“Right,” laughed the Captain. “Whatever else we may have against them, we can’t complain that they’re slow. Well, now you know that there is plenty of danger mixed up in this canter of yours and I want you to take every possible precaution.”
“I will,” Phil assured him. “They’ll have to get up early in the morning to catch me.”
And so, fully forewarned of the perils before him, Phil started off one sunshiny morning, with the affectionate farewells of his friends ringing in his ears. If he had any doubts of the successful outcome of his mission, he was certainly not aware of them. He was conscious, mostly, of being sorry for the boys because they had to stay at home.
They had asked permission to accompany him but Captain Bradley had refused, on the ground that one rider could get through where three or four could not.
“A company would attract attention—and probable disaster—not only to themselves,” so he explained to them, “but to the message which it is most important that I get through to Major Gaynor,” the latter commanding the neighboring camp of Rangers, “without delay. I’m sorry to disappoint you lads, for I know what joy it would be to you to go but—you see how it is.”
The fact that they “saw” did not keep them from being considerably disgruntled. They were apprehensive, too, for Phil’s safety.
“If he gets spotted by a band of those guerrillas,” grumbled Dick, “he won’t have one chance in a hundred of getting out of it alive. I don’t care what the Captain says, I believe in the safety of numbers.”
“But the message—” began Steve.
“Oh,” said Dick impolitely, “Hang the message!”
However, as far as any danger was concerned, Phil might have been cantering along a bridle path in his beloved Castleton. His horse, a beautiful big bay, was possessed of a steady, apparently easy going stride which, nevertheless, ate up the miles with surprising rapidity.