June passed; July opened with unusually warm weather, and Fort Henry
had no visits from Indians or horse-thieves, nor any inconvenience
except the hot sun. It was the warmest weather for many years, and
seriously dwarfed the settlers' growing corn. Nearly all the springs
were dry, and a drought menaced the farmers.
The weather gave Helen an excuse which she was not slow to adopt. Her
pale face and languid air perplexed and worried her father and her
friends. She explained to them that the heat affected her
disagreeably.
Long days had passed since that Sunday morning when she kissed the
borderman. What transports of sweet hope and fear were hers then! How
shame had scorched her happiness! Yet still she gloried in the act. By
that kiss had she awakened to a full consciousness of her love. With
insidious stealth and ever-increasing power this flood had increased
to full tide, and, bursting its bonds, surged over her with
irresistible strength.
During the first days after the dawning of her passion, she lived in
its sweetness, hearing only melodious sounds chiming in her soul. The
hours following that Sunday were like long dreams. But as all things
reach fruition, so this girlish period passed, leaving her a
thoughtful woman. She began to gather up the threads of her life where
love had broken them, to plan nobly, and to hope and wait.
Weeks passed, however, and her lover did not come. Betty told her that
Jonathan made flying trips at break of day to hold council with
Colonel Zane; that he and Wetzel were on the trail of Shawnees with
stolen horses, and both bordermen were in their dark, vengeful,
terrible moods. In these later days Helen passed through many stages
of feeling. After the exalting mood of hot, young love, came reaction.
She fell into the depths of despair. Sorrow paled her face, thinned
her cheeks and lent another shadow, a mournful one, to her great eyes.
The constant repression of emotion, the strain of trying to seem
cheerful when she was miserable, threatened even her magnificent
health. She answered the solicitude of her friends by evasion, and
then by that innocent falsehood in which a sensitive soul hides its
secrets. Shame was only natural, because since the borderman came not,
nor sent her a word, pride whispered that she had wooed him,
forgetting modesty.
Pride, anger, shame, despair, however, finally fled before affection.
She loved this wild borderman, and knew he loved her in return
although he might not understand it himself. His simplicity, his lack
of experience with women, his hazardous life and stern duty regarding
it, pleaded for him and for her love. For the lack of a little
understanding she would never live unhappy and alone while she was
loved. Better give a thousand times more than she had sacrificed. He
would return to the village some day, when the Indians and the thieves
were run down, and would be his own calm, gentle self. Then she would
win him, break down his allegiance to this fearful border life, and
make him happy in her love.
While Helen was going through one of the fires of life to come out
sweeter and purer, if a little pensive and sad, time, which waits not
for love, nor life, nor death, was hastening onward, and soon the
golden fields of grain were stored. September came with its fruitful
promise fulfilled.
Helen entered once more into the quiet, social life of the little
settlement, taught her class on Sundays, did all her own work, and
even found time to bring a ray of sunshine to more than one sick
child's bed. Yet she did not forget her compact with Jonathan, and
bent all her intelligence to find some clew that might aid in the
capture of the horse-thief. She was still groping in the darkness. She
could not, however, banish the belief that the traitor was Brandt. She
blamed herself for this, because of having no good reasons for
suspicion; but the conviction was there, fixed by intuition. Because a
man's eyes were steely gray, sharp like those of a cat's, and capable
of the same contraction and enlargement, there was no reason to
believe their owner was a criminal. But that, Helen acknowledged with
a smile, was the only argument she had. To be sure Brandt had looked
capable of anything, the night Jonathan knocked him down; she knew he
had incited Case to begin the trouble at Metzar's, and had seemed
worried since that time. He had not left the settlement on short
journeys, as had been his custom before the affair in the bar-room.
And not a horse had disappeared from Fort Henry since that time.
Brandt had not discontinued his attentions to her; if they were less
ardent it was because she had given him absolutely to understand that
she could be his friend only. And she would not have allowed even so
much except for Jonathan's plan. She fancied it was possible to see
behind Brandt's courtesy, the real subtle, threatening man. Stripped
of his kindliness, an assumed virtue, the iron man stood revealed,
cold, calculating, cruel.
Mordaunt she never saw but once and then, shocking and pitiful, he lay
dead drunk in the grass by the side of the road, his pale, weary,
handsome face exposed to the pitiless rays of the sun. She ran home
weeping over this wreck of what had once been so fine a gentleman. Ah!
the curse of rum! He had learned his soft speech and courtly bearing
in the refinement of a home where a proud mother adored, and gentle
sisters loved him. And now, far from the kindred he had disgraced, he
lay in the road like a log. How it hurt her! She almost wished she
could have loved him, if love might have redeemed. She was more kind
to her other admirers, more tolerant of Brandt, and could forgive the
Englishman, because the pangs she had suffered through love had
softened her spirit.
During this long period the growing friendship of her cousin for Betty
had been a source of infinite pleasure to Helen. She hoped and
believed a romance would develop between the young widow and Will, and
did all in her power, slyly abetted by the matchmaking colonel, to
bring the two together.
One afternoon when the sky was clear with that intense blue peculiar
to bright days in early autumn, Helen started out toward Betty's,
intending to remind that young lady she had promised to hunt for
clematis and other fall flowers.
About half-way to Betty's home she met Brandt. He came swinging round
a corner with his quick, firm step. She had not seen him for several
days, and somehow he seemed different. A brightness, a flash, as of
daring expectation, was in his face. The poise, too, of the man
had changed.
"Well, I am fortunate. I was just going to your home," he said
cheerily. "Won't you come for a walk with me?"
"You may walk with me to Betty's," Helen answered.
"No, not that. Come up the hillside. We'll get some goldenrod. I'd
like to have a chat with you. I may go away--I mean I'm thinking of
making a short trip," he added hurriedly.
"Please come."
"I promised to go to Betty's."
"You won't come?" His voice trembled with mingled disappointment and
resentment.
"No," Helen replied in slight surprise.
"You have gone with the other fellows. Why not with me?" He was white
now, and evidently laboring under powerful feelings that must have had
their origin in some thought or plan which hinged on the acceptance of
his invitation.
"Because I choose not to," Helen replied coldly, meeting his glance
fully.
A dark red flush swelled Brandt's face and neck; his gray eyes gleamed
balefully with wolfish glare; his teeth were clenched. He breathed
hard and trembled with anger. Then, by a powerful effort, he conquered
himself; the villainous expression left his face; the storm of rage
subsided. Great incentive there must have been for him thus to repress
his emotions so quickly. He looked long at her with sinister, intent
regard; then, with the laugh of a desperado, a laugh which might have
indicated contempt for the failure of his suit, and which was fraught
with a world of meaning, of menace, he left her without so much as
a salute.
Helen pondered over this sudden change, and felt relieved because she
need make no further pretense of friendship. He had shown himself to
be what she had instinctively believed. She hurried on toward Betty's,
hoping to find Colonel Zane at home, and with Jonathan, for Brandt's
hint of leaving Fort Henry, and his evident chagrin at such a slip of
speech, had made her suspicious. She was informed by Mrs. Zane that
the colonel had gone to a log-raising; Jonathan had not been in for
several days, and Betty went away with Will.
"Where did they go?" asked Helen.
"I'm not sure; I think down to the spring."
Helen followed the familiar path through the grove of oaks into the
glade. It was quite deserted. Sitting on the stone against which
Jonathan had leaned the day she kissed him, she gave way to tender
reflection. Suddenly she was disturbed by the sound of rapid
footsteps, and looking up, saw the hulking form of Metzar, the
innkeeper, coming down the path. He carried a bucket, and meant
evidently to get water. Helen did not desire to be seen, and, thinking
he would stay only a moment, slipped into a thicket of willows behind
the stone. She could see plainly through the foliage. Metzar came into
the glade, peered around in the manner of a man expecting to see some
one, and then, filling his bucket at the spring, sat down on
the stone.
Not a minute elapsed before soft, rapid footsteps sounded in the
distance. The bushes parted, disclosing the white, set face and gray
eyes of Roger Brandt. With a light spring he cleared the brook and
approached Metzar.
Before speaking he glanced around the glade with the fugitive,
distrustful glance of a man who suspects even the trees. Then,
satisfied by the scrutiny he opened his hunting frock, taking forth a
long object which he thrust toward Metzar.
It was an Indian arrow.
Metzar's dull gaze traveled from this to the ominous face of Brandt.
"See there, you! Look at this arrow! Shot by the best Indian on the
border into the window of my room. I hadn't been there a minute when
it came from the island. God! but it was a great shot!"
"Hell!" gasped Metzar, his dull face quickening with some awful
thought.
"I guess it is hell," replied Brandt, his face growing whiter and
wilder.
"Our game's up?" questioned Metzar with haggard cheek.
"Up? Man! We haven't a day, maybe less, to shake Fort Henry."
"What does it mean?" asked Metzar. He was the calmer of the two.
"It's a signal. The Shawnees, who were in hiding with the horses over
by Blueberry swamp, have been flushed by those bordermen. Some of them
have escaped; at least one, for no one but Ashbow could shoot that
arrow across the river."
"Suppose he hadn't come?" whispered Metzar hoarsely.
Brandt answered him with a dark, shuddering gaze.
A twig snapped in the thicket. Like foxes at the click of a trap,
these men whirled with fearsome glances.
"Ugh!" came a low, guttural voice from the bushes, and an Indian of
magnificent proportions and somber, swarthy features, entered
the glade.