The Reckoning Part 54

"All is well."

"And we part no more?"

"No more."

Silence, then: "Why do they cheer so, Carus?"

"It is a lost soul they are speeding, child."

"His?"

"Yes."

She breathed feverishly, her little bandaged hands holding my face.

"Lift me a little, Carus; I can not move my legs. Did you know he abandoned me to the Cayugas because I dared to ask his mercy for the innocent? I think his reason was unseated when I came upon him there at Johnson Hall--so much of blood and death lay on his soul. His own men feared him; and, Carus, truly I do not think he knew me else he had never struck me in that burst of rage, so that even the Cayugas interposed--for his knife was in his hands." She sighed, nestling close to me in the rustling straw, and closed her eyes as the torches flared and the horses were backed along the pole.

In the ruddy light I saw Jack Mount approaching. He halted, touched his cap, and smiled; then his blue eyes wandered to the straw where Lyn Montour lay, sleeping the stunned sleep of exhaustion; and into his face a tenderness came, softening his bold mouth and reckless visage.

"The Weasel drives, sir. Tim and Dave and I, we jog along to ease the wheels--if it be your pleasure, sir. We go by the soft trail. A week should see you and yours in Albany. The Ma.s.sachusetts surgeon is here to dress your sweet lady's hurts. Will you speak with him, Mr.

Renault?"

I bent and kissed the bandaged hands, the hot forehead under the tangled hair, then whispering that all was well I went out into the gray dawn where the surgeon stood unrolling lint.

"Those devils tied their prisoners mercilessly at night," he said, "and the scars may show, Mr. Renault. But her flesh is wholesome, and the torn feet will heal--are healing now. Your lady will be lame."

"For life?"

"Oh--perhaps the slightest limp--scarce to be noticed. And then again, she is so sound, and her blood so pure--who knows? Even such tender little feet as hers may bear her faultlessly once more. Patience, Mr.

Renault."

He parted the hanging blankets and went in, emerging after a little while to beckon me.

"I have changed the dressing; the wounds are benign and healthy. She has some fever. The shock is what I fear. Go to her; you may do more than I could."

As the sun rose we started, the Weasel driving, I crouching at her side, her torn hands in mine; and beside us, Lyn Montour, watching Jack Mount as he strode along beside the wagon, a new angle to his cap, a new swagger in his step, and deep in his frank blue eyes a strange smile that touched the clean, curling corners of his lips.

"Look!" breathed Murphy, gliding along on the other side, "'tis the gay day f'r Jack Mount whin Lyn Montour's black eyes are on him--the backwoods dandy!"

I looked down at Elsin. The fever flushed her cheeks. Into her face there crept a beauty almost unearthly.

"My darling, my darling!" I whispered fearfully, leaning close to her.

Her eyes met mine, smiling, but in their altered brilliancy I saw she no longer knew me.

"Walter," she said, laughing, "your melancholy suits me--yet love is another thing. Go ask of Carus what it is to love! He has my soul bound hand and foot and locked in the wall there, where he keeps the letters he writes. If they find those letters some man will hang. I think it will be you, Walter, or perhaps Sir Peter. I'm love-sick--sick o'

love--for Carus mocks me! Is it easy to die, Walter? Tell me, for you are dead. If only Carus loved me! He kissed me so easily that night--I tempting him. So now that I am d.a.m.ned--what matter how he uses me? Yet he never struck me, Walter, as you strike!"

Hour after hour, terrified, I listened to her babble, and that gay little laugh, so like her own, that broke out as her fever grew, waxing to its height.

It waned at midday, but by sundown she grew restless, and the surgeon, Weldon, riding forward from the rear, took my place beside her, and I mounted my horse which Elerson led, and rode ahead, a deadly fear in my heart, and Black Care astride the crupper, a grisly shadow in the wilderness, d.o.g.g.i.ng me remorselessly under pallid stars.

And now hours, days, nights, sun, stars, moon, were all one to me--things that I heeded not; nor did I feel aught of heat or cold, sun or storm, nor know whether or not I slept or waked, so terrible grew the fear upon me. Men came and went. I heard some say she was dying, some that she would live if we could get her from the wilderness she raved about; for her cry was ever to be freed of the darkness and the silence, and that they were doing me to death in New York town, whither she must go, for she alone could save me.

Tears seemed ever in my eyes, and I saw nothing clearly, only the black and endless forests swimming in mists; the silent riflemen trudging on, the little withered driver, in his ring-furred cap and caped shirt, too big for him; the stolid horses plodding on and on. Medical officers came from Willett--Weldon and Jermyn--and the surgeon's mate, McLane; and they talked among themselves, glancing at her curiously, so that I grew to hate them and their whispers. A fierce desire a.s.sailed me to put an end to all this torture--to seize her, cradle her to my breast, and gallop day and night to the open air--as though that, and the fierce strength of my pa.s.sion must hold back death!

Then, one day--G.o.d knows when--the sky widened behind the trees, and I saw the blue flank of a hill unchoked by timber. Trees grew thinner as we rode. A brush-field girdled by a fence was pa.s.sed, then a meadow, all golden in the sun. Right and left the forest sheered off and fell away; field on field, hill on hill, the blessed open stretched to a br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, silver and turquoise in the sunshine, and, beyond it, crowning three hills, the haven!--the old Dutch city, high-roofed, red-tiled, glimmering like a jewel in the November haze--Albany!

And now, as we breasted the ascent, far away we heard drums beating. A white cloud shot from the fort, another, another, and after a long while the dull booming of the guns came floating to us, mixed with the noise of bells.

Elsin heard and sat up. I bent from my saddle, pa.s.sing my arm around her.

"Carus!" she cried, "where have you been through all this dreadful night?"

"Sweetheart, do you know me?"

"Yes. How soft the sunlight falls! There is a city yonder. I hear bells." She sank down, her eyes on mine.

"The bells of old Albany, dear. Elsin, Elsin, do you truly know me?"

She smiled, the ghost of the old gay smile, and her listless arms moved.

Weldon, riding on the other side, nodded to me in quiet content:

"Now all she lacked she may have, Renault," he said, smiling. "All will be well, thank G.o.d! Let her sleep!"

She heard him, watching me as I rode beside her.

"It was only you I lacked, Carus," she murmured dreamily; and, smiling, fell into a deep, sweet sleep.

Then, as we rode into the first outlying farms, men and women came to their gates, calling out to us in their Low Dutch jargon, and at first I scarce heeded them as I rode, so stunned with joy was I to see her sleeping there in the sunlight, and her white, cool skin and her mouth soft and moist.

Gun on gun shook the air with swift concussion. The pleasant Dutch bells swung aloft in mellow harmony. Suddenly, far behind where our infantry moved in column, I heard cheer on cheer burst forth, and the horns and fifes in joyous fanfare, echoed by the solid outbreak of the drums.

"What are they cheering for, mother?" I asked an old Dutch dame who waved her kerchief at us.

"For Willett and for George the Virginian, sir," she said, dimpling and dropping me a courtesy.

"George the Virginian?" I asked, wondering. "Do you mean his Excellency?"

And still she dimpled and nodded and bobbed her white starched cap, and I made nothing of what she said until I heard men shouting, "Yorktown!"

and "The war ends! Hurrah!"

"Hurrah! Hurrah!" shouted a mounted officer, spurring past us up the hill; "Butler's dead, and Cornwallis is taken!"

"Taken?" I repeated incredulously.

The booming guns were my answer. High against the blue a jeweled ensign fluttered, silver, azure and blood red, its staff and halyards wrapped in writhing jets of snow-white smoke flying upward from the guns.

I rode toward it, cap in hand, head raised, awed in the presence of G.o.d's own victory! The shouting streets echoed and reechoed as we pa.s.sed between packed ranks of townspeople; cheers, the pealing music of the bells, the thunderous shock of the guns grew to a swimming, dreamy sound, through which the flag fluttered on high, crowned with the golden nimbus of the sun!