"Oh, come, come," laughed Sir George, "Colonel Ormond has had more bullets driven at him than our Legion pouches in their bullet-bags!"
"A man let drive at me!" breathed Ruyven, in rapture. "I was not hit, cousin! A man let drive at me, and I heard the bullet!"
"Nonsense!" said Sir George, mischievously; "you heard a b.u.mble-bee!"
"He always says that," retorted Ruyven, looking at me. "I know it was a bullet, for it went zo-o-zip-tsing-g! right past my ear; and Sergeant West shouted, "Cut him down, sir!" ... But another trooper did that.
However, I rode like the devil!"
"Which way?" inquired Sir George, in pretended anxiety. And we all laughed.
"It"s good to see you back all safe and sound," said Sir George, warmly.
"Sir Lupus will be delighted and the children half crazed. You should hear them talk of their hero!"
"Dorothy will be glad, too," said Ruyven. "You"ll be in time for the wedding."
I strove to smile, facing Sir George with an effort. His face, in the full sunlight, seemed haggard and careworn, and the light had died out in his eyes.
"For the wedding," he repeated. "We are to be wedded to-morrow. You did not know that, did you?"
"Yes; I did know it. Dorothy wrote me," I said. A numbed feeling crept over me; I scarce heard the words I uttered when I wished him happiness.
He held my proffered hand a second, then dropped it listlessly, thanking me for my good wishes in a low voice.
There was a vague, troubled expression in his eyes, a strange lack of feeling. The thought came to me like a stab that perhaps he had learned that the woman he was to wed did not love him.
"Did Dorothy expect me?" I asked, miserably.
"I think not," said Sir George.
"She believed you meant to follow Arnold to Stanwix," broke in Ruyven.
"I should have done it! I regard General Arnold as the most magnificent soldier of the age!" he added.
"I was ordered to Varick Manor," I said, looking at Sir George.
"Otherwise I might have followed Arnold. As it is I cannot stay for the wedding; I must report at Stillwater, leaving by nine o"clock in the morning."
"Lord, Ormond, what a fire-eater you have become!" he said, smiling from his abstraction. "Are you ready to mount Ruyven"s nag and come home to a good bed and a gla.s.s of something neat?"
"Let Ruyven ride," I said; "I need the walk, Sir George."
"Need the walk!" he exclaimed. "Have you not had walks enough?--and your moccasins and buckskins in rags!"
But I could not endure to ride; a nerve-racking restlessness was on me, a desire for movement, for utter exhaustion, so that I could no longer have even strength to think.
Ruyven, protesting, climbed into his dragoon-saddle; Sir George walked beside him and I with Sir George.
Long, soft August lights lay across the leafy road; the blackberries were in heavy fruit; scarlet thimble-berries, over-ripe, dropped from their pithy cones as we brushed the sprays with our sleeves.
Sir George was saying: "No, we have nothing more to fear from McDonald"s gang, but a scout came in, three days since, bringing word of McCraw"s outlaws who have appeared in the west--"
He stopped abruptly, listening to a sound that I also heard; the sudden drumming of unshod hoofs on the road behind us.
"What the devil--" he began, then c.o.c.ked his rifle; I threw up mine; a shrill c.o.c.k-crow rang out above the noise of tramping horses; a galloping ma.s.s of hors.e.m.e.n burst into view behind us, coming like an avalanche.
"McCraw!" shouted Sir George. Ruyven fired from his saddle; Sir George"s rifle and mine exploded together; a horse and rider went down with a crash, but the others came straight on, and the c.o.c.k-crow rang out triumphantly above the roar of the rushing horses.
"Ruyven!" I shouted, "ride for your life!"
"I won"t!" he cried, furiously; but I seized his bridle, swung his frightened horse, and struck the animal across the b.u.t.tocks with clubbed rifle. Away tore the maddened beast, almost unseating his rider, who lost both stirrups at the first frantic bound and clung helplessly to his saddle-pommel while the horse carried him away like the wind.
Then I sprang into the ozier thicket, Sir George at my side, and ran a little way; but they caught us, even before we reached the timber, and threw us to the ground, tying us up like basted capons with straps from their saddles. Maltreated, struck, kicked, mauled, and dragged out to the road, I looked for instant death; but a lank creature flung me across his saddle, face downward, and, in a second, the whole band had mounted, wheeled about, and were galloping westward, ventre a terre.
Almost dead from the saddle-pommel which knocked the breath from my body, suffocated and strangled with dust, I hung dangling there in a storm of flying sticks and pebbles. Twice consciousness fled, only to return with the blood pounding in my ears. A third time my senses left me, and when they returned I lay in a cleared s.p.a.ce in the woods beside Sir George, the sun shining full in my face, flung on the ground near a fire, over which a kettle was boiling. And on every side of us moved McCraw"s riders, feeding their horses, smoking, laughing, playing at cards, or coming up to sniff the camp-kettle and poke the boiling meat with pointed sticks.
Behind them, squatted in rows, sat two dozen Indians, watching us in ferocious silence.
XXI
THE CRISIS
For a while I lay there stupefied, limp-limbed, lifeless, closing my aching eyes under the glittering red rays of the westering sun.
My parched throat throbbed and throbbed; I could scarcely stir, even to close my swollen hands where they had tied my wrists, although somebody had cut the cords that bound me.
"Sir George," I said, in a low voice.
"Yes, I am here," he replied, instantly.
"Are you hurt?"
"No, Ormond. Are you?"
"No; very tired; that is all."
I rolled over; my head reeled and I held it in my benumbed hands, looking at Sir George, who lay on his side, cheek pillowed on his arms.
"This is a miserable end of it all," he said, with calm bitterness. "But that it involves you, I should not dare blame fortune for the fool I acted. I have my deserts; but it"s cruel for you."
The sickening whirling in my head became unendurable. I lay down, facing him, eyes closed.
"It was not your fault," I said, dully.
"There is no profit in discussing that," he muttered. "They took us alive instead of scalping us; while there"s life there"s hope, ... a little hope.... But I"d sooner they"d finish me here than rot in their stinking prison-ships.... Ormond, are you awake?"
"Yes, Sir George."
"If they--if the Indians get us, and--and begin their--you know--"