cloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than
"roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the more
because I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,
and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would be
kindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered on
and listened with the better grace.
"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jester
who asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.
Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turned
to Gilbert Stair.
"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, passing the question on.
At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,
too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as the
reaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery's
father. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without its
simple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-gray
eyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about the
mouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of him
that Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knew
not how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only her
paternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matched
the weak chin to a hair.
"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" he
quavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His title was well
hanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!"
A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulant
outburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.
"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebel
Roger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tis
likely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to come
into his own again."
"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottle
afresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when he
came? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."
My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie in
words.
"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detached
for special duty.'"
"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"
Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dear
Captain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.
Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;
'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assure
you!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen upon
me for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinking
he'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."
Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, Sir
Francis? You've promised that, you know."
I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to this
little bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.
"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he had
what he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought him
here, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.
Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--this
to the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your title will be well quieted,
Mr. Stair."
At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table till
the bottles reeled.
"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimped
here in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wring
his neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.
If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang him
peacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."
The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We've
had him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barred
door with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as for
that, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."
Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graver
business of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It was
Falconnet who gave the toast.
"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,
Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"
"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know him
better as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,
this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This same
old heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assure
you he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he who
ambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the
wine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallow
them."
By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,
I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with
Captain Damaré, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the
savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner
placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been
king's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and
in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to
learn, he was a man for us to fear.
"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will
not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
It was Falconnet who answered.
"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"
"Yes."
"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's have
your news, Captain."
"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailing
in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to
dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest with
my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border
settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met
with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known
him. Then I heard the baronet say:
"But yet the thing is done?"
"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after
which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And
that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke
in upon it shrilly.
"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting from
his chair. "'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know it
well, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel
militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
But the captain put him down in brief.
"Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tis
hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at
best--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest
in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--I
would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord's
commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumbly
like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too
violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what
double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely
something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways
and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular
orders.
"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota
will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous
will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
Falconnet's oath was of impatience.
"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round their
necks. The country is alive with rebels."
Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern
route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the
partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the
horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent
under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying
prone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene
within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his
factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of
subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle
gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's men
drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the
powder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some
map or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it for
Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what
this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the
frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us
knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men were
planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be
done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led
by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the
over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a
junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk
and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of
any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought
upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay
before me.
The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task
of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking
the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was
nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region
at the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man for
self-defense?
At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would
know how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'd
find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to
this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick before
the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the
half-score miles to Jennifer House.
Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should
last--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which
again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I
would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second
thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge
of the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking the
time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set
some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the
convoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedient
seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught
and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and
glare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers and
the bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. If
I could make a shift to rob them of this map--
It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to
take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and
the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon
their figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and the
captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he
was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw
not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within
and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I
might snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I
had come.
So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching
hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost
my grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the wooden
shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling
the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the
dead.
As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs
flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding
figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I
had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the
night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon
horse-holder.
"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer,
put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,
while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious
scrap of parchment in his hand.
Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattered
down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by
my doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but
tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I
had it safe.
You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what
followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little
stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now
to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain
hung in air and sought his foothold.
With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it
tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged
upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through
the gaping doorway.
I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with the
point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the
oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the
saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till
the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently
by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes with
the sword at the man upon his back.
It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust
he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the
night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon
shot to crush my skull.
VIII
IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY
Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will
tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on
the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to
give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my
captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and
feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and
aching from their buffetings.
How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this
harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could
not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung
pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses
tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.
The scene within the great fore-room of the house had been shifted, too.
A sentry was pacing back and forth before the door--a Hessian grenadier
by the size and shako of him; and when the two trooper bailiffs thrust
me in, and I had winked and blinked my eyes accustomed to the
candle-light, I saw the table had been swept of its bottles and glasses,
and around it, sitting as in council, were some half-score officers of
the British light-horse with their colonel at the head.
As it chanced, this was my first sight near at hand of that British
commander whose name in after years the patriot mothers spoke to fright
their children. He did not look a monster. As I recall him now, he was a
short, square-bodied man, younger by some years than myself, and yet
with an old campaigner's head well set upon aggressive shoulders. His
eyes were black and ferrety; and his face, well seasoned by the Carolina
sun, was swart as any Arab's. A man, I thought, who could be
gentle-harsh or harsh-revengeful, as the mood should prompt; who could
make well-turned courtier compliments to a lady and damn a trooper in
the self-same breath.
This was that Colonel Banastre Tarleton who gave no quarter to
surrendered men; and when I looked into the sloe-black eyes I saw in
them for me a waiting gibbet.
"So!" he rapped out, when I was haled before him. "You're the spying
rebel captain, eh? Are you alive enough to hang?"
His lack of courtesy rasped so sorely that I must needs give place to
wrath and answer sharply that there was small doubt of it, since I could
stand and curse him.
He scowled at that and cursed me back again as heartily as any
fishwife. Then suddenly he changed his tune.
"They tell me you were in the service once and left it honorably. I am
loath to hang a man who has worn the colors. Would it please you best to
die a soldier's death, Captain Ireton?"
I said it would, most surely.
He said I should have the boon if I would tell him what an officer on
the Baron de Kalb's staff should know: the strength of the Continentals,
the general's designs and dispositions, and I know not what besides. I
think it was my laugh that made him stop short and damn me roundly in
the midst.
"By God, I'll make you laugh another tune!" he swore. "You rebels are
all of a piece, and clemency is wasted on you!"
"Your mercy comes too dear; you set too high a price upon it, Colonel
Tarleton. If, for the mere swapping of a rope for a bullet, I could be
the poor caitiff your offer implies, hanging would be too good for me."
"If that is your last word--But stay; I'll give you an hour to think it
over."
"It needs not an hour nor a minute," I replied. "If I knew aught about
the Continental army--which I do not--I'd see you hanged in your own
stirrup-leather before I'd tell you, Colonel Tarleton. Moreover, I
marvel greatly--"
"At what?" he cut in rudely.
"At your informant's lack of invention. He might have brought me
straight from General Washington's headquarters while he was about it.
'Twould be no greater lie than that he told you."
He heard me through, then fell to cursing me afresh, and would be
sending an aide-de-camp hot-foot for Falconnet.
While the messenger was going and coming there was a chance for me to
look around like a poor trapped animal in a pitfall, loath to die
without a struggle, yet seeing not how any less inglorious end should
offer. The eye-search went for little of encouragement; there was no
chance either to fight or fly. But apart from this, the probing of the
shadows revealed a thing that set me suddenly in a fever, first of rage,
and then of apprehension.
As I have said, this gathering-room of our old house was in size like an
ancient banquet hall. It had a gable to itself in breadth and height,
and at the farther end there was a flight of some few steps to reach the
older portion of the house beyond. The upper end of this low stair
pierced the thick wall of the older house, and in the shadows of the
niche thus formed I saw my lady Margery.
She was standing as one who looks and listens; and my rage-fit blazed
out upon the descrying of a shadowy figure of a man behind her; a man I
guessed in jealous wrath to be the baronet--a reasonless suspicion,
since the volunteer captain would certainly have made his presence known
when his colonel had called for him. But while my heart was yet afire my
lady moved aside as if to have a better sight of us below; and then I
saw it was the priest behind her.
While I was watching her, and we were waiting yet upon the
aide-de-camp's return, there was a stir without, and when it reached the
door the sentry challenged. Some confab followed, and I overheard enough
to tell me that a scouting party had come in, bringing a prisoner. The
colonel bade me stand aside, and passed the word to fetch the prisoner
before him. When the thing was done I set my teeth upon a groan. For it
was Richard Jennifer.
Luckily, he did not single me out among the bystanders, being fresh come
from the night without to the glare of candle-light within; and while
the swart-faced colonel plied him with questions I had a chance to look
him up and down. Though his arm was still in its sling, he was seemingly
the better of his wound. There was a glow of health and strength
returning in cheek and eye, and I thought him handsomer than ever what
time he stood forth boldly and fronted down the bullying colonel.
Knowing the Jennifer stock and its fine scorn of subterfuge, I feared it
would go hard with Richard; and so, indeed, it had gone, lacking a word
in season from an enemy. When Tarleton would have made him choose
between the taking of the king's oath and captivity in the hulks at
Charleston, a burly Hessian captain at the table spoke the word in
season.
"_Verdammt!_ mine Colonel; I vill know dis Mr. Yennifer. He is a prave
yoong schalavags, and he is not gone out mit der rebels. Give him to me
for mine plunders."
The colonel laughed and showed his teeth. Having one man to hang he
could afford to be lenient with another.
"What will you do with him, Captain Lauswoulter? By the look of him he'd
make but indifferent sausage-meat."
"Vat shall I do mit him? I shall make him mine best bows and send him
home, py Gott! Ve did had some liddle troubles mit der cards, and ven
mine foot was slipped on dis _verdammt_ grease-grass, he did not run me
t'rough so like he might."
"Oh; an affair of honor? Well, we'll count that in his favor. Take him
away, Trelawny, and quarter yourself and twenty men upon him at Jennifer
House. You have your parole, Mr. Jennifer; but by the Lord, if you break
it by so much as a wink or a nod, Trelawny will hang you to your own
ridge-pole."
Given a hearing, Jennifer would have spoiled it all by swearing hotly he
had given no parole, but at the word the colonel roared him down like a
bull of Bashan, and in the hubbub my brave lad was hustled out.
Though I was full to bursting with my news there was nothing I could do;
and when it was fairly over and he was gone, I was right glad he had not
seen me. For I knew well his steel-true loyalty, and that at sight of me
in trouble he would have lost his slender chance of guarded liberty,
and with it my last hope of sending word across the mountains; though,
as for that, the hope was well-nigh dead at any rate.
While Jennifer's guard and quota were mounting at the door the
aide-de-camp returned, and that without the baronet. I caught but here
and there a word of his report; enough to gather that the captain-knight
was not yet in from posting out the sentries.
I made no doubt his absence was designed. He would have Margery believe
that he had spared me honorably as an enemy wounded, and so had left me
to the tender mercies of his colonel, well assured that Tarleton would
not spare me. And this the colonel did not mean to do, as I was now to
hear in brief.
"You put a bold front on, Captain Ireton, but 'tis to no purpose, this
time," he began. "'Tis charged against you that you rode here from the
baron's camp with your commission in your pocket, and came and went
within our lines like any other spy. You are a soldier, sir, and you
know that's hanging. Yet I will hear you if you've anything to say."