XXII
HOW THE FATES GAVE LARGESS OF DESPAIR
Ephraim Yeates was gone a full hour. When he returned he gave us causeto wonder at his lack of caution, since he filled his earthen Indianpipe and coolly struck a light wherewith to fire it. But when the pipewas aglow he told us of his findings.
"'Twas about ez I reckoned; them varmints waded in the shallows a spellto throw us off, and then came out and forded higher up."
"That will be a shrewd guess of yours, I take it, Ephraim?" said I; forthe night was black as Erebus.
"Ne'er a guess at all; I've had 'em fair at eyeholts," this as calmly asif we had not been for ten long days pinning our faith to an ill-definedtrace of foot-prints. "Ez I was a-going on to say, they're incamped ont'other bank ruther eenside o' two sights and a horn-blow from this. Isaw 'em and counted 'em: seven redskins and the two gals."
"Thank God!" says Richard, as fervently as if our rescue of the womenwere already a thing accomplished. Then he fell upon the scout with aneager question: "How does she look, Ephraim?--tell me how she looks!"
"Listen at him!" said the old man, cackling his dry little laugh. "Howin tarnation am I going to know which 'she' he's a-stewing about?There's a pair of 'em, and they both look like wimmin ez have beendragged hilter-skilter through the big woods for some better 'n a week.Natheless, they're fitting to set up and take their nourishment, both on'em. They was perching on a log afore the fire, with ever' lastidintical one o' them redskins a-waiting on 'em like they was a coupleof Injun queens. I reckon ez how the hoss-captain gave them varmintstheir orders, partic'lar."
Dick was upon his feet, lugging out the great broadsword.
"Show us the way, Eph Yeates!" he burst out impatiently. "We are wastinga deal of precious time!"
But the old man only puffed the more placidly at his pipe, making nomove to head a sortie.
"Fair and easy, Cap'n Dick; fair and easy. There ain't no manner o'hurry, ez I allow. Whenst I've got to tussle with a wheen o' fullredskins, and me with my stummick growed fast to my backbone, I jest ezsoon wait till them same redskins are asleep. Bime-by they'll settledown for the night, and then we'll go up yonder and pizen 'em immejitly,_if_ not sooner. But there ain't no kind o' use to spile it all byrampaging 'round too soon."
There was wisdom undeniable in this, and, accordingly, we waited,taking turns at the hunter's terrible pipe in lieu of supper, and layingour plan of attack. This last was simple enough, as our resources, orrather our lack of them, would make it. At midnight we would move uponthe enemy, feeling our way along the river till we should discover theford by which the captive party had crossed. The stream safely passed,we would deploy and surround the camp of the Indians, and at the signal,which was to be the report of Yeates's rifle, we were to close in andsmite, giving no quarter.
The old borderer dwelt at length upon the need for this severity, sayingthat a single Cherokee escaping would bring the warriors of the Eratitribe down upon us to cut off all chance of our retreat with the women.
"Onless I'm mightily out o' my reckoning, this here spot we're a-settingon ain't more than a day's Injun-running from the Tuckasege Towns. Withthem gals to hender us we ain't a-going to be in no fettle for askimper-scamper race with a fresh wheen o' the redskins. Therefore andwherefore, says I, make them chopping-knives o' your'n cut and comeagain, even to the dividing erpart of soul and marrer."
Dick laughed, and, speaking for both of us, said between his teeth thatwe were not like to be over-merciful.
But now the old wolf of the border gave us a glimpse of an unsuspectedside of him, taking Jennifer sharply to task and reading him a homily onthe sin of vengeance for vengeance's sake. In this harangue he evinceda most astonishing tongue-grasp of Scripture, and for a good half-hourthe air was thick with texts. And to cap the climax, when the sermonpaused he laid his pipe aside, doffed his cap, and went upon his kneesto pour forth such a militant prayer as brought my father's stories ofthe grim old fighting Roundheads most vividly to mind.
Here, being as good a place as any, I may say frankly that I never fullyunderstood this side of Ephraim Yeates. Like all the hardy borderers, hewas a fighter by instinct and inclination; and I can bear him witnessthat when he smote the "Amalekites," as he would call them--red skin orred coat--he smote them hip and thigh, and was as ruthless as thatBritish Captain Turnbull who slew the wounded. Yet withal, on the veryedge of battle, or mayhap fair in the midst of it, he was like to fallupon his knees to pray most fervently; though, as I have hinted, hisprayers were like his blows--of the biting sort, full of Scripturalanathema upon the enemy.
Richard Jennifer, carelessly profane as all men were in that mostgodless day, would say 'twas the old borderer's way of swearing; thatsince he left out the oaths in common speech,--as, truly, he did,--hewould fetch up the arrears and wipe out the score in one fell blast uponhis knees. Be this as it may, he was a good man and a true, as I havesaid; and his warlike supplication that our blades should be as thesword of the Lord and of Gideon in the coming onfall was no whit out ofplace.
It wanted yet a full hour of midnight when Richard began again to pleadpiteously for instant action. Yeates thought it still over-early; butwhen Jennifer pressed him hard the old borderer left the casting vote tome.
"What say ye, Cap'n John? Your'n will be the next oldest head, and Ireckon it hain't been turned plumb foolish rampaging crazy by this herepurty gal o' Gilbert Stair's."
Now you have read thus far in my poor tale to little purpose if you havenot yet discovered the major weakness of an old campaigner, which is toweigh and measure all the chances, holding it to the full as culpable tostrike too soon as too late. This weakness was mine, and in that evilmoment I gave my vote for further waiting, arguing sapiently that my oldfield-marshal would never set a night assault afoot till well on towardthe dawn.
Jennifer heard me through and yielded, perforce, though with littlegood-will.
"I can not compass it alone, or, by the gods, I'd go!" he asserted,angrily. "Mark you, John Ireton, this delay is a thing you'll rue whilstyou live. Your cold-cut pros and cons mouth well enough, and I'm nosoldier-lawyer to argue them down. But something better than yourdamnable reasons tells me that the hour has struck--that these verypresent seconds are priceless." Whereupon he flung himself face down inthe grass and would not speak again until the waiting time was fullyover and Yeates gave the word to fall in line for the advance.
Having learned the lay of the land in his earlier reconnaissance, theold borderer shortened the distance for us by guiding us across the neckof a horseshoe bend in the stream; and a half-hour's blind gropingthrough the forest fetched us out upon the river bank again, this timeprecisely opposite the Indians' lodge fire on the other side.
Here there was a little pause for three of us while Ephraim Yeates creptdown the bank to try with his sounding-pole what chance we had ofcrossing.
Measured by what could be seen from our covert, the narrow width ofquick water seemed the last of the many obstacles.
Lulled to security, as we guessed, by the apparent success of their ruseto throw us off the scent, six of the Cherokees were lying feet to firelike the spokes of a wheel for which the fitful blaze was the hub. Theseventh man was squatted before a small tepee-lodge of dressed skins,which, as we took it, would be the sleeping quarters of the captives.Whilst all the others lay stiff and stark as if wrapped in soundestsleep, this sentry guard, too, it seemed, was scarcely more than halfawake, for as we looked, his gun was slipping from the hollow of his armand he was nodding to forgetfulness.
Richard was a-crouch beside me in this peeping reconnaissance, and Icould feel him trembling in impatient eagerness.
"It should be easy enough--what think you?" he whispered; and then, witha sudden grasp upon my wrist: "You are cool and steady-nerved, JohnIreton; I swear you do not love her as I do!"
"Nay, I grant you that, Dick," said I, making sure that his excitementwould obscure the double meaning in the admission. And then I added,sincerely en
ough: "She has never given me the right to love her at all."
"God help her at this pass!" he said, more to himself than to me; andthen he would go in a breath from blessing Margery to cursing EphraimYeates for this fresh delay.
It was Uncanoola who broke in upon the muttered malediction.
"Wah! Captain Jennif' cuss plenty heap, like missionary medicine-man.Look-see! Uncanoola no can find white squaw horse yonder. Mebbe CaptainJennif' see 'um, hey?"
At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they werenowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. TheCatawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appearedto be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep onlyone eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eyeon war-path!"
Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was withinarm's reach before we heard him. Dick had said I was over-cool, but theold man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkleto my fingers' ends.
"How will it be, Eph?" Dick queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We canmake it across? Never say we can't pass that bit of still water, man!"
But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.
"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n Dick.She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along likegreased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we moughtn't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country;but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find theford where them varmints made out to cross."
"God!" said Dick, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"
The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of theencampment opposite, but at Dick's outbreak he fell back quickly andclapped a hand on the lips of cursing.
"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whispermeant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal,Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain'tin it!"
I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw ahandful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the drywood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what thekeener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowybackground of the surrounding forest a dozen horsemen were converging inorderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the drybranches their leader gave the command to charge.
What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefestspace. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings,raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than theyellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of horsemennarrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steelin the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away andvanished as if by magic.
With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of thesleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; andit was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din,being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader ofthe attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; andwhen his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees,the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to thelady.
"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but wedid not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss acrossthe barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.
"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet,mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines andgot them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages havegiven us a pretty chase, I do assure you. But you are trembling yet,calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."
I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two monthssince I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred,and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses ofthe captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we hadstood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her passfrom mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slippingfrom her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clotheher in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautifulthan ever.
"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said."You have come to take us back to my father?"
He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.
"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know,and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are hereonly by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route fortheirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us tothe west; but I do assure you--"
She stopped him with an impassioned gesture of dissent, and darting adespairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thinghopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands andwrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by allthat men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, ifonly with a single soldier for a guard.
'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else hehad flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend hislife for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refusedher, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as hissuppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of atrue, clean-hearted woman at bay.
"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, CaptainFalconnet?" she said.
"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from thesebrutal savages, Mistress Margery?"
She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying downand I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how thescornful eyes were whipping him.
"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us inthe road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. Isaw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spokenfreely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poorJeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."
The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he wastaken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time havedropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.
"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you didwith the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?'Twas a bold game, _ma petite_, but you have lost and I have won, for mygame was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge,be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un hommedesespere, ma cherie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowryyou will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I mighthave been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you gowhere I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you LadyFalconnet!"
The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words,was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her fourwould-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind;nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each ofus. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril wouldbe blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.
So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp grass andbrought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poisedhis hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed becausethe light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might sparethe man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs comewithin stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to strippingcoats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when wewould have broken cover,
the old borderer dropped his weapon and grippedus with a hand for each.
"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoarsely. "Ye'd drown like rats,and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got agood half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow thatain't teched yet."
It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlineardoings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine andnot the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearlesslittle lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.
"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," shesaid, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, havingthe brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that isall. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."
"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for hishorse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for thewomen, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, MistressSpitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father'shouse again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marryyou for very shame's sake!"
It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it hasever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Greciandiscus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glidesnake-like through the grass to stop at Margery's feet. Though I thinkshe knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sighthelped her to say, quickly:
"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."
His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith withme, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"
He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one sether foot upon the weapon in the grass.
"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.
He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make theoccasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you arehas become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to saveyou from that, my Mistress."
She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act securedand hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of onewho may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.
"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing himbravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear God will giveme leave to die as my mother's daughter should."
"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while welooked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses,and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captivesas a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embersof the lodge fire to prick out its limits in dusky red, was empty, andon the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of thehorses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.
Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curseme bitterly.
"Now may all the devils in hell drag you down to everlasting torments,John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we hadgood hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and thathour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"
He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew,and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet grass, he wouldeke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up insheer abandonment of rage and misery.
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