ATTACK
About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to
attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and
opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that
came faintly in at the open door.
"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"
Landless sprang to his feet. "My God! You are sure?"
"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."
The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up.
Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen,
he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath and
exclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough.
Rushing into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, he
groped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light and
fired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receive
it; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.
"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We'll die fighting." The
woman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars were
drawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and an
axe in her hands.
A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the war
whoop--dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating in
its savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there came
the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against
the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one of
the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by a
yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries,
quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms;
within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child,
and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail of the
rude interior, now plunged all into shadow.
"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloading
his musket. "There's some shall go to hell before we do. Joan, my
girl--"
An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell to
the ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answered
from without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heard
speaking.
"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.
"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil,
but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"
"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low and
thatched with dried grass and moss.
"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in five
minutes, come what may."
"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs have
us fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; his
bones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalp
will hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see the
village and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, he
and his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneath
the mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast.
He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party.
The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf in
the forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is not
seen: the stream closes above the pebble--it is gone!" His voice rose
into a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand,
to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright knife.
"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.
The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together
with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous
noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin.
Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and
swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing
beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and
the invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this space
something dreadful now happened.
On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on
the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had
sobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the
savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful
clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking
smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a
weak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed the
path of the Ricahecrian chief--he glanced downwards, saw the tiny
tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding
it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the
child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the
mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling of
the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the
mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before.
She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon
the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his
knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell
without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet
remained alive.
The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold
smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the
Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless--one
Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded
snake--confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and
the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the
flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or
more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls,
which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority retreating to
the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their devil's work the
bolder spirits within.
These now bore down _en masse_ upon the devoted three. One threw his
tomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuck
into the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but he
beat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who,
knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.
"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I will
care for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One went
down before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like a
reed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by his
tomahawk--there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne down
and knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one last
superhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stag
shakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless,
dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;--
"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the Blue
Mountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs at
Death--dies laughing."
He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying to
and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most
dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died
into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for
which the storm has been too much.
Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon the
yellow menace before him.
"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "They
promise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall lead
to it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."
Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto,
springing back, avoided the blow.
"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.
A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them. A
volume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly saw
Indians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by the
intolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and the
remainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was the
square opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleeping
when this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in his
arms, he made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporary
security. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were already
taking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whispered
encouraging words.
"I know," she answered. "We are in God's hands. I would rather die than
to come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and the
way seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"
"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. They
would certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the fire
reaches this straw above our heads we will try it."
"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.
Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like a
torch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of the
savages, who, unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so covered
with the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it,
congregated in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, and
waited for their still living victims to emerge from it.
"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.
They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it down
the lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at the
foot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, and
painted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bent
forward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the lust for blood. In his
footsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar,
then a fourth, a fifth--a long line, creeping as silently as shadows--a
nightmare procession--up through the lurid light.
Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.
"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."
The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into a
disc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. A
moment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yells
from the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.
"Now is our time," said Landless.
Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, and
down the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.
"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they have
not destroyed it."
They made for the water, found the raft hidden in a clump of reeds and
uninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearance
of the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, down
a stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. The
glare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming mass itself shrunk until
it looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of the
struggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too,
died away.
"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched at
the feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.
"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be so
handled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."
There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.
"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocent
little thing!"
"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil and
suffering. It is better as it is."
"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob in
her voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poor
Indian--"
"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."
"It is I that brought him death!" cried Patricia, tossing up her arms.
"I that shall bring you death!"
Her voice rose into a cry that echoed drearily from the hills about
them, and she beat her hands against the raft with a sudden passion.
"You would bring me no unwelcome gift," said Landless steadily,
"provided only that the time when I could serve you with my life were
past."
She did not answer, and they floated on in silence down the little
river, between banks lined with dwarf willows and sighing reeds. With
the dawn they came to rapids through which they could not pilot their
frail craft. Leaving the water, they turned their faces towards the
rising sun, and pursued their journey through the forest that seemed to
stretch to the end of the world.