The Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper (kiss me liar novel english .TXT) 📗

the remark of Duncan. “He met us hard by, in our outward march to ambush his advance, and scattered us, like driven deer, through the defile, to the shores of Horican. Then we rallied behind our fallen trees, and made head against him, under Sir William—who was made Sir William for that very deed; and well did we pay him for the disgrace of the morning! Hundreds of Frenchmen saw the sun that day for the last time; and even their leader, Dieskau himself, fell into our hands, so cut and torn with the lead, that he has gone back to his own country, unfit for further acts in war.”

* Baron Dieskau, a German, in the service of France.

A few years previously to the period of the tale, this officer was defeated by Sir William Johnson, of Johnstown, New York, on the shores of Lake George.

“‘Twas a noble repulse!” exclaimed Heyward, in the heat of his youthful ardor; “the fame of it reached us early, in our southern army.”

“Ay! but it did not end there. I was sent by Major Effingham, at Sir William’s own bidding, to outflank the French, and carry the tidings of their disaster across the portage, to the fort on the Hudson. Just hereaway, where you see the trees rise into a mountain swell, I met a party coming down to our aid, and I led them where the enemy were taking their meal, little dreaming that they had not finished the bloody work of the day.”

“And you surprised them?”

“If death can be a surprise to men who are thinking only of the cravings of their appetites. We gave them but little breathing time, for they had borne hard upon us in the fight of the morning, and there were few in our party who had not lost friend or relative by their hands.”

“When all was over, the dead, and some say the dying, were cast into that little pond. These eyes have seen its waters colored with blood, as natural water never yet flowed from the bowels of the ‘arth.”

“It was a convenient, and, I trust, will prove a peaceful grave for a soldier. You have then seen much service on this frontier?”

“Ay!” said the scout, erecting his tall person with an air of military pride; “there are not many echoes among these hills that haven’t rung with the crack of my rifle, nor is there the space of a square mile atwixt Horican and the river, that ‘killdeer’ hasn’t dropped a living body on, be it an enemy or be it a brute beast. As for the grave there being as quiet as you mention, it is another matter. There are them in the camp who say and think, man, to lie still, should not be buried while the breath is in the body; and certain it is that in the hurry of that evening, the doctors had but little time to say who was living and who was dead.

Hist! see you nothing walking on the shore of the pond?”

“‘Tis not probable that any are as houseless as ourselves in this dreary forest.”

“Such as he may care but little for house or shelter, and night dew can never wet a body that passes its days in the water,” returned the scout, grasping the shoulder of Heyward with such convulsive strength as to make the young soldier painfully sensible how much superstitious terror had got the mastery of a man usually so dauntless.

“By heaven, there is a human form, and it approaches! Stand to your arms, my friends; for we know not whom we encounter.”

“Qui vive?” demanded a stern, quick voice, which sounded like a challenge from another world, issuing out of that solitary and solemn place.

“What says it?” whispered the scout; “it speaks neither Indian nor English.”

“Qui vive?” repeated the same voice, which was quickly followed by the rattling of arms, and a menacing attitude.

“France!” cried Heyward, advancing from the shadow of the trees to the shore of the pond, within a few yards of the sentinel.

“D’ou venez-vous—ou allez-vous, d’aussi bonne heure?”

demanded the grenadier, in the language and with the accent of a man from old France.

“Je viens de la decouverte, et je vais me coucher.”

“Etes-vous officier du roi?”

“Sans doute, mon camarade; me prends-tu pour un provincial!

Je suis capitaine de chasseurs (Heyward well knew that the other was of a regiment in the line); j’ai ici, avec moi, les filles du commandant de la fortification. Aha! tu en as entendu parler! je les ai fait prisonnieres pres de l’autre fort, et je les conduis au general.”

“Ma foi! mesdames; j’en suis f�che pour vous,” exclaimed the young soldier, touching his cap with grace; “mais — fortune de guerre! vous trouverez notre general un brave homme, et bien poli avec les dames.”

“C’est le caractere des gens de guerre,” said Cora, with admirable self-possession. “Adieu, mon ami; je vous souhaiterais un devoir plus agreable a remplir.”

The soldier made a low and humble acknowledgment for her civility; and Heyward adding a “Bonne nuit, mon camarade,”

they moved deliberately forward, leaving the sentinel pacing the banks of the silent pond, little suspecting an enemy of so much effrontery, and humming to himself those words which were recalled to his mind by the sight of women, and, perhaps, by recollections of his own distant and beautiful France: “Vive le vin, vive l’amour,” etc., etc.

“‘Tis well you understood the knave!” whispered the scout, when they had gained a little distance from the place, and letting his rifle fall into the hollow of his arm again; “I soon saw that he was one of them uneasy Frenchers; and well for him it was that his speech was friendly and his wishes kind, or a place might have been found for his bones among those of his countrymen.”

He was interrupted by a long and heavy groan which arose from the little basin, as though, in truth, the spirits of the departed lingered about their watery sepulcher.

“Surely it was of flesh,” continued the scout; “no spirit could handle its arms so steadily.”

“It was of flesh; but whether the poor fellow still belongs to this world may well be doubted,” said Heyward, glancing his eyes around him, and missing Chingachgook from their little band. Another groan more faint than the former was succeeded by a heavy and sullen plunge into the water, and all was still again as if the borders of the dreary pool had never been awakened from the silence of creation. While they yet hesitated in uncertainty, the form of the Indian was seen gliding out of the thicket. As the chief rejoined them, with one hand he attached the reeking scalp of the unfortunate young Frenchman to his girdle, and with the other he replaced the knife and tomahawk that had drunk his blood. He then took his wonted station, with the air of a man who believed he had done a deed of merit.

The scout dropped one end of his rifle to the earth, and leaning his hands on the other, he stood musing in profound silence. Then, shaking his head in a mournful manner, he muttered:

“‘Twould have been a cruel and an unhuman act for a white-skin; but ‘tis the gift and natur’ of an Indian, and I suppose it should not be denied. I could wish, though, it had befallen an accursed Mingo, rather than that gay young boy from the old countries.”

“Enough!” said Heyward, apprehensive the unconscious sisters might comprehend the nature of the detention, and conquering his disgust by a train of reflections very much like that of the hunter; “‘tis done; and though better it were left undone, cannot be amended. You see, we are, too obviously within the sentinels of the enemy; what course do you propose to follow?”

“Yes,” said Hawkeye, rousing himself again; “‘tis as you say, too late to harbor further thoughts about it. Ay, the French have gathered around the fort in good earnest and we have a delicate needle to thread in passing them.”

“And but little time to do it in,” added Heyward, glancing his eyes upwards, toward the bank of vapor that concealed the setting moon.

“And little time to do it in!” repeated the scout. “The thing may be done in two fashions, by the help of Providence, without which it may not be done at all.”

“Name them quickly for time presses.”

“One would be to dismount the gentle ones, and let their beasts range the plain, by sending the Mohicans in front, we might then cut a lane through their sentries, and enter the fort over the dead bodies.”

“It will not do — it will not do!” interrupted the generous Heyward; “a soldier might force his way in this manner, but never with such a convoy.”

“‘Twould be, indeed, a bloody path for such tender feet to wade in,” returned the equally reluctant scout; “but I thought it befitting my manhood to name it. We must, then, turn in our trail and get without the line of their lookouts, when we will bend short to the west, and enter the mountains; where I can hide you, so that all the devil’s hounds in Montcalm’s pay would be thrown off the scent for months to come.”

“Let it be done, and that instantly.”

Further words were unnecessary; for Hawkeye, merely uttering the mandate to “follow,” moved along the route by which they had just entered their present critical and even dangerous situation. Their progress, like their late dialogue, was guarded, and without noise; for none knew at what moment a passing patrol, or a crouching picket of the enemy, might rise upon their path. As they held their silent way along the margin of the pond, again Heyward and the scout stole furtive glances at its appalling dreariness. They looked in vain for the form they had so recently seen stalking along in silent shores, while a low and regular wash of the little waves, by announcing that the waters were not yet subsided, furnished a frightful memorial of the deed of blood they had just witnessed. Like all that passing and gloomy scene, the low basin, however, quickly melted in the darkness, and became blended with the mass of black objects in the rear of the travelers.

Hawkeye soon deviated from the line of their retreat, and striking off towards the mountains which form the western boundary of the narrow plain, he led his followers, with swift steps, deep within the shadows that were cast from their high and broken summits. The route was now painful; lying over ground ragged with rocks, and intersected with ravines, and their progress proportionately slow. Bleak and black hills lay on every side of them, compensating in some degree for the additional toil of the march by the sense of security they imparted. At length the party began slowly to rise a steep and rugged ascent, by a path that curiously wound among rocks and trees, avoiding the one and supported by the other, in a manner that showed it had been devised by men long practised in the arts of the wilderness. As they gradually rose from the level of the valleys, the thick darkness which usually precedes the approach of day began to disperse, and objects were seen in the plain and palpable colors with which they had been gifted by nature. When they issued from the stunted woods which clung to the barren sides of the mountain, upon a flat and mossy rock that formed its summit, they met the morning, as it came blushing above the green pines of a hill that lay on the opposite side of the valley of the Horican.

The scout now told the sisters to dismount; and taking the bridles from the mouths, and