strenuous onpressing. But through that web the scarlet thread of famine
shuttled in and out, and hunger came and marched with us till all the
days and nights were filled with cravings, and we recked little of fair
skies or dripping clouds, or aught besides save this ever-present
specter of starvation.
You will not think it strange that I should have but dim and misty
memories of this fainting time. Of all privations famine soonest blunts
the senses, making a man oblivious of all save that which drives him
onward. The happenings that I remember clearest are those which turned
upon some temporary bridging of the hunger gulf. One was Yeates's
killing of a milch doe which, with her fawn, ran across our path when we
had fasted two whole days. By this, a capital crime in any hunter's
code, you may guess how cruelly we were nipped in the hunger vise. Also,
I remember this: as if to mock us all the glades and openings on the
hillsides were thicketed with berry bushes, long past bearing. And,
being too late for these, we were as much too early for the nuts of the
hickory and chestnut and black walnut that pelted us in passing.
The doe's meat, coming at a time of sharpest need, set us two days
farther on the march; and when that was spent or spoiled we did as we
could, being never comfortably filled, I think, and oftener haggard and
enfeebled for the want of food. Since we dared not stop to go aside for
game, the Catawba would set over-night snares for rabbits; and for
another shift we cut knobbed sticks for throwing and ran keen-eyed along
the trace, alert to murder anything alive and fit to eat. In this
haphazard hunting nothing ever fell to Jennifer's skilless clubbing, or
to mine; but the old borderer and the Indian were better marksmen, and
now and then some bird or squirrel or rabbit sitting on its form came to
the pot, though never enough of all or any to more than sharpen the
famine edge of hunger.
For all the sharp privations of the forced march there was no hint on
any lip of turning back. With Margery's desperate need to key us to the
unflinching pitch, Richard and I would go on while there was strength to
set one foot before the other. But for the old borderer and the Indian
there was no such bellows to blow the fire of perseverance. None the
less, these two did more than second us; they set the strenuous pace and
held us to it; the Catawba Spartan-proud and uncomplaining; the old
hunter no whit less tireless and enduring. At this far-distant day I can
close my eyes and see the gaunt, leather-clad figure of Ephraim Yeates,
striding on always in the lead and ever pressing forward, tough, wiry
and iron to endure, and yet withal so elastic that the shrewdest
discouragement served only to make him rebound and strike the harder.
Good stuff and true there was in that old man; and had Richard or I been
less determined, his fine and noble heroism in a cause which was not his
own would have shamed us into following where he led.
We had been ten days in this starving wilderness, driving onward at the
pace that kills and making the most of every hour of daylight, before
Yeates and the Indian began to give us hope that we were finally closing
in upon our quarry.
The dragging length of the chase grew upon two conditions. From the
beginning the kidnappers were able to increase their lead by stretching
out the days and borrowing from the nights; also, they were doubtless
well provisioned, and they had horses for the captives and their
impedimenta. But as for us, we could follow only while the daylight let
us see the trail; and though we ran well at first, the lack of proper
food soon took toll of speed.
So now, though the hoof prints grew hourly fresher, and we were at last
so close upon the heels of the kidnappers that their night camp-fires
were scarcely cold when we came upon them, we ran no longer--could
hardly keep a dogged foot-pace for the hunger pains that griped and bent
us double.
The tenth day, as I well remember, was furnace-hot, as were all the
fair-weather days of that never-to-be-forgotten summer, with a still air
in the forest that hung thick and lifeless like the atmosphere of an
oven; this though we were well among the mountains and rising higher
with every added mile of westering.
The sun had passed the meridian, and we were toiling, sweaty-weak, up a
rock-strewn mountain side, when a thing occurred to rouse us roughly
from the famine stupor and set us watchfully alert. In the steepest part
of the ascent where the wood, scanted of rooting ground by the thickly
sown strewing of boulders, was open and free of undergrowth, Ephraim
Yeates halted suddenly, signed to us with upflung hand, and dropped
behind a tree as one shot; and in the same breath the Catawba, running
at Yeates's heels, lurched aside and vanished as if the earth had gaped
and swallowed him.
A moment later the twang of a bow-string buzzed upon the breathless
noontide stillness, and Jennifer clutched and dragged me down in good
time to let the arrow whistle harmless over us. Then, like a distorted
echo of the buzzing bow-string, the sharp crack of the old borderer's
rifle rang out smartly, setting the cliff-crowned mountain side all
a-clamor with mocking repetitions.
"Missed him, slick and clean, by the eternal coon-skin!" growled the
marksman, sitting up behind his tree to reload. "That there's what comes
o' being so dad-blame' hongry that ye can't squinch fair atween the
gun-sights. I reckon ez how ye'd better hunker down and lie clost, you
two. 'Twouldn't s'prise me none if that redskin had a wheen more o' them
sharp-p'inted sticks in his--The Lord be praised for all His marcies!
the chief's got him!"
But Uncanoola had not. He came in presently, his black eyes snapping
with disappointment, saying in answer to Yeates's question that the yell
had been his own; that his tomahawk had sped no truer than the old
borderer's bullet.
"Chelakee snake heap slick: heap quick dodge," was all we could get out
of him; and when that was said he squatted calmly on a flat stone and
fell to work grinding the nick out of the edge of the mis-sped hatchet.
This incident told us plainly enough that the kidnappers were now but a
little way ahead, and that their rear-guard scouts were holding us well
in hand. So from that on we went as men whose lives are held in pawn by
a hidden foe, looking at every turn for an ambushment. Nevertheless, we
were not waylaid again; and when at length the long hot afternoon drew
to its close with the mountain of peril well behind us, we had neither
seen nor heard aught else of the Cherokees.
That night we camped, fireless and foodless, on the banks of a
swift-flowing stream in a valley between two great mountains. We reached
this stream a little before dark, and since the trail led straight into
the water, we would have put this obstacle behind us if we could. But
though the little river was not above five or six poles in width it was
exceeding swift and deep; so impassable, in truth, that we were moved to
wonder how the captive party had made shift to cross.
We guessed at it a while, Richard and I, and then gave it up until we
might have the help of better daylight. But the old borderer's curiosity
was not so readily postponed. Cutting a slim pole from a sapling
thicket, he waded in cautiously, anchoring himself by the drooping
branches of the willows whilst he prodded and sounded and proved beyond
a doubt that the current was over man-head deep, and far too rapid for
swimming.
Satisfied of this, he came out, dripping, and with a monitory word to us
to keep a sharp lookout, disappeared up-stream in the growing dusk, his
long rifle at the trail, and his body bent to bring his keen old eyes
the nearer to the ground.
XXII
HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR
Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us cause
to wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indian
pipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipe
was aglow he told us of his findings.
"'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spell
to throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up."
"That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?" said I; for
the night was black as Erebus.
"Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts," this as calmly as
if we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-defined
trace of foot-prints. "Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped on
t'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. I
saw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals."
"Thank God!" says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the women
were already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with an
eager question: "How does she look, Ephraim?--tell me how she looks!"
"Listen at him!" said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "How
in tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about?
There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have been
dragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week.
Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on
'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' last
idintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a couple
of Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmints
their orders, partic'lar."
Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.
"Show us the way, Eph Yeates!" he burst out impatiently. "We are wasting
a deal of precious time!"
But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making no
move to head a sortie.
"Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o'
hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' full
redskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ez
soon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settle
down for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly,
_if_ not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all by
rampaging 'round too soon."
There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited,
taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and laying
our plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, or
rather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move upon
the enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover the
ford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed,
we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal,
which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in and
smite, giving no quarter.
The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, saying
that a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Erati
tribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.
"Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-setting
on ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. With
them gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for a
skimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore and
wherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and come
again, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer."
Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth that
we were not like to be over-merciful.
But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspected
side of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily on
the sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinced
a most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hour
the air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermon
paused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his knees
to pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories of
the grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.
Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fully
understood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, he
was a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witness
that when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin or
red coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as that
British Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the very
edge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fall
upon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, his
prayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scriptural
anathema upon the enemy.
Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that most
godless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; that
since he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--he
would fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast upon
his knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I have
said; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out of
place.
It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to plead
piteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; but
when Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote to
me.
"What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and I
reckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this here
purty gal o' Gilbert Stair's."
Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you have
not yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is to
weigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable to
strike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evil
moment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my old
field-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on toward
the dawn.
Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with little
good-will.
"I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted,
angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilst
you live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm no
soldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than your
damnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these very
present seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down in
the grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fully
over and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.
Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, the
old borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neck
of a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind groping
through the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this time
precisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.
Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates crept
down the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had of
crossing.
Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width of
quick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.
Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruse
to throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to fire
like the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. The
seventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins,
which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.
Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundest
sleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than half
awake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his arm
and he was nodding to forgetfulness.
Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and I
could feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.
"It should be easy enough--what think you?" he whispered; and then, with
a sudden grasp upon my wrist: "You are cool and steady-nerved, John
Ireton; I swear you do not love her as I do!"
"Nay, I grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitement
would obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added,
sincerely enough: "She has never given me the right to love her at all."
"God help her at this pass!" he said, more to himself than to me; and
then he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing Ephraim
Yeates for this fresh delay.
It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.
"Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.
Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe Captain
Jennif' see 'um, hey?"
At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were
nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The
Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared
to be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only
one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eye
on war-path!"
Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within
arm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but the
old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle
to my fingers' ends.
"How will it be, Eph?" Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We can
make it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!"
But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.
"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick.
She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like
greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought
n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country;
but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the
ford where them varmints made out to cross."
"God!" said Dick, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"
The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the
encampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly and
clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.
"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whisper
meant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal,
Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain't
in it!"
I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a
handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry
wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the
keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy
background of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging in
orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry
branches their leader gave the command to charge.
What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest
space. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings,
raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.
As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the
yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemen
narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel
in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and
vanished as if by magic.
With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the
sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and
it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din,
being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of
the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and
when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees,
the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the
lady.
"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we
did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across
the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.
"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet,
mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and
got them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages have
given us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet,
calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."
I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months
since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred,
and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of
the captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had
stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pass
from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping
from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe
her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful
than ever.
"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said.
"You have come to take us back to my father?"
He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.
"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.
But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know,
and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are here
only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for
theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to
the west; but I do assure you--"
She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting a
despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing
hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and
wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all
that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if
only with a single soldier for a guard.
'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he
had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his
life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused
her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his
suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a
true, clean-hearted woman at bay.
"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain
Falconnet?" she said.
"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these
brutal savages, Mistress Margery?"
She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down
and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the
scornful eyes were whipping him.
"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in
the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I
saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken
freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor
Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."
The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was
taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have
dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.
"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did
with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?
'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for my
game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,
be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme
désespéré, ma chérie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry
you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might
have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go
where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady
Falconnet!"
The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,
was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four
would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;
nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of
us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would
be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.