Silent Struggles Part 45

These men wore no paint; their robes of dressed deer-skin were faded and without ornament. Nothing about them seemed worthy of care, except the guns that they leaned upon, and the pouches in which they kept powder and lead.

The young chief spoke with his followers in their own language. He told them more of Barbara Stafford's history than any person in America knew except himself. How she was the daughter of a proud old chief in the mother country, who owned lands broad almost as the wilderness they stood in, with a vast dwelling which rose from the earth like a mountain peak. The savages needed no more than this, for they had heard his speech near the beacon fire, but he seemed to find proud joy in telling them that the lady, so gentle and so good, now their guest, so far as G.o.d's wilderness could afford hospitality, had bought him of his task-masters, and taken him to foreign countries, where she and her father travelled together in sad companionship, for both were unhappy, and found his affection a solace. She had in her beautiful kindness redeemed his soul from ignorance, as she had purchased his body from the slave-driver's lash. After this she and her proud father had taken him to their home in England--that grand home in which they were held as chiefs and princes--where the old chief died, leaving his daughter alone in her proud domain.

Here the young man paused, his eyes fell, and his haughty lip began to tremble. He spoke in the Indian tongue, which Barbara could not understand, but the swarthy blood burned on his forehead as her eye turned upon him, and for a moment he shrunk from telling the whole truth; but his brave nature gained the mastery, and he went on, yet with humility in his voice, and shame burning in his downcast eyes.

"My children, I loved the lady from the hour her hand unlocked my chains, but the secret lay buried deep in my heart, and no one guessed how it burned there. When her father was dead, and I saw her alone, with no one but me to counsel or comfort her, this love broke from its covert and frightened her almost into hating me. She did not mock me with scorn, but--"

Here the Indians broke their grim silence, and signs of proud anger pa.s.sed between them. At last one spoke.

"Why should the woman treat you with scorn? If she was the child of a great chief, Philip, your father, was the king of a mighty tribe--your mother was white as the boxwood in flower, and proud as the hemlock on a cliff. What woman dare receive the love of a king's son, save with her forehead in the dust?"

"Not with scorn, my braves. I said she was frightened, not angry: my wild pa.s.sion was its own enemy. She commanded me from her presence, told me of the years she had lived before I was born, and with cruel gentleness sent me away.

"But I would not go. Like a disgraced hound I hung upon her track, unseen, unthought of, it may be, till she left her home and came down to the sea sh.o.r.e, where a ship lay ready to sail. I followed her, and buried myself deep in the hold of the vessel, not caring--may the Great Spirit forgive me!--where the ship went, nor how long she might plough the ocean. We were sheltered by the same timbers once more, and that was enough. Before starting I knew that the ship was bound for Boston, and felt that the Great Spirit had been leading me back to my father's people--back among my father's enemies, that I might accomplish the great object of my life, and avenge the wrongs which no Indian can forget. So, urged on by two great pa.s.sions, I obtained such means of war as lay within my power and came among you.

"The lady left our vessel when we neared the land. She descended into a frail boat, and was launched forth into the harbor, which was lashed and angry with storms I dared not offer to go with her, but looked on sick at heart till the tempest swept her away. She was hurled among the breakers, buried in the sea; but an old man, the persecutor of our people, the minister of Salem, dragged her forth, and with him a youth."

The chief paused abruptly, and his reproachful eyes turned upon the lady.

"He was younger than I am, and a stranger, yet she did not drive him from her presence."

He spoke these words in English, but Barbara did not comprehend their meaning or connection. She only knew that his eyes were full of sad reproach, and, smiling softly, drew close to his side, murmuring,

"I am driven into captivity now, and it is from you I seek shelter."

"I have told my braves whom it is they will defend. While they live you are safe in the wilderness which was my father's hunting-ground. As for me, have compa.s.sion and let me go hence."

A flush reddened Barbara Stafford's forehead as she bent it with a gentle sign of acquiescence. The chief gave some orders in their own tongue, and the Indians instantly fell to work cutting away wet branches from the hemlocks and pines, tearing green bark from the giant elms, and felling young saplings, which they planted in the earth, and curved downward in the form of a tent. Over these they laid the bark, and covered the whole with green boughs, till a bower was formed worthy of a wood nymph. Two of the Indians brought great fleeces of moss down from the ledges and heaped a couch with them, and over all a n.o.ble white pine spread its ma.s.sy branches, through which the full moon sent a thousand gleams of silver, as if laughing at the bank of storm clouds from which it had just escaped.

Upon the couch of moss which his people had heaped in this bower, the young chief spread a robe of skins, and laid his blanket, which he unwound from his shoulders. Then, with the air of a prince offering the hospitality of a royal palace, he approached Barbara Stafford where she sat by the fire, and led her to the shelter provided for her.

Barbara was greatly moved. With an impulse of thankfulness, she bent down and kissed the young chief's hand as he was about to withdraw it from hers; but it trembled like a wounded bird beneath her touch, and his magnificent eyes filled with tears--the shame of an Indian's soul.

Angry with his weakness, the young man turned from her and dashed away into the woods.

When Barbara awoke in the morning, for fatigue made her sleep heavy, she inquired for the young man. The Indians answered that he had gone deeper into the wilderness, where the main body of his tribe lay, and when a cabin was prepared for her reception, he would come back again; till then the five warriors whom he had left behind would protect her with their lives.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

TAKEN CAPTIVE.

Samuel Parris bore his daughter home and laid her on her own white bed, where she writhed like a wounded fawn in the snow. Her face was rosy with flushes, that came and went like gleams of light on marble; her lips were in constant motion; she muttered continually about Barbara Stafford and Norman Lovel. Sometimes she called aloud for her mother, and declared with child-like earnestness that she saw her gliding through the room with her golden hair smoothed under a close cap, and a white dress sweeping around her like the wings of an angel.

The old minister listened to all this in stern sorrow. His ewe lamb was smitten down before his eyes: G.o.d had suffered his idolatrous love to find a terrible punishment. What could he do? how act to save that beautiful one from perdition?

Norman Lovel was sad. Barbara Stafford had disappeared like a myth. His approach seemed to have driven her away, and he found Elizabeth, from whom he had parted in anger, writhing on a bed of pain, muttering her wild fancies and crying aloud for help.

Abigail Williams moved about coldly and in breathless silence. The curse of witchcraft was upon the house, hatred and death clung around it like cerecloths to a coffin. What if she, too, were possessed--the story of old t.i.tuba, a device of the Evil One, and the young chief so wildly beautiful, who claimed relationship with her, the arch fiend himself?

The very foundations of her reason seemed shaken by these doubts, and as the moans and cries of Elizabeth reached her ear from time to time, she would pause in her work and stand motionless like a block of marble, till some new sound startled her into life again.

All night Samuel Parris sat by the bedside of his child, pallid and thoughtful. Over and again he questioned her in the midst of her wild speeches, as a judge sifts the words of a doubtful witness. Sometimes he fell into audible prayer, and again sat in dull silence pondering gloomily.

When the morning came he went forth, and, mounting his horse, rode to the nearest magistrate, who was a deacon in his own church, and a man of iron domination. Samuel Parris knew well that after his appeal to this man, there could be little free will left to him.

No wonder then that he walked heavily, and paused long upon the door-step before entering. He shrunk from hunting down the life of a helpless woman, and shuddered at the thought of making a charge from which there was no chance of retreat.

The minister went in at last, and the door closed heavily after him. The sound of a m.u.f.fled drum could not have followed his footsteps more solemnly.

After an hour the old man came forth again, and moved with a slow tread down the village street toward his own dwelling. As he pa.s.sed the doors of his parishioners, men and women came out and questioned him in low tones, and with looks of awe, regarding the condition of his child. He answered them all patiently, but with a sad weariness of manner that turned curiosity into compa.s.sion.

On the threshold of his home Samuel Parris met three men, members of his own congregation, who greeted him in silence, as neighbors salute the chief mourners at a funeral. Then the four pa.s.sed in, and mounted to the chamber where Elizabeth lay, with her wild eyes lifted to the ceiling, and her hands waving about in the air.

These four good men--for after the manner of the times they were good--sat down in silence, and each gathered from the lips of the delirious girl the evidence which was to imperil a human life. When they had listened an hour keenly and conscientiously, each according to his light, they arose and went forth, shaking Samuel Parris by the hand with touching solemnity.

The old minister saw his friends file away from the house, and bend their course toward that of the magistrate, and then he felt with a pang of unutterable sorrow that the fate of Barbara Stafford had pa.s.sed out of his hands.

That day a posse of men, headed by a constable, armed with a warrant to arrest Barbara Stafford for witchcraft, pa.s.sed through the village and into the forest, taking the track which the unhappy woman had pursued.

The moss and forest sward was moist yet, and with the keen eyes of men accustomed to pursue an Indian trail they found traces of her progress--now a faint footprint--then a broken twig or a fragment of her garments. Thus step by step they pursued her, till at last the whole group stood upon a swell of land that overlooked the hollow in which the Indians had built that sylvan lodge. At the entrance a red shawl had been stretched, which was now folded back to let the daylight through, and in the warm shadow beyond they saw the object of their search sitting in dreary thought.

A single Indian lay upon the turf a little way off, guarding the lodge with a vigilance the more watchful because his companions had gone forth in search of food.

The posse of men held a whispered consultation. They understood the condition of things, and resolved to act promptly before help came.

In the savage warfare which had ended in the subjugation of the kingly tribes, Indian life was held scarcely more sacred than that of the wild deer and panthers that infested the hills. When the constable saw that athletic savage lying upon the turf, with his broad chest exposed like that of a bronze statue, he drew the gun which he carried to his shoulder with a grim smile, called on G.o.d to bless the murder, and touched the ponderous lock with his finger. A sharp click, a loud report, a fierce cry: the savage leaped into the air, fell upon his face, all his limbs quivering, and with a single spasm lay dead across the entrance of Barbara Stafford's hiding-place.

Barbara came forth white and trembling, saw the dead savage at her feet, and looked fearfully around for his murderers. A group of men and a wreath of pale smoke curling out upon the air revealed all her danger.

She did not retreat, but fell upon her knees and lifted the head of the Indian up from the ground. Drops of crimson stole down the bronze chest and fell slowly to the turf.

Barbara did not attempt to escape, though she saw at a glance all her danger. The savage who had been her protector was shot through the heart. The sight of so much life and strength smitten down in one instant paralyzed her. She had never witnessed a violent death before, and the shock bereft her alike of hope and fear.

The constable understood, and whispering his men to follow, crept toward her. She saw him without caring to escape, but, stooping over the body of her friend, shook her head mournfully as he came up.

"Unhappy man, you have killed him," she said, lifting her eyes to his face with a glance of pathetic reproach.

The constable stooped down, dragged the body from her feet, and cast it headlong down the slope of earth on which she stood. Then, without a word, he seized Barbara by both her wrists, and grasped them together with a firm grip of one hand, while he searched in his pocket for a thong of deer-skin prepared for the occasion. Putting one end of the thong between his teeth, he wound the other tightly over her wrists--so tightly that the delicate hands grew purple to the finger ends. Then he finished his barbarous work with a double knot tightened with both hands and teeth.

The outraged woman lifted her eyes to his face with a frightened look as he performed this brutal act, but she neither protested nor struggled; once she observed gently that he hurt her hands, but, when no heed was taken, allowed him to proceed without further remonstrance.

When her hands were bound, the constable tore down her shawl from the entrance of the lodge and placed it on her shoulders, crossing it over her bosom and knotting it behind, thus forming a double thraldom for her arms.

She bore it all patiently and in silence; once she cast an earnest look into the depths of the forest, perhaps with a hope that her savage friends might come to the rescue, but she only met the gleaming eyes of a wild-cat, swinging lazily on a bough to which human approach had driven him. Even there her glance was answered by a low growl and a gleam of savage teeth. The wild beasts were defying her in one direction, and human cruelty dragging her to death in another.

Thus, helpless and unresisting, she was forced into the settlement again, bound like a criminal. She made neither protest nor resistance, but remained quietly in the hands of her captors, accepting her fate with touching resignation.