back and forth before the little wigwam. I could see his face at the
turn where the firelight fell upon him; 'twas the face of a villain at
his worst, namely, a villain half in liquor. There was a lurking devil
of passion peering out of the sensuous eyes; and ever and anon he
stopped as if to listen for some sound within the captives' lodge.
When the lieutenant returned to make his report, he was given another
order to cap the first.
"Your line is too close-drawn and too conspicuous," said the captain,
shortly. "Move the men out fifty paces in advance, and bid them take
cover."
"They will scarce be within hail of each other at that," says the
lieutenant.
"Near enough, with ten gold pieces to sharpen their eyesight. Go you
with them and hold them to their work."
The line was presently extended as the order ran, each link in the
cordon chain advancing fifty paces on its front into the forest. Dick
fetched a deep sigh of relief; and I thought less of the thin-leafed
cover and the scarlet coat of me.
Falconnet had resumed the pacing of his sentry beat before the lodge,
but when his men were out of sight and hearing he stopped short and
stole on tiptoe to lay his ear to the flap.
"So, you are awake, Mistress Margery? Send your woman out. I would speak
with you--alone."
There was no reply, but we could both hear the low anguished voice of
our dear lady praying for help in this her hour of trial. Dick inched
aside to give me room, freeing his weapon, as I did mine. We were not
over-quiet about it, but the captain of horse was too hot upon his own
devil's business to look behind him.
Having no answer from within, he stooped to loose the flap. It was
pegged down on the inside. He rose and whipped out his sword; the
firelight fell upon his face again and we saw it as it had been the face
of a foul fiend from the pit.
"Open!" he commanded; and when there was neither reply nor obedience, he
cut the flap free with his sword and flung it back.
The two women within the wigwam were on their knees before a little
crucifix hanging on the lodge wall. So much we saw as we broke cover and
ran in upon the despoiler. Then the battle-madness came upon us and I,
for one, saw naught but the tense-drawn face of a swordsman fighting for
his life--a face in which the hot flush of evil passion had given place
to the ashen graying of fear.
We drove at him together, Dick and I, and so must needs fall afoul of
each other clumsily, giving him time to spring back and so to miss the
claymore stroke which else would have shorn him to the middle. Then
ensued as pretty a bit of blade work as any master of the old
cut-and-thrust school could wish to see; and through it all this king's
captain of horse seemed to bear a charmed life.
There was no punctilio of the code of honor in this duel _à outrance_.
Knowing our time was short, we fought as men who fight with halters
round their necks; not to decide a nice point at issue, but to kill this
accursed villain as we would kill a mad dog or a venomous reptile whose
living on imperiled the life and honor of the woman we loved.
Thrice, whilst I held him in play, Dick rushed in to end it with a
scythe-sweep of the broadsword; and thrice the Scottish death was turned
aside by the flashing circle of steel wherewith the man striving
shrewdly to gain time made shift to shield himself.
Yet it was not in flesh and blood to fend the double onslaught for more
than some brief minute or two. Play as he would--and no
_schlägermeister_, of my old field-marshal's picked troop could best him
at this game of parry and defense--he must give ground step by step;
slowly at the pressing of the Ferara, and in quick backward leaps when
the great broadsword bit at him.
For the first few bouts he withstood us in grim silence. But now Richard
cut in again and the claymore stroke, less skilfully turned aside,
brought him to his knees. This broke his bull courage somewhat, and
though he was afoot and on guard before my point could reach him, he
began to bellow lustily for help.
As you would suppose, the call was all unneeded. At the first clash of
steel the outlying troopers were up and swarming to the rescue; and now
on all sides came the trampling rush of the in-closing cordon line.
Had Falconnet held his ground a moment longer he would have had us fast
in the jaws of the trooper-trap; but 'tis the fatal flaw in mere brute
courage that it will break at the pinch. No sooner did the volunteer
captain catch a glimpse of his up-coming reinforcements than he must
needs show us a clean pair of heels, running like a craven coward and
shouting madly to his men to close with us and cut us down.
"After him!" roared Dick, who was by now as rage-mad as any berserker;
and with a cut and thrust to right and left for the nipping trap-jaws we
were out and away in chase.
Now you may mark this as you will; that whilst the devil hath need of
his bond-servant he will come between with a miracle if need be to keep
the villain breath of life in his vassal. Three bounds beyond the
closing trap-jaws fetched us, pursued and pursuers, to the open camp
field; and here the devil's miracle was wrought. Out of the forest
fringe, out of the skirting of undergrowth, out of the very earth, as it
seemed, uprose a yelling mob of Cherokees--the detachment we had met in
the cavern returned in the very nick of time to cut us off from the
pursuit and to ring us in a whooping circle of death.
"Back to back, lad!" I shouted; and 'twas thus we met their onslaught.
In such a fray as that which followed 'tis the trivial things that leave
their mark upon the memory. For one, I recall the curious thrill of
master-might it gave me to feel the play of Jennifer's great shoulder
muscles against my back in his plying of the heavy claymore. For
another, I remember the sickening qualm I had when the warm blood of my
second--or mayhap 'twas the third--gushed out upon my sword hand, and I
remember, too, how the impaled one, driven in upon the blade by the
pressure of his fellows behind, would lay hold of the sharp steel and
try in the death throe to withdraw it.
But after that sickening qualm I recall only this; that I could not free
the sword for another thrust, and whilst I tugged and fought for space
they dragged me down and buried me, these fierce tribesmen, piling so
thick upon me that sight and sound and breath went out together, and I
was but an atom crushed to earth beneath the human avalanche.
XXIX
IN WHICH, HAVING DANCED, WE PAY THE PIPER
Measured by the sense which takes cognizance of pauses it seemed no more
than a moment between the stamping out of breath and its gasping
recovery. But in the interval the scene had shifted from the open
savanna to a thinly set grove of oaks with the stream brawling through
the midst.
To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart
a fire, newly kindled, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of
the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering deadfalls and dry
branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges
of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other
savages were hurrying to join the wood carriers.
So far as these hasting preliminaries applied to me, their meaning was
not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage
fashion. But Richard Jennifer--what had become of him? A sound, half
sigh, half groan, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I
was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my
poor lad.
"Dick!" I cried.
He turned his head as the close-drawn thongs permitted and gave me a
smile as loving-tender as a woman's.
"Aye, Jack; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying
you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."
"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.
"In the same onset. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that
back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot," this with an inching
nod toward a row of naked bodies propped sitting against a fallen tree;
nine of them in all, one with its severed head between its knees, and
three others showing the gaping hacks and hewings of the great
broadsword.
"They've fetched them here to see us burn," he went on. "But by the
gods, we have the warrant of two good blades and Ephraim Yeates's
hunting-knife that the only fires they'll ever see are those of hell."
"Yeates?" I queried. "Then they have taken him and the Catawba, as
well?"
"Not alive, you may be sure, else we should have them for company. But
it has a black look for our friends that the flying column we met in the
stream-cave came back so soon. Moreover, the bodies of the three
peace-pipe smokers were found and brought in; that will be the Great
Bear holding his head in his hands at the end of yonder bloody
masquerade."
"I guessed as much. God rest our poor comrades!"
"Aye; and God help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we
have signed her death warrant with our bunglings."
"If it were only death!" I groaned.
"'Tis just that, Jack," said he; "no better, mayhap, but no worse. When
we were downed by that screeching mob, she was out and on her knees to
Falconnet, beseeching him to spare us. He put her off smoothly at first,
saying 'twas the Indians' affair--that they would not be balked of their
vengeance by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more
piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as
swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour
she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English
gentleman."
"Well?" said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.
"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she
had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have
spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said.
'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'"
"And then?"
"Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble of
redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the
block."
"She will do it, think you?" I queried, fearful lest she would, but more
fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.
"Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr blood in her
on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And God
nerve her to it, say I."
I said "Amen" to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as
condemned men on the gallows the busy preparations for our taking off.
Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me
most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against
the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures
of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening corpses now,
some erect, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their
bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.
I know not why these poor relics of mortality should have held me
fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista to
where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly
upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering
the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me
irresistibly, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review
again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural postures, and the
circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom
Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.
While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were
strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle
to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have
put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.
"'Tis the death song for the slain," said Richard; and while it lasted,
this moving tableau of naked figures, keeping time in a weird stamping
dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us
spellbound.
But we were not long suffered to be mere curious onlookers. In its
dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill hubbub, and the
dancers turned as one man to face us.
I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a
horrid glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of
blood bent upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone
before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet,
as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.
The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound
us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst
the Indian youth was slashing at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.
"'Tis the knife and hatchet play; they are loosing us to give us
freedom to shrink and dodge. Look straight before you and never flinch a
hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!"
"Trust me," said I. "We must eke it out as long as we can, if only to
give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name
us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough."
The lad ran back, and a warrior stood out, juggling his tomahawk in air.
He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at
me.
That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the
others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I
would think, to split my skull. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh
masterful enough to override the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to
hold fast, and in mid flight the twirling ax veered aside to miss me by
a hair's-breadth, gashing the tree at my ear when it struck.
"Bravo! well met!" cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: "Here
comes mine."
As he spoke, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull
crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark--I could
not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting laugh gave me
leave to breathe again.
The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood
out quickly one after another and for a little space the air was full of
hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous skill
of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the
victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the
thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales
with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians
of ours threw well and skilfully; 'tis a part of the only trade they
know--the trade of war--to send a weapon true to the mark. None the
less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the
cloth of sleeve or body covering--and the flesh beneath it, as well.
Dick had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running
fire of taunts and gibing flings at the marksmen, I could hear the
gritting oaths aside when they pinked him.
Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet,
sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the
helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs of
death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll on fortitude than
did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing erect. 'Tis no
figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a
kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the
agony of it.
Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the
crueler refinements of these ante-burning torments; the flaying alive by
inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the
flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught of this;
and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn
us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the
wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or
four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.
'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage
as these barbarians go, thrust a bit of paper into my hand, and gave me
time to glance its message out by the light of the fire. 'Twas a line
from Margery; and this is what she said:
_Dear Heart:
Though you must needs believe my love is pledged to your good
friend and mine, 'tis yours, and yours alone, my lion-hearted
one. I am praying the good God to give you dying grace, and me
the courage to follow you quickly. Margery.
This by the hand of Tallachama._
For one brief instant a wave of joy caught and flung me upon its highest
crest, and all these savage tormentors could do to me became as naught.
Then the true meaning of this her brave _Ave atque vale_ smote me like a
space-flung meteor, and the joy-wave became an ocean of despair to
engulf me in its blackest depths. The letter was never meant for me;
'twas for Richard Jennifer, who, as she would think, must know the
story of her marriage to his friend and must believe her love went with
the giving of her hand. And she named him Lion-Heart because he was
brave, and true, and strong, like that first English Richard of the
kingly line.
I thrust the message back upon the bearer of it, begging him in dumb
show to give it quickly to my companion. I knew not at the time if he
did it, being so crushed and blinded by this fresh misery. But when the
Indians drew off to ring us in a chanting circle for the final act, I
would not let the lad see my face for fear he might fathom the
heart-break in me and know the cause of it.
'Twas at this crisis, when all was ready and one had run to fetch the
fire, that I heard a smothered oath from Dick and saw the Indian who was
coming up to fire the wood heaps drop his brand and tread upon it.
"Ecod!" said a voice, courtier-like and smoothly modulated. "'Tis most
devilish lucky I came, Captain Ireton. Another moment and they would
have grilled you in the king's uniform--a rank treason, to say naught of
poor Jack Warden left without a clout to cover him."
It needed not the glance aside to name mine enemy. But I would not
pleasure him with an answer. Neither would Richard Jennifer. He stood
silent for a little space, smiling and nursing his chin in one hand, as
his habit was. Then he spoke again.
"I came to bid you God-speed, gentlemen. You tumbled bravely into my
little trap. I made no doubt you'd follow where the lady led, and so you
did. But you'll turn back from this, I do assure you, if there be any
virtue in an Indian barbecue."
At this Richard could hold in no longer.
"Curse you!" he gritted. "Do you mean that you kidnapped Mistress Stair
to draw us out of hiding?"
"Truly," said this arch-fiend, smiling again. "Most unluckily for you,
you both stood in my way,--you see I am speaking of it now as a thing
past,--and I chanced upon this thought of killing two birds with the one
stone; nay, three, I should say, if you count the lady in."
"Have done!" choked Richard, in a voice thick with impotent rage. "Give
place, you hound, and let your savages to their work!"
"At your pleasure, Mr. Jennifer. I have no fancy for funeral baked
meats, hot or cold, though they be made, as now, to furnish forth a
marriage supper. I bid you good night, gentlemen. I'll go and make that
call upon the lady which you were so rude as to interrupt a little while
ago." And with that he turned his back upon us and strode away,
forgetting to tell his redskinned myrmidons to strip me of that king's
uniform he was so loath to have me burned in.
The Cherokees waited till the master-executioner was out of sight among
the trees. Then they set up their infernal howling again, and the
fire-lighter ran to fetch a fresh brand.
"Courage, lad! 'twill soon be over now," said I, hearing a groan from
my poor Dick.
His reply was a chattering curse, not upon Falconnet or the Indians, but
upon his malady, the tertian fever.
"Now, by all the fiends! I'm chilling again, Jack!" he gasped. "If these
cursed wood-wolves mark it, they'll set it down to woman cowardice and
that will break my heart!"
Again I bade him be of good courage, assuring him, not derisively, as it
looks when 'tis written out, that the fire would presently medicine the
chilling. In the middle of the saying the lighted brand was fetched and
thrust among our fagotings, and the upward-curling smoke wreaths made me
gasp and strangle at the finish.
For a little time after the sucking in of that first
smoke-breath--nature's anodyne for any of her poor creatures doomed to
die by fire--I saw and heard less clearly and suffered only by
anticipation. But to this day the smell of burning pine-wood is like a
sleeping potion to me; and the sleep it brings is full of dreams vaguely
troubled.
So, while the Indians danced and leaped about us, brandishing their
weapons and chanting the captives' death song, and while the blue and
yellow tongues of flame mounted from twig to twig, climbing stealthily
to flick at us like little vanishing demon whips, I saw and heard and
felt as one remote from all the torture turmoil of the moment. Through
the dimming haze of sleeping sensibility the dancing savages became as
marionettes in some cunning puppet show; and the blood stained figures
stiffening against their log took shapes less horrifying.
'Twas Dick's voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that
broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in
panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.
"One word, Jack, before we go--go to our own place. He said--he said she
would be free to--to marry him. Tell me ... O God in Heaven!"
His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of
flame, yet I must needs add to it.
"Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear
me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you'll
forgive--"
Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and
through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with
green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon
by smothering us out of hand.
With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full
to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I
called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and
his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful
grimaces of the death throe.
You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away
for very pity's sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames,
as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.
There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The
fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon's tongues of
flame from the outer edges of the fagot piles to curtain off all that
lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on
shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the
dead men's row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering
triumph.
Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now
above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames
a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze
swept through the tree-tops.
So now I would commend my soul to God, making sure that the breath He
gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to
drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind;
a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons' tongues; a pouring
flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the
dulled senses once more keenly alert.
With the wind came the rain, a passing summer-night's shower of great
drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing
in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous
droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it,
came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the
savanna--this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain's whistle
shrilling the assembly.
While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel
and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full
cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of
the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form
burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand
plucked me out of the scorching hell-pit.