The Sherwood Ring (5 page)

That was not really quite so much of a compliment as it sounded. Ogden Van Spurter — known less formally as "Old Sputters" — was a young officer I disliked excessively, a thickheaded Hudson River Dutchman who had to be promoted because he was so brave and then watched ever afterwards because he was so stupid. I tried dutifully to find him that night and discover what he knew about Peaceable Sherwood, but he kept himself out of my way (sulking, I was told, over the loss of the command), and I did not see him until I left camp with my thirty the following morning. General Washington, taking an early ramble around the fortifications with a parcel of officers, came upon our little column headed west for the river, and halted it a moment to say goodbye and wish me luck. Sputters was glowering at his elbow, and I had the satisfaction of saluting him cheerfully as the General turned aside and we clattered off in a cloud of dust.

If the three Fates had suddenly appeared before me on the road, and solemnly warned me that this was to be my last happy moment for many months to come, I think I should have laughed in their faces. I was in a mood to laugh at everything that morning. I had been trusted with what General Washington himself had called "an exceedingly important mission." I was on my way home, even if the house was shut up and poor Barbara cast away in New Jerusalem with my Aunt Susanna. I was escaping from the grinding monotony of life at West Point, with its drill and discipline and everlasting superior officers. With any luck, I could probably manage to spend at least a week or so in Orange County hunting Peaceable Sherwood and his marauders. Peaceable Sherwood himself sounded as if he would make an entertaining antagonist. I was looking forward to the sport of running him down.

Even the prospect of camping at the Shipley Farm was beginning to seem less objectionable than it had at first. I had always liked the house — a pleasant, rambling, white place set in green meadows where Barbara and I had gone as children to hunt wild strawberries with little Eleanor Shipley. And, after all, who was little Eleanor Shipley that she should trouble me now? Her manners had probably improved in the six years which had gone by since I had seen her last. It was ridiculous to behave as if I were still the boy she could skin alive with a mere flicker of her sarcastic tongue. There was really no problem whatever. All I had to do was to be very formal, very distant, very courteous, and make her sorry that she had ever jeered at the dashing young hero who was going to save the whole cause of independence practically singlehanded. And when I had captured Peaceable Sherwood by some brilliant feat of arms, and rid the surrounding countryside of his marauders, then maybe she would realize —

"Colonel Grahame?" The lieutenant of the rangers had come up beside me and was clearing his throat.

"Did you say we were going to make camp at the Shipley Farm, sir?"

"Yes, why? Is anything the matter?"

Lieutenant Felton cleared his throat again. "It's only that we seem to have ridden right past it," he pointed out, apologetically. "There was a house and a big meadow back aways on the left, with the gates open and a girl calling after us when we went by."

I came out of my happy dreams with a jolt. There behind me, a good quarter of a mile down the road, were the white gates of the Shipley Farm; and beside them, standing on the lowest rail of the fence, was a little figure in blue which even at that distance looked distressingly familiar.

There was nothing I could do but wheel my horse around in dignified silence and start back again. Lieutenant Felton and twenty-nine mounted rangers also wheeled their horses around and followed me solemnly down the road to the gate.

It was Eleanor Shipley standing there, beyond a doubt. In the last six years she had somehow lost her scrawniness, and the bright hair blowing in little curls about her forehead was pure coppery gold; but she was still very small — so tiny that I could have swung her off her feet with one hand — and the mocking mouth I had so often longed to slap was just as I remembered it. She was perched on the rail as lightly as a butterfly, with a perfectly grave face, watching our approach with wide, innocent eyes. I remembered that look, too.

"Oh, Dick
dear!"
she said as I came up, her voice quivering with laughter. "What in the world happened to you? I quite thought you had forgotten us altogether."

I told myself firmly that all I had to do was to be very formal, very distant, very courteous, and let her see that she could no longer trifle with me.

"I was thinking, Miss Shipley," I explained, coldly. Then, as this seemed rather inadequate, I added in my loftiest tones, "There is, of course, a great deal weighing on my mind just now."

Eleanor merely continued to look at me for a moment.

"Ah, yes, I see," she remarked softly. "The dashing young hero who is going to save the whole cause of independence singlehanded." She had always had the most detestable habit of putting into exact words a number of thoughts which I would much rather have kept all vague and warm and unspoken in the most secret chambers of my mind.

For one passionate moment I found myself wishing I was fourteen again, so I could pick her up like a kitten and scrub her face with mud to teach her manners, the way I had done the last time she had tried that trick on me. But a full-blown colonel with a company at his back could only wrap himself in the tattered remains of his dignity, and turn pointedly away from her to speak to Mr. Shipley, who was hobbling down the drive as fast as he could come, his kind old face beaming with welcome and delight.

"My boy, my dear boy!" he cried, reaching up to clasp my hand. "Bless my soul, how you've grown! Eleanor, isn't he a fine, dashing young man? This is a great day for the county. I was here at the gate to meet you, but I'd just stepped back to the house a moment to fetch these letters that came for you this morning. Eleanor has been watching the road since dawn" — ("To get the first bite?" I wondered bitterly) — "and you'll find firewood and forage all prepared for you in the South Meadow. We've given you the bedroom on the ground floor, off the parlor, where you can come and go as you like. Bless my soul, it seems only yesterday that you were falling out of that oak in the South Meadow! And now! Eleanor, look at his uniform!"

"I am looking at his uniform, Father," replied Eleanor, without any particular enthusiasm. "That darn on the right sleeve seems to be working loose. I'll mend it after dinner."

"Thank you," I said stiffly. "But I think I'd best get down to the South Meadow to see my men into camp and attend to my letters."

As a matter of fact, there were only two letters, and one of them was a brief note from Barbara wishing me good fortune with Peaceable Sherwood and urging me to capture him as soon as possible — "as Aunt Susanna is so terrified that she has taken to her bed again with the spasms, and we are all in the most melancholy way here." The other letter was addressed to "Colonel Richard Grahame" in a crisp, curiously distinct writing which I had never seen before. It had been sealed with a drop of red wax bearing the impression of a signet ring, equally unfamiliar: a shield, blank except for three little rayed stars in the upper left corner.

Sir [the letter began politely],

It gives me infinite pleasure to welcome so distinguished an officer back to Orange County. You may rest assured that I and all my followers will do our utmost to make your stay in this region lively and interesting, though not (I fear) particularly profitable to your Cause.

With every good wish for your continuing health and welfare, I remain,

Your very obedient servant to command,

PEACEABLE DRUMMOND SHERWOOD

I sat regarding this extraordinary communication in helpless silence for an instant, and then put my head in my hands and burst out laughing. I had been right about one thing at least. I was going to have an entertaining antagonist.

It took Peaceable Sherwood exactly one week to change my ideas of entertainment, and about four to drive me to the edge of raving and insanity. I will spare you the full account of everything that happened. We tried to identify his secret associates — and failed. We tried to unearth his system of communicating with them — and failed again. We tried to track him to his base of operations — and spent six days floundering in the mountains before we finally gave it up. We dispatched spies to worm their way into his organization, and found them tied to the hitching-posts in front of the Presbyterian Church in New Jerusalem the following morning (which was Sunday), with another courteous letter from Peaceable Sherwood, requesting me to send rather more intelligent ones in the future.

I think my men gradually became almost fond of him, as I had known hunters to become almost fond of a certain fox too clever to be caught. To tell the truth, I could very easily have become almost fond of him myself — the man's wit, audacity, and nerve were really admirable ... if only . . . Oh, if only so much had not depended on the outcome! If only the stakes we were playing for had not been quite so appallingly high! I had once rather liked the notion that I had to save the whole cause of independence singlehanded. Now, I woke up at night in a cold sweat whenever I dreamed of it.

And with every week that went by, Peaceable Sherwood's marauders grew stronger, his raids bolder, his mastery of the situation more complete and terrifying. By August, the whole district was reduced to a state of panic, with frantic citizens hooting at me and my soldiers on the road, and every rider from headquarters bringing dispatches to demand immediate and successful action. The only comfort was that the forest fire Peaceable Sherwood had kindled did not yet spread very far. The British authorities were still making no effort to set up similar organizations in other parts of the country — but this was a poor, thin consolation at best, for surely it could not possibly be long now before they started to do so.

It was the first time in my life that I had tasted real failure or shame, and I found them both uncommonly hard to swallow. In my black desperation, I could not endure the faintest suggestion of help or sympathy from anybody. I even disliked riding over to New Jerusalem because the look in Barbara's eyes was becoming more than I could bear. But such was my perversity that I disliked the look in Eleanor Shipley's eyes even more. Eleanor Shipley, needless to say, was making no effort to burden me with help or sympathy over Peaceable Sherwood. Indeed, there were times when I wondered which of them would really be responsible if I put a bullet through my head.

I did my best to remain very formal, very distant, very courteous whenever I was compelled to speak to her; and never by the flicker of an eyelash did I let her know she was hurting me in the least. But the more formal, distant, and courteous I became, the more outrageously she conducted herself. I will spare you the full account of that, also — except to say that by the end of those ten abominable weeks, I think I would have cheerfully sold myself to the devil if he would only have allowed me to trap Peaceable Sherwood by some brilliant maneuver of my own, and made sure that a certain young lady was somewhere about to discover when it was too late how wrong she had been to jeer at Richard Grahame.

"And then she'd be sorry," I muttered fiercely to myself, as I rode home to my dinner one weary August afternoon. I was feeling so wretched that the very thought of food made me sick, but anything was better than having Eleanor Shipley tell me that even dashing young heroes needed to keep up their strength.

It was a blazing day, too, miserably hot and dusty, without even the promise of a thunderstorm to break the monotony. All the birds had retreated into the deep woods, and there was nobody on the road but a peddler who had taken off his pack and was resting under the shade of a tree.

Peddlers were becoming rare now that the country was so unsettled, and I reined in my horse to speak to him on the chance he might have heard some news. He was one of those slim, lean Irishmen who look as if they were made out of a carriage whip. He told me that he was traveling up the valley with needles and laces and pins and various other gewgaws for the farmers' wives, and asked me to buy one of his ribbons "for my young lady." As I did not feel like explaining just why I had no young lady, I put the question aside and asked him in return if he had seen any sign of Peaceable Sherwood or his marauders on the road.

"May the saints forbid," said the peddler, with a quick glance over one shoulder. "It's ruined I'd be if they caught up with me. Maybe a hunter with woodcraft could slip easy into this terrible great forest and lie snug till they'd gone by. But what would I do that was born in Dublin and me hardly able to tell the woods from the trees, as the old saying has it? Look at that there, now —" waving his hand at a white triangular gash in the bark just above his head. "No doubt a gentleman bred to this land like Your Honor could tell what it means, but sure it might be the blessed Latin itself for all I can make of it."

"We call it a blaze hereabouts," I explained kindly. "Somebody has been cutting it on the tree to mark a trail into the woods. Not a very good man with an axe, either: see where it caught a bit off his clothes? No, over there, hanging on the end of that sliver — by the sumac."

"Sure, and I thought it was a flower, the fine color of it. It's Your Honor has the eyes," said the peddler, reaching for the little scrap and passing it up to me. "A shame to murder the good cloth so cruel. Now if I were back across the water in Scotland before the dreary wars I'd say that was the piece of a tartan."

I nodded as I turned the scrap over my finger to examine it in the light. The wearing of the tartan had of course been forbidden on Scottish soil since the last great rebellion of the clans in '45; but many of the Highlanders who had fled to the New World afterwards had brought their plaids with them — I had one myself which I found useful in the woods when I was hunting. And my grandfather, old Enos, had taught me to know the various tartans and clan badges as strictly as if he were still at home in his hills. "Drummond," I said almost without thinking, as I looked down at the bold pattern of scarlets and yellows and whites.