Prisoners of Hope Part 39

They embraced, and he wrung their hands, and, stepping hastily into the boat, sank down and covered his face with his cloak. The Surveyor-General stood with a pale and troubled face, and Dr. Anthony Nash prayed aloud. The rowers took their places and the boat shot out into the middle stream.

Landless, seeing the second boat filling, and supposing that the third would receive its load in a moment, stepped towards it. As he pa.s.sed the overseer, standing a little to one side with two servants belonging to Colonel Fitzhugh, a tenant of Colonel Verney, and an Indian from Rosemead, Woodson put forth an arm and stopped him.

"No, no, my man," he said with a grim smile but with a watchful eye, and nodding to the men to close in around them. "Your way's down, not up."

"What do you mean?" cried Landless, recoiling.

"I mean that the Doctor and the Major and I and these men go back to the settlements to look after things there, and that you are going to renew your acquaintance with Jamestown gaol."

For a moment Landless stood, turned to stone, within the other's grasp, then with a cry he broke from him and rushed to the water's edge. The boat containing the master had turned her head up stream and was beyond call; in the second boat the men held the oars poised while Sir Charles, with one foot upon the gunwale, gave a gravely courteous farewell to the Surveyor-General and the divine.

"Sir Charles Carew!" cried Landless. "I pray you to take me with you!"

Without moving, Sir Charles looked at him coldly, a peculiar smile just curling his lip.

"I remember a day," he said, "when you said that I might wait until doomsday and not hear favor asked of me by you."

"You are not generous," Landless said slowly, "but I ask the favor. I ask it on my knees. Let me go with you."

Sir Charles stepped into the boat and took the seat reserved for him. "I regret," he said politely, "that it comports not with my duty as a gentleman and an officer of the King to a.s.sist you in your very natural endeavors to escape the gibbet. Push off, men."

The boat shot from the sh.o.r.e and up the darkening stream, hastening to overtake its consort. Sir Charles raised his Spanish hat and fluttered a lace handkerchief. "To a happier meeting, gentlemen!" The Surveyor-General and the divine returned the salute, and stood in silence watching the canoe with its brawny rowers and the slender, elegant figure in the stern. It caught up with the Colonel's boat and the two grew smaller and smaller, until they became mere black dots and the dusk swallowed them up.

Landless watched them too with a face set like a stone. The overseer, backed by two of the servants, approached him with caution, but there was no need,--he submitted to be bound without a word, or struggle, or change in the expression of his face. He turned mechanically towards the boat, but the overseer plucked him back. "Not yet," he said. "We are all dead beat, and we have not the need to hurry that have those who are gone on. The Major's commander now, and he says sleep here a few hours.

I'll fasten you so that you can't get away, I promise ye! Fegs! it's a pity that a man who can fight as you fought last night should have to die a dog's death after all! But you've only yourself to thank for it."

The red glow died from the river like the scarlet from cooling iron, and it lay dark and silent, dimly reflecting a myriad of stars. The sloping bank, the maize fields, tobacco patch and mulberry grove, the plateau upon which were ranged the wigwams of the Indians, the dark and endless forest--all the wide, sombre earth--had their stars also--myriads on myriads of fireflies, restlessly sparkling lanterns swung by legions of fairies. There was no wind; the cataracts of wild grape descending from the tops of the tallest trees stirred not a leaf; the pines were soundless. But the whip-poor-wills wailed on, and once a catamount screamed, and the deer, coming to a lick close by, made a trampling over the fern.

Landless, tightly bound to a great bay tree with thongs of deerskin, watched the night grow old with hard, despairing eyes. The stars paled and the moon rose softly above the tree-tops, silvering the world beneath. By her light he saw the little glade of which the tree to which he was bound marked the centre, and the rec.u.mbent forms of those who were to return to the settlements stretched on Indian mats laid upon the short gra.s.s. Worn out with the toil of the day and the storm and stress of the night before, they slumbered heavily. The watcher in their midst thought, "If I could sleep!" and resolutely closed his eyes, but the vision of a flying canoe and a brightness of golden hair, which had vexed him, pa.s.sing up the reaches of the river over and over and over again, was with him still, and he opened them and raised them to the stars, thinking, "She may be above them now."

How still it was! no air, no breath, no sound--the thongs, that, wound many times around his body, bound him to the tree, fell at his feet, a figure slipped from behind the trunk, laid a hand, in which was a knife that gleamed in the moonlight, upon his arm, and whispering, "Follow,"

glided over the gra.s.s, past the sleepers and into the forest.

Swiftly but cautiously Landless went after it. The overseer lay within ten feet of him; he pa.s.sed him, pa.s.sed the unconscious servants, crossed a strip of moonlight, entered the shadow of a locust, and all but stumbled over a man lying asleep beneath it. He recoiled, and a twig snapped beneath his foot. The sleeper stirred, turned upon his side, and opened his eyes. The moon, now high in the heavens, shone so brightly that there was soft light even beneath the heavy branches of the trees, and by this light his Majesty's Surveyor-General and his Majesty's rebellious, convicted, and condemned servant recognized each other. For one long minute they stared each at the other, then, without a word or sign to denote that he was aware that aught stood between him and the moonlight, Carrington lay down again, pillowed his head upon his arm and closed his eyes. Landless was pa.s.sing on with a light and steady step and the ghost of a smile upon his lips when the apparently slumbering figure put forth an arm and laid something long and dark across his pathway. He glanced quickly around, but the Surveyor-General lay motionless, with closed eyes. Stooping, he took up the object, which proved to be a richly inlaid musket with flask and pouch. He paused again, but no sign coming from the quietly breathing form on the gra.s.s he lightly and silently left it and the tiny encampment and entered the forest, where he found a dark figure leaning against a tree, waiting for him. Without a word it moved forward into the dense shadow of the forest, and in the same silence he followed it. They were now in thick woods, moving beneath interlocking branches and a vast canopy of wild grape that, stretching from the summit of one lofty tree to that of another, formed a green and undulating roof upon which beat the moonbeams that could not penetrate the close darkness of the world below. They came to a small and sluggish stream, flowing without noise between the towering trees, and stepping into the water, walked up it for a long while with giant blacknesses on either hand and above them the moon.

All this time the figure had stalked along before Landless without speaking or turning its head, but now, the trees thinning, and they coming upon a field of wild flax that lay fair and white beneath the moon, it quitted the lazy stream, and turning upon Landless as he too stepped upon the bank, showed him the bronze countenance and the gigantic form of the Susquehannock to whom he had once done a kindness, and with whom he had fought on such a night as this, in such a moonlight s.p.a.ce.

"Monakatocka, I thought it had been you," said Landless quietly.

With the never failing "Ugh!" the Indian took Landless's hand and with it touched his own dark shoulder.

"I too am grateful, and with far more reason," said Landless smiling. "I will be yet more so if you will bring me out upon the bank of the river at some distance above yonder encampment."

"What will my brother do then?"

"I will go up the river."

"After the canoes in which sit the palefaces from whom my brother flees?"

"After the canoe which those canoes pursue."

"If my brother wishes to take the warpath against the Algonquin dogs,"

said the Indian quietly, "he must not follow the Pamunkey, but the Powhatan."

"They pa.s.sed this village yesterday, going up the Pamunkey!" cried Landless.

"A false trail. Let my brother come a little further and I will show him."

He stepped in front of the white man, and moving rapidly across the field of flax, dived into the forest again. Following the stream in its windings they came to where it debouched into a wide and muddy creek, which, in its turn, flowed into an expanse of water that lay like molten silver beyond the fringe of trees.

"The Pamunkey!" exclaimed Landless.

The Indian nodded and led the way to a thicket of dwarf willow and alder that grew upon the very brink of the creek.

"While the palefaces slept, Monakatocka was busy. Look!" he said, parting the bushes and pointing.

Within the thicket, drawn up upon the sloping mud, were two large canoes, quite empty save for a debris of broken oars.

Landless gasped. "How do you know them to be the same?"

The Indian stooped and pointed to dark stains. "Blood. They had wounded among them. And this." He put something into the other's hand. Landless looked at it, then thrust it into his bosom. "You are right. It is a ribbon which the lady wore. But why have they left their boats, and where are they?"

The Indian pointed to the side of the larger canoe. "The hatchets of the Pamunkeys were sharp. They fought like real men. This canoe could go no further. See, it is wet within--they had to ply the gourd very fast to keep afloat so far. One canoe would not hold them all, so they hid both here. They knew the palefaces would follow up the river, so they cared not to stay upon its banks; the Pamunkeys, too, are their enemies. They have gone through the forest towards the Powhatan. My brother cannot see their trail, for the eyes of the palefaces are clouded, but Monakatocka sees it."

Landless turned upon him. "Will Monakatocka go with me against the Ricahecrians?"

"Monakatocka has dreamt of the village on the pleasant river where he was born. The arm of the white men cannot reach him here, in these woods, far from their wigwams and warriors and guns; it cannot pluck him back to be beaten. He toils no more in their fields. He is a real man again, a warrior of the long house, a chief of the Conestogas. Let my white brother go with him, across the great rivers, through the forest, until they come to the Susquehanna and the village of the Conestogas.

There will the maidens and the young men welcome Monakatocka with song and dance, and my brother shall be welcome also and shall become a great chief and shall take the warpath against the Algonquin and against the paleface at the side of Monakatocka. In the Blue Mountains is Death. Let us go to the pleasant river, to the hunting grounds of the Conestogas."

Landless shook his head. "My thanks and good wishes go with you, friend, but my path lies towards the Blue Mountains. Farewell."

He put out his hand, but the Indian did not touch it. Instead, he stooped and examined the ground about him with attention, then, beckoning the other to follow, he moved rapidly and silently along the border of the creek. Landless overtook him and laid his hand upon his arm. "This is my path, but yours lies across the river, to the north."

"If my brother will not go with me, I will go with my brother," said the Conestoga.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE BRIDGE OF ROCK

For twenty days they had followed the Ricahecrians. At times the trail lay before them so plain that even Landless's unaccustomed eyes could read it; at times he saw nothing but untrodden ways--no sign to show that man had been in that wilderness since the beginning of the world--but the Susquehannock saw and went steadily onward; at times they lost it altogether, to find it hours, days afterwards.... It had led them westward, then south to the banks of the Powhatan, then westward again. At first they had to avoid an occasional clearing with the cabin of a pioneer rising from it, or some frontier post, or the village of one of the Powhatan tribes, but that time had long past. The world of the white man was far behind them, so far that it might have been another planet for all it threatened them; the Indian villages were few and far between and inhabited by tribes whose tongue the Susquehannock did not know. For the most part they gave these villages a wide berth, but sometimes in the quiet of the evening they entered one, and were met by the eldest man and conducted to the stranger's lodging, where slim brown maidens came to them with platters of maize cakes and nuts and broiled fish, and the warriors and old men gathered around, marveling at the color of the one and conversing with the other in stately gesture.

Sometimes, crouched in a tangle of vines or behind the giant bole of some fallen tree they watched a war party file past, noiseless, like shadows, disappearing in the blue haze that filled the distant aisles of the forest. Once a band of five attacked them, coming upon them in their sleep. Three they killed and the others fled. They dipped into the next stream that crossed their path and swam up it a long distance, then emerged and went their way, tolerably confident that they had covered their trail. Sometimes they struggled for hours through coverts of wild grape, thick with fruit; sometimes they walked for miles down endless colonnades of pine trees, where the needle-strewn ground was like ice for slipperiness, and the blue sky gleamed faintly through the far away tree tops. The wind in the pines rose and fell in long, measured cadences. It made the only sound there, for the birds forgot to sing and the insect world kept silence in those vast and sombre cathedrals.

On the afternoon of the twentieth day they came to a halt upon the bank of a small stream that fell purling over a long, smooth slide of limestone into the river. Mountains had loomed into existence in the last few days. In the distance they made a vast blue rampart which seemed to prop the western skies. When the sun sank behind them it was as though a mighty warrior had entered his fortress. Nearer at hand they fell into lofty hills, over which the forest undulated in unbroken green. In front the river made a sudden turn and was lost to sight, disappearing through a frowning gateway of gray cliffs as completely as though it had plunged into the bowels of the earth.... Landless sat down on the bank of the stream above the fall and, chin in hand, gazed at the mountain-piled horizon. The Indian, leaning against a great sycamore whose branches trailed in the water, watched him attentively.

"My brother is tired," he said at last.