I saw not what followed upon this last despairing effort, for now Tybee was down and I was kneeling beside him to search for the wound. But when I looked again, the crackling crashes of the rifle-firing had ceased. A stout, gray-headed man, whom I afterward knew as Isaac Shelby's father, was riding up from the patriot line to receive Captain de Peyster's sword, and the battle was ended.
If my hand were not sure enough to draw you some speaking picture of this our epoch-marking battle of King's Mountain, it falters still more on coming to the task of setting forth the tragic horrors of the dreadful after-night. Wherefore I pray you will hold me excused, my dears, if I hasten over the events tripping upon the heels of the victory, touching upon them only as they touch upon my tale.
But as for the stage-setting of the after-scene you may hold in your mind's eye the stony hilltop strewn with the dead and dying; the huddle of cowed prisoners at the wagon barricade; the mountaineers, mad with the victor's frenzy, swarming to surround us. 'Twas a clipping from Chaos and Night gone blood-crazed till Sevier and Isaac Shelby brought somewhat of order out of it; and then came the reckoning.
Of the seven hundred-odd prisoners the greater number were Tories, many of them red-handed from scenes of rapine in which their present captors had suffered the loss of all that men hold dear. So you will not wonder that there were knives and rifles shaken aloft, and fierce and vengeful counsels in which it was proposed to put the captives one and all to the cord and tree.
But now again Sevier and Shelby, seconded by the fiery Presbyterian, William Campbell, flung themselves into the breach, pleading for delay and a fair trial for such as were blood guilty. And so the dismal night, made chill and comfortless by the cold wind and most doleful by the groans and cries of the wounded, wore away, and the dawn of the Sunday found us lying as we were in the bloody shambles of the hilltop.
With the earliest morning light the burial parties were at work; and since the stony battle-ground would not lend itself for the trenching, the graves were dug in the vales below. Captain de Peyster begged hard for leave to bury the brave Ferguson on the spot where he fell, but 'twas impossible; and now, I am told, the stout old Scotsman lies side by side with our Major Will Chronicle, of Mecklenburg, who fell just before the ending of the battle.
The dead buried and the wounded cared for in some rough and ready fashion, preparations were made in all haste for a speedy withdrawal from the neighborhood of the battle-field. Rumor had it that Tarleton with his invincible legion was within a few hours' march; and the mountain men, sodden weary with the toils of the flying advance and the hard-fought conflict, were in no fettle to cope with a fresh foe.
As yet I had not made myself known to the patriot commanders, having my hands and heart full with the care of poor Tybee, who was grievously hurt, and being in a measure indifferent to what should befall me.
But now as we were about to march I was dragged before the committee of colonels and put to the question.
"Your uniform is a strange one to us, sir," said Isaac Shelby, looking me up and down with that heavy-lidded right eye of his. "Explain your rank and standing, if you please."
I told my story simply, and, as I thought, effectively; and had only black looks for my pains.
"'Tis a strange tale, surely, sir,—too strange to be believable," quoth Shelby. "You are a traitor, Captain Ireton—of the kind we need not cumber ourselves with on a march."
"Who says that word of me?" I demanded, caring not much for that to which his threat pointed, but something for my good name.
Shelby turned and beckoned to a man in the group behind him. "Stand out, John Whittlesey," he directed; and I found myself face to face with that rifleman of Colonel Davie's party who had been so fierce to hang me at the fording of the Catawba.
This man gave his testimony briefly, telling but the bare truth. A week earlier I had passed in Davie's camp for a true-blue patriot, this though I was wearing a ragged British uniform at the moment. As for the witness himself, he had misdoubted me all along, but the colonel had trusted me and had sent me on some secret mission, the inwardness of which he, John Whittlesey, had been unable to come at, though he confessed that he had tried to worm it out of me before parting company with me on the road to Charlotte.
I looked from one to another of my judges.
"If this be all, gentlemen, the man does but confirm my story," I said.
"It is not all," said Shelby. "Mr. Pengarvin, stand forth."
There was another stir in the backgrounding group and the pettifogger edged his way into the circle, keeping well out of hand-reach of me. How he had made shift to escape from Ferguson's men, to change sides, and to turn up thus serenely in the ranks of the over-mountain men, I know not to this day, nor ever shall know.
"Tell these gentlemen what you have told me," said Shelby, briefly; and the factor, cool and collected now, rehearsed the undeniable facts: how in Charlotte I had figured as a member of Lord Cornwallis's military family; how I had carried my malignancy to the patriot cause to the length of throwing a stanch friend to the commonwealth, to wit, one Owen Pengarvin, into the common jail; how, as Lord Cornwallis's trusted aide-de-camp, I had been sent with an express to Major Ferguson. Also, he suggested that if I should be searched some proof of my duplicity might be found upon me.
At this William Campbell nodded to two of his Virginians, and I was searched forthwith, and that none too gently. In the breast pocket of my hussar jacket they found that accursed duplicate despatch; the one I had taken from Tybee and which had so nearly proved my undoing in the interview with Major Ferguson.
Isaac Shelby opened and read the accusing letter and passed it around among his colleagues.
"I shall not ask you why this was undelivered, sir," he said to me, sternly. "'Tis enough that it was found upon your person, and it sufficiently proves the truth of this gentleman's accusation. Have you aught further to say, Captain Ireton?—aught that may excuse us for not leaving you behind us in a halter?"
Do you wonder, my dears, that I lost my head when I saw how completely the toils of this little black-clothed fiend had closed around me? Twice, nay, thrice I tried to speak calmly as the crisis demanded. Then mad rage ran away with me, and I burst out in yelling curses so hot they would surely dry the ink in the pen were I to seek to set them down here.
'Twas a silly thing to do, you will say, and much beneath the dignity of a grown man who cared not a bodle for his life, and not greatly for the manner of its losing. I grant you this; and yet it was that same bull-bellow of soldier profanity that saved my life. Whilst I was in the storm of it, cursing the lawyer by every shouted epithet I could lay tongue to, a miracle was wrought and Richard Jennifer and Ephraim Yeates pushed their way through the ever-thickening ring of onlookers; the latter to range himself beside me with his brown-barreled rifle in the hollow of his arm, and my dear lad to fling himself upon me in a bear's hug of joyous recognition and greeting.
"Score one for me, Jack!" he cried. "We were fair at t'other end of the mountain, and 'twas I told Eph there was only one man in the two Carolinas who could swear the match of that." Then he whirled upon my judges. "What is this, gentlemen?—a court martial? Captain Ireton is my friend, and as true a patriot as ever drew breath. What is your charge?"
Colonel Sevier, in whose command Richard and the old borderer had fought in the hilltop battle, undertook to explain. I stood self-confessed as the bearer of despatches from Lord Cornwallis to Major Ferguson, he said, and I had claimed that the orders had been so altered as to delay the major's retreat and so to bring on the battle. But they had just found Lord Cornwallis's letter in my pocket, still sealed and undelivered. And the tenor of it was precisely opposite to that of an order calculated to delay the major's march, as Mr. Jennifer could see if he would read it.
While Sevier was talking, the old borderer was fumbling in the breast of his hunting-shirt, and now he produced a packet of papers tied about with red tape.
"'Pears to me like you Injun-killers from t'other side o' the mounting is in a mighty hot sweat to hang somebody," he said, as coolly as if he were addressing a mob of underlings. "Here's a mess o' billy-doos with Lord Cornwallis's name to 'em that I found 'mongst Major Ferguson's leavings. If you'll look 'em over, maybe you'll find out, immejitlyifnot sooner, that Cap'n John here is telling ye the plumb truth."
The papers were examined hastily, and presently John Sevier lighted upon the despatch I had carried and delivered. Thereat the colonels put their heads together; and then my case was re-opened, with Sevier as spokesman.
"We have a letter here which appears to be the original order to Ferguson, Captain Ireton. Can you repeat from memory thepostscriptumwhich you say was added to it?"
I gave the gist of my old patriarch's addendum as well as I could; and thereupon suspicion fled away and my late judges would vie with one another in hearty frontier hand-grasps and apologies, whilst the throng that ringed us in forgot caution and weariness and gave me a cheer to wake the echoes.
'Twas while this burst of gratulation was abuzz that Ephraim Yeates raised a cry of his own.
"Stop that there black-legged imp o' the law!" he shouted, pushing his way out of the circle. "He's the one that ought to hang!"
There was a rush for the wagon barricade, a clatter of horse-hoofs on the hillside below, and Yeates's rifle went to his face. But the bullet flew wide, and the black-garbed figure clinging to the horse's mane was soon out of sight among the trees.
"Ez I allow, ye'd better look out for that yaller-skinned little varmint, Cap'n John," quoth the old man, carefully wiping his rifle preparatory to reloading it. "He's rank pizen, he is, and ye'll have to break his neck sooner 'r later. I 'lowed to save ye the trouble, but old Bess got mighty foul yestiddy, with all the shootings and goings on, and I hain't got no lead-brush to clean her out."
Now that I was fully exonerated I was free to go and come as I chose; nay, more, I was urged to cast in my lot with the over-mountain partizans. As to this, I took counsel with Richard Jennifer whilst the colonels were setting their commands in order for the march and loading the prisoners with the captured guns and ammunition.
"What is to the fore, Dick?" I asked; "more fighting?"
The lad shook his head. "Never another blow, I fear, Jack. These fellows crossed the mountain to whip Ferguson. Having done it they will go home."
I could not forego a hearty curse upon this worst of all militia weaknesses, the disposition to disperse as soon as ever a battle was fought.
"'Tis nigh on to a crime," said I. "This victory, smartly followed up, might well be the turning of the tide for us."
But the lad would not admit the qualifying condition. "'Twill be no less as it is," he declared. "Mark you, Jack; 'twill put new life into the cause and nerve every man of ours afresh. And as for the redcoats, if my Lord Cornwallis gets the news of it in a lump, as he should, Gates will have plenty of time to set himself in motion, slow as he is."
'Twas then I had an inspiration, and I thought upon it for a moment.
"What are your plans, Richard?"
He shook his head. "I have none worth the name."
"Then you are not committed to Colonel Sevier for a term of service?"
"No; nor to Cleaveland, nor McDowell, nor any. We heard there was to be fighting hereaway,—Ephraim Yeates and I,—and we came as volunteers."
"Good! then I have a thought which may stand for what it is worth. To make the most of this victory over Major Ferguson, Gates should be apprised at once and by a sure tongue; and his Lordship should have the news quickly, too, and in a lump, as you say. Let us take horse and ride post, we two; you to Gates at Hillsborough, and I to Charlotte."
"I had thought of my part of that," he said in a muse. Then he came alive to the risk I should run. "But you can't well go back to Cornwallis now, Jack: 'tis playing with death. There will be other news-carriers—there are sure to be; and a single breath to whisper what you have done will hang you higher than Haman."
I shrugged at this. "'Tis but a war hazard."
He looked at me curiously. I saw a shrewd question in his eyes and set instant action as a barrier in the way of its asking.
"Let us find Colonel Sevier and beg us the loan of a pair of horses," said I; and so we were kept from coming upon the dangerous ground of pointed questions and evasive answers.
Somewhat to my surprise, both Sevier and Shelby fell in at once with our project, commending it heartily; and I learned from the lips of that courtliest of frontiersmen, "Nolichucky Jack," the real reason for the proposed hurried return of the over-mountain men. The Cherokees, never to be trusted, had, as it seemed, procured war supplies from the British posts to the southward, and were even now on the verge of an uprising. By forced marches these hardy borderers hoped to reach their homes in time to defend them. Otherwise, as both commanders assured us, they would take the field with Gates.
"We have done what we could, Captain Ireton, and not altogether what we would," said Sevier in the summing-up. "It remains now for General Gates to drive home the wedge we have entered." Then he looked me full in the eyes and asked if I thought Horatio Gates would be the man to beetle that wedge well into the log.
I made haste to say that I knew little of the general; that I was but a prejudiced witness at best, since my father had known and misliked the man in Braddock's ill-fated campaign against the French in '55. But Richard spoke his mind more freely.
"'Tis not in the man at this pass, Colonel Sevier," he would say; "not after Camden. I know our Carolinians as well as any, and they will never stand a second time under a defeated leader. If General Washington would send us some one else; or, best of all, if he would but come himself—"
"George Washington; ah, there is a man, indeed," said Sevier, his dark-blue eyes lighting up. "Whilst he lives, there is always a good hope. But we must be doing, gentlemen, and so must you. God speed you both. Our compliments to General Gates, Mr. Jennifer; and you may tell him what I have told you—that but for our redskin threateners we should right gladly join him. As for Lord Cornwallis, you, Captain Ireton, will know best what to say to him. I pray God you may say it and come off alive to tell us how he took it."
We made our acknowledgments; and when I had bespoken good care for Tybee, we took leave of these stout fighters, and of old Ephraim as well, since the borderer was to serve as a guide for the over-mountain men, at least till they were come upon familiar ground to the westward.
'Twas now hard upon ten of the clock in the forenoon, and we had our last sight of the brave little army whilst it was wending its way slowly down the slopes of King's Mountain. Of what became of it; how its weary march dragged on from day to day; how it was hampered by the train of captives, halted by rain-swollen torrents, and was well-nigh starved withal; of all these things you may read elsewhere. But now you must ride with Richard Jennifer and me, and our way lay to the eastward.
All that Sunday we pressed forward, hasting as we could through the stark columned aisles of the autumn-stripped forest, and looking hourly to come upon Tarleton's legion marching out to Ferguson's relief.
Since Richard Jennifer had ridden to the hounds in all this middle ground from boyhood, we were able to take my blind wanderings in reverse as the arrow flies; and by nightfall we were well down upon the main traveled road leading to Beattie's fording of the Catawba.
As your map will show you, this was taking me somewhat out of my way to the northward; but it was Richard's most direct route to Salisbury and beyond, and by veering thus we made the surer of missing Colonel Tarleton, who, as we thought, would likely cross the river at the lower ford.
Once in the high road we pushed on briskly for the river, nor did we draw rein until the sweating beasts were picking their way in the darkness down the last of the hills which sentinel the Catawba to the westward.
At the foot of this hill a by-road led to Macgowan's ford some six miles farther down the river, and here, as I supposed, our ways would lie apart. But when we came to the forking of the road, Richard pulled his mount into the by-path, clapping the spurs to the tired horse so that we were a good mile beyond the forking before I could overtake him.
"How now, lad?" said I, when I had run him down. "Would you take a fighting hazard when you need not? There is sure to be a British patrol at the lower ford."
He jerked his beast down to a walk and we rode in silence side by side for a full minute before he said gruffly: "You'd never find the way alone."
I laughed. "Barring myself, you are the clumsiest of evaders, Dick. I am on my own ground here, and that you know as well as I."
"Damn you!" he gritted between his teeth. "When we are coming near Appleby Hundred you are fierce enough to be rid of me."
I saw his drift at that: how he would take all the chance of capture and a spy's rope for the sake of passing within a mile of Mistress Margery, or of the house he thought she was in.
"Go back, Dick, whilst you may," said I. "She is not at Appleby Hundred."
He turned upon me like a lion at bay.
"What have you done with her?"
"Peace, you foolish boy. I am not her keeper. Her father took her to Charlotte on the very day you saw her safe at home."
He reined up short in the narrow way. "So?" he said, most bitingly. "And that is why you take the embassy to Lord Cornwallis and fub me off with the one to Gates. By heaven, Captain Ireton, we shall change rôles here and now!"
Ah, my dears, the love-madness is a curious thing. Here was a man who had saved my life so many times I had lost the count of them, feeling for my throat in the murk of that October night as my bitterest foeman might.
And surely it was the love-demon in me that made me say: "You think I am standing in your way, Richard Jennifer? Well, so I am; for whilst I live you may not have her. Why don't you draw and cut me down?"
'Twas then Satan marked my dear lad for his very own.
"On guard!" he cried; "draw and defend yourself!" and with that the great claymore leaped from its sheath to flash in the starlight.
What with his reining back for space to whirl the steel I had the time to parry the descending blow. But at the balancing instant the brother-hating devil had the upper hand, whispering me that here was the death I coveted; that Margery might have her lover, if so she would, with her husband's blood upon his head.
So I sat motionless while the broadsword cut its circle in air and came down; and then I knew no more till I came to with a bees' hive buzzing in my ears, to find myself lying in the dank grass at the path side. My head was on Richard's knee, and he was dabbling it with water in his soaked kerchief.
You may be sure that by now the anger gale had blown itself out, that the madness had passed for both of us; and when I stirred, Richard broke out in a tremulous babblement of thanksgiving for that he had not slain me outright.
"I was mad, Jack; as mad as any Bedlamite," he would say. "The devil whispered me that you would fight; that you wanted but a decent excuse to thrust me out of the way. And when I saw you would not stir, 'twas too late to do aught but turn the flat of the blade. Oh, God help me! I'll never let a second thought of that little Tory prat-a-pace send me to hell again."
"Nay," said I; "no such rash promises, I pray you, Richard. We are but two poor fools, with the love of a woman set fair between us. But you need not fight me for it. The love is yours—not mine."
"Don't say that, Jack; I'm selfish enough to wish it were true; as it is not. I know whereof I speak."
"No," I denied, struggling to my feet; "it has been yours from the first, Dick. I am but a sorry interloper."
For a moment he was all solicitude to know if my head would let me stand; but when I showed him I was no more than clumsily dizzy from the effects of the blow, he went on.
"I say I know, and I do, Jack. She has refused me again."
I groaned in spirit. I knew it must have come to that. Yet I would ask when and where.
"'Twas on our last day's riding," he went on; "after we had had your note saying you would undertake a mission for Colonel Davie."
I took two steps and groped for the horse's bridle rein.
"Did she tell you why she must refuse you?"
He helped me find the rein for my hand and the stirrup for my foot.
"There was no 'why' but the one—she does not love me."
"But I say she does, Dick; and I, too, know whereof I speak."
He flung me into the saddle as a strong man might toss a boy, and I understood how that saying of mine had gone into his blood.
"Then there must be some barrier that I know not of," he said. Whereupon he put hand to head as one who tries to remember. "Stay; did you not say there was a barrier, Jack?—when we were wrestling with death in the Indian fires? Or did I dream it?"
"You did not dream it. But you were telling me what she said."
"Oh, yes; 'twas little enough. She cut me off at the first word as if my speaking were a mortal sin. And when I would have tried again, she gave me a look to make me wince and broke out crying as if her heart would burst."
I steadied myself as I could by the saddle horn and waited till he was up and we were moving on. Then I would say: "Truly, there is a barrier, Richard; if I promise you that I am going to Charlotte to remove it once for all, will you trust me and go about your affair with General Gates?"
"Trust you, Jack? Who am I that I should do aught else? When I am cool and sane, I'm none so cursed selfish; I could even give her over to you with a free hand, could I but hear her say she loves you as I would have her love me. But when I am mad.... Ah, God only knows the black blood there is in the heart at such times."
We rode on together in silence after that, and were come to the bank of the river before we spoke again. But here Dick went back to my warning, saying, whilst we let the horses drink: "'Tis patrolled on the other bank, you say?"
"It was when I passed it a few days agone."
"Then I will turn back and cross at Beattie's. 'Twill make you a risk you need not take—to have me with you."
But I thought now that the upper ford might be guarded as well; and if there must be a cutting of a road through the enemy's outpost line for Dick, two could do it better than one. So I said:
"No; we are here now, and if need be I can lend you the weight of a second blade to see you safe through."
"And you with your head humming like a basket of bees, as I make no doubt it will?"
I laughed. "I should be but a sorry soldier and a sorrier friend if I should let a love-tap with the flat of a blade make me fail you at the pinch."
He reached across the little gap that parted us and grasped my hand.
"By God!" he swore, most feelingly, "you are as true as the steel you carry, Jack Ireton!"
"Nay," said I, in honest shame; "I do confess I was thinking less of my friend than of the importance of the errand he rides on."
"But if there should be a fight, you will spoil your chance of coming peaceably to Charlotte and my Lord's headquarters."
"If I am recognized—yes. But the night is dark, and a brush with the outpost need not betray me."
At this he consented grudgingly, and we pushed on to the crossing. Now since this fording place of Master Macgowan's has marched into our history, you will like to know what the historians do not tell you: namely, how it was but a makeshift wading place, armpit deep over a muddy bottom from the western bank to the bar above an island in mid-stream, and deflecting thence through rocky shallows to a point on the eastern bank some distance below the island. 'Twas here that Lord Cornwallis got entangled some months later—but I must not anticipate.
We made the crossing of the main current in safety and were a-splash in the rocky shallows beyond the island when we sighted the camp-fires of the outpost. To ride straight upon the patrol was to invite disaster, and though Jennifer was for a charging dash, a hurly-burly with the steel, and so on to freedom beyond, he listened when I pointed out that our beasts were too nearly outworn to charge, and that the noise we must make would rouse the camp and draw the fire of every piece in it long before we could reach the bank and come to blade work.
"What for it, then?" he asked, impatiently. "My courage is freezing whilst we wait."
"There is nothing for it but to hold straight on across," I said.
"That we can not; 'twill be over the horses' ears. The beasts will drown themselves and us as well."
How we should have argued it out I do not know, for just then Jennifer's horse, scenting the troop mounts on the farther shore, cocked tail and ears, let out a squealing neigh, and fell to curveting and plunging in a racket that might have stood for the splashings of an advancing army.
In a twinkling the outpost camp was astir and a bellowing hail came to us across the water. Having no answer, the troopers began to let off their pieces haphazard in the darkness; and with the singingzipof the first musket ball, Richard went battle-mad, as he always did in the face of danger.
"At them!" he thundered, clapping spurs to his jaded beast and whipping out the great claymore; and so we charged, the forlornest hope that ever fell upon an enemy.
How we came ashore alive through the gun-fire is one of those mysteries to which every battle adds its quota; but the poor beasts we rode were not so lucky. Jennifer's horse went down while we were yet some yards from the bank; and mine fell a moment later. To face a score of waiting enemies afoot was too much for even Richard's rash courage; so when we were free of the struggling horses we promptly dove for shelter under the up-stream bank.
Here the darkness stood our friend; and when the redcoat troopers came down to the river's edge with torches to see what had become of us, we took advantage of the noise they made and stole away up-stream till a shelving beach gave us leave to climb to the valley level above.
Richard shook himself like a water-soaked spaniel and laughed grimly.
"Well, here we are, safe across, horseless, and well belike to freeze to death," he commented. "What next?"
I made him a bow. "You are on my demesne of Appleby Hundred, Captain Jennifer, and it shall go hard with us if we can not find a fire to warm a guest and a horse to mount him withal. Let us go to the manor house and see what we can discover."
He entered at once into the spirit of the jest, and together we trudged the scant mile through the stubble-fields to my old roof-tree. As you would guess, we looked to find the manor house turned into an outpost headquarters; but now we were desperate enough to face anything.
Howbeit, not to rush blindly into the jaws of a trap, we first routed out the old black majordomo at the negro quarters; and when we learned from him that the great house was quite deserted, we took possession and had the black make us a rousing fire in the kitchen-arch. Nay, more; when we had steamed ourselves a little dry, we had old Anthony stew and grill for us, and fetch us a bottle of that madeira of my father's laying in.
"A toast!" cried Richard, when the bottle came, springing to his feet with the glass held high. "To the dear lady of Appleby Hundred, and may she forgather with the man she loves best, be it you, or I, or another, Jack Ireton!"
We drank it standing; and after would sit before the fire, havering like two love-sick school-boys over the charms of that dear lady to whom one of us was less than naught, and to whom the other could be but naught whilst that first one lived.
You will smile, my dears, that we should come to this when, but a short hour before, one of us had been bent upon slaying the other for Mistress Margery's sake. But the human heart is many-sided; notably that heart the soldier carries. And though I looked not to live beyond the setting of another sun, I was glad to my finger-tips to have this last loving-cup with my dear lad. I thought it would nerve me bravely for what must come—and so it did, though not as I prefigured.
We were still sitting thus before the kitchen-arch when the dawn began to dim the firelight, and the work of the new day confronted us. Pinned down, old Anthony confessed that some two or three horses of the Appleby Hundred stables had escaped the hands of the foragers of both sides; and two of these he fetched for us. Of the twain one chanced to be Blackstar, the good beast which had carried me from New Berne in the spring; and so I had my own horse betwixt my knees when I set Dick a mile on the road to Salisbury, and bade him farewell.
His last word to me was one of generous caution.
"Remember, Jack; 'haste, haste, post haste' is your watchword. There will be other couriers in from the battle-field at King's Mountain; and you must hang and fire your news-petard and vanish before they come to betray you."
"Trust me," said I, evasively; and so we parted, he to gallop eastward, and I to charge down peaceably upon that British outpost we had set abuzz in the small hours of the night.
Though I had passed out of the British lines less than a week before in decent good odor, save for Colonel Tarleton's ill word, I met with nothing like the welcome at the outpost camp that a king's courier had a right to expect.
The captain in command was not the one who had passed me out. He was a surly brute of the Yorkshire breed; and when he had heard that I was an express rider from Major Ferguson, he was pleased to demand my papers.
To this I must needs make answer that I carried no written despatches; that my news was for the commander-in-chief's private ear. This I told my Yorkshire pig, demanding to be sent, under guard if he chose, to the headquarters in Charlotte.
But Captain Nobbut would hear to no such reasonable proposal. On the contrary, he would hold me in arrest till he could report me and have instructions from his colonel.
Knowing what a stake it was I rode for, you may imagine how this day in durance ate into me like a canker. With ordinary diligence the trooper who carried the news of me should have gone to Charlotte by way of Queensborough and returned by noon. But being of the same surly breed with his captain, 'twas full three of the clock before he came ambling back with an order to set me forthwith upon the road to headquarters.
Once free of the camp of detention you may be sure I put Blackstar to his best paces; but hasten as I would it was coming on to evening when I passed the inner safety line and galloped down the high street of the town.
As luck would have it, the first familiar face I saw was that of Charles Stedman, the commissary-general. On my inquiry he directed me straight.
"My Lord is at supper at Mr. Stair's. Have you news, Captain?"
I drew breath of relief. Happily the loss of the day had not made me the bearer of stale tidings. So I made answer with proper reticence, saying that I had news, but it was for Lord Cornwallis's ear first of all. None the less, if the commissary-general were pleased to come with me—
He took the hint at once; and he it was who procured me instant admittance to the house, and who took on himself the responsibility of breaking in upon the party in the supper-room.
I shall not soon forget the scene that fronted us when we came into my Lord's presence. The supper was in some sort a gala feast held in honor of my Lord's accession to his earldom. The table, lighted by great silver candelabra which I recognized as Ireton heirlooms, was well filled around by the members of the commander-in-chief's military family, with the earl at the head, and Mistress Margery, bedight as befitted a lady of the quality, behind the tea-urn at the foot.
At our incoming all eyes were turned upon us, but it required my Lord's sharp question to make me leave off dwelling upon my sweet lady's radiant beauty.
"How now, Captain Ireton? Do you bring us news from the major?"
I broke the fascinating eyehold and turned slowly to face my fate.
"I do, my Lord."
"Well, what of him? You left him hastening to rejoin with his new loyalist levies, I hope?"
I drew my sword, reversed it and laid it upon the table.
"May all the enemies of the Commonwealth be even as he is, my Lord," I said, quietly.
Now, truly, I had hanged my petard well and 'twas plain the shock of it had gone far to shatter the wall of confidence our enemies had builded on the field of Camden and elsewhere. Had a hand-grenade with the fuse alight been dropped upon the table, the consternation could scarce have been greater. To a man the tableful was up and thronging round me; but above all the hubbub I heard a little cry of misery from the table-foot where my lady sat.
"How is this, sir?—explain yourself!" thundered my Lord, forgetting for once his mild suavity.
"'Tis but a brief tale, and I will make it as crisp as may be in the telling," I replied. "I came upon the major some miles this side of the crossing of the Broad. He was marching to rejoin you, in accordance with his orders. But when he had your Lordship's command to stand and fight, he obeyed."
"My command?—but I gave him no such order!"
"Nay, truly, you did not—neither in the original nor in the duplicate, my Lord. But when we had waylaid Lieutenant Tybee and quenched the duplicate, and had so amended the original as to make it fit our purpose, the brave major thanked you for what you had not done and made his stand to await the upcoming of the over-mountain men."
For a moment I thought they would hew me limb from limb, but my Lord quelled the fierce outburst with a word.
"Put up your swords, gentlemen. We shall know how to deal with this traitor," he said. And then to me: "Go on, sir, if you please; there has been a battle, as I take it?"
"There has, indeed. The mountain men came up with us in the afternoon of the Saturday. In an hour one-third of the major's force was dead or dying, the major himself was slain, and every living man left on the field was a prisoner."
Again a dozen swords hissed from their scabbards, and again I heard the little cry of misery from the table-foot. I bowed my head, looking momently to pay the penalty; but once more my Lord put the swords aside.
"Let us have a clean breast of it this time, Captain Ireton," he said. "You know well what you have earned, and nothing you can say will make it better or worse for you. Was this your purpose in making your submission to me?"
"It was."
"And you have been a rebel from the first?"
I met the cold anger in the womanish eyes as a condemned man might.
"I have, my Lord—since the day nine years agone when I learned that your king's minions had hanged my father in the Regulation."
"Then it was a farrago of lies you told me about your adventures in the western mountains?"
"Not wholly. It was your Lordship's good pleasure to send succors of powder and lead to your allies, the western savages. I and three others followed Captain Falconnet and his Indians, and I have the honor to report that we overtook and exploded them with their own powder cargo."
"And Captain Sir Francis Falconnet with them?"
"I do so hope and trust, my Lord."
He turned short on his heel, and for a moment a silence as of death fell upon the room. Then he took the Ferara from the table and sought to break it over his knee; but the good blade, like the cause it stood for, bent like a withe and would not snap.
"Put this spy in irons and clear the room," he ordered sharply. And this is how the little drama ended: with the supper guests crowding to the door; with my Lord pacing back and forth at the table-head; with two sergeants bearing me away to await, where and how I knew not, the word which should efface me.
Being without specific orders what to do with me, my two sergeant bailiffs thrust me into that little den of a strong-room below stairs where I had once found the master of the house, and one of them mounted guard whilst the other fetched the camp armorer to iron me.
The shackles securely on, I was left to content me as I could, with the door ajar and my two jailers hobnobbing before it. Having done all I had hoped to do, there was nothing for it now but to wait upon the consequences. So, hitching my chair up to the oaken table, I made a pillow of my fettered wrists and presently fell adoze.
I know not what hour of the night it was when the half-blood Scipio, who was Mr. Gilbert Stair's body-servant, came in and roused me. I started up suddenly at his touch, making no doubt it was my summons. But the mulatto brought me nothing worse than a cold fowl and a loaf, with a candle-end to see to eat them by, and a dish of hot tea to wash them down.
I knew well enough whom I had to thank for this, and was set wondering that my lady's charity was broad enough to mantle even by this little my latest sins against the king's cause. None the less, I ate and drank gratefully, draining the tea-dish to the dregs—which, by the by, were strangely bitter.
I had scarce finished picking the bones of the capon before sleep came again to drag at my eyelids, a drowsiness so masterful that I could make no head against it. And so, with the bitter taste of the tea still on my tongue, I fell away a second time into the pit of forgetfulness.
When I awakened from what seemed in the memory of it the most unresting sleep I ever had, it was no longer night, and I was stretched upon the oaken settle in that same lumber garret where I had been bedded through that other night of hiding. So much I saw at the waking glance; and then I realized, vaguely at first, but presently with startling emphasis, that it was the westering sun which was shining in at the high roof windows, that the shackles were still on, and that my temples were throbbing with a most skull-splitting headache.
Being fair agasp with astoundment at this new spinning of fate's wheel, I sprang up quickly—and was as quickly glad to fall back upon the pallet. For with the upstart a heaving nausea came to supplement the headache, and for a long time I lay bat-blind and sick as any landsman in his first gale at sea.
The sunlight was fading from the high windows, and I was deep sunk in a sick man's megrims, before aught came to disturb the silence of the cobwebbed garret. From nausea and racking pains I had come to the stage of querulous self-pity. 'Twas monstrous, this burying a man alive, ill, fettered, uncared-for, to live or die in utter solitude as might happen. I could not remotely guess to whom I owed this dismal fate, and was too petulant to speculate upon it. But the meddler, friend or foe, who had bereft me of my chance to die whilst I was fit and ready, came in for a Turkish cursing—the curse that calls down in all the Osmanli variants the same pangs in duplicate upon the banned one.
It was in the midst of one of these impotent fits of malediction that the wainscot door was opened and closed softly, and light footsteps tiptoed to my bedside. I shut my eyes wilfully when a voice low and tender asked: "Are you awake, Monsieur John?"
I hope you will hold me forgiven, my dears, if I confess that what with the nausea and the headache, the fetters and the solitude, I was rabid enough to rail at her. 'Twas so near dusk in the ill-lighted garret that I could not see how she took it; but she let me know by word of mouth.
"Merci, Monsieur," she said, icily. And then: "Gratitude does not seem to be amongst your gifts."
At this I broke out in all a sick man's pettishness.
"Gratitude! Mayhap you will tell me what it is I have to be grateful for. All I craved was the chance to die as a soldier should, and some one must needs spoil me of that!"
"Selfish—selfish always and to the last," she murmured. "Do you never give a moment's thought to the feelings of others, Captain Ireton?"
This was past all endurance.
"If I had not, should I be here this moment?" I raved. "You do make me sicker than I was, my lady."
"Yet I say you are selfish," she insisted. "What have I done that you should come here to have yourself hanged for a spy?"
"Let us have plain speech, in God's name," I retorted. "You know well enough there was no better way in which I could serve you."
"Do I, indeed,mon ami?" she flashed out. "Let me tell you, sir, had she ever a blush of saving pride, Margery Stair—or Margery Ireton, if you like that better—would kill you with her own hand rather than have it said her husband died upon a gallows!"
A sudden light broke in upon me and I went blind in the horror of it.
"God in Heaven!" I gasped; "'twas you, then? I do believe you poisoned me in that dish of tea you sent me last night!"
She laughed, a bitter little laugh that I hated to think on afterward.
"You have a most chivalrous soul, Captain Ireton. I do not wonder you are so fierce to shake it free of the poor body of clay."
"But you do not deny it!" I cried.
"Of what use would it be? I have said that I would not have you die shamefully on the gallows; so I may as well confess to the poppy-juice in the tea. Tell me, Monsieur John; was it nasty bitter?"
"Good Lord!" I groaned; "are you a woman, or a fiend?"
"Either, or both, as you like to hold me, sir. But come what might, I said you should not die a felon's death. And you have not, as yet."
"Better a thousand times the rope and tree than that I should rot by inches here with you to sit by and gird at me. Ah, my lady, you are having your revenge of me."
"Merci, encore.Shall I go away and leave you?"
"No, not that." A cold sweat broke out upon me in a sudden childish horror of the solitude and the darkness and the fetters. And then I added: "But 'twould be angel kindness if you would leave off torturing me. I am but a man, dear lady, and a sick man at that."
All in a flash her mood changed and she bent to lay a cool palm on my throbbing temples.
"Poor Monsieur John!" she said softly; "I meant not to make you suffer more, but rather less." Then she found water and a napkin to wring out and bind upon my aching head.
At the touch and the word of womanly sympathy I forgot all, and the love-madness came again to blot out the very present memory of how she had brought me to this.
"Ah, that is better—better," I sighed, when the pounding hammers in my temples gave me some surcease of the agony.
"Then you forgive me?" she asked, whether jestingly or in earnest I could not tell.
"There is none so much to forgive," I replied. "One hopeless day last summer I put my life in pledge to you; and you—in common justice you have the right to do what you will with it."
"Ah; now you talk more like my old-time Monsieur John with the healing sword-thrust. But that day you speak of was not more hopeless for you than for me."
"I know it," said I, thinking only of how the loveless marriage must grind upon her. "But it must needs be hopeless for both till death steps in to break the bond."
Again she laughed, that same bitter little laugh.
"Indeed, it was a great wrong you did that night, sir. I could wish, as heartily as you, that it might be undone. But this is idle talk. Let me see if this key will fit your manacles. I have been all day finding out who had it, and I am not sure it will be the right one, after all."
But it did prove to be the right one; and when the irons were off I felt more like a man and less like a baited bear.
"That is better," said I, drawing breath of unfeigned relief. "I bear my Lord Charles no malice, but 'twas a needless precaution, this ironing of a man who was never minded to run away."
"But you are going to run away," she said, decisively; "and that as soon as ever you are able to hold a horse between your knees. Shall I bring you another dish of tea? Nay, never look so horrified; I shall not poison you this time."
"Stay," I cried. "You mean that you are going to help me escape? 'Tis a needless prolonging of the agony. Go and tell the guards where they can find me."
She stopped midway to the wainscot door and turned to give me my answer.
"No; you are a soldier, and—and I will not be a gallows-widow. Do you hear, sir? If you are so eager to die, there is always the battle-field." And with that she left me.
I may pass over the two succeeding days in the silence I was condemned to endure through the major part of them. After that first visit, Margery came only at stated intervals to bring me food and drink, and my nurse was an old black beldame, either deaf and dumb, or else so newly from the Guinea Coast as to be unable to twist her tongue to the English.
And in the food-bringings I could neither make my lady stay nor answer any question; this though I was hungering to know what was going on beyond the walls of my garret prison. Indeed, she would not even tell me how I had been spirited away from the two sergeants keeping watch over me in her father's strong-room below stairs. "That is Scipio's secret," she would say, laughing at me, "and he shall keep it."
But in the evening of the third day the mystery bubble was burst, and I learned from Margery's lips the thing I longed to know. Lord Cornwallis had decided to abandon North Carolina, and in an hour or two the army would be in motion for withdrawal to the southward.
"Now, thanks be to God!" I said, most fervently. "King's Mountain has begun the good work, and we shall show Farmer George a thing or two he had not guessed."
On this, my lady drew herself up most proudly and her lip curled.
"You forget, sir, you are speaking to Mr. Gilbert Stair's daughter."
"True," said I; "I did forget. We are at cross purposes in this, as in all things else. I crave your pardon, Madam."
Her eyes were snapping by now. Never tell me, my dears, that eyes of the blue-gray can not flash fire when they will.
"How painstakingly you will go about to make me hate you!" she burst out. And then, all in the same breath: "But you will be rid of me presently, for good and all."
"Nay, then, Mistress Margery, you are always taking an ell of meaning for my inch of speech. 'Tis I who should do the ridding."
"Mon Dieu!" she cried, in a sudden burst of petulance; "I am sick to death of all this! Is there no way out of this coil that is strangling us both, Captain Ireton?"
"I had thought to make a way three days ago; did so make it, but you kept me from walking in it. Yet that way is still open—if you will but drop a word in my Lord's ear when you go below stairs."
"Oh, yes—a fine thing; the wife betray the husband!" This with another lip-curl of scorn. "I have some shreds and patches of pride left, sir, if you have not."
"Then free me of my obligation to you and let me do it myself. I am well enough to hang."
"And so make me a consenting accomplice? Truly, as I have said before, you have a most knightly soul, Captain Ireton."
I closed my eyes in very weariness.
"You are hard to please, my lady."
"You have not to try to please me, sir. I am going away—to-night."
"Going away?" I echoed. "Whither, if I may ask?"
"My father has taken protection and we shall go south with the army. As Lord Cornwallis says, Mecklenburg is a hornets' nest of rebellion, and in an hour or two after we are gone you will be amongst your friends."
She made to leave me now, but I would not let her go without trying the last blunt-pointed arrow in the quiver of expedients.
"Stay a moment," I begged. "You are leaving the untangling of this coil you speak of to a chance bullet on a battle-field. Had you ever thought that the Church can undo what the Church has done?"
Again I had that bitter laugh which was to rankle afterward in memory.
"You are a most desperate, pertinacious man, Captain Ireton. Failing all else, you would even storm Heaven itself to gain your end," she scoffed; then, at the very pitch-point of the scornful outburst she put her face in her hands and fell a-sobbing as if her heart would break.
I knew not what to say or do, and ended, man-like, by saying and doing nothing. And so, still crying softly, she let herself out at the wainscot door, and this was our leave-taking.