The Reckoning Part 53

Then ensued a scene nigh indescribable. With one yelling bound, Ranger and Oneida were on them, shooting, stabbing, dragging them down; and, as they broke cover, their mounted officers, dashing out of the thicket, wheeled northward into galloping flight; and among them at last I saw my enemy, and knew him.

A dozen Oneidas were after him. His horse, spurred to a gallop, crashed through the brush, and was in the water at a leap; and he turned in midstream and shook his pistol at them insultingly.

By Heaven, he rode superbly as the swollen waters of the ford boiled to his horse's straining shoulders, while the bullets clipped the gilded c.o.c.ked-hat from his head and struck his raised pistol from his hand.

"Head him!" shouted Elerson; "don't let that man get clear!" Indians and Rangers raced madly along the bank of the creek, pacing the fugitive as he galloped.

"Take him alive!" I cried, as Butler swung his horse with a crash straight into the willow thickets on the north. We lost him to view as I spoke; and I sounded the rally-whistle, and ran up the bank of the creek, leading my horse at a trot behind me.

The snowfall had ceased; the sun glimmered, then blazed out in the clearing, flooding the whitened ground with a dazzling radiance.

Running, stumbling, falling, struggling through brush and brake and brier-choked marsh, I saw ahead of me three Oneida Indians swiftly cross my path to the creek's edge and crouch, scanning the opposite sh.o.r.e. Almost immediately the Rangers Murphy, Renard, and Elerson emerged from the snowy bushes beside them; and at the same instant I saw Walter Butler ride up on the opposite side of the creek, glance backward, then calmly draw bridle in plain sight. He was fey; I knew it. His doom was upon him. He flung himself from his horse close to the ford where, set in the rock, a living spring of water mirrored the sun; then he knelt down, drew his tin cup from his belt, bent over, and looked into the placid silver pool. What he saw reflected there Christ alone knows, for he sprang back, pa.s.sed his hand across his eyes, and reached out his cup blindly, plunging it deep into the water.

Never, never shall I forget that instant picture as it broke upon my view; my deadly enemy kneeling by the spring, black hair disheveled, the sunshine striking his tin cup as he raised it to his lips; the three naked Oneidas, in their glistening scarlet paint, eagerly raising their rifles, while the merciless weapons of Murphy and Elerson slowly fell to the same level, focused on that kneeling figure across the dark waters of the stream.

A second only, then, G.o.d knows why, I could not endure to witness a justice so close allied with murder, and sprang forward, crying out: "Cease fire! Take him alive!" But, with the words half-sped, flame after flame parted from those leveled muzzles; and through the whirling smoke I saw Walter Butler fall, roll over and over, his body and limbs contracting with agony; then on all fours again, on his knees, only to sink back in a sitting posture, his head resting on his hand, blood pouring between his fingers.

Into the stream plunged an Oneida, rifle and knife aloft, glittering in the sun. The wounded man saw him coming, and watched him as he leaped up the bank; and while Walter Butler looked him full in the face the savage trembled, crouching, gathering for a leap.

"Stop that murder!" I shouted, plunging into the ford as Butler, aching head still lifted, turned a deathly face toward me. One eye had been shot out, but the creature was still alive, and knew me--knew me, heard me ask for the quarter he had not asked for; saw me coming to save him from his destiny, and smiled as the Oneida sprang on him with a yell and ripped the living scalp away before my sickened eyes.

"Finish him, in G.o.d's mercy!" bellowed the Ranger Sammons, running up.

The Oneida's hatchet, swinging like lightning, flashed once; and the severed soul of Walter Butler was free of the battered, disfigured thing that lay oozing crimson in the trampled snow.

Dead! And I heard the awful scalp-yell swelling from the throats of those who had felt his heavy hand. Dead! And I heard cheers from those whose loved ones had gone down to death to satiate his fury. And now he, too, was on his way to face those pale accusers waiting there to watch him pa.s.s--specters of murdered men, phantoms of women, white shapes of little children--G.o.d! what a path to the tribunal behind whose thunderous gloom h.e.l.l's own lightning flared!

As I gazed down at him the roar of the fusillade died away in my ears.

I remembered him as I had seen him there at New York in our house, his slim fingers wandering over the strings of the guitar, his dark eyes drowned in melancholy. I remembered his voice, and the song he sang, haunting us all with its lingering sadness--the hopeless words, the sad air, redolent of dead flowers--doom, death, decay!

The thrashing and plunging of horses roused me. I looked around to see Colonel Willett ride up, followed by two or three mounted officers in blue and buff, pulling in their plunging horses. He looked down at the dead, studying the crushed face, the uniform, the blood-drenched snow.

"Is that Butler?" he asked gravely.

"Yes," I said; and drew a corner of his cloak across the marred face.

n.o.body uncovered, which was the most dreadful judgment those silent men could pa.s.s.

"Scalped?" motioned Colonel Lewis significantly.

"He belongs to your party," observed Willett quietly. Then, looking around as the rifle-fire to the left broke out again: "The pursuit has ended, gentlemen. What punishment more awful could we leave them to than these trackless solitudes? For I tell you that those few among them who shall attain the Canadas need fear no threat of h.e.l.l in the life to come, for they shall have served their turn. Sound the recall!"

I laid my hand upon his saddle, looking up into his face:

"Pardon," I said, in a low voice; "_I_ must go on!"

"Carus! Carus!" he said softly, "have they not told you?"

"Told me?" I stared. "What? What--in the name of G.o.d?"

"She was taken when we struck their rear-guard at one o'clock this afternoon! Was there no one to tell you, lad!"

"Unharmed?" I asked, steadying myself against his stirrup.

"Faint with fatigue, brier-torn, in rags--his vengeance, but--_nothing worse_. That quarter-breed Montour attended her, supported her, struggled on with her through all the horrors of this retreat. He had herded the Valley prisoners together, guarded by Cayugas. The executioner lies dead a mile below, his black face in the water. And here _he_ lies!"

He swung his horse, head sternly averted. I flung myself into my saddle.

"This way, lad. She lies in a camp-wagon at headquarters, asleep, I think. Mount and your Oneida guard her. And the girl, Montour, lies stretched beside her, watching her as a dog watches a cradled child."

The hunting-horns of the light infantry were sounding the recall as we rode through the low brush of Jerseyfield, where the sunset sky was aflame, painting the tall pines, staining the melting snow to palest crimson.

From black, wet branches overhead the clotted flakes fell, showering us as we came to the hemlock shelter where the camp-wagon stood. A fire burned there; before it crowded a shadowy group of riflemen; and one among them moved forward to meet me, touching his fur cap and pointing.

As I reached the rough shelter of fringing evergreen Mount and Little Otter stepped out; and I saw the giant forest-runner wink the tears away as he laid his huge finger across his lips.

"She sleeps as sweetly as a child," he whispered. "I told her you were coming. Oh, sir, it will tear your heart out to see her small white feet so bruised, and the soft, baby hands of her raw at the wrists, where they tied her at night.... _Is_ he surely dead, sir, as they say?"

"I saw him die, thank G.o.d!"

"That is safer for him, I think," said Mount simply. "Will you come this way, sir? Otter, fetch a splinter o' fat pine for a light. Mind the wheel there, Mr. Renault--this way on tiptoe!"

He took the splinter-light from the Oneida, fixed it in a split stick, backed out, and turned away, followed by the Indian.

At first I could not see, and set the burning stick nearer. Then, as I bent over the rough wagon, I saw her lying there very white and still, her torn hands swathed with lint, her bandaged feet wrapped in furs.

And beside her, stretched full length, lay Lyn Montour, awake, dark eyes fixed on mine.

She smiled as she caught my eye; then something in my face sobered her.

"He is dead?" she motioned with her lips. And my lips moved a.s.sent.

Gravely, scarcely stirring, she reached up and unbound her hair, letting it down over her face. I understood, and, stepping to the fire, returned with a charred ember. She held out first one hand, then the other, and I marked the palms with the ashes, touched her forehead, her breast, her feet. Thus, in the solemn presence of death itself, she claimed at the tribunal of the Most High the justice denied on earth, signing herself a widow with the ashes none but a wedded wife may dare to wear.

Lower and lower burned the tiny torch, sank to a spark, and went out.

The black curtains of obscurity closed in; redder and redder spread the glare from the camp-fire; crackling and roaring, the flames rose, tufted with smoke, through which a million sparks whirled upward, showering the void above. Dark shapes moved in the glow with a sparkle of spur and sword as they turned; the infernal light fell on the naked bodies of Oneidas, sitting like demons, eyes blinking at the flames.

And through the roar of the fire I heard their chanting undertone, monotonous, interminable, saluting their dead:

"_Cover the White Throat at Carenay, Lest evil fall at Danascara, Lay the phantom away, Men of Thendara, Trails of Kayaderos And Adriutha Cover our loss!

Tree of Oswaya, From Garoga To Caroga Cover the White Throat For the sake of the Silver Boat afloat In the Water of Light, O Tharon!

This for the pledge of Aroronon Lest the Long House end And the Tree bend And our dead ascend in every trail And the Great League fail.

Now by the brotherhood ye've sworn Let the Oneida mourn._"

And I heard from the forest the deadened blows of mattock and spade, and saw the glimmer of burial torches; and, through the steady chanting of the Oneida, the solemn voice of the chaplain in prayer for dead and living:

"Let the beauty of the Lord our G.o.d be upon us. And establish Thou the work of our hands upon us--yea, the work of our hands, establish Thou it!"

It lacked an hour to dawn when the harsh, stringy drums rolled from the forest and the smoky camp awoke; and I, keeping my vigil, there in the shadow where she lay, listening and bending above her, was aware of a bandaged hand touching me--a feverish arm about my neck, drawing my head lower, closer, till, in the darkness, my face lay on hers, and our tremulous lips united.

"Is all well, my beloved?"