THE HUNTED BEAST
Such a piece of audacity could not be overlooked.
That a robber horseman should in the middle of the nineteenth century and within the confines of a civilized state take it into his head to attack, in broad daylight, post wagons defended by a strong escort of regular soldiers—was a thing unheard of.
The news spread like lightning through the six confederated counties and everyone seized his sword and musket. So old Gerzson Satrakovics whom everybody had laughed at, was right after all. It was universally agreed that a stop must be put to this sort of thing once for all. There was no waiting now for the meetings of Quarter Sessions. The lord-lieutenants of the counties proclaimed the statarium,[47] called out the banderia[48] and gathered together the county pandurs[49] and the militia, in order by their combined efforts, to extirpate the evil without having recourse to the assistance of the military—a measure always repugnant to the freedom-loving Magyars.
[47] A decree authorizing summary procedure.
[48] Mounted gentry.
[49] Police.
Squire Gerzson was elected the leader of this vast hunt, whose area extended over hundreds of square miles, by all the six counties concerned—it was generally felt that this was but due to him for the neglect of his warnings—and Mr. Gerzson proved on this occasion that if he was not a great strategist, at any rate he was a great beater up of game. His plan was to occupy all the mountain roads and passes leading out of the six counties with armed bands of militia, while at the same time he himself advanced slowly along the highroads with his gentlemen-volunteers joining hands together from place to place. Between various groups of the volunteers were regular lines of pandurs who had to thoroughly scour all the forests they came to. The encircling network of this gigantic army of beaters grew narrower and narrower day by day and was to converge towards a fixed point which Squire Gerzson said he would more definitely indicate later on.
Moreover there was a flying column admitted to the full confidence of its leader, whose duty it was to appear suddenly and unexpectedly in all parts of the closely environed region, in order to head off anything like a definite plan of defence on the part of the adventurers and track them down more easily. The leadership of this special corps was entrusted to young Szilard Vamhidy, upon whose ingenuity, determination and ability Squire Gerzson professed to place the utmost reliance.
As soon as he had received this important charge, Szilard took horse and set off at the head of his four and twenty pandurs. First of all he went in the direction of the Alps of Bihár and along a narrow mountain path and through a melancholy, uncanny, region with not a living plant by the wayside and not a morsel of moss on the naked rock. No sound is to be heard there but the eternal sighing of the wind, and in the dizzy depths below the traveller sees nothing but dense, dreary forests crowding one upon another with the Alpine eagles circling and screaming above them.