brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised
his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because
the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare
the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come
within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping
coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we
would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped
us with a hand for each.
"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats,
and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.
Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a
good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that
ain't teched yet."
It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear
doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and
not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless
little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.
"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she
said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having
the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is
all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."
"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his
horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the
women, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, Mistress
Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's
house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry
you for very shame's sake!"
It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has
ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian
discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide
snake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think
she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight
helped her to say, quickly:
"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."
His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith with
me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"
He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set
her foot upon the weapon in the grass.
"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.
[Illustration]
He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the
occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are
has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save
you from that, my Mistress."
She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured
and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one
who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.
"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing him
bravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will give
me leave to die as my mother's daughter should."
"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we
looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses,
and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives
as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers
of the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and
on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the
horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.
Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse
me bitterly.
"Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments,
John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had
good hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and that
hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"
He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew,
and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he would
eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in
sheer abandonment of rage and misery.
XXIII
HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS
You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to
me in sharpest fashion, the more since now I saw how we had lost our
chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to
attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to
the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford
beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the
earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.
So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of
afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame
as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.
"Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair _and_ easy," he protested. "Let's give
that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow,
there was the whole enduring passel of us to ricollact all them things.
To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here
dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had
ne'er a man o' God 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going
to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not
sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n Dick did try his hand that-away."
"True; and I would now we had listened to him," said I, gloomily enough.
"We have lost our chance, and God knows if we shall ever have another.
Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder
train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered
us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy
forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my
Lord Cornwallis's headquarters."
The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for
merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could
understand.
"Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from
yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I
be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead."
Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could reassure him on
the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope
when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a
certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long
after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the
full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.
"That's the kind o' talk!" was the old man's comment. "Now we'll set to
work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is
crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe
you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd
vouchsafe to give us scalps _and_ provender. For our onfaithfulness He's
seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a
widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness,
yit."
So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when
Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should
make another effort to find the ford.
"There's nobody like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into
trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way
cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n Dick
rips and tears and pulls the grass up by the roots, the chief'll only
say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the
chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when
his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone
over his head. Selah!"
Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy
dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far
beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along
the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel
and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had
lost.
"Right about here-away is where they made out to cross," he announced;
"the whole enduring passel of 'em, ez I reckon--our seven varmints and
the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till
we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side."
We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's
edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and
so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the
water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there
was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our
faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with
the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.
Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's horsemen set us
warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been
left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.
"Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left
behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I
was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last
living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the
belly-pinch."
So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune
favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two
horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag
of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive
party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.
With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And
now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few
handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn
stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag
of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on
our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn
into coarse meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the
baking-stones.
In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard
bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten--with
what zestful sharp-sauce of appetite none but the famished may ever
know--we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and
far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had
entangled us.
For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear
lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and
sure; a _coup de main_ which should atone in one shrewd push for the
sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to
the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else
to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.
You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and
protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old
chronicler's day.
Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh
that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century
nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on--in the story-books. Also, I
would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace
of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call "heroics"
were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural
heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm
that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean
fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry
world to live in.
So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and,
after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us
while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to snatch an hour
or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin
afresh.
In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw
not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid
on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: "Are you waking yet,
Jack?"
I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and
shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse
me.
"You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a
friend--to fly out at you like a madman as I did," he added, by way of
fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding
him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.
"The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as
you will some day know, Dick, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward
always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never
make.
He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.
"Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to
blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I
owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in
that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left
me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas--"
"Damn you!" I broke in roughly, "will you never have done and go to
sleep?" And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh
bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.
XXIV
HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY
Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the
wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping
unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the
enemy.
But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that the
players rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, never
faltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip their
kinship with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not so
endowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase,
with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakeful
eye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept;
would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice as
great.
We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, and
were the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter was
already out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and was
grinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. Dick sat up in
his leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.
"Lord, Jack," said he; "if ever we win out of this coil with a full day
to spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, I
promise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough to
leave a bad taste in the mouth."
"Aye; but the taste may be washed out," said I. "I am for a dip in the
river; what say you?"
He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in the
spring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.
'Twas most marvelous refreshing; and with appetites sharp set and
whetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in time
to give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with the
hindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across his
shoulders.
Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of the
dawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we were
made to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the early
morning scouting.
Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle of
reconnaissance around our halting place, "to get the p'ints of the
compass," as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we had
found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and
well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder
train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and
arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short
march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's
position.
For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. The
Indian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of the
cavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straight
into the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rocky
defile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements to
narrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to a
thundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powder
convoy had vanished into thin air.
Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.
We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women;
but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the
powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were
wholly unprepared.
So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched;
and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we had
broken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to the
gorge of disappearance.
On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left
swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for
its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and
lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valley
narrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base of
the tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on the
right.
In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's
stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the
right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and
plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side
of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down
into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.
As we made sure, we left no stone unturned in the effort to solve the
mystery. No horse, ridden or led, could have lived to cross the pouring
torrent of the main river, or to wade up or down its bed; and if the
cavalcade had turned up the barrier stream its progress must have ended
abruptly against the sheer wall of the cliff at the entrance to the
low-arched cavern whence the tributary came into being. But if Falconnet
and his following had ridden neither up nor down the bed of the barrier
stream, it seemed equally certain that no horse of the troop had crossed
it. The Indian trace, which held straight on up the gorge and presently
came out above into a high upland valley, was unmarked by any hoof
print, new or old.
"Well, now; I'll be daddled if this here ain't about the beatin'est
thing I ever chugged up ag'inst," was the old borderer's comment, when
we had flogged our wits to small purpose in the search for some clue to
the mystery. "What's your mind about it, hey, Chief?"
Uncanoola shook his head. "Heap plenty slick. No go up-stream, no go
down, no cross over, no go back. Mebbe go up like smoke--w'at?"
The hunter shook his head and would by no means admit the alternative.
"Ez I allow, that would ax for a merricle; and I reckon ez how when the
good Lord sends a chariot o' fire after sech a clanjamfrey as this'n o'
the hoss-captain's, it'll be mighty dad-blame' apt to go down 'stead of
up."
We were standing on the brink of the barrier stream no more than a
fisherman's cast from the black rock-mouth that spewed it up from its
underground maw. While the hunter was speaking, the Catawba had lapsed
into statue-like listlessness, his gaze fixed upon the eddying flood
which held the secret of the vanished cavalcade. Suddenly he came alive
with a bound and made a quick dash into the water. What he retrieved was
only a small piece of wood, charred at one end. But Ephraim Yeates
caught at it eagerly.
"Now the Lord be praised for all His marcies!" he exclaimed. "It do take
an Injun to come a-running whenst ever'body else is plumb beat out!
Ne'er another one of us had an eye sharp enough to ketch that bit o'
sign a-floating past. What say, Cap'n John?"
I shook my head, seeing no special significance in the token; and Dick
asked: "What will it be, Ephraim, now that it is caught?"
The old man looked his pity for our dullard wit, and then set a moiety
of it in words.
"Well, well, now; I'm fair ashamed of ye! What all d'ye reckon blackened
the end o' this bit o' pine-branch?"
"Why, fire," says Richard, beginning, as I did, to see some glimmering
of light.
"In course. And it come from yonder, didn't it?" pointing to the cavern
under the cliff. "More than that, 'twas cut wi' a hatchet--this fresh
end of it--no longer ago than last night, at the furdest; the pitch that
the fire fried out'n it is all soft and gummy, yit. Gentlemen all:
whenst we find where this here creek comes out into daylight again we're
a-going to find the hoss-captain and the whole enduring passel o'
redskins and redcoats, immejitly, _if_ not sooner!"
What comment this startling announcement would have evoked I know not,
for at the moment of its utterance the Catawba went flat upon the
ground, making most urgent signs for us to do likewise. What he had seen
we all saw a flitting instant later; the painted face of a Cherokee
warrior as a setting for a pair of fierce basilisk eyes peering out of
the low-arched cavern whence the stream issued, an apparition looking
for all the world like a dismembered head floating on the surface of the
outgushing flood.
'Twas the old borderer who took the initiative in the swift retreat,
and we followed his lead like well-drilled soldiers. A crook in the
stream, and the thickset underwood, screened us for the moment from the
basilisk eyes; and in a twinkling we had rolled one after another into
the mimic torrent and were quickly swept down to its mouth.
Here death lay in wait for us in the mad plungings of the main river;
but we made shift to catch at the overhanging branches of the willows in
passing, to draw ourselves out, to scramble up the gorge and to gain a
great boulder on the mountain side whence we could look down upon the
scene of our late surprisal.
By this we saw, from the wings, as it were, the setting of the stage for
a tragedy which might have been ours. One by one a score of heads with
painted faces floated silently out of the spewing rock-mouth. One by one
the glistening, bronze-red bodies appertaining thereto emerged from the
water, each to take its place in an ambuscade enclosing the
stream-crossing of the Indian path in a pocket-like line of crouching
figures, with the mouth of the pocket open toward the lower valley.
Ephraim Yeates chuckled under his breath and smote softly upon his
thigh.
"They tell ez how the good Lord has a mighty tender care for chillern
and simples," he whispered. "Whenst we was a-coming a-rampaging up the
trace a hour 'r two ago, I saw the moccasin track o' that there spy, and
was too dad-blame' biggity in my own consate to ax what it mought mean."
"What spy?" says Dick, matching the hunter's low whisper.
"Why, the varmint that tracked me back from here 'twixt dawn and
daybreak, _to_ be sure. He waited till we broke camp and then took out
up here ahead of us to tell his chief 'twas e'ena'most time to set the
trap for three white simples and a red one. Friends, I'm a-telling ye
plain that the sperrit's a-moving me mighty powerful to get down on my
hunkers and--"
"For heaven's sake, don't do it here and now!" gasped Dick. "Let's get
out of this spider's-web while we may."
The old hunter postponed his prayerful motion, most reluctantly, as it
would seem, and led the way in a silent withdrawal from the dangerous
neighborhood of the ambushment. When we had pushed on somewhat higher up
the gorge and stood on the confines of the upland valley for which it
served as the approach, there was a halt for a council of war.
Since it was now evident that the powder convoy was encamped in some
hidden gorge or valley to which the cavern of the underground stream was
one of the approaches, 'twas plain that we must climb to some height
whence we could command a wider view.
We were all agreed that the cavern entrance could not have been used by
the entire company: this though the conclusion left the vanishing trail
an unsolved riddle. For if the women could have been dragged through
the low-springing arch of the waterway, we knew the horses could not--to
say nothing of the certain destruction of the powder cargo in such a
passage.