The Master of Appleby Part 19

I pushed on faster, drawing the sword to keep me better company, though inwardly I scoffed and jeered at this new twittering of the nerves. What threat was there for me in silent shadows in the wood? The dogs I had to fear were bred in British kennels, and there was never any lack of clamor when they were beating up a cover.

Yet this persistent shadow clung upon my footsteps until from casting furtive glances sidewise I came to holding it craftily in the tail of my eye. 'Twas surely moving as I moved, and surely drawing nearer. I picked a time and place, measured my distance, and darting suddenly aside, sent home a thrust which should have pinned the phantom to a tree.

"Ugh! What for Captain Long-knife want kill the tree?"

The voice came from behind, and when I wheeled again my shadow was become incarnated in flesh and blood; a stalwart Indian, naked to the belt, standing so near he could have p.r.i.c.ked me with his scalping knife.

It was G.o.d's mercy that by some swift intuition I knew him for the friendly Catawba. It is an ill thing to take a frighted man unawares.

"Uncanoola?" said I.

He nodded. "Where 'bouts Captain Long-knife going?"

I told him briefly; whereat he shook his head.

"No find Captain Jennif' this way; find him _that_ way," pointing back along the path.

"How does the chief know that? Has he seen him?" Though my long exile had well-nigh cost me the trick of it, I made shift to drop into the stately Indian hyperbole.

"Wah! Uncanoola has seen the Great Water: that make him have long eyes--see heap things."

"Will the Catawba tell the friend whose life he saved what he has seen?"

"Uncanoola see heap things," he repeated. "See Captain Jennif' so"--he threw himself flat upon the ground and pictured me a fugitive crawling snake-like through the underwood. "Bime-by, come to river and find canoe--jump in and paddle fas'; bime-by, 'gain, stop paddling and laugh and shake fist this way, and say 'G.o.d-d.a.m.n.'"

By this I knew that Jennifer had escaped; nay, more; had somehow learned of my escape and was seeking me.

"Is that all the chief saw?" I asked.

"Ugh! See heap more things: see one thing white squaw no let him tell Captain Long-knife. Maybe some time tell, anyhow."

"The white squaw?" said I. "Who is she?"

The Catawba laughed, an Indian laugh, silent and suppressed; a mere shaking of the ribs.

"No can tell that, neither, too," he said. Then, with a swift dart aside from the subject: "Captain Long-knife care much 'bout black dogs yonder?"

I knew he meant the negroes at the hunting lodge.

"The white man cares for the black as a kind master should," I returned.

The Indian spat upon the ground in token of his hatred and contempt for all the black skins in his fatherland. I never understood this bitter race antipathy between the red and black, but 'tis a tale well written out in many a b.l.o.o.d.y ma.s.sacre of that earlier day.

"The wolves will kill all the black dogs and drink their blood before the moon is awake. Uncanoola has spoken."

I sheathed my sword and turned to take the backward trace.

"Captain Long-knife will go and fight for his black dogs with wool on their heads?" he queried.

"If need be," I a.s.serted.

"Wah!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and at the word was gone as if the earth had swallowed him.

I lost no time in indecision. Since Jennifer was abroad, I had no business at the plantations; and if Tomas and the other refugees were like to come to harm, I could do no less than hasten back to warn or help them.

So I retraced my steps, hurriedly, as the business urged; and saw no more shadows in the ancient wood--in truth, had much ado to see the single step ahead, so thickly did the darkness gather in those skyless depths.

I was breasting the last low hill, was come so near that I could hear the murmur of the river, when in the farthest hazy vista of the tree-tops a softened glow appeared, changing the black to green and then to red. 'Twas like the childish Africans, I said, to draw a secret sentry line for safety's sake, and then to build a fire to advertise it far and wide. Truly, the Catawba's wolves might find an easy--

A chattering scream of agony sent shrill and sharp upon the stillness of the night halted me and broke the gibing comment in the midst. I stood and listened. The cry rang out again; then I loosed the Andrea in its scabbard and fell a-running, though the half-healed wound scanted me sorely of the breath I wanted.

The cabin clearing, or rather the thinned-out grove which stood in lieu thereof, was but a n.i.g.g.ard acre hemmed in on every side, save that toward the river, by the virgin forest. For cover there were holly thickets here and there, and into one of these I plunged, creeping on hands and knees to gain a hidden view-point.

The scene in the little clearing was one to brand itself in lasting shapes upon the memory. A brush heap newly kindled gave out a dusky glow flaring in waves of smoky red against the over-arching foliage. The open s.p.a.ce around the cabin was alive with half-naked savages running to and fro; and in the gloom beyond the fire I saw a shadowy horseman backed by others still more phantom-like.

There was no mystery about it. My enemy had come with sleuth-hound Indians at his back to run me down. The savages were, no doubt, that band of over-mountain Cherokees pledged by their chief to pilot the powder convoy; and by their help the baronet had tracked me.

This was the first thought, caught at in pa.s.sing; but when I came to look again I saw what had been done. Sprawled on the ground before the burning brush pile, his wrinkled face a hideous mask of suffering, with the eyeb.a.l.l.s starting from their sockets in the death-wrench, lay my faithful Darius.

By what inhuman tortures they had made him point the way, or how or why they slew him at the last, I know not, but I made sure it was his death-scream that had halted me and set the stillness of the forest alive with ghastly echoes.

At sight of the stiffening body of the faithful slave you may suppose my blood ran cold and hot by turns, and that his blood cried out for vengeance from the sod that soaked it up. With ten years more of youth and less of age I might have tried to hew my way to Falconnet's stirrup, and so to square accounts with him. But had I been a-mind to rush upon the stage without my cue, another climax in the ghastly tragedy forbade it.

This climax turned upon the capture of my horse-boy, Tomas. The other blacks, it seemed, had made good their escape; but Tomas, lagging behind through fear or foolishness, had given these copper-colored devils leave to run him down and drag him back into the fire light, with yells of savage triumph.

They flung him down upon his knees beside the captain's horse, and though I caught but here and there a word above the frenzied yipping of the Indians, it was plain the baronet was asking him of me.

I could not hear the black boy's gibbering answers, but that he would not tell them what they wished to know--could not, indeed, since I had left no word behind to track me by--was quickly evident. A cord was found, and while I crouched behind the holly screen, aghast and helpless as one against two-score or more, they looped him by the thumbs and swung him up to dangle from a maple bough a musket's length or such a matter before the cabin door.

He bore the torture patiently, as some poor dumb beast suffering at the hand of man, and would not part his lips for all the captain's curses.

But this was only the merciful beginning. With yells of savage fury the Indians carried brands to make a slow fire at his feet; and, lest that should not be enough, a brace of them climbed to the roof, tore off the splits for kindling, and set the cabin wall alight behind him.

You may thank G.o.d, my dears, that you are living in a kindlier age.

Mayhap the savage, now a-march toward the setting sun, is still as pitiless as he was; but not in any corner of the world, I think, would Anglo-Saxon men, wearing the king's or any other uniform, be witnesses unmoved of such a devil's carnival of torment as this that made me nauseate with horror.

As with the stretching of the cord the wretched black spun slowly round and round before the growing blaze, his cries were something terrible to hear. And when the fire light played upon his face it was a sight to freeze the blood: the eyes shut tight against the shriveling heat, the cracking lips drawn back, the black skin changing to a dry and sickly brown. And ever and anon between the shrieks the parched lips shaped a plea: "O Ma.s.sa! Ma.s.sa Cap'm! shoot po' n.i.g.g.a and let um die!"

This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to try to put him out of misery.

The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with l.u.s.t of blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with the night.

I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling to run away. Being c.u.mbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew his sword.

In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he would not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon his shoutings.

That done, I s.n.a.t.c.hed the musket that had cost the man his life, and, staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In the interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues beneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough, the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not be merciful.

I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and make a mark I could not miss. The pause gave s.p.a.ce for some swift steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a fierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger held a life in p.a.w.n, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.