Eveline Mandeville The Horse Thief Rival

CHAPTER XV.

BILL AND DICK--HORSE-​STEAL­ING--AN­TI-​THIEF LEAGUE.

On leav­ing the cave, af­ter the in­ter­view with Eve­line, Bill and Dick re­sort­ed to a place where they were in the habit of hold­ing con­sul­ta­tions on their own af­fairs, ar­rived at which, Bill pro­duced the note which Eve­line gave him, from his pock­et, and at once pe­rused it. A dark scowl gath­ered on his face as he read, and when he had mas­tered the doc­ument, an ex­cla­ma­tion broke from his lips to this ef­fect:

“In­fer­nal vil­lain and cow­ard!”

“What now?” queried Dick, not a lit­tle sur­prised at his com­pan­ion's vi­olent lan­guage.

“What do you think?”

“That's a pret­ty ques­tion to ask! as if I could know any­thing con­tained in that pa­per, when I've nev­er seen it ex­cept in your hand.”

“This ras­cal, for whom we have been work­ing these three months, wants to get clear of us, so soon as he has ob­tained from us all the aid he de­sires.”

“What, _Duf­fel_?”

“Yes, Duf­fel.”

Dick stood a mo­ment, as if in doubt whether to be­lieve Bill's words or not; at length he in­quired:

“How do you know this?”

“Why, here it is, in his own hand-​writ­ing.”

That he wants to be­tray us?"

“No--yes--that is, he wants to get us out of the way!”

“How?”

“By fair means or foul; he don't seem to care which. But I will read his words,” and Bill read the bil­let to his ac­com­plice.

“So he's afeard of us!” com­ment­ed Dick. “Well, it ain't much won­der that he is. Ef I had as many crimes to ac­count for as he has, and oth­ers knew of my guilt, I'd be skeered, too.”

“See here, Dick, what the d----l does he mean by want­ing us to hur­ry off that af­fair with Du­val?”

“Fool! can't you see noth­in'? Why, he wants us to kill a mem­ber of the Or­der, and then have us shot as traitors!”

“Egad! plain enough, tru­ly. Well, Mr. Du­val, you may pass this time; we'll pitch in­to high­er game. What do you say, Dick?”

“Say? Why, that this friend of ours will have to git up mighty air­ly in the mornin', ef he finds us nap­pin'.”

“Let me tell you, it is no very pleas­ant fix, this, that we are in. Duf­fel fears we will be­tray him, and is re­solved to pre­vent it by hav­ing us killed. That's the 'long and short' of the mat­ter; and he has fifty men at his back, all sworn to obey his or­ders. He can ac­cuse us of trea­son, try, con­demn, and have us shot, in the short­est pos­si­ble time. Now, how are we to help our­selves?”

“Well, we can't be tried till the next reg­ular meet­ing of the League, and it is more than two weeks till that time. We can watch his move­ments, and, ef need be, kill him or give him over in­to the hands of the law on a charge of mur­der.”

“Yes, give him over to jus­tice, and who is to prove him guilty, un­less it be our­selves, and then we would have the whole League down up­on us in quick time! a pret­ty way, in­deed, to get rid of him. True, we might kill him at our next meet­ing in the 'swamp' and then be hung for it, which would be a poor rec­om­pense for our trou­ble and bad pay for tak­ing the life of such a das­tard. No, I am for re­venge--a re­venge that will thwart his de­signs, and save us from his pow­er at the same time.”

“But how are you go­ing to ac­com­plish so much? that's the rub.”

“See here; on the back of this note, Miss Man­dev­ille writes a few lines, ask­ing our aid, and promis­ing a re­ward for any ser­vice we may be will­ing and able to ren­der her. My plan is this: To take the la­dy from the cave, which will be the deep­est blow we can strike the vil­lain, and then--”

“Well that'll do for the present. I want to know, be­fore you go any fur­ther, how you are to git the gal out with­out the _key_, which, I take it, Duf­fel is very care­ful to se­cure about his own per­son?”

“Key! the deuce!” replied Bill, tak­en aback, for a mo­ment, by the query. “I hadn't thought of that, but it's no dif­fer­ence; my plans are not alf made out in the de­tails yet; but this is no bar to them; for I'd like to see the lock that Bill Mitchel can't make a key to fit, if he has a fair chance. I can make a false key in a day that will open the door to the cap­tain's room. So that dif­fi­cul­ty is set­tled.”

“And now for the rest of your plan.”

“Well, when we get all ready, I'll just drop a note to some of the vig­ilance men, and tell them when and where they can find Duf­fel tak­ing care of a stolen horse. This will save us from the mal­ice of any of his con­fed­er­ates, as they will not sus­pect us, and place Duf­fel in the hands of the of­fi­cers of the gov­ern­ment; and he will not get away soon, I'm think­ing!”

“So you ex­pect to have Duf­fel cap­tured about the same time you are lib­er­at­ing his gal. Well, that's pret­ty sharp; I think you have not wast­ed your time in Duf­fel's ser­vice, and af­ter all, ought to thank him for giv­ing you such good lessons in plot­ting. But you have left one loop­hole yet, for all that.”

“What is it?”

“I've been tryin' to think what you will do with the gal when she's brought out of the cave. She'll have to tell where she's been, and that'll fix all of us.”

“I have that mat­ter all set­tled. It won't do to take the girl home, that's cer­tain; and this is my plan for ac­tion on that score: You see I have been think­ing this mat­ter over in my mind be­fore to-​day. I didn't know but we should have a split with Duf­fel on the Du­val af­fair, and I was prepar­ing for such a state of things in case it did come. As I have told you be­fore, I know where there is a mag­nif­icent cave for our pur­pose in the moun­tains of Vir­ginia, to which it has been my de­ter­mi­na­tion to re­treat, should any­thing go wrong here. Well, I in­tend to take this young la­dy along with us to that cave.”

“Dang the wom­en! I don't like to be both­ered with 'em. Ef you are goin' to that place, why not let the gal go home and 'blow' all she's a mind to? It wouldn't hurt _us_, ef she did let out the se­cret.”

“It might, though. Some of the mem­bers of the League might chance to find us here­after, and in­form on us out of re­venge.”

“But we can swear the gal to keep still about who let her out.”

“Pooh! do you sup­pose she would or _could_ do it?”

“Why, yes, I think it's more'n like­ly she'd keep her tongue out of grat­itude. She's no com­mon gal, that, and you may put a peg there.”

“Ah, that's it ex­act­ly. She's no com­mon girl, as you say; and I have been en­vy­ing Duf­fel his good for­tune ev­er since she has been in the cave. The truth is, I was smit­ten by her charms the first time I saw her, and was half tempt­ed to play Duf­fel false then; and now that I can serve my­self and dis­ap­point him at the same time, I shall not be slow to avail my­self of the op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

“I don't like this busi­ness of run­nin' off wom­en, no­how you can fix it. It allers looked mean and cow­ard­ly, some­how, and I de­spise mean­ness and cow­ardice above all things.”

“Well, that is a pret­ty speech to come from you, any­how! as if you had not been en­gaged in mean acts half your life, for which you would have to swing, if the law should once get his clutch­es up­on you.”

“I know I have done some _bad_ things; of _mean_ acts I have per­formed but few, and the mean­est of these was help­ing to car­ry off this very gal to the cave; and it was by far the most cow­ard­ly. Two men to one wom­an! It's ac­tu­al­ly a dis­grace, and I nev­er think of it with­out feel­in' lit­tle!”

“I am will­ing you should think as you please about the mat­ter, so you give me a lit­tle help in the af­fair.”

“I don't know about that; I am tee-​to­tal­ly op­posed to med­dlin' with wom­en, and I don't think it's man­ly.”

“Yes, but in this in­stance we are com­pelled, as it were, to take the girl with us. That changes the case, you know, very ma­te­ri­al­ly.”

“I'm not so sure as we need to take her. I be­lieve she'd keep our se­cret ef we'd let her go.”

“Well, I don't; and so we dif­fer. But that is not the ques­tion. Go she must--go she _shall_! Will you as­sist me?”

“Why, I reck­on I'll have to; it wouldn't hard­ly be fair to refuse a friend af­ter helpin' an en­emy. I'll stand by you.”

“That's a good fel­low! Well, so much is set­tled. To-​mor­row Duf­fel will be away, and I will take the im­pres­sion for the key. By Jove, won't it be rich when he finds that he has been robbed and the bird is flown!”

“I think he'll con­clude this par­tic'lar part of God's foot­stool is like­ly to be­come a lee­tle too hot for him.”

“Yes; and about the time he be­gins to pre­pare for leav­ing, he'll find him­self tak­en care of in a way he doesn't dream of.”

“And there will be one cow­ard less at large in the world.”

“And he will be paid for his trea­son to his friends.”

“But how are we to man­age him till the time for ac­tion comes?”

“Oh, we must be friend­ly as ev­er; he is not quite done with us yet, and we must seem to en­ter in­to his plans as ful­ly as ev­er we have done, and, above all, give him no cause to sus­pect any­thing is wrong, or that we have any idea of his in­ten­tions to­ward us.”

“Then we must go af­ter them hors­es to-​night?”

“Cer­tain­ly; I would not miss the op­por­tu­ni­ty, be­cause, if we suc­ceed in tak­ing the hors­es, they will be un­der our care, and we can use them for our own pur­pose.”

“Sure enough. But if we don't get them, what then are we to do?”

“Why, we will take some from the sta­ble.”

“I don't like that much. Ef it is found out, as it will be when we are missed, we shall have the en­mi­ty of the Or­der.”

“I know, and have pre­pared for such an emer­gen­cy.”

“How?”

“I will let you know in good time. We must away, now, to meet Duf­fel in the 'swamp.'”

Thus ter­mi­nat­ed the in­ter­view be­tween these bad men. Had Eve­line dreamed that such would have been the ef­fect of her rev­ela­tion to them of Duf­fel's pur­pose, she would have burned the pa­per soon­er than have placed it in their hands. From one snare she falls in­to an­oth­er, and there ap­pears to be no end to her mis­for­tunes.

* * * * *

Night was up­on the world. In peace­ful slum­bers the in­no­cent re­posed, while the wicked, the thief and rob­ber, stole out up­on er­rands of vice and crime.

'Squire Williams, though in com­mon a fol­low­er of that old proverb:

“Ear­ly to bed and ear­ly to rise, Make a man healthy, wealthy and wise;”

was, on this evening, up un­til past eleven o'clock, in so­cial chat with a neigh­bor, who had “dropped in to spend the evening” with him. Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion be­tween them, the sub­ject of most en­gross­ing and uni­ver­sal in­ter­est in that com­mu­ni­ty, that of horse-​steal­ing, was am­ply dis­cussed.

“What do you think is best to be done?” in­quired the neigh­bor.

“Well, oth­ers may do as they please; but I in­tend to _de­fend_ my prop­er­ty,” was the 'Squire's re­ply.

“Just the con­clu­sion I have ar­rived at; and I shall not be sur­prised if we are called up­on very soon to put our re­solves in­to prac­tice.”

“Have you heard any­thing new?”

“Well, no, I haven't heard any­thing, but I've seen a lit­tle, and that, I take it, is about as good.”

“Why, yes, it might be bet­ter, if it was good for any­thing at all.”

“I do not know how good it is, but my sus­pi­cions were ex­cit­ed.”

“It is quite an easy mat­ter to have our sus­pi­cions ex­cit­ed these ex­cit­ing times, and on this very ex­cit­ing sub­ject. There is Mr. Man­dev­ille, has been made to be­lieve that one of the best young men who ev­er lived, is guilty of steal­ing his horse first, and his daugh­ter af­ter­ward.”

“You don't mean to say that he sus­pects Mr. Duf­fel of such crimes?”

“No; he judges a thou­sand times bet­ter man than Duf­fel; for, be­tween you and me, I have my doubts about this Duf­fel. I have seen him on two dif­fer­ent oc­ca­sions in com­pa­ny with a cou­ple of, to say the least, very sus­pi­cious look­ing char­ac­ters.”

“You don't say so!”

“Yes; and what is more, he was ev­ident­ly on good terms with them, though he did not ap­pear to wish me to think so, and passed the mat­ter off in­dif­fer­ent­ly. I might not have thought so much of the cir­cum­stance were it not for the fact that he does not at­tend to busi­ness at all, and yet lives in a bet­ter style and more ex­trav­agant­ly than any oth­er young man in the coun­try. I tell you a man can't live these times, and spend mon­ey as he does, with­out hav­ing an in­come much greater than his.”

“Per­haps he is mak­ing in­roads on his cap­ital.”

“That may be, too, though I do not know that it is the case; but I _do_ know that he is ab­sent from home much of the time, oc­ca­sion­al­ly for days to­geth­er, and no­body can tell where he is.”

“I have no­ticed the fact of his ab­sence my­self.”

“Mr. Man­dev­ille was here to-​day, and gave me a his­to­ry of his trou­bles. It ap­pears that this Duf­fel was in love with his daugh­ter--or, as _I_ sup­pose, with his mon­ey--and had pro­posed to him for her hand, which he was will­ing to be­stow, but the daugh­ter was not. She had placed her af­fec­tions up­on an­oth­er, and, in my be­lief, a far wor­thi­er ob­ject, and to the im­por­tu­ni­ties of both her fa­ther and Duf­fel, she gave a firm and con­stant re­fusal. The par­ent for­bid her fa­vorite the house, and he be­lieves that it was through his per­sua­sions that Eve­line left her home, of which you, of course, have heard.”

“Why, yes, I heard the fact, but none of the par­tic­ulars.”

“Well there are no par­tic­ulars, ex­cept that Mr. Man­dev­ille found a cou­ple of notes, pur­port­ing to be from her lover, one ad­dressed to her­self and the oth­er to him, in the for­mer of which he per­suades her to meet him at a cer­tain place, and in the lat­ter in­forms the par­ent of their elope­ment and asks for­give­ness. Now it strikes me that these notes or let­ters were placed there by de­sign, and that they are both forg­eries. I know the hand-​writ­ing of the young man he ac­cus­es, and though the manuscript of the two let­ters is a very good im­ita­tion of his, yet it is not the same. Be­side, I do not be­lieve him ca­pa­ble of such an act.”

“Why, then, is the daugh­ter gone?”

“I be­lieve she has been kid­napped!”

“_Kid­napped!_”

“Yes, I do!”

“But who would do it? Who would _dare_ to do it!”

“Who so like­ly as the true lover's ri­val?”

“Heav­ens! you don't be­lieve _Duf­fel_ would com­mit such a crime?”

“I do; but mind, this is to go no fur­ther un­til I can find _proof_ to sus­tain my be­lief. I am go­ing to keep a strict watch up­on the move­ments of this fel­low, and I think I shall be able to find out where he keeps him­self a part of the time dur­ing his ab­sence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Noth­ing more nor less than that there is a se­cret gang of thieves and vil­lains of all kinds, whose head quar­ters are some­where in this re­gion of coun­try, and that I in­tend to fer­ret out their hid­ing-​place.”

“I am with you in that work with all my heart!”

“Very well. Here, then, is a pa­per I wish you to sign. It is a pledge. The vil­lains have band­ed to­geth­er to prey up­on us, and I am for band­ing to­geth­er to frus­trate their plans and bring them to jus­tice. This is sim­ply the form of agree­ment we en­ter in­to among our­selves, and it binds us to use all hon­or­able ef­forts, to fur­ther the cause in which we en­gage, and to ex­pose the guilty wher­ev­er and when­ev­er we can find them, even if the of­fend­er should be our near­est kin.”

“I'll sign it, sir, with a hearty good will!”

“It fur­ther ob­li­gates us to aid each oth­er to the ut­most of our abil­ity in re­cov­er­ing stolen prop­er­ty, in case any of us should meet with such a mis­for­tune.”

“All right, that's a good fea­ture, I'm one of you, heart and hand!”

“Then you may sign, un­der­stand­ing, how­ev­er, that all which pass­es be­tween us, as mem­bers of this body, is to be kept an in­vi­olable se­cret. We ad­min­is­ter no oath, de­pend­ing sole­ly up­on the hon­or of our mem­bers, all of whom are ex­pect­ed to be hon­or­able and hon­est men, whose word will be bet­ter than the most ter­ri­ble oath of a crim­inal.”

The doc­ument was signed, and the 'Squire con­tin­ued:

“Now, I wish you to con­sid­er all that has or may pass be­tween us this evening as strict­ly con­fi­den­tial. At the last meet­ing of our body it was made the du­ty of ev­ery mem­ber to pro­tect his prop­er­ty, and to shoot down all thieves who were caught in the act of steal­ing hors­es. Some, how­ev­er, were for first warn­ing the depreda­tors, and if they did not then de­sist, to fire up­on them.”

“In­deed! is it sup­posed that the ras­cals are so bold?”

“Cer­tain­ly they are! Why, it was but two or three nights ago that two thieves went in­to the pas­ture to take old Mar­shall's hors­es, sup­pos­ing he was too aged and in­firm to thwart them, even if he should learn their de­signs; they went ear­ly in the evening, be­fore peo­ple usu­al­ly re­tired to rest; they caused a dis­tur­bance among the hors­es, which called out a cou­ple of neigh­bors who chanced to be there, who went to the pas­ture and de­mand­ed of the thieves what they want­ed; when they had the in­so­lence to re­ply, that they came af­ter the hors­es and were go­ing to have them. With this the men fired up­on them, but on­ly with the in­ten­tion of fright­en­ing them away; but they were not so eas­ily scared, and con­tin­ued to fol­low up af­ter the hors­es, which were not eas­ily caught, es­pe­cial­ly by strangers. See­ing this, the men reload­ed their ri­fles, and, tak­ing the best aim the dark­ness would al­low, fired again; this time with the de­sired ef­fect, as it was be­lieved one of the vil­lains was wound­ed.”

“I had no idea they were get­ting so bold!”

“No doubt they are nu­mer­ous, and num­bers beget con­fi­dence, you know. But we must teach them a les­son or two they will not soon for­get.”

“By the way, George Gor­don came home from a hunt a day or two ago, with a wound in his arm. Do you think it pos­si­ble he could have been one of the thieves that night?”

“The truth is, I don't know who to trust nor who to sus­pect. I have no doubt there are num­bers of seem­ing­ly hon­est peo­ple who be­long to the se­cret gang of thieves. I should hard­ly have be­lieved it of Gor­don; but there is no telling. How does he ac­count for the wound?”

“He says his gun ac­ci­den­tal­ly went off while he was lean­ing up­on it with his arm over the muz­zle.”

“Guns are not apt to play such scaly tricks as that; and we had bet­ter watch him.”

“By-​the-​way, I heard a re­port yes­ter­day, to the ef­fect that Thomp­son had shot, or shot at, some thieves the oth­er night.”

“Yes, and you will hear of more shoot­ing; mark that! And if the thieves do not cease their op­er­ations, you will hear of some of them be­ing shot dead pret­ty soon!”

At this point in the con­ver­sa­tion, a tram­pling among the hors­es in the pas­ture at­tract­ed the at­ten­tion of the 'Squire.

“Thieves, now!” he ex­claimed; and tak­ing down a cou­ple of ri­fles, he gave one to his neigh­bor and re­tain­ing the oth­er him­self, the two sal­lied forth to as­cer­tain what was go­ing on. It was a starlight night, and they could see some dis­tance tol­er­ably clear­ly. No soon­er did they come in full view of the field in which the hors­es were, than they es­pied two thieves at­tempt­ing to coax the 'Squire's fa­vorite horse to them. The an­imal, how­ev­er, had al­ways been shy of strangers, and would nev­er suf­fer it­self to be caught by one even in the day-​time. It was a no­ble an­imal, and the thieves, as well as the law­ful own­er, had set their hearts up­on it. They would ap­proach as near as pru­dence dic­tat­ed, and then hold out corn and salt to en­tice the beast; it would come near, but the mo­ment they made the least mo­tion to catch it, would wheel about and let fly at them with its heels in such a man­ner as evinced to the thieves that it was best to keep at a re­spect­ful dis­tance. They were yet un­will­ing to go with­out him, and made re­peat­ed at­tempts to win him over to their way of think­ing, but he was en­tire­ly too hon­est to be whee­dled in­to such bad com­pa­ny.

The 'Squire watched their op­er­ations un­til he thought it was about time to stop the play, and then fired near, but not at the ras­cals, at the same time call­ing out to them that they had bet­ter leave in short me­ter if they want­ed to get away alive. Sup­pos­ing that he was alone and his gun emp­ty, they re­turned an in­so­lent an­swer, to the ef­fect that they would leave short­ly on a cou­ple of his hors­es; and turned to try their hand at tak­ing some of the oth­ers in the pas­ture. To such a bold pass had the thieves ar­rived!

“Aim _at_ the ras­cals, and fire!” said the 'Squire to his com­pan­ion; and they did so.

“By jing, Bill, we'd bet­ter be mov­ing, I be­lieve. That ball took a lock of hair off by my ear!”

“The dev­il it did!”

Ev­ery­thing be­ing still at the mo­ment, the 'Squire heard this scrap of con­ver­sa­tion be­tween the thieves, and called out:

“Yes, you _had_ bet­ter leave, or I'll put the next ball through one of your hearts!”

“Do it, then, and be ----!” said one of them; and lev­el­ing a horse pis­tol at the 'Squire he fired, the ball from which struck the fence close by. This cli­max of in­so­lence aroused the 'Squire ful­ly. His gun was just reload­ed, and tak­ing the best aim at one of the mis­cre­ants, both of whom were now re­treat­ing rapid­ly, he fired. The fel­low clapped his hand to his face, but con­tin­ued to run. They were soon out of sight.

The in­ci­dents here re­lat­ed are strict­ly true; but the truth is not half told. Many such scenes took place, and num­bers of the thieves were killed, and some of them proved to be neigh­bors to those who had shot them!

The vil­lains on this oc­ca­sion were Bill and Dick, as the read­er is aware, and this was the ter­mi­na­tion of their at­tempt to save the 'Squire's pas­ture, as Duf­fel sug­gest­ed, or to get his hors­es as they them­selves de­sired.

So soon as the thieves were gone, the neigh­bor re­marked to the 'Squire:

“This re­minds me of what I was go­ing to say in the ear­ly part of the evening, but was led from the sub­ject by the turn our con­ver­sa­tion took.”

“I re­mem­ber, now, you men­tioned hav­ing seen some­thing, which ex­cit­ed your sus­pi­cions that all was not right, in some quar­ter.”

“Well, it was two men, very dare-​dev­il look­ing fel­lows, whom I have seen prowl­ing about on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions, look­ing out, as I thought, for chances to steal; and if I am not great­ly mis­tak­en, these are the same men.”

“No doubt of it at all.--This night's op­er­ations have con­vinced me more than ev­er of the ne­ces­si­ty of strong mea­sures; and the next time I see thieves at their work, I will not stop to scare them, but the first fire will be to wound or kill!”

“I think I shall act on the same prin­ci­ple.”

“I ad­vise you to, and all oth­er hon­est men. I am sat­is­fied noth­ing else will do.”

With this they part­ed, each go­ing to his own home.

It may be well enough to ex­plain more ful­ly than has yet been done, that Bill and Dick act­ed in two ca­pac­ities, one of ruf­fi­ans, the oth­er as gen­tle­men. Bill was equal­ly at home in ei­ther char­ac­ter, and could act the lat­ter quite _a la mode_. Dick was rather out of his el­ement when it came to the gen­tle­man: he was a lit­tle awk­ward, and by no means at his ease; but give him a dar­ing or des­per­ate act to per­form, and he was en­tire­ly at home. Yet for all this there was a streak of the man about him, and at heart he was bet­ter than ei­ther Bill or Duf­fel.

It was at Dick that the 'Squire aimed the last shot, and the bul­let grazed his cheek, do­ing him no se­ri­ous in­jury, how­ev­er, though it drew the blood and left a scar.

The two vil­lains notwith­stand­ing that they were foiled in their at­tempt up­on the hors­es, pre­pared for the pros­ecu­tion of the rest of their schemes on the mor­row with great en­er­gy. But leav­ing them for the present, we will turn to oth­er scenes and char­ac­ters.