The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 12

"In a small way," I answered apologetically.

The lieutenant turned again to his companion. "He might do for us; the sooner the better, unless--"

"Unless," interrupted the staff officer with cold politeness, "you prefer the apology you owe me."

The lieutenant swung round again with a brusque laugh. "Look here, have you your instruments about you?"

For answer I held up my bottle with the one absurd leech dormant at the bottom. He laughed again just as harshly.

"That is about the last thing to suit our purpose. Listen"--he glanced out through the pa.s.sage--"the gates won't be shut for an hour yet. It will take you perhaps twenty minutes to fetch what is necessary. You understand? Return here, and don't keep us waiting. Afterwards, should the gates be shut, one of us will see you back to the town."

I bowed without a word and hurried back across the water meadow. Along the river bank between the patrols the anglers still sat in their patient row. And on the road to the north-west the tail of the second brigade was winding slowly out of sight.

Once past the gate and through the streets, I walked more briskly, paused at my shop door to fit the key in the lock, and was astonished when the door fell open at the push of my hand.

Then in an instant I understood. The shop had been ransacked--by that treacherous scoundrel Michu, of course. Bottles, herbs, shaving apparatus all was topsy-turvy. Drawers stood half-open; the floor was in a litter.

I had two consolations: the first that there were no incriminating papers in the, house; the second that Michu had clearly paid me a private visit before carrying his tale to headquarters. Otherwise the door would have been sealed and the house under guard. I reflected that the idiot would catch it hot for this unauthorised piece of work.

Stay! he might still be in the house rummaging the upper rooms. I crept upstairs.

No, he was gone. He had left my case of instruments, too, after breaking the lock and scattering them about the floor. I gathered them together in haste, descended again, s.n.a.t.c.hed up a roll of lint, and pausing only at the door for a glance up and down the street, made my escape post haste for the water meadow.

In the patio I found the two disputants standing much as I had left them, the staff officer gently and methodically smoothing his horse's crupper, the lieutenant with a watch in his hand.

"Good," said he, closing it with a snap, "seventeen minutes only. By the way, do you happen to understand French?"

"A very little," said I.

"Because, as you alone are the witness of this our little difference, it will be in order if I explain that I insulted this gentleman."

"Somewhat grossly," put in the staff officer.

"Somewhat grossly, in return for an insult put upon me--somewhat grossly--in the presence of my company, two days ago, in the camp above Penamacor, when I took the liberty to resent a message conveyed by him to my colonel--as he alleges upon the authority of the marshal, the Duke of Ragusa."

"An a.s.sertion," commented the staff officer, "which I am able to prove on the marshal's return and with his permission, provided always that the request be decently made."

They had been speaking in French and meanwhile removing their tunics.

The staff officer had even drawn off his riding boots. "Do you understand?" asked the lieutenant.

"A little," said I; "enough to serve the occasion."

"Excellent barber-surgeon! Would that all your nation were no more inquisitive!" He turned to the staff officer. "Ready? On guard, then, monsieur!"

The combat was really not worth describing. The young staff officer had indeed as much training as his opponent (and that was little), but no wrist at all. He had scarcely engaged before he attempted a blind cut over the scalp. The lieutenant, parrying clumsily, but just in time, forced blade and arm upward until the two pointed almost vertically to heaven, and their forearms almost rubbed as the pair stood close and chest to chest. For an instant the staff officer's sword was actually driven back behind his head; and then with a rearward spring the lieutenant disengaged and brought his edge clean down on his adversary's left shoulder and breast, narrowly missing his ear. The cut itself, delivered almost in the recoil, had no great weight behind it, but the blood spurted at once, and the wounded man, stepping back for a fresh guard, swayed foolishly for a moment and then toppled into my arms.

"Is it serious?" asked the lieutenant, wiping his sword and looking, it seemed to me, more than a little scared.

"Wait a moment," said I, and eased the body to the ground. "Yes, it looks nasty. And keep back, if you please; he has fainted."

Being off my guard I said it in very good French, which in his agitation he luckily failed to remark.

"I had best fetch help," said he.

"a.s.suredly."

"I'll run for one of the patrols; we'll carry him back to the town."

But this would not suit me at all. "No," I objected, "you must fetch one of your surgeons. Meanwhile I will try to stop the bleeding; but I certainly won't answer for it if you attempt to move him at once."

I showed him the wound as he hurried into his tunic. It was a long and ugly gash, but (as I had guessed) neither deep nor dangerous. It ran from the point of the collar-bone aslant across the chest, and had the lieutenant put a little more drag into the stroke it must infallibly have snicked open the artery inside the upper arm. As it was, my immediate business lay in frightening him off before the bleeding slackened, and my heart gave a leap when he turned and ran out of the patio, b.u.t.toning his tunic as he went.

It took me ten minutes perhaps to dress the wound and tie a rude bandage; and perhaps another four to pull off coat and shoes and slip into the staff officer's tunic, pull on his riding boots over my blue canvas trousers--at a distance scarcely discernible in colour from his tight-fitting breeches--and buckle on his sword-belt. I had some difficulty in finding his cap, for he had tossed it carelessly behind one of the fallen beams, and by this time the light was bad within the patio. The horse gave me no trouble, being an old campaigner, no doubt, and used to surprises. I untethered him and led him gently across the yard, picking my way in a circuit which would take him as far as possible from his fallen master. But glancing back just before mounting, to my horror I saw that the wounded man had raised himself on his right elbow and was staring at me. Our eyes met; what he thought--whether he suspected the truth or accepted the sight as a part of his delirium--I shall never know. The next instant he fell back again and lay inert.

I pa.s.sed out into the open. The warning gun must have sounded without my hearing it, for across the meadow the townspeople were retracing their way to the town gate, which closed at sunset. At any moment now the patrols might be upon me; so swinging myself into the saddle I set off at a brisk trot towards the gate.

My chief peril for the moment lay in the chance of meeting the lieutenant on his way back with the doctor; yet I must run this risk and ride through the town to the bridge gate, the river being unfordable for miles to the northward and trending farther and farther away from Guarda; and Guarda must be reached at all costs, or by to-morrow Trant's and Wilson's garrisons would have ceased to exist.

My heart fairly sank when on reaching the gate I saw an officer in talk with the sentry there, and at least a score of men behind him. I drew aside; he stepped out and called an order to his company, which at once issued and spread itself in face of the scattered groups of citizens returning across the meadow.

"Yes, captain," said the sentry, answering the question in my look,"

they are after a spy, it seems, who has been practising here as a barber. They say even the famous McNeill."

I rode through the gateway and spurred my horse to a trot again, heading him down a side street to the right. This took me some distance out of my way, but anything was preferable to the risk of meeting the lieutenant, and I believed that I had yet some minutes to spare before the second gunfire.

In this I was mistaken. The gun boomed out just as I came in sight of the bridge gate, and the lieutenant of the guard appeared clanking out on the instant to close the heavy doors. I spurred my horse and dashed down at a canter, hailing loudly:--

"A spy!--a barber fellow; here, hold a minute!"

"Yes, we have had warning half an hour ago. n.o.body has pa.s.sed out since."

"At the gate below," I panted, "they sighted him; and he made for the river--tried to swim it. Run out your men and bring them along to search the bank!"

He began to shout orders. I galloped through the gate and hailed the sentry at the _tete du pont_. "A spy!" I shouted--"in the river. Keep your eyes open if he makes the bank!"

The fellow drew aside, and I clattered past him with a dozen soldiers at my heels fastening their belts and looking to their muskets as they ran. Once over the bridge I headed to the right again along the left bank of the river.

"This way! This way! Keep your eyes open!"

I was safe now. In the rapidly falling dusk, still increasing the distance between us, I led them down past the town and opposite the astonished patrols on the meadow bank. Even then, when I wheeled to the left and galloped for the high road, it did not occur to them to suspect me, nor shall I ever know when first it dawned on them that they had been fooled. Certainly not a shot was sent after me, and I settled down for a steady gallop northward, pleasantly a.s.sured of being at least twenty minutes ahead of any effective pursuit.

I was equally well a.s.sured of overtaking the brigades, but my business, of course, was to avoid and get ahead of them. And with this object, after an hour's brisk going, I struck a hill-track to the left which, as I remembered (having used it on my journey from Badajoz), at first ran parallel with the high road for two miles or more and then cut two considerable loops which the road followed along the valley bottom.

Recent rains had unloosed the springs on the mountain side and set them chattering so loudly that I must have reined up at least a score of times before I detected the tramp of the brigades in the darkness below me. Of the cavalry, though I rode on listening for at least another two miles, I could hear no sound. Yet, as I argued, they could not be far distant; and I pushed forward with heart elate at the prospect of trumping Marmont's card, for I remembered the staff officer's words, "on the marshal's return." I knew that Marmont had been in Sabugal no longer ago than mid-day; and irregular and almost derogatory as it might be thought for a marshal of France to be conducting a night surprise against a half-disciplined horde of militia, I would have wagered my month's pay that this was the fact.

And then, with a slip of my horse on the stony track, my good fortune suddenly ended, and smash went my basket of eggs while I counted the chickens. The poor brute with one false step came down heavily on his near side. Quick as I was in flinging my foot from the stirrup, I was just a moment too late; I fell without injury to bone, but his weight pinned me to earth by the boot, and when I extricated myself it was with a wrenched ankle. I managed to get him to his feet, but he had either dislocated or so severely wrung his near shoulder that he could scarcely walk a step. It went to my heart to leave him there on the mountain side, but it had to be done, for possibly the fate of the garrison at Guarda depended on it.

I left him, therefore, and limped forward along the track until it took an abrupt turn around a shoulder of the mountain. Immediately below me, unless I erred in my bearings, a desolate sheep farm stood but a short distance above the high road. Towards this I descended, and finding it with no great difficulty, knocked gently at the back door. To my surprise the shepherd opened it almost at once. He was fully dressed in spite of the lateness of the hour, and seemed greatly perturbed; nor, I can promise you, was he rea.s.sured when, after giving him the signal arranged between Trant and the peasantry, I followed him into his kitchen and his eyes fell on my French uniform.

But it was my turn to be perturbed when, satisfied with my explanation, he informed me that a body of cavalry had pa.s.sed along the road towards Guarda a good twenty minutes before. It was this had awakened him. "No infantry?" I asked.