Part 23 (1/2)
We would have reined up if Shalah had not cried on us to keep on. I do not think the arrow was meant to strike us. 'Twas a warning, a grim jest of the savages in the wood.
Then another fell, at the same distance before our first rider.
Still Shalah cried us on. I fell back to the rear, for if we were to escape I thought there might be need of fighting there. I felt in my belt for my loaded pistols.
We were now in a coppice again, where the trees were short and spa.r.s.e.
Beyond that lay another meadow, and, then, not a quarter-mile distant, the welcome line of the mist, every second drawing down on us.
A third time an arrow fell. Its flight was shorter and dropped almost under the nose of Elspeth's horse, which swerved violently, and would have unseated a less skilled horsewoman.
”On, on,” I cried, for we were past the need for silence, and when I looked again, the kindly fog had swallowed up the van of the party.
I turned and gazed back, and there I saw a strange sight. A dozen men or more had come to the edge of the trees on the hill-side. They were quite near, not two hundred yards distant, and I saw them clearly. They carried bows or muskets, but none offered to use them. They were tall fellows, but lighter in the colour than any Indians I had seen. Indeed, they were as fair as many an Englishman, and their slim, golden-brown bodies were not painted in the maniac fas.h.i.+on of the Cherokees. They stood stock still, watching us with a dreadful impa.s.sivity which was more frightening to me than violence. Then I, too, was overtaken by the grey screen.
”Will they follow?” I asked Shalah.
”I do not think so. They are not hill-men, and fear the high places where the G.o.ds smoke. Further-more, there is no need.”
”We have escaped, then?” I asked, with a great relief in my voice.
”Say rather we have been shepherded by them into a fold. They will find us when they desire us.”
It was a perturbing thought, but at any rate we were safe for the moment, and I resolved to say nothing to alarm the others. We overtook them presently, and Shalah became our guide. Not that more guiding was needed than Ringan or I could have given, for the lift of the ground gave us our direction, and there was the sound of a falling stream. To an upland-bred man mist is little of a hindrance, unless on a featureless moor.
Ever as we jogged upward the air grew colder. Rain was blowing in our teeth, and the ferny gra.s.s and juniper clumps dripped with wet. Almost it might have been the Pentlands or the high mosses between Douglas Water and Clyde. To us coming fresh from the torrid plains it was bitter weather, and I feared for Elspeth, who was thinly clad for the hill-tops. Ringan seemed to feel the cold the worst of us, for he had spent his days in the hot seas of the south. He put his horse-blanket over his shoulders, and cut a comical figure with his red face peeping from its folds.
”Lord,” he would cry, ”I wish I was in the Dry Tortugas or snug in the beach-house at the Isle o' Pines. This minds me painfully of my young days, when I ran in a ragged kilt in the cold heather of Cruachan. I must be getting an old man, Andrew, for I never thought the hills could freeze my blood.”
Suddenly the fog lightened a little, the slope ceased, and we had that gust of freer air which means the top of the pa.s.s. My head was less dizzy now, and I had a momentary gladness that at any rate we had done part of what we set out to do.
”Clearwater Gap!” I cried. ”Except for old Studd, we are the first Christians to stand on this watershed.”
Below us lay a swimming hollow of white mist, hiding I knew not what strange country.
From the vales below I had marked the lie of the land on each side of the gap. The highest ground was to the right, so we turned up the ridge, which was easier than the glen and better travelling. Presently we were among pines again, and got a shelter from the driving rain. My plan was to find some hollow far up the mountain side, and there to make our encampment. After an hour's riding, we came to the very place I had sought. A pocket of flat land lay between two rocky knolls, with a ring of good-sized trees around it. The spot was dry and hidden, and what especially took my fancy was a spring of water which welled up in the centre, and from which a tiny stream ran down the hill. 'Twas a fine site for a stockade, and so thought Shalah and the two Borderers.
There was much to do to get the place ready, and Donaldson and Bertrand fell to with their axes to fell trees for the fort. Now that we had reached the first stage in our venture, my mind was unreasonably comforted. With the buoyancy of youth, I argued that since we had got so far we must get farther. Also the fever seemed to be leaving my bones and my head clearing. Elspeth was almost merry. Like a child playing at making house, she ordered the men about on divers errands.
She was a fine sight, with the wind ruffling her hair and her cheeks reddened from the rain.
Ringan came up to me. ”There are three Hours of daylight in front of us. What say you to make for the top of the hills and find Studd's cairn? I need some effort to keep my blood running.”
I would gladly have stayed behind, for the fever had tired me, but I could not be dared by Ringan and not respond. So we set off at a great pace up the ridge, which soon grew very steep, and forced us to a crawl. There were places where we had to scramble up loose cliffs amid a tangle of vines, and then we would dip into a little glade, and then once again breast a precipice. By and by the trees dropped away, and there was nothing but low bushes and boulders and rank mountain gra.s.ses. In clear air we must have had a wonderful prospect, but the mist hung close around us, the drizzle blurred our eyes, and the most we saw was a yard or two of grey vapour. It was easy enough to find the road, for the ridge ran upwards as narrow as a hog's back.
Presently it ceased, and with labouring breath we walked a step or two in flat ground. Ringan, who was in front, stumbled over a little heap of stones about a foot high.
”Studd had a poor notion of a cairn,” he said, as he kicked them down.
There was nothing beneath but bare soil.
But the hunter had spoken the truth. A little digging in the earth revealed the green metal of an old powder-flask with a wooden stopper.
I forced it open, and shook from its inside a twist of very dirty paper. There were some rude scratchings on it with charcoal, which I read with difficulty.