The Road to Frontenac Part 34

"Tegakwita's night eyes are not his day eyes. He could not see who the sleeping man was. When he heard the voice, he came quickly."

Menard looked at the musket that rested in the Indian's hand, at the hatchet and knife that hung from his belt.

"You are heavily armed, Tegakwita. Is it for the war-path or the hunt?

Do Onondaga warriors carry their weapons from house to house in their own village?"

The Indian made a little gesture of impatience.

"Tegakwita has no house. His house has been dishonoured. He lives under the trees, and carries his house with him. All that he has is in his hand or his belt. The Big Buffalo speaks strangely."

Menard said nothing for a moment. He looked up, with a keen gaze, at the erect figure of the Indian. Finally he said:--

"Sit down, Tegakwita. Tell me why you came."

"No. Tegakwita cannot rest himself until his sister has reached the Happy Hunting-Ground."

"Very well, do as you like. But waste no more time. What is it?"

"The Big Buffalo has been an Onondaga. He knows the city in the valley where the dead sit in their graves. It is there that my sister lies, by an open grave, waiting for the farewell word of him who alone is left to say farewell to her. Tegakwita's Onondaga brothers will not gather at the grave of a girl who has given up her nation for a white dog. But he can ask the Big Buffalo, who brought the white dog to our village, to come to the side of the grave."

"Your memory is bad, Tegakwita. It was not I who brought the white brave. It was you who brought him, his two hands tied with thongs."

The Indian stood, without replying, looking down at him with brilliant, staring eyes.

Menard spoke again.

"You want me to go with you. You slip through the bushes like a snake, with your musket and your knife and your hatchet, to ask me to go with you to the grave of your sister. Do I speak rightly, Tegakwita?"

"The Big Buffalo has understood."

Menard slowly rose and looked into the Indian's eyes.

"I have no weapons, Tegakwita. The chiefs who have set me free have not yet returned the musket which was taken from me. It is dangerous to go at night through the forest without a weapon. Give me your hatchet and I will go with you."

Tegakwita's lip curled almost imperceptibly.

"The White Chief is afraid of the night?"

Menard, too, looked scornful. He coolly waited.

"The Big Buffalo cannot face the dead without a hatchet in his hand?"

said Tegakwita.

Menard suddenly sprang forward and s.n.a.t.c.hed the hatchet from the Indian's belt. It was a surprise, and the struggle was brief.

Tegakwita was thrown a step backward. He hesitated between struggling for the hatchet and striking with the musket; before he had fully recovered and dropped the musket, Menard had leaped back and stood facing him with the hatchet in his right hand.

"Now I will go with you to the city of the dead, Tegakwita."

The Indian's breath was coming quickly, and he stood with clenched fists, taken aback by the Captain's quickness.

"Come, I am ready. Pick up your musket."

As Tegakwita stooped, Menard glanced toward the hut. The priest lay asleep before the door. It was better to get this madman away than to leave him free to prowl about the hut.

CHAPTER XV.

THE BAD DOCTOR.

At the edge of the thicket they stopped and stood face to face, each waiting for the other to pa.s.s ahead. Tegakwita slightly bowed, with an unconscious imitation of the Frenchmen he had seen at Fort Frontenac and Montreal.

"Pa.s.s on," said Menard, sternly. "You know the trail, Tegakwita; I do not. It is you who must lead the way."

The Indian was sullen, but he yielded, plunging forward between the bushes, and now and then, in the shadow of some tree, glancing furtively over his shoulder. His manner, the suspicion that showed plainly in the nervous movements of his head, in every motion as he glided through thicket, glade, or strip of forest, told Menard that he had chosen well to take the second place. His fingers closed firmly about the handle of the hatchet. That he could throw at twenty paces to the centre of a sapling, no one knew better than Tegakwita.

The city of the dead lay in a hollow at ten minutes' walk from the village. Generations ago the trees had been cleared, and no bush or sapling had been allowed a foothold on this ground. The elms and oaks and maples threw their shadows across the broad circle, and each breath of wind set them dancing over the mounds where many an hundred skeletons crouched side by side, under the gra.s.s-grown heaps of earth, their rusted knives and hatchets and their mouldy blankets by their sides. No man came here, save when a new heap of yellow earth lay fresh-turned in the sun, and a long line of dancing, wailing redmen, led by their howling doctors, followed some body that had come to claim its seat among the skeletons.

Tegakwita paused at the edge of the clearing, and looked around with that furtive quickness. Menard came slowly to his side.

"You will take your weapons to the grave?" asked Menard, very quietly, but with a suggestion that the other understood.

"Yes. Tegakwita has no place for his weapons. He must carry them where he goes."

"We can leave them here. The leaves will hide them. I will put the hatchet under this log." He made a motion of dropping the hatchet, closely watching the Indian; then he straightened, for Tegakwita's right hand held the musket, and his left rested lightly on his belt, not a span from his long knife.

"The White Chief knows the danger of leaving weapons to tempt the young braves. He finds it easy to take the chance with Tegakwita's hatchet."

"Very well," said Menard, sternly. "Lead the way."

They walked slowly between the mounds. Menard looked carefully about, but in the uncertain light he could see no sign of a new opening in any of them. When they had pa.s.sed the centre he stopped, and said quietly:--

"Tegakwita."

The Indian turned.

"Where is the grave?"

"It is beyond, close to the great oak."

"Ah!"

They went on. The great oak was in a dense, deep-shadowed place, at the edge of the circle. A little to one side, close to the crowding thicket, was a small, new mound. Looking now at Tegakwita, Menard could see that his front was stained with the soil. Probably he had spent the day working on the mound for his sister. While Menard stood at one side, he went to a bush that encroached a yard on the sacred ground and drew out a number of presents, with necessary articles and provisions to stay the soul on its long journey to the Happy Hunting-Ground. It was at the end of Menard's tongue to repeat Tegakwita's remark about hiding the weapons, but he held back and stood silently waiting.

"Come," said the Indian.

He parted the bushes, drew away a heavy covering of boughs, and there, wrapped in Tegakwita's finest blanket, lay the body of the Indian girl. Menard stood over it, looking down with a sense of pity he had never before felt for an Indian. He could not see her face, for it was pressed to the ground, but the clotted scalp showed indistinctly in the shadow. He suddenly raised, his eyes to Tegakwita, who stood opposite.