Heralds of Empire Part 14

"Jean," he began, looking up quickly towards the gathering darkness of the woods.

"Sir?"

"'Tis cold enough for hunters to want a fire."

"Is the fire not big enough?"

"Now, where are your wits, lad? If hunters were hiding in that bush, one could see this fire a long way off. The wind is loud. One could go close without being heard. Pardieu, I'll wager a good scout could creep up to a log like this"--touching the pine on which we sat---"and hear every word we are saying without a soul being the wiser!"

Jean turned with a start, half-suspecting a spy. Radisson laughed.

"Must I spell it out? Eh, lad, afraid to go?"

The taunt bit home. Without a word Jean and I rose.

"Keep far enough apart so that one of you will escape back with the news," called Radisson, as we plunged into the woods.

Of the one who might not escape Pierre Radisson gave small heed, and so did we. Jean took the river side and I the inland thicket, feeling our way blindly through the blackness of forest and storm and night. Then the rain broke--broke in las.h.i.+ng whip-cords with the crackle of fire.

Jean whistled and I signalled back; but there was soon such a pounding of rains it drowned every sound. For all the help one could give the other we might have been a thousand miles apart. I looked back. M.

Radisson's fire threw a dull glare into the cavernous upper darkness.

That was guide enough. Jean could keep his course by the river.

It was plunging into a black nowhere. The trees thinned. I seemed to be running across the open, the rain driving me forward like a wet sail, a roar of wind in my ears and the words of M. Radisson ringing their battle-cry--"Storm and cold--man and beast--powers of darkness and devil--knaves and fools and his own sins--he must fight them all!"--"Who?"--"The victor!"

Of a sudden the dripping thicket gave back a glint. Had I run in a circle and come again on M. Radisson's fire? Behind, a dim glare still shone against the sky.

Another glint from the rain drip, and I dropped like a deer hit on the run. Not a gunshot away was a hunter's fire. Against the fire were three figures. One stood with his face towards me, an Indian dressed in buckskin, the man who had pursued the deer. The second was hid by an intervening tree; and as I watched, the third faded into the phaseless dark. Who were these night-watchers? I liked not that business of spying--though you may call it scouting, if you will, but I must either report nothing to M. Radisson, or find out more.

I turned to skirt the group. A pistol-shot rang through the wood. A sword flashed to light. Before I had time to think, but not--thanks to M. Picot's lessons long ago--not before I had my own rapier out, an a.s.sa.s.sin blade would have taken me unawares.

I was on guard. Steel struck fire in red spots as it clashed against steel. One thrust, I know, touched home; for the pistol went whirling out of my adversary's hand, and his sword came through the dark with the hiss of a serpent. Again I seemed to be in Boston Town; but the hunting room had become a northland forest, M. Picot, a bearded man with his back to the fire and his face in the dark, and our slim foils, naked swords that pressed and parried and thrust in many a foul such as the French doctor had taught me was a trick of the infamous Blood!

Indeed, I could have sworn that a woman's voice cried out through the dark; but the rain was in my face and a sword striking red against my own. Thanks, yes, thanks a thousand times to M. Picot's lessons; for again and yet again I foiled that lunge of the unscrupulous swordsman till I heard my adversary swearing, between clinched teeth. He retreated. I followed. By a dexterous spring he put himself under cover of the woods, leaving me in the open. My only practice in swordsmans.h.i.+p had been with M. Picot, and it was not till long years after that I minded how those lessons seemed to forestall and counter the moves of that ambushed a.s.sa.s.sin. But the baffling thing was that my enemy's moves countered mine in the very same way.

He had not seen my face, for my back was turned when he came up, and my face in the shade when I whirled. But I stood between the dark and the fire. Every motion of mine he could forecast, while I could but parry and retreat, striving in vain to lure him out, to get into the dark, to strike what I could not see, pushed back and back till I felt the rush that aims not to disarm but to slay.

Our weapons rang with a glint of green lightnings. A piece of steel flew up. My rapier had snapped short at the hilt. A cold point was at my throat pressing me down and back as the foil had caught me that night in M. Picot's house. To right, to left, I swerved, the last blind rushes of the fugitive man. . . .

"Storm and cold--man and beast--powers of darkness and devil--he must fight them all----"

The memory of those words spurred like a battle-cry. Beaten? Not yet!

"Leap to meet it! Leap to meet it!"

I caught the blade at my throat with a naked hand. Hot floods drenched my face. The earth swam. We were both in the light now, a bearded man pus.h.i.+ng his sword through my hand, and I falling down. Then my antagonist leaped back with a s.h.i.+vering cry of horror, flung the weapon to the ground and fled into the dark.

And when I sat up my right hand held the hilt of a broken rapier, the left was gashed across the palm, and a sword as like my own as two peas lay at my feet.

The fire was there. But I was alone.

[1] Reference to M. Radisson's journal corroborates Mr. Stanhope in this observance, which was never neglected by M. Radisson after season of peril. It is to be noted that he made his prayers after not at the season of peril.

CHAPTER IX

VISITORS

The fire had every appearance of a night bivouac, but there was remnant of neither camp nor hunt. Somewhere on my left lay the river. By that the way led back to M. Radisson's rendezvous. It was risky enough--that threading of the pathless woods through the pitchy dark; but he who pauses to measure the risk at each tread is ill fitted to pioneer wild lands.

Who the a.s.sa.s.sin was and why he had so suddenly desisted, I knew no more than you do! That he had attacked was natural enough; for whoever took first possession of no-man's-land in those days either murdered his rivals or sold them to slavery. But why had he flung his sword down at the moment of victory?

The pelting of the rain softened to a leafy patter, the patter to a drip, and a watery moon came glimmering through the clouds. With my enemy's rapier in hand I began cutting a course through the thicket.

Radisson's fire no longer shone. Indeed, I became mighty uncertain which direction to take, for the rush of the river merged with the beating of the wind. The ground sloped precipitously; and I was holding back by the underbrush lest the bank led to water when an indistinct sound, a smothery murmur like the gurgle of a subterranean pool, came from below.

The wind fell. The swirl of the flowing river sounded far from the rear. I had become confused and was travelling away from the true course. But what was that sound?

I threw a stick forward. It struck hard stone. At the same instant was a sibilant, human--distinctly human--"Hss-h," and the sound had ceased.

That was no laving of inland pond against pebbles. Make of it what you will--there were voices, smothered but talking. "No-no-no" . . . then the warning . . . "Hus.h.!.+" . . . then the wind and the river and . . .

"No--no!" with words like oaths. . . . "No--I say, no! Having come so far, no!--not if it were my own brother!" . . . then the low "Hus.h.!.+" . . . and pleadings . . . then--"Send Le Borgne!"

And an Indian had rushed past me in the dark with a pine f.a.got in his hand.

Rising, I stole after him. 'Twas the fellow who had been at the fire with that unknown a.s.sailant. He paused over the smouldering embers, searching the ground, found the hilt of the broken sword, lifted the severed blade, kicked leaves over all traces of conflict, and extinguis.h.i.+ng the fire, carried off the broken weapon. An Indian can pick his way over known ground without a torch. What was this fellow doing with a torch? Had he been sent for me? I drew back in shadow to let him pa.s.s. Then I ran with all speed to the river.

Gray dawn came over the trees as I reached the swollen waters, and the sun was high in mid-heaven when I came to the gravel patch where M. de Radisson had camped. Round a sharp bend in the river a strange sight unfolded.

A score of crested savages with painted bodies sat on the ground. In the centre, clad like a king, with purple doublet and plumed hat and velvet waistcoat ablaze with medals of honour--was M. Radisson. One hand deftly held his scabbard forward so that the jewelled hilt shone against the velvet, and the other was raised impressively above the savages. How had he made the savages come to him? How are some men born to draw all others as the sea draws the streams?

The poor creatures had piled their robes at his feet as offerings to a G.o.d.

"What did he give for the pelts, G.o.defroy?" I asked.

"Words!" says G.o.defroy, with a grin, "gab and a drop o' rum diluted in a pot o' water!"

"What is he saying to them now?"

G.o.defroy shrugged his shoulders. "That the G.o.ds have sent him a messenger to them; that the fire he brings "--he was handing a musket to the chief--"will smite the Indians' enemy from the earth; that the bullet is magic to outrace the fleetest runner"--this as M. Radisson fired a shot into mid-air that sent the Indians into ecstasies of childish wonder--"that the bottle in his hands contains death, and if the Indians bring their hunt to the white-man, the white-man will never take the cork out except to let death fly at the Indians' enemy"--he lifted a little phial of poison as he spoke--"that the Indian need never feel cold nor thirst, now that the white-man has brought fire-water!"

At this came a harsh laugh from a taciturn Indian standing on the outer rim of the crowd. It was the fellow who had run through the forest with the torch.

"Who is that, G.o.defroy?"

"Le Borgne."

"Le Borgne need not laugh," retorted M. de Radisson sharply. "Le Borgne knows the taste of fire-water! Le Borgne has been with the white-man at the south, and knows what the white-man says is true."

But Le Borgne only laughed the harder, deep, guttural, contemptuous "huh-huh's!"--a fitting rebuke, methought, for the ign.o.ble deception implied in M. Radisson's words.