The Sherwood Ring

by Elizabeth Marie Pope

  It was only a half sheet of very thin paper, and had once evidently been folded very small as well. The handwriting that covered it was very small too, ancient and faded, but with something still rather jaunty and engaging about the sweep of the letters and the flourish of the capitals:

  better Meet every evening making Us elegant rich music At invitation, letting loathsome Bald aged tyrants Rock For furious ignorant violence, exaggeratedly concerned about Raid pricking their utmost respectability, each wailing as sees humiliation issuing On new glories to Supply our new Train.

  I read it through hastily and then went back and read it once more, with an increasing sense of confusion. There was a certain deceptive rhythm about the sentences that carried you along for a moment; they almost seemed to mean something until you started wondering exactly what it was. Why were the loathsome bald aged tyrants rocking? Who was making the elegant rich music at invitation? Each wailing as he sees humiliation issuing on new glories — I was beginning to feel slightly dizzy. I tried again. It would have been easier, I thought, if the writer had not sprinkled his capital letters about quite so eccentrically.

  "Oh, not eccentrically," said a voice from the other side of the room. "Rather carefully, I assure you."

  There by the fireplace, beside the deep armchair where Richard Grahame had been sitting the afternoon before, stood a tiny and liltingly pretty girl in a wide-skirted dress of blue dimity, with a glint of ribbon among the curls of her coppery-gold hair. I could see at once why Richard Grahame had compared her to a butterfly — not that she looked at all silly or featherheaded, like the girls who are always being described as "society butterflies" in old-fashioned romances; but she moved with a kind of winging delicacy, and when she dropped down on the big footstool by the armchair, it was really more like alighting than sitting.

  "So Dick kept the letter, did he?" she asked. She had a lovely voice, with a sort of mocking caress in it whenever she said the word "Dick," and she put one hand on the arm of the big chair almost as if she were laying it affectionately over another hand that rested there. "I thought he had. Dick always loved to collect things — it was like living in the same house with a jackdaw. He had an untidy little hoard in his desk even at the Farm, when he was almost out of his mind about Peaceable Sherwood and things were at their very worst that awful autumn."

  "You mean the autumn just after he lost Peaceable Sherwood at Duck's Head Lake? But I thought

  you and he — I mean, you'd made friends with him again, hadn't you? I thought surely it must have been much happier for you both after that?"

  It was much happier (said Eleanor Shipley); it was so much happier that there were times when I felt as if I'd wakened up out of a nightmare. I could have sung with happiness from dawn to dusk if there hadn't been anything else to worry about. No, it was Peaceable Sherwood who caused all the trouble. Nothing had changed as far as he was concerned — that is, if you could call what was going on "nothing."

  Only a week after Dick almost caught him at Duck's Head Lake, he broke out again and destroyed a whole week's supply of grain for the army that was coming down from Kingston. And a week later he burned the powder mill at Iron Forge. Then it was the outpost on the road to Smith's Clove — he had a horse shot under him in the fighting at Smith's Clove, but he contrived somehow to jump clear and got away again. It was almost as if he were protected by some sort of magic. Nothing seemed to touch him. The wildest rumors concerning his powers had begun to circulate among the country folk, and one day even hardheaded old Sergeant Lee begged me for one of my spoons to make a silver bullet. He said it was well known in his part of the country that only a silver bullet would stop a spell-caster.

  "Well, why not?" asked Dick rather bitterly, when I told him about it. "The good Lord knows we've tried everything else."

  He was standing with me on the porch for a moment while he waited for his horse. As he turned his head to glance impatiently at the stable yard, I could see how shockingly thin and haggard his face had become under its tan. He had been driving himself hard all summer, but ever since that evening at Duck's Head Lake he had been neither to hold nor to bind. It was as if he could never forget that it was his fault that Peaceable Sherwood was still at large, and every grain of corn he stole in Orange County could now be laid directly to Dick's own act of arrogance and folly. He did not speak of it. I had never heard him mention the matter again after that first morning in the hall. But he was on the road all day and half the night; and if he ever got more than two hours' sleep at a stretch, I can only say that he showed no signs of it. And as for his meals — it was nothing but bread and cheese eaten in the saddle for weeks on end, or soup on the hearth at midnight when I was there to see that he drank it. When he was not out riding the roads, or answering alarms, or following up anything that looked like even the slightest clue, or trying to hold the frantic neighborhood steady, he was at his desk working over plans and reports and maps. Hours after everyone else in the house had gone to bed I could hear him walking up and down and up and down and up and down in the room below.

  "You're killing yourself," I told him furiously.

  "Well, why not?" asked Dick again. "I can't have very much more time left, and I might as well use it while I've still got it. They'll throw me out of the command any day now, and then I can have a nice long rest while I'm waiting to be court-martialed."

  "General Washington isn't going to throw you out of the command."

  "What else can he do? The situation can't go on as it is much longer. I expect that delegations from the county trot down to headquarters every week with petitions for my removal signed by hundreds of disgusted citizens. If he'd only let me have more men, I might be able to smash Peaceable by mere brute force or at least scare his secret Tory playmates into staying home and behaving themselves. But there simply aren't the men to spare. They're all needed at the Hudson River forts and the county regiments were cut to pieces on the Minisink this summer. I've written to ask, but it'll be three days at least before I can hear, and even then I know what the answer's going to be."

  The three days dragged wearily by, and then became four, and then five, and finally six. On the morning of the sixth Dick rode over to Goshen with some county officials about the signal-fire system, and I went on an errand to a neighboring farm and did not get back till almost noon. As I passed the camp in the South Meadow, I noticed an unusual amount of activity going on — more fires were being built; men were bustling about with forage and blankets, talking excitedly; and scores of dusty horses led by unfamiliar rangers were milling around by the pond as they waited their turn for the water. Wondering, with a sudden lift of my heart, if General Washington really had sent the reinforcements at last, I stopped one of the strangers as he went by the gate and asked him the question.

  "Yes, miss, we're rangers too, same company, but I don't know whether we're going to be stopping on here or not. Colonel Van Spurter could tell you — he's up at the house."

  Colonel Van Spurter? I wondered as I went on down the drive and up the steps of the front porch. Dick had said that General Washington had once thought of giving the command to an Ogden Van Spurter at the beginning of the whole trouble. Perhaps — but oh, surely not! surely not! It would be too cruel after the way Dick had worked, and the disgrace he was feeling already, and his pride — It was not even as if Colonel Van Spurter were an officer of any sense or capacity. I could still hear Dick's voice saying ruefully only the night before: "If it just doesn't have to be Sputters! You might as well put Peaceable Sherwood in the charge of the village idiot and be done with it."

  Colonel Van Spurter, to do him justice, did not really look very much like the village idiot, but he did most unmistakably look like a large, heavy young man with a great sense of his own importance. I found him alone in the dining parlor by the sideboard, calmly helping himself to an apple from a dish of fruit I had put there that morning on the chance that Dick might remember to eat something in passing. He was gazing ar
ound him as he munched with the air of a man who was expecting to stay a long time and was wondering whether the beds and the cooking were likely to prove tolerable. He seemed, on the whole, rather pleased with the furniture and the apple and the view from the window. When I came forward and introduced myself, he was kind enough to seem rather pleased with me, too.

  "Well, well, well, so this is Miss Shipley!" he said, waggishly. "I can see now why Dick Grahame hasn't been in any particular hurry to finish his business in these parts. The gay dog! You could always trust old Dick Grahame to find himself the tightest house and the prettiest petticoat anywhere on the day's march."

  "That's very good of you," I murmured civilly. "Please don't hesitate to help yourself to that bunch of grapes just because I've come into the room."

  "Well, I don't mind if I do," said the gallant colonel, winking at me over the bunch of grapes with his mouth full. "I can see you're one of those girls who really knows how to take good care of a man — eh?" He sucked a grape rather noisily and spat out the seeds into the hollow of his hand.

  It was perhaps just as well that Dick opened the door of the dining parlor at that moment and came quickly into the room, his gloves and riding whip still in his hand. His face was quite calm and entirely courteous — but it was the distant, formal courtesy he always drew on like armor when he had to deal with people he disliked. If he had gone to the gallows, I am sure he would have faced the executioner with exactly that air of remote politeness.

  "Ah, there you are, sir," he said levelly, closing the door behind him and putting his gloves and whip down on the table. "One of your men was good enough to tell me you were here. What wind's blown you to Orange County?"

  "Well, we're just by way of being a sort of advance guard for General Washington," replied Colonel Van Spurter, baring his teeth in what I suppose he meant to be a subtle smile. "He's on the road behind us now with about ten men and a couple of aides — ought to get in sometime before night. The truth is he seems to think the situation around here has gotten so out of hand he ought to come up and find out what's going on for himself. He isn't in a specially good humor, either. You'd better think up a good story to tell him, Dickie old boy. Otherwise, he's likely to fling you out of your command, and appoint somebody who really knows Peaceable Sherwood."

  "Ogden Van Spurter, for instance?" Dick's voice was still perfectly level, but I could see the hand that hung down at his side suddenly clench so hard that the knuckles turned white.

  "It's possible. You know I never was one to go around blowing my own horn like other officers I could mention, but — well, it's possible."

  Dick did not answer, and there was a pause while Colonel Van Spurter finished his grapes, and emptied the handful of rinds and seeds back into the fruit dish on the sideboard.

  "What's all this about your having trouble with Peaceable Sherwood, anyway, Dick?" he demanded complainingly. "I'm not one to go around blowing my own horn, but I don't think it would take me more'n a couple of weeks to deal with him, even if I had my hands tied behind my back. Why, I met him myself in New York last winter, and he's nothing to frighten a rabbit — skinny white-faced runt who minces about like a dancing master — most of the time he looks half asleep."

  "He must be very different from you, Colonel Van Spurter," I could not help remarking in the sweet, humble manner I used only when I was feeling my deadliest. Dick would have taken warning from the tone at once, but it passed completely over the head of Colonel Van Spurter, who evidently thought that I had fallen victim to his charm, and returned my look with one so warm that it might have ripened the apples in the fruit dish.

  "Well now, I guess that's so," he admitted handsomely. "I was never one to go around blowing my own horn, as I say, but — "

  "Just how were you thinking of dealing with Peaceable Sherwood, sir?" Dick cut in before he could blow his own horn any more.

  Colonel Van Spurter, preening himself a little, offered us three plans in quick succession: two, Dick had tried already, and one so far-fetched that after a slight argument even he was obliged to admit it was impossible.

  "Well, what are you doing that's any better?" he inquired at last, rather sulkily.

  "Very little, I'm afraid. But I've just gotten on the trail of two farmers in the neighborhood I strongly suspect are secret members of the gang, and my men are watching them now."

  "Watching them? Why haven't you sent over a squad and arrested them?"

  "Partly because there isn't any real evidence yet," Dick explained patiently; "but mostly because I want to find out exactly how Peaceable Sherwood is managing to communicate with them. That's the one weak point of his whole system. He has to send his orders to every man separately, because nobody except himself knows who all the others are. You see why he does it, of course. In that way, he's protected and so are they — anybody taken prisoner won't betray his companions because he can't do it even if he wanted to. Why, we once caught a couple of them who had been riding on the same raids for weeks without ever finding out that at home they were acquainted and even lived across the road from one another! He really is a wonder, that man. But fifty or more separate messages are fifty or more separate chances of something going astray. That's what I'm counting on at the moment. He got around the problem once by working out the most ingenious scheme of setting up an innocent little toy landscape where any number of people could come and consult it. But fortunately we stumbled on that particular trick last August. He's thought of something else since then, no doubt, but he's had to do it in a hurry — and the new method may not be quite so clever or foolproof as the other one. He won't risk making the new method too much like the other one, either, not now we're on our guard. He's probably gone back to some device for sending his instructions to every man separately. It seems to me that our best chance now is to intercept one of those messages, and then before he hears that anything is wrong — "

  "Stark nonsense!" Colonel Van Spurter interrupted impatiently. "Nothing will ever come of that; you're simply wasting time. I've listened to some fool plans in my life, Dick, but of all the fool plans I ever listened to, this one is indisputably — "

  "Where is he? Where's Colonel Grahame?"

  We heard an answering voice shout something from the porch. The next instant there was an excited flurry of feet in the hall outside, and a panting young man dressed like a cowhand suddenly flung open the door and burst without further ceremony into the room. Colonel Van Spurter, cut short in the middle of his tirade, arose magnificently to confront him.

  "What do you mean by breaking in on an officer in such a manner?" he demanded, in a voice that would have been more appropriate on the drill ground. "If this is an example of the sort of discipline you keep here, Dick, then all I can say is — "

  "Allow me," Dick interposed gently, "to present to you my old friend Lieutenant Charles Featherstone from West Point, who has graciously been spending a few days of his leave working at Jasper Twill's barn in the interests of his country. Well, Charles, what's happened?"

  "It came," gasped Lieutenant Featherstone, too full of his tidings to pause or even to glance at Colonel Van Spurter. "It came last night. We've got him now, old boy — got him hooked, gaffed, and put away in the basket!"

  "Him? It? Just a little more slowly and coherently, Charles, if you don't mind."

  "Peaceable Sherwood, of course! I was mending a harness up in the stable loft this morning, when I saw old Jasper sneaking out into the yard just below me, with his face over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following him. That didn't seem much like old Jasper's usual manner, which tends more to be bold and rude, as a poor wretched cowhand like myself can tell you. And so I drew back out of sight and saw him prying a little sheet of paper from behind a loose rock in that stone wall that runs along there by the road in front of the stables. Then I remembered I'd heard a horse going by the house late the night before, and while of course I couldn't swear that Peaceable Sherwood had been riding the horse, it did seem
like a good idea to drop on the back of Jasper's dirty neck and persuade him to let me have a look at his love letter. I've got it somewhere about me now." Fumbling at the pocket of his shabby breeches, he produced a folded note and laid it on the table before Dick, who stood there staring down at it as if he were almost unable to believe in so much sudden good fortune.

  "You're sure it's genuine, Charles?" he asked hesitatingly. "Peaceable may be trying to give us a false lead."

  "I don't think so, old boy. I've had no chance to really look at it, but it seems to be in some sort of cipher — and besides, Jasper tried to eat it when he saw I'd caught him for good and all. He wouldn't have done that if he'd been told to let me have it."

  "Where's Jasper now?"

  "Tied up in your South Meadow. I didn't quite know what to do with the other farmhand and that housekeeper of his, but they don't seem to be concerned in this, so I told them to keep their mouths shut and took the liberty of sending over a couple of your rangers to discourage them if they try to leave or talk to anybody. And now please may I get out of these abominable clothes and go fishing?"

  Dick held out his hand to him with a look of gratitude that made Lieutenant Featherstone blush.

  "Charles," he said, "you literally are a blessing in disguise, and I hope you catch a whale."

  "Well, just so it's anything but a cow," said Lieutenant Featherstone, saluting us formally and then making for the door. "I never want to see or smell another cow again as long as I live. When I think of the way I used to drink milk as a child, it makes me positively ill."

  The door swung shut again behind Lieutenant Featherstone's filthy back, and the rest of us came crowding up around the table to look at the cipher letter. I was so excited that for a moment I could hardly even read the words on the paper as I stood peering down at it under the cover of Dick's elbow: "Better Meet every evening making Us elegant rich music At invitation, letting loathsome Bald aged tyrants — "