The Iron Game Part 36

It was twelve o'clock and after. He dared wait no longer. d.i.c.k must s.h.i.+ft for himself. Perhaps he had lost his way. In any event it was safer to set the general prisoners free, as they were only carelessly guarded. Lamps glimmered fitfully in the guard-room, throwing fantastic banners of light almost to the water's edge. He made a final tour about the broken ground, but there was no sound or suspicion of d.i.c.k. He knew every inch of the ground. d.i.c.k and he had surveyed and resurveyed it for days. The coast was clear. No one was on guard at the vital point, but still he lingered, his breath coming and going painfully, as a break in the clouds cast a moving shape over the undulating ground. Should he give the boy another half-hour's grace? He makes a circuit in the direction d.i.c.k must approach by and waits. He will count a hundred very slowly, then wait no longer. He counts up to fifty, hears a coming step, and waits alertly. No--it pa.s.ses on. He begins again--counts one hundred, two hundred. No sign. "Pah! it is madness to delay for him. The young poltroon has lost his resolution in his lovesick fever. Very likely he has been unable to run the risk of Rosa's anger--her mother's indignation--the possibility of never seeing the girl again." Well, he had given him ample grace. He had endangered his own and other lives to humor a boyish whim. Now he must act, and swiftly.

The plan was too far gone in execution to be changed. He must carry out the final measures alone. Now, one of these details required some one to slip down on the ground and crawl to the point between the windows where the prisoners were working and aid them to remove the thin, sh.e.l.l of brick. If it fell outward, the guard at the corner would hear the noise, and might come down to see what it was that made it. The removal of this wall released all confined in the main prison. These he saw stealing out in groups of ten or more. They had guides waiting on the bank of the river. Jack gave them final orders. The most difficult work was the getting out Jones and Barney, for they had special cells. Jack was to guard Jones's exit and d.i.c.k Barney's, but now all the work would devolve upon him. It was two o'clock, and he dared wait no longer. Raising himself from the low wall where he had been crouching, he started toward the corner of the prison farthest from the guard-room. At the wall of the building he dropped flat on his face and began to crawl forward, sheltered by the low ground that formed a sort of dry ditch about the bas.e.m.e.nt of the prison. He had barely stretched himself at full length when a bright light was flashed on him from a deep doorway just beyond him, and a voice, mocking and triumphant, exclaimed.

"This is a bad place to swim, my friend! There ain't enough water to drown you, but if you stir you'll run against a bullet."

Jack lay quite still and raised his eyes. Above him stood a trooper, with a revolver leveled at and within ten feet of him. Figure to yourself any predicament in life in which vital stakes hang on the issue; figure to yourself the s.h.i.+pwrecked seizing ice where he had hoped for timber; the condemned criminal walking into the jailer's toils where he had laboriously dug through solid walls; the captain of an army leaving the field victor, to find his legions rus.h.i.+ng upon him in rout; figure any monstrous overturn in well-laid schemes, and you have but a faint reflex of poor Jack's heart-breaking anguish when this jocular fate stood above him, with the five gaping barrels pointed at his miserable head. Oh, if d.i.c.k had only been there! His quick eye and keen activity would have discovered this lurking devil; perhaps, between them, they would have averted the disaster. Where could d.i.c.k be?

BOOK III

_THE DESERTERS_.

CHAPTER XXIV.

BETWEEN THE LINES.

On quitting Jack, d.i.c.k had but one thought in mind--to make his departure less abrupt for Rosa. If he left her without a word, what would she think? Then, with an officer's uniform, he could be of much more help to Jack and the party than in the rough civilian homespun furnished at the cabin. Besides, he knew of certain blank headquarter pa.s.ses lying on Vincent's desk. He would get a few of these; they might extricate the party in the event of a surprise.

He tore over the solemn roadway, under the spectral foliage, and in twenty minutes he was in his room in the Atterburys'. Vincent's old uniform he had often noticed in a spare closet adjoining his own sleeping-room. In an instant he was in it, and, though it was not a fit, he soon put it in order to pa.s.s casual inspection. The line for Rosa was the next delay. What should he say? He had had his mind full for days of the most tender sentiments and prettily turned phrases, but the turmoil of the last hour, the vital value of every moment to Jack's plans, left him no time to compose the poem he had meditated so long. Rosa's own pretty desk was open, and on a sheet of her own paper he wrote, in a scrawling, school-boy hand:

"DARLING ROSA: You've often said that you would disown Vincent if he were not true to the South. Think of Vincent in my place--dawdling in Acredale or Was.h.i.+ngton while battles were going on. You would not hold him less contemptible that he was in love; that he let his love, or his life, for you are both to me, stand as a barrier to his duty. You can't love where you can't honor, and you can't hate where you know conscience rules. I go to my duty, that in the end I may come to you without shame.

I ask no pledge other than comes to your heart when you read this; but whatever you may say, whatever you may decide, I am now and always shall be your devoted

"RICHARD"

He sighed, casting a woe-begone glance into the mirror, dimly conscious that he was a very heroic young person. He kissed various objects dear to the little maid, and then, in lugubrious unrest, sallied out and mounted.

Again under the calm sky--again the fleet limbs of the horse almost keeping time to his own inward impatience. He holds to the soft, unpaved, outlying streets, that his pace may not attract remark. He pa.s.ses hors.e.m.e.n, like himself spurring fleetly in the darkness. He is near the river at last--dismounts and reconnoitres. He easily finds a place to tie the horse, and, familiar with every inch of the outlying ground about the prison, crawls close to the wall, listening intently.

He can hear no sound save the weary clank of the sentry on the wooden walk. He reaches the wall where the prisoners Jones and Barney were to emerge. There is no sign of a break! Where can Jack be? Some disaster must have overtaken him, for it is past the hour set and soon it will be dawn, and then all action will be impossible. Perhaps Jack has been caught reconnoitring? Perhaps he has gone with the main body, not venturing to try for Jones and d.i.c.k without help? No, that was not like Jack. This was his special part in the plan--if it were not done, Jack was still about. He can find out readily--thanks to the countersign. He steals back over the low hillock, mounts the horse, and by a _detour_ reaches the sentry guarding the river front of the prison. He is challenged, but, possessed of the countersign, finds no difficulty in riding up to the guard-room doorway.

"Has Lieutenant Hawkins been here within an hour, sentry?" he asks, in apparent haste.

"No, sir. I think he has been sent for--leastwise, the sergeant went away about an hour ago to report the taking of a deserter, found prowling about the side of the prison."

"A deserter?"

"Yes, sir. He had a brand-new uniform on and no company mark, nor no equipments."

"What has been done with him?" d.i.c.k asked, breathlessly, dismounting. "I wonder if he isn't one of my company from Fort Lee? He went off on a drunk yesterday, though he was sent here on a commissary errand."

"I dunno, sir. He's in the lockup there. He was very violent, and the sergeant bound him with straps."

"I will go in and examine him; he may be one of my men, and, as our brigade moves in the morning, I should like to know."

"Very well, sir; the officer of the day is asleep in the room beyond the first door. One of the men will call him."

"Oh, no need to disturb him until I have seen the prisoner.--Here, my man"--addressing a soldier asleep on a settee--"show me to the deserter brought in to-night."

"Yes, sir," the man cried, starting up with confused alacrity; then, noticing the insignia of major on d.i.c.k's gray collar, he saluted respectfully, and, pointing to a double doorway, waited for his superior to lead the way. d.i.c.k, who had been in the prison before, knew his whereabouts very well, and it was not until the soldier reached the room in which the deserter was detained that he seemed to remember that there were no lights.

"Here are the man's quarters, sir; but I'm out of matches. If you'll wait a minute I'll bring a candle."

"All right," d.i.c.k responded, in a loud voice; "I'll stand here until you come back."

The quest of the candle would take the guide to the closet in the guard-room, and, risking little to learn much, d.i.c.k struck a match and peered into the stuffy little room, more like a corn-crib than a prison-cell.

"Hist, Jack! is it you?" he called.

There was an exclamation from the farther end of the room, and then a fervent--

"Heavens, d.i.c.k! is it really you?"

"Sh--sh--!"

The soldier's returning footfalls sounded in the pa.s.sage-way; but, as he re-entered the hall where d.i.c.k stood shading the flickering light, he could not see the hastily extinguished match in d.i.c.k's hand. As the man came slowly along the winding pa.s.sage-way, d.i.c.k whispered:

"You are a recruit in Rickett's legion; you were drunk and lost your way, and I am your major; you are stationed at Fort Lee near Mechanicsville, and you belong to Company G."

Jack pretended to be sound asleep when the soldier and d.i.c.k entered. He rubbed his eyes sleepily, and looked up in a vacant, tipsy way, leering knowingly at the soldier, who had caught him by the shoulder.

"What are you doing here, Tarpey? Why aren't you with your company?

You'll get ball and chain for this lark, or my name's not James Braine."

"But, major, it--it wasn't my fault. My cousin, Joe Tarpey, came down from Staunton with a barrel of so'gum whisky, and--and--"

"You drank too much and was caught where you had no business to be.

However," d.i.c.k added, sternly, "the regiment marches in the morning--you must get out of here. Soldier, show me to Captain Payne's quarters. Say to him that Major Braine, of Rickett's Legion, desires to speak with him a moment." But he had no sooner said this than he realized the danger he was running.

The captain might know Braine, and then how could he extricate himself from the dilemma? Luckily the captain was not in his quarters, and d.i.c.k, with calm effrontery, sat down and wrote out a statement of the case, where he was to be found, and his reasons for carrying the prisoner away.

The sergeant, having read this, made no objection to releasing the alleged deserter, since there had been no orders concerning him, and, without more ado, Jack walked away with his captain, the picture of abashed valor and repentant tipsiness.

"Now, d.i.c.k, there's no time to ask the meaning of your miraculous doings. We've still time to let our friends out and get away before daylight; but we mustn't lose a second. s.h.!.+ stand still, what's that?

Troopers! Good heavens, they can't have found out your trick so soon!

Ah, no! They are floundering about looking for quarters," he added, in immeasurable relief, as the voices of the riders sounded through the darkness, cursing luck, the road, and everything else. "O d.i.c.k, if we only had the countersign I could play a brilliant trick on these greenhorns! Perhaps I can as it is."

"I have the countersign. How do you suppose I could have managed to get to you if I hadn't? It is 'Lafayette.'"

"Glory! Now make all the clatter you can after I challenge."

They had by this time reached a row of tumble-down stables directly in the rear of the prison, and shut out from the open ground by a decrepit fence, broken here and there by negroes too lazy to pa.s.s out into the street to reach the river. The hors.e.m.e.n had turned into this lane-like highway--evidently misdirected. When within a few feet, Jack gave a sudden whack on the board and cried, sternly:

"Halt! Who comes there?"