James Fenimore Cooper's Five Novels

by James Fenimore Cooper

  “Not yet—not yet,” said Birch in a low voice; “the road falls from the top of this hill as steep as it rises—first let us gain the top.” While speaking, they reached the desired summit, and both threw themselves from their horses, Henry plunging into the thick underwood, which covered the side of the mountain for some distance above them. Harvey stopped to give each of their beasts a few severe blows of his whip, that drove them headlong down the path on the other side of the eminence, and then followed his example.

  The pedlar entered the thicket with a little caution, and avoided, as much as possible, rustling or breaking the branches in his way. There was but time only to shelter his person from view, when a dragoon led up the ascent and on reaching the height, he cried aloud—

  “I saw one of their horses turning the hill this minute.”

  “Drive on—spur forward, my lads,” shouted Mason, “give the Englishman quarter, but cut down the pedlar, and make an end of him.”

  Henry felt his companion gripe his arm hard, as he listened in a great tremor to this cry, which was followed by the passage of a dozen horsemen, with a vigor and speed, that showed too plainly how little security their over-tired steeds could have afforded them.

  “Now,” said the pedlar, rising from the cover to reconnoitre, and standing for a moment in suspense, “all that we gain is clear gain, for as we go up they go down. Let us be stirring.”

  “But will they not follow us, and surround this mountain,” said Henry, rising, and imitating the laboured but rapid progress of his companion; “remember they have foot as well as horse, and at any rate we shall starve in the hills.”

  “Fear nothing, Captain Wharton,” returned the pedlar, with confidence; “this is not the mountain that I would be on, but necessity has made me a dexterous pilot among these hills. I will lead you where no man will dare to follow. See, the sun is already setting behind the tops of the western mountains, and it will be two hours to the rising of the moon. Who, think you, will follow us far on a November night among these rocks and precipices.”

  “Listen!” exclaimed Henry; “the dragoons are shouting to each other—they miss us already.”

  “Come to the point of this rock, and you may see them,” said Harvey, composedly seating himself down to rest. “Nay, they can see us—observe, they are pointing up with their fingers. There! one has fired his pistol, but the distance is too great for even a musket.”

  “They will pursue us,” cried the impatient Henry; “let us be moving.”

  “They will not think of such a thing,” returned the pedlar, picking the chicker-berries that grew on the thin soil where he sat, and very deliberately chewing them, leaves and all, to refresh his mouth. “What progress could they make here, in their heavy boots and spurs, and long swords? No, no—they may go back and turn out the foot, but the horse pass through these defiles, when they can keep the saddle, with fear and trembling. Come, follow me, Captain Wharton; we have a troublesome march before us, but I will bring you where none will think of venturing this night.”

  So saying, they both arose, and were soon hid from view amongst the rocks and caverns of the mountain.

  The conjecture of the pedlar was true. Mason and his men dashed down the hill in pursuit, as they supposed, of their victims, but on reaching the bottom lands, they found only the deserted horses of the fugitives. Some little time was spent in examining the woods near them, and in endeavouring to take the trail on such ground as might enable the horse to pursue, when one of the party descried the pedlar and Henry seated on the rock already mentioned.

  “He’s off,” muttered Mason, eyeing Harvey with fury, “he’s off, and we are disgraced. By heavens, Washington will not trust us with the keeping of a suspected tory, if we let the rascal trifle in this manner with the corps; and there sits the Englishman too, looking down upon us with a smile of benevolence! I fancy that I can see it. Well, well, my lad, you are comfortably seated, I will confess, and that is something better than dancing upon nothing; but you are not to the west of the Harlaem river yet, and I’ll try your wind before you tell Sir Henry what you have seen, or I’m no soldier.”

  “Shall I fire, and frighten the pedlar?” asked one of the men, drawing his pistol from the holster.

  “Aye, startle the birds from their perch—let us see how they can use the wing.” The man fired the pistol, and Mason continued—“’Fore George, I believe the scoundrels laugh at us. But homeward, or we shall have them rolling stones upon our heads, and the Royal Gazettes teeming with an account of a rebel regiment routed by two loyalists. They have told bigger lies than that, before now.”

  The dragoons moved sullenly after their officer who rode towards their quarters, musing on the course it behoved him to pursue in the present dilemma. It was twilight when Mason’s party reached the dwelling, before the door of which were collected a great number of the officers and men, busily employed in giving and listening to the most exaggerated accounts of the escape of the spy. The mortified dragoons gave their ungrateful tidings with the sullen air of disappointed men; and most of the officers gathered round Mason, to consult of the steps that ought to be taken. Miss Peyton and Frances were breathless and unobserved listeners to all that passed between them, from the window of the chamber immediately above their heads.

  “Something must be done, and that speedily,” observed the commanding officer of the regiment which lay encamped before the house; “this English officer is doubtless an instrument in the great blow aimed at us by the enemy lately; besides, our honor is involved in his escape.”

  “Let us beat the woods!” cried several at once; “by morning we shall have them both again.”

  “Softly—softly—gentlemen,” returned the colonel; “no man can travel these hills after dark, unless used to the passes. Nothing but horse can do service in this business, and I presume Lieutenant Mason hesitates to move without the orders of his major?”

  “I certainly dare not,” replied the subaltern, gravely shaking his head, “unless you will take the responsibility of an order; but Major Dunwoodie will be back again in two hours, and we can carry the tidings through the hills before daylight; so that by spreading patroles across from one river to the other, and offering a reward to the country people, their escape will yet be impossible; unless they can join the party that is said to be out on the Hudson.”

  “A very plausible plan,” cried the colonel, “and one that must succeed; but let a messenger be despatched to Dunwoodie, or he may continue at the ferry until it proves too late; though doubtless the runaways will lie in the mountains to-night.”

  To this suggestion Mason acquiesced, and a courier was sent to the major, with the important intelligence of the escape of Henry, and an intimation of the necessity of his presence to conduct the pursuit. After this arrangement the officers separated.

  When Miss Peyton and her niece first learnt the escape of Captain Wharton, it was with difficulty they could credit their senses. They both relied so implicitly on the success of Dunwoodie’s exertions, that they thought the act, on the part of their relative, extremely imprudent; but it was now too late to mend it. While listening to the conversation of the officers, both were struck with the increased danger of Henry’s situation, if re-captured, and they trembled to think of the great exertions that would be made to accomplish this object. Miss Peyton consoled herself, and endeavoured to cheer her niece, with the probability, that the fugitives would pursue their course with unremitting diligence, so that they might reach the Neutral Ground, before the horse would carry down the tidings of their flight. The absence of Dunwoodie seemed to her all important, and the artless lady was anxiously devising some project that might detain her kinsman, and thus give her nephew the longest possible time. But very different were the reflections of Frances. She could no longer doubt, that the figure she had seen on the hill was Birch, and she felt certain that instead of flying to the friendly forc
es below, her brother would be taken to the mysterious hut to pass the night.

  Frances and her aunt held a long and animated discussion by themselves, when the good spinster reluctantly yielded to the representation of her niece, and folding her in her arms, she kissed her cold cheek, and fervently blessing her, allowed her to depart on an errand of fraternal love.

  Chapter XXX

  “And here, forlorn and lost I tread,

  With fainting steps, and slow;

  Where wilds immeasurably spread,

  Seem length’ning as I go.”

  Goldsmith.

  * * *

  THE NIGHT had set in dark and chilling, as Frances Wharton, with a beating heart but light step, moved through the little garden that lay behind the farm-house which had been her brother’s prison, and took her way to the foot of the mountain, where she had seen the figure of him she supposed to be the pedlar. It was still early, but the darkness and the dreary nature of a November evening would at any other moment, or with less inducement to exertion, have driven her back, in terror, to the circle she had left. Without pausing to reflect, however, she flew over the ground with a rapidity that seemed to bid defiance to all impediments, nor stopped even to breathe, until she had gone half the distance to the rock, that she had marked as the spot, where Birch made his appearance on that very morning.

  The good treatment of their women, is the surest evidence that a people can give of their civilization, and there is no nation which has more to boast of in this respect than the Americans. Frances felt but little apprehension from the orderly and quiet troops, who were taking their evening’s repast on the side of the highway opposite to the field through which she was flying. They were her countrymen, and she knew that her sex would be respected by the eastern militia, who composed this body; but in the volatile and reckless character of the southern horse, she had less confidence. Outrages of any description were seldom committed by the really American soldiery, but she recoiled, with exquisite delicacy, from even the appearance of humiliation. When, therefore, she heard the footsteps of a horse moving slowly up the road, she shrunk, timidly, into a little thicket of wood, which grew around the spring that bubbled from the side of a hillock near her. The vidette, for such it proved to be, passed her without noticing her form, which was so enveloped as to be as little conspicuous as possible, humming a low air to himself, and probably thinking of some other fair that he had left on the banks of the Potomac.

  Frances listened anxiously to the retreating footsteps of his horse, and as they died upon her ear, she ventured from her place of secrecy, and advanced a short distance into the field; where, startled at the gloom, and appalled with the dreariness of the prospect, she paused to reflect on what she had undertaken. Throwing back the hood of her cardinal, she sought the support of a tree, and gazed towards the summit of the mountain that was to be the goal of her enterprize. It rose from the plain, like a huge pyramid, giving nothing to the eye but its outlines. The pinnacle could be faintly discerned in front of a lighter back ground of clouds, between which a few glimmering stars occasionally twinkled in momentary brightness, and then gradually became obscured by the passing vapour, that was moving before the wind, at a vast distance below the clouds themselves. Should she return, Henry and the pedlar would most probably pass the night in fancied security, upon that very hill, towards which she was straining her eyes in the vain hope of observing some light that might encourage her to proceed. The deliberate, and what to her seemed cold-blooded, project of the officers, for the re-capture of the fugitives, still rung in her ears, and stimulated her to go on; but the solitude into which she must venture—the time—the actual danger of the ascent, and the uncertainty of her finding the hut, or what was still more disheartening, the chance that it might be occupied by unknown tenants, and those of the worst description—urged her to retreat.

  The increasing darkness was each moment rendering objects less and less distinct, and the clouds were gathering more gloomily in the rear of the hill, until its form could no longer be discerned. Frances threw back her rich curls with both hands on her temples, in order to possess her senses in their utmost keenness; but the towering hill was entirely lost to the eye. At length she discovered a faint and twinkling blaze in the direction in which she thought the building stood, that by its reviving and receding lustre, might be taken for the glimmering of a fire. But the delusion vanished as the horizon again cleared, and the star of evening shone forth from a cloud, after struggling hard as if for existence. She now saw the mountain to the left of the place where the planet was shining, and suddenly a streak of mellow light burst upon the fantastic oaks that were thinly scattered over its summit, and gradually moved down its side, until the whole pile became distinct under the rays of the rising moon. Although it would have been physically impossible for our heroine to advance without the aid of the friendly light, which now gleamed on the long line of level land before her; yet she was not encouraged to proceed. If she could see the goal of her wishes, she could also perceive the difficulties that must attend her reaching it.

  While deliberating in distressing incertitude, now shrinking with the timidity of her sex and years from the enterprise, and now resolving to rescue her brother at every hazard, Frances turned her looks towards the east, in earnest gaze at the clouds which constantly threatened to involve her again in comparative darkness. Had an adder stung her, she could not have sprung with greater celerity, than she recoiled from the object against which she was leaning, and which she for the first time, noticed. The two upright posts, with a cross beam on their tops, and a rude platform beneath, told but too plainly the nature of the structure—even the cord was suspended from an iron staple, and was swinging, to and fro, in the night air. Frances hesitated no longer, but rather flew than ran across the meadow, and was soon at the base of the rock, where she hoped to find something like a path to the summit of the mountain. Here she was compelled to pause for breath, and she improved the leisure by surveying the ground about her. The ascent was quite abrupt, but she soon found a sheep path that wound among the shelving rocks and through the trees, so as to render her labour much less tiresome than it otherwise would have been. Throwing a fearful glance behind, the determined girl commenced her journey upwards. Young, active, and impelled by her generous motive, she moved up the hill with elastic steps, and very soon emerged from the cover of the woods into an open space of more level ground, that had evidently been cleared of its timber, for the purpose of cultivation. But either the war, or the sterility of the soil, had compelled the adventurer to abandon the advantages that he had obtained over the wilderness, and already the bushes and briars were springing up afresh, as if the plough had never traced its furrows through the mould which nourished them.

  Frances felt her spirits invigorated by these faint vestiges of the labour of man, and she walked up the gentle acclivity, with renewed hopes of success. The path now diverged in so many different directions, that she soon saw it would be useless to follow their windings, and abandoning it, at the first turn, she laboured forward towards what she thought was the nearest point to the summit: the cleared ground was soon past, and woods and rocks, clinging to the precipitous sides of the mountain, again opposed themselves to her progress. Occasionally, the path was to be seen running along the verge of the clearing, and then striking off into the scattering patches of grass and herbage, but in no instance could she trace it upward. Tufts of wool, hanging to the briars, sufficiently denoted the origin of these tracks, and Frances rightly conjectured, that, whoever descended the mountain, would avail himself of their existence, to lighten the labour. Seating herself on a stone, the wearied girl again paused to rest and to reflect;—the clouds were rising before the moon, and the whole scene at her feet lay pictured in the softest colours.

  The white tents of the militia were stretched, in regular lines, immediately beneath her. The light was shining in the window of her aunt, who Frances easily
fancied was watching the mountain, racked with all the anxiety she might be supposed to feel for her niece. Lanterns were playing about in the stable-yard, where she knew the horses of the dragoons were kept, and believing them to be preparing for their night march, she again sprang upon her feet, and renewed her toil.

  Our heroine had to ascend more than a quarter of a mile farther, although she had already conquered two-thirds of the height of the mountain. But she was now without a path, or any guide to direct her in her course. Fortunately the hill was conical, like most of the mountains in that range, and by advancing upwards, she was certain of at length reaching the desired hut, which hung, as it were, on the very pinnacle. Nearly an hour did she struggle with the numerous difficulties that she was obliged to overcome, when, having been repeatedly exhausted with her efforts, and in several instances, in great danger from falls, she succeeded in gaining the small piece of table-land on the summit.

  Faint with her exertions, which had been unusually severe for so slight a frame, she sunk on a rock, to recover her strength and fortitude for the approaching interview. A few moments sufficed for this purpose, when she proceeded in quest of the hut. All of the neighbouring hills were distinctly visible by the aid of the moon, and Frances was able, where she stood, to trace the route of the highway from the plains into the mountains. By following this line with her eyes, she soon discovered the point whence she had seen the mysterious dwelling, and directly opposite to that point she well knew the hut must stand.