“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.
“It’s all right over there,” remarked Collins, jerking his head towards the creek. “The fronting armies are waiting for morning and battle. I suppose that when we send word to Griswold that Appleweight is in a South Carolina jail it will change the scene of operations. It will then be Governor Osborne’s painful task to dance between law-and-order sentiment and the loud cursing of his border constituents. The possibilities of this rumpus grow on me, Ardmore.”
“There is no rumpus, Mr. Collins,” said Jerry over her shoulder. “The governor of North Carolina is merely giving expression to his civic pride and virtue.”
Leaving Ardsley, they followed a dismal stretch of road until they reached the highway that connects Turner’s and Kildare.
“It’s going to be morning pretty soon. We must get the prisoner into Turner’s by five o’clock. Trot ’em up, Paul,” ordered Cooke.
They were all in capital spirits now, with a fairly good road before them, leading straight to Turner’s, and with no expectation of any trouble in landing their prisoner safely in jail. A wide publication of the fact that Appleweight had been dragged from North Carolina and locked in a South Carolina jail would have the effect of clearing Governor Dangerfield’s skirts of any complicity with the border outlaws, while at the same time making possible a plausible explanation by Governor Dangerfield to the men in the hills of the contemptible conduct of the governor of South Carolina in effecting the arrest of their great chief.
They were well into South Carolina territory now, and were jogging on at a sharp trot, when suddenly Cooke turned back and halted the wagon.
“There’s something coming—wait!”