The Continental Dragoon Part 29

He gazed at her with such an expression as a painter of h.e.l.l might put into the face of a lost soul, and he said, faintly, in a kind of articulate moan:

"I might have known!"

Suddenly there came from the outer night the exclamation, quick and distinct:

"Whoa!"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BROKEN SWORD.

The sound wrought a transformation in Colden. His face lighted up with malevolent joy.

"You love too late!" he cried, to Elizabeth. "My men are there! They shall take him to New York a prisoner, at last!"

"But not delivered up by me, thank G.o.d!" replied Elizabeth, while Peyton rose quickly from his chair, and Colden reeled like a drunken man to the window.

She went behind Peyton, and, with the edge of the broken sword, hacked rather than cut through one of the outer windings that bound his wrists together, whereupon she speedily uncoiled the rope.

"You were my prisoner. I set you free!" she said, dropped the rope to the floor, and handed him the broken sword.

He took the weapon in his right hand, and imprisoned Elizabeth with his left arm.

"I'm more your prisoner now than ever!" he said. "You've cut these bonds. Will you put others on me?"

"Sometime,--if we can save your life!" she answered.

Both turned their eyes towards Colden.

The Tory officer had drawn his sword, and was motioning, in great excitement, to his soldiers outside.

"This way, men!" he shouted. "To the front door! d.a.m.n the louts! Can't they understand?" He beat upon the window with his sword, knocking out panes of gla.s.s. "Come through that door, I say! Quick, curse you, there's a prisoner here, with a price for his taking! Ay, that's it!

Some one in the hall there, open the front door to my men!"

The sound now came of knocks bestowed on the outside door, and of Sam's heavy tread on the hall floor.

"Williams! Sam!" shouted Elizabeth. "Don't let them in!"

The heavy tread was heard to stop short. The knocking on the outer door was resumed.

"Let them in, I say," roared Colden, too proud to go himself to the door. "I command it, in the name of the King!"

"Obey your mistress," cried Peyton, to those in the hall. "I command it, in the name of Congress!"

Colden was silent for a moment, then suddenly threw open the window and called out, "This way, men! Quick!"

And he drew pistol, and stood ready with steel and ball to guard the window by which his men were to enter. A new, wild ferocity was on his face, a new, nervous hardness in his body, as if the latent resolution and strength which a prudent man keeps for a great contest, on which his all may depend, were at last aroused. In such a mood, the man who, governed by interest, may have seemed a coward all his life becomes for the once supremely formidable. At last he thinks the stake worth the play, at last the prize is worth the risk, and because it is so he will play and risk to the end, hazarding all, not yielding while he breathes. Having opened the theme which alone, of all themes, shall transform his irresolution into action, he will, Hamlet like, "fight upon this theme until" his "eyelids will no longer wag." So was Colden aroused, transfigured, as he stood doubly armed by the window, waiting for his men to clamber in.

"What shall we do, dear?" said Elizabeth.

"Fight!" replied Peyton, tightening at the same time his right palm around his broken sword, and his left around the hand she had let him take,--for she had moved from the embrace of his arm.

"Ay, there are only two of them," she said, as two burly forms appeared in the open window, one behind the other.

"There will be three of us, you'll find!" cried Colden. "This time I'll take a hand, if need be."

"You must not stay here," said Peyton to Elizabeth, quickly. "Things will be flying loose in a moment!"

"I won't leave you!" said she.

"Go! I beg you, go!" he said, releasing her hand, and stepping back.

Meanwhile, Colden's men bounded in through the window. Rough, st.u.r.dy fellows were they, who landed heavily on the parlor floor, and blinked at the light, drawing the while the breeches of their short muskets from beneath their coats. Their hats and shoulders were coated with snow.

"Take that rebel alive, if you can!" ordered Colden. "He's meant to hang! Stun him with your musket-b.u.t.ts!"

The men quickly reversed their weapons, and strode heavily towards Harry. To their surprise, before they could bring down their muskets, which required both hands of each to hold, Harry dashed forward between them, thinking to cut down Colden with his broken sword, possess himself of the latter's pistol, shoot one of the soldiers, and meet the other on less unequal terms. He saw a possibility of his leaping through the open window and fleeing on one of the soldiers'

horses, but the idea was accompanied by the thought that Elizabeth might be made to suffer for his escape. Her safety now depended on his getting the mastery over his three would-be captors. So, ere the two astonished fellows could turn, Harry had leaped within sword's reach of his doubly armed enemy.

But Colden was now as alert as rigid, and he opposed his officer's sword against Peyton's broken cavalry blade, guarding himself with unexpected swiftness, and giving back, for Harry's sweeping stroke, a thrust which only the quickest and most dexterous movement turned aside from entering the Virginian's lungs. As Harry stepped back for an instant out of his adversary's reach, the Tory raised his pistol.

At the same moment the two soldiers, having turned about, rushed on Peyton from behind. He heard them coming, and half turned to face them. Their movement had for him one fortunate circ.u.mstance. It kept Colden from shooting, for his bullet might have struck one of his own men.

Now Elizabeth had not been idle. At the moment when Harry had stepped back from her and bade her go, she had run to the door of the east hall, and called Williams and Sam. While Peyton had been engaging Colden near the window, the steward and the negro had entered the parlor, and she had excitedly ordered them to Peyton's aid. Williams still had the duck-gun, Sam the pistol. Thus it occurred that, as Peyton half turned from Colden towards the two soldiers, these last-named saw Williams and Sam rush in between them and their prey.

Before Williams could bring his duck-gun to bear, he was struck down senseless by one of the musket blows first intended for Peyton.

Another blow, and from another musket, had been aimed at Sam's woolly head, but the negro had put up his left hand and caught the descending weapon, and at the same time had discharged his pistol at the weapon's holder. But Williams, in falling, had knocked against the darky, and so disturbed his aim, and the ball flew wide. The man who had brought down Williams now struck Sam a terrible blow with the musket-club, on the temple, and the negro dropped like a felled ox.

During this brief pa.s.sage, Peyton had returned to close quarters with Colden. The latter, who had lowered his pistol when his men had last approached Peyton, and who had resumed the contest of swords unequal in size and kind, now raised the pistol a second time. But it was caught by the hands of Elizabeth, who had run around to his left, and who now, suddenly endowed with the strength of a tigress, wrenched it from him as she had wrenched the broken sword earlier in the evening.

She tried to discharge the pistol at one of the two soldiers, as they, relieved of the brief interposition of Williams and Sam, were again taking position to bring down their muskets on Peyton's head while he continued at sword-work with Colden. But the pistol snapped without going off, whereupon Elizabeth hurled it in the face of the man at whom she had aimed. The blow disconcerted him so that his musket fell wide of Peyton, who at the same instant, having seen from the corner of his eye how he was menaced, leaped backward from under the other descending musket. Then, taking advantage of the moment when the muskets were down, he ran to the music seat before the spinet, and mounted upon it, thinking rightly that the infuriated major would follow him, and that he might the better execute a certain manoeuvre from the vantage of height. Colden indeed rushed after him, and thrust at him, Peyton sweeping the thrusts aside with pendulum-like swings of his own short weapon. His thought was to send the point that menaced him so astray that he might leap forward and cleave his enemy with a downward stroke before the Tory could recover his guard. But Colden pressed him so speedily that he was at last fain to step up from the music seat to the spinet, landing first on the keyboard, which sent out a frightened discord as he alighted on it. Finding the keys an uncertain footing, he took another step, and stood on the body of the instrument, so that Colden would be at the disadvantage of thrusting upwards. But Colden, seeming to tire a little after a few such thrusts, called to his men:

"Shoot the dog in the legs!"

Both men aimed at once. Elizabeth screamed. Peyton leaped down from his height to the little s.p.a.ce behind the spinet projection, where he had hidden a week before. Here he found himself well placed, for here he could be approached on one side only,--unless his adversaries should follow his example and come at him from the top of the spinet.

Colden attacked him with sword, at the open side, and shouted to his men:

"One of you get on the spinet. The other crawl under. We have him now."

Still guarding himself from his enemy's thrusts, Peyton heard one of the men leap from the music seat to the spinet, and the other advance creeping, doubtless with gun before him, under the instrument. Peyton sank to his knees, placed his shoulder under the back edge of the spinet's projection, and, warding off a downward movement of Colden's sword, turned the instrument over on its side, checking the creeping man under it, and throwing the other fellow to the floor some feet away. As the spinet fell, one of its legs, rising swiftly into the air, knocked Colden's blade upward, and the Tory leaped back lest Peyton might avail himself of the opening. But the spinet-leg itself hindered Peyton from doing so. Colden rushed forward again, thrusting as he did so. Peyton leaped aside, made a swift half-turn, and landed a stroke on Colden's sword-hand, making the Tory cry out and drop the sword. Harry put his foot on it and cried:

"You're at my mercy! Beg quarter!"

But the man who had been thrown from the top of the spinet now returned to the attack, coming around that end of the upset instrument which was opposite the end where Colden had menaced Harry. Seeing this new adversary, Harry retreated past Colden, in order to put himself in position. The soldier hastened after him, with upraised musket. At this moment, Peyton saw himself confronted by Elizabeth, who pulled open the door of the south hall. He stopped short to avoid running against her.

"Save yourself!" she cried, and pushed him through the open doorway, flinging the door shut upon him, a movement which the pursuing soldier, stayed for a moment by collision with Colden, was not in time to prevent. Harry heard the key move in the lock, and knew that Elizabeth had turned it, and that he was safe in the south hall, with a minute of vantage which he might employ as he would.