Crothers and I started from adjacent points in the little wood, and set out upon our hazardous advance. The ground was broken and rough, and I soon lost sight of him, but, despite his efforts to be noiseless, I could hear his heavy-soled boots scraping over the ice, and his breath puffy like that of a man who was working hard. I dare say I was interrupting the atmosphere in a similar manner; but then I was criticising Crothers, not myself.
I got along pretty well, and was half-way to Fort Hetherill. I ceased to hear Crothers for two or three minutes, and then I heard him scraping along and puffing as before. As we had come half the distance without trouble or resistance, I thought I would go over to him and hold another conference. It seemed to me that we needed at least one more council of war before attacking the hut, if we were to follow strictly the mode of procedure prescribed in the military manuals.
Turning about, I crept and slid toward him until a little ridge not more than half a foot high divided us. I could see his figure stretched out on the ice, and I reached out to touch him. But I was anticipated, for he reached up and grasped me by the throat with two very strong hands. Then I saw that instead of stalking Colonel Hetherill, he had stalked me, the stalker was stalked, and I recognized in it a fact as painful as it was alarming.
The colonel seemed to me to be prodigiously strong for the sick man the soldier had reported him to be. His hands compressed my throat so tightly that I could not cry out, and my limbs were paralyzed; an unpleasant situation for an invading army, I willingly admit. The colonel's eyes were angry, and his face was very red, which could be the result both of fever and of wrath. Both, I think, added to the strength of his arms.
He sat up on the ice and held me out at arm's length like a big doll. I knew that Crothers was near, and I wanted to cry out instantly and wanted to do it very badly; but for the life of me I could not, with that old Confederate's iron fingers on my throat. I had no doubt that Crothers and the men would continue to creep upon the hut, rush into it, and find nobody there. Meanwhile, I would be turning into a cold corpse on the ice.