He took a good mouthful, and she followed. Eva forced the last bit uponher father, who, in spite of himself, was compelled to eat fullytwo-thirds of the piece, which, after all, was the proper thing to do.
Before the feast was finished Aunt Peggy had another slice ready, whichwas handed over to Maggie, who walked directly to where Fred Godfreysat on the log.
"Brother Fred, this is for _you_."
He consented to share it with her as their parent was doing with littleEva, and of course she complied.
While this scene was going on the Indians were lolling near at hand,smoking their pipes, and exchanging a few guttural grunts. They were allon the ground, evidently in a more patient mood than Jake Golcher, whostood a short distance back from the camp-fire, scowling and angry, thathe should be compelled to stand still and see the captives fed, while hewas hungry and unable to obtain a mouthful.
Even Habakkuk McEwen was not forgotten, Maggie ministering to his wants,though, of course, she did not alternate the feasting as she did withFred. Habakkuk asked her to do so, but she refused so pointedly that hedid not repeat the request.
"This is interesting," muttered the angered Tory to himself, as helooked on; "that pig belongs to us, and we've got to set back and letthem rebels swaller it before our eyes. I'll be hanged if I'll standit."
He was fast working up to a dangerous point of anger, which was notmollified when he noticed that Aunt Peggy herself now and then placed alarge piece in her mouth, after which her jaws worked with great vigor.
"See here, old woman," he called out, "that pork don't belong to you,and I reckon it's about time the owner got some."
He did not approach her, but he looked as savage as a sharpenedtomahawk.
Aunt Peggy made no reply and acted as though she heard him not; but, hadany one noticed her closely, he would have seen her jaws working moreenergetically than ever, while her eyes took on a little sharper gleamthan before.
She, too, was rapidly reaching an explosive mood, although theparticular individual against whom she felt the rising anger failed totake warning.
"She's the worst hag I ever seen," muttered Jake, glancing askance ather, but still keeping a respectful distance.
The Senecas sat somewhat apart in the same lolling attitudes, and someof them looked as if they anticipated what was coming.
A minute later, Aunt Peggy finished another slice, which she askedMaggie to take.
"Thank you, auntie, we have enough," replied our heroine, Eva saying thesame.
"I think I could eat a few pounds more," remarked Habakkuk, "but I wouldprefer to see Mr. Golcher get something. He is a good fellow, and orterbeen sarved first."
"If none of you want it, I'll eat it myself," observed the ancientmaiden, who thereupon began disposing of it.
"That's gone about fur enough!" exclaimed Golcher, striding toward her;"some folks haven't got no gratertude, and I'll teach you--"
As he uttered this threat, or rather partly uttered it, he was at AuntPeggy's elbow in a wrathful mood. All at once, she whirled about, andsprang at him like a tigress.
"You'll teach me manners, will you? There! Take _that_! and THAT!"
The attack was so unexpected that Golcher threw up his empty hands in aweak way, and lowered his head, closing his eyes and trying to retreat,but she had grasped his long, straggling hair, and it came out by thehandfuls.
Instantly all was confusion. Mr. Brainerd laughed, and the Senecas, asthey sprang to their feet, made no effort to interfere. Indeed, therewas strong reason to believe they enjoyed the strange scene.
Aunt Peggy scratched and pulled with the most commendable enthusiasm,and her victim howled with pain.
"Take her off!" he shouted, "or she will kill me!"
Eva and Maggie ran forward, but the Indians actually laughed, and thetwo girls were unable to restrain her until she had spent her vengeance.Her victim was in a sorry plight, and in his blind retreat he tumbledbackward over the log, springing instantly to his feet, and actuallydashing off in the darkness.
"There!" gasped Aunt Peggy, "I've been aching to get my hands on you,and now I feel better!"
At this juncture several of the Senecas uttered excited exclamations,for the discovery was made that during the hubbub one of the prisonershad escaped, and his name was Fred Godfrey.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Aunt Peggy Carey "builded better than she knew."
In her fierce attack on the Tory she administered well-meritedpunishment, leaving him in a demoralized condition, so thoroughlywhipped, indeed, that for several minutes he was dazed and not himself.
Her friends trembled to think of the vengeance he would visit upon herfor the act, but the good lady herself seemed to have no apprehensions,and, turning about, she carefully arranged her hair and bonnet, andresumed cooking slices from the carcass of the pig, intending now towait upon the Senecas, who had been kind enough not to interfere whileshe attended to the other important duty.
What the next step would have been was hard to guess, but for the suddendiscovery which we have made known.
One of the captives was found to be missing, and he was the mostimportant of all, being no less a personage than Lieutenant FredGodfrey.
The instant Aunt Peggy assailed Golcher the youth saw that theopportunity for which he was waiting had come, and he took advantage ofit.
The uproar for the moment was great. The captives on the log sprang totheir feet, and the Senecas fixed their attention on the couple, seeingwhich, Mr. Brainerd said to his son:
"_Now's your time, Fred!_"
He turned as he spoke, and saw the lieutenant vanishing like a shot inthe gloom. When the warriors noted his absence, he was at a safedistance in the wood.
Fully a half-dozen Senecas sprang off in the darkness, using everyeffort to recapture the prisoner, who could be at no great distance, nomatter how fast he had traveled.
Had Fred given away to the excitement of the occasion, and lost thatcoolness that had stood him so well more than once on that dreadfulafternoon and evening, he hardly would have escaped recapture before hewent a hundred yards; for the Iroquois were so accustomed to the waysof the woods, they would have seized such advantage and come upon himwhile he was in the immediate neighborhood.
They believed he would continue running and stumbling in the darkness,and thus betray his whereabouts.
And that is precisely what Fred Godfrey did not do.
He ran with all speed through the woods, tripping and picking himselfup, and struggling forward, until he was far beyond the reach of thelight of the camp-fire, when all at once he caught the signal whoops ofthe Indians, and he knew they were after him.
Then, instead of keeping on in his flight, he straightened up andstepped along with extreme caution, literally feeling every foot of theway.
Thus it was he avoided betraying his situation to the cunning warriors,who, in their apparently aimless pursuit, used their ears, and indeedevery sense at their command.
It was because Fred himself did the same that he eluded those on histrack. Listening, he heard the approach of one of the Iroquois. Insteadof hurrying away he stopped, and backing against a tree, stood asmotionless as the trunk itself.
The dense summer vegetation overhead prevented a single beam ofmoonlight reaching him, so that he was secure from observation, so longas he retained his self-possession and made no blunder.
His nerves were under a fearful strain within the next three minutes,for, as if guided by fate, not one but two of the Senecas dashed throughthe wood, and instead of going by, halted not more than six feet fromwhere he stood.
Why they should have stopped thus was more than he could conjecture,unless they really knew where he was and were sure they could placetheir hands on him when they wished.
It was hard to understand how this could be, and Fred refused to believeit, though the actions of the Indians were certainly remarkable.
What more trying situation could there be? It was like some nightmare inwhich th
e victim sees the foe swiftly approaching and is without thepower to move so much as a finger.
But Fred did not lose heart. If they had learned where he was, he meantto use his feet and not to yield so long as he could resist.
He tugged at his bonds, but they were fastened so securely that he couldnot start them. To loosen them so as to free his hands must necessarilybe the work of some time, and he knew how it could be done, when heshould be free of his enemies.
But the bonds, when two of the Senecas were at his elbow, were torture,and but for his strength of will he could not have avoided an outcry.
Fortunately, the suspense lasted but a few minutes. The Indians stoodsilent as if listening, and during that ordeal Fred scarcely drew hisbreath.
Then they exchanged some words in the gruff, exclamatory style peculiarto the red men, and again they paused and listened.
The other pursuers could be heard at different points, for most of themuttered several cautions but well-understood signals, some of which wereanswered by the two at Fred's elbow.
"Why should they stop here," thought he, "when they have every reason tothink I am threshing through the wood and getting farther away eachminute?"
Just then they began moving off, and immediately after, he caught thedim outlines of their figures as they crossed an open space and vanishedin the woods beyond.
Fred Godfrey did not stir for several minutes, but at the end of thattime he became satisfied that his whereabouts were unknown to theSenecas ranging through the wilderness in search of him, and he venturedto leave the tree.
CHAPTER XL.
For a single minute Mr. Brainerd was on the point of following in thefootsteps of Fred, and making a break for freedom: that was at theheight of the general confusion, when the majority of the Indiansstarted in pursuit.
Possibly such a prompt course might have succeeded, but he allowed thecritical moment to pass, through fear that some additional cruelty wouldbe visited on the heads of those whom he left behind.
When Aunt Peggy resumed her culinary operations, the patriots sat downagain on the log, excited and fearful that the events of the last fewminutes would precipitate the crisis they had been dreading for hours.
Habakkuk McEwen was alarmed, but he could do nothing more than giveexpressions to his sympathy for the victim of the old lady's wrath,while he regretted, with an anguish which cannot be described, hisfailure to get away with Fred Godfrey, who, as it seemed to the NewEnglander, was the born favorite of fortune.
"Thank God!" was the fervent exclamation of Mr. Brainerd, as hecompressed his lips, "Fred is beyond their reach."
"Are you sure of that?" asked Maggie.
"Sure of it!" repeated her parent, turning his gaze on her, while hesmiled grimly. "Of course I am. When he escaped the clutches of QueenEsther to-day he had no darkness to help him, and the rascals were athis heels. Yet he got away safely, and he never would have fallen intotheir hands again but for his anxiety to help us. Now he is out theresomewhere in the woods, where it is as dark as Egypt, and do you supposehe is the fool to allow them to take him again? Not by a long shot."
Maggie was immeasurably relieved to hear these words of her parent,which, it may be said, removed every fear for her brother from herthoughts.
"But, father," she added, "what can he do, with his arms bound?"
"Faugh! what's that? We are tied with green withes or vines that hurtlike the mischief, but it will take only a few minutes to rub themagainst the corner of a stone or rock and separate them. Have no fearsabout Fred," continued her father, "these red skins can whoop and yell,and howl and crack their heels together, but they'll never have anothersuch a chance to scalp Fred Godfrey as they had a little while ago."
Relieved of this dread, Maggie's anxieties were centered upon herfriends.
Her heart bled for her father, who sat as proudly upright and defiant asthough at the head of a brigade of men; but she could only pray andutter brave words, in the hope of cheering him.
Poor Eva was so terrified that she cried continually. She clung to herbeloved parent, and, fortunately, as yet none of her captors made anyobjection. She was determined to stay by him to the last.
The American Indian admires bravery as much as does his civilizedenemy, and it needed no student of human nature to see that the few whoremained were as much disgusted as amused with the sorry figure cut bytheir Tory leader in his affray with Aunt Peggy Carey.
This was proven by their refusal to interfere, and by the grins thatappeared among them when the comedy was going on. But they were underthe leadership of the same Tory, and, when he came stumbling back fromhis fall over the log, and the lady resumed culinary operations, theSenecas became as owlishly glum as seems to be their nature.
They were helped in this feeling by the flight of Lieutenant Godfrey,the prisoner most prized. As it was, the entire party came near startingfor the young man, but, unfortunately, they checked themselves in timeto prevent a stampede on the part of the rest of the captives.
Jake Golcher, as we have said, came back dazed and pretty well subdued.A great deal of his straggling hair had been removed by Aunt Peggy, andhis countenance gridironed by her vigorous finger-nails.
He dropped down in a collapsed condition at one end of the log, removedfrom the captives, who, like the Indians, looked at him askance, halfdisposed to laugh outright, despite the alarming danger.
In the mean time, Aunt Peggy was broiling the slices of tender pig withsuch care that she had a couple finished.
"There," she exclaimed, as she tossed the two in the direction of theSenecas, "I like to see hog eat hog, and you might as well begin."
The facetious red men scrambled, like a lot of school-boys after ahandful of marbles, and had they been so many wolves, the food couldhardly have disappeared with greater celerity.
Paying no attention to the Tory, who sat on the fallen tree with hishead drooping forward and his eyes fixed on nothing, the warriorsstarted a curious scene.
Approaching quite close to Aunt Peggy, they crowded and pushed eachother, eagerly waiting when she should be ready to fling them the prizefor which their stomachs yearned.
All were on their feet, and their black eyes, and quick, fidgetingmovements, showed that their souls were in the business, or fun, as itmight be termed.
There can be little question that, incredible as it may seem, the actionof Aunt Peggy had rendered her somewhat of a favorite with the Indians.It is just such people who admire the vim and bravery of anyone--especially when not expected.
There can be no means of knowing, and yet it is safe to suspect, thatthe most reverential of these Senecas was the warrior who had receivedsuch a ringing slap in the face when he dared to touch his painted lipsto the virgin cheek of Aunt Peggy.
Such is human nature the world over. The red men laughed and tumbledabout, as they scrambled for the bits of meat, while even Aunt Peggy'sfeatures relaxed into a grim smile, when she looked upon the amusingperformance.
It was no more than natural that as she had gone up in the estimationof these dusky warriors, the one who had been vanquished sankcorrespondingly low.
Strange complications might result from this condition of affairs.
Perhaps a dozen or more slices of the pig were broiled and tossed amongthe struggling red men, by which time their appetites were so wellattended to that they lost a great deal of the vigor with which in thefirst place they scrambled for the food.
But during this same time, which was only a few minutes, Jake Golcherwas rapidly regaining a correct idea of the situation, and it was notlong before he raised his head and surveyed the scene with interest.
He straightened up and watched them a brief while, when the stingingscratches on his face reminded him of the episode in which he had cutsuch a sorry figure.
"She beats ten thousand wildcats," he muttered, glaring at Aunt Peggy,who just then was smiling at the efforts of the Indians to seize theslice of young pork she tossed toward them.
"I don
't understand how it was she knocked the spots out of me in thatstyle; it must have been her awful temper, and because she come at meafore I knowed anything about it."
Very probably the causes named had much to do with the result.
"Why didn't some of them Senecas pull her off? It's just like 'em to bepleased with it, and I'm sure the rebels busted themselves with laughterto see me catch it."
Jake Golcher seemed to be quite correct in gauging the feelings of thosearound him.
Sitting on the fallen tree, he muttered:
"These warriors have all been put under me, and they've got to do what Itell 'em to do; we've played the fool too long in sparing 'em. Theyought to have been put out of the way before this. Let me see--I'll fixit this way."
He first looked at Aunt Peggy, toward whom he felt a hatredinconceivable to any one not in his situation.
"I'll settle with _her_ for this; it will be just like the Senecas torefuse to burn her at a tree, because she is such a she-panther; butI'll give her a touch of the knife myself, that will prevent her everpulling out half my hair agin.
"I'll keep the two gals there, for they'll stick together, and I'm boundto bring that proud Maggie Brainerd to terms. If she'll do the rightthing by me I'll let up on her father that I hate worse than p'ison. Asfor that long-legged Habakkuk, I don't know what to think of him; it maybe he's one of us, though I have my doubts. I'll wait and see; but won'tI level things up with that 'ere Fred Godfrey? Wal, I should ratherguess so. I'll make sure he's out of the way. I s'pose he's sittin' overthere wondering when his turn is comin'. He won't be kept wonderinglong."
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