The Indian stooped and pointed to dark stains. "Blood. They had wounded
among them. And this." He put something into the other's hand.
Landless looked at it, then thrust it into his bosom. "You are right.
It is a ribbon which the lady wore. But why have they left their boats,
and where are they?"
The Indian pointed to the side of the larger canoe. "The hatchets of
the Pamunkeys were sharp. They fought like real men. This canoe could
go no further. See, it is wet within--they had to ply the gourd very
fast to keep afloat so far. One canoe would not hold them all, so they
hid both here. They knew the palefaces would follow up the river, so
they cared not to stay upon its banks; the Pamunkeys, too, are their
enemies. They have gone through the forest towards the Powhatan. My
brother cannot see their trail, for the eyes of the palefaces are
clouded, but Monakatocka sees it."
Landless turned upon him. "Will Monakatocka go with me against the
Ricahecrians?"
"Monakatocka has dreamt of the village on the pleasant river where he
was born. The arm of the white men cannot reach him here, in these
woods, far from their wigwams and warriors and guns; it cannot pluck him
back to be beaten. He toils no more in their fields. He is a real man
again, a warrior of the long house, a chief of the Conestogas. Let my
white brother go with him, across the great rivers, through the forest,
until they come to the Susquehanna and the village of the Conestogas.
There will the maidens and the young men welcome Monakatocka with song
and dance, and my brother shall be welcome also and shall become a great
chief and shall take the warpath against the Algonquin and against the
paleface at the side of Monakatocka. In the Blue Mountains is Death.
Let us go to the pleasant river, to the hunting grounds of the
Conestogas."
Landless shook his head. "My thanks and good wishes go with you,
friend, but my path lies towards the Blue Mountains. Farewell."
He put out his hand, but the Indian did not touch it. Instead, he
stooped and examined the ground about him with attention, then,
beckoning the other to follow, he moved rapidly and silently along the
border of the creek. Landless overtook him and laid his hand upon his
arm, "This is my path, but yours lies across the river, to the north."
"If my brother will not go with me, I will go with my brother," said the
Conestoga.
*CHAPTER XXIX*
*THE BRIDGE OF ROCK*
For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail
lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could
read it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways--no sign to show
that man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of the
world--but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times they
lost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had led
them westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westward
again. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabin
of a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village of
one of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world of
the white man was far behind them, so far that it might have been
another planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were few
and far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannock
did not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth,
but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met
by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging where slim
brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and
broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at
the color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture.
Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole of
some fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, like
shadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles of
the forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them in
their sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped into
the next stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance,
then emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they had
covered their trail. Sometimes they struggled for hours through coverts
of wild grape, thick with fruit: sometimes they walked for miles down
endless colonnades of pine trees, where the needle-strewn ground was
like ice for slipperiness, and the blue sky gleamed faintly through the
far away tree tops. The wind in the pines rose and fell in long,
measured cadences. It made the only sound there, for the birds forgot
to sing and the insect world kept silence in those vast and sombre
cathedrals.
On the afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bank
of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of
limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the
last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which
seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was
as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand
they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken
green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was lost to sight,
disappearing through a frowning gateway of gray cliffs as completely as
though it had plunged into the bowels of the earth.... Landless sat
down on the bank of the stream above the fall and, chin in hand, gazed
at the mountain-piled horizon. The Indian, leaning against a great
sycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively.
"My brother is tired," he said at last.
Landless shook his head. The Susquehannock paused, still with his eyes
upon the other's face, and then went on, "We have searched and have
found nothing. There have been five suns since the great rains blotted
out the trail. My brother has done very much. Let him say so and we
will go back to the falls of the far west and thence to the northward,
to the pleasant river, to Monakatocka's people, to the graves of his
fathers. And my brother will be welcome to the Conestogas, and he shall
be made one of them, and become a great warrior, and both he and
Monakatocka will forget the evil days when they were slaves--until they
meet a paleface from the great water. My brother has but to speak."
"If these hills in front of us," said Landless with gloomy emphasis,
"were higher than the Alps, I would climb them. If behind them there
were another range, and then another, and another, if we looked upon the
nearest wave of an ocean of mountains, I would climb them all. If they
are before us, sooner or later I shall find them. But not to know that
they are before us! To know that they may be to the north of us, may be
to the south of us! that we may even have passed them! it is maddening!"
"We have not passed them," said his companion slowly, "for--" he stopped
abruptly, broke off a bough from a sumach bush beside him, and falling
on his knees, leaned far out over the stream. There were many tiny
cascades in the brook with little eddies below them where sticks and
leaves circled gaily around before they were drawn on to the next
miniature fall, and into one of these eddies the Indian plunged the
bough. The next moment he drew it carefully towards him, something
white clinging to one of its twigs. It proved to be a fragment of
lace--not more than an inch or two--and it might have been torn from a
woman's kerchief. Landless's hand closed over it convulsively.
"It came down the stream!" he cried.
The other nodded. "Monakatocka saw it slip over that fall. It has not
been in the water long."
"Then--my God!--they are close at hand! They are up this stream!"
The Indian nodded again with a look of satisfaction upon his bronze
features. Landless raised his eyes to the cloudless blue, and his lips
moved. Then, without a word he turned his face up the mountain stream,
and the Indian followed him.
For an hour they crept warily onward, following the stream in its
capricious wanderings. A broken trailer of grapevine, a pine cone that
had been crushed under foot, the print of a moccasin on a bit of muddy
ground told them that they had indeed recovered the long lost trail.
They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through the
long grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes gliding
swiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closed
in upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made another
bend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bed
between banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. The
Susquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned to
his companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.
A moment later they rounded an overhanging, fern-clad rock, and came
full upon that at which Landless stared with a sharp intake of his
breath, and which even his impassive guide greeted with a long-drawn
"Ugh!" of amazement.
Towards them brawled the impetuous stream through a wonderful gorge.
The precipitous hillsides, clothed with a stately growth of oak and
chestnut, changed suddenly into a sheer and awful mass of rock. On
either side of the stream towered up the mighty walls until, two hundred
feet above the water, they swept together, spanning the chasm with a
majestic arch. Great trees crowned it; trailers of grape and clematis
made the span one emerald; below, through the vast opening, shone the
evening sky with little, rosy clouds floating across it. A bird,
flashing downwards from the far-off trees, showed black against the
carnation of the heavens.
The Indian uttered another "Ugh!" then stole forward a pace or two,
stood still, and waited for the other to come up. "My brother sees," he
said simply.
From a covert of arbor-vitae they looked directly up the creek and
through the archway. Beneath it, and for a few yards on the hither
side, the water flowed in a narrower channel, leaving a little strip of
boulder-strewn shore. With a leap of his heart Landless saw, rising
from this shore, the blue smoke of a newly kindled fire, and squatting
about it, or flitting from place to place, a dozen or more dark figures.
At a little distance from the fire, close against the wall of rock, had
been hastily constructed a rude shed or arbor. As he gazed at this
frail shelter, he saw the flutter of a white gown pass the opening which
served as door.
"Night soon," said Monakatocka at his ear. "Then will my brother see
one Iroquois cheat all these Algonquin dogs."
They drew further back into the dense shade of the overhanging boughs.
A large flat boulder afforded them a secure resting-place, and drawing
their feet from the stream, the two curled themselves up side by side
upon its friendly surface. The Indian took some slices of venison from
his wallet, and they made a slender meal, then set themselves patiently
to await the night and the time for action. The tiny encampment was
hidden from them by the thick boughs, but through the screen of
delicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Around
them was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon--the wind in the
trees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of the
water--but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemed
asleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of the
heavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature was
limited--with a grunted, "All safe: wake before moonrise," he turned
upon his side, and was asleep.
His Anglo-Saxon neighbor watched the pensive beauty of the evening with
a softened heart. The glory behind the tremendous rock faded, giving
place to tender tints of pearl and amethyst. Above the distant tree
tops swam the evening star. In the half light the shadowy forest on
either hand blended with the great bridge carved by some mysterious
force from the everlasting hills. Together they made a mountain of
darkness pierced by a titanic gateway through which one looked into
heavenly spaces. The chant of the wind swelled louder. It was like the
moan of distant breakers. The night fell, and the stars came out one by
one until the blue vault was thickly studded. Up and down the sides of
the ravine flickered millions of fireflies. Their restless glimmer
wearied the eyes. Landless raised his to the one star, large, calm and
beautiful, and prayed, then thought of all that star shone upon that
night--most of the white town of his boyhood, lying fair and still like
a dream town, above a measureless, slumberous sea. A great calm was
upon him. Toil and danger were past; passionate hope and settled
despair were past. That he would do what he had come this journey to
do, he now had no doubt,--would not have doubted had there been encamped
between him and the frail shed built against the rock all the Indians
this side of the South Sea.
The stars that shone through the great archway slowly paled, the stream
became dull silver, and down the towering darkness on either hand fell a
soft and tremulous light like a veil of white gauze. Landless put out
his hand to waken the sleeping Indian, and touched bare rock. A moment
later the branches before him parted. He had heard no sound, but there,
within three feet of him, were the high features and the bold eyes of
the Susquehannock.
"Monakatocka has been to the great rock," he said in a guttural whisper.
"The Algonquin dogs sleep sound, for they do not know that a Conestoga
is on their trail. They have camped beneath the rock three days, and
they will move on the morrow. They have built a shed for the maiden
against the rock. About it lie the Ricahecrians, the moccasins of one
touching the scalp lock of another. They keep no watch, hut they have
scattered dried twigs over all the ground. Tread on them, and the god of
the Algonquins will make them speak very loud. But a Conestoga is
cunning. Monakatocka has found a way."
"Then let us go," said Landless, rising.
As they crept from out their leafy covert, the moon appeared over the
tree-tops far above them, flooding the glen with light, and making a
restless shimmer of diamonds of the rushing brook. The two men moved
warily up the stream, setting their feet with care upon the slippery
stones. Once Landless stumbled, but caught at a huge boulder, and saved
himself from falling, sending, however, a stone splashing down into the
water. They drew themselves up within the shadow of the rock, and
listened with straining ears, but there came no answering sound save the
cry of a whip-poor-will, and they went on their way. When they were
within a hundred feet of the encampment, the Indian left the stream,
crossed the strip of earth between it and the cliff, and pointed to a
broken and uneven line that ran at a height of some five feet from the
ground along the face of the cliff. Landless looked and saw a very
narrow ledge, a mere projection here and there of jagged and broken
rock, a pathway perilous and difficult as might well be imagined. So
narrow and insignificant it looked, such a mere seam along the vast
wall, that a white man passing through the ravine might never have
noticed it.
"It is our path," said the Susquehannock. "It leads above the heads of
these dogs and their crackling twigs, straight to where lies the
maiden."
Without a word Landless caught at the stem of a cedar projecting from a
fissure in the rock, and swung himself up to the cleft. The Indian
followed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerous
journey. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had often
rounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking in
thunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize of
high daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, although
not two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send him
crashing down to a more fearful doom--but the prize! A light was in his
eyes as he crept nearer and nearer to the shed built against the rock.
They passed the smouldering embers of a large fire, and came full upon
the circle of sleeping Indians. They lay in the moonlight like fallen
statues, their bronze limbs motionless, their high, stern features
impassive as death. From their belts came the glint of tomahawk and
scalping knife, and beside each warrior lay his bow and quiver of
arrows. Only one man had a gun. It lay in the hollow of his arm, its
barrel making a gleaming line against his dark skin. The skin was not
so dark as was that of the other recumbent figures, and the face, flung
back and pillowed on the arm, was not the face of an Indian. It was
Luiz Sebastian. He lay somewhat nearer to the shed than did the
Ricahecrians, and directly in front of the doorway; as Landless paused
above him, he turned and laughed in his sleep.
Slowly and cautiously Landless swung himself down from the ledge, his
moccasined feet touching ground that was clear of pebbles and beyond the
line of twigs. He glanced back to see the gigantic figure of the
Susquehannock, standing upright against the rock, knife in hand, and
watchful eyes roving from one to the other of the sleeping warriors,
then stepped lightly across the body of the mulatto, and entered the
hut.
Within it the darkness was gross. Pausing a moment to accustom his eyes
to the blackness, there came to him from without the hoot of an owl. It
was the signal agreed upon between him and his companion, and he wheeled
to face the danger it announced.
The lithe, yellow figure that had lain in front of the doorway had
waked. As Landless gazed, it rose to its knees, then with a quick,
cat-like grace to its feet, stretched itself, cast a listening look
around the sleeping circle, and laid its gun softly down, then with a
noiseless step and a smile upon its evil face, it, too entered the hut.
Landless waited until the mulatto was well across the threshold, and
then sprang upon him, dragging him to the ground, where he held him with
his knee against his chest. He writhed and struggled, but the white man
was the stronger, and held him down: he tried to cry out, but the
other's hands were at his throat choking the life from him. Putting all
his strength into one hand, Landless felt with the other for his knife.
The movement brought his face forward into the shaft of moonlight that
trembled through the opening. "You!" said the eyes of the mulatto, and
his clutching hands tore at the hand about his throat. The hand pressed
closer, and with the other Landless struck the knife into the yellow
bosom. When the writhing form was quite still, he rose from his knees,
and looked down upon the evil face flung back to meet the moonlight.
The struggle had lasted but a minute, and had been without sound--not a
sleeping savage had stirred. But he now heard frightened breathing
within the hut. By this his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, and
he made out something white niched into the corner opposite. As he
advanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him,
but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I,
Godfrey Landless."
In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which he
held. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. He
raised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulatto
issued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance,
knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.
*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE BACKWARD TRACK*
Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indian
shook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn,
brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into the
water, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, which
lay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence,
would have turned his face towards the river, but again the
Susquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warily
up stream.
The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious form
of the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the other
steadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed his
companion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the great
arch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until they
had gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close,
dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of great
arbor-vitaes, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them in
long, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice:
"Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is their
road we are traveling."
The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock's
face. "The white man is very wise except when he is in the woods. Then
he is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. A
pappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find the
fawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for our
trail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, when
they find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there,
before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down the
stream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves,
but when they have reached it they will not know what to do. They will
think, 'They who come after the Ricahecrians into the Blue Mountains
must be many, with great hearts and with guns.' They will think, 'They
came in boats, and one of their braves and one Iroquois, stealing up
this stream, came upon the Ricahecrians when Kiwassa had closed their
eyes and their ears, and stole away the fawn that the Ricahecrians had
taken, and killed the man who fled with them from the palefaces.' And
it will take a long time for them to find that there were no boats and
that but two real men have followed them into the Blue Mountains, for I
covered our trail where this stream runs into the river very carefully.
After a while they will find it, and after another while they will find
that the chief of the Conestogas and his white brother and the maiden
have gone up the stream, and they will come after us. But that will not
be until after the full sun power, and by then we must be far from
here."
"It is good," said Landless briefly. "Monakatocka has the wisdom of the
woods."
"Monakatocka is a great chief," was the sententious reply.
"Do you think they will follow us when they find how greatly we have the
start of them?"
"They will be upon our track, sun after sun, keen-eyed as the hawk,
tireless as the wild horses, hungry as the wolf, until we reach the
tribes that are friendly to the palefaces. And that will be many suns
from now. I told my brother that we followed Death into the Blue
Mountains. Now Death is upon our trail."
They came to a rivulet that emptied itself into the larger stream, and
the Susquehannock led the way up its bed. Presently they reached a
gently sloping mass of bare stone, a low hill running some distance back
from the margin of the stream.
"Good," grunted the Susquehannock. "The moccasin will make no mark here
that the sun will not wipe out."
They clambered out upon the rock and stood looking down the ravine
through which they had come. "My brother is tired," said the Indian.
"Monakatocka will carry the maiden."
"I am not tired," Landless answered.
The Indian looked at the face, thrown back upon the other's shoulder.
"She is fair, and whiter than the flowers the maidens pluck from the
bosom of the pleasant river."
"She is coming to herself," said Landless, and laid her gently down upon
the rock.
Presently she opened her eyes quietly upon him as he knelt beside her.
"You came," she said dreamily. "I dreamt that you would. Where are my
father and my cousin?"
"Seeking you still, madam, I doubt not, though I have not seen them
since the day after you were taken. They went up the Pamunkey and so
missed you. Thanks to this Susquehannock, I am more fortunate."
She lay and looked at him calmly, no surprise, but only a great peace in
her face. "The mulatto," she said, "I feared him more than all the
rest. When I saw him enter the hut I prayed for death. Did you kill
him?"
"I trust so," said Landless, "but I am not certain, I was in too great
haste to make sure."
"I do not care," she said. "You will not let him hurt me--if he
lives--nor let the Indians take me again?"
"No, madam," Landless said.
She smiled like a child and closed her eyes. In the moonlight which
blanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to her
knees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, a
creature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Lorelei sleeping upon
her rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with a
beating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent his
darkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "We
must be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Hair
cannot travel swiftly. Let us be going."
"Madam," said Landless.
She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet. "We must hasten on,"
he said gently. "They will follow us and we must put as many leagues as
possible between us before they find our trail."
"I did not think of that!" she said, with dilating eyes. "I thought it
was all past--the terror--the horror! Let us go, let us hasten! I am
quite strong; I have learned how to walk through the woods. Come!"
The Indian glided before them and led the way over the friendly rocks.
They left them and found themselves upon a carpet of pine needles, and
then in a dell where the fern grew rankly and the rich black earth gave
like a sponge beneath their feet. Here the Indian made Landless carry
Patricia, and himself came last, walking backwards in the footprints of
the other, and pausing after each step to do all that Indian cunning
could suggest to cover their trail. They came to more rocky ledges and
walked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide and
shallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself through
the forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutter
and chirp, the squirrels commenced their ceaseless chattering, and
through the white mist, at bends of the stream, they saw deer coming
from the fern of the forest to drink. A great hill rose before them,
bare of trees, covered only with a coarse growth of grass and short blue
thistles in which already buzzed a world of bees; they climbed it and
from the summit watched a ball of fire rise into the cloudless blue. The
morning wind, blowing over that illimitable forest, fanned their brows,
and a tide of woodland sound and incense swept up to them from the world
below. Around them were the Blue Mountains--gigantic masses, cloudy
peaks, vast ramparts rising from a sea of mist--mysterious fastnesses,
scarcely believed in and never seen by the settlers of the level land--a
magic country in which they placed much gold and the wandering colonists
of Roanoke, the South Sea, and long-gowned Eastern peoples.
"Oh, the mountains!" said Patricia. "The dreadful, frowning mountains!
When will we be quit of them? When, will we reach the level land and
the blue water?"
"Before many days, I trust," said Landless. "See, our faces are set to
the east---towards home."
She stood in silence for a moment, her face lifted, the color slowly
coming back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, then said
suddenly:--
"Did my father send you after me?"
"No, madam."
"Then how are you here?"