Chapter XIV: Part 14

I reached across and gripped his hand and wrung it. "Shall we never have the better of these senseless vaporings?" I cried. "'Tis as you say; I can neither live sane nor die mad without another sight of her, Dick, and that is the plain truth. And yet, mark me, this next seeing of her will surely set a thing in train that will make her yours and not mine. Get your leave and come with me on your own terms. Mayhap she will show you how little she cares for me, and how much she cares for you."

So this is how it came about that we two, garbed as decent planters and mounted upon the sleekest cobs the regiment afforded, took the road for Winnsborough together on a certain summer-fine morning in January in the year of battles, seventeen hundred and eighty-one.

XLV

IN WHICH WE FIND WHAT WE NEVER SOUGHT

'Tis fifty miles as a bird would fly it from the grazing uplands of the Broad known as the Cowpens to the lower plantation region lying between that stream and the farther Catawba or Wateree; and Richard Jennifer and I ambled the distance leisurely, as befitted our mission and disguise, cutting the journey evenly in half for the first night's lodging, which we had at the house of one Philbrick--as hot a Tory as we pretended to be.

From our host of the night we learned that within two days the British outposts on the Wateree and the Broad had been advanced; and there were rumors in the air that Lord Cornwallis, who was hourly expecting General Leslie with two thousand of Sir Henry Clinton's men from New York, would presently move on to the long-deferred conquest of North Carolina.

"Has Cornwallis lost his wits?" Dick would say, when we were a-jog on the southward road again. "'Tis a braver lordling than I gave him credit for being--if he will put his head in a trap that will close behind him and cut him off from his line and base."

I laughed. "You may wager Jennifer House against an acre of the Cowpens that Lord Charles will do no such unsoldierly thing. If this rumor be true, we have heard only the half of it."

"And the other half will be?--"

"That my Lord Cornwallis will do his prettiest to pull the teeth of one or the other of the trap-jaws before he trusts himself within them."

Jennifer was silent for an ambling minute or two. Then he said: "'Twill be our teeth he'll try to pull, then. The Broad is nearer than the Pedee; and ours is the weaker of the two jaws."

"Right you are," said I. "And now we know what we have to discover."

"Anan?" he queried.

"We must learn by hook or crook who is to be sent against Dan Morgan, and when."

"That should be easy--if the use of it afterward be not choked out of us at a rope's end."

"We can divide the rope's-end chance of failure by two. We may work together as the opportunity offers, but once within the lines we must pass as strangers to each other, or at most as chance acquaintances of the road."

"Good," said he; and then his jaw dropped. "But what if one of us be taken? Never ask me to stand by stranger-wise and see you hanged, Jack!"

"I shall both ask it and promise to do the same by you. Your hand on it before we go a step farther, if you please."

"'Tis out of all reason," he demurred.

"'Tis the only reasonable course. Bethink you, this is no knight-errant venture; we are two of Dan Morgan's soldiers bent upon doing a thing most needful for the welfare of the country and its cause. 'Tis a duty higher than any obligation friendship lays on Richard Jennifer or John Ireton."

At this he yielded the point, though I could see that the proposal jumped little with the promptings of his generous heart.

"'Tis a scurvy trap you have set for me," he grumbled. "The risk is chiefly yours, and you know it. You are known to Lord Cornwallis, and to God knows how many more of them, and belike--"

The interruption came in the shape of a troop of redcoat horsemen galloping in the road to meet us, and we were shortly surrounded and put sharply to the question. We answered each for himself. Dick was a loyalist from Yorkville way, eager to be set in arms against the bandit Daniel Morgan. I was a refugee from "hornets'-nest" Mecklenburg, also bent upon revenge.

The troop officer passed us on, something doubting, as I suspected. But we were riding in the right direction, and he was unwilling to clog himself with a pair of plain country gentlemen held in leash as prisoners.

A few miles farther down the road the same brace of lies got us safely through the loosely drawn vedette line, and by evening we were in sight of our goal.

Viewing it from the rising ground of approach, Winnsborough appeared less as a town than as a partly fortified camp. The few houses of the village were lost in the field of tents, huts and troop shelters, and measuring by the spread of these, it would seem that my Lord Cornwallis's army had been considerably augmented since I had last seen it in Charlotte. I spoke of this, but Dick was intent upon the business of the moment.

"Aye; there are enough of them, God knows. But tell me, Jack--I'm new to this game--what's to do first when we are among them?"

I laughed at him. "You are my troop commander, Captain Jennifer. 'Tis for you to make the dispositions."

"Have your joke and be hanged to you. There are no captains here."

"If you leave it to me, we shall ride boldly to the tavern, put up as travelers, and listen to the gossips, each for himself," I replied; and this is what we did.

The village tavern, servilely bearing the king's arms thinly painted over the palmetto tree of South Carolina on its swinging sign-board, was a miserable doggery, full to overflowing with a riffraff of carousing soldiery. Separating by mutual consent in the public tap-room, Richard and I presently drifted together again at a small table in a corner, with a black boy in attendance to set before us such poor entertainment as the hostelry afforded.

"Well, what luck?" asked Dick, mumbling it behind his hand, though he might safely have shouted it aloud in the din and clamor of the place.

I shook my head. "Nothing as yet, save that I overheard a tipsy corporal telling his tipsier sergeant that the officers would be holding a revel to-night at a Tory manor house situate somewhere beyond the camp confines to the northward; the house of one Master Marmaduke Harndon, if I heard the name aright." Then I added: "This rabble is too drunken to serve our purpose. 'Tis only the common soldiery, and we shall learn nothing here."

"There was at least one who was not a ranker," said Dick, and there was something akin to awe in his voice. Then he leaned across the table to whisper. "Jack, I've fair had a fright!"

I smiled. Fear, of God, man or the devil, was not one of the lad's weaknesses.

"You may grin as you please," he went on; "but answer me this; do the dead come back to life?"

"Not this side of the resurrection reveille, if we may believe the dominies."

"Then I have seen a ghost--a most horrible mask of a man we both know to our cost."

"Name him and I will tell you whether he be a ghost or no."

"'Tis the ghost of Frank Falconnet; or else it is what of the man himself the fire hath left," said Dick, and I marked his shiver at the word.

"No!" said I.

"I tell you yes."

I sprang up, but the lad reached across the table and smote me back into the chair.

"Softly, old firebrand; 'twas you who said the public matter must take precedence of the private. Moreover, if this be Francis Falconnet whom I have seen, your sweetest revenge on him will be to let him live--as he is."

"I will kill him as I would a wild beast," I raged, thinking of that midnight scene in the great forest when my sweet lady had gone on her knees to this fiend in human guise. "And so should you," I added, "if you care aught for the honor of the woman who loves you."

But now it was this hot-headed Richard I have drawn for you who saw farthest and clearest.

"All in good time," he said, coolly. "At this present we have Dan Morgan's fish to fry, and sitting here saucing this devil's mess of a supper with thoughts of private revenge will never fry it. Set your wits at work; Falconnet's ghost has put mine hopelessly out of gear. Ye gods! but 'twas a most fearsome thing to look at!"

I did not answer him at once, and whilst I plied knife and fork for the sake of appearances, I would think upon what he had discovered. This reappearance of Francis Falconnet was not to be passed over lightly. What would he do, or seek to do? Nay, what devilish thing was it he might not do? If the fire had burned his passion out, it had doubtless kindled a feller blaze of revenge. And if his thirst was for vengeance, how could he quench it in a deeper draft than by harrying the woman we both loved? 'Twas only by a mighty effort that I could drag myself back to Dick's urging and the needs of the hour.

"To have some chance of hearing gossip to our purpose, we must make shift to gain admittance to this officers' rout at the manor house," I said.

"The devil!" quoth Dick, "I venture that's easier said than done--for two plain country gentlemen."

"Never fear; there will be others there lacking fine clothes, and so the throng be great enough, we may pass current in it."

Richard pushed his plate back with a grimace of disgust.

"Let us be at it, then. Another grapple with this pig-bait will finish me outright."

A half-hour later we were tethering our cobs at the already crowded hitching-rail in front of a goodly mansion some mile or more beyond the camp limits on the northward road; a rambling manor house to the full as large as Appleby Hundred, with a shaven lawn in front, and within, lights and music and sounds of revelry.

"By the Lord Harry! but this Master Harndon would seem to be a man of substance," says Dick. And then: "Can you pick out a good horse in the dark, Jack? It may come to a race for our necks, by and by, and these cobs of ours are too broad-backed for speed."

I said I could, and so we went deeper into the cavalcade at the hitch-rail and marked out two clean-limbed chargers, a gray and a sorrel; this before we gave the final touches to our plan of action and passed up the broad avenue to the manor house.

XLVI

HOW OUR PIECE MISSED FIRE AT HARNDON ACRES

For a doorkeeper some one or another of the officer guests had set a sergeant on guard; but though the night was yet young the man passed us into the great entrance hall with a hiccough and a wink that spoke thus early of an open house and freely flowing good cheer.

As we had hoped to find it, this rout at Master Harndon's was a stifling jam, and a good half of the guests were in civilian plain clothes, neither Paris nor London having as yet reached so far into the Carolina plantations to proscribe homespun and to prescribe the gay toggeries of the courts. This for the men, I hasten to add; for then, as now, our American dames and maids would put a year's cropping of a plantation on their backs, thinking nothing of it; and there was no lack of shimmering silks and stiff brocades, of high-piled _coiffures_, paint, patches and powder at this merrymaking at Harndon Acres.

Lacking an introducer, and wanting, moreover, nothing save the leave to have standing-room in the throng as lookers-on, we gave Mr. Marmaduke Harndon, a sleek, rotund little gentleman, smirking and bowing and tapping the lid of his silver snuff-box, a wide berth; and with an agreement to meet later for the comparing of notes, Jennifer and I went apart at the door of the ball-room, each to lose himself in the assembled company as an otter slips into a pool, namely, without ruffling it.

'Twas easily done. Winnsborough had by this time become a refuge camp for all the loyalists in the region roundabout, and there were many in the present company who were strangers one to another, uneasy, shifting figures in the gay throng, beneath the notice alike of haughty dames and prinking dandy officers. Beneath the notice, I say; yet I would qualify this, for more than one of the epauletted macaronis trod upon my toes or bustled me rudely in the crush till I trembled, not for my own self-control, but for Richard's, making sure that the lad was having no more gentlemanly welcome than I.

'Twas with some notion of finding ampler room for my feet that I edged away through the fringing wall-crowd in the dancing-room toward a curtained archway at the back. As yet I had overheard naught save the silly persiflage of the belles and beaux--a word here and another there--and I was beginning to fear that this was as poor a place to look for information as was the pothouse, when a thing befell to set me a-quiver with all the thrillings the human heart-strings can thrum to in one and the same instant of time.

I had shouldered my way out of the ball-room medley and into the less crowded room at the back. This proved to be a rear withdrawing-room serving for the nonce as a refectory. There were little groups and knots of chatterers standing about; fair maids, each with her ring of redcoated courtiers, laughing and jesting or picking daintily at the viands on the great oaken table in the midst.

Rounding the promontory of the table's-end to come to anchor in some quiet eddy where I could listen unnoticed for the word I was thirsting for, I must needs entangle the button of my coat-cuff in the delicate lace of a lady's sleeve in passing.

The wearer of the sleeve had her back to me, and I saw the white shoulders go up in a little shrug of petulance whilst I sought to disentangle the button. Then she turned to face me and the words of apology froze on my lips. 'Twas Mistress Margery, standing at ease with--good heavens! with Richard Jennifer and Colonel Banastre Tarleton for her company!

Here was a halter, with a double snaffle at the end of it, was the thought that flashed upon me; and I was gathering my wits to brazen it out in some such manner as to leave Jennifer unattainted, when my lady give a little start and a shriek.

"La, Mr. Septimus; how you startled me!" she cried. Then, without a tremor of the lip or a pause for breath-taking, she presented me: "Colonel Tarleton; Mr. Septimus Ireton, of Iretondene in Virginia." And next to Dick: "Mr. Richard; my very good friend, Mr. Ireton."

'Twas done so cleverly and with such an air that even Dick, who had known her from childhood, was struck dumb with admiration, as his face sufficiently advertised. And, indeed, I had much ado to play my own part with any decent self-possession, though I did make shift to bow stiffly, and to say: "I see I should have brought the Iretondene title deeds with me to make you sure that I am not my rebel cousin John, Mistress Margery. Your servant, Colonel Tarleton; and yours, Mr. Richard."

Dick's bow was an elaborate hiding of his tell-tale face; but the colonel's was the slightest of nods, and I could feel the sloe-black eyes of him boring into my very soul.

Had my lady given him but a moment's time I make no doubt he would have come instantly at the truth and the little farce would have been turned into a tragedy on the spot. But she gave him no time. The spinet in the ball-room alcove was tinkling out the overture to a minuet, and she laid the tips of her dainty fingers on the colonel's arm.

"This will be ours to walk through, will it not, Colonel Tarleton?" she said, playing the sprightly minx to the very climax of perfection. Then she dipped us a curtsy. "_Au revoir_, gentlemen. 'Tis a thousand pities you had not joined sooner and so had the red coat and small-sword to grace you here."

When they were gone, Dick laughed sardonically.

"Saw you ever such a cool-blood little jade in all your life? 'Twas with me as it was with you; I, too, stumbled upon them, and the colonel bustled me and set his heel on my foot. I daresay I should have had myself in irons in another moment but for Madge. She slipped in between and introduced us as sweetly as you please."

"Nevertheless," said I, "the colonel recognized us both."

"No! Think you so?"

"'Tis certain enough to play upon. What we do now must be done quickly or not at all. What have you overheard?"

He swore softly. "Never a cursed word; less than nothing of any interest to Dan Morgan."

"We must try again. 'Twill surely be talked of here if the army is about to move. Do you take a turn in the anteroom and meet me in a quarter of an hour at the outer door."

At the word, Dick promptly lost himself in the throng whilst I made a slow circuit of the refreshment table. Once I thought I had the clue when a girl hanging on the arm of an infantry lieutenant said: "Will it be true that you will presently go out to hunt the rebels down, Mr. Thornicroft?" But the prudent lieutenant smiled and put her off cleverly, leaving his fair questioner--and me--none the wiser.

I went on, drifting aimlessly from group to group and dallying of set purpose. If I had read Colonel Tarleton's glance aright, the moments were growing diamond-precious; but as yet neither half of my errand was done. Come what might, I must see Margery again and have her tell me where and how to find the priest; and 'twas borne in upon me that she would come back to seek me as soon as she could be free of her partner in the dance.

The forecast as to my lady had its fulfilment while yet the spinetter was striking out the final chords of the minuet. A lady dropped her kerchief, and I was before her swain in stooping to pick it up. As I bowed low in returning the bit of lace to its owner, a voice that I had learned to know and love whispered in my ear.

"Make your way to the clock landing of the stair; I must have speech with you," it said; and for a wonder I was cool enough to obey with no more than a sidelong glance at my lady passing on the arm of another epauletted dangler.

She was before me at the meeting place, and there was no laughing welcome in the deep-welled eyes. Instead, they flashed me a look that made me wince.

"What folly is this, sir?" she demanded. "Will you never have done taking my honor and your own life into your reckless hands?"

I bowed my head to the storm. With the dagger of my miserable errand sticking in my heart there was no fight in me.

"I am but come to do your bidding," I said, slowly, for the words cost me sorely in the coin of anguish. "I had your letter, and if you will say how I may find Father Matthieu--"

She broke me in the midst. "_Mon Dieu!_" she cried. "Could I guess that you would come here, into the very noose of the gallows? Oh, how you do heap scorn on scorn upon me! Once you made me give silent consent to a falsehood you told; twice, nay, thrice, you have made me disloyal to the king; and now you come again to make me look the world in the face and tell a smiling lie to shield you! O Holy Mother, pity me!" And with this she put her face in her hands and began to sob.

Now we were only measurably isolated on the stair, and some sense of the hazard we took--a hazard involving her as well as Richard and myself--steadied me with a sudden shock.

"Control yourself," I whispered. "What is done, is done; and the misery is not all yours to suffer. Tell me how I may find the priest, and I will do my errand and begone."

"You can not stay to find him now--you must not," she insisted, coming out of the fit of despair with a rebound. "He is in the town--indeed, I know not where he is just now. Can you not endure it a little longer, Captain Ireton?"

"No," said I, sullenly. "I have been living a lie all these months to the friend I love best, and I will not do it more."

Could I be mistaken? Surely there was a flash not of anger in the eyes that were lifted to mine, and a tremulous note of eagerness in the voice that said: "Then Dick does not know?--you have not told him?"

"No; I have told no one."

"Poor Dick!" she said softly. "I thought he knew, and I--"

She paused, and in the pause it flashed upon me how she had wronged my dear lad; how she had thought he would make brazen love to her knowing she was the wife of another. I thanked God in my heart that I had been able to right him thus far.

After a time she said: "Why did you make me marry you, Monsieur John? Oh, I have racked my brain so for the answer to that question. I know you said it was to save my honor. But surely we have paid a heavier penalty than any that could have been laid upon me had you left me as I was."

"I was but a short-sighted fool, and no prophet," I rejoined, striving hard to keep the bitterness of soul out of my words. "At the moment it seemed the only way out of the pit of doubt into which my word to Colonel Tarleton had plunged you. But there was another motive. You saw the paper I signed that night, with Lieutenant Tybee and your father's factor for the witnesses?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what it was?"

"No."

"'Twas the last will and testament of one John Ireton, gentleman, in which he bequeathed to Margery, his wife, his estate of Appleby Hundred."

"Appleby Hundred?" she echoed. "But my father--"

"Your father holds but a confiscator's title, and it, with many others, has been voided by the Congress of North Carolina. Richard Jennifer is my dear friend, and you--"

"I begin to understand--a little," she said, and now her voice was low and she would not look at me. Then, in the same low tone: "But now--now you would be free again?"

"How can you ask? As matters stand, I have marred your life and Dick's most hopelessly. Do you wonder that I have been reckless of the hangman? that I care no jot for my interfering life at this moment, save as the taking of it may involve you and Richard?"

"No, surely," she said, still speaking softly. And now she gave me her eyes to look into, and the hardness was all melted out of them. "Did you come here, under the shadow of the gallows, to tell me this, Monsieur John?"

"There shall be no more half-confidences between us, dear lady. I had my leave of General Morgan on the score of our need for better information of Lord Cornwallis's designs; but I should have come in any case--wanting the leave, my commission as a spy, or any other excuse."

"To tell me this?"

"To do the bidding of your letter, and to say that whilst I live I shall be shamed for the bitter words I gave you when I was sick."

"I mind them not; I had forgotten them," she said.

"But I have not forgotten, nor ever shall. Will you say you forgive me, Margery?"

"For thinking I had poisoned you? How do you know I did not?"

"I have seen Scipio. Will you shrive me for that disloyalty, dear lady?"

"Did I not say I had forgotten it?"

"Thank you," I said, meaning it from the bottom of my heart. "Now one thing more, and you shall send me to Father Matthieu. 'Tis a shameful thing to speak of, but the thought of it rankles and will rankle till I have begged you to add it to the things forgotten. That morning in your dressing-room--"

She put up her hands as if she would push the words back.

"Spare me, sir," she begged. "There are some things that must always be unspeakable between us, and that is one of them. But if it will help you to know--that I know--how--how you came there--"

She was flushing most painfully, and I was scarce more at ease. But having gone thus far, I must needs let the thought consequent slip into words.

"Your father's motives have ever been misunderstandable to me. What could he hope to gain by such a thing?"

I had no sooner said it than I could have bitten my masterless tongue. For in the very voicing of the wonder I saw, or thought I saw, Gilbert Stair's purpose. Since I had not made good my promise to die and leave the estate to Margery, he would at least make sure of his daughter's dowry in it by putting it beyond us to set the marriage aside as a thing begun but not completed. So, having this behind-time flash of after-wit, I made haste to efface the question I had asked.

"Your pardon, I pray you; I see now 'tis a thing we must both bury out of sight. But to the other--the matter which has brought me hither; will you put me in the way of finding Father Matthieu?"

We had talked on through the measures of a cotillion, and the dancers, warm and wearied, were beginning to fill the entrance hall below. Our poor excuse for privacy would be gone in a minute or two, and she spoke quickly.

"You shall see Father Matthieu, and I will help you. But you must not linger here. In a few days the army will be moving northward--Oh, heavens! what have I said!"

"Nothing," I cut in swiftly; "you are speaking now to your husband--not to the spy. Go on, if you please."

"We shall return to Appleby Hundred within the fortnight. There, if you are still--if you desire it, you may meet the good _curé_, and--"

A much-bepowdered captain of cavalry was coming up the stair to claim her, and I was fain to let her go. But at my passing of her to the step below, I whispered: "I shall keep the tryst--my first and last with you, dear lady. Adieu."

So soon as she was gone I made haste to find Richard, having, as I feared, greatly overstayed my appointment to meet him at the door. He was not among the promenaders in the hall, so I began to drift again, through the ball-room and so on to where the spread table stood ringed with its groups of nibblers. I had made no more than half the round of the refectory when I saw Margery standing in the curtained arch, looking this way and that, with anxious terror written plainly in her face.

"What is it?" I asked, when she had found me out.

"'Tis the worst that could happen," she whispered. "You are discovered, both of you. Colonel Tarleton was too shrewd for us. He has let it be known among the officers that there are two spies in the house, and now--Hark! what is that?"

We were standing in a deep window-bay and I drew the curtain an inch or two. The air without was filled with the trampling of hoofbeats on greensward. A light-horse troop was surrounding the manor house.

I drew her arm in mine and led her back to the ball-room; 'twas now come to this, that open publicity was our best safeguard. "We must find Dick," said I. "Have you seen him?"

"No."

Together we made the slow circuit of the dancing-room, but Jennifer was not to be found. Out of the tail of my eye I saw a soldier slipping in here and there to stand statue-like against the wall. This brought it to a matter of minutes, of seconds, mayhap, and still we looked in vain for Dick.

"Oh, why did you bring him here? He will surely be taken!" Her voice was tremulous with fear, and I answered as I could, being sore at heart, in spite of all, that her chief concern should be for Richard.

But by now my purpose was well taken, and though it appeared that Richard Jennifer was more than ever my successful rival, I pledge you, my dears, I had no thought of leaving him behind. So we made another slow round of the rooms, and whilst we were looking for Dick I spoke in guarded whispers to warn my lady of Falconnet's return. But the warning was not needed.

Her shudder of loathing shook the hand on my arm. "That man! Oh, Monsieur John! I fear him day and night! If I could but run away; but we are not finding Dick--we _must_ find him quickly!"

There was no other place to look save in the entrance hall, and at the door one of the statue-like soldiers took two steps aside and barred the way. I faced about and we plunged once again into the throng, but not before I had had a glimpse of Richard in the hall beyond. When the chance offered, I bent to whisper.

"Dick is in the hall, looking for me, go you to him and warn him. I may not pass the door, as you have seen."

"He will not escape without you," she demurred.

"Tell him he must. Tell him I say he must!"

She glanced over her shoulder with a look in her eyes that made me think of a wounded bird fluttering in the net of the fowler.

"Oh, 'tis hard, hard!" she murmured.

I snatched the word from her lips. "To choose between love and wifely duty? Then I make it a command. Go, quickly!"

She went at that, and I made my way slowly to the far side of the ball-room, taking post in a deep-recessed window giving upon the lawn. Though it was January and the night was chill and raw, the rooms were summer warm with the breath of the crush, and some one had swung the casement.

Without, I could hear the horses of the waiting troop champing restlessly at their bits, and now and again the low gentling words of the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of British officers at a swoop, and was taking his measures accordingly.

'Twas while I was listening to the champing horses that I heard my name whispered in the darkness beyond the open casement; I turned slowly, and the nearest of the soldier watchers began to edge his way toward my window.

"'Tis I--Dick Jennifer," whispered the voice without. "Swing the casement a little wider and out with you. Be swift about it, for God'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 casement 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 Dick's late antagonist lying prone 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 horsemen and were flying down the broad avenue with all the troopers who had caught sight of us thundering at our heels, Dick 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 Dick, 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," Dick 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," Dick 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, damns 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 Dick, 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."

Dick 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 inpricking 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 restitution 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 assurance 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 damned queasiness that was showing me the burying trench." And then he added softly: "God 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.

Dick 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 assault.

'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.

"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of that--"

But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.

"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.

But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it. But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.

"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall we never get into it?"

'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a rout. The order was misunderstood,--'twas received at the precise moment of the upcoming of the British reserves,--and the Marylanders fell back. In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the horses.

At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy, sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give the _coup de grâce_, he gave the quick command: "About face! Fire! Charge!"

I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. "Charge them, lads! they're sabering the Georgians!"

A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went, with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages--the heavy dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled from catapults.

'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler--figuring in the histories as an unnamed sergeant--had his share.

It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton--a true Briton in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the retreat--was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons. Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler, and my own mount.

When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut him down.

'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellow _sabreur_ drop his weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found his antagonist's sword hand.

At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,--it hangs now over the chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,--gave the signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse, wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so we did not come off scatheless.

This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.

The battle fought and won,--'twas over and done with two full hours before noon,--Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away, and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.

Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it, burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.

'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary, mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.

Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions. Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with Morgan at the upper fords.

Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners, and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank of the stream.

Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel. 'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us leave to rest.