Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Wait for the moon,” said the Sagamore very quietly.

  His low, melodious voice startled me from my thoughts, and I looked around at him inquiringly.

  “I will go,” said the Wyandotte, smiling.

  “One man will never draw fire from an ambush,” said the Grey-Feather cunningly. “The wild drake swims first into the net; the flock follows.”

  “Why does my younger brother of the Oneida believe that we need fear any ambush at yonder ford?” asked the Wyandotte so frankly that again I felt that I could credit no ill of any man who spoke so fairly.

  “Listen to the crows,” returned the Oneida. “Their evening call to council is long and deliberate — Kaah! Kaah! Kaah — h! What are they saying now, Black-Snake, my elder brother?”

  I glanced at the Mohican in startled silence, for we all were listening very intently to the distant crows.

  “They have discovered an owl, perhaps,” said the Wyandotte, smiling, “and are tormenting him.”

  “Or a Mountain Snake,” said the Sagamore blandly.

  Now, what the Sagamore said so innocently had two meanings. He might have meant that the cawing of the crows indicated that they were objecting to a rattlesnake sunning on some rock. Also he might have meant to say that their short, querulous cawing betrayed the presence of Seneca Indians in ambush.

  “Or a Mountain Snake,” repeated the Siwanois, with a perfectly blank face. “The red door of the West is still open.”

  “Or a bear,” said the Grey-Feather, cunningly slurring the Canienga word and swallowing the last syllable so that it might possibly have meant “Mohawk.”

  The Wyandotte turned good-humouredly to the Mohican, not pretending to misunderstand this subtle double entendre and play upon words.

  “You, Sagamore of the Loups,” he said, carrying out the metaphor, “are closer to the four-footed people than are we Wyandottes.”

  “That is true,” said the Grey-Feather. “My elder brother, the Black-Snake, wears the two-legged hawk.”

  Which, again, if it was meant that way, hinted that the Hawk was an alien clan, and neither recognized nor understood by the Oneida. Also, by addressing the Wyandotte as “elder” brother, the Oneida conveyed a broad hint of blood relationship between Huron and Seneca. Yet, there need have been nothing definitely offensive in that hint, because among all the nations a certain amalgamation always took place after an international conflict.

  The Wyandotte did not lose his temper, nor even, apparently, perceive how slyly he was being baited by all except myself.

  “What is the opinion of the Loup, O Sagamore?” he asked lightly.

  “Does my brother the Black-Snake desire to know the Sagamore’s opinion concerning the cawing of yonder crows?”

  The Wyandotte inclined his ugly head.

  “I think,” said the Mohican deliberately, “that there may be a tree-cat in their vicinity.”

  A dead silence followed. The Wyandotte’s countenance was still smiling, but I thought the smile had stiffened and become fixed, though not a tremour moved him. Yet, what the Mohican had said — always with two meanings, and one quite natural and innocent — meant, if taken in its sinister sense, that not only might there be Senecas lying in ambush at the ford, but also emissaries from the Red Priest Amochol himself. For the forest lynx, or tree-cat, was the emblem of these people; and every Indian present knew it.

  Still, also, every man there had seen crows gather around and scold a lynx lying flattened out on some arching limb.

  Whether now there was any particular suspicion of this Wyandotte among the other Indians; whether it was merely their unquenchable and native distrust of any Huron whatever; whether the subtle chaff were playful or partly serious, I could not determine from their manner or expression. All spoke pleasantly and quietly, and with open or expressionless countenances. And the Wyandotte still smiled, although what was going on under that urbane mask of his I had no notion whatsoever.

  I turned cautiously, and looked behind us. We were gathered in a kind of natural and moss-grown rocky pulpit, some thirty feet above the stream, and with an open view down its course to the distant riffles. Beyond them the river swung southward, walling our view with its flanking palisade of living green.

  “We camp here,” I said quietly. “No fire, of course. Two sentinels — the Night Hawk and the Black-Snake. The guard will be relieved every two hours. Wake me at the first change of watch.”

  I laid my watch on a rock where all could see it, and, opening my sack, fished out a bit of dried beef and a handful of parched corn.

  Mayaro shared with me on my motioned invitation; the others fell to in their respective and characteristic manners, the Oneidas eating like gentlemen and talking together in their low and musical voices; the Wyandotte gobbling and stuffing his cheeks like a chipmunk. The Stockbridge Mole, noiseless and mum as the occult and furry animal which gave to him his name, nibbled sparingly all alone by himself, and read in his Algonquin Testament between bites.

  The last level sun rays stripped with crimson gold the outer edges of the woods; the stream ran purple and fire, and the ceaseless sighing of its waters sounded soft as foliage stirring on high pines.

  I said to the Mole in a low voice:

  “Brother in Christ, do you find consolation and peace in your Testament when the whole land lies writhing under the talons and bloody beak of war?”

  The Stockbridge warrior looked up quietly:

  “I read the promise of the Prince of Peace, brother, who came to the world not bearing a sword.”

  “He came to fulfill, not to destroy,” I said.

  “So it is written, brother.”

  “And yet you and I, His followers, go forth armed to slay.”

  “To prepare a place for Him — His humble instruments — lest His hands be soiled with the justice of God’s wrath. What is it that we wade in blood, so that He pass with feet unsoiled?”

  “My brother has spoken.”

  The burning eyes of the calm fanatic were fastened on me, then they serenely reverted to the printed page on his knees; and he continued reading and nibbling at his parched and salted corn. If ever a convert broke bread with the Lord, this red disciple now sat supping in His presence, under the immemorial eaves of His leafy temple.

  The Grey-Feather, who had been listening, said quietly:

  “We Iroquois alone, among all Indians, have always acknowledged one Spirit. We call Him the Master of Life; you Christians call Him God. And does it truly avail anything with Tharon, O my brother Loskiel, if I wear the Turtle, or if my brother the Mole paints out the Beaver on his breast with a Christian cross?”

  “So that your religion be good and you live up to it, sign and symbol avail nothing with God or with Tharon,” said I.

  “Men wear what they love best,” said the Mole, lightly touching his cross.

  “But under cross and clan ensign,” said I, “lies a man’s secret heart. Does the Master of Life judge any man by the colour of his skin or the paint he wears, or the clothing? Christ’s friends were often beggars. Did Tharon ever ask of any man what moccasins he wore?”

  The Sagamore said gravely:

  “Uncas went naked to the Holder of the Heavens.”

  It was a wonderful speech for a Sagamore and an Algonquin, for he used the Iroquois term to designate the Holder of Heaven. The perfect courtesy of a Christian gentleman could go no further. And I thought of our trivial and petty and warring sects, and was silent and ashamed.

  The Wyandotte wiped his powerful jaw with a handful of dead leaves, and looked coldly around at the little circle of men who differed with one another so profoundly in their religious beliefs.

  “Is this then the hour and the place to discuss such matters, and irritate the Unseen?”

  All eyes were instantly turned on the pagan; the Oneidas seemed troubled; the Sagamore serious. Only the Christian Indian remained placid and indifferent, his Testament suspended in his hand. But he also was listening. />
  As for me, I knew as well as did the others what the pagan and burly Wyandotte meant.

  To every Indian — even to many who had been supposedly converted — air, earth, and water still remained thronged with demons. The vast and sunless wilderness was peopled with goblins and fairies. No natural phenomenon occurred except by their agency. Where the sun went after it had set, where the moon hid, the stars, the four great winds, the eight thunders — all remained mysteries to these red children of the forest. And to these mysteries demons held the keys. For no star fell, showering the night with incandescence, no comet blazed aloft, its streaming hair sweeping from zenith to horizon, no eclipse devoured sun or moon, no sunrise painted the Long House golden, no sunset stained its lodge-poles crimson, no waters ran, no winds blew, no clouds piled up quivering with lightning, no thunder rumbled, except that it was done by demons.

  Fur, feather, and silver-scale also had souls, and slyly took council together when alone; the great trees talked to one another in forest depths; moonlit rocks conversed in secret; and peak whispered to peak above the flowing currents of the mist.

  It was useless to dispute such matters with them, while every phenomenon of nature remained to them a mystery. For they had brains and a matchless imagination, and they were obliged to solve these things for themselves as best they knew how, each people according to its personal characteristics.

  So, among the Onondagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks, evil demons were few, and good fairies many; among the Cayugas good and bad seemed fairly balanced; but among the sullen, brutal, and bestial Senecas, devils, witches, demons, and goblins were in the vast majority. And their perverted Erie priesthood, which had debauched some of their own Sachems, was a stench in the nostrils of any orthodox Sachem, and, to an ordained Sagamore, an offense and sacrilege unspeakable.

  I sat looking hard at the Wyandotte, inclined to speak, yet unwilling to meddle where intervention must be useless.

  His small, unwinking eyes met mine.

  “There are demons,” he said in a low voice.

  “Demons in human form,” I nodded. “Some were at Cherry Valley a year ago.”

  “There are witches,” he said.

  I shook my head: “None.”

  “And Giants of Stone, and Flying Heads, and the Dead Hunter, and the Lake Serpent,” he persisted sullenly.

  “There never were either giants or witches,” I replied.

  The Mole looked up from his Testament in surprise, but said nothing. Yet, by his expression I knew he was thinking of the Witch of Endor, and the Dukes of Edom, and the giants of the scriptures. But it seemed hopeless to modify his religious teachings by any self-developed theories of mine.

  All I desired to do was to keep this pagan Huron from tampering with my warriors’ nerves. And it required but little of the supernatural to accomplish this.

  No Indian, however brave and faithful and wise in battle, however cunning and tireless and unerring on forest trail or on uncharted waters, could remain entirely undisturbed by any menace of invisible evil. For they were an impulsive race, ever curbing their impulses and blindly seeking for reason. But what appealed to their emotions and their imagination still affected them most profoundly, and hampered the slow, gradual, but steady development of a noble race emerging by its own efforts from absolute and utter ignorance.

  I said quietly: “After all, the Master of Life stands sentry while the guiltless sleep!”

  “Amen,” said the Mole, lifting his calm eyes to the roof of leaves above.

  An owl began to hoot — one of those great, fierce cat-owls of the North. Every Indian listened.

  The Sagamore said pleasantly to the Wyandotte:

  “It is as though he were calling the lynxes together — as Amochol the Accursed summons his Cat-People to the sacrifice.”

  “I know nothing of Amochol and his sacrifices,” said the Wyandotte carelessly.

  “Yet you Wyandottes border the Western Gate.”

  The Huron shrugged.

  “Hear the Eared One squall,” said Grey-Feather, as the great owl yelled through the darkening forest.

  “One would think to hear an Erie speaking,” said the Sagamore, looking steadily at the Black-Snake. But the latter seemed totally unaware of what amounted now to a persistent baiting.

  “They say,” continued the Sagamore, “that the Erie priesthood learned from the Nez Perces a strange and barbarous fashion.”

  “What fashion?” asked Grey-Feather, so innocently that I could not determine whether he was playing into the Sagamore’s hands.

  “The fashion of wearing the hair in a short, stiff ridge,” said the Mohican. “Has the Black-Snake ever seen it worn that way?”

  “Never,” said the Huron. And there was neither in his voice nor on his features the slightest tremour that we could discover in the fading light of the afterglow.

  I rose to put an end to this, for my own nerves were now on edge; and I directed the two sentinels to their posts, the Wyandotte and the Oneida, Tahoontowhee.

  Then I lay down beside the Mohican. All the Indians had unrolled and put on their hunting shirts; I spread my light blanket and pillowed my head on my pack.

  In range of my vision the Mole had dropped to his knees and was praying with clasped hands. Shamed, I arose and knelt also, to say in silence my evening prayer, so often slurred over while I lay prone, or even entirely neglected.

  Then I returned to my blanket to lie awake and think of Lois, until at last I dreamed of her. But the dream was terrible, and I awoke, sweating, and found the Sagamore seated upright in the darkness beside me.

  “Is it time to change the guard?” I asked, still shivering from the horror of my dream.

  “You have scarce yet closed your eyes, Loskiel.”

  “Why are you seated upright wide awake, my brother?”

  “There is evil in the wind.”

  “There is no wind stirring.”

  “A witch-wind came slyly while you slept. Did you not dream, Loskiel?” In spite of me I shivered again.

  “That is foolishness,” said I. “The Wyandotte’s silly talk has made us wakeful. Our sentinels watch. Sleep, Mayaro.”

  “Have you need of sleep, Loskiel?”

  “I? No. Sleep you, then, and I will sit awake if it reassures you.”

  The Sagamore set his mouth close to my ear:

  “The Wyandotte is not posted where you placed him.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “I went out to see. He sits on a rock close to the water.”

  “Damn him,” I muttered angrily. “I’ll teach him — —”

  “No!”

  The Mohican’s iron grip held me in my place.

  “The Night-Hawk understands. Let the Wyandotte remain unrebuked and undisturbed while I creep down to yonder ford.”

  “I do not intend to reconnoitre the ford until dawn,” I whispered.

  “Let me go, Loskiel.”

  “Alone?”

  “Secretly and alone. The Siwanois is a magic clan. Their Sagamores see and hear where others perceive nothing. Let me go, Loskiel.”

  “Then I go, also.”

  “No.”

  “What of our blood-brotherhood, then?”

  There was a silence; then the Mohican rose, and taking my hand in his drew me noiselessly to my feet beside him.

  By sense of touch alone we lifted our rifles from our blankets, blew the powder from the pans, reprimed. Then, laying my left arm lightly on his shoulder, I followed his silent figure over the moss and down among the huge and phantom trees faintly outlined against the starlit water.

  CHAPTER XII

  AT THE FORD

  When at length from the forest’s edge we saw star-beams splintering over broken water, cutting the flat, translucent darkness of the river with necklaces of light, we halted; for this was the ford foaming there in obscurity with its silvery, mellow voice, unheeded in the wilderness, yet calling ever as that far voice called through the shadows o
f ages dead.

  Now, from where we stood the faint line of sparkles seemed to run a little way into the darkness and vanish. But the indications were sufficient to mark the spot where we should enter the water; and, stepping with infinite precaution, we descended to the gravel. Here we stripped to the clout and laid our rifles on our moccasins, covering the pans with our hunting shirts. Then we strapped on our war-belts, loosening knife and hatchet, pulled over our feet our spare ankle-moccasins of oiled moose-hide soled with the coarse hair of the great, blundering beast himself.

  I led, setting foot in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub’s swirl or a minnow’s spatter-leap when a great chain-pike snaps at him.

  Feeling my way over bed stones and bottom gravel with my feet, striving in vain to pierce the dense obscurity, I moved forward with infinite caution, balancing as best I might against the current. Ankle-deep, shin-deep, knee-deep we waded out. Presently the icy current chilled my thighs, rising to my waistline. But it grew no deeper.

  Yet, here so swift was the current that I scarcely dared move, and was peering around to find the Sagamore, when a shape loomed up on my left. And I reached out and rested my hand on the shadowy shoulder, and stood so, swaying against the stream.

  Suddenly a voice said, in the Seneca dialect:

  “Is it thou, Butler?”

  And every drop of blood froze in my body.

  God knows how I found voice to answer “Yes,” and how I found courage to let my hand remain upon my enemy’s shoulder.

  “It is I, Hiokatoo,” said the low voice.

  “Move forward,” I said; and dropped my hand from his shoulder.

  Somehow, although I could see nothing, all around me in the water I felt the presence of living creatures. At the same moment somebody came close to me from behind, and the Sagamore breathed his name in my ear.

  I managed to retain my presence of mind, and, laying my mouth against his ear in the darkness, I whispered:

  “The Seneca Hiokatoo and his warriors — all around us in the water. He mistakes me for Walter Butler, They have been reconnoitring our camp.”