Cardigan Part 68

Again the distant sound broke out in the stillness; it came again, clear and unmistakable. Now the noise of rapidly galloping horses sounded plainly; wheels striking stones rang out sharp and clear; two lights sparkled in the distance, growing yellower and bigger, while the road beneath flashed into sight in the advancing radiance.

On, on they came, horses at a heavy gallop, chaise swinging and lurching, right into the cross-roads. Then a blinding flash and crash split the gloom, echoed by another, and then a third. I leaped from my cover into a frantic ma.s.s of struggling horses which Renard was dragging violently into the road-ditch, while Mount, swinging his rifle, knocked down a man who fired at him and beat him till he lay still.

A shadowy form leaped from the seat in front and ran across my path, doubling and disappearing into the darkness; another slid from his horse, sinking to the ground without a sound, though the crazed animal kicked and trampled him into the mud.

As I sprang to the chaise, I saw the driver lurch towards me, and I aimed a blow at him with my rifle, but he pitched off heavily, landing in a heap at my feet, face downward in the gra.s.s. Now the horses swung in front of me, plunging furiously in the smashed harness; crash!

went a wheel; the chaise sank forward; a horse fell.

"Look out! Look out!" shouted Mount, behind me, as I ran to the swaying vehicle.

"Silver Heels!" I cried, tearing at the door of the chaise.

For a second I saw her terrified face at the window; her cry rang in my ears; then the door burst open and Wraxall sprang out, burying his knife in my neck.

Down we went together, down, down into a smothering darkness that had no end, yet I remember, after a long, long time, looking up at the stars--or perhaps into her eyes.

Then my body seemed to sink again, silently as a feather, and my soul dropped out, falling like a lost star into an endless night.

CHAPTER XVIII

I knew afterwards--long, long afterwards--that I had been stabbed repeatedly; how many times is now of little consequence, although I have sometimes counted the white cicatrices on my body, tracing each with wonder that I had not long ago done with this life.

For that matter, I was regarded as already ended when they tore my a.s.sailant from my body and shattered him to death with their hatchets and knives, pistoling him again and again while he still quivered in the long gra.s.s.

As for me, I appeared to be quite dead, and whether to bury me there or in some kinder spot, none could determine, while the dear maid I loved lay senseless in Black Betty's arms.

As it was afterwards told to me in the saddest days of my life, so I tell what now befell the rescued, the rescuers, and that scarcely palpitating body o' mine, the soul of which floated on the dark borderland of Death. For it came to happen that dawn, lurking behind the eastern hills, set dull signals of fire on every western peak, warning Mount and Renard that day was on their trail to bare it for all who chose to follow.

My senseless sweetheart they bore to the waiting chaise, and, my body still retaining some warmth, they bore that, too, because they dared not bury me before she had seen me dead with her own eyes.

All that day they rode west by north, climbing the vast divide, halting to lie perdu when their keen ears heard movements all unseen, pushing on to tear the path free while their axes rang out among the windfalls. Then, when the western sun sank beyond the Ohio into the sea of trees, the winds of the east filled their nostrils and the long divide had been pa.s.sed at last.

That night my dear love opened her eyes, and the darkness that enchained her fell, so that she crept to my feet as I lay in a corner of the chaise and laid her head on my knees.

Whether she thought me alive or dead none knew. Betty had bared my body to the waist and washed it. For a corpse they do as much. Later, without hope, Mount brought a pannikinful of blue-balsam gum, p.r.i.c.ked from the globules on the trunk, and when Betty had once more washed me, they filled the long gashes with the balsam and closed them decently, strip on strip, with the fine cambric shift which my sweetheart tore from her own body.

Later, when the moon was coming up, they carried me lying in a blanket, my sweetheart walking beside me, and her silken shoon in tatters till her feet bled at every step, but refused to go back to the chaise. That night they thought me surely dead and watched without sleep lest the rigidity of dissolution surprise me ere my limbs had been laid straight. But the morning found me as I was, and the first shadow of night revealed no change, nor was I dead on the next morning, nor on the next, nor yet the next.

A still Sabbath in the forest, pa.s.sed amid the sad twilight of the trees, gave them hope; for I had opened my eyes, though I saw nothing.

But that night Death sat at my right hand, and the next night Death cradled my head; and my dear love lay at my feet and looked Death steadily in the eyes.

The fever which loosened every muscle burned fiercely all night long, and my voice broke out from my body like a demon mocking within me. A few of the Lenape, roaming near, followed and shot at us towards dawn, driving us north into the forest, where the chaise was abandoned, the traces cut, and the horses loaded with corn.

North and south the runways of the Long House pierced the wilderness, and these were the trails they followed, the men on foot, bearing me on their litter of blankets and balsam-boughs, the women crouching on the sack-laden horses.

As for me, I lived on through cold and heat, storm and stress, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, dumb, save when the demon hidden in my body mocked and laughed between my blackened lips. That demon was always watching things which I could not see, peeping out through my eyes into h.e.l.l. Hours came when there was no water, and the demon knew it and mouthed and cursed between my shrinking lips. Then he would turn on me and tear at my throat and gnaw me and thrust his claws into my brain. Sometimes I heard his low laughter, for though I could neither see nor hear aught in the world, I could hear the demon sometimes, and feel him in my body, setting fire to the blood till it boiled like the water he craved.

At night he often stole my body and carried it where the darkness burnt and charred. There he would take out my bones, one by one, and break them for the marrow to dry hard.

These things no one has told me. I remember them in sleep sometimes, sometimes waking.

What I have heard from others is vague, and to me unreal as a painted scene in a picture where a film has settled under cobwebs. I hear that I breathed through days which I never saw, that I opened my eyes on lands which are strange to me, that my babble broke primeval silences which G.o.d himself had sealed. Nay, not I, but the demon mocked through those voiceless voids and lost ravines, through the still twilight of the noonday forest, through midnight summits m.u.f.fled in the clouds.

But only I know that, or dream it sometimes when I ponder on my end and on that fair salvation which my father finds lately in Christ.

Now, my dark soul, to hidden realms addressed, returned to me one night, and, listening, heard the demon scratching at my bones. Then, weary and perplexed, inside my body crept my soul and drew the lids of both eyes down, so that we might sleep together before the busy demon knew.

Yet I, having my soul again, opened my eyes to find a star was watching me; then, content, lay closer to my soul and slept. And thus the demon found us, and so fled back to the sleepless h.e.l.l from whence he came.

Sleeping, I smelled lavender in the forest, and I thought the wood had windows where a sweet wind blew. Truly, there was a window somewhere near me, for I found my eyes had opened and could see it where the curtains swayed in the sun.

Hours later I looked again; the window was still there, and the moon beyond, low among pines whose shapes I knew.

Hours came and faded into sunshine; days brought bright spots on the curtains; night brought the moon and the tall pines. Sweet-fern, too, I smelled sometimes, and I heard a soothing monotone of familiar sound below me.

One day a c.o.c.k crew and I fell a-trembling all alone, I knew not why.

That night a new sound woke me, and I felt the presence of another person. Moonlight silvered the window of a room which I knew; but I was very quiet and waited for the sun, lest the phantoms I divined should trick me.

Then came a morning--perhaps the next, but I am not sure--when I knew I was in a bed and very tired, too tired to see aught but the sheets and the sunlit curtains beyond. That night, however, I heard rain falling on a roof and fell asleep, watching the window for the hidden moon.

When I first recognized the room, my memory served me a trick, and I thought of the school-room below where the others were imprisoned --Silver Heels, Peter, and Esk. Slyly content to doze abed here in Sir William's room, I understood that I must have been lying sick a long, long time, but could not remember when I had fallen ill. One thing sure: I did not mean they should know that I was better; I closed my eyes when I felt a presence near, lying still as a mouse until alone again.

Sometimes my thoughts wandered to the others in the school-room with Mr. Yost, for I did not remember he had been scalped by the Lenape, and I pitied Silver Heels and Esk and fat Peter a-thumbing their copy-books and breathing chalk-dust. Faith, I was well off in the great white bed, here in Sir William's room.

I could see his fish-rods on the wall, looped with silk lines and scarlet feather-flies; his hunting-horn, too, and his whip and spurs hanging from hooks beneath a fox's-mask and brush. There hung his fowling-pieces above the mantel, pouch and horn dangling from crossed ramrods; there rose his book-case with the eared-owl atop and the Chinese jar full o' pipes, long as my arm and twice as strong--a conceit which sent a weak wave of mirth through my body I could not move.

Soft! They are coming to watch me now. So I slyly close my eyes till they go away or give me the drinks they brew to make me sleep. I know them; were I minded I might gather strength to spit out their sense-stealing stuffs. But I swallow and dream and wake to a new sun or to mark the waxing moon, now near its full.

Our Doctor Pierson was here to-day and caught me watching him. They'll soon have me in the school-room now, though I do still play possum all I can, eating my gruel, which a strange servant brings, and pretending not to see her. Yet I am wondering why the maid is so silent and that her gown is so dark and stiff.

Later that day I saw Colonel Guy Johnson come into the room and look at me, but I did not mean he should think me awake, and so closed my eyes and lay quiet. When Sir William should come, however, I would open my eyes, for I had been desiring to see him since I saw his rods and guns. It fretted me at times that he neglected me, knowing my love for him.

Once, as I lay dozing, Peter crept into the room and stared at me. He had grown tall and gross and heavy-eyed, so that I scarce knew him, nor had he a trace of Sir William in his slinking carriage, which was all Mohawk, and the worst Mohawk at that. I was glad when he ceased thumbing the bedposts and left me.

The next day I saw Doctor Pierson beside me and asked for Sir William.

He said that Sir William was away and that I was doing well. We often spoke after that, and he was ever busy with my head, which no longer ached save when he fingered it.

Then one night I awoke with a cry of terror and found myself sitting upright, bathed in chilly sweat, shouting that the Cayugas were abroad and that I must hold them back by the throat till Sir William could arrive and restrain them.

Lights soon moved into the room; I saw Doctor Pierson and Guy Johnson, but the dammed-up floods of memory had broken loose like an old wound, and the past came crowding upon me till I fell back on the pillows, convulsed and gasping, while the strong hands of the doctor began their silent work, tapping head and body, till somebody gave me a draught and I drowsed perdu.

Day broke--the bitterest day of life I was to know. I felt it, listening to the rain; I felt it, in the footsteps that pa.s.sed my door--footsteps I did not know. Why was the house so silent? Why did all go about so quietly, dressed in black? Was there some one dead in the house below? Where was Silver Heels? Why had she never come to me?

How came I here? Where was Jack Mount and Cade Renard? And Sir William, where was he that he came not near me--me who had lain sick unto death in his service and for his sake?

Dread numbed me; I strove to call, but my dumb lips froze; I strove to rise, and found my body wrecked in bed without power, without sense, a helpless, inert thing between two sheets.