



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




The Fatal Cord
and The Falcon Rover
By Captain Mayne Reid
Published by Charles H. Clarke, 13 Paternoster Row, London.
This edition dated 1872.

The Fatal Cord, by Mayne Reid.

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THE FATAL CORD, BY MAYNE REID.



STORY ONE, CHAPTER ONE.

A BIVOUAC OF BOY HUNTERS.

A Hunters' bivouac under the shadows of a Mississippian forest, in a
spot where the trees stand unthinned by the axe of the woodman.

It is upon the Arkansas side of the great river, not far from the town
of Helena, and in the direction of Little Rock, the capital of that
State.

The scene is a small glade, surrounded by tall cottonwood trees, one of
which on each side, conspicuously "blazed," indicates a "trace" of
travel.  It is that leading from Helena to a settlement on the forks of
the White River and Cache.

The time is a quarter of a century ago, when this district of country
contained a heterogeneous population, comprising some of the wildest and
wickedest spirits to be found in all the length and breadth of the
backwoods border.  It was then the chosen home for men of fallen
fortunes, lawyers and land speculators, slave-traders and swindlers,
hunters, who lived by the pursuit of game, and sportsmen, whose game was
cards, and whose quarry consisted of such dissolute cotton planters as,
forsaking their homes in Mississippi and Tennessee, had re-established
themselves on the fertile bottoms of the Saint Francis, the White and
the Arkansas.

A glance at the individuals comprising the bivouac in question forbids
the supposition that they belong to any of the above.  There