CHAPTER XVI.
THE GAUNTLET RUN.
WITH his bride up behind him on his horse, the rover spurred swiftly away from the parson’s, still within the hour, in which he had promised to return to his wedding. Unafraid of whatsoever the world, before or behind, might contain, while her lover-husband lived at her side, Garde felt a sense of exhilaration, at leaving Boston, such as she had never known in all her life.
With her grandfather dead and Goody no longer at the little cottage on the skirts of town, she had no ties remaining, save those at the houses of Soam and Phipps. And what were these, when weighed in the balance against Adam Rust—her Adam,—her mighty lord?
Trembling and clinging as she was, he had carried her off. Gladly she had gone to the parson’s. Her heart now rejoiced, as he told her that Massachusetts was behind them forever. For its people, with their harsh, mirthless lives of austerity and fanaticism, she had only love enough to give them her pity. But her life was life indeed, when, ever and anon, Adam halted the horse, lest she fear a fall, and twisted about to give her a kiss and a chuckle of love and to tell of the way he had cheated the mob and the court of their witches.
“Make no doubt of it, you are a witch—one of the sweetest, cleverest, bravest, most adorable little witches that ever lived,” he said, “and I love you and love you for it, my darling wife!”
They had left the town early in the morning. By break of day they were not so far from Boston as Adam could have wished. The horse had been wearied by carrying double, when he conveyed Goody Dune to a place of safety,—so that the old woman could subsequently join himself and Garde in New Amsterdam,—and therefore he had halted the animal humanely, from time to time, as the load under which the good beast was now working was not a trifle.
Having avoided the main road, for the greater part of the remaining hours of darkness, Adam deemed it safe at last to return to the highway, as he thought it unlikely they had been pursued under any circumstances. Thus the sun came up as they were quietly jogging along toward a copse of trees through which the road went winding with many an invitation of beauty to beckon them on.
Crossing a noisy little brook, the rover permitted the horse to stop for a drink. Not to be wasting the precious time, Adam turned himself half way around in the saddle, as he had done so frequently before, and gave his bride a fair morning salute.
He had then barely ridden the horse a rod from the stream, when, without the slightest warning, the figure of Gallows, mounted on a great black steed, suddenly broke from cover among the trees and bore down upon them.
The great hulk, sword in hand, made a quick dash toward the defenceless two, and slashed at Garde with all his fearful might.
Jerking his horse nearly out of the road, Adam swung from the line of the brute’s cowardly stroke, yet before he could do aught to prevent it, Gallows righted, flung out his leaden fist and dragged the girl fairly off from her seat, till she struck on the back of her head, among the rocks of the road, and lay there unconscious, and almost beneath the tread of the horse’s prancing feet.
Then the monster spurred at his horse and turning him back, rode to drive him madly over the prostrate form in the dust.
Making a short, sharp cry of anger, Adam whipped out his sword and dashed upon the murderous butcher before he could get within fifteen feet of Garde, where she lay in the sunlight.
Gallows had plenty of time to see him coming. The two met in a tremendous collision of steel on steel that sounded a clangor through the woods and sent the two swords flying from their owners’ grips.
Disarmed, the pair thudded together in a swift and hot embrace, sawing their horses close in, the more firmly and straight erect to hold their seats.
“You be a fool and I be the fool-killer!” roared Gallows, hoarsely. He tugged with his giant strength, to drag Adam fairly across to his own big saddle, where he could either break his back or beat him to death with the butt of a pistol, which he was trying to draw with the hand that held the reins.
Slipping his wrist under the chin and his hand around to the fellow’s massive shoulder, Adam tilted back the heavy head with a force so great that Gallows was glad to release his hold, else he would surely have toppled from his perch.
The horses leaped a little apart. Back their riders jerked them. Again the two big human forms shot together, and clung in a fierce embrace, like two massive chunks of iron, welded together by their impact. Once more Gallows used his great brute strength, while Rust employed his wit and got his same terrible leverage on the monster’s neck.
For a moment Gallows fought to try to break the hold, and to drag his opponent headlong from his horse, by kicking Adam’s animal stoutly in the flank. But Adam was inflicting such an agony upon him as he could not endure. They broke away, only to rush for the third time, back to this giant wrestling.
“The fool will never learn. I shall kill him yet!” cried Rust to himself, for he went for Gallows’s neck as before and got it again in his hold.
He threw a tremendous strength into the struggle. Gallows let out a bellow. Releasing the reins, he threw both his arms about his foe and deliberately fell from his seat, with the intention of crushing Rust beneath his weight, on the ground.
Adam’s turn in the air was the work of the expert wrestler. The horses shied nervously away.
The two were up on their feet and telescoped abruptly in one compact, struggling mass, as if two malleable statues of heroic size had suddenly been bent and intertwisted together.
With his ox-like force Gallows began to force Adam backward. Adam let him expend himself in this manner for a moment. He then discovered the great hulk’s design. He meant to force the rover to where Garde was still lying, and so to trample upon her till the life should be stamped and ground from her helpless form.
Randolph had sent him to commit this final infamy.
The rage that leaped up in Adam’s breast was a terrible thing. He feinted to drop as if in exhaustion. Gallows loosened his hold to snatch a better one, at once. In that second Adam dealt him a blow in the stomach that all but felled him where he stood.
Before he could straighten to recover, Rust was upon him like a tiger. Getting around the great brute’s side, he threw both hands around the short, thick neck and twisted himself into position so that he and Gallows were placed nearly back to back. Then with one movement he lifted at the man’s whole weight, with the monster’s head as a lever, hauled fiercely backward. Into the action he threw such a mighty rush of strength that Gallows was hoisted bodily off the ground, for a second, and then his neck gave forth a tremendous snap and was broken so fearfully that one of the jagged ends of a vertebra stabbed outward through the flesh, and dripped with red.
The whole dead weight of the fellow’s carcass rested for a second on Rust’s back and shoulder, and then Adam let him fall to the ground, where, like a slain hog, he rolled heavily over and moved no more.
Panting, fierce-eyed, ready to slay him again, Adam stood above the body for a moment, his jaws set, his fists clenched hard in the rage still upon him.
Then he heard a little moan, and turning about saw Garde, attempting to raise herself upward, in the road. He ran to her instantly and propped her up on his knee.
“Dearest, dearest,” he said, “are you badly hurt? Garde, let me help you. Don’t look—don’t look there. It’s all right. Here, let me get you back to the shade.”
He took her up tenderly in his arms and carried her out of the road to a near-by bank of moss. Here he sat her down, with her back to a tree, and ran to fill his hat with water from the stream.
The two horses, having stopped to take a supplementary drink, and a nibble at the grass, were easily caught. The rover secured them both and tied them quickly to a bush, with the dragging reins. Then back to Garde he ran with the water.
“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said, “I don’t think I am hurt. But with the fright, and the fall, I think I must have fainted.”
“Thank God!” said Adam, as she drank from his hat and smiled in his face, a little faintly, but with an infinite love in her two brown eyes. “Thank God, for this delivery. There will be no more trouble. I feel it! I know it. At last we have run the gauntlet.”