Beau Brocade by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (hardest books to read .txt) 📖

turn the muzzle of his pistol against his own temple, in time to evade actual capture.

The dog would not miss him. It was practically useless to hide: flight alone, constant, ceaseless flight, might help him for awhile, but it was bound to end one way, and one way only: the scent of blood would lead the cur on his track, and his pursuers would find and seize him! bind him like a felon, and hang him! Aye! hang him like a common thief!

He had oft laughed and joked with John Stich about his ultimate probable fate. He knew that his wild, unlawful career would come to an end sooner or later, but he always carried pistols in his belt, and had not even remotely dreamt of capture.

... Until now!

But now he was tired, ill, half-paralysed with pain and exhaustion. His trembling hand crept longingly round the heavy silver handle of the precious weapon. Every natural instinct in him clamoured for death, now, at this very moment before that yelping cur drew nearer, before those shouts of triumph were raised over his downfall.

Only … after that… what would happen? He would be asleep and at peace … but she? ... what would she think? ... that like a coward he had deserted his post … like a felon he had broken his oath, whilst there was one single chance of fulfilling it… that he had left her at the mercy of that same enemy who had already devised so much cruel treachery.

And like a beast he crept back within his lair, and watched and listened for that one chance of serving her before the end.

He had seen Sir Humphrey Challoner and Mittachip ambling up the hillside. He tried not to lose sight of them, and, if possible, to keep within earshot, but he was driven back by a posse of his pursuers, close upon his heels, and now having succeeded in reaching the road at last, he had the terrible chagrin of seeing that he was too late; the two men were remounting their horses and turning back towards Brassington.

“Methinks we have outwitted that gallant highwayman after all,” Sir Humphrey was saying with one of those boisterous outbursts of merriment, which to Bathurst’s sensitive ears had a ring of the devil’s own glee in it.

“What hellish mischief have those two reprobates been brewing, I wonder?” he mused. “If those fellows at my heels hadn’t cut me off I might have known…”

He crept nearer to the two men, but they set their horses at a sharp trot down the road: Jack vainly strained his ears to hear their talk.

For the last eight hours he had practically covered every corner of the Heath, backwards and forwards, across boulders and through morass; the hound had some difficulty in finding and keeping the trail, but now it seemed suddenly to have found it, the yelping drew nearer, but the shouts had altogether ceased.

What was to be done? God in heaven, what was to be done?

It was at this moment that the plaintive bleating of one or two of the penned-up sheep suddenly aroused every instinct of vitality in him.

“The sheep! ...” he murmured. “A receipt and tally for some sheep! ...”

Fresh excitement had in the space of a few seconds given him a new lease of strength. He dragged himself up to his feet and walked almost upright as far as the hut.

There certainly was a flock of sheep in the pen: the dog was watching close by the gate, but the shepherd was nowhere to be seen.

“The sheep! ...A receipt and tally for some sheep!...In Sir Humphrey Challoner’s coat pocket!...”

Oh! for one calm moment in which to think … to think!

“The sheep! ...” This one thought went on hammering in the poor tired brain, like the tantalising, elusive whisper of a mischievous sprite.

And with it all there was scarce a second to be lost.

The hound, yelping and straining on the leash, was not half a mile away; the next ten or perhaps fifteen minutes would see the end of this awful man-hunt on the Moor. And yet there close by, behind those clumps of gorse and the thickset hedge of bramble, was the clearing, where just twenty-four hours ago he had danced that mad rigadoon, with her almost in his arms.

Instinctively, in the wild agony of this supreme moment, Beau Brocade turned his steps thither. The clearing had but two approaches, there where the tough branches of furze had once been vigorously cut into. Last night he had led her through the one whilst Jock Miggs sat beside the other, piping the quaint sad tune.

For one moment the hunted man seemed to live that mad, merry hour again, and from out the darkness fairy fingers seemed to beckon: and her face—just for one brief second—smiled at him out of the gloom.

Surely this was not to be the end! Something would happen, something must happen, to enable him to render her the great service he had sworn to do.

Oh! if that yelping dog were not quite so close upon his track! Within the next few minutes, seconds even, he would surely think of something that would guide him towards that great goal: her service. Oh! for just a brief respite in which to think! a way to evade his captors for a short while—a means to hide! a disguise! anything.

But for once the Moor—his happy home, his friend, his mother—was silent, save for the sound of hunters on his trail, of his doom drawing nearer and nearer, whilst he stood and remembered his dream.

It was madness surely, or else a continuance of that fairy vision, but now it seemed to him, as he stood just there, where yesterday her foot had plied the dear old measure, that his ear suddenly caught once more the sound of that self-same rigadoon.

It was a dream of course. He knew that, and paused awhile, although every second now meant life or death to him.

The tune seemed to evade him. It had been close to his ear a moment ago, now it was growing fainter and fainter, gradually vanishing away: soon he could scarce hear it, yet it seemed something tangible, something belonging to her: it was the tune which she had loved, to which her foot had danced so gladsomely, so he ran after it, ran as fast as his weary body would take him, to the further end of the clearing, whither the sweet, sad tune was leading him with its tender, plaintive echo.

There, just where the clearing debouched upon the narrow path which leads to Wirksworth, he overtook Jock Miggs who was slowly wending his way along, and who just now must have passed quite close to him, blowing on his tiny pipe, as was his wont.

“The shepherd! ... Chorus of angels in paradise lend me your aid now!”

With a supreme effort he pulled his scattered senses together: the mighty fever of self-defence was upon him, that tower of strength which some over-whelming danger will give to a brave man once perhaps in his lifetime. The veil of semi-consciousness, of utter physical prostration, was lifted from his dull brain for this short brief while. The exhausted, suffering, hunted creature had once more given place to the keen, alert son of the Moor, the mad, free child of Nature, with a resourceful head and a daring hand.

And for that same brief while the great and mighty power whom men have termed Fate, but whom saints have called God, allowed his untamed spirit to conquer his body and to hold it in bondage, chasing pain away, trampling down exhaustion, whilst disclosing to his burning eyes, amidst the dark and deadly gloom, the magic, golden vision of a newly-awakened hope.

Chapter XXIX

The Dawn

Awhile ago, in an agony of longing, he had cried out for a moment’s respite! for a disguise! and now there stood before him Jock Miggs in smock and broad-brimmed hat, with pipe and shepherd’s staff. His pursuers, headed by the yelping dog, were still a quarter of a mile away. Five minutes in which to do battle for his life, for his freedom, for the power to keep his oath! The plan of action had surged in his mind at first sight of the wizened little figure of the shepherd beside the further approach of the clearing.

Beau Brocade drew himself up to his full height, sought and found in the pocket of his coat the black mask which he habitually wore; this he fixed to his face, then drawing a pistol from his belt, he overtook Jock Miggs, clapped him vigorously on the shoulder, and shouted lustily,—

“Stand and deliver!”

Jock Miggs, aroused from his pleasant meditations, threw up his hands in terror.

“The Lud have mercy on my soul!” he ejaculated as he fell on his knees.

“Stand and deliver!” repeated Beau Brocade, in as gruff a voice as he could command.

Jock Miggs was trying to collect his scattered wits.

“B… b… but … kind sir!” he murmured, “y… y … you wouldn’t harm Jock Miggs, the shepherd … would you?”

“Quick’s the word! Now then…”

“But, good sir… Oi… Oi…Oi’ve got nowt to deliver …”

Jock Miggs was pitiful to behold: at any other moment of his life Bathurst would have felt very sorry for the poor, scared creature, but that yelping hound was drawing desperately near and he had only a few minutes at his command.

“Naught to deliver?” he said with a great show of roughness, and seizing poor Jock by the collar.

“Look at your smock!”

“My smock, kind sir? ...”

“Aye! I’ve a fancy for your smock … so off with it … quick!”

Jock Migs struggled up to his feet, he was beginning to gather a small modicum of courage. He had lived all his life on Brassing Moor and it was his first serious encounter with an armed gentleman of the road. Whether ‘twas Beau Brocade or no he was too scared to conjecture, but he had enough experience of the Heath to know that poor folk like himself had little bodily hurt to fear from highwaymen.

But of course it was always wisest to obey. As to his old smock…

“He! he! he! my old smock, sir!” he laughed vaguely and nervously, “why…”

“I don’t want to knock the poor old cuckoo down,” murmured Bathurst to himself, “but I’ve got three minutes before that cur reaches the top of the clearing and …Off with your smock, man, or I fire,” he added peremptorily, and pointing the muzzle of his pistol at the trembling shepherd.

Miggs had in the meanwhile fully realised that the masked stranger was in deadly earnest. Why he should want the old smock was more than any shepherd could conceive, but that he meant to have it was very clear. Jock uttered a final plaintive word of protest.

“Kind sir… but if Oi take off my smock …I shan’t be quite d… d … decent… sir… wi’ only my shirt.”

“You shall have my coat,” replied Bathurst, decisively.

“Lud preserve me! ... Your coat, sir!”

“Yes! it’s old and shabby, and my waistcoat too… Now off with that smock, or …”

Once more the muzzle of the pistol gleamed close to Jock Migg’s head. Without further protest he began to divest himself of his smock. The process was slow and laborious, and Jack set his teeth not to scream with the agony of the suspense.

He himself had had little difficulty in taking off his own coat and waistcoat, for earlier in the day, before he had been so hard pressed, the pain in his shoulder had caused him to slip