The Reckoning Part 44

"Little sister," I said gently, "is it not the truth? Does a Quiver-bearer lie, O Blossom of Carenay?"

Her hands fell away; she raised her head, the tears s.h.i.+ning on her heavy lashes: "It is the truth."

"His wife?" I repeated slowly.

"His wife, O Bearer of Arrows! He took me at the False Faces' feast, and the Iroquois saw. Yet the cherries were still green at Danascara.

Twice the Lenape covered their faces; twice 'The Two Voices' unveiled his face. So it was done there on the Kennyetto." She leaned swiftly toward me: "Twice he denied me at Niagara. Yet once, when our love was new--when I still loved him--he acknowledged me here in this very house, in the presence of a County Magistrate, Sir John Johnson. I am his wife, I, Lyn Montour! I have never lied to woman or man, O my elder brother!"

"And that is why you have come back?"

"Yes; to search--for something to help me--some record--G.o.d knows!--I have searched and searched--" She stretched out her bare arms and gazed hopelessly around the paper-littered floor.

"Will not Sir John uphold you with his testimony?" I asked.

"He? No! He also denies it. What can a woman expect of a man who has broken parole?" she added, in contempt.

I leaned toward her, speaking slowly, and with deadly emphasis:

"Dare Walter Butler deny what the Iroquois Nation may attest?"

"He dare," she said, burning eyes on mine. "I am more Algonquin than Huron, and more than nine-tenths white. What is it to the Iroquois that this man puts me away? It was the Mohican and Lenape who veiled their faces, not the Iroquois. What is it to white men that he took me and has now put me away? What is it to them that he now takes another?"

"Another? Whom?" My lips scarcely formed the question.

"I do not know her name. When he returned from the horrors of Cherry Valley Sir Frederick Haldimand refused to see him. Yet he managed to make love to Sir Frederick's kinswoman--a child--as I was when he took me----"

She closed her eyes. I saw the lashes all wet again, but her voice did not tremble: "He is at Niagara with his Rangers--or was. And--when I came to him he laughed at me, bidding me seek a new lover at the fort----"

Her voice strangled. Twisting her fingers, she sat there, eyes closed, dumb, miserable. At last she gasped out: "O Quiver-bearer, with a white voice and a skin scarce whiter than my own, though your nation be sundered from the Long House, though I be an outcast of clans and nations, speak to me kindly, for my sadness is bitter, and the ghost of my dead honor confronts me in every forest-trail!" She stretched out her arms piteously:

"Teach me, brother; instruct me; heal my bruised heart of hate for this young man who was my undoing--cleanse my fierce, desirous heart. I love him no longer; I--I dare not hate him lest I slay him ere he rights my wrongs. My sorrow is heavier than I can bear--and I am young, O sachem--not yet eighteen--until the snow flies."

She laid her face in her hands once more; through her slim fingers the bright tears fell slowly.

"Are you Christian, little sister?" I asked, wondering.

"I do not know. They say so. A brave Jesuit converted me ere I was unstrapped from the cradle-board--ere I could lisp or toddle. G.o.d knows.

My own brother died in war-paint; my grandmother was French Margaret, my mother--if she be my mother--is the Huron witch of Wyoming; some call her Catrine, some Esther. Yet I was chaste--till _he_ took me--chaste as an Iroquois maid. Thus has he wrought with me. Teach me to forgive him!"

And _this_ the child of Catrine Montour? This that b.e.s.t.i.a.l creature they described to me as some slim, fierce temptress of the forests?

"Listen," I said gently; "if you are wedded by a magistrate, you are his wife; yet if that magistrate falsely witnesses against you, you can not prove it. I would give all I have to prove your marriage. Do you understand?"

She looked at me, uncomprehending.

"The woman I love is the woman he now claims as wife," I said calmly.

Then, in that strange place, alone there together in the dim light, she lying full length on the floor, her hands clasped on my knees, told me all. And there, together, we took counsel how to bring this man to judgment--not the Almighty's ultimate punishment, not even that stern retribution which an outraged world might exact, but a merciful penance--the public confession of the tie that bound him to this young girl. For, among the Iroquois, an unchaste woman is so rare that when a maiden commits the fault she is like a leper until death releases her from her awful isolation.

Together, too, we searched the littered papers on the floor, piece by piece, bit by bit, but all in vain. And while kneeling there I heard a stealthy step behind me, and looked back over my shoulder, to see the Oneida, Little Otter, peering in at us, eyeb.a.l.l.s fairly starting from his painted face. Lyn Montour eyed him silently, and without expression, but I laughed to see how surely he had followed me as I had expected; and motioned him away to await my coming.

It was, I should judge, nearly five o'clock when we descended by the open stairway to the ground floor. I held the window wide; she placed her hands on the sill and leaped lightly to the gra.s.s. I followed.

Presently the lilac thicket parted and the tall Oneida appeared, leading my horse. One keen, cunning glance he gave at the girl, then, impa.s.sive, stood bolt upright beside my horse. He was superb, stripped naked to clout and moccasin, head shaved, body oiled and most elaborately painted; and on his broad breast glimmered the Wolf lined in sapphire-blue. When the long roll of the dead thundered through the council-house, his name was the fourth to be called--Shononses. And never was chief of the Oneida nation more worthy to lift the antlers that no grave must ever cover while the Long House endures.

"Has my brother learned news of the gathering in the north?" I asked, studying the painted symbols on his face and body.

"The council sits at dawn," he replied quietly.

"At dawn!" I exclaimed. "Why, we have no time, then----"

"There is time, brother. There is always time to die."

"To--die!" I looked at him, startled. Did he, then, expect no mercy at the council? He raised his eyes to me, smiling. There was nothing of fear, nothing of boastfulness, even, in att.i.tude or glance. His dignity appalled me, for I knew what it meant. And, suddenly, the full significance of his paint flashed upon me.

"You think there is no chance for us?" I repeated.

"None, brother."

"And yet you go?"

"And you, brother?"

"I am ordered; I am pledged to take such chances. But you need not go, Little Otter. See, I free you now. Leave me, brother. I desire it."

"Shononses will stay," he said impa.s.sively. "Let the Long House learn how the Oneidas die."

I shuddered and looked again at his paint. It was inevitable; no orders, no commands, no argument could now move him. He understood that he was about to die, and he had prepared himself. All I could hope for was that he had mistaken the temper of the council; that the insolence of a revolted nation daring to present a sachem at the Federal-Council might be overlooked--might be condoned, even applauded by those who cherished in their dark hearts, locked, the splendid humanity of the ancient traditions. But there was no knowing, no prophesying what action a house divided might take, what att.i.tude a people maddened by dissensions, wrought to frenzy by fraternal conflict, might a.s.sume. G.o.d knows the white man's strife was barbarous enough, brother murdering brother beneath the natal roof. What, then, might be looked for from the fierce, proud people whose Confederacy was steadily crumbling beneath our touch; whose crops and forests and villages had gone roaring up into flames as the vengeance of Sullivan, with his Rangers, his Continentals, and his Oneidas, pa.s.sed over their lands in fire!

"Where sits the council?" I asked soberly.

"At the Dead-Water."

It was an all-night journey by the Fish House-trails, for we dared not strike the road, with Sir John's white demons outlying from the confluence to Frenchman's creek.

I looked at my horse. Little Otter had strapped ammunition and provisions to the saddle, leaving room for a rider. I turned to Lyn Montour; she laid her hands on my shoulders, and I swung her up astride the saddle.

"Now," I said briefly; and we filed away into the north, the Oneida leading at a slow trot.

I shall never forget the gloom, the bitter misery of that dark trail where specters ever stared at me as I journeyed, where ghosts arose in every trail--pale wraiths of her I loved, calling me back to love again. And "Lost, lost, lost!" wept the little brooks we crossed, all sobbing, whispering her name.

What an end of all--to die now, leaving life's work unfinished, life's desire unsatisfied--all that I loved unprotected and alone on earth.

What an end to it all--and I had done nothing for the cause, nothing except the furtive, obscure work which others shrank from! And now, skulking to certain death, was denied me even the poor solace of an honored memory. Here in this s.h.a.ggy desolation no ray of glory might penetrate to gild my last hour with a hero's halo; contempt must be my reward if I failed. I must die amid the scornful laughter of Iroquois women, the shrill taunts of children, the jeers of renegade white men, who pay a thief more honor at the cross-roads gallows than they pay a convicted spy. Why, I might not even hope for the stern and dignified justice that the Oneida awaited--an iron justice that respected the victim it destroyed; for he came openly as a sachem of a disobedient nation in revolt, daring to justify his nation and his clan. But I was to act if not to speak a lie; I was to present myself as a sleek non-partizan, symbolizing only a n.o.bility of the great Wolf clan. And if any man accused me as a spy, and if suspicion became conviction, the horrors of my degradation would be inconceivable. Yet, plying once more my abhorred trade, I could only obey, hope against hope, and strive to play the man to the end, knowing what failure meant, knowing, too, what my reward for success might be--a low-voiced "Thank you" in secret, a grasp of the hands behind locked doors--a sum of money pressed on me slyly--_that_ hurt most of all--to put it away with a smile, and keep my temper. Good G.o.d! Does a Renault serve his country for money! Why, _why_, can they not understand, and spare me that!--the wages of the wretched trade!

Darkness had long since infolded us; we had slackened to a walk, moving forward between impervious walls of blackness. And always on the curtain of the inky shadow I saw Elsin's pallid face gazing upon me, until the vision grew so real that I could have cried out in my anguish, reeling forward, on, ever on, through a blackness thick as the very shadows of the pit that hides lost souls!

At midnight we halted for an hour. The Oneida ate calmly; Lyn Montour tasted the parched corn, and drank at an unseen spring that bubbled a drear lament amid the rocks. Then we descended into the Drowned Lands, feeling our spongy trail between osier, alder, and willow. Once, very far away, I saw a light, pale as a star, low s.h.i.+ning on the marsh. It was the Fish House, and we were near our journey's end--perhaps the end of all journeys, save that last swift trail upward among those thousand stars!

It was near to dawn when we came out upon the marsh; and above, I heard the whir and whimpering rush of wild ducks pa.s.sing, the waking call of birds, twittering all around us in the darkness; the low undertone of the black water flowing to the Sacandaga.