The Black Abbe Strikes in the Dark
I was awakened to consciousness by some one gently lifting me. I
struggled at once to my feet, leaning upon him. It was Big Etienne.
"You much hurt?" he queried, in great concern.
"Why, no!" said I, presently. "Head feels sore. I think I'll be all
right in a minute."
It was in the red and saffron of dawn. The snow had stopped falling.
The muskets had stopped clattering. The battle was apparently at an
end. All around lay bodies, or rather parts of bodies; for they were
more or less hidden in the snow. Close by me just a pair of knees was
visible, thrust up through a drift into which the man had plunged in
falling.
The snow was all mottled with blood and powder, a very hideous colour
to look upon. I stood erect and stretched myself.
"Why, brother," I exclaimed, in great relief, "I am as good as new.
Where is the commander?"
Big Etienne pointed in silence to the street before the three houses.
There I saw our men drawn up in menacing array. In and behind the
houses were crowded the dark masses of the New Englanders, punctuated
here and there with the scarlet of an officer's coat.
De Villiers greeted me as one recovered from the grave. I asked
eagerly how he had sped, and how the matter now rested.
"Success, everywhere success, Briart!" he answered, with a sort of
controlled elation. "You held these fellows, while we wiped out those
yonder. But it was a cruel and bloody affair, and I would the times,
and the straits of New France, required not such killing in the dark.
But they set fire to a house and barn that they might fight in the
light, and so a band of them escaped us and cut their way through
here,--what was left of them, at least, after they got done with you!
And now their remnant is hemmed in yonder."
"We've got them, then," said I.
"Surely," he answered. "But it will cost our best blood to end it.
They have fought like heroes, though they kept guard like fools. And
they will battle it out, I think, while a man of them stands."
"Yes, 'tis the breed of them!" said I, looking across with admiration
at the silent and dangerous ranks. "But they have done all that brave
men could do. They will accept honourable terms, I think; and such we
may offer them without any touch of discredit. What do you say?"
This was, indeed what de Villiers had in his heart. He withdrew his
troops some little distance, that negotiations might be the less
embarrassed; and I myself, feeling a fresh dizziness, retired to a
cottage where I might have my wound properly tended. But barely had I
got the bandage loosened,--a black-eyed Acadian maid standing by, with
face of deep commiseration and holding a basin of hot water for
me,--when there broke out a sudden firing. I clapped the bloody
bandage to my head, and ran forth; but I saw there was no need of me.
The English had sallied with a fierce heat, hoping to retrieve their
fortunes. But the deep snow was like an army to shut them in. Before
they could come at us they were exhausted, and our muskets dropped them
swiftly in the drifts. Sullenly they fell back again upon their
houses. I turned to my basin and my bandaging.
"That settles that!" said I to the damsel.
"Settles what, Monsieur?" she asked. But as she spoke I saw a look of
sudden concern cross her face, a faintness came over me, and I lay
down, feeling her arm support me as I sank.
Sleep is the best of medicines for me. I woke late in the afternoon to
find my head neatly bandaged, and the dizziness all gone. Men came and
went softly. I found that de Villiers was lying in the same house,
having got a serious wound just after I left him. La Corne, a brave
Canadian, was in command. The English had capitulated toward noon, and
had pledged themselves to depart for Annapolis within forty-eight
hours, not to bear arms again in Acadie within six months. We had
redeemed at Grand Pre our late failure at Annapolis.
My first act was to send a runner, on snow-shoes, to Canard, with a
scrawled note to Mizpah. Explaining nothing, I merely begged that she
and Prudence, with Marc and Father Fafard, should meet me at the Forge
about noon of the following day. In the case of Marc not being yet
strong enough to journey so far, I prayed Mizpah herself, in any event,
to come without fail. My next was to send a messenger for Xavier and
Philip. My heart had fallen to aching curiously for the
child,--insomuch that I marvelled at it, till at length I set it down
as a mere whimsical counterfeit of my longing for his mother.
Being now refreshed and altogether myself again, I went to visit the
lane wherein the fight had opened. The very first house, whose
shattered door and windows, blood-smeared threshold, and dripping
window-sills, showed that the fight had there raged long and madly, had
one great apple tree beside its garden gate. A chill of foreboding
smote me as I marked it. I approached with a curious and painful
expectancy, the words of the Black Abbe ringing again in my ears. At
the foot of the apple tree the snow was drifted deep. It half covered
a pitifully huddled body.
I lifted the body. It was Tamin.
He had been shot through the lungs, and his blood, melting the snow,
had gathered in a crimson pool beneath him. Here was one grim prophecy
fulfilled. Carrying him into the house, I laid him gently on a bed.
Then I turned away with a very sorrowful heart; for there was much to
do, and the dead are not urgent.
Even as I turned, my heart jumped with a new and sickening dread.
Xavier stood before me--Xavier, with wild eyes, and face darkly clotted
with blood. The next instant he threw himself at my feet.
"The child!" he muttered, covering his face. "They have carried him
away. They have carried Philip away!"
"What do you mean?" I cried, in a voice which my fear made harsh, while
at the same time I dragged him to his feet. "Who have carried him
away? Who?"
But I knew the answer ere he could speak it,--I knew my enemy had
seized the chances of the battle and the night.
"The Black Abbe," wailed the lad, in a voice of poignant sorrow. "He
came in the night, with two Chepody Acadians dressed up like Indians,
and seized me asleep, and bound me."
"But Philip!" I cried. "Where have they taken him?" And even as I
spoke I was planning swiftly.
"The Abbe started westward with him," answered Xavier. "From what I
heard say, he would go to Pereau; but which way after, I could not find
out."
"Come!" I ordered roughly, "we must follow them!" But as I spoke I saw
the lad totter. I caught him by the arm and held him up, perceiving
now for the first time how he was both wounded and utterly spent.
"Let us go first to your father," I said more gently, leading him, and
putting what curb I could upon the fierceness of my haste.
"How did you get here?" I asked him presently.
A gleam came into the lad's faint eyes.
"The Chepody men stayed till morning," said he, "and then set out on
the road toward Piziquid, taking me with them. They thought I was
nothing but a boy. As we went, I got my hands loose, so,--and waited.
At noon one man went into a house,--and--so!--I was free, and had the
other dog by the throat. He make no noise; but he fight hard, and hurt
me. I got away, and left him in the snow, and ran back all the way to
tell you the Black Abbe--"
But here the poor lad's voice failed, and he hung upon me with all his
weight. He had fainted, indeed; and now that I thought of his wound,
his hunger, his grief, and his prodigious exertions, I wondered not at
his swooning. Picking him up in my arms, I carried him to the cottage
where the kind damsel had so compassionately tended my own bruises.
As I entered the thronged cottage with my burden, men came about me
with many questions; but I kept my own counsel, not knowing whom I
could trust, or where the Black Abbe might not have his spies posted.
Moreover, I was so distracted with anxiety about the child, that I had
small patience wherewith to take questioning civilly. Every bed and
every settle being occupied with our wounded, I laid Xavier on the
floor, with his head upon a blue petticoat which the kind damsel--who
came to me as soon as she saw me enter--fetched from a cupboard and
rolled up deftly for me. After a careful examination I found no wound
upon the lad save two shallow flesh cuts, one across his forehead and
one down his chest. I thereupon concluded that exhaustion, together
with the loss of blood, had brought him to this pass, and that with a
few days' care he would be altogether restored. Having put some brandy
between his lips, and seen his eyelids tremble with recovering
consciousness, I turned to the maiden and said:--
"Take care of him for me, Cherie. He deserves your best care; and I
trust him to your good heart. Give him something to eat now,--soup,
hot milk, at first. And I will come back in two days from now, at
furthest."
"But Monsieur must rest!"
"No rest for me to-night!" I interrupted, in a low voice, as I
straightened myself up. "Do you know where I may find the lad's
father, the chief, Big--"
But there was no need for me to finish the question. There, close
behind me, stood the tall Indian, looking down at Xavier, with trouble
in his eyes. He had just entered, in his silent fashion.
"There is no danger! He is worn out!" I whispered. "He has done all a
brave man could do; but the child is stolen! Come outside with me."
Big Etienne stooped quickly and laid his hand upon the lad's breast,
and then, most gently, upon his lips. A second later he had followed
me out into the deepening twilight.
In few words I told him what had happened, and my purpose of going
instantly in pursuit. Without a word he strode off toward a small
cabin about a stone's throw from the cottage which we had just left.
"Where are you going?" I asked, astonished at this abruptness.
"My snow-shoes!" he replied. "And bread. I go with you, my brother!"
This, in very truth, was just what I had hoped for. But, in my haste,
I had forgotten the need of eating; and, as for my snow-shoes, usually
strapped at my back, they had been left at the outskirts of the village
the night before in order that my sword arm might have the freer play.
It was no time now to go back for them. I slipped into the cottage,
borrowed a pair, and was presently forth again to meet Big Etienne.
The Indian, instead of bread, had brought a goodly lump of dried beef.
Side by side, and in silence, we set out for the cabin on the Gaspereau
where Philip and Xavier had been captured.
We found the place deserted. Either the man of the house had been a
tool of La Garne, or he feared that I would hold him responsible.
Which it was, I know not to this day; and, at the time, we gave small
thought to the question, merely commending the fellow's wisdom in
removing himself from our indignation. What engaged our concern was a
single snow-shoe track making westward, followed by the trail of a
little sledge.
"Yes," said I; "Xavier is surely right. The Abbe has gone to cross the
Habitants and the Canard where they are little, and will then, belike,
turn down the valley to Pereau!"
"Very like!" grunted my companion; and, at a long lope, we started up
the trail.
This pace, however, soon told upon me, and brought it into my mind that
I had, that day, eaten nothing but a bowl of broth. We halted,
therefore, and rested half an hour in the warmth of a dense spruce
coppice, and ate abundantly of that very savoury beef. Then, much
revived, we set out again. Treading one behind the other, we marched,
in silence, through the glimmering dark; for Big Etienne was no talker,
while I, for my part, was gnawing my heart with rage, and hope
frustrated, and the picture of Mizpah's anguish. We never stayed our
pace till we came, at the edge of dawn, to the spot where the trail
went over the dwindled upper current of the Habitants.
Here, to our astonishment, the trail turned eastward, following down
the course of the river.
I looked at the Indian in wondering consternation. "What can it mean?"
I cried. "Can there be any new plot of his hatching at Canard?"
"Maybe!" said Big Etienne.
At thought of further perils threatening Mizpah and Marc, the weariness
which had been growing upon me vanished, and I sprang forward as
briskly as if we had but just set out. Even Big Etienne, though he had
no such incentive as mine, seemed to win new vigour with the
contemplation of this new coil of the enemy's. If, indeed, he appeared
somewhat fresher than I throughout the latter half of this hard march,
it is but justice to myself to say that he bore no wound from the late
battle.
At last, when it was well past ten of the morning, the trail led us out
upon the main Canard track, and turned toward the settlement.
"Yes," said I, with bitter conviction; "he has gone to Canard. He
would never go there had he not some deep scheme of mischief afoot.
God grant we be in time!"
In less than half an hour we came within sight of the Forge in the
Forest. To my astonishment, the smoke was pouring in furious volume
from the forge chimney.
"What can Babin be about? Or can Mizpah and Marc be there already?" I
wondered aloud; but got no answer from my companion. A moment later, a
turn of the track brought us to a post of vantage whence we could see
straight into the forge. The sight which met our eyes brought us to an
instant stop from sheer amazement.