Milady at Arms/Chapter 11
OUT of a shocked silence, Sally spoke. "That man doth lie!" she cried. "I dub him Tory, sir!"
No one answered her. Captain Camp and Captain Littell merely looked at her, and Sally's chin sank upon her breast, all her confidence blasted by the suspicion so evident in their gaze and in the steady gaze of the men seated at the table behind them. But, standing there, she felt all at once that she could not, must not fail those brave, patriotic women who had trusted her. She raised her blue eyes and started forward again, her hands clasped imploringly.
"Oh, sirs, will ye not let Zenas, here, go wi' escort and see an the horses be really gone?" she pleaded. "Indeed," the tears started into her tired eyes, "we did work very hard to deliver the bullets and—and—the ladies—Mistress Harrison and all—will be marvelously disappointed an ye do not receive them safely! Oh, Zenas," she turned to the boy who, silent and overwhelmed, stood beside her, staring dumbly at the doubting faces before him, "have ye not somewhat on ye to identify ye to these gentlemen? As for me," she made a weary, sad little gesture, "I—I—know not mine own identity, sirs—only that I be Master Todd's bond maid, Sally!"
Zenas turned to her quickly. "Nay, ye must not mind, Sally," he said, honest sympathy in his voice, "for some day I feel sure ye will find trace o' kin! As for me, sirs," he straightened his broad young shoulders, "I be Zenas Williams, sirs—son o' Nathaniel and Mary Williams o' the Mountain!"
Something about his manly way of looking the others straight in the eye was obviously dispelling doubt when mention of his father's name brought a dark frown to Captain Littell's brow. He motioned his companion aside, and, as they bent their heads together, both Zenas and Sally heard the words, "Loyalist—watched by the Committee," before the patriots turned back.
But now anger engulfed Sally. Was that morning's hard work to benefit only the enemy, after all? Had that long, hot ride been taken in vain?
"I tell ye, sirs," she burst out passionately, "this sentry be Tory! Why, he"
She was interrupted by a startled exclamation from Captain Camp. "Where did Crane go?"
Both Sally and Zenas whirled around. But the space behind them was empty! The sentry, when the militia officers had momentarily turned their backs, had vanished without a sound!
"This," said Captain Camp, "gives a different aspect to your words, mistress!" His voice ceased abruptly as he brushed past her, to disappear likewise.
The rest of the men made hasty exits, too. And Sally and Zenas were left alone in the big candlelit room.
She looked at him, then. "'Twas Stockton, think ye not, who did follow us somehow and took the bullets?" she inquired. "I feel sure o't, the varlet!" And she clenched her little fists.
The boy nodded. "Aye, I, too, thought o' him at once!" He looked at her soberly. "What are we to do now, Sally?"
Sally moved toward the door. "Find the bullets," she was commencing valiantly, when voices just outside made her turn swiftly away. "The other door—the kitchen one! 'Tis best we leave before they return!"
But the kitchen door, to her dismay, refused to budge when she lifted the latch. Zenas, at her heels, gave a groan. "We be too late!" he muttered.
"That other door!" Sally flew across the sanded floor of the tap room and darted around the high counter to feel, with trembling fingers, along some dark wainscoting which adorned the wall behind it.
"What door?" asked Zenas, following. His breath came in an involuntary gasp as the latch of the one leading outdoors rattled behind him. The next instant, however, with a low cry of triumph, Sally found a hidden spring, a narrow door, cleverly concealed in the wainscoting, swung inward, and she and Zenas stepped through the opening into a dark passage. They were just in time, for a second later Captains Camp and Littell, with their companions, reëntered the kitchen.
"Know—know ye whither this doth lead, Sally?" stammered Zenas, groping.
"Hush!" Sally's voice came to him in a stern whisper as the candlelight was abruptly blotted out by the closing of the little door. "Here!" She felt for and caught hold of his outstretched hand. "Come ye this way, Zenas!"
The boy stumbled cautiously after her. "Not so fast, prithee!" he whispered. "I—I—feel as though every step I—took would send me headlong into some dark hole!"
"That's because ye do not ktiow this passage!" returned Sally, with a stifled giggle. "I do assure ye 'tis naught but a perfectly safe, ordinary hall which takes us past the kitchen into the tavern garden—no mysterious secret passage this, for all that queer little door i' the wainscot! Ye see, I came this way one time when Mistress Todd did visit here and Mistress Banks, caught in an ancient gown by some fine ladies, did fly through that door and I after her! I had forgotten it; but suddenly, as I turned away from the kitchen door, I did mind me o't! There!" Zenas felt a draught upon his hot face as Sally pulled him gently forward. "Watch thy step—see—place one foot thus!—Down! Now," she drew a long breath and released his hand, "here we be, free once more, Zenas!"
Zenas stared about him; but the darkness, without moon or stars, was still so dense that he could see nothing. "What be planning to do now, Sally?" His voice was almost plaintive. And truly, Sally and he might well feel discouraged, for setting forth on such a night in search of the stolen bullets seemed futile, indeed.
But Sally refused to be discouraged. "I am positive it was the villain Stockton," she said soberly, starting up the road toward the river. "And he would try to convey his plunder across to the enemy. Let us then to the Passaic! Only," she clutched Zenas's arm as he caught up to her, "we must be wary! Either patriots or enemy would hinder us until we secure the bullets once more, Zenas!" And she broke into a little run, tired as she was.
Zenas strode along beside her. "Ye feel the responsibility too keenly," he said, protesting. "My mother and the rest will not blame ye as bitterly as ye seem to fear, an we fail, Sally!"
"But the militia need the bullets," the girl told him solemnly. "I know I saw joy upon Captain Littell's face at mention o' them!"
"Think ye 'tis true the enemy be encamped across the river?" asked Zenas hoarsely.
"Aye," said Sally. And suddenly she caught him by the arm, to point ahead of her excitedly. "See!" she exclaimed beneath her breath. "Do ye not see bivouac fires?"
The boy stared into the darkness. "Nay," he was commencing, when he interrupted himself to nod excitedly. "Aye, aye, Sally, in good sooth I do! Marry, 'tis true, then! Ah, Sally, I fear for Newark and Aquackanonck and all this countryside an General Clinton hath come wi' his trained troops!"
For a little while after they had reached the river bank, the boy and the girl stood motionless, staring across the black, flowing water of the Passaic River. Vague gleams punctured the darkness; but they might have been home lights or even the candle lanterns carried by the fisher folk who lived in huts along the river edge. Sally shook a dubious head after a while.
"Nay, I feel not sure 'tis enemy lights, after all," she said.
"Mayhap ye feel not sure about the bullets having been stolen, also," answered Zenas sarcastically. He was about to continue, when Sally pinched his arm.
"Hist!" she whispered, glancing uneasily over her shoulder. "Dost not hear aught?"
Zenas hstened intently. "Nay," he answered, then. "Ye do imagine noises, Sally!"
But the girl, all at once, dragged him back softly into some underbrush.
"Ye must ha' Indian blood i' ye, Sally, for I hear naught," Zenas was beginning, when a little hand was clamped over his mouth and he subsided into injured silence. As he crouched there, however, he, too, caught the sound of approaching footsteps, and as Sally's hand was removed from his lips, he tensed into an attitude as motionless as the girl's. Then, as they watched, two swift, silent forms came out of the night, passed them like shadows and descended the short, sharp bank to the river edge.
Now, however, came the sound of low, rough voices, subdued cautiously. Zenas threw himself noiselessly upon his stomach and Sally unthinkingly imitated him. Together, they inched forward toward the bank until the voices below them became audible and they could hear what was said.
"Where be the boat? I see it not!"
"Zounds, I left it here, hidden i' the grass!"
"Well, it be not here now!"
"Nay, hast not looked for it! Ye be too lazy, I say!"
"Ha! not looked, say ye! And lazy, say ye! I' faith, I think ye do lie an ye tell me ye hid a boat here i' the grass!"
"Have a care, sir! No one dubs me liar and lives!"
"Well, 'tis not here—ye agreed to have the boat ready, Crane! Where is it?"
"I tell ye, Captain Stockton, I did conceal it here!"
"Nay!"
"Aye!"
As the two exclamations mingled, there was a snarl, the thump of dropped burdens, and before Sally or Zenas could do more than draw excited breaths, there had commenced a vicious struggle in the darkness beneath them! At last there was the clank of steel upon steel!
"Ye will—ye cowardly knave! Draw thy hunting knife, will ye?"
"Ye skulker i' the dark—take that! And that!"
And now came a dreadful groan, the sound of someone falling, the further sound of a hurried plunge into the river—then someone swam away!
Sally, too horrified to move at first, lay where she had crept. Then, "Zenas!" she whispered, between stiff lips. "Zenas!"
"Aye, Sally?" Scarcely less horrified, his voice came to her from near by.
Sally gulped. "Think ye—think ye—the man be—be dead!" she stammered.
Zenas cleared his throat; but for all that his voice, when he spoke, was rough-edged. "Nay, I—I—know not!" And a little silence came upon them. Then Zenas spoke again. "Who was the man who did fall?" he whispered.
Sally shook her head, realized that Zenas could not see her in the darkness, and answered aloud: "Methinks it was Master Crane, though I could not tell."
"Why say ye that?" asked Zenas wonderingly.
"Only save that Stockton be so much a rogue!" she whispered back. She pulled herself to her knees upon the warm earth, got stiffly to her feet.
"Where be going?" inquired Zenas, springing hastily to his feet also.
"Down the bank to see what happened," Sally told him laconically, suiting action to words.
"Stay!"
"What!" Sally halted abruptly, tried to see the boy's face as he stood above her. "Why bid me stay, Zenas?" she demanded.
Zenas scrambled down to her. "Nay, this be no place for a maid," he said anxiously. "And no sight awaits ye that ye should see!"
"Tush!" said Sally roundly. "Not that I can see, dark as it be! This be war, though, Zenas—and I be no city maid, ready to swoon at sight o' blood!"
"Ye did swoon this day," began Zenas.
"Nay," returned Sally angrily, "that was the heat, forsooth! A kind of sunstroke! Make way, Zenas!"
"I—I—would not Sally! Ye will be sorry, I fear!"
But Sally trod past him on determined feet, and the boy followed her reluctantly to a narrow, level place beside the river. He found her kneeling beside an outstretched form.
"'Tis Master Crane," Sally told him in a low voice. "And he breathes, Zenas! I" She stopped, pondered. When she spoke again, her voice was troubled. "I think it our duty to inform Captain Littell and so obtain help for this man, enemy though he be, Zenas."
"Nay, Sally!" The boy whispered impetuously. "He be an enemy! Let him die!"
"Is that your mother's teachings, Zenas Williams!" Sally's voice was stern. "Enemy or no, we cannot let him die. Now," she sprang to her feet, "shall I return to the Rising Sun Tavern or will ye, Zenas?"
The boy hesitated. "I will go," he said sullenly, then.
Left alone beside that silent figure, Sally looked around her fearfully. There was the sound of the river, flowing toward Newark Bay, there were the vague gleams across the water which might mean the enemy, there were mysterious night noises in trees and bushes and the long, dank grass upon the bank above her. Sally shuddered, put out her hands, frantically to stay Zenas's going. "Stay!" she wanted to say. "I will return—anything, even detention by the patriots—anything be better than staying here i' this lonely, forsaken spot wi'—that at my feet!" But no sound left her lips and Zenas, not seeing her imploring gesture, had disappeared.
It was not long, however, before he was back. "Sally!" came his excited whisper.
"Aye?" She crept toward the bank.
"Did ye hear me stumble but now? I was angry—but—but 'twas the saddlebags o'er which I stumbled!"
"The saddlebags?" amazedly. "Oh, Zenas, the saddlebags wi' the bullets?"
"Aye!" Zenas laughed exultantly. "Aye—the varlets must have dropped them over here beside the bank before they fought!"
"Hush!" cautioned Sally. She stooped and prodded the bags which lay as though flung against the sandy bank. "Aye," and now her voice, too, was triumphant, "'tis the bullets! Our luck be changed! And now there be no danger o' Captain Littell confining ye on suspicion an ye return to the tavern, for we have proven our story!"
"I' that case, Sally, ye go i' my place! And I will stay here wi' the Tory!" urged Zenas, with that rare thoughtfulness which made him his mother's right-hand man.
"But you like not to stay here alone," began Sally doubtfully, longing to go, yet hating to be selfish.
Zenas squared his shoulders in the dark. "Go ye, Sally! And ask Captain Littell to send aid for this man. I will await ye here!" he said sturdily.
Sally, despite her knowledge of her good fortune, looked rather timidly around the tap room of the Rising Sun Tavern when, some moments later, she lifted the latch and pushed open the door. Summoning her courage, however, she advanced toward the table around which the militiamen had gathered. It was Captain Littell who, regarding her smiling face from beneath frowning, puzzled brows, spoke grimly.
"Whence came ye, young mistress? And why did ye run away?"
Sally smiled more confidently than she felt. "'Twould take o'erlong to tell ye, sir," she answered, in a hurried manner. "I returned to tell ye that the sentry. Master Crane, be lying, dangerously wounded, down by the river edge and—and—that the saddlebags be found!"
"Crane wounded!"
"How happened it, young maid?"
"The saddlebags found! Ye mean—the ones wi' the bullets therein?"
Sally shook her head. "Nay, I know not how Master Crane did receive his hurt—'twas i' the dark! The other Tory—a Captain Stockton—did fight wi' him, and he fell, wounded—then Stockton swam away!"
"Stockton escaped across the river, ye mean?" snapped Captain Littell.
"Aye, sir!"
There was a brief silence, then the soldier spoke again. "Where be these mysterious saddlebags."
Sally looked at him for a moment, resenting his brusqueness, then she nodded in the direction of the river. "They be lying on the banks o' the Passaic, sir," she told him quietly.
"Zounds!" Captain Camp started to his feet. "There be danger, then, o' the enemy finding them. Boats be not so rare, and the alarm—an the other Tory escaped—must ha' been given. We had best haste, sir!"
But Captain Littell made a negative gesture. "Wait!" he said tersely. "Are ye mad, then, to risk capture? This may be but a Tory ruse! How know ye this maid be not Tory, sent hither by those i' authority? Nay, let us not run ourselves into a trap!"
Sally started forward urgently. "Ah, delay not!" she cried. "E'en now Master Crane may be dying for lack o' aid! And, too, there be danger o' the enemy returning and finding the bullets! Oh, sir," she turned to Captain Littell, "do ye not recognize truth when ye hear it? Indeed and indeed I be no enemy spy! I have told ye I be none but Master Todd's Sally! Why, ye must know him—Samuel Todd o' the Mountain!"
"Aye, we know Samuel Todd," answered Captain Camp heavily, when Sally's broken, pleading voice had died into silence. "But I remember not his having any bond maid."
Now the girl's voice grew once more defiant. She eyed the group of stern-countenanced men facing her in the candlelight, with desperate, scornful gaze. "I have been wi' Master Todd three years—up to the very week he was taken prisoner to New York Town. Why, Parson Chapman did place me wi' the Todds! I be telling the truth, good sirs!"
"Her voice, methinks, rings true!" said one of the men, then. "Why not allow us to proceed to the river with due caution, sir? An the enemy unexpectedly attacks, we can use this girl as a shield and they will not dare fire upon one o' their own!"
"Very well—let us go!" And Captain Littell led the way from the tavern.
Once again Sally trod the way to the river, this time, however, with a hurt and angry heart. The more she saw of the patriots, she told herself bitterly, the better she liked at least one of the enemy. And a picture of Jerry Lawrence's gentle, chivalrous, merry-eyed face rose before her. But Sally, in her hurt, did not give them the sympathy due these New Jersey militiamen. They were under the strain of imminent battle, with the knowledge that the morrow night might bring disaster upon their hearths and homes, for they must fight against unbelievable odds. It was almost certain that they, comparatively untrained militia troops, without the help of the Regulars, as the Continental soldiers under command of General Washington were called, would have to face the trained troops of His Majesty's army before another sun set. So it can be seen readily enough why Captain Camp and Captain Littell felt that they must use every precaution to guard against being surprised by a wily enemy.
Sally, however, saw only ruthless and needless suspicion directed against herself, and tramped along, therefore, with weariness and grief heavy upon her.
Contrary to Captain Littell's fears, they reached the river bank without misadventures and were met by Zenas. "Master Crane still lives, sir," he told Captain Camp earnestly. "And here be the bullets!" And right proudly he led the older man to the place where the saddlebags had been flung.
The rest of the men, who had been lingering cautiously upon the road, alert fingers upon pistol triggers, now advanced at a command from their captain.
"Take ye this man back to the tavern, and we shall see about his removal to the church later, when Dr. Burnet hath had chance to attend him," he ordered.
It was a hard task to carry the heavy, inert form up the sliding gravel which formed the river bank; but at last it was accomplished. When, finally, their slow steps had died away in the darkness, when both Captain Littell and Captain Camp had stooped to feel and prod with inquisitive fingers the precious saddlebags, the former straightened himself and turned to Sally, who had been standing silently by.
"Young mistress," he said, in a low voice, "I do indeed cry abject pardon! Some day ye will understand my rude hesitation and unkind suspicion o' ye—not now, for ye be both young and angry!—but some day! And then ye will forgive mine apparent iniquity!"
Sally had the quick, generous temperament which ever seems to accompany the flaming color of her hair. "Indeed," she said, extending her hand impulsively, "I do forgive ye now, sir! I know 'tis war!" And the next instant she blushed brightly, for in the dark her hand had been raised respectfully to the lips of as noble a gentleman as ever wore Jersey Blue.
It was a weary wait there by the river until a small detachment of militia, sent back by Captain Camp, who had returned to the tavern, appeared to take charge of the saddlebags; but wait they did, for even Sally was determined that no one should get possession again of those bullets! Indeed, stumbling back to the inn, she tried to keep abreast of the men who bent their shoulders beneath the saddlebags, in order to keep her watchful gaze upon them—tried and lagged this way and that, finally bringing up, reeling from fatigue, against Captain Littell, who merely smiled as he slipped a kind, fatherly arm beneath her elbow and commenced a low-voiced, cheerful conversation that Sally but half heard. At length, between long intervals, she heard a few words.
"What," she murmured sleepily.
"I asked how I might make amends to ye?" repeated Captain Littell, smiling again.
"Oh, sir," said poor Sally, "I—I rose at dawn, and—and now it must e'en be nine o'clock! An ye indeed wish—to—make amends—think ye—ho, hum!—think ye—couldst find a place for me—to slee-eep!" And a gigantic yawn cut her words quite in two.