Armitage galloped off to the right and Claiborne jumped from his horse just as the wounded animal trembled for a moment, sank to its knees and rolled over dead.
Fast they come, fast they come; See how they gather! Wide waves the eagle plume, Blended with heather. Cast your plaids, draw your blades, Forward each man set! Pibroch of Donuil Dhu Knell for the onset!
Claiborne climbed upon a rock to get his bearings, and as he gazed off through the wood a bullet sang close to his head and he saw a man slipping away through the underbrush a hundred yards ahead of him. He threw up his rifle and fired after the retreating figure, jerked the lever spitefully and waited. In a few minutes Oscar rode alertly out of the wood at his left.
"It was better for us a dead horse than a dead man--yes?" was the little sergeant's comment. "We shall come back for the saddle and bridle."
"Humph! Where do you think those men are?"
"Behind some rocks near the edge of the gap. It is a poor position."
"I'm not sure of that. They'll escape across the old bridge."
"_Nein_. A sparrow would shake it down. Three men at once--they would not need our bullets!"
Far away to the right two reports in quick succession gave news of Armitage.
"It's the signal that he's got between them and the gate. Swing around to the left and I will go straight to the big clearing, and meet you."
"You will have my horse--yes?" Oscar began to dismount.
"No; I do well enough this way. Forward!--the word is to keep them between us and the gap until we can sit on them."
The mist was fast disappearing and swirling away under a sharp wind, and the sunlight broke warmly upon the drenched world. Claiborne started through the wet undergrowth at a dog trot. Armitage, he judged, was about half a mile away, and to make their line complete Oscar should traverse an equal distance. The soldier blood in Claiborne warmed at the prospect of a definite contest. He grinned as it occurred to him that he had won the distinction of having a horse shot under him in an open road fight, almost within sight of the dome of the Capitol.
The brush grew thinner and the trees fewer, and he dropped down and crawled presently to the shelter of a boulder, from which he could look out upon the open and fairly level field known as the Port of Missing Men. There as a boy he had dreamed of battles as he pondered the legend of the Lost Legion. At the far edge of the field was a fringe of stunted cedars, like an abatis, partly concealing the old barricade where, in the golden days of their youth, he had played with Shirley at storming the fort; and Shirley, in these fierce assaults, had usually tumbled over upon the imaginary enemy ahead of him!
