“I’ll see you swinging at a tree limb for those words, you traitorous rebel!” cried Tarleton, whose arms were now bound behind him by his belt, and who, under guard of the watchful Cole, had stood listening to the young man’s words.
“Take care, you red-coated scoundrel!” exclaimed the other, wheeling upon him fiercely; “take care that you don’t swing from yonder cottonwood yourself before the hour is up. In these times each man in the swamp-lands of Carolina is a law unto himself. You have attacked us without cause, and in strict justice we should treat you as you would have treated us had you taken us prisoners.”
“You don’t mean to say,” cried Tom in horror, “that regular troops are hanging prisoners! I thought that only the Tories would be guilty of such deadly and cowardly work.”
“Colonel Tarleton, here,” and the young man pointed one accusing finger at the British officer, “has given orders to spare no one whom they suspect. And as they suspect all who will not help them, the cane-brakes are full of fugitives, the clearings show nothing but burned homes.”
“Colonel Tarleton!” exclaimed Tom, looking in surprise at the burly form before him, and into the red, strongly-marked face. “Is this Colonel Tarleton?”
The Englishman laughed harshly. “Ah, I see you have heard of me,” said he, sneeringly. “There are not many in the Santee district that have not; and there will be many more, I promise you, before this uprising is done with. There is only one way to deal with rebels, and that is to crush them utterly—to have no mercy.”
“And from what I have just heard, and just seen, too, for that matter, you are acting upon your theory,” said Tom Deering, looking Colonel Tarleton angrily in the eye. “You are a soldier—serving under the flag of what should be an enlightened nation; and do you not know that there is no excuse for such measures—that warfare does not sanction them?”
“I plan my own actions and in my own way,” returned Tarleton. “And when I want advice upon the subject, my forward young friend, depend upon it, I shall not come to you.”
The two young men, as Tom now found, were Nat and David Collins; they and their father were wood-cutters in the swamps. Tom noticed something furtive in their glances, from time to time, toward the cabin, which stood some little distance away from the scene of the fight. Several times he had made as though to approach it, but they had always prevented this by calling his attention elsewhere. But now they were engaged in attending to their father, who had a painful wound in the calf of the leg, and Tom advanced to the cabin door. At another time he would not have dreamed of prying into their affairs, but those were dangerous days, and a patriot’s safety rested solely upon his alertness—upon his being constantly upon the outlook for peril. The people seemed to be friends of Congress, but Tom had grown so accustomed to assuring himself of everything that he did not trust them until he had discovered that which they seemed so anxious to hide.
The interior of the cabin was dark to one just coming into it; so Tom stood in the doorway, his sabre still in his hand, peering about, and waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the darkness. Suddenly he was startled by a quiet voice saying: