The Laird's Luck and Other Fireside Tales Part 9

"And so have I. I spent six hours in Salamanca itself," said the Captain quietly.

"Well, but doesn't that prove it? What other place on earth can he want to a.s.sault? He certainly is not marching south to join Soult." I turned to Jose, who had been listening with an impa.s.sive face.

"The Captain will be right. He always is," said Jose, perceiving that I appealed to him.

"I will wager a month's pay--"

"I never bet," Captain McNeill interrupted, as stiffly as before. "As you say, Marmont will march upon the Agueda, but in my opinion he will not a.s.sault Ciudad Kodrigo."

"Then he will be a fool."

"H'm! As to that I think we are agreed. But the question just now is how am I to get across the Tormes? The ford, I suppose, is watched on both sides." I nodded. "And I suppose it will be absolutely fatal to remain here long after daybreak?"

"Huerta swarms with soldiers," said I, "we have sixteen in the posada and a cavalry picket just behind. A whole battalion has eaten the village bare, and is foraging in all kinds of unlikely places. To be sure you might have a chance in the loft above us, under the hay."

"Even so, you cannot hide our horses."

"Your horses?"

"Yes, they're outside at the back. I didn't know there was a cavalry picket so close, and Jose must have missed it in the darkness."

Jose looked handsomely ashamed of himself.

"They are well-behaved horses," added the Captain. "Still, if they cannot be stowed somewhere, it is unlikely they can be explained away, and of course it will start a search."

"Our stable is full."

"Of course it is. Therefore you see we have no choice--apart from our earnest wish--but to cross the ford before daybreak. How is it patrolled on the far side?"

"Cavalry," said I; "two vedettes."

"Meeting, I suppose, just opposite the ford? How far do they patrol?"

"Three hundred yards maybe: certainly not more."

The Captain pursed up his lips as if whistling.

"Is there good cover on the other side? My map shows a wood of fair size."

"About half a mile off; open country between. Once there, you ought to be all right; I mean that a man clever enough to win there ought to make child's-play of the rest."

He mused for half a minute. "The stream is two wide for me to hear the movements of the patrols opposite. Jose has a wonderful ear."

"Yes, Captain, I can hear the water from where we stand," Jose put in.

"He is right," said I, "it's not a question of distance, but of the noise of the water. The ford itself will not be more than twenty yards across."

"What depth?"

"Three feet in the middle, as near as can be. I have rubbed down too many horses these last three days not to know. The river may have fallen an inch since yesterday. They have cleared the bottom of the ford, but just above and below there are rocks, and slippery ones."

"My horse is roughed. Of course the bank is, watched on this side?"

"Two sentries by the ford, two a little up the road, and the guard-house not twenty yards beyond. Captain, I think you'll have to put on a disguise for once in your life."

"Not if I can help it."

"Then, excuse me, but how the devil do you propose to manage?"

He frowned at the oath, recovered himself, and looked at me again with something like a twinkle of fun in his solemn eyes.

"Do you know," said he, "it has just occurred to me to pay you a tremendous compliment--McNeill to McNeill, you understand? I propose to place myself entirely in your hands."

"Oh, thank you!" I pulled a wry face. "Well, it's a compliment if ever there was one--an infernally handsome compliment. Your man, I suppose, can look after himself?" But before he could reply I added, "No; he shall go with me: for if you _do_ happen to get across, I shall have to follow, and look sharp about it." Then, as he seemed inclined to protest, "No inconvenience at all--my work here is done, and you are pretty sure to have picked up any news I may have missed. You had best be getting your horse at once; the dawn will be on us in half an hour.

Bring him round to the door here. Jose will find straw--hay--anything--to deaden his footsteps. Meanwhile I'll ask you to excuse me for five minutes."

The Spaniard eyed me suspiciously.

"Of course," said I, reading his thoughts, "if your master doubts me--"

"I think, Senor McNeill, I have given you no cause to suspect it," the Captain gravely interrupted. "There is, however, one question I should like to ask, if I may do so without offence. Is it your intention that I should cross in the darkness or wait for daylight?"

"We must wait for daylight; because although it increases some obvious dangers--"

"Excuse me; your reasons are bound to be good ones. I will fetch around my horse at once, and we shall expect you back here in five minutes."

In five minutes time I returned to find them standing in the darkness outside the granary door. Jose had strewn a s.p.a.ce round about with hay; but at my command he fetched more and spread it carefully, step by step, as Captain McNeill led his horse forward. My own arms were full; for I had spent the five minutes in collecting a score of French blankets and s.h.i.+rts off the hedges, where the regimental washermen had spread them the day before to dry.

The sketch on the following page will explain my plan and our movements better than a page of explanation:--

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The reader will observe that the Posada del Rio, which faces inwards upon its own courtyard, thrusts out upon the river at its rear a gable which overhangs the stream and flanks its small waterside garden from view of the village street. Into this garden, where the soldiers were used to sit and drink their wine of an evening, I led the Captain, whispering him to keep silence, for eight of the Frenchmen slept behind the windows above. In the corner by the gable was an awning, sufficient, when cleared of stools and tables, to screen him and his horse from any eyes looking down from these windows, though not tall enough to allow him to mount. And at daybreak, when the battalion a.s.sembled at its alarm-post above the ford, the gable itself would hide him. But of course the open front of the garden--where in two places the bank shelved easily down to the water--would leave him in full view of the troopers across the river. It was for this that I had brought the blankets. Across the angle by the gable there ran a clothes line on which the house-servant, Mercedes, hung her dish-clouts to dry. Unfastening the inner end, I brought it forward and lashed it to a post supporting a dovecote on the river wall. To fasten it high enough I had to climb the post, and this set the birds moving uneasily in the box overhead. But before their alarm grew serious I had slipped down to earth again, and now it took Jose and me but a couple of minutes to fling the blankets over the line and provide the Captain with a curtain, behind which, when day broke, he could watch the troopers and his opportunity. Already, in the village behind us, a c.o.c.k was crowing. In twenty minutes the sun would be up and the bugles sounding the reveille. "Down the bank by the gable," I whispered. "It runs shallow there, and six or seven yards to the right you strike the ford. When the vedettes are separated--just before they turn to come back--that's your time."

I took Jose by the arm. "We may as well be there to see. How were you planning to cross?"

"Oh," said he, "a marketer--with a raw-boned Galician horse and two panniers of eggs--for Arapiles--"

"That will do; but you must enter the village at the farther end and come down the road to the ford. Get your horse"--we crept back to the granary together--"but wait a moment, and I will show you the way round."

When I rejoined him at the back of the granary he had his horse ready, and we started to work around the village. But I had miscalculated the time. The sky was growing lighter, and scarcely were we in the lane behind the courtyard before the bugles began to sound.

"Well," said I, "that may save us some trouble after all."

Across the lane was an archway leading into a wheelwright's yard. It had a tall door of solid oak studded with iron nails; but this was unlocked and unbolted, and I knew the yard to be vacant, for the French farriers had requisitioned all the wheelwright's tools three days before, and the honest man had taken to his bed and proposed to stay there pending compensation.

To this archway we hastily crossed, and had barely time to close the door behind us before the soldiers, whose billets lay farther up the lane, came running by in twos and threes for the alarm-post, the later ones buckling their accoutrements as they ran halting now and then, and muttering as they fumbled with a strap or a b.u.t.ton. Jose at my instruction had loosened his horse's off hind shoe just sufficiently to allow it to clap; and as soon as he was ready I opened the door boldly, and we stepped out into the lane among the soldiers, cursing the dog's son of a smith who would not arise from his lazy bed to attend to two poor marketers pressed for time.