War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 19
IN THE green savannah in the forest, where Jock Pearson's pack train was encamped, a small gentleman with a prodigious shock of white hair was absorbed in the business of defending himself against half a dozen ruffians. The small gentleman, clad in white ruffled shirt and black knee breeches, wielded a slim, straight sword; his assailants attacked him with long, stout staffs. On all sides they hemmed him in, cursing, shouting, flourishing their weapons, and it seemed that his life was not worth a pin. But the small gentleman appeared singularly happy.
He sang shrilly as he fought, and his agility was miraculous. He was here, there, everywhere. His sword was now a circle of light like a halo around his snowy head, now a glittering streak like a horizontal dart of lightning—as quick, as keen, as elusive as the flickering tongue of a snake. Too swift for the eye to follow were the parries and thrusts of that sword, as it clattered on the staffs of his assailants, turning aside their blows, menacing their lives.
Jolie gasped as the scene burst upon her vision. The path that they had been following through the forest had turned sharply around a dense myrtle thicket, and suddenly the glade had opened before her, revealing the combat that raged there. Amazement held her dumb. Just beyond the combatants was the camp of the pack train—the standing ponies, the rude shelters of blankets and skins, the smoking cook-fires; but for a moment she saw nothing of all this. She saw only the lone swordsman battling for his life and the ruffians trying to kill him.
She turned to Lachlan where he sat his horse beside her. His face, too, was blank with amazement, but beyond him Almayne was grinning. The horses had halted at the edge of the glade and neither Lachlan nor Almayne made a move, but suddenly Jolie heard a shout and saw that the small, white-haired gentleman had burst through the circle of his opponents and was racing towards them.
Three of the ruffians started in pursuit, but still Almayne and Lachlan sat their horses without movement, seemingly indifferent to the fleeing man's peril. In a few moments he was within a dozen paces of them, his pursuers meanwhile having halted as though uncertain what to do. The small gentleman rushed up to Lachlan and grasped his hand.
"Eh, lad," he cried, "but I'm glad to see you, Lord, we were worried, Almayne and I! And this is the lady?"
He swung toward Jolie and bowed low.
"By Paul!" he cried, in a thin, bird-like voice, strangely shrill, yet not unmusical, "you will pardon an old man's boldness, Mam'selle, but of all the adorable sex I adore the most those whose hair is the brave, glorious Irish colour that mine once was."
He glanced from one to another of them, a broad grin on his round, pink, clean-shaven face.
"Sure, now," he chirped, "have ye no word of greeting for me?"
"Mr. O'Sullivan," said Lachlan, "what in Heaven's name are you doing here?"
The grin on the round, pink face widened.
"A minute ago," the little man said, "I was enjoying a little healthful exercise. Those ignorant rogues of pack drivers had expressed some scorn of the sword as a weapon, and I laid them a wager that with this rapier I could defend myself for half an hour against the cudgels of all six of them. It was none too easy because I had to be careful not to scratch them, that being part of the bargain, but I would have won the wager."
"But how came you here to Jock Pearson's camp?"
"On a mule," Mr. O'Sullivan answered, "a most abominably perverse and discontented yellow mule that I bought in Charles Town because in so short a time I could not procure a horse. Later, when I have obtained a respectable mount, I shall take delight in feeding him to the wolves."
Almayne chuckled. "You meant it, then?" he said. "When you said you would go with us, I thought you were jesting."
"I was," the little man answered, "but the more I thought about the matter, the more I liked the notion. It fell in with a scheme that has been growing in my head, a scheme to study the aboriginal natives and mayhap write a book about them. So, when the pack train left Charles Town an hour before daylight, there was I and my mangy mule, and my old friend, Ugly Meg, overruled Jock's objections to my company."
He turned to Jolie, took her hand in his and patted it.
"My sweet bird," he said very gently, "Almayne has told me something of what's afoot. You will accept me, will you not, as a volunteer in your service?"
Lachlan came to her rescue. "Mam'selle," he said joyfully, "this is Mr. Francis O'Sullivan, of Doonamaddy, in Ireland, a particular friend of mine and formerly my teacher; a man most marvellously learned in the classics and in history, and a perfect master of the sword. There is much more to commend him, as you will presently discover. I am sure you will be grateful for the aid that he will give us."
"I shall, indeed," Jolie murmured.
Again the little man bowed low to her and, turning, included Lachlan in the gesture.
"I thank you, my lady, and you, my pupil," he said, smiling. "And now I'm thinking Jock Pearson may take himself to the devil, for I am duly enrolled as a private in the ranks."
They rode on slowly across the savannah, Mr. O'Sullivan walking beside them. Despite her weariness, Jolie gazed with keen interest at the camp they were approaching—the pack ponies standing about the water-buckets or cropping the grass; the pack drivers in their high, buckskin leggins and leather jerkins ornamented with beads after the Indian fashion; the little tents of skins, blankets and stained muddy canvas, some of which served as shelters for bundles of merchandise that had been unloaded from the ponies, while others were evidently the sleeping quarters of the party. At the farther edge of the savannah, beyond the camp, Jolie saw two Indians come out of the forest. Each carried a rifle in one hand, while a great dark bird dangled limp and lifeless from the other. Each raised one hand above his head in a stately gesture, and Lachlan replied with a similar salutation.
"My warriors," Lachlan said to Jolie, "Striking Hawk and Little Mink, chiefs of the Muskogee. They have been out for game and they have two turkeys."
From the lower end of the meadow sounded a faint whoop. Three horsemen, all clad in buckskins, had emerged from the woods and were galloping towards the camp.
"Jock Pearson," said Almayne briefly, and rode to meet them.
"We shall have venison, too," said Lachlan, sitting his horse beside Jolie, in front of the first of the tiny tents. "There's a buck behind Ugly Meg Pearson's saddle."
Jolie saw the buck but looked in vain for Meg Pearson. The rider across whose horse the dead deer was slung appeared to be a man. But when they had come up, this rider slid from the saddle and walked swiftly towards Jolie. The girl saw then a tall, big-boned woman of perhaps forty years, hook-nosed, red-faced, astonishingly ugly, clad like the others in long, fringed hunting shirt and leggins, balancing a rifle in her bony hand.
Meg Pearson wasted no time in formalities. She gave Lachlan not so much as a nod.
"You are tired, my lamb," she said to Jolie, in a voice as deep as a man's. "You are nigh ready to drop with weariness. And these fools keep you settin' here! 'Light an' come with Meg."
At noon Jolie was still asleep on a buffalo robe in Ugly Meg Pearson's little tent. That stalwart lady stood like a sentinel before the entrance, frowning grimly. She had just informed her husband that the pack train would not resume its journey for at least two hours. Six feet two in his moccasins, black-bearded, thewed like a Hercules, Jock Pearson had fumed and cursed a little and pointed to the ponies already loaded. But Ugly Meg was obdurate. The "poor lamb" would have two hours more of sleep, she asserted somewhat profanely, and any pack driver who raised his voice or cracked his whip would be most damnably sorry for it.
Jock Pearson saw a certain light in her eyes and grumbled no more until he was out of earshot. If the pack drivers grinned, they did so discreetly, for they feared him as much as he feared his wife, but Mr. Francis O'Sullivan had seen and enjoyed the play and was at no pains to conceal his enjoyment of it.
"Eh, Jock," he cried, his pink face beaming under its white brush of hair. "They are the devil, these women that wear the breeches. What says the rustic poet?
Her name, it's Katie Harridan.
She never cooks or sweeps or stitches;
She's sprouting whiskers like a man."
The trader deigned no reply. He had not desired Mr. O'Sullivan's company and had told him so rather plainly; and just now he was in no mood to be polite. A little apart from the others Almayne, Lachlan, and the two Muskogee warriors were sitting in the grass. Almayne beckoned Pearson.
"Jock," he said, "I've been thinking there's something we ought to tell you, and Lachlan is of the same mind."
Pearson stretched his huge bulk beside the hunter, while Mr. O'Sullivan, having nothing else to do, strolled over and joined the group, standing just behind the trader. Followed then some minutes of earnest talk between Almayne and Pearson, Lachlan putting in a word occasionally, while the two Indians looked on with impassive faces. Presently Mr. O'Sullivan wandered back towards Meg Pearson's tent.
He found her just within the entrance, sitting cross-legged on a deerskin, gazing intently at the face of the sleeping girl. He beckoned her and she came out to him.
"Ugly Meg," he chirped in his voice like a bird's, "I wish you joy of your white-livered, rabbit-hearted behemoth of a husband."
She glowered down upon the little man.
"What's he done now?" she growled.
He jerked his head towards the tent.
"The young lady yonder, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke, has run away from her father who is a vile beast that any daughter would be proud to run away from. However, as you know, old Stanwicke is a great man in the Province and has power with the Governor, and Almayne and Lachlan McDonald are of the opinion that a party may come in pursuit of her with the Governor's authority to take her back to Charles Town. It has occurred to them at this late day that if she is found in Jock Pearson's pack train there will be evil consequence for Jock, and to save him this danger they have proposed that our parties separate. You know and I know and Jock Pearson knows that with the Cherokees ripe for war we are too small a party to venture through the upper country with this girl in our charge."
Mistress Pearson's grim eyes were fixed upon her husband where he still lolled on the grass between Almayne and Lachlan.
"Let be, Mr. O'Sullivan," she said peevishly. "That sweet lamb will be in Meg Pearson's care until she's safe in Fort Prince George."