THE BATTLE OF THE RACCOON
Mrs. Atchison met the returning adventurers at the door.
"Your conduct, Jerry Dangerfield, is beyond words!" she exclaimed, seizing the girl's hands. "And so you really locked that horrid person in a real jail! Well, we shan't miss him! We have been kept up all night by the arrival here of other prisoners—brought in like parcels from the grocer's."
"More prisoners!" shouted Ardmore.
"Dragged here at an unearthly hour of the morning, and flung into the most impossible places by your soldiers! You can hear them yelling without much trouble from the drawing-room, and we had to give up breakfast because the racket they are making was so annoying."
The captain of the battery whose guns frowned upon the terraces came up and saluted.
"Mr. Ardmore," he said, "I have been trying for several hours to see Governor Dangerfield, but this lady tells me that he has left Ardsley."
"That is quite true; the governor was called away last night on official business, and he will not return for an hour or two. You will kindly state your business to me."
The captain was peevish from loss of sleep, and by no means certain that he cared to transact business with Mr. Ardmore. He glanced at Miss Dangerfield, whom he had met often at Raleigh, and the governor's daughter met the situation promptly.
"Captain Webb, what prisoners have you taken, and why are they not gagged to prevent this hideous noise?"
Seemingly from beneath the ample porte-cochère, where this colloquy occurred, rose yells, groans and curses, and the sound of thumps, as of the impact of human bodies against remote subterranean doors.
"They're trying to get loose, Miss Dangerfield, and they refuse to stay tied. The fiercest row is from the fellows we chucked into the coal bins."
"It's excellent anthracite, the best I can buy; they ought to be glad it isn't soft coal," replied Ardmore defensively. "Who are they?"
"They're newspaper men, and they're most terribly enraged," answered Captain Webb. "We picked them up one at a time in different places on the estate. They say they're down here looking for Governor Dangerfield."
Collins grinned his delight.
"Oh, perfect hour!" he sang. "We'll keep them until they promise to be good and print what we tell them. The little squeaky voice you hear occasionally—hark!—that's Peck, of the Consolidated Press. He scooped me once on a lynching, and here is where I get even with him."
"You have done well, Captain Webb," said Jerry with dignity, "and I shall urge your promotion upon papa at the earliest moment possible. Are these newspaper gentlemen your only prisoners?"
"No; we gathered up two other parties, and one of them is in the servants' laundry; the other, a middle-aged person, I lodged in the tower, where he can enjoy the scenery."
He pointed to the tower, from which the flag of North Carolina waved gently in the morning breeze.
"The prisoner up there made an awful rumpus. He declares he will ruin the whole state of North Carolina for this. Here is his card, which, in a comparatively lucid interval, he gave me to hand you at the earliest possible moment," and Captain Webb placed a visiting card in Ardmore's hands.
A smile struggled for possession of Ardmore's countenance, but he regained control of himself promptly, and his face grew severe.
He gave the card to Jerry, who handed it to Mrs. Atchison, and that lady laughed merrily.
"Your prisoner, Captain Webb, is George P. Billings, secretary of the Bronx Loan and Trust Company of New York. What was he doing when you seized him?" demanded Ardmore.
"He was chasing the gentleman who's resting on the anthracite. He chased him and chased him, around a tea-house out here somewhere on the place; and finally this person in the coal hole fell, and they both rolled over together. The gentleman in the coal hole declares that he's Foster, the state treasurer of North Carolina, but his face got so scratched on the shrubbery that he doesn't look in the least like Mr. Foster."
"I have sent him witch hazel and court plaster, and we can get a doctor for his wounds, if necessary," said Mrs. Atchison.
A sergeant rushed up in hot haste with a demand from Colonel Daubenspeck, of the North Carolina First, to know when Governor Dangerfield could be seen.
"The South Carolina pickets have been withdrawn, and our officers want orders from the governor in person," said the messenger.
"Then they shall have orders!" roared Ardmore. "If our men dare abandon their outposts—"
He turned and rode furiously toward the border, and in his rage he had traversed a thousand yards before he saw that Jerry was close behind him. As they passed the red bungalow the crack of scattering rifle-shots reached them.
"Go back! Go back! The war's begun!" cried Ardmore; but, though he quickened the pace of his horse, Jerry clung to his side.
"If there's war, and I hope there is, I shall not shrink from the firing line, Mr. Ardmore."
As they dashed into their own lines they came upon the regimental officers, seated in comfortable chairs from the red bungalow, calmly engaged in a game of cards.
"Great God, men!" blurted Ardmore, "why do you sit here when the state's honor is threatened? Where was that firing?"
"You seem rather placid, gentlemen, to say the least," added Jerry, coldly bowing to the officers, who had risen at her approach. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, that is the flag of South Carolina I see flaunted in yonder field." And she pointed with a gauntleted hand to a palmetto flag beyond the creek.
"It is, Miss Dangerfield," replied the colonel politely, "and you can see their pickets occasionally, but they have been drawn back from the creek, and I apprehend no immediate advance."
"No advance! Who are we to wait for them to offer battle? Who are we to play bridge and wait upon the pleasure of a cowardly enemy?" and Jerry gazed upon the furious Ardmore with admiration, as he roared at the officers, who stood holding their caps deferentially before the daughter of their commander-in-chief. Ardmore, it was clear, they did not take very seriously, a fact which she inwardly resented.
"I don't think it would be quite fair," said the colonel mildly, "to force issues to-day."
"Not force issues!" yelled Ardmore. "With your brave sons of our Old North State, not force battle! In the name of the constitution, I ask you, why not?"
"For the reason," replied the colonel, "that the South Carolina troops ate heavily of green apples last night in an orchard over there by their camp, and they have barely enough men to maintain their pickets this morning. These, you can see, they have withdrawn a considerable distance from the creek."
"Then tell me why they have been firing upon our lines? Why have they been permitted to shoot at our helpless and unresisting men if they are not ready for war?"
"They were not shooting at our men, Mr. Ardmore. Their pickets are very tired from loss of sleep, and they were trying to keep awake by shooting at a buzzard that hung over a field yonder, where there is, our scouts inform us, a dead calf lying in one of your pastures."
"They shall have better meat! Buzzards shall eat the whole state of South Carolina before night! Colonel, I order you to prepare at once to move your troops across that creek."
The colonel hesitated.
"I regret to say, sir, that we have no pontoons!"
"Pontoons! Pontoons! What, by the shade of Napoleon, do you want with pontoons when you have legs? Again, sir, I order you to advance your men!"
It was at this crisis that Jerry lifted her chin a trifle and calmly addressed the reluctant colonel.
"Colonel Daubenspeck, in my father's name, I order you to throw your troops across the Raccoon!"
A moment later the clear notes of the bugle rose above the splash and bubble of the creek. There was no opportunity for a grand onward sweep; it must be a scramble for the southern shore over the rocks and fallen timber in that mad torrent.
And the Raccoon is a stream from all time dedicated to noble uses and destined to hold mighty kingdoms in leash. One might well hesitate before crossing this wayward Rubicon. The Mississippi is merely an excuse for appropriations, the Potomac the sporting ground of congressmen and shad. No other known stream is so happily calculated as the foamy Raccoon to delight at once the gods of battle and the gentle sons of song. It marks one of those impatient flings of nature in which, bored with creating orderly, broadly-flowing streams, or varying the landscape with quiet woodlands or meadows, she abandons herself for a moment to madness and, shaking water and rock together as in a dice-box, splashes them out with joyous laughter.
Jerry Dangerfield, seated upon her horse on a slight rise under a clump of trees a little way back from the stream, coolly munched a cracker and sipped coffee from a tincup. Ardmore, again calm, now that Daubenspeck had been spurred to action, smoked his pipe and watched the army prepare to advance.
Beyond the creek, and somewhat removed from it on the South Carolina side, a rifle cracked, and far against the blue arch a huge, black, languorous object, rising with a last supreme effort, as though to claim refuge of heaven, fell clawing at space with sprawling wings, then collapsed and pitched earthward until the trees on the farther shore hid it from sight. A feeble cheer rose in the distance.
"They sound pretty tame over there," remarked Ardmore critically. "There's no ginger in that cheer."
"The ginger," suggested Colonel Daubenspeck ironically, "is probably all in their stomachs."
One gun from the battery was brought down and placed on a slight eminence to support the advance, for which all was now in readiness. The bugle sang again, and the men of one company sprang forward and began leaping from rock to rock, silently, steadily moving upon the farther shore. Here and there some brown khaki-clad figure slipped and splashed into the stream with a wild confusion of brown leggings; but on they went intrepidly. The captain, leading his men through the torrent, was first to gain the southern shore. He waved his sword, and with a shout his men clambered up the bank and formed in neat alignment. This was hardly accomplished before a uniformed figure dashed from a neighboring blackberry thicket and waved a white handkerchief. He bore something in his hand, which to Ardmore's straining vision seemed to be a small wicker basket.
"It's a flag of truce!" exclaimed Colonel Daubenspeck, and a sigh that expressed incontestable relief broke from that officer.
"The cowards!" cried Ardmore. "Does that mean they won't fight?"
"It means that hostilities must cease until we have permitted the bearer of the flag to carry his message into our lines."
The man with the basket was already crossing the creek in charge of a corporal.
"I have read somewhere about being careful of the Greeks bearing gifts," said Jerry. "There may be something annoying in that basket."
The bearer of the basket gained the North Carolina shore and strode rapidly toward Miss Dangerfield, Ardmore and Colonel Daubenspeck. He handed the trifle of a basket to the colonel, who gazed upon its contents for a moment with unspeakable rage. The color mounted in his neck almost to the point of apoplexy, and his voice bellowed forth an oath so bleak, so fraught with peril to the human race, that Jerry shuddered and turned away her head as from a blast of flame. The colonel cast the wicker basket from him with a force that nearly tore him from his saddle. It struck against a tree, spilling upon the earth six small, hard, bright green apples.
"My letter," said the emissary soberly, "is for Mr. Thomas Ardmore, and, unless I am mistaken, you are that gentleman."
Ardmore seized a long envelope which the man extended, tore it open, and read:
Thomas Ardmore, Esq.,
Acting Governor of North Carolina,
In the Field:
SIR—As I understand the present unhappy differences between the states of North and South Carolina, they are due to a reluctance on the part of the governor of North Carolina to take steps toward bringing to proper punishment in North Carolina an outlaw named Appleweight. I have the honor to inform you that that person is now in jail at Kildare, Dilwell County, North Carolina, properly guarded by men who will not flinch. If necessary I will support them with every South Carolinian able to bear arms. This being the case, a casus belli no longer exists, and to prevent the effusion of blood I beg you to cease your hostile demonstrations on our frontier.
Our men seized a few prisoners during the night, and I am willing to meet you to arrange an exchange on the terms proper in such cases.
I am, sir, your obedient servant,
HENRY MAINE GRISWOLD,
For the Governor of South Carolina.
"The nerve of it! The sublime cheek of it!" exclaimed Ardmore, though the sight of Griswold's well-known handwriting had shaken him for the moment.
"As a bluffer your little friend is quite a wonder," was Jerry's only comment when she had read the letter.
Ardmore promptly wrote on the back of Griswold's letter this reply:
Henry Maine Griswold, Esq.,
Assistant Professor of Admiralty,
Camp Buzzard, S. C.:
SIR—Appleweight is under strong guard in the jail at Turner Court House, Mingo County, South Carolina. I shall take pleasure in meeting you at Ardsley at five o'clock this afternoon for the proposed exchange of prisoners. To satisfy your curiosity the man Appleweight will be produced there for your observation and identification.
I have the honor, sir, to remain, with high regard and admiration, your obliged and obedient servant,
THOMAS ARDMORE,
Acting Governor of North Carolina.
"Putting 'professor' on that will make him crazy," remarked Ardmore to Jerry.
The messenger departed, but recrossed the Raccoon shortly with a formal note agreeing to an armistice until after the meeting proposed at Ardsley.
"Colonel Daubenspeck, you may withdraw your men and go into camp until further orders," said Jerry, and the notes of the bugle singing the recall rose sweetly upon the air.
"By George," said Ardmore, as he and Jerry rode away, "we'll throw it into old Grissy in a way that will jar the professor. But when it comes to the exchange of prisoners, I must tell the boys to bring up that chap I locked in the corn-crib. I had clean forgotten him."
"I don't think you mentioned him, Mr. Ardmore, but I suppose he's one of the Appleweight ruffians."
"Undoubtedly," replied Ardmore, whose spirits had never been higher, "though the fellow was not without his pleasant humor. He insisted with great vigor that he is the governor of South Carolina."
"I wonder"—and Jerry spoke wistfully—"I wonder where papa is!"
"Well, he's not in the corn-crib; be sure of that."
"Papa looks every inch the statesman," replied Jerry proudly, "and in his frock-coat no one could ever mistake him for other than the patriot he is.”