The Black Colonel | Page 6

of the Pass below. I did not need to be a soldier of some instinct,

which I hope I always have been, to grasp the order and purpose of
those doings.
Clearly the plan was to search the bottom of the Pass and its northern
top with men who would meet midway, two parties below, and two
above. The Black Colonel could not, therefore, get away by the western
end, which led to his habitual fastness up the valley of the Dee, for the
door of escape was sealed. No hope could lie south, or east, because
that would be to come out into open country where numbers would
capture any fugitive. There was nothing but the northern side, no
possibility of escape except up its stern face, and it was a forlorn
possibility, alike on account of the terrible climb and because the
red-coats were already there, shaping to cut off even an attempt in this
direction.
What would the Black Colonel do? What was he doing? I wondered,
and two thoughts came to me, one that as an animal pursued ever
makes for home, if only to reach it and die, so a hunted man will do
likewise, should there be the smallest prospect of success; the other that
possibly it is the sounder doctrine to face great perils in getting clear,
when you are sure of an open road and a place of refuge, rather than
seek deliverance by an easier door and then land in unknown plights.
True strategy in any tight place, military or civil, is based on a
knowledge of human nature, what the enemy will do. That entails the
gift of imagination, and there was a touch of it in the disposition going
on before my eyes. The knots of red on the bottom pathway drew
together, and the red strings on the northern height were also
approaching each other. They progressed warily, but I could see an
occasional gleam of bare bayonets against the skyline, silhouetted by
the trees.
Presently a rumble of displaced stones reached my ear from the other
side of the Pass. My eye searched for the spot, halfway up, where the
trees grew sparser and the hard, sharp rocks gained the dominance. Out
from this streak of trees and rocks rode the Black Colonel on black
Mack, and I gasped at his dare-devilry.

I understood instinctively that, by cautious pilotage, probably
dismounting and leading his horse at places, he had managed,
undiscovered, to get thus far up that northern cliff, for it was almost
sheer. But he must next make the upper, still steeper half, with little
shelter from the on-coming flint-locks, and the worst kind of footing
for Mack. Could any horse foaled of a mare climb that crag and bear
his rider to safety, for this was the double, doubtful issue?
When, a moment later, the soldiers caught sight of the Black Colonel
they halted in mute surprise, then shouted, as a dog barks on sight of a
quarry, the killing instinct in man and beast finding tongue. It was
instantly a gamble of the pursued and the pursuers, to escape or to
capture, the keenest yet least noble game which can be played, that
with a human life for the prize. The Black Colonel, a man with a
bar-sinister, but a remarkable man, was the hunted, and two companies
of King George's soldiers, decent fellows enough each man of them,
were the hunters. The outcome depended chiefly on a horse, but such a
horse, Mack!
The King's word had gone round the countryside that our rebel and
canteran was to be taken alive or dead. That is a mandate which loses
its dividing line when the guns begin to shoot. Therefore, while the
soldiers shouted, on getting sight of the Black Colonel, they also began
to fire wildly at him. The immediate range was too far for harm to hit
him, but it would shorten swiftly enough. Realizing this, he stretched
himself along his horse's neck, thus showing a smaller target, and, as I
felt sure, whispering words of encouragement into the great creature's
ear.
The tradition is that the Black Colonel used his dirk for spur on that
ride, but I, who was a witness, know better. He did not need to use it,
and would not have done so in any event, loving Mack as he did. His
soft Gaelic whisper of bidding was his only spur, and up, up, slowly,
yet surely, went the gallant animal. Ah! you should have seen it all. It
was fine.
Mack's shapely, muscular body was stretched like whip-cord against
the dull grey of the broken precipice. You could fancy you heard the

very cracking of his sinews as he rose foot by foot. The reins lay on his
neck,