The Maid-At-Arms Part 58

"Me fri'nd," purred Murphy, persuasively, "is th' Frinch thrappers balin' August peltry f'r to sell in Canady?"

"I've a few late pelts from the lakes," muttered the man, without looking up.

"Domned late," cried Murphy, gayly. "Sure they do say, if ye dhraw a summer mink an' turrn th' pelt inside out like a glove, the winther fur will sprout inside--wid fashtin' an' prayer."

The man bent his eyes obstinately on the ground; instead of smiling he had paled.

"Have you the skin of a wampum bird in that bale?" asked Mount, pleasantly.

Elerson struck the pack with the flat of his hand; the mangy wolverine pelt crackled.

"Green hides! Green hides!" laughed Mount, sarcastically. "Come, my friend, we're your customers. Down with your bales and I'll buy."

Murphy had laid a heavy hand on the man's shoulder, halting him short in his tracks; Elerson, rifle cradled in the hollow of his left arm, poked his forefinger into the bales, then sniffed at the aperture.

"There are green hides there!" he exclaimed, stepping back. "Jack, slip that pack off!"

The man started forward, crying out that he had no time to waste, but Murphy jerked him back by the collar and Elerson seized his right arm.

"Wait!" I said, sharply. "You cannot stop a man like this on the highway!"

"You don't know us, sir," replied Mount, impudently.

"Come, Colonel Ormond," added Elerson, almost savagely. "You're our captain no longer. Give way, sir. Answer for your own men, and we'll answer to Danny Morgan!"

Mount, struggling to unfasten the pack, looked over his huge shoulders at me.

"Not that we're not fond of you, sir; but we know this old fox now--"

"You lie!" shrieked the man, hurling his full weight at Murphy and tearing his right arm free from Elerson's grip.

There came a flash, an explosion; through a cloud of smoke I saw the fellow's right arm stretched straight up in the air, his hand clutching a smoking pistol, and Elerson holding the arm rigid in a grip of steel.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "INSTANTLY MOUNT TRIPPED THE MAN".]

Instantly Mount tripped the man flat on his face in the dust, and Murphy jerked his arms behind his back, tying them fast at the wrists with a cord which Elerson cut from the pack and flung to him.

"Rip up thim bales, Jack!" said Murphy. "Yell find them full o' powther an' ball an' cutlery, sorr, or I'm a liar!" he added to me. "This limb o' Lucifer is wan o' Francy McCraw's renegados!--Danny Redstock, sorr, th' tirror av the Sacandaga!"

Redstock! I had seen him at Broadalbin that evening in May, threatening the angry settlers with his rifle, when Dorothy and the Brandt-Meester and I had ridden over with news of smoke in the hills.

Murphy tied the prostrate man's legs, pulled him across the dusty road to the bushes, and laid him on his back under a great maple-tree.

Mount, knife in hand, ripped up the bales of crackling peltry, and Elerson delved in among the skins, flinging them right and left in his impatient search.

"There's no powder here," he exclaimed, rising to his knees on the road and staring at Mount; "nothing but badly cured beaver and mangy musk-rat."

"Well, he baled 'em to conceal something!" insisted Mount. "No man packs in this moth-eaten stuff for love of labor. What's that parcel in the bottom?"

"Not powder," replied Elerson, tossing it out, where it rebounded, crackling.

"Squirrel pelts," nodded Mount, as I picked up the packet and looked at the sealed cords. The parcel was addressed: "General Barry St. Leger, in camp before Stanwix." I sat down on the gra.s.s and began to open it, when a groan from the prostrate prisoner startled me. He had struggled to a sitting posture, and was facing me, eyes bulging from their sockets.

Every vestige of color had left his visage.

"For G.o.d's sake don't open that!" he gasped--"there is naught there, sir--"

"Silence!" roared Mount, glaring at him, while Murphy and Elerson, dropping their armfuls of pelts, came across the road to the bank where I sat.

"I will not be silent!" screamed the man, rocking to and fro on the ground. "I did not do that!--I know nothing of what that packet holds! A Mohawk runner gave it to me--I mean that I found it on the trail--"

The riflemen stared at him in contempt while I cut the strings of the parcel and unrolled the bolt of heavy miller's cloth.

At first I did not comprehend what all that ma.s.s of fluffy hair could be. A deep gasp from Mount enlightened me, and I dropped the packet in a revulsion of horror indescribable. For the parcel was fairly bursting with tightly packed scalps.

In the deathly silence I heard Redstock's hoa.r.s.e breathing. Mount knelt down and gently lifted a heavy ma.s.s of dark, silky hair.

At last Elerson broke the silence, speaking in a strangely gentle and monotonous voice.

"I think this hair was Janet McCrea's. I saw her many times at Half-moon. No maid in Tryon County had hair like hers."

Shuddering, Mount lifted a long braid of dark-brown hair fastened to a hoop painted blue. And Elerson, in that strange monotone, continued speaking:

"The hair on this scalp is braided to show that the woman was a mother; the skin stretched on a blue hoop confirms it.

"The murderer has painted the skin yellow with red dots to represent tears shed for the dead by her family. There is a death-maul painted below in black; it shows how she was killed."

He laid the scalp back very carefully. Under the ma.s.s of hair a bit of paper stuck out, and I drew it from the dreadful packet. It was a sealed letter directed to General St. Leger, and I opened and read the contents aloud in the midst of a terrible silence.

"SACANDAGA VLAIE, August 17, 1777

"General Barry St. Leger

"SIR,--I send you under care of Daniel Redstock the first packet of scalps, cured, dried, hooped, and painted; four dozen in all, at twenty dollars a dozen, which will be eighty dollars. This you will please pay to Daniel Redstock, as I need money for tobacco and rum for the men and the Senecas who are with me.

"Return invoice with payment acquitted by the bearer, who will know where to find me. Below I have prepared a true invoice. Your very humble servant,

"F. MCCRAW.

"Invoice.

(6) Six scalps of farmers, green hoops to show they were killed in their fields; a large white circle for the sun, showing it was day; black bullet mark on three; hatchet on two.

(2) Two of settlers, surprised and killed in their houses or barns; hoops red; white circle for the sun; a little red foot to show they died fighting. Both marked with bullet symbol.

(4) Four of settlers. Two marked by little yellow flames to show how they died. (My Senecas have had no prisoners for burning since August third.) One a rebel clergyman, his band tied to the scalp-hoop, and a little red foot under a red cross painted on the skin. (He killed two of my men before we got him.) One, a poor scalp, the hair gray and thin; the hoop painted brown. (An old man whom we found in bed in a rebel house.)

(12) Twelve of militia soldiers; stretched on black hoops four inches in diameter, inside skin painted red; a black circle showing they were outposts surprised at night; hatchet as usual.