To the biggest of the trees I was tightly bound; and a little way apart a fire, newly kindled8, smoked and blazed up fitfully. By the light of the fire a good score of the Cherokees were gathering9 deadfalls and dry branches to heap beside me; and from the camp below, the Indian lodges10 of which were in plain view beyond the intervening horse meadow, other savages11 were hurrying to join the wood carriers.
So far as these hasting preliminaries applied13 to me, their meaning was not difficult to read. I was to be burned at the stake in proper savage12 fashion. But Richard Jennifer—what had become of him? A sound, half sigh, half groan14, told me where to look. Hard by, bound to a tree as I was, and so near that with a free hand I could have touched him, was my poor lad.
"Dick!" I cried.
He turned his head as the close-drawn15 thongs16 permitted and gave me a smile as loving-tender as a woman's.
"Aye, Jack17; they have us hard and fast this time. I have been praying you'd never come alive enough to feel the fire."
"We were taken together?" So much I dared ask.
"In the same onset18. 'Twas but a question of clock ticks in that back-to-back business. But they paid scot and lot," this with an inching nod toward a row of naked bodies propped19 sitting against a fallen tree; nine of them in all, one with its severed20 head between its knees, and three others showing the gaping21 hacks22 and hewings of the great broadsword.
"They've fetched them here to see us burn," he went on. "But by the gods, we have the warrant of two good blades and Ephraim Yeates's hunting-knife that the only fires they'll ever see are those of hell."
"Yeates?" I queried23. "Then they have taken him and the Catawba, as well?"
"Not alive, you may be sure, else we should have them for company. But it has a black look for our friends that the flying column we met in the stream-cave came back so soon. Moreover, the bodies of the three peace-pipe smokers24 were found and brought in; that will be the Great Bear holding his head in his hands at the end of yonder bloody25 masquerade."
"I guessed as much. God rest our poor comrades!"
"Aye; and God help Madge! 'Tis no time for reproaches, but amongst us we have signed her death warrant with our bunglings."
"If it were only death!" I groaned26.
"'Tis just that, Jack," said he; "no better, mayhap, but no worse. When we were downed by that screeching27 mob, she was out and on her knees to Falconnet, beseeching28 him to spare us. He put her off smoothly29 at first, saying 'twas the Indians' affair—that they would not be balked30 of their vengeance31 by any interference of his. But when she only begged the more piteously, he showed his true colors, rapping out that we should have as swift a quittance as we had meant to give him, and that within the hour she should be the mistress of Appleby and free to marry an English gentleman."
"Well?" said I, making sure that now at last he must know all.
"At that she stood before him bravely, and I saw that all the time she had had the Catawba's knife hidden in the folds of her gown. 'You have spoken truth for once, Captain Falconnet; I shall be free,' she said. 'Come and tell me when you have added these to your other murders.'"
"And then?"
"Then she went back to her prison wigwam, walking through the rabble33 of redcoats and redskins as proudly as the Scottish Mary went to the block."
"She will do it, think you?" I queried, fearful lest she would, but more fearful lest her courage should fail at the pinch.
"Never doubt it. Good Catholic as she is, there is martyr34 blood in her on the mother's side, and that will help her to die unsullied. And God nerve her to it, say I."
I said "Amen" to that; and thereupon we both fell silent, watching as condemned35 men on the gallows36 the busy preparations for our taking off.
Again, as in the late battle, it was the trivial things that moved me most. Chief among them the grinning row of dead Indians propped against the fallen tree is the constant background for all the memory pictures of that waiting interval, and I can see those stiffening37 corpses38 now, some erect39, as if defying us; some lopping this way or that, as if their bones had gone to water at the touch of the steel.
I know not why these poor relics40 of mortality should have held me fascinated as they did. Yet when I would look away, through the vista41 to where the light of the great fire in the savanna camp played luridly42 upon the Indian lodges, or, nearer at hand, upon the savages gathering the wood to burn us with, this ghastly file of the dead drew me irresistibly43, and I must needs pass the fearsome figures in review again, marking the staring eyes and unnatural44 postures45, and the circular blood-black patches on the heads of the three peace-men whom Yeates and the Catawba had scalped.
While they were making ready for the burning, our executioners were strangely silent; but when the work was done they formed in a semicircle to front the row of corpses and set up a howling chant that would have put a band of Mohammedan dervishes to the blush.
"'Tis the death song for the slain," said Richard; and while it lasted, this moving tableau46 of naked figures, keeping time in a weird47 stamping dance to the rising and falling ululation of the chant, held us spellbound.
But we were not long suffered to be mere48 curious onlookers49. In its dismalest flight the death song ended in a shrill50 hubbub51, and the dancers turned as one man to face us.
I hope it may never be your lot, my dears, to meet and endure such a horrid52 glare of human ferocity as that these wrought-up avengers of blood bent53 upon us. 'Twas more unnerving than aught that had gone before; more terrible, I thought, than aught that could come after. Yet, as to this, you shall judge for yourselves.
The pause was brief, and when a lad ran up to cut the thongs that bound us from the middle up, the torture-play began in deadly earnest. Whilst the Indian youth was slashing54 at the deerskin, Richard gave me my cue.
"'Tis the knife and hatchet56 play; they are loosing us to give us freedom to shrink and dodge57. Look straight before you and never flinch58 a hair, as you would keep the life in you from one minute to the next!"
"Trust me," said I. "We must eke59 it out as long as we can, if only to give our dear lady time for another prayer or two. Mayhap she will name us in them; God knows, our need is sore enough."
The lad ran back, and a warrior60 stood out, juggling61 his tomahawk in air. He made a feint to cast it at Richard, but instead sent it whizzing at me.
That first missile was harder to face unflinching than were all the others. I saw it leave the thrower's hand; saw it coming straight, as I would think, to split my skull62. The prompting to dodge was well-nigh masterful enough to override63 the strongest will. Yet I did make shift to hold fast, and in mid7 flight the twirling ax veered64 aside to miss me by a hair's-breadth, gashing65 the tree at my ear when it struck.
"Bravo! well met!" cried Richard; and then, betwixt his teeth: "Here comes mine."
As he spoke32, a second tomahawk was sped. I heard it strike with a dull crash that might have been on flesh and bone, or on oak-bark—I could not tell. I dared not look aside till Richard's taunting66 laugh gave me leave to breathe again.
The Indians answered the laugh with a yell; and now the marksmen stood out quickly one after another and for a little space the air was full of hurtling missiles. You will read in the romances of the wondrous67 skill of these savages in such diversions as these; how they will pin the victim to a tree and never miss of sticking knife or hatchet within the thickness of the blade where they will. But you must take these tales with a dash of allowance for the romancers' fancy. Truly, these Indians of ours threw well and skilfully68; 'tis a part of the only trade they know—the trade of war—to send a weapon true to the mark. None the less, some of the missiles flew wide; and now and then one would nip the cloth of sleeve or body covering—and the flesh beneath it, as well.
Dick had more of the nippings than I; and though he kept up a running fire of taunts69 and gibing70 flings at the marksmen, I could hear the gritting71 oaths aside when they pinked him.
Notwithstanding, the worst of these miscasts fell to my lot. A hatchet, sped by the clumsiest hand of all, missed its curving, turned, and the helve of it struck me fair in the stomach. Not all the parting pangs73 of death, as I fondly believe, will lay a heavier toll74 on fortitude75 than did this griping-stroke which I must endure standing72 erect. 'Tis no figure of speech to say that I would have given the reversion of a kingdom, and a crown to boot, for leave to double over and groan out the agony of it.
Happily for us, there were no women with the band, so we were spared the crueler refinements76 of these ante-burning torments77; the flaying78 alive by inch-bits, and the sticking of blazing splints of pitchwood in the flesh to make death a thing to be prayed for. There was naught79 of this; and tiring finally of the marksman play, the Indians made ready to burn us. Some ran to recover the spent weapons; others made haste to heap the wood in a broad circle about our trees; and the chief, with three or four to help, renewed the deer-thong lashings.
'Twas in the rebinding that this headman, a right kingly-looking savage as these
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