Thus Mr. Thomas Ardmore tested his pickets with a shibboleth of his own devising. The sturdy militiamen of North Carolina patrolled the northern bank of Raccoon Creek at midnight, aware that that riotous flood alone separated them from their foes. The terraces at Ardsley bristled with the guns of the First Light Battery, while, upon a cot in the wine cellar beneath, Mr. Bill Appleweight, alias Poteet, slept the sleep of the just.
He was rudely aroused, however, at one o'clock in the morning by Ardmore, Cooke and Collins, and taken out through the kitchen to one of the Ardsley farm wagons. Big Paul held the reins, and four of Cooke's detectives were mounted as escort. Ardmore, Cooke and Collins were to accompany the party as a board of strategy in the movement upon Turner Court House, South Carolina.
Appleweight, the terror of the border, blinked at the lanterns that flashed about him in the courtyard. He had been numbed by his imprisonment, and even now he yielded himself docilely to the inevitable. His capture in the first instance at Mount Nebo had been clear enough, and he could have placed his hand on the men who did it if he had been free for a couple of hours. This he had pondered over his solacing solitaire as he sat on the case of Chateau Bizet in the Ardsley wine cellar; but the subsequent events had been altogether too much for him. He had been taken from his original captors by a girl, and while the ignominy of this was not lost on the outlaw, his wits had been unequal to the further fact, which he had no ground for disbelieving, that this captivity within the walls of Ardsley had been due to a daughter of that very governor of North Carolina whom he had counted his friend. Why the girl had interested herself in his seizure and incarceration; why he had been carried to the great house of a New York gentleman whom he had never harmed in the least; and why, more than all, he should have been locked in a room filled with bottles bearing absurd and unintelligible titles, and containing, he had learned by much despairing experiment, liquids that singularly failed to satisfy thirst—these were questions before which Appleweight, alias Poteet, bowed his head helplessly.
"The road between Kildare and Turner's is fairly good," announced Cooke, "though we've got to travel four miles to strike it. Griswold evidently thinks that holding the creek is all there is of this business, and he won't find out till morning that we've crawled round his line and placed Appleweight in jail at Turner's where he belongs."
"You must have a good story ready for the press, Collins," said Ardmore. "The North Carolina border counties don't want Appleweight injured, and Governor Dangerfield don't want any harm to come to him—you may be sure of that, or Bill would have been doing time long ago. The moral element in the larger cities and the people in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, who only hear of Appleweight in the newspapers, want him punished, and we must express to them our righteous indignation that he has been kidnapped and dragged away from our vengeance by the governor of South Carolina, who wants him in his own state merely to protect him. We can come pretty near pleasing everybody if you work it right, Collins. Our manner of handling the matter will do much to increase Governor Dangerfield's popularity with all classes."
"Gentlemen, it was very impolite of you not to tell me you were ready to start!" and Jerry came briskly from the side entrance, dressed for the saddle and nibbling a biscuit.
"But you are not to go! I thought that was understood!" cried Ardmore.
"It may have been understood by you, Mr. Ardmore, but not by me! I should never forgive myself if, after all the trouble I have taken to straighten out this little matter, I should not be in at the finish. Will you kindly get me a horse?"
Miss Dangerfield's resolution was not to be shaken, and a few minutes later the party moved out from the courtyard. Cooke rode several hundred yards ahead; then two detectives preceded the wagon, in which Appleweight sat on a cross-seat with two more of Cooke's men on a seat just behind him. He was tied and gagged, and an old derby hat (supplied by Paul) had been clapped upon the side of his head at an angle that gave him a jaunty air belied by his bonds. Though his tongue was silenced, his eyes were at once eloquent of wonderment, resignation and impotent rage. Beside the wagon rode Miss Jerry Dangerfield, alert and contented. Ardmore and Collins were immediately behind her, and she indulged the journalist in some mild chaff from time to time, to his infinite delight, though considerably to Ardmore's distress of heart; for, though no words had passed between him and Jerry as to the disgraceful flight of the adjutant-general, yet the master of Ardsley was in a jealous mood. The moon had left the conspirators to the softer radiance of the stars, but there was sufficient light for Ardmore to mark the gentle lines of Jerry's face, as she lifted it now and then to scan the bright globes above.
Paul drove his team at a trot over the smooth road of the estate to a remote and little-used gate on the southern side, but still safely removed from the South Carolina pickets along the Raccoon.