The Scouts of the Valley Part 10

He was as good as his word, speaking of the laxness of both Iroquois and Wyandots. The great White Lightning regarded him with an icy stare.

"You say that the boy, Cotter, escaped through carelessness?" he asked.

"I do," exclaimed Wyatt.

"Then why did you not prevent it?"

Wyatt trembled a little before the stern gaze of the chief.

"Since when," continued Timmendiquas, "have you, a deserter front your own people, had the right to hold to account the head chief of the Wyandots?" Braxton Wyatt, brave though he undoubtedly was, trembled yet more. He knew that Timmendiquas did not like him, and that the Wyandot chieftain could make his position among the Indians precarious.

"I did not mean to say that it was the fault of anybody in particular,"

he exclaimed hastily, "but I've been hearing so much talk about the Spirit of Evil having a hand in this that I couldn't keep front saying something. Of course, it was Henry Ware and Hyde who did it!"

"It may be," said Timmendiquas icily, "but neither the Manitou of the Wyandots, nor the Aieroski of the Iroquois has given to me the eyes to see everything that happens in the dark."

Wyatt withdrew still in a rage, but afraid to say more. He and Blackstaffe held many conferences through the day, and they longed for the presence of Simon Girty, who was farther west.

That night an Onondaga runner arrived from one of the farthest villages of the Mohawks, far east toward Albany. He had been sent from a farther village, and was not known personally to the warriors in the great camp, but he bore a wampum belt of purple sh.e.l.ls, the sign of war, and he reported directly to Thayendanegea, to whom he brought stirring and satisfactory words. After ample feasting, as became one who had come so far, he lay upon soft deerskins in one of the bark huts and sought sleep.

But Braxton Wyatt, the renegade, could not sleep. His evil spirit warned him to rise and go to the huts, where the two remaining prisoners were kept. It was then about one o'clock in the morning, and as he pa.s.sed he saw the Onondaga runner at the door of one of the prison lodges. He was about to cry out, but the Onondaga turned and struck him such a violent blow with the b.u.t.t of a pistol, s.n.a.t.c.hed from under his deerskin tunic, that he fell senseless. When a Mohawk sentinel found and revived him an hour later, the door of the hut was open, and the oldest of the prisoners, the one called Ross, was gone.

Now, indeed, were the Iroquois certain that the Spirit of Evil was among them. When great chiefs like Timmendiquas and Thayendanegea were deceived, how could a common warrior hope to escape its wicked influence!

But Braxton Wyatt, with a sore and aching head, lay all day on a bed of skins, and his friend, Moses Blackstaffe, could give him no comfort.

The following night the camp was swept by a sudden and tremendous storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Many of the lodges were thrown down, and when the storm finally whirled itself away, it was found that the last of the prisoners, he of the long arms and long legs, had gone on the edge of the blast.

Truly the Evil Spirit had been hovering over the Iroquois village.

CHAPTER VII. CATHARINE MONTOUR

The five lay deep in the swamp, reunited once more, and full of content.

The great storm in which Long Jim, with the aid of his comrades, had disappeared, was whirling off to the eastward. The lightning was flaring its last on the distant horizon, but the rain still pattered in the great woods.

It was a small hut, but the five could squeeze in it. They were dry, warm, and well armed, and they had no fear of the storm and the wilderness. The four after their imprisonment and privations were recovering their weight and color. Paul, who had suffered the most, had, on the other hand, made the quickest recovery, and their present situation, so fortunate in contrast with their threatened fate a few days before, made a great appeal to his imagination. The door was allowed to stand open six inches, and through the crevice he watched the rain pattering on the dark earth. He felt an immense sense of security and comfort. Paul was hopeful by nature and full of courage, but when he lay bound and alone in a hut in the Iroquois camp it seemed to him that no chance was left. The comrades had been kept separate, and he had supposed the others to be dead. But here he was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the very pit of death, and all the others had been saved from a like fate.

"If I'd known that you were alive and uncaptured, Henry," he said, "I'd never have given up hope. It was a wonderful thing you did to start the chain that drew us all away."

"It's no more than Sol or Tom or any of you would have done," said Henry.

"We might have tried it," said Long Jim Hart, "but I ain't sure that we'd have done it. Likely ez not, ef it had been left to me my scalp would be dryin' somewhat in the breeze that fans a Mohawk village. Say, Sol, how wuz it that you talked Onondaga when you played the part uv that Onondaga runner. Didn't know you knowed that kind uv Injun lingo."

Shif'less Sol drew himself up proudly, and then pa.s.sed a thoughtful hand once or twice across his forehead.

"Jim," he said, "I've told you often that Paul an' me hez the instincts uv the eddicated. Learnin' always takes a mighty strong hold on me.

Ef I'd had the chance, I might be a purfessor, or mebbe I'd be writin'

poetry. I ain't told you about it, but when I wuz a young boy, afore I moved with the settlers, I wuz up in these parts an' I learned to talk Iroquois a heap. I never thought it would be the use to me it hez been now. Ain't it funny that sometimes when you put a thing away an' it gits all covered with rust and mold, the time comes when that same forgot little thing is the most vallyble article in the world to you."

"Weren't you scared, Sol," persisted Paul, "to face a man like Brant, an' pa.s.s yourself off as an Onondaga?"

"No, I wuzn't," replied the shiftless one thoughtfully, "I've been wuss scared over little things. I guess that when your life depends on jest a motion o' your hand or the turnin' o' a word, Natur' somehow comes to your help an' holds you up. I didn't get good an' skeered till it wuz all over, an' then I had one fit right after another."

"I've been skeered fur a week without stoppin'," said Tom Ross; "jest beginnin' to git over it. I tell you, Henry, it wuz pow'ful lucky fur us you found them steppin' stones, an' this solid little place in the middle uv all that black mud."

"Makes me think uv the time we spent the winter on that island in the lake," said Long Jim. "That waz sh.o.r.ely a nice place an' pow'ful comf'table we wuz thar. But we're a long way from it now. That island uv ours must be seven or eight hundred miles from here, an' I reckon it's nigh to fifteen hundred to New Orleans, whar we wuz once."

"Shet up," said Tom Ross suddenly. "Time fur all uv you to go to sleep, an' I'm goin' to watch."

"I'll watch," said Henry.

"I'm the oldest, an' I'm goin' to have my way this time," said Tom.

"Needn't quarrel with me about it," said Shif'less Sol. "A lazy man like me is always willin' to go to sleep. You kin hev my watch, Tom, every night fur the next five years."

He ranged himself against the wall, and in three minutes was sound asleep. Henry and Paul found room in the line, and they, too, soon slept. Tom sat at the door, one of the captured rifles across his knees, and watched the forest and the swamp. He saw the last flare of the distant lightning, and he listened to the falling of the rain drops until they vanished with the vanishing wind, leaving the forest still and without noise.

Tom was several years older than any of the others, and, although powerful in action, he was singularly chary of speech. Henry was the leader, but somehow Tom looked upon himself as a watcher over the other four, a sort of elder brother. As the moon came out a little in the wake of the retreating clouds, he regarded them affectionately.

"One, two, three, four, five," he murmured to himself. "We're all here, an' Henry come fur us. That is sh.o.r.ely the greatest boy the world hez ever seed. Them fellers Alexander an' Hannibal that Paul talks about couldn't hev been knee high to Henry. Besides, ef them old Greeks an'

Romans hed hed to fight Wyandots an' Shawnees an' Iroquois ez we've done, whar'd they hev been?"

Tom Ross uttered a contemptuous little sniff, and on the edge of that sniff Alexander and Hannibal were wafted into oblivion. Then he went outside and walked about the islet, appreciating for the tenth time what a wonderful little refuge it was. He was about to return to the hut when he saw a dozen dark blots along the high bough of a tree. He knew them.

They were welcome blots. They were wild turkeys that had found what had seemed to be a secure roosting place in the swamp.

Tom knew that the meat of the little bear was nearly exhausted, and here was more food come to their hand. "We're five pow'ful feeders, an' we'll need you," he murmured, looking up at the turkeys, "but you kin rest thar till nearly mornin'."

He knew that the turkeys would not stir, and he went back to the hut to resume his watch. Just before the first dawn he awoke Henry.

"Henry," he said, "a lot uv foolish wild turkeys hev gone to rest on the limb of a tree not twenty yards from this grand manshun uv ourn. 'Pears to me that wild turkeys wuz made fur hungry fellers like us to eat. Kin we risk a shot or two at 'em, or is it too dangerous?"

"I think we can risk the shots," said Henry, rising and taking his rifle. "We're bound to risk something, and it's not likely that Indians are anywhere near."

They slipped from the cabin, leaving the other three still sound asleep, and stepped noiselessly among the trees. The first pale gray bar that heralded the dawn was just showing in the cast.

"Thar they are," said Tom Ross, pointing at the dozen dark blots on the high bough.

"We'll take good aim, and when I say 'fire!' we'll both pull trigger,"

said Henry.

He picked out a huge bird near the end of the line, but he noticed when he drew the bead that a second turkey just behind the first was directly in his line of fire. The fact aroused his ambition to kill both with one bullet. It was not a mere desire to slaughter or to display marksmanship, but they needed the extra turkey for food.

"Are you ready, Tom?" he asked. "Then fire."