The Master of Appleby Part 60

"'Tis I--d.i.c.k Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the cas.e.m.e.nt a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for G.o.d's sake!"

"I am fair trapped," I whispered back. "Make off as you can."

"And leave you behind?" So much I heard; and then came sounds of a struggle; the breath-catchings of two men locked in a strangler's hold, a smothered oath or two, a fall on the turf under the window, followed by the soft thudding of fist blows. I could bear it no longer. The edging soldier had come within arm's reach, and when I swung the cas.e.m.e.nt a little wider, he laid a hand on my shoulder.

"In the name of the king!" he said; and this was all he had time or leave to say. For at the summons I drove my fist against the point of his wagging jaw, to send him plunging among the dancers, and the recoil of the blow carried me clear of the window-seat with what a din and clamor of a hue and cry to speed the parting guest as you may figure for yourselves.

The alighting ground of the leap was the body of d.i.c.k's late antagonist lying p.r.o.ne beneath the window ledge; but the lad himself was up and ready to catch me when I stumbled over the vanquished one.

"'Tis legs for it now," he cried. "Make for the avenue and the horses at the hitch-rail!"

At rising twenty a man may run fast and far; at rising forty he may still run far if the first hundred yards do not burst his bellows. So when we had darted through the thin line of encircling hors.e.m.e.n and were flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight of us thundering at our heels, d.i.c.k was the pace-setter, whilst I made but a shifty second, gasping and panting and dying a thousand deaths in the effort to catch my second wind.

"Courage!" shouted d.i.c.k, flinging the word back over his shoulder as he ran. "There is help ahead if we can live to reach the gate!"

But, luckily for me, the help was nearer at hand. Half way down the box-bordered drive, when I was at my last gasp, the shrill yell of the border partizans rose from the shrubbery on the right, and a voice that I shall know and welcome in another world cried out:

"Stiddy, boys! stiddy till ye can see the whites o' their eyes! Now, then; give it to 'em hot _and_ heavy!"

A haphazard banging of guns followed and the pursuit drew rein in some confusion, giving us time to reach the great gate and the horse-rail, and to loose and mount the gray and the sorrel we had marked out.

Whilst we were about this last, Ephraim Yeates came loping down the avenue and through the gate to vault into the saddle of the first horse he could lay hands on; and so it was that we three took the northward road in the silver starlight, with the pursuit now in order again and in full cry behind us.

'Twas not until we had safely run the gantlet of the vedette lines by a by-path known to the old hunter, and had shaken off the troopers that were following, that I found time to ask what had become of the men who had formed the ambush in the shrubbery.

The old man gave me his dry chuckle of a laugh.

"'Twas the same old roose de geer, as the down-country Frenchers 'u'd say. I stole the drunken sergeant's gun and two others, and let 'em off one to a time. As for the screechin', one bazoo's as good as a dozen, if so be ye blow it fierce enough."

"'Twas cut and dried beforehand," d.i.c.k explained. "I had an inkling of what was afoot from Ephraim, here, whom I stumbled on when I dropped from the stair window that Madge opened for me. He went to set his one-man ambush whilst I was trying to warn you."

"So," said I. "Our skins are whole, but after all we have come off with never a word to take back to Dan Morgan--unless you have the word."

"Not I," d.i.c.k said, ruefully.

The old man chuckled again.

"Ye ain't old enough, neither one o' ye, ez I allow. It takes a right old person to fish out the innards of an inimy's secrets. Colonel Tarleton, hoss, foot and dragoons, with the seventh rigiment and a part o' the seventy-first, will take the big road for Dan Morgan's camp to-morrow at sun-up. And right soon atterwards, Gin'ral Cornwallis'll foller on. Is that what you youngsters was trying to find out?"

XLVII

ARMS AND THE MAN

In that book he wrote--the book in which he never so much as names the name of Ireton--my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles Stedman, d.a.m.ns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the South.

Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre Tarleton,--they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a major-general's sword-knot,--'tis but the part of outspoken honest enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord Cornwallis's field officers.

No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy.

'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.

In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within scouting distance of us.

Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.

For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.

Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.

'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure killing distance.

"'Tis a brave old Daniel," said d.i.c.k, whilst the general was sawing the air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. "'Twill not be his fault if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack; what think you of our chances?"

I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to anybody's anvil.

"Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact," said I. "We have Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first, and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them leg-stiff to overtake us."

d.i.c.k fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.

"I have a sort of coward inp.r.i.c.king that I sha'n't come out of this with a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?"

The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with the lad's when I gave him his answer.

"Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when rest.i.tution can go hand in hand with repentance and confession--"

"No, no;" he cut in quickly. "Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may be all too late--for me. Does she love you?--has she said she loves you?"

"Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that content you?"

At my a.s.surance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.

"With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you, Jack; and that in spite of this d.a.m.ned queasiness that was showing me the burying trench." And then he added softly: "G.o.d bless her!"

I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers, one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to reconnoitre us most coolly.

I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to cover.

d.i.c.k swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. "The fumblers!" he raged. "'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"

"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and, truly, the chance did not tarry.

From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the a.s.sault.

'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.