"'Tis the enemy, I think," he said, "but only scouts, I suppose." XXVI A SALUTE ACROSS THE DEAD-LINE I was not seeking enemies just then and was not pleased. "Didn't the Yankees fall back this morning before day and move southward?" I asked. "For what would they do that?" inquired my leader, still using the glass, but before I could reply he gave a soft hiss, dropped the glass, and turned his unaided eye upon a point close beyond our field, in the road. Now again he lifted the glass, and I saw over there two small, black, moving objects. They passed behind some fence-row foliage, reappeared nearer, and suddenly bobbed smartly up to the roadside fence--the dusty hats of two Federal horsemen. The wearers sat looking over into the field between them and us. I asked Ferry if he wasn't afraid they would see us. "That is what we want," was his reply; "only, they must not know we want it. Keep very still; don't move." At that word they espied us and galloped back. We turned to our left and hurried along our own fence-line, first eastward, then south, and reined up behind some live brush at the edge of the public road. "Soon know how many they are, now," he said, smiling back at me. "Are you going to count them?" It seemed so much easier to let them count us. "Yes," he replied. "Wish we had our boys here," he added, and did not need to tell me how he would have posted them; the place was so favorable for an ambush that those Yankees had no doubt been looking for us before they saw us. Half of us would be in the locks of these highroad fences to lure them on, and half in the little gully masked with canes to take them in the flank. "We would count many times our own number before they should pass," he added. "Can't we make them think our men are here?" I suggested. "Couldn't I go back to where this fence crosses the gully and let them see me opening a gap in it?" He was amused. "Go if you want; but be quick; here they come already, a small bunch of them."