THEY waited only long enough to allow the girl to run to her room and slip into some garments better fitted for a journey through the woods. And even this short delay was a mistake. They had believed Stanwicke to be still helpless from shock, but suddenly, while their backs were turned for an instant, he was out of his chair and halfway to the closed door leading to the rear. They overtook him when his hand was reaching for the door, and Almayne's palm across his mouth choked the cry that would have summoned his servants.
They got him back to the chair, struggling with surprising strength for a man who, but a few minutes before, had been sunk in stupor, and, first gagging him securely, they bound him to his seat with a bell-rope cut from the wall.
Jolie, returning, stood for a moment looking down at him, while he glared up at her, hate blazing in his eyes. The cord was tight. Jolie stooped and loosened it; and Stanwicke, suddenly swinging his bound legs sideways, almost knocked her from her feet.
With a little sob, she jumped back from him, turned and, without a glance behind her, passed out of the door opening on the porch, Lachlan at her heels. A moment later Almayne followed them—after tightening again with one deft and savage jerk the cord that Jolie had eased.
Outside it was pitch-dark. There were no stars. Away to the right a lantern flickered across the plantation yard, coming toward the house. From the porch they moved around the south end of the house, the girl walking between the two men, each of whom gripped one of her arms. She was like a blind woman in that utter blackness, but the men with her moved swiftly, unhesitatingly, and she went forward between them, stumbling seldom. For some minutes, glancing back, she could still see the lights of Stanwicke Hall, but shortly they entered the woods and the lights were blotted out.
Here the going was rough. Presently Almayne spoke briefly to Lachlan, handed his rifle to the younger man, then, with a "By your leave, lady," took Jolie in his arms. For perhaps two hundred yards the tall hunter carried her thus, placing her on her feet again when they had left the thickets behind them and had come to open pine forest where no underbrush grew beneath the trees and the ground was carpeted with pine straw. She went forward, as before, between the two men, speaking no word. The pace was fast and she needed her breath; and somehow she realized that, although these men apparently had eyes that could see in the dark, they needed all their faculties to guide them through that maze of pine trunks which to her eyes were all but invisible.
Thus they came, with scarcely a word spoken, to the place where the horses were tethered. Here at last Almayne's gruff voice broke the silence.
"You can walk very well for a woman, Mistress," he said. "Now can you ride?"
His tone was a challenge. He was seldom at pains to disguise the contempt he had for women.
"I can ride," she answered shortly, and they helped her to mount, then swung to their own saddles.
"A loose bridle, Mam'selle," said Lachlan. "Your horse will follow in the track of Almayne's." With the hunter leading the way and Lachlan in the rear, they began the second stage of the night's journey.
As before, they rode in silence, save for a whispered inquiry now and then from Lachlan regarding her comfort. Had she been dying of fatigue she would not have confessed it in Almayne's hearing. There was a question which rose again and again to her lips, but she never uttered it. Still their way led them through unbroken woods, but after an hour or so they came out into an open space, and directly ahead she saw a light glimmering. They rode towards this light over boggy ground where marsh grass or tall rushes brushed their horses' flanks, and came presently to a small hut at the edge of a river.
"It is the ferry, Mam'selle," Lachlan told her, "and the flat-boat is ready, for we are expected. We must dismount now. Once we are across the river, we can rest a while."
A white man and a negro operated the flat-boat, and there was room on the clumsy craft—built for the accommodation of plantation wagons and coaches—for all three horses as well as their riders. Almayne and Lachlan manned the extra sweeps and the broad, placid stream was quickly crossed.
They remounted then and rode on for perhaps a half-hour, at first following a winding road, but soon turning to the left into the woods. Far away she heard the hunting cry of a wolf pack and shivered, although she could only guess what the sound was. It was inexpressibly wild and strangely fierce, but she held her tongue and learned that wolves were abroad only when Almayne growled some comment on the increase of these animals. She was chilly and hungry. She wondered what had become of Lachlan's promise of a rest once the river had been crossed. As if in answer to the thought, he spoke to Almayne and they halted, dismounted and helped her to alight.
"We are safe, now, I think," he said. "On this side the river they could not tell what course we would take. We will have a fire and something to eat and drink."
The warmth of the fire, the sweetened cornbread, the wine from Lachlan's flask dispelled her fatigue. For all its slimness, her body was well-knit and very strong, and in England riding had been her favourite pastime, so that this night's ride had tired her little.
A strange exultation mounted in her. The hunting wolves, though still far away, had drawn somewhat nearer. Their voices made music, savage and unearthly, but softened by the distance. The glow from the fire turned the massive pine trunks to bronze and the hanging Spanish moss to silver. Fifty feet away in the gloom she saw, for a moment, two round orbs which glittered in the light like emeralds, and she knew that they were the eyes of some great beast of the forest. Yet she was not afraid. Somehow all this seemed fitting, natural, vaguely familiar; and somehow it was fitting and natural, too, that she should be here in the depths of the midnight forest with these two men in buckskins, who seemed as much a part of that forest as the trees.
Over and over again she had pictured some such scene as this, constructing it out of vivid details in the letters that Gilbert Barradell had written to her after his coming to America. Always she had loved the open, had found delight in birds and other wild creatures, in trees, flowers, and the things of earth. In England she had dreamed of days and nights in the vast American woods, had lived them in spirit with Barradell as her companion. This that was happening now was all as it should be, all as she had visioned it—except that, instead of Gilbert Barradell, her companions were the tall hunter, Almayne, whom she disliked vaguely because she was aware that he disliked her, and the dark youth who had come so strangely into her life on a certain evening in her father's garden in Charles Town.
These thoughts came and passed swiftly. Almayne was busy with a loose saddle girth; Lachlan was adding fuel to the fire, and in the brief interval since they had halted few words had been spoken. Lachlan rose and stood before her where she sat at the base of a gigantic pine.
"Mam'selle," he began.
She checked him with a gesture. She could wait no longer to ask the question that a dozen times that night had been on her lips.
"Some nights ago, in my father's garden," she said, "a moment before you were struck down, you told me that Gilbert Barradell was alive and that you would go to him. I have not seen you since. I have not been allowed to communicate with Mr. Almayne. You will tell me more now about him—about Gilbert—before we speak of any other thing?"
"He is a prisoner," Lachlan replied, "in the town of Concha, Chief of the Appalaches, on the western borders of the Spanish country of the Floridas. He is safe for the present, but there is one who hates him, and we must lose no time. We must go to him at once and attempt a rescue."
She was silent a moment, as though studying his words.
"When you go," she said quietly at last, "I will go with you."
Almayne had come up and stood close behind Lachlan.
"D'ye know what that would mean?" he asked brusquely. "Hardships, dangers, long weeks in the rough wilderness—enough to try the body and soul of a strong man."
"I am strong," she replied. "I am not afraid. I will go."
Almayne slapped Lachlan between the shoulders.
"By Zooks!" he exclaimed. "You were right, lad, after all."