The Old Dominion

by Mary Johnston

  *CHAPTER XXIX*

  *THE BRIDGE OF ROCK*

  For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the traillay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes couldread it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways--no sign to showthat man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of theworld--but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times theylost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had ledthem westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westwardagain. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabinof a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village ofone of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world ofthe white man was far behind them, so far that it might have beenanother planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were fewand far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannockdid not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth,but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were metby the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging where slimbrown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts andbroiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling atthe color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture.Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole ofsome fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, likeshadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles ofthe forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them intheir sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped intothe next stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance,then emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they hadcovered their trail. Sometimes they struggled for hours through covertsof wild grape, thick with fruit: sometimes they walked for miles downendless colonnades of pine trees, where the needle-strewn ground waslike ice for slipperiness, and the blue sky gleamed faintly through thefar away tree tops. The wind in the pines rose and fell in long,measured cadences. It made the only sound there, for the birds forgotto sing and the insect world kept silence in those vast and sombrecathedrals.

  On the afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bankof a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide oflimestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in thelast few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart whichseemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it wasas though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at handthey fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbrokengreen. In front the river made a sudden turn and was lost to sight,disappearing through a frowning gateway of gray cliffs as completely asthough it had plunged into the bowels of the earth.... Landless satdown on the bank of the stream above the fall and, chin in hand, gazedat the mountain-piled horizon. The Indian, leaning against a greatsycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively.

  "My brother is tired," he said at last.

  Landless shook his head. The Susquehannock paused, still with his eyesupon the other's face, and then went on, "We have searched and havefound nothing. There have been five suns since the great rains blottedout the trail. My brother has done very much. Let him say so and wewill go back to the falls of the far west and thence to the northward,to the pleasant river, to Monakatocka's people, to the graves of hisfathers. And my brother will be welcome to the Conestogas, and he shallbe made one of them, and become a great warrior, and both he andMonakatocka will forget the evil days when they were slaves--until theymeet a paleface from the great water. My brother has but to speak."

  "If these hills in front of us," said Landless with gloomy emphasis,"were higher than the Alps, I would climb them. If behind them therewere another range, and then another, and another, if we looked upon thenearest wave of an ocean of mountains, I would climb them all. If theyare before us, sooner or later I shall find them. But not to know thatthey are before us! To know that they may be to the north of us, may beto the south of us! that we may even have passed them! it is maddening!"

  "We have not passed them," said his companion slowly, "for--" he stoppedabruptly, broke off a bough from a sumach bush beside him, and fallingon his knees, leaned far out over the stream. There were many tinycascades in the brook with little eddies below them where sticks andleaves circled gaily around before they were drawn on to the nextminiature fall, and into one of these eddies the Indian plunged thebough. The next moment he drew it carefully towards him, somethingwhite clinging to one of its twigs. It proved to be a fragment oflace--not more than an inch or two--and it might have been torn from awoman's kerchief. Landless's hand closed over it convulsively.

  "It came down the stream!" he cried.

  The other nodded. "Monakatocka saw it slip over that fall. It has notbeen in the water long."

  "Then--my God!--they are close at hand! They are up this stream!"

  The Indian nodded again with a look of satisfaction upon his bronzefeatures. Landless raised his eyes to the cloudless blue, and his lipsmoved. Then, without a word he turned his face up the mountain stream,and the Indian followed him.

  For an hour they crept warily onward, following the stream in itscapricious wanderings. A broken trailer of grapevine, a pine cone thathad been crushed under foot, the print of a moccasin on a bit of muddyground told them that they had indeed recovered the long lost trail.They moved silently, sometimes creeping on hands and knees through thelong grass where the bank was barren of bushes, sometimes glidingswiftly through a friendly covert of alder or sumach. The hills closedin upon them, and became more precipitous. The stream made anotherbend, and they were in a ravine where the water flowed over a rocky bedbetween banks too steep to afford them secure foothold. TheSusquehannock swung himself down into the shallow water, and motioned tohis companion to do likewise. "Monakatocka smells fire," he whispered.

  A moment later they rounded an overhanging, fern-clad rock, and camefull upon that at which Landless stared with a sharp intake of hisbreath, and which even his impassive guide greeted with a long-drawn"Ugh!" of amazement.

  Towards them brawled the impetuous stream through a wonderful gorge.The precipitous hillsides, clothed with a stately growth of oak andchestnut, changed suddenly into a sheer and awful mass of rock. Oneither side of the stream towered up the mighty walls until, two hundredfeet above the water, they swept together, spanning the chasm with amajestic arch. Great trees crowned it; trailers of grape and clematismade the span one emerald; below, through the vast opening, shone theevening sky with little, rosy clouds floating across it. A bird,flashing downwards from the far-off trees, showed black against thecarnation of the heavens.

  The Indian uttered another "Ugh!" then stole forward a pace or two,stood still, and waited for the other to come up. "My brother sees," hesaid simply.

  From a covert of arbor-vitae they looked directly up the creek andthrough the archway. Beneath it, and for a few yards on the hitherside, the water flowed in a narrower channel, leaving a little strip ofboulder-strewn shore. With a leap of his heart Landless saw, risingfrom this shore, the blue smoke of a newly kindled fire, and squattingabout it, or flitting from place to place, a dozen or more dark figures.At a little distance from the fire, close against the wall of rock, hadbeen hastily constructed a rude shed or arbor. As he gazed at thisfrail shelter, he saw the flutter of a white gown pass the opening whichserved as door.

  "Night soon," said Monakatocka at his ear. "Then will my brother seeone Iroquois cheat all these Algonquin dogs."

  They drew further back into the dense shade of the overhanging boughs.A large flat boulder afforded them a secure resting-place, and drawingtheir feet from the stream, the two curled themselves up side by sideupon its friendly surface. The Indian took some slices of venison fromhis wallet, and they made a slender meal, then set themselves patientlyto await the night and the time for action. The tiny encampment washidden fro
m them by the thick boughs, but through the screen ofdelicate, aromatic leaves they could see the bridge of rock. Aroundthem was the stir and murmur of the summer afternoon--the wind in thetrees, the whir of insects, the song of birds, the babble of thewater--but far above, where the great arch cut the sky, the world seemedasleep. The trees dreamed, resting against the crimson and gold of theheavens. The Indian's appreciation of the wonders of nature waslimited--with a grunted, "All safe: wake before moonrise," he turnedupon his side, and was asleep.

  His Anglo-Saxon neighbor watched the pensive beauty of the evening witha softened heart. The glory behind the tremendous rock faded, givingplace to tender tints of pearl and amethyst. Above the distant treetops swam the evening star. In the half light the shadowy forest oneither hand blended with the great bridge carved by some mysteriousforce from the everlasting hills. Together they made a mountain ofdarkness pierced by a titanic gateway through which one looked intoheavenly spaces. The chant of the wind swelled louder. It was like themoan of distant breakers. The night fell, and the stars came out one byone until the blue vault was thickly studded. Up and down the sides ofthe ravine flickered millions of fireflies. Their restless glimmerwearied the eyes. Landless raised his to the one star, large, calm andbeautiful, and prayed, then thought of all that star shone upon thatnight--most of the white town of his boyhood, lying fair and still likea dream town, above a measureless, slumberous sea. A great calm wasupon him. Toil and danger were past; passionate hope and settleddespair were past. That he would do what he had come this journey todo, he now had no doubt,--would not have doubted had there been encampedbetween him and the frail shed built against the rock all the Indiansthis side of the South Sea.

  The stars that shone through the great archway slowly paled, the streambecame dull silver, and down the towering darkness on either hand fell asoft and tremulous light like a veil of white gauze. Landless put outhis hand to waken the sleeping Indian, and touched bare rock. A momentlater the branches before him parted. He had heard no sound, but there,within three feet of him, were the high features and the bold eyes ofthe Susquehannock.

  "Monakatocka has been to the great rock," he said in a guttural whisper."The Algonquin dogs sleep sound, for they do not know that a Conestogais on their trail. They have camped beneath the rock three days, andthey will move on the morrow. They have built a shed for the maidenagainst the rock. About it lie the Ricahecrians, the moccasins of onetouching the scalp lock of another. They keep no watch, hut they havescattered dried twigs over all the ground. Tread on them, and the god ofthe Algonquins will make them speak very loud. But a Conestoga iscunning. Monakatocka has found a way."

  "Then let us go," said Landless, rising.

  As they crept from out their leafy covert, the moon appeared over thetree-tops far above them, flooding the glen with light, and making arestless shimmer of diamonds of the rushing brook. The two men movedwarily up the stream, setting their feet with care upon the slipperystones. Once Landless stumbled, but caught at a huge boulder, and savedhimself from falling, sending, however, a stone splashing down into thewater. They drew themselves up within the shadow of the rock, andlistened with straining ears, but there came no answering sound save thecry of a whip-poor-will, and they went on their way. When they werewithin a hundred feet of the encampment, the Indian left the stream,crossed the strip of earth between it and the cliff, and pointed to abroken and uneven line that ran at a height of some five feet from theground along the face of the cliff. Landless looked and saw a verynarrow ledge, a mere projection here and there of jagged and brokenrock, a pathway perilous and difficult as might well be imagined. Sonarrow and insignificant it looked, such a mere seam along the vastwall, that a white man passing through the ravine might never havenoticed it.

  "It is our path," said the Susquehannock. "It leads above the heads ofthese dogs and their crackling twigs, straight to where lies themaiden."

  Without a word Landless caught at the stem of a cedar projecting from afissure in the rock, and swung himself up to the cleft. The Indianfollowed, and with silence and caution they commenced their dangerousjourney. Landless was no novice at such work. When a boy, he had oftenrounded the face of frowning white cliffs with the sea breaking inthunder a hundred feet below. Then a bird's nest had been the prize ofhigh daring, death the penalty of dizziness or a misstep. Now, althoughnot two yards below him was the solid earth, a misstep would send himcrashing down to a more fearful doom--but the prize! A light was in hiseyes as he crept nearer and nearer to the shed built against the rock.

  They passed the smouldering embers of a large fire, and came full uponthe circle of sleeping Indians. They lay in the moonlight like fallenstatues, their bronze limbs motionless, their high, stern featuresimpassive as death. From their belts came the glint of tomahawk andscalping knife, and beside each warrior lay his bow and quiver ofarrows. Only one man had a gun. It lay in the hollow of his arm, itsbarrel making a gleaming line against his dark skin. The skin was notso dark as was that of the other recumbent figures, and the face, flungback and pillowed on the arm, was not the face of an Indian. It wasLuiz Sebastian. He lay somewhat nearer to the shed than did theRicahecrians, and directly in front of the doorway; as Landless pausedabove him, he turned and laughed in his sleep.

  Slowly and cautiously Landless swung himself down from the ledge, hismoccasined feet touching ground that was clear of pebbles and beyond theline of twigs. He glanced back to see the gigantic figure of theSusquehannock, standing upright against the rock, knife in hand, andwatchful eyes roving from one to the other of the sleeping warriors,then stepped lightly across the body of the mulatto, and entered thehut.

  Within it the darkness was gross. Pausing a moment to accustom his eyesto the blackness, there came to him from without the hoot of an owl. Itwas the signal agreed upon between him and his companion, and he wheeledto face the danger it announced.

  The lithe, yellow figure that had lain in front of the doorway hadwaked. As Landless gazed, it rose to its knees, then with a quick,cat-like grace to its feet, stretched itself, cast a listening lookaround the sleeping circle, and laid its gun softly down, then with anoiseless step and a smile upon its evil face, it, too entered the hut.

  Landless waited until the mulatto was well across the threshold, andthen sprang upon him, dragging him to the ground, where he held him withhis knee against his chest. He writhed and struggled, but the white manwas the stronger, and held him down: he tried to cry out, but theother's hands were at his throat choking the life from him. Putting allhis strength into one hand, Landless felt with the other for his knife.The movement brought his face forward into the shaft of moonlight thattrembled through the opening. "You!" said the eyes of the mulatto, andhis clutching hands tore at the hand about his throat. The hand pressedcloser, and with the other Landless struck the knife into the yellowbosom. When the writhing form was quite still, he rose from his knees,and looked down upon the evil face flung back to meet the moonlight.The struggle had lasted but a minute, and had been without sound--not asleeping savage had stirred. But he now heard frightened breathingwithin the hut. By this his eyes were accustomed to the darkness, andhe made out something white niched into the corner opposite. As headvanced towards it, it started away, and would have brushed past him,but he seized it. "Madam!" he whispered. "Do not scream. It is I,Godfrey Landless."

  In the darkness he felt the rigor of terror leave the form which heheld. It swayed against him, and the head fell back across his arm. Heraised the fainting figure, and stepping across the body of the mulattoissued from the shed, to find Monakatocka standing beside the entrance,knife in hand, and watchfully regardful of the sleeping Ricahecrians.