THE FATES FAVOR THE FUGITIVE.
Let us now return to our young traveller, whose escape we have already
narrated.
Utterly unconscious of the melancholy circumstance which had diverted
his enemies from the pursuit of himself, he had followed studiously the
parting directions of the young maiden, to whose noble feeling and
fearless courage he was indebted for his present safety; and taken the
almost _blind_ path which she had hastily described to him. On this
route he had for some time gone, with a motion not extravagantly free,
but sufficiently so, having the start, and with the several delays to
which his pursuers had been subjected, to have escaped the danger--while
the vigor of his steed lasted--even had they fallen on the proper route.
He had proceeded in this way for several miles, when, at length, he came
upon a place whence several roads diverged into opposite sections of the
country. Ignorant of the localities, he reined in his horse, and
deliberated with himself for a few moments as to the path he should
pursue. While thus engaged, a broad glare of flame suddenly illumined
the woods on his left hand, followed with the shrieks, equally sudden,
seemingly of a woman.
There was no hesitation in the action of the youth. With unscrupulous
and fearless precipitation, he gave his horse the necessary direction,
and with a smart application of the rowel, plunged down the narrow path
toward the spot from whence the alarm had arisen. As he approached, the
light grew more intense, and he at length discovered a little
cottage-like dwelling, completely embowered in thick foliage, through
the crevices of which the flame proceeded, revealing the cause of
terror, and illuminating for some distance the dense woods around. The
shrieks still continued; and throwing himself from his horse, Ralph
darted forward, and with a single and sudden application of his foot,
struck the door from its hinges, and entered the dwelling just in time
to save its inmates from the worst of all kinds of death.
The apartment was in a light blaze--the drapery of a couch which stood
in one corner partially consumed, and, at the first glance, the whole
prospect afforded but little hope of a successful struggle with the
conflagration. There was no time to be lost, yet the scene was enough to
have paralyzed the nerves of the most heroic action.
On the couch thus circumstanced lay an elderly lady, seemingly in the
very last stages of disease. She seemed only at intervals conscious of
the fire. At her side, in a situation almost as helpless as her own, was
the young female whose screams had first awakened the attention of the
traveller. She lay moaning beside the couch, shrieking at intervals, and
though in momentary danger from the flames, which continued to increase,
taking no steps for their arrest. Her only efforts were taken to raise
the old woman from the couch, and to this, the strength of the young one
was wholly unequal. Ralph went manfully to work, and had the
satisfaction of finding success in his efforts. With a fearless hand he
tore down the burning drapery which curtained the windows and couch; and
which, made of light cotton stuffs, presented a ready auxiliar to the
progress of the destructive element. Striking down the burning shutter
with a single blow, he admitted the fresh air, without which suffocation
must soon have followed, and throwing from the apartment such of the
furniture as had been seized upon by the flames, he succeeded in
arresting their farther advance.
All this was the work of a few moments. There had been no word of
intercourse between the parties, and the youth now surveyed them with
looks of curious inquiry, for the first time. The invalid, as we have
said, was apparently struggling with the last stages of natural decay.
Her companion was evidently youthful, in spite of those marks which even
the unstudied eye might have discerned in her features, of a temper and
a spirit subdued and put to rest by the world's strife and trial, and by
afflictions which are not often found to crowd and to make up the
history and being of the young. Their position was peculiarly insulated,
and Ralph wondered much at the singularity of a scene to which his own
experience could furnish no parallel. Here were two lone women--living
on the borders of a savage nation, and forming the frontier of a class
of whites little less savage, without any protection, and, to his mind,
without any motive for making such their abiding-place. His wonder might
possibly have taken the shape of inquiry, but that there was something
of oppressive reserve and shrinking timidity in the air of the young
woman, who alone could have replied to his inquiries. At this time an
old female negro entered, now for the first time alarmed by the outcry,
who assisted in removing such traces of the fire as still remained about
the room. She seemed to occupy a neighboring outhouse; to which, having
done what seemed absolutely necessary, she immediately retired.
Colleton, with a sentiment of the deepest commiseration, proceeded to
reinstate things as they might have been before the conflagration, and
having done so, and having soothed, as far as he well might, the excited
apprehensions of the young girl, who made her acknowledgments in a not
unbecoming style, he ventured to ask a few questions as to the condition
of the old lady and of herself; but, finding from the answers that the
subject was not an agreeable one, and having no pretence for further
delay, he prepared to depart. He inquired, however, his proper route to
the Chestatee river, and thus obtained a solution of the difficulty
which beset him in the choice of roads at the fork.
While thus employed, however, and just at the conclusion of his labors,
there came another personage upon the scene, to whom it is necessary
that we should direct our attention.
It will be remembered that Rivers and Munro, after the murder of
Forrester, had separated--the latter on his return to the village--the
other in a direction which seemed to occasion some little
dissatisfaction in the mind of his companion. After thus separating,
Rivers, to whom the whole country was familiar, taking a shorter route
across the forest, by which the sinuosities of the main road were
generally avoided, entered, after the progress of a few miles, into the
very path pursued by Colleton, and which, had it been chosen by his
pursuers in the first instance, might have entirely changed the result
of the pursuit. In taking this course it was not the thought of the
outlaw to overtake the individual whose blood he so much desired; but,
with an object which will have its development as we continue, he came
to the cottage at the very time when, having succeeded in overcoming the
flames, Ralph was employed in a task almost as difficult--that of
reassuring the affrighted inmates, and soothing them against the
apprehension of farther danger.
With a caution which old custom had made almost natural in such cases,
Rivers, as he approached the cross-roads, concealed his horse in the
cover of the woods, advanced noiselessly, and with not a little
surprise, to the cottage, whose externals had undergone no little
alteration from the loss of the shutter, the blackened marks, visible
enough in the moonlight, around the window-frame, and the general look
of confusion which hung about it. A second glance made out the steed of
our traveller, which he approached and examined. The survey awakened all
those emotions which operated upon his spirit when referring to his
successful rival; and, approaching the cottage with extreme caution, he
took post for a while at one of the windows, the shutter of which,
partially unclosed, enabled him to take in at a glance the entire
apartment.
He saw, at once, the occasion which had induced the presence, in this
situation, of his most hateful enemy; and the thoughts were strangely
discordant which thronged and possessed his bosom. At one moment he had
drawn his pistol to his eye--his finger rested upon the trigger, and the
doubt which interposed between the youth and eternity, though it
sufficed for his safety then, was of the most slight and shadowy
description. A second time did the mood of murder savagely possess his
soul, and the weapon's muzzle fell pointblank upon the devoted bosom of
Ralph; when the slight figure of the young woman passing between, again
arrested the design of the outlaw, who, with muttered curses, uncocking,
returned the weapon to his belt.
Whatever might have been the relationship between himself and these
females, there was an evident reluctance on the part of Rivers to
exhibit his ferocious hatred of the youth before those to whom he had
just rendered a great and unquestioned service; and, though untroubled
by any feeling of gratitude on their behalf, or on his own, he was yet
unwilling, believing, as he did, that his victim was now perfectly
secure, that they should undergo any further shock, at a moment too of
such severe suffering and trial as must follow in the case of the
younger, from those fatal pangs which were destroying the other.
Ralph now prepared to depart; and taking leave of the young woman, who
alone seemed conscious of his services, and warmly acknowledged them, he
proceeded to the door. Rivers, who had watched his motions attentively,
and heard the directions given him by the girl for his progress, at the
same moment left the window, and placed himself under the shelter of a
huge tree, at a little distance on the path which his enemy was directed
to pursue. Here he waited like the tiger, ready to take the fatal leap,
and plunge his fangs into the bosom of his victim. Nor did he wait long.
Ralph was soon upon his steed, and on the road; but the Providence that
watches over and protects the innocent was with him, and it happened,
most fortunately, that just before he reached the point at which his
enemy stood in watch, the badness of the road had compelled those who
travelled it to diverge aside for a few paces into a little by-path,
which, at a little distance beyond, and when the bad places had been
rounded, brought the traveller again into the proper path. Into this
by-path, the horse of Colleton took his way; the rider neither saw the
embarrassments of the common path, nor that his steed had turned aside
from them. It was simply providential that the instincts of the horse
were more heedful than the eyes of the horseman.
It was just a few paces ahead, and on the edge of a boggy hollow that
Guy Rivers had planted himself in waiting. The tread of the young
traveller's steed, diverging from the route which he watched, taught the
outlaw the change which it was required that he should also make in his
position.
"Curse him!" he muttered. "Shall there be always something in the way of
my revenge?"
Such was his temper, that everything which baffled him in his object
heightened his ferocity to a sort of madness. But this did not prevent
his prompt exertion to retrieve the lost ground. The "turn-out" did not
continue fifty yards, before it again wound into the common road, and
remembering this, the outlaw hurried across the little copse which
separated the two routes for a space. The slow gait at which Colleton
now rode, unsuspicious of danger, enabled his enemy to gain the position
which he sought, close crouching on the edge of the thicket, just where
the roads again united. Here he waited--not many seconds.
The pace of our traveller, we have said, was slow. We may add that his
mood was also inattentive. He was not only unapprehensive of present
danger, but his thoughts were naturally yielded to the condition of the
two poor women, in that lonely abode of forest, whom he had just
rescued, in all probability, from a fearful death. Happy with the
pleasant consciousness of a good action well performed, and with spirits
naturally rising into animation, freed as they were from a late heavy
sense of danger--he was as completely at the mercy of the outlaw who
awaited him, pistol in hand, as if he lay, as his poor friend,
Forrester, so recently had done, directly beneath his knife.
And so thought Rivers, who heard the approaching footsteps, and now
caught a glimpse of his approaching shadow.
The outlaw deliberately lifted his pistol. It was already cocked. His
form was sheltered by a huge tree, and as man and horse gradually drew
nigh, the breathing of the assassin seemed almost suspended in his
ferocious anxiety for blood.
The dark shadow moved slowly along the path. The head of the horse is
beside the outlaw. In a moment the rider will occupy the same spot--and
then! The finger of the outlaw is upon the trigger--the deadly aim is
taken!--what arrests the deed? Ah! surely there is a Providence--a
special arm to save--to interpose between the criminal and his
victim--to stay the wilful hands of the murderer, when the deed seems
already done, as it has been already determined upon.
Even in that moment, when but a touch is necessary to destroy the
unconscious traveller--a sudden rush is heard above the robber. Great
wings sweep away, with sudden clatter, and the dismal hootings of an
owl, scared from his perch on a low shrub-tree, startles the
cold-blooded murderer from his propriety. With the nervous excitement of
his mind, and his whole nature keenly interested in the deed, to break
suddenly the awful silence, the brooding hush of the forest, with
unexpected sounds, and those so near, and so startling--for once the
outlaw ceased to be the master of his own powers!
The noise of the bird scared the steed. He dashed headlong forward, and
saved the life of his rider!
Yet Ralph Colleton never dreamed of his danger--never once conjectured
how special was his obligations to the interposing hand of Providence!
And so, daily, with the best of us--and the least fortunate. How few of
us ever dream of the narrow escapes we make, at moments when a breath
might kill us, when the pressure of a "bare bodkin" is all that is
necessary to send us to sudden judgment!
And the outlaw was again defeated. He had not, perhaps, been scared. He
had only been surprised--been confounded. In the first cry of the bird,
the first rush of his wings, flapping through the trees, it seemed as if
they had swept across his eyes. He lowered the pistol involuntarily--he
forgot to pull the trigger, and when he recovered himself, steed and
rider had gone beyond his reach.
"Is there a devil," he involuntarily murmured, "that stands between me
and my victim? am I to be baffled always? Is there, indeed, a God?"
He paused in stupor and vexation. He could hear the distant tramp of the
horse, sinking faintly out of hearing.
"That I, who have lived in the woods all my life, should have been
startled by an owl, and at such a moment!"
Cursing the youth's good fortune, not less than his own weakness, the
fierce disappointment of Guy Rivers was such that he fairly gnashed his
teeth with vexation. At first, he thought to dash after his victim, but
his own steed had been fastened near the cottage, several hundred yards
distant, and he was winded too much for a further pursuit that night.
Colleton was, meanwhile, a mile ahead, going forward swimmingly, never
once dreaming of danger. He was thus far safe. So frequently and
completely had his enemy been baffled in the brief progress of a single
night, that he was almost led to believe--for, like most criminals, he
was not without his superstition--that his foe was under some special
guardianship. With ill-concealed anger, and a stern impatience, he
turned.