She spoke with decision: “I go with you. I can use a rifle. Better both of us be killed than one. Help me up on this roof. I’ve climbed it a hundred times. My rifle is in my room. Quick, Henry.”
Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand, caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her second foot on de Spain’s shoulder, gained the sloping roof, and scrambled on her hands and knees up toward the window of her 340 room. The heavy rain and the slippery boards made progress uncertain, but with scarcely any delay, she reached her window and pushed open the casement sash. A far-off peal of thunder echoed down from the mountains. Luckily, no flash had preceded it, and Nan, rifle in hand, slid safely down to the end of the lean-to, where de Spain, waiting, caught one foot on his shoulder, and helped her to the ground. He tried again to make her stay behind the house. Finding his efforts vain, he directed her how to make a zigzag advance, how to utilize for cover every rock and tree she could find in the line toward the pine, and, above all, to throw herself flat and sidewise after every shot––and not to fire often.
In this way, amid the falling of rain and the uncharted dangers of the darkness, they advanced on the pine-tree. Surprisingly little effort seemed necessary to drive off whoever held it. De Spain made his way slowly but safely to the disputed point and then understood––the horses were gone.
He had hardly rejoined Nan, who waited at a safe distance, and told her the bad news, when a fresh discharge of shots came from two directions––seemingly from the house and the stable. A moment later they heard sharp firing far down the Gap. This was their sole avenue of escape. It was bad enough, under the circumstances, to negotiate 341 the trail on horseback––but to expose Nan, who had but just put herself under his protection, to death from a chance bullet while stumbling along on foot, surrounded by enemies––who could follow the flash of their own shots if they were forced to use their rifles, and close in on them at will––was an undertaking not to be faced.
They withdrew to the shelter of a large rock familiar to Nan even in the dark. While de Spain was debating in his mind how to meet the emergency, she stood at his side, his equal, he knew, in courage, daring, and resource, and answered his rapid questions as to possible gateways of escape. The rain, which had been abating, now ceased, but from every fissure in the mountains came the roar of rushing water, and little openings of rock and waterway that might have offered a chance when dry were now out of the question. In fact, it was Nan’s belief that before morning water would be running over the main trail itself.
“Yet,” said de Spain finally, “before morning we must be a long way from this particular spot, Nan. Lefever is down there––I haven’t the slightest doubt of that. Sassoon has posted men at the neck of the Gap––that’s the first thing he would do. And if John heard my rifle when I first shot, he would be for breaking in here, and his men, if they’ve come up, would bump into 342 Sassoon’s. It would be insane for us to try to get out over the trail with Sassoon holding it against Lefever––we might easily be hit by our friends instead of our enemies. I’ll tell you what, Nan, suppose I scout down that way alone and see what I can find out?”
He put the proposal very lightly, realizing almost as soon as he made it what her answer would be. “Better we go together,” she answered in the steady tone he loved to hear. “If you were killed, what would become of me? I should rather be shot than fall into his hands after this––if there was ever a chance for it before, there’d be no mercy now. Let’s go together.”
He would not consent, and she knew he was right. But what was right for one was right, she told him, for both, and what was wrong for one was wrong for both. “Then, I’ll tell you,” he said suddenly, as when after long uncertainty and anxious doubt one chooses an alternative and hastens to follow it. “Retreat is the thing for us, Nan. Let’s make for Music Mountain and crawl into our cave till morning. Lefever will get in here some time to-morrow. Then we can connect with him.”
They discussed the move a little further, but there seemed no escape from the necessity of it, despite the hardship involved in reaching the 343 refuge; and, realizing that no time was to be lost, they set out on the long journey. Every foot of the troublesome way offered difficulties. Water impeded them continually. It lay in shallow pools underfoot and slipped in running sheets over the sloping rocks that lay in their obscure path. Sometimes de Spain led, sometimes Nan picked their trail. But for her perfect familiarity with every foot of the ground they could not have got to the mountain at all.
Even before they succeeded in reaching the foot of it their ears warned them of a more serious obstacle ahead. When they got to the mountain trail itself they heard the roar of the stream that made the waterfall above the ledge they were trying to reach. Climbing hardly a dozen steps, they found their way swept by a mad rush of falling water, its deafening roar punctured by fragments of loosened rock which, swept downward from ledge to ledge, split and thundered as they dashed themselves against the mountainside. On a protected floor the two stood for a moment, listening to the roar of the cataract that had cut them off their refuge.