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

this new and other passion—for I am as yet ignorant of its force and possibilities. I would not have it master me until I am free to yield. And that freedom can come happily and honourably to me only when I set my foot in Catharines-town. Do you understand me, Euan?"

"Yes."

"Then—we will not speak of love. Or even let the language of our eyes trouble each other with all we may not say and venture.... You will not kiss me, will you? Before I ask it of you?"

"No."

"Under no provocation? Will you—even if I should ask it?"

"No."

"I will tell you why, Euan. I have promised myself—it is odd, too, for I first thought of it the day I first laid eyes on you. I said to myself that, as God had kept me pure in spite of all—I should wish that the first one ever to touch my lips should be my mother. And I made that vow—having no doubt of keeping it—until I saw you again——"

"When?"

"When you came to me in Westchester before the storm."

"Then!" I exclaimed, amazed.

"Is it not strange, Euan? I know not how it was with me or why, all suddenly, I seemed to know—seemed to catch a sudden glimmer of my destiny—a brief, confusing gleam. And only seemed to fear and hate you—yet, it was not hate or fear, either.... And when I came to you in the rain—there at the stable shed—and when you followed, and gave your ring—such hell and heaven as awakened in my heart you could not fathom—nor could I—nor can I yet understand.... Do you think I loved you even then? Not knowing that I loved you?"

"How could you love me then?"

"God knows.... And afterward, on the rock in the moonlight—as you lay there asleep—oh, I knew not what so moved me to leave you my message and a wild-rose lying there.... It was my destiny—my destiny! I seemed to fathom it.... For when you spoke to me on the parade at the Middle Fort, such a thrill of happiness possessed me——"

"You rebuked and rebuked me, sweeting!"

"Because all my solicitude was for you, and how it might disgrace you."

"I could have knelt there at your ragged feet, in sight of all the fort!"

"Could you truly, Euan?"

"As willingly as I kneel at prayer!"

"How dear and gallant and sweet you are to me——" She broke off in dismay. "Ai-me! Heaven pity us both, for we are saying what should wait to be said, and have talked of love only while vowing not to do so!... Let loose my hand, Euan—that somehow has stolen into yours. Ai-me! This is a very maze I seem to travel in, with every pitfall hiding all I would avoid, and everywhere ambush laid for me.... Listen, dear lad, I am more pitifully at your mercy than I dreamed of. Be faithful to my faithless self that falters. Point out the path from your own strength and compassion.... I—I must find my way to Catharines-town before I can give myself to thoughts of you—to dreams of all that you inspire in me."

"Listen, Lois. This fort is as far as you may go."

"What!"

"Truly, dear maid. It is not alone the perils of an unknown country that must check you here. There is a danger that you know not of—that you never even heard of."

"A danger?"

"Worse. A threat of terrors hellish, inconceivable, terrible beyond words."

"What do you mean? The hatchet? The stake? Dear lad, may I not then venture what you soldiers brave so lightly?"

"It is not what we brave that threatens you!"

"What then?" she asked, startled.

"Dear did you ever learn that you are a 'Hidden Child'?"

"What is that, Euan?"

"Then you do not know?"

She shook her head.

And so I told her; told her also all that we had guessed concerning her; how that her captive mother, terrified by Amochol and his red acolytes, had concealed her, consecrated her, and, somehow, had found a runner to carry her beyond the doors of the Long House to safety.

This runner must have written the Iroquois message which I had read amid the corn-husks of her garret. It was all utterly plain and horrible now, to her and to myself.

As for the moccasins, the same faithful runner must have carried them to her, year after year, and taken back with him to the desolate mother the assurance that her child was living and still undiscovered and unharmed by Amochol.

All this I made plain to her; and I also told her that I, too, was of the Hidden Ones; and made it most clear to her who I really was. And I told her of the Cat-People, and of the Erie, and how the Sorcerer had defied us and boasted that the Hidden Child should yet die strangled upon the altar of Red Amochol.

She was quiet and very pale while I was speaking, and at moments her grey eyes widened with the unearthly horror of the thing; but never a tremour touched her, nor did lid or lips quiver or her gaze falter.

And when I had done she remained silent, looking out over the river at our feet, which was now all crinkling with the sun's bright network through the tracery of leaves.

"There is a danger to you," I said, "which will not cease until this army has left the Red Priest dead amid the sacrilegious ashes of his own vile altar. My Indians have made a vow to leave no Erie, no blasphemous and perverted priest alive. Amochol, the Wyoming Witch, the Toad-Woman—all that accursed spawn of Frontenac must die.

"Major Parr is of the same opinion; Clinton sees the importance of this, having had the sense to learn of Amherst how to stop the Seneca demons with a stout hempen rope. Two Sachems he hung, and the whole nation cowed down in terror of him while his authority remained.

"But Amherst left us; and the yelps of the Toad-Woman aroused the Sorcerers from their torpor. But I swear to you by St. Catharine, who is the saint of the Iroquois also, that the sway of Amochol shall end, and that he shall lie on his own bloody altar, nor die there before he sees the flames of Catharines-town touch the very heaven of an affronted God!"

"Can you do this?"

"With God's help and General Sullivan's," I said cheerfully. "For I daily pray to the One, and I have the promise of the other that before our marching army alarms Catharines-town, I and my Indians and Boyd and his riflemen shall strike the Red Priest there at the Onon-hou-aroria."

"What is that, Euan?"

"Their devil-rites—an honest feast which they have perverted. It was the Dream Feast, Lois, but Amochol has made of it an orgy unspeakable, where human sacrifices are offered to the Moon Witch, Atensi, and to Leshi and the Stone-Throwers, and the Little People—many of which were not goblins and ghouls until Amochol so decreed them."

"When is this feast to be held in Catharines-town?"

"On the last day of this month. Until then you must not leave this camp; and after the army marches you must not go outside this fort. Amochol's arm is long. His acolytes are watching. And now I think you understand at last."

She nodded. Presently she rested her pale cheek on her arms and looked at the reddening edges of the woods. Northwest lay Catharines-town, so Mayaro said. And into the northwest her grey eyes now gazed, calmly and steadily, while the sun went out behind the forest and the high heavens were plumed with fire.

Under us the river ran, all pink and primrose, save where deep, glassy shadows bounded it under either bank. The tips of the trees glowed with rosy flame, faded to ashes, then, burnt out, stood once more dark and serrated against the evening sky.

Suddenly an unearthly cry rang out from somewhere close to the river bank up stream. Instantly a sentry on the parapet near us fired his piece.

"Oh, God! What is it!" faltered Lois, grasping my arm. But I sprang for the ladder and ran down it; and the scattered soldiers and officers below on the parade were already running some grasping their muskets, others drawing pistols and hangers.

We could hear musketry firing ahead, and drums beating to arms in our camp behind us.

"The cattle-guard!" panted an officer at my elbow as we ran up stream along the river-bank. "The Senecas have made their kill again, God curse them!"

It was so. Out of the woods came running our frightened cattle, with the guard plodding heavily on their flanks; and in the rear two of our soldiers urged them on with kicks and blow; two more retreated backward, facing the dusky forest with levelled muskets, and a third staggered beside them, half carrying, half trailing a man whose head hung down crimsoning the leaves as it dragged over them.

He had been smoking a cob pipe when the silent assassin's hatchet struck him, and the pipe now remained clenched between his set teeth. At first, for the dead leaves stuck to him, we could not see that he had been scalped, but when we turned him over the loose and horrible features, all wrinkled where the severed brow-muscles had released the skin, left us in no doubt.

"This man never uttered that abominable cry," I said, shuddering. "Is there yet another missing from the guard?"

"Oh, no, sir," said the soldier who had dragged him. "That there was a heifer bawling when them devils cut her throat."

He stood scratching his head and gazing blankly down at his dead comrade.

"Jesus," he drawled. "What be I a-goin' for to tell his woman now?"

CHAPTER XVI LANA HELMER

Our Sunday morning gun had scarce been fired when from up the river came the answering thunder of artillery. Thirteen times did the distant cannon bellow their salute, announcing Clinton's advance, our camp swarmed like an excited hive, mounted officers galloping, foot officers running, troops tumbling out as the drums rattled the "general" in every regimental bivouac.

Colonel Proctor's artillery band marched out toward the landing place as I entered No. 2 Block-House and ran up the ladder, and I heard the ford-guard hurrahing and the garrison troops on the unfinished parapets answering them with cheer after cheer.

At my loud rapping on the flooring, Lois opened the trap for me, her lovely, youthful features flushed with excitement; Lana, behind her, beckoned me; and I sprang up into the loft and paid my duty to them both.

"What a noble earthquake of artillery up the river!" said Lois. "Butler has no cannon, has he?"

"Not even a grasshopper!" said I gaily. "Those cannon shot are Clinton's how d'ye do!"

"Poor's guns, were they not?" asked Lana, striving to smile. "And that means you march away and leave us with 'The World Turned Upside Down!'" And she shrugged her shoulders and whistled a bar of the old-time British air.

"Come to the parapet!" said Lois impatiently. "For the last few minutes there has been a sound in the woods—very far away, Euan—yet, if one could hear so far I would swear that I heard the conch-horn of your rifles!"

"Did I not tell you she knew it well?" said Lana with her pallid smile, as we opened the massive guard-door, squeezed through the covered way, and came out along the rifle-platform among our noisy soldiers.

"Listen!" murmured Lois, close at my elbow. "There! It comes again! Do you not hear it, Euan! That low, long, sustained and heart-thrilling undertone droning in the air through all this tumult!"

And presently I heard the sound—the wondrous melancholy, yet seductive music of our conch-horn. Its magic call set my every pulse a-throbbing. All the alluring mystery and solitude, all the sorrow of the wilderness were in those long-drawn blasts; all the enchantment of the woodland, too, calling, calling to the sons of the forest, riflemen, hunter, Coureur-de-Bois.

For its elfin monotone was the very voice of the forest itself—the deep, sweet whisper of virgin wilds, sacred, impenetrable, undefiled, tempting forever the sons of men.

And now, across the misty river, there was a great tumult of shouting as the first Otsego batteaux came into view; louder boomed our jolly cohorn, leaping high in its sulphurous powder-cloud; and the artillery band at the landing began to play "Iunadilla," which so deeply pleasured me that I forgot and caught Lois's hands between my own and pressed them there while her shoulder trembled against mine, and her breath came faster as the music swung into "The Huron" with a barbaric clash of cymbals.

It was a wondrous spectacle to see the navy of our Right Wing coming on, the waves slapping on bow and quarter—two hundred and ten loaded batteaux in line falling grandly down with the smooth and sunlit current, three men to every boat. Then, opposite, a wild flurry of bugle-horns announced our light infantry; and on they came, our merry General Hand riding ahead. And we