The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter Part 29

With a cautious and hesitating step, Miss Haviland drew near to this rude structure, and at once perceived, by the appearance of the unguarded loop-hole window, and the open entrance, before which the untrodden wild weeds were growing, that it was untenanted. Approaching still nearer, and peering into the window, she discovered, in one corner of the deserted apartment, a comfortable-looking bed, composed of branches of the hemlock, which she rightly concluded had been collected and used by hunters, who occasionally made the place their quarters for the night. Immediately concluding to avail herself of the advantages which this shelter and primitive couch seemed to promise for obtaining the rest her exhausted system so much needed, she entered, and, throwing herself down on the soft and yielding boughs, soon surrendered herself to the influence of the grateful repose, and fell asleep. She was soon, however, awakened--by what she knew not, unless by the feeling of uneasiness and apprehension, by which she now found herself unaccountably agitated. She had heard, or read, of those mysterious intimations, by which, it is said, we sometimes instinctively become apprised of impending danger, when there is no apparent cause for apprehension, and when reason utters no warning. If such instances ever in reality occurred, this might be one of them; or the impression might have been unconsciously received from actual sounds, which came from foes now secretly lurking near, and which, as it is known often to be the case, had fallen on her slumbering ear, and disturbed and troubled, without fully awakening her. But whatever the cause of the strange foreboding, the effect soon became too strong and exciting to permit her longer to remain pa.s.sive. And she arose to examine the apartment, and see what precautions could be taken to render it more safe against the intrusion of enemies, whether they should come in the shape of men or wild beasts. On approaching the entrance, she discovered, standing by the side of it against the wall a sort of rough door made of long cuts of thick bark, confined by withes to two cross-pieces, and intended, evidently, as there were no contrivances for hanging it, to be set up against the entrance on the inside as a barrier against the cold, or the unwelcome intrusion of any thing from without. But it had become so water-soaked and heavy, and the end on which it stood so firmly set in the ground, that she found, on making the attempt, her strength unequal to the task of removing it. And she turned away to look for other means of protecting herself from danger. Casting her eyes upward, she perceived, lying loose on the beams, or rather poles, extending across the room above, several long pieces of bark, which had been left there, probably, when the roof, of the same material, was constructed. And it immediately occurred to her, that, if she could mount this loft, she might so dispose of herself there as to escape the observation of any human intruders, and, at the same time, be out of reach of any wild beasts that should enter the room below. Accordingly, going to one corner, she began to mount by stepping on the projecting sides of the logs in the two converging walls, and soon succeeded in reaching the loft, and forming, from the bark, a piece of flooring sufficiently strong and broad to bear her weight and screen her person from observation. Upon this she extended herself, face downwards, with her eyes placed to a small aperture, to enable her to see what might happen in the room below, and silently, but with highly excited expectation, awaited the event. But what event did she expect? She could not tell; and yet she was wholly unable to divest herself of the continually intruding idea that something fearful was about to occur; and impelled by the singular apprehension, she could not help listening for sounds which might herald the approaching evil. For some time, however, no sounds reached her ears, except those low, mingled murmurs which are peculiar to the forest in the stillness of night. But at length her quickened organs were greeted by some noise which she knew was not a fancied one; and the next moment the sound of human footsteps became distinctly audible. Presently she heard voices at the door, and then saw two dark forms cautiously entering the room below. After walking around the apartment and thrusting the muzzles of their guns into corners, with the apparent purpose of ascertaining whether any one was concealed within, they approached the pile of boughs before described, and gave vent to their satisfaction at finding so good a bed, in a short, guttural _ugh!_ which proclaimed them, to the trembling listener above, to be Indians, and of those, doubtless, who had been sent out in pursuit of her. They then proceeded to draw up the old door and barricade the entrance after which they set their guns against the wall, and camped down on the bed in the corner.

It would be difficult to describe the sensations with which the hapless girl witnessed what had occurred; and these, with the fear of what might still be in store for her, nearly filled the measure of her distress and perplexity; for although she had thus far escaped observation, and although she soon had the satisfaction of knowing, by the heavy and measured breathing which reached her ears, that her foes had sunk into a deep sleep, yet how was she, even now, to avoid falling into their merciless hands? Should she attempt to descend and escape through the window, could she effect her purpose without being heard and detected? She feared not. And should she remain in her present situation till daylight, would her terrible visitors then awaken and depart without discovering her? This alternative appeared to her even less promising than the other. And yet one of the two courses must be adopted. Which should it be? While anxiously reflecting on the subject, fresh noises in the woods arrested her attention. These were also the sounds of footsteps, but evidently not those of any human prowler. With a light, quick pat, pat, pat, the animal came up to the door, paused, and snuffed the air through the crevices. He then moved along to the window, reared himself on his hind legs, thrust in his nose, and after giving two or three quick, eager snuffs there also, withdrew, and trotted off, at a moderate pace, a short distance into the forest, where he appeared to come to a sudden halt. The next moment, the long, unearthly howl of a wolf rose shrill and tremulous from the spot, and died slowly away, in strange, wild cadences, among the echoing mountains around. Sabrey instinctively shuddered at the fearful sound, but instantly turned her attention to the sleeping Indians, whom she expected to hear rousing up and rushing out with their guns after the insidious prowler. But they, to her surprise, snored on, unconscious of the danger. The howl was soon repeated, when short, faint responses, in the same shrill, savage modulations, became audible in every direction in the surrounding forest. These answering cries, growing more distinct and loud every moment, in their evident approach to the spot where the first signal howl was given, now fully apprised the agitated listener of the fearful character of the scene which was likely soon to occur beneath or around her. In an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, the gathering troop of famished monsters seemed to be arriving and arranging themselves under their invoking leader to be led on to the promised prey. And soon the trampling of mult.i.tudinous feet evinced that they were in motion and cautiously advancing towards the house.

The next moment, they all appeared to have a.s.sembled under the window, and paused as if to plan the mode of attack. After a brief interval, in which no sounds could be distinguished but the low, suppressed snuffling of the troop for the scented prey, a large wolf leaped up into the narrow aperture paused a second and then quickly thrusting his balanced body forward, dropped noiselessly down on the ground floor within. Another, and another, and another, followed in rapid succession, till more than half a score of the gaunt, grim monsters had landed inside, and silently arranged themselves in a row before the bed of their intended victims, who still strangely slept on. One more fearful pause succeeded, in which the greedy band seemed to be eagerly eyeing the fated sleepers, and marking out portions of their bodies for the deadly gripe; when suddenly springing forward, they all fiercely pounced upon the victims, and, with the seeming noise of a thousand wrangling fiends, mingled with the sharp, short, half-stifled screeches of human agony, that were heard in the hideous din, seized, throttled, and tore them, limb from limb, to pieces, and bore off the dissevered parts, munching and snarling, to different corners of the room. The noise now for a short time subsided, and nothing was heard but the low, broken growls of the cannibal troop, as they busily craunched the bones, and tore the flesh on which they were raking their horrid feast. Then followed the fierce and noisy encounters for the decreasing fragments, till none were left worth contending for.

At this juncture, two of the half-glutted but still ravenous gang, relinquishing the well-picked bones on which they had been laboring, rose, and, advancing into the middle of the room, stood a moment listlessly viewing the operations of the rest; when they suddenly started, and, turning slowly round and round, began busily to snuff the air, and throw their noses upward in search of some fresh game that appeared now to have struck their keen olfactories. The affrighted maiden, who had been witnessing this hideous scene from her hitherto unsuspected concealment above, with blood curdling in horror at the sights and sounds that reached her recoiling senses, now shuddered in fresh alarm; for she but too well understood what this new and fearfully-significant movement of the wolves portended. And, instinctively withdrawing her face from her loop-hole of observation, she hastily drew herself up in the middle of her frail support, so as to be as far as possible out of the reach of her expected a.s.sailants.

But they at once detected the slight sounds occasioned by her movement, and, now guided by two senses instead of one, instantly began to gnash their teeth, and, with wild howls, to leap upward after their newly-discovered prey. And although her position was more than seven feet from the ground,--a height which, it might be supposed, could not have been reached by this cla.s.s of animals in a perpendicular leap,--yet so desperate had the present gang become by the taste of human blood, that they soon, in their determined and constantly-repeated efforts, began to strike and seize the beams with their teeth, by which they would hang suspended a moment, and then drop back again to the ground for another trial. The terrified maiden now gave herself up as lost, and tried to quell the tumult of her frenzied feelings, that she might meet her approaching fate, as dreadful as it was, with calmness and resignation. But the terrific noise of her maddened a.s.sailants, as they leaped up, snapping, snarling, and howling, in demoniac chorus, and made nearer and nearer approaches every moment to her person, once more aroused her natural instinct for self-preservation; and she arose, and, standing upon her feet, involuntarily bent over one end of her support to catch a view of what was pa.s.sing below.

In withdrawing her shrinking gaze from the fiercely upheaving heads and fiery eyeb.a.l.l.s which there greeted her, she espied the guns of the Indians still standing against the wall, almost directly beneath her, with the muzzles extending upward within the reach of her arm. With the rapid process of thought which danger is known often to beget, a new plan of deliverance, suggested by the discovery just made, was instantly formed and digested in her mind. And in its pursuance, she drew a white handkerchief from her pocket, and, hastily folding it together, threw it down to the farthest corner of the room below. As she had antic.i.p.ated, the whole gang rushed after it. And instantly seizing the opportunity thus afforded to execute her design, she hastily balanced herself on the edge of the bark the most nearly over the guns, reached down her arm, grasped one of the muzzles, and drew up the heavy weapon, just in time to escape the baffled brutes as they came bounding back, with redoubled howls of rage and disappointment, to the spot. Too much accustomed, in the new settlement in which she had been mostly reared, to the sight and even handling of fire-arms not to know how to use them, she c.o.c.ked the piece, and, again advancing to the edge of her platform, pointed down into the thickest of the infuriated pack, and fired. One wild, piercing yelp followed the deafening explosion, and, the next instant, all the survivors of the hushed and frightened gang were heard scrambling through the window, and scattering and fleeing off with desperate speed into the surrounding forest. With the last sounds of the retreating steps of the wolves, and with the relief which a returning sense of safety brought to the over-wrought feelings of the maiden, all her strength gave way, and, sinking down, weak and helpless as an infant, she sobbed out, in the broken murmurs of an overflowing heart, her grat.i.tude to Heaven for her deliverance from the horrid death from which she had so narrowly escaped. For a while she could only tremble and weep; but at length the violence of her emotions began gradually to subside, exhausted nature would be cheated no longer, and she sunk into slumber, too sound, happily, to permit her to dream over the fearful scenes of the past.

When she awoke, it was broad daylight, and all was quiet within, while without the birds were chanting their morning melodies. At first she could scarcely believe that the scene she had pa.s.sed through was not the distempered imaginings of some frightful dream. But there, on the blood-stained floor beneath her, lay the carca.s.s of a dead wolf, and the scattered bones of the slain Indians, to attest the dreadful reality. Hastening down from the loft into the room, and averting her eyes from the revolting spectacle, she hurried forward with a shudder to the door, effected an opening sufficient for her egress, and rushed out into the open air, of which she now drew a long, grateful inhalation, more expressive than words of the deep sense of inward pleasure she experienced in being freed from this den of horrors.

Believing that, by the advantages daylight would now afford her, she might be able to retrace her way to the road, she immediately sought out and entered the old path by which she had approached the cabin; and this serving to indicate the general course she must pursue to accomplish her purpose, she followed it back to the end, and then pa.s.sed on through the forest in the same direction. She had proceeded but a short distance, however, before she was startled by the unexpected appearance of a man advancing through the thick intervening undergrowth directly towards her. As she was about to strike out obliquely into the forest to avoid him, her steps were arrested by his voice calling out to her.

"Don't be alarmed at a friend, young lady," he said, in a plausible manner, as he came forward and stopped at a respectful distance--"don't be alarmed at my appearance at all; for you are the one, I take it, that we are searching for. It is Miss Haviland, is it not?"

"Yes, sir," replied the latter, looking doubtfully at the man whom she thought she had somewhere before seen--"yes, that is my name; but as there may be both friends and foes out in search of me, you will excuse me for saying that I do not know to which of these you belong."

"True, true," said the other, in a wheedling tone--"true; I don't blame you for being a little cautious. So I must tell you that, living in these parts, and being acquainted with Captain Woodburn, I volunteered, when I heard you were lost last night, to go with the rest in search of you. And being now so lucky as to find you, I will conduct you out to Coffin's--four or five miles from this, I suppose--where your friends are anxiously waiting to see or get word of you."

Although our heroine was not exactly pleased with the manner and countenance of the man, yet the charm of the name of Woodburn, to whom he had so artfully referred, restored her confidence, and she at once and thankfully accepted of his proffered guidance, little suspecting that she had yielded herself to the most subtle of her foes--the deceitful and treacherous David Redding!

CHAPTER VIII.

"Then marched the brave from rocky steep, From mountain river, swift and cold.

The borders of the stormy deep, The vales where gathered waters sleep, Bent up the strong and bold."--_Bryant_

The bold and decisive measures of the Council of Safety had by this time begun to manifest themselves in results little antic.i.p.ated by the adherents of the royal cause in Vermont. The latter, emboldened both by the presence of a powerful British army on their borders, and the doubts and difficulties which, for a while, were known to have embarra.s.sed and rendered ineffectual the deliberations of their opponents, had become so a.s.sured and confident of an easy conquest, that in some sections they proceeded openly in the work of enlistment, and in others pushed forward their parties into the very heart of the interior, before perceiving their error; while, by their representations at headquarters, they completely deceived Burgoyne and his advisers respecting the true state of feeling that animated the bosoms of the great ma.s.s of the people--a fact made abundantly evident, not only by the subsequent confessions of that general, but by all his operations at the time, and especially that of the short-sighted expedition, which we have before shown him to have planned and set afoot, under Peters, to the Connecticut River. It was no wonder, therefore, that when they now suddenly discovered the whole state in motion--armed men springing up in every glen, nook, and corner of the Green Mountains, and concentrating to join another no less unexpected, and no less formidable force, which was understood to be rapidly advancing from New Hampshire--it was no wonder they were taken wholly by surprise, and slunk silently away to their retreats, or immediately fled to the British army, whom they still neglected to undeceive.

It was about one week subsequent to the events last recited; and the interim had been marked with little, as far as immediately concerned the action of our story, and those of its personages to whom we must now return--with very little to which pen can do justice, except what the reader's imagination probably has already antic.i.p.ated; for though thrilling events may be described with a good degree of adequacy, there are yet certain states of high wrought feeling that language can never but feebly portray. The search for the lost maiden, on the eventful night of her capture and escape, had been, as the reader will have inferred, as vain and fruitless as it was agonizing to her lover, and anxious to all. The renewal of the search next day, till afternoon, had been no better rewarded. More force having then arrived, the tory encampment was a.s.sailed, but found empty of occupants, who had, some hours before, scattered and fled. Still unwilling to relinquish his object, Woodburn, with a small party of his friends, continued his efforts in wider ranges through the forest, which, on the third morning, brought him to the cabin in which her most fearful trials had occurred; when the dead wolf, the remnants of the slain Indians, not yet wholly carried off by the foxes or returning wolves, the guns, the torn and blood-stained earth, and, above all, the white shreds of some part of female apparel, discolored and scattered round the room, told a tale, that, in spite of the entreaties of his sympathizing friends, who deemed the evidence not yet wholly conclusive, drove the appalled lover, in a frenzy of grief and horror, from the dreadful scene.

It was about a week, as we have said, after that night of adventure and excitement. Three companies of the newly-enlisted regiment of Rangers, embracing all the recruits yet raised on the east side of the mountains, were paraded in the road before Coffin's tavern, while their officers were standing listless on the gra.s.s in front, and occasionally throwing inquiring glances along the road to the east, as if awaiting some expected arrival from that quarter. At length Woodburn, on whose brow rested an air of gloomy sternness, advanced, and calling his sergeant and scoutmaster, Dunning, to his side, in a low tone, imparted to him some private order or suggestion; when the latter, beckoning from the ranks his and the reader's old acquaintance, Bill Piper, who was also a subaltern in the same company, the two laid aside their guns and equipments, and proceeded leisurely down the road, the way in which the attention of all seemed directed. After proceeding about a quarter of a mile, they came to a turn in the road, which, now becoming invisible from the tavern, led down a long hill, and entered an extended piece of woods nearly another quarter of a mile distant.

"Well," said Dunning, here pausing and casting his eyes forward to the woods, "they der don't seem to make their appearance yet. I ditter think they must have halted there by the brook to drink and rest a little so we will stop at this point, where we can see both ways; and when the troops begin to show themselves, we'll then give the signal."

With this, they threw themselves down in the cool shade of a tree by the way side, and, for a while, yielded themselves to that listless, dreamy mood, which reclining in the shade, after exercise, on a warm day, almost invariably induces.

"Dunning," said Piper, at length rousing up a little, and drawing from his pocket a well-filled leathern purse, which he carelessly c.h.i.n.ked against his upraised knee, by way of preliminary--"Dunning, it is a mystery to me where all this stuff comes from. Six weeks ago, it was thought there were scarcely a thousand hard dollars, except what was in tory families, in all the _Grants_. Now, there must be well on to that sum even in our own company, every recruit having been paid his bounty and month's advance pay, in silver or gold, on the spot. Where does it come from?"

"From the sales of the der tory estates, of which they have been making a clean sweep, you know," replied the other.

"Yes, yes, we all know that, I suppose; but where do the purchasers of these estates get the money to buy with?" rejoined the former.

"I never ditter catechized them about it," said the hunter, evasively.

"Nor I," remarked Piper; "but I have lately heard a curious story about the matter. They say there has been a sort of homespun-looking old fellow, that n.o.body seems to know, following the commissioners of sales round, from place to place, with an old horse and cart, seemingly loaded with wooden ware, or some such kind of gear, for peddling; and that he has bid off a great part of all the farms, and stock on them, which have been sold, paying down for them on the spot in hard money, which they say he carries about with him tied up in old stockings, and hid away in his load of trumpery. Some mistrust he is a Jew; and some are afraid he is a British agent, not only buying up farms, but also the Council of Safety, who are also strangely full of money these days."

"That last would prove a rather ditter tough bargain for him and his masters, I reckon," responded the hunter, dryly.

"Yes, that is all nonsense, no doubt," observed Piper. "But still it is a mystery to my mind, how money, that a short time ago was so scarce, should now all at once be so plenty; and that was the reason I raised the question before you, who generally know pretty near what is going on among our head men, and who, I thought likely, could easily explain this secret."

"No," said the other; "no, Bill; there might be der trouble about that. When a state secret falls into my ears, it is not so easy to get it out of my mouth. I've got an impediment in my ditter speech, you know," he added, with a slight twinkle of the eye.

"Your mouth goes off well enough on some public matters, I find,"

remarked Piper, with an air fluctuating between a miff and a laugh.

"Der yes, to say, for instance, that the decree to confiscate and sell the tory estates was a ditter righteous one--has worked like a charm--called out the rusty dollars from their hiding-places thick as der b.u.mblebees in June--ditter drove off the blue devils from among the people, and raised a regiment of men in less than three weeks!"

"Ah! and a fine regiment, too, it will be. I long to see it all wrought together, for I don't know a tenth of them--men or officers--not even our colonel."

"Herrick? Well, I can't der quite say I should know him now; but he is a ditter go-ahead fellow, who loves the smell of gunpowder nearly as well as Seth Warner himself, whose pupil he is in the trade. We shall have the pleasure of seeing him in a few minutes, probably, as Coffin told me he pa.s.sed along here night before last, on the way to _Number Four_, to come on with Stark. _That_ may be told without ditter mischief."

"And so may another thing, perhaps, which I should like to know, Dunning."

"Der what is that, Bill?"

"Why, you know that Bart, the night after we discovered the place where we supposed the girl was destroyed, disappeared, and has not been here since. Where have they sent him, and what after?"

"Piper, you are as brave as a lion, and as strong as a horse, der doubtless; but your tongue may ditter need training, for all that.

Still, as you mean right, and will probably learn to bridle that unruly member only by practice, I will, for once, put you to the trial. Bart has gone a spy to the British camp. Though Harry, in his despair, would for a while believe nothing but that she was der dead, or worse, yet, as I and others, putting all things together, hoped and reasoned ditter different, in part, and thought she might not have been killed there, but retaken; and, for fear of pursuit, hurried off directly to the British, he concluded to despatch Bart to his friend Allen, of the Council, to take advice, and then proceed in some disguise or other, right into the lion's den--ascertain whether the girl was there--and, after ditter learning what he could about the enemy's movements, return with the news."

"Well, I'll be chunked if the project wan't a bold one! But if any creature on earth can carry it out, it is Bart; and he will, unless they get word from this quarter that such a fellow is among them. Ah!

I now see the need of a close mouth on the subject, and will keep one, thanking you kindly, Dunning, for your caution and confidence."

"It will be all right, I presume, Bill, now you perceive Bart's neck may depend on your ditter discretion. But who have we there?" added the speaker, pointing down the road towards the woods.

While Dunning and Piper were thus engrossed in conversation, two men, on foot, had emerged from the woods and approached within a hundred yards, before attracting the attention of the former. They were without coats, or in their shirt sleeves, as, in common parlance, is the phrase for such undress; and, having handkerchiefs tied round their heads, and carrying in their hands rough sticks, picked up by the way-side, for canes, they presented an appearance, as they leisurely came along up the ascending road, with occasional glances back towards the woods, that left Dunning and his companion wholly in doubt, while attempting to decide who or what they were.

"Now, who knows," said the wary hunter, "but they may be der tory spies, hanging round the skirts of Stark's army, and intending soon to be off cross-lots to the British, to report his progress. I'll ditter banter them a little, at all hazards, before we let 'em pa.s.s."

But as the strangers drew near, their appearance grew less and less like that of the ordinary footpads for whom they had been taken; and there was something in their bearing which considerably shook, though it did not wholly alter, the hunter's intention to banter them. One was a strongly-built, broad-chested man, with a high head, hardy brown features, and a countenance betokening much cool energy and decision of character. The other was rather less stocky, and slightly taller, of quicker motions, but withal a prompt, resolute-looking person.

"Well, my friends," said the former, coming up and pausing before the expectant Rangers, with an air that seemed to challenge conversation, "this is Coffin's tavern here ahead, I suppose. Will the captain be pleased, think ye, to see a little company about this time?"

"Der yes," replied Dunning, eyeing the speaker with a curious, half doubtful and half quizzing expression. "Yes, if of the right sort, he wont ditter cry, I reckon. But the captain is sometimes rather particular--for instance, if you should happen to be tories----"

"Tories!--do we look like tories?" demanded the former glancing to his companion with a droll, surprised look.

"Why der no," replied the hunter, a little abashed, "I ditter think not."

"Well, I had hoped not," rejoined the man. "But who are you, my friend--one of the Green Mountain Boys, that we hear so much about?"

"Not far from the mark, sergeant, or commissary, or whatever is your ditter t.i.tle; for you belong to the army that's at hand, I take it?"

said Dunning.

"O, yes," briskly returned the other, again looking at his companion, and joining him in a merry laugh. "Yes, I am one of them, and mean to have a hand in stirring up Burgoyne, when we reach him, I a.s.sure you."