the sun was well above the tree-tops, and the morning was abroad for all the furred and feathered wood-folk, when i forsook the indian path to make a prudent circle of reconnaissance around the cabin in the maple grove.
happily, there was no need for the cautionary measure. the hunting lodge was undiscovered as yet by any enemy; and when i showed myself my poor black vassals ran to do my bidding, weeping with childish joy to have me back again.
since old darius was still at appleby hundred, tomas ranked as majordomo; and i bade him post the blacks in a loosely drawn sentry line about the cabin, this against the chance that falconnet might stumble on the place in searching for me. for i made no doubt his tory spies would quickly pass the word that i was not with abram forney's band, and hence must be in hiding.
when all was done i flung myself upon the couch of panther-skins, hoping against hope that sleep might come to help me through the hours of waiting. 'twas a vain hope. there was never a wink of forgetfulness for me in all the long watches of the summer day, and i must lie wide-eyed and haggard, thinking night would never come, and making sure that fate had never before walled a man in such a dungeon of despair.
there was no loophole of escape with honor; the heavens were brass, with all 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 death had 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 true, death had thrust the key within the lock, and i had heard the grating of the bolts; and yet the key had been withdrawn and i was left a prisoner of life.
there was no hope of other outlet. now there was space to view it calmly, i saw how foolish was the thought that margery would connive at any breaking of the marriage bond. she would bear my name, and hate me for 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's hands.
it was thus that each fresh scanning of the prison wall that shut me in this dungeon of dishonor fetched me once and again to this one sally-port of death. and when it came to this; that i had searched in vain for other outlet, you will not think it strange that i sat down in spirit 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 he who has lived at all has lived his best; and if he live beyond the turning point of youthful ardor he must beg the grace of younger men to linger yet a little longer on the stage which once was his and now is theirs.
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 call a conscience, a heritage from those simple-hearted ancestors to whom the suicide was a soul accurst—a soul impenitent, whose very outer husk of flesh and bones they used to bury at the crossing of the ways, with a sharpened stake to pinion it.
'twas this ancestral conscience made me cowardly; and when the sight of my father's sword—darius had rescued and restored it to its place upon the chimney-breast—would set me thinking of the israelitish king, and how, when all was lost, he fell upon his blade and died, this horror of the suicide came to give me pause.
besides, that way to right the double wrong was not so clear as it might seem. as matters stood, my living for the present was margery's best safeguard. till she became my widow and my heir-at-law, the mercenary baronet would play his cards to win her honorably. i doubted not he'd make hot love to her; but while she stayed a wife, and was not yet a widow, he'd keep his passion decently in bounds, if only for the better compassing of his end.
but from this horn of the dilemma i slipped to fall upon the other. if my living on as margery's husband was her safety for the time, it was an offering of idol-meats upon the altar of my dear lad's friendship. what would he think of me? how could i go about to make it plain that i had robbed him for his own honor's sake?—that it was not i but fate that was to blame?
these questions came up answerless, like deep-sea plummets where no bottom is. i saw the way no farther on than this; that i must go straightway to jennifer and tell him all. beyond that point the darkness was egyptian, and i could only hope that tricky fate would turn again and blot me out, and make it plain to richard, and to my dear lady, that love, 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 of waiting were outworn at length; and when the sun was dipping to the mountains in the west i rose and washed me in the brook, and afterward constrained myself to eat what tomas had prepared for me.
the sunset glow was fading in the upper air, and underneath the canopy of leaves the wood was darkening on to twilight, when i made ready to be gone. because i thought i might have need of it before the night was done, i buckled on the heirloom sword; and telling tomas and the other blacks for their own safety to keep an alarm guard waking through the night, i sallied forth upon my errand.
i've wished a thousand times, as i sit here before the fire and jot these memories down in crabbed black on white, that i could conjure up for you some speaking picture of this scene primeval in which the story moves.
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 similitude is at an end. you've hacked the virgin forest into shapes and fringes where once it was an ample mantle seamed only by the rivers, and frayed here and there at distant intervals by the settler's ax.
beneath this mantle lay a world unlike the world you know. plunged in its furtive depths you felt the spell of nature's mystery upon you; the mystery of the hoary wood, age-old, steeped in the nepenthe of the centuries. in brightest summer day, which, in these forest aisles, became a misty green translucence, the silence, the vastness, the solitude 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 the shadows bristled with dim fantastic shapes to awe and affright the alien-born.
i was not alien-born. from earliest childhood i had known and loved these forest solitudes. yet now, as when i was a little lad, the twilight shadows awed me. here it was a gnarled and twisted tree-trunk so like a crouching panther that i sprang aside and had the steel half out before the clearer vision came. there it was the figure of a man gliding stealthily from tree to tree, it seemed; keeping even pace with me as if with sinister intent.
i pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though inwardly i scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. what threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? the dogs i had to fear were bred in british kennels, and there was never any lack of clamor when they were beating up a cover.
yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting furtive glances sidewise i came to holding it craftily in the tail of my eye. 'twas surely moving as i moved, and surely drawing nearer. i picked a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent home 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 was become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart indian, naked to the belt, 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 the friendly 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 back along the path.
"how does the chief know that? has he seen him?" though my long exile had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, i made shift to drop into the stately indian hyperbole.
"wah! uncanoola has seen the great water: that make him have long eyes—see heap things."
"will the catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?"
"uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "see captain jennif' so"—he threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling snake-like through the underwood. "bime-by, come to river and find canoe—jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh and shake fist this way, and say 'god-damn.'"
by this i knew that jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learned of 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 tell captain 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 mere shaking of the ribs.
"no can tell that, neither, too," he said. then, with a swift dart aside from the subject: "captain long-knife care much 'bout black dogs yonder?"
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 for all the black skins in his fatherland. i never understood this bitter race antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well written out in many a bloody massacre of that earlier day.
"the wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before the 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 on their heads?" he queried.
"if need be," i asserted.
"wah!" he ejaculated, and at the word was gone as if the earth had swallowed him.
i lost no time in indecision. since jennifer was abroad, i had no business at the plantations; and if tomas and the other refugees were like to come to harm, i could do no less than hasten back to warn or help them.
so i retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw no more shadows in the ancient wood—in truth, had much ado to see the single step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skyless depths.
i was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that i could hear the murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of the tree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green and then to red. 'twas like the childish africans, i said, to draw a secret sentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise it far and wide. truly, the catawba's wolves might find an easy—
a chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. i stood and listened. the cry rang out again; then i loosed the andrea in its scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me sorely of the breath i wanted.
the cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieu thereof, was but a niggard acre hemmed in on every side, save that toward the river, by the virgin forest. for cover there were holly thickets here and there, and into one of these i plunged, creeping on hands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.
the scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lasting shapes upon the memory. a brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glow flaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. the open space around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to and fro; and in the gloom beyond the fire i saw a shadowy horseman backed by others still more phantom-like.
there was no mystery about it. my enemy had come with sleuth-hound indians at his back to run me down. the savages were, no doubt, that band of over-mountain cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.
this was the first thought, caught at in passing; but when i came to look again i saw what had been done. sprawled on the ground before the burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with the eyeballs starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my faithful darius.
by what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why they slew him at the last, i know not, but i made sure it was his death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest alive with ghastly echoes.
at sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. with ten years more of youth and 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 upon the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade it.
this climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, tomas. the other blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but tomas, lagging behind through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of savage triumph.
they flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, and though i caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping of the indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.
i could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he would not tell them what they wished to know—could not, indeed, since i had left no word behind to track me by—was quickly evident. a cord was found, and while i crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helpless as one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs and swung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such a matter before the cabin door.
he bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the hand 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 the indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the splits 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 as pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, i think, would anglo-saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me nauseate with horror.
as with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to hear. and when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly brown. and ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a plea: "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; and lacking means to save his life, i thought i might at least make shift to try to put him out of misery.
the enemy's dispositions favored me. the savages, drunk with lust of blood, leaped and danced around their victim. falconnet sat his horse apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with the night.
i crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the rearmost horseman of the troop. as his ill luck would have it, his horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling to run away. being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew his sword.
in cooler blood i might have given him his soldier's chance, but here again it was another's life or mine. even so, i might have fought him fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. but this he would not, so i had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon his 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 the interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues beneath the eaves. but lest the victim should not suffer long enough, the indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not be merciful.
i waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and make a mark i could not miss. the pause gave space for some swift steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a fierce and terrible temptation. the finger on the musket's trigger held a 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 slave had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would give him surcease i could well avenge him. more than this; that bullet planted in my enemy's heart would save my lady margery harmless, leaving me 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 round as of its own volition, and through its sights i saw the slashings, gold on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. one little crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand. but at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "o massa! 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's musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger of 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 these fierce cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, i was surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate i had invited.
