Fort Amity

A >> Arthur Thomas Quiller Couch >> Fort Amity

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Bateese pointed out a path by following which, as he promised,
they would find a river to carry them down into the St. Lawrence.
He unfolded a scheme. There were trees beside that farther stream--
elm-trees, for example--blown down and needing only to be stripped;
his own eyes had seen them. Portage up and over the ridge would be
back-breaking work. Let the canoe, therefore, be abandoned--hidden
somewhere by the headwaters--and let the Indians hurry ahead and rig
up a light craft to carry the party downstream. They had axes to
strip the bark and thongs to close it at bow and stern. What more
was needed? As for the loss of his canoe, he understood the
sergeant's to be State business, requiring dispatch; and if so,
M. the Intendant at Montreal would recompense him. Nay, he himself
might be travelling back this way before long, and then how handy to
pick up a canoe on this side of the hills!

The sergeant _bravo_-ed and clapped the little man on his back,
drawing tears of pain. The canoe was hauled up and stowed in a damp
corner of the undergrowth under a mat of pine-branches, well screened
from the sun's rays, and the travellers began to trudge on foot, in
two divisions. The Indians led, with John and Barboux, the latter
being minded to survey the country with them from the top of the
ridge and afterwards allow them to push on alone. He took John to
keep him company after their departure, and because the two prisoners
could not well be left in charge of Bateese, who besides had his
hands full with the baggage. So Bateese and McQuarters toiled
behind, the little man grunting and shifting his load from time to
time with a glance to assure himself that McQuarters was holding out;
now and then slackening the pace, but still, as he plodded, measuring
the slopes ahead with his eye, comparing progress with the sun's
march, and timing himself to reach the ridge at nightfall.
Barboux had proposed to camp there, on the summit. The Indians were
to push forward through the darkness.

Meanwhile John stepped ahead with Barboux and the Indians.
His spirits rose as he climbed above the forest; the shadow which had
lain on them slipped away and melted in the clear air. Here and
there he stumbled, his knees reminding him suddenly of his weakness;
but health was coming back to him, and he drank in long pure draughts
of it. It was good, after all, to be alive and young. A sudden
throbbing in the air brought him to a halt; it came from a tiny
humming-bird poising itself over a bush-tufted rock on his right.
As it sang on, careless of his presence, John watched the
music bubbling and trembling within its flame-coloured throat.
He, too, felt ready to sing for no other reason than pure delight.
He understood the ancient gods and their laughter; he smiled down
with them upon the fret of the world and mortal fate. Father Jove,
_optimus maximus_, was a grand fellow, a good Catholic in spite of
misconception, and certainly immortal; god and gentleman both, large,
lusty, superlative, tolerant, debonair. As for misconception, from
this height Father Jove could overlook centuries of it at ease--the
Middle Ages, for instance. Everyone had been more or less cracked in
the Middle Ages--cracked as fiddles. Likely enough Jove had made the
Middle Ages, to amuse himself. . . .

As the climb lulled his brain, John played with these idle fancies.
Barboux, being out of condition and scant of breath, conversed very
little. The Indians kept silence as usual.

The sun was dropping behind the cleft of the pass as they reached it,
and the rocky walls opened in the haze of its yellow beams. So once
more John came to the gate of a new world.

Menehwehna led, Barboux followed, with John close behind, and
Muskingon bringing up the rear. They were treading the actual pass,
and Menehwehna, rounding an angle of the cliff, had been lost to
sight for a moment, when John heard a low guttural cry--whether of
surprise or warning he could not tell.

He ran forward at Barboux's heels. A dozen paces ahead of the
Indian, reclining against the rock-face on a heap of _scree_, in the
very issue of the pass, with leagues of sunlight beyond him and the
basin of the plain at his feet, sat a man.

He did not move; and at first this puzzled them, for he lay dark
against the sun, and its rays shone in their eyes.

But Menehwehna stepped close up to him and pointed. Then they saw,
and understood.

The man was dead; dead and scalped--a horrible sight.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FARTHER SLOPE.

Barboux's complexion had turned to a sick yellow beneath its mottles.
He had been walking hard, and had eaten too much throughout the
voyage; no doubt, too, the sunset light painted his colour deeper.
But the man fairly twittered.

Menehwehna muttered an Indian name.

"Eh? Speak low, for the love of God!" The sergeant swept the cliffs
above and around with a shuddering glance.

"Les Agniers, as you call them--but Iroquois for certain. The man,
you see, is Canayan--" Menehwehna began coolly to handle the corpse.
"He has been dead for hours, but not many hours." He lifted an arm
and let it fall, after trying the rigidity of the muscles. "Not many
hours," he repeated; and signed to Muskingon, who began to crawl
forward and, from the gap of the pass, to reconnoitre the slope
below.

"And in the interval they have been tracking _us_, belike?"

"They may, indeed, have spied us coming from the cliffs above,"
answered Menehwehna unperturbed. "If so, they are watching us at
this moment, and there is no escaping; but this we shall learn within
twenty paces, since between the rocks here they have us at their
will. You, O illustrious, they might suffer to promenade yourself
for a while in the open, for the sake of better sport; with us, who
are Ojibways, they would deal while yet they could be sure."

He said it without any show of vanity, nor did he trouble himself to
glance around or above for signs of the foe. "We had best make trial
of this without delay," he added. "For if they fire the noise may
reach the other two and warn Bateese, who is clever and may yet save
himself."

"What the devil care I for Bateese?" snarled Barboux. "If they have
tracked us, they have tracked all. I run no risks for a _bossu_ and
a useless prisoner."

"I did not say that they have tracked us. _Him_ they tracked beyond
a doubt; and at the end he knew they were after him. See--"
Again he lifted the arm of the corpse, and invited the sergeant to
feel its shirt along the ribs and under the armpits. "See you how
stiff it is; that is where the sweat has dried, and men sweat so when
they are in a great hurry. Perhaps he was the last of his company,
and they overtook him here. Now, see again--I tell you they have not
been tracking us, and I will prove it. In the first place I am no
fool, and if one--two--three men have tracked me close (it cannot be
far) a day long without my knowing, it will be the first time in
Menehwehna's life. But let that pass. See these marks; they
overtook him here, and they did with him--so. But where is any mark
on the path behind us? Look well; there is only one path and no
trail in it at all, else I had not cried out as I did. No man has
passed within less time than it takes the moss to grow. Very good;
then whoever killed him followed him up from yonder, and here stopped
and turned back--I think, in a hurry. To place the body so--that is
an Iroquois trick when few and in a hurry; otherwise they take him
away and do worse."

"Iroquois? But _que diable!_ The Six Nations are at peace with us!
Why on earth should the Iroquois meddle with this man, by the dress
of him a _coureur de bois_?"

"And unarmed, too!" pursued Menehwehna with fine irony, "since they
have taken away his gun. Ask me riddles that I can read. The Six
Nations are never at peace; there were five hundred of them back at
Ticonderoga, seated on a hill opposite and only waiting. Yes, and in
peace they have never less reasons than fingers and toes for killing
a man. Your questions are for a child; but _I_ say that the Iroquois
have been here and killed this man, and in a hurry. Now answer me;
if, after killing him, they wished to spy down upon our coming, and
were in a hurry, why did they not take the short way through the
pass?"

"That is simple. Any fresh track of men at the entrance, or close
within it, would warn us back; therefore they would say, 'Let us
climb to the ridge and watch, though it take longer.'"

"Good; now you talk with a clear head, and I have less fear for you.
They may be aloft there, as you say, having drawn us into their trap.
Yet I do not think it, for why should they be expecting us? It is
now two days since you killed the moose. They could not have been
near in a body to hear that shot fired, for it is hours since they
overtook this man, following him up from the other slope. But a
scout might have heard it and climbed across to warn them; yes, that
is possible."

But here Muskingon came crawling back. He had inspected the ground
by the lip of the descent, and in his belief the dead man's pursuers
were three or four at the most, and had hurried down the hill again
when their work was done.

Menehwehna nodded gravely. "It is as I thought, and for the moment
we need not fear; but we cannot spend the night in this trap--for
trap it is, whether watched or not. Do we go forward then, or back?"

Barboux cursed. "How in the name of twenty devils can I go back!
Back to the Richelieu?--it would be wasting weeks!" His hand went up
to his breast, then he seemed to recollect himself and turned upon
John roughly. "Step back, you, and find if the others are in sight.
We, here, have private matters to discuss."

John obeyed. The first turn of the cliff shut off the warm westerly
glow, and he went back through twilight. He knew now why Barboux had
lagged behind on the Richelieu, in scorn of discipline. The man must
be entrusted with some secret missive of Montcalm's, and, being
puffed up with it, had in a luckless hour struck out a line of his
own. To turn back now would mean his ruin; might end in his standing
up to be shot with his back to a wall. . . .

Between the narrow walls of the pass night was closing down rapidly.
John lifted his face towards the strip of sky aloft, greenish-blue
and tranquil. . . .

He fell back--his heart, after one leap, freezing--slowly freezing to
a standstill; his hands spreading themselves against the face of the
rock.

What voice was that, screaming? . . . one--two--three--horrible human
screams, rending the twilight, beating down on his ears, echoing from
wall to wall. . . .

The third and last scream died out in a low, bubbling wail.
Close upon it rose a sound which John could not mistake--the whoop of
Indians. He plucked his hands from the rock, and ran; but, as he
turned to run, in the sudden silence a body thudded down upon the
path behind him.

In twenty strides he was back again at the issue of the pass.
The two Indians had vanished. Barboux's gross body alone blocked the
pale daylight there. Barboux lingered a moment, stooping over the
murdered man; but he too ran at the sound of John's footsteps, and
the corpse, as John came abreast of it, slid over in a silly heap,
almost rolling against his legs.

He leaped aside and cleared it, and in a moment was pelting down the
slope after the sergeant, who flung back an agonised doubtful glance,
and recognising his pursuer grunted with relief. At their feet, and
far below, spread a wide plain--a sea of forest rolling, wave upon
wave, with a gleam of water between. The river, then--Bateese's
river--was near at hand.

Fifty yards down the slope, which was bare of cover, he saw the two
Indians. Muskingon led by a few strides, and the pair seemed to be
moving noiselessly; yet, by the play of their shoulders, both were
running for their lives. John raced past the lumbering sergeant and
put forth all his strength to catch up with Menehwehna. The descent
jarred his knees horribly, and still, as he plunged deeper into the
shadow of the plain, the stones and bushes beneath his feet grew
dimmer and the pitfalls harder to avoid. His ears were straining for
the Indian war-whoop behind him; he wondered more and more as the
seconds grew into minutes and yet brought no sounds but the trickle
and slide of stones dislodged by Barboux thundering in the rear.

They were close upon the outskirts of the forest. He had caught up
with Menehwehna and was running at his heels, stride for stride.

In the first dark shadow of the trees Menehwehna checked himself,
came to a sudden halt, and swung round, panting. Somehow, although
unable to see his face, John knew him to be furiously angry--with the
cold fury of an Indian.

"Englishman, you are a fool!"

"But why?" panted John innocently. "Is it the noise I made?
I cannot run as you Indians can."

Menehwehna grunted. "What matters noise more or less, when _he_ is
anywhere near?"

"They have not seen us!" gasped Barboux, blundering up at this moment
and almost into John's arms.

"To be sure," answered Menehwehna sardonically, "they have not seen
us. It may even be that the great Manitou has smitten them with
deafness and they have not heard you, O illustrious!--and with
blindness, that they cannot trace your footmarks; yes, and perchance
with folly, too, so that, returning to a dead man whom they left,
they may wonder not at all that he has tumbled himself about!"

"_Peste!_ It was this Englishman's fault. He came running behind
and hurried me. But you Indians do not know everything. I found--"
but here Barboux checked himself on the edge of a boast.

The Indian had sunk on one knee and laid his ear to the ground.
"It will be of great price," said he, "if what you found will take us
out of this. They are not following as yet, and the water is near."

CHAPTER IX.

MENEHWEHNA SETTLES ACCOUNTS.

Weary as they were, there could be no thought of halting. The river
and the plain lay far below them yet, and they must push on through
the darkness.

Hitherto the forest had awed John by its loneliness; its
night-voices, falling at rare intervals on his ear and awaking him
from dreams beside the camp-fire, had seemed to cry and challenge
across immense distances as though the very beasts were far astray.
But now, as he crouched behind Menehwehna, he felt it to be no less
awfully inhabited. A thousand creeping things stirred or slunk away
through the undergrowth; roosting birds edged towards one another in
the branches, ever on the point of flapping off in panic; the
thickets were warm from the flanks of moose and deer. And all this
wild life, withdrawing, watched the four fugitives with a thousand
eyes.

These imaginary terrors did him one service. They kept him awake.
By and by his brain began to work clearly, as it often will when the
body has passed a certain point of fatigue. "If these Indians on the
ridge are Iroquois, why should I run? The Iroquois are friends of
England, and would recognise my red coat. The man they killed was a
Canadian, a _coureur de bois_; they will kill Barboux if they catch
him, and also these two Ojibways. But to me capture will bring
release."

He understood now why Menehwehna had called him a fool.
Nevertheless, as he went, the screams on the cliff rang in his ears
again, closing the argument.

Muskingon still led. He had struck a small mountain stream and was
tracking it down towards the river--keeping wide of it to avoid the
swampy ground, relying on his ears and the lie of the slope.
Menehwehna followed close, ready to give counsel if needed; but the
young Indian held on in silence, never once hesitating.

The debate in John's brain started afresh. "These Iroquois mean _me_
no harm. I am sure enough of that, at any rate, to face the risk of
it. Barboux is my enemy--my country's enemy--and I dislike in him
the little I don't despise. As for Menehwehna and Muskingon--they, I
suppose, are my enemies, and the Iroquois my friends." Somehow John
felt that when civilised nations employ uncivilised allies, the
simplest questions of ethics may become complicated. He remembered a
hundred small acts of kindness, of good-fellowship; and he recalled,
all too vividly, the murdered man and his gory head.

But might he not escape back and show himself without lessening his
comrades' chances? It was a nuisance that he must always be thinking
of them as comrades. Was he not their prisoner? Would their
comradeship help him at the end of the journey? . . .

The moon had risen over the hills when Muskingon's piloting brought
them out once more under open sky, at a point where the mountain
stream met and poured itself into a larger one hurrying down from the
northeast. A few yards below their confluence the riverbed narrowed,
and the waters, gathering speed, were swept down through a rocky
chasm towards a cataract, the noise of which had been sounding in
John's ears while he debated.

Hitherto he had weighed the question as one between himself and his
three companions. For the moment he saw no chance of giving them the
slip; and, if a chance occurred, the odds must be terribly unequal.
Still, supposing that one occurred, ought he to take it? Putting
aside the insane risk, ought he to bring death--and such a death--
down upon these three men, two of whom he looked upon as friends?
Did his country, indeed, require this of him? He wished he had his
cousin Dick beside him for counsellor, or could borrow Dick's
practical mind. Dick always saw clearly.

And behold! as he stepped out upon the river bank, his wish was given
him. He remembered suddenly that this Barboux carried a message--of
what importance he could not tell, nor was it for him to consider.
Important or not, it must be to England's detriment, and as a
soldier, he had no other duty than to baulk it. Why had he not
thought of this before? It ruled out all private questions, even
that of escape or of saving his own life. The report of a gun would
certainly be heard on the ridge above; and if, by forcing Barboux to
shoot, he could draw down the Iroquois, why then--live or die--the
signal must be given.

He scanned the chasm. It could not measure less than twenty feet
across, and the current whirled through it far below--thirty feet
perhaps. He eyed his companions. Barboux leaned on his gun a few
paces from the brink, where the two Indians stood peering down at the
dim waters. John dropped on one knee, pretending to fasten a button
of his gaiters, and drew a long breath while he watched for his
chance. Presently Muskingon straightened himself up and, as if
satisfied with his inspection, began to lead the way again, slanting
his course away from the bank and back towards the selvage of the
woods. Menehwehna followed close, and Barboux shouldered his musket
and fell into third place, grunting to John to hurry after.

And so John did--for a dozen paces back from the river.
Then, swinging quickly on his heel, he dashed for the brink, and
leapt.

So sudden was the manoeuvre that not until his feet left the rock--it
seemed, at that very instant--did he hear the sergeant's oath of
dismay. Even as he flew across the whirling darkness, his ear was
listening for the shot to follow.

The take-off--a flat slab of rock--was good, and the leap well timed.
But he had allowed too little, perhaps, for his weariness and his
recent wound; and in the darkness he had not seen that of the two
brinks the far one stood the higher by many inches. In mid-air he
saw it, and flung his arms forward as he pitched against it little
more than breast-high. His fingers clutched vainly for hold, while
his toes scraped the face of the rock, but found no crevice to
support them.

Had his body dropped a couple of inches lower before striking the
bank, or had the ledge shelved a degree or two more steeply, or had
it been smooth or slippery with rain, he must have fallen backward
into the chasm. As it was, his weight rested so far forward upon his
arms that, pressing his elbows down upon the rock, he heaved himself
over on the right side of the balance, fell on his face and chest,
and so wriggled forward until he could lift a knee.

The roar of the waters drowned all other noise. Only that faint cry
of Barboux had followed him across. But now, as he scrambled to his
feet, he heard a sudden thud on the ledge behind him. A hand
clutched at his heel, out of the night. At once he knew that his
stratagem had failed, that Barboux would not fire, that Muskingon was
upon him. He turned to get at grips; but, in the act of turning,
felt his brain open and close again with a flame and a crash,
stretched out both arms, and pitched forward into darkness.

It seemed--for he knew no break in his sensations--that the ground,
as he touched it, became strangely soft and elastic. For a while he
wondered at this idly, then opened his eyes--but only to blink and
close them again, for they were met by broad daylight.

He was lying on the grass; he was resting in Muskingon's arms amid a
roaring of many waters; he was being carried between Muskingon and
Menehwehna beneath a dark roof of pines--and yet their boughs were
transparent, and he looked straight through them into blue sky.
Was he dead? Had he passed into a world where time was not, that all
these things were happening together? If so, how came the two
Indians here? And Barboux? He could hear Barboux muttering: no,
shouting aloud. Why was the man making such a noise? And who was
that firing? . . . Oh, tell him to stop! The breastwork will never
be carried in this way--haven't the troops charged it again and
again? Look at Sagramore, there: pull him off somebody and let him
die quiet! For pity's sake fetch the General, to make an end of this
folly! Forty-sixth! Where are the Forty-sixth? . . .

He was lying in a boat now--a canoe. But how could this be, when the
boat was left behind on the other side of the mountain? Yet here it
was, plain as daylight, and he was lying in it; also he could
remember having been lifted and placed here by Muskingon--not by
Menehwehna. To be sure Menehwehna crouched here above him, musket in
hand. Between the shouting and firing he heard the noise of water
tumbling over rapids. The noise never ceased; it was all about him;
and yet the boat did not move. It lay close under a low bank, with a
patch of swamp between it and the forest: and across this swamp
towards the forest Muskingon was running. John saw him halt and lift
his piece as Barboux came bursting through the trees with an Indian
in pursuit. The two ran in line, the Indian lifting a tomahawk and
gaining at every stride; and Muskingon had to step aside and let them
come abreast of him before he fired at close quarters. The Indian
fell in a heap; Barboux struggled through the swamp and leapt into
the canoe as Muskingon turned to follow. But now three--four--five
Indians were running out of the woods upon him; four with tomahawks
only, but the fifth carried a gun; and, while the others pursued,
this man, having gained the open, dropped swiftly on one knee and
fired. At that instant Menehwehna's musket roared out close above
John's head; but as the marksman rolled over, dead, on his smoking
gun, Muskingon gave one leap like a wounded stag's, and toppled prone
on the edge of the bank close above the canoe.

And with that, and even as Menehwehna sprang to his feet to reach and
rescue him, Barboux let fly an oath, planted the butt of his musket
against the bank, and thrust the canoe off. It was done in a second.
In another, the canoe had lurched afloat, the edge of the rapid
whirled her bow round, and she went spinning down-stream.

All this John saw distinctly, and afterwards recalled it all in
order, as it befell. But sometimes, as he recalled it, he seemed to
be watching the scene with an excruciating ache in his brain; at
others, in a delicious languor of weakness. He remembered too how
the banks suddenly gathered speed and slid past while the boat
plunged and was whirled off in the heart of the rapid. Muskingon had
uttered no cry: but back--far back--on the shore sounded the whoops
of the Iroquois.

Then--almost at once--the canoe was floating on smooth water and
Menehwehna talking with Barboux.

"It had better be done so," Menehwehna was saying. "You are younger
than I, and stronger, and it will give you a better chance."

"Don't be a fool," growled Barboux. "The man was dead, I tell you.
They are always dead when they jump like that. _Que diable!_ I have
seen enough fighting to know."

But Menehwehna replied, "You need much sleep and you cannot watch
against me. I have reloaded my gun, and the lock of yours is wet.
Indeed, therefore, it must be as I say."

After this, Barboux said very little: but the canoe was paddled to
shore and the two men walked aside into the woods. The sun was
setting and they cast long shadows upon the bank as they stepped out.

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