Matilda Montgomerie Or The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 6

"We have alarmed you, Desborough," said the younger, as they both advanced leisurely to the beach. "Do you apprehend danger from our presence?"

A keen searching glance flashed from the ferocious eye of the ruffian.

It was but momentary. Quitting his firm grasp of the knife, he suffered his limbs to relax their tension, and aiming at carelessness, observed with a smile, that was tenfold more hideous from its being forced:

"Well now, I guess, who would have expected to see two officers so fur away from the fort at this early hour of the mornin'?"

"Ah," said the taller of the two, availing himself of the first opening to a pun which had been afforded, "we are merely out on a _shooting_ excursion."

Desborough gazed doubtingly on the speaker. "Strange sort of a dress that for shootin' I guess--them cloaks must be a great tanglement in the bushes."

"They serve to keep our _arms_ warm," continued Middlemore, perpetrating another of his execrables.

"To keep your arms warm! well sure-_ly_, if that arn't droll. It may be some use to keep the primins dry, I reckon; but I can't see the use of keepin' the fowlin' pieces warm. Have you met with any game yet, officers? I expect as how I can point you out a purty spry place for pattridges and sich like."

"Thank you, my good fellow; but we have appointed to meet our _game_ here."

The dry manner in which this was observed had a visible effect on the settler. He glanced an eye of suspicion around, to see if other than the two officers were in view, and it was not without effort that he a.s.sumed an air of unconcern, as he replied:

"Well, I expect I have been many a long year a hunter, as well as other things, and yet, dang me if I ever calculated the game would come to me.

It always costs me a purty good chase in the woods."

"How the fellow _beats_ about the _bush_ to find what _game_ we are driving at," observed Middlemore, in an under tone, to his companion.

"Let him alone for that," returned he whom our readers have doubtless recognised for Henry Grantham. "I will match his punning against your cunning any day."

"The truth is, he is _fis.h.i.+ng_ to discover our motive for being here, and to find out if we are in any way connected with the disappearance of his rifles."

During this conversation _apart_, the Yankee had carelessly approached his canoe, and was affecting to make some alteration in the disposition of the sail. The officers, the younger especially, keeping a sharp look-out upon his movements, followed at some little distance, until they, at length, stood on the extreme verge of the sands. Their near approach seemed to render Desborough impatient.

"I expect, officers," he said, with a hastiness that, at any other moment, would have called down immediate reproof, if not chastis.e.m.e.nt, "you will only be losin' time here for nothin'; about a mile beyond Hartley's there'll be plenty of pattridges at this hour, and I am jist goin to start myself for a little shootin' in the Sandusky river."

"Than I presume," said Grantham, with a smile, "you are well provided with silver bullets, Desborough; for, in the hurry of departure, you seem likely to forget the only medium through which leaden ones can be made available--not a rifle or a shot-gun do I see."

The man fixed his eyes for a moment, with a penetrating expression, on the youth, as if he would have sought a meaning deeper than the words implied. His reading seemed to satisfy him that all was right.

"What," he observed, with a leer, half cunning, half insolent, "if I have hid my rifle near the Sandusky swamp, the last time I hunted there?"

"In that case," observed the laughing Middlemore, to whom the opportunity was irresistible, "you are going out on a _wild goose chase_ indeed. Your prospects for a good hunt, as you call it, cannot be said to _be sure as a gun_; for in regard to the latter, you may depend some one has discovered and _rifled_ it before this."

"You seem to have laid in a store of provisions for this trip, Desborough," remarked Henry Grantham; "how long do you purpose being absent?"

"I guess three or four days," was the sullen reply.

"Three or four days! why your bag contains"--and the officer partly raised a corner of the sail, "provisions for a week, or, at least, for _two_ for half that period."

The manner in which the _two_ was emphasised did not escape the attention of the settler. He was visibly disconcerted, nor was he at all rea.s.sured when the younger officer proceeded:

"By the bye, Desborough, we saw you leave the hut with a companion--what has become of him?"

The settler, who had now recovered his self-possession, met the question without the slightest show of hesitation:

"I expect you mean, young man," he said, with insufferable insolence, "a help as I had from Hartley's farm, to a.s.sist gittin' down the things. He took home along sh.o.r.e when I went back to the hut for the small bores."

"Oh ho, sir! the rifles are not then concealed near the Sandusky swamp, I find?"

For once the wily settler felt his cunning had overreached itself. In the first fury of his subdued rage, he muttered something amounting to a desire that he could produce them at that moment, as he would well know where to lodge the bullets--but, recovering himself, he said aloud:

"The rale fact is, I've a long gun hid, as I said, near the swamp, but my small bore I always carry with me--only think, jist as I and Hartley's help left the hut, I pit my rifle against the outside wall, not being able to carry it down with the other things, and when I went back a minute or two after, drot me if some tarnation rascal hadn't stole it."

"And if you had the British rascal on t'other sh.o.r.e, you wouldn't be long in tucking a knife into his gizzard, would you?" asked Middlemore, in a nearly verbatim repet.i.tion of the horrid oath originally uttered by Desborough. "I see nothing to warrant our interfering with him," he continued in an under tone to his companion.

Not a little surprised to hear his words repeated, the man lost somewhat of his confidence as he replied, "Well now, sure-_ly_, you officers didn't think nothin' o' that--I expect I was in a mighty rage to find my small bore gone, and I did curse a little heart_y_, to be sure."

"The small bore multiplied in your absence," observed Grantham; "when I looked at the hut there were two."

"Then may be you can tell me who was the particular d----d rascal that stole them," said the settler eagerly.

Middlemore laughed heartily at his companion who observed:

"The particular d----d rascal who removed, not stole them thence, stands before you."

Again the settler looked disconcerted. After a moment's hesitation he continued, with a forced grin that gave an atrocious expression to his whole countenance:

"Well now, you officers are playing a purty considerable spry trick--it's a good lark, I calculate--but you know, as the saying is, enough's as good as a feast. Do tell me, Mr. Grantham," and his discordant voice became more offensive in its effort at a tone of entreaty, "Do tell me where you've hid my small bore; you little think,"

he concluded, with an emphasis then unnoticed by the officers, but subsequently remembered to have been perfectly ferocious, "what reason I have to vally it."

"We never descend to larks of the kind," coolly observed Grantham; "but as you say you value your rifle, it shall be restored to you on one condition."

"And what may that be?" asked the settler, somewhat startled at the serious manner of the officer.

"That you show us what your canoe is freighted with. Here in the bows, I mean."

"Why," rejoined the Yankee quickly, but, as if without design, intercepting the officers' near approach, "that bag, I calculate, contains my provisions, and these here blankets that you see, peepin'

like from under the sail, are what I makes my bed of while out huntin'."

"And are you quite certain there is nothing under those blankets?--nay do not protest--you cannot answer for what may have occurred while your back was turned, on your way to the hut for the rifle."

"By h.e.l.l," exclaimed the settler, bl.u.s.teringly, "were any man to tell me, Jeremiah Desborough, that there was anythin' beside them blankets in the canoe, I would lick him into a jelly, even though he could whip his own weight in wild cats."

"So is it? Now then, Jeremiah Desborough, although I have never yet tried to whip my own weight in wild cats, I tell you there is something more than those blankets; and what is more, I insist upon seeing what that something is."

The settler stood confounded. His eye rolled rapidly from one to the other of the officers, at the boldness and determination of this language. Singly, he could have crushed Henry Grantham in his gripe, even as one of the bears of the forest, near the outskirt of which they stood; but there were two, and while attacking the one, he was sure of being a.s.sailed by the other--nay, what was worse, the neighborhood might be alarmed. Moreover, although they had kept their cloaks carefully wrapped around their persons, there could be little doubt that both officers were armed, not, as they had originally given him to understand, with fowling pieces, but with (at the present close quarters at least) far more efficient weapons--pistols. He was relieved from his embarra.s.sment by Middlemore exclaiming:

"Nay, do not press the poor devil, Grantham; I dare say the story of his hunting is all a hum, and that the fact is, he is merely going to earn an honest penny in one of his free commercial speculations--a little contraband," pointing his finger to the bows, "is it not, Desborough?"

"Why now, officer," said the settler, rapidly a.s.suming a dogged air, as if ashamed of the discovery that had been so acutely made, "you won't hurt a poor feller for doin' a little in this way. Drot me, these are hard times, and this here war jist beginnin' quite pits one to one's s.h.i.+fts."

"This might do, Desborough, were your present freight an arrival instead of a departure, but we all know that contraband is imported, not exported."