Girl in a Buckskin

his pacing upstairs to listen. She had been a fool not to confess her clumsiness to Eseck and now it was too late.
    “T’is they,” she gasped, staring wide-eyed at her brother. “Oh, Eseck, they’ve found us!”
    “Hush,” he said, looking around.
    They were approaching a town, and here the land around them was flat and newly plowed around the charred stumps that had not so long ago been forest. A black shape ahead of them in the moonlight showed a glimmer of light, proving itself to be a farmhouse. Other than this there was no shelter at all for two people on foot, but Eseck seemed undismayed.
    “Come,” he said, “they’re still a distance away. It’s the wind that brings the noise so close.” And taking her hand he made her run with him across the fields until the road seemed scarcely as broad as a hair ribbon when Becky glanced back. “Now,” he said with a touch of grimness, “it’s time we disappear forever. Off with your shoes.”
    “My—shoes?” gasped Becky.
    “Off.”
    She gave them to Eseck and he stuffed them into his knapsack. “We must gain those woods,” he told her, pointing ahead of them. “You must run as you’ve never run before.”
    “But why?” she cried, scarcely able to catch her breath “They cannot see us now!”
    “I have it in mind they’ll have Hob Olcott with them,” Eseck said, “and Hob can trail anything that moves on two feet or four. T’is Hob we must out-think, not our pretty friend Mr. Smeed.”
    In terror Rebecca glanced back. She had no trouble in seeing the four horsemen on the road for they carried pitch-pine torches. From their immobile position in the center of the field she and Eseck must have looked like curiously shaped, blackened stumps yet the horsemen had paused at the exact place where they had left the road. There was no doubt but that a seasoned man was leading them.
    “They’ll see us now,” said Eseck. “Run to the forest!” Becky needed no further urging. Fleet as a deer she sprang after Eseck, glad that she wore breeches instead of a dress that would trip her at every step. The forest lay like a black storm cloud ahead of them, unstirring and safe yet almost half a mile away. Behind them Becky heard shouts and the sound of horses’ hoofs and she knew that if she faltered for an instant they would be overtaken.
    The forest took shape now and became thickets and trees. Following Eseck she crashed through the underbrush very close to exhaustion and hysteria. “Up here,” Eseck said sternly, and without even realizing that she was climbing a tree Becky found herself boosted stirrup-fashion to the lower limb of a huge hemlock. “Up,” he cried, “I’ll cover our tracks.” And without another word Eseck vanished.
    Becky clung weakly to the bough until the sound of creaking saddles reached her ear and she forced herself to climb to the next branch, and then the next. For a moment she stared dizzily at the ground, but the sight of a torch glimmering through the hemlock made her scalp prickle and with one more effort she climbed a foot higher. Satisfied that at last she was out of sight of the torches she lay weak and spent in the cradling branches, staring not at the ground but at the brightening moonlit sky which she could just see through the top of the tree.
    Dimly she thought of the trail they must have left as they dashed clumsily through the wood, and she felt sick with dread and terror. Eseck had said he would cover their trail, but what could he do in the few moments left to him. and where was he now? As she lay there she heard the voices of Mr. Smeed and Mr. Leggett and she weakly closed her eyes, waiting at any moment for their cries of “There she is—there!”
    They were under the tree now. Oh, where was Eseck, she cried to herself silently; would they find him? Had he covered her tracks so well that they would find him and not her? She gripped the trunk of the tree and held her breath.
    “They can’t be far,” said Mr. Leggett, “not when we saw with our very own eyes where they entered the woods.”
    “Aye—we can still see where they entered,” said Hob Olcott laconically. “But no further.”
    “Then we’ll comb every inch for a mile around,” cried Joshua Smeed furiously. “I tell you I mean to find them.”
    “Your indignation would be more becoming to Mr. Leggett,” said a fourth voice, and Becky recognized it as Mr. King’s, the town magistrate. Oh, but the Leggetts had moved swiftly,