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