The Master of Appleby Part 39

By good hap we came to the crossing of the cavern stream without meeting any foeman; and on the farther side of the shallow ford we found the old borderer awaiting us.

"Ez I allow, we've smelt the bait in the trap and come off with whole bones, like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego," he said, mixing metaphor, Scripture phrase and frontier idiom as was his wont. Then he put a leg over his horse and gave the stirrup-word: "From now on, old Jehu, the son o' Nims.h.i.+, is the hoss-whipper we've got to beat. Get ye behind, Cap'n John, and give the hoss that lags a half inch 'r so of your sword-p'int."

Then and there began a night flight long to be remembered. Down the valley of the swift river to the ford where Yeates and I had crossed after the mock rescue of Margery the night before, we let the horses pick the way as they could. But once beyond the ford, where the trace was wider and the footing less precarious, we plied whip and spur, pus.h.i.+ng the saddle-beasts for every stride we could get out of them in the blind race.

I have marveled often that we came not once to grief in all this long night-gallop through the darkness. There was every chance for it. The over-arching trees of the great forest shut out all the starlight, and the trace was no more than a bridle-path, rougher than any cart road.

Yet we held the breakneck pace steadily, save for the time it took to thread some steep defile to a stream crossing, or to scramble up its fellow on the opposite side; and when the dawn began to gray in the sky ahead, we were well out of the broken mountain region and into the opener forest of the hill country.

The sun was yet below the eastern horizon when we came to the fording of a larger stream than any we had crossed in the night. Its course was toward the sunrise, hence I took it for some tributary of the Catawba or the Broad.

"'Tis the Broad itself," said Ephraim Yeates, in answer to my asking; "and yit it ain't; leastwise, it ain't the one you know. 'Tis the one the Parley-voos claimed in the old war, and they call it the Frinch Broad."

"But that flows north and westward, if I remember aright," said I.

"So it do, so it do--in gineral. But hereabouts 'twill run all ways for Sunday, by spells."

"If this be the French Broad we are not yet out of the Tuckasege country, as I take it."

"Mighty nigh to it; nigh enough to make camp for a resting spell. I reckon ye're a-needing that same pretty toler'ble bad, ain't ye, little gal?" this last to Margery.

Weary as she was she smiled upon him brightly, as though he had been her grandsire and so free to name her how he pleased.

"I shall sleep well when we are out of danger. But you must not stop for me, or for Jeanne, till 'tis safe to do so."

"Safe? Lord love ye, child! 'safe' is a word beyond us yit, and will be till we sot ye down on your daddy's door-stone. But we'll make out to give ye a bite and sup and forty winks o' sleep immejitly, _if_ not sooner, now."

So, on the farther side of the stream the hunter led the way aside, and when we were come to a small meadow glade with good grazing for the horses, he called a halt, lifted the women from their saddles and came to help me ease d.i.c.k down. The poor lad was stiff and sore, having no more use of his joints than if he were a bandaged mummy; but the fever delirium had pa.s.sed and he was able to laugh feebly at the tree-limb contrivance rigged to hold him in the saddle.

"How did we come out of it, Jack?" he asked, when we had let him feel the comfort of lying flat upon his back on the soft sward.

"As you see. We are all here, and all in fair fettle, saving yourself.

You're the heaviest loser."

He smiled, and his eyes languid with the fever sought out Margery, who would not come anigh whilst I was with him.

"That remains to be seen, Jack. If my dream comes true, I shall be the richest gainer."

"What did you dream?"

He beckoned me to bend lower over him. "I dreamed I was sore hurt, and that she was binding up my bruises and crying over me."

"'Twas no dream," I said; and with that I went to help Yeates make a bough shelter for the women while Uncanoola was grinding the maize for the breakfast cakes.

'Tis not my purpose to weary you with a day-by-day accounting for all that befell us on the way back to Mecklenburg. Suffice it to say that we ate and slept and rose to mount and ride again; this for five days and nights, during which Jennifer's fever grew upon him steadily.

At the close of the fifth day our night halt was in a deserted log cabin at the edge of an unfinished clearing in the heart of the forest.

Here Richard's sickness anch.o.r.ed us, and for three full weeks the journey paused.

We nursed the lad as best we could for a fortnight, dosing him with stewings of such roots and herbs as the Catawba could find in the wood.

Then, when we were at our wits' ends, and Yeates and I were casting about how we could compa.s.s the bringing of a doctor from the settlements, the fever took a turn for the better,--of its own accord, or for Uncanoola's physickings, we knew not which,--and at the end of the third week d.i.c.k was up and able to ride again, this time without the forked stick to hold him in the saddle.

After this we went on without mishap, and with no hards.h.i.+p greater than that of living solely upon the meat victual provided by the hunter's rifle; and you who know this plough-dressed region at this later day will wonder when I write it down that in all that long faring, or rather to the last day's stage of it, we saw never a face of any of our kind, or of the Catawba's.

You may be sure the month or more we spent thus in the heart of the wildwood was but a sorry time for me. While the excitement of the pursuit and rescue lasted, and later, when anxiety for Richard filled the hours of the long days and nights, I was held a little back from slipping into that pit of despair which I had digged for myself.

But when the strain was off and d.i.c.k was up and fit again, the misery of it all came back with added goadings. I had never dreamed how cutting sharp 'twould be to see these two together day by day; to see her loving, tender care of him, and to hear him babble of his love for her in his feverish vaporings. Yet all this I must endure, and with it a thing even harder. For, to make it worse, if worse could be, the shadow of complete estrangement had fallen between Margery and me. True to her word, given in that moment when I had besought her not to speak aloud for her own safety's sake, she had never opened her lips to me; and for aught she said or did I might have been a deaf-mute slave beneath her notice.

And as she drew away from me, she seemed to draw the closer to Richard Jennifer, nursing him alive when he was at his worst, and giving him all the womanly care and sympathy a sick man longs for. And later, when he was fit to ride again, she had him always at her side in the onward faring.

As I have said before, this was all as I would have it. Yet it made me sick in my soul's soul; and at times I must needs fall behind to rave it out in solitude, cursing the day that I was born, and that other more misfortunate day when I had reared the barrier impa.s.sable between these two.

What wonder, then, that, as we neared the fighting field of the great war, I grew more set upon seizing the first chance that might offer an honorable escape from all these heartburnings? 'Twas a weakness, if you choose; I set down here naught but the simple fact, which had by now gone as far beyond excusings as the underlying cause of it was beyond forgiveness.

'Twas on the final day, the day when we were riding tantivy to reach Queensborough by evening, that my deliverance came. I say deliverance because at the moment it had the look of a short shrift and a ready halter.

We had crossed our own Catawba and were putting our horses at the steep bank on the outcoming side, when my saddle slipped. Dismounting to tighten the girth, I called to the others to press on, saying I should overtake them shortly.

The promise was never kept. I scarce had my head under the saddle flap before a couple of stout knaves in homespun, appearing from I know not where, had me fast gripped by the arms, whilst a third made sure of the horse.

"A despatch rider," said the bigger of the two who pinioned me. "Search him, Martin, lad, whilst I hold him; then we'll pay him out for Tarleton's hanging of poor Sandy M'Guire."

I held my peace and let them search, taking the threat for a bit of soldier bullyragging meant to keep me quiet. But when they had turned the pockets of my borrowed coat inside out and ripped the lining and made it otherwise as much the worse for their mishandling as it was for wear, the third man fetched a rope.

"Did you mean that, friend?--about the hanging?" I asked, wondering if this should be my loophole of escape from the life grown hateful.

"Sure enough," said the big man, coolly. "You'd best be saying your prayers."

I laughed. "Were you wearing my coat and I yours, you might hang me and welcome; in truth, you may as it is. Which tree will you have me at?"

The man stared at me as at one demented. Then he burst out in a guffaw.

"Damme, if you bean't a cool plucked one! I've a mind to take you to the colonel."

"Don't do it, my friend. Though I am something loath to be snuffed out by the men of my own side, we need not haggle over the niceties. Point out your tree."

"No, by G.o.d! you're too willing. What's at the back of all this?"

"Nothing, save a decent reluctance to spoil your sport. Have at it, man, and let's be done with it."

"Not if you beg me on your knees. You'll go to the colonel, I say, and he may hang you if he sees fit. You must be a most d.a.m.nable villain to want to die by the first rope you lay eyes on."

"That is as it may be. Who is your colonel?"

"Nay, rather, who are you?"

I gave my name and circ.u.mstance and was loosed of the hand-grip, though the third man dropped the cord and stepped back to hold me covered with his rifle.

"An Ireton, you say? Not little Jock, surely!"

"No, big Jock; big enough to lay you on your back, though you do have a hand as thick as a ham."