LE GRAND DIABLE SENDS BACK OUR MESSENGER
Father Holland advised caution and consideration before acting. A policy
of bargaining was his counsel.
"I don't like those terms, at all," he said, "too much like giving your
weapons to the enemy. I don't like all this."
He would temporize and rely on Le Grand Diable's covetous disposition
bringing him to our terms; but Hamilton would hear of neither caution
nor delay.
The ransom price was at once collected. Next morning, Little Fellow, on
a fresh mount with a string of laden horses on each side, went post
haste back to the Sioux.
In all conscience, Hamilton had been wild enough during the first
parley. His excitement now exceeded all bounds. The first two days, when
there was no possibility of Miriam's coming and Little Fellow could not
yet have reached the Sioux, I tore after Eric so often I lost count of
the races between our lodge and the north hill. The performance began
again on the third day, and I broke out with a piece of my mind, which
surprised him mightily.
"Look you here, Hamilton!" I exclaimed, rounding him back from the hill,
"Can't you stop this nonsense and sit still for only two days more, or
must I tie you up? You've tried to put me crazy all winter and, by Jove,
if you don't stop this, you'll finish the job----"
He gazed at me with the dumb look of a wounded animal and was too amazed
for words. Leaving me in mid-road, feeling myself a brute, he went
straight to his own hut. After that incident, he gave us no further
anxiety and kept an iron grip on his impatience. With me, anger had
given place to contrition. He remained much by himself until the night,
when our messengers were expected. Then he came across to my quarters,
where Father Holland and I were keyed up to the highest pitch. Putting
out his hand he said--
"Is it all right with us again, Rufus, old man?"
That speech nigh snapped the strained cords.
"Of course," said I, gripping the extended hand, and I immediately
coughed hard, to explain away the undue moisture welling into my eyes.
We all three sat as still and silent as a death-watch, Father Holland
fumbling and pretending to pore over some holy volume, Eric with fingers
tightly interlaced and upper teeth biting through lower lip, and I with
clenched fists dug into jacket pockets and a thousand imaginary sounds
singing wild tunes in my ears.
How the seconds crawled, and the minutes barely moved, and the hours
seemed to heap up in a blockade and crush us with their leaden weight!
Twice I sought relief for pent emotion by piling wood on the fire,
though the night was mild, and by breaking the glowing embers into a
shower of sparks. The soft, moccasined tread of Mandanes past our door
startled Father Holland so that his book fell to the floor, while I
shook like a leaf. Strange to say, Hamilton would not allow himself the
luxury of a single movement, though the lowered brows tightened and
teeth cut deeper into the under lip.
Dogs set up a barking at the other end of the village--a common enough
occurrence where half-starved curs roved in packs--but I could not
refrain from lounging with a show of indifference to the doorway, where
I peered through the moon-silvered dusk. As usual, the Indians with
shrill cry flew at the dogs to silence them. The noise seemed to be
annoying my companions and was certainly unnerving me, so I shut the
door and walked back to the fire.
The howl of dogs and squaws increased. I heard the angry undertone of
men's voices. A hoarse roar broke from the Mandane lodges and rolled
through the village like the sweep of coming hurricane. There was a
fleet rush, a swift pattering of something pursued running round the
rear of our lodge, with a shrieking mob of men and squaws after it. The
dogs were barking furiously and snapping at the heels of the thing,
whatever it was.
"A hostile!" exclaimed Hamilton, leaping up.
Hardly knowing what I did, I bounded towards the door and shot forward
the bolt, with a vague fear that blood might be spilled on our
threshold.
"For shame, man!" cried Father Holland, making to undo the latch.
But the words had not passed his lips when the parchment flap of the
window lifted. A voice screamed through the opening and in hurtled a
round, nameless, blood-soaked horror, rolling over and over in a red
trail, till it stopped with upturned, dead, glaring eyes and hideous,
gaping mouth, at the very feet of Hamilton.
It was the scalpless head of La Robe Noire. Our Indian had paid the
price of his own blood-lust and Diable's enmity.
Before the full enormity of the treachery--messengers murdered and
mutilated, ransom stolen and captives kept--had dawned on me, Father
Holland had broken open the door. He was rushing through the night
screaming for the Mandanes to catch the miscreant Sioux. When I turned
back, not daring to look at that awful object, Hamilton had fallen to
the hut floor in a dead faint.
* * * * *
And now may I be spared recalling what occurred on that terrible night!
Women luxuriate and men traffic in the wealth of the great west, but how
many give one languid thought to the years of bloody deeds by which the
west was won?
* * * * *
Before restoring Hamilton, it was necessary to remove that which was
unseemly; also to wash out certain stains on the hearth-stones; and
those things would have tried the courage of more iron-nerved men than
myself.
I should not have been surprised if Eric had come out of that faint, a
gibbering maniac; but I toiled over him with the courage of blank
hopelessness, pumping his arms up and down, forcing liquor between the
clenched teeth, splashing the cold, clammy face with water, and laving
his forehead. At last he opened his eyes wearily. Like a man ill at ease
with life, moaning, he turned his face to the wall.
Outside, it was as if the unleashed furies of hell fought to quench
their thirst in human blood. The clamor of those red demons was in my
ears and I was still working over Hamilton, loosening his jacket collar,
under-pillowing his chest, fanning him, and doing everything else I
could think of, to ease his labored breathing, when Father Holland burst
into the lodge, utterly unmanned and sobbing like a child.
"For the Lord's sake, Rufus," he cried, "for the Lord's sake, come and
help! They're murdering him! They're murdering him! 'Twas I who set them
on him, and I can't stop them! I can't stop them!"
"Let them murder him!" I returned, unconsciously demonstrating that the
civilized heart differs only in degree from the barbarian.
"Come, Rufus," he pleaded, "come, for the love of Frances, or your hands
will not be clean. There'll be blood on your hands when you go back to
her. Come, come!"
Out we rushed through the thronging Mandanes, now riotous with the lust
of blood. A ring of young bucks had been formed round the Sioux to keep
the crowd off. Naked, with arms pinioned, the victim stood motionless
and without fear.
"Good white father, he no understand," said the Mandanes, jostling the
weeping priest back from the circle of the young men. "Good white
father, he go home!" In spite of protest by word and act they roughly
shoved us to our lodge, the doomed man's death chant ringing in our ears
as they pushed us inside and clashed our door. In vain we had argued
they would incur the vengeance of the Sioux nation. Our voices were
drowned in the shout for blood--for blood!
The sigh of the wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to
our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound
out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I
stop-gapped that, too, with more robes.
* * * * *
That the Sioux would wreak swift vengeance could not be doubted. As soon
as the murderous work was over, guides were with difficulty engaged.
Having fitted up a sort of prop in which I could tie Hamilton to the
saddle, I saw both Father Holland and Eric set out for Red River before
daybreak.
It was best they should go and I remain. If Miriam were still in the
country, stay I would, till she were safe; but I had no mind to see Eric
go mad or die before the rescue could be accomplished.
As they were leaving I took a piece of birch bark. On it I wrote with a
charred stick:--
"Greetings to my own dear love from her ever loyal and devoted
knight."
This, Father Holland bore to Frances Sutherland from me.