In the Midst of Alarms Part 23

Telegrams were rare on the farm, and young Bartlett looked on the receipt of one as an event in a man's life. He was astonished to see Yates receive the double event with a listlessness that he could not help thinking was merely a.s.sumed for effect. Yates held them in his hand, and did not tear them up at once out of consideration for the feelings of the young man, who had had a race to deliver them.

"Here's two books they wanted you to sign. They're tired out, and mother's giving them something to eat."

"Professor, you sign for me, won't you?" said Yates.

Bartlett lingered a moment, hoping that he would hear something of the contents of the important messages; but Yates did not even open the envelopes, although he thanked the young man heartily for bringing them.

"Stuck-up cuss!" muttered young Bartlett to himself, as he shoved the signed books into his pocket and pushed his way through the underbrush again. Yates slowly and methodically tore the envelopes and their contents into little pieces, and scattered them as before.

"Begins to look like autumn," he said, "with the yellow leaves strewing the ground."

CHAPTER XV.

Before night three more telegraph boys found Yates, and three more telegrams in sections helped to carpet the floor of the forest. The usually high spirits of the newspaper man went down and down under the repeated visitations. At last he did not even swear, which, in the case of Yates, always indicated extreme depression. As night drew on he feebly remarked to the professor that he was more tired than he had ever been in going through an election campaign. He went to his tent bunk early, in a state of such utter dejection that Renmark felt sorry for him, and tried ineffectually to cheer him up.

"If they would all come together," said Yates bitterly, "so that one comprehensive effort of malediction would include the lot and have it over, it wouldn't be so bad; but this constant dribbling in of messengers would wear out the patience of a saint."

As he sat in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves on the edge of his bunk Renmark said that things would look brighter in the morning--which was a safe remark to make, for the night was dark.

Yates sat silently, with his head in his hands, for some moments. At last he said slowly: "There is no one so obtuse as the thoroughly good man. It is not the messenger I am afraid of, after all. He is but the outward symptom of the inward trouble. What you are seeing is an example of the workings of conscience where you thought conscience was absent.

The trouble with me is that I know the newspaper depends on me, and that it will be the first time I have failed. It is the newspaper man's instinct to be in the center of the fray. He yearns to scoop the opposition press. I will get a night's sleep if I can, and to-morrow, I know, I shall capitulate. I will hunt out General O'Neill, and interview him on the field of slaughter. I will telegraph pages. I will refurbish my military vocabulary, and speak of deploying and ma.s.sing and throwing out advance guards, and that sort of thing. I will move detachments and advance brigades, and invent strategy. We will have desperate fighting in the columns of the _Argus_, whatever there is on the fields of Canada. But to a man who has seen real war this _opera-bouffe_ masquerade of fighting----I don't want to say anything harsh, but to me it is offensive."

He looked up with a wan smile at his partner, sitting on the bottom of an upturned pail, as he said this. Then he reached for his hip pocket and drew out a revolver, which he handed, b.u.t.t-end forward, to the professor, who, not knowing his friend carried such an instrument, instinctively shrank from it.

"Here, Renny, take this weapon of devastation and soak it with the potatoes. If another messenger comes in on me to-night, I know I shall riddle him if I have this handy. My better judgment tells me he is innocent, and I don't want to shed the only blood that will be spilled during this awful campaign."

How long they had been asleep they did not know, as the ghost-stories have it, but both were suddenly awakened by a commotion outside. It was intensely dark inside the tent, but as the two sat up they noticed a faint moving blur of light, which made itself just visible through the canvas.

"It's another of those fiendish messengers," whispered Yates. "Gi' me that revolver."

"Hus.h.!.+" said the other below his breath. "There's about a dozen men out there, judging by the footfalls. I heard them coming."

"Let's fire into the tent and be done with it," said a voice outside.

"No, no," cried another; "no man shoot. It makes too much noise, and there must be others about. Have ye all got yer bayonets fixed?"

There was a murmur, apparently in the affirmative.

"Very well, then. Murphy and O'Rourick, come round to this side. You three stay where you are. Tim, you go to that end; and, Doolin, come with me."

"The Fenian army, by all the G.o.ds!" whispered Yates, groping for his clothes. "Renny, give me that revolver, and I'll show you more fun than a funeral."

"No, no. They're at least three to our one. We're in a trap here, and helpless."

"Oh, just let me jump out among 'em and begin the fireworks. Those I didn't shoot would die of fright. Imagine scouts scouring the woods with a lantern--with a _lantern_, Renny! Think of that! Oh, this is pie! Let me at 'em."

"Hus.h.!.+ Keep quiet! They'll hear you."

"Tim, bring the lantern round to this side." The blur of light moved along the canvas. "There's a man with his back against the wall of the tent. Just touch him up with your bayonet, Murphy, and let him know we're here."

"There may be twenty in the tent," said Murphy cautiously.

"Do what I tell you," answered the man in command.

Murphy progged his bayonet through the canvas, and sunk the deadly point of the instrument into the bag of potatoes.

"Faith, he sleeps sound," said Murphy with a tremor of fear in his voice, as there was no demonstration on the part of the bag.

The voice of Yates rang out from the interior of the tent:

"What the old Harry do you fellows think you're doing, anyhow? What's the matter with you? What do you want?"

There was a moment's silence, broken only by a nervous scuffling of feet and the clicking of gun-locks.

"How many are there of you in there?" said the stern voice of the chief.

"Two, if you want to know, both unarmed, and one ready to fight the lot of you if you are anxious for a scrimmage."

"Come out one by one," was the next command.

"We'll come out one by one," said Yates, emerging in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves, "but you can't expect us to keep it up long, as there are only two of us."

The professor next appeared, with his coat on. The situation certainly did not look inviting. The lantern on the ground threw up a pallid glow on the severe face of the commander, as the footlights might illuminate the figure of a brigand in a wood on the stage. The face of the officer showed that he was greatly impressed with the importance and danger of his position. Yates glanced about him with a smile, all his recent dejection gone now that he was in the midst of a row.

"Which is Murphy," he said, "and which is Doolin? h.e.l.lo, alderman!" he cried, as his eyes rested on one tall, strapping, red-haired man who held his bayonet ready to charge, with a fierce determination in his face that might have made an opponent quail. "When did you leave New York? and who's running the city now that you're gone?"

The men had evidently a sense of humor, in spite of their bloodthirsty business, for a smile flickered on their faces in the lantern light, and several bayonets were unconsciously lowered. But the hard face of the commander did not relax.

"You are doing yourself no good by your talk," he said solemnly. "What you say will be used against you."

"Yes, and what you do will be used against _you_; and don't forget that fact. It's you who are in danger--not I. You are, at this moment, making about the biggest a.s.s of yourself there is in Canada."

"Pinion these men!" cried the captain gruffly.

"Pinion nothing!" shouted Yates, shaking off the grasp of a man who had sprung to his side. But both Yates and Renmark were speedily overpowered; and then an unseen difficulty presented itself. Murphy pathetically remarked that they had no rope. The captain was a man of resource.

"Cut enough rope from the tent to tie them."

"And when you're at it, Murphy," said Yates, "cut off enough more to hang yourself with. You'll need it before long. And remember that any damage you do to that tent you'll have to pay for. It's hired."

Yates gave them all the trouble he could while they tied his elbows and wrists together, offering sardonic suggestions and cursing their clumsiness. Renmark submitted quietly. When the operation was finished, the professor said with the calm confidence of one who has an empire behind him and knows it:

"I warn you, sir, that this outrage is committed on British soil; and that I, on whom it is committed, am a British subject."