Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Until I deliver my belts — that will be to-morrow.”

  “I thought you wished to see Colonel Cresap, too?” he said.

  “I do; he will return to-day they tell me.”

  Mount leaned over the table, folding his arms under his chest.

  “Hark ye, friend Michael,” he said. “Colonel Cresap, three-quarters of the militia, and all save a score or so of 177 these villagers here are patriots. The Maryland pioneers mean to make a home here for themselves, Indians or no Indians, and it will be little use for you to plead with Colonel Cresap, who could not call off his people if he would.”

  “If he is a true patriot,” I said, “how can he deliberately drive the Six Nations to take up arms against the colonies?”

  “What you don’t understand,” replied Mount, “is that Colonel Cresap’s people hold the Indians at small account. They are here and they mean to stay here, spite of Sir William Johnson and the Cayugas.”

  “But can’t you see that it’s Dunmore’s policy to bring on a clash?” I exclaimed, in despair. “If Cresap is conciliatory towards the Cayugas, can’t you see that Dunmore will stir up such men as Butler and Greathouse to commit some act of violence? I tell you, Dunmore means to have a war started here which will forever turn the Six Nations against us.”

  “Against us?” said Mount, meaningly.

  “Yes — us!” I exclaimed. “If it be treason to oppose such a monstrous crime as that which Lord Dunmore contemplates, then I am guilty! If to be a patriot means to resist such men as Dunmore and Butler — ay, and our Governor Tryon, too, who knows what is being done and says nothing! — if to defend the land of one’s birth against the plots of these men makes me an enemy to the King, why — why, then,” I ended, violently, “I am the King’s enemy to the last blood drop in my body!”

  There was a silence. I sat there with clinched fist on the table, teeth set, realizing what I had said, glad that I had said it, grimly determined to stand by every word I had uttered.

  “Lord Dunmore represents the King,” said Mount, smiling.

  “Prove it to me and I am a rebel from this moment!” I cried.

  “But Lord Dunmore is only doing his duty,” urged Mount. “His Majesty needs allies.”

  “Do you mean to say that Lord Dunmore is provoking war here at the King’s command?” I asked, in horror.

  The young man by the chimney stood up and bent his pleasant eyes on me.

  “I have here,” he said, tapping the letter in his hand, “my Lord Dunmore’s commission as major-general of militia, and his Majesty’s permission to enlist a thousand savages to serve under me in the event of rebellion in these colonies!”

  I had risen to my feet at the sound of the stranger’s voice; Mount, too, had risen, tankard in hand.

  “I am further authorized,” said the young stranger, coolly, “by command of my Lord Dunmore, to offer £12 sterling for every rebel scalp taken by these Indian allies of his most Christian Majesty.”

  At that I went cold and fell a-trembling.

  “By God!” I stammered. “By the blood of man! — this is too much — this is too—”

  Crash! went Mount’s tankard on the table; and, turning to the young stranger with a bow, “I bring you a new recruit, Colonel Cresap,” he said, quietly; “will you administer the oath, sir?”

  Thunderstruck, I stared at the silent young man in his gray woollen hunting-shirt and cloth gaiters who stood there, grave eyes bent on me, tearing at the edge of his paper with his white teeth.

  “Pray, be seated, Mr. Cardigan,” he said, smiling. “I know you have a message for me from Sir William Johnson. I hold it an honour to receive commands from such an honourable and upright gentleman.”

  He drew up a heavy buckeye chair, motioning Mount and me to be seated; the tap-boy brought his tankard; he tasted it sparingly, and leaned back, waiting for me to speak.

  If my speech was halting or ill-considered, my astonishment at the identity of the stranger was to blame; but I spoke earnestly and without reserve, and my very inexperience must have pleaded with him, for he listened patiently and kindly, even when I told him, with some heat, that the whole land would hold him responsible for an outbreak on the frontier.

  When I had finished, he thanked me for coming, and begged me to convey his cordial gratitude to Sir William. Then he began his defence, very modestly and with frankest confession that he had been trapped by Dunmore into a pitfall, the existence of which he had never dreamed of.

  “I am to-day,” he said, “the Moses of these people, inasmuch as I have, at Lord Dunmore’s command, led them into this promised land. God knows it was the blind who led the blind. And now, for months, I have been aware that Dunmore wishes a clash with the Cayugas yonder; but, until Sir William Johnson opened my eyes, I have never understood why Lord Dunmore desired war.”

  He looked at Mount as though to ask whether that notorious forest-runner had suspected Dunmore; and Mount shook his head with a sneer.

  “He is a witless ass,” he muttered. “I see nothing in Mr. Cardigan’s fears that Dunmore means trouble here.”

  “I do,” said Cresap, calmly. “Sir William is right; we have been tricked into this forest. Why, Jack, it’s perfectly plain to me now. This very commission in my hands, here, proves the existence of every missing link in the chain of conspiracy. This commission is made out for the purpose of buying my loyalty to Dunmore. Can’t you see?”

  Mount shook his head.

  Cresap flushed faintly and turned to me.

  “What can I do, Mr. Cardigan? I have led these people here, but I cannot lead them back. Do you think they would follow me in a retreat? You do not know them. If I should argue with them every day for a year, I could not induce a single man to abandon the cabin he has built or the morsel of charred earth he has planted. And where should I lead them? I have nothing behind me to offer them. Virginia is over-populated. I have no land to give them except this, granted by the King — granted in spite of his royal oath, now broken to the Cayugas.

  “You say the whole country will hold me responsible. I cannot help that, though God must know how unjust it would be.

  “Were I to counsel the abandonment of this fort and village, Lord Dunmore would arrest me and clap me into Fort Pitt. Is it not better for me to stay here among these people who trust me? Is it not better that I remain and labour among my people in the cause of liberty?

  “I can do nothing while a royal Governor governs Virginia. But if the time ever comes when our Boston brothers 180 sound the call to arms, I can lead six hundred riflemen out of this forest, whose watchword will be, ‘Liberty or Death!’”

  He had grown pale while speaking; two bright scarlet patches flamed under his cheek-bones; he coughed painfully and rested his head on his hand.

  “Go to your Cayugas,” he said, catching his breath. “Tell them the truth, or as much of the truth as Sir William’s wisdom permits. I am here to watch, to watch such crafty agents as Greathouse, and young Walter Butler, whom I met on the Pitt trail three hours since. Oh, I understand the situation now, Mr. Cardigan.”

  He tasted his ale once more, thoughtfully.

  “Keep Sir William’s Cayugas quiet if you can,” he said. “I will watch Dunmore’s agents that they do nothing to bring on war. I may fail, but I will do what I can. When do you speak to the Cayugas with belts?”

  “At dawn,” I replied, soberly.

  “Poor devils,” said Cresap, sadly, “poor, tricked, cheated, and plundered devils! This is their land. I should never have come had not Dunmore assured me the Cayugas had been paid for the country. And there is their great sachem, Logan, called ‘The Friend of the White Man.’ Greathouse has made a drunken sot of Logan, and all his family down to the tiny maid of ten. Ay, sir, I have seen Logan’s children lying drunk in the road there by Greathouse’s tavern — poor, little babies of twelve and ten, stark-naked, lying drunk in the rain!”

  After a moment I asked why he had not expelled this fiend,
Greathouse, and he replied that he had, but that Dunmore had sent him back under his special protection.

  “What on earth can I do?” he repeated. “The Cayuga camp is rotten with whiskey. Their chiefs and sachems come to me and beg me to forbid the sale. I am powerless; for back of me stands Lord Dunmore in the shape of Greathouse. By God, sir, the man is a nightmare to me!”

  “Why not twist his gullet?” observed Mount.

  Cresap paid him no attention, and the big fellow pouted, muttering that it was a simple thing to exterminate vermin.

  As we sat there, I heard the rain drumming against the horn panes in the window. The room had grown very dark.

  Cresap rose, holding out his hand to me.

  “Shall I administer the oath of fellowship, my friend?” he asked.

  “Not yet,” I replied, taking his hand.

  “When you are ready, Mr. Cardigan,” he said, simply. “Will you lodge here? That is well; the fort is not safe. And, if I mistake not, young Butler will be here to-morrow to search for you. He begged me to have you arrested should you be in my camp.”

  “I shall be at the Cayuga castle by dawn,” I said.

  “And after that?” inquired Mount. “You are not going to leave us, are you, lad?”

  “I have my message to deliver to Sir William,” I answered, earnestly; “and,” I added, “truly, I do not believe there is anything on earth that can prevent my delivering my message, nor retard my returning and slaying this frightful enemy of mankind, Walter Butler.”

  CHAPTER XI

  The rain fell thickly until midnight, and kept me listening to the double roll of the drops along the shingles. I lay in my blanket under the roof, and slept when the rain ceased, but awoke before dawn, listening to the wind roaring around the eaves. Pale clouds, scudding low, alternately hid and revealed the purple roof of sky on which stars hung trembling like drops of dew.

  My landlord, Timothy Boyd, was already astir below, and presently he came up the ladder with a dish of porridge for me — a kindness, indeed, for I had thought to set out for the Cayuga castle on an empty stomach. He also brought me a bowl of coffee, the berries of which he said had been sent for my use by Colonel Cresap. I drank the coffee thankfully, sitting on my mattress of balsam tips. Then, by lanthorn-light, I dressed me, taking only bullet-pouch, powder-horn, and rifle, and bearing the six belts in the bosom of my shirt. I left my pack with Boyd, commending it to his care; and the rugged old man nodded placidly, bidding me rest assured of its safety.

  “There is foul company at the ‘Greathouse Inn,’” he said, as we descended the ladder to the tap-room below. “Greathouse received four guests an hour ago. Mount bade me warn you, sir. He said you would understand.”

  I understood at once. Butler, Wraxall, Toby Tice, and the fourth member of the band had arrived in Cresap’s camp. But I cared not; I was about to accomplish my mission under their four noses, and live to balance my account with them later.

  “Is Mount sleeping?” I asked.

  The old man laughed.

  “I have never seen him sleep,” he said. “I know him well, 183 but I have never seen him asleep. He is out yonder, somewhere, prowling.”

  “And Shemuel? — and Cade Renard?” I inquired.

  “Shemuel is on his way to Pittsburg; Renard mouses with Mount. Is your rifle loaded, sir? There be foul company at the other inn. This night, too, did Greathouse make nine savages drunk with spirits. Have a care that they cross not your path, young man; for, drunk, your Indians go blind like rattlesnakes in September, and like those serpents, too, they strike without warning. Have a care, sir!”

  “I wish you knew the Indians as well as I do,” said I, smiling. “I fear none of them, save the Lenni-Lenape, and these I fear only because I have never known them. I think the whole world can be tamed with kindness.”

  Boyd shook his gray head, watching me in silence.

  A brisk southwest wind was singing through the pines as I stepped out-of-doors and peered cautiously about. There was nothing stirring save the wind and the unseen leaves in the forest. I primed my rifle and sheltered the pan under the hollow of my arm, then stole forth into the starlit road.

  To gain the river, whence the trail ran northward to the Cayuga camp, I was obliged to pass the fort, and consequently the “Greathouse Inn.” But I had no fear at this hour o’ morning, and I trotted on along the stump fence like a cub-fox in his proper runway, until the first curve in the road brought me to Greathouse’s inn.

  Shutters were drawn and bolted over every window, but candle-light streamed through loopholes in the tap-room, and I could hear men singing within and tapping on bowls with spoons:

  “My true love is old Brown Bess.”

  Nosing the house delicately, I perceived odours of cooking, of rum toddy, and of tobacco smoke. Clearly Butler’s company were supping after their long jog on the back trail from Fortress Pitt.

  Satisfied that all was safe, I had silently begun skirting the road ditch shadowed by the fence, when a dark heap, which I had taken for a stump in the road, moved, rolled over, and moaned.

  I stopped, frozen motionless. After a moment’s wary reconnoitring, I crept forward again along the ditch, eyes fastened on the dim shape ahead, a human form lying in the black shadows of the road.

  When I came closer I understood. At my feet, in a drunken stupor, sprawled a young Cayuga girl, limbs plastered with mud, body saturated and reeking with the stench of spirits. Her black hair floated in a pool of rain which spread out reflecting stars. One helpless hand clutched the mud.

  I lifted the little thing and bore her to the shadow of the fence; but here, to my amazement, lay a drunken squaw, doubtless her mother, still clinging to an empty bottle; and, along the ditch and fence, flung in beastly, breathing heaps, I counted seven more barbarians, old and young, from the infant of ten to the young buck of twenty, all apparently of the same family, and all in a sodden swoon.

  This was the work, then, done by a single agent of my Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia!

  Like torpid snakes they lay there, glistening in the grass, the children naked, the mother in rags, breathing out poison under the stars. The very air of morn sweated rum; candle-light from the loopholes fell across the bodies, flung limply on the grass.

  There was nothing I could do for these victims of Greathouse; no aid within my power to give them. Heartsick, I turned away, and, quickening my steps, passed swiftly down the muddy trail, hastening to mend my pace ere dawn should find me missing at the council-fires burning for me on the dark Ohio.

  There were no lights in the fort as I passed; the flag-staff stood out bare against the stars. On the epaulement above the outer trench something moved, probably a sentry.

  But ere I reached the Ohio the eastern sky had turned saffron, through which stars still twinkled; and the drifted mist-banks lay heaped far out across the river, so I could not see the water, and must follow its course along the edge of this phantom stream, whose current was vapour and whose waves of piled-up clouds rolled noiselessly under the stars.

  No birds fluted from the mist; even the winds had blown 185 far away somewhere into the gray morning. But the Cayuga trail was broad and plain, and I took it at a wolf-trot, thoughtfully reading its countless signs by the yellow dawn as I went along, marks of white men, marks of moccasins, imprint of deer and cattle, trail of rabbit and following fox, and the hand-like traces of rambling raccoons. On, on, north upon the broad Cayuga trail, while through the brightening woods sleep fled with the mist and the world awoke around me. Land and river roused with breathing and sigh and scarce-heard stir; through earth and water the pulse of life fluttered and beat on, timed for the moment by the swift rhythm of my flying feet.

  And now a thread of blue smoke, drawn far down the trail, set my nostrils wide and quivering; a flare of blinding yellow turned the world into gold; I had met the sun at the Cayuga camp; the tryst had been kept, thanks to the Lord!

  Dark, uncertain forms loomed up
in the eye of the sun, tall groups that never moved as I drew nigh; men who stood motionless as the pines where the council-fire smoked and flashed like a dull jewel in the sun.

  “Peace!” I said, halting, with upraised hand. “Peace, you wise men and sachems!”

  “Peace!” repeated a low voice. “Peace, bearer of belts!”

  I moved nearer, head high, yet seeing in a blur, for the rising sun blinded me. And when I came to the edge of the fire, I drew a white belt of wampum from my bosom, and, passing it through the smoke, held it aloft, flashing in the sun, until every chief and sachem had sunk down into their blankets, forming a half-circle before me.

  A miracle of speech came to me like the breath of my body; easy, sober, flowing words followed. I spoke as I had never dared hope I might speak. Forgotten phrases, caressing idioms, words long lost flew to aid me, yet not so fast that they crowded, stumbling and choking speech.

  As I spoke, sight slowly returned to my dazzled eyes. I saw the sachems’ painted masks, the totems of three tribes repeated on blanket and lodge, the Cayuga pipe-symbol hanging from the lodge posts, the witch-drum swinging under a bush, where ten stems had been peeled ivory white. Behind all this I saw the green amphitheatre of trees, blue films of 186 smoke floating from unseen lodges, and over all the radiance of sunrise painting earth and sky with pale fire.

  Belt after belt I passed through the fragrant birch-smoke; I spoke to them as Sir William had spoken to Quider with three belts, and my words were earnest and pitiful, for my heart was full of tenderness for Sir William and for these patient children of his, these lost ones, so far from the doors of the Long House.

  The ceremony of condolence was more than a ceremony for me; with eager sympathy I raised up the three stricken tribes; I sweetened the ashes of the eternal fires; I cleared evil from the Cayuga trail, and laid the ghastly ghosts of those who stood in forest highways to confront the fifth nation of the great confederacy.

  “Oonah! Oonah!” whimpered the wind in the pines, but I stilled the winds and purified them, and I cleansed the million needles of the pines with a belt and an enchanted word.