With a soldier's rage, he hurried forward the pursuit,
in a line tolerably direct, after the flying partisans. But
Singleton was too good a soldier, and too familiar with the
ground, to keep his men in mass in a wild flight through woods
becoming denser at every step.
When they had reached a knoll at some little distance beyond the
place where his horses had been fastened, he addressed his troop
as follows: "We must break here, my men. Each man will take his
own path, and we will all scatter as far apart as possible. Make
your way, all of you, for the swamp, however, where in a couple
of hours you may all be safe.--Lance Frampton, you will ride with
me."
Each trooper knew the country, and, accustomed to individual
enterprise and the duties of the scout, there was no hardship to
the men of Marion in such a separation. On all hands they glided
off, and at a far freer pace than when they rode together in a
body. A thousand tracks they found in the woods about them, in
pursuing which there was now no obstruction, no jostling of
brother-horsemen pressing upon the same route.
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