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 cried across the widening space of water. "Is he safe?"

"I got no message," Almayne shouted. "Tell me quickly, do you know aught of Lachlan McDonald?"

She uttered an exclamation of amazement, then shot a swift angry glance at her father, who sat beside her, apparently dumb with surprise.

"He was set upon by three Indians in my garden," she cried in a high, clear tone that carried far. "They"

By now Stanwicke had recovered his wits. He spoke a quick word to the negro oarsmen, and at once their voices rose in unison, chanting the unintelligible words of one of those barbaric rowing songs with which the black boatmen of the coast plantations were accustomed to lighten their labours. The loud melodious chime of their voices blotted out the voice of the girl. Almayne could hear no more of what she tried to tell him.

He saw her turn with a gesture of furious protest upon her father, who sat grim-faced and silent, staring straight ahead. The barge crossed the Ashley and entered the mouth of Wappoo Creek, evidently heading for Stanwicke Hall, Edward Stanwicke's country seat on Stono River.

"There's little more to tell," Almayne concluded. "I spent the rest of the day running in circles on a false scent, and I should have gone to the Governor this morning, much as I dislike him, had you not reappeared."

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 He rapped on the table for the black attendant and ordered more ale.

"Well, what next, lad?" he asked gruffly.

"Her message," said Lachlan, frowning thoughtfully. "She sent you a message which you did not receive—evidently a message telling you that I had been attacked in her garden."

"Aye," Almayne answered.

"Stanwicke suppressed that message, letting her think that it had been delivered."

"Aye," said Almayne again. "So I figured it."

"He is Falcon's tool," Lachlan continued. "He is against her. And he is in Falcon's power—you remember Falcon told me that he held Stanwicke in the hollow of his hand. She will be in danger at Stanwicke Hall with those two men."

Almayne spread his hands in a gesture of irritation.

"That is not my business," he said impatiently. "My business is to get Gilbert Barradell and bring him back to Charles Town. Jock Pearson's pack train is starting for Fort Prince George. I shall ride with them to the Fort and then push on to Chief Concha's town—it is best to take the upper route because the rivers to the south are in flood. You'll be starting for Tallasee, no doubt, and since your road is the same as ours, you had best ride with us."

Lachlan nodded absently. "Good," he replied, "but there's work to be done here first."

For some moments he was silent, frowning and tapping on the table with his fingers.

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 "Does Pearson's wife still ride with the pack train?" he asked presently.

"Always," Almayne growled. "Ugly Meg is Jock's right-hand man—be damned to her, though she's better than most women."

Lachlan smiled. "You were always a hater of women, Almayne," he said, "which is unfortunate, seeing that there will be two women with us on this journey."

"Two women!" the hunter exclaimed. "Meg Pearson and who else?"

"Mistress Jolie Stanwicke," Lachlan answered.

Almayne's eyes widened with amazement.

"Eh, lad, are you daft? In the first place, she would not come. In the second place, how do you propose to get her out of Stanwicke Hall? And in the third place"

"She will come," Lachlan interrupted. "As for the other problem, we must find a way."

"So!" said the hunter dryly, and shouted to the black boy to bring the ale.

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VEN to-day they tell some strange stories of Stanwicke Hall. There is no truth in most of them. Yet, if you will visit Stanwicke Hall to-day, following the moss-curtained roads some twenty miles from Charleston (which is the modern spelling of old Charles Town), you will half believe the tales that are told.

The place is not beautiful like most of the old plantation manors of lowland Carolina that have come down from Colonial times. It is grim and forbidding and lonely. Its brick walls are still solid, having survived hurricane, earthquake and war. But its panelled rooms are a wreck; its lawns and gardens have vanished; there are great gaps in its noble avenue of live-oaks; of the secret underground passage which once, according to tradition, extended from the mansion to the river and through which smugglers and pirates are reputed to have passed, only a trace remains.

You cannot make your way through that mysterious tunnel now, for its walls have caved in and the falling earth has closed it. But there is a straight, narrow path, hedged in by trees and shrubbery, leading from the house to the river; and strolling along

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 that path, you will find, here and there under foot, ancient bricks which came—if you can believe the negroes who live near by—from the roof of the secret tunnel. And there is another thing that you are likely to see as you walk that abandoned promenade above the old underground passage on a late afternoon in summer when the nighthawks are already flying and perhaps the big swamp owls are hooting dismally in the distant woods. You may see, ahead of you, spanning the path and shimmering like a golden disc in the late light, the huge, wheel-like silken web of the great golden spider.

In all that country there is no other creature so horrible to look upon. It is as large as the palm of a man's hand—a golden-speckled, hairy monster, barred and spotted with black and dark brown, as hideous as its silken house is beautiful. It inhabits the forests of lowland Carolina within a few miles of the sea, but it is very rare except in certain localities, so that many have never seen it, and consider it a myth.

It is no myth, however, as you are likely to discover if you will search the tangled shrubbery around the ruins of Stanwicke Hall. There the golden spider still spins its glistening golden webs, three feet or more in diameter, and the negroes know it well and fear it as they fear the rattlesnake. But if you ask them to tell you the story of the man who once lived in Stanwicke Hall and whose black slaves called him (behind his back) the Golden Spider, because of his

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 passion for gold—the man about whom a grim prophecy was spoken—they will gaze at you stupidly, for, though other legends of the place survive, this tale has been forgotten.

That man was Edward Stanwicke, Jolie Stanwicke's father. Dusk of the day on which they had conferred at Marshall's inn found Lachlan and Almayne in the deep woods about a mile from Stanwicke Hall. There they left their horses and a third horse, which they had led from Charles Town, and pushed on through the forest on foot.

They wore buckskins and moccasins and each carried, besides knife and steel tomahawk, a long rifle. At the edge of the woods they waited until no more lanterns or torches moved about the plantation yard. Then they crossed the open stealthily, two dim, almost invisible shapes in the faint moonlight. Lights burned in the great central room on the first floor of the house. Presently Lachlan and Almayne stood in the deep shadow on the front porch or piazza close to the lofty double door opening into the room.

It was a large room, handsomely furnished, and lighted with tall candles, its wide deep windows open to admit the sweet-scented April breeze. In a high-backed chair beside a long table sat Edward Stanwicke, a tall, stooped, gray man of some sixty years, whose craggy face would have been both handsome and strong but for the loose under-lip. He was richly dressed, as became his station in the Province, for the Master of Stanwicke held himself second to none

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 in the New World. In front of him, wearing white with a green silken shawl about—her shoulders, stood Jolie Stanwicke, his daughter.

A liveried negro servant had just placed a decanter and glasses upon the table and had withdrawn.

Lachlan, watching from the darkness without, saw that Stanwicke sat in a strangely hunched position in his chair, his head lolling forward on his chest. For some moments he sat thus without moving, his eyes apparently half-closed. Then he roused suddenly and with shaking hands filled a glass. As he lifted it from the table, the lace of his sleeve brushed against the other glass, overturning it so that it smashed to atoms on the floor. Instantly he broke out in a high-pitched, tremulous wail.

"See," he cried, his voice as shrill as a woman's. "See what all this has done to me. I am a wreck, a shell. I cannot pour wine for the shaking of my hands. And you stand there and there's no pity in you."

The girl moved a step nearer, resting her hand upon the table.

"Pity!" she said slowly in a low voice. "There is no room for pity."

He seemed not to hear her. At a gulp he drained his glass, filled another and drank that also. He cleared his throat and opened his lips to speak, but she cut him short.

"I have something to tell you," she said quickly, "and I must ask you to listen to me now. I do not

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 know whether this illness which affects you like palsy is real or feigned, but I know that you give way to it only when you wish to work upon my sympathy. I think you have begun to realize that there is in me no particle of pity for you and that, therefore, you will try some other way if I remain longer in this place. I shall return to Charles Town to-morrow."

Stanwicke smiled. Seeing that smile, Lachlan realized that his first surmise was mistaken. The man was not drunk. When he spoke his voice was deeper and steadier and his hands no longer trembled.

"My dear daughter," he said, "and how shall you return to Charles Town if I do not choose to send you there?"

She started and stepped back a pace. "You would not dare keep me!" she exclaimed.

"You are my daughter," he replied suavely. "You are still my daughter although you have not chosen to honour my poor house with your presence. Now that you have come to me at last, it is both my duty and my privilege to take care of you, to protect you, to compel you, if need be, to do what is necessary for your well-being. You have been away from me so long that you do not remember a father's authority. You might appeal to other authority, I suppose, but I think the Governor of Carolina, who is my very good friend, would not deny my right to the custody of my child."

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 Suddenly his gray face flamed red. He brought his hand down upon the table with a crash.

"Listen, my pretty," he said, and it was passion which now shook his voice. "I am done with soft words. You are not in England now. You are not even in Charles Town. You are at Stanwicke Hall, and here my word is law. You did not know when you came to me what manner of man I am. Well, you are learning now; and you will learn that I will be obeyed."

He paused for breath, for the words had been pouring from him in a torrent. Something in the girl's face added fuel to his rage. He spat out an oath, and the flush in his cheeks darkened.

"You can be obstinate—you have shown me that," he cried hoarsely. "You have no love and no pity for me, your father, and you care nothing for the honour of my name and yours. I have asked little. I have asked only that you treat the man with ordinary civility, that you refrain from angering him, that you grant him the privileges of a friend. You have refused. Well, I am not to be ruined by your damned obstinacy. If it were left to me, I would know how to deal with you, but he does not desire that—yet."

Again he paused for breath. Jolie Stanwicke, eyes bright with anger, bosom heaving, opened her lips, but he cried her down.

"I owe you nothing," he screamed, leaning far forward in his chair, his voice again shrill and tremu-

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 lous. "You are my daughter, but all your life you have kept away from me, preferring England and your mother's kinsfolk there. God knows I did not ask you to come, but now that you have come, you will lie in the bed I make for you. Who are you to thwart me? Why should I let Falcon destroy me because of your mad infatuation for this Barradell who, I tell you, is dead in the wilderness? You will stay here, here at Stanwicke Hall. And when Captain Falcon comes"

His words ran suddenly together, became an unintelligible jumble of low sounds. The colour drained from his face; his eyes widened, stared fixedly past the girl. Slowly, very slowly, as though the arm were made of lead, he raised his right hand and pointed.

"Good God!" he whispered hoarsely. "The black hag's prophecy!"

Jolie Stanwicke turned quickly, uttered a low cry, and jumped away from the table. Lachlan saw that Stanwicke was pointing at something on the table, but the girl intercepted his view. He moved noiselessly through the darkness of the porch to the other side of the doorway.

He saw then that the thing at which Stanwicke pointed was a huge yellow and black spider moving along the table straight towards the pallid staring man who sat slumped in his chair, his trembling arm still raised.

Slowly that arm sank until it rested on the table; and slowly, steadily the monstrous spider came on.

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 Jolie Stanwicke stood as though turned to stone. Over Lachlan, also, there swept a sudden surge of horror. He knew the golden spider well, had admired a hundred times the shining golden discs that it spun in the woods. Despite its great size and its ugliness, he had never feared it before; but fear and loathing held him rigid now.

The thing never swerved, never paused. Slowly it moved along the table straight towards Stanwicke's hand resting on the table's edge. The hand did not move. Lachlan, staring in new horror at Stanwicke's colourless face, saw that the man was past movement, past consciousness.

The creature's hairy legs touched the fingers, the swollen, mottled body mounted upon the wrist. Slowly it moved up Stanwicke's arm to his shoulder, along his shoulder to his chest. From his chest it passed to the death-like mask of his upturned face, and there it halted, its long, hairy legs spread wide. So huge was it that the legs stretched from cheek to cheek; and as it sat there, hiding half the face of the man, its great bloated, spotted body moved up and down, up and down, as though the creature were sucking blood.

It was Almayne who broke the spell of horror that had been cast upon them all. With a low cry, he sprang through the doorway into the room and, snatching off his cap, swept it across Stanwicke's face. The huge spider fell to the floor. Almayne crushed it with his heel, then bent over the man in the chair.

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 Meanwhile Lachlan had leaped to Jolie Stanwicke's side and had grasped her arm, for she stood swaying perilously.

She seemed scarcely aware of his presence; yet it was to him that she spoke.

"The prophecy!" she whispered dully. "It has come true. An old black slave woman told him once that he would die of the bite of the golden spider."

"He is not dead," said Almayne, his voice shaking. "It is a swoon, I think. Quick, some wine."

Jolie, freeing her arm from Lachlan's grip, filled the glass and handed it to the hunter. In silence they stood and watched the life come back to the man they had thought gone forever. The eyes opened, stared vacantly; the lips moved. Suddenly Jolie turned to Lachlan.

"Thank God, you have come!" she said in a low, steady voice. "Take me away."

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HEY waited only long enough to allow the girl to run to her room and slip into some garments better fitted for a journey through the woods. And even this short delay was a mistake. They had believed Stanwicke to be still helpless from shock, but suddenly, while their backs were turned for an instant, he was out of his chair and halfway to the closed door leading to the rear. They overtook him when his hand was reaching for the door, and Almayne's palm across his mouth choked the cry that would have summoned his servants.

They got him back to the chair, struggling with surprising strength for a man who, but a few minutes before, had been sunk in stupor, and, first gagging him securely, they bound him to his seat with a bell-rope cut from the wall.

Jolie, returning, stood for a moment looking down at him, while he glared up at her, hate blazing in his eyes. The cord was tight. Jolie stooped and loosened it; and Stanwicke, suddenly swinging his bound legs sideways, almost knocked her from her feet.

With a little sob, she jumped back from him, turned and, without a glance behind her, passed out of the door opening on the porch, Lachlan at her heels. A

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 moment later Almayne followed them—after tightening again with one deft and savage jerk the cord that Jolie had eased.

Outside it was pitch-dark. There were no stars. Away to the right a lantern flickered across the plantation yard, coming toward the house. From the porch they moved around the south end of the house, the girl walking between the two men, each of whom gripped one of her arms. She was like a blind woman in that utter blackness, but the men with her moved swiftly, unhesitatingly, and she went forward between them, stumbling seldom. For some minutes, glancing back, she could still see the lights of Stanwicke Hall, but shortly they entered the woods and the lights were blotted out.

Here the going was rough. Presently Almayne spoke briefly to Lachlan, handed his rifle to the younger man, then, with a "By your leave, lady," took Jolie in his arms. For perhaps two hundred yards the tall hunter carried her thus, placing her on her feet again when they had left the thickets behind them and had come to open pine forest where no underbrush grew beneath the trees and the ground was carpeted with pine straw. She went forward, as before, between the two men, speaking no word. The pace was fast and she needed her breath; and somehow she realized that, although these men apparently had eyes that could see in the dark, they needed all their faculties to guide them through that maze of pine trunks which to her eyes were all but invisible.

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 Thus they came, with scarcely a word spoken, to the place where the horses were tethered. Here at last Almayne's gruff voice broke the silence.

"You can walk very well for a woman, Mistress," he said. "Now can you ride?"

His tone was a challenge. He was seldom at pains to disguise the contempt he had for women.

"I can ride," she answered shortly, and they helped her to mount, then swung to their own saddles.

"A loose bridle, Mam'selle," said Lachlan. "Your horse will follow in the track of Almayne's." With the hunter leading the way and Lachlan in the rear, they began the second stage of the night's journey.

As before, they rode in silence, save for a whispered inquiry now and then from Lachlan regarding her comfort. Had she been dying of fatigue she would not have confessed it in Almayne's hearing. There was a question which rose again and again to her lips, but she never uttered it. Still their way led them through unbroken woods, but after an hour or so they came out into an open space, and directly ahead she saw a light glimmering. They rode towards this light over boggy ground where marsh grass or tall rushes brushed their horses' flanks, and came presently to a small hut at the edge of a river.

"It is the ferry, Mam'selle," Lachlan told her, "and the flat-boat is ready, for we are expected. We must dismount now. Once we are across the river, we can rest a while."

A white man and a negro operated the flat-boat,

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 and there was room on the clumsy craft—built for the accommodation of plantation wagons and coaches—for all three horses as well as their riders. Almayne and Lachlan manned the extra sweeps and the broad, placid stream was quickly crossed.

They remounted then and rode on for perhaps a half-hour, at first following a winding road, but soon turning to the left into the woods. Far away she heard the hunting cry of a wolf pack and shivered, although she could only guess what the sound was. It was inexpressibly wild and strangely fierce, but she held her tongue and learned that wolves were abroad only when Almayne growled some comment on the increase of these animals. She was chilly and hungry. She wondered what had become of Lachlan's promise of a rest once the river had been crossed. As if in answer to the thought, he spoke to Almayne and they halted, dismounted and helped her to alight.

"We are safe, now, I think," he said. "On this side the river they could not tell what course we would take. We will have a fire and something to eat and drink."

The warmth of the fire, the sweetened cornbread, the wine from Lachlan's flask dispelled her fatigue. For all its slimness, her body was well-knit and very strong, and in England riding had been her favourite pastime, so that this night's ride had tired her little.

A strange exultation mounted in her. The hunting wolves, though still far away, had drawn somewhat

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 nearer. Their voices made music, savage and unearthly, but softened by the distance. The glow from the fire turned the massive pine trunks to bronze and the hanging Spanish moss to silver. Fifty feet away in the gloom she saw, for a moment, two round orbs which glittered in the light like emeralds, and she knew that they were the eyes of some great beast of the forest. Yet she was not afraid. Somehow all this seemed fitting, natural, vaguely familiar; and somehow it was fitting and natural, too, that she should be here in the depths of the midnight forest with these two men in buckskins, who seemed as much a part of that forest as the trees.

Over and over again she had pictured some such scene as this, constructing it out of vivid details in the letters that Gilbert Barradell had written to her after his coming to America. Always she had loved the open, had found delight in birds and other wild creatures, in trees, flowers, and the things of earth. In England she had dreamed of days and nights in the vast American woods, had lived them in spirit with Barradell as her companion. This that was happening now was all as it should be, all as she had visioned it—except that, instead of Gilbert Barradell, her companions were the tall hunter, Almayne, whom she disliked vaguely because she was aware that he disliked her, and the dark youth who had come so strangely into her life on a certain evening in her father's garden in Charles Town.

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 These thoughts came and passed swiftly. Almayne was busy with a loose saddle girth; Lachlan was adding fuel to the fire, and in the brief interval since they had halted few words had been spoken. Lachlan rose and stood before her where she sat at the base of a gigantic pine.

"Mam'selle," he began.

She checked him with a gesture. She could wait no longer to ask the question that a dozen times that night had been on her lips.

"Some nights ago, in my father's garden," she said, "a moment before you were struck down, you told me that Gilbert Barradell was alive and that you would go to him. I have not seen you since. I have not been allowed to communicate with Mr. Almayne. You will tell me more now about him—about Gilbert—before we speak of any other thing?"

"He is a prisoner," Lachlan replied, "in the town of Concha, Chief of the Appalaches, on the western borders of the Spanish country of the Floridas. He is safe for the present, but there is one who hates him, and we must lose no time. We must go to him at once and attempt a rescue."

She was silent a moment, as though studying his words.

"When you go," she said quietly at last, "I will go with you."

Almayne had come up and stood close behind Lachlan.

"D'ye know what that would mean?" he asked

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 brusquely. "Hardships, dangers, long weeks in the rough wilderness—enough to try the body and soul of a strong man."

"I am strong," she replied. "I am not afraid. I will go."

Almayne slapped Lachlan between the shoulders.

"By Zooks!" he exclaimed. "You were right, lad, after all."

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HEY rested an hour by their fire in the forest. The wolves scented them and made a circle around them in the gloom, invisible except their glittering eyes; but the two men gave them little heed and Jolie knew, without asking, that there was no danger. There was much to be said and the hour passed quickly.

Jolie heard the story of Lachlan's adventures on the Good Fortune—all, that is, that Lachlan felt free to tell her in view of his compact with Lance Falcon. The tale, thus expurgated, puzzled her at times, but she restrained her curiosity and sought no further explanation. Nor did she ask Lachlan about himself, although to her he was still a mystery—himself and his interest in her affairs. She learned that they would join Jock Pearson's pack train next day at a point agreed upon, and she heard, without much interest (for the fact seemed to her of slight importance), that Jock Pearson's wife would be with the train.

On her part she said but little at first, and Lachlan asked no questions of her. But a remark of Almayne's brought from her certain facts. The hunter had kept silence, but when Lachlan had concluded the story of his adventures, Almayne put in a word.

"You will give my young friend credit, Mistress,

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 for one thing," he said, "and I know not whether he will be glad or sorry for it hereafter. It is he that is bringing you on this journey into the wilderness. I should have left you at Stanwicke Hall, or, since we've got you out of there, I should now take you to Charles Town. He was of the opinion that you had best come with us and that you would wish to come. I said that, being a woman, you would be afraid."

"He was right," said Jolie quietly. "I am not afraid of the wilderness. I could not remain at Stanwicke Hall, and there is no one in Charles Town who could keep me safe."

She paused, then continued, speaking very softly:

"I am not sure how much of my unhappiness is already known to you. I came to Charles Town not knowing what my father was. Weeks ago I learned that Captain Falcon had some mysterious hold upon him, that he feared Falcon because of something that Falcon knew. I did not know what this thing was, but now I know—or, at least, I can guess.

"There is a secret passage at Stanwicke Hall, an underground way which leads from the house towards the river. I have not seen it, but a black girl, who was my servant and is more intelligent than most, told me of it. She said that strange men came through that passage at night bringing casks and bales and sometimes gold, and that Falcon came with them. They had come three or four times, she said, for others among Stanwicke's servants had seen them.

"She herself saw them once—one dark night when

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Page:Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Study - Spring 2004.pdf/2

 Social Science Program National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior

Visitor Services Project

Yen Le is a Research Assistant for the Visitor Services Project (VSP), Margaret Littlejohn is the National Park Service VSP Coordinator, and Dr. Steven Hollenhorst is the Director of the Park Studies Unit, Department of Conservation Social Sciences, University of Idaho. We thank the staff and volunteers of Joshua Tree National Park for their assistance with this study. The VSP acknowledges the Public Opinion Lab of the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center, Washington State University, for its technical assistance.


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 she had gone down to the river to keep a tryst. The black boy whom she was to meet was not there, and she was mortally afraid because a storm was brewing and all that part of the river bank was known to be haunted. As she waited, trembling, there came a long flash of lightning and she saw the boy coming towards her; but suddenly he stopped and threw up his hands as though in terror, and dark figures rose round him and one of them struck him down.

"She was too frightened to move; and soon, in another bright flash of lightning, she saw men passing close by her—seafaring men with scarves around their heads, and cutlasses and pistols. There were six of them, and Captain Falcon walked in front; and two of them carried the body of the black boy, and she heard the splash of his body as they threw it into the river. She knew then that the stories which she had heard were true—that these men had come out of the secret passage which led from the house nearly to the river and were now returning to their boat, after leaving their booty at Stanwicke Hall."

Jolie was silent, twining and untwining her fingers nervously.

"At first," she continued presently, "I did not believe all this, but the more I thought about it the more clearly I saw that it was true, for the black girl could not have invented the tale. I do not know what these men were or what was the nature of the goods that they brought into Stanwicke Hall by night through that secret passage from the river; but I

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 know that they came by those goods in some evil way—through piracy, perhaps—and my father has been in league with them, and now Falcon holds him in his power and can ruin and dishonour him."

Her voice sank almost to a murmur and her eyes were lowered.

"I think he cares little for his honour," she said, "but his wealth, his gold is his lifeblood. That is why his servants have named him the Golden Spider after that insect which spins golden webs in these woods. There is a story whispered among the blacks at Stanwicke Hall. An old African slave woman, whom he had slashed with his riding whip, pronounced a curse upon him and prophesied that he would die of the sting of that same golden spider for which the blacks have named him. To-night he thought that this prophecy would be fulfilled."

For a moment she stared gravely into the fire. Lachlan saw that her eyes were moist.

"You do not think it strange, do you," she continued in a low voice, "that I left him as I did—without farewell, without pity for his plight? The fear of Falcon hangs over him like a sword, and at times it seems to stab his very soul and he shakes as if with palsy. Oh, I pitied him at first, and I tried to do what he asked so that Falcon would not be angered. But when I realized what he expected of me, what he would presently force me to do—that he would sell his daughter to save himself—then pity died in me."

"He is a black-hearted villain," Almayne ex-

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 claimed, "and you are well rid of him. I like plain speech, Mistress, and now I would ask a plain question. Captain Falcon desires you, and to save himself your father would give you to him?"

She nodded.

"I am not such a fool as I look," the hunter grumbled apologetically. "Long ago I guessed it. But I was ever a bungler with women and I wished to be sure."

He jabbed the fire with a broken pine branch.

"This Falcon, now," he continued reflectively. "He is something of a man in his way. He will not give up easily. I think we shall hear from him before our journey is over."

The moon showed her face as they remounted and suddenly the forest was bathed in ghostly light. Jolie, sitting her horse beside the embers of the fire, saw dimly in that pallid radiance the spectral circle that ringed them round—wolves gray and black, long-jawed and bushy tailed, prowling restlessly. Only for a moment did she see them. They had been bold in the blackness and had come close in, ranging themselves just beyond the fringe of the firelight. But as the moonlight brightened, they drew back, fading into the shadows, and when Almayne wheeled his horse and the cavalcade started, scarcely one was in sight. Once, however, Jolie glanced back and saw dim, gaunt forms creeping toward the fire, nosing here and there in quest of fragments of food.

For hours they rode on slowly but steadily, Al-

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 mayne in the lead. By the magic of the moonlight the forest, which before had been hideous and menacing in its blackness, was transformed to soft and silvery loveliness. Through this shimmering beauty they passed in silence, their horses' muffled by the thick carpet of pine straw covering the ground. A light breeze blew in their faces, so that their scent was not wafted on ahead of them; and again and again they came within sight of grazing deer.

Once, Jolie, glancing down a dim forest aisle between rows of column-like pines, saw a great beast that was like a lioness sitting on its haunches, staring fixedly with eyes that were glowing coals—a panther, Lachlan called it; and once, just in front of them, there was a sudden commotion in the moonlit woods, a bellowing as of bulls, a tossing of sharp, curved horns, a confusion of big, dark bodies lurching upward from the ground and rocking away amid the crowding trees. At this she cried out in excitement, believing that she was looking for the first time on that half-fabulous beast, the buffalo, but Lachlan laughed the notion away.

"Black cattle," he said, "wild black cattle, strays from the plantations. There are hundreds in these low country woods. We'll see no buffalo till we have passed farther inland."

In general they travelled northward, but often they made wide circles to avoid impassable swamps. The forest seemed endless.

At dawn they came to a deep, narrow creek flowing

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 sluggishly through the woods. Without pause, Almayne rode his horse down the steep bank into the water. As the animal began to swim, Jolie saw the hunter turn and throw a curious glance behind him. She flushed as she realized the meaning of that glance, and her horse was halfway down the bank when Lachlan, who had dropped a little behind, rode forward and grasped her bridle.

"Wait," he said, and she noticed that he was frowning as though angry. "There is a boat on the other bank. Almayne will bring it presently. He should have told you."

"He thought that I would be afraid—that I would not venture," she answered quickly, and jerked the horse's head the other way, so that Lachlan lost his grip on the rein. Next moment her horse was in the water, swimming.

She was wet to the shoulders when they reached the other bank. There a path sloped up from the water's edge and wound into the forest, and without a word Almayne led the way along this path. A quarter of a mile farther on he halted suddenly, swung around in his saddle and turned to her a countenance unwontedly melancholy.

"I am both a fool and a brute, Mistress," he said very humbly. "It is my fault that you are wet and cold. I did not think that you would have courage to swim the river."

She laughed at him, finding a strange joy in her triumph.

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 "You will know me better presently, Mr. Almayne," she replied. "I shall make it my pleasure te teach you something about women."

He glanced at her sharply, and rode on without rejoinder. An hour later she heard the voice of a man singing somewhere ahead of them, and the neighing of horses; and Lachlan, riding abreast of her, said, "It is the camp—Jock Pearson's camp. You can rest and sleep."

She turned toward him slowly, and he saw with surprise that her face was very white.

"I am glad," she whispered. "I think I could not have ridden much farther."

She swayed suddenly in her saddle. For a moment her body leaned against his, her hair brushing his cheek. With his arm about her shoulders, he steadied her, kept her from falling; but almost at once she seemed to recover her strength and drew away from him, sitting upright as her horse walked forward, a slim, straight figure, head high, shoulders back. Lachlan realized with vague astonishment that he was trembling like a reed in the wind.

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N THE green savannah in the forest, where Jock Pearson's pack train was encamped, a small gentleman with a prodigious shock of white hair was absorbed in the business of defending himself against half a dozen ruffians. The small gentleman, clad in white ruffled shirt and black knee breeches, wielded a slim, straight sword; his assailants attacked him with long, stout staffs. On all sides they hemmed him in, cursing, shouting, flourishing their weapons, and it seemed that his life was not worth a pin. But the small gentleman appeared singularly happy.

He sang shrilly as he fought, and his agility was miraculous. He was here, there, everywhere. His sword was now a circle of light like a halo around his snowy head, now a glittering streak like a horizontal dart of lightning—as quick, as keen, as elusive as the flickering tongue of a snake. Too swift for the eye to follow were the parries and thrusts of that sword, as it clattered on the staffs of his assailants, turning aside their blows, menacing their lives.

Jolie gasped as the scene burst upon her vision. The path that they had been following through the forest had turned sharply around a dense myrtle thicket, and suddenly the glade had opened before her, revealing the combat that raged there. Amaze-

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 ment held her dumb. Just beyond the combatants was the camp of the pack train—the standing ponies, the rude shelters of blankets and skins, the smoking cook-fires; but for a moment she saw nothing of all this. She saw only the lone swordsman battling for his life and the ruffians trying to kill him.

She turned to Lachlan where he sat his horse beside her. His face, too, was blank with amazement, but beyond him Almayne was grinning. The horses had halted at the edge of the glade and neither Lachlan nor Almayne made a move, but suddenly Jolie heard a shout and saw that the small, white-haired gentleman had burst through the circle of his opponents and was racing towards them.

Three of the ruffians started in pursuit, but still Almayne and Lachlan sat their horses without movement, seemingly indifferent to the fleeing man's peril. In a few moments he was within a dozen paces of them, his pursuers meanwhile having halted as though uncertain what to do. The small gentleman rushed up to Lachlan and grasped his hand.

"Eh, lad," he cried, "but I'm glad to see you, Lord, we were worried, Almayne and I! And this is the lady?"

He swung toward Jolie and bowed low.

"By Paul!" he cried, in a thin, bird-like voice, strangely shrill, yet not unmusical, "you will pardon an old man's boldness, Mam'selle, but of all the adorable sex I adore the most those whose hair is the brave, glorious Irish colour that mine once was."

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 He glanced from one to another of them, a broad grin on his round, pink, clean-shaven face.

"Sure, now," he chirped, "have ye no word of greeting for me?"

"Mr. O'Sullivan," said Lachlan, "what in Heaven's name are you doing here?"

The grin on the round, pink face widened.

"A minute ago," the little man said, "I was enjoying a little healthful exercise. Those ignorant rogues of pack drivers had expressed some scorn of the sword as a weapon, and I laid them a wager that with this rapier I could defend myself for half an hour against the cudgels of all six of them. It was none too easy because I had to be careful not to scratch them, that being part of the bargain, but I would have won the wager."

"But how came you here to Jock Pearson's camp?"

"On a mule," Mr. O'Sullivan answered, "a most abominably perverse and discontented yellow mule that I bought in Charles Town because in so short a time I could not procure a horse. Later, when I have obtained a respectable mount, I shall take delight in feeding him to the wolves."

Almayne chuckled. "You meant it, then?" he said. "When you said you would go with us, I thought you were jesting."

"I was," the little man answered, "but the more I thought about the matter, the more I liked the notion. It fell in with a scheme that has been growing in my head, a scheme to study the aboriginal natives

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 and mayhap write a book about them. So, when the pack train left Charles Town an hour before daylight, there was I and my mangy mule, and my old friend, Ugly Meg, overruled Jock's objections to my company."

He turned to Jolie, took her hand in his and patted it.

"My sweet bird," he said very gently, "Almayne has told me something of what's afoot. You will accept me, will you not, as a volunteer in your service?"

Lachlan came to her rescue. "Mam'selle," he said joyfully, "this is Mr. Francis O'Sullivan, of Doonamaddy, in Ireland, a particular friend of mine and formerly my teacher; a man most marvellously learned in the classics and in history, and a perfect master of the sword. There is much more to commend him, as you will presently discover. I am sure you will be grateful for the aid that he will give us."

"I shall, indeed," Jolie murmured.

Again the little man bowed low to her and, turning, included Lachlan in the gesture.

"I thank you, my lady, and you, my pupil," he said, smiling. "And now I'm thinking Jock Pearson may take himself to the devil, for I am duly enrolled as a private in the ranks."

They rode on slowly across the savannah, Mr. O'Sullivan walking beside them. Despite her weariness, Jolie gazed with keen interest at the camp they were approaching—the pack ponies standing about

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 the water-buckets or cropping the grass; the pack drivers in their high, buckskin leggins and leather jerkins ornamented with beads after the Indian fashion; the little tents of skins, blankets and stained muddy canvas, some of which served as shelters for bundles of merchandise that had been unloaded from the ponies, while others were evidently the sleeping quarters of the party. At the farther edge of the savannah, beyond the camp, Jolie saw two Indians come out of the forest. Each carried a rifle in one hand, while a great dark bird dangled limp and lifeless from the other. Each raised one hand above his head in a stately gesture, and Lachlan replied with a similar salutation.

"My warriors," Lachlan said to Jolie, "Striking Hawk and Little Mink, chiefs of the Muskogee. They have been out for game and they have two turkeys."

From the lower end of the meadow sounded a faint whoop. Three horsemen, all clad in buckskins, had emerged from the woods and were galloping towards the camp.

"Jock Pearson," said Almayne briefly, and rode to meet them.

"We shall have venison, too," said Lachlan, sitting his horse beside Jolie, in front of the first of the tiny tents. "There's a buck behind Ugly Meg Pearson's saddle."

Jolie saw the buck but looked in vain for Meg Pearson. The rider across whose horse the dead deer

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 was slung appeared to be a man. But when they had come up, this rider slid from the saddle and walked swiftly towards Jolie. The girl saw then a tall, big-boned woman of perhaps forty years, hook-nosed, red-faced, astonishingly ugly, clad like the others in long, fringed hunting shirt and leggins, balancing a rifle in her bony hand.

Meg Pearson wasted no time in formalities. She gave Lachlan not so much as a nod.

"You are tired, my lamb," she said to Jolie, in a voice as deep as a man's. "You are nigh ready to drop with weariness. And these fools keep you settin' here! 'Light an' come with Meg."

At noon Jolie was still asleep on a buffalo robe in Ugly Meg Pearson's little tent. That stalwart lady stood like a sentinel before the entrance, frowning grimly. She had just informed her husband that the pack train would not resume its journey for at least two hours. Six feet two in his moccasins, black-bearded, thewed like a Hercules, Jock Pearson had fumed and cursed a little and pointed to the ponies already loaded. But Ugly Meg was obdurate. The "poor lamb" would have two hours more of sleep, she asserted somewhat profanely, and any pack driver who raised his voice or cracked his whip would be most damnably sorry for it.

Jock Pearson saw a certain light in her eyes and grumbled no more until he was out of earshot. If the pack drivers grinned, they did so discreetly, for they

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 feared him as much as he feared his wife, but Mr. Francis O'Sullivan had seen and enjoyed the play and was at no pains to conceal his enjoyment of it.

"Eh, Jock," he cried, his pink face beaming under its white brush of hair. "They are the devil, these women that wear the breeches. What says the rustic poet?

The trader deigned no reply. He had not desired Mr. O'Sullivan's company and had told him so rather plainly; and just now he was in no mood to be polite. A little apart from the others Almayne, Lachlan, and the two Muskogee warriors were sitting in the grass. Almayne beckoned Pearson.

"Jock," he said, "I've been thinking there's something we ought to tell you, and Lachlan is of the same mind."

Pearson stretched his huge bulk beside the hunter, while Mr. O'Sullivan, having nothing else to do, strolled over and joined the group, standing just behind the trader. Followed then some minutes of earnest talk between Almayne and Pearson, Lachlan putting in a word occasionally, while the two Indians looked on with impassive faces. Presently Mr. O'Sullivan wandered back towards Meg Pearson's tent.

He found her just within the entrance, sitting cross-legged on a deerskin, gazing intently at the face of

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 the sleeping girl. He beckoned her and she came out to him.

"Ugly Meg," he chirped in his voice like a bird's, "I wish you joy of your white-livered, rabbit-hearted behemoth of a husband."

She glowered down upon the little man.

"What's he done now?" she growled.

He jerked his head towards the tent.

"The young lady yonder, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke, has run away from her father who is a vile beast that any daughter would be proud to run away from. However, as you know, old Stanwicke is a great man in the Province and has power with the Governor, and Almayne and Lachlan McDonald are of the opinion that a party may come in pursuit of her with the Governor's authority to take her back to Charles Town. It has occurred to them at this late day that if she is found in Jock Pearson's pack train there will be evil consequence for Jock, and to save him this danger they have proposed that our parties separate. You know and I know and Jock Pearson knows that with the Cherokees ripe for war we are too small a party to venture through the upper country with this girl in our charge."

Mistress Pearson's grim eyes were fixed upon her husband where he still lolled on the grass between Almayne and Lachlan.

"Let be, Mr. O'Sullivan," she said peevishly. "That sweet lamb will be in Meg Pearson's care until she's safe in Fort Prince George."

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T WAS early afternoon when Jolie awoke. "See, I my sweet, what Meg has for you," said Mistress Pearson, smiling down at the girl, eyes twinkling in her tanned, lined face. Jolie, blinking sleepy lids, beheld a fringed buckskin shirt, new and spotless, elaborately inset with red and blue, belted with green.

"I bought it six months ago," Meg continued, "of a half-breed woman in the Chicasaw nation, and I intended it for a slim lad I know at Fort Prince George. It has never been worn and it should fit you fairly well."

Jolie donned it gleefully; the buckskin leggins, too, that Meg had magically provided; but the smallest pair of moccasins upon which Mistress Pearson had been able to lay her hands were much too large for Jolie's feet, so for the present she must stick to her own riding boots. A broad-brimmed hat of soft beaver skin, dyed green, into which Meg had thrust a jaunty feather from a wild turkey's wing, completed the girl's new costume; and when she stepped out of the tent and made her bow, Lachlan, who was waiting just without, saw not a woman but a slim, straight

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 youth garbed like a wilderness hunter—a boy, more beautiful than any boy, whose eyes sought his and challenged them.

"How do I look?" she asked him impudently, one hand on her hip, the other twirling an imaginary moustache.

He stood dumb with amazement. For the life of him he could find no word. It was Mr. Francis O'Sullivan who broke the silence.

"Mam'selle," he chirped, sweeping off his hat and bending low before her, "sure, you have struck him speechless, but I bid you find your answer in the pitiful face of him. Mam'selle, I do assure you with my hand upon my heart that you are the most heavenly thing these eyes have seen at all, at all."

"I thank you, sir, for your handsome speech," said Jolie with a curtsey, "and no thanks to you, Mr. Tie-Tongue, at all, at all. And because he likes not my looks and is frowning at me like an ogre, I choose for my riding companion Mr. Almayne."

So, with Jolie riding by Almayne's side—riding astride after the manner of a man—the pack train resumed its journey. There was a purpose underneath her whim. There were questions that she wished to ask and that only Almayne could answer. He answered grudgingly at first, with an underlying hostility concealed yet plainly evident; but exerting, yet not overplaying, her charm, she got what she wanted out of him, and much more besides, so that she rode with him for an hour or longer. This done, she dared

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 Lachlan to a race and they galloped ahead of the party. Drawing rein, she talked with Lachlan, as they moved slowly on, about the task that lay ahead of them, asking him many questions, drawing from him in rough outline his and Almayne's plans for the rescue of Barradell.

There was another question that she planned to ask him but it was one that had to be led up to with some care; and gradually, as they rode on a hundred yards ahead of the pack train, the spell of the wilderness took hold upon her. Gradually she forgot her own concerns and a certain vague doubt which, since her conversation with Almayne, had shaped itself in her mind. Slowly her anxieties faded, and in their place came a languid content which deepened as the afternoon wore on. The feeling came to her that all sorrow and evil had been left behind—that she was riding through the Garden of God towards happiness and her lost lover and the fulfilment of her dreams.

Truly, it was like God's Garden, that springtime wilderness of Carolina where the white man's axe was yet unknown. It was a garden abloom not only with flowers but with birds more beautiful than golden jessamine or pink Indian rose; a garden not still and silent as most gardens are but astir with abundant life, aquiver with innumerable voices.

There were places where all was silent. Sometimes the trail led through lofty pine woods, carpeted with fern, where the giant trees towered eighty feet without

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 a limb, woods that were vast cathedrals too holy for the little singing birds. But on that day's journey the pine groves through which they passed were of comparatively small extent, so that soon they emerged from the dim, hushed cathedral places into a sunnier broad-leafed forest where the ground was sprinkled with blossoms and the foliage was alive with wings. Here the air throbbed with bird-music; troops of gray squirrels ran and leaped amid the wide-spreading branches; white-tailed deer, grazing in herds of a dozen or more, lifted their shapely heads to stand at gaze for a moment and then go bounding off along the winding, moss-tapestried forest aisles.

To Jolie it was as strange as it was beautiful. There had been birds in England, too, but never such birds as these. Now it was a crested cardinal, red as blood against a bank of lustrous laurel; now it was a gorgeous nonpareil, crimson and blue and shimmering yellow-green, glittering in the sun like a jewel of changing hues; now it was a ruby-throated hummingbird poised above a golden flower on wings that whirred so rapidly that the eye could not see them; now it was some tiny, fragile warbler from the tropical lands, in whose dazzling plumage all the tints of the sunrise seemed to have been imprisoned. All these delighted her; but stranger by far were the tall turkey cocks that she saw striding along the vistas of the woods to the right or to the left or ahead; and most strange and most lovely of all was a great flock of parrakeets that came screaming through the forest

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 and, alighting on the ground, covered the turf with a living carpet of rich green and vivid gold.

To Jolie it seemed that there was nothing to mar this loveliness. Out of this singing, many-coloured wilderness, this green and silver wilderness to which the long, graceful pendants of the Spanish moss imparted a misty beauty never known in England, scarcely a hint of menace came to her. Twice she saw wolves of the small low-country breed slinking along like homeless dogs under the far-spaced trees; and once, glancing down a long glade in the woods, through which trickled a small sluggish stream, she saw a big black bear stand for a moment watching with lowered head, then turn and whisk himself with surprising quickness behind a tree trunk.

The wolves she had already learned to despise, but to her eyes the bear seemed very big. She turned, glanced at Lachlan, perceived that he, too, had seen the animal. But he only smiled and made some light remark about Bruin's nimbleness in getting out of sight; and the sense of danger which had come to her momentarily vanished, and she gave herself again to silent and bemused enjoyment of the changing scene about her.

So, mile after mile, she rode in silence, Lachlan at her side or just behind her, the pack train following well in the rear, Almayne, Jock and Meg Pearson, and Mr. O'Sullivan riding at its head.

An hour before sunset, when the western sky flamed beyond the tree trunks, they came to a long savan-

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 nah stretching away to their left, walled in on either side by the woods. It opened before them suddenly, as they rode out from behind a dense hedge of myrtle; and as Jolie's eye lit upon it she saw its surface heave upward and her ears were full of the surge of wings. A thousand ibises and herons had taken flight, sweeping upward from the moist ground on powerful swiftly beating pinions, whirling and circling in the air, their white plumage gleaming in the late light, the long, curved, crimson bills of the ibises shining like coral. For a long moment Jolie watched them, spellbound; then, when the last of them were vanishing amid the trees, she turned to Lachlan, and he marvelled at the light in her eyes.

"And this," she said, "is the wilderness of which Almayne thought that I would be afraid. I never dreamed of anything so beautiful."

He paused for a moment before answering.

"You do not know it yet," he said. "It is beautiful and this part of it is safe. But it has claws and fangs and—other things. You will know it better soon?"

"I am not afraid of it," she answered quickly; and then more slowly: "There is only one thing of which I am now afraid."

"And that?" asked Lachlan curiously.

"I am afraid of what we may find at our journey's end."

Lachlan read no obscure meaning in the words. He had been frank in pointing out to her the difficulties and dangers of their enterprise, the possibility of

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 failure in their attempt to rescue Gilbert Barradell; and he thought that this was what was in her mind now, and a great sympathy for her welled up in him.

He answered her cheerfully.

"Our task is no light one," he said, "but I think we shall succeed. Almayne has no equal in Carolina, and my two warriors are the pick of the Muskogee braves. In all America I know of no better men for this work than these three."

They were riding onward again side by side, and for a little space Jolie said no more. But her gaze no longer wandered along the forest glades; her eyes were fixed in front of her. Just under the red-gold curls beneath her broad-brimmed hat there was the ghost of a frown.

Suddenly the frown—if frown it was—vanished and her eyes were lit with laughter.

"You are a handsome man, Lachlan McDonald," she said lightly, "though I should not tell you so and risk turning your head. And there is a panther's grace and a lithe comeliness in your two tall warriors, Striking Hawk and Little Mink. Now I am curious about my own sex among your people. It happens that since I have been in America I have seen no young Indian girl. Tell me, Mr. McDonald, are your Indian maidens as comely as your men?"

"There are those among them," he answered gravely, "who are far comelier. They are slim and straight, and some are tall and very beautiful."

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 "And some?" she asked, "have married English husbands?"

"Aye, and French husbands and men from Scotland and from Ireland," Lachlan replied; and he told her then of how the Frenchman, Captain Tourville, had married a Muskogee princess of the Family of Wind, the most exalted of the Muskogee clans; of their beautiful daughter, Sehoy Tourville, herself a princess; and of the Scotsman who came to Tallasee and fell in love with Sehoy and married her and became High Chief or King of the Muskogee Confederacy.

"That Scotsman," he concluded, "is my father, and Sehoy is my mother, and she is as beautiful now as she was then."

"Yes," Jolie replied absently, "all this I know. Almayne told me these things and of how you are the Prince of your nation, and of how you are going back to your people now and will some day become their King."

He nodded, smiling. Presently she turned her face to him again.

"What know you?" she asked carelessly, "of Chief Concha's daughter? Is she one of those slim, tall ones who are so beautiful?"

She waited, her eyes searching his face eagerly; and when no answer came, she leaned towards him.

"You will recall," she said impatiently, "that when you sat the first time in Falcon's cabin, he

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 mentioned this daughter of Concha, the Appalache Chief. It is about her that I inquire. Is she comely? There is a reason why I ask."

"I do not know," Lachlan replied slowly. "I have never seen her."

He was frowning, but she met his gaze coolly. She smiled whimsically, the corners of her lips turning down.

"Well, no matter," she cried. "We shall learn about her in time, and meanwhile I shall think of her as very ugly. It will make me happier to picture her so."

"Mam'selle," said Lachlan gravely, "you will pardon me for questioning you. I told you nothing of what happened in Captain Falcon's cabin. I told you nothing of his reference to Chief Concha's daughter. I must ask you where you learned these things?"

She flushed and bit her lip.

"You, must not be angry with Almayne," she said earnestly. "I wormed it out of him. I knew that you had not told me all and I made Almayne tell me. It was not his fault. I had it from him before he realized that he was telling what you had not chosen to tell."

She paused, tapping her boot with the switch that she carried. Presently her eyes dropped.

"But for Almayne," she said softly, "I should not have known how brave a thing you did when you went alone aboard Captain Falcon's ship."

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 Again she waited, but no answer came.

"I know now," she continued, her rich tones low and flute-like, "that in Lachlan McDonald I have in my service as fearless a gentleman as ever served a lady in distress."

Lachlan's black eyes were stern and hard. He knew that under his swarthy skin the blood suffused his cheeks, and this knowledge added to his anger.

"You have done ill," he said slowly, "and Almayne has done ill. I cannot but blame you both."

She turned to him a pair of flashing eyes.

"Sir," she cried, "I am not accustomed to be scolded!"

A quick answer rose to his lips, but reining in her horse, she cut him short.

"We will wait here," she said, "until the others come."

They sat their horses in silence, neither looking at the other. Two spots of colour blazed in her cheeks, her head was high. On a swaying twig of a willow-oak above the trail a black and russet sanguilla sang an evening song. As Lachlan watched it idly, a blue-gray shape swooped from beyond the tree-top, wings darkened over the singing bird, long claws reached down and snatched it from its perch. Jolie, aware that the song had ceased, glanced upward. She did not see the hawk dashing onward, its victim dangling from its talons.

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HEY made camp that night in a murmurous pine grove close to the edge of a small cypress swamp. It was dim dusk when they halted. Only the pallid radiance of the moon and the flickering glare of the cook-fires lit the grove while the little tents were being pitched. Jolie stood apart from the others, watching the men at their work, dulling her ears as best she could to the oaths with which Jock Pearson larded his orders to the pack-horse drivers upon whom fell all the heavy labour of the camp.

The anger in her swelled higher. Lachlan, she thought, might have bade Pearson control his language out of respect for her. But Lachlan seemed to have forgotten her existence. He was busy with the horses. Almayne was sitting cross-legged on the grass, tinkering with his rifle. Mr. O'Sullivan stood talking with Meg Pearson beside a fire where a haunch of venison was already roasting. Presently, sickened by Jock's blasphemies, the like of which she had never imagined, Jolie wandered away along a moonlit glade sloping down towards the swamp.

At the end of this glade, scarcely fifty yards from the nearest of the cook-fires, the moss-bannered cypresses of the swamp soared straight and tall into

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 the blackness of the night; and here a long narrow cove of a lagoon lay still and deep under the shadowy trees. The moonlight, streaming down between the pine tops, illumined the water and the sloping bank where Jolie stood. Beside her a huge grapevine hung from a pine, making a loop like a child's swing, and in this loop she seated herself ten feet from the water's edge.

She was weary of body, but her mind was wide awake. Her small hands clenched as she thought of Lachlan's impertinence—for so she deemed it. It was an age in England when beauty carried with it regal prerogatives. No young man had ever used such a tone to her before, had ever frowned at her, had ever presumed to scold her. It had remained for a young barbarian of the American wilderness to flout her authority, to reprimand her like a schoolgirl.

Her thoughts passed quickly to Gilbert Barradell—to certain facts that she had learned that morning from Almayne. Lachlan, mindful of his promise to Falcon, had made known to her only part of what had happened on the Good Fortune. What he had omitted seemed to her more important than what he had told.

Most important of all, in her mind, was Falcon's reference to Chief Concha's daughter. Almayne had merely touched upon this incident, which he seemed to regard as of slight importance, in telling her the story of Lachlan's first visit to the brig; but she had questioned him closely regarding it, and she had

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 planned to get from Lachlan a report of Falcon's exact words concerning Concha's daughter, as precisely as Lachlan could recall them. The thing had to be gone about delicately—for none must guess what was in her mind—and before she could accomplish her purpose Lachlan had dared scold her and she had shown him his place.

She must wait now for another opportunity; and meanwhile her better nature cried shame upon her, and she seemed to see the proud, handsome face of Gilbert Barradell gazing at her out of sad, reproachful eyes.

If he were really gazing at her, she mused, what would he think of her beauty now—that beauty which he had worshipped?

She had suffered during these past months, and she wondered uneasily whether it had had any effect upon her face. She knew that it had not, that she was as lovely as she had ever been. She smiled disdainfully as she recalled Lachlan's description of the Indian maidens—"they are slim and straight and some are tall and very beautiful." Perhaps this daughter of Chief Concha was such an one, such an one as would appear beautiful to Lachlan McDonald! She made a little contemptuous sound with her lips; and she thought of the look in Gilbert Barradell's eyes one evening in London when she had come soundlessly into the room where he was awaiting her, and he had looked up to see her standing before him in a filmy gown of white silk and snowy lace.

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 She laughed aloud—a small, happy, confident laugh; and her lips framed the words, "Forgive me, Gilbert," and she sat for many minutes contrite and repentant because of the hateful, unworthy thing that had been in her mind but was there no longer.

She must have fallen asleep sitting in her grapevine swing; but only a few moments passed before she opened her eyes and saw the orbs that watched her. They were pale yellow-green and they were set wide apart, so that she knew at once that they were the eyes of some great beast. Across the glade near the swamp edge a short, squat live-oak stood amid the pines, and under it all was dark. It was from the edge of this blackness that the yellow-green orbs stared palely at Jolie.

She could see nothing except the eyes; but imagination filled out the crouching shape behind them and made it even more terrible than it really was. She sat as though turned to stone, and she felt her body grow cold as clay. Her breath came fast and her heart pounded within her. She tried to cry out, but no sound came from her lips, and somehow she did not try again.

She knew that the camp was not fifty yards' distant behind her. She could hear the voices of the men there, and she knew that by turning her head she could see them in the glare of the camp fires. But she could not turn her head, could not move her eyes from the terrible eyes that held her helpless, and it seemed to her that the camp was miles away.

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 How long she sat silent, rigid, numb with terror, she did not know. For a time her mind, as well as her body, seemed benumbed. But suddenly she realized that her lips were moving and she found herself whispering, speaking coolly to herself under her breath: "I must not be afraid. This is the wilderness. This is what I must face." So, little by little, she fought her terror down, her eyes never straying from those other eyes there in the blackness.

She wondered what the beast was. She knew that these eyes were not the eyes of a wolf and she did not think that they were the eyes of a bear. With a sudden tightening of the throat, she remembered that great beast which she had seen in the moonlight during their flight from Stanwicke Hall, that beast which was like a lioness and which Lachlan had called a panther; and she remembered how its eyes had glowed as it sat on its haunches watching them.

These eyes were paler, but she knew that it was a panther that she faced; and she recalled certain tales that she had heard, tales of panthers that followed women and children through the night. The terror mounted in her afresh; and suddenly she saw the yellow-green eyes move and was sure that they were drawing slowly nearer.

She cried out, but the sound that came from her dry throat could not have been heard a dozen yards away. For minutes more she sat rigid, staring; then the eyes vanished, to appear again almost instantly, a little farther to the left.

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 Somehow this seemed to renew her courage. Slowly she got hold of herself again; and again she fought down her terror, quelling it little by little, pushing it inch by inch out of her mind. Once more the eyes vanished, and once more they reappeared still farther to the left. Then, while she watched them, fascinated, they faded from view and she saw them no more.

A faintness came upon her. She held tightly to her grapevine swing to save herself from falling; and she was still sitting there, her eyes half-closed, when Lachlan's voice spoke close behind her.

"Mam'selle?"

She rose and stood on her feet, swaying a little.

"There were eyes," she told him. "Great pale eyes which watched me from the darkness yonder."

He glanced at her sharply, then strode across the glade in the direction that she had indicated, vanishing in the blackness under the live-oak where the eyes had been. In a moment he reappeared.

"It was a panther," he said quietly. "Its scent is strong on the still air. Were you afraid?"

She was herself again now—apparently as cool and contained as though her ordeal had been all a dream.

"Not I," she lied glibly, knowing that she lied, yet feeling that it was not all a lie. "Did I not tell you that I did not fear your wilderness? And did I not tell Almayne that I would teach him much that he does not know about women?"

Lachlan stood silent a moment.

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 "Mam'selle," he said, "I have come to ask your pardon for my rudeness to you this afternoon."

"I do not lightly forgive, Mr. McDonald," Jolie answered after a pause. "You have done me a great service, but that, as I conceive it, does not give you the privilege of scolding me when you choose."

"Nor do I so conceive it," he answered.

"And yet you hectored me shamefully."

"I was angry. I am sorry."

"And Almayne?" she asked quickly. "You have scolded him also because of what he told me?"

"I have said nothing to him yet," he replied.

"I forbid you to mention the matter to him." Her tone was a command.

"Mam'selle," he exclaimed, "you are arrogant!"

Her eyes flashed dangerously.

"And what if I am, Mr. Lachlan McDonald?" she said proudly.

He was silent, gazing at her in wonder.

"I know not how it is here in America," she continued, a biting sarcasm in her tone, "but in England the young men about me do not complain of what you are pleased to term my arrogance. They take me as I am, and they are proud to serve me."

She paused, expecting a reply, but none came. Deliberately she played her bold game to a finish.

"They said in London, Mr. Lachlan McDonald, that Jolie Stanwicke was the most lovely lady in all that great city, more lovely even than the great ladies of the Court. Because of her beauty many

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 gentlemen of London were her servitors. It is your good fortune to be in her service here. I think you do not sufficiently value your privilege."

"You are mistaken, Mam'selle," Lachlan muttered. "You—I am aware" He hesitated, his mind awhirl in the face of a new experience.

"Come," she said quietly, "I am hungry. The venison should be ready by now."

She chattered lightly of small matters as they walked the short distance to the camp. Lachlan answered briefly, his thoughts still in a maze. As for Jolie's thoughts, they were clear enough, yet led to no conclusion. The sense of them was this:

"Either he hates me as a monument of vanity, in which case all is well, or else I have stretched him at my feet."

At supper she found her answer. The pack-horse men supped apart. The others sat on the grass around an elk hide laid upon the ground, serving them as a table; and Jolie was aware that from beginning to end of the meal Lachlan scarcely glanced in her direction.

Later she led Almayne aside.

"I have done it," she told him.

"Done what, Mistress?" the hunter inquired curtly.

"This afternoon," she said, "you made it very clear to me that you regarded me as a peril to your young Muskogee Prince. To speak plainly, you have been afraid that he would fall in love with me."

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 The hunter stared down at her, open-mouthed.

"By the Lord!" he exclaimed, "I said nothing of this to you!"

"You said it as plainly," she smiled, "as a man may say anything without putting it into words. You can now dismiss your fears. I have done that to your Indian Prince which puts me forever beyond the pale of his desires."

"In God's name, what have you done to him?" asked Almayne in some alarm.

"I have shown him Jolie Stanwicke as she really is," she answered solemnly. "And henceforward he will flee from her as from a plague."

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Page:Joshua Tree National Park Visitor Study - Spring 2004.pdf/3

Joshua Tree NP VSP Visitor Study

 * This report describes the results of a visitor study at Joshua Tree National Park (NP) during April 3-9, 2004. A total of 700 questionnaires were distributed to visitor groups. Visitor groups returned 525 questionnaires for a 75% response rate.

 * This report profiles Joshua Tree NP visitors. A separate appendix contains visitors’ comments about their visit. This report and the appendix include summaries of those comments.

 * Forty-five percent of visitor groups were groups of two and 25% were groups of three or four. Fifty-three percent of the visitor groups were family groups. Fifty-nine percent of visitors were age 26-60 years and 19% were age 15 or younger.

 * International visitors, comprising 8% of the total visitation, were from Canada (29%), Germany (21%), England (19%), and 15 other countries. United States visitors were from California (76%), Washington (4%), 31 other states, and Washington D.C.

 * Prior to this visit, visitor groups most often obtained information about Joshua Tree NP through previous visit(s) (52%), friends/relatives/word of mouth (43%), and internet-NPS or Joshua Tree NP web site (39%). Eight percent of visitor groups received no information before their visit. Most groups (90%) received the information they needed about the park.

 * Eighty-five percent of visitor groups’ primary reason for traveling to the Joshua Tree NP area (including Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms) was to visit Joshua Tree NP. On this visit, the most common activities while visiting Joshua Tree NP were sightseeing (83%), visiting visitor centers (58%), and dayhiking (56%).

 * The average visitor group expenditure in and outside the park (including Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Twentynine Palms) was $254. The average per capita expenditure was $78. The median visitor group expenditure (50% of group spent more, 50% spent less) was $115.

 * In regard to use, importance, and quality of park services and facilities, it is important to note the number of visitor groups that responded to each question. The most used information services/facilities by the 454 respondents included park brochure/map (93%) and park newspaper (63%). The information services/facilities that received the highest “extremely important” and “very important” ratings included park brochure/map (86%, N=408) and self-guided trail brochures (83%, N=135). Assistance from visitor center staff (92%, N=164) is the service that received the highest “good” and “very good” quality rating.

 * The most used visitor services/facilities by the 476 respondents included directional road signs-in park (86%), restrooms (85%), and paved roads (81%). The visitor services/facilities that received the highest “extremely important” and “very important” ratings included campgrounds (96%, N=189), trails (92%, N=296), and restrooms (91%, N=391). The service that rceived the highest “good” and “very good” quality rating was trails (87%, N=286).

 * Most visitor groups (93%) rated the overall quality of visitor services at Joshua Tree NP as "very good" or "good." Less than two percent of visitor groups rated the overall quality of visitor services as “poor” or "very poor."


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UNRISE found them again on the road—the Path, as Almayne called it—the great Trading Path from Charles Town to the inner country. All that day and through the early hours of the next they pushed on steadily. The Path had long been an Indian trail; now the traders' caravans travelled it also, the long lines of pack ponies bearing cloths, rum, guns, hatchets, paint and innumerable trinkets to the Catawbas of the middle country, the Cherokees of the Blue Mountains, the Chicasaws who dwelt beyond the mountain barrier; and returning, after months in the far wilderness, laden with bales of pelts. It was becoming a well-travelled road, for year by year the peltry traffic grew and the caravans increased in number; yet it was still, throughout most of its length, but a narrow trail through a vast and unspoiled wilderness.

Jolie's heart sang within her, answering the singing birds, of which the number seemed illimitable. Her eyes, thought Lachlan, as she turned to glance behind her, were brighter than the wild flowers strewn along the way; her's lender form, as she swayed with the motion of her horse, was more graceful than the slim,

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 leaping deer. Yes, she was beautiful, and doubtless it was true that in England many gentlemen were her servitors because of that beauty. But—he smiled a wry smile and, leaning forward, whispered to his mare:

"Tuti, my little Snowbird," he spoke softly into the silken ear, "she is a very lovely lady, this Mistress Jolie, this Lady Sanguilla. But saw you ever such pride, Tuti, such vanity of woman?"

The mare flicked her ear and tossed her small shapely head. Lachlan laughed quietly.

"Be at ease, Tuti, little Snowbird," he murmured. "For a while longer thy master's heart belongs to thee alone."

Nevertheless, he kept his eyes upon the girl. She rode a little in front of him, Meg Pearson by her side. Ugly Meg's horse, like that of Jock Pearson, who rode with Almayne a few paces behind Lachlan, was a blue roan of the big-boned English type; but Jolie's claybank gelding, Selu by name, was of the Indian breed, small, slim, long-maned, long-tailed, smallheaded like a barb. Men said that the wild horse herds, which roamed the forest savannahs on both sides of the Blue Mountains and from which the Indian warriors obtained their mounts, were sprung from the horses that the Prince Soto had abandoned in the wilderness long years before on his ill-fated march to the Great River. There was truth in the tale, for in those days, before in-breeding had produced the mustang type of later years, one could see in many of the Indian horses—Chicasaw horses, as the

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 folk of Charles Town called them—the signs of Andalusian blood.

Selu, so named because he was the colour of corn, was of this Chicasaw breed, and Tuti the Snowbird, though her colour was dark chestnut, might have been Selu's sister. Lachlan had bought them both of a smooth-tongued trader who had brought them down from the nation of the Cherokees into Charles Town; and though Selu was the swifter and the better trained, Lachlan loved Tuti the Snowbird better, because of her playful, impudent tricks and the warm, loving heart within her.

He was content, for the present, with Tuti's company. Mr. O'Sullivan, digging his heels into the ribs of his mule, pushed past and joined Jolie and Meg at the front of the caravan. Behind Lachlan, Almayne, who rode a piebald Chicasaw pony which he called Nunda the Moon-Face, spun yarns with Jock Pearson about great hunts beyond the Blue Mountains and marches and ambushes of the Indian wars. After these again trailed the pack ponies, the pack-horse drivers riding beside them, occasionally cracking their long whips.

Lachlan turned in his saddle from time to time to' watch the trail behind. The great nation of the Cherokees, who held the mountains and the upper foothills, was known to be restive. The Governor's ill-advised policy had incensed the younger braves; and Lachlan knew more than the authorities at Charles Town knew—knew that a Cherokee war was inevitable.

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 But he did not expect it immediately, and the Catawbas, who held the middle country, were friendly to the Charles Town English.

It was from behind that danger might come at any time, although Lachlan did not look for it so soon. Doubtless Stanwicke had already gone to the Governor with news of Jolie's flight. Doubtless Falcon also had the news by now, and probably the forces of the Province were already engaged in the search. But Lachlan and Almayne had planned carefully.

Before leaving Charles Town for Stanwicke Hall they had laid a false scent, which, Lachlan felt fairly sure, would send the searchers off on a blind track. None in Charles Town knew that they were to join Pearson's pack train, and with the deceptive clues that they had prepared in advance, considerable 'time should elapse before the searchers found the right trail.

One possibility bothered Lachlan. It might be known in the town that Mr. O'Sullivan had left with Pearson's train, and in this Lance Falcon might see some significance. Yet this, too, seemed unlikely. Mr. O'Sullivan had told no one of his hastily formed decision to go journeying into the wilderness, and since the pack train had started before daylight, there was a good chance that his presence in it had been unobserved by anyone who knew him.

In the mid-forenoon they met and passed a group of half a dozen Congaree Indians, members of one of the smaller tribes that the warrior nations despised.

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 All were armed with rifles, two carried steel hatchets, while the others bore tomahawks of stone. They were unmounted, for the Congarees were too poor to own horses, and they carried on their backs the bundles of skins that they would barter in Charles Town for taffai rum.

Recognizing Pearson, they stopped and made as if to show the pelts that they carried, hoping to get their rum at once instead of trudging the weary miles to Charles Town; but Jock, knowing the Congarees of old and aware that few skins of value would be found in their bundles, bade them roughly get on and clear the road. It was just after they had passed that Jolie beckoned Lachlan and he rode forward and joined her.

"Your warriors," she said, "Striking Hawk and Little Mink. I have not seen them this day. Where are they?"

"Little Mink is ahead of us, Mam'selle," Lachlan told her, "and Striking Hawk follows in our rear."

"But why?" she asked.

"You are not travelling the safe roads of England," he replied. "Here it is well to know who comes on the Path in front of you and who follows on the Path behind."

Her eyebrows lifted. "Did you know that those Congaree Indians were coming?" she inquired.

Lachlan nodded.

"A logcock called from the woods in front of us some minutes ago," he said. "It was the voice of

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 Little Mink, and it gave me notice that travellers were approaching and that they were not to be feared."

She exclaimed in wonder, while Meg Pearson looked on with a smile and Mr. O'Sullivan swore softly in the ancient language of Ireland which he used when he was much pleased or surprised.

"And, lad?" he asked, "if those poor Congarees had been enemies whom we should have had cause to fear, what then would have been Little Mink's signal to you?"

"He would have called to me, then," Lachlan answered, "in the voice of one of the preying birds or one of the hunting beasts. If the danger were slight he would have used a sparrow hawk's cry. If it were great, but not very great, he would have uttered the scream of the partridge hawk. If the danger were very serious, we should have heard the howl of a lone wolf or the scream of a hunting panther."

Mr. O'Sullivan slapped his thigh with his right hand. "By damn and by Paul!" he cried, his round face glowing like a beet under his white mop of hair. Tis the strategy of the wilderness and 'tis superb material for the book I plan to write about the war fare of the aborigines. Now tell me, lad. . ."

The words died on his lips; he stood open-mouthed, eyes suddenly wide. From Jolie's cheeks the colour drained.

From far behind the pack train the sound came—a long, quavering, wailing scream. It might have come

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 from a woman smitten suddenly with terror; yet it was an utterly inhuman cry, savage and wild and menacing, fiercer even than the chorus of the wolves.

Ugly Meg found her tongue first.

"Speak of the devil" she said grimly, her eyes on Lachlan's face.

Mr. O'Sullivan glanced at Jolie, marked the pallor of her cheeks.

"Perhaps," he suggested hopefully, "that was the real thing we heard—a real panther. What say you, lad?"

Lachlan made no reply. Already Almayne was at his side, speaking rapidly in a low voice, his gray-blue eyes alight. Lachlan nodded, turned swiftly to Jolie.

"Mam'selle," he said, "we will go now—you and Almayne and I. It was the signal agreed upon with Striking Hawk. It means that pursuers from Charles Town are coming. Mr. O'Sullivan, you cannot come with us—your mule could not keep up. Ready, Mam'selle? Then—ride."

Meg Pearson's long arm encircled Jolie's slim shoulders. Leaning forward, she kissed the girl upon the forehead.

"God's blessing on you, my lamb," she whispered. "We'll do what we can for you here."

Nunda the Moon-Face leaped forward as Almayne's heels dug into the piebald's flanks. "Now, lamb!" cried Meg, and struck Selu's haunch with her open palm. They were off, racing straight up the

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 Path, Almayne in the lead, the fringes of his buckskin shirt streaming in the breeze, his long rifle balanced in his right hand.

Teeth clenched, muscles taut, Jolie bent forward over Selu's neck. She saw Almayne glance behind him, saw the frown on his brow, read the thought that was in his mind.

The spurs of her riding boots tickled Selu's sides. The claybank was racing now, and Jolie, head down, boring into the wind, spoke to him coolly, gently:

"Faster, Selu! Faster, my sweet boy! We'll teach Almayne something, you and I."

The gale shrilled in her ears. Above the rush of the wind she could no longer hear the thunder of Tuti's hoofs behind her. The Path was hard here, the grass that grew in it was short, its curves as it wound through the forest were long and sweeping; yet Jolie knew that it would have been madness to race an English horse at such break-neck speed along that trail. But she knew also that the Chicasaw horses were marvellously sure-footed, and ahead of her Nunda was racing, too. Almayne had let the piebald out; he was doing his best, and his best was good. For some minutes he held his lead; then, little by little, the space between them lessened, and Jolie smiled.

As inch by inch she drew abreast of Almayne, as inch by inch she passed him, she turned her face to him so that he could see that smile.

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R. FRANCIS O'SULLIVAN lounged upon his mule and chirped a foolish song. When his mind was serene, he loved the stately stanzas of the austere Greeks. In moments of anxiety, his tongue, without direction from his brain, warbled of lighter themes. Care bestrode him now, for he sang of love:

Jock Pearson, riding on the little man's right, scowled as though he found the tune distasteful; and Meg Pearson riding just behind him, a long-stemmed black pipe clenched in her teeth, suddenly ripped out a most unladylike oath. Mr. O'Sullivan turned in his saddle and beamed upon the lady.

"What ails you, Meg?" he inquired mildly. "Do you swear at my singing? For my part, I swear by it."

"Your singin' be damned," Meg answered harshly. "They're comin'. I hear their hoof-beats."

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 Mr. O'Sullivan's smile lost something of its good-humour.

"I'm disappointed," he said. "I had begun to hope that it was a real panther, after all. Well, our friends have a good start. Hast any plans, Jock?"

The big trader shook his head. "Only to help Almayne all we can without runnin' ourselves in hot water," he answered gruffly.

"Hum," said Mr. O'Sullivan thoughtfully. "And suppose you let me do the talking, Jock of the bear's voice. I've a good lying tongue in my head, and the less you say the less likely you'll get in trouble."

Jock grumbled something in the depths of his beard, but Meg said quickly, "Talk and be damned to you. Nem' mind my cursin', Mr. O'Sullivan. When somethin's goin' to happen I gets a little narvous and forgets my breedin'."

"I'm a little nervous myself, Mistress Pearson," O'Sullivan said coolly, and went back to humming his tune. Ugly Meg glanced at him sharply, threw back her head and laughed.

"Well, what now, my lovely Bird of Paradise?" asked O'Sullivan testily.

"I was only thinkin'," she said, her corrugated sun-tanned face a little redder than usual, "what a comical sight you are, a-settin' on that-ar mule with that-ar sword a-danglin' by your side."

Mr. O'Sullivan seemed not to hear her. He appeared to be deep in thought, but in reality he was listening—listening to the hoof-beats, which he, too,

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 now heard. Yet he would not turn his head. He sat very erect upon his jogging mule, his uncovered white hair gleaming in the sun, his small, bright-blue eyes very blue in his round, smooth, pink countenance. As always, he wore a white shirt, open at the neck, and black knee trousers with silver buckles. One hand, in which he carried a light hickory switch, lay upon the pommel of his saddle; the other rested on the hilt of the slender rapier that he had worn constantly since leaving Charles Town.

Suddenly he seemed to wake from his absorption.

"My sword, eh," he muttered absently. "What's comical about my sword? Why, damme, woman . . ."

A shout interrupted him. A pack-horse driver was pointing with his whip. Around a bend of the Path behind the pack train a group of riders were approaching at a gallop. There were five men in all, a tall man on a big black horse leading them.

O'Sullivan sat on his mule watching them keenly.

"The tall, wide one's Lance Falcon," he said quietly. "Jock, d'ye know the others?"

Pearson shook his head. "Can't tell yit," he answered. "Except the tall one, they ride like sailors."

Mr. O'Sullivan grinned.

"That's what they are," he muttered. "Falcon's brought his own men with him. Probably the Governor was too slow in moving, and he's taken matters into his own hands. Well, well, luck's with us. Come."

He clucked to his mule and, followed by Jock and

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 Mistress Pearson, rode to the rear of the pack train.

"We'll meet 'em here," he said. "Mind, now, I do the parleying."

Lance Falcon, booted and spurred, the long red feather in his hat matching his broad red sash, reined in before the group, his men close behind him.

"Give you good day, gentlemen," he said pleasantly. "It grieves me to see that those who were with you are no longer of your company."

Mr. O'Sullivan blinked for a moment uncomprehendingly. Then he turned to Jock Pearson.

"This man," he said distinctly in his bird-like treble, jerking his thumb towards Falcon, "is of a certainty very drunk."

Falcon started violently, stared at O'Sullivan, then smiled.

"Your pardon, sir," he said, "I am very sober, and I am in haste."

O'Sullivan calmly returned the stare, then spoke again to Jock.

"If he is not drunk," the little man chirped, "then he is a boor. He has not the courtesy to uncover before a lady."

Falcon's hand, resting on his sword-hilt, tightened, but his smile was broader than before. His eyes darted quickly from one to another of the three, and with a flourish he swept off his wide hat with its red—feather.

"A thousand apologies," he cried, bowing low to Meg. "In my haste I took the lady to be a man. I pray you overlook the error."

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 His smile vanished suddenly.

"You are Jock Pearson?" he asked, addressing the trader.

Jock nodded.

"It will be well for you, then, to answer my questions truthfully. I come with the Governor's authority. A young lady, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke, together with Mr. Lachlan McDonald and a hunter named Almayne, joined your party one day's march from Charles Town. Where are they now?"

"May I ask," said Mr. O'Sullivan meekly, "to see the Governor's warrant?"

Falcon whirled on him fiercely.

"And may I ask you, sir," he thundered, "to hold your tongue?"

The small blue eyes in Mr. O'Sullivan's pink face blinked rapidly. He stroked the point of his chin with a chubby white hand.

"I think, sir," he said cheerfully, "that by using my tongue I may save Your Honour considerable fruitless effort. Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that Mistress Jolie Stanwicke and her two companions were riding in our company. Let us suppose that they learned of your approach and decided to give you the slip. Let us suppose, finally, that they left us forthwith, not even pausing to say good-bye. A few miles distant, I am informed, are the great swamps and canebrakes of the Santee. By now, if all I have supposed is true, Mistress Jolie Stanwicke and her friends are in the Santee canebrakes. And by

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 now I think it has dawned upon you, my black-browed, evil-eyed fellow, that you have played the part of a most lamentable ass."

Falcon's full-blooded, sun-tanned face had turned a purple-red; under his moustache his white teeth gleamed; there was murder in his eyes. But Mr. O'Sullivan continued, unabashed:

"Gentle and courteous sir," he said, in tones of utmost humility, "by your gracious leave, I will put the case before you. I'm thinking you found the Governor a little slow to move, so you, being a man of action, took matters into your own hands. With your own men you galloped out of Charles Town to run Mistress Jolie Stanwicke down. There was a thing or two that you forgot, I'm thinking. You and your men are seamen, and seamen are grand upon the sea. But what I don't understand, Your Honour, and what you don't understand, Your Honour, is this: How in hell are your seamen going to track Mistress Jolie Stanwicke in the canebrakes of the Santee, and she in the charge of James Almayne, the best woodsman in Carolina?"

Mr. O'Sullivan smiled a beatific smile, the smile of a pink-cheeked, snowy-haired cherub.

"Faith, most superfluous sir," he said, "we were worried a while ago, thinking that surely you had with you some man of the woods who could follow a wilderness trail and maybe match wits with Almayne. Yes, my thick-skulled Captain, you gave me a scare, for I had understood that you had a brain. But my

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 mind's easy now and there's a singing in my heart. Good day, sir, and may the snakes of the Santee canebrakes sharpen their fangs on your hide."

For some moments Captain Falcon sat his horse in silence. He sat frowning, his arms folded, his head sunk forward a little, his eyes fixed upon Mr. O'Sullivan. The veins bulged in his forehead, yet his voice was calm.

"I take it," he said, "that you are Mr. Francis O'Sullivan, the pedagogue."

Mr. O'Sullivan bowed. "The same, sir," he replied sweetly. "And you are Captain Lance Falcon, the pirate, who will some day be hanged."

A slow smile replaced Falcon's frown. "Mr. O'Sullivan," said he, "you have given me much pleasure."

Again the little man on the mule inclined his head. "Sure and 'twould be discourteous," he replied, "not to return the compliment. It has been a real joy to me to learn that mine enemy is an ass."

Falcon's smile broadened. "Most of what you have said," he remarked quietly, "is true. Most true of all is it that I proved myself foolish when I lost patience with the Governor and set out on this quest without a woodsman to guide me. I had hoped to overtake my quarry on the road and bag the bird before it could escape into the woods. Yet I am not quite the simpleton that you have supposed me, Mr. O'Sullivan. The Governor's men are but an hour or two behind me, and when they come up we shall try to match wits with your friend Almayne."

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