Jack did not heed it. A second line, fringed with flames, was rising behind the first. Midway of it, through the smoke, he saw Brito’s face. At it he drove. “Wait for me,” he yelled.
But Brito did not wait. Before the rush of the maddened horses the second line was breaking up, dissolving into fragments. To wait was to surrender or to die, and Brito had no mind for either. Probably he did not hear Jack’s challenge. Certainly he did not wait. As the line dissolved he turned and fled, bending low upon his horse’s neck.
Jack glanced neither to the right nor to the left. His eyes were fixed only on his foe. For an instant the roar of battle rose around him. Rifles flashed in his face. Men struck at him with sabers and clubbed guns. Then he was out of the ruck, crashing through the autumn woods. Saplings lashed at him with stinging strokes. Low-hung branches scraped his horse’s back, dragging at him. Thickets, seemingly impassable, broke before the impetus of his rush. Then, abruptly the roar of battle died away. The flickering rifle flames vanished.
Then far to his left a second roar arose; Jack did not know it, but it was Colonel Johnson and his first squadron striking the Indian line, and it sounded the knell of the great chief, Tecumseh. Jack paid no attention to it; heart and soul alike were concentrated on the rider whose red coat he saw far ahead through the packed woods. Recklessly he spurred.
After a time the woods opened and he saw his enemy clearer. He was gaining rapidly, too rapidly. He was in no haste to bring his foe to bay. His horse, a bright bay, bred in Kentucky and brought north with Johnson’s regiment, had come through the short, sharp battle without a wound and was in perfect condition, well rested, and capable both of long pursuit and of extraordinary bursts of speed when need should arise. He knew nothing of Brito’s horse, except the patent fact that it was a big black that seemed to carry its heavy rider with ease, but he had little doubt that his own was better. Almost at will he could close in and sooner or later he meant to do so and to balance the long-due account between himself and Brito. But he did not know where Alagwa was. Brito did. Therefore Brito should lead him to her.
For a long time he galloped on, keeping his distance behind the fleeing Englishman, and availing himself of every bit of cover to screen himself from observation, though he had little fear that Brito would suspect his identity. He guessed, what he afterwards learned to be a fact, that nearly all the British officers who possessed horses were using them to escape; General Proctor, for instance, fled sixty-five miles without a halt. If Brito should see him he was far more likely to think him a brother officer and to halt and wait for him than to suspect that an American had dared to venture so far behind the British lines even after the destruction of the British army.
The chase went on. The sun was dropping toward the west and dusk was creeping over the brown fields and low tree-crowned sandy ridges. Already a veil of deep blue shadow lay on the land. Soon it would be night. The moon, high overhead, a pale ghost in the daylit sky, might or might not illumine the darkness. Jack shook his reins and his bay responded gloriously, cutting down by half the interval between himself and Brito’s black.
Steadily the fugitive drove on. Deserted farm-houses swept by; thickets rose and passed; but he showed no signs of stopping. Anxiously Jack glanced at the darkening west. Soon he must bring the other to bay or risk losing him. Could he have judged wrong? Could Brito be merely fleeing to save himself, careless of Alagwa? Could she be already far behind? Jack’s heart sank at the thought. Should he close in and have done with it?
As he hesitated Brito turned abruptly aside, urging his horse toward the crest of a low ridge that rose to the north. An instant later he vanished into the fringe of trees that crowned it.
Jack’s anxiety swelled uncontrollably. For the first time he used the spur, and the bay responded nobly, turning into the narrow wood road that Brito had followed and tearing up the slope and crashing into the fringe of trees like a tornado. He, like his master, seemed to guess that the long chase was nearing its end.