The Sherwood Ring

"Colonel Grahame?" The lieutenant of the rangers had come up beside me and was clearing his throat.

  "Did you say we were going to make camp at the Shipley Farm, sir?"

  "Yes, why? Is anything the matter?"

  Lieutenant Felton cleared his throat again. "It's only that we seem to have ridden right past it," he pointed out, apologetically. "There was a house and a big meadow back aways on the left, with the gates open and a girl calling after us when we went by."

  I came out of my happy dreams with a jolt. There behind me, a good quarter of a mile down the road, were the white gates of the Shipley Farm; and beside them, standing on the lowest rail of the fence, was a little figure in blue which even at that distance looked distressingly familiar.

  There was nothing I could do but wheel my horse around in dignified silence and start back again. Lieutenant Felton and twenty-nine mounted rangers also wheeled their horses around and followed me solemnly down the road to the gate.

  It was Eleanor Shipley standing there, beyond a doubt. In the last six years she had somehow lost her scrawniness, and the bright hair blowing in little curls about her forehead was pure coppery gold; but she was still very small — so tiny that I could have swung her off her feet with one hand — and the mocking mouth I had so often longed to slap was just as I remembered it. She was perched on the rail as lightly as a butterfly, with a perfectly grave face, watching our approach with wide, innocent eyes. I remembered that look, too.

  "Oh, Dick dear!" she said as I came up, her voice quivering with laughter. "What in the world happened to you? I quite thought you had forgotten us altogether."

  I told myself firmly that all I had to do was to be very formal, very distant, very courteous, and let her see that she could no longer trifle with me.

  "I was thinking, Miss Shipley," I explained, coldly. Then, as this seemed rather inadequate, I added in my loftiest tones, "There is, of course, a great deal weighing on my mind just now."

  Eleanor merely continued to look at me for a moment.

  "Ah, yes, I see," she remarked softly. "The dashing young hero who is going to save the whole cause of independence singlehanded." She had always had the most detestable habit of putting into exact words a number of thoughts which I would much rather have kept all vague and warm and unspoken in the most secret chambers of my mind.

  For one passionate moment I found myself wishing I was fourteen again, so I could pick her up like a kitten and scrub her face with mud to teach her manners, the way I had done the last time she had tried that trick on me. But a full-blown colonel with a company at his back could only wrap himself in the tattered remains of his dignity, and turn pointedly away from her to speak to Mr. Shipley, who was hobbling down the drive as fast as he could come, his kind old face beaming with welcome and delight.

  "My boy, my dear boy!" he cried, reaching up to clasp my hand. "Bless my soul, how you've grown! Eleanor, isn't he a fine, dashing young man? This is a great day for the county. I was here at the gate to meet you, but I'd just stepped back to the house a moment to fetch these letters that came for you this morning. Eleanor has been watching the road since dawn" — ("To get the first bite?" I wondered bitterly) — "and you'll find firewood and forage all prepared for you in the South Meadow. We've given you the bedroom on the ground floor, off the parlor, where you can come and go as you like. Bless my soul, it seems only yesterday that you were falling out of that oak in the South Meadow! And now! Eleanor, look at his uniform!"

  "I am looking at his uniform, Father," replied Eleanor, without any particular enthusiasm. "That darn on the right sleeve seems to be working loose. I'll mend it after dinner."

  "Thank you," I said stiffly. "But I think I'd best get down to the South Meadow to see my men into camp and attend to my letters."

  As a matter of fact, there were only two letters, and one of them was a brief note from Barbara wishing me good fortune with Peaceable Sherwood and urging me to capture him as soon as possible — "as Aunt Susanna is so terrified that she has taken to her bed again with the spasms, and we are all in the most melancholy way here." The other letter was addressed to "Colonel Richard Grahame" in a crisp, curiously distinct writing which I had never seen before. It had been sealed with a drop of red wax bearing the impression of a signet ring, equally unfamiliar: a shield, blank except for three little rayed stars in the upper left corner.

  Sir [the letter began politely],

  It gives me infinite pleasure to welcome so distinguished an officer back to Orange County. You may rest assured that I and all my followers will do our utmost to make your stay in this region lively and interesting, though not (I fear) particularly profitable to your Cause.

  With every good wish for your continuing health and welfare, I remain,

  Your very obedient servant to command,

  PEACEABLE DRUMMOND SHERWOOD

  I sat regarding this extraordinary communication in helpless silence for an instant, and then put my head in my hands and burst out laughing. I had been right about one thing at least. I was going to have an entertaining antagonist.

  It took Peaceable Sherwood exactly one week to change my ideas of entertainment, and about four to drive me to the edge of raving and insanity. I will spare you the full account of everything that happened. We tried to identify his secret associates — and failed. We tried to unearth his system of communicating with them — and failed again. We tried to track him to his base of operations — and spent six days floundering in the mountains before we finally gave it up. We dispatched spies to worm their way into his organization, and found them tied to the hitching-posts in front of the Presbyterian Church in New Jerusalem the following morning (which was Sunday), with another courteous letter from Peaceable Sherwood, requesting me to send rather more intelligent ones in the future.

  I think my men gradually became almost fond of him, as I had known hunters to become almost fond of a certain fox too clever to be caught. To tell the truth, I could very easily have become almost fond of him myself — the man's wit, audacity, and nerve were really admirable ... if only . . . Oh, if only so much had not depended on the outcome! If only the stakes we were playing for had not been quite so appallingly high! I had once rather liked the notion that I had to save the whole cause of independence singlehanded. Now, I woke up at night in a cold sweat whenever I dreamed of it.

  And with every week that went by, Peaceable Sherwood's marauders grew stronger, his raids bolder, his mastery of the situation more complete and terrifying. By August, the whole district was reduced to a state of panic, with frantic citizens hooting at me and my soldiers on the road, and every rider from headquarters bringing dispatches to demand immediate and successful action. The only comfort was that the forest fire Peaceable Sherwood had kindled did not yet spread very far. The British authorities were still making no effort to set up similar organizations in other parts of the country — but this was a poor, thin consolation at best, for surely it could not possibly be long now before they started to do so.

  It was the first time in my life that I had tasted real failure or shame, and I found them both uncommonly hard to swallow. In my black desperation, I could not endure the faintest suggestion of help or sympathy from anybody. I even disliked riding over to New Jerusalem because the look in Barbara's eyes was becoming more than I could bear. But such was my perversity that I disliked the look in Eleanor Shipley's eyes even more. Eleanor Shipley, needless to say, was making no effort to burden me with help or sympathy over Peaceable Sherwood. Indeed, there were times when I wondered which of them would really be responsible if I put a bullet through my head.

  I did my best to remain very formal, very distant, very courteous whenever I was compelled to speak to her; and never by the flicker of an eyelash did I let her know she was hurting me in the least. But the more formal, distant, and courteous I became, the more outrageously she conducted herself. I will spare you the full account of that, also — except to say that by the end of those ten abominable weeks, I think I
would have cheerfully sold myself to the devil if he would only have allowed me to trap Peaceable Sherwood by some brilliant maneuver of my own, and made sure that a certain young lady was somewhere about to discover when it was too late how wrong she had been to jeer at Richard Grahame.

  "And then she'd be sorry," I muttered fiercely to myself, as I rode home to my dinner one weary August afternoon. I was feeling so wretched that the very thought of food made me sick, but anything was better than having Eleanor Shipley tell me that even dashing young heroes needed to keep up their strength.

  It was a blazing day, too, miserably hot and dusty, without even the promise of a thunderstorm to break the monotony. All the birds had retreated into the deep woods, and there was nobody on the road but a peddler who had taken off his pack and was resting under the shade of a tree.

  Peddlers were becoming rare now that the country was so unsettled, and I reined in my horse to speak to him on the chance he might have heard some news. He was one of those slim, lean Irishmen who look as if they were made out of a carriage whip. He told me that he was traveling up the valley with needles and laces and pins and various other gewgaws for the farmers' wives, and asked me to buy one of his ribbons "for my young lady." As I did not feel like explaining just why I had no young lady, I put the question aside and asked him in return if he had seen any sign of Peaceable Sherwood or his marauders on the road.

  "May the saints forbid," said the peddler, with a quick glance over one shoulder. "It's ruined I'd be if they caught up with me. Maybe a hunter with woodcraft could slip easy into this terrible great forest and lie snug till they'd gone by. But what would I do that was born in Dublin and me hardly able to tell the woods from the trees, as the old saying has it? Look at that there, now —" waving his hand at a white triangular gash in the bark just above his head. "No doubt a gentleman bred to this land like Your Honor could tell what it means, but sure it might be the blessed Latin itself for all I can make of it."

  "We call it a blaze hereabouts," I explained kindly. "Somebody has been cutting it on the tree to mark a trail into the woods. Not a very good man with an axe, either: see where it caught a bit off his clothes? No, over there, hanging on the end of that sliver — by the sumac."

  "Sure, and I thought it was a flower, the fine color of it. It's Your Honor has the eyes," said the peddler, reaching for the little scrap and passing it up to me. "A shame to murder the good cloth so cruel. Now if I were back across the water in Scotland before the dreary wars I'd say that was the piece of a tartan."

  I nodded as I turned the scrap over my finger to examine it in the light. The wearing of the tartan had of course been forbidden on Scottish soil since the last great rebellion of the clans in '45; but many of the Highlanders who had fled to the New World afterwards had brought their plaids with them — I had one myself which I found useful in the woods when I was hunting. And my grandfather, old Enos, had taught me to know the various tartans and clan badges as strictly as if he were still at home in his hills. "Drummond," I said almost without thinking, as I looked down at the bold pattern of scarlets and yellows and whites.

  Then, from somewhere out of the past, I heard the echo of my own voice speaking to General Washington: "The 'Drummond' sounds more as if she might be Scottish, sir."

  Perhaps Peaceable Drummond Sherwood also had an old family plaid which he found useful in the woods.

  Or perhaps I was simply making a fool of myself?

  Yet there was nobody else named Drummond in this part of the country. Most of the settlers had been Dutch. Piet Cornelius and Joos Van Ghent owned all the land on both sides of the road for miles around.

  Yet surely Peaceable Drummond Sherwood would never have been so careless as to catch his fine plaid by accident with the edge of an axe?

  But suppose — and I caught my breath hard at the very thought of it — suppose the scrap of tartan had not been caught there by accident? Suppose it had been left on purpose? To mark a particular trail into the woods for someone else to follow?

  Yet surely Peaceable Drummond Sherwood would never have marked his trail with a scrap of tartan that might as well have had his name written on it for anybody with the eyes to see.

  But who except myself would have had the eyes to see? A thousand other riders might have gone by that tree without realizing the significance of the little rag caught on the sliver any more than the peddler had. Peaceable Sherwood could mark his own gate with his own name, and leave it there quite safely for the public to look at. It was, now I came to think of it, exactly the sort of joke that might appeal to him.

  "A fair journey to Your Honor," the voice of the peddler interrupted me. He had risen to his feet, and was yawning and stretching and feeling about for the buckles of his pack. "The road will get no cooler for our sitting beside it, and I want to be over the hills by night. You're sure you wouldn't like to buy a fine ribbon for your young lady, now? Red would adorn her if she's dark like yourself."

  "No — her hair is yellow, just like coppery gold," I answered absent-mindedly before I could check myself.

  "Have a nice bit of blue, then," said the peddler winningly.

  In the end I bought the blue ribbon to get rid of him, and he went away whistling a little tune. He had hardly disappeared around the first bend before I was off my horse to look at the blaze on the tree more closely. As I had thought, the trail was a fresh one. The splinters were still sharp and new, the cut in the bark still almost white. "Probably this morning; certainly not before yesterday," I muttered to myself as I slipped into the wood and on to the next blazed tree like a shadow. Peaceable Sherwood, if it was indeed he, had not made much of an effort to cover his tracks. There was even a path of sorts beaten through the fallen leaves and low bushes.

  The path came to an abrupt end at a clearing perhaps a hundred feet in from the road. It was only a little place, all flat mossy rocks with ferns and a whispering thread of water that fell into a tiny pool where —

  I took one abrupt step forward and stood looking down at it, while once again the hope died out of my heart.

  I had made a fool of myself. All my speculations about Peaceable Sherwood and the scrap of tartan must simply have been vaporing. For the little clearing in the woods was obviously nothing but a "secret place" where a child had been coming to play. Barbara and I had once had a "secret place" in our own woods and built ourselves a hut there.

  Here there was an old doll crumpled up on a natural seat among the rocks, and a wooden ball lying under a pine farther up the slope. But what had first caught my eye was a sort of toy landscape down by the brook, where the rocks widened to leave a circle of mossy grass. A hole filled with water had been dug in the center for a lake, and moss and pebbles and pine sprigs were heaped about it to represent hills and rocks and trees.

  The child, whoever he was, must have worked hard. The little landscape was beautifully made, with a miniature peninsula at one side of the lake, and the hills rounded so naturally that for a moment I had a curious feeling that I was actually gazing at a real landscape from somewhere high in the air. The only thing that spoiled the effect was a withering maple leaf which had been laid, for no apparent reason, over the bare ground where the hills came together at the edge of the water, exactly as they did at Duck's Head Lake.

  Then I understood suddenly why the landscape had seemed so real. The child must have modeled it after seeing the view from the big cliff down over the hills and forest to Duck's Head Lake. The peninsula on the right and the rock rising from the water on the left were just the same as those which actually did make Duck's Head Lake look from the cliff extraordinarily like the head of a duck, with the rock for an eye and the peninsula making a bill wide open to quack.

  But how could a child still young enough to be playing with toys have ever seen Duck's Head Lake? It was up the mountain, at least four hours' journey away, even for a grown and wood-wise man, in the very heart of the forest. Only hunters had ever gone there, and since the war even the hunter
s must have stopped coming. It was too dangerous in the present state of the country, when any such lonely place might be the lurking hole of marauders like Peaceable Sherwood or —

  Like Peaceable Sherwood?

  Peaceable Sherwood and that scrap of tartan which I had thought must be meant to mark a trail for someone to follow.

  A trail for someone to follow.

  Follow where?

  I looked from the scrap of tartan to the toy landscape, my mind working feverishly. Once again my eye was caught by that singular maple leaf lying so awkwardly at the edge of the little lake. There was no reason why it should be there. Had it simply blown down off a tree? Or — ?

  I stooped and picked it up.

  Underneath, someone had packed the ground with water into a smooth square of mud, and then while the mud was still wet, had stamped it with a signet ring as if it were the seal of a letter. The mud had dried hard and the impression was still perfect — a shield, blank except for three little rayed stars in the upper left corner.

  I sat down on the nearest ledge of rock and began to laugh almost hysterically out of sheer triumph and relief. I knew what must have happened now. Everything was becoming clear to me.

  I went on sitting on the rock and worked it all out step by step. The scrap of tartan was a signal. A man who had been told to watch for it could slip quietly off the road as he passed and make his way up the blazed trail to the little clearing. There he would find what was actually an excellent relief map showing him that he was to go on to Duck's Head Lake. The mark of the signet ring in the mud indicated the exact spot where he was to look for Peaceable Sherwood.

  And how beautifully simple the whole thing was!

  No letters that might be captured or stolen; no word-of-mouth messages that might be garbled or forgotten. Nothing that could possibly arouse a shadow of suspicion. Who else would have seen anything amiss with that scrap of tartan? And even if he did, it would only be to find, as I had, that he had stumbled on nothing but a perfectly innocent plaything constructed by some lonely child. That old doll crumpled up among the rocks was enough to touch the hardest heart.