Cedric, the Forester Part 9

Then for the first time spake the youth that rode so unsteadily before us. Deathly pale he was, and his voice like that of one on a sick-bed.

"Masters," he murmured, "I fear my hurt is mortal, and you vainly risk your lives for mine. Put me down, I pray you, on the oak leaves, that I may die in peace, and you may 'scape with no more hurt."

"That we will not," I cried, hotly. "We'll bear thee away to safety, spite of all. Look but now! We gain upon them. A quarter hour will see us well beyond their reach."

"I cannot bear it," he answered faintly. "I bleed full sorely, and I needs must rest." With that his color left him utterly; his blue eyes twitched and closed; he fainted, and but for Cedric's arm must surely have fallen.

Cedric turned to me and whispered:

"Save him we must, or we are no true men."

"Surely we must save him," I echoed, "but how shall we compa.s.s it? If he have not rest full soon and the dressing of his hurt, he will surely die."

"One chance there still remains," he answered softy, "though in the essay we give o'er our own near sight of safety. What say'st thou? Shall we attempt it?"

"With all my heart," I cried. "Shall we make stand in some rock cranny hereabouts?"

To this the forester made no reply. We were riding down a slope toward a wide but shallow stream which we must ford. The outlaws were hid from view by the rise behind us, but we could still hear their shouts and knew that they had by no means given o'er the hope of reaching us.

Midway in the current Cedric sharply pulled his horse's head to the right, and leaving the pathway utterly, spurred him at a trot up the sandy and pebbly bed of the stream. A turn soon hid the ford from view, and this not a moment too soon, for now again we heard the outlaws coming down the hill in hot pursuit. Cedric drew rein for an instant, and we heard them splashing through the shallows of the ford, and then their running feet on the path beyond. A bow-shot farther on we drew out from the stream bed and made better going in the open woods of a valley which led upwards toward the rocky hills to the northward.

"Dost know this place?" I asked of Cedric.

"Aye," he answered shortly, "'tis known as Wolf's Head Glen."

Then we came to thicker wood growth; and he had much ado to guide the war-horse safely in the tangle and to keep the boughs from the face of the stricken youth before him. Once more we entered the stream bed, and again emerged where the forest was of older growth and had little underwood to check us. We had come a mile or more from the pathway when of a sudden the forester drew rein and looked with care about him. Then he leaped down, leaving me to hold the wounded boy, and made his way up a rocky slope to a tangle of saplings and thorn bushes. These at one point he drew apart; then he disappeared, crawling on hands and knees into the darkness beyond.

Speedily he returned; and now a glad and hopeful look was on his face.

"'Tis well," he said, "we yet will save him. Here is shelter and safe hiding if I mistake not."

He lifted down the boy, and together we bore him up the slope and through the narrow, th.o.r.n.y pathway. Beyond was a rocky cave with s.p.a.ce enough for half a dozen men to lie on the beds of leaves the winds had drifted in, though nowhere high enough to let one stand erect. The mouth was safely covered by the growth of sapling trees and briers; and one might pa.s.s at twenty paces and ne'er suspect it.

We laid our burden on the leaves. The poor youth's face was so white and still and his hands so cold that truly I thought we were too late and that his spirit had fled. But Cedric stripped away the garments from the lad's breast and laid his ear against it. Then he rose and nodded brightly.

"He lives. We yet will save him. First let us make ready a bandage, then pluck this shaft away and bind the wound."

I quickly stripped me of a linen garment of which Cedric did make a soft dressing and shield for the hurt. Then I held the quivering side while Cedric firmly drew away the arrow. As it came forth the boy gave a piteous groan and his eyes flickered open, but quickly closed again. The bleeding started afresh, but the forester, with a wondrous deftness, applied the bandage and closely fastened it with strips that went about the body and over the shoulders of the lad. Then we brought water in an iron cup which Cedric carried at his girdle, and bathed the boy's white face. Soon his eyes opened once more, and he asked for drink.

When the lad's thirst was sated and he knew us again, Cedric stole out with cross-bow drawn to make his way a little down the glen and see if any of the robber band had trailed us. Seeing naught of them, he quickly returned and took our good steed and, first giving him to drink at the stream, tethered him in a close thicket half a furlong off where he might browse in quiet and mayhap escape the notice of our enemies.

An hour later we re-dressed our companion's hurt, using a poultice of healing leaves which Cedric had found by the brookside and crushed between stones. Soon the lad fell asleep, and though sometimes beset with grievous pains and babbling dreams, did rest not ill for one who had been so near to death.

Cedric and I watched the night out, sitting with drawn bows at the cave mouth. The stars were bright, but there was no moon and little wind; and our talk was low lest after all some of the outlaws might be near. Half in whispers he told me the story of the glen and its name. It seems that an honest yeoman, John o' the Windle, who had been his father's friend in his youth, had had the mischance to quarrel with a sheriff's man, and, to save his own life, had pierced him with a cloth-yard shaft. Then John Windle had fled to the forest and become a wolf's head, which is the name the commonalty have for outlaws, since the killing of either wolves or outlaws may bring a bounty from the Crown. For years he had lived in this very glen, with his hiding place in the cave known to but a few faithful friends. Often he was pursued to the little valley, but among its woods and streams always shook off the sheriff's trailers and made good his 'scape. Finally the legend grew that he was befriended by unseen powers and changed himself to a wolf whenever he crossed the little stream at the place where so many times his trail had been lost.

Cedric's father, Elbert of Pelham Wood, had once brought him to this spot to visit the outlaw after he had become old and was far gone in his last sickness; and a few days later the two foresters had buried the wolf's head near the cave where he had lived.

Just after dawn, Cedric, sitting at watch, pierced with a cross-bow bolt a hare that was hopping through the underwood fifty paces off. Most cautiously we built a little fire within the cave and roasted the meat for our breakfast, we being of sharpest appet.i.tes through having eaten naught since the middle of the day before.

Some of the tenderest bits we offered to the stranger, and he did try to eat, but with no avail for he grew dizzy when we raised him from his couch. Cedric's face grew grave at this, and soon he came and placed his hand upon the cheek and neck of the lad. What he found made him frown most anxiously at me. The face of the wounded youth had now lost all its paleness; 'twas flushed and something swollen and to the touch near burning hot.

"Sir d.i.c.kon," called Cedric, suddenly, "we must move him, and quickly, to where a leech can tend him. He hath a fever, and with it his wound will not heal."

"Can we issue from this wood by any other road than that on which we left the robbers?" I questioned. "If so be, mayhap we can reach to Mannerley Lodge."

"There is a steep pathway higher in the glen that doth issue on Wilton Road. If we gain that, 'tis not above two leagues to Mannerley."

"Then let us go. I wager we meet not again with the outlaws. They ever scatter and hide themselves after a fray like that of yesterday. Our steed must carry three as before. 'Twill be but an hour's ride."

Soon Cedric had returned from the thicket with the steed, we had lifted the stranger as gently as might be, and, mounting also, were on our way out of the forest. Now I rode in the saddle and held the boy in his place, and Cedric sat behind me with drawn cross-bow and bolt in groove.

We met none to gainsay us, and soon emerged from the wood. For a quarter hour we made such speed as we might along the road to Mannerley. Then all at once the youth's body grew limp in my arms, and I saw that again his wound bled full sorely and that once more he yielded to a death-like fainting.

I drew rein, and we dismounted, laying the boy on the leaves by the side of a little brook. For anxious moments we knelt beside him, bathing his forehead with the cold water, listening in vain for his heart-beats, and much in fear that his eyes would never reopen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _IN A TWINKLING, ARMED AND MOUNTED MEN WERE ALL ABOUT US_]

Then of a sudden we heard iron-shod hoofs on the roadway and a man's rough voice in surprise and angry threatening:

"Hold! What have we here? By'r Lady! 'tis the Mountjoys!"

In a twinkling, armed and mounted men were all about us; and with a heart like lead I recognized the Carleton livery. We could neither fight nor fly. Half a dozen stout men-at-arms leaped from their horses and rushed upon us. We had not struck a blow ere they overthrew us and wrenched our weapons from our hands. In a moment more my hands and Cedric's were fast bound with halters like those of scurvy thieves that go to pay their penalty upon the gibbet.

"Ha! Look but here!" cried the leader, whom I now saw to be none other than the man who had so sworn against us at the trial at Shrewsbury, "these are young Sir Richard and the forester that slew Sir Lionel but six months gone. And now we come on them again red-handed. See _this_ foul wickedness that they have done! What say you now? Shall we not rope them up to yonder limb in requital?"

"Aye, Aye! Let's hang them and quickly," cried another.

"Men of Carleton," said I from where I lay upon the ground, "we are no murderers. But if slay us ye must, let us at least have the death of men and soldiers. I am the heir of a n.o.ble house that yields no jot to any Carleton; and my comrade here is a freeman of England with no smirch on his name. 'Tis not fitting that ye visit on us the punishment of thieves."

"Ho!" jeered the leader, "hear the young hound of Mountjoy, now caught in the sheepfold. 'Tis like if we listen to him that he and this Pelham varlet will yet concoct some plan to 'scape us. Quick, men! the halters!

For we have other and sadder work to do."

Then for a moment all the forest and the blue sky seemed to turn to blackness around me. There was a roaring in my ears like to that I heard when as a child I fell one day from the foot board over the waters of the mill race and came not up to breathe till I reached the other side of the whirlpool below. Then from the midst of this reeling nightmare I heard a voice, saying faintly:

"Oh, Hubert! What dost thou here? And what do ye to these friends of mine that they lie on the ground in bonds?"

The stranger youth was sitting up on his leafy couch. His face was still deadly pale, but his eyes gleamed brightly.

"Our Lady be thanked! He lives," muttered the leader of the men-at-arms, to my utter amaze doffing his headpiece before the stricken youth. Then in answer:

"Master Geoffrey, G.o.d be thanked, they have not murdered thee! But these are Sir Richard of Mountjoy and the forester, Cedric, the very same that did to death thy brother, Lionel. Now we shall swing them from yonder oak limb. 'Twill heal thee faster to see thy enemies thus justly served."

"Hubert, thou shalt not,-_on thy life_!" cried Geoffrey, his weak voice shrill with pa.s.sion, "be they Mountjoys or be they sons of Beelzebub, they are good men and true, and have over and again risked their lives for mine. And I do verily believe that the tale they told at the Shrewsbury trial was the truth, and that my brother brought his death upon himself. Now cut those bonds,-and quickly."

The soldier yet hesitated and muttered somewhat beneath his breath.

"I tell thee, Hubert," broke out Geoffrey afresh, "thou shalt loose them, and give them horses that they may ride safely to Mountjoy. If thou disobey me, verily I'll have thee beaten with rods and cast in the lowest dungeon of Teramore."

Another of the men-at-arms now spoke aside to Hubert.