Montlivet Part 47

But I fell back. I could not. I could not. Three hundred lives for one life. I could spill my own blood for her, but not theirs.

But as for empire, I had forgotten its meaning.

All of these men lying in the shadows had women who were dear. Many of the wives would kill themselves if their husbands died. I had seen an Indian wife do it; she had smiled while she was dying.

Would the woman think of me--at the last? She would not know that I had failed her. She would not know that I was worse than Starling.

She was the highest-couraged, the most finely wrought woman that the world knew. Yet two men had failed her.

"Monsieur," she had said, "life has not been so pleasant that I should wish to live."

It was only a week ago that she--she, alive, untouched, my own--had walked away from me in the sunshine, leaning on Cadillac's arm. And I had let her go. And I had let her go.

And I had let her go. I said that over and over, with my mouth dry, and I forgot time. I did not know that minutes were pa.s.sing, but I looked up, and the stars were dim, and branches and twigs were taking form. Day would be on us soon.

I raised myself on my elbow and peered. I could see very little, but I could hear the strange rhythmic rustle that I call the breathing of the forest. And with it mingled the breathing of three hundred warriors.

They carried clubs, arrows, muskets. I was to give them the signal for war.

I tried to rise. I was up on my knees. I fell back. I tried again.

My muscles did not obey. I saw the war club of the Indian beside me.

My hands stole out to it. A blow on my own head would end matters. My hands closed on the handle of the club.

Then the savage next me stirred. That roused me. The insanity was over, and sweat rained from me at realization of my weakness,--the weakness that always traps a man unsure of his values, his judgment.

When men say that a man's life is not his own to take, I am not sure.

But that had nothing to do with me now. I was not a man in the sense of having a man's free volition. When I had given up human claims for myself, I had ceased to exist as an independent agent. It was only by knowing that I was a tool that I could keep myself alive.

And so I sat upon my knees and whispered to the Indians about me. They whispered in turn, and soon three hundred men were waked and ready.

Yet the forest scarcely rustled.

I motioned, and the line started. We crept some twenty paces from tree to tree. Then ahead of us I saw an opening. I could distinguish the outlines of a rough redoubt.

I stepped in front and stopped a moment. It had grown light enough for me to see the faces of the Sac warriors. Dirt-crusted, red-eyed, wolfish, they awaited my signal.

I raised my sword. "Ready!" I called. An inferno of yells arose. We ran at the top of our speed. We charged the stake-built redoubt with knives in hands. Mingled with our war cry I heard the screams of the awakening camp.

I reached the palings. They were of ba.s.s wood, roughly split and tough. I could not scale them with my lame shoulder. I seized a hatchet from an Indian, struck the stakes, wrenched one free, and climbed through the hole.

The camp was in an uproar. A few Sacs had scaled the redoubt ahead of me, and one of them was grappling with a Seneca just in my path. I dodged them and ran on. Behind me I heard the terrible roar of the blood-hungry army.

I fought my way on. Warriors and slaves rose before me and screamed at my knife, and at something that was in my face. I did not touch them.

I had to find the woman. She might be hiding in one of the huts. But there were many bark huts, and all alike. I ran on.

The air was thickening with powder smoke, and the taste of blood was in my throat. A hatchet whistled by me and cut the cloth from my shoulder. I saw the Seneca who threw the hatchet, but I would not stop. Corpses were in my way. Twice I slipped in blood and went to my knees.

I must search each lodge, each group. I had seen nothing that looked like a woman.

An Indian grappled with me, and I slashed at him till he was helpless.

I was covered with blood that was not my own. I let him drop and stumbled on.

I could not find the woman. I had not seen Starling nor Pierre nor Labarthe nor Leclerc.

And over all the noise of tearing flesh and the screams of dying men came the sound of singing, of constant, exultant singing,--the singing of victors binding their captives; the death songs of wounded preparing to die.

I saw two bodies lying together as if the same arrow had cleft them.

Their hands sprawled toward me, red and beckoning. They were mutilated, but I knew their clothes. They were Leclerc and Labarthe.

Leclerc was hanging on Labarthe as he had leaned in life.

I had brought these men to the wilderness. And Simon was dead, too. I went on.

I saw a Seneca, stripped and running blood, crouch to a white man on the ground and lift his knife to take the scalp. I sprang upon him, but he dashed my knife away, found his feet, and pressed at me. I dodged his hatchet, and catching up a skin shield from the ground turned on him. I was taller than he, and I smashed the shield down on his head so that he dropped. I pounded him till he was beyond doing harm to any one, then I took his knife and hatchet, tossed him aside, and turned to the white man.

It was Starling, and there was life in him, for he opened his eyes.

I took my flask and forced brandy between his teeth. He recognized me but could not speak. A great spear had torn through his chest. I started to pull it out, but when I looked farther and saw what a hatchet had done I checked myself.

His eyes were on mine and he tried to speak. It was more than I could look at,--his effort to hold life in his torn body and tell me something. I eased his head and gave him more brandy.

And then he found strength to try to push me away. "Go! Go! The woman!" I made the words out of the writhing of his lips.

I leaned over him. "Where? Where is she? Where?"

He tried many times before he made a sound that I could catch, and his strength ebbed. I tried more brandy, but he was past reviving. I strained to hear, till my agony matched his. I thought I caught a word. "Woods!" I cried. "Is she in the woods?"

"Yes." He suddenly spoke clearly. "Go." And he fell back in my arms.

I thought that he died with that word, but I held him a moment longer to make sure. It did not matter now that I hated him. As to what he had brought on me,--I could not visit my despair on him for that. As well rage at the forces that made him. Life had given him a little soul in a compelling body. The world believed the body, and expected of the man what he could not reach. I looked at his dead face and trembled before the mystery of inheritance.

But he was not dead. He opened his eyes to mine, quivered, and spoke, and his voice was clear.

"I would have followed her into the woods but they bound me. I was not a coward that time. I would have followed her."

And then the end came to him in a way that I could not mistake, for with the last struggle he cried to the woman.

I laid him down. While I had held him I had known that Frenchmen were fighting around me, and my neck was slimy with warm blood, for an arrow had nicked my ear. But the battle had swayed on to the north of the camp, and only dead and dying were left in sight. I looked at Starling. I could not carry him. I took off my coat, covered the body, and went on.

The woman had gone to the woods. She had gone to the woods.

But woods lay on every side.

As I ran through the camp toward the north I saw a woman ahead of me.

She had a broad, fat figure, and I knew she was an Indian. But she was a woman and the first that I had seen. I caught her and jerked her around to face me.

"The woman? The white woman? Where is she?" I used the Illinois speech.

The woman was a Miami slave and apparently unhurt. But as I stood over her a line of foam bubbled out of her blue lips. Her eyes were meaningless. I had frightened her into catalepsy, and I ground my teeth at my ill luck, for she could have told me something of the woman. I took my brandy flask and tried to pry her teeth apart.

Both of my hands were busy with her when Pierre's bellow rose from behind me. "Master! Jump! Jump!" In the same instant I heard breathing close upon me.