“Ten thirty-three and fourteen seconds,” I said.
“Yes. The other will show 1863 time. You won’t be able to reset the first dial—but for goodness sake remember to keep it wound—and set the second for… 11:54, zero. That means in six minutes you’ll leave—to arrive at midnight. Remember to keep that one wound too, for you’ll go by that regardless of variations in local clocks. Whatever else happens, be in the center of the barn at midnight—allow yourself some leeway—by midnight, July Fourth. I don’t want to have to go wandering around 1863 looking for you.”
“You won’t have to. I’ll be here.”
“Five minutes. Now then, food.”
“I have some,” I answered, slapping my pocket.
“Not enough. Take this concentrated chocolate along. I suppose it won’t hurt to drink the water if you’re not observed, but avoid their food. One never knows what chain might be begun by the casual theft (or purchase, if you had an old enough coin) of a loaf of bread. The possibilities are limitless. Listen! How can I impress on you the importance of doing nothing that could possibly change the future—our present? I’m sure to this day Ace doesn’t understand it, and I tremble every moment he spends in the past. The most trivial action may start a series of disastrous consequences. Don’t be seen, don’t be heard. Make your trip as a ghost.”
“Barbara, I promise I’ll neither assassinate General Lee nor give the North the idea of a modern six-barreled cannon.”
“Four minutes. It’s not a joke, Hodge.”
“Believe me,” I said, “I understand.”
She looked at me searchingly. Then she shook her head and began making her round of the engines, adjusting the dials. I slid under the glass ring as I’d so often seen her do and stood casually under the reflector. I was not in the least nervous. I don’t think I was even particularly excited.
“Three minutes,” said Barbara.
I patted my breast pocket. Notebook, pencils. I nodded.
She ducked under the ring and came toward me. “Hodge…”
“Yes?”
She put her arms on my shoulders, leaning forward. I kissed her, a little absently. “Clod!”
I looked at her closely, but there were none of the familiar signs of anger. “A minute to go, it says here,” I told her.
She drew away and went back. “All set. Ready?”
“Ready,” I answered cheerfully. “See you midnight, July Fourth, 1863.”
“Right. Goodbye, Hodge. Glad you didn’t tell Catty.”
The expression on her face was the strangest I’d ever seen her wear. I could not, then or now, quite interpret it. Doubt, malice, suffering, vindictiveness, love were all there as her hand moved the switch. I began to answer something—perhaps to bid her wait—then the light made me blink and I too experienced the shattering feeling of transition. My bones seemed to fly from each other; every cell in my body exploded to the ends of space.
The instant of translation was so brief it is hard to believe all the multitude of impressions occurred simultaneously. I was sure my veins were drained of blood, my brain and eyeballs dropped into a bottomless void, my thoughts pressed to the finest powder and blown a universe away. Most of all, I knew the awful sensation of being, for that tiny fragment of time, not Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, but part of an I in which the I that was me merged all identity.
Then I opened my eyes. I was emotionally shaken; my knees and wrists were watery points of helplessness, but I was alive and functioning—with my individuality unimpaired. The light had vanished. I was in darkness save for faint moonlight coming through the cracks in the barn. The sweetish smell of cattle was in my nostrils, and the slow, ponderous stamp of hooves in my ears. I had gone back through time.
XI
The barking of the dogs was frenzied, filled with the hoarse note indicating they had been raising the alarm for long without being heeded. I knew they must have been barking at the alien smells of soldiers for the past day, so I was not apprehensive their scent of me would bring investigation. How Barbara and Ace had escaped detection on journeys which didn’t coincide with abnormal events was beyond me; with such an unnerving racket in prospect I would either have given up the trips or moved the apparatus.
Strange, I reflected, that the cows and horses were undisturbed. That no hysterical chicken leaped from the roost in panic. Only the dogs scented my unnatural presence. Dogs, who are supposed to sense things beyond the perceptions of man.
Warily I picked my way past the livestock and out of the barn, fervently hoping the dogs were tied for I had no mind to start my adventure by being bitten. Barbara’s warnings seemed inadequate indeed; one would think she or Ace would have devised some method of neutralizing the infernal barking.
Once out on the familiar Hanover road every petty feeling of doubt or distress fell away and all the latent excitement took hold of me. I was gloriously in 1863, half a day and some 30 miles from the battle of Gettysburg. If there is a paradise for historians I had achieved it without the annoyance of dying first. I swung along at a good pace, thankful I had trained myself for long tramps, so that 30 miles in less than ten hours was no monstrous feat. The noise of the dogs died away behind me and I breathed the night air joyfully.
I had already decided I dare not attempt to steal a ride on the railroad, even supposing the cars were going through. As I turned off the Hanover road and took the direct one to Gettysburg, I knew I would not be able to keep on it for long. Part of Early’s Confederate division was marching along it from recently occupied York; Stuart’s cavalry was all around; trifling skirmishes were being fought on or near it; Union troops, regulars as well as the militia called out by Governor Curtin for the emergency, were behind and ahead of me, marching for the Monocacy and Cemetery Ridge.
Leaving the highway would hardly slow me down, for I knew every sideroad, lane, path or shortcut, not only as they existed in my day, but as they had been in the time where I was now. I was going to need this knowledge even more on my return, for on the Fourth of July this road, like every other, would be glutted with beaten Northern troops—supplies and wounded left behind—frantically trying to reorganize as they were harassed by Stuart’s cavalry and pressed by the victorious men of Hill, Longstreet, and Ewell. It was with this in mind I had allowed disproportionately longer for coming back.
I saw my first soldier a few miles farther on, a jagged shadow sitting by the roadside with his boots off, massaging his feet. I guessed him Northern from his kepi, but this was not conclusive, for many Southron regiments wore kepis also. I struck off quietly into the field and skirted around him. He never looked up.
At dawn I estimated I was halfway, and except for that single sight of a soldier I might have been taking a nocturnal stroll through a countryside at peace. I was tired but certainly not worn out, and I knew I could count on nervous energy and happy excitement to keep me going long after my muscles began to protest. Progress would be slower from now on—Confederate infantry must be just ahead—but even so, I should be at Gettysburg by six or seven.
The sudden drumming of hooves brushed me off the dusty pike and petrified me into rigidity as a troop dressed in gray and dirty tan galloped by screaming “Eeeeee-yeeee” exultantly. It would be the sideroads from now, I decided.
But others had the same impulse; the sideroads were well populated. Although I knew the movement of every division and of many regiments, and even had some considerable idea of the civilian dislocation, the picture around me was confused and chaotic. Farmers, merchants, workers in overalls rode or tramped eastward; others, identical in dress and obvious intensity of effort, pushed westward. I passed carriages and carts with women and children traveling at various speeds both ways. Squads and companies of blue-clad troops marched along the roads or through the fields, trampling the crops, a confused sound of singing, swearing, or aimless talk hanging above them like a fog. Spaced by pacific intervals, men in gray or butternut, otherwise indistinguishable, marched in the same direction. I decided I could pass unnoticed in the milling crowds.