She was not there and I stood awhile, glad to take breath and to cool my heated face. I looked abroad over the silent trees, over the carpet of forest which autumn was beginning to dye to its pattern. I viewed for a moment the smooth green head of King’s Mountain, that to the westward rose above the trees. Then I turned to mark, in the direction whence I came, the cleft in the woods which marked the clearing about the Bluff. Beyond it the forest sank and was replaced by the more distant view of the mountains.
I waited, expecting, with each moment that passed, to hear the movements of her mare on the path. How would she look? What countenance would she put on? What would she, what could she have to say to me? I lost myself in a fever of anticipation. Ten minutes passed, twenty minutes, at last the full half hour! And still she did not come. Still there was no sign of her, no sound of her approach.
At length the heat of expectancy began to give place to the chill of doubt. Had I mistaken, could I have mistaken the place? Or was there another path up the Knob and could she be waiting for me at the foot of the farther side. I hurried across the top, I descended some distance, I called, I whistled. I strove to pierce the thickets with my eyes. Then, harassed by the thought that while I lingered, she might be mounting by the proper track, I toiled again to the summit and looked abroad. She had not appeared, and my heart sank. Doubt in its turn began to give place to suspicion. Had I been tricked? And if so, to what end? Desperately I searched the trees with my eyes. She might still come, but the hour I had been told to wait was nearly up. Indeed in no long time the sun would set, and twilight in Carolina is brief. If I remained on the Knob until it was dark, I should have small chance of returning through the woods without a fall that in my crippled condition might be serious.
I was now angry as well as suspicious. I had been duped—for some reason; duped by a trick too transparent to deceive a child. I had been sent out of the way; I had not a doubt of it now. I only wondered that I had been so easily gulled. Still I would not act in a hurry. They should not say that I had left the rendez-vous before the time. They should not have that excuse. So I waited fuming and fretting until the hour expired, and then reckoning that I should have no more daylight than would suffice for my return, I scrambled down the rocky slope, and in a state of cold anger very different from the heat of anticipation in which I had come, I made the best of my way towards home.
A man, and a soldier, does not like to be tricked. He does not choose to be treated as a child even for his own good. And in this case the lure which they had used, the bait which I had swallowed so greedily, seemed to imply a knowledge of my feelings that made me hot only to think of it. Had the girl been amusing herself with me? Had she, cold and distant as she seemed, been laughing at me? Worst of all, had she taken that d—d grinning black woman into her confidence? No wonder that as I labored on I cursed the boggy piece that delayed me, the roots over which I stumbled, the thorns that snatched at my clothes?
I did not consider what I should say. My one longing was to confront them. But I had not reckoned with the darkness that fell earlier in the woods than in the open, and soon I had to pick my way for fear of a fall which might injure my arm. When I came in sight of the cabins it was dusk and a light already shone from one of the windows of the house.
I was making for this light, with angry words on my lips, when a figure rose suddenly in the path before me and barred my way. It was Mammy Jacks. Apparently she had been crouching on the ground on the look-out for my coming.
“Fer de Lord’s sake, stop, honey!” she gibbered, bringing her ugly face close to mine, her eyeballs and her teeth shining in the gloom. “Der’s Cap’en Levi dar, en de udder rapscallions! Ef you go in, you no mo’ chance den a rooster in de pan! Der ain’t no Marse Marion ter ’elp you loose de rope dis time! Ain’t you no eyes ter see de hosses?” And she clutched me by the arm and held me.
I did see then—with a decided shock—a row of saddled horses standing beside the porch, thirty yards from us. With them were a couple of men lounging, as if on guard. The row extended round the corner of the house so that I could not count either men or horses and the dusk made all indistinct. The windows, now that I was nearer, showed more than one light, though these were darkened from time to time as a figure passed across them. A murmur of voices, a stir of feet, the clink of glass, and now and again a loud laugh issued from the windows and mingled with the jingle of bit and stirrup-iron.
“See dat? W’at I tell you?” Mammy Jacks repeated in terror that was certainly not feigned; and she clung firmly to my sleeve. “You go in, en you sholy hang! Cap’en Levi, he mighty mad atter you en he make an eend dis time! Look like dey sarched de cabins, en you kin hide in dar! Hide in dar, Marse Craven! Fust thing you know de Cap’en’ll get up en go. He go fer sho’ in ten minutes.”