The Canadian Brothers; Or, The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 8

The Yankee, who had now recovered his self-possession, met the question without the slightest show of hesitation:

"I expect you mean, young man," he said, with insufferable insolence, "a help as I had from Hartley's farm, to a.s.sist gittin' down the things. He took home along sh.o.r.e when I went back to the hut for the small bores."

"Oh ho, sir! the rifles ate not then concealed near the Sandusky swamp, I find."

For once, the wily settler felt his cunning had over-reached itself. In the first fury of his subdued rage, he muttered something amounting to a desire that he could produce them at that moment, as he would well know where to lodge the bullets--but, recovering himself, he said aloud:

"The rale fact is, I've a long gun hid, as I said, near the swamp, but my small bore I always carry with me--only think, jist as I and Hartley's help left the hut, I pit my rifle against the outside wall, not being able to carry it down with the other things, and when I went back a minute or two ater, drot me if some tarnation rascal hadn't stole it."

"And if you had the British rascal on t'other sh.o.r.e, you wouldn't be long in tucking a knife into his gizzard, would you?" asked Middlemore, in a nearly verbatim repet.i.tion of the horrid oath originally uttered by Desborough, "I see nothing to warrant our interfering with him," he continued in an under tone to his companion.

Not a little surprised to hear his words repeated, the Yankee lost somewhat of his confidence as he replied, "well now sure-LY, you officers didn't think nothin' o'

that--I expect I was in a mighty rage to find my small bore gone, and I did curse a little hearty, to be sure."

"The small bore multiplied in your absence," observed Grantham; "when I looked at the hut there were two."

"Then maybe you can tell who was the particular d----d rascal that stole them," said the settler eagerly.

Middlemore laughed heartily at his companion, who observed:

"The particular d----d rascal who removed, not stole them thence, stands before you."

Again the Yankee looked disconcerted. After a moment's hesitation, he continued, with a forced grin, that gave an atrocious expression to his whole countenance:

"Well now, you officers are playing a purty considerable spry trick--it's a good lark, I calculate--but you know, as the saying is, enough's as good as a feast. Do tell me, Mr. Grantham," and his discordant voice became more offensive in its effort at a tone of entreaty, "do tell me where you've hid my small bore--you little think," he concluded, with an emphasis then unnoticed by the officers, but subsequently remembered to have been perfectly ferocious, "what reason I have to vally it."

"We never descend to larks of the kind," coolly observed Grantham; "but as you say you value your rifle, it shall be restored to you on one condition."

"And what may that be?" asked the settler, somewhat startled at the serious manner of the officer.

"That you show us what your canoe is freighted with.

Here in the bows I mean."

"Why," rejoined the Yankee quickly, but as if without design, intercepting the officers' nearer approach, "that bag, I calculate, contains my provisions, and these here blankets that you see, peepin' like from under the sail, are what I makes my bed of while out huntin'."

"And are you quite certain there is nothing under those blankets?--nay do not protest--you cannot answer for what may have occurred while your back was turned, on your way to the hut for the rifle."

"By h.e.l.l," exclaimed the settler, bl.u.s.teringly, "were any man to tell me, Jeremiah Desborough, there was any thin' beside them blankets in the canoe, I would lick him into a jelly, even though he could whip his own weight in wild cats."

"So is it? Now then, Jeremiah Desborough, although I have never yet tried to whip my own weight in wild cats, I tell you there is something more than those blankets; and what is more, I insist upon seeing what that something is."

The settler stood confounded. His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers at the boldness and determination of this language. Singly, he could hare crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being a.s.sailed by the other; nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed. Moreover, although they had kept their cloaks carefully wrapped around their persons, there could be little doubt that both officers were armed, not, as they had originally given him to understand, with fowling pieces, but with (at the present close quarters at least) far more efficient weapons--pistols. He was relieved from his embarra.s.sment by Middlemore exclaiming:

"Nay, do not press the poor devil, Grantham; I dare say the story of his hunting is all a hum, and that the fact is, he is merely going to earn an honest penny in one of his free commercial speculations--a little contraband,"

pointing with his finger to the bows, "is it not Desborough?"

"Why now, officer," said the Yankee, rapidly a.s.suming a dogged air, as if ashamed of the discovery that had been so acutely made, "I expect you won't hurt a poor fellor for doin' a little in this way. Drot me, these are hard times, and this here war jist beginnin', quite pits one to one's shifts."

"This might do, Desborough, were your present freight an arrival instead of a departure, but we all know that contraband is imported, not exported."

"Mighty cute you are, I guess," replied the settler, warily, with something like the savage grin of the wild cat, to which he had so recently alluded; "but I expect it would be none so strange to have packed up a few dried hog skins to stow away the goods I am goin' for."

"I should like to try the effect of a bullet among the skins," said Grantham, leisurely drawing forth and c.o.c.king a pistol, after having whispered something in the ear of his companion.

"Nay, officer," said Desborough, now for the first time manifesting serious alarm--"you sure-LY don't mean to bore a hole through them innocent skins?"

"True," said Middlemore, imitating, "if he fires, the hole will be something more than SKIN deep I reckon--these pistols, to my knowledge, send a bullet through a two inch plank at twenty paces."

As Middlemore thus expressed himself, both he and Grantham saw, or fancied they saw, the blankets slightly agitated.

"Good place for HIDE that," said the former, addressing his pun to the Yankee, on whom however it was totally lost, "show us those said skins, my good fellow, and if we find they are not filled with any thing it would be treason in a professed British subject to export thus clandestinely, we promise that you shall depart without further hindrance."

"Indeed, officer," muttered the settler, sullenly and doggedly, "I shan't do no sich thing. Yon don't belong to the custom-house I reckon, and so I wish you a good day, for I have a considerable long course to run, and must be movin'." Then, seizing the paddles that were lying on the sand, he prepared to shove the canoe from the beach.

"Not at least before I have sent a bullet, to ascertain the true quality of your skins," said Grantham, levelling his pistol.

"Sure-LY," said Desborough, as he turned and drew himself to the full height of his bony and muscular figure, while his eye measured the officer from head to foot, with a look of concentrated but suppressed fury, "you wouldn't dare to do this--you wouldn't dare to fire into my canoe-- besides, consider," he said, in a tone somewhat deprecating, "your bullet may go through her, and you would hardly do a fellor the injury to make him lose the chance of a good cargo."

"Then why provoke such a disaster, by refusing to show us what is beneath those blankets?"

"Because it's my pleasure to do so," fiercely retorted the other, "and I won't show them to no man."

"Then is it my pleasure to fire," said Grantham. "The injury be on your own head, Desborough--one--two--."

At that moment the sail was violently agitated--something struggling for freedom, cast the blankets on one side, and presently the figure of a man stood upright in the bows of the canoe, and gazed around him with an air of stupid astonishment.

"What," exclaimed Middlemore, retreating back a pace or two, in unfeigned surprise; "has that pistol started up, like the ghost in Hamlet, Ensign Paul, Emilius, Theophilus, Arnoldi, of the United States Michigan Militia--a prisoner on his parole of honor? and yet attempting a clandestine departure from the country--how is this?"

"Not this merely," exclaimed Grantham, "but a traitor to his country, and a deserter from our service. This fellow,"

he pursued, in answer to an inquiring look of his companion, "is a scoundrel, who deserted three years since from the regiment you relieved--I recognized him yesterday on his landing, as my brother Gerald, who proposed making his report to the General this morning, had done before. Let us secure both, Middlemore, for, thank Heaven we have been enabled to detect the traitor at last, in that which will excuse his final expulsion from the soil, even if no worse befall him. I have only tampered with him thus long to render his conviction more complete."

"Secure me! secure Jeremiah Desborough?" exclaimed the settler, with rage manifest in the clenching of his teeth and the tension of every muscle of his iron frame, "and that for jist tryin' to save a countryman--well, we'll see who'll have the best of it."

Before Grantham could antic.i.p.ate the movement, the active and powerful Desborough had closed with him in a manner to prevent his making use of his pistol, had he even so desired. In the next instant it was wrested from him, and thrown far from the spot on which he struggled with his adversary, but at fearful odds, against himself.

Henry Grantham, although well and actively made, was of slight proportion, and yet in boyhood. Desborough, on the contrary, was in the full force of a vigorous manhood.

A struggle, hand to hand, between two combatants so disproportioned, could not, consequently, be long doubtful as to its issue. No sooner had the formidable Yankee closed with his enemy, than, pressing the knuckles of his iron hand which met round the body of the officer, with violence against his spine, he threw him backwards with force upon the sands. Grasping his victim with one hand as he lay upon him, he seemed, as Grantham afterwards declared, to be groping for his knife with the other.

The settler was evidently anxious to despatch one enemy, in order that he might fly to the a.s.sistance of his son, for it was he whom Middlemore, with a powerful effort, had dragged from the canoe to the beach. While his right hand was still groping for the knife--an object which the powerful resistance of the yet unsubdued, though prostrate, officer rendered somewhat difficult of attainment --the report of a pistol was heard, fired evidently by one of the other combatants. Immediately the settler looked up to see who was the triumphant party. Neither had fallen, and Middlemore, if any thing, had the advantage of his enemy; but to his infinite dismay, Desborough beheld a horseman, evidently attracted by the report of the pistol, urging his course with the rapidity of lightning, along the firm sands, and advancing with cries and vehement gesticulations to the rescue.

Springing with the quickness of thought from his victim, the settler was in the next moment at the side of Middlemore. Seizing him from behind by the arm within his nervous grasp, he pressed the latter with such prodigious force as to cause him to relinquish, by a convulsive movement, the firm hold he had hitherto kept of his adversary.

"In, boy, to the canoe for your life," he exclaimed hurriedly, as following up his advantage, he spun the officer round, and sent him tottering to the spot were Grantham lay, still stupified and half throttled. The next instant saw him heaving the canoe from the sh.o.r.e, with all the exertion called for by his desperate situation.

And all this was done so rapidly, in so much less time than it will take our readers to trace it, that before the horseman, so opportunely arriving, had reached the spot, the canoe, with its inmates, had pushed from the sh.o.r.e.

Without pausing to consider the rashness and apparent impracticability of his undertaking, the strange horseman, checking his rein, and burying the rowels of his spurs deep into the flanks of his steed, sent him bounding and plunging into the lake, in pursuit of the fugitives.

He himself evinced every symptom of one in a state of intoxication. Brandishing a stout cudgel over his head, and pealing forth shouts of defiance, he rolled from side to side on his spirited charger, like some labouring bark careening to the violence of the winds, but ever, like that bark, regaining an equilibrium that was never thoroughly lost. Shallow as the lake was at this point for a considerable distance, it was long before the n.o.ble animal lost its footing, and thus had its rider been enabled to arrive within a few paces of the canoe, at the very moment when the increasing depth of the water, in compelling the horse to the less expeditions process of swimming, gave a proportionate advantage to the pursued.

No sooner, however, did the Centaur-like rider find that he was losing ground, than, again darting his spurs into the flanks of his charger, he made every effort to reach the canoe, Maddened by the pain, the snorting beast half rose upon the calm element, like some monster of the deep, and, making two or three desperate plunges with his fore feet, succeeded in reaching the stern. Then commenced a short but extraordinary conflict. Bearing up his horse as he swam, with the bridle in his teeth, the bold rider threw his left hand upon the stern of the vessel, and brandishing his cudgel in the right, seemed to provoke both parties to the combat. Desborough, who had risen from the stern at his approach, stood upright in the centre, his companion still paddling at the bows; and between these two a singular contest now ensued.

Armed with the formidable knife which he had about his person, the settler made the most desperate and infuriated efforts to reach his a.s.sailant; but in so masterly a manner did his adversary use his simple weapon, that every attempt was foiled, and more than once did the hard iron-wood descend upon his shoulders, in a manner to be heard from the sh.o.r.e. Once or twice the settler stooped to evade some falling blow, and, rushing forward, sought to sever the hand which still retained its hold of the stern; but, with an activity remarkable in so old a man as his a.s.sailant, for he was upwards of sixty years of age, the hand was removed--and the settler, defeated in his object, was amply repaid for his attempt, by a severe collision of his bones with the cudgel. At length, apparently enjoined by his companion, the younger removed his paddle, and, standing up also in the canoe, aimed a blow with its k.n.o.bbed handle at the head of the horse, at a moment when his rider was fully engaged with Desborough. The quick-sighted old man saw the action, and, as the paddle descended, an upward stroke from his own heavy weapon sent it flying in fragments in the air, while a rapid and returning blow fell upon the head of the paddler, and prostrated him at length in the canoe.

The opportunity afforded by this diversion, momentary as it was, was not lost upon Desborough. The horseman, who, in his impatience to avenge the injury offered to the animal, which seemed to form a part of himself, had utterly forgotten the peril of his hand; and before he could return from the double blow that had been so skilfully wielded, to his first enemy, the knife of the latter had penetrated his hand, which, thus rendered powerless now relinquished its grasp. Desborough, whose object--desperate character as he usually was--seemed now rather to fly than to fight, availed himself of this advantage to hasten to the bows of the canoe, where, striding across the body of his insensible companion, he, with a few vigorous strokes of the remaining paddle, urged the lagging bark rapidly a-head. In no way intimidated by his disaster, the courageous old man, again brandishing his cudgel, and vociferating taunts of defiance, would have continued the pursuit, but panting as he was, not only with the exertion he had made, but under the weight of his impatient rider, in an element in which he was supported merely by his own buoyancy, the strength and spirit of the animal began now perceptibly to fail him, and he turned, despite of every effort to prevent him, towards the sh.o.r.e. It was fortunate for the former that there were no arms in the canoe, or neither he nor the horse would, in all probability, have returned alive; such was the opinion, at least, p.r.o.nounced by those who were witnesses of the strange scene, and who remarked the infuriated but impotent gestures of Desborough, as the old man, having once more gotten his steed into depth, slowly pursued his course towards the sh.o.r.e, but with the same wild brandishing of his enormous cudgel, and the same rocking from side to side, until his body was often at right angles with that of his jaded but sure-footed beast. As he is, however, a character meriting rather more than the casual notice we have bestowed, we shall take the opportunity while he is hastening to the discomfited officers on the beach, more particularly to describe him.