Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/40

 26 were silent, suspicious of each other, never relaxing our vigilance. We encountered few travelers, and with these scarcely exchanged a word. Not a soldier was seen, although there was a Confederate garrison at Covington a few miles to the south. The light of a dying day still clung to the western sky when our wearied horses bore us into the village of Hot Springs. It was like a deserted hamlet, few houses appearing inhabited, and the shop windows boarded up. Occasionally a face peered at us cautiously through closed windows, and a man, tramping across the square, paused to stare curiously in our direction; but these were the only signs of life visible. Over a stone building—possibly the post-office—flapped a small Confederate flag, ragged and disreputable. Taylor, glancing neither to right or left, apparently indifferent to all this desolation, rode straight down the main street, and turned onto a pike road, leading to the left. A mile beyond, a frame house, painted white, barely visible through the deepening dusk, stood in a grove of oaks. The fence surrounding it had been broken down, and the gate stood wide open. The mountaineer turned up the broad driveway, and dismounted before the closed door. Almost at the same moment the portal opened slightly and a black face peered out.