The Hidden Children Part 63

As for me, I ran, too, and felt curiously weak and shaken; though I suspected that this wriggling thing now swimming back to sh.o.r.e was the poison snake of the Ksaurora, and no Antouhonoran witchcraft at all, as I had seen skins of the brilliant and oddly marked little serpent at Guy Park, whither some wandering Southern Tuscaroras had brought them.

But the b.e.s.t.i.a.l creature of the cliff had now so inspired us all with loathing that it was as though our very breath was poisoned; and in swift and silent file we pushed forward, as if the very region--land, water, the air itself--had become impure, and we must rid ourselves of the place itself to breathe.

No war-party burning to distinguish itself ever travelled more swiftly.

Sooner than I expected, we crossed the small creek which joins the river from the east, opposite the Old England District, and saw the ruins of Unadilla across the water.

Here was a known ford; and we crossed to Old Unadilla, where that pretty river and the b.u.t.ternut run south into the broadening Susquehanna.

At this place we halted to eat; and I was of two minds whether to go by the West Branch of the Delaware, by Owaga and Ingaren across the Stanwix Treaty Line to Wyalusing, and from thence up the river to the Chemung and Tioga Point; or to risk the Chenango country and travel southwest by Owego, and so cutting off that great southern loop that the Susquehanna makes through the country of the Esaurora.

But when I asked the opinion of my Indians, they were of one mind against my two, saying that to follow the river was the easiest, swiftest, and safest course to Tioga Point.

They knew better than did I. This side of Tioga the Oneidas knew the ground as well as the Siwanois; but beyond, toward Catharines-town, only my Siwanois knew. Indeed, if my Oneidas remained with me at all beyond Tioga I might deem myself lucky, in such dread and detestation did they hold that gloomy region where the Wyoming Witch brooded her deadly crew, and where the Toad Woman, her horrible sister, fed the secret and midnight fires of h.e.l.l with the Red Priest, Amochol.

A grey hawk was circling above us mewing. Truly, our nerves had been somewhat shattered, for as we rose and resumed pack and sack, a distant partridge drumming on his log startled us all; and it was as though we had thought to hear the witch-drums rolling at the Onon-hou-aroria, and the hawk mewing seemed like the Sorcerers calling "Hiou! Hiou! Hiou!"

And the Unadilla made a clatter over its stones like the False-Faces rattling their wooden masks.

"Eheu!" sighed the pines above us as we sped on; and ever I thought of Okwencha and the Dead Hunter. And the upward roar of a partridge covey bursting in thunder through the river willows was like the flight of the hideous Flying Heads.

On we went, every sound and movement of the forest seeming to spur us forward and add flight-feathers to our speeding feet. For in my Indians, ascendant now, was the dull horror of the supernatural; and as for me my hatred of the Sorcerers was tightening every nerve to the point of breaking.

As I travelled that trail through the strange, eternal twilight of the great trees, I vowed to myself that Amochol should die; that the Sagamore and I would guide a thousand rifles to his pagan altar and lay this foul priesthood p.r.o.ne upon it as the last sacrifice.

Then I recalled the Black-Snake's threat against Lois; and shuddered; then the astounding reason he had given for the Red Priest's design upon us both set me dully wondering again.

Fear that his emissaries might penetrate our lines stirred me; and I remembered the moccasins she had received, and the messages sewed within them. If a red messenger had found her every year and had left at her door, unseen, a pair of moccasins, why might not an invisible a.s.sa.s.sin find her, too? Already, within our very encampment, she had received another pair of moccasins and a message entirely different from the customary one.

Whoever had brought it had come and gone unseen.

Distressed, perplexed, half sick with fear for her, I plodded on behind the Mohican, striving to drive from me the sombre thoughts a.s.sailing me, trying to rea.s.sure myself with the knowledge that she was safe at Otsego with her new friends, and that very shortly now she would be still safer in Albany, and under the shrewd and kindly eye of Mr. Hake.

The sun had set; the pallid daylight lingering along the forest edges by the river grew sickly and died. And after a little the Mohican halted on a hillock, and we cart our packs from us and peered around.

The forms of rocks took dim shape all about us, huge slabs and benches of stone, from which great bushes of laurel and rhododendron spread, forming beyond us an entangled and impenetrable jungle.

And under these we crawled and lay, listening for snakes. But there seemed to be none there, though our rocky fastness was a very likely place. And after we had eaten and emptied our canteens, the two Oneidas went out on guard to the eastern limit of the rocks; and the Sagamore and I lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark. And for a while we lay there, neither of us speaking. Finally I said under my breath:

"Then I am one of the Hidden People."

"Yes, brother," he replied very gently.

"Tell me why you believe this to be true. Tell me all you know."

For a little while the Mohican lay there very silent, and I did not stir. And presently he said:

"It was in '57, Loskiel, when I first laid eyes on you."

"What!"

"I am more than twice your age. You were then three years old."

In my astonishment it occurred to me that instead of twenty-two I was now twenty-five years of age, if what the Mohican said were true.

"Listen, Loskiel, blood-brother of mine, for you shall hear the truth now--the truth which Guy Johnson never told you.

"It was in '57; Munro lay at Fort William Henry; Webb at Fort Edward; and Montcalm came down from the lakes with his white-coats and Hurons and shook his sword at Munro and spat upon Webb.

"Then came Sir William Johnson to Webb with half a thousand Iroquois.

And because Sir William was the only white man we Delawares trusted, and in spite of his Iroquois, three Mohicans offered their services--the Great Serpent, young Uncas, and I, Mayaro, Sagamore of the Siwanois."

He paused, then with infinite contempt:

"Webb was a coward. Nor could Sir William kick him forward. He lay s.h.i.+vering behind the guns at Edward; and Fort William Henry fell. And the white-coats could do nothing with their Hurons; the prisoners fell under their knives and hatchets--soldiers, women, little children.

"When Montcalm had gone, Webb let us loose. And, following the trail of murder, in a thicket among the rocks we came upon a young woman with a child, very weak from privation. Guy Johnson and I discovered them--he a mere youth at that time.

"And the young woman told him how it had been with her--that her husband and herself had been taken by the St. Regis three years before--that they had slain her husband but had offered her no violence; that her child had been born a few weeks later and that the St. Regis chief who took her had permitted her to make of it a Hidden Person.

"For three years the fierce St. Regis chief wooed her, offering her the first place in his lodge. For three years she refused him, living in a bush-hut alone with her child, outside the St. Regis village, fed by them, and her solitude respected. Then Munro came and his soldiers scattered the St. Regis and took her and her baby to the fort. And the St. Regis chief sent word that he would kill her if she ever married."

So painfully intent was I on his every low-spoken word that I scarce dared breathe as the story of my mother slowly unfolded.

"Guy Johnson and I took the young woman and her child to Edward," he said. "Her name was Marie Loskiel, and she told us that she was the widow of a Scotch fur trader, one Ian Loskiel, of Saint Sacrament."

There was another silence, as though he were not willing to continue.

Then in a quiet voice I bade him speak; and he spoke, very gravely:

"Your mother's religion and Guy Johnson's were different. If that were the reason she would not marry him I do not know. Only that when he went away, leaving her at Edward, they both wept. I was standing by his stirrup; I saw him--and her.

"And--he rode away, Loskiel.... Why she tried to follow him the next spring, I do not know.... Perhaps she found that love was stronger than religion.... And after all the only difference seemed to be that she prayed to the mother of the G.o.d he prayed to.... We spoke of it together, the Great Serpent, young Uncas, and I. And Uncas told us this. But the Serpent and I could make nothing of it.

"And while Guy Johnson was at Edward, only he and I and your mother ever saw or touched you.... And ever you were tracing with your baby fingers the great Ghost Bear rearing on my breast----"

"Ah!" I exclaimed sharply. "That is what I have struggled to remember!"

He drew a deep, unsteady breath:

"Do you better understand our blood-brotherhood now, Loskiel?"

"I understand--profoundly."

"That is well. That is as it should be, O my blood-brother, pure from birth, and at adolescence undefiled. Of such Hidden Ones were the White-Plumed Sagamores. Of such was Tamanund, the Silver-Plumed; and the great Uncas, with his snowy-winged and feathered head--Hidden People, Loskiel--without stain, without reproach.

"And as it was to be recorded on the eternal wampum, you were found at Guy Johnson's landing place asleep beside a stranded St. Regis canoe; and your dead mother lay beside you with a half ounce ball through her heart. The St. Regis chief had spoken."

"Why do you think he slew her?" I whispered.

"Strike flint. It is safe here."