XIX
HOW A STUMBLING HORSE BROUGHT TIDINGS
Having a definite thing to do, we set about it forthwith, taking to thefields and making a wide circuit around the manor house and the quarterswhere the blacks were already stirring, to come out to the river and soto cross in our canoe.
The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fairweather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloudbank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maizeblades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts.
In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the gravebut for the whispering murmur of the rising wind in the highertree-tops; a sound so like the babbling of brooks as most cunningly todeceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water wherethere was none.
Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunnedthe road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered bykeeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin wood was free ofundergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove. Fireside traditionon the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearlyburnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer.I vouch, not for the truth of this accounting for the fact, but for thefact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-likestretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's ownbuilding, its naves and choirs and transepts columned by the countlesstrees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groinedarches overhead.
Through these pillared aisles we tramped abreast, shunning the road, asI have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its directionserved. In the open vistas we had frequent glimpses of it, winding, atfeud with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther onwe came into the lower land of a creek bottom, and here a thicksetundergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome strugglewith the bushes.
It was in the densest of this underwood, when we could hear the purringof the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniffthe air.
"Smoke," he said, briefly, in answer to my query. "A camp-fire, withmeat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it."
I said I could not--did not, at all events.
"Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up yourwoodcraft and we'll stalk it." And, suiting the action to the word, hedropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out ofthe thicket.
I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the mazewith never a snapped twig to betray him. For though I have called him ayouthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and waswell upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he couldbe as lithe and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach andtiger-strong to spring.
In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on thebrink of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallowravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin was a bitof grassy intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it wassadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon abranch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as ifto guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned;and at the fire, squatting with their backs to us and each toasting acut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.
One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirtand leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy, with leatherfringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he worea cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great caphis iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep theother tasselings in countenance. The hunting-shirt was belted at thewaist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough toserve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs crossed upon hisshoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with theknife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.
The other was a red man, and his attire was simpler. Like all oursouthern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love ofornament showed forth in the fringe of colored porcupine quills on hisleggings and in his raven hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had anarsenal in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and thescalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving tool, butfar more vicious looking.
For a moment or two we crouched irresolute on the brink of the ravine,neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling mustneeds let out a yell.
"Now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet.But at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was senttumbling with the small landslide of clay down upon the twain at thefire.
It went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at thefire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afootbrought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was thequicker, Richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, Ithink. At the trigger-pulling instant the Catawba thrust the thick ofhis hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless forJennifer, into the palm of the Indian.
"Wah!" he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. "No want kill CaptainJennif', hey?"
Ephraim Yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand heldfast by the gun-flint.
"Well, I'm daddled, fair and square, Cap'n Dick!" he declared. "Jest onemore shake of a dead lamb's tail, and I'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartainsure! I allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-awaybehint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son."
Dick laughed and called to me to follow as I could. And his answer tothe old borderer was no answer at all.
"'Tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with thatdeer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton andI, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to workhospitably on the meat supply. Meanwhile I came upon the scene,something less hurriedly than Richard. Ephraim Yeates looked me up anddown with a sniff for my foreign-cut coat, another for my queue, and athird for the German ritter-boots I wore.
"Umph!" said he. "Now if here ain't that there dad-blame' Turkey-fighteragain! What almighty cur'is things the good Lord do let loose on astiff-necked and rebellious gineration!" Then to me, most pointedly:"Say, Cap'n; the big woods ain't no fitting place for such as you, ez Iallow. Ye mought be getting them purty boots o' your'n all tore up onthe briars."
He ended with a dry little laugh not unlike Mr. Gilbert Stair'sparchment crackle; and, being his guest for the nonce, I laughed withhim.
"Have your joke and welcome, Mr. Yeates," said I. "I am too nearfamished to quarrel with my chance of breakfast."
Much to my astoundment he flung his raccoon-skin cap into the air, spatupon his hands and began that insane war-dance of his.
"Whoop!" he yelled. "No band-box dandy from the settlemints ever sot outto call me 'Mister' and got away alive to brag on't! Ketch hold, youinfergotten, Turkey-fighting, silver-buttoned jack-a-dandy till I dip yein the creek and soak a flour-ration 'r two out 'n that there pig-tailtop-knot o' your'n! _Yip-pee!_"
By this Jennifer was trying, as well as a man bent double with laughtermight, to interpose in the interest of peace and amity; and even thestoical Catawba was all a-grin. So, seeing I was like to losecountenance with all of them, I watched my chance, and closing with mycapering ancient, gave him a hearty wrestler's hug.
For all he was so gaunt and thin, and full twenty years or more mysenior, he was a pretty handful. 'Twas much like trying to catch a fallout of some piece of steel-wired mechanism. None the less, after somewild stampings and strivings in which the old man all but made good hispromise to put me in the creek, I took him unawares with a Cornishman'strick--a cross-buttock shifted suddenly to a shoulder-lift--which senthim flying overhead to land all abroad in the soft clay of thela
ndslide.
The effect of this little triumph was magical and wholly unlooked for.When he had gathered himself and set his limbs in order, Ephraim Yeatessat up and thrust out a claw-like hand.
"Put it there, stranger," he said. "I reckon ez how that settles it. OldEph Yeates'll share fair, powder and lead, parched corn _and_ pan-meatwith the man that can flop him that-away. Whilst ye're a-needing afriend in the big woods--a raw-meat-eating Injun-skinner that can jestor'narily whop his weight in wildcats--why, old Eph's your man; from nowon, _if_ not sooner." And in this wise began an alliance the like ofwhich, for true-blue loyalty on this old borderer's part, thesecolder-hearted times of yours, my dears, will never see.
As you would guess, I gripped the hand of pledging most heartily,pulling the old man to his feet and protesting it was but a trick hewould never let another play on him. And then we four fell upon thedeer's meat which was by this time--not cooked, to be sure, but seared alittle on the outside in true hunter fashion.
While we ate, Richard spoke freely of our intendings; and in returnEphraim Yeates was able to confirm Mr. Gilbert Stair's war news to theletter. For all his Tory bias and prejudice, it seemed that Margery'sfather had spoken by the book. Gates' army was crushed and scattered tothe four winds; Thomas Sumter's free-lances had been attacked, worstedand driven, with the leader himself so sorely wounded that he wascarried from the field in a blanket slung between the horses of two ofhis men; and, as was to be expected, the Tories were up and arming inall the north country. Truly, the prospect was most gloomy and theoutlook for the patriot cause was to the full as desperate as KingGeorge himself could wish.
"But you, Ephraim, and the chief, here; are you two running away likeall the others?" Richard would ask.
The old hunter growled his denial between the mouthfuls of scarce-warmedmeat. "I reckon ez how 'tis t'other way 'round; we're sort o' camping onthe redcoats' trail, ez I allow. Ain't we, Chief, hey?"
The Catawba's assent was a guttural "Wah!" and Ephraim Yeates went on toexplain.
"Ye see, 'tis this-away. You took a laugh out'n me, Cap'n Dick, forspying 'round on that there Britisher hoss-captain and his redskins; but'long to'ards the last I met up with a thing 'r two wo'th knowing. 'Twasa powder and lead cargo they was a-waiting for; and they're allowing tosneak it through the mountings to the overhill Cherokees."
"Well?" says Dick.
The old man cut another slice of the venison and took his time toimpale it on the forked toasting stick.
"Well, then I says to the chief, here, says I, 'Chief, this here's ourA-number-one chance to spile the 'Gyptians; get heap gun, heap powder,heap lead, heap scalp.' The chief, he says, 'Wah!'--which is goodInjun-talk for anything ye like,--and so here we are, hot-foot on thetrail o' that there hoss-captain and his powder varmints."
"Alone?" said I, in sheer amazement at the brazen effrontery of thischase of half a hundred well-armed men by two.
The old hunter chuckled his dry little laugh. "We ain't sich tarnationbig fools ez we look, Cap'n John. There's a good plenty of 'em to wallopus, ez I'll allow, if it come to fighting 'em fair and square. Butthere'll be some dark night 'r other whenst we can slip up on 'em andraise a scalp 'r two and lift what plunder we can tote; hey, Chief?"
But now Richard would inquire what time in the night the powder convoyleft Appleby Hundred, and if Gilbert Stair's York District guests hadtraveled with it. To these askings Yeates made answer that Falconnet andhis troop, with the Cherokee contingent, had taken the road at midnight,or thereabouts; and that the Witherbys, with Mistress Margery riding herown black mare, and her maid on a pillion behind a negro groom, hadpassed some two hours later.
This was as we had hoped it might be; but when Dick's satisfactionwould have set itself in words, the old hunter made a sudden sign forsilence and quickly flung himself full length to lay his ear to theground. Whereat we all began likewise to listen, but I, for one, heardnothing till Yeates said: "A hoss; a-taking the back track like old Jehuthe son of Nimshi was a-giving him the whip and spur," and then we allmarked the distant drumming of hoofbeats.
The old borderer sprang afoot, kicked the fire into the stream, andcaught up his rifle. "Let's be a-moving," he said. "We must make out tostop that there hoss-galloper at the ford and find out what-all he's arip-snorting that-away for."
The road crossing of the stream was but a little way above our breakfastcamp; and we were out of the thicket in time to see the horseman, anegro clinging with locked arms to the neck of his mount, come tearingdown to the ford. At sight of us, or else because he would not take thewater at full speed, the horse reared, pawed the air, and fell clumsily,carrying his skilless rider with him.
We picked the black up and soused him in the stream till he found histongue; and the first wagging of that useful member gave us news to firethe blood in our veins--in Jennifer's and mine, at any rate.
"Yah!" he screamed, choking out the muddy creek water that had well-nighstrangled him. "Yah! red debbil Injins kill ebberybody and tote offMistis Marg'y and dat Jeanne 'ooman! Dat's what dey done!"
The Master of Appleby Page 21