A shadow crossed her face, but it was gone in a moment. "I am very
grateful," she said. "You have saved me from worse than death."
"It is I that am thankful," he answered.
They descended the hill in silence and found the Susquehannock, who had
preceded them, squatted before a fire which he had kindled upon a flat
rock beside one of the innumerable streamlets that wound here and there
over the land.
"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he said
with grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and the
Gold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest and
get them something to eat."
He was gone, his gigantic figure looking larger than life as he moved
through the mist which still filled the hollow between the hills, and
Landless and Patricia sat themselves down beside the fire. Landless
piled upon it the dead wood with which the ground was strewn, and the
flames leaped and crackled, sending up thin blue smoke against the
hillside and reddening the bosom of the placid stream. When he had
finished his task and taken his seat, there fell a silence and
constraint upon the man and woman, brought through so many strange and
wayward paths, through lives so widely differing, to this companionship
in the heart of a waste and savage world. They sat opposite each other
in the ruddy light of the fire, and each, looking into the dark or
glowing hollows, saw there the same thing--the tobacco house and what
had there passed.
"I wish to believe in you," said Patricia at last, lifting appealing
eyes to the opposite face. "But how can I? You lied to me!"
Landless raised his head proudly. "Madam, will you listen to me--to my
defense if you will? You are a Royalist: I am a Commonwealth man. Can
you not see, that as ten years ago, in the estimation of you and yours,
it was all that was just and heroic for a Cavalier to plot the downfall
of the Government which then was, both here and at home, so they of the
Commonwealth saw no disgrace in laboring for their cause, a cause as
real and as high and as holy to them, madam, as was that of the Stuart
and the Church to the Cavalier.... And will not the slave fight for his
liberty? Is it of choice, do you think, that men lie rotting in prison,
in the noisome holds of ships, are bought and sold like oxen, are
chained to the oar, to the tobacco field, are herded with the refuse of
the earth, are obedient to the finger, to the whip? We--they who are
known as Oliverians, and they who are felons, and I who am, if you
choose, of both parties, were haled here with ropes. What allegiance
did we owe to them who had cast us out, or to them who bought us as they
buy dumb beasts? As God lives, none! We were no longer regarded as
men, we were chattels, animals, slaves, caged, and chained. And as the
caged beast will break his bars if he can, so we strove to break ours.
You have been a captive, madam. Is not freedom sweet to you? We also
longed for it. We staked our lives upon the throw--and lost. That
dream is over,--let it go! ... There is honor among rebels, madam, as
among thieves. That morning after the storm, I had the choice of lying
to you or of becoming a traitor indeed.... But as to what I had before
asked you to believe, that was the truth, is the truth. I know that in
your eyes I am still the rebel to the King, well deserving the doom
which awaits me, but if, after what I say to you, by the faith of a
gentleman, before the God who is above the stillness of these hills, you
still believe me criminal in aught else, you wrong me much, you wrong
yourself!"
He ceased abruptly, and rising, began to heap more wood upon the fire.
The figure of the Indian, with something dark upon its shoulder, emerged
from the spectral forest, and came towards them through the mist.
"Monakatocka has found our breakfast," said Landless, forcing himself to
speak with indifference, and without looking at his companion. "I am
glad of it, for you must be faint from hunger."
"I am very thirsty," she said in a low voice.
"If you will come to the water's edge, that at least can be quickly
remedied."
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated and followed him
down to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold,"
he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from my
hands, madam?"
"Yes," she said; then deliberately, after a pause, "for I well believe
them to be clean hands."
Her own hand touched his as she spoke, and he put it to his lips in
silence. Kneeling upon the turf by the stream, he raised the water in
his hands and she stooped and drank from them, and then they went back
to the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival of
Monakatocka, laden with a wild turkey. An hour later the Susquehannock
carefully extinguished the fire, raked all the embers and ashes into the
stream, hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal,
obliterated all moccasin prints, and having made the little hollow
between the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hours
before, when the foot of man had probably never entered it, stepped into
the stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey.
Before midday, the stream winding to the south, they left it, and
plunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with their
faces to the east.
*CHAPTER XXXI*
*THE HUT IN THE CLEARING*
Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of
the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few
hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when
Landless, quietly watchful, saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the
woman beside him, or noted her lagging footsteps. They had left the
higher mountains behind them, but still moved through what seemed an
uninhabited territory. No Indian village crowned the hills above the
streams; they encountered no roving bauds; no solitary hunter met them;
nowhere was there sign of human life. If their enemies were upon their
track, they knew it not--perfect peace, perfect solitude seemed to
encompass them. Still the Indian was vigilant; covering their trail
with unimaginable ingenuity, taking advantage of every running stream,
every stony hillside, building a fire only in some hidden hollow or fold
of the hills, using his bow and arrow to bring down the deer or wild
fowl which furnished them food--he stalked behind them, or sat bolt
upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their
resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If
he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the
sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him.
Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the
darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat
with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction
with keen and restless eyes. Nothing worse than the wolves--cowardly as
yet, for though drawing swiftly nearer, winter and famine were still
distant--threatened them; no sound other than the forest sounds
disturbed them; through the scant undergrowth or over the moss and
partridge berry brushed nothing more appalling than bear or badger. But
the Indian watched on.
Day after day Landless and Patricia walked side by side through the
reddening forest. His hands steadied her over crags or down ravines, or
broke a way for her through vast beds of sassafras or mile-long tangles
of wild grape, and when their way lay along the bed of streams he
carried her. She had no need to complain of fatigue, for he saw when
she was weary, and called a halt. At their rustic meals he waited upon
her with grave courtesy, and when they halted for the night he made her
couch of fallen leaves and wove for it a screen of branches. They spoke
but little and only of the needs of the hour. She bore herself towards
him kindly and gently, thanking him with voice and smile for all that he
did for her, and there was no mistrust in her eyes; but he saw, or
fancied he saw, a shadow in their depths, and thinking, "She does not
forget, and neither must I," he set a watch upon himself, and bounds,
across which he was not to step.
Upon the afternoon of the sixth day they were passing through a deep and
narrow ravine--a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded
mountains--when the Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a
warning "Ugh!" then bent forward in a listening attitude.
"What is it?" asked Landless in a low voice. "I hear nothing."
"It is a sound," said the other in the same tone. "I do not know what
yet, for it is far off. But it is in front of us."
"Shall we go on?" demanded Landless, and the Indian nodded.
It was late afternoon, and the hills which closed in behind them as the
gorge writhed to left and right hid the sun. Great trees, too, pine and
chestnut, walnut and oak, leaned towards each other from the opposing
banks, and together with the overhanging rocks, mantled with fern, made
a twilight of the pass beneath. Here and there the silver stem of a
birch stood up tall and straight, and looked a ghostly sentinel. "Do
you hear it still?" demanded Landless when they had gone some distance
in dead silence.
"Yes."
"And still in front of us?"
"Yes."
"Ah, what can it be?" cried Patricia, turning her white face upon
Landless.
A cold wind, blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I
hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a
woodpecker in the heart of the forest."
"It is the sound of the axe of the white man," said the Indian. "Some
one is cutting down a tree."
"There can be no ranger or pioneer within many leagues of us!" exclaimed
Landless. "No white man hath ever come so far. It must be an Indian!"
The Susquehannock shook his head. "Why should an Indian cut down a
tree? We kill them and let them stand until they are bare and white
like the bones of a man when the wolves have finished with him, and they
fall of themselves."
"If my father still searches for me," said Patricia in a low voice, "may
it not be his party that we hear? There may be a stream there. They may
make canoes."
"With all my heart I pray that it be so, madam," said Landless. "But we
will soon know. See, Monakatocka has gone on ahead."
She did not answer, and they walked on through the gloom of the defile.
Presently their path became rough and broken, blocked with large stones
and heavily shadowed by cedars projecting from the rocks above and
draped with vines. He held out his hands and she took them, and he
helped her across the rough places. He felt her hands tremble in his,
and he thought it was with the ecstasy of the hope which inspired her.
"If it is indeed so," she said once in a voice so low that he had to
bend to catch the words, "if it is indeed my father, then this is the
last time you will help me thus."
"Yes," he answered steadily. "The last time."
They passed the rocks and came to where the ravine widened. The sound
that had perplexed them was now plainly audible; there was no mistaking
the quick, ringing strokes of the axe. They rounded a jutting cliff and
abruptly emerged from the chill darkness of the gorge upon a noble
landscape of hill and valley, autumn woods and flowing water, all bathed
in the golden light of the sinking sun and inestimably bright and
precious of aspect after the gloom through which they had been
traveling. But it was not the beauty of the scene which drew an
exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered
with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a
crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of
magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the
wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy
chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a
little, half-naked child--a white child. As the travelers stared in
amazement, a woman's voice rang out, freshly and sweetly, in an English
ballad. The trees had been cleared away from around the knoll, and in
their place rose the yellowing stalks of Indian corn. The little mound,
feathered with the gold of the golden-rod and girt with the gold of the
maize, rose like a fairy isle from the limitless sea of forest, and the
apparition of a troop of veritable elves would have astonished the
wanderers less than did the tiny cabin, the romping child, and the clear
song of the woman.
The Indian glided to their side from behind the trunk of an oak. "Ugh,"
he said with emphasis. "He is mad and so he has his scalp still." As he
spoke he pointed to where, at a little distance, a man, with his back
turned to the forest, was busily felling a tree.
"He dares much," said Landless. "We did not think to see the face of a
white man--pioneer, ranger, trapper or trader--for many a league yet.
He has built his house in the jaws of the wolf."
Patricia gazed at the hut with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there,"
she said, and Landless heard her voice tremble for the first time in
their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass
them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest
here for this one night?"
"Yes," said Landless gently, reading, as he read all her fancies and
desires, her longing for the companionship of a woman, though for so
short a time. The Indian, too, nodded assent. "Good! but Monakatocka
will watch to-night."
They moved through the checkered light and shade towards the man who
worked at the foot of the knoll. They were quite near him when the
woman, whose voice they had heard, came to the door of the cabin, shaded
her eyes with her hand, looked towards the ravine, and saw the three
figures emerging from it. With a loud cry she snatched up the child at
her feet and rushed down the knoll towards the man, who at the sound of
her voice dropped his axe, caught up a musket which leaned against a
stump beside him, and wheeling, presented the gun at the newcomers.
"Give me your kerchief, madam," said Landless, and advanced with the
white lawn in his hand.
"Halt!" cried the man with the gun.
"We are friends," called Landless. "This lady and I are from the
Settlements. This Indian is not Algonquin, but Iroquois--a
Susquehannock, as you may tell by his size. You need have no fear. We
are quite alone."
The man slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends,
do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold
sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy
frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the hue of the Indian.
"I might ask the same question of you," said Landless, coming up to him
with a smile. "This lady was captured and carried off by a band of
roving Ricahecrians who bore her into the Blue Mountains. We ask your
hospitality for to-night. The lady is very weary, and she has not seen
the face of a woman for many weeks. Your good wife will entreat her
kindly, I know."
The woman, who now stood beside the man, smiled, but doubtfully; the
man's face too was clouded, and there was an uneasy light in his eyes.
Landless, looking steadily at him, saw upon his forehead a mark which
served to explain his evident perturbation.
"You need not fear me," he said quietly. "'T is none of our business
how you come to be here in this wilderness, so far from what has been
counted the furthest outpost."
The man, feeling his gaze upon him, raised his hand with an involuntary
motion to his forehead, then dropped it, awkwardly enough.
"I see," said Landless. "I understand. I have been--I am--a servant.
A runaway, too, if you like. I have been in trouble. I would not betray
you if I could: that I cannot, goes without saying. Now, will you
shelter us for this night?"
"Yes," said the man, his face clearing. "As you say, you could n't do
us harm if you would, seeing that masters, and d--d overseers, and
bloodhounds are at the world's end for us. We are beyond their reach.
Bring up the lady. Joan, here, will see to her."
An hour later the woman and Patricia sat side by side upon the doorstep
in the long mountain twilight. At their feet the little child crowed and
clapped its hands, and plucked at the golden-rod growing about the door.
Below them, beside the placid stream, the owner of the hut and Godfrey
Landless paced slowly up and down, now disappearing into the shadow of
the trees, now dimly seen in the open spaces, while the Indian lay at
full length beneath the maples, with his eye upon the blackness of the
ravine down which they had come.
"It is fair to look upon, and peaceful," Patricia said dreamily, "but
Danger lives in these dreadful mountains. Why did you come here?"
"We came because we loved," the woman said simply.
"But why into the very land of the savages, so far from safety, so far
from the Settlements?"
The woman turned her eyes upon the beautiful face beside her and studied
it in silence.
"I will tell you," she said at last, "for I believe you are as good as
you are beautiful, and you are as beautiful as an angel. And, though I
can see that you are a lady, yet you are woman too, as I am, and you
have suffered much, as I have, and have loved too, I think, as I have
loved."
"I have never loved," said Patricia.
The woman smiled, and shook her head. "There is a look in the eyes that
only comes with that. I know it." She gathered the child to her, and
beating its little hand against her bosom, began her story:--
"It is four years since I signed to come to the Plantations, to become
the servant of an up-river planter--and to better myself. It was a hard
life, my lady, a hard life--you cannot guess how hard.... One day a
neighboring planter sent a message to my master, and I (for I served in
the house) took it from the messenger. The messenger was one that I had
known in the village at home, in England. He had left home to make his
fortune, and I had not heard of him for a long time. They used to call
me his sweetheart. When I saw him I cried out, and he caught my hands
in his.... After that we met whenever we could, on Sundays, on
Instruction days, whenever chance offered. He had tried to run away
twice before we met, but he never tried afterwards. His master was a
hard man--mine was worse ... After a while we began to meet in
secret--at night ... You are a lady--that is different--you cannot
understand; but I loved him, loved him as well as any lady in the land
could love; better, maybe ... There came a night when I was followed,
and taken, and he with me." She broke off to smell at the scentless
spear of golden-rod which the child held up, and to say, "Yes, my
darling, pretty, pretty, pretty," then went on with her eyes following
the figures walking up and down beside the stream. "The next night
found us in the sheriff's hands, in the gaol at the courthouse. Oh that
blank, dreadful, heavy night! I felt the lash already--I did not mind
that--but I saw the platform and the post, and the gaping crowd beneath.
I thought of him, and my heart was sick; I thought of my mother, and my
tears fell like rain.... There was a noise at the window, and I stood
upon my stool to see what it was. It was he! He had a knife and he
worked and wrenched at the bars until he had wrenched them away, then
dragged me through the window and we stood together beneath the
stars--free! Another moment and we were down at the water side and into
a boat which was fastened there. We loosed it and rowed with all our
speed up the river. He had killed the gaoler and gotten away, bringing
with him a musket and an axe. All that night we rowed, and when morning
broke we were well-nigh past the settlements, for we had been far up
river to begin with. That day we hid in the reeds, but when night came
we sped up the stream. We came to the falls of the far west and left
our boat there. For many days we walked through the woods, hurrying on,
day after day, for when we lay down at night, I saw in my dreams the
flash of the torches and heard the baying of the hounds. After a long
while we came to an Indian village not many leagues from here, and there
we found the mercies of the savage kinder than the mercies of the white
man. They may have thought us mad--I do not know--but they did not harm
us. There we dwelt for a time, in the stranger's wigwam, and there the
child was born." She pressed the little hand which she held, and which
she had never ceased to beat against her bosom, to her lips. "He would
have stayed in the village, but in sleep I still heard the bloodhounds,
and we left the friendly Indians and pressed on. We came upon this
knoll on just such an evening as this--the light in the west, and the
stream very still, with a large white star shining down upon it. We lay
down beside it, and that night I slept without a dream.... We have been
here ever since, and here we shall stay until we die."
"It is fair now," said Patricia, "but in a little while it will be
winter and very cold."
"Bitterly cold," said the woman. "The snow lies long in these hills,
and the wind howls down the ravine."
"And the wolves are bold in winter."
"Very bold. This scar upon my arm is from the teeth of one which I
fought here, on the very threshold."
"The Indians threaten always, summer or winter."
"Ay, sooner or later they will come against us. We shall die that way at
last. But what does it matter--so that we die together?"
The lady of the manor turned her pure, pale face upon the other with
wonder, and yet with comprehension, written upon it.
"You are happy!" she said, almost in a whisper.
"Yes, I am happy," the woman answered, a light that was not from the
faintly crimson west upon her face.
*CHAPTER XXXII*
*ATTACK*
About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to
attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and
opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that
came faintly in at the open door.
"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"