Osceola the Seminole Part 76

We had pa.s.sed Fort King in safety--had encountered no white face-- strange I should fear to meet men of my own race--and no longer had we any apprehension of danger, either from ambush or open attack.

The Indian guards, with black Jake in their midst, were near the centre of the glade, grouped by a fire, and cooking their suppers. So secure did the chieftain feel that he had not even placed a sentinel on the path. He appeared indifferent to danger.

The night was waning late, and we were about retiring to the tents, which the men had pitched for us, when a singular noise reach us from the woods. To my ears it sounded like the surging of water--as of heavy rain, or the sough of distant rapids.

Osceola interpreted it otherwise. It was the continuous "whistling" of leaves, caused by numerous bodies pa.s.sing through the bushes, either of men, or animals.

We instantly rose to our feet, and stood listening.

The noise continued, but now we could hear the snapping of dead branches, and the metallic clink of weapons.

It was too late to retreat. The noise came from every ride. A circle of armed men were closing around the glade.

I looked towards Osceola. I expected to see him rush to his rifle that lay near. To my surprise he did not stir.

His few followers were already on the alert, and had hastened to his side to receive his orders. Their words and gestures declared their determination to die in his defence.

In reply to their hurried speeches, the chieftain made a sign that appeared to astonish them. The b.u.t.ts of their guns suddenly dropped to the ground, and the warriors stood in listless att.i.tudes, as if they had given up the intention of using them.

"It is too late," said Osceola in a calm voice, "too late! we are completely surrounded. Innocent blood might be spilled, and mine is the only life they are in search of. Let them come on--they are welcome to it now. Farewell, sister! Randolph, farewell!--farewell, Virg--."

The plaintive screams of Maumee--of Virginia--my own bursting, and no longer silent grief, drowned the voice that was uttering those wild adieus.

Cl.u.s.tered around the chief, we knew not what was pa.s.sing, until the shouts of men, and the loud words of command proceeding from their officers, warned us that we were in the midst of a battalion of soldiers. On looking up we saw that we were hemmed in by a circle of men in blue uniform, whose glancing barrels and bayonets formed a _chevaux de frise_ around us.

As no resistance was offered, not a shot had been fired; and save the shouting of men, and the ringing of steel, no other sounds were heard.

Shots were fired afterwards, but not to kill. It was a _feu-de-joie_ to celebrate the success of this important capture.

The capture was soon complete--Osceola, held by two men, stood in the midst of his pale-faced foes a prisoner. His followers were also secured, and the soldiers fell back into more extended line--the prisoners still remaining in their midst.

At this moment a mail appeared in front of the ranks, and near to where the captives were standing. He was in conversation with the officer who commanded. His dress bespoke him an Indian; but his yellow face contradicted the supposition. His head was turbaned, and three black plumes drooped over his brow. There was no mistaking the man. The sight was maddening. It restored all his fierce energy to the captive chief; and flinging aside the soldiers, as if they had been tools, he sprang forth from their grasp, and bounded towards the yellow man.

Fortunate for the latter, Osceola was unarmed. He had no weapon left him--neither pistol nor knife--and while wringing a bayonet from the gun of a soldier, the traitor found time to escape.

The chief uttered a groan as he saw the mulatto pa.s.s through the serried line, and stand secure beyond the reach of his vengeance.

It was but a fancied security on the part of the mulatto. The death of the renegade was decreed, though it reached him from an unexpected quarter.

As he stood outside, bantering the captives, a dark form was seen gliding up behind him. The form was that of a woman--a majestic woman-- whose grand beauty was apparent even in the moonlight. But few saw either her or her beauty. The prisoners alone were facing towards her, and witnessed her approach.

It was a scene of only a few seconds' duration. The woman stole close up to the mulatto, and for a moment her arms appeared entwined around his neck. There was the sheen of some object that in the moonlight gleamed like metal. It was a living weapon--it was the dread _crotalus_!

Its rattle could be heard distinctly, and close following came a wild cry of terror, as its victim felt the cold contact of the reptile around his neck, and its sharp fangs entering his flesh.

The woman was seen suddenly to withdraw the serpent, and holding its glistening body over her head, she cried out:

"Grieve not, Osceola! thou art avenged!--the chitta mico has avenged you!"

Saying this, she glided rapidly away, and before the astonished listeners could intercept her retreat, she had entered among the bushes and disappeared.

The horror-struck wretch tottered over the ground, pale and terrified, his eyes almost starting from their sockets.

Men gathered around and endeavoured to administer remedies. Gunpowder and tobacco were tried, but no one knew the simples that would cure him.

It proved his death-stroke; and before another sun went down, he had ceased to live.

With Osceola's capture the war did not cease--though I bore no further part in it. Neither did it end with his death, which followed a few weeks after--not by court-martial execution, for he was no rebel, and could claim the privilege of a prisoner of war, but of that disease which he knew had long doomed him. Captivity may have hastened the event. His proud spirit sank under confinement, and with it the n.o.ble frame that contained it.

Friends and enemies stood around him in his last hour, and listened to his dying words. Both alike wept. In that chamber there was not a tearless cheek--and many a soldier's eye was moist as he listened to the m.u.f.fled dram that made music over the grave of the _n.o.ble Osceola_.

After all, it proved to be the jovial captain who had won the heart of my capricious sister. It was long before I discovered their secret-- which let light in upon a maze of mysteries--and I was so spited about their having concealed it from me, that I almost refused to share the plantation with them.

When I did so at length, under threat of Virginia--not her solicitor--I kept what I considered the better half for myself and Maumee. The old homestead remained ours, and a new house soon appeared upon it--a fitting casket for the jewel it was destined to contain.

I had still an out-plantation to spare--the fine old Spanish clearing on the Tupelo Greek. I wanted a man to manage it--or rather a "man and wife of good character without inc.u.mbrances."

And for the purpose, who could have been better than black Jake and Viola, since they completely answered the above conditions?

I had another freehold at my disposal--a very small one. It was situated by the edge of the swamp, and consisted of a log cabin, with the most circ.u.mscribed of all "clearings" around it. But this was already in possession of a tenant whom, although he paid no rent, I would not have ejected for the world. He was an old alligator-hunter of the name of Hickman.

Another of like "kidney"--Weatherford by name--lived near on an adjoining plantation; but the two were oftener together than apart.

Both had suffered a good deal of rough handling in their time, from the claws of "bars," the jaws and tails of alligators, and the tomahawk of Indians. When together or among friends, they were delighted to narrate their hair-breadth escapes, and both were often heard to declare that the "toughest sc.r.a.pe they ever come clar out o', wor when they wor on a jury-trial, surrounded by a burnin' forest o' dog-goned broom pines, an'

about ten thousand red Indyuns."

They did come clear out of it, however, and lived long after to tell the tale with many a fanciful exaggeration.

THE END.