United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
Dusk was falling. Jack waited for a move from Solomon. In a few
minutes he heard a stir in the brush. Then he could dimly see the face
of his friend beyond the spider's web.
"Come on, my son," the latter whispered. With a feeling of real
regret, Jack rent the veil of the spider and came out of his
hiding-place. He brushed the silken threads from his hair and brow as
he whispered:
"That old spider saved me--good luck to him!"
"We'll keep clus together," Solomon whispered. "We got to push right
on an' work 'round 'em. If any one gits in our way, he'll have to
change worlds sudden, that's all. We mus' git to them hosses 'fore
midnight."
Darkness had fallen, but the moon was rising when they set out.
Solomon led the way, with that long, loose stride of his. Their
moccasined feet were about as noiseless as a cat's. On and on they
went until Solomon stopped suddenly and stood listening and peering
into the dark bush beyond. Jack could hear and see nothing. Solomon
turned and took a new direction without a word and moving with the
stealth of a hunted Indian. Jack followed closely. Soon they were
sinking to their knees in a mossy tamarack swamp, but a few minutes of
hard travel brought them to the shore of a pond.
"Wait here till I git the canoe," Solomon whispered.
The latter crept into a thicket and soon Jack could hear him cautiously
shoving his canoe into the water. A little later the young man sat in
the middle of the shell of birch bark while Solomon knelt in its stern
with his paddle. Silently he pushed through the lilied margin of the
pond into clear water. The moon was hidden behind the woods. The
still surface of the pond was now a glossy, dark plane between two
starry deeps--one above, the other beneath. In the shadow of the
forest, near the far shore, Solomon stopped and lifted his voice in the
long, weird cry of the great bush owl. This he repeated three times,
when there came an answer out of the woods.
"That's a warnin' fer ol' Joe Thrasher," Solomon whispered. "He'll go
out an' wake up the folks on his road an' start 'em movin'."
They landed and Solomon hid his canoe in a thicket.
"Now we kin skitter right long, but I tell ye we got purty clus to 'em
back thar."
"How did you know it?"
"Got a whiff o' smoke. They was strung out from the pond landing over
'crost the trail. They didn't cover the swamp. Must 'a' had a fire
for tea early in the evenin'. Wherever they's an Englishman, thar's
got to be tea."
Before midnight they reached Remsen's barn and about two o'clock
entered the camp on lathering horses. As they dismounted, looking back
from the heights of Brooklyn toward the southeast, they could see a
great light from many fires, the flames of which were leaping into the
sky.
"Guess the farmers have set their wheat stacks afire," said Solomon.
"They're all scairt an' started fer town."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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