THE RUNNING OF THE ICE
It was Beatrix who first discovered her father's flight; but that was
four hours after its occurrence. The fort was soon astir with the news.
Men set out in all directions, in search of the missing one. Half a
dozen of the friendly Beothics joined in the hunt. They went east and
west, north and south. The sharpest eyes could detect no trail of the
madman's feet. Beatrix insisted upon accompanying Bernard and Ouenwa.
She tried to show a brave face; but something in her heart told her to
expect the worst. The three travelled southward, and shortly before
sunset returned to the fort, unsuccessful. They found that all the other
searchers had got back, save Black Feather and a young brave named
Kakatoc, who had set out together.
By the merest chance Black Feather and his companion happened upon the
place where the baronet had first broken through the melting crust. With
but little effort they found where he had rested and taken up his
journey again. Farther on, the faintness of the trail put an edge to
their determination to find the unfortunate gentleman. It was a
challenge to their woodcraft, and they accepted it eagerly. But within
two hours of finding the marks, they lost them again. They ranged wide;
and at last Black Feather discovered a footprint in a little pad of snow
beside a stunted spruce. In several places the branches of the tree
showed where the snow had been broken away, as if by a man's hand. It
was enough to keep them to the quest.
Not in the next day, but in the early morning after that, the two
Beothics happened upon a sheltered valley and a snow-cleared space, with
a fire-stone in the middle of it, where a lodge had lately stood. As for
signs of blood, there were none. Snow had been deftly spread and
trampled over it. All around the so evident site of a human habitation
the hard crust gleamed unbroken, save for a little path that ran down to
a hole in the ice of the stream. After considering the place, and
shaking their heads, the two ate the last of the food they had in their
pouches and turned their feet back to the fort. They passed within a few
paces of a dense thicket, in the heart of which the baronet's body lay
uncovered. But how were they to know it, when even the prowling foxes
had not yet found it out!
For several days the search was continued by the settlers and their
allies, but all in vain. It was not even suspected that the deserted
camping-place which Black Feather and Kakatoc had seen had so lately
been warmed by the feet of Pierre d'Antons and the blood of the lost
baronet. For a few days longer the business of the settlement lagged,
and the place wore an air of mourning, despite the ever-brightening and
mellowing season. Then the axes struck up their chant again, and the
little duties of the common day erased the forebodings of Eternity from
the minds of the pioneers. Only Mistress Beatrix could see nothing of
the reawakening of life and hope for the sorrow in her heart and the
mist across her eyes. She had loved her father deeply and faithfully,
with a love that had been strengthened by his misfortunes. She had felt
toward him the combined affections of daughter and sister and friend.
She had made allowances for the weaknesses of his later years that
equalled the ever charitable devotion of a parent for a best-loved
child. She had not been, and was not now, blind to the passion of gaming
that had forced him to exile and an unknown death; but she had forgiven
it long ago. As to the alleged murder that had made such an evil odour
in London, she believed--and rightly--that hot blood and overmuch wine
had been to blame, and that her father's sword had been drawn after the
victim's.
Bernard Kingswell did all in his power to comfort the bereaved girl. He
urged her to spend much of her time out-of-doors. He told his plans for
their future, and to cheer her he built them even more hopefully than he
felt; for he realized that many difficulties were yet to be overcome
before Bristol was safely reached. With Ouenwa, the two often went on
long tramps through the woods. Their evenings were always spent
together. Sometimes he read aloud to her, and sometimes they played at
chess. One evening she got her violin, and played as wonderfully as she
had on that other occasion; but instead of leaving him afterward without
a word, as she had done, she laid the fiddle aside and nestled into his
arms. He held her tenderly, patting the bright hair against his
shoulder, and murmuring broken assurances of his love and sympathy. She
wept quietly for a little while; but when she kissed him at the door,
her face and eyes shone with something of their old light.
By mid-April knobs of rock and moss pierced through the shrinking snow
in the open places; but in the woods the drifts continued to withstand
the wasting breath of the spring winds. Gray Goose River was no longer
a broad path of spotless white. Its surface was mottled with patches of
sodden gray; and an attentive listener on the bank might hear a myriad
of tiny voices, some sibilant and some tinkling and liquid, in and under
the enfeebled ice. Up and down the valley, between the knolls and wooded
hills, the little streams were already snarling and roaring, and here
and there flashing brown shoulders to the sunlight. Through all the
wilderness ran a tingling whisper; and twilight, midnight, and dawn were
stirred by the falling cries of wild-fowl on the wing. A faint, alluring
fragrance was in the air--the scent of millions of swelling buds and
crimson willow-stems.
About that time three warriors of the following of the dead Panounia
arrived at the fort, with prayers for peace on their lips and gifts in
their hands. They were received by Kingswell, William Trigget, and
Ouenwa from the fort, and Black Feather and two of his chiefs from the
camp. A lengthy business was gone through with, and much strong
Virginian tobacco was burned. Documents were written in English and in
the picture-writing of the natives, and read aloud, by Ouenwa, in both
languages. Then they were solemnly signed by all present, and peace was
restored to the great tribe of the North, and protection, trade, and
lands were granted for all time to the inhabitants of Fort Beatrix and
their descendants. The three visitors went back to their people with
rolls of red cloth and packets of glass beads, pot-metal knives, and
other useless trinkets on their shoulders.
Shortly after their departure from the fort, a storm of rain blew up
from the sou'east. All day the great drops thumped on the roofs of the
cabins, on the skies of the lodges, and spattered on the sodden snow.
The firs and spruces gleamed clean and black under the drenching
showers. A veil of smoke-gray mist lay above the farther woods and along
the black tangles of alders and gray fringes of willows. All night the
warm rain continued to fall and drift. When morning lifted along the
pearly east, a cry rang from the camp to the fort that the ice in the
river was moving. The settlers hastened to the flat before the stockade.
Beatrix was with them.
"See how the torn edge of ice overtops the bank," said Kingswell,
pointing eagerly. "And there is an open space. Ah, it has closed again!
How slowly it grinds along!"
"It will run faster before night," replied the girl, and Ouenwa, who was
versed in the ways of his northern rivers, nodded silently.
While they watched, admiring the swelling, swinging, ponderous advance
of the great surface, and harkening to the booming thunder of its agony
that filled the air, a breathless runner joined the group and spoke a
few quick words to Black Feather. That chief approached Ouenwa and
whispered in his ear. The boy glanced quickly at Beatrix and Kingswell,
and then questioned Black Feather anxiously. Presently he turned back to
the lovers.
"The ice is stuck down-stream," he said. "Blue Cloud has seen it. He
fears that the water will rise over the flat--and the fort."
The river continued to rise until evening. After that the waters
subsided a little, great cakes of rotten ice hung stranded along the
crest of the bank, and the main body ceased to run downward. But from up
the valley the thunder of a hidden disturbance still boomed across the
windless air.
"The jam had broken down-stream," said Ouenwa.
Kingswell, unused to the ways of running ice, was satisfied, and retired
to his couch with an easy mind. He slept soundly until, in the gray of
the dawn, Ouenwa shook him roughly, and all but dragged him to the
floor.
"Wake up, wake up," cried the boy. "Damn, but you sleep like a bear!
The fort is in danger! We must run for higher land."
"Rip me!" exclaimed Kingswell, springing to his feet, "but what is the
trouble? Are we attacked?"
"The river is all but empty of water," replied Ouenwa. "The ice sags in
the channel, like an empty garment. The water hangs above, behind the
third point where we cut the timber for the boats."
Kingswell, all the while, was busily employed pulling on his heavy
clothes. Though he did not fully understand the threatening danger, he
felt that it was real enough. While he tied the thongs of his deerhide
leggins, Ouenwa told him that warning had reached the fort but a few
minutes before.
"How?" inquired Kingswell, hurriedly bestowing a wallet of gold coins
and some other valuables about his person.
Ouenwa, already loaded down with his friend's possessions, threw open
the door and stepped out.
"Wolf Slayer brought it," he said, over his shoulder. "And I do not
understand," he added, "for Wolf Slayer hates us all."
The other, close at his heels, made no comment on that intelligence. He
scarcely heard it, so anxious was he for the safety of Mistress
Beatrix. The whole fort was astir; but Kingswell ran straight to his
sweetheart's door. It was opened by the maiden herself. She and the old
servant were all ready to leave.
An hour passed; load after load of stores and household goods was
carried to the low hills behind the fort; and still the river lay empty,
with its marred sheet of ice sagging between the banks; and still the
unseen jam held back the gathering freshet. The women wept at the
thought that their little homes were in danger of being broken and torn
and whirled away. But Beatrix was dry-eyed.
"It will be no great matter for them to build new cabins in a safer
place," she said to Kingswell.
He was looking at the natives dragging their rolled-up lodges to higher
ground. He turned, smiling gravely.
"You have no love for the wilderness?" he asked, "and yet but for this
forsaken place, you and I might never have met."
She laid her hand on his arm, and lifted a flushed face to his tender
regard.
"So it has served my turn," she said. "Now that I have you, I could well
spare these wastes of black wood and empty barren."
Kingswell had been waiting patiently and in silence for that confession
ever since their betrothal. Hitherto she had not once spoken with any
assurance of their future together. She had treated the subject vaguely,
as if her thoughts were all with the past and with the tragedy of her
father's death.
"Would you face the homeward voyage in one of the little boats?" he
asked, softly.
"Ay, with you at the tiller," she replied.
"Dear girl," he said, "I think that a stout ship called the _Heart of
the West_ will be setting sail from Bristol, for this wilderness, before
many days."
"Would the fellow dare return?" she asked; for she had heard the story
of Trowley's treachery.
"He will think himself safe enough," replied Kingswell. "No doubt he
owns the ship now--has bought it from my mother for the price of a
skiff, after telling her how recklessly he battled with the savages to
save her son's life."
He laughed softly. "The old rogue will be surprised when I step aboard,"
he added.
Before she could answer him a booming report shook the sunlit air. It
was followed, in a second, by a long-drawn tumult--a grinding and
crashing and roaring--as if the firmament had fallen and overthrown the
everlasting hills. The sagging ice below them reared, domed upward, and
split with clapping thunders. It broke its plunging masses, which were
hurled down the stream and over the flats. A thing of brown water and
sodden gray lumps tore the alders and swung across the meadow where the
Beothic encampment had stood an hour before. The eastern stockade of the
fort went down beneath its inevitable, crushing onslaught.
All day cakes and pans of sodden ice and snow raced down the river, and
the air hummed and vibrated with their clamour. But the weight of the
released waters had passed; and the fort had suffered by no more than an
exposed side.