The Strange Uses to Which Revenge May Be Put.
In after-times, when it could do no harm to tell this story, people were
wont to regard as its most remarkable feature the fact that we made the
trip from the Oriskany battle-field to Cairncross in five days. There was
never exhibited any special interest in the curious workings of mind, and
conscience too if you like, which led me to bring my enemy home. Some few,
indeed, like General Arnold, to whom I recounted the affair a fortnight
later when he marched up the Valley, frankly said that I was a fool for my
pains, and doubtless many others dissembled the same opinion. But they
all, with one accord, expressed surprise, admiration, even incredulity, at
the despatch with which we accomplished the difficult journey.
This achievement was, of course, entirely due to Enoch. At the outset he
protested stoutly against the waste of time and trouble involved in my
plan. It was only after much argument that I won him over to consenting,
which he did with evident reluctance. But it is right to say that, once
embarked on the adventure, he carried it through faithfully and with zeal.
The wounded man lay silent, with closed eyes, while our discussion went
on. He seemed in a half-lethargic state, probably noting all that we said,
yet under too heavy a spell of pain and weakness to care to speak. It was
not until we two had woven a rough sort of litter out of hickory saplings,
covered thick with moss and hemlock twigs, and Enoch had knelt by his side
to look to his wounds again, that Cross spoke:
"Leave me alone!" he groaned, angrily. "It makes me worse to have you
touch me. Are you not satisfied? I am dying; that ought to be enough
for you."
"Don't be a fool, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, imperturbably, moving his hand
along the course of the bandage. "We're trying to save your life. I don't
know just why, but we are. Don't make it extra hard for us. All the help
we want from you is for you to hold your jaw."
"You are going to give me up to your Oneidas!" cried the suffering man,
raising his head by a violent effort at the words, and staring
affrightedly straight ahead of him.
There, indeed, were the two friendly Indians who had come with me to the
swamp, and had run forward in pursuit of Cross's companions. They had
returned with absolute noiselessness, and stood now some ten feet away
from us, gazing with stolid composure at our group.
A hideous bunch of fresh scalp-locks dangled from the belt of each, and,
on the bare legs beneath, stains of something darker than vermilion
mingled with the pale ochre that had been rubbed upon the skin. The
savages breathed heavily from their chase, and their black eyes were
fairly aflame with excitement, but they held the muscles of their faces in
an awesome rigidity. They were young men whom pious Samuel Kirkland had
laboriously covered, through years of effort, with a Christian veneering.
If the good dominie could have been there and seen the glances they bent
upon the wounded enemy at our feet, I fear me he would have groaned
in spirit.
"Keep them off!" shrieked Cross, his head all in a tremble with the
sustained exertion of holding itself up. "I will not be scalped! So help
me God, I will not!"
The Indians knew enough of English to understand this frantic cry. They
looked at me as much as to say that this gentleman's resolution did not
materially alter the existing situation, the probabilities of which were
all on the other side.
"Lay your head down, Mr. Cross," said Enoch, almost gently. "Just keep
cool, or you'll bust your bandages off. They won't hurt you till we give
'em the word."
Still he made fitful efforts to rise, and a faint purplish color came into
his throat and cheeks as he strove excitedly. If Enoch had not held his
arm he would have torn off the plaster from his breast.
"It shall not be done! I will die now! You shall not save me to be
tortured--scalped--by these devils!"
I intervened here. "You need fear nothing from these Indians," I said,
bending over him. "Lie back again and calm yourself. We are different from
the brutes in your camp. We pay no price for scalps."
"Perhaps those are not scalps they have hanging there. It is like your
canting tongue to deny it."
It was easy to keep my temper with this helpless foe. "These savages have
their own way of making war," I answered, calmly. "They are defending
their own homes against invasion, as well as we are. But we do not bribe
them to take scalps."
"Why not be honest--you!" he said, disdainfully. "You are going to give me
up. Don't sicken me with preaching into the bargain."
"Why be silly--you!" I retorted. "Does the trouble we propose taking for
you look like giving you up? What would be easier than to leave you
here--for the wolves, or these Indians here? Instead of that we are going
to carry you all the way to your home. We are going to _hide_ you at
Cairncross, until I can get a parole for you from General Schuyler. _Now_
will you keep still?"
He did relapse into silence at this--a silence that was born alike of
mystification and utter weakness.
Enoch explained to the Oneidas, mainly in their own strange tongue, my
project of conveying this British prisoner, intact so far as hair went,
down the Valley. I could follow him enough to know that he described me as
a warrior of great position and valor; it was less flattering to have him
explain that Cross was also a leading chief, and that I would get a
magnificent ransom by delivering him up to Congress.
Doubtless it was wise not to approach the Indian mind with less practical
arguments. I saw this, and begged Enoch to add that much of this reward
should be theirs if they would accompany us on our journey.
"They would be more trouble than they are worth," he said. "They wouldn't
help carry him more than ten minutes a day. If they'll tell me where one
of their canoes is hid, betwixt here and Fort Schuyler, that will
be enough."
The result was that Enoch got such information of this sort as he desired,
together with the secret of a path near by which would lead us to the
river trail. I cut two buttons from my coat in return, and gave them to
the savages; each being a warranty for eight dollars upon production at my
home, half way between the old and the new houses of the great and
lamented Warraghiyagey, as they had called Sir William Johnson. This done,
and the trifling skin-wound on my arm re-dressed, we lifted Cross upon the
rude litter and started for the trail.
I seem to see again the spectacle upon which I turned to look for a last
time before we entered the thicket. The sky beyond the fatal forest wore
still its greenish, brassy color, and the clouds upon the upper limits of
this unnatural glare were of a vivid, sinister crimson, like clots of
fresh blood. In the calm gray blue of the twilight vault above, birds of
prey circled, with a horrible calling to one another. No breath of air
stirred the foliage or the bending rushes in the swale. We could hear no
sound from our friends at the head of the ravine, a full half-mile away.
Save for the hideous noises of the birds, a perfect silence rested upon
this blood-soaked oasis of the wilderness. The little brook babbled softly
past us; the strong western light flashed upon the rain-drops among the
leaves. On the cedar-clad knoll the two young Indians stood motionless in
the sunset radiance, watching us gravely.
We passed into the enfolding depths of the woods, leaving the battle-field
to the furred and feathered scavengers and scalping-knives of the
forest primeval.
* * * * *
Our slow and furtive course down the winding river was one long misery. I
recall no other equally wretched five days in my life.
The canoe which Enoch unearthed on our first evening was a small and
fragile affair, in which only one beside the wounded man could be
accommodated. The other must take his way as best he could through the
sprawling tangle of water-alders, wild artichoke, and vines, facing
myriads of flies and an intolerable heat in all the wet places, with their
sweltering luxuriance of rank vegetation. One day of this nearly reduced
me to the condition of our weak and helpless prisoner. I staggered blindly
along toward its close, covered to the knees with black river-mud, my face
and wounded arm stinging with the scratches of poisonous ivy and brambles,
my brain aching savagely, my strength and spirit all gone. I could have
wept like a child from sheer exhaustion when at last I came to the nook on
the little stream where Enoch had planned to halt, and flung myself on
the ground utterly worn out.
We were somewhat below Fort Schuyler, as near to the first settlements on
the German Flatts as we might with safety venture by daylight. Thereafter
we must hide during the days, and steal down the river at night. Enoch had
a small store of smoked beef; for the rest we ate berries, wild grapes,
and one or two varieties of edible roots which he knew of. We dared not
build a fire.
Philip Cross passed most of his time, while we lay hiding under cover, in
a drowsy, restless stupor, broken by feverish intervals of nervous
activity of mind which were often very like delirium. The heat, the
fly-pest, and the malarial atmosphere of the dank recesses in which we
lay, all combined to make his days very bad. At night in the canoe,
floating noiselessly down the stream, Enoch said he seemed to suffer less
and to be calmer in his mind. But at no time, for the first three days at
least, did he evince any consciousness that we were doing for him more
than might under the circumstances be expected. His glance seemed
sometimes to bespeak puzzled thoughts. But he accepted all our
ministrations and labors with either the listless indifference of a man
ill unto death, or the composure of an aristocrat who took personal
service and attention for granted.
After we had passed the Little Falls--which we did on our third night
out--the chief danger from shallows and rifts was over, and Enoch was able
to exchange places with me. It was no great trouble to him, skilful
woodsman that he was, to make his way along the bank even in the dark,
while in the now smooth and fairly broad course I could manage the canoe
well enough.
The moon shone fair upon us, as our little bark glided down the river. We
were in the deep current which pushes forcefully forward under the new
pressure of the East Canada waters, and save for occasional guidance there
was small need of my paddle. The scene was very beautiful to the eye--the
white light upon the flood, the soft calm shadows of the willowed banks,
the darker, statelier silhouettes of the forest trees, reared black
against the pale sky.
There is something in the restful radiance of moonlight which mellows
hearts. The poets learned this, ages since; I realized it now, as my
glance fell upon the pallid face in the bow before me. We were looking at
one another, and my hatred of him, nursed through years, seemed suddenly
to have taken to itself wings. I had scarcely spoken to him during the
voyage, other than to ask him of his wound. Now a thousand gentle impulses
stirred within me, all at once, and moved my tongue.
"Are you out of pain to-night?" I asked him. "The journey is a hard one at
best for a wounded man. I would we could have commanded a larger and more
commodious boat."
"Oh, ay! So far as bodily suffering goes, I am free from it," he made
answer, languidly. Then, after a little pause, he went on, in a low,
musing voice: "How deathly still everything is! I thought that in the
wilderness one heard always the night-yelping of the wolves. We did at
Cairncross, I know. Yet since we started I have not heard one. It is as if
we were going through a dead country."
Enoch had explained the reason for this silence to me, and I thoughtlessly
blurted it out.
"Every wolf for forty miles round about is up at the battle-field," I
said. "It is fairly marvellous how such intelligence spreads among these
brutes. They must have a language of their own. How little we really
understand of the animal creation about us, with all our pride of wisdom!
Even the shark, sailors aver, knows which ship to pursue."
He shuddered and closed his eyes as I spoke. I thought at first that he
had been seized with a spasm of physical anguish, by the drawn expression
of his face; then it dawned upon me that his suffering was mental.
"Yes, I dare say they are all there," he said, lifting his voice somewhat.
"I can hear them--see them! Do you know," he went on, excitedly, "all day
long, all night long, I seem to have corpses all about me. They are there
just the same when I close my eyes--when I sleep. Some of them are my
friends; others I do not know, but they all know me. They look at me out
of dull eyes; they seem to say they are waiting for me--and then there are
the wolves!"
He began shivering at this again, and his voice sank into a piteous
quaver.
"These are but fancies," I said, gently, as one would speak to a child
awakened in terror by a nightmare. "You will be rid of them once you get
where you can have rest and care."
It seemed passing strange that I should be talking thus to a man of as
powerful frame as myself, and even older in years. Yet he was so wan and
weak, and the few days of suffering had so altered, I may say refined, his
face and mien, that it was natural enough too, when one thinks of it.
He became calmer after this, and looked at me for a long time as I paddled
through a stretch of still water, in silence.
"You must have been well born, after all," he said, finally.
I did not wholly understand his meaning, but answered:
"Why, yes, the Van Hoorns are a very good family--noble in some branches,
in fact--and my father had his sheepskin from Utrecht. But what of it?"
"What I would say is, you have acted in all this like a gentleman."
I could not help smiling to myself, now that I saw what was in his mind.
"For that matter," I answered, lightly, "it does not seem to me that
either the Van Hoorns or the dead Mauverensens have much to do with it." I
remembered my mother's parting remark to me, and added: "The only Van
Hoorn I know of in the Valley will not be at all pleased to learn I have
brought you back."
"Nobody will be pleased," he said, gloomily.
After that it was fit that silence should again intervene, for I could not
gainsay him. He closed his eyes as if asleep, and I paddled on in the
alternate moonlight and shadow.
The recollection of my mother's words brought with it a great train of
thoughts, mostly bitter. I was bearing home with me a man who was not only
not wanted, but whose presence and continued life meant the annihilation
of all the inchoate hopes and dreams my heart these last two years had fed
upon. It was easy to be civil, even kind, to him in his present helpless,
stricken state; anybody with a man's nature could do that. But it was not
so easy to look resignedly upon the future, from which all light and
happiness were excluded by the very fact that he was alive.
More than once during this revery, be it stated in frankness, the
reflection came to me that by merely tipping the canoe over I could even
now set everything right. Of course I put the evil thought away from me,
but still it came obstinately back more than once. Under the momentary
spell of this devilish suggestion, I even looked at the form recumbent
before me, and noted how impossible it was that it should ever reach the
bank, once in the water. Then I tore my mind forcibly from the idea, as
one looking over a dizzy height leaps back lest the strange, latent
impulse of suicide shall master him, and fixed my thoughts instead upon
the man himself.
His talk about my being well born helped me now to understand his
character better than I had before been able to do. I began to realize the
existence in England--in Europe generally, I dare say--of a kind of man
strange to our American ideas, a being within whom long tradition and
sedulous training had created two distinct men--one affable, honorable,
generous, likeable, among his equals; the other cold, selfish, haughty,
and harsh to his inferiors. It struck me now that there had always been
two Philips, and that I had been shown only the rude and hateful one
because my station had not seemed to entitle me to consort with the other.
Once started upon this explanation, I began to comprehend the whole story.
To tell the truth, I had never understood why this young man should have
behaved so badly as he did; there had been to me always a certain
wantonness of brutality in his conduct wholly inexplicable. The thing was
plainer now. In his own country he would doubtless have made a tolerable
husband, a fair landlord, a worthy gentleman in the eyes of the only class
of people whose consideration he cared for. But over here, in the new
land, all the conditions had been against him. He had drawn down upon
himself and all those about him overwhelming calamity, simply because he
had felt himself under the cursed obligation to act like a "gentleman," as
he called it. His contemptuous dislike of me, his tyrannical treatment of
his wife when she did not fall in with his ambitions, his sulky resort to
dissipation, his fierce espousal of the Tory side against the common
herd--I could trace now the successive steps by which obstinacy had led
him down the fell incline.
I do not know that I had much satisfaction from this analysis, even when I
had worked it all out. It was worth while, no doubt, to arrive at a
knowledge of Philip's true nature, and to see that under other
circumstances he might have been as good a man as another. But all the
same my heart grew heavy under the recurring thought that the saving of
his life meant the destruction of all worth having in mine.
Every noiseless stroke of my paddle in the water, bearing him toward home
as it did, seemed to push me farther back into a chill, unknown world of
gloom and desolation. Yet, God help me, I could do no other!