CHAPTER XLII
I shall have failed very thoroughly in interpreting the character of Claire Arlington (or Webster, if we allow it to be reasonable that a woman should adopt the name of the man with whom she has established the most intimate of human relationships) if it has not become evident already that she was one who would strike straight and hard for any object to which her purpose turned, without over-careful calculating of either risk or cost in the gaining.
She rode down the lane at a pace which would have appalled the cooler mind of the man she followed. At every stride she risked a stumble in the hidden weed-grown ruts, but she came through safely, as audacity may, and swung round into the highroad, to find that she had made up most of the time that she had lost in the freeing of Helen, and that Joe, now riding hard enough, was but a short distance before her.
As she came down the lane she had not been thinking of Joe or of the children, but of a more personal problem. The pang of jealousy which had stirred her heart as she had observed the loveliness of the wife that Martin was about to recover had quickly died finding no nourishment in an unaccustomed soil. But the conviction remained that Helen’s right was not only that of a chronological precedence, but was irrevocably established in a feminine superiority which it would be futile for her to attempt to challenge. She was accustomed to the knowledge that there were few women, among the score of millions that had dwelt around her, against whom she could not compete in the sports of either land or water. Of this she thought but little, but in more feminine comparisons, she was of a convinced humility. With such a wife, could she hope that Martin would continue to regard her? It was not sense to suppose it. Friendship would continue, surely. But beyond that—nothing. Friendship with Helen? How would Helen take her tale which she had come to tell her? She felt that she had nothing to excuse. She would not be apologetic. If Fate had loaded its dice for their undoing, it was against herself they had fallen. But as to how Helen would take it, she considered, as Martin had done before, and like Martin—she was not sure.
She did not calculate that if she should succeed in the recovery of the children, she would have placed Helen under any obligation of gratitude. It was not the kind of thought to which her mind was native. Besides, it was not for Helen that she was attempting it. It was because they were Martin’s children. Her relations with Martin being what they were, it was an action which was obvious and inevitable. It was an affair of the family. She did not think this. It was of the fundamentals, on which we all act without thinking, though they are not the same for all of us.
So she came into the highroad, and saw Joe but a short distance before her. The distance was lessened when Joe came to the fallen elm.
It is needless to say that he was a good horseman. The horse he rode was the best of six, for he had done his own choosing. It might have jumped the tree easily enough, but it was a large tree, and Joe did not know his mount. He did know enough to be doubtful, and he was always cautious. Then, the horse was awkwardly burdened.
Instead of taking it as it came in the middle road, he turned to the further side, where the fallen bole was slimmest. Here, on the grassy edge of the road, he scrambled rather than jumped the horse across it.
By this time Claire was close behind. She rode straight at the tree. The chestnut took it like a swallow. She cocked a backward ear for her mistress’s approval.
Claire laughed aloud: “Good girl,” she said. The chestnut’s pace quickened.
There is a school of theologians which asserts that the souls of animals (if it allows them to have any) are of an inferior quality to those which have been bestowed upon the human race. Dogmatic theology is of no importance, unless we regard it as a form of mental gymnastics. The only safe deduction from this particular speculation is that theologians are not horsemen.
A man may talk to his fellowman for a week, and yet may not reach the understanding which may be born in an hour between a horse and a trusted rider.
The chestnut could not mention that she had come that way, in the early morning hours, half a score of times before, with Rentoul on her back. It was a jump she knew. Whether modesty or truth would have constrained her to tell it is beyond knowing. Nature withheld the temptation.
Joe looked back, and, for the first time he was anxious. He saw that the mare had spurted, and the distance shortened behind him. He could get a little more from his own horse, but not much.
He had a pistol, which he had obtained at Cooper’s Camp, though it was against his prudence to show it unless the need were final. It may be questioned why he did not relieve himself from such pursuit by using it, either against the horse, or the woman.
The explanation is simple. He regarded Claire as his own property. She was the reward which Cooper had agreed should be his portion, if she should fall into their clutches. Now, very humorously, she was riding in the direction he required, and—he did not doubt—to her own undoing. His mind went forward to the spot at which the raiders were to assemble when their spoil was taken. He did not doubt that some of them would be there already. They would not be visible till the hilltop should be gained, and then it would be too late for flight on a horse that would be already exhausted. He pictured the troop burdened with a score of captives—tied and protesting. A score of screaming, weeping, struggling, or secretly-contented women. None but he would have brought his capture riding obediently behind him. He was well pleased also with the result of his venture. Helen had escaped, and his two companions had been shot down, but that showed how perilous had been the enterprise which he had come through successfully. He would have brought off the children. They would be sufficient hostages for any purpose. A man will do as much to save two members of his family as though three were in jeopardy. So he supposed. Two—or one. That had become a practical question. He looked back again at the pursuit. The chestnut ran easily. He had looked back so often thus when the last lap opened. No man living could better judge of the capacity of the horse that shortened the distance behind him.
If Claire could ride well enough, he knew that the next hundred yards would see them neck to neck, and it was a risk that he had no mind to take. He had not stayed to see the end of Bryan, but he had heard the shots, and it was Claire who had come clear of the conflict. She was the “fighting bitch.” She should keep her place in the rear.
He resolved that he must drop one of the children. He would have liked it to be the elder, but it was Joan who was serving as an involuntary shield for his back, and her work was too useful to terminate. He loosed the younger, Mary, and pitched her into the grassy ditch at the roadside, where she lay for a time before rising, bruised and frightened, but without any serious injury. Joe had endeavoured to throw her so that she should not strike the hard road, nor suffer useless damage. It is right to record that as a fact; it would be wrong to give him any credit for this consideration. Like many of his type he disliked to inflict pain. When he avoided it, he was considering his own feelings only. He would not have lost a finger to save the lives of a hundred children, had they been ten miles away. They might have been boiled alive, and he would have grinned untroubled.
Claire saw the child fall, and her eyes, which could be soft enough at the right time, hardened, as they had done when she fired into the body of Bryan. It was the look which Helen had caught, as she had looked up, and seen a fierce and merciless light in large grey eyes under black and meeting brows, which was in her mind when she said: “She is like a Valkyrie.” It was a look which she would long remember, which had printed on her mind one aspect of Claire’s character as an indelible record.
It was then that Claire first looked at Joe with the resolve to kill him. But Joe had no wish to be killed, and we have seen that he had some adroitness in avoiding danger.
Claire supposed that he had dropped the child with some thought that she would stop to pick it up, and that he would escape with the other. But she had no mind for this (of which, indeed, he had not thought, he had acted under the spur of n
ecessity). But, for the moment, his lightened horse made a better pace: the distance did not shorten between them. Rather, it lengthened slightly. For more than that, Joe made no effort. He would not waste the strength of his horse beyond the need of the moment.
We have seen what was in Joe’s mind, but why did not Claire fire at the horse before her? The answer is simple again, though it may seem foolish to many. She did not think of it. Her quarrel was with the man: she had none with the horse. It was not an idea which would be likely to come to her mind, or one that she could have received without repulsion; or adopted, except in the most desperate of emergencies.
So they passed the end of the lane that led to the lodge up which she had gone an hour ago on Davy’s wobbling chariot, passed the lane on the left, down which Davy had dodged away from the bullets, passed the road to Cowley Thorn on the right. They passed a group of excited men, the dismounted Davy among them. Some of them were armed. They appeared to be collected there with no definite purpose. They waited to hear of the doings of those of a more resolute kind—and meanwhile it was a sufficient occupation to question Davy.
They gazed in a loose-mouthed wonder at the flying riders. One man fired. The bullet, vague as the mind that sent it, broke a high twig in a distant hedge.
The road was now less clear than it had been. There were fallen walls and trees, and shattered fences, which human industry had been insufficient to more than partly clear at the worst places.
Pace must slacken at times, but, with Joe’s skilful riding, the distance held.
Now they were near the ruins of the mining village, and the hill rose before them. Joe felt that the game was almost over, as indeed it was. He used a sharp spur as the ground commenced to rise beneath them. He had been saving something of his horse’s strength for this effort. He did not give Claire credit for a similar strategy. But in this he was wrong. For some time she had been riding the chestnut well within its capacity. She had seen the rise of the hill long before they had reached it, and had resolved that it was there that she would call for the sudden effort which should draw level, and give her the shot which would not risk the child. As soon as the ground rose she would do it. The pistol was in her hand already. But how often do things happen as we intend them?
Joe’s gelding felt the spur, and quickened a stride that was already slackening on the rising ground. Claire’s chestnut felt an urgent heel, and heard a voice that called her to a further effort. Joe’s practised ear caught the quicker beat of the hooves behind him. He looked round, and the look was fatal.
Twenty yards ahead Martha stood at her cottage door, a yard-broom in her hand. She had heard of Claire. Davy was not a youth to gossip in the village street before reporting at his own headquarters. Martha judged the position with an instant accuracy. The broom spun beneath the legs of the flying horse.
Had Joe been looking, the result might have been different. He was a clever rider. As it was, the gelding did not come to a complete disaster, it broke its stride, staggered, and came to its knees a few yards further down the road. But Joe, riding with turned head and a slack rein, shot clean out of the saddle, and lay motionless.
Claire dismounted beside him. The child, strapped to his back, had fallen with him, but he had been a useful pillow to break her fall. Claire loosed her, with a wary eye on the sprawling form beneath, which made no motion. Joan was unhurt and untroubled. She seemed to recognise Claire as a friend, and to trust her without scruple. She looked at her with excited eyes, but without fear. She said something which Claire could not clearly follow.
Claire lifted her in her arms, and looked again at the fallen man. He might be dead. It was more than likely that he would recover.
Anyway, she could not shoot him there, now that he had fallen, and in the sight of the child. She put the pistol in her belt.
She lifted the child, and swung back into the saddle. She thought, “Another horse may be worth having.” She caught the gelding’s rein and he trotted beside her. So she rode back through the group that still talked and did nothing. They looked at her with a new wonder, but no one stayed her.
Martha had retired behind a closed door after the broom left her hands. She watched from a window. Now she came out again. She picked up the broom. She noticed, with some annoyance, that it now had a cracked staff. She looked at the silent figure on the road. There might be compensation here. She stooped over him. She could observe no injury. Her hand went into an inviting pocket.
“No, you don’t,” said the voice of Joe. He grabbed her wrist, and she struck at him with the broom to free it.
He struggled to his feet. “No, mother, I’m not hurt,” he said, with his usual grin, “you won’t search me this time. I’ve got a pistol.” He appeared to bear her no ill will. It was not evident that he realised that it was by her hand that he had fallen.
“I couldn’t move till that hell-bitch cleared,” he added, in a needless explanation. He had had many a worse fall than that. There was nothing more than a cut hand, and a bruised knee.
Martha looked at him shrewdly, but she made no answer.
He went up the hill.
CHAPTER XLIII
It has been said with truth that a campaign is won by the general who makes the fewest mistakes, where all make many.
The operations which we are now considering illustrate this axiom.
Captain Cooper had advanced to his anticipated surprise with caution. He had scouted far ahead, and on either flank, though the prospect of any resistance to an advance which could not have been foreseen was remote enough.
Now that he was retiring, he was less careful, when he was in the greater danger, though he could not know it.
The danger, if such there were, would appear to be from the rear, but the fact is that he regarded the adventure as ended when he gave the order for the retirement.
He was in a black mood. He did not hide from his own mind that he had been defeated without a battle. He had been defeated by Martha Barnes, though he was ignorant that he had been out-manoeuvred by a woman. He had lost two men killed, and two missing (who were killed also), besides the jockey. A total of three women, and some miscellaneous booty, was a poor setoff. He was poorer also by three horses.
He rode at the head of the retreating column, his mind on what had been, rather than on anything which might be. He knew when to cut a loss.
Had he thrown out his flank-riders with his usual discretion they could not have failed to observe the breathless line of riflemen who were approaching Sterrington, as he rode down to the place which had been a village. There was no village now. Fire and storm had destroyed it. But the squat tower of the church still showed among such trees as had survived to screen it.
The road ran steeply down, narrow, between high hedges, with the church on the right, and a rise of meadow on the left. It was toward the crest of this leftward ridge that Martin’s little force were now straining. They aimed to have descended, and lined the hedges on either side of the road, before Jerry’s band should have appeared.
Martin knew that they would show conspicuously on the crest, he could not tell for how far; he went on first with Tom to the shelter of a stunted thorn.
He saw the line of laden horsemen riding down the lane. Failure. He was too late by ten minutes.
He took it quietly, though the disappointment was bitter.
“We’re too late, Tom,” he said. “Can you see who they’ve got?”
“They’ve not got much,” said Tom, “if they tried for the women. I can see three. There’s Nance Weston for one. She’s not much loss. There’s no man here that would risk a finger for Nancy. The second’s Goodwin’s Tilly. I wonder how they got her? Goodwin lives far enough off. I can’t see the third.”
Martin’s eyes followed the road. He never ceased to fight a case till the judgement was given.
“Tom,” he said, “can’t we cut them off higher up, if we hurry?”
Tom answered alertly enough. “We might, if we keep
along the ridge—if they take the south road. They won’t make much pace up the hill. It ’ud be a near thing either way.”
It was a chance—no more.
The road forked beyond the church, and if they took the more northern route it was good-bye to Goodwin’s Tilly as well as Nance the worthless.
If they should turn to the south, there might be time, or there might not. The way across the fields would be the shorter, and the more level. But it might be rough, and slow walking. In the end, it must depend upon the pace at which the horses were ridden up the hill.
Fortune favoured the attempt in so far that the raiders came on to the southern road. Had Tom or his friends had sufficient enterprise to locate Jerry’s camp in earlier days they would have known that they would be certain to do so.
For the rest, though Fortune gave something to the importunity with which Martin had wooed her favours yet she did it with a niggard hand, as though she grudged her surrender.
Jerry Cooper, leading the column on his great bay, reached the hilltop at a walk, for the pace had slackened on the ascent, and looking round as he did so, saw a dozen men, with Tom and Martin leading, coming across a field of oats in which the cattle had wandered. What had not been eaten had been trampled flat enough to make little obstacle for the runners, but they were scant of breath, and could do little toward an extra spurt, when they saw that they were again too late for their purpose.
Martin judged the position quickly. If his men should halt and fire from where they stood, the leaders of the climbing column might suffer, but the others, toiling up the hill behind, would take their places. It might soon be that they would be engaged in a duel in which his own men would be exposed, while their opponents would have the protection of hedge and ditch. He was not disposed to stake the lives of his men in such a conflict.
Besides, he had left Jack Tolley, with half a dozen others, to follow the road’s course, and come up in their rear. That was to prevent the backward flight of horsemen who could not be pursued on foot to any possible purpose. But he had to consider now how that portion of his force would come into action.
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