Cardigan Part 33

"No need to guess," cut in the big fellow, cheerfully. "I'm Jack Mount; I burned the _Gaspee_, I helped dump his Majesty's tea into Boston harbour, and I should be pleased to do as much for the King himself. Tell him so, Captain Butler; tell my Lord Dunmore he can have a ducking, too, at his lordship's polite convenience."

Butler glared at him, but Mount raised his c.o.o.n-skin cap and bowed mockingly. "Charmed, sir, charmed," he simpered. "Pray, permit me to present my comrade, Sir Cade Renard, of the backwood aristocracy, sometimes called the Weasel. He's so shy, sir. Friend Weasel, come out from behind that stump and bring your rifle; step up beside me and make a very fine bow to his Majesty's deputy-sheriff. Tell the kind gentleman what good men we are, Cade, and how proud we feel to entertain him."

The Weasel sauntered up and performed a slow, wriggling bow.

"Minions of the moon, sir," he said; "and so charmed to receive you, or anything you have of value. Your scalp, now, might bring five shillings at Baton Rouge, or is that but a scratch wig you wear, sir?"

"Will you deliver me my warrant and my prisoner?" demanded Butler, with a ghastly smile.

"No!" said Mount, abruptly changing his manner. "Make a new trail, you Tory hangman! March!" And he gave him a prod with his rifle.

Never had I seen such ferocity expressed on any human face as I saw now on Mr. Butler's.

He backed out into the brush, at the point of Mount's long rifle; then the red fire-glow left him, and he was gone into the darkness of early morning. Presently the Weasel stole after him.

Mount came swaggering back, pausing to drop the warrant on the hot coals as he pa.s.sed. Renard returned in a few minutes, took his rifle, and squatted briskly down just beyond the fire-light.

As Mount came up to me, I rose and thanked him for the protection he had given so generously, and he laughed and laid one padded fist on my shoulder.

"Hark ye, friend," he said; "take your Indian belts and your pack and go in peace, for if Dunmore is after you, the sooner you start north the better. Go, lad; I'm not your enemy!"

"I go south," I replied, cautiously.

"Oh, you do, eh?" said Mount, fumbling in his pockets for the flint he had taken from my rifle. "Are you bound for Cresap's camp, too?"

"Are you?" I asked, reddening.

He rubbed his chin, watching me with sulky eyes.

"You answer ever with a question!" he complained, fretfully. "I ask you this and you ask me that--tom tiddle! tiddle tom!--and I be no wiser now for all I have heard your name."

"I know Michael Cardigan," observed the Weasel, quietly coming up, buckling on his pack.

"It's an honourable name," I began, in desperation, striving to stop him, but the Weasel ignored me and addressed himself to Mount.

"He's one of Sir William Johnson's household. That accounts for those peace-belts of wampum. Shemuel, yonder, knows the lad."

"Oho!" exclaimed Mount, staring at me. "So you come on Sir William's business to the Cayugas? Ha! Now I begin to grasp this pretty game.

Sir William wishes his Cayugas to sit tight while Cresap builds forts--"

"Hush, for G.o.d's sake!" I pleaded, seeing that he had guessed all.

"Oh, I'll hush," he replied, eying me with frank curiosity. "I am no enemy to Sir William. A fairer and more honest gentleman lives not in these colonies, be he Tory or patriot! Oh, I'll hush, but every one knows Sir William will not have the Indians take sides in this same war that's coming so fast upon us. It's no secret, lad; every pot-house, every tavern tap-room is full o' gossip that Butler means to rouse the Indians against us, and that Sir William will not have it!"

"Since when have you come from Johnstown?" I asked, astonished.

"Oh, a week after you left," replied the Weasel. "We saw your tracks, but we went another way after the first week. You lost too much time."

Mount had now hoisted his pack to his shoulders and stood watching Shemuel, the Hebrew peddler, strapping up his dingy boxes, tucking in bits of lace and ribbon and cheap finery.

"Come on, Shemmy, you pigeon-toed woodchuck!" growled Mount, cracking a fresh lump of spruce-gum in his glistening teeth.

The little Jew looked up at me slyly, his grimy fists buried in the bowels of his gewgaws.

"Perhaps the gendleman cares to look at som goots?" he observed, interrogatively. "I haff chains, buckles, pins, needles, b.u.t.tons, laces, knifes, ribbons for queue and gollarettes--"

Mount, with the toe of his moccasin, gently reversed Shemuel into one of his own boxes, then warning him to pack up if he valued his scalp, took my arm in friendly fashion and moved out into the gray woods.

"Touching this mission of yours to the Cayugas," he said, frankly, "I see no good to come of it, and I say this with all respect to Sir William. By-the-bye, Sir William has much to trouble him these days."

"I know that," said I, sadly.

"Oh no, you don't," smiled Mount. "There have been strange doings in Johnstown since you left: a change has come in a single week, lad; neighbours no longer speak; the town is three parts Tory to one part patriot; even brothers hate each other. Two taverns known to be the meeting-places of patriots have been set afire and shot into; and old John Butler is gone north, where, they say, he is raising a b.l.o.o.d.y crew of cut-throats, rangers, half-breeds, and young Mohawks. Sir William is holding long talks with Brant and Red Jacket at the upper castle. Oh, the sands begin to run faster now, and men must soon take one side or t'other, for there's more troops going to Boston, and that means the end of King George!"

I did not perhaps realize the importance of all he said; I had seen too little of the rebels themselves to credit the seriousness of the situation. But here was an opportunity to sound Mount on the Cresap affair, and I began earnestly.

"Can you not see that Colonel Cresap is driving the Cayugas into the King's ranks?"

"What do we care for the Cayugas?" replied Mount, contemptuously; and it was in vain I wasted argument on this man who had been born a woodsman, but who knew the savages only from the outside. I could not make him see the foolish uselessness of angering the Six Nations. He was one of that kind who detested all Indians, who professed to hold them in scorn, and who had pa.s.sed his life in killing all he could.

"What are we to do?" he demanded, sarcastically. "Give up the frontier and go back to Virginia with tails between our legs?"

"Better that than serve as silly tools for Dunmore!" I retorted hotly.

"Dunmore!" sneered Mount. "We his tools, when the silly a.s.s hasn't wits to twiddle his own thumbs?"

"He had the wit to send Butler to stop me!" I answered, bitterly.

Mount began to grin again and wink his eyes slyly.

"Butler came for something else, too," he said. "Dunmore's suite travelled south the day you left, and ought to be in Fortress Pitt by this hour to-morrow."

"What of it?" I asked.

"Ay, that's it, you see. Since you left Johnstown, all are talking of the new beauty who threw over Walter Butler--what's her name--a certain Miss Warren, ward of Sir William; and it is commonly reported that the dispute over the Indians and the quarrel betwixt Butler and Sir William stopped the match."

"What of it!" I broke out, hoa.r.s.ely.

"Only that this beautiful Miss Warren came with Lord Dunmore's suite to Pittsburg, and Walter Butler has openly boasted he will marry her spite of Sir William or the devil himself. And here is the lady--and here comes her rash gallant tumbling after his jill!"

To hear her name in the southern wilderness, to hear these things in this place, told coa.r.s.ely, told with a wink and a leer, raised such a black fury in me that I could scarce see the man before me. As for speaking, my throat closed and my breast heaved as though to burst the very straps on my pack. Oh, that I had killed Butler! I clutched my rifle and glared into the gray waste of misty trees. Somewhere out there that devil was lurking; and when I had fulfilled my trust I would seek him and end everything for good and all.

"Are you certain that Miss Warren is already in Pittsburg?" I managed to ask.

"We saw the ladies and the escort a week since," said Mount. "The trail is good for horses below Crown Gap, and they were well mounted, ay, n.o.bly horsed, ladies and troopers, by Heaven! Was it not a splendid sight, Cade?"

"Gay and G.o.dless," replied the Weasel, buckling the straps on his pack more tightly and shifting the weight with a grunt. "Are you ready, Jack?"

Mount looked at me.