Cardigan

Minute after minute dragged, timed by the interminable axe-strokes. Presently the Weasel wriggled out of his saddle, ran to the boot, and hurried away, axe on shoulder, and I sat there alone in the lamplight, gnawing my lips and groaning.

But now, above the sharp axe-strokes and the deep roar of the torrent, I caught the sound of creaking timbers. Crack! Crack! Then a long-drawn crackle of settling beams, ending in a crash which set the blowing horses on their hind legs. Ere I could pull them down, Mount came running back, followed by Renard and Shemuel.

"No need to gallop now," observed Mount, shoving the axes into the boot and brushing the mud from his face. He climbed into his seat; Shemuel sought the body of the chaise, and Renard mounted the horse behind me.

"Walk the horses," said Mount; "we are an hour ahead yet. The roads cross just below here. Cheer up, Mr. Cardigan; we'll sight them over our rifles yet. And when Dunmore's horsemen come to the bridge yonder, they'll have some twenty miles to wander ere they can cross the Monongahela to-night."

"The river is in flood; you can hear it," added Renard. "There's no ford for twenty miles where a horse could live to-night."

"Lord! Won't Dunmore rage!" muttered Mount.

I had not thought of pursuit, but there was probably no doubt that Dunmore's horse were already hunting our trail somewhere between the stockade and the toll-gate. If that were so our plans must be changed, for we could not traverse Virginia with the Governor's dragoons at our heels.

Distracted with anxiety, cold and feverish by turns, I strove to regain self-command, and in a measure succeeded. Mount was of my opinion that we must take a forest road over the mountains and make straight for Philadelphia – on foot, if our chaise could not take us. He asked me about the Indians we might encounter, and I told him we had nothing as yet to fear from the Lenape, who could not be bound by clan ties to take up the Cayugas' quarrel until the Mohawks rose.

"Well," said Mount, "curse them all, I say. One moccasin looks like another, and all redskins smell like foxes. I take your word for it that the Lenape are afraid to breathe unless the Mohawks give them leave, so I hope we get through without a war-yelp in our ears."

"There's the Tuscaroras," said Renard, gloomily.

It was true. In my misery and torturing fear for Silver Heels, I had forgotten the Sixth Nation, bands of whom roamed the forests north of the Virginia line. But reflection quieted apprehensions concerning the Tuscaroras, who also must first take council with our Mohawks before drawing their hatchets in a Cayuga quarrel.

I explained this to Mount, who swore a great deal and shrugged his shoulders, but nevertheless I knew he was greatly relieved.

"There's a wood road over the mountains," he said. "Cade knows it. He came that way hunting his wife at Annapolis when the British fleet put in. Didn't you, Cade?"

The Weasel turned in his saddle.

"Jack," he said, gently, "I know my wife is dead. We will never speak of her any more."

Mount was silent. Presently he jumped to the ground and came walking along beside my horse, one hand on my stirrup.

"I don't know," he muttered, under his breath – "I don't know whether that's a healthy sign or not. Ever since Cade saw your lady – Miss Warren – he keeps telling me that his wife is dead, and that God has forgiven her and has told him to do so, too. Somehow he has changed. Do you note it? His voice, now, is different – like a gentleman's. Somehow, he makes me feel lonely."

I was scarcely listening, for, just ahead, I fancied I could see a signpost which must mark cross-roads. After a moment I called excitedly to Mount, pointing out to him the tall post in the middle of the road. Behind it the moon was setting.

"Ay," he said, coolly, "that's our runway. The game will cross here in an hour or so. Sit your saddle, Mr. Cardigan; there's time to whistle the devil's jig to an end yet."

But I was out of my saddle and priming my rifle afresh before he could finish.

"Poor lad," he said, pityingly. "Lord, but you're white as a cross-roads ghost. Shemmy, take the chaise south till you come to a spring brook that crosses the road; it's a hundred yards or so. Cover the coach-lamps with blankets and look to the horses a bit. Cade, I guess you had better take this side of the road with me. We want to be sure o' the post-boys. Mr. Cardigan, try to shoot the driver through the head. There's too much risk in a low shot."

"For God's sake, be careful!" I begged them. "Remember the lady is in the chaise. Can't you kill the leading horses – wouldn't that be safer?"

They were silent for a while. Presently Mount looked guiltily at me, muttering something about "highwayman style," but Renard shook his head.

"Well," began Mount, combatively, "it's the safest. I can stop the chaise all alone without a shot fired if you wish."

He looked at me; there was a joyously evil light in his sparkling eyes.

"This is familiar ground to me," he said, impudently. "Cade and I stopped Sir Timerson Chank by that signpost."

After a moment he added: "Coach and six; post-boys, coachman, footmen, and guards – all armed – eh, Cade, old spark? Lord, how they gaped when I took off my hat and invited Sir Timerson to a stroll! Do you mind that fat coachman, Cade? – and all the post-boys agape and cross-eyed with looking into your rifle-barrel?"

"Jack," I groaned, "I cannot endure delay. Post us, for Heaven's sake. I'm nigh spent with fright and grief."

"There, there!" said Mount, affectionately clapping me on the shoulder. "You will see your dear lady in half an hour, lad. No fear that we will miss – eh, Cade? We shoot straighter for our friends' than for our own lives."

Then he bade the Weasel take his stand to the left, and posted me to the right; he himself sat down cross-legged under the signpost – a strange, monstrous shape squatting in the light of the setting moon.

I heard the click, click, of the closing rifle-pans in the darkness, and for the twentieth time I renewed my priming, fearing the night air might flash the powder in the pan.

The silence weighed me down; awful fear shot through and through me, stabbing my swelling heart till I quivered from head to toe. Try as I might I could scarcely crush back the dread which sometimes chained my limbs, sometimes set them trembling. Suppose that after all they had gone north, risking the war-belt for a dash through to Crown Gap? This was foolish, and I knew it, for they were bound for Williamsburg. Yet the dreadful chance of their mistaking the route and plunging into a Cayuga ambuscade drove me almost frantic.

I thought of Silver Heels, while straining my ears for the sound of the chaise that bore her. Strange, but in my excitement I found myself utterly unable to recall her face to mind. Other faces crowded it out, and I could see them plainly, God wot! – Dunmore, falling under my heavy blow; Butler, his ghastly visage shattered, writhing with my clutch at his throat; Greathouse, as he lay in the alley with the lanthorn's light on his bloated face – enough! Ay, enough now, for in my ears I seemed to hear the crash of Butler's bones as I had dashed his accursed body to the floor, and I trembled and wondered what God did to punish those who had slain.

Punish? Perhaps this was my punishment now – perhaps I was never to see Silver Heels again! Terrible thoughts gathered like devils and clamoured at my ears for a hearing, and I lay on the wet grass, listening and staring into the night, while my dry lips burnt with the fever that consumed me. Around me the darkness seemed to be rocking like water; my head swam as if invisible tides were ebbing through it. Again and again I seemed to be falling, and I started to find my eyes wide open and burning like fire.

Suddenly a faint, far sound in the night stilled every pulse. I saw Mount slowly rise to his feet and step into the shadow of the signpost. The whispering call of a whippoorwill broke out from the bushes where Renard lurked, and I stood up, icy cold but calm, eyes fixed on the darkness which engulfed the road ahead.

Again the distant sound broke out in the stillness; it came again, clear and unmistakable. Now the noise of rapidly galloping horses sounded plainly; wheels striking stones rang out sharp and clear; two lights sparkled in the distance, growing yellower and bigger, while the road beneath flashed into sight in the advancing radiance.

On, on they came, horses at a heavy gallop, chaise swinging and lurching, right into the cross-roads. Then a blinding flash and crash split the gloom, echoed by another, and then a third. I leaped from my cover into a frantic mass of struggling horses which Renard was dragging violently into the road-ditch, while Mount, swinging his rifle, knocked down a man who fired at him and beat him till he lay still.

A shadowy form leaped from the seat in front and ran across my path, doubling and disappearing into the darkness; another slid from his horse, sinking to the ground without a sound, though the crazed animal kicked and trampled him into the mud.

As I sprang to the chaise, I saw the driver lurch towards me, and I aimed a blow at him with my rifle, but he pitched off heavily, landing in a heap at my feet, face downward in the grass. Now the horses swung in front of me, plunging furiously in the smashed harness; crash! went a wheel; the chaise sank forward; a horse fell.

"Look out! Look out!" shouted Mount, behind me, as I ran to the swaying vehicle.

"Silver Heels!" I cried, tearing at the door of the chaise.

For a second I saw her terrified face at the window; her cry rang in my ears; then the door burst open and Wraxall sprang out, burying his knife in my neck.

Down we went together, down, down into a smothering darkness that had no end, yet I remember, after a long, long time, looking up at the stars – or perhaps into her eyes.

Then my body seemed to sink again, silently as a feather, and my soul dropped out, falling like a lost star into an endless night.

CHAPTER XVIII

I knew afterwards – long, long afterwards – that I had been stabbed repeatedly; how many times is now of little consequence, although I have sometimes counted the white cicatrices on my body, tracing each with wonder that I had not long ago done with this life.

For that matter, I was regarded as already ended when they tore my assailant from my body and shattered him to death with their hatchets and knives, pistoling him again and again while he still quivered in the long grass.

As for me, I appeared to be quite dead, and whether to bury me there or in some kinder spot, none could determine, while the dear maid I loved lay senseless in Black Betty's arms.

As it was afterwards told to me in the saddest days of my life, so I tell what now befell the rescued, the rescuers, and that scarcely palpitating body o' mine, the soul of which floated on the dark borderland of Death. For it came to happen that dawn, lurking behind the eastern hills, set dull signals of fire on every western peak, warning Mount and Renard that day was on their trail to bare it for all who chose to follow.

My senseless sweetheart they bore to the waiting chaise, and, my body still retaining some warmth, they bore that, too, because they dared not bury me before she had seen me dead with her own eyes.

All that day they rode west by north, climbing the vast divide, halting to lie perdu when their keen ears heard movements all unseen, pushing on to tear the path free while their axes rang out among the windfalls. Then, when the western sun sank beyond the Ohio into the sea of trees, the winds of the east filled their nostrils and the long divide had been passed at last.

That night my dear love opened her eyes, and the darkness that enchained her fell, so that she crept to my feet as I lay in a corner of the chaise and laid her head on my knees.

Whether she thought me alive or dead none knew. Betty had bared my body to the waist and washed it. For a corpse they do as much. Later, without hope, Mount brought a pannikinful of blue-balsam gum, pricked from the globules on the trunk, and when Betty had once more washed me, they filled the long gashes with the balsam and closed them decently, strip on strip, with the fine cambric shift which my sweetheart tore from her own body.

Later, when the moon was coming up, they carried me lying in a blanket, my sweetheart walking beside me, and her silken shoon in tatters till her feet bled at every step, but refused to go back to the chaise. That night they thought me surely dead and watched without sleep lest the rigidity of dissolution surprise me ere my limbs had been laid straight. But the morning found me as I was, and the first shadow of night revealed no change, nor was I dead on the next morning, nor on the next, nor yet the next.

A still Sabbath in the forest, passed amid the sad twilight of the trees, gave them hope; for I had opened my eyes, though I saw nothing. But that night Death sat at my right hand, and the next night Death cradled my head; and my dear love lay at my feet and looked Death steadily in the eyes.

The fever which loosened every muscle burned fiercely all night long, and my voice broke out from my body like a demon mocking within me. A few of the Lenape, roaming near, followed and shot at us towards dawn, driving us north into the forest, where the chaise was abandoned, the traces cut, and the horses loaded with corn.

North and south the runways of the Long House pierced the wilderness, and these were the trails they followed, the men on foot, bearing me on their litter of blankets and balsam-boughs, the women crouching on the sack-laden horses.

As for me, I lived on through cold and heat, storm and stress, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, dumb, save when the demon hidden in my body mocked and laughed between my blackened lips. That demon was always watching things which I could not see, peeping out through my eyes into hell. Hours came when there was no water, and the demon knew it and mouthed and cursed between my shrinking lips. Then he would turn on me and tear at my throat and gnaw me and thrust his claws into my brain. Sometimes I heard his low laughter, for though I could neither see nor hear aught in the world, I could hear the demon sometimes, and feel him in my body, setting fire to the blood till it boiled like the water he craved.

At night he often stole my body and carried it where the darkness burnt and charred. There he would take out my bones, one by one, and break them for the marrow to dry hard.

These things no one has told me. I remember them in sleep sometimes, sometimes waking.

What I have heard from others is vague, and to me unreal as a painted scene in a picture where a film has settled under cobwebs. I hear that I breathed through days which I never saw, that I opened my eyes on lands which are strange to me, that my babble broke primeval silences which God himself had sealed. Nay, not I, but the demon mocked through those voiceless voids and lost ravines, through the still twilight of the noonday forest, through midnight summits muffled in the clouds. But only I know that, or dream it sometimes when I ponder on my end and on that fair salvation which my father finds lately in Christ.

Now, my dark soul, to hidden realms addressed, returned to me one night, and, listening, heard the demon scratching at my bones. Then, weary and perplexed, inside my body crept my soul and drew the lids of both eyes down, so that we might sleep together before the busy demon knew.

Yet I, having my soul again, opened my eyes to find a star was watching me; then, content, lay closer to my soul and slept. And thus the demon found us, and so fled back to the sleepless hell from whence he came.

Sleeping, I smelled lavender in the forest, and I thought the wood had windows where a sweet wind blew. Truly, there was a window somewhere near me, for I found my eyes had opened and could see it where the curtains swayed in the sun.

Hours later I looked again; the window was still there, and the moon beyond, low among pines whose shapes I knew.

Hours came and faded into sunshine; days brought bright spots on the curtains; night brought the moon and the tall pines. Sweet-fern, too, I smelled sometimes, and I heard a soothing monotone of familiar sound below me.

One day a cock crew and I fell a-trembling all alone, I knew not why. That night a new sound woke me, and I felt the presence of another person. Moonlight silvered the window of a room which I knew; but I was very quiet and waited for the sun, lest the phantoms I divined should trick me.

Then came a morning – perhaps the next, but I am not sure – when I knew I was in a bed and very tired, too tired to see aught but the sheets and the sunlit curtains beyond. That night, however, I heard rain falling on a roof and fell asleep, watching the window for the hidden moon.

When I first recognized the room, my memory served me a trick, and I thought of the school-room below where the others were imprisoned – Silver Heels, Peter, and Esk. Slyly content to doze abed here in Sir William's room, I understood that I must have been lying sick a long, long time, but could not remember when I had fallen ill. One thing sure: I did not mean they should know that I was better; I closed my eyes when I felt a presence near, lying still as a mouse until alone again.

Sometimes my thoughts wandered to the others in the school-room with Mr. Yost, for I did not remember he had been scalped by the Lenape, and I pitied Silver Heels and Esk and fat Peter a-thumbing their copy-books and breathing chalk-dust. Faith, I was well off in the great white bed, here in Sir William's room.

I could see his fish-rods on the wall, looped with silk lines and scarlet feather-flies; his hunting-horn, too, and his whip and spurs hanging from hooks beneath a fox's-mask and brush. There hung his fowling-pieces above the mantel, pouch and horn dangling from crossed ramrods; there rose his book-case with the eared-owl atop and the Chinese jar full o' pipes, long as my arm and twice as strong – a conceit which sent a weak wave of mirth through my body I could not move.

Soft! They are coming to watch me now. So I slyly close my eyes till they go away or give me the drinks they brew to make me sleep. I know them; were I minded I might gather strength to spit out their sense-stealing stuffs. But I swallow and dream and wake to a new sun or to mark the waxing moon, now near its full.

Our Doctor Pierson was here to-day and caught me watching him. They'll soon have me in the school-room now, though I do still play possum all I can, eating my gruel, which a strange servant brings, and pretending not to see her. Yet I am wondering why the maid is so silent and that her gown is so dark and stiff.

Later that day I saw Colonel Guy Johnson come into the room and look at me, but I did not mean he should think me awake, and so closed my eyes and lay quiet. When Sir William should come, however, I would open my eyes, for I had been desiring to see him since I saw his rods and guns. It fretted me at times that he neglected me, knowing my love for him.

Once, as I lay dozing, Peter crept into the room and stared at me. He had grown tall and gross and heavy-eyed, so that I scarce knew him, nor had he a trace of Sir William in his slinking carriage, which was all Mohawk, and the worst Mohawk at that. I was glad when he ceased thumbing the bedposts and left me.

The next day I saw Doctor Pierson beside me and asked for Sir William. He said that Sir William was away and that I was doing well. We often spoke after that, and he was ever busy with my head, which no longer ached save when he fingered it.

Then one night I awoke with a cry of terror and found myself sitting upright, bathed in chilly sweat, shouting that the Cayugas were abroad and that I must hold them back by the throat till Sir William could arrive and restrain them.

Lights soon moved into the room; I saw Doctor Pierson and Guy Johnson, but the dammed-up floods of memory had broken loose like an old wound, and the past came crowding upon me till I fell back on the pillows, convulsed and gasping, while the strong hands of the doctor began their silent work, tapping head and body, till somebody gave me a draught and I drowsed perdu.

Day broke – the bitterest day of life I was to know. I felt it, listening to the rain; I felt it, in the footsteps that passed my door – footsteps I did not know. Why was the house so silent? Why did all go about so quietly, dressed in black? Was there some one dead in the house below? Where was Silver Heels? Why had she never come to me? How came I here? Where was Jack Mount and Cade Renard? And Sir William, where was he that he came not near me – me who had lain sick unto death in his service and for his sake?

Dread numbed me; I strove to call, but my dumb lips froze; I strove to rise, and found my body wrecked in bed without power, without sense, a helpless, inert thing between two sheets.

Why was I here? Why was I alive if aught had harmed Silver Heels? God! And I safe here in bed? Where was she? Where was she? Dead? Why do they not tell me? Why do they not kill me as I lie here if I have returned without her?

I must have cried aloud in my agony, for the doctor came running and leaned over me.

"Tell me! Tell me!" I stammered. "Why don't you tell me?" and strove to strike him, but could not use my arms.

"Quiet, quiet," he said, watching me; "I will tell you what you wish to know. What is it then, my poor boy?"

"I – want – Felicity," I blurted out.

"Felicity?" he repeated, blankly. "Oh – Miss – ahem! – Miss Warren?"

I glared at him.

"Miss Warren has gone with Sir John Johnson to Boston," he said, dryly.

My eyes never left him.

"Is that why you cried out?" he asked, curiously. "Miss Warren left us a week ago. Had you only known her she would have been happy, for she has slept for weeks on the couch yonder."

"Why – why did she go?"

"I cannot tell you the reasons," he said, gravely.

"When will she return?"

"I do not know."

With a strength that came from God knows where, I dragged myself upright and caught him by the hand.

"She is dead!" I whispered. "She is dead, and all in this house know it save I who love her!"

A strange light passed over the doctor's face; he took both my hands and looked at me carefully. Then he smiled and gently forced me back to the pillows.

"She is alive and well," he said. "On my honour as a man, lad, I set your heart at rest. She is in Boston, and I do know why, but I may not meddle with what concerns this family, save in sickness – or death."

I watched his lips. They were solemn as the solemn word he uttered. I knew death had been in the house; I had felt that for days. I waited, watching him.

"Poor lad," he said, holding my hands.

My eyes never left his.

"Ay," he said, softly, "his last word was your name. He loved you dearly, lad."

And so I knew that Sir William was dead.

CHAPTER XIX

Day after day I lay in my bed, staring at the ceiling till night blotted it out. Then, stunned and exhausted, I would lie in the dark, crying in my weakness, whimpering for those I loved who had left me here alone. There was no strength left in me, body or mind; and, perhaps for that reason, my suffering was too feeble to waste what was left of me, for I had not even the strength of the fretful who do damage themselves with every grimace.

Certain it was that my thinned blood was growing gradually warmer, and its currents flowed with slightly increasing vigour day by day. The fever, which had come only partly from my wounds, had doubtless been long in me, and had fermented my blood as the opportunity offered when Wraxall nigh drained my every vein with his butcher's blade.

The emaciation of my body was extreme, my limbs were pithless reeds, my skull grinned through the tensely stretched skin, and my eyes were enormous.

Yet, such sturdy fibre have I inherited from my soldier father that grief itself could not retard the mending of me, and in the little French mirror I could almost see my sunken muscles harden and grow slowly fuller. Like a pear in a hot-frame, I was plump long before my strength could aid me or my shocked senses gather to take counsel for the future.

The dreadful anguish of my bereavement came only at intervals, succeeded by an apathy which served as a merciful relief. But most I thought of Silver Heels, and why she had left me here, and when she might return. Keen fear lurked near to stab me when, rousing from blank slumber, my first thought was of her. Then I would lie and wonder why she had gone, and tell myself I loved her above all else, or whimper and deem her cruel to leave me.