IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE
The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the
larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt
of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless
structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect.
Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of
outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he
walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom, the three started up
from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been
squatting, with their heads ominously close together.
Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said.
The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow
of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent
body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying
his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him
back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The
face of the wretch gradually resumed its usual expression of low
brutality, though an ugly sweat broke out upon it, and the mouth opened
and shut as though he had been running. He turned upon Landless with a
half threatening, half cringing air.
"So you've found out what I was about last night, eh, pardner? But
you'll keep a still tongue. You're not one to peach on your comrade as
was in hell or Newgate with you, and as crossed the ocean with you to
this d--d Virginia, and as has always liked you, and has the same spite
as you have against the man what bought us. You say naught, comrade, and
you'll not stand to lose by it."
"I go from here to give you up to Colonel Verney," said Landless.
The wretch gave a snarl of rage and fear. Luiz Sebastian laid a soothing
hand upon his shoulder.
"If I thought that," snarled the convict, "you'd never live to reach
that door."
"I shall live to see you hanged," said the other coolly.
Here the mulatto slipped something into Roach's hand. "So you'll give me
up?" said the latter in a peculiar voice.
"I have said so."
"Then, by the Lord! I'll be even with you!" Roach cried with savage
triumph. "Do you see this, and this, and this?" fluttering a mass of
folded papers before the other's eyes. "Ah! I was wise, I was, when I
couldn't hide everything about me, to take the papers, and leave the
weapons. I've got you now. Here's the lists that the old fool who is
dead and gone to hell had hidden behind the gold! Here's enough to hang
you and your d--d Cromwellians higher than Haman. There will be more
than one giving up, I'm thinking! I've got you under my thumb, and I'll
squeeze you!"
"You cannot read; you do not know what those papers contain," said
Landless steadily.
"But I can," put in Trail smoothly. "I was but just running them over to
our friend whose education has been so sadly neglected, when you came
in."
Landless drew a pistol from his bosom, cocked it, and leveled it at the
murderer. "You see," he said with an ominously quiet eye and voice, "you
were not altogether wise to leave the weapons. Now, give me those
lists."
"Damnation!" cried the convict, and Luiz Sebastian glided towards the
door.
Landless, quick of eye and active of body, saw the movement, and sprang
backwards to the opening before the other could reach it. He covered the
three with his pistol.
"I will shoot the first of you that stirs," he said sternly. "You,
Roach, lay those papers upon that bit of board, and push them towards me
with your foot."
"I'll go to hell first," was the sullen reply.
"As you please. I will give you until I count twenty. If those papers
are not in my hands, then I will shoot you like the dog you are."
The murderer uttered a dreadful curse. Landless began to count. Roach
made an irresolute motion of the hand that held the lists. Landless
counted on, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--" With another oath
and a grin of rage Roach dropped the papers upon the board at his feet.
"Now push it towards me," said Landless.
With a brow like midnight the other did as he was bid. Still covering
his men, Landless stooped quickly, and took up the precious papers,
assured himself that they were all there, and placed them in his bosom.
"Now," he said, leaning his back against the doorpost, and regarding
the three baffled rogues with a grim eye, "I have a few words to say to
you. I speak first to you, Trail, and to you, Luiz Sebastian. These
papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not the
information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it was
the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this
conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took
you, might sell to Colonel Verney?"
"Senor Landless sees the thing as it is," said Luiz Sebastian.
"Well, you no longer possess these proofs, and are therefore just where
you were yesterday."
"Listen, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian gloomily. "This plot does
not please us. It is too much in the hands of those who call themselves
soldiers and martyrs, whom our master calls fanatic Oliverians, and whom
I, Luiz Sebastian, call accursed heretics. The servants have no say in
the matter; they are to follow like sheep where these others lead. The
slaves are not even to know of it until the last moment. A handful of us
who have white blood in our veins are let into the secret, that we may
incite the blacks when the time is come; but are we consulted? Are our
opinions asked, our wishes deferred to? I, Luiz Sebastian, who have been
through three insurrections in the Indies, and who know how such things
should be managed; has my advice been craved as to this or that? You
make us promises. Mother of God! how do we know that those promises will
be kept? By St. Jago! the insurrection may arrive, and the planters be
put down, and next year may find us slaves still, with but a change of
masters!"
"It is too late now for such questions," said Landless steadily. "You
must accept the conspiracy as it is. In liberating themselves, these men
will of necessity free you even as they will free me, who am not, as you
know, of their class. I shall take my chance, as I think you will take
yours."
The mulatto played with a tobacco peg, striking it against his great,
white teeth. At length he said slowly and with a sinister upward glance
at the figure by the door, "Certainly, Senor Landless, it seems our
best, our only chance, for freedom."
And with this Landless had perforce to be content. He turned to the
murderer, saying sternly, "Now for my word with you. I hold your life in
my hands, for I heard you last night in the marsh, and Porringer and I
saw you stealing from the creek this morning, and I can swear that you
knew of the gold hidden in the hut. You have it on you at this moment. I
could hold you here with this pistol until the overseer should come and
search you. But I let you go, choosing rather your safety than the
endangerment of that which was dearer than life to the man you murdered.
The unsupported assertion of a murderer as to the contents of papers
which he had not got to show, might not go for much, but I prefer that
you should not make it. I have warned you;--you had best make your
escape at once."
"If you hold your tongue, there's no reason why I should run."
"Oh, yes, there is! There is a reason in the hut on the marsh."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that clasped in the hand of the man you murdered is the missing
half of that torn lock upon your forehead."
With a yell Roach sprang to the door only to be confronted by the muzzle
of Landless' pistol.
"Wait a moment," he said composedly. "Oh, you need not be afraid! I
intend to let you go. But you don't leave this tobacco house until after
I have left it myself."
"Curse you!" cried the other, foaming at the lips.
"You are ungrateful. I not only promise not to witness against you, but
I aid you to escape."
"For reasons of your own," suggested Trail.
"Precisely; for reasons of my own. If you are taken, I will hold my
tongue just so long as you hold yours. If you escape now, I will pray
that my day of reckoning will yet come. And it will be a heavy
reckoning."
"Ay, that it will!" cried the murderer with brutal fury. "You've got the
upper hand now; but wait! Every dog has his day, and I'll have mine! and
when it comes, I'll do for you! I'll smash your beauty! I'll draw more
blood from you than ever the whip of the overseer did! I'll use you
worse than I used that old man last night, who writhed and struggled,
and tried to pray! I'll--"
With white lips and blazing eyes Landless sprang forward, and clapped
the mouth of the pistol to the ruffian's temple. Roach recoiled, then
sunk upon his knees with an abject whine for mercy.
Landless let his hand drop, and moved slowly back to the door. "You had
need to cry for mercy," he said in a low, distinct voice, "for you were
never so near to death before. I let you go now, but one day I shall
kill you. Until which day--take care of yourself!" Still with his face
upon them he passed out of the door, then turned and walked away with a
steady step, but with a heart bleeding for the loss of his friend, and
heavy with forebodings for the future.
In the tobacco house the murderer, the forger, and the mulatto sat
stricken into silence until the last crisp footfall had died away. Then
amidst a torrent of curses Roach made for the door. Trail plucked him
back. "Where are you going?" he cried.
"I don't know! To the devil!"
"The bloodhounds will be upon your trail before noon."
The wretch cried out and struck his hand against the wall with a force
that laid the knuckles bare and bleeding.
"There is a way," said Luiz Sebastian slowly, "a way that only I know.
You must take to the inlet here, and swim up it until you come to the
mouth of the brook yonder in the forest. You must wade up that brook
until you come to a second, and up that until you come to a third. When
you have gone a mile up that one, leave it, and strike through the
woods, going towards the north. Another mile will bring you to a village
of the Chickahominies upon the Pamunkey.[1] They are at odds with
Governor and Council, and they will hide you. Moreover, I once did their
sachem a service, and they are my friends."
"I'm off," said Roach, breaking from the detaining grasp.
"Wait," said Luiz Sebastian. "There is time enough. Woodson will not
come for a long while. When he does, he shall find Senor Trail and
myself busily at work there outside, and we will say that you left us,
and went down the inlet a long time before. But now we want to talk to
you."
"Be quick then," growled the other, "I've no mind to swing for this
job."
Luiz Sebastian brought his handsomely malevolent face close to the
other's hideous countenance.
"Would you not like to ruin that devil who but now robbed you of your
hard-earned property?"
"Would I not?" cried the murderer with a tremendous oath. "I'd give
everything but life and gold to do it, as that cunning devil well knew.
I'd give my soul!"
"Would you like to be shown how to get more gold than old Godwyn's
store, twenty times told? To get your freedom? To have some black, sweet
hours in which to work your will on them at the house yonder? To plunge
your arms to the elbow in the master's money chest; to become drunken
with his wine; to strike him down, and that smiling imp his cousin, and
that other devil, Woodson; to hear the women cry for mercy--and cry in
vain? You would like all this?"
"Show me the way!" cried the brute with a ferocious light in his
bloodshot eyes. "Show me the way to do it safely, and I'll--" He broke
off and threatened the air with malignant fists.
"Go to the village on the Pamunkey," said Luiz Sebastian with his most
feline expression. "I will come to you there the first night I can slip
away, I and our friend, the Senor Trail. There we will have our little
conference. Mother of God! Senor Landless may find that others can plot
as well as he and his accursed heretics."
[Footnote 1: The modern York.]