"Are you the leader of those men?" I asked. "They looked a scurvy lot.
Do you call that a proper occupation for the best blood in Breadalbane?"
It was a silly speech, and I could have bitten my tongue out when I had uttered it. But I was in a vile temper, for the dregs of the negro"s rum still hummed in my blood. His face grew dark, till he looked like the man I had seen the night before.
"I allow no man to slight my race," he said in a harsh voice.
"It"s the truth whether you like it or not. And you that claimed to be a gentleman! What is it they say about the Highlands?" And I quoted a ribald Glasgow proverb.
What moved me to this insolence I cannot say, I was in the wrong, and I knew it, but I was too much of a child to let go my silly pride.
Ringan got up very quickly and walked three steps. The blackness had gone from his face, and it was puzzled and melancholy.
"There"s a precious lot of the bairn in you, Mr. Garvald," he said, "and an ugly spice of the Whiggamore. I would have killed another man for half your words, and I"ve got to make you pay for them somehow."
And he knit his brow and pondered.
"I"m ready," said I, with the best bravado I could muster, though the truth is I was sick at heart. I had forced a quarrel like an ill-mannered boy on the very man whose help I had come to seek. And I saw, too, that I had gone just that bit too far for which no recantation would win pardon.
"What sort of way are you ready?" he asked politely. "You would fight me with your pistols, but you haven"t got them, and this is no a matter that will wait. I could spit you in a jiffy with my sword, but it wouldna be fair. It strikes me that you and me are ill matched. We"re like a shark and a wolf that cannot meet to fight in the same element."
Then he ran his finger down the b.u.t.tons of his coat, and his eyes were smiling. "We"ll try the old way that laddies use on the village green.
Man, Andrew, I"m going to skelp you, as your mother skelped you when you were a breechless bairn," And he tossed his coat on the gra.s.s.
I could only follow suit, though I was black ashamed at the whole business. I felt the disgrace of my conduct, and most bitterly the disgrace of the penalty.
My arm was too short to make a fighter of me, and I could only strive to close, that I might get the use of my weight and my great strength of neck and shoulder. Ringan danced round me, tapping me lightly on nose and cheek, but hard enough to make the blood flow, I defended myself as best I could, while my temper rose rapidly and made me forget my penitence. Time and again I looked for a chance to slip in, but he was as wary as a fox, and was a yard off before I could get my arm round him.
At last in extreme vexation, I lowered my head and rushed blindly for his chest. Something like the sails of a windmill smote me on the jaw, and I felt myself falling into a pit of great darkness where little lights twinkled.
The next I knew I was sitting propped against the tent-pole with a cold bandage round my forehead, and Ringan with a napkin bathing my face.
"Cheer up, man," he cried; "you"ve got off light, for there"s no a scratch on your lily-white cheek, and the blood-letting from the nose will clear out the dregs of Moro"s hocus."
I blinked a little, and tried to recall what had happened. All my ill-humour had gone, and I was now in a hurry to set myself right with my conscience. He heard my apology with an embarra.s.sed face.
"Say no more, Andrew. I was as muckle to blame as you, and I"ve been giving myself some ill names for that last trick. It was ower hard, but, man, the temptation was sore."
He elbowed me to the open air.
"Now for the questions you"ve a right to ask. We of the Brethren have not precisely a chief, as you call it, but there are not many of them would gainsay my word. Why? you ask. Well, it"s not for a modest man to be sounding his own trumpet. Maybe it"s because I"m a gentleman, and there"s that in good blood which awes the commonalty. Maybe it"s because I"ve no fish of my own to fry. I do not rob for greed, like Calvert and Williams, or kill for l.u.s.t, like the departed Cosh. To me it"s a game, which I play by honest rules. I never laid finger on a bodle"s worth of English stuff, and if now and then I ease the Dons of a pickle silver or send a Frenchman or two to purgatory, what worse am I doing than His Majesty"s troops in Flanders, or your black frigates that lie off Port Royal? If I"ve a clear conscience I can more easily take order with those that are less single-minded. But maybe the chief reason is that I"ve some little skill of arms, so that the lad that questions me is apt to fare like Cosh."
There was a kind of boastful sincerity about the man which convinced me. But his words put me in mind of my own business.
"I came seeking you to ask help. Your friends have been making too free with my belongings. I would never complain if it were the common risk of my trade, but I have a notion that there"s some sort of design behind it." Then I told him of my strife with the English merchants.
"What are your losses?" he asked.
"The Ayr brig was taken off Cape Charles, and burned to the water. G.o.d help the poor souls in her, for I fear they perished."
He nodded. "I know. That was one of Cosh"s exploits. He has paid by now for that and other things."
"Two of my ships were chased through the Capes and far up the Tidewater of the James not two months back," I went on.
He laughed. "I did that myself," he said.
Astonishment and wrath filled me, but I finished my tale.
"A week ago there was a ship ash.o.r.e on Accomac. Pirates boarded her, but they took nothing away save a sum of gold that was mine. Was that your doing also, Mr. Campbell?"
"Yes," he said; "but the money"s safe. I"ll give you a line to Mercer, and he"ll pay it you."
"I"m much obliged to you, Mr. Campbell," I said, choking with anger.
"But who, in Heaven"s name, asked you to manage my business? I thought you were my friend, and I came to you as such, and here I find you the chief among my enemies."
"Patience, Andrew," he said, "and I"ll explain everything, for I grant you it needs some explaining. First, you are right about the English merchants. They and the Free Companions have long had an understanding, and word was sent by them to play tricks on your ships. I was absent at the time, and though the thing was dirty work, as any one could see, some of the fools thought it a fair ploy, and Cosh was suffered to do his will. When I got back I heard the story, and was black angry, so I took the matter into my own keeping. I have ways and means of getting the news of Virginia, and I know pretty well what you have been doing, young one. There"s spirit in you and some wise notions, but you want help in the game. Besides, there"s a bigger thing before you. So I took steps to bring you here."
"You took a roundabout road," said I, by no means appeased.
"It had to be. D"you think I could come marching into James Town and collogue with you in your counting-house? Now that you"re here, you have my sworn word that the Free Companions will never lay hand again on your ventures. Will that content you?"
"It will," I said; "but you spoke of a bigger thing before me."
"Yes, and that"s the price you are going to pay me for my goodwill.
It"s what the lawyers call _consideratio_ for our bargain, and it"s the reason I brought you here. Tell me, Andrew, d"you ken a man Frew who lives on the South Fork River?" "A North Ireland fellow, with a hatchet face and a big scar? I saw him a year ago."
"It stuck in my mind that you had. And d"you mind the advice he gave you?"
I remembered it very well, for it was Frew who had clinched my views on the defencelessness of our West. "He spoke G.o.d"s truth," I said, "but I cannot get a Virginian to believe it."
"They"ll believe in time," he said, "though maybe too late to save some of their scalps. Come to this hillock, and I will show you something."
From the low swell of ground we looked west to some little hills, and in the hollow of them a spire of smoke rose into the blue.
"I"m going to take you there, that you may hear and see something to your profit. Quick, Moro," he cried to a servant. "Bring food, and have the horses saddled."
We breakfasted on some very good beefsteaks, and started at a canter for the hills. My headache had gone, and I was now in a contented frame of mind; for I saw the purpose of my errand accomplished, and I had a young man"s eagerness to know what lay before me. As we rode Ringan talked.
"You"ll have heard tell of Bacon"s rising in "76? Governor Berkeley had ridden the dominion with too harsh a hand, and in the matter of its defence against the Indians he was slack when he should have been tight. The upshot was that Nathaniel Bacon took up the job himself, and after giving the Indians their lesson, turned his mind to the government of Virginia. He drove Berkeley into Accomac, and would have turned the whole place tapsalteery if he had not suddenly died of a bowel complaint. After that Berkeley and his tame planters got the upper hand, and there were some pretty homings and hangings. There were two men that were lieutenants to Bacon, and maybe put the notion into his head. One was James Drummond, a cousin of my own mother"s, and he got the gallows for his trouble. The other was a man Richard Lawrence, a fine scholar, and a grand hand at planning, though a little slow in a fight. He kept the ordinary at James Town, and was the one that collected the powder and kindled the fuse. Governor Berkeley had a long score to settle with him, but he never got him, for when the thing was past hope Mr. Richard rode west one snowy night to the hills, and Virginia saw him no more. They think he starved in the wilderness, or got into the hands of the wild Indians, and is long ago dead."
I knew all about d.i.c.k Lawrence, for I had heard the tale twenty times.
"But surely they"re right," I said, "It"s fifteen years since any man had word of him."
"Well, you"ll see him within an hour," said Ringan, "It"s a queer story, but it seems he fell in with a Monacan war party, and since he and Bacon had been fighting their deadly foes, the Susquehannocks, they treated him well, and brought him south into Carolina. You must know, Andrew, that all this land hereaways, except for the little Algonquin villages on the sh.o.r.e, is Sioux country, with as many tribes as there are houses in Clan Campbell. But cheek by jowl is a long strip held by the Tuscaroras, a murdering lot of devils, of whom you and I"ll get news sooner than we want. The Tuscaroras are bad enough in themselves, but the worst part is that all the back country in the hills belongs to their cousins the Cherokees, and G.o.d knows how far north their sway holds. The Long House of the Iroquois controls everything west of the coast land from Carolina away up through Virginia to New York and the Canadas. That means that Virginia has on two sides the most powerful tribes of savages in the world, and if ever the Iroquois found a general and made a common attack things would go ill with the Tidewater. I tell you that so that you can understand Lawrence"s doings. He hates the Iroquois like h.e.l.l, and so he likes their enemies.
He has lived for fifteen years among the Sioux, whiles with the Catawbas, whiles with the Manahoacs, but mostly with the Monacans. We of the Free Companions see him pretty often, and bring him the news and little comforts, like good tobacco and _eau de vie_, that he cannot get among savages. And we carry messages between him and the Tidewater, for he has many friends still alive there. There"s no man ever had his knowledge of Indians, and I"m taking you to him, for he has something to tell you."
By this time we had come to a place where a fair-sized burn issued from a shallow glen in the savannah. There was a peeled wand stuck in a burnt tree above the water, and this Ringan took and broke very carefully into two equal pieces, and put them back in the hole. From this point onwards I had the feeling that the long gra.s.s and the clumps of bushes held watchers. They made no noise, but I could have sworn to the truth of my notion. Ringan, whose senses were keener than mine, would stop every now and again and raise his hand as if in signal. At one place we halted dead for five minutes, and at another he dismounted and cut a tuft of sumach, which he laid over his saddle. Then at the edge of a thicket he stopped again, and held up both hands above his head. Instantly a tall Indian stepped from the cover, saluted, and walked by our side. In five minutes more we rounded a creek of the burn and were at the encampment.
"Twas the first time I had ever seen an Indian village. The tents, or teepees, were of skins stretched over poles, and not of bark, like those of the woodland tribes. At a great fire in the centre women were grilling deer"s flesh, while little brown children strove and quarrelled for sc.r.a.ps, I saw few men, for the braves were out hunting or keeping watch at the approaches. One young lad took the horses, and led us to a teepee bigger than the others, outside of which stood a finely-made savage, with heron"s feathers in his hair, and a necklace of polished sh.e.l.ls. On his Iron face there was no flicker of welcome or recognition, but he shook hands silently with the two of us, and struck a blow on a dry gourd. Instantly three warriors appeared, and took their place by his side. Then all of us sat down and a pipe was lit and handed by the chief to Ringan. He took a puff and gave it to one of the other Indians, who handed it to me. With that ceremony over, the tongue of the chief seemed to be unloosed. "The Sachem comes," he said, and an old man sat himself down beside us.