"Shall we return and face them?" I asked eagerly.
Ta-wan-ne-ars permitted himself a smile of friendly sarcasm.
"If we can hear them, surely they can hear us," he said. "No, we
will keep on. There is a place farther along the trail from which we
can look back upon them. Come, Ormerod, you and I will run ahead.
Peter will follow us."
"But why does he not come with us!" I objected. "If there is
danger----"
"If there is danger we will all front it together," interrupted
Ta-wan-ne-ars. "Peter is to walk behind us so that the trailers may
not detect our haste."
"_Ja,_" assented Peter.
Ta-wan-ne-ars shifted his musket to his shoulders, and broke into a
long, loping stride. I followed him.
Half a mile up the trail we came to a clearing where some storm of
bygone years had battered down a belt of sturdy timber. We ran for
another half-mile beyond this before Ta-wan-ne-ars slowed his pace
and commenced to study the leaf barriers that walled the slot of the
trail. Presently he stopped.
"Walk in my tracks, brother," he said. "And be certain that you do
not bruise a twig."
With the utmost caution he parted the screen of underbrush on our
right hand, and revealed a tunnel through the greenery into which he
led the way, hesitating at each step until he had gently thrust aside
the intervening foliage. Once in the tunnel, however, his care was
abandoned, and he ran quickly to the trunk of a huge pine which
soared upward like a monumental column, high above the surrounding
trees. He leaned his musket against the pitchy bole.
"The symbol of the Long House," he said tapping the swelling girth of
it. "Strength and symmetry and grandeur. We will climb, brother."
He swung himself up into the branches, which formed a perfect ladder,
firm under foot, behind the screen of the pine-needles. When the
other tree-tops were beneath us, he straddled a bough and cleared a
loop-hole from which we might look out over the forest we had
traversed.
"How did you know this tree was here?" I questioned curiously.
"Upon occasion enemies penetrate the Long House, so we must be able
to see who follow us."
"Do you know that those who follow us are enemies?"
He shook his head.
"If they were friends 'twas strange they did not try to overtake us,
brother. My people like company when they travel."
He said no more, but fixed his eyes on the forest below. It swept
away in billows of green that rolled in gigantic combers across ridge
and hillock and tossed plumes of spray aloft whenever a breeze
rustled the tree-tops. There was an effect of continuity, of
boundless size such as the ocean gives. From my lofty perch I could
survey the four quarters of the horizon, and in every direction the
forest stretched to the sky-line. The Great Trail of the Iroquois
was hidden from sight. The one gap in the vista of emerald and jade
was the narrow slash of the clearing we had recently crossed.
I saw that Ta-wan-ne-ars had concentrated his attention upon this
spot, where the exit of the trail was indicated by a ragged fringe of
undergrowth. We looked for so long, without anything happening, that
my eyeballs ached. But at last there was a movement like the
miniature upheaval which is caused by an ant in breaking ground.
Boughs quivered, and a figure appeared in the open. 'Twas Corlaer.
He glanced around him and strode on. In a moment he had passed the
clearing and disappeared in the forest.
Ta-wan-ne-ars hitched forward and peered through the loop-hole with
tense muscles. And again there was a wait which seemed endless. My
eyelids blinked from the strain of watching.
The desolation and loneliness of the wilderness were so complete that
it seemed inconceivable another human being could be within view.
And whilst this thought occupied my mind a dark figure crawled on
hands and knees from the mouth of the trail.
The newcomer feared a trap. His ear sought the ground. His eye
studied the sky above him. He looked in every direction. But his
instincts were baffled. He stole forward across the clearing with
musket poised. At that distance all we could see of his costume was
the clump of feathers that bristled from his scalp-lock.
He followed Peter into the trail on our side of the clearing, and
there was a second and briefer pause. Then as silently as ghosts a
string of figures flitted into the clearing. There were six of them,
each with musket in the hollow of his arm, each with bristling
feather headdress. They walked one behind the other, with a peculiar
effect, even at that distance, of stealth and watchfulness.
Ta-wan-ne-ars emitted a guttural grunt, quite unlike his usual rather
musical utterances.
"Cahnuagas!" he exclaimed, and spat.
"What?" I answered.
"Down!" he rasped. "Down! The time is scant!"
All the way during our descent he was muttering to himself in his own
tongue, and a black scowl covered his face. At the foot of the pine
he snatched up his musket without a word, and turned into the green
tunnel that debouched upon the screen of the trail.
As we stepped into the worn slot Peter came into view.
"Well!" he said phlegmatically.
"Cahnuagas," answered Ta-wan-ne-ars.
The Seneca's face became convulsed with fury.
"Cahnuaga dogs! They dare to invade territory of the Long House!"
"We can cross der Mohawk to der south branch of der trail," proposed
Corlaer. "They wouldt not dare to follow us there."
"No," snarled Ta-wan-ne-ars; "we shall not step aside for them. We
will attend to them ourselves."
"Hafe you a plan?" inquired the Dutchman amicably.
He never lost his temper when other people did.
"Yes," said the Seneca briefly. "And now we will go along as if we
did not know they were near us."
"Are they not likely to attack?" I interposed.
"No, they will not attack unless they have to for we are still near
the Mohawk Castle, although 'tis upon the opposite bank of the river.
They will leave us alone until night."
"But why can not we attack them!"
A look of ferocity which was almost demoniac changed his usually
pleasant features into an awful mask.
"In an ambuscade one might escape. No, my brother Ormerod, we will
wait until they attack us. Then----"
He paused significantly.
"Not one of the Keepers shall return to tell Murray how his brothers
died."
We took up the march. 'Twas already mid-afternoon, and shortly the
dimness of twilight descended upon the trail, as the level rays of
the setting sun were turned aside by the interlacing masses of
vegetation.
Once, I remember, we passed along the edge of a swampy tract, and I
saw for the first time that industrious animal, the beaver, whose
pelt was the principal stake for which France and England contended
in the great game upon the issue of which depended the future of a
continent. They had erected a dam across one end of a stream to make
a pond, and their engineers were busily at work floating trees into
place to reënforce a weak point in the structure. Other trees a few
feet from the trail were gnawed in preparation for felling.
"How is it they are able to exist here so close to the white man's
country?" I called to Ta-wan-ne-ars.
He flung a haughty look cross his shoulder. Since we had identified
the Cahnuagas a startling change had transformed him. The veneer of
deferential courtesy which ordinarily he wore was cracked. He was
all Indian. More than that, he was contemptuous of what was not
Indian. Aye, of whatever was not Iroquois like himself, of the bone
and sinew of the League.
"This is not the white man's country," he answered. "You are within
the portals of the Long House."
"But the beaver's skin is no less valuable to the Indian than to the
white man," I persisted.
"Yes," he agreed, "yet the Indian does not slay game only for gain.
If it were not for the dam those beavers built the Great Trail we
walk upon would be overflowed. So long ago in the time of my
forefathers that tradition can not fix the date the forefathers of
those beavers built that dam, and when the Founders drove the trail
they decreed that the beavers should be safe forever--that the trail
might be safe."
Twilight faded into dusk and still we kept on. Ta-wan-ne-ars had
eyes like a cat's, and I, too, accustomed myself to perception of
hanging branches and the unexpected turns and twists in the groove of
the path. The stars were out in the sky overhead when we stepped
from the shelter of the forest into a rocky dell divided by a tiny
brook.
"We will camp here," said Ta-wan-ne-ars.
He rested his musket on a boulder and began to collect firewood.
"Why a fire?" I asked.
"The trailers must not think we suspect them," he replied curtly.
"If we lit no fire they would know for certain that we were
suspicious."
I helped him, whilst Corlaer crouched by the opening of the trail on
watch. We soon had a respectable pile of wood, but before kindling
it the Seneca bade us strip off our leathern shirts and stuffed them
with underbrush into a semblance of human shapes. A third figure to
represent himself he contrived out of the packs and several branches.
The three dummies were then disposed to the satisfaction of
Ta-wan-ne-ars and, striking flint and steel to some rotten wood, a
bright blaze sent the shadows chasing each other around the confines
of the glade.
"Peter," he said, "you had best take post by that boulder on the
other side of the fire, Ormerod and Ta-wan-ne-ars will lie together
upon this side."
"You need not think it necessary to keep me by your side," I said
indignantly. "'Tis not the first time I shall have heard musketry."
A gleam of humorous intelligence chased the gloomy ferocity from the
Seneca's face.
"Ta-wan-ne-ars does not doubt the valor of his brother," he said,
"but Ormerod has never fought with Cahnuagas. They are dogs, but
they are skilled in forest war."
He did not give me a chance to answer, but putting his fingers to his
lips to enjoin silence sank down behind a boulder next to the one by
which I stood. Corlaer had been swallowed by the dancing shadows
beyond the fire.
I dropped beside Ta-wan-ne-ars, and like him dusted fresh powder into
the pan of my musket, drew tomahawk and knife from their sheaths and
laid them on the ground within reach.
How long we waited I can not say, but the suspense which had racked
me in the swaying branches of the pine that afternoon was nothing
compared to the agony of the hours that followed. For it must have
been at least two hours after we had taken cover that Ta-wan-ne-ars
touched my arm, and the light from the glowing bed of coals revealed
a feathered head crouching forward where the trail entered the glade.
It hovered around the edge of the firelight like a monstrous
reptilian fiend, body bent nearly double, a glint of steel showing
whenever the hands moved. Presently he withdrew into the trail, and
it seemed that two more hours dragged by on leaden feet, although it
was probably less than half that time.
The fire was lower, but Ta-wan-ne-ars did not need to warn me when
the Keepers reappeared. It was as if a mist of evil preceded them.
My senses were alert, and I saw the first feathered head emerge from
the trail and each one of the six who followed their leader. I
counted every step of their approach until the yellow paint which
streaked the ribs of the one nearest to me glimmered in the light of
the embers.
"_Hah-yah-yah-eeee-eee-ee-e!_"
Ta-wan-ne-ars sounded the war-whoop as he fired, and instinctively I
aimed my piece at those ocher-tinted ribs and pressed the trigger.
The report of my musket carried on the echoes which had been roused
by the Seneca's. Corlaer's discharged as I bounded to my feet.
The Cahnuagas yelled in surprize; three of them were thrashing out
their lives on the rocks. But the four survivors did not hesitate.
The French called them "Praying Indians," and perhaps they did pray
occasionally for Black Robe, to placate him sufficiently in order
that they might practise their own horrid rites in secret. They
fought now like the devils they really were.
One of them was on me immediately, bounding over the boulders with
screeches that split the night. His knife and hatchet cut circles
around my head--then chopped at my bowels. His activity was
extraordinary, and he fought better than I, for he knew his weapons
and they were strange to me.
It was the realization of this which saved me. Fending awkwardly
with knife or hatchet against a foe whose handling of them was the
result of lifelong training, I was at a disadvantage. I could not
hope to beat him by his own methods.
So I changed the tomahawk to my left hand, and grasped the knife by
the hilt as if it were a sword, thrusting with it point first instead
of slashing as the Indian did. And now my skill at fence was in my
favor.
The Cahnuaga's knife was no longer than mine. We were on equal
terms--or rather the advantage inclined toward me. Bewilderment
showed in the Indian's face. He did not understand this fighting
with passes and parries and swift, stabbing assaults. I touched him
in the thigh, and he struck at my knife-arm with his hatchet; but my
tomahawk was ready to meet him.
He side-stepped to attack me from a new quarter, but I pivoted on my
heel as I had often done in the _salle des armes_, and he retreated,
circling warily in search of an opportunity to return to the style of
fighting he preferred. My chance came the next time he charged me,
goaded into desperation by these strange tactics. I aimed a smashing
blow at his head with the tomahawk, and, as he lifted his own hatchet
to guard, I thrust for his belly, parried his knife and ripped him
open.
His death-yell was in my ears as I leaped over his body and looked to
see how my comrades were doing. Ta-wan-ne-ars had just knifed his
man and was running to the help of Peter, who had two assailants on
his hands. As Ta-wan-ne-ars came up, the Dutchman closed with one,
dashed the defending weapons aside and grasped the struggling savage
in his powerful arms. The last Cahnuaga turned to flee, but
Ta-wan-ne-ars did not even attempt to pursue him. Without any
appearance of haste the Seneca balanced his tomahawk, drew back his
arm and hurled it after the fugitive. The keen blade crushed the
man's skull before he had passed from the circle of firelight, and
Ta-wan-ne-ars sauntered across and scalped him.
"That time Ta-wan-ne-ars did not miss, brother," he observed to me as
I watched with fascinated horror the bloody neatness with which he
dispatched his task.
"But why do you scalp your enemies, Ta-wan-ne-ars?" I answered.
"Surely----"
"I am an Indian, not a white man."
"Yet you----"
"I have forgotten what the missionaries taught me," he replied
impatiently. "All except what I think may be useful to my people."
Peter brought up his captive and tossed the man down in front of us.
"Oof, that was a goodt fight!" he commented placidly.
"Why a prisoner, Peter!" asked Ta-wan-ne-ars.
"We will ask him of der Doom Trail," returned Corlaer.
He jerked the man to his feet.
"Where is der Doom Trail?" he demanded.
The Cahnuaga, badly shaken though he was, drew himself erect and
folded his arms across his painted chest.
"The Rat can go to the torture-stake and not answer that question,
Corlaer," he said quite simply.
"We will take you to the nearest village and let you make good your
boast," threatened Ta-wan-ne-ars.
The Cahnuaga smiled.
"If I told you, none the less should I suffer at the stake," he said,
"for the Ga-go-Sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta[1] knows all. Do your worst,
Chief of the Long House."
[1] Mistress of the False Faces.
A tinge of mockery colored his voice.
"Be sure that whatever you do you can not equal the ingenuity of the
Ga-go-sa. Yes, I think you will come to know more about them some
day, Iroquois. I seem to see pictures in the firelight of a stake,
and a building with a tower and a bell that rings, and many of the
Ga-go-sa dance around you, and your pain is very great. Aye, you are
shrieking like a woman; you----"
He sprang, not at the Seneca but at me. His hands were around my
throat before I could move. His eyes blazed into mine. His teeth
gnashed at my face. A gout of blood, thick and warm, deluged me.
The next thing I remembered was seeing Ta-wan-ne-ars bending over me.
"My brother is whole?" he asked anxiously.
The ferocity was gone from his face, and his fingers prodded me
tenderly in search of hurts.
"Yes," I said, sitting up and rubbing a very sore throat, "except
that I shall not be able to swallow for a time."
"You were choked, brother."
"And the Cahnuaga?"
"That dog is dead. Do you sleep now, for the dawn grows near and we
must be upon our way."