WHEREIN LOUIS INTRIGUES
Next morning Le Grand Diable would set out for the north. This night,
then, was my last chance to rescue Miriam. "Do your do before morning!"
How Laplante's words echoed in my ears! I had told Miriam a stormy night
was to be the signal for our attempt; and now the rising moon was
dispelling any vague haziness that might have helped to conceal us. In
an hour, the whole camp would be bright as day in clear, silver light.
Presently, the clatter of the lodges ceased. Only an occasional snarl
from the dogs, or the angry squeals of my bronchos kicking the Indian
ponies, broke the utter stillness. There was not even a wind to drown
foot-treads, and every lodge of the camp was reflected across the ground
in elongated shadows as distinct as a crayon figure on white paper. What
if some watchful Indian should discover our moving shadows? La Robe
Noire's fate flashed back and I shuddered.
Flinging up impatiently from the robes, I looked from the tent way. Some
dog of the pack gave the short, sharp bark of a fox. Then, but for the
crunching of my horses over the turf some yards away, there was
silence. I could hear the heavy breathing of people in near-by lodges.
Up from the wooded valley came the far-off purr of a stream over stony
bottom and the low washing sound only accentuated the stillness. The
shrill cry of some lonely night-bird stabbed the atmosphere with a throb
of pain. Again the dog snapped out a bark and again there was utter
quiet.
"One chance in a thousand," said I to myself, "only one in a thousand;
but I'll take it!" And I stepped from the tent. This time the wakeful
dog let out a mouthful of quick barkings. Jerking off my boots--I had
not yet taken to the native custom of moccasins--I dodged across the
roadway into the exaggerated shadow of some Indian camp truckery. Here I
fell flat to the ground so that no reflection should betray my
movements. Then I remembered I had forgotten Louis Laplante's saddle.
Rising, I dived back to the tepee for it and waited for the dogs to
quiet before coming out again. That alert canine had set up a duet with
a neighboring brute of like restless instincts and the two seemed to
promise an endless chorus. As I live, I could have sworn that Louis
Laplante laughed in his sleep at my dilemma; but Louis was of the sort
to laugh in the face of death itself. A man flew from a lodge and
dealing out stout blows quickly silenced the vicious curs; but I had to
let time lapse for the man to go to sleep before I could venture out.
Once more, chirp of cricket, croak of frog and the rush of waters
through the valley were the only sounds, and I darted across to the camp
shadow. Lying flat, I began to crawl cautiously and laboriously towards
my horses. One gave a startled snort as I approached and this set the
dogs going again. I lay motionless in the grass till all was quiet and
then crept gently round to the far side of my favorite horse and caught
his halter strap lest he should whinny, or start away. I drew erect
directly opposite his shoulders, so that I could not be seen from the
lodges and unhobbling his feet, led him into the concealment of a group
of ponies and had the saddle on in a trice. To get the horse to the rear
of Miriam's tent was no easy matter. I paced my steps so deftly with the
broncho's and let him munch grass so often, the most watchful Indian
could not have detected a man on the far side of the horse, directing
every move. Behind the Sioux lodge, the earth sloped abruptly away, bare
and precipitous; and I left the horse below and clambered up the steep
to the white wall of Miriam's tent. Once the dogs threatened to create a
disturbance, but a man quieted them, and with gratitude I recognized the
voice of Laplante.
Three times I tapped on the canvas but there was no response. I put my
arm under the tent and rapped on the ground. Why did she not signal? Was
the Sioux squaw from the other lodge listening? I could hear nothing but
the tossings of the child.
"Miriam," I called, shoving my arm forward and feeling out blindly.
Thereupon, a woman's hand grasped mine and thrust it out, while a voice
so low it might have been the night breeze, came to my ear--"We are
watched."
Watched? What did it matter if we were? Had I not dared all? Must not
she do the same? This was the last chance. We must not be foiled. My
horse, I knew, could outrace any cayuse of the Sioux band.
"Miriam," I whispered back, lifting the canvas, "they will take you away
to-morrow--my horse is here! Come! We must risk all!"
And I shoved myself bodily in under the tent wall. She was not a hand's
length away, sitting with her face to the entrance of Diable's lodge,
her figure rigid and tense with fear. In the half light I could discern
the great, powerful, angular form of a giantess in the opening. 'Twas
the Sioux squaw. Miriam leaned forward to cover the child with a motion
intended to conceal me, and I drew quickly out.
I thought I had not been detected; but the situation was perilous
enough, in all conscience, to inspire caution, and I was backing away,
when suddenly the shadows of two men coming from opposite sides appeared
on the white tent, and something sprang upon me with tigerish fury.
There was the swish of an unsheathing blade, and I felt rather than saw
Le Grand Diable and Louis Laplante contesting over me.
"Never! He's mine, my captive! He stole my saddle! He's mine, I tell
you," ground out the Frenchman, throwing off my assailant. "Keep him for
the warriors and let him be tortured," urged Louis, snatching at the
Indian's arm.
I sprang up. It was Louis, who tripped my feet from under me, and we two
tumbled to the bottom of the cliff, while the Indian stood above
snarling out something in the Sioux tongue.
"Idiot! Anglo-Saxon ox!" muttered Louis, grappling with me as we fell.
"Do but act it out, or two scalps go! I no promise mine when I say I
help you, bah----"
That was the last I recall; for I went down head backwards, and the blow
knocked me senseless.
When I came to, with an aching neck and a humming in my ears, there was
the gray light of a waning moon, and I found myself lying bound in
Miriam's tent. Her child was whimpering timidly and she was hurriedly
gathering her belongings into a small bundle.
"Miriam, what has happened?" I asked. Then the whole struggle and
failure came back to me with an overwhelming realization that torture
and death would be our portion.
"Try no more," she whispered, brushing past me and making as though she
were gathering things where I lay. "Never try, for my sake, never try!
They will torture you. I shall die soon. Only save the child! For
myself, I am past caring. Good-by forever!" and she dashed to the other
side of the tent.
At that, with a deal of noisy mirth, in burst Laplante and the Sioux
squaw.
"Ho-ho! My knight-errant has opened his eyes! Great sport for the
braves, say I! Fine mouse-play for the cat, ho-ho!" and Louis looked
down at me with laughing insolence, that sent a chill through my veins.
'Twas to save his own scalp the rascal was acting and would have me act
too; but I had no wish to betray him. Striking at her captives and
rudely ordering them out, the Sioux led the way and left Louis to bring
up the rear.
"Leave this, lady," said Louis with an air that might have been
impudence or gallantry; and he grabbed the bundle from Miriam's hand and
threw it over his shoulder at me. This was greeted with a roar of
laughter from the Sioux woman and one look of unspeakable reproach from
Miriam. Whistling gaily and turning back to wink at me, the Frenchman
disappeared in Diable's lodge. For my part, I was puzzled. Did Louis act
from the love of acting and trickery and intrigue? Was he befooling the
daughter of L'Aigle, or me?
They tore down Diable's tepee, stringing the poles on the bronchos
stolen from me and leaving Miriam's white tent with the Sioux. I saw
them mount with my horses to the fore, and they set out at a sharp trot.
From the hoof-beats, I should judge they had not gone many paces, when
one rider seemed to turn back, and Louis ran into the tent where I lay.
I did not utter one word of pleading; but as he stooped for Miriam's
bundle, he whisked out a jack-knife and my heart bounded with a great
hope. I suppose, involuntarily, I must have lifted my arms to have the
bonds severed; for Laplante shook his head.
"No--mine frien'--not now--I not scalp Louis Laplante for your
sake,--no, never. Use your teeth--so!" said he, laying the blade of the
knife in his own teeth to show me how; and he slipped the thing into
hiding under my armpits. "The warriors--they come back to-day," he
warned. "You wait till we are far, then cut quick, or they do worse to
you than to La Robe Noire! I leave one horse for you in the valley
beyond the beaver-dam. Tra-la, comrade, but not forget you. I pay you
back yet all the same," and with a whistle, he had vanished.
I hung upon the Frenchman's words as a drowning sailor to a life-line,
and heard the hoof-beats grow fainter and fainter in the distance,
hardly daring to realize the fearful peril in which I lay. By the light
at the tent opening, I knew it was daybreak. Already the Sioux were
stirring in their lodges and naked urchins came to the entrance to hoot
and pelt mud. Somehow, I got into sitting posture, with my head bowed
forward on my arms, so I could use the knife without being seen. At
that, the impertinent brats became bolder and swarming into the tent
began poking sticks. I held my arm closer to my side, and felt the hard
steel's pressure with a pleasure not to be marred by that tantalizing
horde. There seemed to be a gathering hubbub outside. Indians, squaws
and children were rushing in the direction of the trail to the Mandanes.
The children in my tent forgot me and dashed out with the rest. I could
not doubt the cause of the clamor. This was the morning of the warriors'
return; and getting the knife in my teeth, I began filing furiously at
the ropes about my wrists. Man is not a rodent; but under stress of
necessity and with instruments of his own designing, he can do something
to remedy his human helplessness. To the din of clamoring voices outside
were added the shouts of approaching warriors, the galloping of a
multitude of horses and the whining yells of countless dogs.
While all the Sioux were on the outskirts of the encampment, I might yet
escape unobserved, but the returning braves were very near. Putting all
my strength in my wrists, I burst the half-cut bonds; and the rest was
easy. A slash of the knife and my feet were free and I had rolled down
the cliff and was running with breathless haste over fallen logs, under
leafy coverts, across noisy creeks, through the wooded valley to the
beaver dam. How long, or how far, I ran in this desperate, heedless
fashion, I do not know. The branches, that reached out like the bands of
pursuers, caught and ripped my clothing to shreds. I had been bootless,
when I started; but my feet were now bare and bleeding. A gleam of
water flashed through the green foliage. This must be the river, with
the beaver-dam, and to my eager eyes, the stream already appeared muddy
and sluggish as if obstructed. My heart was beating with a sensation of
painful, bursting blows. There was a roaring in my ears, and at every
step I took, the landscape swam black before me and the trees racing
into the back ground staggered on each side like drunken men. Then I
knew that I had reached the limit of my strength and with the domed
mud-tops of the beaver-dam in sight half a mile to the fore, I sank down
to rest. The river was marshy, weed-grown and brown; but I gulped down a
drink and felt breath returning and the labored pulse easing. Not daring
to pause long, I went forward at a slackened rate, knowing I must
husband my strength to swim or wade across the river. Was it the
apprehension of fear, or the buzzing in my ears, that suggested the
faint, far-away echo of a clamoring multitude? I stopped and listened.
There was no sound but the lapping of water, or rush of wind through the
leaves. I went on again at hastened pace, and distinctly down the valley
came echo of the Sioux war-whoop.
I was pursued. There was no mistaking that fact, and with a thrill,
which I have no hesitancy in confessing was the most intense fear I have
ever experienced in my life, I broke into a terrified, panic-stricken
run. The river grew dark, sluggish and treacherous-looking. By the
blood flowing from my feet, Indian scouts could track me for leagues. I
looked to the river with the vague hope of running along the water bed
to throw my pursuers off the trail; but the water was deep and I had not
strength to swim. The beaver-dam was huddled close to the clay bank of
the far side and on the side, where I ran, the current spread out in a
flaggy marsh. Hoping to elude the Sioux, I plunged in and floundered
blindly forward. But blood trails marked the pond behind and the soft
ooze snared my feet.
I was now opposite the beaver-dam and saw with horror there were
branches enough floating in mid-stream to entangle the strongest
swimmer. The shouts of my pursuers sounded nearer. They could not have
known how close they were upon me, else had they ambushed me in silence
after Indian custom, shouting only when they sighted their quarry. The
river was not tempting for a fagged, breathless swimmer, whose dive must
be short and sorry. I had nigh counted my earthly course run, when I
caught sight of a hollow, punky tree-trunk standing high above the bank.
I could hear the swiftest runners behind splashing through the marsh
bed. Now the thick willow-bush screened me, but in a few moments they
would be on my very heels. With the supernatural strength of a last
desperate effort, I bounded to the empty trunk and like some hounded,
treed creature, clambered up inside, digging my wounded feet into the
soft, wet wood-rot and burrowing naked fingers through the punk of the
rounded sides till I was twice the height of a man above the blackened
opening at the base. Then a piece of wood crumbled in my right hand.
Daylight broke through the trunk and I found that I had grasped the edge
of a rotted knot-hole.
Bracing my feet across beneath me like tie beams of raftered
scaffolding, I craned up till my eye was on a level with the knot-hole
and peered down through my lofty lookout. Either the shouting of the
Sioux warriors had ceased, which indicated they had found my tracks and
knew they were close upon me, or my shelter shut out the sound of
approaching foes. I broke more bark from the hole and gained full view
of the scene below.
A crested savage ran out from the tangled foliage of the river bank, saw
the turgid settlings of the rippling marsh, where I had been
floundering, and darted past my hiding-place with a shrill yell of
triumph. Instantaneously the woods were ringing, echoing and re-echoing
with the hoarse, wild war-cries of the Sioux. Band after band burst from
the leafy covert of forest and marsh willows, and dashed in full pursuit
after the leading Indian. Some of the braves still wore the buckskin
toggery of their visit to the Mandanes; but the swiftest runners had
cast off all clothing and tore forward unimpeded. The last coppery form
disappeared among the trees of the river bank and the shoutings were
growing fainter, when, suddenly, there was such an ominous calm, I knew
they were foiled.
Would they return to the last marks of my trail? That thought sent the
blood from my head with a rush that left me dizzy, weak and shivering. I
looked to the river. The floating branches turned lazily over and over
to the lapping of the sluggish current, and the green slime oozing from
the clustered beaver lodges of the far side might hide either a miry
bottom, or a treacherous hole.
A naked Indian came pattering back through the brush, looking into every
hollow log, under fallen trees, through clumps of shrub growth, where a
man might hide, and into the swampy river bed. It was only a matter of
time when he would reach my hiding-place. Should I wait to be smoked out
of my hole, like a badger, or a raccoon? Again I looked hopelessly to
the river. A choice of deaths seemed my only fate. Torture, burning, or
the cool wash of a black wave gurgling over one's head?
A broad-girthed log lay in the swamp and stretched out over mid-stream
in a way that would give a quick diver at least a good, clean, clear
leap. A score more savages had emerged from the woods and were eagerly
searching, from the limbs of trees above, where I might be perched, to
the black river-bed below. However much I may vacillate between two
courses, once my decision is taken, I have ever been swift to act; and I
slipped down the tree-trunk with the bound of a bullet through a
gun-barrel, took one last look from the opening, which revealed pursuers
not fifty yards away, plunged through the marsh, dashed to the fallen
log and made a rush to the end.
A score of brazen throats screeched out their baffled rage. There was a
twanging of bow-strings. The humming of arrow flight sung about my head.
I heard the crash of some savage blazing away with his old flintlock. A
deep-drawn breath, and I was cleaving the air. Then the murky, greenish
waters splashed in my face, opened wide and closed over me.
A tangle of green was at the soft, muddy bottom. Something living,
slippery, silky and furry, that was neither fish, nor water snake, got
between my feet; but countless arrows, I knew, were aimed and ready for
me, when I came to the surface. So I held down for what seemed an
interminable time, though it was only a few seconds, struck for the far
shore, and presently felt the green slime of the upper water matting in
my hair.
Every swimmer knows that rich, sweet, full intake of life-giving air
after a long dive. I drew in deep, fresh breaths and tried to blink the
slime from my eyes and get my bearings. There were the howlings of
baffled wolves from what was now the far side of the river bank; but
domed clay mounds, mossy, floating branches and a world of willows
shrubs were about my head. Then I knew what the furry thing among the
tangle at the river bottom was, and realized that I had come up among
the beaver lodges. The dam must have been an old one; for the clay
houses were all overgrown with moss and water-weeds. A perfect network
of willow growth interlaced the different lodges.
I heard the splash as of a diver from the opposite side. Was it a
beaver, or my Indian pursuers? Then I could distinctly make out the
strokes of some one swimming and splashing about. My foes were
determined to have me, dead, or alive. I ducked under, found shallow,
soft bottom, half paddled, half waded, a pace more shoreward, and came
up with my head in utter darkness.
Where was I? I drew breath. Yes, assuredly, I was above water; but the
air was fetid with heavy, animal breath and teeth snarled shut in my
very face. Somehow, I had come up through the broken bottom of an old
beaver lodge and was now in the lair of the living creatures. What was
inside, I cannot record; for to my eyes the blackness was positively
thick. I felt blindly out through the palpable darkness and caught tight
hold of a pole, that seemed to reach from side to side. This gave me
leverage and I hoisted myself upon it, bringing my crown a mighty sharp
crack as I mounted the perch; for the beaver lodge sloped down like an
egg shell.
I must have seemed some water monster to the poor beaver; for there was
a scurrying, scampering and gurgling off into the river. Then my own
breathing and the drip of my clothes were all that disturbed the lodge.
Time, say certain philosophers, is the measure of a man's ideas
marching along in uniform procession. But I hold they are wrong. Time is
nothing of the sort; else had time stopped as I hung panting over the
pole in the beaver lodge; for one idea and one only, beat and beat and
beat to the pulsing of the blood that throbbed through my brain--"I am
safe--I am safe--I am safe!"
How can I tell how long I hung there? To me it seemed a century. I do
not even know whether I lost consciousness. I am sure I repeatedly
awakened with a jerk back from some hazy, far-off, oblivious realm, shut
off even in memory from the things of this life. I am sure I tried to
burrow my hand through the clammy moss-wall of the beaver lodge to let
in fresh air; but my spirit would be suddenly rapt away to that other
region. I am sure I felt the waters washing over my head and sweeping me
away from this world to another life. Then I would lose grip of the pole
and come to myself clutching at it with wild terror; and again the
drowse of life's borderland would overpower me. And all the time I was
saying over and over, "I am safe! I am safe!"
How many of the things called hours slipped past, I do not know. As I
said before, it seemed to me a century. Whether it was mid-day, or
twilight, when I let myself down from the pole and crawled like a
bedraggled water-rat to the shore, I do not know. Whether it was
morning, or night, when I dragged myself under the fern-brake and fell
into a death-like sleep, I do not know. When I awakened, the forest was
a labyrinth of shafted moonlight and sombre shadows. All that had
happened in the past twenty-four hours came back to me with vivid
reality. I remembered Laplante's promise to leave a horse for me in the
valley beyond the beaver dam. With this hope in my heart I crawled
cautiously down through the silent shadows of the night.
At daybreak I found Louis had made good his promise, and I was speeding
on horseback towards the trail, where Little Fellow awaited me.