“Yes—but Matt Hunter stood by me on that.”
“You thought the men would surrender before being burned alive?”
“They would. Oh, we had our plans perfected, Huldah Armstrong. Your father arrested me in the nick of time. Twenty minutes more of freedom and I would have flung wide the gates to the Indians.”
“And what reward was you to receive for your Arnold trick?”
“My life and yours!”
“I was to have been the price of a massacre?”
“Yes. I’m talking plainly now,” he said. “The three pistol-shots on the hill told me that O’Neill accepted the propositions which I sent him by the deserter Sawyer; but our plans failed.”
The girl did not reply; her eyes wandered from his expression of triumph, and she thought of her perilous situation.
Captain Armstrong hated her, and to humor his hate he would make her a hopeless captive. Mercy at his hands was not to be thought of; he would shoot her down before he would surrender her into other hands, and she upbraided herself for not allowing O’Neill to capture her in the forest. The colonel, a monster though he was, possessed several good traits; Zebulon Strong, the traitor, could boast of none.
“You’re tryin’ to catch the British troops?” she said, after a long silence.