The Sherwood Ring (4 page)

Pat had said quite distinctly before he went away that he was going to see me again very soon, whether Uncle Enos liked it or not. And I had been fool enough to believe him. I had watched the mail for days. I had found myself wandering casually time and again up through the orchard to the gate and leaning there almost as if I were waiting for somebody. But he had never come back. There had not even been a word from him.

Well, if that was the way he wanted it, why should I worry myself about him? Probably he had never really liked me at all, and only said he was going to see me again because he knew it would annoy Uncle Enos. Or did he by any chance suppose that he could simply turn up any time it happened to suit his convenience and find me there patiently leaning on the gate until he condescended to notice me? Well, he couldn't. I had my pride. It would be very easy to forget him completely if I chose. And he needn't think he could whistle me back whenever he wanted to, either. I could ignore other people myself, if it came to that, and keep them waiting about for weeks. I could treat him just as badly as he had treated me, and maybe that would show him —

"Show him what, exactly?" inquired a voice from the other side of the room.

For one dreadful moment I thought I had been speaking aloud, and that Uncle Enos had come out of his study to demand just why I was planning to have anything more to do with Pat at all? Then I realized that the study door was still fast shut, and there was nobody at that end of the library.

"Over here," said the voice.

Behind me, in the shadows by the fireplace, a tall young man was lounging in the deep armchair with his legs crossed and one booted foot resting on the fender. He had a dark, rather disdainful face, which was saved from absolute haughtiness only by a certain good humor about the eyes and mouth. His long cloak was untied and flung back over his shoulders, and underneath it I could see that he was wearing the buff-and-blue uniform and gold epaulets of an officer in the Continental Army. The uniform looked very shabby: the right sleeve had been awkwardly darned, and the boot resting on the fender was patched.

"Well, Peggy," said the young man, with a sudden delightful smile that changed his arrogant face completely. "Do you know who I am?"

I thought a moment. I had, as a matter of fact, recognized him at once, but it seemed rude to use the actual word "ghost."

"I believe there's a picture of you in the dining room hanging over the sideboard," I ventured at last. "You're the second Richard Grahame, aren't you, the one who was Barbara's brother? Only in the picture you seem younger, somehow, and of course you were dressed quite differently."

The second Richard Grahame laughed. "I was indeed," he said a little ruefully. "I used to think about that picture sometimes when I was sitting over a campfire, gnawing on a bone. Gray velvet with gold embroidery, wasn't it, and my nose in the air to show what a fine young gentleman I was? I almost took it down and hid it away when I came home after the war, but in the end I left it where it was to remind me of the fool I'd been. I kept the scrap of tartan too, and the — "

"You mean that scrap of tartan I found in the Chippendale cabinet?"

"That was the one."

"And it was you who wrote the line on the sheet of paper?"

" 'Pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall'? Oh, yes. My old tutor once made me copy that verse three hundred times when I was a boy as a warning to mend my ways before it was too late — and after what happened to me, I thought I might just as well copy it down again."

"But what
did
happen to you?" I demanded eagerly.

It's a sad story (said the second Richard Grahame), but I suppose it wouldn't have been quite so sad if I hadn't had what my Scottish grandmother called a good conceit of myself to begin with. You remember the dashing young gentleman in the dining room, with his velvet coat and his nose in the air? Well, I had to give up the coat when I went into the Army, of course, but I contrived to keep the nose for a considerable time after that. I had rather more than my share of good fortune in the field too, and it naturally did nothing to cure me. So I was a dashing young hero at the battle of Saratoga; and then I was a dashing young aide-de-camp for Israel Putnam when he commanded the fort at West Point; and then in the early summer of '79 I was a dashing young colonel riding downriver under orders to report for special duty to General Washington himself at headquarters. I am afraid that I must have been a little lofty in my manner to the elderly major and the middle-aged captain who were traveling with me. Poor things, they were obviously never going to be dashing young officers required for special duty by the commander-in-chief himself.

I found the commander-in-chief at his headquarters, with a sheaf of reports spread over the table before him, and a large map of New York pinned to the wall behind. He took a moment to welcome me kindly, and speak of a visit he had once paid my father at Rest-and-be-thankful. For all his graciousness I thought he seemed preoccupied and even troubled.

"You have been recommended to me, Colonel Grahame, as an officer with the ability and intelligence needed to carry out an exceedingly important mission."

He paused to look down at the papers in front of him, and I hurriedly adjusted my face to express the proper combination of gratitude, zeal, self-confidence, and courage.

"For the past few weeks, Colonel Grahame, reports of the most alarming nature have been coming in from your particular district of Orange County. It appears that during the last month or so the British have sent one of their young officers into the region with orders to assemble a gang of deserters, dispossessed loyalists, and secret Tories of all sorts to prey on patriot holdings, supply-trains for the army, isolated outposts, and the like. Such gangs, of course, are unfortunately only too common in that neighborhood, but most of them are too small and badly organized to be anything more than a nuisance. This one is different. It is under the command of a trained officer, who is also by all accounts a man of very singular competence and ingenuity. He hides out somewhere in the hills with a small band of permanent followers; but his real strength lies in his many secret friends and helpers among the valley farmers of the district, who keep him supplied with information and join him whenever he needs extra men for large raids or expeditions. On such occasions, they all wear masks to prevent recognition, and return home quietly afterwards to go on with their usual work until the next call. Their organization and system of communication is evidently something remarkable, as you will admit when I tell you that so far the local authorities have not been able to identify a single member of the gang except those actually killed or captured during attacks — many of them men who had been regarded as strong patriots for years."

"These prisoners could not be forced to tell the names of their companions, sir, or the hiding place of their leader?"

"They did not know themselves. That is an example of what I meant when I spoke of the leader's singular competence and ingenuity. I may add that this young man has already done much more damage than we can afford, and seems to be growing in strength and audacity every day. You understand now, I hope, the gravity — the extreme gravity — of the situation?"

I understood only too well not merely what General Washington was saying, but a good deal that he was leaving unsaid. Loose bands of marauders had long been the curse of our part of the country, bordering as it did on the dreadful "Neutral Ground" that lay between the British army holding New York City and the American army holding the north of the state. But such gangs were usually made up of ordinary ragamuffins out for loot, led by desperadoes like Claudius Smith and his three sons, who used the war simply as an excuse to plunder both sides with fine impartiality — men so lawless that no decent Tories would join them, even when they had no other way of striking a blow for the king. The British, praise be, could not or would not learn to make use of the thousands of loyalists scattered throughout the country. No American was permitted to join the regular army. If he chose to abandon his home and make the long, dangerous journey to New York, he had a thin chance of obtaining a place in one of the slipshod and badly handled Tory regiments slowly taking shape there — and many desperate or courageous loyalists took the chance. But many more lukewarm or cautious loyalists stayed where they were. Men with families they dared not leave behind or possessions they refused to give up, outwardly patriotic, outwardly resigned to the new government; inwardly resentful, and ready to make any mischief they could without losing their property or sinking to the level of common thieves. This new leader's plan sounded like exactly the sort of thing they had been waiting for. And if it once proved successful, if the British authorities were once convinced that it would work, then it might spread like an epidemic throughout the whole country — and the harm it could do was beyond calculation. I looked aghast at General Washington as the full extent of the danger became clear to me. He answered the look.

"If this business isn't stopped," he said, suddenly and violently, "stopped
now,
before it does any more damage, even as big a fool as General Sir Henry Clinton will be forced to realize the possibilities of it, and then — " he broke off with a little gesture of his hand as if he were throwing something away, "it may lose the war for us."

There was no answer I could make to that. I knew that what he had said was true as well as he did. "At least, it hasn't gone very far yet," was all the comfort I could think of.

"Neither has a forest fire — the first hour after it starts," retorted the General grimly. "All you have to do is get there and put it out in time." Then, as suddenly as it had risen, his voice became level and commanding again. "I have ordered thirty volunteers detached for special duty from Ogden Van Spurter's company of rangers. With these, you, Colonel Grahame, will proceed at once to Orange County and take whatever measures you think necessary to put a permanent end to these marauders. Those are the only men I can spare, and the only orders I can give you. The details I will leave to your own judgment — and I hope for the sake of your country that it is a sound one. Edward Shipley near New Jerusalem has very generously offered us his lands for your base and his own house for your headquarters. He is one of our most ardent patriots, and you may trust him as you would me."

My face fell. It was not that I distrusted old Mr. Shipley — I had known the whole family ever since I was a boy — but I did not find myself taking very greatly to the idea of camping at the Shipley Farm. I wanted to live at home, for one thing; and for another, I had a particular dislike of Mr. Shipley's daughter Eleanor, a rude, scrawny, redheaded little girl with a fleering tongue.

"Rest-and-be-thankful would be three miles nearer New Jerusalem, sir," I ventured to suggest deferentially.

General Washington nodded. "Yes," he said. "I'd thought of that. But your father writes that now that you and he are both away with the army, and the neighborhood in such an unsettled condition, he has decided to close the house altogether and send your sister to live with her aunt at New Jerusalem. It seems that your aunt is an invalid who feels the want of company, and your sister will of course be much safer and happier there."

That only showed how little General Washington knew about my Aunt Susanna, an old tyrant suffering from twenty-seven different diseases, of which twenty-five were imaginary and the other two entirely brought on by fretfulness and self-indulgence.

"I take it," the General was adding, "that you have no objection to the Shipley Farm itself."

I could not very well inform him that what I actually objected to was living under the same roof with an unmannerly, disrespectful brat like little Eleanor Shipley.

"No, sir," I murmured, as civilly as I could.

"Then we may regard it as settled, and there is no reason why you should not set out as soon as you can. Unless there is any further information you would like before you go?"

"Only about this British officer who's supposed to be leading the marauders, sir. I gather that he's the real heart and soul of all the trouble. Is anything more definitely known about him?"

"Not very much. He holds the rank of captain, and his name is Sherwood — Peaceable Drummond Sherwood, if that means anything to you. I thought parents in England had stopped giving their children names like 'Peaceable' a hundred years ago. Do you suppose his mother could have been a Quaker lady from Nantucket?"

"The 'Drummond' sounds more as if she were Scottish, sir."

"Perhaps. Ogden Van Spurter may be able to tell you. It appears that he actually met and talked to this Captain Sherwood when he went to New York on some military mission last winter. To be frank with you, I thought very seriously of giving this command to him — but he does not, of course, possess your intimate knowledge of the country, and the members of my staff who had worked with you both seemed to consider you the better man of the two."