Part 34 (1/2)
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 gra.s.s. 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, d.i.c.k 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 s.h.i.+eld 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 p.r.i.c.kings 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 l.u.s.tily 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 pa.s.sing 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 d.i.c.k 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.
XXVIII
IN WHICH I SADDLE THE BLACK MARE
Having so good a disguise, the thing I had set myself to do would seem to ask for little more than peaceful boldness held in check by common caution.
The point where I had broken cover to step into the circle of fire light was nearly equidistant from the Englishmen's camp on the right and the horse meadow on the left, so I had not to pa.s.s within recognition range of the great fire; indeed, I might have skulked in the laurel cover all the way, thus coming to the horses unseen by any, but that I was afraid Falconnet might miss his trooper. So I thought it best to show myself discreetly.
Copying our captive's lounging stride, I first held a sauntering course down to the stream's edge, keeping the great camp-fire and the droning Indian hive well to the right and far enough aloof to baffle any over-curious eye at either. Coming to the stream without mishap, I stopped and made a feint of drinking; after which I crossed and climbed slowly toward the makes.h.i.+ft powder magazine.
As I have said, the camp was pitched in a small savanna or natural clearing on the right bank of the little river. This clearing was hedged about by the forest on three sides, and backed by the densely wooded steeps and crags of the western cliff. I guessed the compa.s.s of it to be something more than an acre; not greatly more, since the fire at the troop camp lighted all its boundaries.
On the left or opposite bank of the stream there was no intervale at all. The ground rose sharply from the water's edge in a rough hillside thickly studded and bestrewn with boulders great and small; fallen cleavings and hewings from the crags of the eastern cliff. 'Twas at the foot of one of the boulders, a huge overhanging ma.s.s of weather-riven rock facing the camp, that the powder cargo was sheltered; so isolated to be out of danger from the camp-fires.
From the hillside just below this powder rock I could look back upon the camp _en enfilade_, as an artilleryman would say. Nearest at hand was the half-moon of Indian lodges with the hollow of the crescent facing the stream, and a caldron fire burning in the midst. Around the fire a ring of warriors naked to the breech-clout kept time in a slow shuffling dance to a monotonous chanting; and for onlookers there was an outer ring of squatting figures--the visiting Tuckaseges, as I supposed.
Beyond the Indian lodges, and a little higher up the gentle slope of the savanna, were the troop shelters; and beyond these, half concealed in the fringing of the boundary forest, was the tepee-lodge of the women.
On the bare hillside beneath the powder magazine I made no doubt I was in plainest view from the great fire, and the proof of this conclusion came shortly in a bellowing hail from Falconnet.