CHAPTER XXXII
ATTACK
About midnight, Landless, lying upon the dirt floor of the lean-toattached to the one room of the cabin, felt a hand upon his shoulder andopened his eyes upon a shadowy figure, blocking up the starlight thatcame faintly in at the open door.
"Hist!" said the figure. "Ricahecrians!"
Landless sprang to his feet. "My God! You are sure?"
"They are coming out of the ravine. You will hear the whoop directly."
The owner of the hut, stirred by the Susquehannock's foot, started up.Such an alarm being about the least surprising thing that could happen,he kept his wits, and after the first intake of the breath andexclamation of, "Indians!" he went about his preparations coolly enough.Rushing into the cabin where Landless had already waked the women, hegroped for his tinder box, and with a steady hand struck a light andfired a pine knot which he stuck into a block of wood pierced to receiveit; then jerked from the wall his musket and powder horn.
"You both have guns," he said coolly. "Good! We'll die fighting." Thewoman had flown to the door, had seen that the heavy wooden bars weredrawn across it, and now stood beside him with a resolute face, and anaxe in her hands.
A moment of silence, and then the quiet night was cleft by the warwhoop--dreadful sound, forerunner of death and torture, concentrating inits savage cadence all ideas of terror! A moment more, and there camethe sound of many moccasined feet and the hurling of many bodies againstthe door. The door held, and the man put the muzzle of his gun in one ofthe cracks between the logs and fired. The explosion was followed by ayell. Shot and cry preluded pandemonium. Without were demoniacal cries,quick crashing blows against the door, stealthy feet, clambering forms;within were smoke and the noise of the muskets, the crying of the child,and a red and flickering light which now brought out each detail of therude interior, now plunged all into shadow.
"We are making it hot for them," cried the owner of the hut, reloadinghis musket. "There's some shall go to hell before we do. Joan, mygirl--"
An arrow, whistling through a crack, pierced his brain and he fell tothe ground with a crash. The shriek that the woman set up was answeredfrom without by a triumphant yell, and then one voice was heardspeaking.
"It is the mulatto!" cried Patricia, clasping her hands.
"Yes," answered Landless grimly. "I thought I had done for that devil,but it seems not. May I have better luck this time!"
"Ugh!" said the Indian, and pointed to the roof, which was low andthatched with dried grass and moss.
"I see," said Landless. "The cabin is on fire. We must leave it in fiveminutes, come what may."
"We will never leave it alive," the Indian said calmly. "The dogs haveus fast. The Chief of the Conestogas will die in a strange land; hisbones will be a plaything for the wolves of the mountains; his scalpwill hang before the wigwam of an Algonquin dog. He will never see thevillage and the pleasant river, never will he smoke the peace pipe, heand his braves, with the Wyandots and the Lenni Lenape, sitting beneaththe mulberries in front of the lodge. He will never see the cornfeast.He will never dance the war dance again, nor will he lead the war party.The sagamore dies, and who will tell his tribe? He falls like a leaf inthe forest, like a pebble that is cast into the water. The leaf is notseen: the stream closes above the pebble--it is gone!" His voice roseinto a chant, stern and mournful, and his vast form appeared to expand,to become taller. He threw down his gun and drew his long, bright knife.
"They are upon us!" cried Landless, and thrust Patricia behind him.
The rude door, constructed of the trunks of saplings, bound togetherwith withes, crashed inwards, coming to the floor with a tremendousnoise, and a dozen savages precipitated themselves into the cabin.Landless fired, bringing one to his knee; then clubbed his musket andswung it over his shoulder. Between him and the Susquehannock, standingbeside him with bent body and knife drawn back against his breast, andthe invaders, was a space some few feet in width, and in this spacesomething dreadful now happened.
On one side lay the body of the man with the woman crouched above it, onthe other a pile of skins upon which lay the little child. It hadsobbed itself into exhaustion and quiet, but terrified afresh by thesavage forms pouring through the doorway, the increased and awfulclamor, the flames which had now seized upon the walls, and the chokingsmoke which filled the hut, it now scrambled from the pallet, and with aweak cry started across the space towards its mother. It crossed thepath of the Ricahecrian chief--he glanced downwards, saw the tinytottering figure with its outstretched arms, caught it up, and holdingit by its feet, dashed its head against the ground. The cry which thechild uttered as he raised it reached the until then deaf ears of themother. She started up with a shriek that rang high above the yelling ofthe savages, and darted forward, only to receive at her very feet themangled form of the baby she had sung to sleep but a few hours before.She caught it to her breast and with another dreadful cry rushed uponthe savage. He met her, seized her free arm, raised it, and plunged hisknife into her bosom. Still clasping the child to her bosom, she fellwithout a groan, while the Indian bounded on towards the three who yetremained alive.
The Susquehannock met him. "A chief for a chief," he said with a coldsmile, and the two locked together in a deadly embrace. When theRicahecrian was dead, the Susquehannock turned to find Landless--oneIndian dead before him, another writhing away like a woundedsnake--confronting across the body at his feet the graceful figure andthe amber-hued, evil, smiling face of Luiz Sebastian. So strong were theflames by now, and so dense and stifling the smoke, that of the score ormore who had broken into the cabin but few remained within its walls,which were fast becoming those of a furnace, the majority retreating tothe fresh air outside, whence they whooped on to their devil's work thebolder spirits within.
These now bore down _en masse_ upon the devoted three. One threw histomahawk; it whistled within half an inch of Landless's head, and stuckinto the wall behind him. Another struck at him with his knife, but hebeat him down with his musket, and turned again to the mulatto, who,knife in hand, watched his chance to run in upon him.
"Look to the yellow slave, my brother," cried the Susquehannock, "I willcare for these dogs," and hurled his gigantic form upon them. One wentdown before his knife; he broke the back of another, bending him like areed across his knee; a third fell, cleft to the brain by histomahawk--there was a fresh influx from without, and he was borne downand knives thrust into him. Struggling to his feet, with one lastsuperhuman exertion of his vast strength, he shook them off as a stagshakes off the dogs, and stretching out his arm, cried to Landless,dimly seen through the ever thickening smoke;--
"My brother, farewell! I said we should find Death in the BlueMountains.... The Iroquois laughs at the Algonquin dogs, laughs atDeath--dies laughing."
He broke into wild, unearthly, choking laughter, his figure swaying toand fro like a pine in a storm. The laughter, an indescribable and mostdreadful sound, became low, choked, a mere rattle in the throat, diedinto silence, and the laugher crashed to the ground like a pine forwhich the storm has been too much.
Landless drew a breath that was like a moan, but kept his eyes upon theyellow menace before him.
"The Ricahecrians are my good friends," said Luiz Sebastian. "Theypromise me a wigwam in their village in the Blue Mountains. I shall leadto it a bride, and she shall be no Indian girl."
Landless struck at him over the dead body between them, but the mulatto,springing back, avoided the blow.
"It is my hour," he said, still with a smile.
A portion of the roof fell in, making a barrier of flame between them. Avolume of smoke arose, and through it Landless and Patricia dimly sawIndians and mulatto making for the doorway, driven forth by theintolerable heat and the imminent danger of the burning walls and theremainder of the roof caving in upon them. Beyond Landless was thesquare opening leading into the tiny shed in which he had been sleepingwhen this midnight visitation came upon them. Raising Patricia in hisarms, h
e made for it, and they presently found themselves in temporarysecurity. It was but for a moment, he knew, for the flames were alreadytaking hold upon the shed, but as he set his burden down he whisperedencouraging words.
"I know," she answered. "We are in God's hands. I would rather die thanto come into that man's power. But the door to the shed is open and theway seems clear. Could we not escape even now?"
"Alas! madam, the flames make it as light as day around the cabin. Theywould certainly see us. And yet if we stay, we burn. When the firereaches this straw above our heads we will try it."
"I would rather stay here," said Patricia.
Behind them the flames roared and crackled, the cabin burning like atorch, and with the flames rose and fell the triumphant cries of thesavages, who, unaware of the existence of the tiny shed, so coveredwith the vines that draped the cabin that it seemed one with it,congregated in front of the gap in the wall where had been the door, andwaited for their still living victims to emerge from it.
"Look!" breathed Patricia, grasping Landless's arm.
They stood facing the open door of the shed, and gazing through it downthe lit slope of the knoll. Into the light, out of the darkness at thefoot of the hill, now glided a man, naked save for the loin cloth, andpainted with horrible devices; in the figure, noiseless and bentforward, savage cunning; in the eyes, the lust for blood. In hisfootsteps came his double, then a third, in all points exactly similar,then a fourth, a fifth--a long line, creeping as silently as shadows--anightmare procession--up through the lurid light.
Landless drew Patricia further into the shadow.
"Wait," he said. "They may prove our deliverance."
The stealthy line reached the summit of the knoll, then broadened into adisc, and swept past the frail shelter in which stood the fugitives. Amoment, and the war whoop rang out, to be answered by a burst of yellsfrom the Ricahecrians, and then by prolonged and awful clamor.
"Now is our time," said Landless.
Hand in hand they ran from the shed that was now in a light flame, anddown the slope up which had come the band of unconscious Samaritans.
"The stream!" said Landless. "There is a small raft upon it if they havenot destroyed it."
They made for the water, found the raft hidden in a clump of reeds anduninjured, and stepped upon it. In ten minutes' time from the appearanceof the new factor in the sum they were moving steadily, if slowly, downa stream so wide that in Europe it would have been called a river. Theglare from the burning cabin faded, the flaming mass itself shrunk untilit looked a burning bush, then dwindled to a star. The noise of thestruggle upon the mount was with them longer, but at length it, too,died away.
"Which will conquer?" said Patricia at last, from where she crouched atthe feet of Landless, who stood erect, poling.
"The Ricahecrians were the stronger," he answered. "But they may be sohandled that they will not come at us again. That must be our hope."
There followed a long silence, broken by Patricia.
"The baby," she said in a quivering voice, "the poor, pretty, innocentlittle thing!"
"It is well with it," said Landless. "It is spared all toil andsuffering. It is better as it is."
"The man and woman went together," said Patricia, still with the sob inher voice. "They would have chosen it so, I think. But the poorIndian--"
"He was my friend," said Landless slowly, "and I brought him death."
"It is I that brought him death!" cried Patricia, tossing up her arms."I that shall bring you death!"
Her voice rose into a cry that echoed drearily from the hills aboutthem, and she beat her hands against the raft with a sudden passion.
"You would bring me no unwelcome gift," said Landless steadily,"provided only that the time when I could serve you with my life werepast."
She did not answer, and they floated on in silence down the littleriver, between banks lined with dwarf willows and sighing reeds. Withthe dawn they came to rapids through which they could not pilot theirfrail craft. Leaving the water, they turned their faces towards therising sun, and pursued their journey through the forest that seemed tostretch to the end of the world.
Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia Page 32
