CHAPTER XXXIITHE ASHES OF POWER
After a few weeks of desperate struggle, Butler gave up all hopes of maintaining the rights he had so haughtily assumed, and departed abruptly for America, leaving his wife at Ashton, for a time unconscious of his desertion.
But when she knew that he was gone, no wild bird, torn from its mate, ever became so restless in its thralldom as she did in that princely mansion. She pined without ceasing, and, refusing all food, sat down with her face shrouded, after the manner of her race, and refused to be comforted.
In vain both Varnham and Mary strove to persuade the unhappy young creature to stay with them, and share the wealth which Catharine Montour’s violent death had undoubtedly prevented her dividing. The forest girl could not be made to comprehend the value of property. As for gold, she scarcely knew its use, or that the beautiful objects with which her mother had been surrounded, did not come naturally to those whom the Great Spirit favored, as leaves grew upon the summer boughs. She pined for the presence of her husband, and smiled with scorn when any one sought to console her for his absence with gold which she did not want and lands that bore blossoms and grain, rather than the mighty old forest trees, under which her father’s warriors had hunted all their lives.
At last a strange belief came upon her that Butler had not intentionally left her behind. She had known him called away suddenly to battle, when he had notime to warn her. Was not this occasion urgent, as those had been? She would not doubt it, in the faith of her great love she trusted in him still. One morning, when Mary went up to her sister’s chamber, hoping to comfort her, she found the room empty. Tahmeroo had left Ashton in the night, and followed after her husband.
Across the ocean she came into her own beautiful, wild country. She was told that Butler might be found in the Mohawk Valley, leading his Indians on to battle again; and to that point she bent her way. Wherever a fight had been, or a body of savages gathered, she came in breathless haste, searching for the man who had cast her off.
In October, 1781, the poor Indian wife found herself on the banks of a creek, deep in the forest, with an escort of two or three Indians who had been detached from their companions, and were glad to take charge of their chief’s daughter.
There had been a skirmish on this stream during the day, and from some of the fugitives Tahmeroo had learned that her husband was in command of the Indians. Without a thought of the dangers she was sure to encounter in a running fight of this kind, the young wife kept on her route, led forward by scattering shots, till the woods, now dun with withered foliage, were filled with the cold gloom of the coming night. As she moved on, the wind rose, filling the air with dead leaves, and above that came the rush and flap of wings. The patter of stealthy feet, and the low growl of wolves, disturbed by the approach of human beings.
A little hollow was before her, full of shadows, and with a black cloud of crows gathering over it.
Tahmeroo rode to the brink of the hollow, and looked down, stooping over the bent neck of her horse. From the side of a rock, around which a little stream of water was creeping, three ravens soared upwards, flapping their heavy wings, and roosting on a tree-branch sullenlyeyed her approach. She did not heed them, for by the rock was a mass of blackness more terrible than the ravenous birds to her. She dropped slowly down the side of her horse, crept across the rock and bent over.
When her escort reached her, she lay with her face downward, and her eyes open, as they had looked on the dead body of her husband, but those eyes saw nothing, and when the savages lifted her up, she felt nothing—all the world was dark to her then.
As if Gi-en-gwa-tah’s curse had fulfilled itself, the settlement at Seneca Lake had atoned for the massacre of Wyoming, and now lay desolated; the beautiful grounds were black with ruin, the charred trunks of the dead trees rose in black groups where life and greenness had been. Heaps of stone lay where the houses had stood, and a few bark wigwams, in which the broken remnants of Queen Esther’s followers still sheltered themselves, were all that Sullivan’s avenging troops had left to the old queen.
The mansion which she had called her palace was a heap of ruins, but some of the walls remained, and one of the largest rooms had been roofed over with plank and slabs, thus giving shelter to that terrible woman, who lay like a sick lioness on a buffalo skin in the centre, smitten by her son’s curse, and struggling with that dogged old age which chains the passions it cannot quench.
On the broken door-step sat a group of savages, looking gloomily into the yawning hall. They dared not intrude on the sick woman without a summons; but sat listening, not for moans or complaints—those they never could expect—but for a sound of the death rattle, which must soon follow the appalling stillness in which she rested.
As she lay thus, picking perpetually at the fur on the buffalo robe, with a keen glare of the eyes, as if thatwork must be done before she could enter eternity, a figure glided past the Indians on the door-step and entered that death-chamber. It was Tahmeroo, her grandchild, but so haggard and lifeless that the Indians, whom she passed, had not known her.
The old woman turned her eyes that way, but kept picking, picking, picking at the fur.
All at once she seemed to comprehend that one of her own kindred stood beside her. She raised herself up on one hand; the snow-white hair swept back from her face, leaving it stony and ashen. Up and up, inch by inch, she struggled, shaking like a naked tree in the winter, till she stood upright.
“Tell him that you saw his mother die upon her feet. He struck her with a curse, but death is not so strong. I grapple with him, face to face, tooth and tooth; but a child’s curse who can bear!”
She reeled heavily, flung out her clenched hands, striving to balance herself, but fell with a dull crash. There was a sound in her throat, like the muffled rattle of chains in a dungeon, and the old queen lay across her buffalo robe stiff and dead.
All that day and night a death-chant rose and swelled through those ruins. The blackened trees, dead, like their owner, shivered as the wind passed them burdened with that mournful wail. That little group of Indians, broken off from the great tribe by the curse of their chief, buried their queen among the blackened ruins, covered her grave with ashes, and sat down by it in patient desolation.
Then Tahmeroo glided among them like a ghost. “Old men,” she said, in the gentleness of solemn grief, “sit no longer in the ashes of my father’s curse. Gi-en-gwa-tah will listen to Catharine Montour’s child when she tells him all the sweet words which her mother left behind. Gather up the dried fruit and corn in your wigwams, and follow me to the great-waters, where thetribe are planting young trees and building new lodges.”
The Indians arose in dead silence and filed away. As they gathered the scant provisions from their wigwams, the death-chant was hushed, but when they struck into file again, and Tahmeroo placed herself at their head, it broke forth once more, and went moaning down the banks of the lake, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, till a sob of wind carried the last sound away.
THE END
THE END
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTESSilently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES