Читать книгу A Pageant of Victory - John Jeffery Farnol - Страница 10

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Day was waning yet it was with a strange reluctance that Anthony turned his back on the Great House and began to descend towards the river, that smooth highway that was to bear him so many hundreds of miles into the troublous North. He went very slowly, often glancing back over his shoulder, and once he halted as if greatly minded to return, whereat the Sagamore, halting also, questioned him in his own dialect.

"What holdeth my brother, making his swift feet heavy and slow, is it passion of anger or love,--hate for yon old, great man or desire for the golden-eyed maiden?"

Anthony started, his sunburnt cheek flushed, his dark brows knit themselves and, glancing askance on the Sagamore, he strode forward again, saying over his shoulder:

"Mahtocheega, how shall you ever learn English as I would have you, if we speak in your own tongue? Let us talk English. As for hatred and anger, no,--there is nobody I have the least cause to hate, thank God, and ... as for love--"

Once more he halted suddenly and stood dumb, glancing about keen-eyed and poised for swift action, for here was the place where they had landed that morning, but the canoe was gone.

"Well, comrade," he demanded, "what say you now?"

"If I speak the English, my brother, now it is I say damblast cursem!" quoth the Sagamore gravely. Then, laying by his rifle, he unslung the powerful three foot bow he carried and strung it, for his quick eye had discerned some movement in the dense leafage on the other side of the river.

"Enemy!" he nodded and drew an arrow from his quiver, as, out from that same hanging foliage, glided the canoe impelled by a figure at sight of which, Anthony grasped the Sagamore's bow in restraining hand, for, though clad in leather like himself, this lithe, shapely youth was looking at him with tawny eyes beneath the dark serenity of low-arching brows.

"Mistress Blodwen," he cried, coming to the river's margin, "what does this mean?"

With slow, graceful strokes, she urged the canoe nearer, nor troubled to answer until, being come within easy speaking distance, she checked and turned up-stream, keeping thus stationary against the current with dexterous paddle.

"Mr. Anthony," said she in her smooth soft voice, "I am travelling North, do you go with me or must I steal your canoe and go alone?"

"Gad's life!" exclaimed Anthony, looking his astonishment, "is this a jest, madame?"

"It is deadly earnest," she answered, setting her chin at him and frowning.

"But," said he, beckoning her nearer, "this is positive sheer madness--"

"However, will you come, Mr. Anthony, or do I go alone?"

"Go?" he repeated. "But whither, where to, child?"

"Philadelphia."

"Lord love you, but this is many hundreds of miles, and desperate hard travel."

"Well, I am strong."

"And a woman!" said he.

"This shall never trouble you!" she retorted. "Do you go or stay?"

"Impossible!" he answered, very decidedly. "Out of the question. The wilderness is no place for any woman these days."

"Then," said she softly, edging the canoe further away, "I must go alone."

"Now damme!" he exclaimed.

"And also Good-bye!" she retorted.

"No, wait--wait!" cried he for already she was heading up stream. "Blodwen, for God's sake, wait,--Blodwen!"

"Well?" she demanded, watching him beneath level brows.

"It is the most difficult journey ... through a trackless wilderness and what's more--"

"Well, I love the wilderness, Mr. Anthony, so no matter."

"You will be lost and perish."

"Not while I have powder and shot, so 'tis no matter for this either!" she answered serenely.

"But I tell you there are worse dangers than hunger and thirst.... Wild beasts, girl, roving Indians ... war parties, the forests will be full of them!"

"Well, but these shall nowise fright me!" she answered bitterly. "Maybe these shall prove my kith and kin. And should death come, none shall grieve for me, surely not myself."

"Wait! I implore you ... Blodwen!"

"And so, for the second time, Good-bye, Mr. Anthony!"

"Oh, child, why ... why will you run such desperate hazard?"

"Because," she answered, with sudden strange passion, "oh because I will find myself, to know what manner of creature I really am ... all the good and all the evil of me, yes, though it prove my death!" In her flashing eyes, her vivid cheek, the quick surge of her bosom, he read such deep emotion, that for a long moment he was silent, gazing down into these wonderful eyes that gazed back unflinching into his; and when they had thus mutely questioned and answered each other, Anthony's frown vanished and he held forth his hand.

"To find our real selves!" said he. "To prove to ourselves and to each other our true worth! So be it!"

"You will go with me?" she questioned in the same passionless voice, turning the canoe inshore, "both of you?"

"We will go, both of us."

"You will promise me," said she urging the canoe nearer yet, "on your faith as a gentleman you shall suffer me to share all work and every peril, forgetting I am a woman?"

"We promise!" Her long-lashed eyes grew suddenly gentle, the vivid mouth curved to smile very tender, and once again he was amazed at this swift, beautifying change.

Then the canoe touched shore and Blodwen, taking Anthony's proffered hand, grasped and shook it very warmly even as a man might have done.

"So we are to be comrades, Mr. Anthony?"

"Yes," he answered, "yes indeed, so you must not mister me any more."

"Very well, Anthony, then you must let me take my turn at the paddle!"

Thus presently with the Sagamore paddling at the prow, with Blodwen astern and Anthony amidships upon the buffalo robes, they were off and away upstream upon this long and perilous journey.

Lying thus at such unwonted ease, Anthony glanced at Blodwen, the broad-winding river, at Blodwen, at the tree-shaded shore and at Blodwen, watching the graceful swing and balance of her as she plied the paddle, her vivid lips just apart to show small white teeth, her well opened eyes fixed on the vague distances ahead.

"Your hair!" said he suddenly. "What have you done to your hair?"

"Cut it off!" she answered, her gaze still on the distance.

"This was great pity!"

"Oh? Why?" she demanded.

"Well, it was so long ... silky--'dark as a starless night'--"

"Like an Indian's!" she nodded.

"It was beautiful," said he.

"This was why I cut it off."

"But what need was there?"

"To save the labour of it. And lest I show too womanish."

"My child," said he, gravely but with a laugh in his grey eyes, "were that head of yours shaven like an Indian brave's you would still look a woman, the manly hunting shirt and long leggings you are wearing also proclaim this fact most eloquently."

"My hateful womanhood!" said she between snapping teeth. "Well, you will be pleased to forget it while we company together."

"I shall do my best," he answered, smiling. "Though why you should so hate your womanhood passes my understanding." At this she merely frowned at him, then fixed her gaze upon the distance again.

"This is your rifle, I think," said he, laying his hand on the splendid weapon that lay beside him, "may I look at it?"

"Of course!"

"It is a fine piece," said he, handling it, "and beautifully balanced. Can you use it?"

"Oh yes, I should not trouble to bring it else."

"You have a bow and arrows also, I see."

"For hunting in a hostile country," she nodded, "an arrow cannot be heard, as maybe you are possibly aware."

"You are well instructed, it seems."

"Very well."

"But how comes this? Who taught you, pray?"

"Two famous hunters, one a white man and one a red. These were my playfellows as a child and my friends always."

"Miss Blodwen," said he, after a pause, "I am still wondering why you are running away to Philadelphia?"

"Oh enough of me, talk of yourself," she demanded. "How you have lived since leaving your Oxford University. And why you chose to settle in America. And if you are truly a rebel, as my lord says. And if so--why? Now," said she, keeping exact time to the Sagamore's long, easy paddle-strokes, "while I work and you idle--talk to me."

"Well," he answered, settling himself more comfortably, "I left Oxford after my father died. I'd lost my mother long and long ago. And being thus solitary, when Cousin Charles left Cambridge and crossed home to America I came with him. England was at war with France, there was some sharp fighting in Canada, so to Canada went I."

"You must have been very young."

"About twenty I was then and a sizeable infant. I marched with Forbes' regiment against Fort Duquesne in 'Fifty-eight, in the advanced guard commanded by Captain Washington, a wealthy neighbour of my Uncle George's and one time friend. After this I was in the campaign that ended in the victory at the Heights of Abraham. When the war ended I turned hunter, became a landowner and built a loghouse in the wilderness. And there is your humble servant's history in a nutshell, Miss Blodwen."

"You have been in many battles, then?"

"Enough to abominate war."

"Yet would fight again."

"I wonder?" he sighed. "Yes, I suppose so, if needs must."

"And your loghouse in the wilderness, is it strong? Is it ... cosy?"

"Very!" said he, sitting up with a sudden eagerness. "These two hands helped to build it. Yes, it is a good house, roomy and comfortable, yet strong as a fort, nothing like Uncle George's stately edifice, of course, but very homelike and set in an earthly paradise of forest and mountain, river and lake.... And in a clearing between forest and lake the Tuscarora village. Yes, there shall be my home someday, God willing."

Here Anthony was silent awhile, his musing gaze upon the bright waters, and Blodwen, silent also, swaying to her paddle, viewed him furtively,--this man who must be her companion for so many weeks. Was he to become as the many others whose avid wooing had so shamed and angered her, varying as it had from the lustful brutality of Sir Joseph Wimperis to the cynical gallantries of such fine gentlemen and accomplished libertines as the Marquis de Vaucelles. Well, this Anthony was a man also, but was she, like Circe (but despite herself) to change him to a beast also? Thus, she viewed him with a dreadful speculation; his lofty brow, keen eyes and tender mouth, this bold line of nose with aggressive jut of chin and masterful carriage of head; so she watched him, striving to read the weakness and strength, the latent evil and good of him.

Now suddenly meeting this searching look, Anthony smiled and in this moment, her dark mistrust forgotten, into her face came such radiance that his voice was not quite steady as he questioned her:

"Why do you look so? ... What are you thinking of me?"

"That you are a man," she answered impulsively; "strong and clean like this great wilderness. And yet also," sighed she, "you are a ... fine gentleman."

"No no," he answered, smiling a little ruefully, "you heard them disown me. Je suis déclassé. Henceforth I am what you say ... just a man of the wilderness. But surely this is as good and honourable, at least I think so--"

"It is better!" said she in soft, rich voice like a caress. "Better and far nobler, for in His Wilderness the Lord God walks."

"Yes," said Anthony, watching her with quickening interest, "yes indeed. But here also fierce beasts lurk and death in many shapes to catch the unwary."

"Yet are not these of God?" she murmured. "However, Mr. Anthony, I had rather fight any beast on four legs than beasts with two and, when I die, breathe back my soul to God here in these clean wide solitudes, 'stead of airless sick chamber."

And now she questioned him concerning the long journey before them, the perils and difficulties of this great north-western country that she had so often imagined but never seen. And very frankly he told her how cruel the wild could be and how pitiless to the weak and stricken. He spoke of foaming rapids and roaring cataracts, of weary portages where they must carry canoe and gear from river to lake and lake to river until cacheing it at last, they must plunge deep into the hush of the forest, going silently by run-ways and narrow trails made by the Indians or wild animals of these primeval woodlands, long since.

"And of these Indians, Mr. Anthony. Pray do not fear to tell me."

"Yes," he answered, looking at her with troubled eyes. "The Cagugas, so long our friends and allies, have been goaded till they have risen at last and, with them, the Mohawks."

"How, pray, how have they been goaded?"

"In a thousand devilish ways. Our pioneer traders make them drunk, then trick and cheat them, and once you break faith with an Indian he neither forgets nor forgives. They were wont to be a clean, honourable people these red children of the forests, but now ...! Ah well, their raiding parties are far to the North and West of us, so you may sleep secure to-night and for many--ha, what now?" And speaking he caught up his rifle and cocked it; for round a distant bend of the river shot a canoe coming down upon them with the current very swiftly, paddled by four savages whose heads were shaven and adorned with black feathers white tipped.

"How think you of them, Sagamore?"

"Senecas."

"Ay, three chiefs and a sachem." As he spoke, Anthony laid down his rifle and lifted his right arm high above his head palm outwards, as did the Sagamore also, whereupon the Senecas answered this peace sign, and, as the canoes drifted close, called out harshly and with fierce gestures, showing their war axes new burnished while one held up belts of wampum and all of these red, at sight of which, Anthony called out very urgently gesturing now with both hands out-turned. The Senecas frowned, shook their heads pointing again to their glittering hatchets; then lifting their hands in farewell, bent to their paddles and shot away downstream, while Anthony stared in frowning dismay at the Sagamore whose lean hand was fumbling at the tomahawk in his girdle.

"They brought evil tidings, I think," said Blodwen softly, "news of death, Mr. Anthony?"

"News of murder!" he answered, between shut teeth. "The head chief of the Cagugas mourns his family, his whole family, women and little children ... murdered by white men. The Long House is astir, those Senecas are away to preach war and bloody vengeance to the Indians of the South and along the Ohio ... the whole Six Nations will be up! And so God have mercy on this poor country!"