making lowly obeisance to the gods of the underworld began a snail-like
progress into the gurgling throat of the spewing rock-monster.
I here confess to you, my dears, that, had I loved my sweet lady less,
no earthly power could have driven me into that dismal stifling place.
All my life long I have had a most unspeakable horror of low-roofed
caverns and squeezing passages that cramp a man for breath and for the
room to draw it in; and when the suffocating madness came upon me, as
it did when we were well jammed in this cursed horror-hole, I was right
glad to have my love for Margery to make an outward-seeming man of me;
glad, too, that my dear lad was close behind to shame me into going on.
Yet, after all, the passage through the throat of the rock dragon was
vastly more terrifying than difficult. Once well within the closely
drawn upper lip we could brace our backs against the roof and so have a
purchase for the foothold. Better still, when we had passed a
pike's-length beyond the lip the breathing space above the water grew
wider and higher till at length we could stand erect and come abreast to
lock arms and push on side by side.
From that the stream broadened and grew shallower with every step, and
presently we could hear it on ahead babbling over the stones like any
peaceful woodland brook. Then suddenly the dank and noisome air of the
cavern gave place to the pine-scented breath of the forest; and, looking
straight up, we could see the twinkling stars shining down upon us from
a narrow breadth of sky.
XXVII
HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL
Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep drafts
of the grateful outer air.
"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe in
his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the
answer with our finger-tips.
When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most
simply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the
stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was
quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. In
some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face
had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep
cleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm--that toward the
upland valley--was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides;
but the lower end was open.
Through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come,
turning from the Indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier
stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single
file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so
to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.
How the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the Catawba as well,
had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had
left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we
might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we
felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's
edge in the gorge.
That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into
the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were
presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. This
extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide
and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing
pebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooks
and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like
to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side
passages, Richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.
"Softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"
Just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone
to coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drew
his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the
great blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as the
teeth-chattering suffered him:
"What say you, Jack? Shall we rush them? There's naught else for it."
And then, with a gritting oath: "Oh, damn this cursed chilling!"
I whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. He was loath
to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved
our lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in the
crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly
starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of
savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two
sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In the
same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in
which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless
of possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the main
corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped
past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky
trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so
suddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak
without coughing to betray ourselves.
"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "By
all the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and his
peace-offering out yonder on the trace--which same they did not. So
when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch
hot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhounds
win out in time to overtake them!"
"Aye," said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to
go about our business with the sentries.
But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem
that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. The
watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the
watchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue and
cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the
pit-black depths beyond.
Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the
rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a
long Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow
whence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in the
sunken valley.
"Now God be praised!" quoth Richard most fervently. "Another hour in
this cursed kennel with the fever on me and I should be a yammering
loose-wit." And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to
be at large beneath them.
Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the
stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the
enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met no
let or hindrance in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, the
Indians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother's
son of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire built
before the pine-bough shelters.
Favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-hand
reconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. As I have
said, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered the
steep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed from
the stream, and from the Indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at the
water's edge. Here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of the
Indian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humming
like the buzzing of a bee-hive. The flap of the tepee-lodge was closely
drawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap of
white-ashed embers.
"They are safe as yet, thank God!" says Richard, heaving a most palpable
sigh of relief. Then, with the fever in his veins to whip his natural
ardor into hasty action: "'Twill be hours before Eph and the Catawba can
come in by your upper ravine, Jack, and we shall never have a better
chance than this. Hold you quiet here, whilst I--"
But I laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardy
marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan.
"Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?" I would say. "'Twill be risky
enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that
great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to
work in!"
He turned upon me like a pettish child. "Oh, to the devil with your
stumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. By
heaven! I'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in your veins!"
"So you have said before. But let that pass, we must bide by our promise
to Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in present
peril. Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we
have the firelight to help. When the time for action comes we must be
able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be. Come."
'Twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length
and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp. We had it;
had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his
lieutenant and another. The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.
The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and
while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less to
fear from him.
I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of
usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.
"I know Frank Falconnet better than you do, Jack, for I have known him
later. He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate
with the liquor in him. 'Tis lucky we are here. If he do but drink deep
enough, Margery is like to have need--"
"Hist!" said I; "some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as
they look."
He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us
out on the up-valley side of the encampment. Here we could look down
into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of
the band were cropping the lush grass. It was the sight of these, and of
Margery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering
venture to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but now
dissuaded Richard Jennifer.
"We shall need another mount, and Mistress Margery's saddle," I said.
"Lie you close here whilst I play the horse-thief on these reavers."
But my dear lad was rash only for himself. "Now who is daft?" he
retorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come
through alive."
"Mayhap," I admitted. "But yet--"
He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an
extinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire
had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.
I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the man
had walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.
"Give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shorten
upon," and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of
hiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by
the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.
"Follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!" he commanded; and so,
pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a
shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer
shadows of the forest.
When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by
the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings
with the Ferara.
"Say, quick! what to do with him, Jack?" he demanded, when I came up;
and now my slower wit came into play.
"Out of this to some safer dressing-room, and I'll show you," said I;
and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or
more.
When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his
life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan I
had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in
train before this trooper should be missed.
So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we
stripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and
became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that
king whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,
waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the
boots we stuck fast, and I was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.
The change made,--and you may believe no play-house actor of them all
ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,--we bound our luckless captive
hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him
with only his boots for a memento,--happily for him the night was no
more than goose-flesh cool,--we raced back to our peeping-place on the
skirting of the camp ground.
Here Dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable for
letting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and with
that I stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy's
camp.
XXVIII
IN WHICH I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE
Having so good a disguise, the thing I had set myself to do would seem
to ask for little more than peaceful boldness held in check by common
caution.
The point where I had broken cover to step into the circle of fire light
was nearly equidistant from the Englishmen's camp on the right and the
horse meadow on the left, so I had not to pass within recognition range
of the great fire; indeed, I might have skulked in the laurel cover all
the way, thus coming to the horses unseen by any, but that I was afraid
Falconnet might miss his trooper. So I thought it best to show myself
discreetly.
Copying our captive's lounging stride, I first held a sauntering course
down to the stream's edge, keeping the great camp-fire and the droning
Indian hive well to the right and far enough aloof to baffle any
over-curious eye at either. Coming to the stream without mishap, I
stopped and made a feint of drinking; after which I crossed and climbed
slowly toward the makeshift powder magazine.
As I have said, the camp was pitched in a small savanna or natural
clearing on the right bank of the little river. This clearing was
hedged about by the forest on three sides, and backed by the densely
wooded steeps and crags of the western cliff. I guessed the compass of
it to be something more than an acre; not greatly more, since the fire
at the troop camp lighted all its boundaries.
On the left or opposite bank of the stream there was no intervale at
all. The ground rose sharply from the water's edge in a rough hillside
thickly studded and bestrewn with boulders great and small; fallen
cleavings and hewings from the crags of the eastern cliff. 'Twas at the
foot of one of the boulders, a huge overhanging mass of weather-riven
rock facing the camp, that the powder cargo was sheltered; so isolated
to be out of danger from the camp-fires.
From the hillside just below this powder rock I could look back upon the
camp _en enfilade_, as an artilleryman would say. Nearest at hand was
the half-moon of Indian lodges with the hollow of the crescent facing
the stream, and a caldron fire burning in the midst. Around the fire a
ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling
dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer
ring of squatting figures--the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.
Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the
savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in
the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.
On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was
in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion
came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.
"Ho, Jack Warden!" he called, making a speaking-trumpet of his hands to
lift the hail above the chanting of the Indian dancers. "Have a look at
that shelter whilst you are over there and make sure 'twill shed rain if
the weather shifts."
Now some such long-range marking down as this was what I had been
angling for. So I came to attention and saluted in soldierly fashion,
thereby raising a great laugh among my pseudo-comrades around the
trooper fire--a laugh that pointed shrewdly to the baronet-captain's
lack of proper discipline. But that is neither here nor there. Having my
master's order for it, I climbed to the foot of the powder rock.
Here the bare sight of all the stored-up devastation set me athirst with
a fierce longing for leave to snap a pistol in the well-laid mine. For
if these enemies of ours had planned their own undoing they could never
have given a desperate foeman a better chance. To hold the pine boughs
of the rude shelter in place they had piled a great loose wall of stones
around and over the cargo; and the firing of the powder, heaped as it
was against the backing cliff of the boulder, would hurl these weighting
stones in a murderous broadside upon the camp across the stream.
But since my dear lady would also share the hazard of such a broadside,
I had no leave to blow myself and the powder convoy to kingdom come, as
I thirsted to--could not, you will say, having neither pistol to snap
nor flint and steel to fire a train. Nay, nay, my dears, I would not
have you think so lightly of my invention. Had this been the only
obstacle, you may be sure I should have found a way to grind a firing
spark out of two bits of stone.
But being otherwise enjoined, as I say, I turned my back upon the
temptation and held to the business in hand, which was to reach and
recross the stream higher up and so to come among the horses.
As I had hoped to find them, the saddles were hung upon the branches of
the nearest trees, Margery's horse-furnishings among them. At first the
black mare was shy of me, but a gentling word or two won her over, and
she let me take her by the forelock and lead her deeper into the herd
where I could saddle and bridle her in greater safety.
My plan to cut her out was simple enough. Trusting to the darkness--the
horse meadow was far enough from the fires to make a murky twilight of
the ruddy glow--I thought to lead the mare quietly away up the stream
and thus on to the foot of that ravine by which we hoped to climb to the
old borderer's rendezvous on the plateau. But when all was ready and I
sought to set this plan in action, an unforeseen obstacle barred the
way. To keep the horses from straying up the valley an Indian sentry
line was strung above the grazing meadow, and into this I blundered like
any unlicked knave of a raw recruit.
Had I been armed, the warrior who rose before me phantom-like in the
laurel edging of the meadow would have had a most sharp-pointed answer
to his challenge. As it was,--I had left my sword with Jennifer because
the captured trooper whose understudy I was had left his sword in
camp,--I tried to parley with the sentry. He knew no word of English,
nor I of Cherokee; but that deadlock was speedily broken. A guttural
call summoned others of the horse-keepers, and among them one who spoke
a little English.
"Ugh! What for take white squaw horse?" he demanded.
"'Tis the captain's order," I replied, lying boldly to fit the crisis.
At that they gave me room; and had I hastened, I had doubtless gone at
large without more ado. But at this very apex point of hazard I must
needs play out the part of unalarm to the fool's _envoi_, taking time to
part the mare's forelock under the head-stall, and looking leisurely to
the lacings of the saddle-girth.
This foolhardy delay cost me all, and more than all. I was still
fiddle-faddling with the girth strap, the better to impose upon my
Indian horse-guards, when suddenly there arose a yelling hubbub of
laughter in the camp behind. I turned to look and beheld a thing
laughable enough, no doubt, and yet it broke no bubble of mirth in me.
Half-way from the nearest forest fringe to the great fire a man, white
of skin, and clothed only in a pair of trooper boots, was running
swiftly for cover to the nearest pine-bough shelter, shouting like an
escaped Bedlamite as he fled. It asked for no second glance, this
apparition of the yelling madman; 'twas our captive soldier, foot-loose
and racing in to raise the hue and cry.
Now you may always count upon this failing in a cautious man, that at a
crisis he is like to do the unwisest thing that offers. This cutting out
of Margery's mare was none so vital a matter that I should have risked
the marring of Ephraim Yeates's plan upon it. Yet having done this very
thing, I must needs make a bad matter infinitely worse.
Instead of mounting to ride a charge through the camp, and so to draw
the pursuit after me toward the cavern entrance, as I should, I slapped
the mare to send her bounding through the guard line, snatched a saddle
from its oak-branch peg to hurl it in the faces of the sentry group, and
darting aside, plunged into the laurel thicket to come by running where
I could and creeping where I must to that place where I had left Richard
Jennifer.
All hot and exasperated as I was, 'twas something less than cooling to
find Dick a-double on the ground, holding his sides and laughing like a
yokel at his first pantomime.
"Oh, ho, ho! did you--did you twig him, Jack?" he gasped. "Saw you ever
such a mincing puss-in-boots since the Lord made you? Ah! ha! ha!"
"The devil take your ill-timed humor!" I cried. "Up with you, man, and
let us vanish while we may!"
By this the camp was in a pretty ferment, as you would guess--our late
captive having had space enough to tell his tale. Drunk or sober,
Falconnet was afoot and alert, shouting his orders to the Englishmen who
were scrambling for their arms, and to the Indians who came swarming up
from the lodges.
Whilst we looked, the Cherokees scattered like a company of trained
gillies to beat us out of cover; and when the hunt was fairly up, the
baronet-captain set his men in marching order to surround the wigwam of
the captives.
As yet there was time for a swift retreat up the valley, or at least for
the choosing of some battle-field of our own where the enemy need not
outnumber us twenty to one; and again I urged Richard to bestir himself.
But it was the sight of Falconnet's troopers deploying to surround the
tepee-lodge, and not any word of mine, that broke his merriment in the
midst.
At a bound he was up and handing me my sword.
"Good by, Jack; go you whilst you can. You'll be like to meet Eph and
the Catawba coming in; turn them back and tell them to bide their time."
"But you?" I would say.
"My place is inside of that soldier-cordon our friend is drawing about
his dove-cote. I shall be at hand when she needs me, as I promised."
"Aye, so you may be; but not alone," said I; and with that we fell to
running like a pair of doubling foxes through the wood on the steep
slope behind the lodge, striving with might and main to gain the laurel
thicket whence we had made our first reconnaissance before the
converging lines of the redcoat cordon should close and shut us out.
We did it by the skin of our teeth, diving to cover through the closing
gap not a second too soon. When we were in and hugging the bare ground
under the scanty leafing of the laurel, I take no shame in saying that I
would have given a king's ransom to be at large again. Had there been
but one of us the covert would have been cramped enough; and I was
painfully conscious that my borrowed coat of scarlet was but a poor
thing to hide in.
To make it worse, Falconnet, who had lagged behind at the fire, was now
heaping fresh fuel on, and this reviving of the blaze made the place as
light as day. With the nearest links in the redcoat chain no more than a
pike's-length at our backs, we dared not stir or breathe a word; and,
all in all, we might have been taken like rats in a trap had any one of
the sentries on our side of the circle chanced to look behind him.
Having repaired the fire to his liking, the troop-captain came up to
pass a word or two with his lieutenant. They spoke guardedly, but we
could hear--could not help hearing.
"You have seen nothing, Gordon?"
"Nothing, as yet."
"Make the round again and tell the men 'twill be ten gold joes and a
double allowance of liquor to the man who first claps eyes on any one of
the four."