Page:Scribner's Monthly, Volume 12 (May–October 1876).djvu/24

18 Now it was Harrod's turn to explain that this was impossible. He confessed to the discovery of the tupelo leaves. Inez had been on the log. But she had not fallen, he said, lying stoutly. There was no such wreck of broken branches as her fall would have made. And before he was half done, the suggestion had been enough. Two of the men were in the water. It was deep, alas! it was over their heads. But the men had no fear. They went under again and again; they followed the stream down its sluggish current. So far as their determined guess was worth anything, Inez's body was not there. In the meanwhile every man of them had his theory. The water terror held to Eunice,—though she said nothing of it. The men believed generally, that those infernal Apaches had been on their trail ever since they left the Fort; that they wanted perhaps to regain White Hawk, or perhaps thought they would take another prisoner in her place. This was the first chance that had been open to them, and they had pounced here. This was the theory which they freely communicated to each other and to Ransom. To Eunice, in person, when she spoke to one or another, in the hurried preparations for a search, they kept up a steady and senseless lie, such as it is the custom of ignorant men to utter to women whom they would encourage. The girl had missed the turn by the bay trees; or she had gone up the stream looking for posies. It would not be fifteen minutes before they had her "back to camp" again. Such were the honeyed words with which they hoped to re-assure the agonized woman, even while they charged their rifles, or fastened tighter their moccasins as if for war. Of course she was not deceived for an instant. For herself, while they would let her stay by the water-side, she was pressing through one and another quagmire to the edge of the cove in different places. But at last, as his several little parties of quest arranged themselves, Harrod compelled her to return. As she turned up from the stream one of the negroes came up to her, wet from the water. He gave her the little porcelain cup, which had lodged on a tangle of sedge just below the cotton-wood tree. Strange that no one should have noticed it before!

Every instant, thus far, as the reader knows, had been wasted time. Perhaps it was no one's fault,—nay, certainly it was no one's fault,—for every one had "done the best his circumstance allowed." For all that, it had been all wasted time. Had Harrod fired a rifle the moment he first missed Inez, with half an hour of daylight still, and with the certainty that she would have heard the shot, and could have seen her way toward him, all would have been well. But Harrod had, and should have had, the terror lest he should alarm Eunice unduly—and in trying to save her, he really lost his object. At the stream again, minutes of daylight passed quicker than any one could believe, in this scanning of the trail and plunging into the water. The shouts—even the united shouts of the party—did not tell on the night air as the sharp crack of a rifle would have done. Worst of all, in losing daylight, they were losing everything, and this, when it was too late, Harrod felt only too well.

Considering what he knew and the impressions he was under, his dispositions, which were prompt, were well planned and soldierly. It is but fair to say this, though they were, in fact, wholly wrong. Yielding to the belief, for which he had only too good reason, that the Apaches were on the trail, and had made a push to secure their captive again, Harrod bade the best soldiers of his little party join him for a hasty dash back on the great trail, in the hope that traces of them might be found, and that they could be overtaken, even now, before it was wholly dark. One thing was certain, that if they had pounced on their victim, they had turned promptly. They had not been seen nor suspected at the camp itself, by their trail.

Silently, and without Eunice's knowledge, he bade Richards work southward, and Harry, the negro boy who had brought in the water-bottle, work northward along the edges of the bayou. If there were—anything—there, they must find it, so long as light lasted. And they were to be in no haste to return. "Do not let me see you before midnight. The moon will be up by and by. Stay while you can see the hand before, your face."

He should have given rifles to both of them. Richards, in fact, took his, but the, negro, Harry, as was supposed in the fond theory of those times, had never carried a gun, and he went with no weapon of sound but his jolly "haw-haw-haw" and his vigorous call. Once more here was a mistake. Harry's rifle-shot, had he had any rifle to fire, would have brought Inez in even then.

Meanwhile Ransom led Eunice back to the camp-fire; and when his arrangements by the bayou were made, Harrod hastily