The Trapper's Daughter Part 74

"I accuse this man of having burnt the house of my father and mother, a.s.sa.s.sinated my parents, and handed me over to bandits to be brought up in crime," White Gazelle said.

"I," Bloodson added, "accuse him of the same crimes: this girl's father was my brother."

There was a start of horror on the audience. Valentine consulted with the judges in a low voice, then said--

"Red Cedar, you are unanimously found guilty and condemned to be scalped, and then hung."

Sutter was condemned to be hanged only; the judges had regard for his youth, and the evil examples he had constantly before him. The monk's turn had now arrived.

"One moment," Bloodson said, as he stepped forward; "this man is a wretched adventurer, who has no right to wear the gown he has so long dishonoured. I ask that it be stripped off him, before he is tried."

"Why waste time in accusing me, and making this mockery of justice?"

Fray Ambrosio ironically replied. "All you who try us are as criminal as we are. You are a.s.sa.s.sins; for you usurp, without any right, functions that do not belong to you. This time you act justly, by chance: a thousand other times, awed by the populace that surrounds you, you condemn innocent men. If you wish to know my crimes, I will tell you them. That man is right. I am no monk--never was one. I began by debauchery; I finished in crime. As an accomplice of Red Cedar, I fired farms, whose inhabitants I burned or a.s.sa.s.sinated, in order to plunder them afterwards. I have been, still with Red Cedar, a scalp hunter. I helped to carry off that girl. What more? I killed that gambusino's brother in order to obtain the secret of a placer. Do you want any more?

Imagine the most atrocious and hideous crimes, and I have committed them all. Now p.r.o.nounce and carry out your sentence, for you will not succeed in making me utter another word. I despise you. You are cowards."

After uttering these odious words with revolting cynicism, the wretch looked impudently round the audience.

"You are sentenced," Valentine said, after a consultation, "to be scalped, hung up by the arms, seasoned with honey, and remain hanging till the flies and birds have devoured you."

On hearing this terrible sentence, the bandit could not repress a start of terror, while the people frenziedly applauded this severe sentence.

"Now the sentence will be carried out," Valentine said.

"One moment," Unicorn exclaimed, as he sprang up, and stood before the judges; "as regards Red Cedar, the law has not been followed: does it not say, 'eye for eye, and tooth for tooth?'"

"Yes, yes!" the Indians and trappers shouted. Struck by an ominous presentiment, Red Cedar trembled.

"Yes," Bloodson said, in a hollow voice, "Red Cedar killed Dona Clara, Don Miguel's daughter--his daughter Ellen must die."

The judges themselves recoiled in horror, and Red Cedar uttered a terrible howl. Ellen alone did not tremble.

"I am ready to die," she said, in a gentle and resigned voice. "Poor girl! Heaven knows how gladly I would have given my life to save hers."

"My daughter!" Red Cedar exclaimed, in despair.

"Don Miguel felt the same when you were a.s.sa.s.sinating his daughter,"

Bloodson retorted, cruelly. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth."

"Oh! What you are doing there, my brothers, is horrible," Father Seraphin exclaimed. "You are shedding innocent blood, and it will fall on your heads. G.o.d will punish you. For pity's sake, brothers, do not kill that innocent maiden!"

At a signal from Unicorn, four warriors seized the missionary, and, despite his efforts, while treating him most kindly, carried him to the chiefs lodge, where they guarded him. Valentine and Curumilla tried in vain to oppose this barbarous and blood-thirsty deed, but the Indians and trappers, worked on by Bloodson, loudly claimed the execution of the law, and threatened to take justice into their own hands.

In vain did Don Miguel and his son implore Unicorn and Bloodson; they could obtain nothing. At length, Unicorn, wearied by the young man's prayers, seized Ellen by the hair, plunged his knife into her heart, and threw her into his arms, shouting:

"Her father killed your sister, and you pray for her. You are a coward."

Valentine, at this unjustifiable deed, hid his face in his hands, and fled. Red Cedar writhed in the bonds that held him. On seeing Ellen fall, a revolution took place in him. Henceforth he only uttered one word, in a heart-rending voice:

"My daughter! My daughter!"

Bloodson and White Gazelle were implacable, and sternly watched the execution of the sentence pa.s.sed upon the prisoners. Red Cedar and his son did not suffer long, although the former was scalped; the madness that had seized on him rendered him insensible to everything.

The man who suffered the most fearful punishment was Fray Ambrosio; the wretch writhed for two-and-twenty hours in unimaginable suffering, ere death put an end to his fearful tortures.

So soon as the culprits had been executed, Bloodson and White Gazelle mounted their horses and galloped away.

They have never been heard of since, and no one knows what has become of them.

It was the eighth day after the fearful application of Lynch Law we have just described, a little before sunset.

All traces of the execution had disappeared. Unicorn's camp was still established at the same spot, for he insisted on his men remaining there, on account of Madame Guillois's illness rendering the most absolute rest necessary for her. The poor old lady felt herself dying by degrees; day by day she grew weaker, and, gifted with that lucidity which Heaven at times grants to the dying, she saw death approach with a smile, while striving to console her son for her loss.

But Valentine, who after so many years only saw his mother again to separate from her for ever, was inconsolable. Deprived of Don Miguel and Don Pablo, who had returned to the Paso del Norte, bearing with them the body of the hapless Trapper's Daughter, the Trail-hunter wept on the bosom of Curumilla, who, to console him, could only weep with him, and say--

"The Great Spirit recalls my brother's mother; it is because that he loves her."

A very long sentence for the worthy chief, and which proved the intensity of his grief.

On the day when we resume our narrative, Madame Guillois was reclining in a hammock in front of her hut, with her face turned to the setting sun. Valentine was standing on her right, Father Seraphin on her left, and Curumilla by his friend's side.

The patient's face had a radiant expression, her eyes sparkled vividly, and a light pink flush gilded her cheeks; she seemed supremely happy.

The warriors, sharing in the grief of their adopted brother, were crouching silently near the hut.

It was a magnificent evening; the breeze that was beginning to rise gently agitated the leaves; the sun was setting in a flood of vapour, iridescent with a thousand changing tints.

The sick woman uttered at times broken words, which her son religiously repeated.

At the moment when the sun disappeared behind the snowy peaks of the mountains, the dying woman rose, as if impelled by an irresistible force, she took a calm and limpid glance around, laid her hands on the hunter's head, and uttered one word, with an accent full of strange melody--

"Farewell!"

Then she fell back--she was dead.

Instinctively all present knelt. Valentine bent over his mother's body, whose face retained that halo of heavenly beauty which is the last adornment of death; he closed her eyes, kissed her several times, and pressing her right hand which hung out of the hammock in his, he prayed fervently.

The whole night was spent in this way, and no one left the spot. At daybreak Father Seraphin, aided by Curumilla, who acted as sacristan, read the service for the dead. The body was then buried, all the Indian warriors being present at the ceremony.

When all had retired, Valentine knelt down by the grave, and though the missionary and the chief urged on him to leave it he insisted on spending this night also in watching over his dead mother. At daybreak his two friends returned; they found him still kneeling and praying; he was pale, and his features were worn; his hair, so black on the eve, had white hairs now mingling with it.

Father Seraphin tried to restore his courage, but the hunter shook his head sadly at all the priest's pious exhortations.

"What good is it?" he said.

"Oh!" the missionary at length said to him, "Valentine, you, who are so strong, are now weak as a child; grief lays you low without your striking a blow in self-defence. You forget, though, that you do not belong to yourself."

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "What is left me now?"