"You do not yet know me, Murray."
"Possibly you are subject to education," he retorted, buttoning up
his greatcoat. "Come, Marjory."
She drew away from him.
"I choose to remain," she said coldly.
"I choose that you shall not."
He waved his hand in unmistakable signal of release to the watchful
False Faces and their followers. A yell of satisfaction swelled from
their hungry throats, and they dashed forward. Indeed, so violent
was their reaction from the restraint just imposed upon them that in
the first mad rush a number of the younger men were carried beyond
control of the evil priests and commenced to butcher the Senecas
outright with knife and tomahawk.
Marjory shrank back and covered her eyes with her hands as a
feather-tufted warrior ran up to Ta-wan-ne-ars and dangled a freshly
severed scalp in his face.
"'Twill be difficult for me to control them at all in a few moments,"
observed Murray.
"Oh, you vile coward!" exclaimed Marjory, her own courage now
regained. "I am steeped in shame whenever I remember that I have in
my veins blood that is akin to yours."
"You are unreasonable, my mistress," he remonstrated. "I am giving
the young man a chance for his life."
He addressed me directly.
"You will bear me out, Master Ormerod, that I warned you life on the
frontier was not pretty. We who deal with savages must employ
measures designed to strike their imaginations. We can not be
overdainty. We----"
He looked up in amazement, as a mantle of silence enveloped the
Council-Place for the second time.
"O my people," boomed a harsh voice in the Cahnuaga dialect, "verily
Ha-ne-go-ate-geh has claimed you! You are mad! You toy with your
enemies here when the warriors of the Long House are as thick along
the Doom Trail as the falling leaves of Autumn. The Keepers who were
on watch are dead or in flight. At any minute the Iroquois will be
here. They have burned Ga-o-no-geh. The snow of the Trail is
trampled flat by their multitudes. Aye, the Doom Trail is bringing
doom upon its Keepers."
The tall, severe figure of Black Robe pushed through the surrounding
masses of renegades until he had reached Marjory's side.
"What have they done to you, my daughter?" he asked kindly, his tone
changing as if by magic. "I was led away by a false story."
She pointed down at the corpses of Ga-ha-no and de Veulle. Père
Hyacinthe made the sign of the cross and muttered a brief prayer.
"Providence works mysteriously," he sighed. "Once I trusted this
man--" and he swung around with stern hostility upon Murray--"and
this one here. Now I think I know them for what they were, servants
of evil who employed the force of God's holy Word in the furtherance
of their own wicked plans.
"France is great, my daughter. France has a destiny before her. But
her greatness and her destiny may not be reached through by-paths of
sin and evil-doing."
He would have said more, but Murray intervened.
"I will answer your personal comments at a future time, sir," he
said; "but do I understand you to say that the Doom Trail has been
penetrated by the Iroquois?"
"They are almost at your door," replied Black Robe sternly.
"'Sdeath!" swore Murray. "This is too much!"
He raised his voice in a shout.
"To your arms, O Keepers of the Trail! The Iroquois are upon us!"
But his words were drowned in a racket of firing from the heart of
the Evil Wood. A number of the False Faces emerged from the shelter
of the firs, their awful masks wabbling unsteadily.
"The People of the Long House!" they wailed. "The People of the Long
House are come!"
"We are attacked back and front," snarled Murray. "Well, Master
Ormerod, you and your friend the chief are excellent hostages."
He bellowed a series of commands which brought some degree of order
out of the confusion, and dispatched one party of Keepers into the
Wood to resist the attack from that quarter. Another body he sent
through the village to hold the approaches of the Doom Trail. Under
his directions the remainder of the warriors unbound the surviving
prisoners from the stakes and escorted us to the stockaded house in
which he dwelt.
As we passed the chapel we saw Black Robe standing in the doorway.
His eyes were fixed upon the heavens.
"You were a chosen people!" he cried. "You were the few selected
from the many! The Word of God was brought to you, and you saw the
light--or said you did. Your feet were set upon the narrow way. A
great work was given you to do.
"But you wandered far afield, back into unexplored realms of the
ancient wickedness of your race. You became devil-worshipers in
secret; aye, eaters of human flesh. You lived a life of deceit. You
became tools of Ha-ne-go-ate-geh.
"Great was your fall, and great will be your punishment therefor.
You will be torn up, root and branch. You will be banished from your
villages and exiled to a strange country. Your warriors will die
under the tomahawk, your children will be reared by your enemies.
You will perish, O Keepers of the Trail! Your end is----"
Cowering under the whip-lashes of his words, the Keepers hurried by
the chapel, and ran us inside the stockade. In the doorway they
paused to await the coming of Murray. He arrived presently, with
Marjory hanging unwillingly on his arm.
"The prisoners?" he rasped in answer to the question of our guards.
"Take them to the cellar. Look to their security if you value your
lives."
An echo of distant shouts reached our ears as we stood there, and
across the posts of the stockade we saw the Keepers streaming from
the Evil Wood and at their heels certain darting, quick-moving
figures that we knew must be the warriors of the Eight Clans.
"It is time to bring our women and children inside the stockade,"
proposed one of the Cahnuagas.
Murray shook his head.
"We have not room nor food to spare," he refused with iron
determination.
Discontent showed in the faces of the Keepers, for even these fiends
knew the instinct of domestic affection; but Murray cut off attempts
at protestation.
"See," he said, as the sound of firing came from the southward, "we
are surrounded. We are ignorant of the strength of the Iroquois. It
may be all we can do to defend ourselves. Women and children would
be so many inconveniences to us."
And whilst a squad of savages conducted us to our prison the rest
manned the firing-platforms around the stockade and prepared to cover
the retreat of the Keepers, who were falling back rapidly before the
hard-driving attacks of the Iroquois.
I sought for a word with Marjory as we entered the door, but Murray
deliberately strode between us. All I gained was a glance from her
eyes that bade me be strong and confident. And I needed all the
strength and confidence I could obtain during that dreadful afternoon
and night in the cellar, with the shouts of the opposing sides and
the discharges of their muskets the sole tidings to reach us of what
went on above.
Ta-wan-ne-ars sat with his back to a wall, his eyes fixed on vacancy,
his lips murmuring at intervals Ga-ha-no's name. I tried to interest
him in what went on without success. He looked at me, and turned his
eyes away.
In desperation I struggled with two of our eight surviving comrades
to untie our bonds, and after hours of trial we succeeded and
released the others. This permitted me to pay attention to those who
had been injured. One had a broken shoulder, the result of a blow
from a war-club the night we were captured. One had been partially
scalped at the stake, and three had been hacked and cut in the
preliminary stages of torture.
We slept little that night, for we were very cold and we had no food.
But in the morning the Keepers thrust a pan of corn-mush within the
door and we ate it to the last kernel. I forced a portion upon
Ta-wan-ne-ars, feeding him with a stick we found on the floor.
After that we slept for several hours, and then a lanthorn gleamed on
the stairs and Murray stepped into our midst, an immaculate periwig
on his head, his linen spotless, his brown cloth suit as fresh as if
direct from the tailor's hands.
He set the lanthorn on the dirt floor and stood beside it.
"A good morrow to you, Master Ormerod," he began. "I have come to
hold counsel with you."
"'Tis more than kind," I observed sarcastically.
"Nay, 'tis no more than a proposition of business," he returned
coolly. "Look you, my friend, we each of us have that which the
other wants. In such a case sensible men come to terms."
"If I remember rightly you were speaking of terms only yesterday," I
said dryly.
"True, and naturally I was not then disposed to yield you much."
"I would not trust you now on any terms," I said flatly.
"Tut, tut, sir. Is that language for one gentleman to employ to
another?"
"You are not a gentleman, sir; you are----"
He glowered.
"Have a care, sir," he warned.
"You are a scoundrel," I finished.
He made a gesture of magnificent disdain.
"Let it pass, let it pass. Your opinion, Master Ormerod, is of
little moment to me. What I seek is an accommodation of our mutual
desires."
"As how?"
He pursed his lips.
"Look you, Master Ormerod," he replied, "I have you fast here. I
have also the chief, your friend. I have in addition one you love."
"Before you proceed further," I interrupted, "I wish you to answer me
one question: Whose child is she!"
He hesitated, and regarded me sidewise.
"Oh, well," he said after a moment, "it might as well out now as
later. She'd tell you herself, I suppose. The maid is the child of
my sister."
"And her name!"
"She is a Kerr of Fernieside," he answered pompously. "I should add,
sir, that I have been at particular pains with the girl, having an
especial affection for her."
"Oh," I murmured politely. "An especial affection!"
"Even so."
He bowed elegantly.
"I have treated her as my own daughter. Her father was lost in the
'15, and since then, seeing that her mother was dead, I have made her
my charge. She hath been well educated in a dame's school in
Edinburgh."
"Well, of that we will say no more," I said. "I find it unpleasant
to hear you talk of her."
He frowned, but made no reply.
"You consider us as hostages, then?" I continued.
"Yes. I might as well admit to you that I am surrounded here. The
Iroquois have sent out the largest war-party ever I saw."
"You are helpless, but you attempt to impose terms," I said.
"Pardon me, sir; I am not helpless," he objected. "If the worst
comes to the worst I shall give intelligence to my opponents of my
intent to blow up my house and my hostages and undertake to fight a
way through the Iroquois. Better a death in such fashion than
captivity and disgrace, let alone the torture-stake."
I considered this, and gauged him as capable of doing all that he
said.
"Yes," I assented finally; "being what you are, you have advantages
on your side. What are your terms?"
"A safe-conduct for me and my people to Canada."
"So that you may restore your trade again?"
A look of sorrow fitted over his face.
"I can not restore it, Master Ormerod. That fact is indisputable.
My one hold upon public opinion was my success and the power it gave
me. Let me fail and lose my power, and my influence is dead."
"Yes," I agreed; "that is true."
"Moreover," he went on, "my savages are killed or scattered. My
organization is gone. My most valuable servants are slain."
"And Mistress Marjory?"
He regarded me oddly.
"Do you care to sue for her hand?" he parried.
"I shall wed her, if she pleases," I responded; "but I do assure you,
sir, I have no intent to approach you in the matter."
"You make a grave mistake then. I should like to settle upon her a
jointure proportionate to her birth and heritage."
My first sensation of amusement was turned to ridicule.
"Murray," I said, "you seem not to understand that honest men and
women want nothing of your bloody, ill-gotten money. I know that
Mistress Marjory will uphold me in this. All we ask of you is that
you should disappear, erase yourself."
He flushed, but had himself in hand immediately.
"You have insulted me more than enough, sir," he said with dignity.
"Let us end this interview. Are you prepared to go outside the
stockade and secure consent to the terms we have discussed, giving
your word of honor to return here afterwards?"