"Foxcroft will guard me!" she murmured. "Go to them, dearest!"
"Foxcroft! Hold these horses!" I cried, flinging Warlock's bridle to him, and slipping out of my saddle.
Rifle a-trail, I ran across the road, leaped the fence, and plunged into the low bushes. Jack Mount turned a cool, amused eye on me as I came up.
"The Weasel is right," he said, triumphantly; "we'll catch a half-dozen red-birds now. Be ready when I draw their fire, lad; then drop and run forward through the swamp! You know how the Senecas fight. We'll catch them alive!"
Over the tops of the low bushes I could see the soldiers coming towards us, muskets half raised, scanning the cover for the game they meant to bag, thrusting their bayonets into bushes, beating the long grass with their gunstocks to flush the skulking quarry for a snap-shot.
Without warning, Mount rose, then sank to the ground as a volley rattled out; and instantly we three ran forward, bent double. In a moment more I sprang up from the swamp-grass beside a soldier and knocked him flat with a blow from my rifle-stock. Mount shot at another and missed him, but the fellow promptly threw down his musket, yelling lustily for quarter.
The four remaining soldiers attempted to load, but the Weasel tripped up one, with a cartridge half bitten in his mouth, and the other three were chased and caught by some Acton militia, who came leaping across the swampy covert from the Bedford Road.
When the Acton men returned with their prisoners, the soldier whom I had struck was sitting up in the swamp-grass, rubbing his powdered head and staring wildly at his sweating and anxious comrades.
"That's the fellow who murdered Harrington!" said one of the militia, and drew up his rifle with a jerk.
"Use these prisoners well, or I'll knock your head off!" roared Mount, striking up the rifle.