THE LAST FIGHT
Out from the forest rushed the remnant of that band which had smoked the
peace pipe with the Governor one sunny afternoon on the banks of the
Pamunkey. Tall and large of limb, painted with all fantastic and ghastly
devices, and decorated with hideous mementoes of nameless deeds; with
the lust of blood written large in every fierce lineament and dark and
rolling eye; with raised hands grasping knife and tomahawk, and lips
uttering cries that seemed not of earth--a more appalling vision could
not have issued from out the beautiful, treacherous forest, a more
crashing discord have come into the music of the golden evening.
For the two in their rocky fortress beneath the crags the apparition had
no terrors. All the pain, the anguish, the hopelessness of the world was
passing from them--the cry that swelled through the forest was its
knell. They smiled to hear it, and with raised faces looked beyond the
many-tinted evening skies into clear spaces where Love was all. The
intoxication of the moment when hidden and despairing love became love
triumphant and acknowledged abode with them. In the very grasp of death
ineffable bliss possessed them. Their countenances changed; the lines of
care and pain, the marks of tears, were all gone and the beauty of the
happy soul shone out. For that brief space of time transcendent youth
and loveliness was theirs. About them, as about the sun now sinking
behind the low hills, there breathed a glory, a dying splendor as bright
as it was fleeting. They felt, too, a lightness and gaiety of
spirit--they had drunk of the nectar of the gods, and no leaden weight
of care, no heavy sorrow, could ever touch them, ever drag them down
again to the sad earth.
"You are beautiful," said Landless, gazing at her, even in the act of
raising his gun to his shoulder; "as beautiful as you were the day I
first saw you. I hear the drone of the bees in the vines at Verney
Manor. I smell the roses. I look up and see the Rose of the World. My
eyes were dazzled then, are dazzled now, my Rose of the World."
"That day I wore brocade and lace, and there were pearls around my
throat," she said with a laugh of pure delight. "There was rouge upon my
cheeks, too, sir, and my eyes were darkened. To-day I go a beggar maid,
in rags, burnt by the sun--"
"The nut-brown maid," he said.
"Ay," she answered, "the nut-brown maid--'For in my mind of all
mankind'--you may e'en finish it yourself, sir."
The Ricahecrians had paused at the foot of the ascent to hold a council.
It was soon over. With another burst of cries they rushed up the steep
and upon the rocks, behind which were hidden their victims. Landless,
kneeling to one side of the gap between the boulders by which he and
Patricia had entered, fired, and the foremost of the savages threw up
his arms, uttered a dreadful cry, and fell across the path of his
fellows. For one moment the rush was checked, the next on they came,
yelling furiously and brandishing their weapons. Landless fired and
missed, fired again and pierced the thigh of a gigantic warrior,
bringing him crashing to the ground. The line wavered, paused, then
turning, swept to one side and so passed out of sight.
"They have found this pass too formidable," said Landless. "They will
try now to force an entrance from the side. Do you watch the front, my
queen, while I face them, coming over the rocks."
"I looked only at the mulatto," she said. "The others are shadows to
me."
"His time is come," said Landless. "Do not fear him, sweetheart."
"I fear not," she answered. "I have the perfect love."
Along the top of a tall boulder to their right appeared a dark red
line--the arm of a savage, with clutching fingers. Above it, very slowly
and cautiously, there rose first an eagle's feather, then a coarse black
scalp lock, then a high forehead and fierce eyes. The echo of Landless's
shot reverberated through the cliffs, and when the smoke cleared only
the bare gray boulder faced him. But from behind it came a derisive
yell.
"Thou wilt think me a poor marksman, my dear," he said, smiling, as he
reloaded his musket. "I have missed again."
"It is because you are wounded," she said. "I would I had thy wounds."
"I had a wounded heart, but you have healed it," he said, and looked at
her with shining eyes.
The sun sank and the long twilight of the hills set in. The evening star
was brightening through the pale amethyst of the sky when Landless said
quietly: "The last charge," and emptied it into an arm which for one
incautious moment had waved above the rocks.
"It is the end, then," said Patricia.
"Yes, it is the end. We have beaten them back for the moment, but
presently they will find that all we could do we have done, and then--"
She left her post beside the gap in the front, and came and knelt beside
him, and he took her in his arms.
"It is not Death before us, but Life," she said in a low voice.
"It is God and Love, naught else," he answered. "But the river between
will be bitter for you to cross, sweetheart."
"We cross it together," she said, "and so--" She raised her head that he
might see her radiant smile, and their lips met.
"Hark!" she said directly with her hand on his. "What is that sound?"
He shook his head. "The wind has risen, and the forest rustles and
sighs. There is nothing more."
"It is far off," she answered, "but it is like the dip of oars. Ah!"
Over against them, framed in the narrow opening between the rocks, his
lithe, half-nude figure dark against the crimson west, and with a smile
upon his evil lips and in his evil eyes, stood Luiz Sebastian. In the
dead silence that succeeded he looked with a smiling; countenance from
the musket, now useless and thrown aside, to his enemy, wounded and
unarmed save for a knife, and to the woman in that enemy's arms; then,
without turning, he said a few words in an Indian tongue. From the dusky
mass behind him came one short, wild cry of savage triumph, followed by
another dead silence.
Still holding Patricia in one arm, Landless rose from his knee, and
stood confronting him.
"We are met again, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian smoothly.
Receiving no answer, he spoke again with a tigerish expansion of his
thick lips. "You have had an accident, I see. Mother of God! that foot
must pain you! But you will forget it presently in the pleasure of the
pine splinters."
"I will forget it in the pleasure of this," said Landless, releasing
Patricia, and springing upon the mulatto with a suddenness and violence
that sent them both staggering through the opening between the rocks,
out upon the narrow plateau and into the ring of Ricahecrians. Luiz
Sebastian was strong, with the easy masked strength of the panther, but
Landless had the strength of despair. The mulatto, thrown heavily to the
ground, and pinned there by his adversary's knee, saw the gleam of the
lifted knife, and would have seen nothing more in this life, but that a
woman's cry rang out and saved him. Landless heard, turned, saw Patricia
dragged from the shelter of the rocks, leaped to his feet, leaving his
work undone, and rushed upon the knot of savages with whom she was
struggling. A moment saw him beside her with the Indian who had held her
dead at his feet. Behind them was the great boulder which had formed the
front wall of their chamber of defense. He put his arm around her, and
drew her back with him until they stood against this rock, then faced
the advancing savages with uplifted knife.
So determined was his attitude, so terribly had they proved his power,
so certain it was that before he should be taken one at least of their
number would taste that knife, that the Ricahecrians paused, swaying to
and fro, yelling, working themselves into a fury that should send them
on like maddened brutes, blind and deaf to all things but their lust for
blood.
"I hear a sound of footsteps over the leaves," said Patricia.
"The wind rustles in them, or the deer pass," answered Landless. "Oh, my
life! are you content?"
She answered with a low, clear laugh. "I hold happiness fast," she said.
"It cannot escape us now."
"They are coming," he said. "The last kiss, heart of my heart."
Their lips met, and their eyes with a smile in them met, and then he put
her gently behind him, and turned to again face Luiz Sebastian.
With his eyes fixed upon the yellow face, he had raised his hand to
strike at the yellow breast, spotted and barred with the black of the
war paint, when an Indian, gliding between, struck up his arm, and sent
the knife tinkling down upon the rocks. With a yell of triumph the
savage snatched up the weapon, and brandished it, showing it to his
fellows, who, seeing their work accomplished, and the two whom they had
tracked so far actually in their hands, made the forest ring with their
exultant shouts. A few closed in around the devoted pair, directing at
them fiendish cries and no less fiendish laughter, and menacing them
with knife and tomahawk, but the majority streamed down the steep and
into the forest at its base.
"They go to gather wood," said the still smiling Luiz Sebastian. "By and
by we are to have a bonfire. Senor Landless has often carried wood, I
think, in those old times when he was a slave, and when the pretty
mistress behind him there treated him as such--unless she gave him
favors in secret. But, Mother of God! now that she has made him master,
we must carry the wood for him!"
Landless, standing with folded arms, looked at him with quiet scorn. "It
is the nature of the viper to use his venom," he said calmly. "Such a
thing cannot anger me."
"At the same time it is as well to crush the viper," said a voice at his
elbow.
The speaker, who was Sir Charles Carew, had come from behind the
boulders which ran in a straggling line down the hillside toward the
river. He had his drawn sword in his hand, and as he spoke, he ran the
mulatto through the body. The wretch, his oath of rage and astonishment
still upon his lips, fell to the ground without a groan, writhed there a
moment or two, and then lay still forever.
From the forest below rose a loud confusion of shouts and cries,
followed by a volley of musketry. At the sound the half dozen savages
upon the plateau turned and plunged down the hillside, to be met before
they reached the bottom by the upward rush of a portion of the rescuing
party. For a short while the twilight glades, low hills and frowning
crags rang to the sound of a miniature battle, to the quick crack of
muskets, the clear shouts of the whites, and the whoops of the savages.
But by degrees these latter became fainter, further between, died
away--a short ten minutes, and there were no warriors left to return to
the village in the Blue Mountains. Fierce shedders of blood, they were
paid in their own coin.
On the hilltop Sir Charles shot his rapier into its scabbard, and
strode over to Patricia, standing white and still against the rock. "I
was in time," he said. "Thank God!"
She made no motion to meet his extended hands, but stood looking past
him at Landless. Her face was like marble, her eyes one dumb question.
Landless met their gaze, and in his own she read despair, renunciation,
strong resolve--and a long farewell.
"You are come in time, Sir Charles Carew," he said. "A little more, and
we should have been beyond your reach. You will find the lady safe and
well, though shaken, as you see, by this last alarm. She will speak for
me, I trust, will tell you that I have used her with all respect, that I
have done for her all that I could do.... Madam, all danger is past.
Will you not collect yourself and speak to your kinsman and savior?"
He spoke with a certain calm stateliness of voice and manner, as of one
who has passed beyond all emotion, whether of hope or fear, and in his
eyes which he kept fixed upon her there was a command.
"Speak to me, my cousin; tell me that I am welcome," said Sir Charles,
flinging himself upon his knee before her.
With a strong shudder she looked away from the still, white, and sternly
composed face opposite to the darkening river and the evening star
shining calmly down upon a waste world.
At length she spoke. "I was all but beyond this world, cousin, so pardon
me if I seem to come back to it somewhat tardily. You have my thanks, of
course--my dear thanks--for saving my life--my life which is so precious
to me."
She gave him her hand with a strange smile, and he pressed his lips
upon it. "Your father is below, dearest cousin. Shall we descend to meet
him? As to this--gentleman," turning with a smile that was like a frown
to Landless, "I regret that circumstances combine to prevent our
rewarding him as the guardian (a trusty one, I am sure) of so precious a
jewel should be rewarded. But Colonel Verney will do--I will do--all
that is possible. In the mean time I observe with regret that he is
wounded. If he will allow me, I will send him my valet, who is below,
and is the best barber surgeon in the three kingdoms. Come, dearest
madam."
He bowed low and ceremoniously to Landless, who returned the salute with
grave courtesy, and gave his hand to Patricia. For one moment she looked
at Landless with wide, dark eyes, then, her spirit obedient to his
spirit, she turned and went from him without one word or backward look.
The color had quite faded from the west, and the stars were thickening
when Landless became conscious that the overseer was standing beside
him. "You are the hardest one to hold that ever I saw," said that worthy
grimly, and yet with a certain appreciation of the qualities that made
the man at his feet hard to hold showing in his tone, "but I fancy we've
got you at last. You've gone and put yourself in bilboes."
Landless smiled. "This time you may keep me. I shall not interfere. But
tell me how you come here. You were sent back to the Plantations."
"Ay," said the other, "and there was the devil to pay, I can tell you,
when I had to report you missing to Sir William. But Major Carrington
stood my friend, and I got off with a tongue-drubbing. Well, after about
three weeks or so, during which time the dogs and the searchers brought
back most all of the runaway niggers, and Mistress Lettice had hysterics
every day, back comes the Colonel and Sir Charles with ten of the twenty
men who had rowed them up the Pamunkey. The rest had fallen in a brush
with the Monacans. They hadn't come up with the Ricahecrians, hadn't
seen hair nor hide of them, had but one report from the Indian villages
along the river, and that was that no Ricahecrians had passed that way.
So after a while they were forced to believe that they were upon a false
scent, and back they comes post haste to the Plantations to get more
men, and go up the Rappahannock. Well, they went up the Rappahannock,
and found nothing to their purpose, so back they came again to try the
James and the country above the Falls. This time they found the
Settlements, which had been before like an overturned hive, pretty
quiet, the ringleaders of your precious plot having all been strung up,
and the rest made as mild as sheep with branding and whipping and
doubling of times. So, the tobacco being in and the plantation quiet,
things were left to Haines, and I came along with the Colonel. Major
Carrington, too, who they say is in the Governor's black books, though
Lord knows he was active enough in stamping out this insurrection, asked
to be allowed to join in the search for his old friend's daughter, and
so he's down in the woods yonder. And Mr. Cary is there, and Mr. Peyton
(Mistress Betty Carrington made _him_ come) and Mr. Jaclyn Carter. Fegs!
half the young gentry in the colony pressed their services on the
Colonel. It got to be the fashion to volunteer to run their heads into
the wolf's mouth for Mistress Patricia. But Sir Charles choked most of
them off. 'Gentlemen,' he says, says he, 'despite the saying that there
cannot be too much of a good thing, I beg to remind you that the
disastrous fortunes of those who first struggled with the forest and the
Indians in this western paradise are attributed to the fact that they
were two thirds gentlemen. Wherefore let us shun the rock upon which
they split'--"
"How many of my fellow conspirators were put to death?" interrupted
Landless.
"All the principal ones--them that Trail denounced as leaders. The rest
we pardoned after giving them a lesson they won't soon forget. We let
bygones be bygones with the redemptioners and slaves--all but those
devils who got away that night at Verney Manor, and with Trail at their
head, made for Captain Laramore's ship which was going to turn pirate.
Well, they got to the boats, and one lot got off safe to the ship which
hoisted the black flag, and sailed away to the Indies, and is sailing
there, murdering and ruining, to this day, I reckon. But the other boat
was over full, and the steersman was drunken, and she capsized before
she got to the middle of the channel. Some were drowned, and those that
got ashore we hung next morning. But Trail was in the first boat."
"When do you--do we--start down the river?"
"At midnight. And it's the Colonel's orders that until then you stay
here among the rocks and not show yourself to the men below. He'll see
you before we start. In the mean time I'll keep you company." And the
overseer took out his pipe and tobacco pouch, filled the former, lighted
it, and leaning back against the rock fell to smoking in contented
silence.
Landless too sat in silence, with his head thrown back against the rock
and his face uplifted to the growing splendor of the skies. The night
wind, blowing mournfully around the bare hill and the broken crag,
struck upon his brow with a hint of winter in its touch. With it came
the tide of forest sounds--the sough of the leaves, the dull creaking of
branch against branch, the wash of the water in the reeds, the whirr of
wings, the cries of night birds--all the low and stealthy notes of the
earth chant which had become to him as old and tenderly familiar as the
lullabies of his childhood. Below him, at the foot of the hill, a square
of dark and stately pines was irradiated by a great fire which burnt
redly, casting flickering shadows far across the smooth brown earth, and
around which sat or moved many figures. Laughter and jest, oaths and
scraps of song floated up to the lonely watcher upon the hilltop. He
heeded them not--he was above that world--and no sound came from that
other and smaller fire blazing at some distance from the first--and the
tree trunks between were so many and so thick that he could see naught
but the light.