“That was a brave little maid who bore our message to you.”

He made no answer.

“I have been wondering,” I continued carelessly, “whether she has no friends—­ so poor she seems—­ so sad and friendless, Have you any knowledge of her?”

The Indian glanced at me warily, “My brother Loskiel should ask these questions of the maid herself.”

“But I shall never see her again, Sagamore.  How can I ask her, then?”

The Indian remained silent.  And, perhaps because I vaguely entertained some future hope of loosening his tongue in her regard, I now said nothing more concerning her, deeming that best.  But I was still thinking of her as I rode northward through the deepening dusk.

A great weariness possessed me, no doubt fatigue from the day’s excitement and anxiety.  Also, for some hours, that curious battle-hunger had been gnawing at my belly so that I had liked to starve there in my saddle ere Boyd gave the signal to off-saddle for the night.

CHAPTER IV

 A tryst

Above the White Plains the territory was supposed to be our own.  Below, seventeen thousand red-coats held the city of New York; and their partisans, irregulars, militia, refugee-corps, and Legion-horsemen, harried the lines.  Yet, except the enemy’s cruisers which sometimes strayed far up the Hudson, like impudent hawks circling within the very home-yard, we saw nothing of red-rag or leather-cap north of our lines, save only once, when Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe nearly caught us.

His Excellency’s army lay in position all around us, now, from West Point down the river; and our light-horsemen patrolled as far south as the unhappy country from which we had retired through the smoke of Bedford’s burning farms and the blaze of church and manor at Poundridge.  That hilly strip was then our southern frontier, bravely defended by Thomas and Lockwood, shamefully neglected by Sheldon, as we had seen.  For which he was broke, poor devil, and a better man set there to watch the red fox Tarleton, to harry Emmeriek, and to throw the fear o’ God into that headlong blockhead, Simcoe, a brave man, but so possessed by hatred for “Mr.”  Washington that every move he made was like a goaded bull—­ his halts merely the bewilderment of baffled fury, his charges blind and bellowing.

I know how he conducted, not from hearsay alone, but because at sunrise on our second day northward, before we struck the river-road, we had like to have had a brush with him, his flankers running afoul of us not far beyond a fortified post heavily held by our Continentals.

It was the glimpse of cannon and levelled bayonets that bewildered him; and his bawling charge sheered wide o’ the shabby Continental battle-line, through which we galloped into safety, our Indian sticking to my crupper like a tree-cat with every claw.  And I remember still the grim laughter that greeted us from those unshaven, powder-blackened ranks, and how they laughed, too, as they fired by platoons at the far glimmer of Simcoe’s helmets through the chestnut trees.