Nick of the Woods Part 28

And now it was, that, as the wretched and defeated barbarians, scattering at Dodge's fire, fled from the spot, the party at the stake beheld a sight well fitted to turn the alarm they had for a moment felt on their own account, into horror and pity. The savage shot down by Dodge was instantly scalped by one of the pursuers, of whom five or six others rushed upon another man--for a second of the fugitives had fallen at the same moment, but only wounded,--attacking him furiously with knives and hatchets, while the poor wretch was seen with raised arms vainly beseeching for quarter. As if this spectacle was not in itself sufficiently pitiable, there was seen a girlish figure at the man's side, struggling with the a.s.sailants, as if to throw herself between them and their prey, and uttering the most heart-piercing shrieks.

"It is Telie Doe!" shouted Forrester, leaping from his kinswoman's side, and rushing with the speed of light to her a.s.sistance.--He was followed, at almost as fleet a step, by Colonel Bruce, who recognised the voice at the same instant, and knew by the ferocious cries of the men,--"Kill the cursed tory! kill the renegade villain!" that it was the girl's apostate father, Abel Doe, who was dying under their vengeful weapons.

"Hold, friends, hold!" cried Roland, as he sprang amid the infuriated Kentuckians. His interposition was for a moment successful: surprise arrested the impending weapons; and Doe, taking advantage of the pause, leaped to his feet, ran a few yards, and then fell again to the ground.

"No quarter for turn-coats and traitors! no mercy for white Injuns!"

cried the angry men, running again at their prey. But Roland was before them; and as he bestrode the wounded man, the gigantic Bruce rushed up, and, catching the frenzied daughter in his arms, exclaimed, with tones of thunder, "Off, you perditioned brutes! would you kill the man before the eyes of his own natteral-born daughter? Kill Injuns, you brutes,--thar's the meat for you!"

"Hurrah for Cunnel Tom Bruce!" shouted the men in reply; and satisfying their rage with direful execrations, invoked upon "all white Injuns and Injun white men," they rushed away in pursuit of more legitimate objects of hostility, if such were still to be found,--a thing not so certain, for few Indian whoops were now mingled with the white man's cry of victory.

In the meanwhile, Roland had endeavoured to raise the bleeding and mangled renegade to his feet; but in vain, though a.s.sisted by the efforts of the unhappy wretch himself; who, raising his hands, as if still to avert the blows of an unrelenting enemy, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed wildly,--"It a'n't nothing,--its only for the gal. Don't murder a father before his own child!"

"You are safe,--fear nothing," said Roland, and at the same moment, poor Telie herself rushed into the dying man's arms, crying, with tones that went to the Virginian's heart,--"They're gone, father, they're gone! Now get up, father, and they won't hurt you no more; the good captain has saved you, father; they won't hurt you, they won't hurt you no more!"

"Is it the Captain?" cried Doe, struggling again to rise, while Bruce drew the girl gently from his arms. "Is it the captain?" he repeated, bending his eager looks and countenance ghastly with wounds upon the Virginian. "They han't murdered you then? I'm glad on it, captain;--I'll die the easier, captain! And the gal, too?" he exclaimed, as his eyes fell upon Edith, who, scarce knowing in her horror what she did, but instinctively seeking the protection of her kinsman, had crept up to the group now around the dying wretch. "It's all right, captain!--But where's d.i.c.k? where's d.i.c.k Braxley? You han't killed him among you?"

"Think not of the villain," said Roland; "I know naught of him."

"I'm a dying man, captain," exclaimed Doe; "I know'd this would be the end of it. If d.i.c.k's a prisoner, jist bring him up and let me speak with him. It will be for your good, captain."

"I know nothing of the scoundrel. Think of yourself," said the Virginian.

"Why, there, don't I see his red han'kercher," cried Doe, pointing to Dodge, who, from his horse, which he had not yet deserted, perhaps, from fear of again losing him, sat looking with soldier-like composure on the expiring renegade, until made conscious that the shawl which he had tied round his waist somewhat in manner of an officer's sash, had become an object of interest to Doe and all others present.

"I took it from the Injun feller," said he, with great self-complacency, "the everlasting big rascal that was a carrying off madam on my own hoss, and madam was jist as dead as a piece of rock. I know'd the crittur, and sung out to the feller to stop, and he wouldn't; and so I jist blazed away at him, right bang at his back,--knocked him over jist like a streak o' lightning, and had the scalp off his 'tarnal ugly head afore you could say John Robinson,--and all the while madam was jist as dead as a piece of rock. Here's the top-knot, and an ugly dirty top-knot it is!" With which words, the valiant Dodge displayed his trophy, a scalp of black hair, yet reeking with blood.

A shiver pa.s.sed through Edith's frame, she grasped her cousin's arm to avoid falling, and with a countenance as white and ghastly as countenance could be, exclaimed,--

"It was Braxley!--It was he carried me off;--but I knew nothing. It was he! Yes, it was _he_!"

"It war'n't a white man?" cried Dodge, dropping his prize in dismay; while even Roland staggered with horror at the thought of a fate so sudden and dreadful overtaking his rival and enemy.

"Ha, ha!" cried the renegade, with a hideous attempt at laughter; "I told d.i.c.k the devil would have us; but I had no idea d.i.c.k would be the first afore him! Shot,--scalped,--sarved like a mere dog of an Injun! Well, the game's up at last, and we've both made our fortun's! Captain, I've been a rascal all my life, and I die no better. You wouldn't take my offer, captain;--it's no matter." He fumbled in his breast, and presently drew to light the will, with which he so vainly strove the preceding night to effect his object with Roland; it was stained deeply with his blood.

"Take it, captain," he cried, "take it; I give it to you without axing tarms; I leave it to yourself, captain. But you'll remember her, captain?

The gal, captain! the gal! I leave it to yourself--"

"She shall never want friend or protector," said Roland.

"Captain," murmured the renegade, with his last breath, and grasping the soldier's hand with his last convulsive effort--"you're an honest feller; I'll--yes, captain, I'll trust you!"

These were the renegade's last words; and before Bruce, who muttered, half in reproach, half in kindness, "The gal never wanted friend or protector, till she fled from me, who was as a father to her," could draw the sobbing daughter away, the wretched instrument of a still more wretched princ.i.p.al in villany, had followed his employer to his last account.

In the meanwhile, the struggle was over, the battle was fought and won. The army, for such it was, being commanded in person by the hero of Kaskaskias,[14] the great protector, and almost founder of the West,--summoned in haste to avenge the slaughter at the Blue Licks,--a lamentable disaster, to which we have several times alluded, although it was foreign to our purpose to venture more than an allusion,--and conducted with unexampled speed against the Indian towns on the Miami, had struck a blow which was destined long to be remembered by the Indians, thus for the first time a.s.sailed in their own territory.

Consisting of volunteers well acquainted with the woods, all well mounted and otherwise equipped, all familiar with battle, and all burning for revenge, it had reached within but ten or twelve miles of Wenonga's town, and within still fewer of a smaller village, which it was the object of the troops first to attack, at sunset of the previous day, and encamped in the woods to allow man and horse, both well nigh exhausted, a few hours' refreshment, previous to marching upon the neighbouring village; when Nathan, flying with the scalp and arms of Wenonga in his hand, and looking more like an infuriated madman than the inoffensive man of peace he had been so long esteemed, suddenly appeared amidst the vanguard, commanded by the gallant Bruce, whom he instantly apprised of the condition of the captives at Wenonga's town, and urged to attempt their deliverance.

[Footnote 14: General George Rogers Clark.]

This was done, and with an effect which has been already seen. The impetuosity of Bruce's men, doubly inflamed by the example of the father and his eldest son, to whom the rescue of their late guests was an object of scarce inferior magnitude even compared with the vengeance for which they burned in common with all others, had in some measure defeated the hopes of the General, who sought, by a proper disposition of his forces, completely to invest the Indian village, so as to ensure the destruction or capture of every inhabitant. As it was, however, very few escaped; many were killed, and more, including all the women and children (who, honest Dodge's misgivings to the contrary notwithstanding, were in no instance designedly injured), taken prisoners. And this, too, at an expense of but very few lives lost on the part of the victors; the Indians attempting resistance only when the fall of more than half their numbers, and the presence of foes on every side, convinced them that flight was wholly impracticable.

The victory was, indeed, so complete, and--as it appeared that several bands of warriors from more distant villages were in the town at the time of the attack--the blow inflicted upon the tribe so much severer than was antic.i.p.ated even from a series of attacks upon several different towns, as was at first designed, that the victors, satisfied that they had done enough to convince the red-man of the irresistible superiority of the Long-knife, satisfied, too, perhaps, that the cheapness of the victory rendered it more valuable than a greater triumph achieved at a greater loss, gave up at once their original design of carrying the war into other villages, and resolved to retrace their march to the Settlements.

But the triumph was not completed until the village, with its fields of standing corn, had been entirely destroyed--a work of cruel vengeance, yet not so much of vengeance as of policy; since the destruction of their crops, by driving the savages to seek a winter's subsistence for their families in the forest, necessarily prevented their making warlike inroads upon their white neighbours during that season. The maize-stalks, accordingly, soon fell before the knives and hatchets of the Kentuckians; while the wigwams were given to the flames. When the last of the rude habitations had fallen, crashing, to the earth, the victors began their retreat towards the frontier; so that within a very few hours after they first appeared, as if bursting from the earth, amid the amazed barbarians, nothing remained upon the place of conflict and site of a populous village, save scattered ruins and mangled corses.

Their own dead the invaders bore to a distance, and interred in the deepest dens of the forest; and then, with their prisoners, carried with them as the surest means of inducing the tribe to beg for peace, in order to effect their deliverance, they resumed the path, which, in good time, led them again to the Settlements.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

With the battle at the Black-Vulture's town, the interest of our history ceases; and there it may be said to have its end. The deliverance of the cousins, the one from captivity and death, the other from a fate to her more dreadful than death; the restoration of the will of their uncle; and the fall of the daring and unprincipled villain to whose machinations they owed all their calamities, had changed the current of their fortunes, which was now to flow in a channel where the eye could no longer trace obstructions. The last peal of thunder had dissipated the clouds of adversity, and the star of their destiny shone out with all its original l.u.s.tre. The future was no longer one of mere hope; it presented all the certainty of happiness of which human existence is capable.

Such being the case, it would be a superfluous and unprofitable task to pursue our history further, were it not that other individuals, whose interests were so long intermingled with those of the cousins, have a claim upon our notice. And first, before speaking of the most important of all, the warlike man of peace, the man-slaying hater of blood, the redoubtable Nathan Slaughter, let us bestow a word upon honest Pardon Dodge, whose sudden re-appearance on the stage of life so greatly astonished the young Virginian.

This resuscitation, however, as explained by Dodge himself, was, after all, no such wonderful matter. Swept from his horse by the violence of the flood, in the memorable flight from the ruin, a happy accident had flung him upon the raft of timber that bordered the fatal _chute_; where, not doubting that, from the fury of the current, all his companions had perished, and that he was left to contend alone against the savages, he immediately sought a concealment among the logs, in which he remained during the remainder of the night and the greater part of the following day, until pretty well a.s.sured the Indians were no longer in his vicinity. Then, scaling the cliffy banks of the river, and creeping through the woods, it was his good fortune at last to stumble upon the clearings around Brace's Station, at which he arrived soon after the defeated Regulators had effected their return. Here--having now lost his horse, arms, everything but life; having battled away also in the midnight siege some of those terrors that made Indians and border life so hateful to his imagination, and being perhaps seduced by the hope of repairing his losses, and revenging the injuries he had suffered--he was easily persuaded to follow Colonel Bruce and the army of Kentuckians to the Indian territory, where Fate, through his arm, struck a blow so dreadfully yet retributively just at the head of the long-prospering villain, the unprincipled and unremorseful Braxley.

It was mentioned, that when Nathan first burst upon the astonished Bruce, where he lay with his vanguard encamped in the woods, his appearance and demeanour were rather those of a truculent madman than of the simple-minded, inoffensive creature he had so long appeared to the eyes of all who knew him. His Indian garments and decorations contributed somewhat to this effect; but the man, it was soon seen, was more changed in spirit, than in outward attire. The bundle of scalps in his hand, the single one, yet reeking with blood, at his belt, and the axe of Wenonga, gory to the helve, and grasped with a hand not less blood-stained, were not more remarkable evidences of transformation than were manifested in his countenance, deportment, and expressions. His eye beamed with a wild excitement, with exultation, mingled with fury; his step was fierce, active, firm, and elastic, like that of a warrior leaping through the measures of the war-dance; and when he spoke, his words were of battle and bloodshed. He flourished the axe of Wenonga, pointed grimly toward the village, and while recounting the number of warriors who lay therein waiting to be knocked on the head, he seemed, judging his thoughts from his gestures, to be employed in imagination in despatching them with his own hands.

When the march, after a hasty consultation, was agreed upon and resumed, he, although on foot, maintained a position at the head of the army, guiding it along with a readiness and precision which argued extraordinary familiarity with all the approaches to the village; and when the a.s.sault was actually commenced, he was still among the foremost, as the reader has seen, to enter the village and the square. To cut the bonds of the Virginian, and utter a fervent expression of delight at his rescue, was not enough to end the ferment in Nathan's mind. Leaving the Virginian immediately to the protection of the younger Bruce, he rushed after the flying Indians, among whom he remained fighting wherever the conflict was hottest, until there remained no more enemies to encounter, achieving such exploits as filled all who beheld him with admiration and amazement.

Nor did the fervour of his fury end altogether even with the battle. He was among the most zealous in destroying the Indian village, applying the fire with his own hands to at least a dozen different wigwams, shouting with the most savage exultation, as each burst into flames.

It was not indeed until the work of destruction was completed, the retreat commenced, and the army once more buried in the woods, that the demon which had thus taken possession of his spirit, seemed inclined to relax its hold, and restore him once more to his wits. It was then, however, that the remarks which all had now leisure to make on his extraordinary transformation, the mingled jests and commendations of which he found himself the theme, began to make an impression on his mind, and gradually wake him as from a dream that had long mastered and distracted his faculties. The fire of military enthusiasm flashed no more from his eyes, his step lost its bold spring and confidence, he eyed those who so liberally heaped praise on his lately acquired courage and heroic actions, with uneasiness, embarra.s.sment, and dismay; and cast his troubled eyes around, as if in search of some friend capable of giving counsel and comfort in such case made and provided. His looks fell upon little Peter, who had kept ever at his side from the moment of his escape from the village, and now trotted along with the deferential humility which became him, while surrounded by so gallant and numerous an a.s.semblage; but even little Peter could not relieve him from the weight of eulogy heaped on his head, nor from the p.r.i.c.kings of the conscience which every word of praise and every encomiastic huzza seemed stirring up in his breast.

In this exigency, he caught sight of the Virginian,--mounted once more upon his own trusty Briareus, which the younger Bruce had brought with him to the field of battle,--and remembered on the sudden that he had not yet acquainted the former with the important discovery of the will, which he had so unexpectedly made in the village. The young soldier was riding side by side with his cousin, for whom a palfrey had been easily provided from the Indian pound, and indulging with her many a joyous feeling which their deliverance was so well suited to inspire; but his eye gleamed with double satisfaction as he marked the approach of his trusty a.s.sociate and deliverer.

"We owe you life, fortune, everything," he cried, extending his hand; "and be a.s.sured neither Edith nor myself will forget it. But how is this, Nathan?" he added, with a smile, as he perceived the bundle of scalps, which Nathan, in the confusion or absence of his mind, yet dangled in his hands,--"you were not used so freely to display the proofs of your prowess!"

"Friend," said Nathan, giving one look, ghastly with sorrow and perturbation, to the shaking ringlets, another to the youth, "thee looks upon locks that was once on the heads of my children!" He thrust the bundle into his bosom, and pointed with a look of inexpressible triumph to that of Wenonga, hanging to his belt. "And here," he muttered, "is the scalp of him that slew them! It is enough, friend: thee has had my story,--thee will not censure me. But, friend," he added, hastily, as if anxious to revert to another subject; "I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair maid, thee cousin, to know. There was a will, friend,--a true and lawful last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same. Truly, friend, I did take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how."

"I have it safe," said Roland, displaying it for a moment, with great satisfaction, to Nathan's eyes. "It makes me master of wealth, which you, Nathan, shall be the first to share. You must leave this wild life of the border, go with me to Virginia,--"

"I, friend!" exclaimed Nathan, with a melancholy shake of the head; "thee would not have me back in the Settlements, to scandalise them that is of my faith! No, friend; my lot is cast in the woods, and thee must not ask me again to leave them. And, friend, thee must not think I have served thee for the lucre of money or gain: for, truly, these things is now to me as nothing. The meat that feeds me, the skins that cover, the leaves that make my bed, are all in the forest around me, to be mine when I want them; and what more can I desire? Yet, friend if thee thinks theeself obliged by whatever I have done for thee, I would ask of thee one favour, that thee can grant."

"A hundred!" said the Virginian, warmly.

"Nay, friend," muttered Nathan, with both a warning and beseeching look, "all that I ask is, that thee shall say nothing of me that should scandalise and disparage the faith to which I was born."

"I understand you," said Roland, "and will remember your wish."

"And now, friend," continued Nathan, "do thee take theeself to the haunts of thee fellows, the habitations of them that is honest and peaceful,--thee, and the good maiden, thee cousin; for, truly, it is not well, neither for thee nor for her,--and especially for her, that is feeble and fearful,--to dwell nigh to where murdering Injuns abound."

"Yet go with us, good Nathan," said Edith, adding her voice to the entreaties of her kinsman: "there shall be none to abuse or find fault with you."

"Thee is a good maid," said Nathan, surveying her with, an interest that became mournful as he spoke. "When thee goes back to thee father's house, thee will find them that will gladden at thee coming; and hearts will yearn with joy over thee young and lovely looks. Thee will smile upon them, and they will be happy. Such," he added, with deep emotion, "such might have been _my_ fate, had the Injun axe spared me but a single child. But it is not so; there is none left to look upon me with smiles and rejoicing,--none to welcome me from the field and the forest with the voice of love--no, truly, truly,--there is not one,--not one." And as he spoke, his voice faltered, his lip quivered, and his whole countenance betrayed the workings of a bereaved and mourning spirit.

"Think not of this," said Roland, deeply affected, as his cousin also was, by this unexpected display of feeling in the rude wanderer: "the grat.i.tude of those you have so well served, shall be to you in place of a child's affection. We will never forget our obligations. Come with us, Nathan,--come with us."