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

After a long while he raised his eyes, saw me looking at him, stared at me for a moment, then quietly extended the letter toward me.

"You wish me to read it?" I asked.

"Yes, read it, Loskiel, before I burn it," he said drearily. "I do not desire to have it discovered on my body after death."

I took the single sheet of paper and read:

"Lieutenant Thomas Boyd,
       "Rifle Corps,
             "Sir:

"For the last time, I venture to importune you in behalf of one for whose present despair you are entirely responsible. Pitying her unhappy condition, I have taken her as companion to me since we are arrived at Easton, and shall do what lies within my power to make her young life as endurable as may be.

"You, sir, on your return from the present campaign, have it in your power to make the only reparation possible. I trust that your heart and your sense of honour will so incline you.

"As for me, Mr. Boyd, I make no complaint, desire no sympathy, expect none. What I did was my fault alone. Knowing that I was falling in love with you, and at the same time aware what kind of man you had been and must still be, I permitted myself to drift into deeper waters, too weak of will to make an end, too miserable to put myself beyond the persuasion of your voice and manner. And perhaps I might never have found courage to give you up entirely had I not been startled into comprehension by what I learned concerning the poor child in whose behalf I now am writing.

"That instantly sobered me, ending any slightest spark of hope that I might have in my secret heart still guarded. For, with my new and terrible knowledge, I understood that I must pass instantly and completely out of your life; and you out of mine. Only your duty remained—not to me, but to this other and more unhappy one. And that path I pray that you will follow when a convenient opportunity arises.

"I am, sir y' ob't, etc., etc.

"Magdalene Helmer.

"P. S. If you love me, Tom, do your full duty in the name of God!

"Lana."

I handed the letter back to him in silence. He stared at it, not seeing the written lines, I think, save as a blurr; and after a long while he leaned forward and laid it on the coals.

"If I am not already foredoomed," he said to me, "what Lana bids me do that I shall do. It is best, is it not, Loskiel?"

"A clergyman is fitter to reply to you than I."

"Do you not think it best that I marry Dolly Glenn?"

"God knows. It is all too melancholy and too terrible for me to comprehend the right and wrong of it, or how a penitence is best made. Yet, as you ask me, it seems to me that what she will one day become should claim your duty and your future. The weakest ever has the strongest claim."

"Yes, it-is true. I stand tonight so fettered to an unborn soul that nothing can unloose me.... I wish that I might live."

"You will live! You must live!"

"Aye, 'must' and 'will' are twins of different complexions, Loskiel.... Yet, if I live, I shall live decently and honestly hereafter in the sight of God and—Lana Helmer."

We said nothing more. About ten o'clock Boyd rose and went away all alone. Half an hour later he came back, followed by some score and more of men, a dozen of our own battalion, half a dozen musket-men of the 4th Pennsylvania Regiment, three others, two Indians, Hanierri, the headquarters Oneida guide, and Yoiakim, a Stockbridge.

"Volunteers," he said, looking sideways at me. "I know how to take Amochol; but I must take him in my own manner."

I ventured to remind him of the General's instructions that we find the Chinisee Castle and report at sunrise.

"Damn it, I know it," he retorted impatiently, "but I have my own plans; and the General will bear me out when I fling Amochol's scalp at his feet."

The Grey-Feather drew me aside and said in a low, earnest voice:

"We are too many to surprise Amochol. Before Wyoming, with only three others I went to Thenondiago, the Castle of the Three Clans—The Bear, The Wolf, and The Turtle—and there we took and slew Skull-Face, brother of Amochol, and wounded Telenemut, the husband of Catrine Montour. By Waiandaia we stretched the scalp of Skull-Face; at Thaowethon we painted it with Huron and Seneca tear-drops; at Yaowania we peeled three trees and wrote on each the story so that the Three Clans might read and howl their anguish. Thus should it be done tonight if we are to deal with Amochol!"

Once more I ventured to protest to Boyd.

"Leave it to me, Loskiel," he said pleasantly. And I could say no more.

At eleven our party of twenty-nine set out, Hanierri, the Oneida, from headquarters, guiding us; and I could not understand why Boyd had chosen him, for I was certain he knew less about this region than did Mayaro, However, when I spoke to Boyd, he replied that the General had so ordered, and that Hanierri had full instructions concerning the route from the commander himself.

As General Sullivan was often misinformed by his maps and his scouts, I was nothing reassured by Boyd's reply, and marched with my Indians, feeling in my heart afraid. And, without vaunting myself, nor meaning to claim any general immunity from fear, I can truly say that for the first time in my life I set forth upon an expedition with the most melancholy forebodings possible to a man of ordinary courage and self-respect.

We followed the hard-travelled war-trail in single file; and Hanierri did not lose his way, but instead of taking, as he should have done, the unused path which led to the Chinisee Castle, he passed it and continued on.

I protested most earnestly to Boyd; the Sagamore corroborated my opinion when summoned. But Hanierri remained obstinate, declaring that he had positive information that the Chinisee Castle lay in the direction we were taking.

Boyd seemed strangely indifferent and dull, making apparently no effort to sift the matter further. So strange and apathetic had his manner become, so unlike himself was he, that I could make nothing of him, and stood in uneasy wonderment while the Mohican and the Oneida, Hanierri, were gravely disputing.

"Come," he said, in his husky and altered voice, "let us have done with this difference in opinion. Let the Oneida guide us—as we cannot have two guides' opinions. March!"

In the darkness we crept past Butler's right flank, silently and undiscovered; nor could we discover any sign of the enemy, though now not one among us doubted that he lay hidden along the bluffs, waiting for our army to move at sunrise into the deadly trap that the nature of the place had so perfectly provided.

All night long we moved on the hard and trodden trail; and toward dawn we reached a town. Reconnoitering the place, we found it utterly abandoned. If the Chinisee Castle lay beyond it, we could not determine, but Hanierri insisted that it was there. So Boyd sent back four men to Sullivan to report on what we had done; and we lay in the woods on the outskirts of the village, to wait for daylight.

When dawn whitened the east, it became plain to us all that we had taken the wrong direction. The Chinisee Castle was not here. Nothing lay before us but a deserted village.

I knew not what to make of Boyd, for the discovery of our mistake seemed to produce no impression on him. He stood at the edge of the woods, gazing vacantly across the little clearing where the Indian houses straggled on either side of the trail.

"We have made a bad mistake," I said in a low voice.

"Yes, a bad one," he said listlessly.

"Shall we not start on our return?" I asked.

"There is no hurry."

"I beg your pardon, but I have to remind you that you are to report at sunrise."

"Aye—if that were possible, Loskiel."

"Possible!" I repeated, blankly. "Why not?"

"Because," he said in a dull voice, "I shall never see another sunrise save this one that is coming presently. Let me have my fill of it unvexed by Generals and orders."

"You are not well, Boyd," I said, troubled.

"As well as I shall ever be—but not as ill, Loskiel."

At that moment the Sagamore laid his hand on my shoulder and pointed. I saw nothing for a moment; then Boyd and Murphy sprang forward, rifles in hand, and Mayaro after them, and I after them, running into the village at top speed. For I had caught a glimpse of a most unusual sight; four Iroquois Indians on horseback, riding into the northern edge of the town. Never before, save on two or three occasions, had I ever seen an Iroquois mounted on a horse.

We ran hard to get a shot at them, and beyond the second house came in full view of our enemies. Murphy fired immediately, knocking the leading Indian from his horse; I fired, breaking the arm of the next rider; both my Indians fired and missed; and the Iroquois were off at full speed. Boyd had not fired.

We ran to where the dead man was lying, and the Mohican recognized him as an Erie named Sanadaya. Murphy coolly took his scalp, with an impudent wink at the Sagamore and a grin at Boyd and me.

In the meanwhile, our riflemen and Indians had rushed the town and were busy tearing open the doors of the houses and setting fire to them. In vain I urged Boyd to start back, pointing out that this was no place for us to linger in, and that our army would burn this village in due time.

But he merely shrugged his shoulders and loitered about, watching his men at their destruction; and I stood by, a witness to his strange and inexplicable delay, a prey to the most poignant anxiety because the entire Tory army lay between us and our own army, and this smoke signal must draw upon us a very swarm of savages to our inevitable destruction.

At last Boyd sounded the recall on his ranger's whistle, and ordered me to take my Indians and reconnoiter our back trail. And no sooner had I entered the woods than I saw an Indian standing about a hundred yards to the right of the trail, and looking up at the smoke which was blowing southward through the tree-tops.

His scarlet cloak was thrown back; he was a magnificent warrior, in his brilliant paint, matching the flaming autumn leaves in colour. My Indians had not noticed him where he stood against a crimson and yellow maple bush. I laid my rifle level and fired. He staggered, stood a moment, turning his crested head with a bewildered air, then swayed, sank at the knee joints, dropped to them, and very slowly laid his stately length upon the moss, extending himself like one who prepared for slumber.

We ran up to where he lay with his eyes closed; he was still breathing. A great pity for him seized me; and I seated myself on the moss beside him, staring into his pallid face.

And as I sat beside him while he was dying, he opened his eyes, and looked at me. And I knew that he knew I had killed him. After a few moments he died.

"Amochol!" I said under my breath. "God alone knows why I am sorry for this dead priest." And as I rose and stared about me, I caught sight of two pointed ears behind a bush; then two more pricked up sharply; then the head of a wolf popped up over a fallen log. But as I began to reload my rifle, there came