Alice of Old Vincennes Part 47

Clark simply pushed Beverley's pleadings aside as not worth a moment's consideration. He easily felt the fine bit of grat.i.tude at the bottom of it all; but there was too much in the other side of the balance; justice, the discipline and confidence of his little army, and the claim of the women and children on the frontier demanded firmness in dealing with a case like Long-Hair's.

"No, no," he said to Beverley, "I would do anything in the world for you, Fitz, except to swerve an inch from duty to my country and the defenceless people down yonder in Kentucky, I can't do it. There's no use to press the matter further. The die is cast. That brute's got to be killed, and killed dead. Look at him--look at that scalp! I'd have him killed if I dropped dead for it the next instant."

Beverley shuddered. The argument was horribly convincing, and yet, somehow, the desire to save Long-Hair overbore everything else in his mind. He could not cease his efforts; it seemed to him as if he were pleading for Alice herself. Captain Farnsworth, strange to say, was the only man in the fort who leaned to Beverley's side; but he was reticent, doubtless feeling that his position as a British prisoner gave him no right to speak, especially when every lip around him was muttering something about "infamous scalp-buyers and Indian partisans,"

with whom he was prominently counted by the speakers.

As Clark had said, the die was cast. Long-Hair, bound to a stake, the scalp still dangling at his side, grimly faced his executioners, who were eager to fire. He appeared to be proud of the fact that he was going to be killed.

"One thing I can say of him," Helm remarked to Beverley; "he's the grandest specimen of the animal--I might say the brute--man that I ever saw, red, white or black. Just look at his body and limbs! Those muscles are perfectly marvelous."

"He saved my life, and I must stand here and see him murdered," the young man replied with intense bitterness. It was all that he could think, all that he could say. He felt inefficient and dejected, almost desperate.

Clark himself, not willing to cast responsibility upon a subordinate, made ready to give the fatal order. Turning to Long-Hair first, he demanded of him as well as he could in the Indian dialect of which he had a smattering, what he had to say at his last moment.

The Indian straightened his already upright form, and, by a strong bulging of his muscles, snapped the thongs that bound him. Evidently he had not tried thus to free himself; it was rather a spasmodic expression of savage dignity and pride. One arm and both his legs still were partially confined by the bonds, but his right hand he lifted, with a gesture of immense self-satisfaction, and pointed at Hamilton.

"Indian brave; white man coward," he said, scowling scornfully.

"Long-Hair tell truth; white man lie, d.a.m.n!"

Hamilton's countenance did not change its calm, cold expression.

Long-Hair gazed at him fixedly for a long moment, his eyes flas.h.i.+ng most concentrated hate and contempt. Then he tore the scalp from his belt and flung it with great force straight toward the captive Governor's face. It fell short, but the look that went with it did not, and Hamilton recoiled.

At that moment Alice arrived. Her coming was just in time to interrupt Clark, who had turned to the waiting platoon with the order of death on his lips. She made no noise, save the fluttering of her skirts, and her loud and rapid panting on account of her long, hard run. She sprang before Long-Hair and faced the platoon.

"You cannot, you shall not kill this man!" she cried in a voice loaded with excitement. "Put away those guns!"

Woman never looked more thrillingly beautiful to man than she did just then to all those rough, stern backwoodsmen. During her flight her hair had fallen down, and it glimmered like soft sunlight around her face.

Something compelling flashed out of her eyes, an expression between a triumphant smile and a ray of irresistible beseechment. It took Colonel Clark's breath when he turned and saw her standing there, and heard her words.

"This man saved Lieutenant Beverley's life," she presently added, getting better control of her voice, and sending into it a thrilling timbre; "you shall not harm him--you must not do it!"

Beverley was astounded when he saw her, the thing was so unexpected, so daring, and done with such high, imperious force; still it was but a realization of what he had imagined she would be upon occasion. He stood gazing at her, as did all the rest, while she faced Clark and the platoon of riflemen. To hear his own name pa.s.s her quivering lips, in that tone and in that connection, seemed to him a consecration.

"Would you be more savage than your Indian prisoner?" she went on, "less grateful than he for a life saved? I did him a small, a very small, service once, and in memory of that he saved Lieutenant Beverley's life, because--because--" she faltered for a single breath, then added clearly and with magnetic sweetness--"because Lieutenant Beverley loved me, and because I loved him. This Indian Long-Hair showed a grat.i.tude that could overcome his strongest pa.s.sion. You white men should be ashamed to fall below his standard."

Her words went home. It was as if the beauty of her face, the magnetism of her lissome and symmetrical form, the sweet fire of her eyes and the pa.s.sionate appeal of her voice gave what she said a new and irresistible force of truth. When she spoke of Beverley's love for her, and declared her love for him, there was not a manly heart in all the garrison that did not suddenly beat quicker and feel a strange, sweet waft of tenderness. A mother, somewhere, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a sweetheart, called through that voice of absolute womanhood.

"Beverley, what can I do?" muttered Clark, his bronze face as pale as it could possibly become.

"Do!" thundered Beverley, "do! you cannot murder that man. Hamilton is the man you should shoot! He offered large rewards, he inflamed the pa.s.sions and fed the love of rum and the cupidity of poor wild men like the one standing yonder. Yet you take him prisoner and treat him with distinguished consideration. Hamilton offered a large sum for me taken alive, a smaller one for my scalp. Long-Hair saved me. You let Hamilton stand yonder in perfect safety while you shoot the Indian. Shame on you, Colonel Clark! shame on you, if you do it."

Alice stood looking at the stalwart commander while Beverley was pouring forth his torrent of scathing reference to Hamilton, and she quickly saw that Clark was moved. The moment was ripe for the finis.h.i.+ng stroke. They say it is genius that avails itself of opportunity.

Beverley knew the fight was won when he saw what followed. Alice suddenly left Long-Hair and ran to Colonel Clark, who felt her warm, strong arms loop round him for a single point of time never to be effaced from his memory; then he saw her kneeling at his feet, her hands upstretched, her face a glorious prayer, while she pleaded the Indian's cause and won it.

Doubtless, while we all rather feel that Clark was weak to be thus swayed by a girl, we cannot quite blame him. Alice's flag was over him; he had heard her history from Beverley's cunning lips; he actually believed that Hamilton was the real culprit, and besides he felt not a little nauseated with executing Indians. A good excuse to have an end of it all did not go begging.

But Long-Hair was barely gone over the horizon from the fort, as free and as villainous a savage as ever trod the earth, when a discovery made by Oncle Jazon caused Clark to hate himself for what he had done.

The old scout picked up the scalp, which Long-Hair had flung at Hamilton, and examined it with odious curiosity. He had lingered on the spot with no other purpose than to get possession of that ghastly relic. Since losing his own scalp the subject of crownlocks had grown upon his mind until its fascination was irresistible. He studied the hair of every person he saw, as a physiognomist studies faces. He held the gruesome thing up before him, scrutinizing it with the expression of a connoisseur who has discovered, on a grimy canvas, the signature of an old master.

"Sac' bleu!" he presently broke forth. "Well I'll be--Look'ee yer, George Clark! Come yer an' look. Ye've been sold ag'in. Take a squint, ef ye please!"

Colonel Clark, with his hands crossed behind him, his face thoughtfully contracted, was walking slowly to and fro a little way off. He turned about when Oncle Jazon spoke.

"What now, Jazon?"

"A mighty heap right now, that's what; come yer an' let me show ye. Yer a fine sort o' eejit, now ain't ye!"

The two men walked toward each other and met. Oncle Jazon held up the scalp with one hand, pointing at it with the index finger of the other.

"This here scalp come off'n Rene de Ronville's head."

"And who is he?"

"Who's he? Ye may well ax thet. He wuz a Frenchman. He wuz a fine young feller o' this town. He killed a Corp'ral o' Hamilton's an' tuck ter the woods a month or two ago. Hamilton offered a lot o' money for 'im or 'is scalp, an' Long-Hair went in fer gittin' it. Now ye knows the whole racket. An' ye lets that Injun go. An' thet same Injun he mighty nigh kicked my ribs inter my stomach!"

Oncle Jazon's feelings were visible and audible; but Clark could not resent the contempt of the old man's looks and words. He felt that he deserved far more than he was receiving. Nor was Oncle Jazon wrong.

Rene de Ronville never came back to little Adrienne Bourcier, although, being kept entirely ignorant of her lover's fate, she waited and dreamed and hoped throughout more than two years, after which there is no further record of her life.

Clark, Beverley and Oncle Jazon consulted together and agreed among themselves that they would hold profoundly secret the story of the scalp. To have made it public would have exasperated the creoles and set them violently against Clark, a thing heavy with disaster for all his future plans. As it was, the release of Long-Hair caused a great deal of dissatisfaction and mutinous talk. Even Beverley now felt that the execution ordered by the commander ought to have been sternly carried out.

A day or two later, however, the whole dark affair was closed forever by a bit of confidence on the part of Oncle Jazon when Beverley dropped into his hut one evening to have a smoke with him.

The rain was over, the sky shone like one vast luminary, with a nearly full moon and a thousand stars reinforcing it. Up from the south poured one of those balmy, accidental wind floods, sometimes due in February on the Wabash, full of tropical dream-hints, yet edged with a winter chill that smacks of treachery. Oncle Jazon was unusually talkative; he may have had a deep draught of liquor; at all events Beverley had little room for a word.

"Well, bein' as it's twixt us, as is bosom frien's," the old fellow presently said, "I'll jes' show ye somepin poorty."

He p.r.i.c.ked the wick of a lamp and took down his bunch of scalps.

"I hev been a addin' one more to keep company o' mine an' the tothers."

He separated the latest acquisition from the rest of the wisp and added, with a heinous chuckle:

"This'n's Long-Hair's!"

And so it was. Beverley knocked the ashes from his pipe and rose to go.

"Wen they kicks yer Oncle Jazon's ribs," the old man added, "they'd jes' as well lay down an' give up, for he's goin' to salervate 'em."

Then, after Beverley had pa.s.sed out of the cabin, Oncle Jazon chirruped after him:

"Mebbe ye'd better not tell leetle Alice. The pore leetle gal hev hed worry 'nough."

CHAPTER XXII

CLARK ADVISES ALICE