Chapter X

By daylight next morning the country for miles around was aroused and in arms. The members of Captain Leigh’s company had assembled at Newberg and started out in parties under lieutenants and sergeants in search of the trail of the marauders.

For the first time since the fall of Sumter the quiet hamlets of northern Ohio were thrilled with patriotic zeal as if their very hearthstones were assailed by the rebel horde. The Cleveland papers contained a full account of the affair, which Mark reported, and a glowing telegram was dispatched by the Associated Press to all parts of the country. It seemed impossible that the band of Delmy would be able to elude their pursuers. But as days went by without any tidings, though the State and National authorities were exerting every influence at their command, hope waned, and in the heart of Captain Leigh’s young wife became transmuted to despair. Ten days after the abduction, Mark Kilbourne was in Cincinnati, having ridden on horse-back the entire distance. He and his party had crossed the trail of the fugitives at two different points; but wherever there was a telegraph line by which information might have been sent ahead, Delmy took care to cut it, and had finally vanished like a phantom.

Mark was haggard, pale and dejected. The excitement of the chase had sustained him and his band without the help of due nourishment or sleep; but when they were obliged to accept the conviction that Delmy had made good his escape and carried his prisoner with him, the reaction was extreme. After a few hours’ rest and a fruitless inquiry of the authorities at Cincinnati, Mark decided to write a full account to Mrs. Leigh, of the pursuit, and of the probable situation and fate of Philip.

That same day Captain Leigh was sitting on a log near a campfire, bound fast, and reading a Cincinnati newspaper. It was dated two days after his abduction and contained a narrative of that event as given to a special correspondent, in an interview, by Mr. Smiles. The despatch was dated “Newberg,” and began with flaming headlines.

The details given were tolerably accurate up to the time that Philip was dragged from the house; but what followed had a pressing interest for the prisoner as it contained news of subsequent events. The substance of this was a description of Mr. Smiles’s injuries received in defence of Captain Leigh, the report said, and the startling information that Mrs. Leigh had insisted upon caring for the injured minister at her own house, where Mrs. and Miss Taine were staying with her.

Mr. Smiles related his conviction that the attack was made by burglars. He said he had resisted until stunned and left for dead, and was astonished on his return to consciousness to hear the cry of ‘Where is Captain Leigh?’ He had not heard of the warning received by Philip, and had no occasion for apprehending danger; but he had a firm conviction that if the negro Dan, Mrs. Taine’s coachman, had not gone to sleep in the hayloft, he might have warned them in time to have prevented the attack.

“However,” the injured minister remarked towards the close of the interview, “while I shall be the last person in the world to implicate Captain Leigh in the plot, it certainly seems very strange that the details should have been so well concerted, and that I, unarmed and defenceless as I was, should have been nearly murdered while defending him, and he, to all appearances, carried away unhurt.”

The correspondent could not close without making a feeling reference to the courtesy and cultured bearing of Mr. Smiles, and to the great kindness and hospitality of Mrs. Leigh who spared no pains to give her husband’s gallant defender every comfort of a pleasant home. Philip smiled bitterly at the sentimental gush with which the despatch concluded, but was really amused with other portions of it.

“They evidently have a report that I am my own abductor, and my friend, the Boston parson, seems to favor its plausibility,” he mused, as he turned over the limp and faded sheet, which had been brought into camp that morning wrapped around some provender from a cross-roads store.

Part of the gang were lying a short distance from him wrapped in blankets and fast asleep. Delmy was sitting on a log in front of him cleaning a carbine that had got wet in fording a stream the previous day, and another man, a small fellow of plebeian Creole type, sat a few feet further off repairing a saddle girth. The camp was in a small clearing in the midst of an almost primeval forest, and the only sound which broke the stillness of the warm cloudy afternoon, was the intermittent roar of a river they had crossed the previous night.

The carbine in Delmy’s hands was accidentally discharged, the huge bullet striking the ground near Philip’s feet and hissing away among the foliage of the trees behind him. In an instant every man sprang to his feet and grasped his gun to repel an attack. Philip, whose face was pelted with the sand thrown up by the bullet as it passed him, looked up from his paper, and broke the most rigid rule of his captors by exclaiming angrily:

“What’s the matter, Captain, do you mean to murder me!”

“No—it’s nothing—hold your tongue,” growled Delmy.

Philip had been ordered not to speak above a whisper under pain of being gagged. But Delmy motioned the men back as they rushed towards him, and flinging the carbine into the thicket, said it was no good. He then ordered the men to resume their rest as he knew they must need it.

“As to yerself, Mr. Leigh, sense ye’v bin so well behaved so fur, I don’t mind ef ye do talk a little bit in a low voice. I don’t like to be too hard on no man,” said Delmy in a voice of unwonted generosity.

“Thank you very much,” replied Philip, “I feel so thoroughly lost that I’d like to ask you where we are, Captain?”

“Well, we’re gittin’ on, gittin’ on slowly, but we ain’t thar yit, not by a long shot.”

“Was not that the Ohio River we crossed last night?”

“It mout a bin, and then agin it moutn’t: Leastways, I can’t tell ye, fur I don’t know geography very well, and I’m preoccupied with my reflections.”

Delmy had shown the most astonishing acquaintance with the country between Cleveland and the Kentucky frontier, and had succeeded in bringing his prisoner triumphantly into the borders of a friendly state. His present stopping place was on the Kentucky shore of the Ohio, a few miles above Maysville, at which point he had arrived without horses, having sunk the jaded nags that brought him the last stage, in the turgid stream before he crossed. But one wretched beast could be found in the neighborhood, and this one had carried “No. 9” to Maysville that morning to procure the mounts for the party which had been arranged for. Delmy knew that there was too much Northern sympathy at Maysville for him to pass that way, but he had plenty of friends there, and felt that one more night’s travel would bring him to a point on the railroad from which he could proceed openly and as a hero, to his destination.

Having finished supper in a few minutes, the men proceeded to pack up their meagre belongings, and Delmy, approaching Philip and addressing him in a low and deferential tone, said:

“It goes right hard with me, Mr. Leigh, to see a Southern gentleman o’ your standin’ in this here kind of a fix. But, ye see I can’t very well ask one of the boys to tote two saddles so we’ll all have to pack our own traps. I hope you don’t object.”

“Not at all,” said Philip, cheerfully—“I shall try to do my part to assure the success of this noble expedition.”

His hands were again tied behind him, and Delmy smiled grimly as he strapped the heavy Mexican saddle over the prisoner’s shoulders.

It was almost dark, and the pale light of the stars was beginning to show through the twilight as one by one the men took up their burdens, Delmy being the last to fling a saddle over his back. As he did so, he said: “Come on boys, it’s not over three miles to Simpson’s Bend.”

They started towards the path that led through the thicket on the Maysville side of the clearing, but at that moment a clear voice called out from the rear of the camp the one word:

“Surrender!”

Delmy wheeled about and clutched his carbine fiercely, but before he could bring it to his shoulder he staggered and fell to the earth, mortally wounded by a bullet from the underbrush. None of his men were ready for a sudden attack; and they were so appalled at the sight of their fallen chief, and of the armed men who now surrounded them, that they halted and flung down their arms in despair.

Again the voice of the attacking leader was heard:

“If you will all surrender unconditionally we will not fire another shot, but not one of you must move on pain of death.”

“As we’ve been betrayed, boys, and they’re two to one, there’s nothing for it but surrender,” said one of the men, doggedly.

“Fall into line, then, and face this way,” said James Taine, whom Philip now recognized as the commander of the surprise party.

Delmy’s men promptly obeyed the order, and while part of the rescuers stood guard with fixed bayonets others proceeded to put handcuffs on the prisoners, who, for further safety, were all made fast to a strong trace-chain so that they could march single file. All this was done with remarkable expedition. Philip’s thongs and burden were removed, and James congratulated him upon his good luck.

The order was given to march, and the Ohio boys proceeded with their captives along the river bank for about a mile. At that point James fired two shots in quick succession from his revolver, and two good sized boats were rowed quickly from the opposite shore. During the walk from the camp and while crossing in the boat, James and Philip were talking apart.

“By what miracle have you been healed of your injuries, and enabled to effect this long journey, and my rescue?” asked Philip, as soon as James was at leisure to converse.

“It has all been more simple, Phil, than it appears at first sight,” James replied. “As days elapsed without any news of you, I felt an irresistible longing to take part in the chase. It was on the fourth day after your disappearance that I told Dr. Warren of my resolve to start out in search of you. That day the doctor said I should incur great risk to my life, and advised me not to think of such an act. I promised to postpone my decision until the following day, and to ask his opinion again. Meanwhile I mentioned the matter to some of the boys, and they were perfectly willing to join me. When the doctor arrived next day, I was walking about the room feeling like a well man; my strength seemed to build up rapidly as my determination became indomitable. The doctor thought this an interesting circumstance, and finally gave his consent to go forward with my project. That night we took the train to Cincinnati, and as good luck would have it struck the trail of your captors in Brown County two days later.”