"Oh, Lord!" groaned Falconnet. "I say, Captain, drown the names in the wine and we"ll drink them so. "Tis by far the easiest way to swallow them."
By this, the grizzled captain"s mention of the old Fort Loudon ma.s.sacre, I knew him for that same John Stuart of the Highlanders who, with Captain Damare, had so stoutly defended the frontier fort against the savages twenty years before; knew him and wondered I had not sooner placed him. When I was but a boy, as I could well remember, he had been king"s man to the Cherokees; a sort of go-between in times of peace, and in the border wars a man the Indians feared. But now, as I was soon to learn, he was a man for us to fear.
""Tis carried through at last," he went on, when the toast was drunk.
And then he stopped and held up a warning finger. "This business will not brook unfriendly ears. Are we safe to talk it here, Mr. Stair?"
It was Falconnet who answered.
"Safe as the clock. You pa.s.sed my sentry in the road?"
"Yes."
"He is the padlock of a chain that reaches round the house. Let"s have your news, Captain."
"As I was saying, the Indians are at one with us. "Twas all fair sailing in the council at Echota; the Chelakees being to a man fierce enough to dig the hatchet up. But I did have the devil"s own teapot tempest with my Lord Charles. He says we have more friends than enemies in the border settlements, and these our redskins will tomahawk them all alike."
I made a mental note of this and wondered if my Lord Cornwallis had met with some new change of heart. He was not over-squeamish as I had known him. Then I heard the baronet say:
"But yet the thing is done?"
"As good as done. The Indians are to have powder and lead of us, after which they make a sudden onfall on the over-mountain settlements. And that fetches us to your part in it, Sir Frank; and to yours, Mr. Stair.
Your troop, Captain, will be the convoy for this powder; and you, Mr.
Stair, are requisitioned to provide the commissary."
There was silence while a cat might wink, and then Gilbert Stair broke in upon it shrilly.
"I can not, Captain Stuart; that I can not!" he protested, starting from his chair. ""Twill ruin me outright! The place is stripped,--you know it well, Sir Francis,--stripped bare and clean by these thieving rebel militia-men; bare as the back of your hand, I tell you! I--"
But the captain put him down in brief.
"Enough, Mr. Stair; we"ll not constrain you against your will. But "tis hinted at headquarters that you are but a fair-weather royalist at best--nay, that for some years back you have been as rebel as the rest in this nesting-place of traitors. As a friend--mind you, as a friend--I would advise you to find the wherewithal to carry out my Lord"s commands. Do you take me, Mr. Stair?"
The trembling old man fell back in his chair, nodding his "yes" dumbly like a marionette when the string has been jerked a thought too violently, and his weasel face was moist and clammy. I know not what double-dealing he would have been at before this, but it was surely something with the promise of a rope at the publishing of it.
So he and his factor fell to ciphering on a bit of paper, reckoning ways and means, as I took it, while Falconnet was asking for more particular orders.
"You"ll have them from headquarters direct," said Stuart. "Oconostota will furnish carriers, a Cherokee escort, and guides. The rendezvous will be hereabouts, and your route will be the Great Trace."
"Then we are to hold on all and wait still longer?"
"That"s the word: wait for the Indians and your cargo."
Falconnet"s oath was of impatience.
"We"ve waited now a month and more like men with halters round their necks. The country is alive with rebels."
Whereupon Captain Stuart began to explain at large how the northern route had been chosen for its very hazards, the better to throw the partizans off the scent. I listened, eager for every word, but when the horses stirred behind me I was set back upon the oft-recurrent under-thought of how the gloom did also hide a silent figure lying p.r.o.ne, with the three bridle reins knotted round its wrist.
But though the unnerving under-thought would not begone, the scene within the great room held me fast by eye and ear. The master and his factor sat apart, their heads together over the knotty problem of subsistence for the convoy troop. At the table-end, with the bottle gurgling now at one right hand and now at another, the three king"s men drank confusion to the rebels, and in the intervals discussed the powder-convoy"s route across the mountains. The senior plotter had some map or chart of his own making, and he was p.r.i.c.king out on it for Falconnet the route agreed upon in council with the Cherokees.
At this cool outlaying of the working plan, some proper sense of what this plot of savage-arming meant to every undefended cabin on the frontier seized and thrilled me. I knew, as every border-born among us knew, the dismal horrors of an Indian ma.s.sacre; and this these men were planning was treacherous murder on an unwarned people. All was to be done in midnight secrecy. Supplied with ammunition, the Cherokees, led by this Captain Stuart or some other, were first to fall upon the over-mountain settlements. These laid waste, the Indians were to form a junction with the army of invasion, and so to add the torch and tomahawk and scalping knife to British swords and muskets.
It was a plot to make the blood run cold in my veins, or in the veins of any man who knew the cruel temper of these savages; and when I thought upon the fate of my poor countrymen beyond the mountains, I saw what lay before me.
The settlers must be warned in time to fight or fly.
But while I listened, with every faculty alert to reckon with the task of rescue, I take no shame in saying that the problem balked me. Lacking the strength to mount and ride in my own proper person, there was nothing for it but to find a messenger; and who would he be in a region at the moment distraught with war"s alarums, and needing every man for self-defense?
At that, I thought of Jennifer. True, he was wounded, too; but he would know how best to pa.s.s the word to those in peril. I made full sure he"d find a way if I could reach him; and when I had it simmered down to this, the problem simplified itself. I must have speech with d.i.c.k before the night was out, though I should have to crawl on hands and knees the half-score miles to Jennifer House.
Having decided, I was keen to be about it while the night should last--the friendly darkness, and some fine flush of excitement which again had come at need to take the place of healthful vigor. But when I would have quit the window to begone upon my errand a sober second thought delayed me. If my simple counterplot should fail, some knowledge of the powder-convoy"s route would be of prime importance. Lacking the time to warn the over-mountain men, the next best thing would be to set some band of patriot troopers upon the trail and so to overtake the convoy. Nay, on this second thought"s rehearsing the last expedient seemed the better of the two, since thus the plot would come to naught and we would be the gainers by the capture of the powder.
So now you know why I should stick and hang by toe and finger-tip and glare across the little s.p.a.ce that gaped between my itching fingers and the bit of parchment pa.s.sed from hand to hand around the table"s end. If I could make a shift to rob them of this map--
It was a desperate chance, but in the frenzy of the moment I resolved to take it. Their placings round the table favored me. Gilbert Stair and the lawyer sat fair across from me, but they were still intent upon their figurings. Of the trio at the table"s end, the baronet and the captain had their backs to me. The younger officer sat across, and he was staring broadly at my window, though with wine-fogged eyes that saw not far beyond the bottle-neck, I thought.
My one hope hinged upon the boldness of a dash. If I could spring within and sweep the two candlesticks from the table, there was a chance that I might s.n.a.t.c.h the parchment in the darkness and confusion and escape as I had come.
So I began by inches to draw me up and feel for some better launching hold. But in the midst, for all my care and caution, I slipped and lost my grip upon the cas.e.m.e.nt; lost that and got another on the wooden shutter opened back against the outer wall, and then went down, pulling the shutter from its rusted hinges in crashing clamor fit to rouse the dead.
As if they were quick echoes, other crashings followed as of chairs flung back; and then the window just above me filled with crowding figures. I marvel that I had the wit to lie quiet as I had fallen, but I had; and those above, looking from a lighted room into the belly of the night, saw nothing. Then Captain Stuart shouted to his dragoon horse-holder.
"Ho! Tom Garget; this way, man!" he cried; and when he had no answer, put a leg across the window seat to clamber out. "Twas in the very act, while I was watching catlike every movement, that I saw the precious sc.r.a.p of parchment in his hand.
Here was the chance I had prayed for. Tom Garget"s sword had clattered down beside me, and with it I sprang afoot and cut a whizzing circle by my doughty captain"s ear that made him cringe and gasp and all but tumble out upon me. The bit of parchment fluttered down and in a trice I had it safe.
You may think small of me, if so you must, my dears, when I confess what followed after. No man is braver than his opportunity, and I had little stomach for a fight with three unwounded men. Hence it was narrowed now to a bold sortie for the horses, and this I made while yet the captain hung in air and sought his foothold.
With all my breathless haste it was not done too soon, nor soon enough.
When I had quickly freed a horse from the dead hand that held it tethered, and was making shift to climb into the saddle, they thronged upon me; the captain from his window, the others pouring hotly through the gaping doorway.
I made shift to get astride the horse, to p.r.i.c.k the poor beast with the point of sword, and so to break away in some brief dash beneath the oaks. But it was a chase soon ended. As I remember, I was reeling in the saddle what time the foremost of them overtook me. I held on grimly till the horse pursuing lapped the one I rode by head, by neck and presently by withers. Then I turned and would be making frantic-feeble pa.s.ses with the sword at the man upon his back.
It was my plotting captain who rode me thus to earth; and when I thrust he laughed and swore, and turned the blade aside with his bare hand.
Then, pressing closer, he struck me with his fist, and thereupon the night and all its happenings went blank as if the blow had been a cannon shot to crush my skull.
VIII
IN WHICH I TASTE THE QUALITY OF MERCY
Two ways there be to fetch a stunned man to his senses, as they will tell you who have seen the rack applied: one is to slack the tension on the cracking joints and minister cordials to the victim; the other to give the straining winch a crueller twist. It was not the gentler way my captors took, as you would guess; and when I came to know and see and feel again a pair of them were kicking me alive, and I was sore and aching from their buffetings.
How long a time came in between my futile dash for liberty and this harsh preface to their dragging of me back to the manor house, I could not tell. It must have been an hour or more, for now a gibbous moon hung pale above the tree-tops, and all around were bivouac fires and horses tethered to show that in the interval a troop had come and camped.