The Hidden Children by Robert W. Chambers (books to improve english .TXT) 📗

we take our pride in!

One after another took the hand I offered in self-respecting silence.

"Brothers," I said, "I come to buy. Sooner or later your young men will put on red paint and oil their bodies. Even now I see your rifles and your hatchets have been polished. Sooner or later the army will move four hundred miles through a wilderness so dark that neither sun nor moon nor stars can penetrate. The old men, the women, the children, and the littlest ones still strapped to the cradle-board, must then remain behind. Is it the truth I speak, my brothers?"

"It is the truth," they answered very quietly, "Then," said I, "they will require food and money to buy with. Is it not true, Oneidas?"

"It is true, brother."

I smiled and turned toward the women who were listening, and who now looked up at me with merry faces.

"I have," said I, "four hundred dollars. It is for the Oneida maid or matron who will sell to me her pretty bridal dress of doeskin—the dress which she has made and laid aside and never worn. I buy her marriage dress. And she will make another for herself against the hour of need."

Two or three girls leaped laughing to their feet; but, "Wait!" said I. "This is for my little sister; and I must judge you where you stand, Oneida forest flowers, so I may know which one among you is most like my little sister in height and girth and narrow feet."

"Is our elder brother's little sister fat and comely?" inquired one giggling and over-plump Oneida maid.

"Not plump," I said; and they all giggled.

Another short one stood on tip-toe, asking bashfully if she were not the proper height to suit me.

But there was a third, graceful and slender, who had risen with the rest, and who seemed to me nearer a match to Lois. Also, her naked, dusky feet were small and shapely.

At a smiling nod from me she hastened into the family lodge and presently reappeared with the cherished clothing. Fresh and soft and new, she cast the garments on the moss and spread them daintily and proudly to my view for me to mark her wondrous handiwork. And it was truly pretty—from the soft, wampum-broidered shirt with its hanging thrums, to the clinging skirt and delicate thigh-moccasins, wonderfully fringed with purple and inset in most curious designs with painted quills and beads and blue diamond-fronds from feathers of a little jay-bird's wing.

Bit by bit I counted out the currency; and it took some little time. But when it was done she took it eagerly enough, laughing her thanks and dancing away toward her lodge. And if her dusky sisters envied her they smiled on me no less merrily as I took my leave of them. And very courteously a stately chief escorted me to the campfire's edge. The Oneidas were ever gentlemen; and their women gently bred.

Once more at my own hut door, I entered, with a nod to Mayaro, who sat smoking there in freshened war paint. One quick and penetrating glance he darted at the Oneida garment on my arm, but except for that betrayed no curiosity.

"Well, Mayaro," said I, in excellent spirits, "you still wear war paint hopefully, I see. But this army will never start within the week."

The Siwanois smiled to himself and smoked. Then he passed the pipe to me. I drew it twice, rendered it.

"Come," said I, "have you then news that we take the war-trail soon?"

"The war-trail is always open for those who seek it. When my younger brother makes ready for a trail, does he summon it to come to him by magic, or does he seek it on his two legs?"

"Are you hoping to go out with the scout to-night?" I asked. "That would not do."

"I go to-night with my brother Loskiel—to take the air," he said slyly.

"That may not be," I protested, disconcerted. "I have business abroad to-night."

"And I," he said very seriously; but he glanced again at the pretty garments on my arm and gave me a merry look.

"Yes," said I, smilingly, "they are for her. The little lady hath no shoon, no skirt that holds together, save by the grace of cockspur thorns that bind the tatters. Those I have bought of an Oneida girl. And if they do not please her, yet these at least will hold together. And I shall presently write a letter to Albany and send it by the next batteau to my solicitor, who will purchase for her garments far more suitable, and send them to the fort where soon, I trust, she will be lodged in fashion more befitting."

The Sagamore's face had become smooth and expressionless. I laid aside the garments, fished out quill and inkhorn, and, lying flat on the ground, wrote my letter to Albany, describing carefully the maid who was to be fitted, her height, the smallness of her waist and foot as well as I remembered. I wrote, too, that she was thin, but not too thin. Also I bespoke a box of French hair-powder for her, and buckled shoes of Paddington, and stockings, and a kerchief.

"You know better than do I," I wrote, "having a sister to care for, how women dress. They should have shifts, and hair-pegs, and a scarf, and fan, and stays, and scent, and hankers, and a small laced hat, not gilded; cloak, foot-mantle, sun-mask, and a chip hat to tie beneath the chin, and one such as they call after the pretty Mistress Gunning. If women wear banyans, I know not, but whatever they do wear in their own privacy at morning chocolate, in the French fashion, and whatever they do sleep in, buy and box and send to me. And all the money banked with you, put it in her name as well as mine, so that her draughts on it may all be honoured. And this is her name——"

I stopped, dismayed, I did not know her name! And I was about to sign for her full power to share my every penny! Yet, my amazing madness did not strike me as amazing or grotesque, that, within the hour, a maid in a condition such as hers was to divide my tidy fortune with me. Nay, more—for when I signed this letter she would be free to take what she desired and even leave me destitute.

I laughed at the thought—so midsummer mad was I upon that sunny July afternoon; and within me, like a hidden thicket full of birds, my heart was singing wondrous tunes I never knew one note of.

"O Sagamore," I said, lifting my head, "tell me her surname now, because I need it for this business. And I forgot to ask her at the Spring Waiontha."

For a full minute the Indian's countenance turned full on me remained moon-blank. Then, like lightning, flashed his smile.

"Loskiel, my friend, and now my own blood-brother, what magic singing birds have so enchanted your two ears. She is but a child, lonely and ragged—a tattered leaf still green, torn from the stem by storm and stress, blown through the woodlands and whirled here and yonder by every breath of wind. Is it fit that my brother Loskiel should notice such a woman?"

"She is in need, my brother."

"Give, and pass on, Loskiel."

"That is not giving, O my brother."

"Is it to give alone, Loskiel? Or is it to give—that she may render all?"

"Yes, honestly to give. Not to take."

"And yet you know her not, Loskiel."

"But I shall know her yet! She has so promised. If she is friendless, she shall be our friend. For you and I are one, O Sagamore! If she is cold, naked, or hungry, we will build for her a fire, and cover her, and give her meat. Our lodge shall be her lodge; our friends hers, her enemies ours. I know not how this all has come to me, Mayaro, my friend—even as I know not how your friendship came to me, or how now our honour is lodged forever in each other's keeping. But it is true. Our blood has made us of one race and parentage."

"It is the truth," he said.

"Then tell me her name, that I may write it to my friend in Albany."

"I do not know it," he said quietly.

"She never told you?"

"Never," he said. "Listen, Loskiel. What I now tell to you with heart all open and my tongue unloosened, is all I know of her. It was in winter that she came to Philipsburgh, all wrapped in her red cloak. The White Plains Indians were there, and she was ever at their camp asking the same and endless question."

"What question, Mayaro?"

"That I shall also tell you, for I overheard it. But none among the White Plains company could answer her; no, nor no Congress soldier that she asked.

"The soldiers were not unkind; they offered food and fire—as soldiers do, Loskiel," he added, with a flash of Contempt for men who sought what no Siwanois, no Iroquois, ever did seek of any maiden or any chaste and decent woman, white or red.

"I know," I said. "Continue."

"I offered shelter," he said simply. "I am a Siwanois. No women need to dread Mohicans. She learned this truth from me for the first time, I think. Afterward, pitying her, I watched her how she went from camp to camp. Some gave her mending to do, some washing, enabling her to live. I drew clothing and arms and rations as a Hudson guide enrolled, and together she and I made out to live. Then, in the spring, Major Lockwood summoned me to carry intelligence between the lines. And she came with me, asking at every camp the same strange question; and ever the soldiers laughed and plagued and courted her, offering food and fire and shelter—but not the answer to her question. And one day—the day you came to Poundridge-town—and she had sought for me through that wild storm—I met her by the house as I came from North Castle with news of horsemen riding in the rain."

He leaned forward, looking at me steadily.

"Loskiel," he said, "when first I heard your name from her, and that it was you who wanted Mayaro, suddenly it seemed to me that magic was being made. And—I myself gave her her answer—the answer to the question she had asked at every camp."

"Good God!" said I, "did you, then know the answer all the while? And never told her?" But at the same moment I understood how perfectly characteristic of an Indian had been his conduct.

"I knew," he said tranquilly, "but I did not know why this maiden wished to know. Therefore was I silent."

"Why did you not ask her?" But before he spake I knew why too.

"Does a Sagamore ask idle questions of a woman?" he said coldly. "Do the Siwanois babble?"

"No. And yet—and yet——"

"Birds sing, maidens chatter. A Mohican considers ere his tongue is loosed."

"Aye—it is your nature, Sagamore.... But tell me—what was it in the mention of my name that made you think of magic?"

"Loskiel, you came two hundred miles to ask of me the question that this maid had asked in every camp."

"What question?"

"Where lay the trail to Catharines-town," he said.

"Did she ask that?" I demanded in astonishment.

"It was ever the burden of her piping—this rosy-throated pigeon of the woods."

"That is most strange," said I.

"It is doubtless sorcery that she should ask of me an interview with you who came two hundred miles to ask of me the very question."

"But, Mayaro, she did not then know why I had come to seek you."

"I knew as quickly as I heard your name."

"How could you know before you saw me and I had once made plain my business?"

"Birds come and go; but eagles see their natal nest once more before they die."

"I do not understand you, Mayaro."

He made no answer.

"Merely to hear my name from this child's lips, you say you guessed my business with you?"

"Surely, Loskiel—surely. It was all done by magic. And, at once, I knew that I should also speak to her, there in the storm, and answer her her question."

"And did you do so?"

"Yes, Loskiel. I said to her: 'Little sad rosy-throated pigeon of the woods, the vale Yndaia lies by a hidden river in the West. Some call it Catharines-town.'"

I shook my head, perplexed, and understanding nothing.

"Yndaia? Did you say Yndaia, Mayaro?"

Then, as he looked me steadily in the eye, my gaze became uneasy, shifted, fell by an accident upon the blood-red bear reared on his hind legs, pictured upon his breast. And through and through me passed a shock, like the dull thrill of some forgotten thing clutched suddenly by memory—yet clutched in vain.

Vain was the struggle, too, for the faint gleam passed from my mind as it had come;