6 In a State of Siege

Old Put stretched his neck, and the regular, steady beat of his flying hoofs was music to a man who loves a good horse. But the new horse too lengthened his stride and kept by my side. I judged that he was a good comrade for Old Put. The plain, grassy and undulating, rolled away before us, and I could not see its end.

Our pursuers hung on, and I distrusted their silence. It betokened resolution, a determination to follow us mile after mile, to cling to the chase like hounds after a deer. I judged that among Crowder’s motives chagrin at having made such a fool of himself and a desire to repair the error were the strongest. The men did not spread out fan-shape, but followed us in a close group. I was still sure that we were gaining, though very slowly, and they seemed to think so too, for presently they fired two or three shots, as if they hoped to frighten us with spent balls. The girl’s horse swayed a bit to one side, and I thought he had stumbled again, but she said he was merely startled by the pistol-shots, and pulling him back into the true course we galloped on.

We crossed a swell of the earth, and far out on the plain I saw the dim outlines of a small house, or rather log cabin, rising from the earth. The girl’s horse threw up his head and uttered a neigh, or rather a cry or a great sigh, for it was almost like that of a human being, and staggered from side to side, his pace sinking quickly from a sure gallop to a shaky trot. His great eyes were distended with pain and fear, and blood and foam were on his lips. A dark-red clot of blood appeared upon his side, and I knew then that one of the bullets which I thought would fall short had struck him and the wound was mortal.

Without my hand pulling upon his rein Old Put stopped and looked at the other horse with eyes of pity and sorrow, for he knew what was going to happen—he knew he was going to lose one who had been proving himself a worthy running mate and comrade.

I leaped from Old Put’s back and snatched the girl from the saddle just as her horse reeled and fell, giving up his honest life with one great groan.

I half-lifted, half-pushed the girl upon Old Put’s back, where she sat securely despite the man’s saddle. Once she protested, but I roughly bade her be silent and obey me and we would escape yet. Then she said no more.

“See the house yonder?” I said. “We will reach that and beat them off. Maybe we will find allies there. This should be a patriot region.”

I rested one arm on Old Put’s shoulder. The girl was on the horse’s back, and I, partly supported by him, ran by his side. It is a trick that the borderers will tell you is common and useful enough. Old Put gave me great assistance, for he understood, and as we flew along my feet at times seemed not to touch the ground.

Our pursuers reached the crest of the swell and raised a shout of triumph as they saw the dead horse in the path, and the single horse running on, carrying one of the fugitives and half-carrying the other.

I took a quick look backward and calculated that we would reach the hut in time. Our pursuers evidently did not think so, for they fired no more shots. The girl was silent, her hands folded upon the pommel of my saddle and her face all white again. She left the direction of everything to me.

The cabin continued to rise from the plain, the corners, the eaves, and the roof appearing until it stood before us distinct and near at hand.

“Now, Put, old comrade, greatest of horses,” I cried, “we are nearing the goal! Show them how much strength and speed you have kept in reserve for this last effort! Show them what you can do when you try your best!”

He replied by deed, and I fairly swung through the air as we raced straight to the cabin. I expected some tousled head to appear, roused by the thunder of so many hoofs, but none came. The place remained silent and lone. There was a small garden, but no fence around either it or the house.

Old Put dashed straight for the door, as if he knew what was wanted of him, which, in fact, he did, and stopped five feet in front of it so abruptly that the girl would have shot over his head had I not held her.

She sprang to the ground. I slipped the bridle off Old Put, gave him a slap, and cried,—

“Go!”

He galloped around the house and disappeared, his hoof-beats dying away in the darkness. Then I pushed open the door and rushed in, dragging the girl after me. I slammed it back and looked for the bar that is commonly used as a fastening in such frontier houses. There is was, and I shoved it into its place. Nothing but a battering-ram could break in that door now!

“Safe for the time!” I cried. “I defy them to take us in this fort!”

Then I looked around me. The girl, half-fainting, had staggered against the wall and was leaning there. It was a house of but a single room. On a wide brick hearth a fire was still burning, or rather smouldering, yet it threw out enough light to disclose the contents of the place. No human being was there. Everything of value except the heavy furniture, which was of the rudest description and worth not much more than raw lumber, had been removed, and the whole appearance of the room indicated that its occupants had taken a hasty departure. It was easy enough to guess the cause. Some poor family, frightened by the converging of the armies upon this region, and with good reason too,—for no other State was harried in this war as was ours of South Carolina,—had gathered up their portable goods and fled to safer quarters, and perhaps not an hour before our arrival, as the fire still burning proved.

“They might have made things a little more comfortable for us,” I said cheerfully, for my spirits had gone up with a leap; “but it’s good as it is, and we haven’t any right to complain. Mr. South Carolina Farmer, whoever you are and wherever you are, we thank you.”

The girl smiled faintly and walked mechanically to the fire, where she sat down on a rude stool and spread out her fingers before the coals as if she were in her home.

“Take a little of this,” I said, for I saw that she was half-dazed. There was yet some whiskey in my flask, and I handed it to her. She obeyed me like a child and drank.

Then I turned my attention to the single window, which was closed with a heavy but ill-fitting shutter, a few wandering moonbeams finding a way through the cracks. Peeping out, I could see the guerillas dismounted beyond pistol-shot and holding a conference.

“They are talking, but let ’em talk, my dear,” I said to the girl. “They can’t get us in this cabin. What a neat, stout little place it is!”

I really began to have a friendly feeling towards her. We had been through so many dangers together, and, besides, she was my prisoner. It is much easier for the conqueror to be generous to the conquered than for the conquered to be generous to the conqueror.

She did not reply either to my words or my manner. Her cheeks, which had been so white before, were faintly flushed with pink, but I could not tell whether it was the fire or not. She seemed to me to be in a state of collapse, natural to a girl, even the strongest and bravest, after so much.

“Now set the table for us,” I said. “We must eat a little after our long, hard ride, for we will need our strength. See if you can’t find a candle in that cupboard. And here, take my bundle and get out the food.”

I handed her the wallet of bread and meat which I had snatched from Old Put’s back almost with the same motion with which I had swept off his bridle. She took it, drew the rough pine table to the centre of the room, and spread the food upon it. Then, sure enough, she found in the cupboard a piece of old tallow candle, which she lighted and stuck in the middle of the table. These simple household duties seemed to revive her. Her eyes brightened, her color came back, and her first thought was half to defend, half to apologize, for her previous collapse.

“I was tired merely,” she said. “I did not lose courage. Don’t think that. I’m an English girl.”

“I never said you lost courage,” I replied. “I think that you have borne yourself bravely, almost as well as an American girl would have done in the same situation.”

“Show me the one who would have done better,” she said, with a snap of the eye.

But that was manifestly impossible at the time, and I made no such attempt.

“The table is ready, and we wait only for the army to take a seat and enjoy itself,” she said in a light tone.

“Come and have a look at our enemies first,” I said, noticing how her strength and courage had come back and how well they became her.

She put her eyes to one of the cracks and looked out. Crowder and his men, unconsciously imitating us, had begun to make themselves comfortable, first by building a great bonfire, and then by sitting around it and keeping warm. They had tethered their horses near, and from their position they could watch the house very well and detect us if we came forth.

“Why do they follow us so persistently?” the girl asked.

“For a variety of reasons,” I replied. “I might mention as one that they are anxious to take me. You know you informed them that I was the bearer of very important news which I would tell, under proper pressure, to Tarleton.”

“But that was not true.”

“They do not know that it was not.”

“I wish they were real British soldiers,” she said. “I do not believe that any of them ever saw England. I believe they are American Tories, maybe American rebels in British uniforms.”

I did not care to argue with her, such is the strength of prejudice founded on teaching and training, especially British prejudice, and most especially the prejudice of British women.

“Why did you take off his bridle?” she asked as she turned away from the window.

I had hung up Old Put’s bridle on a nail in the wall.

“In order that I may have it when I want to put it on him again, which won’t be long, I hope,” I replied.

“Why, the horse is gone!” she said.

I laughed, laughed in her face, which turned red, and then, seeing that it was red, deliberately laughed again. Here was a woman who prided herself on her intelligence and quickness of mind, and with good cause too, so I had begun to believe, and yet after passing a day and part of a night in Old Put’s presence she knew so little about him!

“Why do you laugh?” she asked redly and angrily.

“I laugh at your ignorance,” I replied, “the fact that you know so little of our comrade, in many respects the shrewdest and ablest of us three, as he is certainly the swiftest and the strongest. That horse has not left us. I merely took his bridle off in order that he might not be troubled with it, that he might eat better, for no doubt he will find, somewhere around here, even in winter, a bit of grazing on some sheltered and sunny southern slope. He will take care of himself and come back to us when we need him.”

“But suppose the guerillas take him?”

“I wish I was as sure that they would not take us,” I said.

Then I led the way to the table. I drew up the stool for the lady and an old pine box that I found in a corner for myself. A little water was left in the canteen. She drank part of it and said,—

“Here’s to the health of King George!”

“Yes,” I said as I drank the remainder of the water, “this is to the health of King George—George Washington! I’m glad to see that your conversion has begun.”

She frowned at me, but we had an amicable dinner over the scraps nevertheless. I stopped at intervals to watch the progress of the partisans outside. They had not yet made any movement against us, and all sat or lay around the fire. I counted them—six—and I knew that all were there, as choice a lot of scoundrels as one could find on the soil of the thirteen colonies.

I turned my eyes away from the crevice to look at the girl. The rest and the bite of food had made a wonderful improvement. She was a true English rose, I could see that—a rose of Devon or Warwick or Kent, or whatever is fairest among their roses—a girl with yellow hair that shone like fresh gold in the sun, tinted with red in the firelight, and a brow of white and cheeks of the warm pink that is the heart of the pink rose. Oh, well, as I said twice before, everybody knows that the most beautiful women are the most dangerous, and I wondered if these Saxon maidens of England were ever an exception. For a moment I felt a feeling of warmth and kinship to old England, but then this England, which is so kind to herself and so appreciative of her own merits, has never been anything but an enemy to us.

“What are you thinking of, Mr. Marcel?” she said suddenly, as she looked up. “Why are you so serious?”

“I am astonished that you should address me as Mr. Marcel and not as a rebel with a rope around his neck.”

She patted the floor meditatively with her foot and looked away from me and at the fire.

“It was a mistake due to forgetfulness,” she replied with an air of resentment. “I will not do it again.”

“I would not forget epithets when you speak of us,” I said. “You will get out of practice, and then you will be unlike the remainder of your countrymen and countrywomen.”

“Do you want another quarrel?” she asked pointedly. “I should think that we had enough to do to carry on our quarrel with those men outside.”

She went to the window and took a long look.

“They are still by the fire,” she said, “and I see your horse too. He is dining, like the rest of us.”

“Where?” I cried, for I was somewhat surprised at the early reappearance of Old Put.

“There’s another crack here. Use it,” she said. “Don’t you see him grazing over there to the left in that field surrounded by a tumbledown fence, or rather the rails of what used to be a fence?”

In truth it was Old Put, about fifty yards to the left of the cavalrymen and grazing with supreme horse content, as if no enemy were within fifty miles of him. It was a southern slope on which he stood, and I suppose some blades of grass had retained their freshness and tenderness despite the wintry winds. It was these that Old Put sought, with the assiduous attention to detail and keen eye for grist characteristic of him.

There was a fine, full moon, shedding a silver-gray light over the earth. Old Put was clothed in its radiance, and we could see him as distinctly as if he stood at the window—the tapering head; the velvety nose, which slid here and there over the grass in search of the tender stems; the sinewy neck, and the long, powerful body, marked often, it is true, by wear and war, but in the prime and zenith of its strength. My saddle was still upon his back, but that was a trifle to which he had long since grown accustomed in his life with a cavalryman.

How rash of him, I thought, to come so near the British! The doubt which I had of Old Put when he allowed himself to be deceived by the girl came back to me. Perhaps he was really growing old, falling into his dotage. Surely nothing else could account for his taking such a risk! I would have shouted to him to go away had I thought he could hear me, but I knew my voice could not reach him, and in suspense and anxiety I merely watched that old horse as he continued to graze almost within the light of his enemy’s camp-fire.

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