Cardigan Part 41

He whispered to Tamarack; the aged sachem stretched out his arm, making a mystic sign.

Eagerly the white man turned and looked at me, and I cried out with rage and horror, for I was face to face with Walter Butler.

He spoke, but I scarcely heard him urging my death.

Terror, which had gripped me, gave place to fury, and that in turn left me faint but calm.

I heard the merciless words in which he delivered me to the savages; I heard him denounce me as a spy of Cresap and an agent of rebels. Then I lost his voice.

I was very still for a while, trying to understand that I must die.

The effort tired me; la.s.situde weighed on me like iron chains. To my stunned mind death was but a word, repeated vaguely in the dark chamber of life where my soul sat, listening. Thought was suspended; sight and hearing failed; there was a void about me, blank and formless as my mind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'THEY'VE HIT HIM,' SAID MOUNT, RELOADING HASTILY"]

Presently I became conscious that things were changing around me. Lights moved, voices struggled into my ears; forms took shape, pressing closer to me. An undertone, which I had heard at moments through my stupor, grew, swelling into a steady whisper. It was the ceaseless rustle of the rain.

A torch blazed up crackling close in front. My eyes opened; a thrill of purest fear set every sense a-quiver. Amid the dull roar of voices, I heard women laughing and little children prattling. Faces became painfully distinct. I saw Sowanowane, the war-chief, thumb his hatchet; I saw Butler, beside him, catch an old woman by the arm. He told her to bring dry moss. It rained, rained, rained.

They were calling to me from the crowd now; everywhere voices were calling to me: "Show us how Cresap's men die!" Others repeated: "He is a woman; he will scream out! Logan's children died more bravely.

Oonah! The children of Logan!"

Butler watched me coolly, leaning on his rifle.

"So this ends it," he said, with his deathly grimace. "Well, it was to be done in one way or another. I had meant to do it myself, but this will do."

I was too sick with fear, too close to death, to curse him. Pain often makes me weak; the fear of pain sickens me. It was that I dreaded, not death. Where my father had gone, I dared follow, but the flames--the thought of the fire--

I said, faintly, "Turn your back to me when I die; I have much pain to face, Mr. Butler; I may not bear it well."

"No, by G.o.d! I will not!" he burst out, ferociously. "I'm here to see you suffer, d.a.m.n you!"

I turned my head from him, but he struck me in the face so that my mouth was bathed in blood; twice he struck me, crying: "Listen!

Listen, I tell you!" And, planting himself before the stake, he cursed me, vowing that he could tear me with his bared teeth for hatred.

"Know this before they roast you," he snarled; "I shall possess your pretty baggage, Mistress Warren, spite of Sir William! I shall use her to my pleasure; I shall whip her to my feet. I may wed her, or I may choose to use her otherwise and leave her for Dunmore. Ah! Ah! Now you rage, eh?"

I had hurled my trussed body forward on the cords, struggling, convulsed with a fury so frantic that the blood sprayed me where the bonds cut.

Indians struck me and thrust me back with clubs, for the great post at my back had been partly dragged out of its socket by my frenzy, but I did not feel the blows; I fixed my maddened eyes on Butler and struggled.

But now the sachems were calling him sharply, and he backed away from me as the circle surged forward. Again the girl came out, bearing a flaming f.a.got. She looked up at me, laughed, and thrust the burning sticks into the moss and tinder which was stacked around me. A billow of black smoke rolled into my face, choking and blinding me, and the breath of the flames pa.s.sed over me.

Twice the rain quenched the fire. They brought fresh heaps of moss, laughing and jeering. Through the smoke I saw the fort across the valley, its parapets crowded with people. Jets of flame and distant reports showed they were firing rifles, hoping perhaps to kill me ere the torture began. It was too far. The last glimpse of the fort faded through the downpour; a new pile of moss and birch-bark was heaped at my feet.

This time the girl was thrust aside and a young Indian advanced, waving a crackling branch of pitch-pine, roaring with flames. As he knelt to push it between my feet, a terrific shout burst from the throng--a yell of terror and amazement. Through the tumult I heard women screaming; in front of me the crowd shrank away, huddling in groups. Some backed into me, stumbling among the f.a.gots; the young Indian let his blazing pine-branch fall hissing on the wet ground and stood trembling.

And now into the circle stalked a tall figure, coming straight towards me through the sheeted rain--a spectre so hideous that the cries of terror drowned his voice, for he was speaking as he came on, moving what had once been a mouth, this dreadful thing, all raw and festering to the bone.

Two blazing eyes met mine, then rolled around on the cringing throng; and a voice like the voice of the dead broke out:

"I am come to the judgment of this man whom you burn!"

"Quider!" moaned the throng. "He returns from the grave! Oonah! He returns!"

But the unearthly voice went on through the whimper of the crowd:

"From the dead I return. I return from the north. Madness drove me. I come without belts, though belts were given.

"Peace, you wise men and sachems! Set free this man, my brother!"

"Quider!" I gasped. "Bear witness."

And the dead voice echoed, hollow:

"Brother, I witness."

Trembling fingers picked and plucked and tugged at my cords; the bonds loosened; the sky spun round; down I fell, face splas.h.i.+ng in the mud.

CHAPTER XII

How I managed to reach the fort, I never knew. I do not remember that the savages carried me; I have no recollection of walking. When the gate lanthorn was set that night, a sentry noticed me creeping in the weeds at the moat's edge. He shot at me and gave the alarm.

Fortunately, he missed me.

All that evening I lay in a hot sickness on a cot in the casemates.

They say I babbled and whimpered till the doctor had finished cupping me, but after that I rambled little, and, towards sunrise, was sleeping.

My own memories begin with an explosion, which shook my cot and brought me stumbling blindly out of bed, to find Jack Mount firing through a loophole and watching me, while he reloaded, with curious satisfaction.

He guided me back to my cot, and summoned the regiment's surgeon; between them they bathed me and fed me and got my s.h.i.+rt and leggings on me.

At first I could scarcely make out to stand on my legs. From crown to sole I ached and throbbed; my vision was strangely blurred, so that I saw things falling in all directions.

I think the regiment's surgeon, who appeared to be very young, was laying his plans to bleed me again, but I threatened him if he laid a finger on me, and Mount protested that I was fit to fight or feast with any man in Tryon County.

The surgeon, saying I should lie abed, mixed me a most filthy draught, which I swallowed. Had I been able, I should have chased him into the forest for that dose. As it was, I made towards him on wavering legs, to do him a harm, whereupon he went out hastily, calling me an a.s.s.

Mount linked his great arm in mine, and helped me up to the parapet, where the Virginia militia were firing by platoons into the forest.

The freshening morning was lovely and sweet; the west winds poured into me like wine. I lay on the platform for a while, peering up at the flag flapping above me on its pine staff, then raised up on my knees and looked about.

Bands of shadow and sunlight lay across the quiet forests; the calm hills sparkled. But the blackened clearing around the fort was alive with crawling forms, moving towards the woods, darting from cover to cover, yet always advancing. They were Cresap's Maryland riflemen, reconnoitring the pines along the river, into which the soldiers beside me on the parapet were showering bullets.

It was pretty to watch these Virginia militia fire by platoon under instructions of a tall, young captain, who lectured them as jealously as though they were training on the parade below.

"Too slow!" he said. "Try it again, lads, smartly! smartly! 'Tention!