"Twas d.i.c.k"s voice, coming, as it seemed, from a mighty distance, that broke the spell and brought me back to quickened agonies. He spoke in panting gasps, as the smoke would let him.
"One word, Jack, before we go--go to our own place. He said--he said she would be free to--to marry him. Tell me ... O G.o.d in Heaven!"
His agony was a lash to cut me deeper than any flicking demon whip of flame, yet I must needs add to it.
"Aye, Richard, I have wronged you, wronged you desperately; can you hear me yet? I say I have wronged you, and I shall die the easier if you"ll forgive--"
Once more the smoke, rising again in denser clouds, cut me off, and through the blinding blue haze of it I saw the Indians running up with green branches to beat it down lest it should spoil their sport oversoon by smothering us out of hand.
With the chance to gasp and breathe again I would have confessed in full to Richard Jennifer and had him shrive me if he would. But when I called, he did not answer. His head was rolling from side to side, and his handsome young face was all drawn and distorted as in the awful grimaces of the death throe.
You will not wonder that I could not look at him; that I looked away for very pity"s sake, praying that I might quickly breathe the flames, as I made sure he had, and so be the sooner past the anguish crisis.
There was good hope that the prayer would have a speedy answer. The fires were burning clearer now, leaping up in broad dragon"s tongues of flame from the outer edges of the f.a.got piles to curtain off all that lay beyond. Through the luminous flame-veil the capering savages took on shapes the most weird and grotesque; and when I had a glimpse of the dead men"s row, each hideous face in it seemed to wear a grin of leering triumph.
Thus far there had been never a puff of wind to fan the blaze. But now above the shrilling of the Indian chant and the crackling of the flames a low growl of thunder trembled in the upper air, and a gentle breeze swept through the tree-tops.
So now I would commend my soul to G.o.d, making sure that the breath He gave would go out on the wings of the first gust that should come to drive the fiery veil inward. But when the gust came it was from behind; a sweeping besom to beat down the leaping dragons" tongues; a pouring flood of blessed coolness to turn the ebbing life-tide and to set the dulled senses once more keenly alert.
With the wind came the rain, a pa.s.sing summer-night"s shower of great drops spattering on the leaves above and dripping thence to fall hissing in the fires. Then the thunder growled again; and into the monotonous droning of the Indian chant, or rather rising sharp and clear above it, came a sudden rattling fire of musketry from the camp in the savanna--this, and the sharp skirling of the troop captain"s whistle shrilling the a.s.sembly.
While yet the flames lay flattened in the wind, I saw the Indians wheel and bound away to the rescue of their camp like a pack of hounds in full cry. In a trice they were wallowing through the stream at the foot of the powder boulder; and then, as the flames leaped up again, a dark form burst through the fiery barrier, my bonds were cut, and a strong hand plucked me out of the scorching h.e.l.l-pit.
If I did aught to help it was all mechanical. I do remember dimly some fierce struggle to free my legs from the blazing tangle; this, and the swelling sob of joy at the sight of the faithful Catawba hacking at d.i.c.k"s lashings and dragging him also free of the fire. And you may believe the welcome tears came to ease the pain of my seared eyes when my poor lad--I had thought him gone past human help--took two staggering steps and flung his arms about my neck.
Uncanoola gave us no time to come by easy stages to full-wit sanity. In a twinkling he had pounced upon us to crush us one upon the other behind the larger tree. And now I come upon another of those flitting instants so crowded with happenings that the swiftest pen must seem to make them lag. "Twas all in a heart-beat, as it were: the Catawba"s freeing of us; his flinging us to earth behind the tree; a spurt of blinding yellow flame from the foot of the powder-cliff, and a booming, jarring shock like that of an earthquake.
The momentary glare of the yellow flash lit up a scene most awe-inspiring. The spouting fountain of fire at the base of the great powder-rock was thick with flying missiles; and on high the very cliff itself was tottering and crumbling. So much I saw; then the Catawba sprang up to haul us afoot by main strength, and to rush us, with an arm for each, headlong through the wood toward the valley head.
But d.i.c.k hung back, and when the dull thunder of the falling rocks, the crash of the tumbling cliff and the shrill death yells of the doomed ones came to our ears, he fought loose from the Indian and flung himself down, crying as if his heart would break.
"O G.o.d! she"s lost, she"s lost!--and I have missed the chance to die with her or for her!"
x.x.x
HOW EPHRAIM YEATES PRAYED FOR HIS ENEMIES
However much or little the Catawba understood of Richard Jennifer"s grief or its cause, the faithful Indian had a thing to do and he did it, loosing his grasp of me to turn and fall upon d.i.c.k with pullings and haulings and buffetings, fit to bring a man alive out of a very stiffening rigor of despair.
So, in a hand-s.p.a.ce he had him up, and we were pressing on again, in midnight darkness once we had pa.s.sed beyond the light of our grilling fires. No word was spoken; under the impatient urging of the Indian there was little breath to spare for speech. But when Richard"s afterthought had set its fangs in him, he called a halt and would not be denied.
"Go on, you two, if you are set upon it," he said. "I must go back.
Bethink you, Jack; what if she be only maimed and not killed outright.
"Tis too horrible! I"m going back, I say."
The Catawba grunted his disgust.
"Captain Jennif" talk fas"; no run fas". What think? White squaw _yonder_--no yonder," pointing first forward and then back in the direction of the stricken camp.
Richard spun around and gripped the Indian by the shoulders. "Then she is alive and safe?" he burst out. "Speak, friend, whilst I leave the breath in you to do it!"
"Ugh!" said the chief, in nowise moved either by Jennifer"s vehemence or by the dog-like shake. "What for Captain Jennif" think papoose thinks "bout the Gray Wolf and poor Injun? Catch um white squaw _firs"_; _then_ blow um up Chelakee camp and catch um Captain Jennif" and Captain Long-knife if can. Heap do firs" thing _firs"_, and las" thing _las"_.
Wah!"
It was the longest speech this devoted ally of ours was ever known to make; and having made it he went dumb again save for his urgings of us forward. But presently both he and I had our hands full with the poor lad. The swift transition from despair to joy proved too much for d.i.c.k; and, besides, the fever was in his blood and he was grievously burned.
So we went stumbling on through the cloud-darkened wood, locked arm in arm like three drunken men, tripping over root snares and bramble nets spread for our feet, and getting well sprinkled by the dripping foliage.
And at the last, when we reached the ravine at the valley"s head, d.i.c.k was muttering in the fever delirium and we were well-nigh carrying him a dead weight between us.
"Twas a most heart-breaking business, getting the poor lad up that rock-ladder of escape in the darkness; for though I had come out of the fire with fewer burns than the roasting of me warranted, the battle preceding it had opened the old sword wound in my shoulder. So, taking it all in all, I was but a short-breathed second to the faithful Catawba.
None the less, we tugged it through after some laborious fashion, and were glad enough when the steep ascent gave place to leveler going, and we could sniff the fragrance of the plateau pines and feel their wire-like needles under foot.
By this the shower cloud had pa.s.sed and the stars were coming out, but it was still pitch black under the pines; so dark that I started like a nervous woman and went near to panic when a horse snorted at my very ear, and a voice, bodiless, as it seemed, said; "Well, now; the Lord be praised! if here ain"t the whole enduring--"
What Ephraim Yeates would have said, or did say, was lost upon me. For now my poor d.i.c.k"s strength was quite spent, and when the chief and I were easing him to lie full length upon the ground, there was a quick little cry out of the darkness, a swish of petticoats, and my lady darted in to fall upon Richard in a very transport of pity.
"Oh, my poor d.i.c.k! they have killed you!" she sobbed; "oh, cruel, cruel!" Then she lashed out at us. "Why don"t you strike a light? How can I find and dress his hurts in the dark?"
"Your pardon, Mistress Margery," I said; ""tis only that the fever has overcome him. He has no sore hurts, as I believe, save the fire-scorching."
"A light!" she commanded; "I must have a light and see for myself."
We had to humor her, though it was something against prudence. Ephraim found dry punk in a rotten log, and firing it with the flint and steel of a great king"s musket--one of his reavings from the enemy--soon had a pine-knot torch for her. She gave it to the Catawba to hold; and while she was cooing over her patient and binding up his burns in some simples gathered near at hand by the Indian, I had the story of the double rescue from the old hunter.
Set forth in brief, that which had come as a miracle to d.i.c.k and me figured as a daring bit of strategy made possible by the emptying of the Indian camp at our torture spectacle.
Yeates and the Catawba, following out the plan agreed upon, had come within spying distance while yet we were in the midst of that hopeless back-to-back battle, and had most wisely held aloof. But later, when every Indian of the Cherokee band was busy at our torture trees, they set to work.
With no watch to give the alarm, "twas easy to rifle the Indian wigwams of the firearms and ammunition. The latter they threw into the stream; the muskets they loaded and trained over a fallen tree at the northern edge of the savanna, bringing them to bear pointblank upon the light-horse guard gathered again around the great fire.
The next step was the cutting out of the women; this was effected whilst the baronet-captain was paying his courtesy call on us. Like the looting of the Indian camp, "twas quickly planned and daringly done; it asked but the quieting of the two trooper guards on the forest side of the tepee-lodge, a warning word to Margery and her woman, and a shadow-like flitting with them over the dead bodies of their late jailers to the shelter of the wood.
Once free of the camp, Yeates had hurried his charges to a place of temporary safety farther up the valley, leaving the Catawba to cross the stream to lay a train of dampened powder to the makeshift magazine. When he had led the women to a place of safety, the old man left them and ran back to his masked battery of loaded muskets. Here, at an owl-cry signal from Uncanoola, he opened fire upon the redcoats.
The outworking of the _coup de main_ was a triumph for the old borderer"s shrewd generalship. At the death-dealing volley the Englishmen were thrown into confusion; whilst the Indians, summoned by the firing and the shrilling of the captain"s whistle, dashed blindly into the trap. At the right moment Uncanoola touched off his powder train and cut in with a clear field for his rescue of d.i.c.k and me.
Of the complete success of these various climaxings, Ephraim Yeates had his first a.s.surance when we three came safely to the rendezvous; for, after firing his masked battery, the old hunter lost no time in rejoining the women and in hastening with them out of the valley. Had these three been afoot we might have overtaken them; but Yeates had been lucky enough to stumble upon the black mare peacefully cropping the gra.s.s in a little glade; and with this mount for Margery and her tire-woman he had easily outpaced us.
All this I had from Yeates what time Margery was pouring the wine and oil of womanly sympathy into Richard"s woundings; and I may confess that whilst the ear was listening to the hunter"s tale, the eye was taking note of these her tender ministrations, and the heart was setting them down to the score of a great love which would not be denied. "Twas altogether as I would have had it; and yet the thought came unbidden that she might spare a n.i.g.g.ard moment and the breath to ask me how I did. And because she would not, I do think my burns smarted the crueler.
It was to have surcease of these extra smartings that I turned my back upon the trio under the flaring torch and took up with Ephraim Yeates the pressing question of the moment.
"As I take it, we may not linger here," I said. "Have you marked out a line of retreat?"