I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas, and by the laws of G.o.d and man had earned his death. The tortured slave had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would give him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bullet planted in my enemy"s heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.
All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold on red, across the breasting of his captain"s riding coat. One little crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand.
But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "O Ma.s.sa! Ma.s.sa Cap"m! G.o.d "a" mussy--shoot po" n.i.g.g.a and let "um die!"
I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king"s musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.
And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cl.u.s.ter thick upon it, I was surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.
XV
IN WHICH A HATCHET SINGS A MAN TO SLEEP
In such a coil as this I"d looped about me there was nothing for it, as it seemed, but to draw the steel and die as a soldier should. So I broke cover on the forest side of the holly thicket with a yell as fierce as theirs, and picked a tree to set my back against, and ran for it.
I never reached the tree. In mid career, when all the Cherokee wolf pack was bursting through the holly tangle at my heels, two men, a white man and an Indian, ran in ahead, as I supposed to cut me off. Just then the dry roof of the hunting lodge roared aflame, reddening the forest far and near. The light was at my back and on the faces of the two who ran to meet me. A great sob swelled in my throat and choked me, but I ran the faster. For these were my dear lad and the friendly Catawba, charging gallantly to cover my retreat.
It was a ready help in time of need. They ran in bravely, the chief ahead, twirling his tomahawk for the throw, with d.i.c.k a pace to right and rear, his two great pistols brandished and the grandsire of all the broadswords dangling by a thong at his wrist.
"Follow the chief!" he shouted in pa.s.sing; and at the word the Catawba stopped short, sent his hatchet whistling into the yapping pack behind me, and swerved to run aside and point the way for me.
Left to myself, I hope I should have had the grace to stand with Jennifer. But at the turning point of indecision the quick-witted Indian read my thought, and s.n.a.t.c.hing the sword from my hand, gave me no choice but to follow him.
So I ran with him; but as I fled I looked behind and saw a sight to put the ancient hero tales to the blush. One man against two-score my brave d.i.c.k stood, while through the underwood the mounted soldiery came to make the odds still greater.
He never flinched for all the hurtling missiles sent on ahead to cut him down, nor gave a glance aside to where the hors.e.m.e.n were deploying to surround him. As I looked, the two great pistols belched in the very faces of the nearest Cherokees; and in the momentary check the firearms made, the basket-hilted claymore went to work, rising and falling like a weaver"s beam.
I saw no more; but some heart-bursting minutes later, when Jennifer came racing on behind to share the flight his heroic stand had made a possibility, the swelling sob choked me once again; and when I thought of what this his rescue of me meant to him, I could have blubbered like a boy.
But there was little time or s.p.a.ce to give remorse an inning. The Cherokees, checked but for the moment, were storming hotly at our heels.
And as we ran I heard the shouted command of Falconnet to his mounted men: "A rescue! Right oblique, and head them in the road! Gallop, you devils!"
We ran in Indian file, I at the chief"s heels and Jennifer at mine. I followed the Catawba blindly; and being as yet little better than half a man in breath and muscle, was well-nigh spent before we crashed down through a tangled briar thicket into the river road.
We were in time, but with no fraction of a minute to spare. We could hear the _pad-pad-pad_ of the light-footed runners close upon us, following now by the noise we made; and on our left the air was trembling to the thunder of the mounted men coming at a break-neck gallop down the road.
"Thank G.o.d!" says Richard, with a quick eyeshot to right and left in the lesser gloom of the open. "I was afeard even the chief might miss the place in the dark. Down the bank to the river!--quick, man, and cautious! If they smell us out now, we"re no better than buzzard-meat!"
And when we reached the water"s edge: "You taught me how to paddle a pirogue, Jack; I hope you haven"t lost the knack of it yourself."
"No," said I; and the three of us slid the hollowed log into the stream.
We were afloat in shortest order, holding the canoe against the current by clinging to the overhanging trees that fringed the bank; yet with paddles poised for a second dash for freedom should the need arise. I should have dipped forthwith to save the precious minutes, but Jennifer stayed me.
"Hist!" he whispered. "Hold steady and listen. They can not see us from above; mayhap we"ve thrown them off the scent."
I thought it most unlikely; but his guess was right and mine was wrong.
Though any of these savages could lift a trail in daylight, following it at top speed like a trained blood-hound, yet now the darkness baffled them.
So there was some running to and fro in the road above our heads, and then the troopers galloped down. Followed hastily a labored confab through the linguister, broken in the midst by a fury of hot oaths from Falconnet; and then the chase swept on toward the plantations, and we were left to make their losing of us sure by whatsoever means we chose.
We paddled slowly up stream in silence, keeping well within the blacker shadow of the tree fringe. When we came opposite the glowing ruins of the hunting lodge, Jennifer backed upon his paddle.
"You"ll go ash.o.r.e?" said he.
I said I would, adding: "They have slaughtered poor old Darius, and I am loath to leave his bones for the buzzards to pick."
He made no comment other than to swear in sympathy. When the pirogue grounded, the Indian was out like a cat, to vanish phantom-wise among the trees. I followed in some clumsier fashion, leaving Jennifer to keep the canoe; but half way up the hill he joined me, and would not turn back for all my urging. "No; hang me if I"ll let you out of eye-grip again," was all he would say; and so we went together, and were together at the seeing of what the glowing ember-heap would show us.
Poor Tomas had his sepulture already. His cord had burned in two and let him down so close beside the cabin wall that all the blazing debris from the overhanging eaves had made his funeral pile. Darius lay as I had last seen him; and him we buried in the maize clearing at the back, with the ember glow for funeral lights.
It was a chanceful thing to do. Since the Cherokees had left their dead and wounded, and Falconnet the body of his trooper who had yielded me the musket, there was small doubt they would return. Yet we had time to dig a shallow grave for my old henchman; to dig and fill it up again; and afterward to make a circuit round the burning pile to reach the river side once more.
When we had launched the canoe, and were afloat and ready for the start, the Catawba was still missing.
"Where is the chief, think you?" I asked; but d.i.c.k"s answer, if, indeed, he gave me any, was lost in a chorus of ear splitting yells rending the silence of the night like demon cries. Then a single ululation, long drawn and fair blood chilling, answered back, and Jennifer swept the pirogue stern to strand with a quick paddle stroke.
"That last was Uncanoola"s war cry; they"ve doubled back in time to catch him at it!" he cried. "Stand by to drive her when I give the word!
Here he comes!"
Down the sloping hillside, looking, in the red glow of the ember heap, more like a flying demon than a man, came the Catawba, one hand gripping the scalping-knife, the other flung aloft to flaunt his terrible trophies in sight of his pursuers. They were so close upon him that waiting promised death for all of us; so Jennifer dipped again to send the canoe a broad jump from the bank.
"Ready!" he cried. "He"ll take the water like a fish, and we can pick him up afterward--_Now_!"
I heard the clean-cut dive of the Indian, and struck the paddle deep to balance Jennifer"s stroke. But as I bent to put my back into it, some flying missile caught me fair behind the ear, and but for Jennifer"s quick wit I should have swamped the crazy shallop. In a flash he jerked me flat between his knees and sent the pirogue with a mighty thrust beyond the zone of fire light.
At that, though all the sense was beaten out of me, I was alive enough to hear the savage yells of disappointed rage behind us; these and the spitting crackle of a dozen rifles fired at random in the darkness. But afterward all sounds, save the rhythmic dip and drip of Jennifer"s paddle, faded on the sense of hearing till, as it would seem, this gentle monody of dipping blade and tinkling drops became a crooning lullaby to blot out all the years that lay between, and make me once again a little child sinking asleep in my young mother"s arms.
XVI
HOW JENNIFER THREW A MAIN WITH DEATH
"Tis a sure mark of healthful sleep that it never makes account of time.
No odds how long the night, "tis but a moment from the lapse of consciousness to its recovery in the morning. But this deep sleep that crept upon me as I lay in the pirogue, listening to the tinkling drip from Jennifer"s paddle, was not of healthful weariness; and when I came awake from it there was a dim and troubled vista of vague and broken dreams to measure off the longest night I could ever remember.
The place of this awakening was a burrow in the earth. My bed of bearskins over fragrant pine-tufts was spread upon the ground, and by the flickering light of a handful of fire I could see the earth walls of the burrow, which were worn smooth as if the place had been the well-used den of some wild creature. But overhead there was the mark of human occupancy, since the earth-arch was sooted and blackened with the reek of many fires.
When I stirred there was another stir beyond the handful of fire, and Jennifer came to kneel beside me, taking my hand and chafing it as a tender-hearted woman might, and asking if I knew him.
"Know you? Why should I not?" I said, wondering why the words took so many breaths between.
"O Jack!" was all I had in answer; but when he had found a tongue to babble out his joy, I learned the why and wherefore. Once more grim death had reached for me, lying await in the twirled tomahawk that set me dreaming of my mother"s lap and lullaby. For a week I had lain here upon the bed of pine-tufts, poised upon the brink of the death pit with only my dear lad to hold and draw me back.