[Illustration: 9154]
N his escape from the sheriff and his deputy, Pete Warren ran with the
speed of a deer-hound through the near-by woods. Thinking his pursuers
were close behind him, he did not stop even to listen to their
footsteps. Through dell and fen, up hill and down, over rocks and
through tangled undergrowth he forged his way, his tongue lolling from
the corner of his gaping mouth. The thorns and briers had tom gashes in
his cheeks, neck, and hands, and left his clothing in strips. The wild
glare of a hunted beast was in his eyes. The land was gradually sloping
upward. He was getting upon the mountain. For a moment the distraught
creature paused, bent his ear to listen and try to decide, rationally,
calmly, which was the better plan, to hide in the caverns and craggy
recesses of the frowning heights above or speed onward over more level
ground. For a moment the drumlike pounding of his heart was all
the sound he heard, and then the blast of a hunter's horn broke
the stillness, not two hundred yards away, and was thrown back in
reverberating echoes from the mountain-side. This was followed by
a far-off answering shout, the report of a signal-gun, and then the
mellow, terrifying baying of blood-hounds fell upon his ears. Pete stood
erect, his knees quivering. No thought of prayer passed through his
brain. Prayer, to his mind, was only a series of empty vocal sounds
heard chiefly in churches where black men and women stood or knelt in
their best clothes, and certainly not for emergencies like this, where
granite heavens were closing upon stony earth and he was caught between.
Suddenly bending lower, and fresher for the second wind he had got,
he sped onward again, choosing the valley rather than the steeper
mountain-side. Shouts, gun reports, horn-blasts, and the baying of the
hounds now followed him. Presently he came to a clear mountain creek
about twenty feet wide and not deeper anywhere than his waist, and in
many places barely covering the slimy brown stones over which it flowed.
Here, as if by inspiration, came the remembrance of some story he had
heard about a pursued negro managing to elude the scent of blood-hounds
by taking to water, and into the icy stream Pete plunged, and, slipping,
stumbling, falling, he made his way onward.
But his reason told him this slow method really would not benefit him,
for his pursuers would soon catch up and see him from the banks. He had
waded up the stream about a quarter of a mile, when he came to a spot
where the stout branches of a sturdy leaning beech hung down within his
reach. The idea which came to him was worthy of a white man's brain,
for, pulling on the bough and finding it firm, he decided upon the
original plan of getting out of the water there, where his trail would
be lost to sight or scent, and climbing into the dense foliage above.
His pursuers might not think to look upward at exactly that spot, and
the hounds, bent on catching the scent from the ground where he landed,
would speed onward, farther and farther away. At all events it was worth
the trial.
With quivering hands he drew the bough down till its leaves sank under
the water. It bore his weight well and from it he climbed to the
massive trunk and higher upward, till, in a fork of the tree, he rested,
noticing, with a throb of relief, that the bough had righted itself and
hung as before above the surface of the stream. On came the dogs; he
could not hear them now, for, intent upon their work, they made no
sound, but the hoarse, maddened voices of men under their guidance
reached his ears. The swish through the undergrowth, the patter, as of
rain on dry leaves, as their claws hurled the ground behind them, the
snuffing and sneezing--_that was the hounds_. Closer and closer Pete
hugged the tree, hardly breathing, fearing now that the water dripping
from his clothing or the bruised leaves of the bough might betray his
presence. But the hounds, one on either side of the stream, their noses
to the earth, dashed on. Pete caught only a gleam of their sleek, dim
coats and they were gone. Behind them, panting, followed a dozen men.
In his fear of being seen, Pete dared not even look at their inflamed
faces. With closed eyes pressed against his wet coat-sleeve, he clung to
his place, a hunted thing, neither fish, fowl, nor beast, and yet, like
them all, a creature of the wilderness, endowed with the instinct of
self-preservation.
“They will run 'im down!” he heard a man say. “Them dogs never have
failed. The black devil thought he'd throw 'em off by taking to water.
He didn't know we had one for each bank.”
On ran the men, the sound of their progress becoming less and less
audible as they receded. Was he safe now? Pete's slow intelligence
answered no. He was still fully alive to his danger. He might stay there
for awhile, but not for long. Already, perhaps owing to his desperate
running, he had an almost maddening thirst, a thirst which the sheer
sight of the cool stream so near tantalized. Should he descend, satisfy
his desire, and attempt to regain his place of hiding? No, for he might
not seclude himself so successfully the next time. Then, with his face
resting on his arm, he began to feel drowsy. Twisting his body about,
he finally found himself in a position in which he could recline
still close to the tree and rest a little, though his feet and legs,
surcharged with blood, were painfully weighted downward. The forest
about him was very quiet. Some bluebirds above his head were singing
merrily. A gray squirrel with a fuzzy tail was perched inquiringly
on the brown bough of a near-by pine. Pete reclined thus for several
minutes, and then the objects about him appeared to be in a blur. The
far off shouts, horn-blasts, and gun reports beat less insistently on
his tired brain, and then he found himself playing with a kitten--the
queerest, most amusing kitten--in the sunlight in front of his mother's
door.
He must have slept for hours, for when he opened his eyes the sun was
sinking behind the top of a distant hill. He tried to draw his aching
legs up higher and felt stinging pricks of pain from his hips to his
toes, as his blood leaped into circulation again. After several efforts
he succeeded in standing on the bough. To his pangs of thirst were now
added those of hunger. For hours he stood thus. He saw the light of day
die out, first on the landscape and later from the clear sky. Now,
he told himself, under cover of night, he would escape, but something
happened to prevent the attempt. Through the darkness he saw the
flitting lights off many pine torches. They passed to and fro under
the trees, sometimes quite near him, and as far as he could see up the
mountain-sides they flickered like the sinister night-eyes of his doom.
He stood till he felt as if he could do so no longer, and then he got
down on the bough as before, and after hours of conscious hunger and
thirst and cramping pains he slept again. Thus he passed that night, and
when the golden rays of sunlight came piercing the gray mountain mists
and flooding the landscape with its warm glory, Pete Warren, hearing the
voices of sleepless revenge, now more numerous and harsh and packed with
hate--hearing them on all sides from far and near--dared not stir. He
remained perched in his leafy nook like some half-knowing, primeval
thing, avoiding the flint-tipped arrows of the high-cheeked,
straight-haired men lurking beneath.