Salute to Adventurers Part 24

"And ye shall wear no silken gown, No maid shall bind your hair; The yellow broom shall be your gem, Your braid the heather rare.

"Athwart the moor, adown the hill, Across the world away!

The path is long for happy hearts That sing to greet the day, My love, That sing to greet the day."

I remember, too, the last verse of it:--

"And at the last no solemn stole Shall on thy breast be laid; No mumbling priest shall speed thy soul, No charnel vault thee shade.

But by the shadowed hazel copse, Aneath the greenwood tree, Where airs are soft and waters sing, Thou'lt ever sleep by me, My love, Thou'lt ever sleep by me."

Then we fell to talking about the things in the West that no man had yet discovered, and Shalah, to whom our songs were nothing, now lent an ear.

"The first Virginians," said Grey, "thought that over the hills lay the western ocean and the road to Cathay. I do not know, but I am confident that but a little way west we should come to water. A great river or else the ocean."

Ringan differed. He held that the land of America was very wide in those parts, as wide as south of the isthmus where no man had yet crossed it. Then he told us of a sea-captain who had travelled inland in Mexico for five weeks and come to a land where gold was as common as chuckiestones, and a great people dwelt who wors.h.i.+pped a G.o.d who lived in a mountain. And he spoke of the holy city of Manoa, which Sir Walter Raleigh sought, and which many had seen from far hill-tops. Likewise of the wonderful kings who once dwelt in Peru, and the little isle in the Pacific where all the birds were nightingales and the Tree of Life flourished; and the mountain north of the Main which was all one emerald. "I think," he said, "that, though no man has ever had the fruition of these marvels, they are likely to be more true than false.

I hold that G.o.d has kept this land of America to the last to be the loadstone of adventurers, and that there are greater wonders to be seen than any that man has imagined. The pity is that I have spent my best years scratching like a hen at its doorstep instead of entering. I have a notion some day to travel straight west to the sunset. I think I should find death, but I might see some queer things first."

Then Shalah spoke:--

"There was once a man of my own people who, when he came to man's strength, journeyed westward with a wife. He travelled all his days, and when his eyes were dim with age he saw a great water. His spirit left him on its sh.o.r.e, but on his road he had begotten a son, and that son journeyed back towards the rising sun, and came after many years to his people again. I have spoken with him of what he had seen."

"And what was that?" asked Ringan, with eager eyes.

"He told of plains so great that it is a lifetime to travel over them, and of deserts where the eagle flying from the dawn dies of drought by midday, and of mountains so high that birds cannot cross them but are changed by cold into stone, and of rivers to which our little waters are as reeds to a forest cedar. But especially he spoke of the fierce warriors that ride like the wind on horses. It seems, brother, that he who would reach that land must reach also the Hereafter."

"That's the place for me," Ringan cried. "What say you, Andrew? When this affair is over, shall we make a bid for these marvels? I can cull some pretty adventurers from the Free Companions."

"Nay, I am for moving a step at a time," said I. "I am a trader, and want one venture well done before I begin on another, I shall be content if we safely cross these mountains on which we are now perched."

Ringan shook his head. "That was never the way of the Highlands, 'Better a bone on the far-away hills than a fat sheep in the meadows,'

says the Gael. What say you, mistress?" and he turned to Elspeth.

"I think you are the born poet," said she, smiling, "and that Mr.

Garvald is the sober man of affairs. You will leap for the top of the wall and get a prospect while Mr. Garvald will patiently pull it down."

"Oh, I grant that Andrew has the wisdom," said Ringan. "That's why him and me's so well agreed. It's because we differ much, and so fit together like opposite halves of an apple.... Is your traveller still in the land of the living?" he asked Shalah.

But the Indian had slipped away from the fireside circle, and I saw him without in the moonlight standing rigid on a knoll and gazing at the skies.

Next day dawned cloudless, and Shalah and I spent it in a long journey along the range. We kept to the highest parts, and at every vantage-ground we scanned the glens for human traces. By this time I had found my hill legs, and could keep pace even with the Indian's swift stride. The ridge of mountains, you must know, was not a single backbone, but broken up here and there by valleys into two and even three ranges. This made our scouting more laborious, and prevented us from getting the full value out of our high station. Mostly we kept in cover, and never showed on a skyline. But we saw nothing to prove the need of this stealth. Only the hawks wheeled, and the wild pigeons crooned; the squirrels frisked among the branches; and now and then a great deer would leap from its couch and hasten into the coverts.

But, though we got no news, that journey brought to me a revelation, for I had my glimpse of Studd's Promised Land. It came to me early in the day, as we halted in a little glade, gay with willowherb and goldenrod, which hung on a shelf of the hills looking westwards. The first streamers of morn had gone, the mists had dried up from the valleys, and I found myself looking into a deep cleft and across at a steep pine-clad mountain. Clearly the valley was split by this mountain into two forks, and I could see only the cool depth of it and catch a gleam of broken water a mile or two below. But looking more to the north, I saw where the vale opened, and then I had a vision worthy of the name by which Studd had baptized it. An immense green pasture land ran out to the dim horizon. There were forests scattered athwart it, and single great trees, and little ridges, too, but at the height where we stood it seemed to the eye to be one verdant meadow as trim and shapely as the lawn of a garden. A n.o.ble river, the child of many hill streams, twined through it in s.h.i.+ning links. I could see dots, which I took to be herds of wild cattle grazing, but no sign of any human dweller.

"What is it?" I asked unthinkingly.

"The Shenandoah," Shalah said, and I never stopped to ask how he knew the name. He was gazing at the sight with hungry eyes, he whose gaze was, for usual, so pa.s.sionless.

That prospect gave me a happy feeling of comfort; why, I cannot tell, except that the place looked so bright and habitable. Here was no sour wilderness, but a land made by G.o.d for cheerful human dwellings. Some day there would be orchards and gardens among those meadows, and miles of golden corn, and the smoke of hearth fires. Some day I would enter into that land of Canaan which now I saw from Pisgah. Some day--and I scarcely dared the thought--my children would call it home.

CHAPTER XXI.

A HAWK SCREAMS IN THE EVENING

Those two days in the stockade were like a rift of sun in a stormy day, and the next morn the clouds descended. The face of nature seemed to be a mirror of our fortunes, for when I woke the freshness had gone out of the air, and in the overcast sky there was a forewarning of storm. But the little party in the camp remained cheerful enough. Donaldson and Bertrand went off to their trapping; Elspeth was braiding her hair, the handsomest nymph that ever trod these woodlands, and trying in vain to discover from the discreet Ringan where he came from, and what was his calling. The two Borderers knew well who he was; Grey, I think, had a suspicion; but it never entered the girl's head that this debonair gentleman bore the best known name in all the Americas. She fancied he was some exiled Jacobite, and was ready to hear a pitiful romance. This at another time she would have readily got; but Ringan for the nonce was in a sober mood, and though he would talk of Breadalbane, was chary of touching on more recent episodes. All she learned was that he was a great traveller, and had tried most callings that merit a gentleman's interest.

The day before, Shalah and I had explored the range to the south, keeping on the west side where we thought the enemy were likely to gather. This day we looked to the side facing the Tidewater, a difficult job, for it was eaten into by the upper glens of many rivers.

The weather grew hot and oppressive, and over the lowlands of Virginia there brooded a sullen thundercloud. It oppressed my spirits, and I found myself less able to keep up with Shalah. The constant sight of the lowlands filled me with anxiety for what might be happening in those sullen blue flats. Gone was the glad forgetfulness of yesterday.

The Promised Land might smile as it pleased, but we were still on the flanks of Pisgah with the Midianites all about us.

My recollection of that day is one of heavy fatigue and a pressing hopelessness. Shalah behaved oddly, for he was as restive as a frightened stag. No covert was unsuspected by him, and if I ventured to raise my head on any exposed ground a long brown arm pulled me down. He would make no answer to my questions except a grunt. All this gave me the notion that the hills were full of the enemy, and I grew as restive as the Indian. The crackle of a branch startled me, and the movement of a scared beast brought my heart to my throat.

Then from a high place he saw something which sent us both crawling into the thicket. We made a circuit of several miles round the head of a long ravine, and came to a steep bank of red screes. Up this we wormed our way, as flat as snakes, with our noses in the dusty earth. I was dripping with sweat, and cursing to myself this new madness of Shalah's. Then I found a cooler air blowing on the top of my prostrate skull, and I judged that we were approaching the scarp of a ridge.

Shalah's hand held me motionless. He wriggled on a little farther, and with immense slowness raised his head. His hand now beckoned me forward, and in a few seconds I was beside him and was lifting my eyes over the edge of the scarp.

Below us lay a little plain, wedged in between two mountains, and breaking off on one side into a steep glen. It was just such a shelf as I had seen in the Carolinas, only a hundred times greater, and it lay some five hundred feet below us. Every part of the hollow was filled with men. Thousands there must have been, around their fires and teepees, and coming or going from the valley. They were silent, like all savages, but the low hum rose from the place which told of human life.

I tried to keep my eyes steady, though my heart was beating like a fanner. The men were of the same light colour and slimness as those I had seen on the edge of the mist in Clearwater Glen. Indeed, they were not unlike Shalah, except that he was bigger than the most of them. I was not learned in Indian ways, but a glance told me that these folk never came out of the Tidewater, and were no Cherokees of the hills or Tuscaroras from the Carolinas. They were a new race from the west or the north, the new race which had so long been perplexing us. Somewhere among them was the brain which had planned for the Tidewater a sudden destruction.

Shalah slipped noiselessly backward, and I followed him down the scree slope, across the ravine, and then with infinite caution through the spa.r.s.e woods till we had put a wide shoulder of hill between us and the enemy. After that we started running, such a pace as made the rush back to the Rappahannock seem an easy saunter. Shalah would avoid short-cuts for no reason that I could see, and make long circuits in places where I had to go on hands and feet. I was weary before we set out, and soon I began to totter like a drunken man. The Indian's arm pulled me up countless times, and his face, usually so calm, was now sharp with care. "You cannot fail here, brother," he would say, "On our speed hang the lives of all." That put me on my mettle, for it was Elspeth's safety I now strove for, and the thought gave life to my leaden limbs.

Every minute the air grew heavier, and the sky darker, so that when about five in the afternoon we pa.s.sed the Gap and struggled up the last hill to the stockade, it seemed as if night had already fallen.

Elspeth and Ringan were there, and the two trappers had just returned.

I could do nothing but pant on the ground, but Shalah cried out for news of Grey. He heard that he had gone into the woods with his musket two hours past. At this he flung up his hands with a motion of despair.

"We cannot wait," he said to Ringan. "Close the gate and put every man to his post, for the danger is at hand."

Ringan gave his orders. The big log gate was barred, the fire trampled out, and we waited in that thunderous darkness. A long draught of cold water had revived me, and I could think clearly of Elspeth. Her bower was in the safest part of the stockade, but she would not stay there, I could see terror in her eyes, but she gave no sign of it. She made ready our supper of cold meat as if she had no other thought in the world.

Waiting on an attack is a hard trial for mortal nerves. I am not ashamed to confess that in those minutes my courage was little to boast of. I envied Ringan his ease, and Bertrand his light cheerfulness, and Donaldson his unshaken gravity, and especially I envied Shalah his G.o.dlike calm. But most of all I envied Elspeth the courage which could know desperate fear and never show it. Most likely I did myself some wrong. Most likely my own face was firm enough, but, if it were, 'twas a poor clue to the brain behind it. I fell to wondering about Grey still travelling in the woods. Was there any hope for him? Was there hope, indeed, for any one of us penned in a wooden palisade fifty miles from aid, a handful against an army?

Presently in the lowering silence came the scream of a hawk.

An uncommon sound, half croak, half cry, which only hill dwellers know, but 'tis an eery noise in the wilderness. It came again, less near, and a third time from a great distance. I thought it queer, for a hawk does not scream twice in the same hour. I looked at Shalah, who stood by the gate, every sinew in his body taut with expectation. He caught my eye.

"That hawk never flew on wings," he said.

Then an owl hooted, and from near at hand came the cough of a deer. The thicket was alive with life, which mimicked the wild things of the woods.

Then came a sound which drowned all others. From the inky sky descended a jagged line of light, and in the same second the crash of the thunder broke. Never have I seen such a storm. Down in the Tidewater we had thunderstorms in plenty during the summer-time, but they growled and pa.s.sed and scarce ruffled the even blue of the sky. But here it looked as if we had found the home of the lightnings, where all the thunderbolts were forged. It blazed around us like a steady fire. By a miracle the palisade was not struck, but I heard a rending and splintering in the forest where tall trees had met their doom. The noise deafened me, and confused my senses. Out of the loophole I could see the glade that sloped down to the Gap, and it was as bright as if it had been high noonday. The clumps of fern and gra.s.s stood out yellow and staring against the inky background of the trees. I remember I noted a rabbit run confusedly into the open, and then at a fresh flare of lightning scamper back.

Something was crouching and s.h.i.+vering at my side. I found it was Elspeth, whose courage was no match for the terrors of the heavens. She snuggled against me for companions.h.i.+p, and hid her face in the sleeve of my coat.

Suddenly came a cry from Shalah on my left. He pointed his hand to the glade, and in it I saw a man running. A new burst of light sprang up, for some dry tindery creepers had caught fire, and were blazing to heaven. It lit a stumbling figure which I saw was Grey, and behind him was a lithe Indian running on his trail.

"Open the gate," I cried, and I got my musket in the loophole.