The Keepers of the People

1163It was midnight when he reached the further foot of the pass; and he ordered a rest, that the horses might be fresh for the morrow’s scouting. The night wore through; he slept for four hours, and was early afoot, seeing that food should be ready for his riders. An hour before dawn they were astir, and gathered round their fires eating; and soon after another spy came in from the south. He told Prince Ralph of a small body of fifty Russian horsemen moving across country with some prisoners, to join one of the main bodies. It was a matter of little moment; but Prince Ralph asked him about the prisoners. The man said that seven of them were Sikhs; but that the others were strangers, and he had never seen their like. One of them was dressed in black, three in white, the fourth was a woman with strange hair, all red, A thought flashed into Prince Ralph’s head: “It was Ruth! Ruth a prisoner of the Russians!”

1164He plied the man with swift questions; learned from him the line of country over which the party would travel; and saw that he might be just in time to cut them off at a point twenty miles away. He shouted an order; his men rushed from the fires to their horses. As they rode out of the camp, the grey dawn came shivering across the plain to meet them; and when they entered the forest edge, they were riding in broad daylight. He led them at a steady pace, sparing the horses; but there was a grim, set look on his face, and a dull mutter of “Faster! Faster!” rang in his heart. Never in his life before had he known so strong a sustained emotion as this furious, tearing desire to come to Ruth quickly, and snatch her from the Russians. It almost exhausted his strength of will, his trained, soldierly endurance, to refrain from galloping on at his horse’s fullest speed, and letting his troop follow as best they might. The thought of reaching her in time to die with her, fighting for her, was a relief from the thought of her falling into Prince Melinsky’s hands. But he curbed the desire, let his eye fall at times on the horses of the troop, but for the most part rode with his look straight down the forest path, his ear straining for a sound; only he loosened very often his sword in its sheath. At last they came to a little hill beside the road, whence, if his judgment were not at fault, and if he were in time, he would see the fugitives. He halted the troop; forced his horse quickly up it; and coming to its top, gazed down on a break in the forest. At his feet was a little plain, a mile across; then a narrow belt of forest; and beyond the belt a broader plain stretching some ten miles either way. There, in the further plain, were two moving clouds of dust, one, small, very near the belt of timber; the other, larger by far, three miles out on the plain. The prisoners had escaped, and were flying into his very arms.