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Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, a novel by Mary Johnston |
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Chapter 13. In The Tobacco House |
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_ CHAPTER XIII. IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect. Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom, the three started up from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been squatting, with their heads ominously close together. Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said. The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The face of the wretch gradually resumed its usual expression of low brutality, though an ugly sweat broke out upon it, and the mouth opened and shut as though he had been running. He turned upon Landless with a half threatening, half cringing air. "So you've found out what I was about last night, eh, pardner? But you'll keep a still tongue. You're not one to peach on your comrade as was in hell or Newgate with you, and as crossed the ocean with you to this d--d Virginia, and as has always liked you, and has the same spite as you have against the man what bought us. You say naught, comrade, and you'll not stand to lose by it." "I go from here to give you up to Colonel Verney," said Landless. The wretch gave a snarl of rage and fear. Luiz Sebastian laid a soothing hand upon his shoulder. "If I thought that," snarled the convict, "you'd never live to reach that door." "I shall live to see you hanged," said the other coolly. Here the mulatto slipped something into Roach's hand. "So you'll give me up?" said the latter in a peculiar voice. "I have said so." "Then, by the Lord! I'll be even with you!" Roach cried with savage triumph. "Do you see this, and this, and this?" fluttering a mass of folded papers before the other's eyes. "Ah! I was wise, I was, when I couldn't hide everything about me, to take the papers, and leave the weapons. I've got you now. Here's the lists that the old fool who is dead and gone to hell had hidden behind the gold! Here's enough to hang you and your d--d Cromwellians higher than Haman. There will be more than one giving up, I'm thinking! I've got you under my thumb, and I'll squeeze you!" "You cannot read; you do not know what those papers contain," said Landless steadily. "But I can," put in Trail smoothly. "I was but just running them over to our friend whose education has been so sadly neglected, when you came in." Landless drew a pistol from his bosom, cocked it, and leveled it at the murderer. "You see," he said with an ominously quiet eye and voice, "you were not altogether wise to leave the weapons. Now, give me those lists." "Damnation!" cried the convict, and Luiz Sebastian glided towards the door. Landless, quick of eye and active of body, saw the movement, and sprang backwards to the opening before the other could reach it. He covered the three with his pistol. "I will shoot the first of you that stirs," he said sternly. "You, Roach, lay those papers upon that bit of board, and push them towards me with your foot." "I'll go to hell first," was the sullen reply. "As you please. I will give you until I count twenty. If those papers are not in my hands, then I will shoot you like the dog you are." The murderer uttered a dreadful curse. Landless began to count. Roach made an irresolute motion of the hand that held the lists. Landless counted on, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--" With another oath and a grin of rage Roach dropped the papers upon the board at his feet. "Now push it towards me," said Landless. With a brow like midnight the other did as he was bid. Still covering his men, Landless stooped quickly, and took up the precious papers, assured himself that they were all there, and placed them in his bosom. "Now," he said, leaning his back against the doorpost, and regarding the three baffled rogues with a grim eye, "I have a few words to say to you. I speak first to you, Trail, and to you, Luiz Sebastian. These papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not the information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it was the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took you, might sell to Colonel Verney?" "Señor Landless sees the thing as it is," said Luiz Sebastian. "Well, you no longer possess these proofs, and are therefore just where you were yesterday." "Listen, Señor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian gloomily. "This plot does not please us. It is too much in the hands of those who call themselves soldiers and martyrs, whom our master calls fanatic Oliverians, and whom I, Luiz Sebastian, call accursed heretics. The servants have no say in the matter; they are to follow like sheep where these others lead. The slaves are not even to know of it until the last moment. A handful of us who have white blood in our veins are let into the secret, that we may incite the blacks when the time is come; but are we consulted? Are our opinions asked, our wishes deferred to? I, Luiz Sebastian, who have been through three insurrections in the Indies, and who know how such things should be managed; has my advice been craved as to this or that? You make us promises. Mother of God! how do we know that those promises will be kept? By St. Jago! the insurrection may arrive, and the planters be put down, and next year may find us slaves still, with but a change of masters!" "It is too late now for such questions," said Landless steadily. "You must accept the conspiracy as it is. In liberating themselves, these men will of necessity free you even as they will free me, who am not, as you know, of their class. I shall take my chance, as I think you will take yours." The mulatto played with a tobacco peg, striking it against his great, white teeth. At length he said slowly and with a sinister upward glance at the figure by the door, "Certainly, Señor Landless, it seems our best, our only chance, for freedom." And with this Landless had perforce to be content. He turned to the murderer, saying sternly, "Now for my word with you. I hold your life in my hands, for I heard you last night in the marsh, and Porringer and I saw you stealing from the creek this morning, and I can swear that you knew of the gold hidden in the hut. You have it on you at this moment. I could hold you here with this pistol until the overseer should come and search you. But I let you go, choosing rather your safety than the endangerment of that which was dearer than life to the man you murdered. The unsupported assertion of a murderer as to the contents of papers which he had not got to show, might not go for much, but I prefer that you should not make it. I have warned you;--you had best make your escape at once." "If you hold your tongue, there's no reason why I should run." "Oh, yes, there is! There is a reason in the hut on the marsh." "What do you mean?" "I mean that clasped in the hand of the man you murdered is the missing half of that torn lock upon your forehead." With a yell Roach sprang to the door only to be confronted by the muzzle of Landless' pistol. "Wait a moment," he said composedly. "Oh, you need not be afraid! I intend to let you go. But you don't leave this tobacco house until after I have left it myself." "Curse you!" cried the other, foaming at the lips. "You are ungrateful. I not only promise not to witness against you, but I aid you to escape." "For reasons of your own," suggested Trail. "Precisely; for reasons of my own. If you are taken, I will hold my tongue just so long as you hold yours. If you escape now, I will pray that my day of reckoning will yet come. And it will be a heavy reckoning." "Ay, that it will!" cried the murderer with brutal fury. "You've got the upper hand now; but wait! Every dog has his day, and I'll have mine! and when it comes, I'll do for you! I'll smash your beauty! I'll draw more blood from you than ever the whip of the overseer did! I'll use you worse than I used that old man last night, who writhed and struggled, and tried to pray! I'll--" With white lips and blazing eyes Landless sprang forward, and clapped the mouth of the pistol to the ruffian's temple. Roach recoiled, then sunk upon his knees with an abject whine for mercy. Landless let his hand drop, and moved slowly back to the door. "You had need to cry for mercy," he said in a low, distinct voice, "for you were never so near to death before. I let you go now, but one day I shall kill you. Until which day--take care of yourself!" Still with his face upon them he passed out of the door, then turned and walked away with a steady step, but with a heart bleeding for the loss of his friend, and heavy with forebodings for the future. In the tobacco house the murderer, the forger, and the mulatto sat stricken into silence until the last crisp footfall had died away. Then amidst a torrent of curses Roach made for the door. Trail plucked him back. "Where are you going?" he cried. "I don't know! To the devil!" "The bloodhounds will be upon your trail before noon." The wretch cried out and struck his hand against the wall with a force that laid the knuckles bare and bleeding. "There is a way," said Luiz Sebastian slowly, "a way that only I know. You must take to the inlet here, and swim up it until you come to the mouth of the brook yonder in the forest. You must wade up that brook until you come to a second, and up that until you come to a third. When you have gone a mile up that one, leave it, and strike through the woods, going towards the north. Another mile will bring you to a village of the Chickahominies upon the Pamunkey.[1] They are at odds with Governor and Council, and they will hide you. Moreover, I once did their sachem a service, and they are my friends." "I'm off," said Roach, breaking from the detaining grasp. "Wait," said Luiz Sebastian. "There is time enough. Woodson will not come for a long while. When he does, he shall find Señor Trail and myself busily at work there outside, and we will say that you left us, and went down the inlet a long time before. But now we want to talk to you." "Be quick then," growled the other, "I've no mind to swing for this job." Luiz Sebastian brought his handsomely malevolent face close to the other's hideous countenance. "Would you not like to ruin that devil who but now robbed you of your hard-earned property?" "Would I not?" cried the murderer with a tremendous oath. "I'd give everything but life and gold to do it, as that cunning devil well knew. I'd give my soul!" "Would you like to be shown how to get more gold than old Godwyn's store, twenty times told? To get your freedom? To have some black, sweet hours in which to work your will on them at the house yonder? To plunge your arms to the elbow in the master's money chest; to become drunken with his wine; to strike him down, and that smiling imp his cousin, and that other devil, Woodson; to hear the women cry for mercy--and cry in vain? You would like all this?" "Show me the way!" cried the brute with a ferocious light in his bloodshot eyes. "Show me the way to do it safely, and I'll--" He broke off and threatened the air with malignant fists. "Go to the village on the Pamunkey," said Luiz Sebastian with his most feline expression. "I will come to you there the first night I can slip away, I and our friend, the Señor Trail. There we will have our little conference. Mother of God! Señor Landless may find that others can plot as well as he and his accursed heretics." [Footnote 1: The modern York.] _ |
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