dick pressed closer to me, and i could feel him drinking in deep drafts of the grateful outer air.
"what new wonder is this?" he would ask, with something akin to awe in his voice; but we must needs grope this way and that to feel out the answer with our finger-tips.
when the answer was found, the mystery of the lost trail was solved most simply. as we made out, we were in a deep crevice cut crosswise by the stream which, issuing from a yawning cavern in the farther wall, was quickly engulfed again by that lower archway we had just traversed. in some upheaval of the earthquake age a huge slice of the mountain's face had split off and settled away from the parent cliff to leave a deep cleft open to the sky. one end of this crevice chasm—that toward the upland valley—was choked and filled by the debris of later landslides; but the lower end was open.
through this lower end, as we made no doubt, the powder train had come, turning from the indian path in the gorge up the bed of the barrier stream, turning again at the outer cavern mouth to squeeze in single file between the thickly matted undergrowth and the cliff's face, and so to pass around the split-off mass and come into the crevice rift.
how the sharp eyes of the old hunter, and those of the catawba as well, had missed the finding of this squeezing place where the cavalcade had left the stream-bed, we could never guess; but on the chance that we might yet need to know all the crooks and turnings of this outlet, we felt our way quite around the masking cliff and down to the stream's edge in the gorge.
that done we were ready for a farther advance, and clambering back into the crevice we once more took the stream for our guide and were presently deep in the natural tunnel piercing the mountain proper. this extension of the subterranean waterway proved to be a noble cavern, wide and high enough to pass a loaded wain, as we determined by tossing pebbles against the arching roof. none the less, 'twas full of crooks and windings; and in the sharpest elbow of them all, where we were like to lose our way by blundering into one of the many branching side passages, richard stopped me with a hand thrust back.
"softly!" he cautioned; "here are their vedettes!"
just beyond the crooking elbow the dull red glow from a tiny fire gone to coals showed us two indian sentries set to keep the pass. dick drew his claymore, but he was chilling again and the hand that grasped the great blade was shaking as with a palsy. yet he would mutter, as the teeth-chattering suffered him:
"what say you, jack? shall we rush them? there's naught else for it." and then, with a gritting oath: "oh, damn this cursed chilling!"
i whispered back that we would wait till he was better fit. he was loath to admit the necessity, but, as it chanced, the momentary delay saved our lives in that strait. while we paused, hugging the shadows in the crooking elbow, the gloomy depths beyond the sentries were suddenly starred with flaring flambeaux lighting the way for a hasting rabble of savages; and had we been entangled in the struggle with the two sentinels we should have been taken red-handed.
as it was, we had to make the quickest play to save ourselves. in the same breath we both remembered the narrow side passage just behind in which we were nigh to losing our way, and into this we plunged, reckless of possible pitfalls. we were no more than safely out of the main corridor when the runners, some score of them, as we guessed, trooped past our covert in full cry, leaving us half smothered in the smoky trail of their pitch-pine flambeaux.
"now what a-devil has set this hornet's nest of theirs abuzz so suddenly?" i whispered, when the smoke-choke gave us liberty to speak without coughing to betray ourselves.
"our pony-riding tuckaseges, doubtless," was richard's ready answer. "by all the chances, they should have met the great bear and his peace-offering out yonder on the trace—which same they did not. so when they bring this tale to camp there is the devil to pay and no pitch hot. god help our tough old ephraim and the catawba if these bloodhounds win out in time to overtake them!"
"aye," said i; and then we crept out of our dodge-hole and made ready to go about our business with the sentries.
but when we came to peer again around the crooking elbow it would seem that the hurrying search party had fought our battle for us. the watch-fire was there to light a little circle in the gloom, but the watchers were gone. we chanced a guess that they had joined the hue and cry, and so we pressed forward, past the handful of embers and into the pit-black depths beyond.
twenty paces farther on it came to playing blind man's buff with the rocky walls again, and measured by the trippings and stumblings 'twas a long sabbath day's journey to that final turn in the great earth-burrow whence we could see the glimmering of the enemy's camp-fires in the sunken valley.
"now god be praised!" quoth richard most fervently. "another hour in this cursed kennel with the fever on me and i should be a yammering loose-wit." and i, too, was glad enough to see the stars again, and to be at large beneath them.
emerging from the subterranean way, we held to the camp side of the stream, making an ample circuit to the left to come down upon the enemy's position from the wooded slope behind the encampment. we met no let or hindrance in this approach. secure in their stronghold, the indians had no patrols out; and as for the englishmen, every mother's son of them, it seemed, was basking in the light of a great fire built before the pine-bough shelters.
favored by a dense thicketing of laurel we made a near-hand reconnaissance of the little wigwam which held our dear lady. as i have said, this was pitched in the thinning of the forest which covered the steep slope behind the encampment, and so was the farthest removed from the stream, and from the indian lodges disposed in a half-moon at the water's edge. here all was quiet as the grave, and the clamor of the indian camp came softened by the distance to a low monotonous humming like the buzzing of a bee-hive. the flap of the tepee-lodge was closely drawn, and the bit of fire before it had burned out to a heap of white-ashed embers.
"they are safe as yet, thank god!" says richard, heaving a most palpable sigh of relief. then, with the fever in his veins to whip his natural ardor into hasty action: "'twill be hours before eph and the catawba can come in by your upper ravine, jack, and we shall never have a better chance than this. hold you quiet here, whilst i—"
but i laid fast hold of him and would not hear to any such a foolhardy marring of ephraim yeates's plan.
"heavens, boy! are you gone clean mad?" i would say. "'twill be risky enough with midnight in our favor; with the camp well asleep, and that great fire burned down to give us something less than broad daylight to work in!"
he turned upon me like a pettish child. "oh, to the devil with your stumbling-blocks, john ireton! you are always for holding back. by heaven! i'll swear you have no drop of lover's blood in your veins!"
"so you have said before. but let that pass, we must bide by our promise to yeates, which was not to interfere unless margery stood in present peril. moreover, we should learn the lay of the land better while we have the firelight to help. when the time for action comes we must be able to make the play with our eyes shut, if need be. come."
'twas like pulling sound teeth to get him away, but he yielded at length and we crept on to have some better sight of the troop camp. we had it; had also a glimpse of the baronet-captain playing loo with his lieutenant and another. the tableau at the fire gave us better courage. the men had laid their arms aside and were sprawling at their ease; and while the arch scoundrel was in the gaming mood, margery had less to fear from him.
i said as much to dick, and for answer he pointed to the flask of usquebaugh which was at that moment making the round of the loo players.
"i know frank falconnet better than you do, jack, for i have known him later. he is all kinds of a villain sober, but he is a fiend incarnate with the liquor in him. 'tis lucky we are here. if he do but drink deep enough, margery is like to have need—"
"hist!" said i; "some of these lounging rascals may not be so drowsy as they look."
he nodded, and we backed away to make another circuit which fetched us out on the up-valley side of the encampment. here we could look down into a smaller glade or bottom meadow on the stream where the horses of the band were cropping the lush grass. it was the sight of these, and of margery's black mare among them, that set me thinking of a pickeering venture to the full as harebrained as that from which i had but now dissuaded richard jennifer.
"we shall need another mount, and mistress margery's saddle," i said. "lie you close here whilst i play the horse-thief on these reavers."
but my dear lad was rash only for himself. "now who is daft?" he retorted. "the catawba himself could never run that gantlet and come through alive."
"mayhap," i admitted. "but yet—"
he cut me off in the midst, winding an arm about my head by way of an extinguisher. one of the redcoat troopers lounging before the great fire had risen and was coming straight for our hiding place.
i saw not what to do; should have done nothing, i dare say, till the man had walked fair upon us. but richard was quicker witted.
"give me your sword!" he muttered; "mine will be too long to shorten upon," and when the englishman's next stride would have kicked us out of hiding, dick rose up before him like the devil in a play, gripped him by the collar and laid his sword's point at his throat.
"follow me, step for step, or you are a dead man!" he commanded; and so, pacing backward, he led the fellow, with the hulking body of him for a shield and mask, out of the circle of firelight and into the safer shadows of the forest.
when i had made a creeping detour to join him, he still had his man by the collar and was emphasizing the need for silence by sundry prickings with the ferara.
"say, quick! what to do with him, jack?" he demanded, when i came up; and now my slower wit came into play.
"out of this to some safer dressing-room, and i'll show you," said i; and forthwith we marched our prize up the valley a long musket-shot or more.
when the soldier had leave to speak he begged right lustily for his life, as you would guess; but we gave him a short shrift. if the plan i had in mind should have a fighting chance for success it must be set in train before this trooper should be missed.
so, having first gagged the poor devil with his own neckerchief, we stripped him quickly; and i as quickly donned the borrowed uniform and became, at least in outward semblance, a light-horse trooper of that king whose service i had once forsworn. the items of small-clothes, waistcoat and head-gear fitted me passing well, but when it came to the boots we stuck fast, and i was forced to wear my own foot-coverings.
the change made,—and you may believe no play-house actor of them all ever doffed or donned a costume quicker,—we bound our luckless captive hand and foot, pinned him face downward in the sward, and so leaving him with only his boots for a memento,—happily for him the night was no more than goose-flesh cool,—we raced back to our peeping-place on the skirting of the camp ground.
here dick wrung my hand, calling himself all the knaves unspeakable for letting me take a risk which he was pleased to call his own; and with that i stepped out into the firelight and was fair afoot in the enemy's camp.
