CHAPTER XXXTHE BACKWARD TRACK
Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn, brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into the water, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, which lay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence, would have turned his face towards the river, but again the Susquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warily up stream.
The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious form of the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the other steadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed his companion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the great arch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until they had gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close, dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of great arbor-vitæs, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them in long, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice:
"Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is their road we are traveling."
The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock's face. "The white man is very wiseexcept when he is in the woods. Then he is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. A pappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find the fawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for our trail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, when they find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there, before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down the stream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves, but when they have reached it they will not know what to do. They will think, 'They who come after the Ricahecrians into the Blue Mountains must be many, with great hearts and with guns.' They will think, 'They came in boats, and one of their braves and one Iroquois, stealing up this stream, came upon the Ricahecrians when Kiwassa had closed their eyes and their ears, and stole away the fawn that the Ricahecrians had taken, and killed the man who fled with them from the palefaces.' And it will take a long time for them to find that there were no boats and that but two men have followed them into the Blue Mountains, for I covered our trail where this stream runs into the river very carefully. After a while they will find it, and after another while they will find that the chief of the Conestogas and his white brother and the maiden have gone up the stream, and they will come after us. But that will not be until after the full sun power, and by then we must be far from here."
"It is good," said Landless briefly. "Monakatocka has the wisdom of the woods."
"Monakatocka is a great chief," was the sententious reply.
"Do you think they will follow us when they find how greatly we have the start of them?"
"They will be upon our track, sun after sun, keen-eyed as the hawk, tireless as the wild horses, hungry as the wolf, until we reach the tribes that are friendly to the palefaces. And that will be many suns from now. I told my brother that we followed Death into the Blue Mountains. Now Death is upon our trail."
They came to a rivulet that emptied itself into the larger stream, and the Susquehannock led the way up its bed. Presently they reached a gently sloping mass of bare stone, a low hill running some distance back from the margin of the stream.
"Good," grunted the Susquehannock. "The moccasin will make no mark here that the sun will not wipe out."
They clambered out upon the rock and stood looking down the ravine through which they had come. "My brother is tired," said the Indian. "Monakatocka will carry the maiden."
"I am not tired," Landless answered.
The Indian looked at the face, thrown back upon the other's shoulder. "She is fair, and whiter than the flowers the maidens pluck from the bosom of the pleasant river."
"She is coming to herself," said Landless, and laid her gently down upon the rock.
Presently she opened her eyes quietly upon him as he knelt beside her. "You came," she said dreamily. "I dreamt that you would. Where are my father and my cousin?"
"Seeking you still, madam, I doubt not, though I have not seen them since the day after you were taken. They went up the Pamunkey and so missedyou. Thanks to this Susquehannock, I am more fortunate."
She lay and looked at him calmly, no surprise, but only a great peace in her face. "The mulatto," she said, "I feared him more than all the rest. When I saw him enter the hut I prayed for death. Did you kill him?"
"I trust so," said Landless, "but I am not certain, I was in too great haste to make sure."
"I do not care," she said. "You will not let him hurt me—if he lives—nor let the Indians take me again?"
"No, madam," Landless said.
She smiled like a child and closed her eyes. In the moonlight which blanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to her knees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, a creature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Lörelei sleeping upon her rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his darkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "We must be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Hair cannot travel swiftly. Let us be going."
"Madam," said Landless.
She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet. "We must hasten on," he said gently. "They will follow us and we must put as many leagues as possible between us before they find our trail."
"I did not think of that!" she said, with dilating eyes. "I thought it was all past—the terror—the horror! Let us go, let us hasten! I am quite strong; I have learned how to walk through the woods. Come!"
The Indian glided before them and led the way over the friendly rocks. They left them and found themselves upon a carpet of pine needles, and then in a dell where the fern grew rankly and the rich black earth gave like a sponge beneath their feet. Here the Indian made Landless carry Patricia, and himself came last, walking backwards in the footprints of the other, and pausing after each step to do all that Indian cunning could suggest to cover their trail. They came to more rocky ledges and walked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide and shallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself through the forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutter and chirp, the squirrels commenced their ceaseless chattering, and through the white mist, at bends of the stream, they saw deer coming from the fern of the forest to drink. A great hill rose before them, bare of trees, covered only with a coarse growth of grass and short blue thistles in which already buzzed a world of bees; they climbed it and from the summit watched a ball of fire rise into the cloudless blue. The morning wind, blowing over that illimitable forest, fanned their brows, and a tide of woodland sound and incense swept up to them from the world below. Around them were the Blue Mountains—gigantic masses, cloudy peaks, vast ramparts rising from a sea of mist—mysterious fastnesses, scarcely believed in and never seen by the settlers of the level land—a magic country in which they placed much gold and the wandering colonists of Roanoke, the South Sea, and long-gowned Eastern peoples.
"Oh, the mountains!" said Patricia. "The dreadful, frowning mountains! When will we be quit ofthem? When will we reach the level land and the blue water?"
"Before many days, I trust," said Landless. "See, our faces are set to the east—towards home."
She stood in silence for a moment, her face lifted, the color slowly coming back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, then said suddenly:—
"Did my father send you after me?"
"No, madam."
"Then how are you here?"
He looked at her with a smile. "I broke gaol—and came."
A shadow crossed her face, but it was gone in a moment. "I am very grateful," she said. "You have saved me from worse than death."
"It is I that am thankful," he answered.
They descended the hill in silence and found the Susquehannock, who had preceded them, squatted before a fire which he had kindled upon a flat rock beside one of the innumerable streamlets that wound here and there over the land.
"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he said with grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and the Gold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest and get them something to eat."
He was gone, his gigantic figure looking larger than life as he moved through the mist which still filled the hollow between the hills, and Landless and Patricia sat themselves down beside the fire. Landless piled upon it the dead wood with which the ground was strewn, and the flames leaped and crackled, sending up thin blue smoke against the hillside and reddening the bosom of the placid stream. When hehad finished his task and taken his seat, there fell a silence and constraint upon the man and woman, brought through so many strange and wayward paths, through lives so widely differing, to this companionship in the heart of a waste and savage world. They sat opposite each other in the ruddy light of the fire, and each, looking into the dark or glowing hollows, saw there the same thing—the tobacco house and what had there passed.
"I wish to believe in you," said Patricia at last, lifting appealing eyes to the opposite face. "But how can I? You lied to me!"
Landless raised his head proudly. "Madam, will you listen to me—to my defense if you will? You are a Royalist: I am a Commonwealth man. Can you not see, that as ten years ago, in the estimation of you and yours, it was all that was just and heroic for a Cavalier to plot the downfall of the Government which then was, both here and at home, so they of the Commonwealth saw no disgrace in laboring for their cause, a cause as real and as high and as holy to them, madam, as was that of the Stuart and the Church to the Cavalier.... And will not the slave fight for his liberty? Is it of choice, do you think, that men lie rotting in prison, in the noisome holds of ships, are bought and sold like oxen, are chained to the oar, to the tobacco field, are herded with the refuse of the earth, are obedient to the finger, to the whip? We—they who are known as Oliverians, and they who are felons, and I who am, if you choose, of both parties, were haled here with ropes. What allegiance did we owe to them who had cast us out, or to them who bought us as they buy dumb beasts? As God lives, none! We were no longer regarded as men,we were chattels, animals, slaves, caged, and chained. And as the caged beast will break his bars if he can, so we strove to break ours. You have been a captive, madam. Is not freedom sweet to you? We also longed for it. We staked our lives upon the throw—and lost. That dream is over,—let it go!... There is honor among rebels, madam, as among thieves. That morning after the storm, I had the choice of lying to you or of becoming a traitor indeed.... But as to what I had before asked you to believe, that was the truth, is the truth. I know that in your eyes I am still the rebel to the King, well deserving the doom which awaits me, but if, after what I say to you, by the faith of a gentleman, before the God who is above the stillness of these hills, you still believe me criminal in aught else, you wrong me much, you wrong yourself!"
He ceased abruptly, and rising, began to heap more wood upon the fire. The figure of the Indian, with something dark upon its shoulder, emerged from the spectral forest, and came towards them through the mist.
"Monakatocka has found our breakfast," said Landless, forcing himself to speak with indifference, and without looking at his companion. "I am glad of it, for you must be faint from hunger."
"I am very thirsty," she said in a low voice.
"If you will come to the water's edge, that at least can be quickly remedied."
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated and followed him down to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold," he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from my hands, madam?"
"Yes," she said; then deliberately, after a pause, "for I well believe them to be clean hands."
Her own hand touched his as she spoke, and he put it to his lips in silence. Kneeling upon the turf by the stream, he raised the water in his hands and she stooped and drank from them, and then they went back to the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival of Monakatocka, laden with a wild turkey. An hour later the Susquehannock carefully extinguished the fire, raked all the embers and ashes into the stream, hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal, obliterated all moccasin prints, and having made the little hollow between the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hours before, when the foot of man had probably never entered it, stepped into the stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey. Before midday, the stream winding to the south, they left it, and plunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with their faces to the east.
CHAPTER XXXITHE HUT IN THE CLEARING
Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when Landless, quietly watchful, saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the woman beside him, or noted her lagging footsteps. They had left the higher mountains behind them, but still moved through what seemed an uninhabited territory. No Indian village crowned the hills above the streams; they encountered no roving bands; no solitary hunter met them; nowhere was there sign of human life. If their enemies were upon their track, they knew it not—perfect peace, perfect solitude seemed to encompass them. Still the Indian was vigilant; covering their trail with unimaginable ingenuity, taking advantage of every running stream, every stony hillside, building a fire only in some hidden hollow or fold of the hills, using his bow and arrow to bring down the deer or wild fowl which furnished them food—he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimesthey rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction with keen and restless eyes. Nothing worse than the wolves—cowardly as yet, for though drawing swiftly nearer, winter and famine were still distant—threatened them; no sound other than the forest sounds disturbed them; through the scant undergrowth or over the moss and partridge berry brushed nothing more appalling than bear or badger. But the Indian watched on.
Day after day Landless and Patricia walked side by side through the reddening forest. His hands steadied her over crags or down ravines, or broke a way for her through vast beds of sassafras or mile-long tangles of wild grape, and when their way lay along the bed of streams he carried her. She had no need to complain of fatigue, for he saw when she was weary, and called a halt. At their rustic meals he waited upon her with grave courtesy, and when they halted for the night he made her couch of fallen leaves and wove for it a screen of branches. They spoke but little and only of the needs of the hour. She bore herself towards him kindly and gently, thanking him with voice and smile for all that he did for her, and there was no mistrust in her eyes; but he saw, or fancied he saw, a shadow in their depths, and thinking, "She does not forget, and neither must I," he set a watch upon himself, and bounds, across which he was not to step.
Upon the afternoon of the sixth day they were passing through a deep and narrow ravine—a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded mountains—whenthe Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a warning "Ugh!" then bent forward in a listening attitude.
"What is it?" asked Landless in a low voice. "I hear nothing."
"It is a sound," said the other in the same tone. "I do not know what yet, for it is far off. But it is in front of us."
"Shall we go on?" demanded Landless, and the Indian nodded.
It was late afternoon, and the hills which closed in behind them as the gorge writhed to left and right hid the sun. Great trees, too, pine and chestnut, walnut and oak, leaned towards each other from the opposing banks, and together with the overhanging rocks, mantled with fern, made a twilight of the pass beneath. Here and there the silver stem of a birch stood up tall and straight, and looked a ghostly sentinel. "Do you hear it still?" demanded Landless when they had gone some distance in dead silence.
"Yes."
"And still in front of us?"
"Yes."
"Ah, what can it be?" cried Patricia, turning her white face upon Landless.
A cold wind, blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in the heart of the forest."
"It is the sound of the axe of the white man," said the Indian. "Some one is cutting down a tree."
"There can be no ranger or pioneer within many leagues of us!" exclaimed Landless. "No white man hath ever come so far. It must be an Indian!"
The Susquehannock shook his head. "Why should an Indian cut down a tree? We kill them and let them stand until they are bare and white like the bones of a man when the wolves have finished with him, and they fall of themselves."
"If my father still searches for me," said Patricia in a low voice, "may it not be his party that we hear? There may be a stream there. They may make canoes."
"With all my heart I pray that it be so, madam," said Landless. "But we will soon know. See, Monakatocka has gone on ahead."
She did not answer, and they walked on through the gloom of the defile. Presently their path became rough and broken, blocked with large stones and heavily shadowed by cedars projecting from the rocks above and draped with vines. He held out his hands and she took them, and he helped her across the rough places. He felt her hands tremble in his, and he thought it was with the ecstasy of the hope which inspired her.
"If it is indeed so," she said once in a voice so low that he had to bend to catch the words, "if it is indeed my father, then this is the last time you will help me thus."
"Yes," he answered steadily. "The last time."
They passed the rocks and came to where the ravine widened. The sound that had perplexed them was now plainly audible; there was no mistaking the quick, ringing strokes of the axe. They rounded a jutting cliff and abruptly emerged from the chill darkness of the gorge upon a noble landscape of hill and valley, autumn woods and flowing water, all bathed in the golden light of the sinking sun and inestimablybright and precious of aspect after the gloom through which they had been traveling. But it was not the beauty of the scene which drew an exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a little, half-naked child—a white child. As the travelers stared in amazement, a woman's voice rang out, freshly and sweetly, in an English ballad. The trees had been cleared away from around the knoll, and in their place rose the yellowing stalks of Indian corn. The little mound, feathered with the gold of the golden-rod and girt with the gold of the maize, rose like a fairy isle from the limitless sea of forest, and the apparition of a troop of veritable elves would have astonished the wanderers less than did the tiny cabin, the romping child, and the clear song of the woman.
The Indian glided to their side from behind the trunk of an oak. "Ugh," he said with emphasis. "He is mad and so he has his scalp still." As he spoke he pointed to where, at a little distance, a man, with his back turned to the forest, was busily felling a tree.
"He dares much," said Landless. "We did not think to see the face of a white man—pioneer, ranger, trapper or trader—for many a league yet. He has built his house in the jaws of the wolf."
Patricia gazed at the hut with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there," she said, and Landless heard hervoice tremble for the first time in their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest here for this one night?"
"Yes," said Landless gently, reading, as he read all her fancies and desires, her longing for the companionship of a woman, though for so short a time. The Indian, too, nodded assent. "Good! but Monakatocka will watch to-night."
They moved through the checkered light and shade towards the man who worked at the foot of the knoll. They were quite near him when the woman, whose voice they had heard, came to the door of the cabin, shaded her eyes with her hand, looked towards the ravine, and saw the three figures emerging from it. With a loud cry she snatched up the child at her feet and rushed down the knoll towards the man, who at the sound of her voice dropped his axe, caught up a musket which leaned against a stump beside him, and wheeling, presented the gun at the newcomers.
"Give me your kerchief, madam," said Landless, and advanced with the white lawn in his hand.
"Halt!" cried the man with the gun.
"We are friends," called Landless. "This lady and I are from the Settlements. This Indian is not Algonquin, but Iroquois—a Susquehannock, as you may tell by his size. You need have no fear. We are quite alone."
The man slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends, do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the hue of the Indian.
"I might ask the same question of you," said Landless, coming up to him with a smile. "This lady was captured and carried off by a band of roving Ricahecrians who bore her into the Blue Mountains. We ask your hospitality for to-night. The lady is very weary, and she has not seen the face of a woman for many weeks. Your good wife will entreat her kindly, I know."
The woman, who now stood beside the man, smiled, but doubtfully; the man's face too was clouded, and there was an uneasy light in his eyes. Landless, looking steadily at him, saw upon his forehead a mark which served to explain his evident perturbation.
"You need not fear me," he said quietly. "'Tis none of our business how you come to be here in this wilderness, so far from what has been counted the furthest outpost."
The man, feeling his gaze upon him, raised his hand with an involuntary motion to his forehead, then dropped it, awkwardly enough.
"I see," said Landless. "I understand. I have been—I am—a servant. A runaway, too, if you like. I have been in trouble. I would not betray you if I could: that I cannot, goes without saying. Now, will you shelter us for this night?"
"Yes," said the man, his face clearing. "As you say, you couldn't do us harm if you would, seeing that masters, and d—d overseers, and bloodhounds are at the world's end for us. We are beyond their reach. Bring up the lady. Joan, here, will see to her."
An hour later the woman and Patricia sat side by side upon the doorstep in the long mountain twilight. At their feet the little child crowed and clapped itshands, and plucked at the golden-rod growing about the door. Below them, beside the placid stream, the owner of the hut and Godfrey Landless paced slowly up and down, now disappearing into the shadow of the trees, now dimly seen in the open spaces, while the Indian lay at full length beneath the maples, with his eye upon the blackness of the ravine down which they had come.
"It is fair to look upon, and peaceful," Patricia said dreamily, "but Danger lives in these dreadful mountains. Why did you come here?"
"We came because we loved," the woman said simply.
"But why into the very land of the savages, so far from safety, so far from the Settlements?"
The woman turned her eyes upon the beautiful face beside her and studied it in silence.
"I will tell you," she said at last, "for I believe you are as good as you are beautiful, and you are as beautiful as an angel. And, though I can see that you are a lady, yet you are woman too, as I am, and you have suffered much, as I have, and have loved too, I think, as I have loved."
"I have never loved," said Patricia.
The woman smiled, and shook her head. "There is a look in the eyes that only comes with that. I know it." She gathered the child to her, and beating its little hand against her bosom, began her story:—
"It is four years since I signed to come to the Plantations, to become the servant of an up-river planter—and to better myself. It was a hard life, my lady, a hard life—you cannot guess how hard.... One day a neighboring planter sent a message to my master, and I (for I served in the house) took it fromthe messenger. The messenger was one that I had known in the village at home, in England. He had left home to make his fortune, and I had not heard of him for a long time. They used to call me his sweetheart. When I saw him I cried out, and he caught my hands in his.... After that we met whenever we could, on Sundays, on Instruction days, whenever chance offered. He had tried to run away twice before we met, but he never tried afterwards. His master was a hard man—mine was worse.... After a while we began to meet in secret—at night.... You are a lady—that is different—you cannot understand; but I loved him, loved him as well as any lady in the land could love; better, maybe.... There came a night when I was followed, and taken, and he with me." She broke off to smell at the scentless spear of golden-rod which the child held up, and to say, "Yes, my darling, pretty, pretty, pretty," then went on with her eyes following the figures walking up and down beside the stream. "The next night found us in the sheriff's hands, in the gaol at the court-house. Oh that blank, dreadful, heavy night! I felt the lash already—I did not mind that—but I saw the platform and the post, and the gaping crowd beneath. I thought of him, and my heart was sick; I thought of my mother, and my tears fell like rain.... There was a noise at the window, and I stood upon my stool to see what it was. It was he! He had a knife and he worked and wrenched at the bars until he had wrenched them away, then dragged me through the window and we stood together beneath the stars—free! Another moment and we were down at the water side and into a boat which was fastened there. We loosed it and rowed with all our speed upthe river. He had killed the gaoler and gotten away, bringing with him a musket and an axe. All that night we rowed, and when morning broke we were well-nigh past the settlements, for we had been far up river to begin with. That day we hid in the reeds, but when night came we sped up the stream. We came to the falls of the far west and left our boat there. For many days we walked through the woods, hurrying on, day after day, for when we lay down at night, I saw in my dreams the flash of the torches and heard the baying of the hounds. After a long while we came to an Indian village not many leagues from here, and there we found the mercies of the savage kinder than the mercies of the white man. They may have thought us mad—I do not know—but they did not harm us. There we dwelt for a time, in the stranger's wigwam, and there the child was born." She pressed the little hand which she held, and which she had never ceased to beat against her bosom, to her lips. "He would have stayed in the village, but in sleep I still heard the bloodhounds, and we left the friendly Indians and pressed on. We came upon this knoll on just such an evening as this—the light in the west, and the stream very still, with a large white star shining down upon it. We lay down beside it, and that night I slept without a dream.... We have been here ever since, and here we shall stay until we die."
"It is fair now," said Patricia, "but in a little while it will be winter and very cold."
"Bitterly cold," said the woman. "The snow lies long in these hills, and the wind howls down the ravine."
"And the wolves are bold in winter."
"Very bold. This scar upon my arm is from the teeth of one which I fought here, on the very threshold."
"The Indians threaten always, summer or winter."
"Ay, sooner or later they will come against us. We shall die that way at last. But what does it matter—so that we die together?"
The lady of the manor turned her pure, pale face upon the other with wonder, and yet with comprehension, written upon it.
"You are happy!" she said, almost in a whisper.
"Yes, I am happy," the woman answered, a light that was not from the faintly crimson west upon her face.
CHAPTER XXXIIATTACK
About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly in at the open door.
"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"
Landless sprang to his feet. "My God! You are sure?"
"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."
The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up. Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen, he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath and exclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough. Rushing into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, he groped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light and fired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receive it; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.
"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We'll die fighting." The woman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars were drawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and an axe in her hands.
A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the war whoop—dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating in its savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there came the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one of the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by a yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries, quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms; within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child, and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail of the rude interior, now plunged all into shadow.
"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloading his musket. "There's some shall go to hell before we do. Joan, my girl—"
An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell to the ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answered from without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heard speaking.
"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.
"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil, but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"
"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low and thatched with dried grass and moss.
"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in five minutes, come what may."
"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs have us fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; his bones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalp will hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see the village and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, he and his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneath the mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast. He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party. The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf in the forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is not seen: the stream closes above the pebble—it is gone!" His voice rose into a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand, to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright knife.
"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.
The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin. Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and the invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this space something dreadful now happened.
On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had sobbeditself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a weak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed the path of the Ricahecrian chief—he glanced downwards, saw the tiny tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling of the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before. She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet remained alive.
The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless—one Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded snake—confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls, which were fast becoming those of a furnace,the majority retreating to the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their devil's work the bolder spirits within.
These now bore downen masseupon the devoted three. One threw his tomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuck into the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but he beat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who, knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.
"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I will care for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One went down before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like a reed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by his tomahawk—there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne down and knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one last superhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stag shakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless, dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;—
"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the Blue Mountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs at Death—dies laughing."
He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying to and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for which the storm has been too much.
Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon the yellow menace before him.
"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "They promise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall lead to it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."
Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto, springing back, avoided the blow.
"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.
A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them. A volume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly saw Indians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by the intolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and the remainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was the square opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleeping when this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in his arms, he made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporary security. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were already taking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whispered encouraging words.
"I know," she answered. "We are in God's hands. I would rather die than to come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and the way seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"
"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. They would certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the fire reaches this straw above our heads we will try it."
"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.
Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like a torch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of the savages, who,unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so covered with the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it, congregated in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, and waited for their still living victims to emerge from it.
"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.
They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it down the lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at the foot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, and painted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bent forward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the lust for blood. In his footsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar, then a fourth, a fifth—a long line, creeping as silently as shadows—a nightmare procession—up through the lurid light.
Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.
"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."
The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into a disc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. A moment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yells from the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.
"Now is our time," said Landless.
Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, and down the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.
"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they have not destroyed it."
They made for the water, found the raft hidden ina clump of reeds and uninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearance of the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, down a stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. The glare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming mass itself shrunk until it looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of the struggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too, died away.
"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched at the feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.
"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be so handled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."
There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.
"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocent little thing!"
"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil and suffering. It is better as it is."
"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob in her voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poor Indian—"
"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."
"It is I that brought him death!" cried Patricia, tossing up her arms. "I that shall bring you death!"
Her voice rose into a cry that echoed drearily from the hills about them, and she beat her hands against the raft with a sudden passion.
"You would bring me no unwelcome gift," said Landless steadily, "provided only that the time when I could serve you with my life were past."
She did not answer, and they floated on in silencedown the little river, between banks lined with dwarf willows and sighing reeds. With the dawn they came to rapids through which they could not pilot their frail craft. Leaving the water, they turned their faces towards the rising sun, and pursued their journey through the forest that seemed to stretch to the end of the world.