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Prisoners of Hope: A Tale of Colonial Virginia, a novel by Mary Johnston |
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Chapter 31. The Hut In The Clearing |
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_ CHAPTER XXXI. THE HUT IN THE CLEARING Five days later saw the wayfarers some thirty leagues to the eastward of the hollow in the hills. They had traveled swiftly, sleeping but a few hours of each night and in the daytime pausing for rest only when Landless, quietly watchful, saw the weariness growing in the eyes of the woman beside him, or noted her lagging footsteps. They had left the higher mountains behind them, but still moved through what seemed an uninhabited territory. No Indian village crowned the hills above the streams; they encountered no roving bands; no solitary hunter met them; nowhere was there sign of human life. If their enemies were upon their track, they knew it not--perfect peace, perfect solitude seemed to encompass them. Still the Indian was vigilant; covering their trail with unimaginable ingenuity, taking advantage of every running stream, every stony hillside, building a fire only in some hidden hollow or fold of the hills, using his bow and arrow to bring down the deer or wild fowl which furnished them food--he stalked behind them, or sat bolt upright against the tree or rock beneath which they had made their resting place, tireless, watchful, the breathing image of caution. If he slept, it was a sleep from which the sound of a falling acorn, the sleepy stir of a partridge in the fern was sufficient to awaken him. Sometimes they rested by fires, for they heard the wolves through the darkness; upon the nights when this was necessary the Susquehannock sat with his gun across his knees, piercing the darkness in every direction with keen and restless eyes. Nothing worse than the wolves--cowardly as yet, for though drawing swiftly nearer, winter and famine were still distant--threatened them; no sound other than the forest sounds disturbed them; through the scant undergrowth or over the moss and partridge berry brushed nothing more appalling than bear or badger. But the Indian watched on. Day after day Landless and Patricia walked side by side through the reddening forest. His hands steadied her over crags or down ravines, or broke a way for her through vast beds of sassafras or mile-long tangles of wild grape, and when their way lay along the bed of streams he carried her. She had no need to complain of fatigue, for he saw when she was weary, and called a halt. At their rustic meals he waited upon her with grave courtesy, and when they halted for the night he made her couch of fallen leaves and wove for it a screen of branches. They spoke but little and only of the needs of the hour. She bore herself towards him kindly and gently, thanking him with voice and smile for all that he did for her, and there was no mistrust in her eyes; but he saw, or fancied he saw, a shadow in their depths, and thinking, "She does not forget, and neither must I," he set a watch upon himself, and bounds, across which he was not to step. Upon the afternoon of the sixth day they were passing through a deep and narrow ravine--a mere crack between two precipitous, heavily wooded mountains--when the Indian stopped short in his tracks and uttered a warning "Ugh!" then bent forward in a listening attitude. "What is it?" asked Landless in a low voice. "I hear nothing." "It is a sound," said the other in the same tone. "I do not know what yet, for it is far off. But it is in front of us." "Shall we go on?" demanded Landless, and the Indian nodded. It was late afternoon, and the hills which closed in behind them as the gorge writhed to left and right hid the sun. Great trees, too, pine and chestnut, walnut and oak, leaned towards each other from the opposing banks, and together with the overhanging rocks, mantled with fern, made a twilight of the pass beneath. Here and there the silver stem of a birch stood up tall and straight, and looked a ghostly sentinel. "Do you hear it still?" demanded Landless when they had gone some distance in dead silence. "Yes." "And still in front of us?" "Yes." "Ah, what can it be?" cried Patricia, turning her white face upon Landless. A cold wind, blowing from open spaces beyond, rushed up the ravine. "I hear a very faint sound," said Landless, "like the tapping of a woodpecker in the heart of the forest." "It is the sound of the axe of the white man," said the Indian. "Some one is cutting down a tree." "There can be no ranger or pioneer within many leagues of us!" exclaimed Landless. "No white man hath ever come so far. It must be an Indian!" The Susquehannock shook his head. "Why should an Indian cut down a tree? We kill them and let them stand until they are bare and white like the bones of a man when the wolves have finished with him, and they fall of themselves." "If my father still searches for me," said Patricia in a low voice, "may it not be his party that we hear? There may be a stream there. They may make canoes." "With all my heart I pray that it be so, madam," said Landless. "But we will soon know. See, Monakatocka has gone on ahead." She did not answer, and they walked on through the gloom of the defile. Presently their path became rough and broken, blocked with large stones and heavily shadowed by cedars projecting from the rocks above and draped with vines. He held out his hands and she took them, and he helped her across the rough places. He felt her hands tremble in his, and he thought it was with the ecstasy of the hope which inspired her. "If it is indeed so," she said once in a voice so low that he had to bend to catch the words, "if it is indeed my father, then this is the last time you will help me thus." "Yes," he answered steadily. "The last time." They passed the rocks and came to where the ravine widened. The sound that had perplexed them was now plainly audible; there was no mistaking the quick, ringing strokes of the axe. They rounded a jutting cliff and abruptly emerged from the chill darkness of the gorge upon a noble landscape of hill and valley, autumn woods and flowing water, all bathed in the golden light of the sinking sun and inestimably bright and precious of aspect after the gloom through which they had been traveling. But it was not the beauty of the scene which drew an exclamation from them both. At a little distance rose a knoll, covered with short grass and fading golden-rod, and with its base laved by a crystal stream of some width, and upon the knoll, shaded by a couple of magnificent maples, and covered with the pale and feathery bloom of the wild clematis, stood a small, rude hut. Smoke rose from its crazy chimney, and upon the strip of greensward before the door rolled a little, half-naked child--a white child. As the travelers stared in amazement, a woman's voice rang out, freshly and sweetly, in an English ballad. The trees had been cleared away from around the knoll, and in their place rose the yellowing stalks of Indian corn. The little mound, feathered with the gold of the golden-rod and girt with the gold of the maize, rose like a fairy isle from the limitless sea of forest, and the apparition of a troop of veritable elves would have astonished the wanderers less than did the tiny cabin, the romping child, and the clear song of the woman. The Indian glided to their side from behind the trunk of an oak. "Ugh," he said with emphasis. "He is mad and so he has his scalp still." As he spoke he pointed to where, at a little distance, a man, with his back turned to the forest, was busily felling a tree. "He dares much," said Landless. "We did not think to see the face of a white man--pioneer, ranger, trapper or trader--for many a league yet. He has built his house in the jaws of the wolf." Patricia gazed at the hut with wistful eyes. "There is a woman there," she said, and Landless heard her voice tremble for the first time in their long, toilsome and painful journey. "There is no need to pass them by, is there? It looks very fair and peaceful. May we not rest here for this one night?" "Yes," said Landless gently, reading, as he read all her fancies and desires, her longing for the companionship of a woman, though for so short a time. The Indian, too, nodded assent. "Good! but Monakatocka will watch to-night." They moved through the checkered light and shade towards the man who worked at the foot of the knoll. They were quite near him when the woman, whose voice they had heard, came to the door of the cabin, shaded her eyes with her hand, looked towards the ravine, and saw the three figures emerging from it. With a loud cry she snatched up the child at her feet and rushed down the knoll towards the man, who at the sound of her voice dropped his axe, caught up a musket which leaned against a stump beside him, and wheeling, presented the gun at the newcomers. "Give me your kerchief, madam," said Landless, and advanced with the white lawn in his hand. "Halt!" cried the man with the gun. "We are friends," called Landless. "This lady and I are from the Settlements. This Indian is not Algonquin, but Iroquois--a Susquehannock, as you may tell by his size. You need have no fear. We are quite alone." The man slowly lowered his gun. "What, in the name of all the fiends, do you here?" he said, wiping away with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had sprung to his forehead. He was a tall man with a sinewy frame and a dare-devil face, tanned to well-nigh the hue of the Indian. "I might ask the same question of you," said Landless, coming up to him with a smile. "This lady was captured and carried off by a band of roving Ricahecrians who bore her into the Blue Mountains. We ask your hospitality for to-night. The lady is very weary, and she has not seen the face of a woman for many weeks. Your good wife will entreat her kindly, I know." The woman, who now stood beside the man, smiled, but doubtfully; the man's face too was clouded, and there was an uneasy light in his eyes. Landless, looking steadily at him, saw upon his forehead a mark which served to explain his evident perturbation. "You need not fear me," he said quietly. "'Tis none of our business how you come to be here in this wilderness, so far from what has been counted the furthest outpost." The man, feeling his gaze upon him, raised his hand with an involuntary motion to his forehead, then dropped it, awkwardly enough. "I see," said Landless. "I understand. I have been--I am--a servant. A runaway, too, if you like. I have been in trouble. I would not betray you if I could: that I cannot, goes without saying. Now, will you shelter us for this night?" "Yes," said the man, his face clearing. "As you say, you couldn't do us harm if you would, seeing that masters, and d--d overseers, and bloodhounds are at the world's end for us. We are beyond their reach. Bring up the lady. Joan, here, will see to her." An hour later the woman and Patricia sat side by side upon the doorstep in the long mountain twilight. At their feet the little child crowed and clapped its hands, and plucked at the golden-rod growing about the door. Below them, beside the placid stream, the owner of the hut and Godfrey Landless paced slowly up and down, now disappearing into the shadow of the trees, now dimly seen in the open spaces, while the Indian lay at full length beneath the maples, with his eye upon the blackness of the ravine down which they had come. "It is fair to look upon, and peaceful," Patricia said dreamily, "but Danger lives in these dreadful mountains. Why did you come here?" "We came because we loved," the woman said simply. "But why into the very land of the savages, so far from safety, so far from the Settlements?" The woman turned her eyes upon the beautiful face beside her and studied it in silence. "I will tell you," she said at last, "for I believe you are as good as you are beautiful, and you are as beautiful as an angel. And, though I can see that you are a lady, yet you are woman too, as I am, and you have suffered much, as I have, and have loved too, I think, as I have loved." "I have never loved," said Patricia. The woman smiled, and shook her head. "There is a look in the eyes that only comes with that. I know it." She gathered the child to her, and beating its little hand against her bosom, began her story:-- "It is four years since I signed to come to the Plantations, to become the servant of an up-river planter--and to better myself. It was a hard life, my lady, a hard life--you cannot guess how hard.... One day a neighboring planter sent a message to my master, and I (for I served in the house) took it from the messenger. The messenger was one that I had known in the village at home, in England. He had left home to make his fortune, and I had not heard of him for a long time. They used to call me his sweetheart. When I saw him I cried out, and he caught my hands in his.... After that we met whenever we could, on Sundays, on Instruction days, whenever chance offered. He had tried to run away twice before we met, but he never tried afterwards. His master was a hard man--mine was worse.... After a while we began to meet in secret--at night.... You are a lady--that is different--you cannot understand; but I loved him, loved him as well as any lady in the land could love; better, maybe.... There came a night when I was followed, and taken, and he with me." She broke off to smell at the scentless spear of golden-rod which the child held up, and to say, "Yes, my darling, pretty, pretty, pretty," then went on with her eyes following the figures walking up and down beside the stream. "The next night found us in the sheriff's hands, in the gaol at the court-house. Oh that blank, dreadful, heavy night! I felt the lash already--I did not mind that--but I saw the platform and the post, and the gaping crowd beneath. I thought of him, and my heart was sick; I thought of my mother, and my tears fell like rain.... There was a noise at the window, and I stood upon my stool to see what it was. It was he! He had a knife and he worked and wrenched at the bars until he had wrenched them away, then dragged me through the window and we stood together beneath the stars--free! Another moment and we were down at the water side and into a boat which was fastened there. We loosed it and rowed with all our speed up the river. He had killed the gaoler and gotten away, bringing with him a musket and an axe. All that night we rowed, and when morning broke we were well-nigh past the settlements, for we had been far up river to begin with. That day we hid in the reeds, but when night came we sped up the stream. We came to the falls of the far west and left our boat there. For many days we walked through the woods, hurrying on, day after day, for when we lay down at night, I saw in my dreams the flash of the torches and heard the baying of the hounds. After a long while we came to an Indian village not many leagues from here, and there we found the mercies of the savage kinder than the mercies of the white man. They may have thought us mad--I do not know--but they did not harm us. There we dwelt for a time, in the stranger's wigwam, and there the child was born." She pressed the little hand which she held, and which she had never ceased to beat against her bosom, to her lips. "He would have stayed in the village, but in sleep I still heard the bloodhounds, and we left the friendly Indians and pressed on. We came upon this knoll on just such an evening as this--the light in the west, and the stream very still, with a large white star shining down upon it. We lay down beside it, and that night I slept without a dream.... We have been here ever since, and here we shall stay until we die." "It is fair now," said Patricia, "but in a little while it will be winter and very cold." "Bitterly cold," said the woman. "The snow lies long in these hills, and the wind howls down the ravine." "And the wolves are bold in winter." "Very bold. This scar upon my arm is from the teeth of one which I fought here, on the very threshold." "The Indians threaten always, summer or winter." "Ay, sooner or later they will come against us. We shall die that way at last. But what does it matter--so that we die together?" The lady of the manor turned her pure, pale face upon the other with wonder, and yet with comprehension, written upon it. "You are happy!" she said, almost in a whisper. "Yes, I am happy," the woman answered, a light that was not from the faintly crimson west upon her face. _ |
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