Matilda Montgomerie Or The Prophecy Fulfilled Part 25

"Only one hundred and fifty men!" repeated Gerald, unable to disguise his vexation and astonishment.

"That ere's a poser for him," said the Major, turning and addressing Captain Buckhorn in an under tone, who replied to him with a wink from his nearest eye.

"Even so, Mr. Grantham," replied the Colonel. "One hundred and fifty men of all arms, save artillery, composed my force at the moment when your columns crossed the plain. To-night we muster one hundred and forty-nine."

"Good Heaven!" exclaimed Gerald warming into excitement, with vexation and pique, "what a disgraceful affair."

"Disgraceful, yes--but only in as far as regards those who planned, and provided (or rather ought to have provided) the means of attack. I can a.s.sure you, Mr. Grantham, that although prepared to defend my post to the last, when I saw your columns first emerge from the wood, I did not expect, with my small force, to have been enabled to hold the place one hour; for who could have supposed that even a school boy, had such been placed at the head of an army, would have sent forward a storming party, without either fascines to fill a trench, or ladders to ascend from it when filled. Had these been provided, there can be no doubt of the issue, for, to repulse the attempt at escalade in one quarter, I must have concentrated the whole of my little force--and thereby afforded an unopposed entrance to the other columns--or even granting my garrison to have been sufficient to keep two of your divisions in check, there still remained a third to turn the scale of success against us."

"I can understand the satisfaction with which you discovered this wretched bungling on the part of our leaders," remarked Gerald, with vexation.

"No sooner had I detected the deficiency," pursued Colonel Forrester, "than I knew the day would be my own, since the obstacles opposed to your attempt would admit of my spreading my men over the whole line embraced within the attack. The result, you see, has justified my expectation. But enough of this. After the fatigues of the day, you must require both food and rest. Captain Jackson, I leave it to you to do the honors of hospitality towards Mr. Grantham, who will so shortly become your fellow-traveller; and if, when he has performed the ablutions he seems so much to require, my wardrobe can furnish anything your own cannot supply to transform him into a backwoodsman (in which garb I would strongly advise him to travel). I beg it may be put under contribution without ceremony."

So saying, Colonel Forrester departed to the rude log-hut that served him for his head-quarters, first enjoining his uncouth second to keep a sufficient number of men on the alert, and take such other precautions as were necessary to guard against surprise--an event, however, of which little apprehension was entertained, now that the British troops appeared to have been wholly withdrawn.

Sick, wearied, and unhappy, Gerald was but too willing to escape to the solitude of retirement, to refuse the offer which Captain Jackson made of his own bed, it being his intention to sit up all night in the mess-room, ready to communicate instantly with the Colonel in the event of any alarm.

Declining the pressing invitation of the officers to join in the repast they were about to make for the first time since the morning, and more particularly that of Captain Buckhorn, who strongly urged him to "bring himself to an anchor and try a little of the Wabash," he took a polite but hasty leave of them all, and was soon installed for the night in the Aid-de-camp's dormitory.

It would be idle to say that Gerald never closed his eyes that night--still more idle would it be to attempt a description of all that pa.s.sed through a mind whose extent of wretchedness may be inferred from his several desperate although unsuccessful, efforts at the utter annihilation of all thought. When he met Colonel Forrester and his officers in the mess-room at breakfast, he was dressed, as had been recommended, in the hunting frock and belt of a backwoodsman; and in this his gentlemanly figure looked to such advantage as to excite general attention--so much so, indeed, that Major Killdeer was more than once detected in eyeing his own heavy person, as if to ascertain if the points of excellence were peculiar to the dress or to the man. Sick and dispirited as he was, Gerald felt the necessity of an attempt to rally, and however the moralist may condemn the principle, there is no doubt that he was considerably aided in his effort by one or two gla.s.ses of bitters which Captain Buckhorn strongly recommended as being of his wife's making, and well calculated to put some color into a man's face--an advantage in which, he truly remarked, Grantham was singularly deficient.

Accurate intelligence having been obtained from a party of scouts, who had been dispatched early in the morning to track their course, that the British General with his troops and Indians had finally departed, preparations were made about midday for the interment of the fallen. Two large graves were accordingly dug on the outer brow of the ravine, and in these the bodies of the fallen soldiers were deposited, with all the honors of war. A smaller grave, within the fort, and near the spot where they so n.o.bly fell, was considerately allotted to Cranstoun and Middlemore. There was a composedness on the brow of the former that likened him, even in death, to the living man; while, about the good-humored mouth of poor Middlemore, played the same sort of self-satisfied smile that had always been observable there when about to deliver himself of a sally. Gerald, who had imposed upon himself the painful duty of attending to their last committal to earth, could not help fancying that Middlemore must have breathed his last with an inaudible pun upon his lips--an idea that inexpressibly affected him.

Weighed down with sorrow as was his own soul, he had yet a tear for the occasion--not that his brave comrades were dead, but that they had died with so much to attach them to life--while he whose hope was in death alone, had been chained, as by a curse to an existence compared with which death was the first of human blessings.

On the following morning, after an early breakfast, he and Captain Jackson quitted the fort, Colonel Forrester--who had not failed to remark that the brusque manner of his aide-de-camp was not altogether understood by his charge--taking occasion at parting, to a.s.sure the latter that, with all his eccentricity, he was a kind-hearted man, whom he had selected to be near him more for his personal courage, zeal, and general liberality of feeling, than for any qualifications of intellect he possessed.

The means provided for their transport into the interior were well a.s.similated to the dreariness of the country through which they pa.s.sed.

Two common pack-horses, lean, galled by the saddle, and callous from long acquaintance with the admonitory influence both of whip and spur, had been selected by Captain Jackson as the best within the fort.

Neither were the trappings out of keeping with the steeds they decked.

Moth-eaten saddles, almost black with age, beneath which were spread pieces of dirty blanket to prevent further excoriation of the already bared and reeking back--bridles, the original thickness of which had been doubled by the incrustation of mould and dirt that pertinaciously adhered to them--stirrups and bits, with their accompanying buckles--the absence of curb chains being supplied by pieces of rope--all afforded evidence of the wretchedness of resource peculiar to a back settlement population. Over the hard saddles, however, had been strapped the blankets which, when the travellers were fortunate enough to meet with a hut at the close of their day's ride, or, as was more frequently the case, when compelled to bivouac in the forest before the fire kindled by the industry of the hardy aide-de-camp, served them as their only couch of rest, while the small leather valise tied to the pummel of the saddle, and containing their scanty wardrobe, was made to do the duty of the absent pillow. The blanket Gerald found to be the greatest advantage of his grotesque equipment--so much so, indeed, that when compelled, by the heavy rains which took place shortly after their departure, to make it serve, after the fas.h.i.+on of a backwoodsman, as a covering for his loins and shoulders, he was obliged to own that his miseries, great as they were, were yet susceptible of increase.

Notwithstanding Captain Jackson had taken what he considered to be the best of the two Rosinantes for himself. Gerald had no reason to deny the character for kind-heartedness given of him by Colonel Forrester.

Frequently when winding through some dense forest, or moving over some extensive plain where nothing beyond themselves told of the existence of man, his companion would endeavor to divert him from the abstraction and melancholy in which he was usually plunged, and, ascribing his melancholy to an unreal cause, seek to arouse him by the consolatory a.s.surance that he was not the first man who had been taken prisoner--adding that there was no use in snivelling, as "what was done couldn't be undone, and no great harm neither, as there was some as pretty gals in Kaintuck as could be picked out in a day's ride; and that to a good-looking young fellow like himself, with nothing to do but make love to them, _that_ ought to be no mean consideration, enabling him, as it would, to while away the tedium of captivity." At other times he would launch forth into some wild rhapsody, the invention of the moment, or seek to entertain his companion with startling anecdotes connected with his encounters with the Indians on the Wabash, (where he had formerly served) in the course of which much of the marvellous, to call it by the most indulgent term, was necessarily mixed up--not perhaps that he was quite sensible of this himself, but because he possessed a const.i.tutional p.r.o.neness to exaggeration that rendered him even more credulous of the good things he uttered than those to whom he detailed them.

But Gerald heard without being amused, and, although he felt thankful for the intention, was distressed that his abstraction should be the subject of notice, and his despondency the object of care. To avoid this he frequently suffered Jackson to take the lead, and, following some distance in the rear with his arms folded and the reins loose upon the horse's neck, often ran the risk of having his own neck broken by the frequent stumbling of the unsure-footed beast. But the Captain as often returned to the charge, for, in addition to a sincere desire to rally his companion, he began at length to find it exceedingly irksome to travel with one who neither spoke himself, nor appeared to enjoy speech in another; and when he had amused himself with whistling, singing, hallooing, and cutting a thousand antics with his arms, until he was heartily tired of each of these several diversions, he would rein in his horse to suffer Gerald to come up, and, after a conciliating offer of his rum flask, accompanied by a slice of hung beef that lined the wallet depending from his shoulder, enter upon some new and strange exploit, of which he was as usual the hero. Enforced in a degree to make some return for the bribe offered to his patience, Gerald would lend--all he could--his ear to the tale; but long before the completion he would give such evidence of his distraction, as utterly to disconcert the narrator, and cause him finally to have recourse to one of the interludes above described.

In this manner they had journeyed some days, when the rains suddenly commenced with a violence and continued with a pertinacity, that might have worn out the cheerfulness of much less impatient spirits than those of our travellers, who without any other protection than what was afforded by the blanket tightly girt around the loins, and fastened over the shoulders in front of the chest, presented an appearance quite as wild as the waste they traversed. It was in vain that, in order to promote a more rapid circulation, they essayed to urge their jaded beasts out of the jog-trot in which they had set out. Accustomed to this from the time when they first emerged from colthood into horsehood, the aged steeds, like many aged senators of their day, were determined enemies to anything like innovation on the long established customs of their caste; and, although, unlike the said senators, they were made to bear all the burdens of the state, still did they not suffer themselves to be driven out of the sluggish habits in which sluggish animals of every description seem to feel themselves privileged to indulge. Whip and spur, therefore, were alike applied in vain, as to any accelerated motion in themselves; but with this advantage at least to their riders, that while the latter toiled vigorously for an increase of vital warmth through the instrumentality of their non-complying hacks they found it where they least seemed to look for it--in the mingled anger and activity which kept them at the fruitless task.

It was at the close of one of those long days of wearying travel throughout a vast and unsheltered plain--where only here and there rose an occasional cl.u.s.ter of trees, like oases in the desert--that, drenched to the skin with the steady rain, which commencing at the dawn had continued without a moment's intermission, they arrived at a small log hut, situate on the skirt of a forest forming one of the boundaries of the vast savannah they had traversed. Such was the unpromising appearance of this apology for a human dwelling, that, under any other circ.u.mstances, even the "not very d----d particular" Jackson, as the aide-de-camp often termed himself, would have pa.s.sed it by without stopping; but after a long day's ride, and suffering from the greatest evils to which a traveller can well be subjected--cold, wet and hunger--even so wretched a resting-place as this was not to be despised; and accordingly a determination was formed to stop there for the night.

On riding up to the door, it was opened to their knock, when a tall man--apparently its only occupant--came forth, and after viewing the travellers a moment with a suspicious eye, inquired "what the strangers wanted?"

"Why I guess," said Jackson, "it doesn't need much conjuration to tell that. Food and lodging for ourselves, to be sure, and a wisp of hay and tether for our horses. Hospitality, in short; and that's what no true Tennessee man, bred and born, never refused yet--no, not even to an enemy, such a night as this."

"Then you must go further in search of it," replied the woodsman, surlily. "I don't keep no tavern, and han't got no accommodation; and what's more, I reckon I'm no Tennessee man."

"But any accommodation will do friend. If you havn't got beds, we'll sit up all night, and warm our toes at the fire, and spin long yarns, as they tell in the Eastern sea-ports. Anything but turn a fellow out such a night as this."

"But I say, stranger," returned the man fiercely and determinedly, "I an't got no room any how, and you shan't bide here."

"Oh, ho, my old c.o.c.k! that's the ticket, is it? But you'll see whether an old stager like me is to be turned out of any man's house such a night as this. I havn't served two campaigns against the Ingins and the British for nothing; and here I rest for the night."

So saying, the determined Jackson coolly dismounted from his horse, and unbuckling the girth, proceeded to deposit the saddle, with the valise attached to it, within the hut, the door of which still stood open.

The woodman, perceiving his object, made a movement, as if to bar the pa.s.sage; but Jackson with great activity seized him by the wrist of the left hand, and, all-powerful as the ruffian was, sent him dancing some few yards in front of the threshold before he was aware of his intention, or could resist the peculiar _knack_ with which it was accomplished. The aide-de-camp, meanwhile, had deposited his saddle in a corner near the fire, and on his return to the door, met the inhospitable woodsman advancing as if to court a personal encounter.

"Now, I'll tell you what it is, friend," he said calmly, throwing back at the same time the blanket that concealed his uniform and--what was more imposing--a brace of large pistols stuck in his belt. "You'd better have no nonsense with me, I promise you, or--" and he tapped with the fore finger of his right hand upon the b.u.t.t of one of them, with an expression that could not be misunderstood.

The woodsman seemed little awed by this demonstration. He was evidently one on whom it might have been dangerous for one man, however well armed, to have forced his presence, so far from every other human habitation; and it is probable that his forbearance then arose from the fact of there being two opposed to him, for he glanced rapidly from one to the other, nor was it until he seemed to have mentally decided that the odds of two to one were somewhat unequal, that he at length withdrew himself out of the doorway, as if in pa.s.sive a.s.sent to the stay he could not well prevent.

"Just so, my old c.o.c.k," continued Jackson, finding that he had gained his point, "and when you speak of this again, don't forget to say it was a true Tennessee man, bred and born, that gave you a lesson in what no American ever wanted--hospitality to a stranger. Suppose you begin and make your self useful, by tethering and foddering old spare bones."

"I reckon as how you've hands as well as me," rejoined the surly woodsman, "and every man knows the ways of his own beast best. As for fodder, they'll find it on the skirt of the wood, and where natur'

planted it."

Gerald meanwhile, finding victory declare itself in favor of his companion, had followed his example and entered the hut with his saddle.

As he again quitted it, a sudden flash of light from the fire, which Jackson was then in the act of stirring, fell upon the countenance of the woodsman who stood without, his arms folded and his brow scowling, as if planning some revenge for the humiliation to which he had been subjected. In the indistinct dusk of the evening Grantham had not been able to remark more than the outline of the figure; but the voice struck him as one not unknown to him, although somewhat harsher in its tones than that which his faint recollection of the past supplied. The glance he had now obtained, momentary as it was, put every doubt to rest. What his feelings were in recognising in the woodsman the traitor settler of the Canadas, Jeremiah Desborough, we leave to our readers to infer.

CHAPTER XXV.

There was a time, when to have met his father's enemy thus would have been to have called into activity all the dormant fierceness of Gerald's nature; but since they had last parted, a new channel had been opened to his feelings, and the deep and mysterious grief in which we have seen him shrouded had been of so absorbing and selfish a nature, as to leave him little consideration for sorrows not his own. The rash impetuosity of his former character, which had often led him to act even before he thought, and to resent an injury before it could well be said to have been offered, had moreover given place to a self-command, the fruit of the reflective habits and desire of concealment which had made him latterly almost a stranger to himself.

Whatever his motives for outwardly avoiding all recognition of the settler, certain it is that, so far from this, he sought sedulously to conceal his own ident.i.ty, by drawing the slouched hat, which formed a portion of his new equipment, lower over his eyes. Left to do the duties of the rude hostelry, Captain Jackson and he now quitted the hut, and leading their jaded, smoking steeds, a few rods off to the verge of the plain they had so recently traversed, prepared to dispose of them for the night. Gerald had by this time become too experienced in the mode of travelling through an American wilderness, not to understand, that he who expects to find a companion in his horse in the morning must duly secure him with the tether at night. Following, therefore, the example of the Aide-de-camp, he applied himself, amid the still pelting rain, to the not very cleanly task of binding round the fetlock joints of his steed several yards of untanned hide strips, with which they were severally provided for the purpose. Each gave his steed a parting slap on the b.u.t.tock with the hard bridle. Jackson exclaiming, "Go ye luxurious beasts--ye have a whole prairie of wet gra.s.s to revel in for the night," and then left them to make the best of their dainty food.

While returning, Grantham took occasion to observe, that he had reason to think he knew the surly and inhospitable woodsman, by whom however he was not desirous of being recognised, and therefore begged as a favor that Captain Jackson would not, in the course of the night, mention his name, or even allude to him in any way that could lead to an inference that he was any other than he seemed, a companion and brother officer of his own; promising, in conclusion, to give him, in the course of the next day's journey, some little history of the man which would fully explain his motives. With this request Jackson unhesitatingly promised compliance, adding, good-humoredly, that he was not sorry to pledge himself to anything that would thaw his companion's tongue into sociability, and render himself, for the first time since their departure, a listener. Before entering the hut Gerald further observed in a whisper that, the better to escape recognition, he would, as much as possible, avoid joining in any conversation which might ensue, and therefore hoped his companion would not think him rude if he suffered him to bear the tax. Jackson again promised to keep the attention of the woodsman directed as much as possible to himself, observing that he thought Gerald had already, to his cost, discovered he was one not easily tired out by conversation, should their host be that way inclined.

On opening the door of the cabin, they found that the woodsman--or more properly the settler, as we shall again term him--making a virtue of necessity, had somewhat changed its interior. A number of fine logs, sufficient to last throughout the night had been heaped upon the hearth, and these, crackling and fizzing, and emitting sparks in all the burly of a hickory wood fire, gave promise of a night of comparative comfort.

Ensconced in the farther corner of the chimney, the settler had already taken his seat, and, regardless of the entrance of the strangers, (with his elbows resting on his knees, and his face buried in his large palms,) kept his eyes fixed upon the fire, as if with a sullen determination neither to speak nor suffer himself to be questioned. But the Aide-de-camp was by no means disposed to humor him in his fancy. The idea of pa.s.sing some eight or ten consecutive hours in company with two fellow beings, without calling into full play the b.u.mp of loquacity with which nature had largely endowed him, was, in his view, little better than the evil from which his perseverance had just enabled him to escape. Making himself perfectly at home, he unbuckled the wet blanket from his loins and spreading it, with that of Gerald, to dry upon the rude floor before the fire, drew forward a heavy uncouth-looking table, (which, with two or three equally unpolished chairs, formed the whole of the furniture,) and deposited thereon the wallet or haversack in which remained a portion of provision. He then secured the last vacant chair, and taking up a position on the right of the table which lay between himself and Gerald, let it fall upon the dry clay hearth, with a violence that caused the settler to quit his att.i.tude of abstraction for one of anger and surprise.

"Sorry to disturb you, friend," he said, "but these chairs of yours are so cursed heavy, there's no handling them decently; 'specially with cold fingers."

"Beggars, I reckon, have no right to be choosers," returned the settler; "the chairs is quite good enough for me--and no one axed you to sit on 'em."

"I'll tell you what it is, old c.o.c.k," continued the Aide-de-camp, edging his seat closer, and giving his host a smart friendly slap upon the thigh, "this dull life of yours don't much improve your temper. Why, as I am a true Tennessee man, bred and born, I never set eyes upon such a crab-apple in all my life--you'd turn a whole dairy of the sweetest milk that ever came from prairie-gra.s.s sour in less than no time. I take it you must be crossed in love, old boy--eh?"

"Crossed in h.e.l.l," returned the settler, savagely; "I reckon as how it don't consarn you whether I look sour or sweet--what you want is a night's lodgin', and you've got it--so don't trouble me no more."

"Very sorry, but I shall," said Jackson, secretly congratulating himself that, now he had got the tongue of his host in motion, he had a fair chance of keeping it so. "I must trouble you for some bread, and whatever else your larder may afford. I'll pay you honestly for it, friend."

"I should guess," said the settler, his stern features brightening for the first time into a smile of irony, "as how a man who had served a campaign agin the Ingins and another agin the British, might contrive to do without sich a luxury as bread. You'll find no bread here, I reckon."

"What, not even a bit of corn bread? Try, my old c.o.c.k, and rummage up a crust or two, for hung beef is devilish tight work for the teeth, without a little bread of some sort for a relish."

"If you'd ha' used your eyes, you'd ha' seen nothin' like a corn patch for twenty mile round about this. Bread never entered this hut since I have been here. I don't eat it."