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

ran their lines through the wilderness, but sometimes we were stealing forward, far ahead and in touch with the retreating Tory army, patiently and persistently contriving plans to get at Amochol. But the painted hordes of Senecas enveloped the Sorcerer and his acolytes as with a living blanket; and, prowling outside their picket fires at night, not one ridged-crest did we see during those twelve days of swift pursuit.

Boyd, during the last few days, had become very silent and morose; and his men and my Indians believed that he was brooding over his failure to take the Red Priest at Catharines-town. But my own heavy heart told me a different story; and the burden of depression which this young officer bore so silently seemed to weight me also with vague and sinister apprehensions.

I remember, just before sunset, that our small scout of ten were halted by a burnt log bridge over a sluggish inlet to a lake. The miry trail to the Chinisee Castle led over it, swung westward along the lake, rising to a steep bluff which was gashed with a number of deep and rocky ravines.

It was plain that the retreating Tory army had passed over this bridge, and that their rearguard had set it afire.

I said to Boyd, pointing across the southern end of the lake:

"From what I have read of Braddock's Field, yonder terrain most astonishingly resembles it. What an ambuscade could Butler lay for our army yonder, within shot of this crossing!"

"Pray God he lays it," said Boyd between his teeth.

"Yet, we could get at him better beyond those rocky gashes," I muttered, using my spyglass.

"Butler is there," said the Mohican, calmly.

Both Boyd and I searched the wooded bluffs in vain for any sign of life, but the Sagamore and the other Indians quietly maintained their opinion, because, they explained, though patches of wild rice grew along the shore, the wild ducks and geese had left their feeding coves and were lying half a mile out in open water. Also, the blue-jays had set up a screaming in the yellowing woods along the western shore, and the tall, blue herons had left their shoreward sentry posts, and now mounted guard far to the northward among the reeds, where solitary black ducks dropped in at intervals, quacking loudly.

Boyd nodded; the Oneidas drew their hatchets and blazed the trees; and we all sat down in the woods to await the coming of our advanced guard.

After a little while, our pioneers appeared, rifles slung, axes glittering on their shoulders, and immediately began to fell trees and rebuild the log bridge. Hard on their heels came my rifle battalion; and in the red sunshine we watched the setting of the string of outposts.

Far back along the trail behind us we could hear the halted army making camp; flurries of cheery music from the light infantry bugle-horns, the distant rolling of drums, the rangers penetrating whistle, lashes of wagoners cracking, the melancholy bellow of the beef herd.

Major Parr came and talked with us for a few minutes, and went away convinced that Butler's people lay watching us across the creek. Ensign Chambers came a-mincing through the woods, a-whisking the snuff from his nose with the only laced hanker in the army; and:

"Dear me!" says he. "Do you really think we shall have a battle, Loskiel? How very interesting and enjoyable it will be."

"Who drilled your pretty hide, Benjamin?" said I bluntly, noting that he wore his left arm in a splint.

"Lord!" says he. "'Twas a scratch from a half-ounce ball at the Chemung. Dear, dear, how very disappointing was that affair, Loskiel! Most annoying of them not to stand our charge!" And, "Dear, dear, dear," he murmured, mincing off again with all the air of a Wall Street beau ogling the pretty dames on Hanover Square.

"Where is this damned Castle?" growled Boyd. "Chinisee, Chenussio, Genesee—whatever it is called? The name keeps buzzing in my head—nay, for the last three days I have dreamed of it and awakened to hear it sounding in my ears, as though beside me some one stooped and whispered it."

I pulled out our small map, which we had long since learned to distrust, yet even our General had no better one.

Here was marked the Chinisee Castle, near the confluence of Canaseraga Creek and the Chinisee River; and I showed the place to Boyd, who looked at it curiously.

Mayaro, however, shook his crested head:

"No, Loskiel," he said. "The Chinisee Castle stands now on the western shore. The Great Town should stand here!"—placing his finger on an empty spot on the map. "And here, two miles above, is another town."

"And you had better tell that to the General when he comes," remarked Boyd. And to me he said: "If we are to take Amochol at all, it will be this night or at dawn at the Chinisee Castle."

"I am also of that opinion," said I.

"I shall want twenty riflemen," he said.

"If it can not be done with four, and my Indians, we need not attempt it."

"Why?" he asked sullenly.

"The General has so ordered."

"Yes, but if I am to catch Amochol I must do it in my own way. I know how to do it. And if I risk taking my twenty riflemen, and am successful, the General will not care how it was accomplished."

I said nothing, because Boyd ranked me, but what he proposed made me very uneasy. More than once he had interpreted orders after his own fashion, and, being always successful in his enterprises, nothing was said to him in reproof.

My Indians had made a fire, I desiring to let the enemy suppose that we suspected nothing of his ambuscade so close at hand; and around this we lay, munching our meagre meal of green corn roasted on the coals, and ripe apples to finish.

As we ended, the sun set behind the western bluffs, and our evening gun boomed good-night in the forest south of us. And presently came, picking their way through the trail-mire, our General, handsomely horsed as usual, attended by Major Adam Hoops, of his staff, and several others.

We instantly waited on him and told him what we knew and suspected; and I showed him my map and warned him of the discrepancy between its marked places and the report of the Mohican Sagamore.

"Damnation!" he said. "Every map I have had lies in detail, misleading and delaying me when every hour empties our wagons of provisions. Were it not for your Indians, Mr. Loskiel, and that Sagamore in particular, we had missed half the game as it lies."

He sat his saddle in silence for a while, looking at the unfinished log bridge and up at the bluffs opposite.

"I feel confident that Butler is there," he said bluntly. "But what I wish to know is where this accursed Chinisee Castle stands. Boyd, take four men, move rapidly just before midnight, find out where this castle stands, and report to me at sunrise."

Boyd saluted, hesitated, then asked permission to speak. And when the General accorded it, he explained his plan to take Amochol at the Chinisee Castle, and that this matter would neither delay nor interfere with a prompt execution of his present orders.

"Very well," nodded the General, "but take no more than four men, and Mr. Loskiel and his Indians with you; and report to me at sunrise."

I heard him say this; Major Hoops heard him also. So I supposed that Boyd would obey these orders to the letter.

When the mounted party had moved away, Boyd and I went back to the fire and lay down on our blankets. We were on the edge of the trees; it was still daylight; the pioneers were still at work; and my Indians were freshening their paint, rebraiding their scalp-locks, and shining up hatchet, rifle, and knife.

"Look at those bloodhounds," muttered Boyd. "They did not hear what we were talking about, but they know by premonition."

"I do not have any faith in premonitions," said I.

"Why?"

"I have dreamed I was scalped, and my hair still grows."

"You are not out of the woods yet," he said, sombrely.

"That does not worry me."

"Nor me. Yet, I do believe in premonition."

"That is old wives' babble."

"Maybe, Loskiel. Yet, I know I shall not leave this wilderness alive."

"Lord!" said I, attempting to jest. "You should set up as a rival to Amochol and tell us all our fortunes."

He smiled—and the effort distorted his pale, handsome face.

"I think it will happen at Chinisee," he said quietly.

"What will happen?"

"The end of the world for me, Loskiel."

"It is not like you, Boyd, to speak in such a manner. Only lately have I ever heard from you a single note of such foreboding."

"Only lately have I been dowered with the ominous clairvoyance. I am changed, Loskiel."

"Not in courage."

"No," he said with a shrug of his broad shoulders that set ruffles and thrums a-dancing on his rifle-dress.

We were silent for a while, watching the Indians at their polishing. Then he said in a low but pleasant voice:

"How proud and happy must you be with your affianced. What a splendour of happiness lies before you both! An unblemished past, an innocent passion, a future stretching out unstained before you—what more can God bestow on man and maid?... May bright angels guard you both, Loskiel."

I made to thank him for the wish, but suddenly found I could not control my voice, so lay there in silence and with throat contracted, looking at this man whose marred young life lay all behind him, and whose future, even to me, lowered strangely and ominously veiled.

And as we lay there, into our fire-circle came a dusty, mud-splashed, and naked runner, plucking from his light skin-pouch two letters, one for Boyd and one for me.

I read mine by the flickering fire; it was dated from Tioga Point:

"Euan Loskiel, my honoured and affianced husband, and my lover, worshipped and adored, I send you by this runner my dearest affections, my duties, and my most sacred sentiments.

"You must know that this day we have arrived at the Fort at Tioga Point without any accident or mischance of any description, and, indeed, not encountering one living creature between Catharines-town and this post.

"My beloved mother desires her particular and tender remembrances to be conveyed to you, her honoured son-in-law to be, and further commands that I express to you, as befittingly as I know how, her deep and ever-living gratitude and thanks for your past conduct in regard to me, and your present and noble-minded generosity concerning the dispositions you have made for us to remain under the amiable protection of Mr. Hake in Albany.

"Dear lad, what can I say for myself? You are so glorious, so wonderful—and in you it does seem that all the virtues, graces, and accomplishments are so perfectly embodied, that at moments, thinking of you, I become afraid, wondering what it is in me that you can accept in exchange for the so perfect love you give me.

"I fear that you may smile on perusing this epistle, deeming it, perhaps, a trifle flowery in expression—but, Euan, I am so torn between the wild passion I entertain for you, and a desire to address you modestly and politely in terms of correspondence, as taught in the best schools, that I know not entirely how to conduct. I would not have you think me cold, or too stiffly laced in the formalities of polite usage, so that you might not divine my heart a-beating under the dress that covers me, be it rifle-frock or silken caushet. I would not have you consider me over-bold, light-minded, or insensible to the deep and sacred tie that already binds me to you evermore—which even, I think, the other and tender tie which priest and church shall one day impose, could not make more perfect or more secure.

"So I must strive to please you by writing with elegance befitting, yet permitting you to perceive the ardent heart of her who thinks of you through every blessed moment of the day.

"I pray, as my dear mother prays, that God, all armoured, and with His bright sword drawn, stand sentinel on your right hand throughout the dangers and the trials of this most just and bloody war. For your return I pray and wait.

"Your humble and dutiful and obedient and adoring wife to be,
"Lois de Contrecoeur.

"Post scriptum: The memory of our kiss fades not from my lips. I will be content when circumstances permit us the liberty to repeat it."

When I had read the letter again and again, I folded it and laid it in the bosom of my rifle-shirt. Boyd still brooded over his letter, the red firelight bathing his face to