The Sherwood Ring

by Elizabeth Marie Pope

  Meanwhile, just how many men had come and gone and received their directions since yesterday or this morning? Not, I thought, very many. One or two, maybe; but ten or even five, no matter how cautious they were, would have left more marks in the woods than I had found — and I did not think from the look of the trail that anyone was trying to be excessively cautious. Perhaps they had not yet all arrived, or perhaps this was some special meeting arranged for only one or two chosen lieutenants. Perhaps — O glory! O possibility! — I was still ahead of the whole field, and if I just got to the rendezvous at Duck's Head Lake quickly enough, Peaceable Sherwood would be waiting there alone.

  I came to my feet and out of the clearing in one passionate rush, remembering somehow to kick the toy landscape to pieces with my boot as I went by. The scrap of tartan was already in my pocket, and I paused when I had mounted my horse to pull a trail of wild grapevine down over the blaze on the tree. It did not matter how many men came looking for it now: they would have no way of finding out where to go. At most, there would be only one or two with Peaceable Sherwood at Duck's Head Lake; and a chance — more than a fair chance — that there would be nobody at all, and I could have him entirely to myself at last.

  The voice of common sense still kept making itself heard fretfully from time to time above the clatter of my horse's hoofs as I pelted up the mountain road as fast as I could go. It went whining on in a nagging way that I could not be absolutely certain of taking Peaceable Sherwood singlehanded, especially if he had even one or two followers with him. And it was imperative to take Peaceable Sherwood; without him his whole organization would fall apart like beads when the string is pulled out. What I ought to do was return to the Shipley Farm first and come back with ten or fifteen men of my own in order to make sure.

  But the Shipley Farm was a good five miles in the opposite direction — by the time I got there and rounded up my reinforcements and returned, Peaceable Sherwood would probably either have finished his business or else become tired of waiting and escaped me again. Besides, if there was any more delay I could not hope to reach Duck's Head Lake much before night, and I did not want to go thrashing through a strange forest with fifteen rangers looking for Peaceable Sherwood in the dark. Fifteen rangers would undoubtedly make too much noise even in broad daylight. It was actually wiser to take care of the whole matter myself. I was a better tracker than anyone else in the company, except possibly Lieutenant Felton — and Lieutenant Felton was sickening at the moment with a touch of malaria; it would really not be fair to drag him out for such a long expedition on such a stifling afternoon. Anyway, I was going to take Peaceable Sherwood singlehanded if it killed me; and that was the end of the question. I would no longer put up with being harried and defeated and mocked as I had been that summer. I wanted to ride triumphantly back to the Shipley Farm with Peaceable Sherwood tied to my stirrup, and find Eleanor Shipley standing at the gate again to watch me come in.

  By this time I was well up the mountain, where the road turned first into a rough trail and then petered out altogether. My horse had begun to stumble with weariness too, and I patted him apologetically when I dismounted to cut through the rest of the forest on foot.

  "Cheer up, old boy, we'll both be famous in the morning," I said, as I saw to his needs before I left him. "People will be pulling hairs out of your tail to remember us by."

  Once afoot in the forest, the going was slower, especially as I had only been in the region twice before on hunting trips, and did not remember the landmarks very clearly. I had also been rather foolish not to go back to the Shipley Farm for my moccasins and hunting shirt. My riding boots were hot and uncomfortable for walking, and my buff-and-blue uniform would have made a fine target for any marauder who happened to catch sight of me among the trees. My sword kept getting in my way too; and it was my only weapon.

  Mercifully, however, there seemed to be nobody abroad in the forest. By using every ounce of woodcraft I possessed, I managed to make fair speed. All the same, it was almost evening by the time I came through the last of the pine trees and out under the great rock fall where the hills came together at the edge of Duck's Head Lake. The sun was going down in the west all crimson and gold, and the clear waters of the lake rippled with dissolving colors that melted into dark greens and blacks under the shadow of the towering rocks.

  Standing on the highest rock, apparently watching the sunset, was a figure in a scarlet uniform, exactly where the signet on the toy landscape had indicated that he would be.

  It was the first time I had ever seen him, and for a moment I could hardly bring myself to believe that he was really Peaceable Sherwood at all. He looked so different from anything I had imagined. He was very slender and extremely young — even younger than I was — with blue eyes and a gentle, curiously calm expression. He stood leaning against a ledge of the rock with an air of careless elegance, as if it were the back of a drawing-room chair, and gazing dreamily down at the dissolving colors in the sunlit water.

  Then a twig snapped under my foot as I took an incautious step forward, and I saw him look up.

  "That you, Timothy?" he said, without so much as turning his head. He had a lazy, rather drawling voice, and spoke as if it were almost too great an effort to bother.

  I came out from under the shelter of the pines, and stood squarely across the only place where it was possible to clamber down from the rock. "It isn't Timothy," I answered.

  Peaceable Sherwood stiffened and for an instant seemed to become absolutely still. But when he spoke again his voice sounded only mildly surprised, like a gentleman receiving an unexpected visit from some casual acquaintance.

  "Colonel Grahame, I believe?" he inquired courteously. "Won't you come up? Be careful of your riding boots — that rock's slippery. I sometimes think that if I belonged to this country, I would much prefer moccasins and a hunting shirt for work in the woods. As it is, I have to live night and day in this confoundedly uncomfortable uniform to prevent the public from hanging me as a spy when you catch me. Do come up."

  Rather taken aback by all this cordiality, I went scrambling across the rocks to him, with a wary eye out for some possible trap or ambush. Peaceable Sherwood merely laughed and shook his head.

  "No, I didn't bring anyone with me," he assured me. "There are times when I find the company of even very superior outlaws like my own a little tedious. I fancy all those endless ballads about Robin Hood and his merry men under the greenwood shaws must have been written by virtuous citizens who never even went out of the house. They should have seen old Timothy sitting under a maple tree and eating trout with his fingers. By the way, I hope that nothing is amiss with old Timothy? He had a rather important engagement to meet me here with some other lads in an hour or so."

  "We didn't capture him, if that's what you mean," I told him. "He's probably still just trying to find out where you are. I took that scrap of Drummond tartan off the tree, and kicked apart your landscape map in the clearing."

  For some mysterious reason, we seemed to be talking together as easily as if we had known one another all our lives.

  Peaceable nodded. "So you noticed the Drummond tartan?" he said a little ruefully. "I should have remembered your name was Grahame before I went ruining my auld mither's plaid in that shocking manner. I daresay you were raised on that sort of thing from the cradle, so to speak. Still, I feel the idea was basically a sound one, and that child's playground with the little landscapes has really been useful to me for a long time. Now I suppose I'll have to think of something else."

  "That will be quite unnecessary," I said firmly. "You are coming with me."

  Peaceable Sherwood did not seem startled or alarmed in the least. The look he gave me was simply one of polite question.

  "Am I?" he said. "Now just how are you proposing to go about that, I wonder?" He sounded as if he were only vaguely interested in the problem. "I observe that you are not carrying a pistol, and this rock is really quite unsuited to swordplay. Surely you don'
t mean to overcome me with your bare hands? I detest wrestling matches."

  "That's regrettable," I answered politely, and reached for him.

  It was like taking hold of a flash of lightning. Peaceable Sherwood met my attack with one crashing blow that shuddered up my whole arm and almost sent me off my feet; and then I was down by the edge of the rock fighting for my life against a murderous fury that seemed to be made entirely of whipcord and steel. For one precarious instant we struggled desperately; then I felt the heel of my boot slide on the treacherous slippery rock — there was a whirling rush — and I went hurtling through the air into a crashing greenness of pine boughs that closed over me and went black.

  When I came to myself again, it was still fairly dark and the light of a full moon was flickering through the branches above me. Someone had thoughtfully removed my coat and rolled it up to make a rough pillow for my head. But when I tottered uncertainly to my feet, Peaceable Sherwood was no longer standing on the rock, and there was not even the rustle of a leaf in the forest to show which way he had gone.

  It must have been almost four o'clock in the morning when I finally got back to the Shipley Farm. Somewhere a sleepy cock was beginning to crow, and all the eastern horizon was luminously green with the coming dawn. But it was still black night under the great elm trees by the porch as I let myself into the shadowy hall and went blundering towards my room in the dark.

  "Dick?" said a whispering voice somewhere above my head. "Dick, is that you?"

  Eleanor Shipley was coming down the wide stairway carrying a lighted candle in one hand. The glow shone on the butterfly blue of her dress, and her white throat, and the coppery glints in her hair.

  "Why are you up?" I whispered back. I was so weary that my voice seemed to come from a long way off, as if it belonged to somebody else. I reached uncertainly for the newel post at the foot of the stairs and steadied myself on it. "Why are you up? Is Felton worse?"

  "No, but I expected you back this afternoon, and when you didn't come and didn't come, I thought — Why, Dick!" She broke off sharply and leaned over the banister with a sudden exclamation to look down at me. "Dick, what is it? Are you hurt? Where have you been all this time? You look like death. What's the matter with you?"

  I went on standing there stupidly, looking straight ahead of me, not at her, but at the little flame of the candle she was carrying. My voice when I answered her still sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. It seemed to be speaking quietly and dispassionately about another person I neither knew very well nor liked very much.

  "I have been behaving like the arrogant fool that I am," the voice said. "I found out by chance today that Peaceable Sherwood was going to Duck's Head Lake to meet some of his followers. I followed him there alone instead of coming back here first to get some help. I told myself that I couldn't spare the time, and the rangers might blunder, and Felton was sick. I was only making excuses for my own pride and folly and spite. I wanted to take him singlehanded as if I were a prince in a fairy tale, and have you looking up to me at last and telling me what a wonder you thought I was."

  The voice paused an instant, on a sort of painful breath, and then went on again, even more carefully than before.

  "We fought, and my foot slipped because I was wearing my riding boots, like a fool, and he knocked me off the rocks and got clean away because there wasn't anyone else there to stop him. Now I don't suppose we ever will catch him. And General Washington said that I had been recommended to him as an officer with the intelligence and ability needed to carry out a very important mission. Intelligence and ability — isn't that amusing?" I turned my head a little to look up at her. "I see now why you've found me so laughable all these years."

  Eleanor was not laughing. To my astonishment, her face had suddenly become a sort of blazing white, and she was so angry that there were actually tears of rage in her eyes. I had not seen her look like that since she was ten years old and flying like a fury at Johnny Tatlock for bullying a small boy much younger than he was. She reached out her hand and caught me hard by the shoulder.

  "You stop!" she said, stamping her foot. "You stop talking about yourself that way! I won't have it! I won't have it, do you hear me?"

  "But Eleanor—" I stammered, almost as completely taken aback as Johnny Tatlock had been in his time.

  "Be quiet!" said Eleanor fiercely. "I suppose you think you know more about your own intelligence and ability than General Washington does? Never catch Peaceable Sherwood, indeed! Of all the nonsense! Who almost caught him only tonight? You would probably have caught him if your boot only hadn't slipped on the rock, and who cares about a silly old boot? It was all my fault, anyway."

  "Your fault?" I was beginning to feel that my plunge from the rock must really have unsettled my wits.

  "For driving you crazy with my pestering, the way I have!" cried Eleanor. "I knew it was wrong, and I shouldn't have done it, but you never would pay any attention to me, and you were always so formal and distant and courteous, and I was only trying to show you — "

  "Show me what, exactly?"

  "Oh be quiet!" said Eleanor again, two furious tears spilling over her lashes and falling hotly on my hand. "You always treated me like that, even when you were a boy. You know you did."

  "But I thought you didn't like me," I said numbly. "You were always laughing and trying to catch me out and making fun of me. You know you were."

  "At least you might admit it was you who began it."

  "I never did any such thing. I tell you I thought you didn't like me."

  "Like you!" Eleanor wailed. "I did everything but stand on my head trying to make you take the smallest notice of me! I know I kept talking about your arrogance and your stupidity and your airs, but all the time I would have followed you to China at the hint of a kindness. And when I saw you riding down the road on your horse this spring, I thought you the most — "

  It was at that moment I began to laugh.

  "Eleanor, I warn you that if you call me a dashing young hero just once more, I shall probably fell you to the earth."

  Eleanor began to laugh too, and we both stood there idiotically with our hands linked over the banister, laughing at one another. Then, still laughing, she suddenly bent down to me, and for an instant I felt the mocking mouth brush across my cheek as lightly as a butterfly's wing. The next instant she had pulled her hand out of mine and was running away up the stairs.

  The second Richard Grahame sat looking out at the garden for a moment, apparently lost in some pleasant memory. Then he turned his head and smiled at me.

  "I told you it was a sad story," he said, "but at least it has a happy ending, and incidentally teaches a useful moral lesson which should prove of great value to your future career."

  I felt myself coloring a little guiltily. "If you're thinking about Pat —" I began.

  "Well, as a matter of fact, I was," said Richard Grahame. "You were planning to 'show' him something, I believe? Because you have your pride? I thought so. Do let me assure you from my own personal experience that it is a most unsatisfactory method of attracting attention."

  "It's only that I haven't heard from him at all," I defended myself. "I don't even know where he is."

  "I expect you'll find out all in good time," said Richard Grahame offhandedly.

  "Maybe he's just sick of us," I suggested rather dolefully. "I can't understand why Uncle Enos won't make friends with him or even utter a word about him."

  "I expect you'll find that out all in good time, too." He had risen to his feet and was moving away towards the other end of the library where the shadows were so thick I could barely distinguish him.

  "Wait — oh, please wait!" I begged him. "Just tell me one more thing. Did you ever catch Peaceable Sherwood?"

  This time there was no answer.

  The Cipher Letter

  UNCLE ENOS, who was Peaceable Sherwood?" I inquired the next morning at breakfast.

  Uncle Enos, torn from his coffee and
the latest issue of Antiques and Collectors, merely glowered at me in a blighting manner, and demanded gruffly where I had heard of Peaceable Sherwood.

  "Oh, around," I said airily. "I only wanted to know whether he really ever did get caught in the end. They couldn't have hanged him the way they did poor Major Andre, could they? Because if he was wearing his uniform — "

  "I would rather not discuss the subject," remarked Uncle Enos, and started to read Antiques and Collectors again.

  "But I only want to know — " Uncle Enos quite deliberately rose to his feet, poured himself another cup of coffee, and made off with the cup in the direction of his study.

  I sat there looking after him and thinking how I should love — how much I should love — to throw my poached egg squarely at the back of his neck.

  Then I remembered that I had never finished looking through the bottom drawer of the Chippendale cabinet, and the answer I wanted might possibly be there. Richard Grahame had saved the scrap of Drummond tartan; perhaps he had kept other things as well.

  He had, I found, kept a great many other things. In fact, he apparently had been one of those people who have a sort of mania for collecting souvenirs. There was a faded green ribbon of the kind worn by aides-de-camp in the Continental Army — an eagle's feather — a rough sketch of a four-legged animal labeled MY HORSE GAWAINE — a hunting knife — two pairs of spurs, one broken — an old copy book full of Latin sentences with the words "You must exercise greater diligence" written across the cover in a different hand — a tattered piece of flag that looked as if it might have been picked up on a battlefield — and a little note which read crisply: "Eat what I've left on the hob for you the minute you get in. You won't catch Peaceable Sherwood any sooner by starving yourself to death. — E. S." But there seemed to be no other papers in the drawer, and nothing else that had any connection with Peaceable Sherwood at all. I was just about to close the cabinet again when I caught sight of the letter. It had somehow worked its way between the pages of the Latin copy book, and at first glance I had missed it altogether.