XIV
HOW THE BARONET PLAYED ROUGE-ET-NOIR
The sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for allthe furred and feathered wood-folk, when I forsook the Indian path tomake a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maplegrove.
Happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. The hunting lodgewas undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when I showed myself my poorblack vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have meback again.
Since old Darius was still at Appleby Hundred, Tomas ranked asmajordomo; and I bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry lineabout the cabin, this against the chance that Falconnet might stumble onthe place in searching for me. For I made no doubt his Tory spies wouldquickly pass the word that I was not with Abram Forney's band, and hencemust be in hiding.
When all was done I flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hopingagainst hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours ofwaiting. 'Twas a vain hope. There was never a wink of forgetfulness forme in all the long watches of the summer day, and I must lie wide-eyedand haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fatehad never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
There was no loophole of escape with honor; The heavens were brass, withall the horizons narrowed to a bounding wall to hem me in on every side.There was no sally-port in all this wall save one--the one that deathhad promised to open at the dawn. The promise had been broken. True,death had thrust the key within the lock, and I had heard the grating ofthe bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and I was left a prisonerof life.
There was no hope of other outlet. Now there was space to view itcalmly, I saw how foolish was the thought that Margery would connive atany breaking of the marriage bond. She would bear my name, and hate mefor the giving of it; would go on hating me, I thought, to all eternity;but she would never take her freedom back again, save at a dead man'shands.
It was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me inthis dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this onesally-port of death. And when it came to this; that I had searched invain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that I sat down inspirit at this postern to see if I might open it with my own hands.
It was not love of life that made me hesitate. At two-score years hewho has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond theturning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men tolinger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now istheirs.
No, it was not any love of life for life's own sake that held me back.'Twas rather that the Ireton blood is linked up with that thing we calla conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom thesuicide was a soul accurst--a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk offlesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with asharpened stake to pinion it.
'Twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight ofmy father's sword--Darius had rescued and restored it to its place uponthe chimney-breast--would set me thinking of the Israelitish king, andhow, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror ofthe suicide came to give me pause.
Besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it mightseem. As matters stood, my living for the present was Margery's bestsafeguard. Till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenarybaronet would play his cards to win her honorably. I doubted not he'dmake hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet awidow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the bettercompassing of his end.
But from this horn of the dilemma I slipped to fall upon the other. Ifmy living on as Margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was anoffering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. Whatwould he think of me? How could I go about to make it plain that I hadrobbed him for his own honor's sake?--that it was not I but fate thatwas to blame?
These questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where nobottom is. I saw the way no farther on than this; that I must gostraightway to Jennifer and tell him all. Beyond that point the darknesswas Egyptian, and I could only hope that tricky fate would turn againand blot me out, and make it plain to Richard, and to my dear lady, thatlove, and not base treachery, had set me on to do as I had done.
In some such dismal grindings of the mill of thought the hours ofwaiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to themountains in the west I rose and washed me in the brook, and afterwardconstrained myself to eat what Tomas had prepared for me.
The sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopyof leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when I made ready to begone. Because I thought I might have need of it before the night wasdone, I buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling Tomas and the otherblacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through thenight, I sallied forth upon my errand.
I've wished a thousand times, as I sit here before the fire and jotthese memories down in crabbed black on white, that I could conjure upfor you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the storymoves.
True, its hills and valleys are the same; the river keeps its course;and in the west the mountain sky-line is unchanged. But here similitudeis at an end. You've hacked the virgin forest into shapes and fringeswhere once it was an ample mantle seamed only by the rivers, and frayedhere and there at distant intervals by the settler's ax.
Beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. Plunged inits furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; themystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of thecenturies. In brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles,became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, thesolitude laid each a finger on you, bidding you go softly all the way.But in the twilight hour the real held still more aloof, and all theshadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright thealien-born.
I was not alien-born. From earliest childhood I had known and lovedthese forest solitudes. Yet now, as when I was a little lad, thetwilight shadows awed me. Here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunkso like a crouching panther that I sprang aside and had the steel halfout before the clearer vision came. There it was the figure of a mangliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace withme as if with sinister intent.
I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, thoughinwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. Whatthreat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had tofear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack ofclamor when they were beating up a cover.
Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from castingfurtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of myeye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I pickeda time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, senthome a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree.
"Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?"
The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow wasbecome incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to thebelt, standing so near he could have pricked me with his scalping knife.
It was God's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for thefriendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.
"Uncanoola?" said I.
He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?"
I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head.
"No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him _that_ way," pointing backalong the path.
"How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exilehad well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into thestately Indian hyperbole.
"Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have longeyes--see heap things."
"Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he h
as seen?"
"Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"--hethrew himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawlingsnake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and findcanoe--jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laughand shake fist this way, and say 'God-damn.'"
By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learnedof my escape and was seeking me.
"Is that all the chief saw?" I asked.
"Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tellCaptain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow."
"The white squaw?" said I. "Who is she?"
The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mereshaking of the ribs.
"No can tell that, neither, too," he said. Then, with a swift dart asidefrom the subject: "Captain Long-knife care much 'bout black dogsyonder?"
I knew he meant the negroes at the hunting lodge.
"The white man cares for the black as a kind master should," I returned.
The Indian spat upon the ground in token of his hatred and contempt forall the black skins in his fatherland. I never understood this bitterrace antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well writtenout in many a bloody massacre of that earlier day.
"The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood beforethe moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken."
I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace.
"Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool ontheir heads?" he queried.
"If need be," I asserted.
"Wah!" he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth hadswallowed him.
I lost no time in indecision. Since Jennifer was abroad, I had nobusiness at the plantations; and if Tomas and the other refugees werelike to come to harm, I could do no less than hasten back to warn orhelp them.
So I retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw nomore shadows in the ancient wood--in truth, had much ado to see thesingle step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skylessdepths.
I was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that I could hearthe murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of thetree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green andthen to red. 'Twas like the childish Africans, I said, to draw a secretsentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise itfar and wide. Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy--
A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness ofthe night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stoodand listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in itsscabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted mesorely of the breath I wanted.
The cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieuthereof, was but a niggard acre hemmed in on every side, save thattoward the river, by the virgin forest. For cover there were hollythickets here and there, and into one of these I plunged, creeping onhands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.
The scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lastingshapes upon the memory. A brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glowflaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. The openspace around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to andfro; and in the gloom beyond the fire I saw a shadowy horseman backed byothers still more phantom-like.
There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-houndIndians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, thatband of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot thepowder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.
This was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when I came tolook again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before theburning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, withthe eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay myfaithful Darius.
By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or whythey slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was hisdeath-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forestalive with ghastly echoes.
At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose myblood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out forvengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youthand less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup,and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush uponthe stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbadeit.
This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The otherblacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behindthrough fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leaveto run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells ofsavage triumph.
They flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, andthough I caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping ofthe Indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.
I could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he wouldnot tell them what they wished to know--could not, indeed, since I hadleft no word behind to track me by--was quickly evident. A cord wasfound, and while I crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helplessas one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs andswung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such amatter before the cabin door.
He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at thehand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury theIndians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest thatshould not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off thesplits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.
You may thank God, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still aspitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, wouldAnglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnessesunmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made menauseate with horror.
As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly roundand round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible tohear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight tofreeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, thecracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sicklybrown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped aplea: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! shoot po' nigga and let um die!"
This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; andlacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift totry to put him out of misery.
The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust ofblood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horseapart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was wellwithin the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled withthe night.
I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind therearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, hishorse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheelingto run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work ofhandling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting trembleto rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drewhis sword.
In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but hereagain it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought himfair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this hewould not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears uponhis shoutings.
That done, I snatched the musket that had cost the man his life, and,staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In theinterval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawedits way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongu
esbeneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough,the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze withgreen branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should notbe merciful.
I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn andmake a mark I could not miss. The pause gave space for some swiftsteadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought afierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger helda life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.
I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas,and by the laws of God and man had earned his death. The tortured slavehad little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that wouldgive him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bulletplanted in my enemy's heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leavingme free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.
All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly roundas of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, goldon red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One littlecrooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "OMassa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy--shoot po' nigga and let 'um die!"
I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king'smusket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messengerof death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.
And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and thesefierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I wassurrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and riflebullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.
The Master of Appleby Page 16