Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “I never heard of her. But the Witch of Catharines-town is living. And her warlock offspring, Amochol!” He squared his broad shoulders, shaking them. “What do I care?” he said. “I am a Sagamore of the Enchanted Clan!” He struck the painted symbol on his chest. “What do I care for this red priest’s sorcery — I, who wear the great Witch Bear rearing in scarlet here across my breast!

  “Let the Cat People make their magic! Let Amochol sacrifice to Leshi in Biskoonah! Let their accursed Atensi watch the Mohicans from behind the moon. Mayaro is a Sagamore and his clan are Sachems; and the clan was old — old — old, O little brother, before their Hiawatha came to them and made their League for them, and returned again to The Master of Life in his silver cloud-canoe!

  “And I say to you, O my blood-brother, that between this sorcerer and me is now a war such as no Mohican ever waged and no man living, white or red, has ever seen. His magic will I fight with magic; his knife and hatchet shall be turned on mine! And I shall deceive and trick and mock him — him and his Erie Cats, till one by one their scalps shall swing above a clean Mohican fire. O Loskiel, my brother, and my other self, a warrior and a Sagamore has spoken. Go, now, to your evening tryst in peace and leave me. For in my ears the Seven Chiefs are whispering — The Thunderers. And Tamanund must hear my speech and read my heart. And the long roll of our Mohican dead must be recited — here and alone by me — the only one who has that right since Uncas died and the Mohican priesthood ended, save for the Sagamores of the Magic Clan.

  “Go, now, my brother. Go in peace.”

  CHAPTER VII

  LOIS

  When I came to the log house by the Spring Waiontha, lantern in hand and my packet tucked beneath my arm, it was twilight, and the starless skies threatened rain. Road and field and forest were foggy and silent; and I thought of the first time I had ever set eyes on Lois, in the late afternoon stillness which heralded a coming storm.

  I had with me, as I say, a camp lantern which enabled me to make my way through the thicket to the Spring Waiontha. Not finding her there, I retraced my steps and crossed the charred and dreary clearing to the house of logs.

  No light burned within; doubtless this widow woman was far too poor to afford a light of any sort. But my lantern still glimmered, and I went up to the splintered door and rapped.

  Lois opened it, her knitting gathered in her hand, and stood aside for me to enter.

  At first, so dusky was the room that I perceived no other occupant beside ourselves. Then Lois said: “Mrs. Rannock, Mr. Loskiel, of whom I spoke at supper, is to be made known to you.”

  Then first I saw a slight and ghostly figure rise, take shape in the shadows, and move slowly into my lantern’s feeble beams —— a frail and pallid woman, who made her reverence as though dazed, and uttered not a word.

  Lois whispered in my ear:

  “She scarcely seems to know she is alive, since Cherry Valley. A Tory slew her little sister with a hatchet; then her husband fell; and then, before her eyes, a blue-eyed Indian pinned her baby to its cradle with a bayonet.”

  I crossed the room to where she stood, offering my hand; and she laid her thin and work-worn fingers listlessly in mine.

  “Madam,” I said gently, “there are today two thousand widows such as you betwixt Oriska and Schenectady. And, to our cause, each one of you is worth a regiment of men, your sorrows sacred to us all, strengthening our vows, steeling us to a fierce endeavour. No innocent death in this long war has been in vain; no mother’s agony. Yet, only God can comfort such as you.”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “No God can comfort me,” she said, in a voice so lifeless that it sounded flat as the words that sleepers utter, dreaming of trouble.

  “Shall we be seated outside on the door-sill?” whispered Lois. “The only seat within is on the settle, where she sits.”

  “Is this the only room?”

  “Yes — save for the mouse-loft, where I sleep on last year’s corn-husks. Shall we sit outside? We can speak very low. She will not heed us.”

  Pity for all this stark and naked wretchedness left me silent; then, as the lantern’s rays fell on this young girl’s rags, I remembered my packet.

  “Yes, we will sit outside. But first, I bring you a little gift — —”

  She looked up quickly and drew back a step, “Oh, but such a little gift, Lois — a nothing — a mere jest of mine which we shall enjoy between us. Take it as I offer it, lightly, and without constraint.”

  Reluctantly she permitted me to lay the packet in her arms, displeasure still darkening her brow. Then I set my lantern on the puncheon floor and stepped outside, closing the hatchet-battered door behind me.

  How long I paced the foggy strip of clearing I do not know. The mist had thickened to rain when I heard the door creak; and, turning in my tracks, caught the lantern’s sparkle on the threshold, and the dull gleam of her Oneida finery.

  I picked up the lantern and held it high above us.

  Smiling and bashful she stood there in her clinging skirt and wampum-broidered vest, her slender, rounded limbs moulded into soft knee-moccasins of fawn-skin, and the Virgin’s Girdle knotted across her thighs in silver-tasselled seawan.

  And, “Lord!” said I, surprised by the lovely revelation. “What a miracle are you in your forest masquerade!”

  “Am I truly fine to please you, Euan?”

  I said, disturbed, but striving to speak lightly:

  “Little Oneida goddess in your bridal dress, the Seven Dancers are laughing at me from your eyes; and the Day-Sun and the Night-Sun hang from your sacred girdle, making it flash like silvery showers of seawan. Salute, O Watcher at the Gates of Dawn! Onwa oyah! Na-i! A-i! Lois!” And I drew my light war-hatchet from its sheath and raised it sparkling, in salute.

  She laughed a little, blushed a little, and bent her dainty head to view her finery once more, examining it gravely to the last red quill sewed to the beaded toe-point.

  Then, still serious, she lifted her grey eyes to me:

  “I seem to find no words to thank you, Euan. But my heart is — very — full — —” She hesitated, then stretched forth her hand to me, smiling; and as I touched it ceremoniously with finger-tip and lip:

  “Ai-me!” she exclaimed, withdrawing under shelter. “It is raining, Euan! Your rifle-shirt is wet already, and you are like to take a chill! Come under shelter instantly!”

  “Fancy a man of Morgan’s with a chill!” I said, but nevertheless obeyed her, set the lantern on the puncheon floor, brushed the fine drops from thrums and hatchet-sheath, rubbed the bright-edged little axe with buck-skinned elbow, and wiped my heavy knife from hilt to blade.

  As I looked up, busy with my side-arms, I caught her eye. We smiled at each other; then, as though a common instinct stirred us to caution, we turned and looked silently toward the settle in the corner, where the widow sat brooding alone.

  “May we speak freely here, Lois?” I whispered.

  She cast a cautious glance at the shadowy figure, then, lowering her voice and leaning nearer:

  “I scarcely know whether she truly heeds and hears. She may not — yet — she may. And I do not care to share my confidences with anyone — save you. I promised to tell you something about myself.... I mean to, some day.”

  “Then you will not tell me now?”

  “How can I, Euan?”

  We stood silent, thinking. Presently my eyes fell on the rough ladder leading to the loft above. She followed my gaze, hesitated, shot a keen and almost hostile glance at me, softened and coloured, then stole across the room to the ladder’s foot.

  I lifted the lantern, followed her, and mounted, lighting the way for her along low-hanging eaves among the rustling husks. She dropped the trap-door silently, above the ladder, took the lantern from my hand, set it on the floor, and seated herself beside it on the husks, her cheeks still brightly flushed.

  “Is this then your intimate abode?” I asked, half-smiling.

  “Cou
ld I desire a snugger one?” she answered gaily. “Here is both warmth and shelter; and a clean bed of husks; and if I am lonely, there be friendly little mice to bear me company o’ nights. And here my mice and I lie close and listen to the owls.”

  “And you were reared in comfort!” I said with sudden bitterness.

  She looked up quickly, then, shrugging her shoulders:

  “There is still some comfort for those who can remember their brief day of ease — none for those who never knew it. I have had days of comfort.”

  “What age are you, Lois?”

  “Twenty, I think.”

  “Scarce that!” I insisted.

  “Do I not seem so?” she asked, smiling.

  “Eighteen at most — save for the — sadness — in your eyes that now and then surprises me — if it be sadness that I read there.”

  “Perhaps it is the wisdom I have learned — a knowledge that means sadness, Euan. Do my eyes betray it, then, so plainly?”

  “Sometimes,” I said, A faint sound from below arrested our attention.

  Lois whispered:

  “It is Mrs. Rannock weeping. She often weeps like that at night. And so would I, Euan, had I beheld the horrors which this poor thing was born to look upon — God comfort her! Have you never heard how the destructives slew her husband, her baby, and her little sister eight years old? The baby lay in its cradle smiling up at its murderers. Even the cruel Senecas turned aside, forbearing to harm it. But one of Walter Butler’s painted Tories spies it and bawls out: ‘This also will grow to be a rebel!’ And with that he speared the little smiling creature on his bayonet, tossed it, and caught it — Oh, Euan — Euan!” Shuddering, she flung her arm across her face as though to shut out the vision.

  “That villainy,” said I, “was done by Newberry or Chrysler, if I remember. And Newberry we caught and hung before we went to Westchester. I saw him hang with that wretched Lieutenant Hare. God! how we cheered by regiments marching back to camp!”

  Through the intense stillness I could still hear the woman sobbing in the dark below.

  “Lois — little Lois,” I whispered, touching her trembling arm with a hand quite as unsteady.

  She dropped her arm from her face, looking up at me with eyes widened still in horror.

  I said: “Do you then wonder that the thought of you, roaming these woods alone, is become a living dread to me, so that I think of nothing else?”

  She smiled wanly, and sat thinking for a while, her pale face pressed between her hands. Presently she looked up.

  “Are we so truly friends then, Euan? At the Spring Waiontha it almost seemed as though it could come true.”

  “You know it has come true.”

  “Do I?”

  “Do you not know it, little Lois?”

  “I seem to know it, somehow.... Tell me, Euan, does a true and deathless friendship with a man — with you — mean that I am to strip my heart of every secret, hiding nothing from you?”

  “Dare you do it, Lois?” I said laughingly, yet thrilled with the candour of her words.

  “I could not let you think me better than I am. That would be stealing friendship from you. But if you give it when you really know me — that will be dear and wonderful — —” She drew a swift breath and smiled.

  Surprised, then touched, I met the winning honesty of her gaze in silence.

  “Unless you truly know me — unless you know to whom you give your friendship — you can not give it rightly. Can you, Euan? You must learn all that I am and have been, Is not this necessary?”

  “I — I ask you nothing,” I stammered. “All that I know of you is wonderful enough — —” Suddenly the danger of the moment opened out before me, checking my very thoughts.

  She laid both hands against her temple, pressing them there till her cheeks cooled. So she pondered for a while, her gaze remote. Then, looking fearlessly at me:

  “Euan, I am of that sad company of children born without name. I have lately dared to guess who was my father. Presently I will tell you who he was.” Her grey and troubled eyes gazed into space now, dreamily. “He died long since. But my mother is living. And I believe she lives near Catharines-town to-day!”

  “What! Why do you think so?” I exclaimed, astounded.

  “Is not the Vale Yndaia there, near Catharines-town?”

  “Yes. But why — —”

  “Then listen, Euan. Every year upon a certain day — the twelfth of May — no matter where I chance to be, always outside my door I find two little beaded moccasins. I have had them thirteen times in thirteen years. And every year — save the last two — the moccasins have been made a little larger, as though to fit my growing years. Now, for the last two years, they have remained the same in size, fitting me perfectly. And — I never yet have worn them more than to fit them on and take them off.”

  “Why?” I asked vaguely.

  “I save them for my journey.”

  “What journey?”

  “The long trail through the Long House — straight through it, Euan, to the Western Door. That is the trail I dream of.”

  “Who leaves these strange moccasins at your threshold every year?”

  “I do not know.”

  “From where do you suppose they come?” I asked, amazed.

  “From Catharines-town.”

  “Do you believe your mother sends them?”

  “Oh, Euan, I know it now! Until two years ago I did not understand. But now I know it!”

  “Why are you so certain Lois? Is any written message sent with them?”

  “Always within one of each pair of moccasins is sewed a strip of silver birch. Always the message written is the same; and this is what is always written:

  “Swift moccasins for little feet as swift against the day that the long trail is safe. Then, in the Vale Yndaia, little Lois, seek her who bore you, saved you, lost you, but who love you always.

  “Pray every day for him who died in the Regiment de la Reine.

  “Pray too for her who waits for you, in far Yndaia.”

  “What a strange message!” I exclaimed.

  “I must heed it,” she said under her breath. “The trail is open, and my hour is come.”

  “But, Lois, that trail means death!”

  “Your army makes it safe at last. And now the time is come when I must follow it.”

  “Is that why you have followed us?”

  “Yes, that is why. Until that night in the storm at Poundridge-town I had never learned where the Vale Yndaia lay. Month after month I haunted camps, asking for information concerning Yndaia and the Regiment de la Reine. But of Yndaia I learned nothing, until the Sagamore informed me that Yndaia lay near Catharines-town. And, learning you were of the army, and that the army was bound thither, I followed you.”

  “Why did you not tell me this at Poundridge? You should have camped with us,” I said.

  “Because of my fear of men — except red men. And I had already quite enough of your Lieutenant Boyd.”

  I looked at her seriously; and she comprehended the unasked questions that were troubling me.

  “Shall I tell you more? Shall I tell you how I have learned my dread of men — how it has been with me since my foster parents found me lying at their door strapped to a painted cradle-board?”

  “You!”

  “Aye; that was my shameful beginning, so they told me afterward — long afterward. For I supposed they were my parents — till two years ago. Now shall I tell you all, Euan? And risk losing a friendship you might have given in your ignorance of me?”

  Quick, hot, unconsidered words flew to my lips — so sweet and fearless were her eyes. But I only muttered:

  “Tell me all.”

  “From the beginning, then — to scour my heart out for you! So, first and earliest my consciousness awoke to the sound of drums. I am sure of this because when I hear them it seems as though they were the first sounds that I ever heard.... And once, lately, they were like to be the last....
And next I can remember playing with a painted mask of wood, and how the paint tasted, and its odour.... Then, nothing more can I remember until I was a little child with — him I thought to be my father. I may not name him. You will understand presently why I do not.”

  She looked down, pulling idly at the thrums along her beaded leggins.

  “I told you I was near your age — twenty. But I do not really know how old I am, I guess that I am twenty — thereabouts.”

  “You look sixteen; not more — except the haunting sorrow — —”

  “I can remember full that length of time.... I must be twenty, Euan. When I was perhaps seven years old — or thereabout — I went to school — first in Schenectady to a Mistress Lydon; where were a dozen children near my age. And pretty Mistress Lydon taught us A — B — C and manners — and nothing else that I remember now. Then for a long while I was at home — which meant a hundred different lodgings — for we were ever moving on from place to place, where his employment led him, from one house to another, staying at one tavern only while his task remained unfinished, then to the road again, north, south, west, or east, wherever his fancy sped before to beckon him.... He was a strange man, Euan.”

  “Your foster father?”

  “Aye. And my foster mother, too, was a strange woman.”

  “Were they not kind to you?”

  “Y-es, after their own fashion. They both were vastly different to other folk. I was fed and clothed when anyone remembered to do it, And when they had been fortunate, they sent me to the nearest school to be rid of me, I think. I have attended many schools, Euan — in Germantown, in Philadelphia, in Boston, in New York. I stayed not long in school at New York because there our affairs went badly. And no one invited us in that city — as often we were asked to stay as guests while the work lasted — not very welcome guests, yet tolerated.”

  “What was your foster father’s business?”

  “He painted portraits.... I do not know how well he painted. But he cared for nothing else, except his wife. When he spoke at all it was to her of Raphael, and of Titian, and particularly of our Benjamin West, who had his first three colours of the Indians, they say.”