Amazed, but still resolute, the aid-de-camp followed on, still riding at the same rapid pace through the arches of the wood.
The hoof-beats of the following dragoons grew fainter and fainter, and still the two horsemen galloped on in a direction due west, away from both armies. How long they rode, Clark could not tell, but hour after hour passed by without any change in their relative positions. The aid-de-camp rode a splendid horse, one of the few thoroughbreds then in America, and horses of that blood, as is well known, will gallop till they drop.
At the pace at which they were going, four hours of this work took them many a mile from settlements of any kind, till they entered a broken, limestone region. Then, of a sudden, the red flame went out on the demon’s head, and, with a loud, mocking laugh, horse and rider plunged into a narrow black gully, almost hidden in bushes.
A moment later, Clark pulled up, thoroughly bewildered, in thick darkness. The light that had guided him had disappeared, and he was alone in the woods.
Too wary to venture himself in an unknown region, the officer sat in his saddle, musing on the best course to pursue. Then, with a muttered, “That’s it,” he turned his horse’s head on the way homeward.
The animal, with the well-known instinct of his species, took up his march without hesitation, as Clark had foreseen. The officer drew his sword, and gave a slash at every tree he passed, leaving a white streak in the bark.
“You may hide, master juggler,” he said to himself; “but if I don’t track you to your haunt by daylight, it will be because there is no virtue in a blaze.”
CHAPTER X.
MOLLY STARK’S HUSBAND.
The little mountain town of Derryfield[1] was full of the sounds of the drum and fife, while companies of tall, raw-boned countrymen, some with uniforms, more without, but all bearing arms and belts, were marching to and fro in the streets, and on the green, to the lively notes of “Yankee Doodle.”