Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “Had I my say,” remarked Boyd loudly, “I’d take a regiment and scour me out these rattlesnakes from the Proprietary, and pack ’em off to prison, bag and baggage!”

  Lana had knelt, making a cup of her hand, and was drinking from the silvery thread of water at our feet. Now, as Boyd spoke, she straightened up and cast a shower of sparkling drops in his face, saying calmly that she prayed God he might have the like done for him when next he needed a cooling off.

  “Lanette,” said he, disconcerted but laughing, “do you mean in hell or at the Iroquois stake?”

  Whereupon Lana flushed and said somewhat violently that he should not make a jest of either hell or stake; and that she for one marvelled at his ill-timed pleasantries and unbecoming jests.

  So here was a pretty quarrel already sur le tapis; but neither I nor Lois interposed, and Lana, pink and angry, seated herself on the moss and gazed steadily at our watchful Indians. But in her fixed gaze I saw the faint glimmer of tears.

  After a moment Boyd got up, went down to her, and asked her pardon. She made no answer; they remained looking at each other for another second, then both smiled, and Boyd lay down at her feet, resting his elbow on the moss and his cheek on his hand, so that he could converse with me across her shoulder.

  And first he cautioned both Lana and Lois to keep secret whatever was to be said between us two, then, nodding gaily at me:

  “You were quite right, Loskiel, in speaking to the General about the proper trap for this Wizard-Sachem Amochol, who is inflaming the entire Seneca nation to such a fury.”

  “I know no other way to take and destroy him,” said I.

  “There is no other way. It must be done secretly, and by a small party manoeuvring ahead and independently of our main force.”

  “Are you to command?” I asked.

  “I am to have that honour,” he said eagerly, “and I take you, your savages, and twenty riflemen — —”

  “What is this?” said Lana sharply; but he lifted an impatient hand and went on in his quick, interested manner, to detail to me the plan he had conceived for striking Amochol at Catharines-town, in the very midst of the Onon-hou-aroria.

  “Last night,” he said, “I sent out Hanierri and Iaowania, the headquarters scouts; and I’m sorry I did, for they came in this morning with their tails between their legs, saying the forest swarmed with the Seneca scouts, and it was death to stir.

  “And I was that disgusted — what with their cowardice and the aftermath of that headquarters punch — that I bade them go paint and sing their death-songs — —”

  “Oh, Lord! You should not lose your temper with an Indian!” I said, vexed at his indiscretion.

  “I know it. I’ll not interfere with your tame wolves, Loskiel. But Hanierri madded me; and now he’s told Dominie Kirkland’s praying Indians, and not one o’ them will stir from Tioga — the chicken-hearted knaves! What do you think of that, Loskiel?”

  “I am sorry. But we really need no other Indians than my Sagamore, the two Oneidas, and the Stockbridge, Yellow Moth, to do Amochol’s business for him, if you and your twenty riflemen are going.”

  “I think as you do; and so I told the General, who wanted Major Parr to command and the entire battalion to march. ‘Oh, Lord!’ says I. ‘Best bring Colonel Proctor’s artillery band, also!’ And was frightened afterward at what I said, with so little reflection and respect; but the General, who had turned red as a pippin, burst out laughing and says he: ‘You are a damnably disrespectful young man, sir, but you and your friend Loskiel may suit yourselves concerning the taking of this same Amochol. Only have a care to take or destroy him, for if you do not, by God, you shall be detailed to the batteaux and cool your heels in Fort Sullivan until we return!’”

  We both laughed heartily, and Boyd added:

  “He said it to fright me for my impudence. Trust that man to know a man when he sees one!”

  “Meaning yourself?” said I, convulsed.

  “And you, too, Loskiel,” he said so naively that Lois, too, laughed, exclaiming:

  “What modest opinions of themselves have these two boys! Do you hear them, Lana, dubbing each other men?”

  “I hear,” said Lana listlessly.

  Boyd plucked a long, feathery stalk, and with its tip caressed Lana’s cheeks.

  “Spiders!” said he. “Spinning a goblin veil for you!”

  “I wish the veil of Fate were as transparent,” said she.

  “Would you see behind it if you could?”

  She said under her breath:

  “I sometimes dream I see behind it now.”

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  She shook her head; but we all begged her to disclose her dreams, saying laughingly that as dreams were the most important things in the lives of all Indians, our close association with them had rendered us credulous.

  “Come, Lanette,” urged Boyd, “tell us what it is you see in dreams behind the veil.”

  She hesitated, shuddered:

  “Flames — always flames. And a man in black with leaden buttons, whose face is always hidden in his cloak. But, oh! I know — I seem to know that he has no face at all, but is like a skull under his black cloak.”

  “A merry dream,” said Boyd, laughing.

  “Is there more to it?” asked Lois seriously.

  “Yes.... Lieutenant Boyd is there, and he makes a sign — like this — —”

  “What!” exclaimed Boyd, sitting up, astounded. “Where did you learn that sign?”

  “In my dream. What does it mean?”

  “Make it no more, Lana,” he said, in a curiously disturbed voice. “For wherever you have learned it — if truly from a dream, or from some careless fellow — of my own — —” He hesitated, glanced at me. “You are not a Mason, Loskiel. And Lana has just given the Masonic signal of distress — having seen me give it in a dream. It is odd.” He sat very silent for a moment, then lay down again at Lana’s feet; and for a little while they conversed in whispers, as though forgetting that we were there at all, his handsome head resting against her knees, and her hand touching the hair on his forehead lightly at intervals.

  After a few moments I rose and, with Lois, walked forward toward our picket line, from where we could see very plainly the great cattle herd among the trees along the river.

  She said in a low and troubled voice:

  “It has come so far, then, that Lana makes no longer a disguise of her sentiments before you and me. It seems as though they had bewitched each other — and find scant happiness in the mutual infatuation.”

  I said nothing.

  “Is he not free to marry her?” asked Lois.

  “Why, yes — I suppose he is — if she will have him,” I said, startled by the direct question. “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. Once, at Otsego Camp I overheard bitter words between them — not from him, for he only laughed at what she said. It was in the dusk, close to our tent; and either they were careless or thought I slept.... And I heard her say that he was neither free nor fit to speak of marriage. And he laughed and vowed that he was as free and fit as was any man. ‘No,’ says she, ‘there are other men like Euan Loskiel in the world.’ ‘Exceptions prove the case,’ says he, laughing; and there was a great sob in her voice as she answered that such men as he were born to damn women. And he retorted coolly that it was such women as she who ever furnished the provocation, but that only women could lose their own souls, and that it was the same with men; but neither of ’em could or ever had contributed one iota toward the destruction of any soul except their own.... Then Lana came into our tent and stood looking down at me where I lay; and dimly through my lashes I could perceive the shadow of Boyd behind her on the tent wall, wavering, gigantic, towering to the ridge-pole as he set the camp-torch in its socket on the flooring.” She passed her slim hand across her eyes. “It was like an unreal scene — a fevered vision of two phantoms in the smoky, lurid lustre of the torch. Boyd stood there dark against the li
ght, edged with flickering flame as with a mantle, figure and visage scintilant with Lucifer’s own beauty — and Lana, her proud head drooping, and her sad, young eyes fixed on me — Oh, Euan!” She stood pressing down both eyelids with her fingers, motionless; then, with a quick-drawn breath and a brusque gesture, flung her arms wide and let them drop to her sides. “How can men follow what they call their ‘fortune,’ headlong, unheeding, ranging through the world as a hot-jowled hound ranges for rabbits? Are they never satiated? Are they never done with the ruthless madness? Does the endless chase with its intervals of killing never pall?”

  “Hounds are hounds,” I said slowly. “And the hound will chase his thousandth hare with all the unslaked eagerness that thrilled him when his first quarry fled before him.”

  “Why?”

  But I shook my head in silence.

  “Are you that way?”

  “I have not been.”

  “The instinct then is not within you?”

  “Yes, the instinct is.... But some hounds are trained to range only as far as their mistress, Old Dame Reason, permits. Others slip leash and take to the runways to range uncontrolled and mastered only by a dark and second self, urging them ever forward.... There are but two kinds of men, Lois — the self-disciplined, and the unbroken. But the raw nature of the two differed nothing at their birth.”

  She stood looking down at the distant cattle along the river for a while without speaking; then her hand, which hung beside her, sought mine and softly rested within my clasp.

  “It is wonderful,” she murmured, “that it has been God’s pleasure I should come to you unblemished — after all that I have lived to learn and see. But more wonderful and blessed still it is to me to find you what you are amid this restless, lawless, ruthless world of soldiery — upright and pure in heart.... It seems almost, with us, as though our mothers had truly made of us two Hidden Children, white and mysterious within the enchanted husks, which only our own hands may strip from us, and reveal ourselves unsullied as God made us, each to the other — on our wedding morn.”

  I lifted her little hand and laid my lips to it, touching the ring. Then she bent timidly and kissed the rough gold circlet where my lips had rested. Somehow, a shaft of sunlight had penetrated the green roof above, and slanted across her hair, so that the lovely contour of her head was delicately edged with light.

  * “Nene-nea-wen-ne, Lois!” I whispered passionately.

  [* “This thing shall happen, Lois!”]

  * “Nen-ya-wen-ne, O Loskiel! Teni-non-wes.”

  [* “It shall happen, O Loskiel! We love, thou and I.”]

  We stood yet a while together there, and I saw her lift her eyes and gaze straight ahead of us beyond our picket line, and remain so, gazing as though her regard could penetrate those dim and silent forest aisles to the red altar far beyond in unseen Catharines-town.

  “When must you go?” she asked under her breath.

  “The army is making ready today.”

  “To march into the Indian country?”

  I nodded.

  “When does it march?”

  “On Friday. But that is not to be known at present.”

  “I understand. By what route do you go?”

  “By Chemung.”

  “And then?”

  “At Chemung we leave the army, Boyd and I. You heard.”

  “Yes, Euan.”

  I said, forcing myself to speak lightly:

  “You are not to be afraid for us, Little Rosy Pigeon of the Forest. Follow me with your swift-winged thoughts and no harm shall come to me.”

  “Must you go?”

  I laughed: * “Ka-teri-oseres, Lois.”

  [* “I am going to this war, Lois.”]

  * “Wa-ka-ton-te-tsihon,” she said calmly. “Wa-ka-ta-tiats-kon.”

  [* “I understand perfectly. I am resigned.”]

  Then I gave way to my increasing surprise:

  “Wonder-child!” I exclaimed. “When and where have you learned to understand and answer me in the tongue of the Long House?”

  * “Kio-ten-se,” she said with a faint smile.

  [* “I am working for somebody.”]

  “For whom?”

  “For my mother, Euan. Did you suppose I could neglect anything that might be useful in my life’s quest? Who knows when I might need the tongue I am slowly learning to speak?... Oh, and I know so little, yet. Something of Algonquin the Mohican taught me; and with it a little of the Huron tongue. And now for nearly a month every day I have learned a little from the Oneidas at Otsego — from the Oneida girl whose bridal dress you bought to give to me. Do you remember her? The maid called Drooping Wings?”

  “Yes — but — I do not understand. To what end is all this? When and where is your knowledge of the Iroquois tongue likely to aid you?”

  She gave me a curious, veiled look — then turned her face away.

  “You do not dream of following our army, do you?” I demanded. “Not one woman would be permitted to go. It is utterly useless for you to expect it, folly to dream of such a thing.... You and Lana are to go to Easton as soon as the heavier artillery is sent down the river, which will be the day we start — Friday. This frontier gypsying is ended — all this coquetting with danger is over now. The fort here is no place for you and Lana. Your visit, brief as it has been, is rash and unwarranted. And I tell you very plainly, Lois, that I shall never rest until you are at Easton, which is a stone town and within the borders of civilization. The artillery will be sent down by boat, and all the women and children are to go also. Neither Boyd nor I have told this to you and Lana, but — —” I glanced over my shoulder. “I think he is telling her now.”

  Lois slowly turned and looked toward them. Evidently they no longer cared what others saw or thought, for Lana’s cheek lay pressed against his shoulder, and his arm encircled her body.

  We walked back, all together, to the fort, and left Lois and Lana at the postern; then Boyd and I continued on to my bush-hut, the Indians following.

  Muffled drums of a regiment were passing, and an escort with reversed arms, to bury poor Kimball, Captain in Colonel Cilly’s command, shot this morning through the heart by the accidental discharge of a musket in the careless hands of one of his own men.

  We stood at salute while the slow cortege passed.

  Said Boyd thoughtfully:

  “Well, Kimball’s done with all earthly worries. There are those who might envy him.”

  “You are not one,” I said bluntly.

  “I? No. I have not yet played hard enough in the jolly blind man’s buff — which others call the game of life. I wear the bandage still, and still my hands clutch at the empty air, and in my ears the world’s sweet laughter rings — —” He smiled, then shrugged. “The charm of Fortune’s bag is not what you pull from it, but what remains within.”

  “Boyd,” I said abruptly. “Who is that handsome wench that followed us from Otsego?”

  “Dolly Glenn?”

  “That is her name.”

  “Lord, how she pesters me!” he said fretfully. “I chanced upon her at the Middle Fort one evening — down by the river. And what are our wenches coming to,” he exclaimed impatiently, “that a kiss on a summer’s night should mean to them more than a kiss on a night in summer!”

  “She is a laundress, is she not?”

  “How do I know? A tailoress, too, I believe, for she has patched and mended for me; and she madded me because she would take no pay. There are times,” he added, “when sentiment is inconvenient — —”

  “Poor thing,” I said.

  “My God, why? When I slipped my arm around her she put up her face to be kissed. It was give and take, and no harm done — and the moon a-laughing at us both. And why the devil she should look at me reproachfully is more than I can comprehend.”

  “It seems a cruel business,” said I.

  “Cruel!”

  “Aye — to awake a heart and pass your way a-whistling.”

&nb
sp; “Now, Loskiel,” he began, plainly vexed, “I am not cruel by nature, and you know it well enough. Men kiss and go their way — —”

  “But women linger still.”

  “Not those I’ve known.”

  “Yet, here is one — —”

  “A silly fancy that will pass with her. Lord! Do you think a gentleman accountable to every pretty chit of a girl he notices on his way through life?”

  “Some dare believe so.”

  He stared at me, then laughed.

  “You are different to other men, of course,” he said gaily. “We all understand that. So let it go — —”

  “One moment, Boyd. There is a matter I must speak of — because friendship and loyalty to a childhood friend both warrant it. Can you tell me why Lana Helmer is unhappy?”

  A dark red flush surged up to the roots of his hair, and the muscles in his jaw tightened. He remained a moment mute and motionless, staring at me. But if my question, for the first moment, had enraged him, that quickly died out; and into his eyes there came a haggard look such as I had never seen there.

  He said slowly:

  “Were you not the man you are, Loskiel, I had answered in a manner you might scarcely relish. Now, I answer you that if Lana is unhappy I am more so. And that our unhappiness is totally unnecessary — if she would but listen to what I say to her.”

  “And what is it that you say to her?” I inquired as coolly as though his answer might not very easily be a slap with his fringed sleeve across my face.

  “I have asked her to marry me,” he said. “Do you understand why I tell you this?”

  I shook my head.

  “To avoid killing you at twenty paces across the river.... I had rather tell you than do that.”

  “So that you have told me,” said I, “the reason for your telling matters nothing. And my business with you ends with your answer.... Only — she is my friend, Boyd — a playmate of pleasant days. And if you can efface that wretchedness from her face — brighten the quenched sparkle of her eyes, paint her cheeks with rose again — do it, in God’s name, and make of me a friend for life.”