Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Whither?”

  “It is my own affair.”

  “May I not aid?”

  “You could not if you would; you would not if you could.”

  “Ask me, Lois.”

  “No.” She shook her head. Then, slowly: “I do thank you for the wish, Mr. Loskiel. But the Siwanois himself refuses what I ask. And you would, also, did you know my wish.”

  “What is your wish?”

  She shook her head: “It is useless to voice it — useless.”

  She gathered the scant fragments of her meal, wrapped them in a bit of silver birch-bark, unrolled her bundle, and placed them there. Then she drained the tin cup of its chilly water, and, still sitting there cross-legged on the rock, tied the little cup to her girdle. It seemed to me, there in the dusk, that she smiled very faintly; and if it was so it was the first smile I had had of her when she said:

  “I travel light, Mr. Loskiel. But otherwise there is nothing light about me.”

  “Lois, I pray you, listen. As I am a man, I can not leave you here.”

  “For that reason, sir, you will presently take your leave.”

  “No, I shall remain if you will not come into camp with us.”

  She said impatiently:

  “I lie safer here than you around your fire. You mean well; now take your leave of me — with whatever flight of fancy,” she added mockingly, “that my present condition invests me with in the eyes of a very young man.”

  The rudeness of the fling burnt my face, but I answered civilly:

  “A scalping party may be anywhere in these woods. It is the season; and neither Oneida Lake nor Fort Niagara itself are so distant that their far-hurled hatchets may not strike us here.”

  “I will not go with you,” said she, making of her bundle a pillow. Then, very coolly, she extended her slim body and laid her head on the bundle.

  I made no answer, nor any movement for fully an hour. Then, very stealthily, I leaned forward to see if she truly slept. And found her eyes wide open.

  “You waste time mounting sentry over me,” she said in a low voice. “Best employ your leisure in the sleep you need.”

  “I can not sleep.”

  “Nor I — if you remain here awake beside me.”

  She raised herself on her elbow, peering through the darkness toward the stream.

  “The Siwanois has been standing yonder by the stream watching us this full hour past. Let him mount sentry if he wishes.”

  “You have a tree-cat’s eyes,” I said. “I see nothing.”

  Then I rose and unbuckled my belt. Hatchet and knife dangled from it. I stooped and laid it beside her. Then, stepping backward a pace or two, I unlaced my hunting shirt of doe-skin, drew it off, and, rolling it into a soft pillow, lay down, cradling my cheek among the thrums.

  I do not know how long I lay there before I fell asleep from very weariness of the new and deep emotions, as strange to me as they were unwelcome. The restlessness, the misgivings which, since I first had seen this maid, had subtly invaded me, now, grown stronger, assailed me with an apprehension I could neither put from me nor explain. Nor was this vague fear for her alone; for, at moments, it seemed as though it were for myself I feared — fearing myself.

  So far in my brief life, I had borne myself cleanly and upright, though the times were loose enough, God knows, and the master of Guy Park had read me no lesson or set me no example above the morals and the customs of his class and of the age.

  It may have been pride — I know not what it was, that I could notice the doings of Sir John and of young Walter Butler and remain aloof, even indifferent. Yet, this was so. Never had a woman’s beauty stirred me otherwise than blamelessly, never had I entertained any sentiment toward fashionable folly other than aversion and a kind of shamed contempt.

  Nor had I been blind at Guy Park and Butlersbury and Tribes Hill, nor in Albany, either. I knew Clarissa Putnam; I also knew Susannah Wormwood and her sister Elizabeth, and all that pretty company; and many another pretty minx and laughing, light-minded lass in county Tryon. And a few in Cambridge, too. So I was no niais, no naive country fool, unless to remain aloof were folly. And I often wondered to myself how this might really be, when Boyd rallied me and messmates laughed.

  And now, as I lay there under the clustered stars, my head pillowed on my deer-skin shirt, my mind fell a-groping for reason to bear me out in my strained and strange perplexity.

  Why, from the time I first had spoken to her, should thoughts of this strange and ragged maid have so possessed me that each day my memory of her returned, haunting me, puzzling me, plaguing my curiosity till imagination awoke, spurring my revery to the very border of an unknown land where rides Romance, in armour, vizor down.

  Until this night I had not crossed that border, nor ever thought to, or dreamed of doing it. No beggar-maiden-seeking king was I by nature, nor ever felt for shabby dress and common folk aught but the mixture of pity and aversion which breeds a kind of charity. And, I once supposed, were the Queen of Sheba herself to pass me in a slattern’s rags, only her rags could I ever see, for all her beauty.

  But how was it now with me that, from the very first, I had been first conscious of this maid herself, then of her rags. How was it that I felt no charity, nor pity of that sort, only a vague desire that she should understand me better — know that I meant her kindness — God knows what I wished of her, and why her grey eyes haunted me, and why I could not seem to put her from my mind.

  That now she fully possessed my mind I convinced myself was due to my very natural curiosity concerning her; forgetting that a week ago I should not have condescended to curiosity.

  Who and what was she? She had been schooled; that was plain in voice and manner. And, though she used me with scant courtesy, I was convinced she had been schooled in manners, too, and was no stranger to usages and customs which mark indelibly where birth and breeding do not always.

  Why was she here? Why alone? Where were her natural protectors then? What would be her fate a-gypsying through a land blackened with war, or haunting camps and forts, penniless, in rags — and her beauty ever a flaming danger to herself, despite her tatters and because of them.

  I slept at last; I do not know how long. The stars still glittered overhead when I awoke, remembered, and suddenly sat upright.

  She was gone. I might have known it. But over me there came a rush of fear and anger and hurt pride; and died, leaving a strange, dull aching.

  Over my arm I threw my rifle-frock, looked dully about to find my belt, discovered it at my feet. As I buckled it, from the hatchet-sling something fell; and I stooped to pick it up.

  It was a wild-rose stem bearing a bud unclosed. And to a thorn a shred of silver birch-bark clung impaled. On it was scratched with a knife’s keen point a message which I could not read until once more I crept in to our fire, which Mount had lighted for our breakfast.

  And there I read her message: “A rose for your ring, comrade. And be not angry with me.”

  I read it again, then curled it to a tiny cylinder and placed it in my pouch, glancing sideways at the reclining Mohican. Boyd began to murmur and stretch in his blanket, then relaxed once more.

  So I lay down, leaving Jack Mount a-cooking ashen cakes, and yawning.

  CHAPTER V

  THE GATHERING

  Now, no sooner had we broken camp, covered our fire, packed, saddled, and mounted, than all around us, as we advanced, the wilderness began to wear an aspect very different to that brooding solitude which hitherto had been familiar to us — our shelter and our menace also.

  For we had proceeded on our deeply-trodden war trail no more than a mile or two before we encountered the raw evidences of an army’s occupation. Everywhere spotted leads, game trails, and runways had been hacked, trimmed, and widened into more open wood-walks; foot-paths enlarged to permit the passage of mounted men; cattle-roads cleared, levelled, made smoother for wagons and artillery; log bridges built across the rapid streams that darkle
d westward, swamps and swales paved with logs, and windfalls hewn in twain and the huge abattis dragged wide apart or burnt to ashes where it lay. Yet, still the high debris bristling from some fallen forest giant sprawling athwart the highway often delayed us. Our details had not yet cleared out the road entirely.

  We were, however, within a wolf-hound’s easy run to Cherry Valley, Fort Hunter, and the Mohawk — the outer edges of my own country. Northeast of us lay Schenectady behind its fort; north of us lay my former home, Guy Park, and near it old Fort Johnson and Johnson Hall. Farther still to the northward stretched the Vale and silvery Sacandaga with its pretty Fish House settlement now in ashes; and Summer House Point and Fonda’s Bush were but heaps of cinders, too, the brave Broadalbin yeomen prisoners, their women and children fled to Johnstown, save old man Stoner and his boys, and that Tory villain Charlie Cady who went off with Sir John.

  Truly I should know something of these hills and brooks and forests that we now traversed, and of the silent, solitary roads that crept into the wilderness, penetrating to distant, lonely farms or grist mills where some hardy fellow had cleared the bush and built his cabin on the very borders of that dark and fearsome empire which we were gathering to enter and destroy.

  Here it lay, close on our left flank — so close that its strange gigantic shadow fell upon us, like a vast hand, stealthy and chill.

  And it was odd, but on the edges of these trackless shades, here, even with fresh evidences on every side that our own people lately passed this way — yes, even when we began to meet or overtake men of our own color — the stupendous desolation yielded nothing of its brooding mystery and dumb magnificence.

  Westward, the green monotony of trees stretched boundless as an ocean, and as trackless and uncharted — gigantic forests in the depths of which twilight had brooded since first the world was made.

  Here, save for the puny, man-made trail — save for the tiny scars left by his pygmy hacking at some high forest monument, all this magic shadow-land still bore the imprint of our Lord’s own fingers.

  The stillness and the infinite majesty, the haunting fragrance clinging to the craftsmanship of hands miraculous; all the sweet odour and untainted beauty which enveloped it in the making, and which had remained after creation’s handiwork was done, seemed still to linger in this dim solitude. And it was as though the twilight through the wooded aisles was faintly tinctured still, where the sweet-scented garments of the Lord had passed.

  There was no underbrush, no clinging sprays or fairy brambles intertwined under the solemn arches of the trees; only the immemorial strata of dead leaves spread one above another in endless coverlets of crumbling gold; only a green and knee-deep robe of moss clothing the vast bases of the living columns.

  And into this enchanted green and golden dusk no sunlight penetrated, save along the thread-like roads, or where stark-naked rocks towered skyward, or where, in profound and velvet depths, crystalline streams and rivers widened between their Indian willow bottoms. And these were always set with wild flowers, every bud and blossom gilded by the sun.

  As we journeyed on, the first wayfarer we encountered after passing our outer line of pickets was an express rider from General Sullivan’s staff, one James Cook, who told us that the right division of the army, General James Clinton’s New York brigade, which was ours, was still slowly concentrating in the vicinity of Otsego Lake; that innumerable and endless difficulties in obtaining forage and provisions had delayed everything; that the main division, Sullivan’s, was now arriving at Easton and Wyoming; and that, furthermore, the enemy had become vastly agitated over these ominous preparations of ours, but still believed, from their very magnitude, that we were preparing for an advance into Canada.

  “Ha-ha!” said Boyd merrily. “So much the better, for if they continue to believe that, they will keep their cursed scalping parties snug at home.”

  “No, sir,” said the express soberly. “Brant and his Mohawks are out somewhere or other, and so is Walter Butler and his painted crew.”

  “In this same district?”

  “No doubt of it, sir. Indians fired on our pickets last week. It will go hard with the outlying farms and settlements. Small doubt, too, that they will strike heavily and strive to draw this army from whatever plan it meditated.”

  “Then,” said Boyd with a careless laugh, “it is for us to strike more heavily still and draw them with the very wind of our advance into a common vortex of destruction with the Iroquois.”

  The express rode on, and Boyd, in excellent humour, continued talking to me, saying that he knew our Commander-in-Chief, and that he was an officer not to be lightly swayed or turned from the main purpose, but would hew to the line, no matter what destruction raged and flamed about him.

  “No, Loskiel, they may murder and burn to right and left of us, and it may wring his heart and ours to hear the agonized appeals for aid; but if I judge our General, he will not be halted or drawn aside until the monstrous, loathesome body of this foul empire lies chopped to bits, writhing and dying in the flames of Catharines-town.”

  “He must truly be a man of iron,” said I, “if we win through.”

  “We will win through, Loskiel,” he said gaily, “ — to Catharines-town or paradise — to hell or heaven. And what a tale to tell our children — we who survive!”

  An odd expression came into his handsome face, and he said in a low and dreamy voice:

  “I think that almost every man will live to tell that story — yet, I can never hear myself telling the tale in years to come.”

  On paths and new-made highways we began to encounter people and cattle — now a long line of oxen laden with military stores or with canoes and flatboats, and conducted by batt-men in smock and frock, now a sweating company of military surveyors from headquarters, burdened with compass, chain, and Jacob-staff, already running their lines into the wilderness. Here trudged the frightened family of some settler, making toward the forts; there a company of troops came gaily marching out on some detail, or perhaps, with fixed bayonets, herded sheep and cattle down some rutted road.

  It seemed scarce possible that we were already within scouting range of that never-to-be-forgotten region of Wyoming, where just one year ago old John Butler with his Rangers, his hell-born Senecas, and Johnson’s Greens, had done their bloody business; where, in “The Shades of Death,” a hundred frightened women and little children had perished in that ghastly darkness. Also, we were but a few miles from that scene of terror where, through the wintry dawn at Cherry Valley, young Walter Butler damned his soul for all eternity while men, women, and children, old and young, died horribly amid the dripping knives and bayonets of his painted fiends, or fell under the butchering hatchets of his Senecas.

  I could see that Boyd also was thinking of this ghastly business, as I caught his sombre eye. He seemed to shudder, then:

  “Patience,” he muttered grimly, with a significant nod toward the Siwanois, who strode silently between our horses. “We have our guide at last. A Siwanois hates the Iroquois no more fiercely than do we white-skins. Wait till he leads our van within rifle-range of Catharines-town! And if Walter Butler be there, or that bloodless beast Sir John, or Brant, or any of that hell-brood, and if we let them get away, may God punish us with the prisoner’s fire! Amen.”

  Never before had I heard him speak that way, or with such savage feeling; and his manner of expression, and the uncanny words he used concerning fire caused me to shudder, too — knowing that if he had ever dreaded anything it was the stake, and the lingering death that lasted till the very soul lay burnt to cinders before the tortured body died. We exchanged no further conversation; many people passed and repassed us; the woods opened somewhat; the jolly noise of axes resounded near at hand among the trees.

  Just ahead of us the road from Mattisses’ Grist Mill and Stoney Kill joined ours, where stood the Low Dutch Church. Above us lay the Middle Fort, and the roads to Cherry Valley and Schenectady forked beyond it by the Lutheran C
hurch and the Lower Fort. We took the Cherry Valley Road.

  Here, through this partly cleared and planted valley of the Scoharie Kill, between the river and the lake, was now gathering a great concourse of troops and of people; and all the roads were lively with their comings and goings. Every woodland rang with the racket of their saws and axes; over the log bridges rumbled their loaded transport wagons; road and trail were filled with their crowding cattle; the wheels of Eckerson’s and Becker’s grist mills clattered and creaked under the splash of icy, limpid waters, and everywhere men were hammering and sawing and splitting, erecting soldiers’ huts, huts for settlers, sheds, stables, store-houses, and barracks to shelter this motley congregation assembling here under the cannon of the Upper Fort, the Lower, and the Middle.

  As we rode along, many faces we passed were familiar to us; we encountered officers from our own corps and from other regiments, with whom we were acquainted, and who greeted us gaily or otherwise, according to their temper and disposition. But everybody — officers, troops, batt-men — looked curiously at our Siwanois Indian, who returned the compliment not at all, but with stately stride and expressionless visage moved straight ahead of him, as though he noticed nothing.

  Twice since we had started at daybreak that morning, I had managed to lag behind and question him concerning the maid who now shared well-nigh every thought of mine — asking if he knew who she was, and where she came from, and why she journeyed, and whither.

  He answered — when he replied at all — that he had no knowledge of these things. And I knew he lied, but did not know how I might make him speak.

  Nor would he tell me how and when she had slipped away from me the night before, or where she had likely gone, pretending that I had been mistaken when I told him I had seen him watching us beside the star-illumined stream.

  “Mayaro slept,” he said quite calmly. “The soldier, Mount, stood fire-guard. Of what my brother Loskiel and this strange maiden did under the Oneida Dancers and the Belt of Tamanund, Mayaro has no knowledge.”