"That"s true, anyway," said Ringan, and fell to whittling a stick.
"For three days," I continued, "you have food enough, and if by the end of it you are not attacked you may safely go hunting for more. If nothing happens in a week"s time you will know that I have failed, and you can send another messenger. Ringan would be the best."
"That can hardly be," he said, "because I"m coming with you now."
I could only stare blankly.
"Two"s better than one for this kind of business, and I am no use here--only _fruges consumere natus_, as I learned from the Inveraray dominie. It"s my concern as much as yours, for I brought you here, and I"m trysted with Lawrence to take back word. I"m loath to leave my friends, but my place is at your side, Andrew. So say no more about it."
I knew it was idle to protest. Ringan was as obstinate as a Spanish mule when he chose, and, besides, there was reason in what he said. Two were better than one both for speed in travel and for fighting if the need came, and though I had more woodcraft than he, he had ten times my wisdom. There was something about his matter-of-fact tone which took the enterprise out of the land of impossibilities into a more sober realm. I even began to dream of success.
But when. I looked at Elspeth her eyes were so full of grief and care that my spirits sank again.
"Tell me," I cried, "that you think I am doing right, G.o.d knows it is hard to leave you, and I carry the sorest heart in Virginia. But you would not have me stay idle when my plain duty commands. Say that you bid me go, Elspeth."
"I bid you go," she said bravely, "and I will pray G.o.d to keep you safe." But her eyes belied her voice, for they were swimming with tears. At that moment I got the conviction that I was more to her than a mere companion, that by some miracle I had won a place in that proud and loyal heart. It seemed a cruel stroke of fate that I should get this hope at the very moment when I was to leave her and go into the shadow of death.
But that was no hour to think of love, I took every man apart and swore him, though there was little need, to stand by the girl at all costs.
To Grey I opened my inmost thoughts.
"You and I serve one mistress," I said, "and now I confide her to your care. All that I would have done I am a.s.sured you will do. My heart is easier when I know that you are by her side. Once we were foes, and since then we have been friends, and now you are the dearest friend on earth, for I leave you with all I cherish."
He flushed deeply and gave me his hand.
"Go in peace, sir," he said. "If G.o.d wills that we perish, my last act will be to a.s.sure an easy pa.s.sage to heaven for her we worship. If we meet again, we meet as honourable rivals, and may that day come soon."
So with pistols in belt, and a supply of cartouches and some little food in our pockets, Ringan and I were enfolded in the silence of the woods.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE HORN OF DIARMAID SOUNDS.
We reached the gap, and made slantwise across the farther hill. I did not dare to go clown Clearwater Glen, and, besides, I was aiming for a point farther south than the Rappahannock. In my wanderings with Shalah I had got a pretty good idea of the lie of the mountains on their eastern side, and I had remarked a long ridge which flung itself like a cape far into the lowlands. If we could leave the hills by this, I thought we might strike the stream called the North Fork, which would bring us in time to the neighbourhood of Frew"s dwelling. The ridges were our only safe path, for they were thickly overgrown with woods, and the Indian bands were less likely to choose them for a route. The danger was in the glens, where the trees were spa.r.s.er and the broad stretches of meadow made better going for horses.
The movement of my legs made me pluck up heart. I was embarked at any rate in a venture, and had got rid of my desperate indecision. The two of us held close together, and chose the duskiest thickets, crawling belly-wise over the little clear patches and avoiding the crown of the ridge like the plague. The weather helped us, for the skies hung grey and low, with wisps of vapour curling among the trees. The glens were pits of mist, and my only guide was my recollection of what I had seen, and the easterly course of the streams.
By midday we had mounted to the crest of a long scarp which fell away in a narrow and broken promontory towards the plains. So far we had seen nothing to give us pause, and the only risk lay in some Indian finding and following our trail. We lay close in a scrubby wood, and rested for a little, while we ate some food. Everything around us dripped with moisture, and I could have wrung pints from my coat and breeches.
"Oh for the Dry Tortugas!" Ringan sighed. "What I would give for a hot sun and the kindly winds o" the sea! I thought I pined for the hills, Andrew, but I would not give a clean beach and a warm sou"-wester for all the mountains on earth."
Then again: "Yon"s a fine la.s.s," he would say.
I did not reply, for I had no heart to speak of what I had left behind.
"Cheer up, young one," he cried. "There was more lost at Flodden. A gentleman-adventurer must live by the hour, and it"s surprising how Fortune favours them that trust her. There was a man I mind, in Breadalbane...." And here he would tell some tale of how light came out of black darkness for the trusting heart.
"Man, Ringan," I said, "I see your kindly purpose. But tell me, did ever you hear of such a tangle as ours being straightened out?
"Why, yes," he said. "I"ve been in worse myself, and here I am. I have been in a cell at Cartagena, chained to a man that had died of the plague, with the gallows preparing for me at c.o.c.k-crow. But in the night some friends o" mine came into the bay, and I had the solemn joy of stepping out of yon cell over the corp of the Almirante. I"ve been mad with fever, and jumped into the Palmas River among the alligators, and not one of them touched me, though I was swimming about crying that the water was burning oil. And then a lad in a boat gave me a clout on the head that knocked the daftness out of me, and in a week I was marching on my own deck, with my bonnet c.o.c.ked like a king"s captain.
I"ve been set by my unfriends on a rock in the Florida Keys, with a keg of dirty water and a bunch of figs, and the sun like to melt my brains, and two bullet holes in my thigh. But I came out of the pickle, and lived to make the men that put me there sorry they had been born. Ay, and I"ve seen my grave dug, and my dead clothes ready, and in a week I was making napkins out of them. There"s a wonderful kindness in Providence to mettled folk."
"Ay, Ringan, but that was only the risk of your own neck. I think I could endure that. But was there ever another you liked far better than yourself, that you had to see in deadly peril?"
"No. I"ll be honest with you, there never was. I grant you that"s the hardest thing to thole. But you"ll keep a stiff lip even to that, seeing you are the braver of the two of us."
At that I cried out in expostulation, but Ringan was firm.
"Ay, the braver by far, and I"ll say it again. I"m a man of the dancing blood, with a rare appet.i.te for frays and forays. You are the sedate soul that would be happier at home in the chimney corner. And yet you are the most determined of the lot of us, though you have no pleasure in it. Why? Just because you are the bravest. You can force yourself to a job when flesh and spirit cry out against it. I let no man alive cry down my courage, but I say freely that it"s not to be evened with yours."
I was not feeling very courageous. As we sped along the ridge in the afternoon I seemed to myself like a midge lost in a monstrous net. The dank, dripping trees and the misty hills seemed to m.u.f.fle and deaden the world. I could not believe that they ever would end; that anywhere there was a clear sky and open country. And I had always the feeling that in those banks of vapour lurked deadly enemies who any moment might steal out and encompa.s.s us.
But about four o"clock the weather lightened, and from the c.o.c.k"s-comb on which we moved we looked down into the lower glens. I saw that we had left the main flanks of the range behind us, and were now fairly on a cape which jutted out beyond the other ridges. It behoved us now to go warily, and where the thickets grew thin we moved like hunters, in every hollow and crack that could shelter a man. Ringan led, and led well, for he had not stalked the red deer on the braes of Breadalbane for nothing. But no sign of life appeared in the green hollows on either hand, neither in the meadow s.p.a.ces nor by the creeks of the growing streams. The world was dead silent; not even a bird showed in the whole firmament.
Lower and lower we went, till the end of the ridge was before us, a slope which melted into the river plains. A single shaft of bright sunshine broke from the clouds behind us, and showed the tumbled country of low downs and shallow vales which stretched to the Tidewater border. I had a momentary gleam of hope, as sudden and transient as that ray of light. We were almost out of the hills, and, that accomplished, we were most likely free of the Indian forces that gathered there. I had come to share the Rappahannock men"s opinion about the Cherokees. If we could escape the strange tribes from the west, I looked for no trouble at the hands of those common raiders.
The thicket ended with the ridge, and there was a quarter-mile of broken meadow before the forest began. It was a queer place, that patch of green gra.s.s set like an arena for an audience on the mountain side.
A fine stream ran through it, coming down the glen on our right, and falling afterwards into a dark, woody ravine. I mistrusted the look of it, for there was no cover, and "twas in full view of the whole flanks of the hills.
Ringan, too, was disturbed. "Twould be wiser like to wait for darkness before trying that bit," he said. "We"ll be terrible kenspeckle to the gentry we ken of."
But I would not hear of delay. Now that we were all but out of the hills I was mad to get forward. I thought foolishly that every minute we delayed there we increased our peril, and I longed for the covering of the lowland forest. Besides, I thought that by using some of the crinkles in the meadow we could be sheltered from any eyes on the slopes.
Ringan poked his head out of the covert and took a long gaze. "The place seems empty enough, but I cannot like it. Have you your pistols handy, Andrew? I see what looks like an Indian track, and if we were to meet a brave or two, it would be a pity to let them betray us."
I looked at my pistols to see if the damp woods had spoiled the priming.
"Well, here"s for fortune," said Ringan, and we scrambled off the ridge, and plunged into the lush gra.s.ses of the meadow.
Had we kept our heads and crossed as prudently as we had made the morning"s journey, all might have been well. But a madcap haste seemed to possess us. We tore through the herbage as if we had been running a race in the yard of a peaceful manor. The stream stayed us a little, for it could not be forded without a wetting, and I went in up to the waist. As we scrambled up the far bank some impulse made me turn my head.
There, coming down the water, was a band of Indians.
They were still some distance off, but they saw us, and put their horses to the gallop. I cried to Ringan to run for the shelter of the woods, for in the open we were at their mercy. He cast one glance over his shoulder, and set a pace which came near to foundering me.
We got what we wanted earlier than we had hoped. The woods in front rose in a high bluff, and down a little ravine a burn trickled. The sides were too steep and matted for horses to travel, and he who stood in the ravine had his back and flanks defended.
"Now for a fight, Andrew lad," cried Ringan, his eyes dancing. "Stick you to the pistols, and I"ll show them something in the way of sword-play."
The Indians wheeled up to the edge of the ravine, and I saw to my joy that they did not carry bows.
One had a musket, but it looked as if he had no powder left, for it swung idly on his back. They had tomahawks at their belts and long shining knives with deerhorn handles. I only got a glimpse of them, but "twas enough to show me they were of that Western nation that I dreaded.
They were gone in an instant.