A REFUGEE.
IRRESPONSIBLY joyous, thus to be in a saddle, on a spirited horse, Rust
was soon dashing across the common and turning about like a centaur, for
ease and grace, glanced back to see who might be joining in the race.
His naked sword was still in his hand. It was red from point to hilt. He
wiped it on the horse, thereby causing the animal to plunge and to run
in a frenzy of nervousness.
Adam chortled. The affair from beginning to end, from his present
standpoint, appealed to his sense of humor. The consequences of his
adventure would be presented to his mind soon enough. He merely knew now
that he had won out of a tight corner, as a gentleman should, that a
glorious animal was bounding beneath him and, that sweet night air came
rushing upon him as if it opened its arms to receive him.
Aware that he would soon be pursued, and mentally acknowledging that the
horse was not his own, he rode to a farm-house about a mile or so out
from the town, and there dismounted. Reluctantly he said farewell to the
charger, bidding the farmer have the animal returned to Boston in the
morning, with his thanks and compliments. For the service he presented
the wondering man with a piece of silver, the last he had of the small
amount left him after paying the fares of the beef-eaters up to
Massachusetts.
Coolly inviting himself to have a bite of the farmer’s scanty supper, he
bade the man good night, about five minutes before the mounted
constables came riding hotly to the place. He even heard them, when they
left the farm and began to scour the woods to jump him up. At this he
smiled with rare good humor, confident of the powers of superior
wood-craft to baffle anybody or anything in all Massachusetts, save
alone an Indian.
Understanding all the delighted chucklings of the forest as he did, he
felt at once secure among the trees, as one of the family. Moreover he
loved to be wandering in the woods at night. He continued to walk, on
and on, beginning to wonder at last what he really intended to do. Then,
at the thought of Garde, who might be expecting to see him, and whom he
very much desired again to see, he waxed somewhat impatient with this
enforced flight from the town where she was.
The more he thought upon it, then, the more impossible it seemed for him
to return. Against Randolph, enthroned in power, and against all his
wretched disciples, he could not expect to breathe a word which would
avail to get him justice. It would be sheer madness to make the attempt.
The creatures would charge him with all the crimes on the calendar, and,
swearing all to one statement, would convict him of anything they chose.
The whole affair had been planned to beat him, or worse, and to a
galling extent it had quite succeeded. He was balked, completely and
absolutely, in whatsoever direction his meditations turned. To try to
see Garde would be fairly suicidal. Not to see her, especially after his
promises, would be, to a man so much in love as he, a living death.
And again, the beef-eaters. What was to become of his faithful retinue?
They would arrive there, only to find that he had again deserted them,
leaving them wholly at the mercy of Randolph and his jackals. These
demons would not be slow at recognizing who and what Pike and Halberd
were, from episodes of the past. The two would go straight into the
lion’s mouth, at the Crow and Arrow.
He thought at first of going to Plymouth. He could write to Garde from
there, he reflected, and also to Halberd and Pike. But he soon concluded
that this would be to walk merely into the other end of the enemy’s
trap, for no good or comforting purpose. New York presented itself as a
jurisdiction where Randolph’s arm would have no power to do him harm.
But New York was a long way off. If he went there, not only would he
miss seeing Garde, but he could not warn his retinue in time to keep
them out of Randolph’s clutches.
The business was maddening. He began to think, as a consequence of
dwelling on the hopelessness of his own situation, that Randolph would
be aiming next at Garde herself, in wreaking his dastardly vengeance for
his past defeats. This was intolerable. He halted, there in the dark
woods, swaying between the good sense of hiding and the nonsense of
going straight back to the town, to carry Garde away from the harpies,
bodily.
A picture of old David Donner, stricken, helpless, a child, arose in his
mind, to confront him and to mock his Quixotic scheme. He could not
carry both Garde and her grandfather away to New York, nor even to the
woods. He was penniless. This was not the only obstacle, even supposing
Donner would consent so to flee, which was not at all likely.
It was also certain that Garde would not permit him to carry her off and
leave the old man behind. But at least, he finally thought, he could go
back to the town and be near, to protect her, if occasion should require
a sword and a ready wit. Could he but manage to do this—to go there
secretly and remain there unknown—he could gather his beef-eaters about
him and together they could and would combat an army!
But how to go back and be undetected, that was the question. In the
first place he despised the idea of doing anything that did not smack of
absolute boldness and fearlessness. Yet Boston was a seething whirlpool
of Randolph’s power, at this time. Simply to be caught like a rat and
killed like a pest would add nothing of glory to his name, nor could it
materially add to Garde’s happiness and safety.
Driven into a corner of his brain, as it were, by all these moves and
counter-moves on the chess-board of the situation, he presently
conceived a plan which made him hug himself in sheer delight.
He would simply disguise himself as an Indian and go to town to make a
treaty with Randolph, the Big-man-afraid-to-be-chief.
This so tickled his fancy that, had an Indian settlement been near at
hand, he would have been inside his buckskins and war-paint and back to
Boston ahead of the constables themselves. In such a guise, he told
himself, he could manage to see his sweetheart, he could get his
beef-eaters clear of danger, baffle his foes, and arrange to carry both
Garde and her grandfather away to safety.
But the first consideration was, where should he find an Indian? He was
aware that the Red men had been pushed backward and westward miles from
the towns of the whites. It was years since he had roamed through the
forests and mountains——years since he had known where his old-time, red
brothers built their lodges. There could be but one means of finding a
camp, namely: to walk onward, to penetrate fairly to the edge of the
wilderness beyond.
Nothing daunted by the thought of distance, he struck out for the west.
Like the Indians themselves, he could smell the points of the sunrise
and sunset, unerringly. With boyish joy in his thoughts, and in the
dreams he fashioned of the hair-breadth events that would happen when he
arrived in the town in his toggery, he plodded along all night, happy
once more and contented.
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