In that book he wrote—the book in which he never so much as names the name of Ireton—my Lord Cornwallis's commissary-general, Charles Stedman, damns Colonel Tarleton in a most gentlemanly manner for his ill-success at the Cowpens, and would charge to his account personal the failure of Cornwallis's plan to crush in detail the patriot Army of the South.
Now little as I love, or have cause to love, Sir Banastre Tarleton,—they tell me he has been knighted and now wears a major-general's sword-knot,—'tis but the part of outspoken honest enmity to say that we owed the victory at the Cowpens to no remissness on the part of the young legion commander who, if he were indeed the most brutal, was also the most active and enterprising of Lord Cornwallis's field officers.
No, it was no remissness nor lack of bravery on the part of the enemy. 'Twas only that the tide had turned. King's Mountain had been fought and won, and there were to be no more Camdens for us.
In the affair at the cow pastures, which followed hard upon Richard's and my return from our flying visit to Winnsborough, the very elements fought for us and against the British. As for instance: Tarleton, with his famous legion of horse, and infantry enough to make his numbers exceed ours, began his march on the eleventh and was rained on and mired for four long days before he had crossed the Broad and had come within scouting distance of us.
Left to himself, Dan Morgan would have locked horns with the enemy at the fording of the Pacolet; but in the council of war, our colonel and John Howard of the Marylanders were for drawing Tarleton still deeper into the wilderness, and farther from the British main, which was by this moved up as far as Turkey Creek. So we broke camp hastily and fell back into the hill country; and on the night of the sixteenth took post on the northern slope of a low ridge between two running streams.
For its backbone our force had some three hundred men of the Maryland line and two companies of Virginians. These formed our main, and were posted on the rising ground with John Howard for their commander. A hundred and fifty paces in their front, partly screened in the open pine, oak and chestnut wooding of the ground, were Pickens's Carolinians and the Georgians; militiamen, it is true, but skilled riflemen, and every man of them burning hot to be avenged on Tarleton's pillagers.
Still farther to the front, disposed as right and left wings of outliers, were Yeates and his fellow borderers and some sixty of the Georgians set to feel the enemy's approach; and in the reserve, posted well to the rear of the Marylanders and Virginians, was our own colonel's troop guarding the horses of the dismounted Georgians.
'Twas when we were all set in order to await the sun's rising and the enemy's approach that Dan Morgan rode the lines and harangued us. He was better at giving and taking shrewd blows than at speech-making; but we all knew his mettle well by now, and I think there was never a man of us to laugh at his unwonted grandiloquence and solemn periods. In the harangue the two battle lines had their orders: to be steady; to aim low; and above all to hold their fire till the enemy was within sure killing distance.
"'Tis a brave old Daniel," said Dick, whilst the general was sawing the air for the benefit of the South Carolinians. "'Twill not be his fault if we fail. But you are older at this business than any of us, Jack; what think you of our chances?"
I laughed, and the laugh was meant to be grim. I knew the temper of the British regulars, and how, when well led, they could play the hammer to anybody's anvil.
"Any raw recruit can prophesy before the fact," said I. "We have Tarleton, his legion, the Seventh, a good third of the Seventy-first, and two pieces of artillery in our front. If they do not give a good account of themselves, 'twill be because Tarleton has marched them leg-stiff to overtake us."
Dick fell silent for the moment, and when he spoke again some of Dan Morgan's solemnity seemed to have got into his blood.
"I have a sort of coward inpricking that I sha'n't come out of this with a whole skin, Jack; and there's a thing on my mind that mayhap you can take off. You have had Madge to yourself a dozen times since that day last autumn when I asked her for the hundredth time to put me out of misery. As I have said, she would not hear me through; but she gave me a look as I had struck her with a whip. Can you tell me why?"
The morning breeze heralding the sunrise was whispering to the leafless branches overhead, and there was nothing in all Dame Nature's peaceful setting of the scene to hint at the impending war-clash. Yet the war portent was abroad in all the peaceful morning, and my mood marched with the lad's when I gave him his answer.
"Truly, I could tell you, Richard; and it is your due to know it from no other lips than mine. Mayhap, a little later, when restitution can go hand in hand with repentance and confession—"
"No, no;" he cut in quickly. "Tell me now, Jack; your 'little later' may be all too late—for me. Does she love you?—has she said she loves you?"
"Nay, dear lad; she despises me well and truly, and has never missed the chance of saying so. Wait but a little longer and I pledge you on the honor of a gentleman you shall have her for your very own. Will that content you?"
At my assurance his mood changed and in a twinkling he became the dauntless soldier who fights, not to die, but to win and live.
"With that word to keep me I shall not be killed to-day, I promise you, Jack; and that in spite of this damned queasiness that was showing me the burying trench." And then he added softly: "God bless her!"
I could say amen to that most heartily; did it, and would have gone on to add a benison of my own, but at the moment there were sounds of galloping horses on our front, and presently three red-coated officers, one of them the redoubtable Colonel Tarleton himself, rode out to reconnoitre us most coolly.
I doubt if he would have been so rash had he known that Yeates and his borderers were concealed in easy pistol-shot; but the simultaneous cracking of a dozen rifles warned and sent the trio scuttling back to cover.
Dick swore piteously, with the snap-shot skirmishers for a target. "The fumblers!" he raged. "'Twas the chance of a life-time, and they all missed like a lot of boys at their first deer stalking!"
"They will have another chance, and that speedily," I ventured; and, truly, the chance did not tarry.
From our view point on the rising ground we could see the enemy forming under cover of the wood; and as we looked, the two pieces of cannon were thrust to the front to bellow out the signal for the assault.
'Twas a sight to stir the blood when the enemy broke cover into the opener wooding of the field to the tune of the roaring cannon, the volleyings of small arms and the defiant huzzaings of the men. The sun was just peering over the summit of Thicketty Mountain, and his level rays fell first upon the charging line sweeping in like a tidal wave of red death to crumple our skirmishers before it.
"Lord!" says Richard; "if Yeates and the Indian come alive out of that—"
But the outliers closed upon our first line in decent good order, firing as they could; and in less time than it takes to write it down the onsweeping wave of red was upon the Carolinians. We looked to see the militia fire and run, home-guard fashion; but these men of Pickens's were made of more soldierly stuff. They took the fire of the assaulting line like veterans, giving ground only when it came to the bayonet push.
"That fetches it to us," said Richard, most coolly; drawing his claymore when the Carolinians began to come home like spindrift ahead of the wave of red. Then he had a steadying word for the men of his company, and a hearty shout and a curse for some of the Georgians who had cut around the flanks of our main to come at their horses in the rear.
But the lad's assertion that our time was come was only a half prophecy. The Marylanders, with the Virginians on either flank, stood firm, giving the onrushing wave a shock that went near to breaking it. But the British were better bayoneted than we, and when it came to the iron our lads must needs give ground sullenly, fighting their way backward as a stubborn assault fights its way inch by inch forward.
"Here come their reserves," said Dick, pointing with his blade to a second red line forming in the farther vistas of the wood. "Lord! shall we never get into it?"
'Twas just here that an order sent by Colonel Howard to his first company, directing it to charge by the flank, came near costing us a rout. The order was misunderstood,—'twas received at the precise moment of the upcoming of the British reserves,—and the Marylanders fell back. In the turning of a leaf our entire fighting front gave way, and what of the Georgians there were left in the mellay made a frantic dash for the horses.
At this crisis John Howard saved the day for us by shrewdly executing the most difficult manoeuver that is ever essayed by a field officer in the heat of battle. Suffering his men to drift backward until the enemy, sure now of success, were rushing on in disorder to give thecoup de grâce, he gave the quick command: "About face! Fire! Charge!"
I saw the volley delivered in the faces of the redcoats at pike's length range; saw the Virginians on the flanks bend to encircle the enemy; saw the rout transfer itself at the roar of the muskets from our side to the recoiling British. Then I heard Dick's shouted command. "Charge them, lads! they're sabering the Georgians!"
A section of Tarleton's horse had hewed its way past our flank and was at work on the militiamen scrambling for their mounts. At it we went, with our brave colonel a horse's length ahead of the best rider in the troop, pistols banging and sword blades whistling, and that other curious sound you will hear only when the cavalry engages—the heavy dunch of the horses coming together like huge living missiles hurled from catapults.
'Twas soon over, and the enemy, horse and foot, was flying in hopeless confusion through the open wood. Our troop led the pursuit; and this brings me to an incident in which thy old chronicler—figuring in the histories as an unnamed sergeant—had his share.
It was in the hot part of the chase, and Colonel Tarleton—a true Briton in this, that he would be first in the charge and last in the retreat—was galloping with two of his aides in rear of the dragoons. Since many of us knew the British commander by sight, there was a great clapping-to of spurs to overtake and cut him off. In this race three horses outdistanced all the others; the great bay ridden by Colonel Washington, a snappy little gray bestridden by the colonel's boy bugler, and my own mount.
When the crisis came, our colonel had the wind of the boy and me and was calling on Colonel Tarleton to surrender at discretion. For answer the three British officers wheeled and fell upon him. Never was a man nearer his death. In a whiff, Tarleton was foining at him in front whilst the two aides were rising in their stirrups on either hand to cut him down.
'Twas the little bugler boy who saved his colonel's life, and not the unnamed "sergeant," as the histories have it. Having neither a sword nor the strength to wield one, the boy reined sharp to the left and pistoled his man as neatly as you please. Seeing his fellowsabreurdrop his weapon and clap his hand to the pistol-wound, my man hesitated just long enough to let me in with the clumsiest of upcuts to spoil the muscles of his sword arm. This transferred the duel to the two principals, who were now at it, hammer and tongs. Both were good swordsmen, but of the twain our colonel was far the cooler. So when Tarleton made to end it with a savage thrust in tierce, Washington parried deftly and his point found his antagonist's sword hand.
At this, Tarleton dropped his blade,—it hangs now over the chimney-piece in Mr. Washington's town house in Charleston,—gave the signal for flight, and the three Britons, each with a wound to nurse, wheeled and galloped on. But in the act Tarleton snatched a pistol from his holster and let drive at our colonel, wounding him in the knee, so we did not come off scatheless.
This pistoling of Colonel Washington by the British commander skimmed a little of the cream from our great and glorious victory. 'Twas no serious hurt, but wanting it I make no doubt we should have ridden down the flying dragoons, adding them, and their doughty colonel to boot, to the five-hundred-odd prisoners we took.
The battle fought and won,—'twas over and done with two full hours before noon,—Dan Morgan knew well what must befall, lacking the swiftest after-doing on our part. With Greene near a hundred miles away, and my Lord Cornwallis less than three hours' gallop to the southward on Turkey Creek, the time was come for the hastiest welding of our little army with that of the general-in-command; if, indeed, the promptest running would take us to the upper fords of the Catawba before Cornwallis should intervene and cut us off.
Accordingly, Jennifer and I were detailed to carry the news of the victory to Greene's camp at Cheraw Hill; and when we rode away on the warm trail of the flying British, we left Dan Morgan's men hard at it, burning the heavy impedimenta of the capture, and otherwise making ready for the swiftest of forced marches to the north.
'Twould be a thankless task to take you with us stage by stage on our cross-country gallop to advertise General Greene of the victory at the cow pastures. Suffice it to say that we made shift to turn the head of the advancing British main, now in motion and hastening with all speed to cut Dan Morgan off; that we were by turns well soaked by rain and stream, deep mired in bogs, chased times without number by the enemy's outriders, and hardshipped freely for food and horse provender before we saw the camp on the Pedee. All this you may figure for yourselves, the main point being that we came at length to the goal, weary, mire-splashed and belted to the last buckle-hole to pinch down the hunger pains, but sound of skin, wind and limb.
Having our news, which set the camp in a pretty furor of rejoicing, I promise you, General Greene lost not an hour in making his dispositions. Leaving Isaac Huger and Colonel Otho Williams in command at Cheraw, the general sent Edward Stevens with the Virginians by way of Charlotte to Morgan's aid, and himself took horse, with a handful of dragoons in which Dick and I were volunteers, to ride post haste to a meeting with Morgan at the upper fords.
Again I may pass lightly over an interval of three days spent hardily in the saddle, coming at once to that rain-drenched thirty-first of January, cold, raw and dismal, when we drew rein at Sherrard's Ford and found Dan Morgan and his men safe across the Catawba with his prisoners, and my Lord Cornwallis quite as safely flood-checked on the western bank of the stream.
Having done our errand, Dick and I reported at once to our colonel. 'Twas of a piece with William Washington's goodness of heart to offer us leave to rest.
"You have had weary work of it, I doubt not, gentlemen," he would say. "Your time is your own until General Greene sets us in order for what he has in mind to do."
I looked at Dick, and he looked at me.
"May we count upon twenty-four hours, think you, Colonel?" I asked.
"Safely, I should say."
"Then I shall ask leave of absence for Captain Jennifer and myself till this time to-morrow," I went on. "This is our home neighborhood, as you know, and we have a little matter of private business which may be despatched in a day."
"Will this business take you without the lines?"
"That is as it may be, sir. I do not know the bounds of the outposting."
The colonel wrote us passes to come and go at will past the sentries, and I drew Dick away.
"What is it, Jack?" he asked, when we were by ourselves.
"'Tis the fulfilling of my promise to you, Richard. Get your horse and we will ride together."
"But whither?" he queried.
"To Appleby Hundred—and Mistress Margery."
'Twas late in the afternoon of the last day of January when we set out together, Jennifer and I, from the camp of conference at Sherrard's Ford.
The military situation, lately so critical for us, had reached and passed one of its many subclimaxes. Morgan's little army, with its prisoners still safe in hand, was on its way northward to Charlottesville in Virginia, and only the officers remained behind to confer with General Greene.
For the others, Huger and Williams were hurrying up from Cheraw to meet the general at Salisbury; and General Davidson, with a regiment of North Carolina volunteers, was set to keep the fords of the Catawba.
As for the British commander's intendings, we had conflicting reports. Two days earlier, Lord Cornwallis had burned his heavy baggage at Ramsour's Mill, and so we had assurance that the pursuit was only delayed. But whether, when he should break his camp at Forney's plantation, he would go northward after Morgan and the prisoners, or cross the river at some nearhand ford to chase our main, none of our scouts could tell us.
We were guessing at this, Richard and I, as we jogged on together down the river road, and were agreed that could my Lord cross the flooded river without loss of time, his better chance would be to fall upon our main at Salisbury or thereabouts. But as to the possibility of his crossing, we fell apart.
"Lacking another drop of rain, we are safe for forty-eight hours yet," Dick would say, pointing to the brimming river rolling its brown flood at our right as we fared on. "And with two days' start we shall have him burning more than his camp wagons to overtake us."
"Have it so, if you will," said I, to end the argument. "But this I know: were Dan Morgan or General Greene, or you or I, in Lord Cornwallis's shoes, the two days would not be lost."
Jennifer laughed. "Leave the rest of us out, Sir Hannibal Ireton, and tell what you would do," he said, mocking me.
We were at that bend in the road where Jan Howart and his Tories had sought to waylay us in the cool gray dawn of a certain June morning when we were galloping this same road to keep my appointment with Sir Francis Falconnet. A huge rock makes a promontory in the stream just here, and I pointed to a water-worn cavity in it where the flood lapped in and out in gurgling eddies.
"You've been sharp to take me up on my forgetting of the landmarks, but there is one I've not forgot," said I. "One day, about the time you were getting yourself born, I was passing this way with my father and a company of the county gentlemen. 'Twas in the Seven Years' War, and the Cherokees were threatening us from the other side. The river was in flood as it is now; and I mind my father saying that when you could see that hole in the rock, Macgowan's Ford would be no more than armpit deep."
"So?" said Richard; "then it behooves us to—" He stopped in mid sentence, drew rein and shifted his sword hilt to the front.
"What is it?" I asked.
For reply he pointed me to a canoe half hidden in the bushes where roadside and river-edge came together.
I laughed. "An empty pirogue. Shall we charge and run it through?"
"Hist!" said he; "that canoe was afloat a minute since. Mark the paddle—'tis dripping yet."
As he spoke an Indian stood up in the bushes beside the pirogue, holding out his empty hands in token of amity. We rode up and were presently shaking hands with our old-time ally, the Catawba.
"How!" said he; "heap how! Chief Harris glad; wah! Make think have to go to Sal'bury to find Captain Long-knife and Captain Jennif'. Heap much glad!"
"Chief Harris?" I queried. "Who may he be?"
The Catawba drew himself up and drummed upon his breast.
"Chief Harris here," he answered, proudly. "The Great War Chief," by which we understood he meant General Greene, "say all Catawba take war-path 'gainst redcoat; make Uncanoola headman; give um new name. Wah!"
At this we shook hands with him again, well pleased that our stanch ally should have recognition at the hands of the general. Then I would ask if he were on the way to raise his tribesmen to fight with us.
"Bimeby; no have time now; big thing over yonder," pointing across the river. "Manitou Cornwally fool Great War Chief, mebbe, hey?"
"How is that?" said Dick; and the query elicited a bit of news to make us prick our ears. The Catawba had been in the British camp at Forney's, posturing again as a Cherokee friendly to the king's side. Some sudden movement had been determined upon, though what it was to be he could not learn. At the end of his own resources he had crossed the river in a stolen pirogue to find and warn us.
"What say you, Dick?" I asked, when we had heard the Catawba through.
The lad was holding his lip in his hand and scowling as one who pits duty against inclination.
"'Tis our cursed luck!" he gloomed. Then he swore it out by length and breadth, and, when the air was cleared, let me have what was in his mind.
"After all, 'tis like enough we should find Appleby house deserted. Gilbert Stair will cling to Lord Cornwallis's coat-skirt as long as he can for sheer safety's sake. At all events, our business must wait; the country's weal comes first." Then to the Indian: "If we can make the beasts take the water, will you ferry us across, Chief?"
The Catawba nodded, and made the nod good by setting us dry-shod on the farther bank of the brown flood. By the time we had the horses rubbed down and resaddled 'twas twilight in the open and night dark in the wood; but we were on our own ground and knew every by-path through the forest.
So, when we had sent the Indian back to carry news of us to General Davidson at the lower ford, and to advertise him of our purpose, we mounted to begin a scouting jaunt, keeping to the wood paths and bearing cautiously northward toward the enemy's camp at Forney's plantation.
At times we were close upon the British sentries, with every nerve strained tense for fight or flight; anon we would be making wide detours through bog and fen, or beneath the black network of wet branches with the rain-soaked leaf beds under foot to make the horses' treadings as noiseless as a cat's.
None the less, in the fullness of time—'twas near about midnight as we guessed it—we had our patience well rewarded. Hovering on the confines of the camp we heard the muffled drum-tap of the reveille, and soon there was the stir of an army making ready for the march.
"Which way will it be, north or south?" whispered Dick, when we had dismounted to cloak the heads of the horses.
"We shall know shortly," said I; and truly, we did, being well-nigh enveloped and ridden down by the fringe of light-horse deploying to pioneer the way. When we had sheered off to let this skirmish cloud blow by, Dick struck a spark into his tinder-box to have a sight of his compass needle.
"South and by east," he announced; "that will mean Beattie's Ford, I take it."
"Not unless they swim, horse and foot," I objected. "'Twill be Macgowan's, more likely."
Having this uncertainty to resolve, we must hang upon the skirts of the British advance till we could make sure, and this proved to be a most perilous business. Yet by riding abreast of the moving main we did resolve the uncertainty; heard the orders passed from man to man, and later saw a small feinting detachment split off to take the road for Beattie's, whilst the main body held on for Macgowan's; all this before we were discovered in the gloaming of the dawn by some of Tarleton's men.
Then, I promise you, my dears, it was neck or nothing, with the devil to take the hindmost. Away we sped toward the near-by river, spurring our wearied beasts as men who ride for life, with a dozen troopers so close upon us that when I glanced over my shoulder the foremost of the redcoat riders was having his face well bespattered with the mud from my horse's heels.
'Twas touch and go, but happily, as I have said, the river was at hand. We came to the high bank some hundred yards above the fording place, and lacking Dick's example to shame me to the braver course, I fear I should have recoiled at the brink. But when the lad sent his horse without the missing of a bound far out over the eddying flood, I shook the reins on the sorrel's neck, gave him the word and shut my eyes.
After all, it was nothing worse than a cold plunge, with a few pistol bullets to spatter harmlessly around us when we came up for air. Moreover, there were the camp-fires of Davidson's men on the farther bank to encourage us; and so swimming and wading by turns we got across in time to give the alarum.
As you would guess, there was a mighty stir on our side of the river when we had splashed ashore and got our news well born. As it turned out, General Davidson's main camp was a good half-mile back from the river in one of the outfields of Appleby Hundred. So it chanced there were upon the spot only brave Joe Graham and his fifty riflemen to dispute the passage of an army.
What was done at Macgowan's Ford in the gray of the morning of February first, 1781, has become a page in our history. But I protest that not any of the chroniclers do even-handed justice to the little band of patriot riflemen doing their utmost to hold a hundred-to-one outnumbering host in check.
'Twas a fine sight, be the onlooker Whig or Tory. The Guards, led by the fiery Irishman, O'Hara, took the water first, the men crowding shoulder to shoulder to brace against the sweep of the current which, on the western side of the stream, was little less than a mill-tail for swiftness. After them came the foot and horse in solid squares, and always with more to follow. None the less, our little handful did not blanch; and when the Guards in midstream held straight across instead of bearing to the right as the ford ran, a shout went up on our side and the fifty hastened up from the ford-head as one man to face the enemy squarely.
Now it was that the brown-barreled rifles began to crack and spit fire; and I do think if we had had our other two hundred and fifty out of that back field on the manor lands, we might at least have made the wading redcoats hurry a little. Indeed, as it was, the van of the Guards broke here and there, and we could hear O'Hara berating his men as only a battle-mad Irishman can, with blarneyings and curses intermingled.
Having no firearms save our wetted pistols, Jennifer and I crouched in cover, waiting to do what two swordsmen might when the blade's length should bridge the fast-narrowing distance between us and the advancing host.
'Twas in this little interval of forced inaction that we heard a most familiar voice issuing from a clump of holly just below our covert; a voice lifted now in fervent prayer and again in Scriptural anathema on the foe.
"'Let God arise and let His inimies be scattered.... Let them be as the chaff upon a threshing-floor'—"
The sharp crack of the old borderer's rifle filled the momentary pause, and a British officer in a colonel's uniform swayed drunkenly in his saddle and plunged headlong in the stream.
"'Let them be as the children of Amalek before the Mighty One of Israel: make them and their princes like Oreb and Zeeb; yea, make all their princes like as Zebah and Zalmunna.... O my God, make them like unto a wheel, and as the stubble before the wind; like as the fire that burneth up the wood, and as the flame that consumeth the mountains.'"
Crack! went the long-barreled piece again, and again an officer hallooing on his floundering battalion bent to his saddle horn and slipped into the turbid flood.
My gorge rose. This picking off of officers has always seemed to me the savagest of war's barbarities. How Richard divined my thought and purpose, I know not; but when I would have slipped down to Yeates's holly bush he laid a detaining hand on my arm.
"Let be," he said; "'tis murder, if you like, but all war is that. When old Eph's turn comes, they will kill him as relentlessly as he is killing them."
By this time the British vanguard was storming ashore through the shallows below the tree fringe which served as cover for Graham's men, and the king's muskets, silent hitherto, began to roar and belch by platoon and volley fire. Jennifer craned his neck and took a swift view of the situation.
"By the Lord Harry!" he cried, "'tis high time Joe Graham was getting his lads in order for a foot race. Once those fellows come ashore they'll play hare and hounds with us to the king's taste. Keep your eye on the nags, Jack. It may chance us to do what two men can to cover a belated retreat."
We had tethered our horses in a thicket of scrub oak where they would be out of bullet-reach until the enemy gained the bank. As I looked to make sure of them, the sorrel gave a shrill neigh to welcome the pounding of hoofs on the Appleby road. I made sure this would be General Davidson bringing in the reserves; and so, indeed, it was; but he came too late. O'Hara's men were already climbing the bank; and Joe Graham was rallying his little company for flight in the face of an onset that made the tree fringe sing with musket balls.
"'Tis our cue to run away!" Dick shouted, dragging me to my feet. "To the horses!"
But now we were too late. Davidson's men were between us and the scrub oak thicket, and we must wait till the column swept by.
Dick swore fervently and put his face to the foe and his back to a tree. Whereupon I dragged him down as promptly as he had just now dragged me up, telling him his broadsword would make but a poor shift parrying musket-balls.
What followed after was over and done with in a dozen fluttering heart-beats. Seeing the case was desperate, General Davidson gathered Graham's fifty into his flying column, flogged his rear into the retreat, and was pitched out of his saddle by a Tory rifle-bullet whilst he was doing it. And when the way to our horses was clear of the galloping Carolinians, and we would have run to mount and ride after them, the swarming redcoat van was upon us.
"Up with you and out of this!" cried Jennifer, setting me the example. "We must e'en gallop as we can. Quick, man!"
But in the gathering and the retreat our old sharpshooter under his holly bush had been left behind; and now we heard him again, chanting his terrible imprecations on the enemy.
Dick saw the meaning in my look, and together we pounced to drag the old man out of hiding. When we burst down upon him, Yeates had his piece to his face and was drawing a bead on a stout man in cocked hat and plain regimentals whose horse was curveting and sidling in the nearer shallows; no less a figure, in truth, than my Lord Cornwallis himself, cheering his men on to the attack.
We had scarce made out the old hunter's target when the rifle spat fire, the curveting charger reared in its death plunge, and the British commander-in-chief, unhurt, as it seemed, was dragged from the entanglement of his stirrups by his aides.
The old marksman sprang up in a fury of wrath. "Dad blast ye for a pair of aim-sp'ilin'—"
A roar of musketry cut the rebuke in half, and a storm of bullets smote through the branches overhead. A falling bough knocked my hat off, and I stooped to recover it. When I rose, Dick was clipping the old man tightly in his arms. Yeates's belt was cut, and a little oozing well-spring of red was slowly soaking the fringe of his hunting-shirt.
"Ease me down, Cap'n Dick; ease me down. The old man's done for, this time, ez I allow—spang in the innards. Ease me down and get off for yerselves, if so be ye can, im—me—jit—"
The wagging jaw dropped and the keen old eyes went dim and sightless. Dick's oath was more a sob than an imprecation; and now it was I who said: "Come on—the living before the dead!" and so we made the well-nigh hopeless dash for the horses.
How we rode free out of that hurly-burly at the ford-head you must figure for yourselves, if you can. The men of the British vanguard were all about us when we got to the scrub oak thicket and mounted, but no one of them raised a hand to stay us. I have thought since that mayhap they took us for a pair of their own Tory allies who were not above wearing the stolen uniforms of the dead. Be that as it may, we rode away unhindered, Dick in all the bravery of his captain's slashings, and I in light-horse buff and blue, taking the road toward the manor house because that was the only one open to us, and ambling leisurely till we were beyond the sight and sound of the victors at the ford.
But once at large, we put spurs to our horses in trueritterfashion; and we had galloped half way to Appleby house before Dick said:
"Now we are well out of that, what next? We can not go to Margery with the whole British army at our heels."
"Nay, but we shall, if only for a short half-hour," I asserted. Then, as once before, I gave him my best bow. "For the last time, it may be, let me play the lord of the manor. You are very welcome to my father's demesne, Richard, and to all of its holdings."
"All?" said he, giving me a quick eye-shot as we pressed on side by side.
"Yes, all," said I; and I meant it in good faith. He should have the lady, too; that precious holding of the old manse without whom my father's acres would be but a bauble to be lost or won indifferently.
"Then you do not love Madge more?" he queried, his eye kindling.
"Nay, I did not say that. But I did say the other; that you should have the house and all its holdings."
We were cantering up the oak-sentried avenue to that door which Gilbert Stair had once sought to keep against us with his bell-mouthed blunderbuss. There was no sign of any living thing about the place; and when we had no answer to our sword-hilt knockings on the door, the lad turned upon me with a flash of anger in his eyes and his lip a-curl.
"You knew full well what you were promising, John Ireton!" he said. "She is not here."
What Richard's most natural resentment would have led to, in what new tangle of the net of bitterness we might have been enmeshed, we were spared the knowing. For when he said, "She is not here," two happenings intervened to give us both other things to think of.
The first was the advent, at the far end of the oak-lined avenue, of a troop of British light-horse, trotting leisurely; the second was the swinging inward of the door of unwelcome, with old Anthony grinning and bowing behind it.
Now when you have fairly surprised a fox in the open, he asks nothing more than a hole to hide him in. There were the hunters coming up the avenue; and here was our dodge-hole gaping before us. So, as hunted things will, we took earth quickly; though, truly, 'twas an ostrich-trick rather than a fox's, since we left the horses standing without to advertise our presence to all and sundry.
It was Richard who first found the wit to realize the ostrich-play.
"The horses!—we may as well have left the town crier outside to ring his bell and tell the redcoats we are here," he would say; and before I knew what he would be at he had snatched the door open and was whistling softly to the big gray.
Hearing his master's call, the gray pricked his ears and came obediently, with the sorrel tagging at his heels. A moment later, when the up-coming troop was hidden by a turn in the avenue, we had the pair of them in the hall with the door shut and barred behind them.
"So far, so good," quoth Dick. Then to the old black, who had stood by, saucer-eyed and speechless, the while: "Anthony, do you be as big a numbskull as you were born to be, and hold these redcoat gentlemen in palaver till we can win out at the back."
The old majordomo nodded his good-will, but now my slow wit came in play. "We've done it now," said I. "The horses will go out as they came in, or not at all. Had you forgotten the stair at the back?"
Judge for yourselves, my dears, if this were the time, place or crisis for a man to fling himself upon the hall settle, grip his ribs and laugh like any lack-wit. Yet this is what Richard Jennifer did.
It was in the very midst of his gust of ill-timed merriment, while the horses were nosing niftily at their strange surroundings, and the hoof-strokes of the redcoat troop could be plainly heard on the gravel of the avenue, that I chanced to lift my eyes to the stair. There, looking down upon us with speechless astoundment in the blue-gray eyes, stood our dear lady.
Another instant and she was with us, stamping her foot and crying: "Mon Dieu!what is this? Are you gone mad, both of you?"
Dick's answer was another burst of laughter, loud enough, you would think, to be heard by those beyond the door.
"Behold four witless brute beasts, Mistress Madge—two horses and two asses," he said. And then to old Anthony: "Open the door, Tony, and invite the gentlemen in."
But Margery was before him. Ah, my dears, a man's wit is like a matchlock, fizzing and sputtering its way noisily to find the powder whilst the enemy hath time to ride up and saber the musketeer; but a woman's is like the spark in a tinder-box—a quick snip of flint and steel and you have your fire. In a flash my lady had torn down the heavy curtains from an inner doorway and was carpeting a horse path for us to the rear.
"Quick!" she cried; "lead them gently, for the love of heaven!"
She went before us, padding the way with whatever came first to hand, rugs, curtains, table-coverings, and I know not what besides; and by the time the British troopers were hammering at the outer door, we were deep within the old mansion and had made shift to drag the unwilling horses by one and two-step descents to a room half under and half out of ground, which served as a sort of ante-dungeon to the wine cellar.
Here I thought we might be safe for the moment, but not so my lady. Calling Dick to help her—in all the fierce haste of it I marked that she called to Dick and not to me—she unlocked and opened the door to the wine vault, and in a trice we two and the luckless horses were safely jailed in pitchy darkness, with the stout oaken door slammed behind us, the bolt shot in the lock, and the key withdrawn, as we could see by the spot of light which came through the keyhole.
Richard was the first to break the grave-like silence of our dungeon.
"Lord!" said he; "did ever you see such sharp-wit work in all your adventures? What a soldier's wife she'd make!"
I smiled at that, being safe to smile in the darkness. For was she not a soldier's wife? I hugged that saying as we cling to the thing that is slipping from us. True, I was here to give her freely over to another and a better soldier; but while she was mine I would claim her, in my heart, at least.
The excitement of the narrow escape somewhat overpast, we sat long on the edge of a wine-bin, speculating in whispers as to what would befall, and listening vainly for the footsteps which would forecast our release or our capture by the enemy. But when no sounds, threatening or encouraging, came from the upper world, we groped about till we found the cellar candle, lighted it with flint and steel and tinder-box, and took a survey of our jail.
'Twas the same old cavernous wine vault of my youthful remembrance, such an one as has not its mate in all Carolina to this good day, as I firmly believe. My father's hobby was to build for all eternity; and this stone-arched cellarage was more like a cathedral crypt than a store-room for a country gentleman's table-stock of wines.
Dick held the candle aloft and scanned the bottle racks, none so greatly depleted as they might have been, had any hand but that close-fisted one of Gilbert Stair's taken the key in charge after my father.
"There is no lack of potables," says my candle-bearer; "but, unhappily, there is never so much as a dry crust to soak in them. And as for the horses, I'll venture they'd give it all, pint for pint, for a good feeding of oats."
"Truly," said I; and then we fell to stripping the straw casings from the bottles of madeira to give the poor beasts a feed of rye-stalks which had grown and ripened their grain many a year before either the sorrel or the gray was foaled.
Having no time-measure save our own impatience, it seemed a weary while before we heard the key rasping in the lock of our prison door.
"'Tis Madge," said Dick, with a true lover's gift of second sight; and 'twas he who went to help her swing the thick-slabbed oak.
What passed between them I did not hear, nor want to hear. But when the door was swung to and locked again I knew we were not free to go abroad.
Richard came back to me in the inner vault bearing gifts; the better part of a boiled ham with bread to match, a jug of water from the well, and more candles.
"We are not to starve, but that is our best news, thus far," he said. "Of all the houses on our side of the river, Lord Cornwallis must needs pitch upon this manor of Appleby for his rallying headquarters. Madge can not guess when he and the army will be gone, and she is frighted stiff for our sakes."
This was sober news, indeed, but we could do naught but make the best of it. As for me, I was most anxious to know if the good priest were at Appleby, and what of my chance for seeing him; but of this I could say no word to Richard.
So, when we had done full justice to my lady's bounty, we stowed the horses in the deepest of the vaults and stripped more of the bottle coverings for them. But having only the jug of water, we could do no more than swab their mouths out with a wetted kerchief in lieu of giving them a drink.
When all was done we sat ourselves down to wait as we must; and when the silence and solitude had wrought their perfect work, we fell to talking in low tones to match the place and circumstance; and I do think in those quiet hours, walled in as we were from all the disturbments of the outer world, we came closer than we had come for many months.
And while we sat and talked the long day wore on to evening and a storm came on, as we could determine, though no otherwise than by the muffled rolling of the thunder which, since we could not see the lightning nor hear the rain, we took at first for the booming of distant cannon.
I can not tell you all we spoke of in that day-long immurement. There was some talk of the great struggle for independence, now, though we knew it not, drawing near to its close; and there was much of reminiscence, harking back to the exciting and tragic scenes in which we two had had our entrances and our exits. Also, there was a tribute paid to the memory of our true old friend and trusted comrade in arms, Ephraim Yeates, so lately gone to his own place. 'Twas at this time I learned what of the old man's gifts and peculiarities I have hereinbefore set down; for Richard had known him long and well.
From speaking of old Ephraim and his sudden taking-off we came to things more nearly present; and at length Dick would lay a finger gently upon the mystery in which he was as yet walking as one blindfolded.
"'Tis not a shameful thing; don't tell me it is that, Jack," he would say; and I gave him speedy assurance upon that head.
"No,'tis never shameful; so much I may lay an oath to."
"Yet you said once—in that black night when I went mad and would have killed you—that your life lay between Madge and me."
"So it did—and does. And God will bear me witness, dear lad, that I have worn that life upon my sleeve."
"Nay," he said, very gently; "you need not go so high for a witness; have I not seen?"
We fell silent upon that, and there, in the candle-yellowed gloom of our dungeon harbor, I fought the fellest battle of my life; fought it and won it, too, my dears, once and for all. There was a cold sweat on my brow when I began in low tones to tell him the story of that fateful night in June. At rising forty 'tis no light thing to lose a friend—nay, to turn a friend's love into scorn and loathing and bitter hatred.
He heard me through without a word; and at the end, when I looked to see him spring up and bid me draw and let him have his one poor chance for satisfaction, he still sat motionless, winking and staring at the guttering candle. And when he spoke 'twas with a quivering of the lip that was not of anger.
"Dear God," said he; "'tis I who stand in the way."
"No; for she loves you, Richard, as dearly as she hates me. And 'tis not so hopeless now, else I had never screwed together the courage to tell you all this. She has at last consented to the Church's undoing of the incomplete marriage—'twas this she wrote me about when we were at the Cowpens, and 'twas her letter that set me upon going to Winnsborough to see the priest. I missed him there, as you know; but I am here now by her own appointment to meet him in her father's house."
He shook his head slowly. "You've killed the hope in me, Jack. I do think you are all at sea; 'tis you she loves—not me."
I could afford to smile at that.
"If you could see how she has ever gone about to prove that she did not love me, you would rest easy on that score, dear lad."
But he would only shake his head again.
"'Twas to save your life she rode in on us that morning under the oaks in the glade."
"'Twas a womanly horror of a duel and bloodshed, more belike," said I.
"But she has saved your life thrice since then, as you confess."
"Yes; from a strained sense of wifely duty, as she took good care to tell me."
"None the less—ah, Jack, you do not know her as I do; she would never have consented to stand before the priest with you had there not been something warmer than hatred in her heart."
"'Twas a bitter necessity, fairly forced upon her. Tell me; had there been a spark of love for me in her heart, would she have treated me as the dust beneath her feet on that long infaring from the western mountains? She never spoke a word to me, Dick, in all those weeks."
"Which may prove no more than that you said or did something to cut her to the quick. 'Twould be well in your way, Jack. She is as sensitive as she should be, and you are blunter than I—which is the worst I could say of you."
"No, no; you are far beside the mark. You forget that the breaking of the marriage is of her own proposing—at least, I should say I only hinted at it."
"There may be two sides to that, as well. Have you ever told her that you love her, Jack?"
"Surely not! I have been all kinds of a poltroon in this matter, as I have confessed, but this one thing I have not done."
"Well," said he, speaking slowly, as one who thinks the path out word by word, "what if she believes 'tis you who want your freedom? What if you have made her that bitterest thing in all the world—a woman scorned?"
I would not listen to him more.
"This is all the merest folly, Richard, as I will prove to you beyond the question of a doubt. Do you mind that little interval in the Cherokees' torture-play when they came to bind us afresh for the burning?"
"I mind no more of that horror-night than I can help."
"Well, in that hour, when death was waiting for all three of us, she wrote a little farewell note to the man she loved. 'Twas for you, Dick, but her Indian messenger blundered and gave it me."
He got upon his feet at that and began to pace slowly back and forth under the gloomy archings. But ere long he paused to grasp and wring my hand most lovingly, saying, "Who am I, Jack, to buy my happiness at such a price?"
"Nay, lad; 'tis neither you nor I who should figure greatly in the matter; 'tis our dear lady. She must e'en have what she longs for, if you, or I, or both of us, should have to go above stairs and put our necks into my Lord Cornwallis's noose."
"Now, by heaven, Jack Ireton, 'tis you who are the true lover and the gentleman; and I am naught but a selfish churl with my face in my own trencher!" he burst out, wringing my hand yet again. "'Tis as you say; yet I will not be driven from this; for aught you have told me to prove it otherwise, Madge has yet to choose between us, and she shall have that choice, fairly and squarely, and knowing that you love her, before we three go apart again."
I smiled, and tried hard to keep the heart-soreness out of my reply.
"As for that, my lad, I have had my stirrup-cup long since, and have drained it to the dregs with a wry face, as an old man must when a young man brews for him. But if the priest—"
Jennifer had resumed his pacing sentry beat, and at this juncture a most singular thing happened. Though we were sealed in, as I have said, from all the outer world with no crack nor cranny for a peephole, a blinding flash of lightning, blue and ghastly, came suddenly to fill the whole cellar with its vivid glare.
"Good Lord!" says Richard, clapping his hands to his eyes; "where did that come from?"
I was wholly at a loss for a moment. Then I remembered that there was, or had been in my boyhood days, a narrow, iron-barred window in the farther end of the wine cellar, opening beneath that other window of the great south room where I had climbed to spy upon the conspirators on the night of Captain John Stuart's visit to Appleby. So it chanced that when another flash came I was looking straight over Dick's head at the place in the farther arching of the vault where the little window should be.
The momentary glare showed me the low square of the window opening, and framed for a flitting instant therein a face of most devilish malignity peering in upon me with foxy-fierce eyes; the face, to wit, of Gilbert Stair's lawyer-factor.
In a twinkling the vision was gone, and in the space between the flash and the crash there was a sound as of a wooden shutter slamming in place. Dick heard the noise without knowing the cause of it, being so far beneath the window as to see nothing but the lighting of the glare.
"What was that?" he demanded, when the thunder gave him leave.
"'Twas our trapper clapping the shutter on the window over your head," said I. "He was looking in to see if we were ripe for hanging."
"'Tis no time for riddles; what mean you?"
"I mean that we shall have a file of redcoats down upon us as soon as ever Mr. Owen Pengarvin can give the alarm."
"Oho!" said Dick; and then he pulled his sword from its scabbard, and I could see the battle-veins swelling in his forehead. "They can hang me when I am too dead to cut and thrust more—not sooner."
I got me up and went to find the sword which I had laid aside in the horse-baiting. 'Twas a poor blade—one of our captures at the Cowpens; and when I tried its temper it snapped in my hand.
"Never mind," said I; "give me the broadsword scabbard and I will play it as a cudgel, 'tis long enough and full heavy enough."
He laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, swearing out his love for me as if I had said something moving. "You are every inch a soldier, Jack; you would put heart into a worse craven than I am ever like to be." And he loosed the iron scabbard and gave it me.
Now ensued a most painful time of waiting and listening for the tramp of our takers. We posted us near the door, a little to the side, so that its inswing might not catch us; and so, bracing for the onset, we waited till the strain of suspense grew so great that we both started like frighted children, when finally the key was thrust into the lock and the bolt shot back.
But when the heavy door gave inward, as at the pushing of a weak or timid hand, we saw our dear lady standing in the half gloom of the ante-dungeon, breathless and trembling with excitement.
"Come!" she panted; "come quickly—there is not an instant to spare. The factor has betrayed you; he will be here directly with the dragoons!"
I cut in swiftly. "He has not seen Dick; does he know we are both here?"
She had one hand on her heart to still its tumultuous beating, and the other held behind her, and she could scarce speak more for her eagerness to have us out and away.
"No; it was you he saw; and my father heard Colonel Tarleton give the order. Lieutenant Tybee is to take a file of his troopers and hang without grace the man he will find hiding in the wine cellar; those were his very words. Oh, merciful heaven! will you never stir?"
Richard gave a low whistle.
"So Tybee has come alive in good time to square the old account with us," he would say; but my wonder was greater on the other head. "Your father?" I gasped. "And he sent you to save me?"
"Surely," she said. "Are you not once again his guest, Captain Ireton?" Then she stamped her foot, and though the candle-light was of the poorest, I could see her eyes flash. "Will you squander the last moment in silly questions?" she burst out. "Come, I say!"
I smiled. "Give me that sword you are hiding behind you and I will keep the door whilst you spirit Dick away. He is not to be in this."
She gave me the weapon, though not, as I made sure, in any consenting to my proposal. I could have cried out in sheer joy when I found the sword to be my own good blade of proof—the ancient Ferara willed me by my father.
Sharp as the crisis was, I make no doubt I should have asked her then and there how she came by the blade I had last seen when my Lord Cornwallis tried to break it over his knee; but the march of events suddenly became too swift for me. There was a sound of cautious footsteps in the inclined passage leading from the butler's pantry above, and our chance for escape that way was gone.
"Too late!" said Dick; and with an arm about Margery he whipped behind the great oaken door opened back against the cellar wall, whispering me to follow.
We were scarce in hiding, with the door well drawn back to screen us, when the cautious footsteps came slowly into the out-cellar. Peeping through the crack behind the door we saw Pengarvin—alone.
What brought him there without his tale of armed men at his back no man will ever know; but since his ways were always crooked and devious, I guessed he would not wish to appear in the matter in his own proper person, and yet could not deny himself a 'forehand peep to see if the trap were still safe shut and secure.
'Twas evident he was much disconcerted at finding the door open and the wine vault apparently empty. At first he would start and dodge as if to run away; then his rage got the better of his caution and he had one of those senseless cursing fits I have before told you of, raving and swearing and promising all manner of fiendish recompense to Mistress Margery when he should have her in his power.
A little longer dwelling upon this variation of the cursing theme—ravings in which Dick learned for the first time of the factor's design to marry my widow and the estate—and I do think the lad would have gone out to make him sing another tune. But now the factor left off suddenly to cock his ear and listen, and afterward to come tiptoeing into the cellar, all eyes to spy and legs to run if a mouse should but squeak at him.
He was muttering to himself as he passed our hiding place.
"By all the devils, he must be here, some gait. The little jade would have warned him if she had known; but it is known only to the doddering old miser and me, and the girl is safe in her bed-room. Happen this devil of an Austrian captain has drunken himself sodden; ah, that would be a rare jest—to wake with the rope around his neck! If those cursed, slow-footed dragoons would but come! Damme! I'll have that bull-necked lieutenant cashiered if his high and mighty loitering balks me in this."
He stopped before the wine cask whereon the flickering candle stood and craned his neck to look beyond it. The candle was guttering smokily, and he reached a shaking thumb and finger to pluck the "dead man" from the wick. At that we heard him muttering again.
"'Twas a play to make the very devil envious; and to have it marred by that pig of a lieutenant! No one knew me in it save the legion colonel, and could we have sprung the trap fair and softly, not even Mistress Margery herself could have laid this swashbuckler's death at my door. But now he's gone—vanished like a straw bailee, and all because that damned understrapper of Colonel Tarleton's must needs turn up his nose at a bit of sheriff's work. Curse him!"
The candle was burning brightly now, and he crept catlike around the cask to peer into the bin beyond it. Just then the shutter to the little window of espial fell open with a shrill creaking of its rusty hinges, and a blue glare of lightning came to prick out every nook and corner of the cellar. Being almost within a blade's length of the factor, I saw him plainly; saw him start back and put his hands to his face and drop down all of a tremble on the bin's edge, where I had been sitting when he discovered me.
To second the flash a prolonged drum-roll of thunder dinned upon the still air of the vault, and mingled with the thunder came other flashes, searing the eye and making the candle flame appear as a sickly orange halo in the blue-white glare. What with the play of the storm artillery we could neither see nor hear for the moment; but when the candle-light came to its own again the scene had changed as if by magic. Under cover of the thunder din a squad of dragoons had come to ring the factor in where he sat upon the edge of the wine bin.
"So-ho!" said my good friend Tybee, with a little strident laugh, "'tis you I am to take out and hang, is it, Master Lawyer? I thought mayhap you'd double on your track once too often, and so it seems you have. Up with you and come along."
All in a flash Pengarvin was up and bursting out in a trembling frenzy-fit of protestation.
"Oh, 'tis all a mistake, my good sir—a devil's own trap! I—I am not the man; I pledge you my sacred word! I—hands off, you cursed villains, or I'll have the law on you!" this last when one of the men cast the noose of a rope over his head whilst a second drew his arms to his sides in the looping of another cord. "By God! you shall all smart for this; all, I say! Take me to Colonel Tarleton. The king has no stancher friend in all the province than I. Why, damme,'twas I who—"
A trooper came behind and gagged him with the loose end of the rope; and Tybee held the candle to light the knotting of it. And so they marched him out, with Tybee muttering between his teeth that it was rat-catcher's work, and no soldier's, this killing of vermin, and bidding his men make haste.