THE ASHES OF POWER
After a few weeks of desperate struggle, Butler gave up all hopes of
maintaining the rights he had so haughtily assumed, and departed
abruptly for America, leaving his wife at Ashton, for a time unconscious
of his desertion.
But when she knew that he was gone, no wild bird, torn from its mate,
ever became so restless in its thralldom as she did in that princely
mansion. She pined without ceasing, and, refusing all food, sat down
with her face shrouded, after the manner of her race, and refused to be
comforted.
In vain both Varnham and Mary strove to persuade the unhappy young
creature to stay with them, and share the wealth which Catharine
Montour’s violent death had undoubtedly prevented her dividing. The
forest girl could not be made to comprehend the value of property. As
for gold, she scarcely knew its use, or that the beautiful objects with
which her mother had been surrounded, did not come naturally to those
whom the Great Spirit favored, as leaves grew upon the summer boughs.
She pined for the presence of her husband, and smiled with scorn when
any one sought to console her for his absence with gold which she did
not want and lands that bore blossoms and grain, rather than the mighty
old forest trees, under which her father’s warriors had hunted all their
lives.
At last a strange belief came upon her that Butler had not intentionally
left her behind. She had known him called away suddenly to battle, when
he had no time to warn her. Was not this occasion urgent, as those had
been? She would not doubt it, in the faith of her great love she trusted
in him still. One morning, when Mary went up to her sister’s chamber,
hoping to comfort her, she found the room empty. Tahmeroo had left
Ashton in the night, and followed after her husband.
Across the ocean she came into her own beautiful, wild country. She was
told that Butler might be found in the Mohawk Valley, leading his
Indians on to battle again; and to that point she bent her way. Wherever
a fight had been, or a body of savages gathered, she came in breathless
haste, searching for the man who had cast her off.
In October, 1781, the poor Indian wife found herself on the banks of a
creek, deep in the forest, with an escort of two or three Indians who
had been detached from their companions, and were glad to take charge of
their chief’s daughter.
There had been a skirmish on this stream during the day, and from some
of the fugitives Tahmeroo had learned that her husband was in command of
the Indians. Without a thought of the dangers she was sure to encounter
in a running fight of this kind, the young wife kept on her route, led
forward by scattering shots, till the woods, now dun with withered
foliage, were filled with the cold gloom of the coming night. As she
moved on, the wind rose, filling the air with dead leaves, and above
that came the rush and flap of wings. The patter of stealthy feet, and
the low growl of wolves, disturbed by the approach of human beings.
A little hollow was before her, full of shadows, and with a black cloud
of crows gathering over it.
Tahmeroo rode to the brink of the hollow, and looked down, stooping over
the bent neck of her horse. From the side of a rock, around which a
little stream of water was creeping, three ravens soared upwards,
flapping their heavy wings, and roosting on a tree-branch sullenly eyed
her approach. She did not heed them, for by the rock was a mass of
blackness more terrible than the ravenous birds to her. She dropped
slowly down the side of her horse, crept across the rock and bent over.
When her escort reached her, she lay with her face downward, and her
eyes open, as they had looked on the dead body of her husband, but those
eyes saw nothing, and when the savages lifted her up, she felt
nothing—all the world was dark to her then.
As if Gi-en-gwa-tah’s curse had fulfilled itself, the settlement at
Seneca Lake had atoned for the massacre of Wyoming, and now lay
desolated; the beautiful grounds were black with ruin, the charred
trunks of the dead trees rose in black groups where life and greenness
had been. Heaps of stone lay where the houses had stood, and a few bark
wigwams, in which the broken remnants of Queen Esther’s followers still
sheltered themselves, were all that Sullivan’s avenging troops had left
to the old queen.
The mansion which she had called her palace was a heap of ruins, but
some of the walls remained, and one of the largest rooms had been roofed
over with plank and slabs, thus giving shelter to that terrible woman,
who lay like a sick lioness on a buffalo skin in the centre, smitten by
her son’s curse, and struggling with that dogged old age which chains
the passions it cannot quench.
On the broken door-step sat a group of savages, looking gloomily into
the yawning hall. They dared not intrude on the sick woman without a
summons; but sat listening, not for moans or complaints—those they never
could expect—but for a sound of the death rattle, which must soon follow
the appalling stillness in which she rested.
As she lay thus, picking perpetually at the fur on the buffalo robe,
with a keen glare of the eyes, as if that work must be done before she
could enter eternity, a figure glided past the Indians on the door-step
and entered that death-chamber. It was Tahmeroo, her grandchild, but so
haggard and lifeless that the Indians, whom she passed, had not known
her.
The old woman turned her eyes that way, but kept picking, picking,
picking at the fur.
All at once she seemed to comprehend that one of her own kindred stood
beside her. She raised herself up on one hand; the snow-white hair swept
back from her face, leaving it stony and ashen. Up and up, inch by inch,
she struggled, shaking like a naked tree in the winter, till she stood
upright.
“Tell him that you saw his mother die upon her feet. He struck her with
a curse, but death is not so strong. I grapple with him, face to face,
tooth and tooth; but a child’s curse who can bear!”
She reeled heavily, flung out her clenched hands, striving to balance
herself, but fell with a dull crash. There was a sound in her throat,
like the muffled rattle of chains in a dungeon, and the old queen lay
across her buffalo robe stiff and dead.
All that day and night a death-chant rose and swelled through those
ruins. The blackened trees, dead, like their owner, shivered as the wind
passed them burdened with that mournful wail. That little group of
Indians, broken off from the great tribe by the curse of their chief,
buried their queen among the blackened ruins, covered her grave with
ashes, and sat down by it in patient desolation.
Then Tahmeroo glided among them like a ghost. “Old men,” she said, in
the gentleness of solemn grief, “sit no longer in the ashes of my
father’s curse. Gi-en-gwa-tah will listen to Catharine Montour’s child
when she tells him all the sweet words which her mother left behind.
Gather up the dried fruit and corn in your wigwams, and follow me to the
great-waters, where the tribe are planting young trees and building new
lodges.”
The Indians arose in dead silence and filed away. As they gathered the
scant provisions from their wigwams, the death-chant was hushed, but
when they struck into file again, and Tahmeroo placed herself at their
head, it broke forth once more, and went moaning down the banks of the
lake, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, till a sob of wind carried
the last sound away.
THE END
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in
spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.