The night was even darker than before, the fire of the Wyandotts on the
square had burned so low as no longer to send even a ray to the hut of
Wenonga, and the wind, though subsiding, still kept up a sufficient din
to drown the ordinary sound of footsteps. Under such favourable
circumstances, Nathan (for, as may be supposed, it was this faithful
friend who had snatched the forlorn Edith from the grasp of the betrayer)
stalked boldly from the hut, bearing the rescued maiden in his arms, and
little doubting that, having thus so successfully accomplished the first
and greatest step in the enterprise, he could now conclude it in safety,
if not with ease.
But there were perils yet to be encountered, which the man of peace had
not taken into anticipation, and which, indeed, would not have existed,
had his foreboding doubts of the propriety of admitting either of his
associates, and honest Stackpole especially, to a share of the exploit,
been suffered to influence his counsels to the exclusion of that worthy
but unlucky personage altogether. He had scarce stepped from the
tent-door before there arose on the sudden, and at no great distance from
the square over which he was hurrying his precious burden, a horrible
din,--a stamping, snorting, galloping and neighing of horses, as if a
dozen famished bears or wolves had suddenly made their way into the
Indian pinfold, carrying death and distraction into the whole herd. And
this alarming omen was almost instantly followed by an increase of all
the uproar, as if the animals had broken loose from the pound, and were
rushing, mad with terror, towards the centre of the village.
At the first outbreak of the tumult, Nathan had dropped immediately into
the bushes before the wigwam; but perceiving that the sounds increased,
and were actually drawing nigh, and that the sleepers were waking on the
square, he sprang again to his feet, and, flinging his blanket around
Edith, who was yet incapable of aiding herself, resolved to make a bold
effort to escape, while darkness and the confusion of the enemy
permitted. There was, in truth, not a moment to be lost. The slumbers of
the barbarians, proverbially light at all times, and readily broken even
when the stupor of intoxication has steeped their faculties, were not
proof against sounds at once so unusual and so uproarious. A sudden yell
of surprise, bursting from one point, was echoed by another, and another
voice; and, in a moment, the square resounded with these signals of
alarm, added to the wilder screams which some of them set up, of
"Long-knives! Long-knives!" as if the savages supposed themselves
suddenly beset by a whole army of charging Kentuckians.
It was at this moment of dismay and confusion, that Nathan rose from the
earth, and, all other paths being now cut off, darted across a corner of
the square towards the river, which was in a quarter opposite to that
whence the sounds came, in hopes to reach the alder-thicket on its banks,
before being observed. And this, perhaps, he would have succeeded in
reaching, had not Fortune, which seemed this night to give a loose to all
her fickleness, prepared a new and greater difficulty.
As he rose from the bushes, some savage, possessed of greater presence of
mind than his fellows, cast a decaying brand from the fire into the heap
of dried grass and maize-husks, designed for their couches, which,
bursting immediately into a furious flame, illuminated the whole square
and village, and revealed, as it was designed to do, the cause of the
wondrous uproar. A dozen or more horses were instantly seen galloping
into the square, followed by a larger and denser herd behind, all
agitated by terror, all plunging, rearing, prancing, and kicking, as if
possessed by a legion of evil spirits, though driven, as was made
apparent by the yells which the Indians set up on seeing him, by nothing
more than the agency of a human being.
At the first flash of the flames seizing upon the huge bed of straw, and
whirling up in the gust in a prodigious volume, Nathan gave up all for
lost, not doubting that he would be instantly seen and assailed. But the
spectacle of their horses dashing madly into the square, with the cause
of the tumult seen struggling among them, in the apparition of a white
man, sitting aloft, entangled inextricably in the thickest of the herd,
and evidently borne forward with no consent of his own, was metal more
attractive for Indian eyes; and Nathan perceived that he was not only
neglected in the confusion by all, but was likely to remain so, long
enough to enable him to put the thicket betwixt him and the danger of
discovery.
"The knave has endangered us, and to the value of the scalp on his own
foolish head;" muttered Nathan, his indignation speaking in a voice
louder than a whisper: "but, truly, he will pay the price: and, truly,
his loss is the maiden's redeeming!"
He darted forwards as he spoke; but his words had reached the ears of
one, who, cowering like himself among the weeds around Wenonga's hut, now
started suddenly forth, and displayed to his eyes the young Virginian,
who, rushing eagerly up, clasped the rescued captive in his arms,
crying,--"Forward now, for the love of Heaven! forward, forward!"
"Thee has ruined all!" cried Nathan, with bitter reproach, as Edith,
rousing from insensibility at the well known voice, opened her eyes upon
her kinsman, and, all unmindful of the place of meeting, unconscious of
everything but his presence--the presence of him whose supposed death
she had so long lamented,--sprang to his embrace with a cry of joy that
was heard over the whole square, a tone of happiness, pealing above the
rush of the winds and the uproar of men and animals. "Thee has ruined
all,--theeself and the maid! Save thee own life!"
With these words, Nathan strove to tear Edith from his grasp, to make one
more effort for her rescue; and Roland, yielding her to his superior
strength, and perceiving that a dozen Indians were running against them,
drew his tomahawk, and, with a self-devotion which marked his love, his
consciousness of error, and his heroism of character, waved Nathan away,
while he himself rushed, back upon the pursuers, not so much, however, in
the vain hope of disputing the path, as, by laying down his life on the
spot, to purchase one more hope of escape to his Edith.
The act, so unexpectedly, so audaciously bold, drew a shout of admiration
from throats which had before only uttered yells of fury: but it was
mingled with fierce laughter, as the savages, without hesitating at, or
indeed seeming at all to regard his menacing position, ran upon him in a
body, and avoiding the only blow they gave him the power to make, seized
and disarmed him,--a result that, notwithstanding his fierce and furious
struggles, was effected in less space than we have taken to describe it.
Then, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, who proceeded to
bind him securely, the others rushed after Nathan, who, though encumbered
by his burden, again inanimate, her arms clasped around his neck, as they
had been round that of her kinsman, made the most desperate exertions to
bear her off, seeming to regard her weight no more than if the burden had
been a cushion of thistle-down. He ran for a moment with astonishing
activity, leaping over bush and gully, where such crossed his path, with
such prodigious strength and suppleness of frame, as to the savages
appeared little short of miraculous; and, it is more than probable he
might have effected his escape, had he chosen to abandon the helpless
Edith. As it was, he, for a time, bade fair to make his retreat good. He
reached the low thicket that fringed the river, and one more step would
have found him in at least temporary security. But that step was never
to be taken. As he approached, two tall barbarians suddenly sprang from
the cover, where they had been taking their drunken slumbers; and,
responding with exulting whoops to the cries of the others, they leaped
forward to secure him. He turned aside, running downwards to where a
lonely wigwam, surrounded by trees, offered the concealment of its
shadow. But he turned too late; a dozen fierce wolf-like dogs, rushing
from the cabin, and emboldened by the cries of the pursuers, rushed
upon him, hanging to his skirts, and entangling his legs, rending and
tearing all the while, so that he could fly no longer. The Indians were
at his heels: their shouts were in his ears; their hands were almost
upon his shoulders. He stopped, and turning towards them with a gesture
and look of desperate defiance, and still more desperate hatred,
exclaimed,--"Here, devils! cut and hack! your time has come, and I am the
last of them!" And holding Edith at the length of his arm, he pulled open
his garment, as if to invite the death-stroke.
But his death, at least at that moment, was not sought after by the
Indians. They seized him, and, Edith being torn from his hands, dragged
him, with endless whoops, towards the fire, whither they had previously
borne the captured Roland, over whom, as over himself, they yelled their
triumph; while screams of rage from those who had clashed among the
horses after the daring white man who had been seen among them, and the
confusion that still prevailed, showed that _he_ also had fallen into
their hands.
The words of defiance which Nathan breathed at the moment of yielding,
were the last he uttered. Submitting passively to his fate, he was
dragged onwards by a dozen hands, a dozen voices around him vociferating
their surprise at his appearance even more energetically than the joy of
their triumph. His Indian habiliments and painted body evidently struck
them with astonishment, which increased as they drew nearer the fire, and
could better distinguish the extraordinary devices he had traced so
carefully on his breast and visage. Their looks of inquiry, their
questions jabbered freely in broken English as well as in their own
tongue, Nathan regarded no more than their taunts and menaces, replying
to these, as to all, only with a wild and haggard stare, which seemed to
awe several of the younger warriors, who began to exchange looks of
peculiar meaning. At last, as they drew nearer the fire, an old Indian
staggered among the group, who made way for him with a kind of respect,
as was, indeed, his due,--for he was no other than the old Black-Vulture
himself. Limping up to the prisoner, with as much ferocity as his
drunkenness would permit, he laid one hand upon his shoulder, and with
the other aimed a furious hatchet-blow at his head. The blow was arrested
by the renegade Doe, or Atkinson, who made his appearance at the same
time with Wenonga, and muttered some words in the Shawnee tongue, which
seemed meant to soothe the old man's fury.
"Me Injun-man!" said the chief, addressing his words to the prisoner, and
therefore in the prisoner's language,--"Me kill all white-man! Me
Wenonga: me drink white-mans blood! me no heart!" And to impress the
truth of his words on the prisoner's mind, he laid his right hand, from
which the axe had been removed, as well as his left, on Nathan's
shoulder, in which position supporting himself, he nodded and wagged his
head in the other's face, with as savage a look of malice as he could
infuse into his drunken features. To this the prisoner replied by bending
upon the chief a look more hideous than his own, and indeed so strangely
unnatural and revolting, with lips so retracted, features so distorted by
some nameless passion, and eyes gleaming with fires so wild and
unearthly, that even Wenonga, chief as he was, and then in no condition
to be daunted by anything, drew slowly back, removing his hands from the
prisoner's shoulder, who immediately fell down in horrible convulsions,
the foam flying from his lips, and his fingers clenching like spikes of
iron into the flesh of two Indians that had hold of him.
Taunts, questions, and whoops were heard no more among the captors, who
drew aside from their wretched prisoner, as if from the darkest of their
Manitoes, all looking on with unconcealed wonder and awe. The only
person, indeed, who seemed undismayed at the spectacle, was the renegade,
who, as Nathan shook and writhed in the fit, beheld the corner of a piece
of parchment projecting from the bosom of his shirt, and looking vastly
like that identical instrument he had seen but an hour or two before in
the hands of Braxley. Stooping down, and making as if he would have
raised the convulsed man in his arms, he drew the parchment from its
hiding-place, and, unobserved by the Indians, transferred it to a secret
place in his own garments. He then rose up, and stood like the rest,
looking upon the prisoner, until the fit had passed off, which it did in
but a few moments, Nathan starting to his feet, and looking around him in
the greatest wildness, as if, for a moment, not only unconscious of what
had befallen him, but even of his captivity.
But unconsciousness of the latter calamity was of no great duration, and
was dispelled by the old chief saying, but with looks of drunken respect,
that had succeeded his insane fury--"Me brudder great-medicine white-man!
great white-man medicine! Me Wenonga, great Injun-captain, great
kill-man-white-man, kill-all-man, man-man, squaw-man, little papoose-man!
Me make medicine-man brudder-man! Medicine-man tell Wenonga all
Jibbenainosay?--where find Jibbenainosay? How kill Jibbenainosay? kill
white-man's devil-man! Medicine-man tell Injun-man why medicine-man come
Injun town? steal Injun prisoner? steal Injun hoss? Me Wenonga,--me good
brudder medicine-man."
This gibberish, with which he seemed, besides expressing much new-born
good will, to intimate that his cause lay in the belief that the prisoner
was a great white conjuror, who could help him to a solution of sundry
interesting questions, the old chief pronounced with much solemnity and
suavity; and he betrayed an inclination to continue it, the captors of
Nathan standing by and looking on with vast and eager interest. But a
sudden and startling yell from the Indians who had charge of the young
Virginian, preceded by an exclamation from the renegade who had stolen
among them, upset the curiosity of the party,--or rather substituted a
new object for admiration, which set them all running towards the fire,
where Roland lay bound. The cause of the excitement was nothing less than
the discovery which Doe had just made, of the identity of the prisoner
with Roland Forrester, whom he had with his own hands delivered into
those of the merciless Piankeshaws, and whose escape from them and sudden
appearance in the Shawnee village were events just as wonderful to the
savages as the supposed powers of the white medicine-man, his associate.
But there was still a third prodigy to be wondered at. The third prisoner
was dragged from among the horses to the fire, where he was almost
immediately recognised by half a dozen different warriors, as the
redoubted and incorrigible horse-thief, Captain Stackpole. The wonderful
conjuror, and the wonderful young Long-knife, who was one moment a
captive in the hands of Piankeshaws on the banks of the Wabash, and, the
next, an invader of a Shawnee village in the valley of the Miami, were
both forgotten: the captain of horse-thieves was a much more wonderful
person,--or, at least, a much more important prize. His name was howled
aloud and in a moment became the theme of every tongue; and he was
instantly surrounded by every man in the village,--we may say, every
woman and child, too, for the alarm had brought the whole village into
the square; and the shrieks of triumph, the yells of unfeigned delight
with which all welcomed a prisoner so renowned and so detested, produced
an uproar ten times greater than that which gave the alarm.
It was indeed Stackpole, the zealous and unlucky slave of a mistress whom
it was his fate to injure and wrong in every attempt he made to serve
her; and who had brought himself and his associates to their present
bonds by merely toiling on the present occasion too hard in her service.
It seems,--for so he was used himself to tell the tale,--that he entered
the Indian pound with the resolution to fulfil Nathan's instructions to
the letter; and he accordingly selected four of the best animals of the
herd, which he succeeded in haltering without difficulty or noise. Had he
paused here, he might have retreated with his prizes without fear of
discovery. But the excellence of the opportunity,--the best he had ever
had in his life,--the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in
number, "the primest and beautifullest critturs," he averred, "what war
ever seed in a hoss-pound," with a notion which now suddenly beset his
grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could
"make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh," proved too
much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of
war in his own mind, he came to a resolution "to steal the lot."
This being determined upon, he imitated the example of magnanimity lately
set him by Nathan, stripped off and converted his venerable wrap-rascal
into extemporary halters, and so made sure of half a dozen more of the
best horses; with which, and the four first selected, not doubting that
the remainder of the herd would readily follow at their heels, he crept
from the fold, to make his way up the valley, and round among the hills,
to the rendezvous. But that was a direction in which, as he soon learned
to his cost, neither the horses he had in hand, nor those that were to
follow in freedom, had the slightest inclination to go; and there
immediately ensued a struggle between the stealer and the stolen, which,
in the space of a minute or less, resulted in the whole herd making a
demonstration towards the centre of the village, whither they succeeded
both in carrying themselves and the vainly resisting horse-thief, who was
borne along on the backs of those he had haltered, like a land-bird on
the bosom of a torrent, incapable alike of resisting or escaping the
flood.
In this manner he was taken in a trap of his own making, as many a better
and wiser man of the world has been, and daily is; and it was no
melioration of his distress to think he had whelmed his associates in his
ruin, and defeated the best and last hopes of his benefactress. It was
with such feelings at his heart, that he was dragged up to the fire, to
be exulted over and scolded at as long as it should seem good to his
captors. But the latter, exhausted by the day's revels, and satisfied
with their victory, so complete and so bloodless, soon gave over
tormenting him, resolving, however, that he should be soundly beaten at
the gantelope on the morrow, for the especial gratification, and in
honour, of the Wyandott party, their guests.
This resolution being made, he was, like Roland and Nathan, led away
bound, each being bestowed in a different hut, where they were committed
to safer guards than had been appointed to watch over Edith; and, in an
hour after, the village was again wrapped in repose. The last to betake
themselves to their rest were Doe, and his confederate, Braxley, the
latter of whom had been released from his disagreeable bonds, when Edith
was carried back to the tent. It was while following Doe to his cabin,
that he discovered the loss of the precious document upon the possession
of which he had built so many stratagems, and so many hopes of success.
His agitation and confusion were so great at the time of Nathan's
assault, that he was wholly unaware it had been taken from him by this
assailant; and Doe, to whom its possession opened newer and bolder
prospects, and who had already formed a design for using it to his own
advantage, effected to believe that he had dropped it on the way, and
would easily recover it on the morrow, as no Indian could possibly
attach the least value to it.
Another subject of agitation to Braxley, was the reappearance of his
rival; who, however, Doe assured him, was "now as certainly a dead man,
as if twenty bullets had been driven through his body."--"He is in the
hands of the Old Vulture," said he, grimly, "and he will burn in fire
jist as sure as _we_ will, Dick Braxley, when the devil gits us!--that
is, unless we ourselves save him!"
"We, Jack!" said the other, with a laugh: "and yet who knows how the wind
may blow _you_? But an hour ago you were as remorseful over the lad's
supposed death as you are now apparently indifferent what befalls him."
"It is true," replied Doe, coolly: "but see the difference! When the
Piankeshaws were burning him,--or when I thought the dogs were at it,--it
was a death of _my_ making for him: it was _I_ that helped him to the
stake. But here the case is altered. He comes here on his own hook; the
Injuns catch him on his own hook; and, d--n them, they'll burn him on
his own hook! and so it's no matter of my consarning. There's the root of
it!"
This explanation satisfied his suspicious ally; and having conversed a
while longer on what appeared to them most wonderful and interesting in
the singular attempt at the rescue, the two retired to their repose.