The Master of Appleby Part 29

At his word we both looked for the horses, marking now that they were nowhere to be seen within the circle lighted by the lodge fire. The Catawba grunted his doubt that the enemy was as inalert as he appeared to be; then he set the doubt in words. "Chelakee heap slick. Sleep only one eye, mebbe, hey? Injun warrior no hide horse and go sleep _both_ eye on war-path!"

Here our scout came gliding back, so noiselessly that he was within arm's reach before we heard him. d.i.c.k had said I was over-cool, but the old man's ghostlike reappearance gave me such a start as made me prinkle to my fingers' ends.

"How will it be, Eph?" d.i.c.k queried, hotly eager to be at work. "We can make it across? Never say we can't pa.s.s that bit of still water, man!"

But Ephraim Yeates did say so in set terms.

"I reckon ez how we've got to cross, but not jest here-away, Cap'n d.i.c.k.

She ain't making any fuss about it, but she's a-slipping along like greased lightning, deep and mighty powerful. I ain't saying we mought n't swim her and come out somewheres this side o' Dan'l Boone's country; but we'll make it a heap quicker by projec'ing 'round till we find the ford where them varmints made out to cross."

"G.o.d!" said d.i.c.k, deep in his throat; "more time to be killed! By--"

The old man was parting the bushes to have a better sight of the encampment opposite, but at d.i.c.k's outbreak he fell back quickly and clapped a hand on the lips of cursing.

"Hist! Lookee over yonder, will ye!" he cut in. And then in a whisper meant for no ear but mine: "The Lord be marciful to that little gal, Cap'n John; we've fooled our chance away--the game's afoot, and we ain't in it!"

I looked and saw nothing save that the sentry guard had risen to throw a handful of dry branches on the dying fire. But on the instant the dry wood blazed up, and in the wider circle of firelight I saw what the keener eyes of Ephraim Yeates had descried the sooner. In the shadowy background of the surrounding forest a dozen hors.e.m.e.n were converging in orderly array upon the encampment, and at the blazing up of the dry branches their leader gave the command to charge.

What sham battle there was, or was meant to be, was over in the briefest s.p.a.ce. The troopers galloped in with shouts and aimless pistolings, raising a clamor that was instantly doubled by the yells of the Indians.

As for resistance, the charging troop met with nothing worse than the yellings and a scattering fusillade in air. Then the ring of hors.e.m.e.n narrowed in to closer quarters and there was some flashing of bare steel in the firelight, at which the Cherokee kidnappers melted away and vanished as if by magic.

With the shouts and the firing Margery and her maid had burst out of the sleeping-lodge to find themselves in the thick of the sham battle; and it was but womanlike that they should add their shrieks to the din, being as well terrified as they had a right to be. But now the leader of the attacking troop speedily brought order with a word of command; and when his men fell back to post themselves as vedettes among the trees, the officer dismounted to uncover courteously and to bow low to the lady.

"The hoss-captain!" muttered Ephraim Yeates, under his breath; but we did not need his word for it. 'Twas but a child's pebble-toss across the barrier stream, and we could both see and hear.

"I give you joy of your escape, Mistress Margery," said the baronet, mouthing his words like a player who had long since conned his lines and got them well by heart and letter-perfect. "These slippery savages have given us a pretty chase, I do a.s.sure you. But you are trembling yet, calm yourself, dear lady; you are quite safe now."

I was watching her intently as he spoke. 'Twas now hard upon two months since I had seen her last in that fateful upper room at Appleby Hundred, and the interval--or mayhap it was only the hardships and distresses of the captive flight--had changed her woefully. Yet now, as when we had stood together at the bar of Colonel Tarleton's court, I saw her pa.s.s from mood to mood in the turning of a leaf, her natural terror slipping from her like a cast-off garment, and a sweet dignity coming to clothe her in a queenlier robe, making her, as I would think, more beautiful than ever.

"I thank you, Sir Francis--for myself and for poor Jeanne," she said.

"You have come to take us back to my father?"

He bowed again and spread his hands as a friend willing but helpless.

"Upon my honor, my dear lady, nothing would give me greater pleasure.

But what can I say? We are upon the king's business, as you well know, and our mission will not brook an hour's delay--indeed, we are here only by the good chance which led your captors to choose our route for theirs. I have no alternative but to take you and your woman with us to the west; but I do a.s.sure you--"

She stopped him with an impa.s.sioned gesture of dissent, and darting a despairing glance around that minded me of some poor hunted thing hopelessly enmeshed in the net of the fowler, she clasped her hands and wrung them, breaking down piteously at the last, and begging him by all that men hold sacred to send her and her maid back to her father, if only with a single soldier for a guard.

'Twas then we had to drag my dear lad down and hold him fast, else he had flung himself into the torrent in some mad endeavor to spend his life for her. So I know not in what false phrase the baronet refused her, but when I looked again she was no longer pleading as his suppliant; she was standing before him in the martyr steadfastness of a true, clean-hearted woman at bay.

"Then you will not by so much undo the wrong you have done me, Captain Falconnet?" she said.

"A wrong? How then; do you call it a wrong to rescue you from these brutal savages, Mistress Margery?"

She took a step nearer, and though the dry-stick blaze was dying down and I could no longer see her face distinctly, I knew well how the scornful eyes were whipping him.

"Listen!" she said. "When you set Tallachama and his braves upon us in the road that night, you were not cautious enough, Captain Falconnet. I saw and heard you. More than that, Tallachama and the others have spoken freely of your plans in their own tongue, not knowing that my poor Jeanne had been three years a captive among the Telliquos."

The attack was so sudden-sharp and so completely a surprise that he was taken off his guard, else I made sure he would not at such a time have dropped the gentlemanly mask to stand forth the confessed ravisher.

"So ho? Then you have been playing fast and loose with me as you did with the handsome young planter and that beggarly captain of Austrians?

'Twas a bold game, _ma pet.i.te_, but you have lost and I have won, for my game was still bolder than yours. What I need, I take, Mistress Madge, be it the body of a woman or the life of a man. _Savez-vous un homme desespere, ma cherie?_ I am that man. You pique me, and I need the dowry you will bring. If I could have killed your lover out of hand, I might have been content to leave you for a time. Since I could not, you go where I go; and when we return I shall do you the honor to make you Lady Falconnet!"

The effect of this fierce tirade, poured out in a torrent of hot words, was less marked upon his helpless captive than it was upon her four would-be defenders. It moved us variously, each after his kind; nevertheless, I think the same thought lighted instantly upon each of us. Though we might not reach and rescue her, her sharpest peril would be blunted upon the quieting of this fiend-in-chief.

So Ephraim Yeates stretched himself face downward in the damp gra.s.s and brought his long rifle to bear, while the Indian sprang up and poised his hatchet for the throw; but neither lead nor steel was loosed because the light was poor, and a hair's-breadth swerving of the aim might spare the man and slay the woman. As for the two of us who must needs come within stabbing distance, the same thought set us both to stripping coats and foot-clogs for a plunge into the barrier torrent. But when we would have broken cover, the old borderer dropped his weapon and gripped us with a hand for each.

"No, no; none o' that!" he whispered, hoa.r.s.ely. "Ye'd drown like rats, and we can't afford no sech foolish sakerfices on the altar o' Baal.

Hunker down and lie clost; if there's any dying to be done, ye've got a good half o' the night ahead of ye, and there's all o' to-morrow that ain't teched yet."

It takes a pitiless avalanche of words to spread these interlinear doings out for you; but you are to conceive that the pause is mine and not the action's. While the old man was yet pulling us down, my fearless little lady had drawn back a pace and was giving the villain his answer.

"I am glad I know you now for what you are, Captain Falconnet," she said, coldly. And then: "You can take me with you, if you choose, having the brute strength to make good so much of your threat. But that is all. You can not take for yourself what I have given to another."

"Can not, you say?" He clapped his hat on smartly and whistled for his horse-holder; and when the man was gone to fetch the mounts for the women, he finished out the sentence. "Listen you, in your turn, Mistress Spitfire. I shall take what I list, and before you see your father's house again, you'll beg me on your knees, as other women have, to marry you for very shame's sake!"

It was then that Uncanoola did the skilfulest bit of jugglery it has ever been my lot to witness. Posturing like one of those old Grecian discus-throwers, he sent his scalping-knife handle foremost to glide snake-like through the gra.s.s to stop at Margery's feet. Though I think she knew not how it got there, she saw it, and the courage of the sight helped her to say, quickly:

"When it comes to that, sir, I shall know how to keep faith with honor."

His laugh was the harshest mockery of mirth. "You will keep faith with me, dear lady; do you hear? Otherwise--"

He turned to take the black mare from his man. At this my brave one set her foot upon the weapon in the gra.s.s.

"I have no faith to keep with you, Captain Falconnet," she said.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

He struck back viciously. "Then, by heaven, you'd best make the occasion. It has happened, ere this, that a lady as dainty as you are has become a plaything for an Indian camp. It lies with me to save you from that, my Mistress."

She stooped to gather her skirts for mounting, and in the act secured and hid the knife. So her answer had in it the fine steadfastness of one who may make desperate terms with death for honor's sake.

"I thank you for the warning, Captain Falconnet," she said, facing him bravely to the last. "When the time comes, mayhap the dear G.o.d will give me leave to die as my mother's daughter should."

"Bah!" said he; and with that he whistled for his troopers; and while we looked, my dear lady and her tirewoman were helped upon their horses, and at the leader's word of command the escort formed upon the captives as a center. A moment later the little glade, with the smoldering embers of the lodge fire to p.r.i.c.k out its limits in dusky red, was empty, and on the midnight stillness of the forest the minishing hoofbeats of the horses came fainter and fainter till the distance swallowed them.

Then it was that my poor lad, famine-mad and frenzied, rose up to curse me bitterly.

"Now may all the devils in h.e.l.l drag you down to everlasting torments, John Ireton, for your cold-hearted caution that made us lose when we had good hope to win!" he cried. "One little hour I begged for, and that hour had fought her battle and set her free. But now--"

He broke off in the midst, choking with what miserable despair I knew, and shared as well; and throwing himself down in the wet gra.s.s, he would eke out the bitter words with such ravings and sobbings as bubble up in sheer abandonment of rage and misery.

XXIII