Kitabı oku: «The White Squaw», sayfa 6
Chapter Twenty.
Still Another Sorrow
Disappointed and chafed, the two chiefs returned in all haste to the Indian encampment.
But few words had been spoken between them on their way from the hill. A firm pressure of his uncle’s hand was proof that Wacora, once embarked in the impending contest, would remain faithful to its end.
It needs no speech among true men to establish confidence. Between the two chiefs it was mutual.
As they neared the spot where the tribe had pitched their tents, an unusual excitement was observable. Men and women were conversing in little groups, animated apparently by the receipt of some startling news.
The two chiefs at first imagined that the result of their interview was already known; but on reflection, the impossibility of the thing became apparent to them, and their surprise was extreme.
All at once they saw Nelatu hastening towards them.
The young man seemed ready to drop as if from fatigue. His looks told that he was a prey to the keenest anxiety.
On arriving before the two chiefs, he was for some moments unable to speak.
Words rose to his tongue, but they found no articulate utterance. His lips seemed glued together. Drops of sweat glistened upon his brow.
The father, with a dreadful prescience of new sorrows, trembled at the sight of his son.
“Nelatu,” he said, “what anguish awaits me? Of what fresh disaster do you bring the tidings? Speak! speak!”
The young Indian again essayed, but only succeeded in muttering “Sansuta!”
“Sansuta! What of her? Is she dead? Answer me!”
“No; she is not dead. Oh! father be calm – have courage – she is – ”
“Speak, boy, or I shall go mad! What of her?”
“She is gone!”
“Gone! Whither?”
“I have sought her everywhere. I only heard of her departure after you left the encampment. Bury your tomahawk in my brain if you will, for I have been the cause.”
“What does the boy rave about? What does it all mean? Has the Great Spirit cursed me in all my hopes? Speak, Nelatu. Where is your sister? You say she is gone. Gone! Gone! With whom?”
“With Warren Rody!”
Oluski uttered a shriek of mingled rage and grief, pressed his hand upon his heart, and reeling, would have fallen to the earth but for Wacora’s arm, at that instant thrown around him.
The two young men bent over his prostrate form, which his nephew had gently laid upon the sward.
A few faint, murmuring words escaped from his lips; so faint, indeed, that they were not comprehended by either son or nephew.
The frown which had gathered on his brow in his interview with Elias Rody gradually gave place to a gentle smile. His eyes, for an instant, rested sorrowfully on the face of Nelatu, then on Wacora, and were closed for ever!
With that look had his life ended. The spirit of the Seminole Chief had departed to a better land.
Wounded in his friendship, doubly wounded in his pride, cruelly stabbed by the desertion of his own daughter and the weakness of his own son, outraged as friend and father, the old man’s heart had burst within his bosom!
Tenderly covering the body with his blanket, Wacora stooped and kissed the cold brow in silence, registering a vow of vengeance upon his murderers!
Nelatu, stunned by the suddenness of the event, hid his face in his hands, and gave way to lamentation and tears.
That evening the remains of their chief were interred in a temporary grave, around which the warriors of the tribe, by their own consent now commanded by Wacora, joined in an oath of sure and ample vengeance. Coupled with their oath was the declaration that war and rapine should not cease until the hill was again their own, and the body of their beloved chief laid peacefully beside the bones of his ancestors.
That night the red pole was erected in their encampment, and under the glare of pine torches was performed around it the fearful scalp-dances of the tribe.
The white sentinels upon the hill saw afar off the fiendlike performance, and, as around echoed in their ears their wild shriek, they turned trembling from the hill, and cursed Elias Rody!
Chapter Twenty One.
Wacora Chosen Chief
Wacora was unanimously elected war chief of the tribe over which his uncle had long ruled. Nelatu’s claims were so slight, his ability so deficient, that not one of the warriors wished to nominate him for the important position.
To Wacora the honour was of inestimable value. By its means there was now a hope for the realisation of his long-cherished dream – the redemption of the red-man by the union of all the tribes into one powerful nation.
He instantly dispatched messengers to the braves of his own sub-tribe, summoning them to Tampa Bay, to take part in the conflict.
He was answered by the speedy arrival of a large and well-armed force, who, mingling with Oluski’s people, now became one community.
Obedient to his mandate, they continued to preserve an ominously peaceful attitude towards the settlers, who, but for a knowledge to the contrary, might have comforted themselves with a belief that the red men had left the bay.
But although unseen, their presence was not unfelt. The news of Oluski’s death had spread a feeling of alarm among the white colonists, which the heartless and assumed indifference of Elias Rody and his adherents could not dismiss from their minds.
The “governor” seemed to have returned to the courses of his early life. He had for many years been a man of sober habits; but since the building of his new house a change had come over him. He had begun to drink freely, and in the excitement of preparation for the defence of his usurped property, he found a thousand excuses for the indulgence of that appetite so long kept under control.
Still another matter gave discomfort to the governor. His son had been for some time missing from the settlement, and in a mysterious manner. His disappearance had a marked effect on his father’s temper, and when not cursing himself for the general discomfort he had caused, he cursed the son for adding to it!
It will thus be seen that although Elias Rody had prepared his own bed, and was obliged to lie upon it, it was proving anything but a bed of roses.
Had it not been for the presence of his daughter Alice, the new mansion in which he now lived, and for which he might yet have to pay dearly, would have been a perfect pandemonium to him.
That amiable girl, by her gentle behaviour, did much to soften the rude, inharmonious elements around her; and the roughest of her father’s roystering companions were silent and respectful in her presence.
She was like a ministering angel among those who had taken refuge within the stockade. She never seemed to tire of attending upon them or their wants. Her kind sympathetic voice and assiduous care were of inestimable service to the sick, who blessed her in their hearts.
Nothing in the meantime had been heard of her brother Warren.
Crookleg had also disappeared, although no one particularly missed him.
Cris Carrol, the hunter, had not returned to the settlement. In some distant savanna he was no doubt tranquilly passing his time, at peace with all the world. Such was the condition of affairs.
The first preparations for strife between the Whites and Indians had been made; and to several other outrages, similar to that committed by Elias Rody, may be traced the causes of that Seminole war which cost the government of the United States some thousands of lives, along with several millions of dollars, to say nought of the reputation of six hitherto distinguished generals.
Chapter Twenty Two.
A Conversation between Cousins
The tranquil state of affairs did not last for long.
The Indians, eager to revenge Oluski’s death, wore impatient of the restraint Wacora would have imposed upon them, and at a council convened for that purpose, they determined to attack the stockade upon the hill.
This determination was hastened by several rencontres which had taken place in the outlying districts.
A small party of the red men, led by Maracota, had pillaged and destroyed a plantation.
Near the bay they had been met by some of the white settlers as they were returning from their work of destruction.
In the mêlée which ensued a number of Indians were killed, while their white adversaries met with little loss.
These and some individual cases of contest had worked the red men up to a pitch of savage earnestness that took all Wacora’s temporising power to restrain.
He knew the character of the people he had to deal with too well to hazard opposition to their will, the more so as his own desire for vengeance was as deep and earnest, but more deadly than theirs.
One thought occupied his mind nobler than that of revenge – the regeneration of the Indian race.
A chimera it may have been, but still his great ambition.
He thus spoke to the assembled chiefs —
“I do not urge upon you to withhold vengeance for injuries done to our race by the white enemy. I only desire to make it more full and terrible. This is but the beginning of a long list of retributions, the overflowing of accumulated wrongs, the first step towards freedom and redemption! To take that step we must be patient until certain of success. Then begins a warfare that will only end with the annihilation of our hated enemies and in a new existence for the red men! Have I spoken well?”
Loud approbation greeted him from the assembled warriors; but such is the inconsistency of human character that individually they devised means for immediate retaliation on the settlers.
Hence the several encounters which had already taken place.
Nelatu, mortified at his own weakness, was among the warriors addressed by Wacora.
On returning from the council, the young chief approached his cousin.
“Nelatu, you would do something to make up for your blind infatuation, that has led to such misfortunes?”
“I would, Wacora, I would. My father’s face seems always before me, reproaching me as my sister’s destroyer.”
“Then action is the only way by which to shake off the remorseful feeling. Our efforts have till now been fruitless in tracing the spot to which your sister has been carried. She must be found, and the punishment of the guilty made sure.”
“Not Sansuta. You would not injure her?”
Wacora smiled sadly, as he pressed his hand upon his heart.
“No, Nelatu, I would not injure your sister. Alas! I had already learned to love her. I would not hurt her for worlds. It is the wretch who has carried her away. I would have him suffer a thousand deaths, and every death more terrible than the other!”
“Tell me, what can I do? If I remain idle, I shall die!”
“Take three or four of my own people, follow every trail that promises to lead to where they are concealed, and having found the monster, bring him to me alive.”
Wacora’s eyes, as he uttered these words, blazed with passion.
“I would rather go alone,” said Nelatu.
“As you please; but remember, that there is one man you dare not trust, and yet he may be the means of finding Sansuta.”
“His name?”
“Crookleg, the negro.”
“But he, too, is missing.”
“I know it, and therefore he can lead you to their hiding-place, if he can be found. With Crookleg to assist you, you may succeed; without him your search will be fruitless.”
“How am I to find him?”
“By diligent search. He is not near the spot, but yet not so distant as to be ignorant of what is passing. He has the cunning of the wild cat; remember that.”
“I’ll be a match for him, never fear, cousin.”
Wacora glanced pityingly at the simple youth.
He thought of his confiding nature, and felt that if the only chance of finding Sansuta lay in cunning, they would never be discovered.
“Well, Nelatu, I have given you the best advice I can. Will you undertake the search?”
“I will!”
“When?”
“At once, Wacora.”
With these words the cousins separated.
Chapter Twenty Three.
The Strayed Canoe
That night Nelatu left the Indian camp.
Wacora had given him a few hints by which he thought his search for Crookleg might be facilitated.
He had suggested that the negro lay hid within the neighbouring swamp.
This wilderness, difficult to traverse, was of great extent. It was only by a knowledge of its intricate paths that it could be successfully explored.
Nelatu, fully appreciating the difficulty of his undertaking, was more than usually depressed.
This journey through the track of dry timber was easy enough.
On emerging from it he found himself on a broad savanna.
On the other side of which lay the swamp to which Wacora had directed him.
Its gloomy appearance struck a chill to the young chief’s heart.
Could it by any possibility be the place selected by Warren for Sansuta’s concealment?
He almost hoped his search for her in its sombre fastnesses might prove futile.
Its aspect was especially forbidding at the time Nelatu reached it, which was in the early morning.
A heavy fog rose from its dark waters, clinging around the rank vegetation, and veiling the mosses and spectral limbs of the decayed trees.
A foetid breath exhaled from the thick undergrowth, and the air seemed charged with poison.
No note of bird was heard; no bloom of flower seen. Death in life was everywhere apparent!
Carefully, and with the quick natural instinct of his race, Sansuta’s brother struck upon a well-defined trail leading inwardly from the borders of the morass.
Following this with care, he had soon made considerable progress.
The sun rising higher as he advanced, only revealed more clearly the gloomy character of the scene.
The thick mist became dispelled; the verdure, dark but rich, glistened with drops of moisture, and the ghostly moss waved to and fro, stirred by a gentle breeze that had helped to dissipate the fog.
With the bright sky, however, there came a corresponding lightness over the young man’s spirit, and a doubt arose in his mind as to the guilt of his former friend.
“I cannot believe all that he has been accused of. Perhaps he is not guilty of carrying off Sansuta. I always trusted him. Why should he be so evil without a suspicion having crossed my mind that he was so? He has not been seen since she disappeared; but yet Crookleg might be the guilty one. If all I have been told be true, and Warren be the man, he shall bitterly pay for his crime. But I will not believe it until I am convinced ’tis so.”
It will be seen that Nelatu was still a firm friend, ready to doubt even villainy.
Suddenly the trail he was following came to an end.
A deep black lagoon was before his feet.
How to cross it?
Its unrippled bosom showed it to be deep.
Here and there jagged cypress stumps, to which clung drooping parasites, stood out of it.
Nelatu felt that the trail he had followed was purposely terminated at the edge of the lake, doubtless to be discovered on its opposite shore.
How to cross it? That was the question.
Stooping, he scanned the shore, but failed to trace any further evidence of the footsteps of man.
He was on the point of retracing his path in order to look for a trail, when he was arrested by a faint sound, as from a movement in the water.
It was very faint, but unmistakeable in its character.
It was the stroke of an oar!
He strained his eyes to catch a view of the boat which he felt sure was traversing the lake.
After some time spent in the endeavour, his scrutiny was rewarded.
A strange tableau was revealed to him.
At a distance appeared the shadowy form of a canoe, in which two figures were seated.
The fog, like a dull silver veil, was still spread over the lagoon, and his efforts to recognise the phantom-like forms were unavailing.
The intervening curtain of vapour baffled even the keen eye-sight of an Indian.
He hallooed to the spectral figures until the swamp re-echoed his shouts.
In vain!
No response came from the silent voyagers.
He fancied that the measured pulling of the oars for an instant ceased, but so dim and unreal did it all appear, that he began to doubt the evidence of his senses.
As he gazed the canoe glided silently out of sight.
Muttering an angry adjuration at the ghostly oarsman, he threw himself upon the ground.
Overcome with the fatiguing journey, and dispirited by his fruitless search, he soon fell into a deep slumber.
The last film of the fog was now dispelled by the powerful rays of the sun.
Birds sang in the trees above him, and from the black waters of the lagoon a huge caiman crawled up the banks to bask in the noontide glare.
Still Nelatu slumbered.
He slept until the meridian heat had passed, and the evening approached, seeming to lull all nature into silence.
The young man’s sleep was placid. With his head pillowed on his arm, he lay like one dead.
From this sweet unconsciousness he awoke with a start.
A rippling sound as of some craft cleaving the water, once more fell upon his ear.
Had the phantom canoe returned?
A glance answered the question.
Drifting near the shore was an empty dug-out.
The broken manilla rope, dragging at the stern, told him why it was adrift.
Without hesitation he plunged into the water, and in a few strokes reached the straying craft.
Scrambling into it, he seized an oar found lying in its bottom, and paddled back to the place whence he had started. Placing his gun ready beside him, he again paddled off, and rowed into the centre of the lake, steering his course, as nearly as he could remember, in the direction which, in the morning, he had observed the canoe to take.
The spot, as he had marked it, was near a huge cypress tree.
It proved to be at a greater distance than he thought, and the sun had well sunk in the western sky before he arrived at it.
Once there he came to a stop. Those he sought had evidently either gone further out into the open water of the lagoon or had made for one or other of the numerous narrow canals which debouched into it.
Selecting that which appeared of the greatest width, he plied his oar and advanced towards it.
Chapter Twenty Four.
A Smoke Interrupted
Although Cris Carrol was absent from the immediate neighbourhood of the settlement, he was none the less informed of what had happened since his departure.
Several of the colonists, alarmed at the prospect of affairs, had quietly left Tampa Bay, and, meeting with the hunter, had told him of the events that had transpired within the past month.
The backwoodsman’s foresight had not deceived him.
The whites, by which he meant Elias and his followers, had not heeded his advice, and worse had come of it.
The hunter was nothing, if not oracular.
“Wal,” said he, “Governor Rody thought himself smart when he set to work buildin’ that thar frame-house of his’n on the red-man’s ground, but I reckon he’ll pay for it yet in bloody scalps and broken bones. Confound the old cormorant; his house will cause all of them poor white settlers no end of trouble. It don’t bear thinkin’ on, that it don’t. As for his black-hearted whelp of a son, darn me if I wouldn’t like to put an ounce o’ lead into his carcass, if it war only to larn him some human feelin’.”
“But won’t you go back to the settlement now, and see if your presence can do any good?”
To this question, propounded by one of the fugitive settlers, Cris answered —
“Good! What good can I do now? No, lad, the fat’s in the fire this time, and, may be, I may better help some poor critter away from the place than anigh it. I’ll tell ye what it is, and it aint no use denyin’ it. Them there red devils means mischief, and the old cuss Rody knows it by this time. The chief, Oluski, what you tell me air dead, war worth a whole settlement of Rody’s – barrin’ one – that is, barrin’ one.”
“And who may that be?”
“Who but his darter. The most beautifullest gal that this coon ever set eyes on. Bless her, I hope no hurt won’t come to her, and there shan’t either, if Cris Carrol can prevent it.”
In this manner did the honest hunter comment on the alarming news brought by the fugitives from Tampa Bay.
Not that he approached the spot closely. No; he had formed an idea of the manner in which he might be most useful; and, to do so, he must carefully avoid any appearance of interference between the contending parties.
He, therefore, pursued his occupation of hunting; but contrived materially to narrow the circle of his excursions.
Often as the image of Alice Rody presented itself to his mind, he would heave a painful sigh.
“How such a gal came to be a child of that old trait’rous heathen is more nor I can reckon up. It’s one of them thar things as philosophers call startlers!”
In one of these moralising, wandering moods the old hunter was seated on a tree stump on the afternoon of a day that had been more than usually fatiguing to him.
He knocked the ashes from his pipe, took a plug of tobacco from his pouch, and began to cut up a supply for another smoke.
“Ah!” muttered he, shaking his head, “I remember the time when there was happiness in the savannahs, and when them red-skins were ready to help the white man rather than fight agin them. Them times is gone from hyar for ever!”
He struck a light with his flint, and applied it to his pipe.
Just as he had puffed two or three small clouds of smoke, and was preparing to enjoy himself to the fullest extent, a flash suddenly appeared, the pipe was knocked from his mouth, and the whizz of a bullet sounded in his ears!
To grasp his rifle and shelter himself behind a tree, on the side opposite to that from which the shot proceeded, was but the work of an instant.
“Red-skins, by the eternal! I know it by the twang of that rough-cast bullet.”
Whether red-skins or white men, he did not find it easy to be certain, although he was up to every move in such an emergency.
He knew that to look in the direction of the shot was to expose himself to almost certain death.
He listened with breathless anxiety for the slightest sound, which might give evidence of the movements of the enemy.
All remained perfectly still.
Adopting a very old ruse, he stuck his skin cap upon the barrel of his rifle, and held it out a few inches beyond the trunk of the tree, by the side of which he had ensconced himself.
A flash, a report, and it was pierced by a bullet!
He was now fully satisfied that there was but one enemy with whom he had to cope.
Had there been more, the first bullet, which struck the pipe from his mouth, would have been followed by another as quickly, but perhaps more surely aimed.
With a rapid glance he surveyed the ground behind him.
It was covered with undergrowth and fallen timber.
His resolution was at once taken.
He fell flat upon the earth, and noiselessly gliding away reached a tree, distant some paces, and in an oblique direction from the one he had left.
From that spot he made his way to another, at a greater angle, and about equally distant from the second.
The movements were affected with such agile stealthiness, as to be entirely unperceived by his unseen enemy.
By the change of position he now commanded a side view of his unknown antagonist, who, unsuspicious of it, was keeping a close watch upon Carrol’s supposed shelter.
To raise his rifle to his shoulder was a natural action of the old hunter.
Instead of pulling the trigger, however, some idea seemed to cross his mind, and pausing, he scanned his adversary.
He saw it was Maracota who had fired at him!
Carrol knew Maracota as a faithful and devoted follower of the late chief, and he felt loth to take his life, although he might easily have done so.
The better thought prevailed.
He felt convinced that the bullet fired by the Indian had been aimed in reality at one for whom Maracota had mistaken him.
Advancing cautiously towards the unconscious warrior, the old backwoodsman crept from tree to tree until he was close upon him.
Not anticipating an attack from the rear, and still fancying he commanded the hiding-place of the white man, Maracota, in spite of his Indian cunning, was completely in the white man’s power.
A loud shout, a quick bound, and Carrol had him in his grasp.
With one hand upon his throat, the hunter had pinned him to the earth.
“Not a word, you darned catamount, or I’ll run my knife into your ribs! So you thought to circumwent me, did yer, with your Injun treachery? What would you say now if I war to raise your har, ’stead of letting you take mine?”
Maracota could make no reply to the question, as the pressure on his throat stopped his breath as well as speech.
The backwoodsman saw by the expression upon the Indian’s face, that his own surmise had been correct.
He was not the victim Maracota would have doomed to death.
It was a mistake, but rather a serious one.
Loosening his hold, he suffered the astonished Maracota to rise to his feet.
“Yes; I can tell you’ve made a random shot at me. Next time, try and see a man’s face ’fore you pulls trigger on him, or it might be awkward. There’s no harm done, only a worse shot nor yours I never saw. I’d eat my rifle, stock, lock and barrel, afore I’d own to sich shooting. Who war it you were arter?”
Having at length recovered breath, the Indian was able to answer.
“I took you for Warren Rody.”
“Much obleeged for the compliment. Do I look such a skunk as that fellow? If I do, put a brace of bullets into me, and we won’t quarrel.”
The warrior grimly smiled.
“Maracota has sworn to avenge Oluski’s death. Warren Rody must die!”
“Wal, let him die. I shan’t stop you from riddin’ the world of such as he. What made you follow my trail?”
“It was no trail I followed. I have been seeking one from the north; yours came from the east.”
“Right you air; that’s whar I hail from last.”
“Have you seen anything of him, or Sansuta?”
“Hark hyar, Injun. Altho’ I might draw blood in the scoundrel if I saw him, I ain’t a man-hunter, and that’s why I haint been a follerin’ any trail of his’n.”
Maracota’s eager look gave place to one of despondency, as he muttered, —
“Not found yet! Where can they be?”
“Ah, whar? It ain’t Warren as has hid whar he can’t be found. Some knowin’ hand has put him up to it.”
“Yes, Maracota thinks so. It must be the negro Crookleg.”
“Crookleg! Is that all-fired nigger varmint mixed up with him? That makes a brace of the durndest hounds that ever run together. Who told you that Crookleg helped young Rody?”
“The chief thinks so.”
“Wal, then, I’ll bet a ’possum skin agin a musk rat’s that he’s right. Your chief, Wacora, is as likely an Injun at reck’nin up the merits o’ a case as this coon knows on. Now you’ve missed liftin’ my scalp, what do you intend doin’?”
“Go on looking for the chief who stole Oluski’s heart, find him, and kill him.”
The glance that accompanied these words was full of deadly determination.
“Wal, go, and good luck attend you. Don’t ask me to jine you, I tell you I ain’t no man-hunter nor never will be; only, if either of them thar scamps should be out walkin’ whar I chance to be, they had better have met with a mad bar than this Cris Carrol. Never mind sayin’ a word about that bad shot o’ yourn. The moment I seed you I knowed you didn’t mean it for me, only next time be more partiklar, that’s all.”
Without making reply, Maracota turned away, and was soon lost under the shadows of the forest.
As soon as he was out of sight, the old hunter renewed his preparations for a smoke.
Drawing from his pouch (which seemed to contain everything that the heart of a hunter could desire) another pipe, he was soon once more sending clouds of blue smoke up into the air.
“If that Maracota meets Warren Rody or Crookleg he’ll be an awkward customer to either or both on ’em; and that he may meet ’em he has Cris Carrol’s best prayers and wishes.”
With this homely but sincere expression of his desires, the backwoodsman ceased to think of the deadly danger lately threatening himself.
