I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and make a mark I could not miss.  The pause gave space for some swift steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a fierce and terrible temptation.  The finger on the musket’s trigger held a life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I’d take.

I glanced aside at Falconnet.  He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas, and by the laws of God and man had earned his death.  The tortured slave had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would give him surcease I could well avenge him.  More than this; that bullet planted in my enemy’s heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.

All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold on red, across the breasting of his captain’s riding coat.  One little crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.  But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again:  “O Massa!  Massa Cap’m!  God ‘a’ mussy—­shoot po’ nigga and let ’um die!”

I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed.  The great king’s musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.

And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I was surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.

XV

IN WHICH A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP

In such a coil as this I’d looped about me there was nothing for it, as it seemed, but to draw the steel and die as a soldier should.  So I broke cover on the forest side of the holly thicket with a yell as fierce as theirs, and picked a tree to set my back against, and ran for it.

I never reached the tree.  In mid career, when all the Cherokee wolf pack was bursting through the holly tangle at my heels, two men, a white man and an Indian, ran in ahead, as I supposed to cut me off.  Just then the dry roof of the hunting lodge roared aflame, reddening the forest far and near.  The light was at my back and on the faces of the two who ran to meet me.  A great sob swelled in my throat and choked me, but I ran the faster.  For these were my dear lad and the friendly Catawba, charging gallantly to cover my retreat.

It was a ready help in time of need.  They ran in bravely, the chief ahead, twirling his tomahawk for the throw, with Dick a pace to right and rear, his two great pistols brandished and the grandsire of all the broadswords dangling by a thong at his wrist.

“Follow the chief!” he shouted in passing; and at the word the Catawba stopped short, sent his hatchet whistling into the yapping pack behind me, and swerved to run aside and point the way for me.