XXVII
HOW A KING'S TROOPER BECAME A WASTREL
Dick pressed closer to me, and I could feel him drinking in deep draftsof the grateful outer air.
"What new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe inhis voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out theanswer with our finger-tips.
When the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved mostsimply. As we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by thestream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, wasquickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. Insome upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's facehad split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deepcleft open to the sky. One end of this crevice chasm--that toward theupland 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 barrierstream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in singlefile between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and soto 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 hadleft the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that wemight yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, wefelt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream'sedge in the gorge.
That done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back intothe crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and werepresently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. Thisextension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wideand high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossingpebbles against the arching roof. None the less, 'twas full of crooksand windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were liketo lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching sidepassages, 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 goneto coals showed us two Indian sentries set to keep the pass. Dick drewhis claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped thegreat blade was shaking as with a palsy. Yet he would mutter, as theteeth-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 loathto admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay savedour lives in that strait. While we paused, hugging the shadows in thecrooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenlystarred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble ofsavages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the twosentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
As it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. In thesame breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind inwhich we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, recklessof possible pitfalls. We were no more than safely out of the maincorridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, troopedpast our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smokytrail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
"Now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz sosuddenly?" I whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speakwithout coughing to betray ourselves.
"Our pony-riding Tuckaseges, doubtless," was Richard's ready answer. "Byall the chances, they should have met the Great Bear and hispeace-offering out yonder on the trace--which same they did not. Sowhen they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitchhot. God help our tough old Ephraim and the Catawba if these bloodhoundswin out in time to overtake them!"
"Aye," said I; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready togo about our business with the sentries.
But when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seemthat the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. Thewatch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but thewatchers were gone. We chanced a guess that they had joined the hue andcry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into thepit-black depths beyond.
Twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with therocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas along Sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrowwhence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in thesunken valley.
"Now God be praised!" quoth Richard most fervently. "Another hour inthis cursed kennel with the fever on me and I should be a yammeringloose-wit." And I, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and tobe at large beneath them.
Emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of thestream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon theenemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. We met nolet or hindrance in this approach. Secure in their stronghold, theIndians had no patrols out; and as for the Englishmen, every mother'sson of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire builtbefore the pine-bough shelters.
Favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-handreconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. As I havesaid, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered thesteep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed fromthe stream, and from the Indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at thewater's edge. Here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of theIndian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humminglike the buzzing of a bee-hive. The flap of the tepee-lodge was closelydrawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap ofwhite-ashed embers.
"They are safe as yet, thank God!" says Richard, heaving a most palpablesigh of relief. Then, with the fever in his veins to whip his naturalardor into hasty action: "'Twill be hours before Eph and the Catawba cancome in by your upper ravine, Jack, and we shall never have a betterchance than this. Hold you quiet here, whilst I--"
But I laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardymarring of Ephraim Yeates's plan.
"Heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?" I would say. "'Twill be riskyenough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and thatgreat fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight towork in!"
He turned upon me like a pettish child. "Oh, to the devil with yourstumbling-blocks, John Ireton! You are always for holding back. Byheaven! 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 promiseto Yeates, which was not to interfere unless Margery stood in presentperil. Moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while wehave the firelight to help. When the time for action comes we must beable 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 lengthand 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 hislieutenant and another. The tableau at the fire gave us better courage.The men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; andwhile the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, Margery had less tofear from him.
I said as much to Dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask ofusquebaugh 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 himlater. He is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnatewith the liquor in him. 'Tis lucky we are here. If he do but drink deepenough, Margery is like to have need--"
"Hist!" said I; "some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy asthey look."
He nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched usout on the
up-valley side of the encampment. Here we could look downinto a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses ofthe band were cropping the lush grass. It was the sight of these, and ofMargery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeeringventure to the full as harebrained as that from which I had but nowdissuaded 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?" heretorted. "The Catawba himself could never run that gantlet and comethrough alive."
"Mayhap," I admitted. "But yet--"
He cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of anextinguisher. One of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great firehad risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.
I saw not what to do; should have done nothing, I dare say, till the manhad walked fair upon us. But Richard was quicker witted.
"Give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shortenupon," and when the Englishman's next stride would have kicked us out ofhiding, Dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him bythe 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 ashield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safershadows of the forest.
When I had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man bythe collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickingswith 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 ormore.
When the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for hislife, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. If the plan Ihad in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set intrain before this trooper should be missed.
So, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, westripped him quickly; and I as quickly donned the borrowed uniform andbecame, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of thatking whose service I had once forsworn. The items of small-clothes,waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to theboots 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 allever doffed or donned a costume quicker,--we bound our luckless captivehand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving himwith only his boots for a memento,--happily for him the night was nomore than goose-flesh cool,--we raced back to our peeping-place on theskirting of the camp ground.
Here Dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable forletting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and withthat I stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy'scamp.
The Master of Appleby Page 29