VII
IN WHICH MY LADY HATH NO PART
Seeing that I had taken a man's life for this, the chance of looking inupon a drinking bout, you will not wonder that I went aghast and wouldhave fled for very shame had not a sudden weakness seized me. But in themidst I heard a mention of my name and so had leave, I thought, to stayand listen.
It was one of the late-comers who gave me this leave; a man well on inyears, grizzled and weather-beaten; a seasoned soldier by his look andgarb. Though his frayed shoulder-knot was only that of a captain offoot,'twas plain enough he ranked his comrade, and the knight as well.
"You say you've bagged this Captain Ireton? Who may he be? Surely notold Roger's son?"
"The same," said the baronet, shortly, and would be filling his glassagain. He could always drink more and feel it less than any sot I everknew.
"But how the devil came he here? The last I knew of him--'twas somehalf-score years ago, though, come to think--he was a lieutenant in theRoyal Scots."
Mine enemy nodded. "So he was. But afterward he cut the service andlevanted to the Continent."
The questioner fell into a muse; then he laughed and clapped his leg.
"Ecod! I do remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke abouthim. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face wouldstop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while theytold this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority,and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw himshe shrieked and cried out, '_Il est le pere aux tetes rondes, lui-meme!Le portez-vous dehors!_' So he got but a captaincy after all; ha! ha!ha!"
Now this was but a mess-room gibe, as he had said, cut out of unmarredcloth, at that. Our Austrian Maria ever had a better word than"roundhead" for her soldiers. But yet it stung, and stung the morebecause I had and have the Ireton face, and that is unbeloved of women,and glum and curst and solemn even when the man behind it would bekindly. So when they laughed and chuckled at this jest, I lingered onand listened with the better grace.
"What brought him over-seas, Sir Francis?" 'Twas not the grizzled jesterwho asked, but the younger officer, his comrade.
Falconnet smiled as one who knows a thing and will not tell, and turnedto Gilbert Stair.
"What was it, think you, Mr. Stair?" he said, passing the question on.
At this they all looked to the master of Appleby Hundred, and I looked,too. He was not the man I should have hit upon in any throng as thereaver of my father's estate; still less the man who might be Margery'sfather. He had the face of all the Stairs of Ballantrae without itssimple Scottish ruggedness; a sort of weasel face it was, with pale-grayeyes that had a trick of shifty dodging, and deep-furrowed about themouth and chin with lines that spoke of indecision. It was not of himthat Margery got her firm round chin, or her steadfast eyes that knewnot how to quail, nor aught of anything she owed a father save only herpaternity, you'd say. And when he spoke the thin falsetto voice matchedthe weak chin to a hair.
"I? Damme, Sir Francis, I know not why he came--how should I know?" hequavered. "Appleby Hundred is mine--mine, I tell you! His title was wellhanged on a tree with his damned rebel father!"
A laugh uproarious from the three soldiers greeted his petulantoutburst; after which the baronet enlightened the others.
"As you know, Captain John, Appleby Hundred once belonged to the rebelRoger Ireton, and Mr. Stair here holds but a confiscator's title. 'Tislikely the son heard of the war and thought he stood some chance to comeinto his own again."
"Oh, aye; sure enough," quoth the elder officer, tilting his bottleafresh. And then: "Of course he promptly 'listed with the rebels when hecame? Trust Roger Ireton's son for that."
My baronet wagged his head assentingly to this; then clinched the lie inwords.
"Of course; we have his commission. He is on De Kalb's staff, 'detachedfor special duty.'"
"A spy!" roared the jester. "And yet you haven't hanged him?"
Sir Francis shrugged like any Frenchman. "All in good time, my dearCaptain. There were reasons why I did not care to knot the rope myself.Besides, we had a little disagreement years agone across the water;'twas about a woman--oh, she was no mistress of his, I do assureyou!"--this to quench my jester's laugh incredulous. "He was keen uponme for satisfaction in this old quarrel, and I gave it him, thinkinghe'd hang the easier for a little blooding first."
Here the factor-lawyer cut in anxiously. "But you will hang him, SirFrancis? You've promised that, you know."
I did not hate my enemy the more because he turned a shoulder to thislittle bloodhound and quite ignored the interruption.
"So we fought it out one morning in Mr. Stair's wood-field, and he hadwhat he came for. Not to give him a chance to escape, we brought himhere, and as soon as he is fit to ride I'll send him to the colonel.Tarleton will give him a short shrift, I promise you, and then"--thisto the master of Appleby Hundred--"then your title will be well quieted,Mr. Stair."
At this the weather-beaten captain roared again and smote the table tillthe bottles reeled.
"I say, Sir Frank, that's good--damned good! So you have him crimpedhere in his own house, stuffing him like a penned capon before you wringhis neck. Ah! ha! ha! But 'tis to be hoped you have his legs well tied.If he be any son of my old mad-bull Roger Ireton, you'll hardly hang himpeacefully like a trussed fowl before the fire."
The baronet smiled and said: "I'll be your warrant for his safety! We'vehad him well guarded from the first, and to-night he is behind a barreddoor with Mr. Stair's overseer standing sentry before it. But as forthat, he's barely out of bed from my pin-prick."
Having thus disposed of me, they let me be and came to the graverbusiness of the moment, with a toast to lay the dust before it. It wasFalconnet who gave the toast.
"Here's to our bully redskins and their king--How do you call him,Captain Stuart? Ocon--Ocona--"
"Oconostota is the Chelakee of it, though on the border they know himbetter as 'Old Hop.' Fill up, gentlemen, fill up; 'tis a dry business,this. Allow me, Mr. Stair; and you, Mr.--er--ah--Pengarden. This sameold heathen is the king's friend now, but, gentlemen all, I do assureyou he's the very devil himself in a copper-colored skin. 'Twas he whoambushed us in '60, and but for Attakullakulla--"
"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in thewine and we'll drink them so. 'Tis by far the easiest way to swallowthem."
By this, the grizzled captain's mention of the old Fort Loudon massacre,I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, withCaptain Damare, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against thesavages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not soonerplaced him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had beenking's man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, andin the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon tolearn, he was a man for us to fear.
"'Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business willnot brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
It was Falconnet who answered.
"Safe as the clock. You passed my sentry in the road?"
"Yes."
"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let's haveyour news, Captain."
"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. 'Twas all fair sailingin the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough todig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil's own teapot tempest withmy Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the bordersettlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had metwith some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had knownhim. Then I heard the baronet say:
"But yet the thing is done?"
"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, afterwhich they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain se
ttlements. Andthat fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair brokein upon it shrilly.
"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting fromhis chair. "'Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know itwell, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebelmilitia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
But the captain put him down in brief.
"Enough, Mr. Stair; we'll not constrain you against your will. But 'tishinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist atbest--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the restin this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--Iwould advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord'scommands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumblylike a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought tooviolently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not whatdouble-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surelysomething with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning waysand means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particularorders.
"You'll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostotawill furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvouswill be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
"That's the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
Falconnet's oath was of impatience.
"We've waited now a month and more like men with halters round theirnecks. The country is alive with rebels."
Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northernroute had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw thepartizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when thehorses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrentunder-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lyingprone, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scenewithin the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and hisfactor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem ofsubsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottlegurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king's mendrank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed thepowder-convoy's route across the mountains. The senior plotter had somemap or chart of his own making, and he was pricking out on it forFalconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of whatthis plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on thefrontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among usknew, the dismal horrors of an Indian massacre; and this these men wereplanning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to bedone in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, ledby this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon theover-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form ajunction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawkand scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins ofany man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thoughtupon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what laybefore me.
The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the taskof rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lackingthe strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there wasnothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a regionat the moment distraught with war's alarums, and needing every man forself-defense?
At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he wouldknow how best to pass the word to those in peril. I made full sure he'dfind a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down tothis, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with Dick beforethe night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees thehalf-score miles to Jennifer House.
Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night shouldlast--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement whichagain had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when Iwould have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober secondthought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledgeof the powder-convoy's route would be of prime importance. Lacking thetime to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to setsome band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake theconvoy. Nay, on this second thought's rehearsing the last expedientseemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naughtand we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip andglare across the little space that gaped between my itching fingers andthe bit of parchment passed from hand to hand around the table's end. IfI could make a shift to rob them of this map--
It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved totake it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair andthe lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upontheir figurings. Of the trio at the table's end, the baronet and thecaptain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and hewas staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that sawnot far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring withinand sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that Imight snatch the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as Ihad come.
So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launchinghold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lostmy grip upon the casement; lost that and got another on the woodenshutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pullingthe shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse thedead.
As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairsflung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowdingfigures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but Ihad; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of thenight, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoonhorse-holder.
"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer,put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. 'Twas in the very act,while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the preciousscrap of parchment in his hand.
Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget's sword had clattereddown beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle bymy doughty captain's ear that made him cringe and gasp and all buttumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice Ihad it safe.
You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess whatfollowed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had littlestomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed nowto a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captainhung in air and sought his foothold.
With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held ittethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they throngedupon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly throughthe gaping doorway.
I made shift to get astride the horse, to prick the poor beast with thepoint of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath theoaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in thesaddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly tillthe horse p
ursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presentlyby withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble passes withthe sword at the man upon his back.
It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrusthe laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon thenight and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannonshot to crush my skull.
The Master of Appleby Page 9