A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE
For what I now tell I offer no excuse. I would but record what
savagery meant. Then may you who are descended from the New World
pioneers know that your lineage is from men as heroic as those
crusaders who rescued our Saviour's grave from the pagans; for
crusaders of Old World and New carried the sword of destruction in one
hand, but in the other, a cross that was light in darkness. Then may
you, my lady-fingered sentimentalist, who go to bed of a winter night
with a warming-pan and champion the rights of the savage from your soft
place among cushions, realize what a fine hero your redman was, and
realize, too, what were the powers that the white-man crushed!
For what I do not tell I offer no excuse. It is not permitted to
relate _all_ that savage warfare meant. Once I marvelled that a just
God could order his chosen people to exterminate any race. Now I
marvel that a just God hath not exterminated many races long ago.
We reached the crest of a swelling upland as the first sun-rays came
through the frost mist in shafts of fire. A quick halt was called.
One white-garbed scout went crawling stealthily down the snow-slope
like a mountain-cat. Then the frost thinned to the rising sun and
vague outlines of tepee lodges could be descried in the clouded valley.
An arrow whistled through the air glancing into snow with a soft
whirr at our feet. It was the signal. As with one thought, the
warriors charged down the hill, leaping from side to side in a
frenzy, dancing in a madness of slaughter, shrieking their long,
shrill--"Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!"--yelping, howling, screaming their
war-cry--"Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!"--like demons incarnate. The
medicine-man had stripped himself naked and was tossing his arms with
maniacal fury, leaping up and down, yelling the war-cry, beating the
tom-tom, rattling the death-gourd. Some of the warriors went down on
hands and feet, sidling forward through the mist like the stealthy
beasts of prey that they were.
Godefroy, Jack Battle, and I were carried before the charge helpless as
leaves in a hurricane. All slid down the hillside to the bottom of a
ravine. With the long bound of a tiger-spring, Le Borgne plunged
through the frost cloud.
The lodges of the victims were about us. We had evidently come upon
the tribe when all were asleep.
Then that dark under-world of which men dream in wild delirium became
reality. Pandemonium broke its bounds.
* * * * * *
And had I once thought that Eli Kirke's fanatic faith painted too lurid
a hell? God knows if the realm of darkness be half as hideous as the
deeds of this life, 'tis blacker than prophet may portray.
Day or night, after fifty years, do I close my eyes to shut the memory
out! But the shafts are still hurtling through the gray gloom. Arrows
rip against the skin shields. Running fugitives fall pierced. Men
rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded
against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and
scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet
of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the
mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed,
helpless and living victims are thrown aside to await slow death.
Children are torn from their mothers' arms--but there--memory revolts
and the pen fails!
It was in vain for us to flee. Turn where we would, pursued and
pursuer were there.
"Don't flinch! Don't flinch!" Godefroy kept shouting. "They'll take
it for fear! They'll kill you by torture!"
Almost on the words a bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl
stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings,
and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was
wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round
Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes
as would have moved stone.
"Don't touch her! Don't touch her! Don't touch her!" screamed
Godefroy, jerking to pull Jack free. "It will do no good! Don't help
her! They'll kill you both--"
"Great God!" sobbed Jack, with shivering horror, "I can't help helping
her--"
But there leaped from the mist a figure with uplifted spear.
May God forgive it, but I struck that man dead!
It was a bootless sacrifice at the risk of three lives. But so was
Christ's a bootless sacrifice at the time, if you measure deeds by
gain. And so has every sacrifice worthy of the name been a bootless
sacrifice, if you stop to weigh life in a goldsmith's scale!
Justice is blind; but praise be to God, so is mercy!
And, indeed, I have but quoted our Lord and Saviour, not as an example,
but as a precedent. For the act I merited no credit. Like Jack, I
could not have helped helping her. The act was out before the thought.
Then we were back to back fighting a horde of demons.
Godefroy fought cursing our souls to all eternity for embroiling him in
peril. Jack Battle fought mumbling feverishly, deliriously,
unconscious of how he shot or what he said--"Might as well die here as
elsewhere! Might as well die here as elsewhere! Damn that Indian!
Give it to him, Ramsay! You shoot while I prime! Might as well die
here as elsewhere----"
And all fought resolute to die hard, when, where, or how the dying came!
To that desperate game there was but one possible end. It is only in
story-books writ for sentimental maids that the good who are weak
defeat the wicked who are strong. We shattered many an assailant
before the last stake was dared, but in the end they shattered my
sword-arm, which left me helpless as a hull at ebb-tide. Then
Godefroy, the craven rascal, must throw up his arms for surrender,
which gave Le Borgne opening to bring down the butt of his gun on
Jack's crown.
The poor sailor went bundling over the snow like a shot rabbit.
When the frost smoke cleared, there was such a scene as I may not
paint; for you must know that your Indian hero is not content to kill.
Like the ghoul, he must mutilate. Of all the Indian band attacked by
our forces, not one escaped except the girl, whose form I could descry
nowhere on the stained snow.
Jack Battle presently regained his senses and staggered up to have his
arms thonged behind his back. The thongs on my arms they tightened
with a stick through the loop to extort cry of pain as the sinew cut
into the shattered wrist. An the smile had cost my last breath, I
would have defied their tortures with a laugh. They got no cry from
me. Godefroy, the trader, cursed us in one breath and in the next
threatened that the Indians would keep us for torture.
"You are the only man who can speak their language," I retorted. "Stop
whimpering and warn these brutes what Radisson will do if they harm us!
He will neither take their furs nor give them muskets! He will arm
their enemies to destroy them! Tell them that!"
But as well talk to tigers. Le Borgne alone listened, his foxy glance
fastened on my face with a strange, watchful look, neither hostile nor
friendly. To Godefroy's threats the Indian answered that "white-man
talk--not true--of all," pointing to Jack Battle, "him no friend great
white chief--him captive----"
Then Godefroy burst out with the unworthiest answer that ever passed
man's lips.
"Of course he's a captive," screamed the trader, "then take him and
torture him and let us go! 'Twas him stopped the Indian getting the
girl!"
"Le Borgne," I cut in sharply, "Le Borgne, it was I who stopped the
Indian killing the girl! You need not torture the little white-man.
He is a good man. He is the friend of the great white chief."
But Le Borgne showed no interest. While the others stripped the dead
and wreaked their ghoulish work, Le Borgne gathered up the furs of the
Little Sticks and with two or three young men stole away over the crest
of the hill.
Then the hostiles left the dead and the half-dead for the wolves.
Prodded forward by lance-thrusts, we began the weary march back to the
lodges. The sun sank on the snowy wastes red as a shield of blood; and
with the early dusk of the northern night purpling the shadowy fields
in mist came a south wind that filled the desolate silence with
restless waitings as of lament for eternal wrong, moaning and sighing
and rustling past like invisible spirits that find no peace.
Some of the Indians laid hands to thin lips with a low "Hs-s-h," and
the whole band quickened pace. Before twilight had deepened to the
dark that precedes the silver glow of the moon and stars and northern
lights, we were back where Le Borgne had killed the old man. The very
snow had been picked clean, and through the purple gloom far back
prowled vague forms.
Jack Battle and I looked at each other, but the Indian fellow, who was
our guard, emitted a harsh, rasping laugh. As for Godefroy, he was
marching abreast of the braves gabbling a mumble-jumble of pleadings
and threats, which, I know very well, ignored poor Jack. Godefroy
would make a scapegoat of the weak to save his own neck, and small good
his cowardice did him!
The moon was high in mid-heaven flooding a white world when we reached
the lodges. We three were placed under guards, while the warriors
feasted their triumph and danced the scalp-dance to drive away the
spirits of the dead. To beat of tom-tom and shriek of gourd-rattles,
the whole terrible scene was re-enacted. Stripping himself naked, but
for his moccasins, the old wizard pranced up and down like a fiend in
the midst of the circling dancers. Flaming torches smoked from poles
in front of the lodges, or were waved and tossed by the braves.
Flaunting fresh scalps from lance-heads, with tomahawk in the other
hand, each warrior went through all the fiendish moves and feints of
attack--prowling on knees, uttering the yelping, wolfish yells,
crouching for the leap, springing through mid-air, brandishing the
battle-axe, stamping upon the imaginary prostrate foe, stooping with a
glint of the scalping knife, then up, with a shout of triumph and the
scalp waving from the lance, all in time to the dull thum--thum--thum
of the tom-tom and the screaming chant of the wizard. Still the south
wind moaned about the lodges; and the dancers shouted the louder to
drown those ghost-cries of the dead. Faster and faster beat the drum.
Swifter and swifter darted the braves, hacking their own flesh in a
frenzy of fear till their shrieks out-screamed the wind.
Then the spirits were deemed appeased.
The mad orgy of horrors was over, but the dancers were too exhausted
for the torture of prisoners. The older men came to the lodge where we
were guarded and Godefroy again began his importunings.
Setting Jack Battle aside, they bade the trader and me come out.
"Better one be tortured than three," heartlessly muttered Godefroy to
Jack. "Now they'll set us free for fear of M. Radisson, and we'll come
back for you."
But Godefroy had miscalculated the effects of his threats. At the door
stood a score of warriors who had not been to the massacre. If we
hoped to escape torture the wizard bade us follow these men. They led
us away with a sinister silence. When we reached the crest of the
hill, half-way between the lodges and the massacre, Godefroy took
alarm. This was not the direction of our fort. The trader shouted out
that M. Radisson would punish them well if they did us harm. At that
one of the taciturn fellows turned. They would take care to do us no
harm, he said, with an evil laugh. On the ridge of the hill they
paused, as if seeking a mark. Two spindly wind-stripped trees stood
straight as mast-poles above the snow. The leader went forward to
examine the bark for Indian signal, motioning Godefroy and me closer as
he examined the trees.
With the whistle of a whip-lash through air the thongs were about us,
round and round ankle, neck, and arms, binding us fast. Godefroy
shouted out a blasphemous oath and struggled till the deer sinew cut
his buckskin. I had only succeeded in wheeling to face our treacherous
tormentors when the strands tightened. In the struggle the trader had
somehow got his face to the bark. The coils circled round him. The
thongs drew close. The Indians stood back. They had done what they
came to do. They would not harm us, they taunted, pointing to the
frost-silvered valley, where lay the dead of their morning crime.
Then with harsh gibes, the warriors ran down the hillside, leaving us
bound.