She followed closely as I pushed a pa.s.sage through the obstructing underbrush, finally locating Sam at the edge of a small opening, where the light was sufficiently strong to enable us to distinguish marks of a little-used trail leading along the bottom of a shallow gully bisecting the sidehill. The way was obstructed by roots and rotten tree trunks, and so densely shaded as to be in places almost imperceptible, but Sam managed to find its windings, while we held close enough behind to keep him safely in sight. Once we came into view of the river, but the larger part of the way lay along a hollow, heavily overshadowed by trees, where we could see only a few feet in any direction.
At the crossing of a small stream we noticed the imprint of several feet in the soft mud of the sh.o.r.e. One plainly enough was small and narrow, beyond all question that of a woman, but the others were all men"s, one being clad in moccasins. Beyond this point the path trended downward, winding along the face of the hill and much more easily followed. Sam, still ahead, started to clamber across the trunk of a fallen tree, but came to a sudden halt, staring downward at something concealed from our view on, the other side.
"Good Lord o" mercy!" he exclaimed, excitedly.
"What"s dat?"
I was close beside him by this time and saw the thing also--the body of a man lying on the ground. The light was so dim only the bare outlines of the rec.u.mbent figure were visible, and, following the first shock of discovery, my earliest thought was to spare the girl.
"Wait where you are, Rene!" I exclaimed, waving her back. "There is a man lying here beyond the log. Come, Sam; we will see what he looks like."
He was slow in following, hanging back as I approached closer to the motionless form, and I could hear the muttering of his lips.
Unquestionably the man was dead; of this I was a.s.sured before I even knelt beside him. He lay p.r.o.ne on his face in a litter of dead leaves, and almost the first thing I noticed was the death wound back of his ear, where a large caliber bullet had pierced the brain. His exposed hands proved him a negro, and it was with a feeling of unusual repugnance that I touched his body, turning it over sufficiently to see the face. The countenance of a negro in death seldom appears natural, and under that faint light, no revealed feature struck me, at first, as familiar. Then, all at once, I knew him, unable to wholly repress a cry of startled surprise, as I stared down into the upturned face--the dead man, evidently murdered, shot treacherously from behind, was Free Pete. I sprang to my feet, gazing about blindly into the dim woods, my mind for the instant dazed by the importance of this discovery. What could it mean? How could it have happened? By what means had he reached this spot in advance of us, and at whose hand had he fallen?
He could have been there only for one purpose, surely--in an attempt to guide Eloise Beaucaire and the quadroon Delia. Then what had become of the women? Where were they now?
I stumbled backward to the support of the log, unable to answer any one of these questions, remembering only in that moment that I must tell Rene the truth. Her eyes already were upon me, exhibiting her fright and perplexity, her knowledge that I had viewed something of horror.
She could keep silent no longer.
"Tell me--please," she begged. "Is the man dead? Who is he, do you know?"
"Yes," I replied desperately. "He is dead, and I recognize his face.
He is the negro Pete, and has been killed, shot from behind. I cannot understand how it has happened."
"Pete," she echoed, grasping at the log to keep erect, her eyes on that dimly revealed figure in the leaves. "Free Pete, Carlton"s Pete?
How--how could he have got here? Then--then the others must have been with him. What has become of them?"
"It is all mystery; the only way to solve it is for us to go on. It can do no one any good to stand here, staring at this dead body. When we reach the cabin we may learn what has occurred. Go on ahead, Sam, and we will follow--don"t be afraid, boy; it is not the dead who hurt us."
She clung tightly to me, shrinking past the motionless figure. She was not sobbing; her eyes were dry, yet every movement, each glance, exhibited her depth of horror. I drew her closer, thoughtless of what she was, my heart yearning to speak words of comfort, yet realizing there was nothing left me to say. I could almost feel the full intensity of her struggle for self-control, the effort she was making to conquer a desire to give way. She must have known this, for once she spoke.
"Do not mind me," she said, pausing before the utterance of each word to steady her voice. "I--I am not going to break down. It--it is the suddenness--the shock. I--I shall be strong again, in a minute."
"You must be," I whispered, "for their lives may depend on us."
It was a short path before us and became more clearly defined as we advanced. A sharp turn brought us into full view of the cabin, which stood in a small opening, built against the sidehill, and so overhung with trees as to be invisible, except from the direction of our approach. We could see only the side wall, which contained one open window, and was a one-room affair, low and flat-roofed, built of logs.
Its outward appearance was peaceful enough, and the swift beat of my pulse quieted as I took rapid survey of the surroundings.
"Sam," I commanded, "you are to remain here with Rene, while I learn the truth yonder. Yes," to her quick protest, "that will be the better way--there is no danger and I shall not be gone but for a moment."
I seated her on a low stump and left them there together, Sam"s eyes rolling about in a frightened effort to perceive every covert in the woods, but the girl satisfied to watch me intently as I moved cautiously forward. A dozen steps brought me within view of the front of the cabin. The door had been smashed in and hung dangling from one hinge. Another step, now with a pistol gripped in my hand, enabled me to obtain a glimpse within. Across the puncheon threshold, his feet even protruding without, lay a man"s body; beyond him, half concealed by the shadows of the interior, appeared the outlines of another, with face upturned to the roof, plainly distinguishable because of a snow-white beard.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRAIL OF THE RAIDERS
Shocked and unmanned as I was at this discovery, to pause there staring at those gruesome figures would have only brought fresh alarm to the two watching my every movement from the edge of the clearing. Gripping my nerves I advanced over the first body, watchful for any sign of the presence of life within the cabin. There was none--the work of the murder had been completed, and the perpetrators had fled. I saw the entire interior at a glance, the few articles of rude, hand-made furniture, several overturned, the fire yet smouldering on the hearth, some broken crockery, and pewter dishes on the floor, and on every side the evidences of a fierce, brutal struggle. The dead man, with ghastly countenance upturned to the roof rafters, and the snowy beard, was undoubtedly the negro helper, Amos Shrunk. Pete"s description of the appearance of the man left this identification beyond all dispute. He had been stricken down by a savage blow, which had literally crushed in one side of his head, but his dead hands yet gripped a rifle, as though he had fallen fighting to the last.
The other man, the one lying across the threshold, had been shot, although I did not ascertain this fact until after I turned the body over sufficiently to reveal the face. This was disfigured by the wound and covered with blood, so that the features could scarcely be seen, yet I instantly recognized the fellow--Carver. Surprised out of all control by this unexpected discovery, I steadied myself against the log wall, fully aroused to the sinister meaning of his presence. To a degree the complete significance of this tragedy instantly gripped my mind. It this fellow Carver had been one of the a.s.sailants, then it was absolutely certain that Kirby must have also been present--the leader of the attack. This inevitably meant that both men had been aboard the steamer, and later were put ash.o.r.e at the mouth of the Illinois. And now that I thought about it, why not? It was no accident, and I wondered that the possibility had never occurred to me before. The gambler naturally knew all the gossip of the river, and, beyond question, he would be aware of the reported existence of this underground station for runaway slaves. It was common talk as far down as St. Louis, and his mind would instantly revert to the possibility that the fleeing Rene might seek escape through the a.s.sistance of Shrunk. The mysterious vanishing of the boat would serve to increase that suspicion. Even if this had not occurred to him at first, the steamer would have brought news that no keel-boat had been seen on the lower river, while the captain of the _John B. Glover_, or someone else on board, would have been sure to have mentioned the negro-helper and suggest that he might have had a hand in the affair. To follow that trail was, indeed, the most natural thing for Kirby to do.
And he had promptly accepted the chance; blindly, no doubt, and yet guided by good fortune. He had not overtaken Rene, because she was not yet there, but he had unexpectedly come upon the other fugitives, and, even though the encounter had cost the life of his henchman, Carver, it also resulted in the death of two men who had come between him and his prey--the negro, and the abolitionist. The scene cleared in my brain and became vivid and real. I could almost picture in detail each act of the grim tragedy. The two revengeful trackers--if there were only two engaged, for others might have been recruited on the steamer--must have crept up to the hut in the night, or early morning. Possibly Kirby had learned of some other means of approach from the direction of the big river. Anyway, the fact that Shrunk had been trapped within the cabin would indicate the final attack was a surprise. The negro might have been asleep outside, and met his death in an attempt at escape, but the old white man, finding flight impossible, had fought desperately to the last and had killed one antagonist before receiving his death blow. This was all plain enough, but what had become of Kirby, of the two women--Eloise, and the quadroon mother?
I searched the cabin without uncovering the slightest trace of their presence, or finding a single article which could be a.s.sociated with them. Kirby himself must have fled the scene of the tragedy immediately--without even pausing long enough to turn his companion over to ascertain the nature of his wound. Had something occurred to frighten him? Had the fellow fled alone back to a waiting boat at the sh.o.r.e, perchance seriously injured himself in the melee, or had he secured the two women, and, reckless as to all else, driven them along with him to some place of concealment until they could be transported down the river? Nothing could answer these questions; no discovery enabled me to lift the veil. Uncertain what to do, or how to act, I could only return to the waiting girl and the negro to tell them what I had found.
They listened as though scarcely comprehending, Sam uttering little moans of horror, and appearing helpless from fright, but Rene quiet, merely exhibiting her emotion in the whiteness of her face and quickened breathing. Her eyes, wide-open, questioning, seemed to sense my uncertainty. As I ended the tale and concluded with my theory as to what had occurred following the deed of blood, her quick mind a.s.serted itself.
"But this must have happened very lately; the men were not long dead?"
"I cannot judge how long; their bodies were cold."
"Yet the fire still smouldered, you said. When do you think that steamer could have landed here?"
"Why, perhaps early last evening."
"And it has not occurred to you that the boat might have waited here while the man Kirby went ash.o.r.e?"
"No; that could scarcely be true, if the steamer was transporting troops; what was it you were thinking about?"
She buried her face in her hands; then lifted it once more to mine, with a new conviction in her eyes.
"It is all dark, of course," she said slowly, "we can only guess at what happened. But to me it seems impossible that the man Kirby could have accomplished all this alone--without a.s.sistance. The boat we saw at the landing was not his; it must have been Pete"s, and there is no evidence of any other trail leading here from the river. If, as you imagine, he knew the captain of that steamer, and some of the other men aboard were Missourians and defenders of slavery, he would have no trouble in enlisting their help to recover his runaway slaves. They would be only too glad to break up an abolitionist"s nest. That is what I believe has happened; they came ash.o.r.e in a party, and the steamer waited for them. Even if it was a troop boat, the captain could easily make excuses for an hour"s delay."
"And you think the prisoners were taken along? Yet Kirby would not want to transport them up the river."
"As to that," she insisted, "he could not help himself. He needed to get away quickly, and there were no other means available. He could only hope to connect later with some craft south-bound on which to return. There are keel-boats and barges always floating down stream from the mines. He dare not remain here; that was why they were in such haste; why, they did not even wait to bury the bodies."
"You may be right," I admitted, impressed, yet not wholly convinced.
"But what can we do?"
She looked at me reproachfully.
"You should not ask that of a girl."
The words stung me.
"No; this is my task. I was thoughtlessly cruel. Neither can we remain here, only long enough to bury those bodies. It would be inhuman not to do that. Sam, there is an old spade leaning against the cabin wall--go over and get it."
"Ah ain"t goin" fer ter tetch no daid man, sah."
"I"ll attend to that; all you need do is dig. Over there at the edge of the wood will answer, and we shall have to place all three in one grave--we can do no more."
He started on his mission reluctantly enough, glancing constantly backward over his shoulder to insure himself of our presence, and carefully avoiding any approach to the open door.
"Am I to simply remain here?" the girl asked, as I took the first step to follow him. "Can I not be of some help?"
"I think not; I can get along very nicely. It is not a pleasant sight inside. Here is the best place for you, as it might not be safe for you to go any further away. We do not know positively where those men have gone. They might be hiding somewhere in the woods. You can turn away and face the forest, so as to see nothing. We shall not be long."