IN THE THREE-MILE FIELD
In a far corner of the Three-mile Field Landless bent over tobacco plant
after tobacco plant, patiently removing the little green shoots or
"suckers" from the parent stem.
His back and limbs ached from the unaccustomed stooping, the fierce
sunshine beat upon his head, the blood pounded behind his temples, his
tongue clave to the roof of his mouth,--and the noontide rest was still
two hours away. As, with a gasp of weariness, he straightened himself,
the endless plain of green rose and fell to his dazzled eyes in misty
billows. The most robust rustic required several months of seasoning
before he and the Virginia climate became friends, and this man was
still weak from privation and confinement in prison and in the noisome
hold of the ship.
He turned his weary eyes from the vivid gold green of the fields to the
shadows of the forest. It lay within a few yards of him, just on the
other side of a little stream and a rail fence that zigzagged in gray
lines hung with creepers. At the moment he defined happiness as a plunge
into the cool, perfumed darkness, a luxurious flinging of a tired body
upon the carpet of pine needles, a shutting out, forever, of the
sunshine.
Suddenly he felt that eyes were upon him, and his glance traveled from
the fringe of trees to meet that of an Indian seated upon a log in an
angle of the fence.
He was a man of gigantic stature, dressed in coarse canvas breeches, and
with a handkerchief of gaudy dye twisted about his head. His bold
features wore the usual Indian expression of saturnine imperturbability,
and he half sat, half reclined upon the log as motionless as a piece of
carven bronze, staring at Landless with large, inscrutable eyes.
Landless, staring in return, saw something else. The rank growth of
weeds in which the log was sunk moved ever so slightly. There was a
flash as of a swiftly drawn rapier, and something long and mottled hung
for an instant upon the shoulder of the Indian, and then dropped into
its lair again.
With a sudden lithe twist of his body, the savage flung himself upon it,
and holding it down with one hand, with the other beat the life out with
a heavy stick. The creature was killed by the first stroke, but he
continued to rain vindictive blows upon it until it was mashed to a
pulp. Then, with a serenely impassive mien, he resumed his seat upon the
log.
Landless sprang across the stream, and went up to him.
"You are bitten! Is there aught I can do?"
The Indian shook his head. With one hand he pulled the shoulder forward,
trying, as Landless saw, to meet the wound with his lips; but finding
that it could not be done, he desisted and sat silent, and to all
appearance, unconcerned.
Landless cried out impatiently, "It will kill you, man! Do you know no
remedy?"
The Indian grunted. "Snake root grow deep in the forest, a long way off.
Besides, an Iroquois does not die for a little thing like a pale face
or a dog of an Algonquin."
"Why did you try to reach the sting with your mouth?"
"To suck out the evil."
"Is that a cure?"
The Indian nodded. Landless knelt down and examined the shoulder. "Now,"
he said, "tell me if I set about it in the right way," and applied his
lips to the swollen, blue-black spot.
The Indian gave a grunt of surprise, and his white teeth flashed in a
smile; then he sat silent under the ministrations of the white man who
sucked at the wound, spitting the venom upon the ground, until the dark
skin was drawn and wrinkled like the hand of a washerwoman.
"Good!" then said the Indian, and pointed to the stream. Landless went
to it, rinsed his mouth, and brought back water in his cap with which he
laved the shoulder of his new acquaintance, ending by binding it up with
the handkerchief from the man's head.
A guttural sound from the Indian made him look up. At the same instant
the whip of the overseer, descending, cut him sharply across the
shoulders. He sprang to his feet, the veins in his forehead swollen, his
frame tense with impotent anger. The overseer, having gained his
attention, thrust the whip back into his belt.
"If you don't want to get what will hurt as bad as a snake bite," he
said grimly, "you had best tend to your tobacco and let vagrom Indians
alone. That row is to be suckered before dinner-time or your pork and
beans will go begging. As for you," turning to the Indian, "what are you
doing on this plantation? Where's your pass?"
The Indian took from his waistband a slip of paper which he handed to
the overseer, who looked at it and gave it back with a grudging--"It's
all right this time, but you'd better be careful. It's my opinion that
Major Carrington lets his servants run about a deal more than's good for
them. Anyhow, you've no business in this field. Clear out!"
The Indian arose and went his way. But as he passed Landless, suckering
a plant with angry energy, he touched him, as if by accident, with his
sinewy hand.
"Monakatocka never forgives an enemy," came in a sibilant whisper too
low to be heard by the watchful overseer. "Monakatocka never forgets a
friend. Some day he will repay."
The red-brown body slipped away through the tall weeds and clumps of
alder, like the larger edition of the thing that had hung upon its
shoulder. The overseer strode off down the field, sending keen glances
to right and left. He was a conscientious man, and earned every pound of
his wages.
Landless, left alone, worked steadily on, for he had no mind to lose his
midday meal, uninviting as he knew it would prove to be. Moreover, he
was one who did with his might what his hand found to do. His body was
weary, and his heart sick within him, but the green shoots fell thick
and fast.
"Yon was a kindly thing you did. Pity 'twas in no better cause than the
saving of a worthless natural."
The speaker, who was at work on the next row of plants, had caught up
with Landless from behind, and now moved his nimble fingers more slowly,
so as to keep pace with the less expert new hand.
Landless, raising his head, stared at a figure of positively terrifying
aspect. Upon a skeleton body of extraordinary height was set a head bare
of any hair. Scalp, forehead and cheeks were of one dull, ivory hue like
an eastern carving. Upon the smooth, dead surface of the right cheek
sprawled a great red R, branded into the flesh, and through each large
protruding ear went a ragged hole. For the rest, the lips were of iron,
and the small, deep-set eyes were so bright and burning that they gave
the impression that they were red like the great letter. It might have
been the face of a man of sixty years, though it would have been hard to
tell wherein lay the semblance of age, so smooth was the skin and so
brilliant the eyes.
"The Indian needed help. Why should I not have given it him?" said
Landless.
"Because it is written, 'Cursed are the heathen who inhabit the land.'"
Landless smiled. "So you would not help an Indian in extremity. What if
it had been a negro?"
"Cursed are the negroes! 'Ye Ethiopians also, ye shall be slain by the
sword.'"
"A Quaker?"
"Cursed are the Quakers! 'Silly doves that have no heart.'"
Landless laughed. "You have cursed pretty well all the oppressed of the
land. I suppose you reserve your blessings for the powers that be."
"The powers that be! May the plagues of Egypt light upon them, and the
seven vials rain down their contents upon them! Cursed be they all, from
the young man, Charles Stuart, to that prelatical, tyrannical, noxious
Malignant, William Berkeley! May their names become a hissing and an
abomination! Roaring lions are their princes, ravening wolves are their
judges, their priests have polluted the sanctuary! May their flesh
consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes consume
away in their holes, and their tongues consume away in their mouths, and
may there be mourning among them, even as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in
the valley of Megiddon!"
"You are a Muggletonian?"
"Yea, verily am I! a follower of the saintly Ludovick Muggleton, and of
the saintlier John Reeve, of whom Ludovick is but the mouthpiece, even
as Aaron was of Moses. They are the two witnesses of the Apocalypse.
They are the two olive trees and the two candlesticks. To them and to
their followers it is given to curse and to spare not, to prophesy
against the peoples and kindred and nations and tongues whereon is set
the seal of the beast. Wherefore I, Win-Grace Porringer, testify against
the people of this land; against Prelatists and Papists, Presbyterians
and Independents, Baptists, Quakers and heathen; against princes,
governors, and men in high places; against them that call themselves
planters and trample the vineyard of the Lord; against their sons and
their daughters who are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth neck and
wanton eyes, walking and mincing and making a tinkling with their feet.
Cursed be they all! Surely they shall be as Sodom and Gomorrah, even the
breeding of salt-pits and a perpetual desolation!"
"Your curses seem not to have availed, friend," said Landless. "Curses
are apt to come home to roost. I should judge that yours have returned
to you in the shape of branding-irons."
The man raised a skeleton hand and stroked the red letter.
"This," he said coolly, "was given me when I ran away the second time.
The first time I was merely whipped. The third time I was shaven and
this shackle put upon my leg." He raised his foot and pointed to an iron
ring encircling the ankle. "The fourth time I was nailed by the ears to
the pillory, whence come these pretty scars."
Landless burst into grim laughter. "And after your fifth attempt, what
then?"
The man gave him a sidelong look. "I have not made my fifth attempt," he
said quietly.
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Then said Master Win-Grace
Porringer:--
"I was sent to the plantations, because, in defiance of the Act of
Uniformity (cursed be it, and the authors thereof), I attended a meeting
of the persecuted and broken remnant of the Lord's people. What was your
offense, friend, for I reckon that you come not here of your free will,
being neither a rustic nor a fool?"
"I came from Newgate," said Landless, after a pause. "I am a convict."
The man's hand stopped in the act of pulling off a shoot. He gave a slow
upward look at the figure beside him, let his eyes rest upon the face,
and looked slowly down again with a shake of the head.
"Humph!" he said. "The society in Newgate must be improved since my
time."
They worked without speaking until they had nearly reached the end of
the long double row, when said the Muggletonian:--
"You are too young, I take it, to have seen service in the wars?"
"I fought at Worcester."
"Upon which side?"
"The Commonwealth's."
"I thought as much. Humph! You were all, Parliament and Presbytery,
Puritan and Independent, Hampden and Vane and Oliver, in the gall of
bitterness and the bond of iniquity, very far from the pure light in
which walk the followers of the blessed Ludovick. At the last the two
witnesses will speak against you also. But in the mean time it were
easier for the children of light to walk under the rule of the Puritan
than under that of the lascivious house of Jeroboam which now afflicts
England for her sins. But the Lord hath a controversy with them! An east
wind shall come up, the wind of the Lord shall come up from the
wilderness! They shall be moved from their places! They shall lick the
dust like serpents, they shall move out of their holes like worms of the
earth, and be utterly destroyed! Think you not as I do, friend?" he
asked, turning suddenly upon Landless.
"I think," said Landless, "that you are talking that which, if
overheard, might give you a deeper scar than any you bear."
"But who is to hear? the tobacco, the Lord in heaven, and you. The
senseless plant will keep counsel, the Lord is not like to betray his
servant, and as for you, friend,--" he looked long and searchingly at
Landless. "Despite the place you come from, I do not think you one to
bring a man into trouble for being bold enough to say what you dare only
think."
Landless returned the look. "No," he said quietly. "You need have no
fear of me."
"I fear no one," said the other proudly.
Presently he craned his long body across the plant between them until
his lips almost touched the ear of the younger man.
"Shall you try to escape?" he whispered.
A smile curled Landless's lip. "Very probably I shall," he said dryly.
He looked down the long lines of broad green leaves at the toiling
figures, black and white, dull peasants at best, scoundrels at worst;
and beyond to the huddled cabins of the quarter, and to the great house,
rising fair and white from orchard and garden; seeing, as in a dream, a
man, young in years but old in sorrow, disgraced, outcast, friendless,
alone, creeping down a vista of weary years, day after day of
soul-deadening toil, of association with the mean and the vile, of
shameful submission to whip and finger. Escape! The word had beaten
through brain and heart so long and so persistently, that at times he
feared lest he should cry it aloud.
Win-Grace Porringer shook his head.
"It's not an easy thing to escape from a Virginia plantation. With dogs
and with horses they hunt you down, yea, with torches and boats. They
band themselves together against the fleeing sparrow. They call in the
heathen to their aid. And it is a fearful land, for great rivers bar
your way, and forests push you back, and deep quagmires clutch you and
hold you until the men of blood come up. And when you are taken they
cruelly maltreat you, and your term of service is doubled."
"And yet men have gotten away," said Landless.
"Yes, but not many. And those that get away are seldom heard of more.
The forest swallows them up, and after a while their skulls roll about
the hills, playthings for wolves, or the deep waters flow over their
bones, or they lie in a little heap of ashes at the foot of some Indian
torture stake."
"Why did you try to escape?" asked Landless.
The man gave him another sidelong look.
"I tried because I was a fool. I am no longer a fool. I know a better
way."
"A better way!"
"Hush!" The man looked over his shoulder and then whispered, "Will you
go with me to-night?"
"Go with you! Where?"
"To a man I know--a man who gives good advice."
"Many can do that, friend."
"Ay, but not show the way to profit by it as doth this man."
"Who is he?"
"A servant even as we are servants,--a learned and godly man, albeit not
a follower of the blessed Ludovick. Listen! About the rising of the moon
to-night, slip from your cabin and come to the blasted pine on the shore
of the inlet. There will be a boat there and I will be in it. We will go
to the cabin of the man of whom I speak. He is a cripple, and knowing
that he cannot run away, the godless and roistering Malignant who calls
himself our master hath given him a hut among the marshes, where he
mendeth nets. Come! I may not say more than that it will be worth your
while."
"If we are caught--"
"Our skins pay for us. But the Lord will shut the eyes of the overseers
that they see not, and their ears that they hear not, and we will be
safely back before the dawn. You will come?"
"Yes," said Landless. "I will come."