"Well, well," said Doe's associate, "this is idle talk. We have won the victory, and must enjoy it. I must see the prize."

"What good can come of it?" demanded Doe, moodily: "the gal's half dead and whole crazy,—or so Telie says. And as for your gitting any good-will out of her, cuss me if I believe it. And Telie says—"

"That Telie will spoil all! I told you to keep the girl away from her."

"Well, and didn't I act accordin'? I told her I'd murder her, if she went near her agin—a full-blooded, rale-grit rascal to talk so to my own daughter, an't I? But I should like to know where's the good of keeping the gal from her, since it's all she has for comfort?"

"And that is the very reason she must be kept away," said the stranger, with a look malignly expressive of self-approving cunning: "there must be no hope, no thought of security, no consciousness of sympathy, to make me more trouble than I have had already. She must know where she is, and what she is, a prisoner among wild savages: a little fright, a little despair, and the work is over. You understand me, eh? There is a way of bringing the devil himself to terms; and as for a woman, she is not much more unmanageable. One week of terrors, real and imagined, does the work; and then, my jolly Jack, you have won your wages."

"And I have desarved 'em," said Doe, striking his fist upon the table with violence; "for I have made myself jist the d——dest rascal that was ever made of a white man. Lying, and cheating, and perjuring, and murdering—it's nothing better nor murder, that of giving up the younker that never did harm to me or mine, to the Piankeshaws,—for they'll burn him, they will, d—n 'em! there's no two ways about it.—There's what I've done for you; and if you were to give me had the plunder, I reckon 'twould do no more than indamnify me for my rascality. And so, here's the end on't;—you've made me a rascal, and you shall pay for it."

"It is the only thing the world ever does pay for," said the stranger, with edifying coolness; "and so, don't be afflicted. To be a rascal is to be a man of sense,—provided you are a rascal in a sensible way,—that is, a profitable one."

"Ay," said Doe, "that's the doctrine you have been preaching ever since I knowed you; and you have made a fortun' by it. But as for me, though I've toed the track after your own leading, I'm jist as poor as ever, and ten times more despisable,—I am, d—n me; for I'm a white Injun, and there's nothing more despisable. But here's the case," he added, working himself into a rage,—"I won't be a rascla for nothing,—I'm sworn to it: and this is a job you must pay for to the full vally, or you're none the better on it."

"It will make your fortune," said his companion in iniquity: "there was bad luck about us before; but all is now safe—The girl will make us secure."

"I don't see into it a bit," said Doe, morosely: "you were secure enough without her. The story of the other gal you know of gave you the grab on the lands and vall'ables; and I don't see what's the good to come of this here other one, no how."

"Then have you less brains, my jolly Jack, then I have given you credit for," said the other. "The story you speak of is somewhat too flimsy to serve us long. We must have a better claim to the lands than can come of possession in trust for an heir not to be produced, till we can find the way to Abraham's bosom. We have now obtained it: the younker, thanks to your Piankeshaw cut-throats, is on the path to Paradise; the girl is left alone, sole claimant, and heiress at law. In a word, Jack, I design to marry her;—ay, faith will-she nill-she, I will marry her: and thereby, besides gratifying certain private whims and humours not worth mentioning, I will put the last finish to the scheme, and step into the estate with a clear conscience."

"But the will, the cussed old will?" cried Doe. "You've got up a cry about it, and there's them that won't let it drop so easy. What's an heir at law agin a will? You take the gal back, and the cry is, 'Where's the true gal, the major's daughter?' I reckon, you'll find you're jist got yourself into a trap of your own making!"

"In that case," said the stranger, with a grin, "we must e'en act like honest men, and find (after much hunting and rummaging, mind you!) the major's last will."

"But you burned it!" exclaimed Doe: "you told me so yourself."

"I told you so, Jack; but that was a little bit of innocent deception, to make you easy. I told you so; but I kept it, to guard against accidents. And here it is, Jack," added the speaker, drawing from amid the folds of his blanket a roll of parchment, which he proceeded very deliberately to spread upon the table: "The very difficulty you mention occurred to me; I saw it would not do to raise the devil, without retaining the power to lay him. Here then is the will, that settles the affair to your liking. The girl and the younker are co-heirs together; but the latter dying intestate, you understand, the whole falls into the lap of the former. Are you easy now, honest Jack? Will this satisfy you all is safe?"

"It is jist the thing to an iota," ejaculated Doe, in whom the sight of the parchment seemed to awaken cupidity and exultation together: "there's no standing agin it in any court in Virginnee!"

"Right, my boy," said his associate. "But where is the girl? I must see her."

"In the cabin with Wenonga's squaw, right over agin the Council-house," replied Doe; adding with animation, "but I'm agin your going nigh her, till we settle up accounts jist as honestly as any two sich d—d rascals can. I say, by G—, I must know how the book stands, and how I'm to finger the snacks: for snacks is the word, or the bargain's no go."

"Well,—we can talk of this on the morrow."

"To-night's the time," said Doe: "there's nothing like having an honest understanding of matters afore-hand. I'm not going to be cheated,—not meaning no offence in saying so; and I've jist made up my mind to keep the gal out of your way, till we've settled things to our liking."

"Spoken like a sensible rogue," said the stranger, with a voice all frankness and approval, but with a lowering look of impatience, which Nathan, who had watched the proceedings of the pair with equal amazement and interest, could observe from the chink, though it was concealed from Doe by the position of the speaker, who had risen from his stool, as if to depart, but who now sat down again, to satisfy the fears of his partner in villany. To this he immediately addressed himself, but in tones lower than before, so that Nathan could no longer distinguish his words.

But Nathan had heard enough. The conversation, as far as he had distinguished it, chimed strangely in with all his own and Roland's suspicions; there was, indeed, not a word uttered that did not confirm them. The confessions of the stranger, vague and mysterious as they seemed, tallied in all respects with Roland's account of the villanous designs imputed to the hated Braxley; and it was no little additional proof of his identity, that, in addressing Doe, whom he styled throughout as Jack, he had, once at least, called him by the name of Atkinson,—a refugee, whose connection with the conspiracy in Roland's story Nathan had not forgotten. It was not, indeed, surprising that Abel Doe should possess another name; since it was a common practice among renegades like himself, from some sentiment of shame or other obvious reasons, to assume an alias and nom de guerre, under which they acquired their notoriety: the only wonder was, that he should prove to be that person whose agency in the abduction of Edith would, of all other men in the world, go furthest to sustain the belief of Braxley being the principal contriver of the outrage.

Such thoughts as these may have wandered through Nathan's mind; but he took little time to con them over. He had made a discovery at that moment of more stirring importance and interest. Allowing that Edith Forrester was the prisoner of whom the disguised stranger and his sordid confederate spoke, and there was little reason to doubt it, he had learned, out of their own mouths, the place of her concealment, to discover which was the object of his daring visit to the village. Her prison-house was the wigwam of Wenonga, the chief,—if chief he could still be called, whom the displeasure of his tribe had robbed of almost every vestige of authority; and thither Nathan, to whom the vile bargaining of the white-men no longer offered interest, supposing he could even have overheard it, instantly determined to make his way.

But how was Nathan to know the cabin of the chief from the dozen other hovels that surrounded the Council-house. That was a question which, perhaps Nathan did not ask himself: for creeping softly from Doe's hut, and turning into the street (if such could be called the irregular winding space that separated the two lines of cabins composing the village), he stole forward, with nothing of the hesitation or doubt which might have been expected from one unfamiliar with the village.



CHAPTER XXIX.

While Nathan lay watching at the renegade's hut, there came a change over the aspect of the night, little less favourable to his plans and hopes than even the discovery of Edith's place of concealment, which he had so fortunately made. The sky became suddenly overcast with clouds, and deep darkness invested the Indian village; while gusts of wind, sweeping with a moaning sound over the adjacent hills, and waking the forests from their repose, came rushing over the village, whirring and fluttering aloft like flights of the boding night-raven, or the more powerful bird of prey that had given its name to the chieftain of the tribe.

In such darkness, and with the murmur of the blasts and the rustling of boughs to drown the noise of his footsteps, Nathan no longer feared to pursue his way; and rising boldly to his feet, drawing his blanket close around him, and assuming, as before, the gait of a savage, he strode forwards, and in less than a minute, was upon the public square,—if such we may call it,—the vacant area in the centre of the village, where stood the rude shed of bark and boughs, supported by a circular range of posts, all open, except at top, to the weather, which custom had dignified with the title of Council-house. The bounds of the square were marked by clusters of cabins placed with happy contempt of order and symmetry, and by trees and bushes that grew among and behind them, particularly at the foot of the hill on one side, and, on the other, along the borders of the river; which, in the pauses of the gusts, could be heard sweeping hard by over a broken and pebbly channel. Patches of bushes might even be seen growing in places on the square itself; and here and there were a few tall trees, remnants of the old forest which had once overshadowed the scene towering aloft, and sending forth on the blast such spiritual murmurs, and wild oraculous whispers, as were wont, in ancient days, to strike an awe through soothsayers and devotees in the sacred groves of Dodona.

Through this square, looking solitude and desolation together, lay the path of the spy; and he trode it without fear, although it offered an obstruction that might well have daunted the zeal of one less crafty and determined. In its centre, and near the Council-house, he discovered a fire, now burning low, but still, as the breeze, time by time, fanned the decaying embers into flame, sending forth light enough to reveal the spectacle of at least a dozen savages stretched in slumber around it, with as many ready rifles stacked round a post hard by. Their appearance, without affrighting, greatly perplexed the man of peace; who, though at first disposed to regard them as a kind of guard, to whom had been committed the charge of the village and the peace of the community, during the uproar and terrors of the debauch, found reason, upon more mature inspection, to consider them a band from some neighbouring village, perhaps an out-going war party, which, unluckily for himself, had tarried at the village to share the hospitalities, and take part in the revels, of its inhabitants. Thus, there was near the fire a huge heap of dried corn-husks and prairie-grass, designed for a couch,—a kind of, luxury which Nathan supposed the villagers would have scarce taken the trouble to provide, unless for guests whose warlike pride and sense of honour would not permit them to sleep under cover until they had struck the enemy in his own country, and were returning victorious to their own; and as a proof that they had shared as guests in all the excesses of their hosts, but few of them were seen huddled together on the couch, the majority lying about in such confusion and postures as could only have been produced by the grossest indulgence.

Pausing awhile, but not deterred by the discovery of such undesirable neighbours, Nathan easily avoided them by making the circuit of the square; creeping along from tree to tree, and bush to bush, until he had left the whole group on the rear, and arrived in the vicinity of a cabin, which, from its appearance, might with propriety be supposed the dwelling of the most distinguished demagogue of the tribe. It was a cottage of logs very similar to those of the renegades, who had themselves, perhaps, built it for the chief, whose favour it was so necessary to purchase by every means in their power; but as it consisted of only a single room, and that by no means spacious, the barbarian had seen fit to eke it out by a brace of summer apartments, being tents of skins, which were pitched at its ends like wings, and, perhaps, communicated directly with the interior, though each had its own particular door of mats looking out upon the square.

All these appearances Nathan could easily note, in occasional gleams from the fire, which, falling upon the rude and misshapen lodge, revealed its features obscurely to the eye. It bore an air of solitude that became the dwelling of a chief. The soil around it, as if too sacred to be invaded by the profane feet of the multitude, was left overgrown with weeds and starveling bushes; and an ancient elm, rising among them, and flinging its shadowy branches wide around, stood like a giant watchman, to repel the gaze of the curious.

This solitude, these bushes through which he could crawl unobserved, and the shadows of the tree, offering a concealment equally effectual and inviting, were all circumstances in Nathan's favour; and giving one backward glance to the fire on the square, and then fixing his eye on one of the tents, in which, as the mat at the door shook in the breeze, he could detect the glimmering of a light, and fancied he could even faintly hear the murmur of voices, he crawled among the bushes, scarcely doubting that he was now within but a few feet of the unhappy maid in whose service he had toiled so long and so well.

But the path to the wigwam was not yet free from obstructions. He had scarce pushed aside the first bush in his way, opening a vista into the den of leaves, where he looked to find his best concealment, before a flash of light from the fire, darting through the gap, and falling upon a dark grim visage almost within reach of his hand, showed him that he had stumbled unawares upon a sleeping savage,—a man that had evidently staggered there in his drunkenness, and falling among the bushes, had straightway given himself up to sottish repose.

For the first time, a thrill smote through the bosom of the spy; but it was not wholly a thrill of dismay. There was little indeed in the appearance of the wretched sleeper, at that moment, to inspire terror; for apart from the condition of helpless impotence, to which his ungovernable appetites had reduced him, he seemed to be entirely unarmed,—at least Nathan could see neither knife nor tomahawk about him. But there was that in the grim visage, withered with age, and seamed with many a scar,—in the mutilated, but bony and still nervous hand lying on the broad naked chest,—and in the recollections of the past they recalled to Nathan's brain, which awoke a feeling not less exciting, if less unworthy, than fear. In the first impulse of surprise, it is true, he started backwards, and grovelled flat upon his face, as if to beat an instant retreat in the only posture which could conceal him, if the sleeper should have been disturbed by his approach. But the savage slept on, drugged to stupefaction by many a deep and potent draught; and Nathan, preserving his snake-like position only for a moment, rose slowly upon his hands, and peered over again upon the unconscious barbarian.

But the bushes had closed again around him, and the glimmer of the dying fire no longer fell upon the barbarian. With an audacity of daring that marked the eagerness and intensity of his curiosity, Nathan with his hands pushed the bushes aside, so as again to bring a gleam upon the swarthy countenance; which he perused with such feelings as left him for a time unconscious of the object of his enterprise, unconscious of everything save the spectacle before him, the embodied representation of features which events of former years had painted in indelible hues on his remembrance. The face was that of a warrior, worn with years, and covered with such scars as could be boasted only by one of the most distinguished men of the tribe. Deep seams also marked the naked chest of the sleeper; and there was something in the appearance of his garments of dressed hides, which, though squalid enough, were garnished with multitudes of silver brooches and tufts of human hair, with here and there a broad Spanish dollar looped ostentatiously to the skin, to prove he was anything but a common brave. To each ear was attached a string of silver coins, strung together in regular gradation from the largest to the smallest,—a profusion of wealth which could appertain only to a chief. To prove, indeed, that he was no less, there was visible upon his head, secured to the tiara, or glory, as it might be called (for such is its figure) of badgers' hairs, which is so often found woven around the scalp-lock of a North-western Indian, an ornament consisting of the beaks and claws of a buzzard, and some dozen or more of its sable feathers. These, as Nathan had previously told the soldier, were the distinguishing badges of Wenonga, or the Black-Vulture (for so the name is translated); and it was no less a man than Wenonga himself, the oldest, most famous, and, at one time, the most powerful chief of his tribe, who thus lay, a wretched, squalid sot, before the doors of his own wigwam, which he had been unable to reach. Such was Wenonga; such were many of the bravest and most distinguished of his truly unfortunate race, who exchanged their lands, their fathers' graves, and the lives of their people, for the doubtful celebrity which the white man is so easily disposed to allow them.

The spy looked upon the face of the Indian; but there was none at hand to gaze upon his own, to mark the hideous frown of hate, and the more hideous grin of delight, that mingled on, and distorted his visage, as he gloated, snake-like, over that of the chief. As he looked, he drew from its sheath in his girdle his well-worn, but still bright and keen knife,—which he poised in one hand, while feeling, with what seemed extraordinary fearlessness or confidence of his prey, with the other along the sleeper's naked breast, as if regardless how soon he might wake. But Wenonga still slept on, though the hand of the white man lay upon his ribs, and rose and fell with the throbs of his warlike heart. The knife took the place of the hand, and one thrust would have driven it through the organ that had never beaten with pity or remorse; and that thrust Nathan, quivering through every fibre with nameless joy and exultation, and forgetful of everything but his prey, was about to make. He nerved his hand for the blow; but it trembled with eagerness. He paused an instant, and before he could make a second effort, a voice from the wigwam struck upon his ear, and the strength departed from his arm. He staggered back, and awoke to consciousness; the sound was repeated; it was the wail, of a female voice, and its mournful accents, coming to his ear in an interval of the gust, struck a new feeling into his bosom. He remembered the captive, and his errand of charity and mercy. He drew a deep and painful breath, and muttering, but within the silent recesses of his breast, "Thee shall not call to me in vain!" buried the knife softly in its sheath. Then crawling silently away, and leaving the chief to his slumbers, he crept through the bushes until he had reached the tent from which the mourning voice proceeded. Still lying upon his face, he dragged himself to the door, and looking under the corner of the mat that waved before it in the wind, he saw at a glance that he had reached the goal of his journey.

The tent was of an oval figure, and of no great extent; but being lighted only by a fire burning dimly in the centre of its earthen floor, and its frail walls darkened by smoke, the eye could scarcely penetrate to its dusky extremity. It consisted, as has been said, of skins, which were supported upon poles, wattled together like the framework of a crate or basket; the poles of the opposite sides being kept asunder by cross-pieces, which, at the common centre of intersection or radiation, were themselves upheld by a stout wooden pillar. Upon this pillar, and on the slender rafters, were laid or suspended sundry Indian utensils of the kitchen and the field, wooden bowls, earthen pans and Irazen pots, guns, hatchets, and fish-spears, with ears of corn, dried roots, smoked meats, blankets and skins, and many articles that had perhaps been plundered from the Long-knives, such as halters and bridles, hats, coats shawls, and aprons, and other such gear; among which was conspicuous a bundle of scalps, some of them with long female tresses, the proofs of the prowess of a great warrior, who, like the other fighting-men of his race, accounted the golden ringlets of a girl as noble a trophy of valour as the grizzled locks of a veteran soldier.

On the floor of the tent, piled against its sides and farthest extremity, was the raised platform of skins, with rude partitions and curtains of mats, which formed the sleeping-couch, or, perhaps we might say, the sleeping-apartments, of the lodge. But these were in a great measure hidden under heaps of blankets, skins, and other trumpery articles, that seemed to have been snatched in some sudden hurry from the floor, which they had previously cumbered. In fact, there was every appearance that the tent had been for a long time used as a kind of store-room, the receptacle of a bandit's omnium-gatherum, and had been hastily prepared for unexpected inmates. But these particulars, which he might have noted at a glance, Nathan did not pause to survey. There were objects of greater attractions for his eyes in a group of three female figures: in one of whom, standing near the fire, and grasping the hands and garments of a second, as if imploring pity or protection, her hair dishevelled, her visage bloodless, her eyes wild with grief and terror, he beheld the object of his perilous enterprise, the lovely and unhappy Edith Forrester. Struggling in her grasp, as if to escape, yet weeping, and uttering hurried expressions that were meant to soothe the agitation of the captive, was the renegade's daughter, Telie, who seemed herself little less terrified than the prisoner. The third person of the group was an Indian beldam, old, withered, and witch-like, who sat crouching over the fire, warming her skinny hands, and only intermitting her employment occasionally to eye the more youthful pair with looks of malignant hatred and suspicion.

The gale was still freshening, and the elm-boughs rustled loudly in the wind; but Nathan could overhear every word of the captive, as, still grasping Telie by the hand, she besought her, in the language of desperation, "not to leave her, not to desert her, at such a moment;" while Telie, shedding tears, which seemed to be equally those of shame and sorrow, entreated her to fear nothing, and permit her to depart.

"They won't hurt you,—no, my father promised that," she said: "it is the chief's house, and nobody will come nigh to hurt you. You are safe, lady; but, oh! my father will kill me, if he finds me here."

"It was your father that caused it all!" cried Edith, with a vehement change of feeling; "it was he that betrayed us, he that killed, oh! killed my Roland! Go!—I hate you! Heaven will punish you for what you have done; Heaven will never forgive the treachery and the murder—Go, go! they will kill me, and then all will be well,—yes, all will be well!"

But Telie, thus released, no longer sought to fly. She strove to obtain and kiss the hand that repelled her, sobbing bitterly, and reiterating her assurances that no harm was designed the maiden.

"No,—no harm! Do I not know it all?" exclaimed Edith, again giving way to her fears, and grasping Telie's arm. "You are not like your father; if you betrayed me once, you will not betray me again. Stay with me,—yes, stay with me, and I'll forgive you,—forgive you all. That man—that dreadful man! I know him well: he will come—he has murdered my cousin, and he is,—oh Heaven, how black a villain! Stay with me, Telie, to protect me from that man; stay with me, and I'll forgive all you have done."

It was with such wild entreaties Edith, agitated by an excitement that seemed almost to have unsettled her brain, still urged Telie not to abandon her; while Telie, repeating again and again her protestations that no injury was designed or could happen, and that the old woman at the fire was specially deputed to protect her, and would do so, begged to be permitted to go, insisting, with every appearance of sincere alarm, that her father would kill her if she remained,—that he had forbidden her to come near the prisoner, which, nevertheless, she had secretly done, and would do again, if she could this time avoid discovery.

But her protestations were of little avail in moving Edith to her purpose; and it was only when the latter, worn out by suffering and agitation, and sinking helpless on the couch at her feet, had no longer the power to oppose her, that Telie hurriedly, yet with evident grief and reluctance, tore herself away. She pressed the captive's hand to her lips, bathed it in her tears, and then, with many a backward glance of sorrow, stole from the lodge. Nathan crawled aside as she passed out, and watching a moment until she had fled across the square, returned to his place of observation. He looked again into the tent, and his heart smote him with pity as he beheld the wretched Edith sitting in a stupor of despair, her head sunk upon her breast, her hands clasped, her ashy lips quivering, but uttering no articulate sound. "Thee prays Heaven to help thee, poor maid!" he muttered to himself: "Heaven denied the prayer of them that was as good and as lovely; but thee is not yet forsaken!"

He took his knife from its sheath, and turned his eyes upon the old hag, who sat at the fire with her back partly towards him, but her eyes fastened upon the captive, over whom they wandered with the fierce and unappeasable malice, that was in those days seen rankling in the breast of many an Indian mother, and expended upon prisoners at the stake with a savage, nay, a demoniacal zeal that might have put warriors to shame. In truth, the unlucky captive had always more to apprehend from the squaws of a tribe than from its warriors; and their cries for vengeance often gave to the torture wretches whom even their cruel husbands were inclined to spare.

With knife in hand, and murderous thoughts in his heart, Nathan raised a corner of the mat, and glared for a moment upon the beldam. But the feelings of the white-man prevailed; he hesitated, faltered, and dropping the mat in its place, retreated silently from the door. Then restoring his knife for a second time to its sheath, listening awhile to hear if the drunken Wenonga yet stirred in his lair, and taking a survey of the sleepers at the nearly extinguished fire, he crept away, retraced his steps through the village, to the place where he had left the captain of horse-thieves, whom,—to the shame of that worthy be it spoken,—he found fast locked in the arms of Morpheus, and breathing such a melody from his upturned nostrils as might have roused the whole village from its repose, had not that been at least twice as sound and deep as his own.

"Tarnal death to me!" said he, rubbing his eyes when Nathan shook him from his slumbers, "I war nigh gone in a dead snooze!—being as how I ar'n't had a true reggelar mouthful of snortin' this h'yar no-time,—considering I always took it with my hoptical peepers right open. But, I say, Nathan, what's the last news from the abbregynes and anngelliferous madam?"

"Give me one of thee halters," said Nathan, "and do thee observe now what I have to say to thee."

"A halter!" cried Ralph, in dudgeon; "you ar'n't for doing all, and the hoss-stealing too?"

"Friend," said Nathan, "with this halter I must bind one that sits in watch over the maiden; and, truly, it is better it should be so, seeing that these hands of mine have never been stained with the blood of woman."

"And you have found my mistress?" said Ralph, in a rapture. "Jist call the Captain, and let's be a doing!"

"He is a brave youth, and a youth of a mighty heart," said Nathan; "but this is no work for them that has never seen the ways of an Injun village. Now, friend, does thee hear me? The town is alive with fighting-men, and there is a war-party of fourteen painted Wyandotts sleeping on the Council-square. But don't thee be dismayed thereupon; for, truly, these assassin creatures is all besotted with drink; and were there with us but ten stout young men of Kentucky, I do truly believe we could knock every murdering dog of an on the head, and nobody the wiser. Does thee hear, friend? Do but thee own part in this endeavour well, and we will save the young and tender maid thee calls madam. Take theeself to the pound, which thee may do safely, by following the hill: pick out four good horses, fleet and strong, and carry them safely away, going up the valley,—mind, friend, thee must go up, as if thee was speeding thee way to the Big Lake, instead of to Kentucky: then, when thee has ridden a mile, thee may cross the brook, and follow the hills, till thee has reached the hiding-place that we did spy from out upon this village. Thee hears, friend? There thee will find the fair maid, Edith; which I will straightway fetch out of her bondage. And, truly, it may be, I have learned that, this night, which will make both her and the young man thee calls Captain, which is a brave young man, both rich and happy. And now, friend, thee has heard me; and thee must do thee duty."

"If I don't fetch her the beautifullest hoss that war ever seed in the woods," said Ralph, "thar's no reason, except because the Injuns ar'n't had good luck this year in grabbing! And I'll fetch him round up the holler, jist as you say too, and round about till I strike the snuggery, jist the same way; for thar's the way you show judgematical, and I'm cl'ar of your way of thinking. And so now, h'yar's my fo'-paw, in token thar's no two ways about me, Ralph Stackpole, a hoss to my friends, and a niggur to them that sarves me!"

With these words, the two associates, equally zealous in the cause in which they had embarked, parted, each to achieve his own particular share of the adventure, in which they had left so little to be done by the young Virginian.

But, as it happened, neither Roland's inclination nor fate was favourable to his playing so insignificant a part in the undertaking. He had remained in the place of concealment assigned him, tortured with suspense, and racked by self-reproach, for more than an hour: until, his impatience getting the better of his judgment, he resolved to creep nigher the village, to ascertain, if possible, the state of affairs. He had arrived within earshot of the pair, and without overhearing all, had gathered enough of their conversation to convince him that Edith was at last found, and that the blow was now to be struck for her deliverance. His two associates separated before he could reach them; Ralph plunging among the bushes that covered the hill, while Nathan, as before, stalked boldly into the village. He called softly after the latter, to attract his notice; but his voice was lost in the gusts sweeping along the hill; and Nathan proceeded onwards, without heeding him. He hesitated a moment whether to follow, or return to his station, where little Peter, more obedient, or more prudent than himself, still lay, having resolutely refused to stir at the soldier's invitation to accompany him; until finally, surrendering his discretion to his anxiety, he resolved to pursue after Nathan,—a measure of imprudence, if not of folly, which, at a less exciting moment, no one would have been more ready to condemn than himself. But the image of Edith in captivity, and perhaps of Braxley standing by, the master of her fate, was impressed upon his heart, as if pricked into it with daggers; and to remain longer at a distance, and in inaction, was impossible. Imitating Nathan's mode of advance as well as he could, guided by his dusky figure, and hoping soon to overtake him, he pushed forward and was soon in the dreaded village.



CHAPTER XXX.

In the meanwhile, Edith sat in the tent abandoned to despair, her mind not yet recovered from the stunning effect of her calamity, struggling confusedly with images of blood and phantasms of fear, the dreary recollections of the past mingling with the scarce less dreadful anticipations of the future. Of the battle on the hill-side she remembered nothing save the fall of her kinsman, shot down at her feet,—all she had herself witnessed, and all she could believe; for Telie Doe's assurances, contradicted in effect by her constant tears and agitation, that he had been carried off to captivity like herself, conveyed no conviction to her mind: from that moment, events were pictured on her memory as the records of a feverish dream, including all the incidents of her wild and hurried journey to the Indian village. But with these broken and dream-like reminiscences, there were associated recollections, vague, yet not the less terrifying, of a visage that had haunted her presence by day and by night, throughout the whole journey, watching, over her with the pertinacity of an evil genius; and which, as her faculties woke slowly from their trance, assumed every moment a more distinct and dreaded appearance in her imagination.

It was upon these hated features, seen side by side with the blood-stained aspect of her kinsman, she now pondered in mingled grief and terror; starting occasionally from the horror of her thoughts only to be driven back to them again by the scowling eyes of the old crone; who, still crouching over the fire, as if its warmth could never strike deep enough into her frozen veins, watched every movement and every look with the vigilance, and as it seemed, the viciousness of a serpent. No ray of pity shone even for a moment from her forbidding, and even hideous countenance; she offered no words, she made no signs, of sympathy; and, as if to prove her hearty disregard, or profound contempt for the prisoner's manifest distress, she by and by, to while the time, began to drone out a succession of grunting sounds, such as make up a red-man's melody, and such indeed as any village urchin can drum with his heels out of an empty hogshead. The song, thus barbarously chanted, at first startled and affrighted the captive; but its monotony had at last an effect which the beldam was far from designing. It diverted the maiden's mind in a measure from its own harassing thoughts, and thus introduced a kind of composure where all had been before painful agitation. Nay, as the sounds, which were at no time very loud, mingled with the piping of the gale without and the rustling of the old elm at the door, they lost their harshness, and were softened into a descant that was lulling to the senses, and might, like a gentler nepenthe, have, in time, cheated the over-weary mind to repose. Such, perhaps, was beginning to be its effect. Edith ceased to bend upon the hag the wild, terrified looks that at first rewarded the music; she sunk her head upon her bosom, and sat as if gradually giving way to a lethargy of spirit, which, if not sleep, was sleep's most beneficent substitute.

From this state of calm she was roused by the sudden cessation of the music; and looking up, she beheld, with a renewal of all her alarms, a tall man, standing before her, his face and figure both enveloped in the folds of a huge blanket, from which, however, a pair of gleaming eyes were seen riveted upon her own countenance. At the same time, she observed that the old Indian woman had risen, and was stealing softly from the apartment. Filled with terror, she would have rushed after the hag, to claim her protection: but she was immediately arrested by the visitor, who, seizing her by the arm firmly, yet with an air of respect, and suffering his blanket to drop to the ground, displayed to her gaze features that had long dwelt, its darkest phantoms, upon her mind. As he seized her, he muttered, and still with an accent of the most earnest respect,—"Fear me not, Edith; I am not yet an enemy."

His voice, though one of gentleness, and even of music, completed the terrors of the captive, who trembled in his hand like a quail in the clutches of a kite, and would, but for his grasp, as powerful to sustain as to oppose, have fallen to the floor. Her lips quivered, but they gave forth no sound; and her eyes were fastened upon his with a wildness and intensity of glare that showed the fascination, the temporary self-abandonment of her spirit.

"Fear me not, Edith Forrester," he repeated, with a voice even more soothing than before: "You know me;—I am no savage;—I will do you no harm."

"Yes,—yes,—yes," muttered Edith at last, but in the tones of an automaton, they were, at first, so broken and inarticulate, though they gathered force and vehemence as she spoke—"I know you,—yes, yes, I do know you, and know you well. You are Richard Braxley,—the robber, and now the persecutor of the orphan; and this hand that holds me is red with the blood of my cousin. Oh, villain! villain! are you not yet content?"

"The prize is not yet won," replied the other, with a smile that seemed intended to express his contempt of the maiden's invectives, and his ability to forgive them: "I am indeed Richard Braxley,—the friend of Edith Forrester, though she will not believe it,—a rough and self-willed one, it may be, but still her true and unchangeable friend. Where will she look for a better? Anger has not alienated, contempt has not estranged me: injury and injustice still find me the same. I am still Edith Forrester's friend; and such, in the sturdiness of my affection, I will remain, whether my fair mistress will or no. But you are feeble and agitated: sit down and listen to me. I have that to say which will convince my thoughtless fair the day of disdain is now over."

All these expressions, though uttered with seeming blandness, were yet accompanied by an air of decision and even command, as if the speaker were conscious the maiden was fully in his power, and not unwilling she should know it. But his attempt to make her resume her seat upon the pile of skins from which she had so wildly started at his entrance, was resisted by Edith; who, gathering courage from desperation, and shaking his hand from her arm, as if snatching it from the embraces of a serpent, replied with even energy,—"I will not sit down,—I will not listen to you. Approach me not—touch me not. You are a villain and murderer, and I loathe, oh! unspeakably loathe, your presence. Away from me, or—"

"Or," interrupted Braxley with the sneer of a naturally mean and vindictive spirit, "you will cry for assistance! From whom do you expect it? From wild, murderous, besotted Indians, who, if roused from their drunken slumbers, would be more like to assail you with their hatchets than to weep for your sorrows? Know, fair Edith, that you are now in their hands;—that there is not one of them, who would not rather see those golden tresses hung blackening in the smoke from the rafters of his wigwam, than floating over the brows they adorn—Look aloft: there are ringlets of young and fair, the innocent and tender, swinging above you!—Learn, moreover, that from these dangerous friends there is none who can protect you, save me. Ay, my beauteous Edith," he added, as the captive, overcome by the representation of her perils so unscrupulously, nay, so sternly made, sank almost fainting upon the pile, "it is even so; and you must know it. It is needful you should know what you have to expect, if you reject my protection. But that you will not reject; in faith, you cannot! The time has come, as I told you it would, when your disdainful scruples—I speak plainly, fair Edith!—are to be at an end. I swore to you—and it was when your scorn and unbelief were at the highest—that you should yet smile upon the man you disdained, and smile upon no other. It was a rough and uncouth threat for a lover; but my mistress would have it so. It was a vow breathed in anger: but it was a vow not meant to be broken. You tremble! I am cruel in my wooing; but this is not the moment for compliment and deception. You are mine, Edith: I swore it to myself—ay, and to you. You cannot escape. You have driven me to extremities; but they have succeeded. You are mine; or you are—nothing."

"Nothing let it be," said Edith, over whose mind, prone to agitation and terror, it was evident the fierce and domineering temper of the individual could exercise an irresistible control, and who, though yet striving to resist, was visibly sinking before his stern looks and menacing words;—"let it be nothing! Kill me, if you will, as you have already killed my cousin. Oh! mockery of passion, of humanity, of decency, to speak to me thus;—to me, the relative, the more than sister of him you have so basely and cruelly murdered!"

"I have murdered no one," said Braxley, with stony composure: "and if you will but listen patiently, you will find I am stained by no crime save that of loving a woman who forces me to woo her like a master, rather than a slave. Your cousin is living and in safety."

"It is false," cried Edith, wringing her hands; "with my own eyes I saw him fall, and fall covered with blood!"

"And from that moment you saw nothing more," rejoined Braxley. "The blood came from the veins of others; he was carried away alive, and almost unhurt. He is a captive,—a captive like yourself. And why? Shall I remind my fair Edith how much of her hostility and scorn I owed to her hot and foolish kinsman? how he persuaded her the love she so naturally bore so near a relative was reason enough to reject the affection of a suitor? how impossible she should listen to the dictates of her own heart, or the calls of her interest, while misled by a counsellor so indiscreet, and yet so trusted? Before that unlucky young man stepped between me and my love, Edith Forrester could listen,—ay, and could smile. Nay, deny it if you will; but hearken. Your cousin is safe; rely upon that; but, rely, also, he will never again see the home of his birth, or the kinswoman whose fortunes he has so opposed, until she is the wife of the man he misjudges and hates. He is removed from my path: it was necessary to my hopes. His life is, at all events, safe; his deliverance rests with his kinswoman. When she has plighted her troth, and surely she will plight it—"

"Never! never!" cried Edith, starting up, her indignation for a moment getting the better of her fears: "with one so false and treacherous, so unprincipled and ungrateful, so base and revengeful,—with such a man, with such a villain, never! no, never!"

"I am a villain indeed, Edith," said Braxley, but with exemplary coolness; "all men are so. Good and evil are sown together in our natures, and each has its season and its harvest. In this breast, as in the breast of the worst and the noblest, Nature set, at birth, an angel and a devil, either to be the governor of my actions, as either should be best encouraged. If the devil be now at work, and have been for months, it was because your scorn called him from his slumbers. Before that time Edith, I was under the domination of my angel; who then called, or who deemed me, a villain? Was I then a robber and persecutor of the orphan? Am I now? Perhaps so,—but it is yourself that have made me so. For you, I called up my evil genius to my aid; and my evil-genius aided me. He bade me woo no longer like the turtle but strike like the falcon. Through plots and stratagems, through storms and perils, through battle and blood, I have pursued you, and I have conquered at last. The captive of my sword and spear, you will spurn my love no longer; for, in truth, you cannot. I came to the wilderness to seek an heiress for your uncle's wealth; I have found her. But she returns to her inheritance the wife of the seeker! In a word, my Edith,—for why should I, who am now the master of your fate, forbear the style of a conqueror? why should I longer sue, who have the power to command?—you are mine,—mine beyond the influence of caprice or change,—mine beyond the hope of escape. This village you will never leave but as a bride."

So spoke the bold wooer, elated by the consciousness of successful villany, and perhaps convinced from long experience of the timorous, and doubtless, feeble, character of the maid, that a haughty and overbearing tone would produce an impression, however painful it might be to her, more favourable to his hopes than the soft hypocrisy of sueing. He was manifestly resolved to wring from her fears the consent not to be obtained from her love. Nor had he miscalculated the power of such a display of bold, unflinching energetic determination in awing, if not bending, her youthful spirit. She seemed indeed, stunned, wholly overpowered by his resolved and violent manner; and she had scarcely strength to mutter the answer that rose to her lips:

"If it be so," she faltered out, "this village, then, I must never leave; for here I will die, die even by the hands of barbarians, and die a thousand times, ere I look upon you, base and cruel man, with any but the eyes of detestation. I hated you ever,—I hate you yet."

"My fair mistress," said Braxley, with a sneer that might have well become the lip of the devil he had pronounced the then ruler of his breast, "knows not all the alternative. Death is a boon the savages may bestow, when the whim takes them. But before that, they must show their affection for their prisoner. There are many that can admire the bright eyes and ruddy cheeks of the white maiden; and some one, doubtless, will admit the stranger to a corner of his wigwam and his bosom! Ay, madam, I will speak plainly,—it is as the wife of Richard Braxley or of a pagan savage you go out of the tent of Wenonga. Or why go out of the tent of Wenonga at all? Is Wenonga insensible to the beauty of his guest? The hag that I drove from the fire, seemed already to see in her prisoner the maid that was to rob her of her husband."

"Heaven help me!" exclaimed Edith, sinking again to her seat, wholly overcome by the horrors it was the object of the wooer to accumulate on her mind. He noted the effect of his threat, and stealing up, he took her trembling, almost lifeless hand, adding, but in a softer voice,—

"Why will Edith drive one who adores her to these extremities? Let her smile but as she smiled of yore, and all will yet be well. One smile secures her deliverance from all that she dreads, her restoration to her home and to happiness. With that smile, the angel again awakes in my bosom, and all is love and tenderness."

"Heaven help me!" iterated the trembling girl, struggling to shake off Braxley's hand. But she struggled feebly and in vain; and Braxley, in the audacity of his belief that he had frightened her into a more reasonable mood, proceeded the length of throwing an arm around his almost insensible victim.

But heaven was not unmindful of the prayer of the desolate and helpless maid. Scarce had his arm encircled the waist of the captive, when a pair of arms, long and brawny, infolded his body as in the hug of an angry bear, and in an instant he lay upon his back on the floor, a knee upon his breast, a hand at his throat, and a knife, glittering blood-red in the light of the fire, flourished within an inch of his eyes: while a voice, subdued to a whisper, yet distinct as if uttered in tones of thunder, muttered in his ear,—"Speak, and thee dies!"

The attack, so wholly unexpected, so sudden and so violent, was as irresistible as astounding; and Braxley, unnerved by the surprise and by fear, succumbing as to the stroke of an avenging angel, the protector of innocence, whom his villany had conjured from the air, lay gasping upon the earth without attempting the slightest resistance, while the assailant, dropping his knife and producing a long cord of twisted leather, proceeded, with inexpressible dexterity and speed, to bind his limbs, which he did in a manner none the less effectual for being so hasty. An instant sufficed to secure him hand and foot; in another, a gag was clapped in his mouth and secured by a turn of the rope round his neck; at the third, the conqueror, thrusting his hand into his bosom, tore from it the stolen will, which he immediately after buried in his own. Then, spurning the baffled villain into a corner, and flinging over his body a pile of skins and blankets, until he was entirely hidden from sight, he left him to the combined agonies of fear, darkness, and suffocation.

Such was the rapidity, indeed, with which the whole affair was conducted, that Braxley had scarce time to catch a glimpse of his assailant's countenance; and that glimpse, without abating his terror, took but little from his amazement. It was the countenance of an Indian,—or such it seemed,—grimly and hideously painted over with figures of snakes, lizards, skulls, and other savage devices, which were repeated upon the arms, the half-naked bosom, and even the squalid shirt of the victor. One glance, in the confusion and terror of the moment, Braxley gave to his extraordinary foe; and then the mantles piled upon his body concealed all objects from his eyes.

In the meanwhile, Edith, not less confounded, sat cowering with terror, until the victor, having completed his task, sprang to her side,—a movement, however, that only increased her dismay,—crying, with warning gestures, "Fear not and speak not;—up and away!" when, perceiving she recoiled from him with all her feeble strength, and was indeed unable to rise, he caught her in his arms, muttering, "Thee is safe—thee friends is nigh!" and bore her swiftly, yet noiselessly, from the tent.



CHAPTER XXXI.

The night was even darker than before, the fire of the Wyandotts on the square had burned so low as no longer to send even a ray to the hut of Wenonga, and the wind, though subsiding, still kept up a sufficient din to drown the ordinary sound of footsteps. Under such favourable circumstances, Nathan (for, as may be supposed, it was this faithful friend who had snatched the forlorn Edith from the grasp of the betrayer) stalked boldly from the hut, bearing the rescued maiden in his arms, and little doubting that, having thus so successfully accomplished the first and greatest step in the enterprise, he could now conclude it in safety, if not with ease.

But there were perils yet to be encountered, which the man of peace had not taken into anticipation, and which, indeed, would not have existed, had his foreboding doubts of the propriety of admitting either of his associates, and honest Stackpole especially, to a share of the exploit, been suffered to influence his counsels to the exclusion of that worthy but unlucky personage altogether. He had scarce stepped from the tent-door before there arose on the sudden, and at no great distance from the square over which he was hurrying his precious burden, a horrible din,—a stamping, snorting, galloping and neighing of horses, as if a dozen famished bears or wolves had suddenly made their way into the Indian pinfold, carrying death and distraction into the whole herd. And this alarming omen was almost instantly followed by an increase of all the uproar, as if the animals had broken loose from the pound, and were rushing, mad with terror, towards the centre of the village.

At the first outbreak of the tumult, Nathan had dropped immediately into the bushes before the wigwam; but perceiving that the sounds increased, and were actually drawing nigh, and that the sleepers were waking on the square, he sprang again to his feet, and, flinging his blanket around Edith, who was yet incapable of aiding herself, resolved to make a bold effort to escape, while darkness and the confusion of the enemy permitted. There was, in truth, not a moment to be lost. The slumbers of the barbarians, proverbially light at all times, and readily broken even when the stupor of intoxication has steeped their faculties, were not proof against sounds at once so unusual and so uproarious. A sudden yell of surprise, bursting from one point, was echoed by another, and another voice; and, in a moment, the square resounded with these signals of alarm, added to the wilder screams which some of them set up, of "Long-knives! Long-knives!" as if the savages supposed themselves suddenly beset by a whole army of charging Kentuckians.

It was at this moment of dismay and confusion, that Nathan rose from the earth, and, all other paths being now cut off, darted across a corner of the square towards the river, which was in a quarter opposite to that whence the sounds came, in hopes to reach the alder-thicket on its banks, before being observed. And this, perhaps, he would have succeeded in reaching, had not Fortune, which seemed this night to give a loose to all her fickleness, prepared a new and greater difficulty.

As he rose from the bushes, some savage, possessed of greater presence of mind than his fellows, cast a decaying brand from the fire into the heap of dried grass and maize-husks, designed for their couches, which, bursting immediately into a furious flame, illuminated the whole square and village, and revealed, as it was designed to do, the cause of the wondrous uproar. A dozen or more horses were instantly seen galloping into the square, followed by a larger and denser herd behind, all agitated by terror, all plunging, rearing, prancing, and kicking, as if possessed by a legion of evil spirits, though driven, as was made apparent by the yells which the Indians set up on seeing him, by nothing more than the agency of a human being.

At the first flash of the flames seizing upon the huge bed of straw, and whirling up in the gust in a prodigious volume, Nathan gave up all for lost, not doubting that he would be instantly seen and assailed. But the spectacle of their horses dashing madly into the square, with the cause of the tumult seen struggling among them, in the apparition of a white man, sitting aloft, entangled inextricably in the thickest of the herd, and evidently borne forward with no consent of his own, was metal more attractive for Indian eyes; and Nathan perceived that he was not only neglected in the confusion by all, but was likely to remain so, long enough to enable him to put the thicket betwixt him and the danger of discovery.

"The knave has endangered us, and to the value of the scalp on his own foolish head;" muttered Nathan, his indignation speaking in a voice louder than a whisper: "but, truly, he will pay the price: and, truly, his loss is the maiden's redeeming!"

He darted forwards as he spoke; but his words had reached the ears of one, who, cowering like himself among the weeds around Wenonga's hut, now started suddenly forth, and displayed to his eyes the young Virginian, who, rushing eagerly up, clasped the rescued captive in his arms, crying,—"Forward now, for the love of Heaven! forward, forward!"

"Thee has ruined all!" cried Nathan, with bitter reproach, as Edith, rousing from insensibility at the well known voice, opened her eyes upon her kinsman, and, all unmindful of the place of meeting, unconscious of everything but his presence—the presence of him whose supposed death she had so long lamented,—sprang to his embrace with a cry of joy that was heard over the whole square, a tone of happiness, pealing above the rush of the winds and the uproar of men and animals. "Thee has ruined all,—theeself and the maid! Save thee own life!"

With these words, Nathan strove to tear Edith from his grasp, to make one more effort for her rescue; and Roland, yielding her to his superior strength, and perceiving that a dozen Indians were running against them, drew his tomahawk, and, with a self-devotion which marked his love, his consciousness of error, and his heroism of character, waved Nathan away, while he himself rushed, back upon the pursuers, not so much, however, in the vain hope of disputing the path, as, by laying down his life on the spot, to purchase one more hope of escape to his Edith.

The act, so unexpectedly, so audaciously bold, drew a shout of admiration from throats which had before only uttered yells of fury: but it was mingled with fierce laughter, as the savages, without hesitating at, or indeed seeming at all to regard his menacing position, ran upon him in a body, and avoiding the only blow they gave him the power to make, seized and disarmed him,—a result that, notwithstanding his fierce and furious struggles, was effected in less space than we have taken to describe it. Then, leaving him in the hands of two of their number, who proceeded to bind him securely, the others rushed after Nathan, who, though encumbered by his burden, again inanimate, her arms clasped around his neck, as they had been round that of her kinsman, made the most desperate exertions to bear her off, seeming to regard her weight no more than if the burden had been a cushion of thistle-down. He ran for a moment with astonishing activity, leaping over bush and gully, where such crossed his path, with such prodigious strength and suppleness of frame, as to the savages appeared little short of miraculous; and, it is more than probable he might have effected his escape, had he chosen to abandon the helpless Edith. As it was, he, for a time, bade fair to make his retreat good. He reached the low thicket that fringed the river, and one more step would have found him in at least temporary security. But that step was never to be taken. As he approached, two tall barbarians suddenly sprang from the cover, where they had been taking their drunken slumbers; and, responding with exulting whoops to the cries of the others, they leaped forward to secure him. He turned aside, running downwards to where a lonely wigwam, surrounded by trees, offered the concealment of its shadow. But he turned too late; a dozen fierce wolf-like dogs, rushing from the cabin, and emboldened by the cries of the pursuers, rushed upon him, hanging to his skirts, and entangling his legs, rending and tearing all the while, so that he could fly no longer. The Indians were at his heels: their shouts were in his ears; their hands were almost upon his shoulders. He stopped, and turning towards them with a gesture and look of desperate defiance, and still more desperate hatred, exclaimed,—"Here, devils! cut and hack! your time has come, and I am the last of them!" And holding Edith at the length of his arm, he pulled open his garment, as if to invite the death-stroke.

But his death, at least at that moment, was not sought after by the Indians. They seized him, and, Edith being torn from his hands, dragged him, with endless whoops, towards the fire, whither they had previously borne the captured Roland, over whom, as over himself, they yelled their triumph; while screams of rage from those who had clashed among the horses after the daring white man who had been seen among them, and the confusion that still prevailed, showed that he also had fallen into their hands.

The words of defiance which Nathan breathed at the moment of yielding, were the last he uttered. Submitting passively to his fate, he was dragged onwards by a dozen hands, a dozen voices around him vociferating their surprise at his appearance even more energetically than the joy of their triumph. His Indian habiliments and painted body evidently struck them with astonishment, which increased as they drew nearer the fire, and could better distinguish the extraordinary devices he had traced so carefully on his breast and visage. Their looks of inquiry, their questions jabbered freely in broken English as well as in their own tongue, Nathan regarded no more than their taunts and menaces, replying to these, as to all, only with a wild and haggard stare, which seemed to awe several of the younger warriors, who began to exchange looks of peculiar meaning. At last, as they drew nearer the fire, an old Indian staggered among the group, who made way for him with a kind of respect, as was, indeed, his due,—for he was no other than the old Black-Vulture himself. Limping up to the prisoner, with as much ferocity as his drunkenness would permit, he laid one hand upon his shoulder, and with the other aimed a furious hatchet-blow at his head. The blow was arrested by the renegade Doe, or Atkinson, who made his appearance at the same time with Wenonga, and muttered some words in the Shawnee tongue, which seemed meant to soothe the old man's fury.

"Me Injun-man!" said the chief, addressing his words to the prisoner, and therefore in the prisoner's language,—"Me kill all white-man! Me Wenonga: me drink white-mans blood! me no heart!" And to impress the truth of his words on the prisoner's mind, he laid his right hand, from which the axe had been removed, as well as his left, on Nathan's shoulder, in which position supporting himself, he nodded and wagged his head in the other's face, with as savage a look of malice as he could infuse into his drunken features. To this the prisoner replied by bending upon the chief a look more hideous than his own, and indeed so strangely unnatural and revolting, with lips so retracted, features so distorted by some nameless passion, and eyes gleaming with fires so wild and unearthly, that even Wenonga, chief as he was, and then in no condition to be daunted by anything, drew slowly back, removing his hands from the prisoner's shoulder, who immediately fell down in horrible convulsions, the foam flying from his lips, and his fingers clenching like spikes of iron into the flesh of two Indians that had hold of him.

Taunts, questions, and whoops were heard no more among the captors, who drew aside from their wretched prisoner, as if from the darkest of their Manitoes, all looking on with unconcealed wonder and awe. The only person, indeed, who seemed undismayed at the spectacle, was the renegade, who, as Nathan shook and writhed in the fit, beheld the corner of a piece of parchment projecting from the bosom of his shirt, and looking vastly like that identical instrument he had seen but an hour or two before in the hands of Braxley. Stooping down, and making as if he would have raised the convulsed man in his arms, he drew the parchment from its hiding-place, and, unobserved by the Indians, transferred it to a secret place in his own garments. He then rose up, and stood like the rest, looking upon the prisoner, until the fit had passed off, which it did in but a few moments, Nathan starting to his feet, and looking around him in the greatest wildness, as if, for a moment, not only unconscious of what had befallen him, but even of his captivity.

But unconsciousness of the latter calamity was of no great duration, and was dispelled by the old chief saying, but with looks of drunken respect, that had succeeded his insane fury—"Me brudder great-medicine white-man! great white-man medicine! Me Wenonga, great Injun-captain, great kill-man-white-man, kill-all-man, man-man, squaw-man, little papoose-man! Me make medicine-man brudder-man! Medicine-man tell Wenonga all Jibbenainosay?—where find Jibbenainosay? How kill Jibbenainosay? kill white-man's devil-man! Medicine-man tell Injun-man why medicine-man come Injun town? steal Injun prisoner? steal Injun hoss? Me Wenonga,—me good brudder medicine-man."

This gibberish, with which he seemed, besides expressing much new-born good will, to intimate that his cause lay in the belief that the prisoner was a great white conjuror, who could help him to a solution of sundry interesting questions, the old chief pronounced with much solemnity and suavity; and he betrayed an inclination to continue it, the captors of Nathan standing by and looking on with vast and eager interest. But a sudden and startling yell from the Indians who had charge of the young Virginian, preceded by an exclamation from the renegade who had stolen among them, upset the curiosity of the party,—or rather substituted a new object for admiration, which set them all running towards the fire, where Roland lay bound. The cause of the excitement was nothing less than the discovery which Doe had just made, of the identity of the prisoner with Roland Forrester, whom he had with his own hands delivered into those of the merciless Piankeshaws, and whose escape from them and sudden appearance in the Shawnee village were events just as wonderful to the savages as the supposed powers of the white medicine-man, his associate.

But there was still a third prodigy to be wondered at. The third prisoner was dragged from among the horses to the fire, where he was almost immediately recognised by half a dozen different warriors, as the redoubted and incorrigible horse-thief, Captain Stackpole. The wonderful conjuror, and the wonderful young Long-knife, who was one moment a captive in the hands of Piankeshaws on the banks of the Wabash, and, the next, an invader of a Shawnee village in the valley of the Miami, were both forgotten: the captain of horse-thieves was a much more wonderful person,—or, at least, a much more important prize. His name was howled aloud and in a moment became the theme of every tongue; and he was instantly surrounded by every man in the village,—we may say, every woman and child, too, for the alarm had brought the whole village into the square; and the shrieks of triumph, the yells of unfeigned delight with which all welcomed a prisoner so renowned and so detested, produced an uproar ten times greater than that which gave the alarm.

It was indeed Stackpole, the zealous and unlucky slave of a mistress whom it was his fate to injure and wrong in every attempt he made to serve her; and who had brought himself and his associates to their present bonds by merely toiling on the present occasion too hard in her service. It seems,—for so he was used himself to tell the tale,—that he entered the Indian pound with the resolution to fulfil Nathan's instructions to the letter; and he accordingly selected four of the best animals of the herd, which he succeeded in haltering without difficulty or noise. Had he paused here, he might have retreated with his prizes without fear of discovery. But the excellence of the opportunity,—the best he had ever had in his life,—the excellence, too, of the horses, thirty or forty in number, "the primest and beautifullest critturs," he averred, "what war ever seed in a hoss-pound," with a notion which now suddenly beset his grateful brain, namely, that by carrying off the whole herd he could "make anngelliferous madam rich in the item of hoss-flesh," proved too much for his philosophy and his judgment; and after holding a council of war in his own mind, he came to a resolution "to steal the lot."

This being determined upon, he imitated the example of magnanimity lately set him by Nathan, stripped off and converted his venerable wrap-rascal into extemporary halters, and so made sure of half a dozen more of the best horses; with which, and the four first selected, not doubting that the remainder of the herd would readily follow at their heels, he crept from the fold, to make his way up the valley, and round among the hills, to the rendezvous. But that was a direction in which, as he soon learned to his cost, neither the horses he had in hand, nor those that were to follow in freedom, had the slightest inclination to go; and there immediately ensued a struggle between the stealer and the stolen, which, in the space of a minute or less, resulted in the whole herd making a demonstration towards the centre of the village, whither they succeeded both in carrying themselves and the vainly resisting horse-thief, who was borne along on the backs of those he had haltered, like a land-bird on the bosom of a torrent, incapable alike of resisting or escaping the flood.

In this manner he was taken in a trap of his own making, as many a better and wiser man of the world has been, and daily is; and it was no melioration of his distress to think he had whelmed his associates in his ruin, and defeated the best and last hopes of his benefactress. It was with such feelings at his heart, that he was dragged up to the fire, to be exulted over and scolded at as long as it should seem good to his captors. But the latter, exhausted by the day's revels, and satisfied with their victory, so complete and so bloodless, soon gave over tormenting him, resolving, however, that he should be soundly beaten at the gantelope on the morrow, for the especial gratification, and in honour, of the Wyandott party, their guests.

This resolution being made, he was, like Roland and Nathan, led away bound, each being bestowed in a different hut, where they were committed to safer guards than had been appointed to watch over Edith; and, in an hour after, the village was again wrapped in repose. The last to betake themselves to their rest were Doe, and his confederate, Braxley, the latter of whom had been released from his disagreeable bonds, when Edith was carried back to the tent. It was while following Doe to his cabin, that he discovered the loss of the precious document upon the possession of which he had built so many stratagems, and so many hopes of success. His agitation and confusion were so great at the time of Nathan's assault, that he was wholly unaware it had been taken from him by this assailant; and Doe, to whom its possession opened newer and bolder prospects, and who had already formed a design for using it to his own advantage, effected to believe that he had dropped it on the way, and would easily recover it on the morrow, as no Indian could possibly attach the least value to it.

Another subject of agitation to Braxley, was the reappearance of his rival; who, however, Doe assured him, was "now as certainly a dead man, as if twenty bullets had been driven through his body."—"He is in the hands of the Old Vulture," said he, grimly, "and he will burn in fire jist as sure as we will, Dick Braxley, when the devil gits us!—that is, unless we ourselves save him!"

"We, Jack!" said the other, with a laugh: "and yet who knows how the wind may blow you? But an hour ago you were as remorseful over the lad's supposed death as you are now apparently indifferent what befalls him."

"It is true," replied Doe, coolly: "but see the difference! When the Piankeshaws were burning him,—or when I thought the dogs were at it,—it was a death of my making for him: it was I that helped him to the stake. But here the case is altered. He comes here on his own hook; the Injuns catch him on his own hook; and, d—n them, they'll burn him on his own hook! and so it's no matter of my consarning. There's the root of it!"

This explanation satisfied his suspicious ally; and having conversed a while longer on what appeared to them most wonderful and interesting in the singular attempt at the rescue, the two retired to their repose.



CHAPTER XXXII.

The following day was one of unusual animation and bustle in the Indian village, as the prisoners could distinguish even from their several places of confinement, without, however, being sensible of the cause. Prom sunrise until after mid-day, they heard, at intervals, volleys of fire-arms shot off at the skirts of the town, which, being followed by shrill halloos as from those who fired them, were immediately re-echoed by all the throats in the village—men, women, children, and dogs uniting in a clamour that was plainly the outpouring of savage exultation and delight. It seemed as if parties of warriors, returning victorious from the lands of the Long-knife, were, time after time, marching into and through the village, proclaiming the success of their arms, and exhibiting the trophies of their triumph. The hubbub increased, the shouts became more frequent and multitudinous, and the village for a second time seemed given up to the wildest and maddest revelry, to the sway of unchained demons, or of men abandoned to all the horrible impulses of lycanthropy.

During all this time, the young Virginian lay bound in a wigwam, guarded by a brace of old warriors, who occasionally varied the tedium of watching by stalking to the door, where, like yelping curs paying their respects to passers-by, they up-lifted their voices and vented a yell or two in testimony of their approbation of what was going on without. Now and then, also, they even left the wigwam, but never for more than a few moments at a time; when, having thus amused themselves, they would return, squat themselves down by the prisoner's side, and proceed to entertain him with sundry long-winded speeches in their own dialect, of which, of course, he understood not a word. Wrapped in his own bitter thoughts, baffled in his last hope, and now grown indifferent what might befall him, he lay upon the earthen floor during the whole day, expecting almost every moment to behold some of the shouting crew of the village rush into the hovel and drag him away to the tortures which, at that period, were so often the doom of the prisoner.

But the solitude of his prison-house was invaded only by his two old jailers; and it was not until nightfall that he beheld a third human countenance. At that period, Telie Doe stole trembling into the hut, bringing him food, which she set before him, but with looks of deep grief and deeper abasement, which he might have attributed to shame and remorse for a part played in the scheme of captivity, had not all her actions shown that, although acquainted with the meditated outrage, she was sincerely desirous to avert it.

Her appearance awakened his dormant spirits, and recalled the memory of his kinswoman, of whom he besought her to speak, though well aware she could speak neither hope nor comfort. But scarce had Telie, more abashed and more sorrowful at the question, opened her lips to reply, when one of the old Indians interposed, with a frown of displeasure, and, taking her by the arm, led her angrily to the door, where he waved her away, with gestures that seemed to threaten a worse reception should she presume to return.

Thus thwarted and driven back again upon his own reflections, Roland gave himself up to despondency, awaiting with sullen indifference the fate which he had no doubt was preparing for him. But he was doomed once more to experience the agitations of hope, the tormentor not less than the soother of existence.

Soon after nightfall, and when his mind was in a condition resembling the hovel in which he lay—a cheerless ruin, lighted only by occasional flickerings from a fire of spirit fast smouldering into ashes—he heard a step enter the door, and, by and by, a jabbering debate commenced between the newcomer and his guards, which resulted in the latter presently leaving the cabin. The intruder then stepped up to the fire, which he stirred into a flame; and seating himself full in its light, revealed, somewhat to Roland's surprise, the form and visage of the renegade, Abel Doe, whose acts on the hill-side had sufficiently impressed his lineaments on the soldier's memory. He eyed the captive for awhile very earnestly, but in deep silence, which Roland himself was the first to break.

To the soldier, however, bent upon preserving the sullen equanimity which was his best substitute for resignation, there was enough in the appearance of this man to excite the fiercest emotions of indignation. Others might have planned the villany which had brought ruin and misery upon his head; but it was Doe who, for the bravo's price, and with the bravo's baseness, had set the toils around him, and struck the blow. It was, indeed, only through the agency of such an accomplice that Braxley could have put his schemes into execution, or ventured even to attempt them. The blood boiled in his veins as he surveyed the mercenary and unprincipled hireling, and strove, though in vain, to rise upon his fettered arms, to give energy to his words of denunciation.

"Villain!" he cried, "base, wretched, dastardly caitiff! have you come to boast the fruits of your rascally crime?"

"Right, captain!" replied Doe, with a consenting nod of the head, "you have nicked me on the right p'int: villain's the true word to begin on; and, perhaps, 'twill be the one to end on: but that's as we shall conclude about it, after we have talked the matter over."

"Begone, wretch,—trouble me not," said Roland, "I have nothing to say to you, but to curse you."

"Well, I reckon that's natteral enough, too, that cussing of me," said Doe, "seeing as how I've in a manner deserved it. But there's an end to all things, even to cussing; and, may be, you'll jist take a jump the other way, when the gall's over. A friend to-day, an enemy to-morrow, as the saying is; and you may jist as well say it backwards; for, as things turn up, I'm no sich blasted enemy, jist now, no-way no-how. I'm for holding a peace talk, as the Injuns say, d—n 'em, burying the axe, and taking a whiff or two at the kinnikinick of friendship. So cuss away, if it will do you good; and I'll stand it. But as for being off, why I don't mean it noway. I've got a bargain to strike with you, and it is jist a matter to take the tiger-cat out of you,—it is, d—n it: and when you've heard it, you'll be in no sich hurry to get rid of me. But, afore we begin, I've jist got a matter to ax you: and that is,—how the h—— you cleared the old Piankeshaw and his young uns?"

"If you have anything to propose to me," said Roland, smothering his wrath as well as he could, though scarce hoping assistance or comfort of any kind from the man who had done him so much injury, "propose it, and be brief, and trouble me with no questions."

"Well now," said Doe, "a civil question might as well have a civil answer! If you killed the old feller and the young-uns, you needn't be ashamed of it; for cuss me, I think all the better of you for it; for it's not every feller can kill three Injuns that has him in the tugs, by no means no-how. But, I reckon, the ramscallions took to the liquor? (Injuns will be Injuns, there's no two ways about it!) and you riz on 'em, and so paid 'em up scot and lot, according to their desarvings? You couldn't have done a better thing to make me beholden: for, you see, I had the giving of you up to 'em, and I felt bad,—I did, d—n me, for I knew the butchers would burn you, if they got you to the Wabash—I did, captain, and I had bad thoughts about it. But it was a cussed mad notion of you, following us, it was, there's no denying! Howsomever, I won't talk of that. I jist want to ax you where you picked up that Injun-looking feller that was lugging off the gal, and what his natur'? The Injuns say, he's a conjuror: now I never heerd of conjurors among the whites, like as among the Injuns, afore I cut loose from 'em, and I'm cur'ous on the subject!—I jist ax you a civil question, and I don't mean no harm in it. There's nobody can make the feller out; and, as for Ralph Stackpole, blast him, he says he never seed the crittur afore in his life!"

"If you would have me answer your question," said Roland, in whom Doe's discourse was beginning to stir up many a former feeling, "you must first answer mine. This person you speak of,—what is to be his fate?"

"Why, burning, I reckon: but that's according as he pleases the old Vulture: for, if he can find out what never an Injun Medicine has been able to do, it may be, the old chief will feed him up and make him his conjuror. They say, he's conjuring with the crittur now."

"And Stackpole, what will they do with him?"

"Burn him, sartin! They're jist waiting till the warriors come in from the Licking, where, you must know, they have taken a hundred scalps, or so, at one grab: and then the feller will roast beyond all mention."

"And I, too," said the Virginian, with such calmness us he could, "I, too, am to meet the same fate?"

"Most ondoubtedly," said Doe, with an ominous nod of assent. "There's them among us that speak well of you, as having heart enough to be made an Injun: but there's them that have sworn you shall burn; and burn you must!—That is, onless—" But he was interrupted by Roland, exclaiming hurriedly,—

"There is but one more to speak of—my cousin? my poor friendless cousin?"

"There," said Doe, "you needn't be afeard of burning, by no means whatsomever. We didn't catch the gal to make a roast of. She is safe enough; there's one that will take care of her."

"And that one is the villain Braxley! Oh, knave that you are, could you have the heart,—you who have a daughter of your own, could you have committed her into the arms of such a villain?"

"No, by G——, I couldn't!" said Doe, with great earnestness: "but another man's daughter is quite another thing. Howsomever, you needn't take on for nothing; for he means to marry her and take her safe back to Virginny: and, you see, I bargained with him agin all rascality; for I had a gal of my own, and I couldn't think of his playing foul with the poor creatur'. No, we had an understanding about all that, when we was waiting for you on old Salt. All Dick wants is jist a wife that will help him to them lands of the old major. And that, you see, is jist the whole reason of our making the grab on you."

"You confess it, then!" cried Roland, too much excited by the bitterest of passions to be surprised at the singular communicativeness of his visitor: "you sold yourself to the villain for gold! for gold you hesitated not to sacrifice the happiness of one victim of his passions, the life of another! Oh, basest of all that bear the name of man, how could you do this villany?"

"Because," replied Doe, with as much apparent sincerity as emphasis, "because I am a d—d rascal: there's no sort of doubt about it; and we won't be tender the way we talk of it. I was an honest man once, captain, but I am a rascal now; warp and woof, skin-deep and heart-deep, ay, to the bones and marrow,—I am all the way a rascal! But don't look as if you was astonished already. I come to make a clean breast of all sorts of matters, jist, captain, for a little bit of your advantage and my own: and there's things coming that will make you look a leetle of a sight wilder! And, first and foremost, to begin. Have you any particular longing to be out of this here Injun town, and well shut of the d—d fire torture?"

"Have I any desire to be free! Mad question!"

"Well, captain, I'm jist the man, and the only one, that can help you; for them that would, can't, and them that can, won't. And, secondly and lastly, captain, as the parsons say in the settlements, have you any hankering to be the master of the old major, your uncle's lands and houses?"

"If you come to mock and torture me,"—said Roland, but was interrupted by the renegade.

"It is jist to save you from the torture," said he, "that I'm now speaking; for, cuss me, the more I think of it, the more I can't stand it no-how. I'm a rascal, captain, but I'm no tiger-cat, especially to them that hasn't misused me, and there's the grit of a man about you that strikes my feelings exactly. But, you see, captain, there's a bargain first to be struck between us, afore I comes up to the rack—but I'll make tarms easy."

"Make them what you will, and But, alas! where shall I find means to repay you? I who am robbed of everything?"

"Didn't I say I could help you to the major's lands and houses? and a'n't they a fortun' for an emperor?"

"You! you help me? help me to them?"

"Captain," said the renegade, with sundry emphatic nods of the head, "I'm a sight more of a rascal than you ever dreamed on! and this snapping of you up by Injun deviltry, that you think so hard of, is but a small part of my misdoings: I've been slaving agin you this sixteen years, more of less, slaving (that's the word, for I made a niggur of myself) to rob you of these here very lands that I'm now thinking of helping you to! You don't believe me, captain! Well, did you ever hear of a certain honest feller of old Augusta, called John Atkinson?"

"Hah!" cried the soldier, looking with new eyes upon the renegade; "you are then the fellow upon whose perjured testimony Braxley relied to sustain his frauds?"

"The identical same man, John Atkinson, or Jack, as they used to call me; but now Abel Doe, for convenience sake," said the refugee, with great composure; "and so, now, you can see into the whole matter. It was me that had the keeping of the major's daughter that you knows of. Well, I was an honest feller in them days, I was, captain, by G——!" repeated the fellow with something that sounded like remorseful utterance, "and jist as contented in my cabin on the mountain as the old major himself in his big house at Felhallow. But Dick Braxley came, d—n him, and there was an end of all honest doings: for Dick was high with the old major, and the major was agin his brothers; and says Dick, says he, 'Put but this little gal,'—meaning the major's daughter,—'out of the way and I'm jist as good as the major's heir; and I'll make your fortun'"—

"Ay! and it was he then, the villain himself," cried Roland, "who devised this horrible iniquity, which, by innuendo at least, he charged upon my father!—You are a rascal indeed! And you murdered the poor child?"

"Murdered! No, rat it, there was no murdering in the case: it was jist hiding in a hole, as you may call it. We burned down the wigwam, and made on as if the gal was burned in it; and then I stumped off to the Injun border, among them that didn't know me, and according to Dick's advice, helped myself to another name, and jist passed off the gal for my own daughter."

"Your own daughter!" cried Roland, starting half up, but being unable to rise on account of his bonds: "the story then is true! and Telie Doe is my uncle's child, the lost heiress?"

"Well, supposing she is?" said Atkinson, "I reckon you'd not be exactly the man to help her to her rights?"

"Ay, by Heaven, but I would though!" said Roland, "if rights they be. If my uncle, upon knowledge that she was still alive, thought fit to alter his intentions with regard to Edith and myself, he would have found none more ready to acknowledge the poor girl's claims than ourselves, none more ready to befriend and assist her."

"Well! there's all the difference between being an honest feller and a rascal!" muttered Atkinson, casting his eyes upon the fire, which he fell to studying for a moment with great earnestness. Then starting up hastily, and turning to the prisoner he exclaimed—

"There's not a better gal in the etarnal world! You don't know it, captain; but that Telie, that poor critter that's afeard of her own shadow, did run all risks, and play all manner of fool's tricks, to save you from this identical same captivation; and the night you was sleeping at Bruce's fort, and we waiting for you at the ford, she cried, and begged, and prayed that I would do you no more mischief; and, cuss her, she threatened to tell you and Bruce, there, the whole affair of the ambush; till I scared her with my tomahawk, like a d——d rascal as I am (but there's nothing will fetch her round but fear of murdering); and so swore her to keep silence. And then, captain, her running away after you in the woods,—why, it was jist to circumvent us,—to lead you to the t'other old road, and so save you; it was, captain, and she owned it: and if you'd a' taken to her leading, as she axed you, she'd 'a' got you out of the snarl altogether. Howsomever, captain," he continued, after making those admissions, which solved all the enigmas of Telie's conduct, "I won't lie in this matter no-how. The gal is no gal of the major's, but my own flesh and blood: the major's little critter sickened on the border, and died off in less than a year; and so there was all our rascally burning and lying for nothing; for, if we had waited a while, the poor thing would have died of her own accord. Well, captain, I'm making a long story about nothing: but the short of it is, I didn't make a bit of a fortun' at all, but fell into troubles; and the end was, I turned Injun, jist as you see me; and a feller there, Tom Bruce, took to my little gal out of charity; and so she was bred up a beggar's brat, with everybody a jeering of her, because of her d——d rascally father. And, you see, this made a wolf of me; for I couldn't bring her among the Injuns, to marry her to a cussed niggur of a savage,—no, captain, I couldn't; for she's my own natteral flesh and blood, and, captain, I love her! And so I goes back to Virginny, to see what Braxley could do for her; and there, d——n him, he puts me up to a new rascality; which was nothing less than setting up my gal for the major's daughter, and making her a great heiress, and marrying of her. Howsomever, this wouldn't do, this marrying; for, first, Dick Braxley was a bigger rascal than myself, and it was agin my conscience to give him the gal, who was a good gal, deserving of an honest husband; and, next the feller was mad after young madam, and there was no telling how soon he might p'ison my gal, to marry the other. And so we couldn't fix the thing then to our liking, no way; but by and by we did. For when the major died, he sends for me in a way I told him of; and here's jist the whole of our rascality. We was, in the first place, jist to kill you off—"