deer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton and
I, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work
hospitably on the meat supply. Meanwhile I came upon the scene,
something less hurriedly than Richard. Ephraim Yeates looked me up and
down with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and a
third for the German ritter-boots I wore.
"Umph!" said he. "Now if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighter
again! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on a
stiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" Then to me, most pointedly:
"Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez I
allow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up on
the briars."
He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair's
parchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed with
him.
"Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates," said I. "I am too near
famished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast."
Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spat
upon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.
"Whoop!" he yelled. "No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot out
to call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, you
infergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip ye
in the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tail
top-knot o' your'n! _Yip-pee!_"
By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughter
might, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even the
stoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to lose
countenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with my
capering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.
For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more my
senior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fall
out of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after some
wild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good his
promise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman's
trick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which sent
him flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of the
landslide.
The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.
When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeates
sat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.
"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. Old
Eph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meat
with the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing a
friend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jest
or'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from now
on, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like of
which, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, these
colder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.
As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,
pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick he
would never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon the
deer's meat which was by this time--not cooked, to be sure, but seared a
little on the outside in true hunter fashion.
While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in return
Ephraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to the
letter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery's
father had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered to
the four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worsted
and driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he was
carried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two of
his men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming in
all the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and the
outlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as King
George himself could wish.
"But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away like
all the others?" Richard would ask.
The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmed
meat. "I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping on
the redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?"
The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on to
explain.
"Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, for
spying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but
'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twas
a powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing to
sneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees."
"Well?" says Dick.
The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time to
impale it on the forked toasting stick.
"Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's our
A-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,
heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'--which is good
Injun-talk for anything ye like,--and so here we are, hot-foot on the
trail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."
"Alone?" said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of this
chase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.
The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "We ain't sich tarnation
big fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallop
us, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. But
there'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em and
raise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?"
But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoy
left Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests had
traveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet and
his troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,
or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistress Margery riding her
own black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, had
passed some two hours later.
This was as we had hoped it might be; but when Dick's satisfaction
would have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign for
silence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to the
ground. Whereat we all began likewise to listen, but I, for one, heard
nothing till Yeates said: "A hoss; a-taking the back track like old Jehu
the son of Nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur," and then we all
marked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.
The old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, and
caught up his rifle. "Let's be a-moving," he said. "We must make out to
stop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's a
rip-snorting that-away for."
The road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfast
camp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, a
negro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearing
down to the ford. At sight of us, or else because he would not take the
water at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily,
carrying his skilless rider with him.
We picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found his
tongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to fire
the blood in our veins--in Jennifer's and mine, at any rate.
"Yah!" he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nigh
strangled him. "Yah! red debbil Injins kill ebberybody and tote off
Mistis Marg'y and dat Jeanne 'ooman! Dat's what dey done!"
XX
IN WHICH WE STRIVE AS MEN TO RUN A RACE
It was some time before the affrighted black could give us any connected
account of what had befallen; and when at length the story was told, all
save the principal fact of the carrying off of Mistress Margery and her
maid was hazy enough.
Pruned down to the simple statement of the fact, and with all the
foolish terror chatterings weeded out, his news came to this: the party
of homing revelers had been ambushed and waylaid at the fording of a
creek some miles to the southward, and in the mellay the young mistress
and her tire-woman had been captured.
So far as any actual witness of the eye went, the negro had seen
nothing. There had been a volley fire from the thicket-belly of black
darkness, a swarming attack to a chorus of Indian yells, shouts from the
men, shrieks from the women, confusion worse confounded in which the
newsbearer himself had been unhorsed and trodden under foot. After which
he knew no more till some one--his master, as he thought--kicked him
alive and bade him mount and ride post-haste on the backward track to
Appleby Hundred, crying the news as he went that Mistress Margery Stair
and her maid had been kidnapped by the Indians.
Pinned to the mark and questioned afresh, the slave could not affirm of
his own knowledge that any one had been killed outright. Pinned again,
it proved to be only a guess of his that the one who had given him his
orders was his master. In the darkness and confusion he could make sure
of nothing; had made sure of nothing save his own frenzy of terror and
the wording of the message he carried.
When we had quizzed him empty we hoisted him upon his beast and sent him
once more a-gallop on the road to Appleby Hundred. That done, a hurried
council of war was held in which we four fell apart, three against one.
Jennifer was for instant pursuit, afoot and at top speed; and Ephraim
Yeates and the Catawba, abandoning their own emprise apparently without
a second thought, sided indifferently with him. For my part, I was for
going back to prepare in decent order for a campaign which should
promise something more hopeful than the probability of speedy
exhaustion, starvation and failure.
We grew hot upon it, Richard and I; he with a young lover's unrecking
rashness, and I with an old campaigner's foresight to make me stubborn;
and Ephraim Yeates and the Catawba drew aside and let us have it out.
Dick argued angrily that time was the all-important item, and was not
above taunting me bitterly, flinging the reproach of cold-blooded age
in my face and swearing hotly that I knew not so much as the alphabet of
love.
The taunts were passed in silence, since I would set them over against
the irrevocable wrong I had done him, saying in my heart that nothing he
could say or do should again tempt me to give place to the devil of
jealous wrath.
But when he would give me space I set the hopelessness of pursuit, all
unprepared as we were, in plainest speech. The chase might well be a
long one, and we were but scantily armed and without provisions. The
hunter's rifle must be our sole dependence for food, and in the summer
heat we would be forced to kill daily. On the other hand, with horses, a
bag of corn apiece, firearms and ammunition, we should be in some more
hopeful case; and, notwithstanding the delay in starting, could make far
better speed.
For all the good it did I might have spared my pains and saved my
breath. Jennifer broke me in the midst, crying out that I was even now
killing the precious minutes; and so our ill-starred venture had its
launching in the frenzied haste that seldom makes for speed. One small
concession I wrung out of his impatience--this with the help of Yeates
and the Catawba. We went back to the breakfast camp, rekindled the fire,
and cooked what we could keep and carry of the venison.
In spite of this delay it was yet early in the forenoon of that
memorable Sunday, the twentieth of August, when we set our faces
southward and took up the line of march to the ford of the ambushment.
By now the sky was wholly overcast, and the wind was blowing fresher in
the tree-tops; but though as yet the storm held off, the air was the
cooler for the threatened rain and this was truly a blessing, since the
old hunter put us keen upon our mettle to keep pace with him.
We marched in Indian file, Ephraim Yeates in the lead, Uncanoola at his
heels, and the two of us heavier-footed ones bringing up the rear.
Knowing the wooded wilderness by length and breadth, the old man held on
through thick and thin, straight as an arrow to the mark; and so we had
never a sight of the road again till we came out upon it suddenly at the
ford of violence.
Here I should have been in despair for the lack of any intelligible hint
to point the way; and I think not even Jennifer, with all his woodcraft,
could have read the record of the onfall as Yeates and the Catawba did.
But for all the overlapping tangle of moccasin and hoof prints neither
of these men of the forest was at fault, though ten minutes later even
their skill must have been baffled, inasmuch as the first few spitting
raindrops were pattering in the tree-tops when we came upon the ground.
"That's jest about what I was most afeard of," said the borderer, with a
hasty glance skyward. "Down on your hunkers, Chief, and help me read
this sign afore the good Lord takes to sending His rain on the jest and
the unjest," and therewith these two fell to quartering all the ground
like trained dogs nosing for a scent.
We stood aside and watched them, Richard and I, realizing that we were
of small account and should be until, perchance, it should come to the
laying on of hearty blows. After the closest scrutiny, which took
account of every broken twig and trampled blade of grass, this prolonged
until the rain was falling smartly to wash out all the foot-prints in
the dusty road, Yeates and the Indian gave over and came to join us
under the sheltering branches of an oak.
"'Tis a mighty cur'is sign; most mighty cur'is," quoth the hunter,
slinging the rain-drops from his fur cap and emptying the pan of his
rifle, not upon the ground, as a soldier would, but saving every
precious grain. "Ez I allow, I never heerd tell of any Injuns a-doing
that-away afore; have you, Chief? hey?"
The Catawba's negative was his guttural "Wah," and Ephraim Yeates,
having carefully restored the final grain of the priming to his
powder-horn, proceeded to enlighten us at some length.
"Mighty cur'is, ez I was a-saying. Them Injuns fixed up an ambush_ment_,
blazed in a volley at the clostest sort o' range, and followed it up
with a tomahawk and knife rush,--lessen that there Afrikin was too plumb
daddled to tell any truth, whatsomedever. And, spite of all this here
rampaging, they never drawed a single drop o' blood in the whole
enduring scrimmage! Mighty cur'is, that; ain't it, now? And that ain't
all: some o' them same Injuns, or leastwise one of 'em, was a-wearing
boots with spurs onto 'em. What say, Chief?"
Uncanoola held up all the fingers of one hand and two of the other.
"Sebben Injun; one pale-face," he said, in confirmation.
I looked at Richard, and he gave me back the eyeshot, with a hearty
curse to speed it.
"Falconnet!" said he, by way of tail-piece to the oath; and I nodded.
"'Twas that there same hoss-captain, sure enough, ez I reckon," drawled
Yeates. "Maybe one o' you two can tell what-all he mought be a-driving
at."
Jennifer shook his head, and I, too, was silent. 'Twas out of all reason
to suppose that the baronet would resort to sheer violence and make a
terrified captive of the woman he wanted to marry. It was a curious
mystery, and the hunter's next word involved it still more.
"And yit that ain't all. Whilst some o' the Injuns was a-whooping it up
acrost the creek, a-chasing the folks that was making tracks for their
city o' refuge, t'others run the two gals off into the big woods at the
side o' the road. Then Mister Hoss-Captain picks up the Afrikin, chucks
him on a hoss and sends him a-kiting with his flea in his ear; after
which he climbs _his_ hoss and makes tracks hisself--not to ketch up
with the gals, ez you mought reckon, but off yon way," pointing across
the creek and down the road to the southward.
Jennifer heard him through, had him set it all out again in plainest
fashion, and after all could only say: "You are sure you have the
straight of it, Eph?"
The borderer appealed to Uncanoola. "Come, Chief; give us the wo'th of
your jedgment. Has the old Gray Wolf gone stun-blind? or did he read
them sign like they'd ort to be read?"
"Wah! the Gray Wolf has sharp eye--sharp nose--sharp tongue, sometime.
Sign no can lie when he read 'um."
Jennifer turned to me. "What say you, Jack? 'Tis all far enough beyond
me, I'll confess."
I was as much at sea touching the mystery as he was; yet the thing to do
seemed plain enough.
"Never mind the baronet's mystery; 'tis Mistress Margery's hazard that
concerns us," I would say. And then to Ephraim Yeates: "Will this rain
kill the trail, think you?"
He shook his head dubiously. "I dunno for sartain; 'twill make a heap o'
differ' if they was anyways anxious to hide it. Ez it starts out, with
the women a-hossback, 'tis plain enough for a blind man to lift on the
run."
"Then let us be at it," said I. "We can very well afford to let the
mystery untangle itself as we go." And with this the pursuit began in
relentless earnest.
The trail of the two horses ridden by Margery and her woman cut a right
angle with the road, turning northwest along the left bank of the
stream; and, despite the rain, which was now pouring steadily even in
the thick wood, the hoof-prints were so plainly marked that we could
follow at a smart dog-trot.
In this speeding the old hunter and the Indian easily outwearied
Jennifer and me. They both ran with a slow swinging leap, like the
racking gait, half pace, half gallop, of a well-trained troop horse.
Mile after mile they put behind them in these swinging bounds; and when,
well on in the afternoon, we stopped to eat a snack of the cold meat and
to slake our thirst at one of the many rain pools, I was fain to follow
Jennifer's lead, throwing myself flat on the soaking mold to pant and
gasp and pay off the arrears of breathlessness.
This breathing halt was of the briefest; but before the race began
again, Ephraim Yeates took time to make a careful scrutiny of the trail,
measuring the stride of the horses, and looking sharply on the briars
for some bit of cloth or other token of assurance. When we came up with
him he was mumbling to himself.
"Um-hm; jes' so. They was a-making tracks along hereaway, sartain, sure;
larruping them hosses to a keen jump, lickity-split. Now, says I to
myself, what's the tarnation hurry? Ain't they got all the time there is
to get where they're a-going, immejitly, _if_ not sooner?" Then he
turned upon me. "Cap'n John, can't you and the youngster lay your heads
side and side and make out what-all this here hoss-captain mought be up
to? It do look like he had some sort o' hatchet to grind, a-sending that
Afrikin back to raise a hue and cry, and then a-letting his Injuns leave
a trail like this here that any tow-head boy from the settlemints could
follow at a canter."
Richard said he could never guess the meaning of it all; and my mind was
to the full as blank as his. I made sure some deep-laid plot was at the
bottom of the mystery; but we had measured many weary miles in the
wilderness, and the plotter's trap had been fairly baited, set and
sprung, before the lightning flash of explication came to show us all
its devilish ingenuity.
But now "Forward," was the word, and we fell in line again, and again
the tireless running of the two guides stretched and held us on the rack
of weariness. Happily for us two who were out of training, the rainy-day
dusk came early; and though Yeates and the Indian, running now with
their bodies bent double and their noses to the ground, held on long
after Richard Jennifer and I were bat-blind for any seeing of the
hoof-prints, the end came at length and we bivouacked as we were,
fireless, and with the last of the cooked ration of deer's meat for a
scanty supper.
After the meal, which was swallowed hastily in the silence of utter
fatigue, we scooped a hollow in a last year's leaf bed and lay down to
sleep, wet to the skin as any four half-drowned water rats, and to the
full as miserable.
Fagged as I was, 'twas a long time before sleep came to make me forget;
a weary interval fraught with dismal mental miseries to march step and
step with the treadmill rackings of the aching muscles. What grievous
hap had befallen my dear lady? and how much or how little was I to blame
for this kidnapping of her by my relentless enemy? Was it a sharp
foreboding of some such resort to savage violence that had tortured her
into sending the appeal for help?
With this, I fell to dwelling afresh upon the wording of her message,
hungering avidly for some hint to give me leave to claim it for my own.
Though I made sure she did not love me,--had never loved me as other
than a make-shift confidant, whose face and age would set him far beyond
the pale of sentiment,--yet I had hoped this friendship-love would give
her leave to call upon me in her hour of need.
Was I the one to whom her message had been sped? Suddenly I remembered
what Richard had said; that the arrow was the Catawba's. If Uncanoola
were the bearer of the parchment, he would surely know to whom he had
been sent.
His burrow in the leaf bed chanced to be next to mine, and I could hear
his steady breathing, light and long-drawn, like that of some wild
creature--as, truly, he was--sleeping with all the senses alert to
spring awake at a touch or the snapping of a twig. A word would arouse
him, and a single question might resolve the doubt.
I thought of all this, and yet, when I would have wakened the Indian, a
shaking ague-fit of poltroon cowardice gave me pause. For while the
doubt remained there was a chance to hope that she had sent to me,
making the little cry for help a token, not of love, perchance, but of
some dawning of forgiveness for my desperate wronging of her. And in
that hesitant moment it was borne in upon me that without this slender
chance for hope I should go mad and become a wretched witling at a time
when every faculty should be superhuman sharp and strong for spending in
her service.
So I forebore to wake the Indian; and following out this thought of
service fitness, would force myself to go to sleep and so to gather
fresh strength for the new day's measure.
XXI
HOW WE KEPT LENTEN VIGILS IN TRINITYTIDE
'Twould weary you beyond the limit of good-nature were I to try to
picture out at large the varied haps and hazards of our wanderings in
the savage wilderness. For the actors in any play the trivial details
have their place and meaning momentous enough, it may be; yet these are
often wearisome to the box or stall yawning impatiently for the climax.
So, if you please, you are to conceive us four, the strangest
ill-assorted company on the footstool, pushing on from day to day deeper
and ever deeper into the pathless forest solitudes, yet always with the
plain-marked trail to guide us.
At times the march measured a full day's length amid the columned aisles
of the forest temple through lush green glades dank and steaming in the
August heat, or over hillsides slippery with the fallen leaves of the
pine-trees. Anon it traced the crooked windings of some brawling
mountain stream through thicket tangles where, you would think, no
woman-ridden horse could penetrate.
One day the sun would shine resplendent and all the columned distances
would fill with soft suffusings of the gray and green and gold, with
here and there a dusky flame where the sweet-gum heralded the autumn,
whilst overhead the leafy arches were fine-lined traceries and
arabesques against the blue. But in the night, mayhap, a dismal rain
would come, chill with the breath of the nearing mountains; and then the
trees turned into dripping sprinkling-pots to drench us where we lay,
sodden already with the heaviness of exhaustion.
Since the hasting pursuit was a thing to tap the very fountain-head of
fortitude and endurance, we fared on silent for the better part; and in
a little time the hush of the solitudes laid fast hold of us, scanting
us of speech and bidding us go softly. And after this the march became a
soundless shadow-flitting, and we a straggling file of voiceless
mechanisms wound up and set to measure off the miles till famine or
exhaustion should thrust a finger in among the wheels and bid them stop
forever.