CHAPTER XIV.
The physical shock to Maxwell’s system had worked no lasting harm to his constitution. Freedom, cleanliness and nourishing food were magical in their effects, and a week after his rescue found him up and about gradually joining in the duties of the camp.
And what an experience it was to this young, tenderly nurtured aristocrat! It was his function to watch the shifting panorama of defiance to despotism as outlined in the daily lives of the patriotic abolitionists with whom his lot was now cast. He lived in an atmosphere of suspicion, for to be identified with John Brown was a forfeit of one’s life; a price was on the head of every individual associated with him. Yet with all the discouraging aspects of the cause these men had espoused, scarcely a day went by that did not bring news of the movements of the enemy, sent by some friendly well-wisher, or a token of good feeling in the form of much needed supplies, and even delicacies for the sick.
The menace of impending danger, however, hung over them constantly. The very ground was honey-combed with intrigue set on foot by resolute and determined Southerners who vowed to crush out all opposition and make the institution of slavery national, and with this determination conspiracies of every kind were abroad to circumvent the North and its agents, of whom the Kansas pro-slavery men were the most belligerent, in the growing desire of that section to make freedom universal within the borders of the United States. He saw plainly that the nation was fast approaching an alarming crisis in its affairs, and, by contrast with the arguments and attitude of the South, that the weight of principle was with the North where the people had been alarmingly docile and conservative. The efforts, in Congress, and in pro-slavery political conventions, were but an aggravation, and not satisfactory to either side, adding fuel to the flame that was making terrible inroads upon the public peace.
The Brown men were restless because of enforced inactivity, for all felt a blow was impending, marvelling that it was so long delayed, and anxious to force an issue—anything was better than uncertainty—for the lengthened time of waiting was a terrible strain upon the nerves.
Captain Brown sought the company of Maxwell frequently, conversing freely of his hopes and fears. The young man was greatly impressed with the clearness and value of his knowledge of military tactics. He was familiar with all the great battles of ancient and modern times; had visited every noted battlefield of old Europe and carefully sketched plans of the operations and positions of the opposing forces. These maps were a source of delight to the old man who went over them with Warren, explaining with great enthusiasm the intricacies of the manœuvres. During this intimacy, Captain Brown revealed to his guest his own great scheme for an insurrection among the slaves—an uprising of such magnitude that it should once and for all time settle the question of slavery.
Maxwell promised money and ammunition and arms, but his heart was heavy as he listened to plans and purposes that had been long in maturing, brooded over silently and secretly, with much earnest thought, and under a solemn sense of religious duty. What would be the fate of the band of hero-martyrs who would dash themselves to bloody death under the inspired influence of their intrepid leader? The prison walls would shake from summit to foundation, and wild alarm would fill every tyrant heart in all the South, of this he had no doubt, but would the effort be crowned with success? It was hardly possible.
Summer was advancing ever deeper in dust. The sky was tarnishing with haze. The sunsets longer in burning out in the west, in tragic colors. Scouts were continually posting back and forth. Warren had promised himself while in prison never to complain of the dispensations of Providence should he live to enjoy freedom again; but at the end of the second week of convalescence he was imploring to be allowed to join the scouting parties of skirmishers. The stir of the camp fired his blood; he was devoured by anxiety to be among the busy people of the world once more, to know what events had transpired in his absence and how the world had wagged along without his help, forgetting that a vacuum is quickly filled and we are soon forgotten.
“The sooner I get out of this the better, Maybee;” he exclaimed one day, rousing himself from painful memories of home and his failure to accomplish the mission he had set out so confidently to perform. “I want to get home!”
“Jest so,” replied Maybee, with ready sarcasm. “We’ll start to-morrow morning on foot.”
“No—you know what I mean. I want to——”
“Oh, yes, cert’nly; jest so. We might, ef you’re in a great hurry, start this evenin’. The Rangers are all over the place between here an’ civilization, but we won’t stop for that, for with a strong fightin’ man like you fer a companion there’d be nothin’ to fear—about gittin’ a through ticket to glory this week.”
“Cease jesting, Maybee! What I want is to make every hour tell upon the work of getting well—not only on my own account, but—we owe that poor girl something.”
“Hem!” grunted Maybee, shooting the young man a keen look under which he colored slightly. “That’s right; always keep the weaker vessel in yer mem’ry; trust in the Lord and keep yer powder dry, as our friend Brown’d say. And that remin’s me of ’Tarius up home. ’Tarius got religion and when the day came roun’ fer the baptisin’ it was a January blizzard, although well along in the month of April. ’Tarius ain’t fond of cold weather no how, and he didn’t show up along with the other candidates. Next day the minister came up to look after ’Tarius. ‘Don’ ye trus’ in de Lawd, brother?’ says the minister. ‘Yes, brother,’ says ’Tarius, ‘I trust pintedly in de Lawd; but I ain’t gwine fool wif God!’ That’s my advice to you, Maxwell; don’t you fool with Providence; jest let well-enough alone.”
The next afternoon Mr. Maybee came rushing back to the cabin which was their mutual home.
“Well, young feller, we’re in fer it, an’ no mistake. You’ll git fightin’ a-plenty before forty-eight hours.”
“What’s it?” queried Maxwell languidly, “another false alarm?”
“No, by gosh; it’s the real thing this time. The Rangers are at Carlton’s. You remember hearin’ Parson Steward speak of Reynolds, don’ you?” Maxwell nodded.
“He’s come up to camp an’ brought Brown the news.”
“How soon will they get here?”
“Cayn’t tell; maybe to-morrow an’ perhaps not before nex’ week; but it’s boun’ to come. Dog my cats, if I’m sorry. I fairly itch to git my hands on the onery cusses that killed the parson.”
“Anything is better than waiting; it takes the life out of a man. I shall not feel safe until I get my feet on British soil once more. God being my helper, Maybee, I’ll never set foot on the soil of the ‘greatest (?) Republic on earth’ again,” he finished earnestly.
Mr. Maybee chuckled.
“Con-vinced are you? They used ter tell me when I was a little shaver that the proof of the puddin’ was in swallerin’ the bag—that is, pervidin’ it was a biled puddin’. I’ll ’low them varmints heat you pretty hot, but there’s nothin’ so convincin’ as ex-perience. I might a talked to you fer forty days an’ nights, wastin’ my breath fer nothin’, an’ you’d a said to yourself ‘Maybee’s stretchin’ it; ’taint quarter so bad as he makes out;’ but jest as soon as they git to work on your anatermy yer fin’ out that Maybee was mild by comparison. The South’s a horned hornet on the ‘nigger’ question. Time n’r tide, n’r God A’mighty aint goin’ to change ’em this week.”
“Well, I’m ready for them; I’m feeling decidedly fit,” replied Maxwell.
“Good. Reynolds left you a message, a sort of warning. Thomson says the nex’ time he gits you he’ll fix you, law or no law; he’s goin’ to flog you first like a nigger, an’ then burn you an’ send your ashes to your folks in England in a chiny vase. How’s that strike you?”
“He will if he’s lucky; but I have my doubts.”
Maybee gazed at him in silent admiration a moment before he said: “British grit a plenty in you, by thunder; that’s the talk.”
Preparations immediately went forward in the camp for meeting the enemy. Winona’s cave on the mountainside was to be stored with provision, ammunition and all other necessaries. The men worked all night in detachments, watch and watch.
Warren had seen very little of Winona; she kept with the women.
Thinking of the coming conflict, Warren climbed the slope leading to the top of the highest peak, and established himself there as a lookout. It was near the cave in which supplies were being stored, and where the women and children would find a refuge. Presently he saw Winona loitering up the hillside with downcast eyes. As she drew near, the magnetism of his gaze compelled her glance to seek his face. She started, and would have turned back but Warren called out in a kindly voice not in the least alarming:
“Come, see this fine sweep of country. We cannot be surprised.”
The sudden blush that had suffused her cheek at sight of him died out, leaving her serious and calm. The last few days she had thawed somewhat out of her coldness, for care could not live with youth and gaiety and the high-tide of summer weather, and the propinquity, morning, noon and night, of the society of the well-beloved one.
More and more Warren felt toward her as to a darling, irresistible child, and sometimes as to a young goddess far beyond him, as he realized how pure and sweet was the inner life of this child-woman. The noisome things that creep and crawl about the life of the bond chattel had fallen away from her. She was unique: a surprise every day in that she was innocence personified and yet so deliciously womanly,
“Standing, with reluctant feet,Where the brook and river meet,Womanhood and childhood fleet!”
“Standing, with reluctant feet,Where the brook and river meet,Womanhood and childhood fleet!”
“Standing, with reluctant feet,Where the brook and river meet,Womanhood and childhood fleet!”
“Standing, with reluctant feet,
Where the brook and river meet,
Womanhood and childhood fleet!”
In this last week of returning strength, Winona imagined, when she saw Maxwell sitting among the men of the camp moody and silent, that he was remembering his home with longing and awaiting the moment for safe departure with impatience.
During her weeks of unselfish devotion when she had played the role of the boy nurse so successfully, she had been purely and proudly glad. Now, little by little, a gulf had opened between them which to her unsophisticated mind could not be bridged. There lay the misery of the present time—she was nothing to him. Does any love resign its self-imposed tasks of delightful cares and happy anxieties without a pang? Like any other young untrained creature, she tormented herself with fears that were but shadows and railed at barriers which she herself had raised, even while she argued that Fate had fixed impassable chasms of race and caste between them.
“How a man glories in war,” she said, after a silence, from her seat on a jagged rock overhanging the cliff.
“You, with your Indian training, ought to feel with us and not think of fear,” said Warren.
“But then, I am not of the blood.”
“True.”
His reply fell upon her ear like a reproach—a reflection upon her Negro origin. Her suspicion sounded in her voice as she replied:
“Better an Indian than a Negro? I do not blame you for your preference.”
“Why speak with that tone—so scornfully? Is it possible that you can think so meanly of me?”
She could not meet his eye, but her answer was humbly given—her answer couched in the language of the tribes.
“Are you not a white brave? Do not all of them hate the black blood?”
“No; not all white men, thank God. In my country we think not of the color of the skin but of the man—the woman—the heart.”
“Oh, your country! Do you know, I believe my dear papa was of the same?”
Her head rested against the tree back of her; the lace-work of the pine ashes formed upon her knees and enveloped her as a cloud.
He nodded in reply, and continued, musingly, as his eyes wandered off over the plain at his feet:
“England is a country to die for—rich, grand, humane! You shall see it for yourself.”
“Which is my country, I wonder? Judah says that he will not fight for the Stars and Stripes if war comes—the flag that makes the Negro a slave. This country mine? No, no! The fearful things that I have seen——” she broke off abruptly. “My father’s country shall be mine.”
“Better reserve your decision until you marry.”
“I shall never marry.”
“But why?” asked Warren, opening his eyes in surprise. “Nonsense; all girls expect to marry, and do—most of them.”
“I cannot marry out of the class of my father,” she replied, with head proudly erect. “It follows, then, that I shall never marry.”
“Nonsense,” again returned Warren. “You will not live and grow old alone. Mere birth does not count for more than one’s whole training afterward, and you have been bred among another race altogether.”
“But the degradation of the two years just passed can never leave me; life will never seem quite the same,” she said in a stifled voice full of pain. “I shall be a nun.” She ended with a little laugh, but the voice quivered beneath it.
Warren scarcely knew how to answer her; he felt awkward and mere words sounded hollow.
“See here,” he began abruptly: “it is no use to dwell on a painful subject; just strive to forget all about it and take the happiness that comes your way. As for the last alternative—you will not be happy.”
“That cannot be helped. Perhaps I should not be happy if I married,” she went on with a smile upon her lips, but deep gravity in her eyes. “It would depend upon the man who must know all my past. Nokomis used to say ‘they are all the same—the men. When you are beautiful they kill each other for you; when you are plain they sneer at you.’”
“Old Nokomis! She spoke of red men, not white men.”
“Yes; all the same Nokomis said: men are men. People will never forget that my mother was an American Negress even if I forget. No,” concluded the girl with a wise little shake of her cropped head, “I shall go to the convent.”
Warren dissembled his intense amusement, but beneath his smile was a tear for the tender, helpless creature trying so bravely to crush out of sight the tender flowers of her maiden heart. At length he said:
“Who can foresee the future? There are men with red blood in their veins; not all are empty caskets. How can you talk of convents—you who will go to England with me; and perhaps, who can tell, you may marry a duke. But believe me, Winona, you think too seriously of your position,” he concluded, dropping his jesting air.
“‘You have too much respect upon the world:They lose it that do buy it with much care.’”
Silence fell between them for a time, and the evening shadows gradually shut the eye of day. Clear and shrill upon the air fell the notes of a bugle, once—twice—thrice—it rose in warning cadence. Winona sprang to her feet with the words, “’Tis Judah! There is danger! Let us go at once!”
So violent was her start that she came perilously near falling to the plain below, which on this side the hill was a sheer descent of many feet, to where the Possawatomie rilled along its peaceful course.
“God!” broke from Warren’s white lips as he caught her just in time. For a second he held her in a close embrace, she clinging to him in affright. There was extraordinary gravity in both look and tone as he leaned his cheek against the cropped curly head that nestled close to his throat like a frightened child, and said: “Winona, let me say it now before we go to meet we know not what—thank God I have known you—so noble, so patient, so sweet. Despite the dangers of our situation, the hours we have passed together have been the happiest of my life.”
Forgetful of time and place, youth yielded to the sway of the love-god, and for one dazzling instant the glory of heaven shone upon them.
“What harm just once?” thought the girl as she rested in his embrace. “Tomorrow it may not matter about race or creed, one or both of us will belong to eternity; pray God that I may be the one to go.”