"Gone!" answered Alf. "Escaped! I told you...."
"Joe!" boomed the Judge.
"Here I am, sir."
"Have you been here all the time?"
"Yes, sir."
"The dirty rat let him escape...."
"Shut up, Alf! Have you been here all the time, Joe?"
"Yes, sir. I've been right here, sir. I didn't leave for a second."
Alf yelled: "Look out the window! He jumped out the window! Run around
outside!" He came bounding down the hall again, entered the room, and threw
open the window.
Tom could see his head in the candle light. He shifted back closer to the
wall, his heart pounding. "Look through them bushes," yelled Alf to the men
who had run into the yard. He let the window slam shut and went up the
hall. Then: "Where'd that other one go? Come on! Out with it! You know!"
"Don't try any of that," said the Judge. "You're wasting your time. These
men don't know anything about it. Joe was here in the corridor."
A few seconds later, Tom heard Alf's voice in the yard: "He's got away. Get
horses! If we only had a pack of dogs...." The noise in the corridor
ceased, and the men clumped down the stairs, leading Wilson and Shadrack
with them. The sound of voices in the yard grew indistinct and far away.
Tom began quietly to investigate his new room. It was on the corner of the
house, and there were two windows--the one through which Tom had entered,
and another which looked out to the rear. He felt his way along the wall
and came to a wash-stand and a chair. He took the chair and wedged it
silently under the door-knob; then stole across to the rear window. It was
black dark outside. After a few minutes, he raised the window and listened.
Men were yelling in the distance. Apparently they were starting on a wild
night chase in the hopes of finding him on the road.
"If you had more sense and less energy, Alf," muttered Tom, "you might get
me." The vision of Andrews' calmness during the raid flashed across his
mind. "Let them get excited," he said to himself; "you keep your wits."
Then he heard the Judge's voice, booming in front of the hotel: "Tell them
to get that wagon around here in a hurry--we'll get these two engine
stealers started for Chattanooga, and hunt down the other one when it's
light."
Tom left the window and snatched up the bedclothes, knotted the blankets
together and tied them around the leg of the bed. They would shorten his
drop to a few feet, so that the noise would not be heard above the general
commotion. Then he waited until he heard the wagon creak up before the
hotel and stop. The crowd followed the prisoners and their guards out to
watch the departure.
Tom opened the window and tossed the blankets down; then he squirmed to the
sill, clutched the blankets with his hands and knees, and slid. He dropped
to the ground noiselessly, and stood for a moment scanning the yard for
obstacles. Thirty or forty yards ahead of him there was a row of bushes
which led into the woods south of the village. That would be the best way,
he decided.
Then he changed his mind, for it was too obviously the best way--others
would think of it too, and look for him there. To the bushes, then, and
across the road to the north at the first opportunity. He took off his
shoes, tied them together through a button-hole so that he could not drop
them, and raced, crouching, across the open space. In the bushes, he
stopped and listened. The crowd was yelling and talking in front of the
hotel. Regardless of the stones and twigs which cut into his feet, he
pressed on through the bushes as rapidly as he dared, skirting the yard and
avoiding the woods which lay to his left. A dog yipped frantically, and Tom
stopped; then he decided that the dog was aimlessly sharing in the
excitement, and went forward again.
Five minutes later, he sat on the ground and began scraping the
accumulation of mud and twigs from his socks. He pulled his shoes on, laced
and tied them; then he stood up and began to make his calculations. In
leaving the hotel he had gone west; now, with the village on his right, he
was facing northward, and the Tennessee River was directly ahead of him,
probably four or five miles. The sky was heavily clouded and there were no
stars by which he could set his course through the fields and woods which
lay between him and the river. There was a road going northward from the
hotel, but it would be inviting capture to follow it. The best he could do,
he decided, was to parallel the road, stealing to the right every half-hour
or so until he came to it, then stealing back again until he was under
cover.
Presently he heard the wagon creaking, its wheels sinking through the mud
and grinding upon the solid ground beneath. Men were talking, but he could
not distinguish what they said. Poor Wilson and Shadrack! Prisoners, and
bound for Chattanooga under heavy guard! As he stood there listening, a
sense of utter helplessness wrenched at him. He could do nothing but fight
his own way back to the lines. Plans for going to their rescue tumbled over
each other in his mind, but all of them were hopelessly inadequate.
When the wagon had passed, he walked to the Chattanooga road and crossed,
plunging into the bushes on the other side. Once again he took his
bearings, and hurried northward as quietly as he could. The branches
whipped in his face; sometimes he stumbled and fell. Once he walked into a
ditch half-filled with water, and sprawled on the slippery mud of the bank.
Then he came to a field where his feet sank in the gumbo over his
shoe-tops. His feet accumulated mud until he was obliged to stop and scrape
it off with his hands. But he labored forward, step after step.
After an hour, he turned to the right and went towards the road to make
sure of his course. He reached it after more than a half-hour's walk.
"Must have veered off to the left," he muttered; then he silently retraced
his steps for ten minutes, and turned northward again.
Ahead of him he made out a farmhouse, so he went on a long detour to avoid
arousing the dogs. An hour later, he struck back toward the road again, and
found it after fifteen minutes' walking.
"That's better," he said. He was puffing from the exertion of dragging
himself through the mud, so he sat near the road and rested. His ears
caught the sound of horses' hoofs. He worked his way to the roadside and
waited there to overhear a scrap of the conversation, for the riders were
talking.
"...trying to tell Alf," were the first words he caught.
"He's too crazy to listen," answered the other. "Can't find a man on a
night like this. He won't be fool enough to travel on the road, anyhow.
Better wait until daylight, I says to Alf, but he goes raving 'round like a
mad dog into the woods."
"Well, we'll go to the river an' lay low there. Probably he'll come popping
out along 'bout noon."
"Can't get across the river, anyhow, can he!"
"Can't tell about a Yank. Who'd have thought they'd have stole an engine!"
"Yeh, that's right...."
So they were posting a guard along the river! That was valuable
information. And Alf was in the woods!
At three o'clock in the morning Tom spread his cape upon the ground and
sank down to rest. The long struggle through the mud had become a
nightmare. He was too exhausted to care greatly if the man-hunt ended with
him a prisoner--if it would only end. To be out of this sea of jelly-like
mud would be enough. He lay there breathing heavily, his body aching and
throbbing. Minutes passed. Then he became vaguely aware of a faint roaring.
He listened for a moment, but it meant nothing to him. Presently the sound
came to his ears again, and he sat up.
"The river!" he exclaimed at last. He forgot his exhaustion and sprang to
his feet. During the past two hours he had been straining to catch that
sound, and now he wanted to rush forward, recklessly. But he held himself
in check, remembering the conversation he had overheard, and approached
slowly, choosing each step of the way. Many times he paused to listen; the
noise of the rushing water seemed nearer, but always far away, just out of
his reach. It was maddening. Again and again he felt himself becoming
unnerved by the mud and the darkness and the idea of being hunted.
The clouds were breaking, and a faint blue light seeped through the rifts.
It was as though the trees and bushes had grown magically from the
blackness, only to dissolve in blackness again as the rifts closed. For a
moment he paused, thinking that he had heard the sound of voices. Ten
minutes passed while he crouched in the mud, listening. There was another
brief instant of moonlight, this time brighter, and the shadows cast by the
trees seemed living, moving things. Tom could feel his heart thumping.
"Don't get excited," he muttered to himself. It was encouraging and
comforting to hear the sound of his own voice: "Don't be a fool and lose
your wits--and spoil your chances."
To his left was a forest, and directly ahead of him ran a long row of
bushes. He wanted to avoid the forest, so he hurried as fast as he could
across the field during the next interval of darkness. Then came another
wait of five minutes, and another dash forward. He gained the bushes and
discovered that he had come to a road. It bordered the river, he decided,
for now the rush of the water seemed directly before him. Just as he was
about to cross the road, he caught the beat of a horse's hoofs upon the
mud. A minute later the horse galloped past; Tom had a brief glimpse of the
rider, with his rifle held in the crook of his arm.
Tom crossed the road and entered the thicket on the other side. Now the
river sounded below him, and he decided that he must be close to the edge
of an embankment. He crept forward slowly on his hands and knees through
the tangle of branches, feeling the ground before him. One hand went off
into space, and he groped about. Then he drew back and waited for another
moment of moonlight to show him his position. When it came, a few minutes
later, he saw the Tennessee, swollen and tossing, forty feet below him. He
was on the edge of a sheer embankment.
"Can't do it here," he said, moving away. He crawled back to the road,
crossed it, and walked in the direction of Chattanooga. Presently he heard
someone yelling in the distance. He decided that it was the horseman
calling a farmer from his bed and warning him of the escaped Yankee.
After a half-hour of slow traveling, he made his way towards the river
again. Now the dawn was coming, and the water rippled luminously as Tom
looked over the embankment. At this point, the descent to the water's edge
was more gradual--a straight drop of twelve feet, then a slope of gravel.
Once down there, he would have no choice but to swim the river, and
swimming in such a current was no easy matter. Would it be better, he asked
himself, to go farther down, to risk another half-hour in exploring!
His thoughts were interrupted suddenly by voices on the road, twenty yards
behind him. A man said: "Reckon this is as good a spot as any. Out there I
can see as far up as Johnson's and a mile down."
"Suit yourself," answered the other; "you know the country. I'll go down
an' get Phipps out if nobody else has. Then I'll be back along up this way
and tell the boys that you're here."
"You say this Yank's a young man?"
"'Bout twenty, I'd say."
"How many of them were there that stole the train?"
"The stories are all different. Some say five and some say fifty. Can't
tell. Well, I'll see you later."
Tom swung over the edge of the embankment and dropped. He struck the loose
gravel and rolled down with the gravel sliding after him in a great wave.
It seemed incredible that the men should not hear him, but he trusted to
the noise of the river and ran down along the water's edge. Presently he
came to a large rock projecting from the embankment and dodged behind it.
There he sank down to get breath for his next move.