``Surely, Colonel, you would not invade the house of an unprotected female.''
The Colonel, evidently with a great effort, throttled his wrath for the moment.His new tone was apologetic but firm.
``I regret to have to do so, ma'am,'' said he, ``but both sexes are equal before the law.''
``The law!'' repeated the widow, seemingly tickled at the word.She smiled indulgently at the Colonel.
``What a pity, Mr.Tipton, that the law compels you to arrest such a good friend of yours as Colonel Sevier.
What self-sacrifice, Colonel Tipton! What nobility!''
There was a second titter behind him, whereat he swung round quickly, and the crimson veins in his face looked as if they must burst.He saw me with my hand over my mouth.
``You warned him, damn you!'' he shouted, and turning again leaped to the porch and tried to squeeze past the widow into the house.
``How dare you, sir?'' she shrieked, giving him a vigorous push backwards.The four of us, his three men and myself, laughed outright.Tipton's rage leaped its bounds.He returned to the attack again and again, and yet at the crucial moment his courage would fail him and he would let the widow thrust him back.Suddenly Ibecame aware that there were two new spectators of this comedy.I started and looked again, and was near to crying out at sight of one of them.The others did cry out, but Tipton paid no heed.
Ten years had made his figure more portly, but I knew at once the man in the well-fitting hunting shirt, with the long hair flowing to his shoulders, with the keen, dark face and courtly bearing and humorous eyes.Yes, humorous even now, for he stood, smiling at this comedy played by his enemy, unmindful of his peril.The widow saw him before Tipton did, so intent was he on the struggle.
``Enough!'' she cried, ``enough, John Tipton!''
Tipton drew back involuntarily, and a smile broadened on the widow's face.``Shame on you for doubting a lady's word! Allow me to present to you--Colonel Sevier.''
Tipton turned, stared as a man might who sees a ghost, and broke into such profanity as I have seldom heard.
``By the eternal God, John Sevier,'' he shouted, ``I'll hang you to the nearest tree!''
Colonel Sevier merely made a little ironical bow and looked at the gentleman beside him.
``I have surrendered to Colonel Love,'' he said.
Tipton snatched from his belt the pistol which he might have used on me, and there flashed through my head the thought that some powder might yet be held in its pan.
We cried out, all of us, his men, the widow, and myself,--all save Sevier, who stood quietly, smiling.Suddenly, while we waited for murder, a tall figure shot out of the door past the widow, the pistol flew out of Tipton's hand, and Tipton swung about with something like a bellow, to face Mr.Nicholas Temple.
Well I knew him! And oddly enough at that time Riddle's words of long ago came to me, ``God help the woman you love or the man you fight.'' How shall Idescribe him? He was thin even to seeming frailness,--yet it was the frailness of the race-horse.The golden hair, sun-tanned, awry across his forehead, the face the same thin and finely cut face of the boy.The gray eyes held an anger that did not blaze; it was far more dangerous than that.Colonel John Tipton looked, and as I live he recoiled.
``If you touch him, I'll kill you,'' said Mr.Temple.
Nor did he say it angrily.I marked for the first time that he held a pistol in his slim fingers.What Tipton might have done when he swung to his new bearings is mere conjecture, for Colonel Sevier himself stepped up on the porch, laid his hand on Temple's arm, and spoke to him in a low tone.What he said we didn't hear.The astonishing thing was that neither of them for the moment paid any attention to the infuriated man beside them.Isaw Nick's expression change.He smiled,--the smile the landlord had described, the smile that made men and women willing to die for him.After that Colonel Sevier stooped down and picked up the pistol from the floor of the porch and handed it with a bow to Tipton, butt first.
Tipton took it, seemingly without knowing why, and at that instant a negro boy came around the house, leading a horse.Sevier mounted it without a protest from any one.
``I am ready to go with you, gentlemen,'' he said.
Colonel Tipton slipped his pistol back into his belt, stepped down from the porch, and leaped into his saddle, and he and his men rode off into the stump-lined alley in the forest that was called a road.Nick stood beside the widow, staring after them until they had disappeared.
``My horse, boy!'' he shouted to the gaping negro, who vanished on the errand.
``What will you do, Mr.Temple?'' asked the widow.
``Rescue him, ma'am,'' cried Nick, beginning to pace up and down.``I'll ride to Turner's.Cozby and Evans are there, and before night we shall have made Jonesboro too hot to hold Tipton and his cutthroats.''
``La, Mr.Temple,'' said the widow, with unfeigned admiration, ``I never saw the like of you.But I know John Tipton, and he'll have Colonel Sevier started for North Carolina before our boys can get to Jonesboro.''
``Then we'll follow,'' says Nick, beginning to pace again.Suddenly, at a cry from the widow, he stopped and stared at me, a light in his eye like a point of steel.
His hand slipped to his waist.
``A spy,'' he said, and turned and smiled at the lady, who was watching him with a kind of fascination; ``but damnably cool,'' he continued, looking at me.``I wonder if he thinks to outride me on that beast? Look you, sir,'' he cried, as Mrs.Brown's negro came back struggling with a deep-ribbed, high-crested chestnut that was making half circles on his hind legs, ``I'll give you to the edge of the woods, and lay you a six-forty against a pair of moccasins that you never get back to Tipton.''
``God forbid that I ever do,'' I answered fervently.
``What,'' he exclaimed, ``and you here with him on this sneak's errand!''