Lords of the North Part 26

"Shut up, boy!" exclaimed Father Holland. "Just when ye both need all y'r wits, y'r scattering them to the four winds. Now, mind yourselves! I don't like these terms! 'Tis the devil's own doing! Let's talk this over!"

With a vast deal of the wordy eloquence that characterizes Indian diplomacy, the tenor of Le Grand Diable's message was "His shot pouch was light and his pipe cold; he hung down his head and the pipe of peace had not been in the council; the Sioux were strangers and the whites were their enemies; the pale-faces had been in their power and they had always conveyed them on their journey with glad hearts and something to eat." Finally, the Master of Life, likewise Earth, Air, Water, and Fire were called on to witness that if the white men delivered five hundred rounds of ammunition, twenty guns and ten horses, the white woman and her child, likewise the two messengers, would be sent safely back to the Mandane lodge; none but these two messengers would be permitted in the Sioux camp; also, the Sioux would not answer for the lives of the white men if they left the Mandane lodges. Let the white men, therefore, send back the full ransom by the hands of the same messenger.

CHAPTER XVI

LE GRAND DIABLE SENDS BACK OUR MESSENGER

Father Holland advised caution and consideration before acting. A policy of bargaining was his counsel.

"I don't like those terms, at all," he said, "too much like giving your weapons to the enemy. I don't like all this."

He would temporize and rely on Le Grand Diable's covetous disposition bringing him to our terms; but Hamilton would hear of neither caution nor delay.

The ransom price was at once collected. Next morning, Little Fellow, on a fresh mount with a string of laden horses on each side, went post haste back to the Sioux.

In all conscience, Hamilton had been wild enough during the first parley. His excitement now exceeded all bounds. The first two days, when there was no possibility of Miriam's coming and Little Fellow could not yet have reached the Sioux, I tore after Eric so often I lost count of the races between our lodge and the north hill. The performance began again on the third day, and I broke out with a piece of my mind, which surprised him mightily.

"Look you here, Hamilton!" I exclaimed, rounding him back from the hill, "Can't you stop this nonsense and sit still for only two days more, or must I tie you up? You've tried to put me crazy all winter and, by Jove, if you don't stop this, you'll finish the job----"

He gazed at me with the dumb look of a wounded animal and was too amazed for words. Leaving me in mid-road, feeling myself a brute, he went straight to his own hut. After that incident, he gave us no further anxiety and kept an iron grip on his impatience. With me, anger had given place to contrition. He remained much by himself until the night, when our messengers were expected. Then he came across to my quarters, where Father Holland and I were keyed up to the highest pitch. Putting out his hand he said--

"Is it all right with us again, Rufus, old man?"

That speech nigh snapped the strained cords.

"Of course," said I, gripping the extended hand, and I immediately coughed hard, to explain away the undue moisture welling into my eyes.

We all three sat as still and silent as a death-watch, Father Holland fumbling and pretending to pore over some holy volume, Eric with fingers tightly interlaced and upper teeth biting through lower lip, and I with clenched fists dug into jacket pockets and a thousand imaginary sounds singing wild tunes in my ears.

How the seconds crawled, and the minutes barely moved, and the hours seemed to heap up in a blockade and crush us with their leaden weight!

Twice I sought relief for pent emotion by piling wood on the fire, though the night was mild, and by breaking the glowing embers into a shower of sparks. The soft, moccasined tread of Mandanes past our door startled Father Holland so that his book fell to the floor, while I shook like a leaf. Strange to say, Hamilton would not allow himself the luxury of a single movement, though the lowered brows tightened and teeth cut deeper into the under lip.

Dogs set up a barking at the other end of the village--a common enough occurrence where half-starved curs roved in packs--but I could not refrain from lounging with a show of indifference to the doorway, where I peered through the moon-silvered dusk. As usual, the Indians with shrill cry flew at the dogs to silence them. The noise seemed to be annoying my companions and was certainly unnerving me, so I shut the door and walked back to the fire.

The howl of dogs and squaws increased. I heard the angry undertone of men's voices. A hoa.r.s.e roar broke from the Mandane lodges and rolled through the village like the sweep of coming hurricane. There was a fleet rush, a swift pattering of something pursued running round the rear of our lodge, with a shrieking mob of men and squaws after it. The dogs were barking furiously and snapping at the heels of the thing, whatever it was.

"A hostile!" exclaimed Hamilton, leaping up.

Hardly knowing what I did, I bounded towards the door and shot forward the bolt, with a vague fear that blood might be spilled on our threshold.

"For shame, man!" cried Father Holland, making to undo the latch.

But the words had not pa.s.sed his lips when the parchment flap of the window lifted. A voice screamed through the opening and in hurtled a round, nameless, blood-soaked horror, rolling over and over in a red trail, till it stopped with upturned, dead, glaring eyes and hideous, gaping mouth, at the very feet of Hamilton.

It was the scalpless head of La Robe Noire. Our Indian had paid the price of his own blood-l.u.s.t and Diable's enmity.

Before the full enormity of the treachery--messengers murdered and mutilated, ransom stolen and captives kept--had dawned on me, Father Holland had broken open the door. He was rushing through the night screaming for the Mandanes to catch the miscreant Sioux. When I turned back, not daring to look at that awful object, Hamilton had fallen to the hut floor in a dead faint.

And now may I be spared recalling what occurred on that terrible night!

Women luxuriate and men traffic in the wealth of the great west, but how many give one languid thought to the years of b.l.o.o.d.y deeds by which the west was won?

Before restoring Hamilton, it was necessary to remove that which was unseemly; also to wash out certain stains on the hearth-stones; and those things would have tried the courage of more iron-nerved men than myself.

I should not have been surprised if Eric had come out of that faint, a gibbering maniac; but I toiled over him with the courage of blank hopelessness, pumping his arms up and down, forcing liquor between the clenched teeth, splashing the cold, clammy face with water, and laving his forehead. At last he opened his eyes wearily. Like a man ill at ease with life, moaning, he turned his face to the wall.

Outside, it was as if the unleashed furies of h.e.l.l fought to quench their thirst in human blood. The clamor of those red demons was in my ears and I was still working over Hamilton, loosening his jacket collar, under-pillowing his chest, fanning him, and doing everything else I could think of, to ease his labored breathing, when Father Holland burst into the lodge, utterly unmanned and sobbing like a child.

"For the Lord's sake, Rufus," he cried, "for the Lord's sake, come and help! They're murdering him! They're murdering him! 'Twas I who set them on him, and I can't stop them! I can't stop them!"

"Let them murder him!" I returned, unconsciously demonstrating that the civilized heart differs only in degree from the barbarian.

"Come, Rufus," he pleaded, "come, for the love of Frances, or your hands will not be clean. There'll be blood on your hands when you go back to her. Come, come!"

Out we rushed through the thronging Mandanes, now riotous with the l.u.s.t of blood. A ring of young bucks had been formed round the Sioux to keep the crowd off. Naked, with arms pinioned, the victim stood motionless and without fear.

"Good white father, he no understand," said the Mandanes, jostling the weeping priest back from the circle of the young men. "Good white father, he go home!" In spite of protest by word and act they roughly shoved us to our lodge, the doomed man's death chant ringing in our ears as they pushed us inside and clashed our door. In vain we had argued they would incur the vengeance of the Sioux nation. Our voices were drowned in the shout for blood--for blood!

The sigh of the wind brought mournful strains of the victim's dirge to our lodge. I fastened the door, with robes against it to keep the sound out. Then a smell of burning drifted through the window, and I stop-gapped that, too, with more robes.

That the Sioux would wreak swift vengeance could not be doubted. As soon as the murderous work was over, guides were with difficulty engaged.

Having fitted up a sort of prop in which I could tie Hamilton to the saddle, I saw both Father Holland and Eric set out for Red River before daybreak.

It was best they should go and I remain. If Miriam were still in the country, stay I would, till she were safe; but I had no mind to see Eric go mad or die before the rescue could be accomplished.

As they were leaving I took a piece of birch bark. On it I wrote with a charred stick:--

"Greetings to my own dear love from her ever loyal and devoted knight."

This, Father Holland bore to Frances Sutherland from me.

CHAPTER XVII

THE PRICE OF BLOOD