The Master of Appleby Part 30

HOW WE KEPT THE FEAST OF BITTER HERBS

You may be sure that Richard Jennifer's bitter reproachings came home to me in sharpest fas.h.i.+on, the more since now I saw how we had lost our chance by neglecting the commonest precautions. Having determined to attack, the merest novice of a general would have moved his forces to the nearest point; would have had his scouts search out the ford beforehand; and, above all, would never have delayed the blow beyond the earliest moment of the enemy's unwatchfulness.

So now, when all was lost, I fell to kneading out this sodden dough of afterwit with Ephraim Yeates; but when I sought to carry off the blame as mine by right, the old borderer would not give me leave.

"Fair and easy, Cap'n John; fair _and_ easy," he protested. "Let's give that old sarpent, which is the devil and Satan, his dues. Ez I allow, there was the whole enduring pa.s.sel of us to ricollact all them things.

To be sure, we had our warnings, mistrusting all along that this here dad-blame' hoss-captain had his finger in the pie. But, lawzee! we had ne'er a man o' G.o.d 'mongst us to rise up and prophesy what was a-going to happen if we didn't get up and scratch gravel immejitly, _if_ not sooner; though I won't deny that Cap'n d.i.c.k did try his hand that-away."

"True; and I would now we had listened to him," said I, gloomily enough.

"We have lost our chance, and G.o.d knows if we shall ever have another.

Falconnet must have half a hundred men, red and white, in the powder train; and by this time he has learned from the Indian who reconnoitered us on the mountain that we are within striking distance. With the enemy forewarned, as he is, we might as well try to cut the women out of my Lord Cornwallis's headquarters."

The old man chuckled his dry little laugh, though what food for merriment he could find in the hopeless prospect was more than I could understand.

"Ho! ho! Cap'n John; I reckon ez how ye're a-taking that word from yonder down-hearted boy of our'n. Wait a spell till ye're ez old ez I be; then you'll never say die till ye're plumb dead."

Now, truly, though I was dismally disheartened, I could rea.s.sure him on the point of perseverance. 'Tis an Ireton failing to lose heart and hope when the skies are dark; but this is counterbalanced in some of us by a certain quality of unreasoning persistence which will go on running long after the race is well lost. My father had this stubborn virtue to the full; and so had that old Ironside Ireton from whom we are descended.

"That's the kind o' talk!" was the old man's comment. "Now we'll set to work in sure-enough arnest. Ez I said a spell back, my stummick is crying cupboard till I can't make out to hear my brain a-sizzling. Maybe you took notice o' me a-praying down yonder that the good Lord'd vouchsafe to give us scalps _and_ provender. For our onfaithfulness He's seed fit to withhold the one; but maybe we'll find a raven 'r two, or a widder's mite 'r meal-bar'l, somewheres in this howling wilderness, yit."

So saying, he summoned the Catawba with a low whistle, and when Uncanoola joined us, told him to stay with Jennifer whilst we should make another effort to find the ford.

"There's n.o.body like an Injun for a nuss when a man's chin-deep into trouble," quoth this wise old woodsman, when we were feeling our way cautiously along the margin of the swift little river. "If Cap'n d.i.c.k rips and tears and pulls the gra.s.s up by the roots, the chief'll only say, 'Wah!' If he sits up and cusses till he's black in the face, the chief'll say, 'Ugh!' And that's just about all a man hankers for when his sore's a-running in the night season, and all Thy waters have gone over his head. Selah!"

Now you are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something he had lost.

"Right about here-away is where they made out to cross," he announced; "the whole enduring pa.s.sel of 'em, ez I reckon--our seven varmints and the hoss-captain's powder train. Give me the heft o' your shoulder till we take the water and projec' 'round a spell on t'other side."

We squared ourselves, wholly by the sense of touch, with the river's edge, locked arms for the better bracing against the swift current, and so essayed the ford. It was no more than thigh deep, and though the water lashed and foamed over the shoal like a torrent in flood, there was a clean bottom and good footing. Once safe across, we turned our faces down-stream, and in a little time came to the deserted glade with the embers of the kidnappers' fire glowing dully in the midst.

Here a sign of some later visitants than Falconnet's hors.e.m.e.n set us warily on our guard. The tepee-lodge of dressed skins, which had been left undisturbed by the sham rescuers, had vanished.

"Umph! The redskins have been back to make sure o' what they left behind," said Yeates, in a whisper. "I jing! that's jest the one thing I was a-hoping they'd forget to do. I reckon ez how that spiles our last living chance o' finding anything that mought help slack off on the belly-pinch."

So he said, but for this once his wisdom was at fault and tricky fortune favored us. When we had found the covert in the bushes where the two horses had been concealed we lighted upon a precious prize. 'Twas a bag of parched corn in the grain; some share of the provision of the captive party overlooked by those who had returned to gather up the leavings.

With this treasure-trove we made all haste to rejoin our companions. And now behold what a miracle of reanimation may be wrought by a few handfuls of bread grain! In a trice the Catawba had found a water-worn stone to serve for a mortar, and another for a pestle. These and the bag of corn were carried back to a sheltered ravine which we had crossed on our late advance; and here the Indian fell to work to grind the corn into coa.r.s.e meal, whilst Yeates and I kindled a fire to heat the baking-stones.

In these preparations for the breaking of our long fast even Richard bestirred himself to help; and when the cakes were baked and eaten--with what zestful sharp-sauce of appet.i.te none but the famished may ever know--we were all in better heart, and better able to face the new and far more desperate plight in which our lack of common foresight had entangled us.

For now, since we knew the full measure of the peril menacing our dear lady, there was need for swift determination and a blow as swift and sure; a _coup de main_ which should atone in one shrewd push for the sleeveless failure of the night. So we would grip hands around, even to the stolid Indian, and swear a solemn oath to cut the women out or else to leave our bones to whiten in the forest wilderness.

You'll laugh at all these vowings and handstrikings, I dare say, and protest there was a deal of such fustian heroics in your doddering old chronicler's day.

Mayhap there was. But, my dears, I would you might remember as you laugh that we of that simple-hearted elder time lived by some half-century nearer to that age of chivalry you dote on--in the story-books. Also, I would you might mingle with your merriment a little of the saving grace of charity; letting it hint that, perchance, these you call "heroics"

were but the free, untrammeled folk-speech of that sincerer natural heart which you have learned to silence and suppress. For I dare affirm that now, as then and always, there will be some spark of the Promethean fire in every heart of man or maid, else this would indeed be a sorry world to live in.

So, as I say, we four struck hands anew on the desperate venture; and, after carefully burying the fire to the end that it might not betray us while we slept, we burrowed in the nearest leaf bed to s.n.a.t.c.h an hour or two of rest before the toils and hazards of the chase should begin afresh.

In the thick darkness following hard upon the douting of the fire, I saw not who my nearest bed-fellow might be. But ere I slept a hand was laid on my shoulder, and a voice that I knew well, said: "Are you waking yet, Jack?"

I said I was; and at that my poor lad would blurt out all his sorrow and shame for the mad fit of despair that had set him on to rail and curse me.

"You will say with good reason that I am but a sorry jockey for a friend--to fly out at you like a madman as I did," he added, by way of fitting epilogue; and to this I gave him the answer he wished, bidding him never let a thought of it spoil him of the rest he needed.

"The debt of obligation and forgiveness is all upon the other side, as you will some day know, d.i.c.k, my lad," said I, hovering, as a coward always will, upon the innuendo-edge of the confession he will never make.

He mistook the pointing of this protest, as he was bound to.

"Never say that, Jack. 'Twould be a dog-in-the-manger trick in me to blame you for loving her. And since you speak of debts, I do protest I owe you somewhat, too. With so fair a chance to cut a clean swath in that fair-weather month at Appleby Hundred, another man would have left me scant gleanings in the field, I'll be bound; whereas--"

"d.a.m.n you!" I broke in roughly, "will you never have done and go to sleep?" And so, taking surly harshness for a mask when my heart was nigh bursting with shame and grief, I turned my back and cut him off.

XXIV

HOW WE FOUND THE SUNKEN VALLEY

Looking back upon the hazards and chance-takings of our adventure in the wilderness, I recall no more promising risk than that we ran by sleeping unsentried within rifle-shot, for aught we knew, of the camp of the enemy.

But touching this, 'tis only on the mimic stage of the romances that the players rise to the plane of superhuman sagacity and angel-wit, never faltering in their lines nor betraying by slip or tongue-trip their kins.h.i.+p with common humankind. Being mere mortals we were not so endowed; we were but four outwearied men, well spent in the long chase, with never a leg among us fit to pace a sentry beat nor a decent wakeful eye to keep it company. So, as I have said, we took the risk and slept; would have slept as soundly, I dare say, had the risk been twice as great.

We were astir at the earliest graying of the dawn, Richard and I, and were the laggards of the company at that, since the old hunter was already out and away, and the Indian had kindled a fire and was grinding more of the parched corn for the morning meal. d.i.c.k sat up in his leaf litter, yawning like a sleepy giant.

"Lord, Jack," said he; "if ever we win out of this coil with a full day to spare, I mean to sleep the clock hands twice around at a stretch, I promise you. 'Twas but a catch, this cat-nap; no more than enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth."

"Aye; but the taste may be washed out," said I. "I am for a dip in the river; what say you?"

He took me at the word, and we had an eye-opening plunge in the spring-cold flood of the swift little river at the mouth of our ravine.

'Twas most marvelous refres.h.i.+ng; and with appet.i.tes sharp set and whetted by the stripping and plunging we were back at the fire in time to give good day to Ephraim Yeates, at that moment returned with the hindquarters of a fine yearling buck, fresh-killed, across his shoulders.

Seeing the deer's meat, we would think the old hunter's thrift of the dawn sufficiently accounted for; but when the cuts were a-broil, we were made to know that the buck was merely a lucky incident in the early morning scouting.

Taking time by the forelock, the old borderer had swept a circle of reconnaissance around our halting place, "to get the p'ints of the compa.s.s," as he would say. His first discovery was that the ford we had found in the darkness served as the river crossing of an ancient and well-used Indian trace. Along this trace from the eastward the powder train had come, no longer ago than mid-afternoon of yesterday; and arguing from this that the night camp of the band would be but a short march to the westward, Yeates had pushed on to feel out the enemy's position.

For a mile or more beyond the ford he had trailed the convoy easily. The Indian trace or path, well-trampled by the numerous horses of the cavalcade, followed the up-stream windings of the swift river straight into the eye of the western mountains. But in the eye itself, a rocky defile where the slopes on each hand became frowning battlements to narrow valley and stream, the one to a darkling gorge, the other to a thundering torrent, the trail was lost as completely as if the powder convoy had vanished into thin air.

Here was a fresh complication, and one that called for instant action.

We had counted upon a battle royal in any attempt to rescue the women; but that Falconnet, impeded as he was by the slow movements of the powder cargo, could slip away, was a contingency for which we were wholly unprepared.

So, as you would guess, the hunter breakfast was hurriedly despatched; and by the time the sun was shoulder high over the eastern hills we had broken camp and crossed the river, and were pressing forward to the gorge of disappearance.

On each hand the mountains rose precipitous, the one on the left swelling unbroken to a bald and rounded summit, forest covered save for its tonsured head high in air, while that on the right was steeper and lower, with a line of cliffs at the top. As we fared on, the valley narrowed to a mere chasm, with the river thundering along the base of the tonsured mountain, and the Indian path hugging the cliff on the right.

In the gloomiest depths of this defile we came upon the hunter's stumbling-block. A tributary stream, issuing from a low cavern in the right-hand cliff, crossed the Indian path and the chasm at a bound and plunged noisily into the flood of the larger river. On the hither side of this barrier stream the trail of the powder convoy led plainly down into the water; and, so far as one might see, that was the end of it.