Heralds of Empire Part 29

"To bring back your wounded and for furs, you fool," cried G.o.defroy, "and if you don't call your braves off, you can sell no more pelts to the French."

Le Borgne gabbled out something that drove the braves back.

"We have no furs yet," said he.

"But you will have them when you raid the Little White Sticks," raged G.o.defroy, caring nothing for the harm his words might work if he saved his own scalp.

Le Borgne drew off to confer with the braves. Then he came back and there was a treacherous smile of welcome on his bronze face.

"The Indians thought the white-men spies from the Little White Sticks,"

he explained in the mellow, rhythmic tones of the redman. "The Indians were in war council. The Indians are friends of the French."

"Look out for him, G.o.defroy," said I.

"If the French are friends to the Indians, let the white-men come to battle against the Little White Sticks," added Le Borgne.

"Tell him no! We'll wait here till they come back!"

"He says they are not coming back," answered G.o.defroy, "and hang me, Ramsay, an I'd not face an Indian ma.s.sacre before I go back empty-handed to M. Radisson. We're in for it," says he, speaking English too quick for Le Borgne's ear. "If we show the white feather now, they'll finish us. They'll not harm us till they've done for the English and got more muskets. And that red pirate is after these same furs! Body o' me, an you hang back, scared o' battle, you'd best not come to the wilderness."

"The white-men will go with the Indians, but the white-men will not fight with the Little Sticks," announced G.o.defroy to Le Borgne, proffering tobacco enough to pacify the tribe.

'Twas in vain that I expostulated against the risk of going far inland with hostiles, who had attacked the New England fort and were even now planning the slaughter of white-men. Inoffensiveness is the most deadly of offences with savagery, whether the savagery be of white men or red. Le Borgne had the insolence to ask why the tribe could not as easily kill us where we were as farther inland; and we saw that remonstrances were working the evil that we wished to avoid--increasing the Indians' daring. After all, G.o.defroy was right. The man who fears death should neither go to the wilderness nor launch his canoe above a whirlpool unless he is prepared to run the rapids. This New World had never been won from darkness if men had hung back from fear of spilt blood.

'Twas but a moment's work for the braves to deck out in war-gear.

Faces were blackened with red streaks typifying wounds; bodies clad in caribou skins or ermine-pelts white as the snow to be crossed; quivers of barbed and poisonous arrows hanging over their backs in otter and beaver skins; powder in buffalo-horns for those who had muskets; s.h.i.+elds of toughened hide on one arm, and such a number of scalp-locks fringing every seam as told their own story of murderous foray. While the land still smoked under morning frost and the stars yet p.r.i.c.ked through the gray darkness, the warriors were far afield coasting the snow-billows as on tireless wings. Up the swelling drifts water-waved by wind like a rolling sea, down cliffs crumbling over with snowy cornices, across the icy marshes swept glare by the gales, the braves pressed relentlessly on. G.o.defroy, Jack Battle, and I would have hung to the rear and slipped away if we could; but the fate of an old man was warning enough. Muttering against the braves for embroiling themselves in war without cause, he fell away from the marauders as if to leave. Le Borgne's foxy eye saw the move. Turning, he rushed at the old man with a hiss of air through his teeth like a whistling arrow. His musket swung up. It clubbed down. There was a groan; and as we rounded a bluff at a pace that brought the air cutting in our faces, I saw the old man's body lying motionless on the snow.

If this was the beginning, what was the end?

G.o.defroy vowed that the man was only an Indian, and his death was no sin.

"The wolves would 'a' picked his bones soon anyway. He wore a score o'

scalps at his belt. Pah, an we could get furs without any Indians, I'd see all their skulls go!" snapped the trader.

"If killing's no murder, whose turn comes next?" asked Jack.

And that gave G.o.defroy pause.

CHAPTER XVII

A BOOTLESS SACRIFICE

For what I now tell I offer no excuse. I would but record what savagery meant. Then may you who are descended from the New World pioneers know that your lineage is from men as heroic as those crusaders who rescued our Saviour's grave from the pagans; for crusaders of Old World and New carried the sword of destruction in one hand, but in the other, a cross that was light in darkness. Then may you, my lady-fingered sentimentalist, who go to bed of a winter night with a warming-pan and champion the rights of the savage from your soft place among cus.h.i.+ons, realize what a fine hero your redman was, and realize, too, what were the powers that the white-man crushed!

For what I do not tell I offer no excuse. It is not permitted to relate _all_ that savage warfare meant. Once I marvelled that a just G.o.d could order his chosen people to exterminate any race. Now I marvel that a just G.o.d hath not exterminated many races long ago.

We reached the crest of a swelling upland as the first sun-rays came through the frost mist in shafts of fire. A quick halt was called.

One white-garbed scout went crawling stealthily down the snow-slope like a mountain-cat. Then the frost thinned to the rising sun and vague outlines of tepee lodges could be descried in the clouded valley.

An arrow whistled through the air glancing into snow with a soft whirr at our feet. It was the signal. As with one thought, the warriors charged down the hill, leaping from side to side in a frenzy, dancing in a madness of slaughter, shrieking their long, shrill--"Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!"--yelping, howling, screaming their war-cry--"Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!--Ah--oh!"--like demons incarnate. The medicine-man had stripped himself naked and was tossing his arms with maniacal fury, leaping up and down, yelling the war-cry, beating the tom-tom, rattling the death-gourd. Some of the warriors went down on hands and feet, sidling forward through the mist like the stealthy beasts of prey that they were.

G.o.defroy, Jack Battle, and I were carried before the charge helpless as leaves in a hurricane. All slid down the hillside to the bottom of a ravine. With the long bound of a tiger-spring, Le Borgne plunged through the frost cloud.

The lodges of the victims were about us. We had evidently come upon the tribe when all were asleep.

Then that dark under-world of which men dream in wild delirium became reality. Pandemonium broke its bounds.

And had I once thought that Eli Kirke's fanatic faith painted too lurid a h.e.l.l? G.o.d knows if the realm of darkness be half as hideous as the deeds of this life, 'tis blacker than prophet may portray.

Day or night, after fifty years, do I close my eyes to shut the memory out! But the shafts are still hurtling through the gray gloom. Arrows rip against the skin s.h.i.+elds. Running fugitives fall pierced. Men rush from their lodges in the daze of sleep and fight barehanded against musket and battle-axe and lance till the snows are red and scalps steaming from the belts of conquerors. Women fall to the feet of the victors, kneeling, crouching, dumbly pleading for mercy; and the mercy is a spear-thrust that pinions the living body to earth. Maimed, helpless and living victims are thrown aside to await slow death.

Children are torn from their mothers' arms--but there--memory revolts and the pen fails!

It was in vain for us to flee. Turn where we would, pursued and pursuer were there.

"Don't flinch! Don't flinch!" G.o.defroy kept shouting. "They'll take it for fear! They'll kill you by torture!"

Almost on the words a bowstring tw.a.n.ged to the fore and a young girl stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings, and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was wounded in the shoulder. Getting to her knees she threw her arms round Jack with such a terrified look of helpless pleading in her great eyes as would have moved stone.

"Don't touch her! Don't touch her! Don't touch her!" screamed G.o.defroy, jerking to pull Jack free. "It will do no good! Don't help her! They'll kill you both--"

"Great G.o.d!" sobbed Jack, with s.h.i.+vering horror, "I can't help helping her--"

But there leaped from the mist a figure with uplifted spear.

May G.o.d forgive it, but I struck that man dead!

It was a bootless sacrifice at the risk of three lives. But so was Christ's a bootless sacrifice at the time, if you measure deeds by gain. And so has every sacrifice worthy of the name been a bootless sacrifice, if you stop to weigh life in a goldsmith's scale!

Justice is blind; but praise be to G.o.d, so is mercy!

And, indeed, I have but quoted our Lord and Saviour, not as an example, but as a precedent. For the act I merited no credit. Like Jack, I could not have helped helping her. The act was out before the thought.

Then we were back to back fighting a horde of demons.

G.o.defroy fought cursing our souls to all eternity for embroiling him in peril. Jack Battle fought mumbling feverishly, deliriously, unconscious of how he shot or what he said--"Might as well die here as elsewhere! Might as well die here as elsewhere! d.a.m.n that Indian!

Give it to him, Ramsay! You shoot while I prime! Might as well die here as elsewhere----"

And all fought resolute to die hard, when, where, or how the dying came!

To that desperate game there was but one possible end. It is only in story-books writ for sentimental maids that the good who are weak defeat the wicked who are strong. We shattered many an a.s.sailant before the last stake was dared, but in the end they shattered my sword-arm, which left me helpless as a hull at ebb-tide. Then G.o.defroy, the craven rascal, must throw up his arms for surrender, which gave Le Borgne opening to bring down the b.u.t.t of his gun on Jack's crown.

The poor sailor went bundling over the snow like a shot rabbit.