Suddenly she got up, her face brightened with a new resolve. Tying her shoes together, she threw them them across her shoulder and tiptoed to the door, which she opened softly, and went downstairs. Her Indian bodyguards were sleeping on the stone floor in the vestibule, wrapped in their blankets.
“Exundos,” she whispered in the ear of the oldest, “get me out of this; I am going to go away.”
The trusty redskin, who always slept with one eye open, nudged his comrade, Firequill, and made their way to the door. It was locked and chained, and the key probably under the Major’s pillow.
Exundos was determined to redeem his record. He rushed upstairs to where a portly German was sleeping in the officer’s antechamber. He knocked the valet senseless with the butt of his horse pistol. Then he sprang like a panther over the prostrate body into the Major’s apartment. In a moment he had gagged him with the caltrop extracted from the horse’s foot, then bound him hand and foot.
The key was under the pillow. In five minutes the fugitives were on the front lawn, surrounded by the Major’s pack of yelping, snarling hounds. Getting by them as best they could, the trio made for the bluffs, found a dugout in which they crossed the river, and were soon in the shelter of the friendly mountains.
In the morning the Major’s other servants who slept in quarters near the stables, found the half-dazed bodyguard with a bloody head, and their gagged and helpless master. Once released, the Major decided not to send a posse after the runaways; he was heavily in debt, and needed that pouch of fifteen hundred dollars in gold.
Brant’s daughter, after her fortuitous escape, was not completely happy. She had longed for the Major for five years, and had almost gotten him as the result of severe privations. It was pretty hard to lose him now. She was going home defeated, to die unwed. Her feelings became desperate when she reached the Boone Road, with all its haunting memories.
As she clambered up the steep grades, and the Indian Garden came into view, she reached down and turned her belt, the symbol of resolution. No one was about as she passed the garden, which made her heart sink with loneliness for some strong man’s love.
When Kettle Creek was reached and crossed near the Cold Spring, she decided to rest awhile. After a meal, which she barely tasted, she told the Indians that she was going for a little walk in the woods.
“I am safe now,” she said, bitterly; “I have no gold.”