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March, Jan, Aunt Chloe, and several of the neighbors from across the river had assembled to see them off, and many and hearty were the good wishes offered for a pleasant journey and a safe return in the fall. "Good-bye, Misto Mark an' Missy Rufe," said Aunt Chloe; "trus' in de Lo'd while you's young, an' he ain't gwine fo'git yo' in yo' ole age."
Hale had never seen a more easy, graceful, daring figure on horseback, and in the bright light he could make out the reckless face of the man who had been the first to flash his pistol in town that day Bad Rufe Tolliver.
"Follow me; I want Yellow Rufe alive!" cried Dolores, leaving the wheel and springing to the bulwarks. Instinctively Peters stepped to the wheel, and as he passed his employer he leaned to whisper in his ear: "Let them once leave these decks, sir, and we'll up hellum and away!"
Rufe had told the jailer, his one friend through whom he had kept in constant communication with the Tollivers, how on the night after the shooting of Mockaby, when he lay down to sleep high on the mountain side and under some rhododendron bushes, a flock of little birds flew in on him like a gust of rain and perched over and around him, twittering at him until he had to get up and pace the woods, and how, throughout the next day, when he sat in the sun planning his escape, those birds would sweep chattering over his head and sweep chattering back again, and in that mood of despair he had said once, and only once: "Somehow I knowed this time my name was Dennis" a phrase of evil prophecy he had picked up outside the hills.
Again we had met the far-sighted cunning of Hawk Rufe, in a trap baited by a master, and had slipped from under it by no skill of ours. Had we missed those last words of Patsy, flung back like an angry taunt, I should have believed the tale about my brother and hurried north, if all the cattle in the Hills had gone to the devil.
Yellow Rufe and his followers, runaways from the pirates' camp, maroons banished from their homes for crimes against their fellows, rebellious slaves, and what not, splashed through the shallow water and stormed the Feu Follette by way of the jib-boom and head-rigging, while Sancho urged his boats on toward the vessel's quarters.
Outside Hale still waited, and as his eyes turned from the Tollivers to the Falins, seven of the faces among them came back to him with startling distinctness, and his mind went back to the opening trouble in the county-seat over the Kentucky line, years before when eight men held one another at the points of their pistols. One face was missing, and that face belonged to Rufe Tolliver.
Rufe had heard of these old scaffolds, but he had never known of the existence of this one down by the "lick." He sprang up, a flush of excitement contending with the dirt on his countenance; he set his squirrel teeth resolutely together; he applied his sturdy fingers and his nimble legs to the bark of the tree, and up he went like a cat.
For ten minutes the two talked in whispers Rufe bent forward with one elbow on the withers of his horse but lifting his eyes every now and then to the stranger seated in the porch and then the horseman turned with an oath and galloped into the darkness whence he came, while the Red Fox slouched back to the porch and dropped silently into his seat. "Who was that?" asked Hale. "Bad Rufe Tolliver."
He knew that she was to leave on the early train, that there would be no chance to speak with her alone in the morning. A faint streak of misty light shone through the window. She watched it deepen to rose. By and by Rachel came in to make the fire. She tiptoed to the bed and peeped through the curtains. "You 'wake, Miss Rufe? Dey's been terrible goings on in town last night!
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