CHAPTER V.
Captain Adrian Schuyler pursued his way toward Derryfield, pistol in hand, keeping a vigilant watch over his prisoner. The altercation on the road had detained him so long that the sun had kissed the mountain tops ere he had crossed the valley, and a dark shadow had crept over the landscape.
The hussar felt uneasy, he hardly knew why, but the defiant manner of his prisoner had roused strange misgivings in his breast. Still, nothing occurred to disturb him on hispassage through the valley, and as he crossed the ridge on the other side, he came in sight of the village of Derryfield, nestling in the wide valley, through which ran a large tributary of the Connecticut, while the glimmer of lights stole through the gathering darkness.
“Thank Heaven, in sight at last!” ejaculated the officer, as he involuntarily pulled up to gaze at the scene. The outlines of houses could be distinguished in the twilight, but as some three miles still intervened, every thing was misty and uncertain. The hussar chirruped to his horse, and was about to ride on, when the hitherto silent prisoner suddenly woke into terrible life and activity.
Seizing the soldier by the belt with his manacled hands with the strength of a giant, he endeavored to drag him down from the saddle, uttering a shout as he did so.
The hussar, though slight of frame, seemed to possess considerable nerve and activity, for he resisted the effort with great adroitness, by throwing himself to the further side of the saddle, while he instinctively leveled his pistol and fired.
The grim recluse uttered a savage cry of pain as the bullet plowed his shoulder, and grappled the slender soldier with such power that he lost a stirrup, let go his bridle and tried to push away his assailant with his left hand, while he cocked the other barrel of his pistol with his right.
How the struggle might have terminated is uncertain, but just as the soldier was almost out of the saddle, and bringing his pistol to bear, a score of dark forms sprung from the roadside, and Adrian Schuyler was seized by strong hands, the pistol going off in the struggle.
A moment later he was a prisoner, while the charger, freed from his burden, and snorting with terror, gave a series of flying kicks at the crowd of Indians, broke loose from all restraint, snapping the cord which bound him to the unknown spy, and galloped away toward Derryfield, neighing as he went.
“Hell’s furies, give him an arrow!” cried the spy, savagely. “Stop the brute, or he’ll alarm the town! Fools, have ye no bows?”
The answer was given in a shower of arrows after the flying steed, which only seemed to increased its speed, for itsoon vanished in the gathering darkness, leaving its master a captive.
The reflections of Adrian Schuyler were by no means pleasant at finding himself in the power of his quondam prisoner. Too late he recognized the trap into which he had fallen, and that he had made a bitter and remorseless enemy.
The spy, for such he evidently was, seemed to be the leader of the Indians; he issued his orders as peremptorily as a chief, and was implicitly obeyed.
He did not deign to take any notice of the hussar himself, but in a few moments the latter found himself stripped of all his weapons, while the handcuffs were transferred from the wrists of the recluse to his own, and he was hurried off into the darkening woods.
The white leader remained on the spot where the fracas had occurred, gazing angrily toward Derryfield, scowling and muttering to himself.
“Curse the popinjay hussar! why did I let him stop me, when a bullet would have kept his brute from giving the alarm? It is too late now. Another goodly scheme thwarted by one of those cursed accidents that none can foresee! We must retire. One comfort, I havehim, and I’ll take satisfaction out of his pretty face, when I see the flames distorting it. Ay, ay, there you go, in the toll-gate. I thought the brute would rouse ye.”
As he spoke, several moving lights appeared in the distance, on the way to Derryfield, and the sound of distant shouts, mingled with the hoof-beats of the flying charger. The new moon shed a faint light over the landscape, and the spy turned away into the woods on the track of the Indians, who had already vanished.
Adrian Schuyler, manacled and guarded, stumbled on through the darkness, not knowing whither he was going. He judged that his escort was numerous, from the constant rustle of leaves, and the sound of low signals that echoed through the woods.
He did not know that those signals were the recall of a numerous band of Indians, who, but for his accidental presence and the escape of his horse would, ere this, have beenclosing around Derryfield, for a midnight massacre, as well planned as it was atrocious.
Like the tiger, the Indian attacks only by surprise, and, that foiled, is apt to slink away. Adrian Schuyler knew that a body of troops was already gathered at Derryfield, militia, perhaps, but none the less the victors of Lexington and Breed’s Hill. In a midnight surprise these men would have fallen an easy prey to the waiting Indians, but their leader knew too well that the flying horse with its bloody saddle would tell a tale to the commander at Derryfield that the latter was not likely to pass unheeded.
For several hours the weary march through the woods was continued, the Indians in sullen silence urging on their weary captive, till the latter was ready to drop. He had been riding rapidly for at least ten hours before, and was tired when he dismounted, and his high-heeled boots were not the style of foot-gear to wind a way among rocks and roots.
At last, when the moon had been down for several hours, and the poor hussar was nearly exhausted, the whistle of a whippowil, echoing through the arches of the wood, brought the party guarding Schuyler to a halt, and the sound of horse-hoofs announced that some one approached.
Presently up rode the quondam farmer and Mountain Hermit, now revealed in his true character as a partisan leader, and followed by several men in green uniforms, wearing the brass and bear-skin helmets of a well-known Tory corps, called after their leader the “Johnson Greens” or “Rangers.”
The spy was dressed as before in homespun clothes, but he rode a stout horse, and wore a sword, while he seemed to be in authority over white and red alike.
He issued a few brief orders, after which he dismounted from his horse, and the rangers and Indians proceeded to encamp.
It was not long before a fierce fire was glowing under the arches of the woods, the heat being very grateful to the frame of the captive hussar, for the night was chilly, and he was wet and shivering, from wading so many brooks.
He had sunk down at the foot of a tree, quite tired out, when a ranger stirred him up with the butt end of his rifle,and ordered him, in a surly tone, to “get up, the captain wanted to see him.”
Schuyler obeyed the ungracious order with patience, for he knew the hands he had fallen into, and did not wish to provoke further indignities. He followed the soldier to where his late enemy lay under a tree, with his feet to the fire, gloomily meditating.
The partisan looked up, and a grim smile lighted his face.
“So, my young hussar, the tables are turned, it seems. It takes an old warrior to keep Tony Butler in irons. Now, hand out your dispatches, unless you prefer to be searched. Which shall it be?”
The young officer smiled disdainfully.
“My dispatches are in my brain,” he said. “All I carry in writing is this.”
And he drew a paper from his bosom and handed it to the captain of rangers.