The Irish Witch rb-11

by Dennis Wheatley

  So the matter was settled. The thongs that bound the Indian's hands behind his back were cut, upon which he knelt down before Mary and kissed the hem of her fur robe in gratitude. His furs were brought to him and, as night had now fallen, a soldier took him to a place along­side the palisade where he could sleep. Then Roger and Mary returned to their cabin to eat a cold supper.

  Next morning they collected Leaping Squirrel from the compound, gave him the theodolite to carry and set off on their daily walk along the cliff. When they had covered a couple of miles, Roger pointed to a small mound from which anyone approaching could be seen from a distance, and said, 'Now, let's sit down there and talk.'

  When they were all seated, he addressed Leaping Squirrel in French. 'You realise that, within a week at most, one of the Fathers will have come up from St. Regis, and that when you have made your confession there will be no way in which you can secure a further respite from being hanged?'

  The Indian gravely inclined his head. ‘I accept that. Leaping Squirrel was told before he started on the trail that if he fell into a snare his end would be as that of a robbing stoat dangling from a tree. To you, noble ones of the Americani, Leaping Squirrel is grateful for these few extra days of life.'

  'We are not Americani,' said Roger quietly. 'My wife and I are Englesi.'

  The dark eyes of the Indian suddenly lit up. 'Then Leaping Squirrel is not the enemy of the noble ones, but their little brother.'

  Roger nodded. 'Yes. We three are as one people. My wife and I are very anxious to get to Canada, but we can­not find a way to cross the river. By showing us a way you can not only earn our gratitude, but save your own life.'

  No longer impassive, the Indian spread wide his hands, bowed his fine head then exclaimed joyfully, 'Noble ones, the Lord Jesus sent you to Leaping Squirrel. You are to him as the hand of the Father when He held it over Daniel in the lion's den. Leaping Squirrel will lead you to Canada. But the trail is long. Three sleeps from here. No, four or more for the tender feet of the gracious lady, be­fore we can cross the rushing water.'

  'No matter,' Roger smiled. 'And the sooner we are on our way, the better. We will start tonight.'

  The Indian's face fell. 'How is that possible, noble one? Leaping Squirrel is a captive. He sleeps within the stockade.'

  'We will get you out. It means running a certain risk, but with a little luck it can be done. Fortunately, the moon is in its last quarter, so the stockade will be in semi-dark­ness; and you must pick a place in which to sleep where the shadow from one of the blockhouses will conceal you. I'll then throw a rope over to you so that you can haul yourself up and get over the palisade.'

  'But what then, noble one? When it is found that Leap­ing Squirrel has escaped, Indian trackers will be sent after him. Given a few hours' start, he could outdistance them. What, though, of the gracious lady? She could not travel at such speed. After our first sleep, at best our second, they would catch up with us.'

  That most unpleasant possibility had not occurred to Roger. As he looked anxiously at Mary, she said:

  'It is a chance we must take. Unless we do, in a few days' time a priest will arrive from St. Regis to hear Leap­ing Squirrel's confession, and then he will be hanged. Be­sides, I am stronger than I look.'

  Roger smiled. 'That's true, my love; and you are right about Leaping Squirrel. If we can get a good start, we should be able to throw any trackers off our scent. There is also the fact that, without a guide, the possibility of our getting across the river seems very slender. I think we should risk it.'

  Having taken this decision, they left the mound and went into a nearby neck of the woods, with the object of sleeping through the afternoon, so that they would be able to travel all night without needing to rest. Leaping Squirrel gathered some young branches of sassafras to make a couch for Mary, then they settled down.

  Early in the evening, filled with suppressed excitement, ~ they returned to camp. While Mary went to the cabin to cook supper, Roger accompanied Leaping Squirrel into the stockade, and the Indian indicated the spot against the palisade where he would lie in his furs when night came. Roger, while apparently looking uncon­cernedly about him, counted the number of posts in the palisade from the spot chosen to the south-west corner. Walking out through the sally port he again counted the posts up to the same number, picked up a large stone and put it against the post, so that he could find it easily again; then he went to the Mess, bought a bottle of brandy, had his usual evening drink there, and afterwards rejoined Mary.

  When they had had their meal, they packed all the belongings they felt they could not do without, and such food as Mary had been able to get hold of, into two bundles in the canvas of the bivouac under which they had slept on the way up to Fort George; but Roger had first tied the greater part of the ropes by which it was pegged out into one lengh of about eighteen feet.

  Having completed these preparations, they had to wait with such patience as they could muster until the hour that had been agreed for Leaping Squirrel's rescue. For­tunately, the garrison at French Mills kept early hours.

  One by one the lights in the other cabins went out, then they doused theirs and sat on the hard bed, with their arms about each other, occasionally kissing or talking in low voices. The time of waiting seemed interminable, although they had decided that, to get as long a start as possible, they would make the attempt as soon as it could reason­ably be assumed that the officers and men who lived in the stockade were asleep. At length, at about eleven o'clock, Roger felt that they must risk everything to carry out their plan.

  Each of them took a bundle and Roger, in addition, threw over his shoulder the rope he had made and the straw palliasse from the bed. Walking as quietly as they could, they made their way along the track through the wood until it ended a hundred yards or so from the fort. There, in the shadow of the last trees, Roger left Mary with the two bundles and continued on toward the stockade.

  Since the river bank for several miles on either side of the fort was a high cliff, it was almost impossible to take French Mills by surprise, so no sentries were posted, except for one man inside the now closed sally port, and he was stationed there only to open it in the event of a despatch rider arriving during the night. Taking care not to tread on any small fallen branches, Roger advanced until he reached the large stone he had left outside the palisade. There he took from his pocket a whistle made from the wing bone of a turkey, which Leaping Squirrel had given him to signal with. He blew gently on it, so that the sound should not be audible at a distance of more than a dozen paces. It was answered from the other side of the palisade by the low hoot of an owl.

  Standing well back, Roger threw the straw palliasse up so that it landed on the spikes of the eight-foot-high stakes forming the palisade. He threw after it one end of the rope, then tied the other end round his waist, so that he could take a strain upon it. A moment later it became taut and he caught the sound of a faint scram­bling noise, then Leaping Squirrel's head appeared above the mattress. Wriggling over it, he slid down to Roger's side.

  Five minutes later they were with Mary. The two men took the bundles and, in Indian file with Leaping Squirrel leading, they set off, three silent shadows, into the almost dark woods.

  For about two hours the moon, filtering through the bare branches of the trees, continued to give them just enough light to see their way. By the time it set they were sufficiently distant from the camp for there to be no risk of their being seen on the open ground along the cliffs by any restless person who had left his quarters to go for a midnight stroll; and, for the remainder of the night, the dim illumination from lingering patches of snow enabled them to press on without any danger of walking over the edge of the cliff. By dawn, although leaning on Roger's arm, Mary had to admit that she could not go a step further. But her dogged courage had enabled them to cover the better part of fifteen miles.

  As it was unlikely that Leaping Squirrel's escape would be discovered before dawn, and after that s
ome little time would elapse before a party of trackers could be sent in pursuit, they reckoned that their night march had given them about eight hours' start. Having rested for ten minutes every hour, Mary had been able to keep going, but Roger realised that unless fatigue should overcome her later, they must now sacrifice several hours of their lead; so he called a halt and they made camp.

  At ten o'clock, after a good sleep, they roused and

  Roger set about collecting sticks so that they could get a fire going and cook a meal. But Leaping Squirrel stopped him, giving the disquieting reason that they were in Mohawk country, and the smoke of a fire might be seen by an Indian out hunting. If that happened, he would fetch others, and they would be lucky if they were not scalped and killed.

  Having made do on cold food, they set off again, re­-entering the forest, as the river curved away in a great arc at the place where they had slept, and Leaping Squirrel told them it would save many miles if they cut across it. After they had penetrated for some way among the trees, the Indian asked them to wait where they were for a while. He then padded to and fro, sometimes dis­appearing for several minutes; but at length he beckoned them to follow him. When they had done so for two hun­dred yards or more, he pointed to a gash about five feet up on a big tree, where the bark had been chipped away. Turning east, he walked on some distance, then pointed to a similar gash on another big tree, and told them these were the marks by which he had blazed a trail on his outward journey, so that he could easily find his way back.

  Just as evening was closing in, he stopped beside one of the blazed trees which also bore a buzzard feather wedged in the bark. With a stout stick, which he had picked up an hour or so earlier, he began to dig in the earth behind the tree, and soon turned up a foot-long package. Unwrapping a covering of elk skin, he showed them a chunk of dried bear meat and some strips of pemmican. Roger was delighted at this unexpected addition to their supplies as, although they had brought all the food Mary had had in the cabin, he had feared it would not last them for more than a few days; and his pistols were useless for hunting, owing to their short range.

  After eating, they slept for some hours. When they awoke, moonlight lit the glade, so they made the most of it to cover several more miles; then, when the moon set, they slept again.

  Half-way through their second day's trek, Leaping Squirrel, who always led the party, suddenly halted, swung round and put his finger to his lips to enjoin silence. He then signed to them to take cover among some black­berry bushes,-which were the only low-growing vegeta­tion within sight. Reluctantly, but seeing, from the alarmed expression on the Indian's face, that danger threatened, they waded in among the long, prickly stems and crouched down among them.

  For several minutes Roger and Mary could hear noth­ing, although they listened intently. Then they caught the faint sound of snapping twigs. Peering out from their hiding place they saw a dozen figures some twenty yards away. It was a party of Mohawk warriors, moving silently in single file and resembling a band of gliding spectres.

  Fortunately they were heading in the direction of the river, but a good ten minutes elapsed before Leaping Squirrel signed to his companions that they might leave their cover. They emerged from the tangle of bushes with several nasty scratches, and Roger's buckskin leggings had been badly torn on a cat briar.

  Roger and Mary feared that the Indians they had glimpsed were trackers sent out from French Mills. Leap­ing Squirrel reassured them that the men were a party of hunters intent on their own business, and to be avoided only because they might have proved hostile. But, he added grimly, their lead must be lessening, as they had to take much longer rests than the trackers would need, and the time had come when they must try to hide their trail by wading in a lake which he knew lay a few miles head.

  That evening they came to it and, for a quarter of an hour, splashed through the bitterly cold water along its shore, entering and leaving it several times to confuse their pursuers.

  Now that the danger of capture had become ominously nearer, Roger could not keep his mind off that possibility. It would certainly mean death for Leaping Squirrel. There was no way of preventing that. But what would happen to himself and Mary after they had been marched back to French Mills?

  Colonel Jason could hardly have failed to connect their disappearance with Leaping Squirrel's escape on the same night. In any case, their being captured with him would be indisputable evidence of it. What, Roger wondered, was the penalty for assisting an enemy spy to escape? Al­most certainly a sentence of several months in prison. But would matters end even there? At French Mills there was no prison, so he would be sent down to Albany, or perhaps New York. A trial would also lead to an investigation of his past. It would emerge that the document stating him to be a surveyor in the employ of the Ministry of Rivers and Forests was a forgery; and, quite possibly, that he was an Englishman. The discovery of his nationality, together with the fact that he had secured a guide known to be a spy to get him over the frontier into Canada would lead to the assumption that he, too, was a spy. The pos­sible result could be, not months, but years in prison, or worse.

  And what of Mary? It was hardly likely that they would imprison her. But she would be stranded. As the van Wycks knew the truth about them, they would almost certainly help her. Even so, she could not live on them indefinitely. She would have to take some dreary job in a shop, or become a dressmaker, and live in constant misery at the thought of him in prison.

  It was not to be wondered at that, during their third day in the forest, Roger was constantly looking over his shoulder, and frequently tempted to force the pace. But he could not do that for, although gallant little Mary trudged doggedly on, she had now to lean on his arm for most of the time, and was fast approaching exhaustion.

  At last, on the Friday, their fourth day after leaving French Mills, they emerged from the forest to see again the valley through which the St. Lawrence ran. A high cliff still prevented them from getting down to the river, but Roger heaved a great sigh of relief when Leaping Squirrel told him that within two hours they would be across it.

  After walking for a little over a mile, the Indian led them to the edge of the cliff and pointed to the right. Immediately below them were rapids with water foaming between a number of big, flattish rocks, and nearer the bank several large, swirling pools. But further along the cliff was rugged and broken, where there had been a landslide, making it possible to climb down to the water, and there it was smooth.

  For some minutes they gazed down at the river; then, just as they turned away, a great bald-headed eagle swooped, screeching, down upon them. Evidently its nest was below the place where they were standing on the edge of the cliff, and it feared they were about to harm its young.

  Mary gave a cry of fright and swiftly backed away from the big, terrifying bird. Next second she uttered a pierc­ing scream. She had retreated too far and put a foot over

  the cliff edge. Roger dashed forward, but was too late to grab her. Flinging himself flat, he looked over, praying that she might have landed on a ledge. But she had not. His eyes starting from his head, he saw her, a whirling bundle of furs, hurtling downward until, with a great splash, she hit one of the pools and disappeared.

  8

  News out of Portugal

  It was on the evening of April 6th, while Roger and Mary were on their way with Leaping Squirrel from French Mills to the place at which the latter hoped to get them across the St. Lawrence, that a Captain John Harley of the 47th Foot delivered to Lady Luggala's residence a packet addressed to Jemima. She did not receive it until she returned from a rout soon after two o'clock in the morning.

  Seeing that it was addressed in Charles's writing, Jemima bade Lady Luggala a swift goodnight, went straight up to her room and tore open the packet with eager fingers. To her delight, she found that it contained a letter several pages in length. Its opening, 'Most beauti­ful and adorable of the Sex", caused her to flush with plea­sure, and quickly she read on:
r />   'You will, I trust, have received my missive despatched by a sloop sailing from Lisbon within a few hours of my landing, just to inform you that, although we met rough weather in the Bay of Biscay, being a good sailor I arrived none the worse for that’

  Jemima had not received such a missive, but at once assumed that either it had gone astray or the sloop had been sunk. The letter continued:

  'In Lisbon I spent several very pleasant days, as I had brought with me a letter of introduction to the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles Stuart, our Minister in that city; and, after reporting to the Garrison Commander I went straight to the Legation. There I was most kindly received by Sir Charles and his lady, who insisted I should be their guest until I received orders to proceed to the front.

  'At two dinner parties given by the Stuarts, and other entertainments to which I was invited, I met as well as numerous British officers several Portuguese Generals and Ministers and their wives, and all cannot speak too highly of His Grace of Wellington's conduct of the campaign. And well they may, since with an army that until recently rarely numbered more than sixty thousand men, for four long years he has bedevilled the French, who at times had four hundred thousand men in the Peninsula, driven them from Portugal and has now freed half Spain.

  'The Stuarts have living with them their niece, Deborah —a poor, pale hop-pole of a girl who suffers from shyness, but is a kindly creature. On two occasions I drove out, with her as my guide, to see the now famous "Lines of Torres Vedras", behind which our army remained secure during the winter of 1810-11. The earthworks and innumerable bastions in this great double line of forti­fications are of such amazing strength that no-one, having seen them, can be surprised that Marshal Massena, despite his great superiority in numbers, realised that any attempt to force them would have led to the massacre of his army. For his failure to make the attempt Bonaparte recalled and broke him. That, to my mind, was cutting off his nose to spite his face, for it is generally held that Massena was the ablest of all the French Marshals.