Free The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope Page B

prisoner won't betray his companions because he can't do it even if he wanted to. Why, we once caught a couple of them who had been riding on the same raids for weeks without ever finding out that at home they were acquainted and even lived across the road from one another! He really is a wonder, that man. But fifty or more separate messages are fifty or more separate chances of something going astray. That's what I'm counting on at the moment. He got around the problem once by working out the most ingenious scheme of setting up an innocent little toy landscape where any number of people could come and consult it. But fortunately we stumbled on that particular trick last August. He's thought of something else since then, no doubt, but he's had to do it in a hurry — and the new method may not be quite so clever or foolproof as the other one. He won't risk making the new method too much like the other one, either, not now we're on our guard. He's probably gone back to some device for sending his instructions to every man separately. It seems to me that our best chance now is to intercept one of those messages, and then before he hears that anything is wrong — "
    "Stark nonsense!" Colonel Van Spurter interrupted impatiently. "Nothing will ever come of that; you're simply wasting time. I've listened to some fool plans in my life, Dick, but of all the fool plans I ever listened to, this one is indisputably — "
    "Where is he? Where's Colonel Grahame?"
    We heard an answering voice shout something from the porch. The next instant there was an excited flurry of feet in the hall outside, and a panting young man dressed like a cowhand suddenly flung open the door and burst without further ceremony into the room. Colonel Van Spurter, cut short in the middle of his tirade, arose magnificently to confront him.
    "What do you mean by breaking in on an officer in such a manner?" he demanded, in a voice that would have been more appropriate on the drill ground. "If this is an example of the sort of discipline you keep here, Dick, then all I can say is — "
    "Allow me," Dick interposed gently, "to present to you my old friend Lieutenant Charles Featherstone from West Point, who has graciously been spending a few days of his leave working at Jasper Twill's barn in the interests of his country. Well, Charles, what's happened?"
    "It came," gasped Lieutenant Featherstone, too full of his tidings to pause or even to glance at Colonel Van Spurter. "It came last night. We've got him now, old boy — got him hooked, gaffed, and put away in the basket!"
    "Him? It? Just a little more slowly and coherently, Charles, if you don't mind."
    "Peaceable Sherwood, of course! I was mending a harness up in the stable loft this morning, when I saw old Jasper sneaking out into the yard just below me, with his face over his shoulder to make sure nobody was following him. That didn't seem much like old Jasper's usual manner, which tends more to be bold and rude, as a poor wretched cowhand like myself can tell you. And so I drew back out of sight and saw him prying a little sheet of paper from behind a loose rock in that stone wall that runs along there by the road in front of the stables. Then I remembered I'd heard a horse going by the house late the night before, and while of course I couldn't swear that Peaceable Sherwood had been riding the horse, it did seem like a good idea to drop on the back of Jasper's dirty neck and persuade him to let me have a look at his love letter. I've got it somewhere about me now." Fumbling at the pocket of his shabby breeches, he produced a folded note and laid it on the table before Dick, who stood there staring down at it as if he were almost unable to believe in so much sudden good fortune.
    "You're sure it's genuine, Charles?" he asked hesitatingly. "Peaceable may be trying to give us a false lead."
    "I don't think so, old boy. I've had no chance to really look at it, but it seems to be in some sort of cipher — and