MEDITATION AND ACTION
For hours after retiring Kingswell lay awake, reviewing, in his restless
brain, the incidents of that crowded day. His couch was luxurious,
compared to the resting-places he had known since leaving the _Heart of
the West_; but, for all that, sleep evaded him. From the other side of
the hearth Ouenwa's deep and regular breathing reached his alert ears.
He saw the yellow light blink to darkness above the curtain of skins,
when D'Antons extinguished his candle in the other apartment. The red
firelight rose and fell, dwindled and flooded high. The core of it
contracted and expanded, and a straight log across the middle of the
glow was like a heavy eyelid. It was like something alive--like
something stirring between sleeping and waking, desiring sleep, yet
afraid to forsake a vigil. To the restless explorer beside the hearth it
suggested a drowsy servitor nodding and starting in a deserted hall.
"What is it waiting for?" he wondered, and smiled at the conceit. "What
does it fear? Mayhap the master and mistress are late at a rout, and are
people without consideration for the feelings of their servants."
From such harmless imagery his mind slipped to the less pleasant subject
of Sir Ralph Westleigh. He recalled what he had seen and heard of the
days of the baronet's glory--of the great places near Bristol, with
their stables that were the envy of dukes, and their routs that lured
people weary and dangerous journeys--of the famous Lady Westleigh and
her jewels--of Sir Ralph's kindliness to great and small alike. His own
father, the merchant-knight of Bristol, had held the baronet in high
esteem. Bernard himself, when a child, and later when a well-grown lad,
had experienced the hospitality of Randon Hall and Beverly. At the time
of his last visit to Beverly, rumour was busy with the baronet's
affairs. During Lady Westleigh's life, all had gone well, apparently.
After her death, Sir Ralph spent less of his time at home, and more of
it in distant London, and even in Paris. Stories went abroad of his
heavy gaming and his ruinous bad luck. People said the love of the dice
and the cards had settled in the man like a disease, working on him
physically to such an extent that he looked a different person when the
heat of the play was on him. Also it played the devil with him
morally--and perhaps mentally. So things took the turn and started
down-hill. Then the run was short and mad, despite warnings of friends,
threats of relatives, and the baronet's own numerous clever checks and
parries to avoid disaster. There was a season of hope after the sale of
Randon. But the lurid clouds gathered again. Then Beverly was
impoverished to the last oak and the last horse in the stud. The baronet
took his daughter to town, and, by a turn of luck, put in a few merry
months. Then a certain Scotch viscount caught him playing as no
gentleman, no matter how dissolute, is supposed to play. The Scotchman
made a clamour, and was killed for his trouble. That was the last known
of Sir Ralph Westleigh and his daughter by any one of the outside world
until the _Pelican_ landed her voyagers before the stockade of Fort
Beatrix on Gray Goose River.
All these matters employed Kingswell's thoughts as he lay awake in
Captain d'Antons' cabin and watched the fire on the rough hearth fall
lower and lower. Pity for the young girl, who had been born and bred to
such a different heritage, pained and fretted him more keenly than a
personal loss. The discomfort of it was almost as if his conscience were
accusing him of disloyalty to a friend, though that was absurd, as
neither he nor his had helped Westleigh in his descent, nor cried out
against him when he met disaster at the bottom. But he had never, during
those two years after their disappearance, given them more than a
passing thought--and they had been friends and neighbours. He had
experienced no pity for the young and beautiful girl with whom he had
played in the racquet court at Beverly. Like the great world of which he
was so insignificant a part, he had forgotten. Two lives, more or less,
were of no consequence in such stirring times. He groaned, as if the
realization of a great sin had come to him. Then, to the anger against
himself was added anger against the world that had dragged Sir Ralph
into this oblivion of dishonour, and the innocent girl into exile. What
had she done to be driven beyond the bounds of civilization, her safety
dependent on the whims of a French buccaneer? Ah, there was the raw
spot, sure enough! In the little space of time between two risings of
the sun, Kingswell had met a man and marked him for an enemy. Nursing a
bitter, though somewhat muddled, resentment, he at last fell asleep,
guarded from storm and frost by the roof of the very man who had
inspired his anger.
For the next few days matters went smoothly at Fort Beatrix. It was
evident to even the least experienced of the settlers that the winter
had come to stay. The snow lay deep and dry over the frozen earth. The
river was already hidden under a skin of gleaming ice, made opaque by
the snow that had mingled with the water while it was freezing. The
little settlement took up the routine of the dreary months. Axes were
sharpened at the great stone in the well-house. The men donned moccasins
of deerskin. They tied ingenious racquets, or snow-shoes, to their feet
and tramped into the sombre forests. All day the thud, thud of the axes
jarred across the air, interrupted ever and anon by the rending,
splitting lament of some falling tree.
Kingswell put his men under William Trigget's orders, and he and Ouenwa
spent much of their time with the choppers. Also, they journeyed with
the trappers. Captain d'Antons, who was a skilled and tireless woodsman,
led them on many weary marches in quest of game and fur. Most of the
caribou had travelled southward, in herds of from ten to one hundred
head, at the approach of winter; but a few remained in the sheltered
valleys. Fortunately the settlers were familiar with the habits of the
deer, and had laid in a supply of dried venison during the summer.
However, whenever the hunters managed to make a kill, the fresh meat
was enthusiastically received at the fort. Hares and grouse were snared,
as were foxes and other small animals. A few wolves and one or two
wildcats were shot. The bears were all tucked safely away in their
winter quarters, and the beavers were frozen into theirs. On the whole,
the hunters had a hard time of it, and no great reward for their toil.
But it was work that kept both their brains and sinews employed, and so
was of a deal more worth than the bare value of the pelts and dinners it
supplied.
One day in early December, when Kingswell, D'Antons, the younger
Donnelly, and Ouenwa were traversing a drifted expanse of "barren,"
marching in single file and without undue noise, they came upon another
trail of racquet prints. They halted. They regarded this unexpected
evidence of the proximity of their fellow man with misgivings--for snow
had fallen in abundance, and therefore the trail was new. They glanced
uneasily about them, scanning clumps of spruce and fir and mounds of
snow-drifted rock with anxious eyes. They strained their ears for some
warning sound--or for the twanging of bowstrings. They saw nothing. They
heard nothing but the disconsolate chirping of a moose-bird in a
thicket close at hand. D'Antons lowered his gaze to the trail.
"From the westward, and heading for the river," he said. "Then they are
not from the village on Gander Lake."
"Big number," remarked Ouenwa. "Ten, twenty, thirty--don't know how
much! Whole camp, I think."
"Ay," agreed Donnelly, "they sure has packed clear down through two
falls o' snow. Ye could trot a pony along the pat' they has made."
"Are you on friendly terms with the savages?" inquired Kingswell of
Captain d'Antons. The Frenchman smiled uncheerfully and shrugged his
lean shoulders. He was not one to speak unconsidered words.
"Yes, we are on friendly terms with the people from Gander Lake," he
replied, presently. "That is, we have traded with them a number of
times, and have exchanged gifts with their chief, and through him with
old Soft Hand. But Soft Hand is dead now; and these fellows are
evidently from the West. Also, friendship means nothing where these
vermin are concerned. Treachery is as the breath of life to them."
"Panounia," whispered Ouenwa, excitedly. "Panounia no good for friend.
He is a murderer. He is a false chief. He make trade--yes, with
war-arrows from the bushes and with knives in the dark. In friendship
his hand is under his robe, and his fingers are on the hilt of his
knife. Evil warms itself at his heart like an old witch at a fire."
D'Antons smiled thinly at the lad. "There is a time for all things," he
said--"a time for oratory and another time for action. If you are
willing, Master Kingswell, let us now retrace our steps as swiftly and
quietly as may be. It would be wise to warn the fort that a band of the
sly devils is abroad."
Ouenwa glanced uncertainly at the speaker and flushed darkly. Kingswell
intimated his willingness to return immediately to Fort Beatrix by a
curt nod. It was in his heart to administer a kick to Captain Pierre
d'Antons, though just why the desire he could not say. They turned in
their tracks and started back along the twisting, seven-mile trail.
D'Antons led; and the pace he set was a stiff one. Mile after mile was
passed, with no other sound save those of padding racquet and toiling
breath. In the hollows their shoulders brushed the snow from the
crowding spruce-fronds. Going over the knolls, they crouched low, and
scanned the horizon with alert eyes as they ran.
At last, all but breathless from the prolonged exertion, the hunters
turned aside from the path and ascended the gradual, heavily wooded side
of a hill which overlooked the fort from the south. They crossed the
naked summit with painful caution, bending double, and taking every
advantage of the sheltering thickets.
"The choppers are inside," whispered D'Antons to Kingswell, as they
peered furtively out between the snow-weighted branches. "See! And the
savages are in cover along the river." It was quite evident to Kingswell
that the place had been attacked, and was now in a state of siege. The
platform in the southeast corner of the stockade was protected by
shields composed of bundles of firewood. Men whom he recognized as those
who had been working in the woods earlier in the day moved about within
the enclosure. The wide, snow-covered clearing that had been so spotless
when he had last seen it was trampled and stained here and there by dark
patches. Along the fringe of timber that shut the river from the
clearing, and extended to within a dozen paces of the southeast corner
of the stockade, a Beothic warrior would frequently show himself for a
moment, hoot derisively, and let fly a harmless shaft. Presently the
watchers on the knoll saw the head and shoulders of William Trigget
above the shield of the gun-platform. The master mariner shaded his eyes
with his hand and seemed to be scanning the woods along the river and
then the timber in which his own comrades were concealed. He lowered his
hand and ducked quickly--and not a second too soon; for a flight of
arrows rattled against his stronghold, a few stuck, quivering, into the
pickets of the stockade, and many fell within the fort.
Kingswell turned to D'Antons. "More of them than we thought," he said.
"There must have been a hundred arrows in that volley."
Captain d'Antons nodded with a preoccupied air. He did not look at his
companion, and his brow was puckered in lines of thought. If the
Englishman had been able to read the other's mind at that moment, a deal
of future trouble would have been spared him. However, as Kingswell was
but an adventurous, keen-witted young man, with no superhuman powers, he
was content with the Frenchman's nod, and returned his attentions to the
fort.
Suddenly, from the screen of faggots above which Trigget had so lately
exposed his head, burst a flash of yellow flame, a spurt of white smoke,
and a clapping bulk of sound. The stockade shook. A spruce-tree shook in
the wood by the river, and cries of fear and consternation rang across
the frosty air. A score of savages darted from their cover and as
quickly sped back again. Flight after flight of arrows broke away and
tested every inch of surface of Trigget's shelter. Then, with shrill
screams and mad yells of defiance, the whole party of Beothics emerged
into the clearing and dashed for the palisade. They drew their bows as
they ran, and some hurled clubs and spears. In front, with red feathers
in his hair and his right arm bandaged across his breast, Panounia
shouted encouragement and led the charge. They were half-way across the
open when the second cannon spat forth its message of hate. The ball
passed low over the advancing mass and plunged into the timber beyond.
For a second or two, the attackers wavered, a few turned back, then they
continued their valorous onset. They were already springing at the
palisade when the muskets crashed in their faces from half a dozen
loopholes. This volley was followed immediately by another. The savages
dropped back from their futile leapings against the fortification, hung
on their heels for a moment, clamorous and undecided, and then broke for
cover. They dragged their dead and wounded with them, and left
sanguinary trails on the snow. They were within a few yards of the
sheltering trees when one of the little cannon banged again. The ball
cut across the mass of crowded warriors like a string through cheese.
"Now is our time!" exclaimed Kingswell. "Run for the gate, lads."