University of Virginia Library

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
DICK OF TOPHET ON THE CARPET.

It was night when Hell-fire Dick found himself in Orangeburg,
and at the entrance of the widow Bruce's dwelling.

Captain Inglehardt had been busy all the day with his raw
recruits, preparing for a recommencement of the duties of the
field, and especially seeking to have them in readiness for the
prospective encounter with the troop of Coulter. His scouts
were still on the hunt below, along the swamps of Edisto.
Inglehardt sat in his chamber seeking solace in his pipe, when
the door opened, and Dick of Tophet stood before him — wild
of aspect, shaggy haired, with ragged raiment, the grim picture
of the ruffian and outlaw that he was.

It was some moments before the captain of loyalists recognised
his visiter. When he did, he said: —

“What! You! Are you not afraid to show yourself here,
Dick? Don't you know that your life is forfeited? What
should keep you from the gallows, fellow, if I should call in a
few of my troopers?”

“They're not in calling distance, cappin. I took care of
that afore I come here. I know jest where they keep, and
know that ef 'twas in me to do sich a thing, I could slash you
to pieces afore you could sing a psalm. No! no! I felt my
way all along as I come, and I made sure thar was no risk. I
am too old a sodger to trust any offser in the army with my
life.”

The coolness of the ruffian might have alarmed a more timid

and less-prepared person than Richard Inglehardt. He simply
cast his eyes upon the pistols that lay before him, convenient
to his grasp, to say nothing of the rapier which had just been
unbuckled from his side, and leaned against the panel of the fireplace.
To grasp either would have been easy. But Inglehardt
knew his man, and well conceived that he never would have
shown himself but that he had a bargain to drive promising
some advantages for any favor he might receive. Besides, he
was never more in want of such a person than at the present
moment, and half-fancied that the devil had sent him for the
peculiar emergency. Still, he was not prepared to admit his
own wants, or to accord his favor too readily. He answered the
ruffian in the same spirit which prompted his first address.

“Rascal! You have at least lost none of your audacity.
Rags, wretchedness, starvation, outlawry, none of these seem to
humble you. You are a fool, Dick, with all the devil that you
have in you. As for slashing me to pieces, I could blow your
brains out before you could lift a finger. Do you suppose
that because my troop is in the woods, that I have not help at
hand?”

At this moment, a footfall behind the intruder, and between
him and the door, caused him to turn his head; when he beheld
a great tall angular backwoodsman, weapon in hand, who had just
entered the apartment. His presence seemed to confirm Inglehardt's
boast of succor, and occasioned a doubt, in the mind of
the intruder, whether he himself was secure. In an instant his
couteau de chasse was flourished in one hand, while he drew a
pistol with the other.

“It'll be a bear fight first, I tell you — tooth and nail!”
cried the ruffian desperately, and receding obliquely, so as to
face both Inglehardt and the backwoodsman. The latter carried
a bayonet at his side, but he seemed taken all aback by the
suddenness of the affair.

“Pshaw!” said Inglehardt, with quiet scorn, taking up and
tapping his snuff-box — “you will still be a fool, Joel Andrews.
Do you suppose if I wished for your worthless life that I would
suffer you to stand for a moment? Put up your weapon; and
do you, Brownlee, take yourself off for a while. I do not want
you.”

“Bill Graham has come in from below, sir—”

“Well, let him wait.”

Brownlee was retiring when Inglehardt called him back.

“Stay,” said he — “send Graham up. I will finish with him
first.”

Brownlee went out, and Graham the next moment came in
— another stout forester.

“Well Graham.”

“Coulter's gone, sir, gone up and across South Edisto. He
went yesterday, they tell me. He was about Chevillette's till
night afore last, was then seen about the Pou Settlement, afterwards
pushed off for Cannon's. Fry and Nathan both report
his troop at fourteen or fifteen men.”

“Fourteen or fifteen men! We can manage them, I think.
Have you anything farther to report, Graham?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“Well, go below, and remain with Brownlee. I shall probably
call you after a while.”

“And these fellows do your scouting, cappin?” said Dick of
Tophet, after the other had departed, with something of contempt
in his speech.

“Yes! Could you do better, Dick?”

“Couldn't I? — and thar's `the Trailer' with me, who's worth
a dozen of sich chaps.”

“The Trailer! Dy you mean Brunson?”

“Jest so! He's worth a dozen of 'em.”

“And is he with you?”

“He's not far off.”

“Ha! very good. And what have you to say for yourself.”

“Well, I've got to say that I'm mighty hungry, and I want
some good clothes.”

“Faith you do; you have been rolling in the briers for a
month, I fancy, and your desire is to be well fed, and decently
clad, that you may look the better in the rope.”

“I hain't got the feeling of rope about my neck this time,
cappin.”

“But you deserve it. You are a deserter from the arms of
his majesty.”

“I knows it.”

“You have been serving in the ranks of Marion.”

“Yes, I sarved them in sich a way that they made the rope
ready for me on the Santee, and ef twarnt for the old devil's
good help, I'd ha' been run up to a swinging limb, without a
sign of a jacket on me.”

“Why did you leave us?”

“Well, that little slaughtering business, which was all a
haccident, as I may say, the killing of old Gregson and his wife.”

“And wasn't that enough to hang a dozen such fellows as
yourself. You plundered and murdered the people that gave
you supper and a bed.”

“Psho, cappin, that ain't the way to name it. The old man
swore agin me for robbing him.”

“And you did rob him.”

“'Twant no robbery! I jest took a little change of clothes
that I wanted, and that he hadn't much use for, and there was
a little money in the pockets. I warn't to know that. And the
old fellow set upon me like a mad-dog, and I down'd him.”

“He had no weapons.”

“I don't ax that question when a fellow takes me by the
throat, cappin.”

“But the wife — you stabbed her.”

“Well, she flew at me too. There was them two upon me
one, and they pulled and hauled me about as ef I was nobody.
Flesh and blood can't stand everything.”

“Joel Andrews, flesh and blood find such deeds as yours a
hanging matter, even in war-time.”

“Well, I know you ain't a-gwine to hang me for that business.
Why, cappin, it's high time that it was clean forgot.
It's a year old, by this time.”

“And what have you been doing since in the way of burning,
and robbing, and slaughtering?”

“Well, cappin, I don't care to be talking of sich little matters,
and thar's no use for it. Least said's soonest mended.
You see me here now, willing to make up and jine you, and
sarve the king once more, and do good service.”

“Until you run again! No! no! Joel Andrews, there's no
trusting you. I'm afraid you've come to be hung.”

“Not this time, cappin. A born rascal, like myself, is a leetle

too useful for you now to give him up. You're a-wanting me,
at the bottom of your soul, this very minute.”

“You are a born devil, Andrews.”

“Well, I ain't so sure but it's the better for me, considerin'
the sort of people I hev' to sarve.”

“The father of lies is certainly your father.”

“Edzackly; yet I makes a good use of the truth when I kin
get it. I've got some truth now that you'd like to hear, cappin.”

“Ah! you are for making terms for your life, Dick.”

“Not so, cappin; I'm for making tarms for sarvice, and employment,
and a handsome payment. I knows very well, the
valley of what I've got to tell you; and, I reckon, you knows
me well enough to be sure that I wouldn't ha' been so quick to
put myself into the halter, ef I hadn't something to say that
would spell me out of it and something more. So, jest let's
come to the marrow of the matter, right away, and jest you say
that all's safe, and that I shall hev' a little of the king's kine
[coin] in my pocket, and his picture to swear by in the ranks,
off and on duty, and I'll fill your ears with a wagon-load of intelligence,
sich as none of your green scouts could gather for
you in a year of Sundays.”

“Well, let's hear your intelligence.”

“Is it a bargain, cappin?”

“I suppose so! Perhaps you won't hang this time, though
hanging is as surely your doom, Dick, as if you were born to it.
Still, I have no wish to play Jack Ketch for you.”

“It's a long road to the sea, cappin. I don't think I'm to
hang so long as the old devil has something for me to do, and
that's jest as long as I'm in the sarvice of a cappin of rangers.”

“Don't be saucy, Dick.”

“Not for the world, cappin; but say out, up and down, am
I to hev' the king's kine again, and to wear his pictur? — that's
to say, s'posing I have something to tell you now, that you'd
like to hear better, prehaps, than anything else that a man
could tell you. You wants my sarvices, I know, and thar's
Rafe Brunson, the Trailer, as good a scout as ever stept in
mockasin, betwixt here and Tarrapin Heaven. You wants
men and scouts badly, and then there's my news, you know.”

“Well, Dick, I can't be too hard on you, and if your news is
really worth anything—”

“It's worth everything. It'll put Willie Sinclair in your
power; and if rope's the word, why you kin give him as many
ties of it as you think proper.”

“Do that, Joel Andrews, and you shall have all that you ask.”

“It's a barg'in, and now jest you listen.”

Inglehardt threw himself back in a listening attitude, helped
his nostrils to a morsel of Scotch snuff, and motioned his companion
to proceed. Dick of Tophet began his narrative. We,
who already know, from actual observation, so large a portion
of it, will not need to hear the elaborate recital of the ruffian.
We shall content ourselves with abridging his report, which
was sufficiently full, except in those portions where he had his
own most villanous deeds to relate. Of these, there are many
not known to us; but these are not essential to our story, and
still less to a proper appreciation of his ruffianism. We shall
begin with his pursuit of Sinclair.

“We tracked him up to Turkey hill, and thar we lost him.
How, I don't know; but I never seed the Trailer so off the
scent. But we guessed whar he was aguine, for we know'd
pretty much that he was a'ter that gal of Travis. Well, we
scouted the woods all about Holly-Dale, but we couldn't find
the trail. How he did manage to kiver up his tracks thar's no
saying. But thar he was.”

“He used a boat.”

“Well, thar's no tracking a boat in the water, and it's hard
pulling one up stream, though an easy matter to go down. But
knowing that he would be thar — for when a chap's a'ter a gal,
he's apt to stick to the chase — we kept beating about the stamping-ground,
sure to hev' him at the last. And we was sworn,
both me and the Trailer, to hev' this same Willie Sinclair.”

“Why were you so hot on his trail, Dick?”

“Look at these burns here, on my back, on my hands, on my
feet. Why, I'm in a sort of fiery furnace now, all the time,
though they ain't hafe as bad as they was three days ago.”

“You don't mean to say that Sinclair burned you thus?” demanded
Inglehardt, as the other displayed the scars.

“Well, 'twas all owing to him, and I may as well say, right

away, that he did it. 'Twas to git out of his roping that I had
to walk into the fire, and lie down on the blazing lightwood.”

Here the outlaw, having previously suppressed the account
of his attempt on the Sinclair Barony, was compelled to supply
his deficiencies. Inglehardt shook his head gravely.

“Hark you, Dick, this is a serious matter, for you, should it
reach the ears of Lord Rawdon. Do you not know that old
Sinclair is a friend to the royal cause, and intimate with Lord
Rawdon?”

Well, I didn't ax about all sich matters, when I thought of
the gould and silver at the Barony, and of them hundred gould
guineas in the pockets of Willie Sinclair — and he is no king's
man, as you know.”

“Ah! ha! so you knew that Willie Sinclair had a hundred
guineas in his pocket? And how did you know that? I can
well understand, now, why you have been hunting him so
handsomely.”

“In course, thyar was reason for it. In course, I knew about
the guineas, and how and where he got them.”

Here he had to take another leap, and go back over a chasm
in his narrative. The history was gradually unfolding itself
clearly to his auditor.

“But I shan't tell you any more of the matter, cappin, ef
you're not guine to make me safe. You talks as ef you'd hev'
to give me up to Lord Rawdon, about that Barony affair.”

“If he ever hears of it, and looks after you, Dick, I don't see
how I'm to escape giving you up; and I certainly would do so,
if he should require it — unless—”

“Well, unless what?”

“Why, unless you took the hint before the halter, and found
your way into the swamp, and forgot entirely that the provost
was waiting for you under a tree, with a plough-line dangling
in his fingers.”

“Oh! I see!” — with a chuckle — “well, I'll hold it as your
promise that I'm to hev' a hint of the s'arch whenever they're
aguine to begin it.”

Inglehardt nodded his head with a smile, and again took snuff

“Well, a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse. I'm satisfied.
— So, as I was a-telling you—”

And the outlaw resumed his narrative, and detailed his unexpected
discovery of Sinclair, in the conference with Travis.

“And they've made tarms to meet to-morrow at Holly-Dale.
`We'll be with you thar,' says Sinclair, `at three o'clock
edzackly.'”

Inglehardt listened to this statement with unexampled composure.
He tapped his mull quietly, fed the reddened nostril,
smiled complacently on the ruffian, and motioned him to proceed;
though all the while a raging spirit in his bosom — a
rousing fury — was goading him with the mortifying conviction
that Travis had outwitted him, and that he was betrayed to his
enemy and rival. Neither he nor Dick of Tophet ever fancied
that the party destined to meet with Travis was to be any
other than Sinclair himself.

Inglehardt sifted well the evidence of the outlaw, cross-examined
him closely, and gleaned from him numerous particulars
of his progress and discovery, which need not be again
repeated. He rapidly formed his own plans as he listened.

“And now, cappin, I must hev' a little ready-money. Look
at my clothes. I hain't had a full feed for a week; and as for
a sup of Jamaica, the sweet critter is a parfect stranger to my
lips.”

In silence, Inglehardt rose, took a bottle of rum from his
closet, pointed to a glass and bade the other help himself.
Then, as Dick drank, he wrote a billet which he handed him.

“Take that to Elbridge. You will find him at Baltezegar's.
He will provide you with clothes. Here are two guineas. Use
them sparingly; the commodity is scarce, and will be scarcer,
unless we can get the hundred which Sinclair carries in his
pouch.”

“Ah! I don't reckon he carries it about with him all the
time. He's hid it away, I'm jubous, when he went to Turkey
hill.”

“Tell me, Dick, how was it, that, hating him as you do, and
knowing of this money, you didn't shoot him down where he
sat, when he talked with Travis. It would have pleased me
quite as well, had you left me nothing to do in this matter.”

This was said very quietly and mildly, without the slightest
show of passion or vindictiveness.

“Wouldn't I hev' done it, ef thar had been been a decent
chaince. But look at them dirty little puppies” — casting a
pair of pistols on the table — “and say ef one would be sensible
to take a risk on sich we'pons, at fifteen paces, agin two
men, and one of them sich a man as Willie Sinclair?”

“But you have your knife besides.”

“Yes; but it's a word and a blow with Sinclair; and I've
had the weight of his fist upon my ear once a'ready. I tell you,
big man as I am, and tough as an old alligator, I went down
under his fist like a great bullock under the axe of a butcher.
He's a most powerful fellow in the gripe, and I know'd them
pistols worn't worth at over five steps. Then agin, I thought
we'd have him sure enough to-morrow, ef he keeps his word
to Travis.”

“Ay, so we may have him; and I trust he will keep his
word. You say he has no one with him?”

“None that we could get the wind of. He's sartinly got no
troopers. We left St. Julien crossing the Santee with all the
corn and cattle he could gather up.”

Well, go and get your clothes and supper, and return to me
in one hour. I shall see that you have immediate employment.
We must have the Trailer in. Can you find him?”

“Oh! yes, after a sign. We agreed on one afore we divided.
Two hours will help me to pick him up.”

“I shall employ him also. Enough for the present. Away
now, and supply yourself. Let me see you within the hour —
and — Andrews — see that you keep sober.”

“Jest so, captain, and ef I'm not to drink out of doors, I
reckon you'll not think it onreasonable ef I wets my whistle
agin afore I go.”

And he coolly helped himself to a second and very potent
stoup of the Jamaica. Inglehardt beheld the measure of the
potation taken without any apprehension. He knew what that
arid soil could receive without being flooded.

Inglehardt was alone in his chamber.

“So, Captain Travis, we at last fully understand each other.
Now, at least, I fully understand you. You have embraced my
enemy. You are now my enemy. Fool! you believe that rebellion
is to triumph. You are for making terms with rebellion. You

would secure your spoils. But you shall do so through me only,
and at one price. Bertha Travis shall be mine — she shall
never wed with Willie Sinclair. I will bring you both to my
feet, whence neither shall rise in safety, but to satisfy my desires.

“I have you now!

“Sinclair too in my power! He shall die. Why didn't this
rascal shoot him down even where he sate. Cowed! cowed by
a buffet! But the game is still in my hands.”

And his plans were all arranged by the time that Dick of
Tophet reappeared. He was now clad in the dark green uniform
faced with red, of the corps of mounted rangers which Inglehardt
commanded. He carried a dragoon sabre, with pistols of larger
calibre than those he had worn before. A shaggy cap of fur,
too heavy for the season, formed a part of his equipment; and
cap in hand — resuming the more respectful department of the
soldier to his superior, he waited orders.

These were given, without delay, and he was despatched in
less than half an hour, on a mission, which involved the finding
and employing of Brunson, the Trailer, and a further duty
which they were to take together.

We are not yet permitted to know what are the plans of
Inglehardt. They must develop themselves. Enough to know
that he was subtle, cool, calculating, vigilant, taking no rest, no
respite, while the game was in progress. He was busy all
night, and threw himself down for a few hours' sleep only when
the day was near its dawn. His force, we may mention, with
late additions, had grown to thirty troopers, all told.