“Master Harper,” said the colonel without preliminary, “I hope you’ve come to a sensible frame of mind.”
“And I hope my frame of mind is ever sensible,” replied Zack, “though I stand here falsely accused and unlawfully imprisoned.”
“You tell us that you’re loyal to King George?” challenged Moore.
“I have been loyal ever, and my father before me. Yet I dare say that King George is ignorant of what sorry things are done here in his colonies. I dare say that such injustice as this is the explanation for the rebellion against his rule.”
“Sink me, Prothero,” muttered Major Welch among the listening officers, “this acquaintance of yours speaks like a lawyer.”
“A canting Whiggish lawyer,” rejoined another. “We want none of that kidney here.”
Colonel Moore studied Zack a long moment in the lantern light.
“Well, every man must prove his loyalty these days,” he said at last. “If you’re a true King’s subject, you should be in our ranks.”
“I serve neither in these ranks, nor in the ranks of the North Carolina militia that drills in my district,” replied Zack.
“Ha!” cried Moore. “We’ve heard of that rebel company. You know the men in it?”
“He does, Colonel, no doubt that he does,” volunteered Alspaye. “I myself heard his friends speak of joining it, and he was there at the time. Belike he’s as arrant a traitor as any of them, and a member of that company to boot.”
“Have done, Sergeant Alspaye,” snapped Moore. “Harper, I asked if you know the men of that company.”
“Some of them, sir,” admitted Zack.
“Name them, then. Captain Cumberland, take down the names as he gives them.”
But Zack stood silent, feeling expectant eyes upon him from all sides.
“Name them, I say,” ordered Colonel Moore again. “Begin with their captain.”
“Colonel Moore,” said Zack, “I have said I did not come to spy upon you. Neither did I come to carry tales to you. I am a spy for neither side.”
Another silence around Zack, chill and baleful. It seemed to last an hour.
“My young friend,” said Moore, “you do not seem to realize that you stand here in peril of your life.”
“I realize it very well, sir,” returned Zack. “But I shall not say anything I do not want to say, at your bidding or the bidding of any man on earth.”
“Said I not he was an insolent rebel?” cried Alspaye.
“Colonel Moore, we waste our time hearkening to his impudence,” spoke up the officer who was making notes. “I vote that he be hanged before he may see another sun’s rising.”
“D’ye hear that, Harper?” asked Moore, with a harsh smile. “Believe me, your refusal to help us convicts you of rebellion against your King. One last chance to speak the information we want.”
“Tell us what we ask you, Zack,” said Godfrey Prothero suddenly. “Cease this playing the scoundrel—”
“I'll not be called a scoundrel by you, Godfrey,” blazed Zack, losing his temper. “You’re the scoundrel, grieving your father and sister by renegading to these outlaws!”
“Outlaws,” echoed Moore coldly. “Outlaws, he calls us. Well, gentlemen, all seven of you sit here with me as chosen officers of this volunteer force. Captain Cumberland speaks for hanging this prisoner. How do you others vote on the matter, yea or nay? Captain Warlick?”
“Yea,” said a squat man in a dark coat with a sash around it. “Captain Murray?”
“Yea,” said the next officer.
“Captain Carpenter?”
“Yea.”
“Captain Prothero?”
“Nay! ” cried out Godfrey Prothero. “This is an old neighbor and playfellow of mine, and I’d mourn to see—”
“You’ve voted, Captain Prothero,” Moore cut him off. “What says Captain Simpson?”
“Yea.”
“And Major Welch?”
“Yea,” said the major.
“Which sounds to me like an overwhelming vote for a rope to this rebel’s neck,” summed up Moore. “So be it ordered. Write it down, Captain Cumberland. Half an hour before sunrise, when there is light sufficient to hang him by, he shall be hoisted, and the whole command paraded to see how resolutely we stand by our loyalties. Lock him up again. What other matter before the council?”
As Zack turned away between his two guards, he heard Major Welch speak.
“That recruit, Colonel. The one who came vaporing of his wish to join us. I apprehend he is too far soaked in brandy to speak properly when sworn.”
“Then let him be put in the guardhouse with Harper,” said Moore. “Take his weapons, and let him sleep and sober up.”
As Zack’s guards brought him to the prison hut, a blubbering of protest and a half-bellowed snatch of song rose behind them. Two more men came, supporting a third between them. He stumbled and sagged in their arms.
“Fling him inside,” directed the sentry. “A night in our jail, with only this rebel for company, will help him to better wit and better manners.”
One of the guards shoved Zack inside. A moment later the staggering stranger followed, and fell heavily on the dirt floor. The door slammed shut, and the big latch fell in place.
Zack knelt beside the fallen man. “Are you hurt?” he asked.
“Softly, lad,” came back a whisper.
“What?”
“Softly, I say. I play this part to help you.”
It was the unmistakable voice of Enoch Gilmer, the prankster of the South Fork.
5 Godfrey Prothero’s Offer
So amazed was Zack that he might have cried out had not Gilmer’s quick palm clamped itself tight across his mouth.
“Quiet, Zack, for both our lives,” begged Gilmer in a whisper. “The night out yonder is full of prowling Tories.”
Zack shoved Gilmer’s hand away. “How came you here, Enoch?” he demanded softly.
“How and why but to set you free? Come over to this corner, it’s away from the door and that slit in the wall. Now, hark you.”
They sat side by side in the corner. Gilmer cupped his hand to Zack’s ear.
“I saw you leave home this morning,” he said in the quietest of undertones. “I’d come to bid you go hunting, and when I saw you go I followed. But ere I could catch you up, I saw you moving so stealthily that I wondered at your business, and for sport’s sake slipped along behind.”
“And I didn’t know of your following,” said Zack, embarrassed. “A sorry woods-runner I’ve proved this day.”
“Never sorry, Zack. It’s only that perhaps I’m a mite better. You were well intent on your errand, in any case. But you went for miles, ever furtive, and my curiosity was enough to bring me miles after you. When you stopped at Mr. Mauney’s I stole close enough to hear him tell you of the Tory camp, and I was not far off when that sneaking fellow Alspaye captured you.”
“Again my woodsmanship was poor.”
“Yes, you were careless then. And I watched you taken to this lockup, and then wandered around outside the camp, pondering how to free you. When I saw them fetch you out for questioning, I hit upon the device. I feigned both Toryism and tipsiness, and they did as I hoped—put me in here with you.”
“So you have ruined yourself,” mourned Zack. “They took your weapons, and the door is barred, with an armed watcher outside.”
“Be of cheer. Each trick I have is worth two of theirs. But tell me, Zack, are you still of the notion that King George is rightful ruler of America?”
Zack could have groaned again. There it came, that question of what was true loyalty, and in this perilous plight.
“I cannot answer that,” he whispered back after a moment. “My father tells me that he hopes only for peace, not for triumph by either side in this war.”
“It’s a vain hope he has, lad. For there is no peace, but war. And one side or other must triumph.”
“Perhaps,” admitted Zack, “perhaps. Bu
t what am I to decide? My father came from England and fought for the King. We are all British, by nation and by blood—”
“The British themselves seem to hold otherwise. What says Tom Paine, he who upholds Washington? I can give you ,hrs words, Zack. Hark while I whisper: ‘Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right not only to tax, but to bind us in all cases whatsoever, and if being bound in that manner is not slavery, then there is not such a thing as slavery upon the earth.’ ”
Zack recognized the words. “So he writes in The American Crisis ” he said, nodding in the thick darkness. “Mr. Blythe showed me a copy. I have heard say that Thomas Paine is a scoffing unbeliever.”
“That I won’t agree. Here’s more of what he says.” Gilmer paused, as though calling up his memory. “Aye, thus goes the passage: ‘I have as little superstition in me as any man living, but my secret opinion has ever been, and still is, that God Almighty will not give up a people to military destruction, or leave them unsupportedly to perish, who have so earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid the calamities of war, by every decent method which wisdom could invent.’ ”
Gilmer had quoted the words with as impressive a solemnity as Mr. Blythe himself might have used. Again Zack reflected on Gilmer’s gift for mimicry and impersonation.
“You may be right, Enoch,” he admitted. “There s no sound of the infidel there.”
“And the words are still more to the point where you re concerned,” pursued Gilmer, emphatic for all his lowered voice. “Have you not earnestly and repeatedly sought to avoid war? Have you not striven to follow your father’s teachings and remain neutral? Yet here you are, captive andi condemned. I heard the word gallows spoken to you, and more than once.”
It was true, but Zack scowled to himself in the black night, as though to dismiss the argument.
“What perplexes me more, Enoch, is how you think to get out of this trap for foxes. They left neither of us so much as a knife to whittle with.”
“No more they did,” agreed Gilmer. “They took my knife and yours. But earlier I saw a carpenter by one of the fires, at the edge of this encampment, and made it my business to snap up a tool lying there. Here it is—I hid it in my legging, and they found it not. Mind your fingers, lad.”
He thrust something into Zack’s hands. It was a small saw. Again Zack might have exclaimed, this time in triumph, but for his friend’s warning nudge.
“That fellow on guard outside walks all the way around this prison hut several times in the hour,” muttered Gilmer. “We’ll be wise to work on the inner wall, lest he come upon us with a hole half made. There’s another chamber beyond this, and the door to that stands open. I saw as much ere I came staggering and hiccuping in among these Tories.”
Zack groped along the partition with his free hand. He felt rough slabs, apparently split from logs, and these were fastened with wooden pegs to rough upright timbers on the other side.
“We can put the saw in at this space,” he reported to Gilmer. “But it will make noise.”
“Saw away without fear, Zack. I’ll make some noise myself.”
And Gilmer burst into a raucous song about Barney O’Lynn.
So loudly did Gilmer bawl his song that the scratch and scrape of the saw teeth through the rough wood was utterly drowned out. Verse after verse of the old ballad Gilmer sang while Zack cut through one plank, then another.
“Sing on, Enoch,” he urged happily. “Another cut the same width over here, and we’ll have space enough to squirm through.”
Just then there was a noise at the door. At once Gilmer flung himself in a slumping sag against the place where Zack had been sawing.
“Barney O’Lynn! ” he gurgled thickly. “Barney O’Lynn! ”
“What sort of squalling is this?” demanded a gruff voice, and the door opened, showing a man with a lighted lantern in his hand. “Must we give this toper more drink to silence him? Let Harper stand forth.”
Zack laid the saw down quietly, and rose and walked to the door. “What’s your wish with me?” he asked.
uNever question us, rebel. Come outside.”
Zack stepped into the open. At once the man who had summoned him drew a tin slide over the face of the lantern to mask its light. The sentry stood with musket slanted at the ready. He spoke grumpily.
“If I turn this prisoner over to you I’ll fare ill with my officers,” he said.
“Tut, man, my captain is your officer,” flung back the one with the lantern. “He engages that the prisoner will be returned after questioning. Do you disbelieve the captain?”
“Not I,” said the sentry. “But if that rogue escapes, remember that you and your captain are in the same trouble that I am.”
"Hold my lantern,” bade the other. “Now, where’s that buckskin cord? I’ll bind the fellow’s hands, and bring him back again safe bound.”
Swiftly he drew Zack’s wrists together behind his back and threw a loop of cord around them. Pulling it tight, he made several secure knots.
“So,” he pronounced, “he is helpless. How far could he run in the night, trussed and tethered? The lantern again, by your leave. Walk before me, prisoner. No, ask me nothing. I’ll warrant you that the captain will have much to ask you, and your replies had best be straight ones.”
With his hand on Zack’s shoulder, he started away. Behind them could be heard the muffled singing of Enoch Gilmer in the guard cabin.
Zack’s conductor marching him among the trees in the night, avoided several fires, and at last approached a rough shelter of branches and thatch almost at the rim of the camp. Another man stood there, slenderly elegant and watchful.
“Ah, Rufton, did you bring him? Aye, it’s Zack Harper, right enough.”
“Godfrey!” exclaimed Zack. “Godfrey Prothero!”
“Keep your voice down, Zack. I’ve had you brought here for your own good. Now, Rufton, tie the other end of that line to this tree.”
“As you say, Captain Prothero,” replied the man with the lantern, and wound the free end of the cord around the trunk. “So, he’s safe now.”
“Go you apart now,” directed Godfrey, “and let me question him privately, but be within my call.”
The man departed among some brushy thickets. Godfrey Prothero came close. He wore the green riding coat, with a scarf tucked around his neck, and his cocked hat was drawn over his eyes. Standing before Zack, he set his clenched fists lightly on his hips.
“I’ll speak briefly, Zack,” he said. “You are condemned to a sorry death at dawn. But I voted against it, and I can give you life.”
“That’s vastly neighborly of you, Godfrey,” responded Zack.
He spoke mockingly and without much cordiality, for the buckskin thong cut into his wrists, and he was weary and angry from the treatment he had received at the hands of the Tories.
“I will explain,” Godfrey was saying.
“Pray do so. Begin by explaining why I am insulted and sentenced by these friends of yours.”
“Zack, I alone believe the story you told.” Godfrey’s voice was friendly. “I know you and your father. I know he is a neutral and, at heart, loyal.”
“Think you he’d be neutral and loyal if he knew how his son fared here?”
“Have patience, Zack. Hear me out. I say I am your friend.”
“And you hitch me to a tree like a haltered beast,” growled Zack, his temper growing hot. “There’s a fine proof of friendship.”
“I say that I believe you,” said Godfrey, in earnest appeal.
“I believe that you came to find me, to serve the wish of my family. Believing that, I will save your life if only you help me make it possible.”
“I wait to hear how I can do that.”
“I’m no coward,” went on Godfrey, “but I shrink at shedding the blood of old friends, or of seeing it shed. I keep yow bound only so that you will stand safe and hear my words; as we speak in private. Now, first of all, you may live if y
ou agree to be one of us.”
“Agree to be one of you?” echoed Zack sharply. “After being thus penned and tied? I am not likely to agree.”
“If you don’t, there is the rope and the scaffold. Be wise in time, Zack. You can make your fortune by agreeing. We are several hundred here together, more than all the rebel volunteers in this part of the country. Another week’s time, and we’ll be several thousand. And Cornwallis will bring British regulars from South Carolina. This whole land will be taken and held for King George, and short will be the shrift of the traitor against him.”
“Why then should my own enlistment be important to Colonel Moore?” Zack inquired, still too angry to hear of bis own danger. “I am but one, and you say you will have thousands.”
As Zack spoke, he had drawn close to the tree trunk around which his imprisoning line had been looped. Suddenly he felt a touch of something cold and hard against his arm—a steel knife was sliding between flesh and snug leather bond. He controlled himself and craned his neck toward Godfrey.
“Once I swear to Colonel Moore that you have changed your tune and will join us,” Godfrey insisted, “he will welcome you. You shall be one of my own company. Then I’ll send you on a scouting mission, and you can go home again.”
Stealthily the knife was working at the leather. “Can I so, indeed?” Zack temporized.
“You will bear a letter to my father, saying that I am well and prosperous and that the cause I follow will prevail. He will be won over. Your own father needs only persuasion to do likewise. Those two households will be strong points for the loyal men of the country to hold to. Then, returning here, you can bring news of the rebels—that company that has been formed, and what plans it makes for resistance.”
The offer was of spy service, such as Zack had heard from Moore and had hotly refused. But he fought down his rage, for that knife kept twitching and tugging to sever the tight loop at his wrists.
“Do you think,” he asked, “that the folk along the South Fork will trust me among them?”
“Why not, Zack? My father will not give information against me, nor will your father betray you. Indeed, you might even pretend to join that rebel company, and sound out many who might welcome a chance to muster with us. Depend upon it, Zack, King George will win back his colonies. And if you help us, you help him. You will profit greatly by it.”
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1961 Page 4