The Iron Game Part 39

"We must crawl back toward the bush, and get as near those folks as we can," Jones whispered. They made their way easily into the high bushes and stole forward in the direction of the voices. But as they had to guard against breaking twigs or hurtling branches, which would have betrayed them, their advance was slow. When they reached the vicinity where they had fancied the voices to be, all was silent.

"Sound the call; perhaps that will lead to something," Jones whispered in d.i.c.k's ear.

But, unnerved by the trying experience of the night, or worn out by fatigue, d.i.c.k's call was far from the significant signal he had practiced with Jack. He repeated it several times, but there was no response. There was, however, something more startling. A few rods beyond them a flame suddenly shot up, lighting a group of cavalry patrols standing beside a fire just kindled.

"Rebels!" Jones whispered. "Now we must be slippery as snakes. If they have no dogs, we are all right. If you hear the whimper of a hound, follow me like lightning and plunge into the water. That'll break the trail. Stay here and let me reconnoitre a bit. Have no fear. I'll go in no danger."

Jones crept away, leaving d.i.c.k by no means easy in his mind, but he no longer felt the terror that numbed him in the deep wood. Here there was companionship. By pushing the branches aside he could see the figures lounging about the fire; he could see the dark vault of the sky, and was not oppressed by the hideous shapes and shadows of the dense jungle.

Jones meanwhile had pushed within earshot of the group. He flattened his body against a friendly pine and listened.

"I reckon they ain't the Westover n.i.g.g.e.rs, for they were traced to the Pamunkey; these rascals are most likely from the south side--"

"If Jim gets here with the dogs in an hour, we can be back to the barracks for breakfast."

"Ef it hadn't been for that blamed fire in the swamp, we should have had them before this. The rascal that fired at Tom wasn't a musket-shot from me when the smoke poured out and hid him."

"They've gone into the swamp. The dogs'll soon tree them. I'm going to turn in till the dogs come. One of you stay awake and keep a sharp eye toward the creek."

"All right, sergeant. You won't have more'n a cat-nap. Bilc.o.x's dogs are over at the ford, I know, for they were brought there's soon as the news of the Yankee escape came."

"I hope they are; but I'm afraid they are not. If they are, we shall soon hear them."

Jones had heard enough. Hastening back to d.i.c.k, he asked:

"Can you swim?"

"Yes, I'm a good swimmer."

"Very well; throw away everything--no, stay--that would betray us. When we reach the water bury all you can't carry in the sand and then follow me."

They were forced to retrace their painful way through the bushes to reach a place as distant from the point of pursuit as possible. A half-mile or more from their starting-place they found themselves in a running stream. Jones examined it in both directions, and bade d.i.c.k enter it and follow in the water, pushing upward in the bed, waist-deep, a hundred yards. Then, climbing to the bank, he groped about until he found a slender white oak. Climbing this as high as he could get, he slowly swung off, and, the tree bending down to the very stream, he dropped back into the water and rejoined d.i.c.k. Both waded in the middle of the stream until they reached the pond, and then struck out toward the pine clump the lightning had revealed a little while before. There was no need of swimming, and, finding it possible to wade, Jones decided to retain the pistols and ammunition which he had at first resolved to bury as impeding the flight. The bottom appeared to be hard sand, a condition often found in Southern ponds near the inflow of the sea. They had gone a mile or more, keeping just far enough from the bank to remain undistinguishable, when the appalling baying of a hound sounded from the farther end of the pond, where the patrol fire gleamed faintly among the trees.

"Now, youngster, we must keep all our wits at work. The dogs will push on to where we hid. They will follow to the stream, and I think I have given them the slip there. Then they will beat about and follow our trail into the cypress swamp. There the horses will mislead them, and if you can only hold out, so soon as daylight comes we can strike into the pines and make for the Union lines."

"I--I--think I can--ah!--"

d.i.c.k reeled helplessly and would have sunk under the water, if Jones had not caught him.

"Courage, my boy, courage! Don't give up now, just as we are near rescue!"

But d.i.c.k was unconscious, the strain of the early part of the night, the desperate fight through the brakes, all had told on the slight frame, and Jones stood up to his middle in the dark water, holding the fainting boy.

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN THE UNION LINES.

If there is reason as well as rhyme in the old song that danger's a soldier's delight and a storm the sailor's joy, Jack and his comrade were in for all the delights that ever gladdened soldier or sailor boy.

When they left d.i.c.k and Jones, the eager couriers tore through the marshy lowlands, the stubbly thickets and treacherous quagmires, poor Barney, panting and groaning in his docile desire to keep up with his leader, as he had done often in boyish bravado.

"There'll not be a rag on me body nor a whole bone in me skin when we get out of this!" he gasped, as they reached high ground between two spreading deeps of mingled weeds and water. "The sight of us'd frighten the whole rebel army, if we don't come on them aisy loike, as the fox said when he whisked into the hen-house."

"He was a very considerate fox, Barney. Most of the personages you select to ill.u.s.trate your notions seem to me to be gifted with little touches of thoughtfulness. Barney, you ought to write a sequel to Aesop.

There never was out of his list of animal friends such wise beasts, birds, and what not as you seem to have known."

"Jack, dear, if a man lived on roses would the bees feed on him? If he ate honeysuckle instead of hard-tack would he be squeezed for his scents to fill ladies' smelling-bottles?"

"I don't know that sense is always a recommendation to women," Jack shifts his burden to say tentatively, as Barney, involved in a more than commonly obstinate brier, loses the thread of this jocose induction.

"Ah, Jack, dear, ye're weak in ye're mind when you fall to play on words like that."

"You mean my sense is small?"

"Not that at all. Sure, it's a hero's mind ye show when you can find heart to make merry at a time like this!"

"Yes--'he jests at love who never felt a throb.'"

"Then you've a hard heart--and I know I lie when I say it, as Father Mike McCune said to himself when he tuk the oath to King George in '98--if ye're heart never throbbed in Acredale beyant, for there's many a merry one cast down entirely that handsome Jack's gone."

"Come, come, Barney; it's dark, and I can't see the grin that saves this from fulsome blarney."

"Indeed, then--"

"Hark!"

Through the monotonous noises of the night the clanking of steel and the neighing of horses could be heard just ahead.

"We must move cautiously now, Barney. Try to put a curb on your tongue, and let your reflections mature in your busy brain."

"Put me tongue in bonds to keep the peace, as Lawyer Donigan cautioned Biddy Gavan when the doctor said she was driving the parish mad with her prate."

"Sh!--sh!--you noisy brawl; we shall have a platoon of cavalry upon us.

Even the birds have stopped crooning to catch your delicate brogue!"

"'Tis only the ill-mannered owl that makes game of me--if--"

"Sh! Come on. Bend low. Do as I do--if you can see me. If not, keep touch on my arm."

"As the wolf said to the lamb when he bid him take a walk in the wather."

They had now emerged on the reedy margin of the dark pool discovered by d.i.c.k and Jones later. All was silent. The sky was full of stars--so full that, even in the absence of the moon, there was a transparent clarity in the air that enabled Jack to take definite bearings.

"This must be an outlet of the York River, the stream we saw this afternoon. If it be, then we are not far from our own outposts. The troopers we heard just now may be Union soldiers. We must wait patiently to let them discover themselves. Keep abreast of me, and don't, as you value your life, speak above a whisper--better not to speak at all."

"That's what the priest said to Randy Maloney's third wife when she complained that he bate her."