26 At Last Chance

“I am glad that we were no nearer,” said Elinor, and I knew that she was thinking not of herself, but of the men who were lying out there in the valley, and who would smile no more. War is a terrible thing for woman to look upon.

We reached a village at noon, where we found rest and food for ourselves and the horses. Many questions, natural to the dwellers in lonely places, were asked us here, but I told a part of the truth, saying that my wife and I were going to the East, and wished to pass as far away from the path of the war as possible. They advised us to beware of the roving bands of partisans who were committing many atrocities, and we continued on our way, soon arriving in the region that was distinctly mountainous. Here autumn was advancing on the uplands. The leaves were beginning to burn with vivid reds, and yellows, and browns, and the air was strong like wine.

Elinor, who had been grave and quiet during the early part of our journey, now became a sprite. Never had I seen her when the play of her fancy was more brilliant. I was the subject of many a jest, but never an unfeeling one. I think it was youth and happiness in her veins, her escape from the life and dangers that she dreaded, and the quiet world through which we now rode. The roses, which had paled a little in her cheeks under the stress of danger and hardship, bloomed afresh and in more vivid colours. Never have I seen a finer spirit and a greater courage. She would not anticipate disaster, but expected only good fortune. She talked of those whom we had left behind, and those whom we expected to find in the East. She laughed at William Penn, and in the same breath thanked him. She spoke gently of my grandmother, and of her aunt, too, who she was sure would forgive her. She wondered where Major Titus Tyler was, and if we would see in the East Pembroke, and Tourville, and Mason, and all the others we had known.

I knew that my loyalty was due to the army, but I did not wish the happiest journey of my life to end soon, and so we made no haste for a while. There is but one true honeymoon in every man’s or woman’s life, and nothing can replace it. A country of thirty millions could not miss one humble soldier, and my conscience was at ease while I looked upon the woman who rode beside me, and felt that even in war life may be sweet.

The autumnal colours deepened. The mountains glowed with their varying colours, and a fine haze like that of Indian summer clothed the ridges. We saw far away the smoke of forest fires, and now and then the crack of a rifle shot came to our ears, but it was only a hunter, and we saw and heard no enemy. The war now seemed to us a vague and distant quarrel in which we were not concerned, and yet if we had sought more closely through the valleys and coves through which we were passing we could have found its trail. Both sides had drawn troops from among the lank mountain boys, but the North had been the greater gainer by far. They fired at each other sometimes from the mountain ambushes, but no one disturbed us.

We had been nearly two weeks on the way, riding through beautiful weather, and were deep in the mountains, when we reached a tiny hamlet called Last Chance. There were not more than twenty houses in the place, and they were all of logs, but it was a picturesque little village, lying in an angle of a narrow valley with a clear mountain torrent rushing at its feet. I decided that we should rest here a day before crossing the highest and loneliest peaks, and, as usual, it was easy enough to find a place for Elinor. Her face and manner were an unfailing passport to the favour of the mountain wives, and an hour after we arrived she was comfortably installed in the best room in the best house in the place, while I found quarters fifty yards away, with the only shopkeeper in Last Chance. I sat in his queer little store, while Elinor was sleeping, and saw the mountain men, some still in the ’coonskin cap and buckskins of the pioneers, come in and bargain with their furs for what they thought they needed most, and that seemed to be powder and bullets.

I took my supper with Elinor and then walked back in the dark toward my own room. When I was halfway between I heard a clatter of hoofs, the gallop of cavalry, and in a moment thirty or forty men rode down the trail into the village. It was clear moonlight, and the leader raised a shout when he saw me. I knew him. It was Blanchard, who, I had thought, must have quit the pursuit long since.

My pulses seemed to stop beating for a moment, and I claim that it was not fear for myself. I can say truly that my first thought was of Elinor. As I hesitated a moment, uncertain what to do, Blanchard fired at me with his pistol, the bullet whizzing near my face. I drew my own weapon and sent a return shot, but missed Blanchard, and instead struck the man just behind him, who fell from his horse. Then the bullets began to patter around me, and, seeing the futility of flight or further resistance, I held up my hands as a sign that I surrendered.

“It was a long chase, but we brought down the game at last,” said Blanchard as they bound my arms; “and I’ll wager that the girl can’t be far away.”

His face for almost the first time since I knew him showed expression. His satisfaction was undisguised.

“She’s near, isn’t she, hey, Mr. Kingsford?” he said; “or were you getting ready to run off with some other girl? I fear that gay fellows like you are fickle.”

“My arms are bound, Mr. Blanchard,” I replied, “and so it is safe for you to say whatever you please.”

He said nothing more, but then I heard the quick step of light feet, the flutter of a dress, and Elinor’s arms were about my neck.

“Yes, Elinor,” I said, “it is Blanchard, and they have taken us. It was my carelessness, but I thought that they had turned back long ago.”

“What right have you to bind him?” asked Elinor, turning indignantly upon Blanchard. “He is a prisoner of war.”

“He is too slippery, Miss Maynard,” replied Blanchard; “and he is especially wanted.”

“They can not harm you; they can only take you back,” said Elinor bravely, and then she said to Blanchard, with a flash of warlike fire in her eyes, “I shall not permit you to harm him; he is my husband.”

“How can you prove that?” asked Blanchard, his face distorting into an ugly grin.

I struggled to break the cords that bound my arms, but they held fast. Oh, for only five minutes of freedom! I saw now why he called her Miss Maynard, and yet the motive seemed too base. Elinor flushed a deep crimson, and then became white. But she turned her back upon Blanchard with an expression of scorn.

“I wish you not to speak to me again,” she said.

“As you please,” he replied coolly; “but meantime we’ll guard you too, my lady, as you are wanted as well as he.”

The villagers gathered, but they could not have rescued us from a troop of cavalry even had they felt disposed to do so. Their looks showed sympathy. Blanchard noticed it, and he said:

“He is a deserter, and, besides, he stole a young girl from her home.”

“Both are lies,” I said. “I was a prisoner, but I escaped, and the lady is my wife.”

I saw that they believed me, and I felt a pleasure in it. I wished to be justified even in the minds of those humble mountain people who had never seen me before, and who probably would never see me again.

Blanchard proceeded with the authority of a dictator, and was as unscrupulous. He told Elinor that she could return to her room, but a guard would be placed around the house. She kissed me on the forehead, after the fashion of my grandmother, and said:

“You shall escape yet, Henry, and wherever you go I will go with you.”

Blanchard sneered, but said nothing. I, too, was returned to my room, but my arms remained bound, and a sentinel, rifle in hand, stood inside the door.

“I shall not take any chances with you, my pretty fellow,” said Blanchard. “I warned the colonel, back there at Silver Bow, that you might escape, but he was too confident. The greatest men even have their weak moments.”

Blanchard’s language and accent were good, and I looked at him with curiosity, wondering why he should be willing to do Varian’s ugly work for him. But his face was inscrutable, and in a moment he left me alone with the sentinel.

A tallow candle burned on a table, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, my bound arms paining me somewhat. I was not sleepy, and tried to engage the sentinel in conversation, but he refused to answer. Time then passed with the greatest monotony and slowness, but in an hour Blanchard came back and said that he wished to talk with me.

“I decline to say a word, no matter what the subject,” I replied, “unless you unbind me. I can’t escape anyhow, guarded as I am.”

“I think that’s true,” he replied, “and while I am here I have no fear that you will try it.”

He ordered my arms unbound, and told the sentinel to stand outside the door, but to be ready with his weapon if he were called. Then he sat down by the table in the only chair that the room contained, while I remained sitting on the edge of the bed. The light of the candle nickered over his face, and I noticed how heavy, strong, and unscrupulous it was.

“Mr. Kingsford,” said Blanchard, “I am not going to take you and Miss Maynard back to Kentucky.”

“Mrs. Kingsford, if you please,” I replied, “or I refuse to listen to another word.”

“Very well, then,” he replied, “Mrs. Kingsford let it be, for the sake of courtesy. Nobody shall say that I lack manners. You would not think, would you, to find such pride in a rough man like me? And I repeat that I am not going to take Mr. and Mrs. Kingsford back to Kentucky.”

“Why not?” I asked with interest.

“Because Colonel Varian, my friend and employer, has preceded you to the East. This escape of yours, and your kidnapping the young lady for whom he intended the high honour of being his wife, upset all his plans. It was altogether likely that your flight would take you to the eastward, and he learned, too, from good evidence, that it had done so. Then he used his influence, which you and I know to be powerful, to have himself transferred to a command in the East, in order that he might have the pleasure of meeting you and the young lady when you arrived there. Don’t you feel flattered because your own movements compel so many others to go in the same direction? Meanwhile I took a select body of troopers and followed on your trail through the mountains, which was not a hard thing to do, as I heard of you several times before I succeeded in catching you in this little town so aptly named Last Chance, for here you saw your last chance go. Colonel Varian wanted to do this work himself, but it was not wise for him to come, and, besides, he knew that he had a competent and faithful lieutenant, Covin Blanchard, Esquire, at your service.”

“All this may be interesting,” I said, “but you have now told the tale.”

“These are merely preliminaries,” he resumed; “but I have a message for you from Colonel Varian. You know that he is a man accustomed to having his own way, and he had his heart set upon this girl. I repeat that even the greatest men have their weaknesses. He was in a terrible rage when he heard that you had escaped; but that was nothing to his fury when he found that you had stolen his bride and taken her with you. The thunder rolled and the lightning flashed, and some of us were afraid that we were going to get struck by a thunderbolt. Even I, Covin Blanchard, who claim to fear nobody, had a pretty bad half hour, and I redeem my credit only by the recapture of you and Miss May—Mrs. Kingsford, I mean.”

It was my impulse again to strike him, as his intent was too obvious, but I restrained myself, and he resumed:

“Colonel Varian is not a man to be discouraged, and he at once set about the pursuit of you two, still determined that the young lady should be his, and not yours. Mrs. Arlington and that confounded minister said that you and the girl were married, but those hasty ceremonies are sometimes imperfect, and Colonel Varian would not let such a trifle stand in his way. Keep your anger! I am merely giving you the view that the colonel takes of it, and I have to do it to make you understand the situation. His orders to me were to bring you and the girl to him in Virginia, and under no circumstances to permit your escape again. My men were to shoot you at your first attempt, and any little movement, you know, may look like an attempt.”

Both accent and words were full of sinister meaning, and I understood thoroughly.

“Now it’s superfluous for me to say, Mr. Kingsford, that you are in the way,” he resumed. “You are very much in the way. Colonel Varian was disposed to like you, and so am I even now. You are a brave man and full of resources. You escaped and stole away with the girl very cleverly. Neither of us denies that, and Colonel Varian is disposed to favour you so long as you don’t oppose him. Now, I want to make you a proposition in his behalf. I don’t say that it comes from him. I merely foresee his wishes. I am under heavy obligations to him, and sometimes I serve him in ways of which perhaps he doesn’t approve. There is a difference between us: he is scrupulous, and I am not, and on that account we make a strong team. It was I who incited Palmore to shoot at you—I make no secret of it now, why should I?—but what a wretched blunderer he was! We are well rid of him. But, in brief, what I want to say to you is this: Give up your claim on the girl, let Varian have her, and when you make an attempt at escape at some convenient place in a day or two, my men will fire wildly; their bullets will go over your head, and our hurry in reaching Virginia will forbid further pursuit of you.”

I felt the hot blood rising again in my veins, and my brain was touched with fire.

“But the lady is my wife,” I said, with an appearance of calmness.

“That useless ceremony again,” he continued impatiently. “Whatever it amounts to, it can be undone without trouble. As I said, it does not defeat Varian. Be reasonable—you need to be so. Even if she were your wife, as you say, she can easily become your widow, and then you will be much worse off than you are now, while she will be no better. Don’t you see how completely both of you are in our power? Why not give her up, when you can only gain by it? Besides, if you let Varian have her you can say that you were first——”

I struck him in the face with all my might, and he fell bleeding to the floor.

“Repeat such words,” I said, “and I shall strangle you, even if your sentinel out there shoots me the next moment!”

“You should be thankful that I have not called him already,” he replied, giving me a look of deep malice as he struggled to his feet. “I prefer, however, to do my work in the right manner. I have better command of myself than you have over yourself. I see that you are not a man of sense, as I had supposed. I was making you a fair proposition that might have saved your life, and you replied with violence. Good night.”

But he did not go immediately. He wiped the blood off his face, and then recalled the sentinel, who rebound my arms at the gun-muzzle.

“Now you watch here, Walker, until your relief comes,” said Blanchard; “and if the prisoner tries to escape, shoot him at once. Don’t forget this.”

I knew from the sentinel’s face that he would not forget it. Blanchard went out quietly, and I was left to unhappy thoughts.

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