Prisoners of Hope Part 43

About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-to attached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder and opened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight that came faintly in at the open door.

"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"

Landless sprang to his feet. "My G.o.d! You are sure?"

"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."

The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up.

Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen, he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath and exclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough.

Rus.h.i.+ng into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, he groped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light and fired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receive it; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.

"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We'll die fighting." The woman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars were drawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and an axe in her hands.

A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the war whoop--dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating in its savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there came the sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies against the door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one of the cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by a yell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries, quick cras.h.i.+ng blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms; within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child, and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail of the rude interior, now plunged all into shadow.

"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloading his musket. "There's some shall go to h.e.l.l before we do. Joan, my girl--"

An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell to the ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answered from without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heard speaking.

"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.

"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil, but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"

"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low and thatched with dried gra.s.s and moss.

"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in five minutes, come what may."

"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs have us fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; his bones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalp will hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see the village and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, he and his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneath the mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast.

He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party.

The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf in the forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is not seen: the stream closes above the pebble--it is gone!" His voice rose into a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand, to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright knife.

"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.

The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound together with withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendous noise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin.

Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket and swung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standing beside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, and the invaders, was a s.p.a.ce some few feet in width, and in this s.p.a.ce something dreadful now happened.

On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, on the other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It had sobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by the savage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awful clamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the choking smoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with a weak cry started across the s.p.a.ce towards its mother. It crossed the path of the Ricahecrian chief--he glanced downwards, saw the tiny tottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holding it by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which the child uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of the mother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling of the savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet the mangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before.

She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed upon the savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged his knife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fell without a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yet remained alive.

The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a cold smile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When the Ricahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless--one Indian dead before him, another writhing away like a wounded snake--confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure and the amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were the flames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score or more who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls, which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority retreating to the fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their devil's work the bolder spirits within.

These now bore down _en ma.s.se_ upon the devoted three. One threw his tomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuck into the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but he beat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who, knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.

"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I will care for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One went down before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like a reed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by his tomahawk--there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne down and knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one last superhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stag shakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless, dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;--

"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the Blue Mountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs at Death--dies laughing."

He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying to and fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and most dreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, died into silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine for which the storm has been too much.

Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon the yellow menace before him.

"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "They promise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall lead to it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."

Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto, springing back, avoided the blow.

"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.

A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them. A volume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly saw Indians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by the intolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and the remainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was the square opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleeping when this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in his arms, he made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporary security. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were already taking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whispered encouraging words.

"I know," she answered. "We are in G.o.d's hands. I would rather die than to come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and the way seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"

"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. They would certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the fire reaches this straw above our heads we will try it."

"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.

Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like a torch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of the savages, who, unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so covered with the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it, congregated in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, and waited for their still living victims to emerge from it.

"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.

They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it down the lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at the foot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, and painted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bent forward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the l.u.s.t for blood. In his footsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar, then a fourth, a fifth--a long line, creeping as silently as shadows--a nightmare procession--up through the lurid light.

Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.

"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."

The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into a disc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. A moment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yells from the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.

"Now is our time," said Landless.

Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, and down the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.

"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they have not destroyed it."

They made for the water, found the raft hidden in a clump of reeds and uninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearance of the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, down a stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. The glare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming ma.s.s itself shrunk until it looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of the struggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too, died away.

"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched at the feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.

"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be so handled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."

There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.

"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocent little thing!"

"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil and suffering. It is better as it is."

"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob in her voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poor Indian--"

"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."