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Updated: June 2, 2025
But we were in no mood for the picturesque. A few minutes brought us into the Blackberry hollow, which debouches into Redman's Dell. Here, the road being both steep and rugged, our speed abated. The precipitous banks shut out the sunlight, except at noon, and the road through this defile, overhung by towering trees and rocks, was even now in solemn shadow.
In this mood he paced, without minding in what direction he went, under those great rows of timber which over-arch the pathway leading toward Redman's Dell the path that he and Mark Wylder had trod in that misty moonlight walk on which I had seen them set out together.
Turning up the dark road at Redman's Dell, the gallant captain passed the old mill, and, all being quiet up and down the road, he halted under the lordly shadow of a clump of chestnuts, and opened and read the letter he had just taken charge of. It contained only these words: 'Wednesday. 'On Friday night, next, at half-past twelve. This he read twice or thrice, pausing between whiles.
His old friend, Sir Francis Seddley, summoned by the telegraph, was now gliding from London along the rails for Dollington station; but another a pale courier on the sightless coursers of the air, was speeding with a different message to Captain Stanley Lake, in the small and sombre drawing-room in Redman's Dell.
"You know that good kind man Jacob Buckley, who lives up in Redman's Gap with his sick brother Daniel, who is so fond of me; well, I went up to the Gap this afternoon, when I had done cleaning up, to sit with the sick brother for a little. I found him in great anxiety and very ill.
He looked round like a man newly awakened, and up among the great boughs and interlacing foliage of the noble trees, and the child made him two courtesies, and departed towards Redman's Farm. Lake sauntered back slowly toward the Hall. On his way, a rustic seat under the shadow invited him, and he sat down, drawing Rachel's letter from his pocket. What a genius they have for teasing!
Some raced headlong down the main road, seeking shelter under the muzzles of Holcroft's guns; some sought refuge in the houses; others raced to the landing only to find the boats no longer there. Not a few, hot pressed by Brant's avenging Mohawks, threw themselves over the precipice, preferring suicide to the redman's tomahawk.
A spring was close at hand. Alf tore off the scarf that he wore round his throat in bushman fashion, soaked it in the water, and mopped the redman's brow. Still there was no sign of returning senses, and the lad was now grievously distressed at his enemy's disaster. He would have been rejoiced to have vanquished the man, had the adventure terminated in an unavoidable encounter.
For he is a Mexican by birth; when a boy made prisoner by the Comanches, and long since matriculated into the mysteries of the redman's life its cunning, as its cruelties. Now a man, he is one of the chiefs of the tribe, in authority only less than the Horned Lizard himself, but equal to the latter in all the cruel instincts that distinguish the savage.
The envelope bore the London postmark. Then he took out his cigar case, selected a promising weed, and wrapping the laconic note prettily round one of his scented matches, lighted it, and the note flamed pale in the daylight, and dropped still blazing, at the root of the old tree he stood by, and sent up a little curl of blue smoke an incense to the demon of the wood and turned in a minute more into a black film, overrun by a hundred creeping sparkles; and having completed his mysterious incremation, he, with his yellow eyes, made a stolen glance around, and lighting his cigar, glided gracefully up the steep road, under the solemn canopy of old timber, to the sound of the moaning stream below, and the rustle of withered leaves about him, toward Redman's Farm.
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