The Maid-At-Arms Part 46

"Flatten out," I whispered. "Follow me!" And I crawled straight towards the fire, where, ink-black against the ruddy conflagration, an enormous pine lay uprooted, smashed by lightning or tempest, I know not which.

Into the dense shadows of the debris I crawled, Mount and Sir George following, and lay there in the dark, staring at the forbidden circle where the secret mysteries of the False-Faces had already begun.

Three great fires roared, set at regular intervals in a cleared s.p.a.ce, walled in by the huge black pines. At the foot of a tree sat a white man, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. The man was Walter Butler.

On his right sat Brant, wrapped in a crimson blanket, his face painted black and scarlet. On his left knelt a ghastly figure wearing a scowling wooden mask painted yellow and black.

Six separate groups of Indians surrounded the fires. They were sachems of the Six Nations, each sachem bearing in his hands the symbol of his nation and of his clan. All were wrapped in black-and-white blankets, and their faces were painted white above the upper lip as though they wore skin-tight masks.

Three young girls, naked save for the beaded clout, and painted scarlet from brow to ankle, beat the witch-drums tump-a-tump! tump-a-tump! while a fourth stood, erect as a vermilion statue, holding a chain belt woven in black-and-white wampum.

Behind these central figures the firelight fell on a solid semicircle of savages, crowns shaved, feathers aslant on the braided lock, and all oiled and painted for war.

A chief, wrapped in a blue blanket, stepped out into the circle swinging the carca.s.s of a white dog by the hind-legs. He tied it to a black-birch sapling and left it dangling and turning round and round.

"This for the Keepers of the Fires," he said, in Tuscarora, and flung the dog's entrails into the middle fire.

Three young men sprang into the ring; each threw a log onto one of the fires.

"The name of the Holder of the Heavens may now be spoken and heard without offence," said an old sachem, rising. "Hark! brothers. Harken, O you wise men and sachems! The False-Faces are laughing in the ravine where the water is being painted with firelight. I acquaint you that the False-Faces are coming up out of the ravine!"

The witch-drums boomed and rattled in the silence that followed his words. Far off I heard the sound of many voices laughing and talking all together; nearer, nearer, until, torch in hand, a hideously masked figure bounded into the circle, shaking out his bristling cloak of green reeds. Another followed, another, then three, then six, then a dozen, whirling their blazing torches; all horribly masked and smothered in coa.r.s.e bunches of long, black hair, or cloaked with rustling river reeds.

"Ha! Ah-weh-hot-kwah!

Ha! Ah-weh-hah!

Ha! The crimson flower!

Ha! The flower!"

they chanted, thronging around the central fire; then falling back in a half-circle, torches lifted, while the masked figures banked solidly behind, chanted monotonously:

"Red fire burns on the maple!

Red fire burns in the pines.

The red flower to the maple!

The red death to the pines!"

At this two young girls, wearing white feathers and white weasel pelts dangling from shoulders to knees, entered the ring from opposite ends.

Their arms were full of those spectral blossoms called "Ghost-corn," and they strewed the flowers around the ring in silence. Then three maidens, glistening in cloaks of green pine-needles, slipped into the fire circle, throwing showers of violets and yellow moccasin flowers over the earth, calling out, amid laughter, "Moccasins for whippoorwills! Violets for the two heads entangled!" And, their arms empty of blossoms, they danced away, laughing while the False-Faces clattered their wooden masks and swung their torches till the flames whistled.

Then six sachems rose, casting off their black-and-white blankets, and each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier, samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of the silent throng of savages.

"Until the night-sun comes be these your barriers, O Iroquois!" they chanted. And all answered:

"The Cherry-maid shall lock the gates to the People of the Morning! A-e!

ja-e! Wild cherry and cherry that is red!"

Then came the Cherry-maid, a slender creature, hung from head to foot with thick bunches of wild cherries which danced and swung when she walked; and the False-Faces plucked the fruit from her as she pa.s.sed around, laughing and tossing her black hair, until she had been despoiled and only the garment of sewed leaves hung from shoulder to ankle.

A green blanket was spread for her and she sat down under the branch of witch-hazel.

"The barrier is closed!" she said. "Kindle your coals from Onondaga, O you Keepers of the Central Fire!"

An aged sachem arose, and, lifting his withered arm, swept it eastward.

"The hearth is cleansed," he said, feebly. "Brothers, attend!

She-who-runs is coming. Listen!"

A dead silence fell over the throng, broken only by the rustle of the flames. After a moment, very far away in the forest, something sounded like the m.u.f.fled gallop of an animal, paddy-pad! paddy-pad, coming nearer and ever nearer.

"It's the Toad-woman!" gasped Mount in my ear. "It's the Huron witch!

Ah! My G.o.d! look there!"

Hopping, squattering, half scrambling, half bounding into the firelight came running a dumpy creature all fluttering with scarlet rags. A coa.r.s.e mat of gray hair masked her visage; she pushed it aside and raised a dreadful face in the red fire-glow--a face so marred, so horrible, that I felt Mount shivering in the darkness beside me.

Through the hollow boom-boom of the witch-drums I heard a murmur swelling from the motionless crowd, like a rising wind in the pines. The hag heard it too; her mouth widened, splitting her ghastly visage. A single yellow fang caught the firelight.

"O you People of the Mountain! O you Onondagas!" she cried. "I am come to ask my Cayugas and my Senecas why they a.s.semble here on the Kennyetto when their council-fire and yours should burn at Onondaga! O you Oneidas, People of the Standing Stone! I am come to ask my Senecas, my Mountain-snakes, why the Keepers of the Iroquois Fire have let it go out? O you of the three clans, let your ensigns rise and listen. I speak to the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Bear! And I call on the seven kindred clans of the Wolf, and the two kindred clans of the Turtle, and the four kindred clans of the Bear throughout the Six Nations of the Iroquois confederacy, throughout the clans of the Lenni-Lenape, throughout the Huron-Algonquins and their clans!

"And I call on the False-Faces of the Spirit-water and the Water of Light!"

She shook her scarlet rags and, raising her arm, hurled a hatchet into a painted post which stood behind the central fire.

"O you Cayugas, People of the Carrying-place! Strike that war-post with your hatchets or face the ghosts of your fathers in every trail!"

There was a deathly silence. Catrine Montour closed her horrible little eyes, threw back her head, and, marking time with her flat foot, began to chant.

She chanted the glory of the Long House; of the nations that drove the Eries, the Hurons, the Algonquins; of the nation that purged the earth of the Stonish Giants; of the nation that fought the dreadful battle of the Flying Heads. She sang the triumph of the confederacy, the bonds that linked the Elder Brothers and Elder Sons with the Esaurora, whose tongue was the sign of council unity.

And the circle of savages began to sway in rhythm to her chanting, answering back, calling their challenge from clan to clan; until, suddenly, the Senecas sprang to their feet and drove their hatchets into the war-post, challenging the Lenape with their own battle-cry:

"Yoagh! Yoagh! Ha-ha! Hagh! Yoagh!"

Then the Mohawks raised their war-yelp and struck the post; and the Cayugas answered with a terrible cry, striking the post, and calling out for the Next Youngest Son--meaning the Tuscaroras--to draw their hatchets.

"Have the Seminoles made women of you?" screamed Catrine Montour, menacing the sachems of the Tuscaroras with clinched fists.

"Let the Lenape tell you of women!" retorted a Tuscarora sachem, calmly.

At this opening of an old wound the Oneidas called on the Lenape to answer; but the Lenape sat sullen and silent, with flashing eyes fixed on the Mohawks.

Then Catrine Montour, lashing herself into a fury, screamed for vengeance on the people who had broken the chain-belt with the Long House. Raving and frothing, she burst into a torrent of prophecy, which silenced every tongue and held every Indian fascinated.

"Look!" whispered Mount. "The Oneidas are drawing their hatchets! The Tuscaroras will follow! The Iroquois will declare for war!"

Suddenly the False-Faces raised a ringing shout:

"Kree! Ha-ha! Kre-e!"

And a hideous creature in yellow advanced, rattling his yellow mask.