THE GREAT MEDICINE CHIEF
"Hark," the Indian said again, "the great medicine chief comes to
claim the white women."
Since they had offered us no violence, nor indeed had they exerted any
towards their other prisoners after the fight was over and they were
bound, Mary and I had scarcely changed our position from the time the
fray ceased. I still sat on the floor with my darling's head upon my
breast, Mary stood by Kinchella, his bound hands clasped in hers, and
sometimes kissing him as, over and over again, I also kissed my lord's
dear lips while attempting to staunch the flow of blood from his head.
The other prisoners all bound together looked forth into the night,
waiting to see what the great personage whose arrival was now welcomed
might be like. On the floor O'Rourke still lay where he had fallen,
and I feared that surely he must be dead. Yet when I thought of him
and how bravely he had fought this night, I could not but hope, even
though plunged in my own misery, that much of his past wickedness
would be forgiven him in consequence of his repentance.
"The great medicine chief, eh?" said Buck to Lamb, not even troubling
to lower his voice for fear it should offend our captor or any other
of the Indians around us who might understand his words--and seeming
as cool and reckless now as though he were one of the victors instead
of the vanquished. "The great medicine chief, eh? I wonder what he's
like, though we shall see soon enough. Some mean mountebank I'll bet a
crown--if ever I get hold of one again--who finds hocus-pocussing
these red devils a good deal easier than fighting alongside of 'em.
Knows everything that happens on earth, does he? Ay! just as much as a
gipsy in a booth can tell when a gentleman of the road is going to be
hanged, or is able to prophecy that the mother of a dozen shall never
have a child. How they howl for him, though, rot 'em, if they had any
sense they'd see he had enough of his own to keep out of the way while
the bustle was going on."
"He comes. He comes," again exclaimed the chief, and, even in my
trouble, I could not but marvel much at seeing so powerful looking a
warrior prostrate himself with such great humility upon the floor,
while all the other Indians did the same.
For now, escorted by several savages who marched in front of him, and
a like number behind him, this person strode into the room and stood
before us. His face was not visible, excepting only the eyes which
twinkled behind the light silken cloth he wore around it, but his form
presented the appearance of litheness and activity, and gave the idea
that, however wonderful his arts might be, he had at least acquired
them young, since he was undoubtedly not even yet arrived at middle
age. He was clad in a tight-fitting tunic of tanned deer skin, over
which fell the long Indian blanket with devices worked on it of skulls
and snakes as well as of a flaming sun and many stars, and his
leggings and moccasins were stained red. His head-dress was the
ordinary Indian cap, or coronet, into which was thrust a number of
eagles' feathers, while on his breast he bore, hanging on to a chain
of shells, a human hand dried and mummified so that the tips of the
finger-bones could be seen protruding through the shrivelled flesh,
and, equally dreadful sight, some _ears_ strung together!
Those twinkling eyes wandered round the wrecked saloon, taking in at
one glance, as it seemed to me, the dead forms of Indians and white
men, the broken furniture and the prostrate figures of the other
Indians who knelt before him; and then they fixed themselves on Mary
and me, while from behind the silken mask--for such indeed it
was--there came a cruel, gurgling laugh. And I, driven to desperation
by that sound, which augured even worse for me than what I had yet
endured, softly placed my dear one's head upon the floor and, leaving
him there, cast myself before the medicine chief and, at his knees and
with my hands uplifted, besought his mercy.
"Oh!" I cried between my sobs, "if you can speak my tongue, as so many
of your race are able to do, hear my prayer, I beseech you; the prayer
of a broken-hearted, ruined woman who has never injured you or yours
till driven to it in self-defence; a woman at whose people's hearths
you and yours have warmed yourselves and been welcome, at whose table
you and yours were once fed and treated well. Oh! what have I, a
defenceless girl, done that this my home should be sacked by your
warriors, my loved one slain? See, see! he who lies there was to
have been my husband--these brave men around me, living and dead,
would have done nought to you had you left us in peace. What,
what," I continued, "have I done that you come as a conqueror to my
house--what?----"
He raised his hand as thus I knelt before him, and held it up as
though bidding me be silent; then, in a hollow, muffled voice, he
said, speaking low: "You are Joice Bampfyld. That alone is enough,"
and again his cruel laugh grated on my ears.
But at that voice, muffled as it was, I sprang to my feet as did Mary,
while even Buck looked startled and Mr. Kinchella amazed, and Mary
exclaimed passionately:
"_You! You!_ It is you. And she has pleaded on her knees for mercy to
such a thing as you. Oh! the infamy of it, the infamy for such as she
is to plead to such, as you!"
The prostrate Indians raised their heads in astonishment at her words
of scorn--doubtless it was incredible to them that any mortal should
so dare to address their great medicine man and wonder-worker--while
he, with his glittering eyes fixed on his followers, bade them at once
begone and leave him alone with their captives. Alone, he said, so
that he might awe these women into submission. And they, obedient to
him, withdrew at his command, though still with the look of
astonishment on their faces that any should have ventured to so speak
to him and still live.
"Yes," he said when they had retired; and, unwrapping the silken folds
from his face so that in a moment, all painted and tattooed though he
was, that most unutterable villain, Roderick St. Amande, stood
revealed before us, "yes, it is I. Returned at last to Pomfret Manor
to repay in full all the treatment I received, and to give to all and
every one in the village of Pomfret a just requital of their kindness
in driving me forth, wounded and bleeding, to the savages who proved
more kind than they. God! if I had had my will the whole place should
have been put to slaughter long ago, and there should have been no
reprieve lasting for five years."
I have said that the Indians who had captured us had left Mary and me
free and untouched, so that, with the exception that there was no
chance of escape, we were under no restraint. And now that freedom was
seized upon by Mary, who, becoming wrought upon by the fiendish
cruelty of this creature's words, seized up a pistol lying on the
spinet by her side and snapped it at him--but vainly, as, since its
last discharge, it had not been reloaded.
"You dog," she said as she did so, "you base dog. It can be but a
righteous act to slay such as you." But, when she found that the
weapon was harmless, she flung it to the floor with violence while she
exclaimed that even heaven seemed against us now.
But to this Mr. Kinchella raised a protest, telling her that even in
the troubles which now surrounded us it was impossible for any
Christian to believe such a thing, and pointing out to her--with what
I have ever since thought was unconscious scorn--that, since heaven
had not seen fit even to desert one so evil as the creature before us,
it would be impossible for it to do so to those who, righteously and
God-fearingly, worshipped it and its ruler.
"I know not," said Roderick St. Amande, "who this fellow is, though by
his garb he is a minister; but amongst the tribe to which I now belong
the Christian minister, as he is termed, is ever regarded as the worst
of white men, and as the one, above all, who makes the best bargain
for robbing the native. The one who teaches him to drink deeper than
any other white man teaches him, and who has less respect for their
squaws' fidelity and their daughters' honour.[3] So, good sir, when we
have safely conveyed you to our home in the mountains, I will promise
you that you will have full need of the intercession of that heaven of
which you speak ere you can escape torture and death."
"I shall doubtless have strength granted to endure both," the other
replied calmly. "And I will, at least, undertake one thing, which is
that no cowardice shall prompt me to embrace the life of a savage and
a heathen to save my skin."
The villain scowled at him as he spoke these bitter words, but
answered him no more; then, glancing down at some of the prostrate
bodies lying at his feet, he exclaimed, "I trust all these carrion are
still alive. They will be wanted for the rejoicings. Let's see for
myself," while, kicking O'Rourke's body with his foot, he turned it
over until it was face upwards. Then, for a moment, even he seemed
appalled, recoiling from it--yet an instant afterwards bending down to
gaze into the features of the unhappy adventurer.
"What!" he exclaimed, "what, O'Rourke here? O'Rourke, the clumsy fool
who, when he should have shipped off my beggarly cousin shipped me in
his place? O'Rourke. O'Rourke! Oh! if he but lives, how I will repay
him for his folly. What a dainty dish he shall make for the torturers!
How his fat body shall feed the flames! For, even though his mistake
has made me a greater man than ever I could have been at home--ay, one
before whom these credulous red fools bow as to a god--there is much
suffering to be atoned for; the awful suffering of the passage in the
_Dove_; your father's insults, my dearest Joice, and his blows; and
also much else. But for that latter, you, my dear one, will repay me
when you are mine and mine alone, with no rival in my heart but our
haughty Mary, who shall be my dark love as you shall be my fair one."
As the wretch spoke, however, there were two things happened that he
saw not, in spite of the all-seeing eyes with which he was credited by
the tribe he dwelt with. He did not see that, as he turned to insult
Mary and me, O'Rourke first opened his own eyes and gazed on him and
then raised his head to stare at him; he did not see that, from where
the window had been, the Indian chief heard all he said, and stared in
amazement and looked strangely at him as he spoke of the "credulous
red fools."
But Mary and Mr. Kinchella and I saw it all, as well as did Buck and
Lamb. Nay, we saw more; we saw the Indian's hand feel for the hilt of
his dagger and half draw it from his wampum belt, and then return it
to its place while he smoothed his features to the usual impenetrable
Indian calm.
"And," went on Roderick St. Amande, as he drew near to my beloved
one, who still lay as I had placed him, "who is this spruce and
well-dressed gentleman who was to have been the husband of my Joice.
Some Virginian dandy, I presume, who, not good enough for England, is
yet a provincial magnate here. Ay, it must be so"--stooping down to
gaze into my lord's face--"it must be so, for I have seen those very
features when in a more boyish form. Possibly he is one of the young
Pringles, or Byrds, or Clibornes, whom I knew five years ago. Is't not
so, Joice, my beloved Joice, my future queen of squaws?"
That he should not recognise Gerald for his own cousin, for the man
who held the rank he had once falsely said would some day be his, was
the first moment of happiness I had known through this dreadful night,
since the fact of his not so recognising him might, I thought, save my
lover from instant death, if he were not dead already. For, if that
villain could but guess who he really was, I did not doubt but that he
would sheath his knife in the other's heart, all helpless as he lay.
This being so, I answered:
"He is a gentleman and, I fear, is dead. Is that not enough for you?"
"Nay, too much. I would not have one Virginian dead; yet, I would not
have one die so easily as he is dying now, for he is not at present
dead. No, no; the dead are no good to us when we return from a
successful attack such as this of Pomfret; it is the living we want;
the quick not the dead. For see, my Joice, and you, too, my black but
bonny Mary, the dead cannot feel! Their nerves and sinews have no
longer the power of suffering, their flesh is cold, their tongues
paralysed, so that they can neither shriek with pain nor cry for
mercy--but, with the living, how different it is! They can feel all
that is done upon them, they can feel limbs twisted off, and burnings,
and loppings off of--of--of, why, say of ears," and here he grinned so
demoniacally while he fingered the clusters of human ears that hung on
his own breast, that all of white blood in the room shuddered but
himself. "Yes, all these things they can feel. And, my sweethearts,"
he went on, gloatingly over our horror and his own foul and devilish
picturings, "shall I tell you what the Indian tortures are, what you
will see--when you sit by my side, my best beloved of wives--done upon
these men here. On him," pointing to Mr. Kinchella, "and him," with
his finger directed to my lord, "and this old blunderer," indicating
O'Rourke, "and these scum and rakings of the London gutters?" sweeping
his arm round so as to denominate all the convicts and bondsmen who
had fought so well for us this night, though without avail. "Shall I
tell you that? 'Twill be pretty hearing."
For myself I could but sob and moan and say, "No, no. Tell us no more!
Spare them, oh, spare them!" But Mary, whose spirit was of so much
firmer mould than mine, and who was no more cowed by him than was Buck
himself--who, indeed, had interrupted his remarks with many
contemptuous and disdainful snorts and "pishes" and "pahs" and with,
once, a scornful laugh--answered him in very different fashion.
"Tell us nothing, you murderous, cowardly wolf," she said, while she
extended her hand defiantly at him as though she forbade him to dare
to speak again, "tell us nothing, since we should not believe you. We
know--God help us! we all in Virginia know--that the Indian exacts a
fearful reckoning from all who have once wronged him, but we know,
too, that that exactment is made upon the actual persons who have done
the wrong, and not on those who have never raised hand against him, as
none in this house to-night have done except in their own defence. As
for you, you cowardly, crawling dog, who think you can egg on the
Indians to gratify your petty spite and cruelty, what, what, think
you, will they do for the gratification of your thirst for innocent
blood when I, tell them who and what their great wonderworking,
miracle-making medicine chief is?" and I saw her dark eyes steal into
the obscurity of the ruined window frame to observe if the chief out
there heard her words. But he only drew a little more in the shadow as
she did so.
"Silence, woman," said Roderick St. Amande, advancing threateningly
towards her. "Silence, I say, or it shall be the worse for you."
"Silence," she repeated, "silence! And why? So as to shield you from
their wrath if they should know who you are? Silence! Nay, I tell you
Roderick St. Amande, that when you have taken us away to wherever you
herd now, I will speak out loudly and tell them all. All, all,
as to what their great medicine man--their great _impostor_ is. A
wonder-worker, a magician!" And she laughed long and bitterly as she
spoke, so that his face became so distorted with anger that I feared
he would rush at her and slay her. Yet, as she did so, and still spake
further, I saw the Indian chief's eyes steal round the corner while he
listened to her every word. "A wonder-worker! a magician!" she went
on. "Ay! a pretty one forsooth. A magician who could not save his ear
from a righteous vengeance; a bond-slave to an English colonist; a
poor, pitiful drunkard! What a thing for a red man who cannot live in
slavery, and who hates in his heart the fire-water he has learnt to
drink, to worship! A magician who knows all. Ha! ha! A wonder-worker!
who stole from out his owner's bookshelves a 'British Merlin' and a
calendar because, perhaps, he knew the credulous creatures with whom
he would ere long dwell."
"Ay," exclaimed Buck, "and a book of how to do tricks with cards from
me, with many recipes for palming and counterfeiting. A magician, ha!
ha! ha!"
And of all that was said the Indian chief had heard every word.