Part 92 (2/2)
Once Lois turned and called back in a low, breathless voice;
”I thank Tahoontowhee from my heart for his true eye and his avenging arrow.”
The young warrior laughed; but I knew he was the proudest youth in all the West that night.
The great cat-owls were shrieking and yelping through the forest as we sped southward. My Indians, silent and morose, their vengeance unslaked and now indefinitely deferred, moved at a dog trot through the forest, led by the Sagamore, whose eyes saw as clearly in the dark as my own by day.
And after a little while we noticed the stars above us, and felt ferns and gra.s.s under our feet, and came out into that same glade from whence runs the trail to Yndaia through the western hill cleft.
”People ahead!” whispered the Sagamore. ”Their Sorceress and six Eries!”
”Are you certain?” I breathed, loosening my hatchet.
”Certain, Loskiel. Yonder they are halted within the ferns. They are at the stream, drinking.”
I caught Lois by the wrist.
”Come with me--hurry!” I said, as the Indians darted away and began to creep out and around the vague and moving group of shadows. And as we sped forward I whispered brokenly my instructions, conjuring her to obey.
We were right among them before they dreamed of our coming; not a war-cry was uttered; there was no sound save the cras.h.i.+ng blows of hatchets, the heavy, panting breathing of those locked in a death struggle, the deep groan and coughing as a knife slipped home.
I flung a clawing Erie from me ere his blood drenched me, and he fell floundering, knifed through and through, and tearing a hole in my rifle-cape with his teeth as he fell. Two others lay under foot; my Oneidas were slaying another in the ferns, and the Sagamore's hatchet, swinging like lightning, dashed another into eternity.
The last one ran, but stumbled, with three arrows in his burly neck and spine; and the Night Hawk's hatchet flew, severing the thread of life far him and hurling him on his face. Instantly the young Oneida leaped upon the dead man's shoulders, pulled back his heavy head, and tore the scalp off with a stifled cry of triumph.
”The Black-Snake!” said the Sagamore at my side, breathing heavily from his b.l.o.o.d.y combat, and das.h.i.+ng the red drops from the scalp he swung.
”Look yonder, Loskiel! Our little Rosy Pigeon has returned at last!”
I had seen it already, but I turned to look. And I saw the White Sorceress and my sweetheart close locked in each other's arms--so close and motionless that they seemed but a single snowy shape there under the l.u.s.tre of the stars.
CHAPTER XX
YNDAIA
At the mouth of the pa.s.s which led to the Vale Yndaia I lay with my Indians that night, two mounting guard, then one, then two more, and the sentinels changed every three hours throughout the night. But all were excited and all slept lightly.
Within the Vale Yndaia, perhaps a hundred yards from the mouth of the pa.s.s, stood the lonely little house of bark in which Madame de Contrecoeur had lived alone for twenty years.
And here, that night, Lois lay with her mother; and no living thing nearer the dim house than we who mounted guard--except for the little birds asleep that Madame de Contrecoeur had tamed, and the small forest creatures which had learned to come fearlessly at this lonely woman's low-voiced call. And these things I learned not then, but afterwards.
Never had I seen such utter loneliness--for it had been less a solitude, it seemed to me, had the little house not stood there under the pale l.u.s.tre of the stars.
On every side lofty hills enclosed the valley, heavily timbered to their crests; and through the intervale the rill ran, das.h.i.+ng out of the pa.s.s and away into that level, wooded strip to the fern-glade which lay midway between the height of land and Catharines-town; and there joined the large stream which flowed north. I could see in the darkness little of the secret and hidden valley called Yndaia, only the heights silhouetted against the stars, a vague foreground sheeted with mist, and the dark little house standing there all alone under the stars.
All night long the great tiger-owls yelped and hallooed across the valley; all night the spectral whip-poor-will whispered its husky, frightened warning. And long after midnight a tiny bird awoke and sang monotonously for an hour or more.
Awaiting an attack from Catharines-town at any moment, we dared not make a fire or even light a torch. Rotten trunks which had fallen across the stream we dragged out and piled up across the mouth of the pa.s.s to make a defence; but we could do no more than that; and, our efforts ended, my Indians sat in a circle cross-legged, quietly hooping and stretching their freshly taken scalps by the dim light of the stars, and humming their various airs of triumph in low, contented, and purring voices. All laboured under subdued excitement, the brief and almost silent slaughter in the ferns having thoroughly aroused them.
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