The Trapper's Daughter: A Story of the Rocky Mountains

"My mother!" the hunter exclaimed in despair. "Oh, God! What shall I do to reach her?"

"Curumilla is warned," she answered; "he is waiting for you at the foot of the mountains, with two horses."

The hunter rushed down the path like a madman.

CHAPTER XL

LYNCH LAW

Before going further, we will explain in a few words what Lynch Law is to which we have several times referred in the course of this narrative, and which plays so great a part, not only in the prairies of North America, but also in certain districts of the United States.

Although we Europeans are rightly surprised that such a monstrosity as Lynch Law can exist in a general society, to be just to the Americans, and although we are bound to disapprove their present system derived from the original, this law was the result of imperious circumstances. When the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth, Lynch Law was the chastisement imposed by a community deprived of all law, who could only have recourse to their own justice to punish crime.

Now-a-days, in the great centres of the Union, this law, on the contrary, is only the illegal exercise of power by a majority acting in opposition to the laws of the country, as well as the punishments, where the population is sparse, and which, according to the Constitution, must have a certain number of inhabitants to be recognised as districts; up to that recognition, those who have come to seek an existence at these settlements among bandits of every description, against whose attacks they cannot appeal to any legal protection, are obliged to protect themselves, and have recourse to Lynch Law. In the prairies of the Far West, this law is exactly the same as the ancient lextalionis of the Hebrews.

We will not go deeper into the subject of this law, which is so obscure in its origin, that its very name is an unsolved riddle, although some persons assert wrongly, as we think, that Lynch was a governor who first applied this law. The only difficulty there is against the truth of this derivation is that Lynch Law existed, as we have said, in America, from the first day that Europeans landed there. Without attempting to guarantee the authenticity of our assertion, it is evident that Lynch Law did not really begin to be applied in the civilised provinces of the Union till the last years of the eighteenth century; at that period it was much more summary, for a lamp was taken down, and the victim hoisted in its place; hence we believe that the word Lynch is only a corruption of derivation of light. We will now return to our narrative.

Four days after the events we describe in our last chapter, Unicorn's camp afforded a strange sight; not only did it contain Indian warriors belonging to all the allied nations of the Comanches, but also many hunters, trappers, and half-breeds had hurried in from all parts of the prairies to try the prisoners, and punish them by Lynch Law as understood in the Far West.

Father Seraphin, who was at this moment in camp, busied in offering help and consolation to Madame Guillois, whose illness had reached its last and fatal stage, tried to oppose the trial of the prisoners with all his power. In vain did he present to the Indians and white men that there were upright judges in the United states, who would apply the laws and punish the criminals; his efforts had obtained no result, and he had been obliged to withdraw, heart-broken.

Not being able to save the prisoners, he wished to prepare them for death; but here again the missionary failed: he had found scoundrels with hearts bronzed by crime, who would not listen, but derided him. Singularly enough, since these men had fallen into the hands of their enemies, they had not exchanged a word, crouched in a corner of the hut that served as a prison, sullen as wild beasts, they avoided each other as much as the bonds that attached them permitted them to do.

Ellen alone appeared among them like the angel of consolation, lavishing soft words on them, and trying before all to soothe her father's last hours. Red Cedar only lived in and through his daughter – each smile of the poor girl which hid her tears, brought a smile on his face branded and ravaged by passion: if he could have reformed, his paternal love would surely have affected this prodigy; but it was too late, all was dead in this heart, which now only contained one feeling, a paternal affection like that of tigers and panthers.

"Is it for today, my child?" he asked.

"I do not know, father," she timidly replied.

"I understand you, poor darling, you are afraid of grieving me by letting me know the truth; but undeceive yourself, when a man like me has fallen so low as I have done, the only blessing he craves is death, and, stay, I have my answer then," he added with a grin; "Judge Lynch is about to begin his duty."

A great noise was audible at this moment in the camp; three stakes had been put up in the morning, and round them the population were tumultuously electing the judges ordered to avenge public justice.

The judges were seven in number: Valentine, Curumilla, Unicorn, Black Cat, Spider, and two other Comanche chiefs. Care had been taken not to elect any who had accusations to bring against the prisoners.

At midday precisely, a silence of lead fell on the assembly, a band of warriors and trappers had gone to the prison to fetch the prisoners and lead them before the judges.

Although Father Seraphin's attempts to arouse better feelings in the heart of the bandits had failed, he determined to accompany and exhort them to the last moment; he walked on the right of Red Cedar, and Ellen on his left.

When the prisoners were brought before the tribunal, Valentine, who had been nominated president against his will, summoned the accusers, who at once appeared. They were five in number: Don Miguel, Don Pablo Zarate, Andrés Garote, White Gazelle, and Bloodson. Valentine took the word in a loud and firm voice.

"Red Cedar," he said, "you are about to be tried by Lynch Law: you will hear the crimes of which you are accused, and have entire liberty to defend yourself."

The squatter shrugged his shoulders.

"Your Lynch Law is foolish," he said disdainfully; "it can only kill, and the victim has not even time to feel the pain: instead of taking that absurd vengeance, fasten me to the stake of torture for a day, and then you will have some fun, for you shall see how a warrior can look death in the face, and endure pain."

"You are mistaken as to our intentions: we are not avenging ourselves, but punishing you; the stake is reserved for brave and honourable warriors, but criminals are only worthy of the gallows."

"As you please," he replied carelessly; "what I said was through a wish to afford you pleasure."

"Who are the persons who have charges against Red Cedar?" Valentine went on.

"I, Don Miguel de Zarate."

"I, Don Pablo de Zarate."

"I, who am called Bloodson, but who will reveal my real name if Red Cedar desires it."

"It is unnecessary," he said in a hollow voice.

"I, White Gazelle."

"Bring your charges forward."

"I accuse this man of having carried off my daughter, whom he basely assassinated," Don Miguel said; "I also accuse him of having caused the death of my friend, General Ibañez."

"What reply have you to this?"

"None."

"What does the people say?"

"We attest," the audience replied in one voice.

"I accuse this man of the same crimes," Don Pablo said.

"I accuse this man of having burnt the house of my father and mother, assassinated my parents, and handed me over to bandits to be brought up in crime," White Gazelle said.

"I," Bloodson added, "accuse him of the same crimes: this girl's father was my brother."

There was a start of horror on the audience. Valentine consulted with the judges in a low voice, then said —

"Red Cedar, you are unanimously found guilty and condemned to be scalped, and then hung."

Sutter was condemned to be hanged only; the judges had regard for his youth, and the evil examples he had constantly before him. The monk's turn had now arrived.

"One moment," Bloodson said, as he stepped forward; "this man is a wretched adventurer, who has no right to wear the gown he has so long dishonoured. I ask that it be stripped off him, before he is tried."

"Why waste time in accusing me, and making this mockery of justice?" Fray Ambrosio ironically replied. "All you who try us are as criminal as we are. You are assassins; for you usurp, without any right, functions that do not belong to you. This time you act justly, by chance: a thousand other times, awed by the populace that surrounds you, you condemn innocent men. If you wish to know my crimes, I will tell you them. That man is right. I am no monk – never was one. I began by debauchery; I finished in crime. As an accomplice of Red Cedar, I fired farms, whose inhabitants I burned or assassinated, in order to plunder them afterwards. I have been, still with Red Cedar, a scalp hunter. I helped to carry off that girl. What more? I killed that gambusino's brother in order to obtain the secret of a placer. Do you want any more? Imagine the most atrocious and hideous crimes, and I have committed them all. Now pronounce and carry out your sentence, for you will not succeed in making me utter another word. I despise you. You are cowards."

After uttering these odious words with revolting cynicism, the wretch looked impudently round the audience.

"You are sentenced," Valentine said, after a consultation, "to be scalped, hung up by the arms, seasoned with honey, and remain hanging till the flies and birds have devoured you."

On hearing this terrible sentence, the bandit could not repress a start of terror, while the people frenziedly applauded this severe sentence.

"Now the sentence will be carried out," Valentine said.

"One moment," Unicorn exclaimed, as he sprang up, and stood before the judges; "as regards Red Cedar, the law has not been followed: does it not say, 'eye for eye, and tooth for tooth?'"

"Yes, yes!" the Indians and trappers shouted. Struck by an ominous presentiment, Red Cedar trembled.

"Yes," Bloodson said, in a hollow voice, "Red Cedar killed Doña Clara, Don Miguel's daughter – his daughter Ellen must die."

The judges themselves recoiled in horror, and Red Cedar uttered a terrible howl. Ellen alone did not tremble.

"I am ready to die," she said, in a gentle and resigned voice. "Poor girl! Heaven knows how gladly I would have given my life to save hers."

"My daughter!" Red Cedar exclaimed, in despair.

"Don Miguel felt the same when you were assassinating his daughter," Bloodson retorted, cruelly. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth."

"Oh! What you are doing there, my brothers, is horrible," Father Seraphin exclaimed. "You are shedding innocent blood, and it will fall on your heads. God will punish you. For pity's sake, brothers, do not kill that innocent maiden!"

At a signal from Unicorn, four warriors seized the missionary, and, despite his efforts, while treating him most kindly, carried him to the chiefs lodge, where they guarded him. Valentine and Curumilla tried in vain to oppose this barbarous and blood-thirsty deed, but the Indians and trappers, worked on by Bloodson, loudly claimed the execution of the law, and threatened to take justice into their own hands.

In vain did Don Miguel and his son implore Unicorn and Bloodson; they could obtain nothing. At length, Unicorn, wearied by the young man's prayers, seized Ellen by the hair, plunged his knife into her heart, and threw her into his arms, shouting:

"Her father killed your sister, and you pray for her. You are a coward."

Valentine, at this unjustifiable deed, hid his face in his hands, and fled. Red Cedar writhed in the bonds that held him. On seeing Ellen fall, a revolution took place in him. Henceforth he only uttered one word, in a heart-rending voice:

"My daughter! My daughter!"

Bloodson and White Gazelle were implacable, and sternly watched the execution of the sentence passed upon the prisoners. Red Cedar and his son did not suffer long, although the former was scalped; the madness that had seized on him rendered him insensible to everything.

The man who suffered the most fearful punishment was Fray Ambrosio; the wretch writhed for two-and-twenty hours in unimaginable suffering, ere death put an end to his fearful tortures.

So soon as the culprits had been executed, Bloodson and White Gazelle mounted their horses and galloped away.

They have never been heard of since, and no one knows what has become of them.

It was the eighth day after the fearful application of Lynch Law we have just described, a little before sunset.

All traces of the execution had disappeared. Unicorn's camp was still established at the same spot, for he insisted on his men remaining there, on account of Madame Guillois's illness rendering the most absolute rest necessary for her. The poor old lady felt herself dying by degrees; day by day she grew weaker, and, gifted with that lucidity which Heaven at times grants to the dying, she saw death approach with a smile, while striving to console her son for her loss.

But Valentine, who after so many years only saw his mother again to separate from her for ever, was inconsolable. Deprived of Don Miguel and Don Pablo, who had returned to the Paso del Norte, bearing with them the body of the hapless Trapper's Daughter, the Trail-hunter wept on the bosom of Curumilla, who, to console him, could only weep with him, and say —

"The Great Spirit recalls my brother's mother; it is because that he loves her."

A very long sentence for the worthy chief, and which proved the intensity of his grief.

On the day when we resume our narrative, Madame Guillois was reclining in a hammock in front of her hut, with her face turned to the setting sun. Valentine was standing on her right, Father Seraphin on her left, and Curumilla by his friend's side.

The patient's face had a radiant expression, her eyes sparkled vividly, and a light pink flush gilded her cheeks; she seemed supremely happy. The warriors, sharing in the grief of their adopted brother, were crouching silently near the hut.

It was a magnificent evening; the breeze that was beginning to rise gently agitated the leaves; the sun was setting in a flood of vapour, iridescent with a thousand changing tints.

The sick woman uttered at times broken words, which her son religiously repeated.

At the moment when the sun disappeared behind the snowy peaks of the mountains, the dying woman rose, as if impelled by an irresistible force, she took a calm and limpid glance around, laid her hands on the hunter's head, and uttered one word, with an accent full of strange melody —

"Farewell!"

Then she fell back – she was dead.

Instinctively all present knelt. Valentine bent over his mother's body, whose face retained that halo of heavenly beauty which is the last adornment of death; he closed her eyes, kissed her several times, and pressing her right hand which hung out of the hammock in his, he prayed fervently.

The whole night was spent in this way, and no one left the spot. At daybreak Father Seraphin, aided by Curumilla, who acted as sacristan, read the service for the dead. The body was then buried, all the Indian warriors being present at the ceremony.

When all had retired, Valentine knelt down by the grave, and though the missionary and the chief urged on him to leave it he insisted on spending this night also in watching over his dead mother. At daybreak his two friends returned; they found him still kneeling and praying; he was pale, and his features were worn; his hair, so black on the eve, had white hairs now mingling with it.

Father Seraphin tried to restore his courage, but the hunter shook his head sadly at all the priest's pious exhortations.

"What good is it?" he said.

"Oh!" the missionary at length said to him, "Valentine, you, who are so strong, are now weak as a child; grief lays you low without your striking a blow in self-defence. You forget, though, that you do not belong to yourself."

"Alas!" he exclaimed, "What is left me now?"

"God!" the priest said sternly, as he pointed to the sky.

"And the desert!" Curumilla exclaimed, extending his arm toward the rising sun.

A flame flashed from the hunter's black eye; he shook his head several times, bent a glance full of tenderness on the tomb, and said, in a broken voice —

"Mother, we shall meet again."

Then he turned to the Indian chief.

"Let us go," he said, resolutely.

Valentine was about to commence a new existence. His further adventures will be described in a new series of stories, each complete in itself, commencing with the "The Tiger Slayer," and the characters running through the "Gold Seekers," the "Indian Chief," and the "Red Track."

THE END

1

See the Trail Hunter and Pirates of the Prairies.

2

This episode, incredible as it may appear, is rigorously true. – G.A.