CHAPTER VI.
AN UNEXPECTED SHOT.
“Yes, Mark, there’s some one in the hollow.”
This declaration, repeated the second time, aroused Mark Morgan.
He looked down the river, and beheld three feathered heads floating, as it were, on the moonlit water; and along the bank, to gain a point opposite the Cone, ran six or eight British soldiers, whose gilt buttons, and scarlet uniforms made them conspicuous marks for the ranger’s rifle.
Missing St. Pierre from among them, the scout again glanced down-stream, and noted the long iron-gray hair of the old trader floating beside the heron feathers of an Ottawa chief.
As we have said, the situation of the pair was extremely critical.
Did they but possess a boat—the scout’s canoe, which had mysteriously disappeared, as the reader has seen—they might hope for escape, for their enemies possessed no barks, and could not pursue.
In the moment of indecision, which had followed Effie’s startling announcement, perhaps precious time had been lost, which Mark Morgan, inwardly cursing his inaction, resolved to regain.
Indians on the island—in the hollow!
“Back into the shade of this cottonwood, girl,” cried the spy, drawing Effie from the bank. “Those voices in the hollow must be attended to. The red-skins seem to be making poor headway in the water, for which thank God! Here, stand behind this trunk; my rifle, take it, and drop the first red-man upon whom you can draw a bead. I’ve seen you shoot before, Effie. Be vigilant. I will return presently.”
The brave girl smiled as she took the scout’s rifle, and threw her gaze upon the heads on the water. He gripped her hand a moment, pressed it with fervor, as he looked down into her determined face, and glided away among the young poplars.
A few steps brought him to a spot that commanded a tolerable view of the hollow.
Once the river had flowed through the vale, thus forming two islets out of the Cone, and consequently, from frequent irrigations, but few representatives of the vegetable kingdom flourished there. But near the water’s edge now grew a group of silver maples, and failing to see any living object in the almost denuded hollow, the spy bent his eyes upon this spot.
“Effie must have been mistaken,” he murmured, as he was about to seek the girl, convinced that they were the only occupants of the island. “I must haste to her, for she may need my assistance. I do not deem it necessary to reconnoiter yonder hill, for— Hist! by my soul! a groan.”
The sound that fell upon the spy’s ears came from the group of silver maples near the water, and as Morgan turned his eyes thitherward he beheld a momentary glitter among the white leaves.
“That groan was not feigned; it came from a person sorely wounded, and that person is a white man, for he said, ‘Oh, my God!’ An Indian never says that; he dies in silence; he never groans.”
Satisfied that but one person, and that a wounded man, occupied the maple grove, the scout approached the grove and paused among the outer trees.
All was silent.
Then he crept forward with drawn knife.
On, on, still on, to the center of the maples, yet encountering no one!
“Could I have been deceived?” he asked himself, over and over. “I was willing to swear a minute since that I heard a groan in these maples; but now—”
“Christ, give me strength!”
Mark Morgan came to an abrupt halt. Scarce ten steps from him lay the speaker.
His gilt buttons scintillated in the rays of the new moon, and his scarlet uniform looked as pale as the face that the spy saw through the trees.
A moment served to bring Morgan to the man’s side.
The wounded one looked up, and, with a groan of despair, shrunk from what he supposed an Indian.
“Major Runnion!” ejaculated the spy, recognizing the frightened face upturned to him.
“Yes, and you?”
“Mark Morgan.”
“Wayne’s spy?”
“Yes; but how came you here? My boat!” as his eyes fell upon the canoe, poorly moored to a maple root. “No, you need not speak. I can read all now. St. Pierre shot not to the death. You fell into the water, accidentally found my boat, and came hither.”
“Yes—to die,” groaned the major. “Hark! Oh, God, my foes, and yours too, are hounding us on to the dread end.”
A fearful pallor overspread the Briton’s face, as the report of a rifle smote the air.
“Courage!” cried Mark Morgan, stooping over the man—his enemy. “Lie perfectly still. I will return directly, and then we’ll leave the island; we’ll baffle them at last.”
He sprung erect, and darted from the murderer, toward the spot where he had left Effie St. Pierre.
He had recognized the report of his rifle.
He found the brave girl driving a ball home with the calmness of a brave man, and she smiled faintly as she looked up into his face.
“There’s one Ottawa less, Mark,” she said. “By stepping into the moonlight and displaying a directed rifle, I have kept the red-skins at bay in mid-stream, where they can touch ground; and until a moment since, they have been afraid to advance. Then one taunted his companions, said that the white girl’s arms shook like leaves, and stepped forward. Ah! Mark, he’ll never fight again. See! down-stream, the demons look like buoys.”
“Come girl, we leave the island.”
“What, Mark, a boat?”
“My boat, Effie. Ha! look yonder! They’re going to flank us.”
He pointed up the river to a spot from whence a number of British soldiers were springing into the water, to act in concert with St. Pierre and their red allies, by flanking the island.
Instantly Effie turned the spy’s rifle upon the scarlet coats.
“No, Effie, they’re the king’s soldiers,” said Mark, gently taking possession of the weapon. “We’re not at war with England, and the death of a Briton by our hands might be mourned by a thousand homes. Come, we’ll defeat them yet.”
He caught her hand and darted from the spot, almost directly in the faces of the British, some of whom were in mid-stream above the Cone.
A few minutes sufficed to bring them to the wounded Briton, and the spy’s boat.
“Major Runnion!”
The exclamation bubbled involuntarily to Effie’s lips.
The major groaned, and turned his face from the girl he had grossly insulted—deeply wronged.
“Perhaps it would serve you right to leave you here,” said Mark Morgan, looking down upon the major. “You’re a murderer, and deserve the gallows; but, I’m not the man to leave a fellow-creature to die without a chance for his life. Were they to find you here, they’d kill you without a moment’s prayer, and I doubt you’re not prepared to settle with the powers above. We’ll take you with us, and if you recover, which, to be plain, I think doubtful, I’ll turn you over to Mad Anthony, and you can guess what he’ll do with you.”
“Take me with you,” groaned Runnion. “Do not let me fall into their hands. When I recover I’ll meet them, and fight them fair.”
Glancing at Effie, the spy raised the British soldier in his arms, and laid him in the bottom of the boat.
The Briton smiled his gratitude.
“Get in, girl.”
Effie St. Pierre sprung into the bark, and the scout followed.
“Now for the gantlet!” he said, as he seized the paddle.
The boat shot from the shore; a yell burst from the red-skins below, which was quickly answered by the British above. Effie griped the scout’s trusty rifle.
A few strokes sent them around the southern point of the island, and the canoe burst upon the vision of the Britons.
A cry of astonishment greeted the daring voyagers.
Mark Morgan guided the boat toward the right bank of the stream, and, as if to aid them, clouds flitted before the bright disk of the moon.
“Shoot them! shoot them!” shouted a stentorian voice from the bank.
The soldiers in mid-stream threw to their shoulders the rifles which they had kept above their heads, and half a dozen flashes greeted the occupants of the canoe. The balls flew over their heads, and struck the spongy cottonwoods that clothed the bank, with dull thuds.
The spy laughed as the bullets whistled over them, and glancing up at the clouds, gradually passing before the queen of night, drove his boat swifter through the placid water, and soon they were out of range—for the moment were safe.
Then Mark Morgan lessened his speed, and bade Effie take the paddle.
“I must play surgeon awhile,” he said, turning to the major, who, during the flight had laid motionless in the bottom of the boat. “Major, we’ve run the gantlet safely. Your countrymen, I fear, are sorry marksmen. There! don’t speak. I see it irritates your wound.”
The next moment the spy had removed the bloody clothing from the Briton’s wound, which he, with some knowledge of surgery, proceeded to examine.
He discovered that the half-ounce ball of the trader’s rifle had torn through the soldier’s right side, inflicting one of the ghastliest wounds the young spy had ever seen. The loss of blood had been very great, and now with that and the Herculean task of working the spy’s canoe from its moorings to the Cone, the Briton was as weak as a child.
“Your wound has stopped bleeding,” said Mark, looking into Runnion’s face, “and I must say that your case looks bilious. I can’t do much for you now; but when we get to a hiding-place, I’ll do the best I know how with you.”
Then Mark proceeded to place a pillow formed from his blanket, under the soldier’s head, and in other little ways tried to make him comfortable.
“I know a place where we can hide to-day,” said Mark, gliding to Effie’s side. “It is now far into the night, girl, and, thank fortune, before the dawn we shall reach the spot.”
He looked the savage he impersonated, while he sat at Effie’s side, and conversed with her in low whispers. The long heron plumes fluttered over his shoulders; he had the keen eye of the Ottawa, and his body was covered with glittering war-paint.
When the sky, at length, began to grow lighter in the east, the canoe increased its speed, under Morgan’s strong strokes, and when the dawn had fairly come the spy guided his little craft up a narrow stream walled by perpendicular rocks.
“There’s a cave not far from here, Effie,” he said, as the boat shot along, now and then grating upon rocks which proclaimed the shallowness of the stream they were navigating.
“Now that we are safe, Mark, I hope Wayne—”
The sentence was broken by the crack of a rifle overhead, the paddle fell from Mark Morgan’s hands, and he sunk down in the bottom of the boat.
With a light cry Effie St. Pierre snatched up the rifle that lay at her feet, and glanced upward.
Two figures on a projecting rock fifty feet above, commanded her attention.
“Throw down the rifle, girl,” said the silvery voice that floated down to her, while the boat spun around among the rocks.
The two figures began to descend.
“Hasten!” cried Effie, laying the rifle aside, and glancing at the bloody face of her lover. “He’s not an Indian,” and she pointed to him as she looked up again. “The young She-wolf has stained her hands with the blood of a friend!”
At this a cry escaped the lips of the foremost of the descending twain, and faster down the rocks came the beautiful Terror of the Maumee, and Kenowatha.