Cardigan Part 38

"Go to your Cayugas," he said, catching his breath. "Tell them the truth, or as much of the truth as Sir William's wisdom permits. I am here to watch, to watch such crafty agents as Greathouse, and young Walter Butler, whom I met on the Pitt trail three hours since. Oh, I understand the situation now, Mr. Cardigan."

He tasted his ale once more, thoughtfully.

"Keep Sir William's Cayugas quiet if you can," he said. "I will watch Dunmore's agents that they do nothing to bring on war. I may fail, but I will do what I can. When do you speak to the Cayugas with belts?"

"At dawn," I replied, soberly.

"Poor devils," said Cresap, sadly, "poor, tricked, cheated, and plundered devils! This is their land. I should never have come had not Dunmore a.s.sured me the Cayugas had been paid for the country. And there is their great sachem, Logan, called 'The Friend of the White Man.' Greathouse has made a drunken sot of Logan, and all his family down to the tiny maid of ten. Ay, sir, I have seen Logan's children lying drunk in the road there by Greathouse's tavern--poor, little babies of twelve and ten, stark-naked, lying drunk in the rain!"

After a moment I asked why he had not expelled this fiend, Greathouse, and he replied that he had, but that Dunmore had sent him back under his special protection.

"What on earth can I do?" he repeated. "The Cayuga camp is rotten with whiskey. Their chiefs and sachems come to me and beg me to forbid the sale. I am powerless; for back of me stands Lord Dunmore in the shape of Greathouse. By G.o.d, sir, the man is a nightmare to me!"

"Why not twist his gullet?" observed Mount.

Cresap paid him no attention, and the big fellow pouted, muttering that it was a simple thing to exterminate vermin.

As we sat there, I heard the rain drumming against the horn panes in the window. The room had grown very dark.

Cresap rose, holding out his hand to me.

"Shall I administer the oath of fellows.h.i.+p, my friend?" he asked.

"Not yet," I replied, taking his hand.

"When you are ready, Mr. Cardigan," he said, simply. "Will you lodge here? That is well; the fort is not safe. And, if I mistake not, young Butler will be here to-morrow to search for you. He begged me to have you arrested should you be in my camp."

"I shall be at the Cayuga castle by dawn," I said.

"And after that?" inquired Mount. "You are not going to leave us, are you, lad?"

"I have my message to deliver to Sir William," I answered, earnestly; "and," I added, "truly, I do not believe there is anything on earth that can prevent my delivering my message, nor r.e.t.a.r.d my returning and slaying this frightful enemy of mankind, Walter Butler."

CHAPTER XI

The rain fell thickly until midnight, and kept me listening to the double roll of the drops along the s.h.i.+ngles. I lay in my blanket under the roof, and slept when the rain ceased, but awoke before dawn, listening to the wind roaring around the eaves. Pale clouds, scudding low, alternately hid and revealed the purple roof of sky on which stars hung trembling like drops of dew.

My landlord, Timothy Boyd, was already astir below, and presently he came up the ladder with a dish of porridge for me--a kindness, indeed, for I had thought to set out for the Cayuga castle on an empty stomach. He also brought me a bowl of coffee, the berries of which he said had been sent for my use by Colonel Cresap. I drank the coffee thankfully, sitting on my mattress of balsam tips. Then, by lanthorn-light, I dressed me, taking only bullet-pouch, powder-horn, and rifle, and bearing the six belts in the bosom of my s.h.i.+rt. I left my pack with Boyd, commending it to his care; and the rugged old man nodded placidly, bidding me rest a.s.sured of its safety.

"There is foul company at the 'Greathouse Inn,'" he said, as we descended the ladder to the tap-room below. "Greathouse received four guests an hour ago. Mount bade me warn you, sir. He said you would understand."

I understood at once. Butler, Wraxall, Toby Tice, and the fourth member of the band had arrived in Cresap's camp. But I cared not; I was about to accomplish my mission under their four noses, and live to balance my account with them later.

"Is Mount sleeping?" I asked.

The old man laughed.

"I have never seen him sleep," he said. "I know him well, but I have never seen him asleep. He is out yonder, somewhere, prowling."

"And Shemuel?--and Cade Renard?" I inquired.

"Shemuel is on his way to Pittsburg; Renard mouses with Mount. Is your rifle loaded, sir? There be foul company at the other inn. This night, too, did Greathouse make nine savages drunk with spirits. Have a care that they cross not your path, young man; for, drunk, your Indians go blind like rattlesnakes in September, and like those serpents, too, they strike without warning. Have a care, sir!"

"I wish you knew the Indians as well as I do," said I, smiling. "I fear none of them, save the Lenni-Lenape, and these I fear only because I have never known them. I think the whole world can be tamed with kindness."

Boyd shook his gray head, watching me in silence.

A brisk southwest wind was singing through the pines as I stepped out-of-doors and peered cautiously about. There was nothing stirring save the wind and the unseen leaves in the forest. I primed my rifle and sheltered the pan under the hollow of my arm, then stole forth into the starlit road.

To gain the river, whence the trail ran northward to the Cayuga camp, I was obliged to pa.s.s the fort, and consequently the "Greathouse Inn."

But I had no fear at this hour o' morning, and I trotted on along the stump fence like a cub-fox in his proper runway, until the first curve in the road brought me to Greathouse's inn.

Shutters were drawn and bolted over every window, but candle-light streamed through loopholes in the tap-room, and I could hear men singing within and tapping on bowls with spoons:

"My true love is old Brown Bess."

Nosing the house delicately, I perceived odours of cooking, of rum toddy, and of tobacco smoke. Clearly Butler's company were supping after their long jog on the back trail from Fortress Pitt.

Satisfied that all was safe, I had silently begun skirting the road ditch shadowed by the fence, when a dark heap, which I had taken for a stump in the road, moved, rolled over, and moaned.

I stopped, frozen motionless. After a moment's wary reconnoitring, I crept forward again along the ditch, eyes fastened on the dim shape ahead, a human form lying in the black shadows of the road.

When I came closer I understood. At my feet, in a drunken stupor, sprawled a young Cayuga girl, limbs plastered with mud, body saturated and reeking with the stench of spirits. Her black hair floated in a pool of rain which spread out reflecting stars. One helpless hand clutched the mud.

I lifted the little thing and bore her to the shadow of the fence; but here, to my amazement, lay a drunken squaw, doubtless her mother, still clinging to an empty bottle; and, along the ditch and fence, flung in beastly, breathing heaps, I counted seven more barbarians, old and young, from the infant of ten to the young buck of twenty, all apparently of the same family, and all in a sodden swoon.

This was the work, then, done by a single agent of my Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia!

Like torpid snakes they lay there, glistening in the gra.s.s, the children naked, the mother in rags, breathing out poison under the stars. The very air of morn sweated rum; candle-light from the loopholes fell across the bodies, flung limply on the gra.s.s.

There was nothing I could do for these victims of Greathouse; no aid within my power to give them. Heartsick, I turned away, and, quickening my steps, pa.s.sed swiftly down the muddy trail, hastening to mend my pace ere dawn should find me missing at the council-fires burning for me on the dark Ohio.

There were no lights in the fort as I pa.s.sed; the flag-staff stood out bare against the stars. On the epaulement above the outer trench something moved, probably a sentry.

But ere I reached the Ohio the eastern sky had turned saffron, through which stars still twinkled; and the drifted mist-banks lay heaped far out across the river, so I could not see the water, and must follow its course along the edge of this phantom stream, whose current was vapour and whose waves of piled-up clouds rolled noiselessly under the stars.

No birds fluted from the mist; even the winds had blown far away somewhere into the gray morning. But the Cayuga trail was broad and plain, and I took it at a wolf-trot, thoughtfully reading its countless signs by the yellow dawn as I went along, marks of white men, marks of moccasins, imprint of deer and cattle, trail of rabbit and following fox, and the hand-like traces of rambling racc.o.o.ns. On, on, north upon the broad Cayuga trail, while through the brightening woods sleep fled with the mist and the world awoke around me. Land and river roused with breathing and sigh and scarce-heard stir; through earth and water the pulse of life fluttered and beat on, timed for the moment by the swift rhythm of my flying feet.

And now a thread of blue smoke, drawn far down the trail, set my nostrils wide and quivering; a flare of blinding yellow turned the world into gold; I had met the sun at the Cayuga camp; the tryst had been kept, thanks to the Lord!

Dark, uncertain forms loomed up in the eye of the sun, tall groups that never moved as I drew nigh; men who stood motionless as the pines where the council-fire smoked and flashed like a dull jewel in the sun.

"Peace!" I said, halting, with upraised hand. "Peace, you wise men and sachems!"

"Peace!" repeated a low voice. "Peace, bearer of belts!"