Part 10

Another quarter of an hour elapsed, and they reached the shore; Hodges jumped out of the boat, and was followed by the negro, still loaded with his fetters. The Mexicans sprang after them.

"Stop by your boat!" cried Hodges in a threatening tone. Instead of an answer, a knife, thrown by a sure and practised hand, struck him on the breast. The deerskin vest with which Canondah had equipped him, proved his protection. The weapon stuck in it, and remained hanging there.

"Vile assassins!" cried Hodges, who now broke off the flat part of his oar, and grasping the other half, was about to rush upon the bandits, when the negro threw his arms round him.

"Massa not be a fool! pirates have more knives, and be glad if he go near them. Kill him then easy."

"You are right, Pompey," said Hodges, half laughing, half angry, at the negro, who was showing his white teeth in an agony of fear and anxiety. "The dogs are not worth the killing."

For a moment the three assassins stood undecided; then yelling out a "Buen viage á los infiernos," got into their boat and speedily disappeared in the fog and darkness.

Hodges is pursued and recaptured, but Tokeah and Rosa, who, with their companions, are brought in by a party of militia, and the latter of whom is joyfully recognised and welcomed by the worthy Squire Copeland, clear him of the charge of spying, and he remains a prisoner of war. The troops take their departure for New Orleans, and the Indians are detained at the town, whence, however, Tokeah and El Sol depart in the night-time, and continue their journey. The old chief accomplishes his object, disinters his father's bones, and returns to fetch Rosa, and proceed with her to his new home in the country of the Comanches. Meanwhile the action of New Orleans has been fought, and he finds, to his grief and astonishment, that Lafitte, whose life he had spared in the expectation of his meeting punishment at the hands of the Americans, has actually been fighting in their ranks, and has received, as a reward for his services, a free pardon, coupled, however, with an injunction to quit the territory of the United States. Through an advertisement in an old newspaper, traces have been discovered of Rosa's father, who, as the reader is given to understand, is a Mexican of high rank. She had been stolen by a tribe of Indians with whom Tokeah was at war, and from whose hands he rescued her. Tokeah has an interview with General Jackson, who cautions him against the further indulgence of his inveterate hostility to the Americans, and permits him to depart. Rosa now goes to take leave of the old chief, who is as yet unaware that she is not to accompany him.

When Rosa, Squire Copeland, and Hodges entered the estaminet of the Garde Imperiale, they found the two chiefs and their followers seated in their usual manner upon the floor of the room, which had no other occupants. El Sol rose at their entrance, and, advancing a few steps, took Rosa's hand and conducted her to a chair. She did not sit down, but ran to the Miko and affectionately embraced him. The old chief gazed at her with a cold and inquiring look.

"Miko," said the squire, "Miss Rosa has come to take leave of you, and to thank you for the kindness you have shown her. You yourself shall fix the sum that will compensate you for your expenses on her account."

"Tokeah," replied the Indian, misunderstanding Major Copeland's words, and taking a leather bag from his wampum belt, "will willingly pay what the white chief claims for food and drink given to the White Rose."

"You are mistaken," replied the squire; "payment is due to you. Strictly speaking, the amount should be fixed by a jury, but you have only to ask, and any reasonable sum shall be paid at once."

"The white chief," said the Indian, "may take whatever he pleases."

"I tell you it is I, and not you, who have to pay," returned the squire.

"Has my daughter bid farewell to her foster-father?" said the Indian to Rosa, who had listened to this dialogue with some uneasiness. "Rosa must leave the wigwam of the white men; the Miko's path is a long one, and his spirit is weary of the palefaces."

"And must the Miko go?" said Rosa. "Oh! father of my Canondah! remain here; the white men will love thee as a brother."

The Indian looked at her with astonishment.

"What means the White Rose?" said he,--"the palefaces love Tokeah? Has the White Rose----?" He paused, and surveyed her gloomily and suspiciously. "Tokeah," continued he, at last, "is very weary of the white men; he will be gone."

"Miko," said Rosa, timidly--for it was evident that the chief was still in error as to the motive of her visit--"Rosa has come to beg you to remain a while with the white men; but if you must go, she will"----

"The Miko is the father of his people," interrupted Tokeah; "they call him; he must go, and the Rose of the Oconees shall also be the Rose of the Comanches, the squaw of a great chief."

The young girl blushed, and stepped back.

"Miko," said she, "you are the beloved father of my dear Canondah; you saved my life and maintained me, and I thank you heartily; but, Miko, I cannot, I must not, do as you wish. I no longer belong to you, but to my father, my long-lost father."

"Rosa speaks truth--she belongs to her father," said the Miko, not yet undeceived; "my daughter's feet are weak, but she shall sit in a canoe till she reaches the wigwams of the Pawnees, and they have many horses."

"By G--!" cried the squire, "here is a mistake; the Indian thinks to take Rosa with him. My dear boy," continued he to Hodges, "run as quick as you can to Colonel Parker, and bring a party of men. Bayonets are the only things these savages respect. Rosa, say no more to him, he is getting wild."

A change had taken place in the Indian, although it was one which only a keen observer could detect. He began to have an inkling that Rosa was to be taken from him, and his gloomy inanimate physiognomy betrayed a restless agitation, which alarmed the major.

"The White Rose," resumed Tokeah, after a while, "is a dutiful daughter. She will cook her father's venison."

"That would I willingly do for the father of my Canondah," said the young girl; "but a higher duty calls me. Father of my Canondah! Rosa has come to take leave of thee."

The Indian listened attentively.

"Miko," continued the maiden, "the father who gave me life, is found. Rosa must hasten to him who for fourteen years has wept and sought her."

"Tokeah gave Rosa her life; he saved her from the tomahawk of Milimach; he paid with skins for the milk she drank."

"But Rosa has another father who is nearer to her, whom the Great Spirit bestowed upon her; to him must she go. I _must_ leave you, Miko," said she, with increased firmness of manner.

Upon the countenance of the Indian all the bad passions of his nature were legible. The scales had at last fallen from his eyes; but even now his cold and terrible calmness did not desert him, although the violence of the storm raging within showed itself in the play of his features and the variation of his complexion.

"Miko," said the squire, who foresaw an approaching outburst of fury--"Miko, you heard the words of the great warrior of the palefaces?"

The Indian took no notice of the caution; his whole frame was agitated by a feverish trembling; his hand sought his scalping-knife; and he cast so terrible a look at Rosa, that the horrorstruck squire sprang to her side. To Major Copeland's astonishment, the young girl had regained all her courage, and there was even a certain dignity in her manner.

"Miko," said she, extending her arms, "I must leave you."

"What says my daughter?" demanded the Indian--who even yet seemed unable to believe his ears--his voice assuming so shrill and unnatural a tone, that the tavern-keeper and his wife rushed terrified into the room. "Tokeah is not her father? she will not follow the Miko?"

"She cannot," answered Rosa firmly.

"And Rosa," continued the Indian, in the same piercing accents, "will leave the Miko; will let him wander alone on his far and weary path?"

The words were scarcely uttered, when, by a sudden and unexpected movement, Tokeah sprang to his feet, caught Rosa in his arms, and with a like rapidity retreating to the side door of the room, came in such violent contact with it, that its glass panes were shivered into a thousand pieces.

"And does the white snake think," he exclaimed, with flashing eyes, "that the Miko is a fool?" He held the maiden in his left arm, whilst his right raised the glittering scalping-knife. "Does the white snake think," continued the raging Indian, with a shrill laugh of scorn, whilst the foam gathered round his mouth, "that the Miko fed and cherished her, and gave skins for her, that she might return to the white men, the venomous palefaces, whom he spits upon?" And he spat with loathing upon the ground.

"By the God who made you, hold! Hurt the child, and you are a dead man!" cried the squire, who seized a stool and endeavoured to force his way to Rosa, but was repulsed by the Comanches and Oconees.

"Therefore did the white snake accompany me!" yelled Tokeah. "Does my son know," cried he to El Sol, "that the White Rose has betrayed her father--betrayed him for the palefaces? Will the white snake follow her father?" screamed the frantic savage.

"I cannot," was the reply. "The voice of my white father calls me."

An expression of intense hatred came over the features of the Indian, as he gazed at the beautiful creature who lay half-fainting on his arm.

"Tokeah will leave the White Rose with her friends," said he, with a low deadly laugh, drawing back his hand and aiming the knife at her bosom.

"Gracious God! he is killing her!" cried the major, breaking furiously through the opposing Indians. But at this critical moment the young Comanche was beforehand with him. With a bound he interposed himself between the chief's armed hand and intended victim, tore Rosa from the grasp of Tokeah, and hurled him back against the door with such force that it flew into fragments.

"Tokeah is indeed a wild cat!" cried he with indignant disgust. "He forgets that he is a chief amongst his people, and brings shame upon the name of the Red men. El Sol is ashamed of such a father."

These words, spoken in the Pawnee dialect, had an indescribable effect upon the old savage. He had partly raised himself after his fall, but now again sank down as if lifeless. Just then several file of militia entered the room with bayonets fixed.

"Shall we take the Indian to prison?" said Lieutenant Parker.

The major stood speechless, both his arms clasped round Rosa.

"Lieutenant Parker," said he, "support Rosa for a moment: the Almighty himself has protected her, and it beseems not us to take vengeance." He approached the old Indian, who still lay upon the floor, lifted him up, and placed him against the wall. "Tokeah," he said, "according to our laws your life is forfeited, and the halter the least you deserve; nevertheless, begone, and that instantly. You will find your punishment without receiving it at our hands."

"He was my father, my unhappy father!" exclaimed Rosa, and tottering to the Indian, she threw her arms around him. "Father of my Canondah," cried she, "Rosa would never leave you, but the voice of her own father calls. Forgive her who has been a daughter to you!"

The Indian remained mute. She gazed at him for a while with tearful eyes; then turned to El Sol, and bowing her head modestly and respectfully, took leave of him, and left the house with her companions.

The young chief of the Comanches remained as in a dream, till the major, with Rosa and the militia, were already far from the estaminet. Suddenly he came bounding after them, and placing himself before Rosa, took her hands, pressed them to his breast, and bowed his head so mournfully, that the witnesses of the scene stood silent, sympathizing with his evident affliction.

"El Sol," whispered he, in a scarcely audible tone, "has seen Rosa: he will never forget her."

And without raising his eyes to her face, he turned away.

"As I live," exclaimed the squire, with some emotion, "the noble savage weeps!"

* * * * *

An hour subsequently to this scene, the party of Indians left the bayou in a canoe, and ascended the Mississippi. Upon reaching the mouth of the Red River, they turned into it, and continued their route up-stream. On the tenth day from that of their departure, they found themselves upon the elevated plain where the western district of Arkansas and Louisiana joins the Mexican territory. To their front were the snowy summits of the Ozark range, beyond which are immense steppes extending towards the Rocky Mountains. The sun sank behind the snow-capped peaks, as the Indians landed at the western extremity of the long table-rock, which there stretches like a wall along the left bank of the Red River. Leaving their canoe, they approached a hill, or rather a mass of rock, that rises not far from the shore in the barren salt steppe, and in whose side exists a cave or grotto, resembling, by its regularity of form, an artificial archway. Here, upon the imaginary boundary line separating the hunting grounds of the Pawnees of the Toyask tribe from those of the Cousas and Osages, they took up their quarters for the night. El Sol ordered a fire to be made; for Tokeah, who had just left the warm climate of Louisiana, shivered with cold. Their frugal meal dispatched, the Miko and his Oconees stretched themselves upon the ground and slept. El Sol still listened to a legend related by one of the Comanches, when he was startled by a distant noise. In an instant the three warriors were upon their feet, their heads stretched out in the direction of the breeze which had conveyed the sound to their ears.

"The dogs!" murmured the young Comanche; "they bay after a foe in whose power it once was to crush them."

The Oconees were roused from their slumber, and the party hurried to the place where they had left the canoe. The Miko and his warriors got in and descended the stream; whilst El Sol and the two Comanches crept noiselessly along the water's edge in the same direction. After proceeding for about half a mile, the canoe stopped, and the young chief and his followers entered it, previously breaking the bushes growing upon the shore, so as to leave unmistakable marks of their passage. They continued their progress down the river to the end of the table-rock, and then, leaving the old man in the boat, El Sol and the four warriors again landed, and glided away in the direction of their recently abandoned bivouac. In its vicinity were stationed a troop of twenty horses. Of the Indians to whom these belonged, ten remained mounted, whilst the remainder searched the cave, and followed the trail left by its late occupants. Crouching and crawling upon the ground, the better to distinguish the footmarks dimly visible in the moonlight, it might almost have been doubted whether their dark forms were those of men, or of some strange amphibious animals who had stolen out of the depths of the river for a midnight prowl upon the shore.

His ear against the rock, and motionless as a statue, El Sol observed each movement of the foe. Suddenly, when the Indians who followed the trail were at some distance from the cave, he made a sign to his companions, and, with a noiseless swiftness that defied detection, the five warriors approached the horses. A slight undulation of the plain was all that now separated them from their enemy. El Sol listened, gazed upwards at the moon's silver disk, just then emerging from behind a snow-charged cloud, raised himself upon his knee, and taking a long and steady aim, nodded to his warriors. The next instant five savages, pierced by as many bullets, fell from their horses to the ground; a terrible yell shattered the stillness of the night; and with lightning swiftness El Sol sprang upon the terrified survivors, who, answering his war-whoop by cries of terror, fled in confusion from the place. It needed all the surprising rapidity and dexterity of the young chief and his followers to secure six of the half-wild horses, whose bridles, so swift and well-calculated had been the movements of the Comanches, might be said to fall from the hands of their slain riders into those of the assailants. The remaining steeds reared in extreme terror, and then, with neigh and snort, dashed madly across the wide waste of the steppe.

Springing upon the backs of the captured animals, the Comanches galloped to the shore. Scarcely had they entered the canoe, astern of which the horses were made to swim, when the bullets and arrows of the pursuing foe whistled around them.

"Will my son promise the Miko to be a good father to the Oconees?" said the old chief in a hollow voice, as they pulled out of range of the fire.

"A father and a brother," answered the Comanche. "But why does my father ask? He will dwell long and happily with his children."

"Will El Sol swear it by the Great Spirit?" repeated the old man, earnestly, but in a fainter voice.

"He will," replied the young chief.

"Will he swear to bury Tokeah and his father's bones in the grave of the warriors of the Comanches?"

"He will," said El Sol.

"So shall the white men not scoff at his ashes nor at those of his father," groaned the Miko. "But it is the will of the Great Spirit that Tokeah should not see the hunting-grounds of the Comanches; he is doomed to die in the land of the palefaces."

A rattling in his throat interrupted the old man; he murmured a few broken words in the ears of his Oconees, who broke out into a wild howl of lamentation. Still clasping to his breast the coffin containing his father's bones, he sank back in the boat in the agonies of death. El Sol raised him in his arms, but life had already fled. A bullet had struck him between the shoulders, and inflicted a mortal wound. In silent grief the young chief threw himself upon the corpse, and long after the boat had reached the opposite shore, he lay there, unmindful of all but his sorrow. Roused at length by the whispers of his companions, to a sense of the danger of longer delay, he laid the body across a horse, and himself mounting the same animal, took the road to the village of the Pawnees. There, upon the following day, to the wild and mournful music of the death-song, the little party made its sorrowful entrance.

At this point the narrative ceases. We turn the page, expecting at least another chapter, or some notice of Rosa's restoration to her father, and subsequent marriage with Hodges, which the previous portion of the novel certainly led us to anticipate. But our author, with his usual eccentric disregard of the established routine of romance writers, contents himself with a postscript, consisting of an advertisement extracted from the Opelousas county paper, and dated March 1816, announcing the marriage of the amiable and accomplished Miss Mary Copeland, daughter of the Honourable John Copeland, of James county, to Mr James Hodges, formerly of H.B.M. Navy, and now of Hodges' Seat in the same state. The reader is left to complete the denouement for himself, if he so pleases, and to conjecture that Rosa's father, a Mexican grandee, takes back his daughter to her native country, and that the incipient attachment between her and the young Englishman is mutually forgotten.

We here finally conclude our extracts from the already published work of our German American friend--extracts comprising, as we believe, the cream of the twenty volumes, or thereabouts, which he has given to the world. The incognito behind which this clever and original writer has so long shrouded himself, is at length abandoned; and to a new edition of his works, now in course of publication, stands prefixed the name of Charles Sealsfield.

THE DEATH OF ZUMALACARREGUI.

BY COLONEL LORD HOWDEN, K.ST.F., K.C.S.

"Ac sane, quod difficilimum, et prælio strenuus erat et bonus in consilio; quorum alterum ex providentiâ timorem, alterum ex audaciâ temeritatem, adferre plerumque solet. In Jugurthâ tantus dolus, tantaque peritia locorum et militiæ erat, ut absens aut præsens perniciosior esset in incerto haberetur."--SALLUST.

The siege of Bilbao was undertaken against the will, and strongly expressed counsel of Zumalacarregui. He was not only aware of the risk of the enterprise, with the insufficient means at his disposal for attempting it, but he had other plans. His plans, however, were undervalued, and his counsels were slighted, at the court of the Pretender. The little empty politicians there, were dazzled by the idea of possessing an important town, not deeming it their business to calculate the means by which it was to be obtained; the incompetent military advisers who directed from afar, thought that this bold attempt, proceeding from them, would contrast in bright relief with the hitherto wary and waiting policy of the commander-in-chief; and the wish, not an unnatural one, of the wandering prince, to find himself for once in comfortable quarters, was not the least among the motives which decided the operation. Though at this moment the Christino army was in a state of great discouragement from a long series of advantages that had been gained by the Carlists, the funds of the latter were entirely exhausted; and the idea of a forced loan upon the rich inhabitants of Bilbao was too seducing to be coldly examined by those little acquainted with the real difficulties of the war. Zumalacarregui wished to attack Victoria, and, profiting by the prestige of his late successes, to throw himself on the fertile and virgin ground of the Castiles. This was doubtlessly the right course, but the project was overruled.

Independently of what thus gave rise to these ambitious aspirations, there was a personal feeling which had long been busy, either in attempting new and unexpected combinations on the part of the Camarilla, or in mutilating or rendering ineffectual those that had been imagined by Zumalacarregui. There was no passion, bold or mean, no jealousy, no intrigues, vegetating ever so rankly or rifely in the oldest and largest court of Europe, which did not flourish in that of Don Carlos.

There was not a Christino general more disliked by the hangers-on of Don Carlos than Zumalacarregui. They feared him, they respected him, but they hated him.

When the Pretender first made his appearance in Navarre, Zumalacarregui was in his favourite retreat of the Amescuas. He was far from insensible to the advantage which the presence of the chief actor in the drama might produce, if his personal bearing should be such as to create an enthusiasm for his cause, and if those who accompanied him should bring each his personal contingent of enlightened advice and honest activity. But with all these hopes, Zumalacarregui was not without his fears; his sagacity foresaw what his experience soon confirmed, that the royal chief was worse than a nullity, and that the royal suite were actively in the way. Lord Bacon says, "it is the solecism of princes to think to command the end, and yet not to endure the means." Dr Carlos was always commanding the end, while his general was left to find the means as best he could. A large portion of his small army was absorbed in protecting the prince, and could rarely be counted on in a combined movement; and the non-combatants, under every denomination of title and rank, drew more rations for their consumption than would have sufficed for the support of a large body of soldiers.