Part 3

Chapter 34,296 wordsPublic domain

The broken-hearted Omemee went with those who departed for the scene of the tragedy. No trail was visible except those of Red Owl and Peg Leg. The old man’s tracks were easily recognized. His denial of any guilty knowledge of the killing was met by silence and dark looks. Circumstantial evidence was against him. The motive was obvious and the story was on the snow. The partial justice of the retribution that had mysteriously fallen upon the thief did not lessen the innocent old trapper’s sorrow and fear, for he knew that justice, age, or infirmity would be no bar to Indian revenge. He would never have killed Red Owl for interfering with his traps. A high wind and a snow storm came up in the afternoon that effectually baffled any further investigation. The despondent old man kept the seclusion of his cabin and brooded over his trouble for several weeks.

Red Owl was laid away after the customs of his people. Omemee departed into the wilderness to mourn for her dead. After many days she returned with the light in her eyes that gleams from those of the she-panther when her young have been killed before her--a light that an enemy sees but once.

In the spring Peg Leg left with his pack of winter pelts. He had once been cheated by Chenault and preferred to do his trading where he had gone before the half-breed came. His journey consumed nearly two weeks. One evening at dusk he laboriously picked his way down the steep path into the ravine, laid his load of supplies on the rude bridge, and then signalled for help by pounding the bridge timbers with his hickory stump. He was worn out and could not carry his burden up the steep incline alone.

Like a snake from its covert, a beautiful wild thing darted from the deep shadows of the pines. The moccasined feet made no sound on the logs. There was a gleam of steel, a lightning-like movement, and Omemee glided on out of the ravine into the gathering gloom. The silence was broken by a heavy splash below the side of the bridge, and when they found poor old Peg Leg the hilt of a knife protruded from between his shoulders.

There was a hidden observer of the tragedy. Pierre Chenault had watched long and anxiously for the stroke of Omemee’s revenge. The white man’s law now gave him a coveted advantage. He broke cover and pursued the fast retreating figure. He would offer to conduct her to a place of safety, protect her and declare his love.

Omemee ran with the speed of a deer in the direction of the home of her childhood. She fled out over the dunes to the shore of the lake. For miles along the wild wave-washed coast the two dim figures sped in the darkness. Omemee finally dropped from exhaustion. The half-breed carried her in his arms to the foot of the bluff where he built a small fire behind a mass of drift-wood, and sat beside her until the gray of the morning came over the sand-hills. They were now about twelve miles from the settlement. They walked along the beach together for several hours and turned into the dunes.

After the April rains tender leaves unfolded in the trees around the bark wigwam where Omemee was born. The old chief had died two years before, but a faint wreath of smoke ascended softly to the overhanging branches. Fastened above the door was a grisly and uncanny thing that moved fitfully to and fro when the winds blew from the lake. It was the scalp of Pierre Chenault.

With the failure to obtain a government appropriation for a harbor at City West, the name of the new settlement, the embryo town vanished utterly and became a dream of the past. Its ambitions and crushed hopes are entombed in obscure history. No vestiges of its buildings remain. There are traces of a crude mill race near the place where the now obliterated trail crossed the creek. Around the site of the old fort the trees, whose tops were cut away to clear the range for the six-pounders, have covered their wounds with new limbs that have grown from the mutilated trunks.

Near the roots of a gnarled oak at a bend in the stream Peg Leg’s dust has mingled with the black loam, where his spirit may be lulled by the passing waters. When we seem to hear the tapping of the woodpecker on a hidden hollow tree in the depths of the dark ravine, it may be the echoes through the mists of the years of the strokes of the poor old trapper on the timbers of the bridge.

The red man has gone. The currents of human passion that rose and fell along the banks of the little stream have passed into silence. The bistre-colored waters still flow out on the wide expanse of sand and spread their web of romance in the moon-light.

THE MOON IN THE MARSH

There is a hazy mist on the horizon where the red rim of the October sun left the sky-line. The twilight of Indian Summer is stealing over the marsh. There is a hush of vibrant voices and a muffled movement of tiny life in the darkened places. Sorrow rests upon the world, for the time of the requiem of the leaves has come. The red arrows are abroad; a flush of crimson is creeping through the forest. An elusive fragrance of fruition is in the air, and a drowsy languor droops the stems and branches.

Royal robes rustle faintly on the hills and in the shadows of the woods. From among the living trees a mighty presence has vanished. A queen who came in green has departed as a nun in gray, and the color fairies have entered the bereaved realm with offerings of red and gold.

A vague unrest troubles the trembling aspens and the little sassafras trees that flock like timid children beyond the sturdy sycamores. The gnarled oaks mutely await the winds of winter on their castanets of cold dead leaves--music of our Mother Earth to which we all must listen until our slumber hour comes.

Through darkening masses of tangled thickets, and over bogs concealed by matted grasses, some soggy and decayed logs, covered with moss and slime, lead out over the wet margin of the tarn to the edge of the clear water. A startled bittern rises clumsily out of the rushes. A pair of wild ducks tower out and glide away over the tree-tops. There are stifled rustlings in the ferns and sedges, and little wings are fluttering furtively among unseen branches. There is a soft splash near the edge of the woods. From out the shadow the curling wake of a muskrat stretches across an open space. A mottled water-snake drops stealthily into a wet labyrinth--the muffled movements cease--and muted echoes of vesper choirs sweeten the solitude that broods over the tarn.

After a period of silence another whir of pinions overhead heralds the return of the ducks. They circle swiftly and invisibly in the deep shadows--their silhouettes dart across the sky openings, and, with a loud swish, they strike the water and settle comfortably for the night behind some weedy bogs close to the opposite shore.

In the gathering gloom tiny beams creep into the depths of the water. One by one the starry host begins to twinkle in the inverted canopy of the heavens. The full-orbed silver moon rides into the sky through the delicate lacery of the trees with a flood of soft light. Another disk sinks majestically into the abyss.

The asterisms of the astronomer are in the firmament above, rolling in mighty cycles to the ordered destinies of the spheres, but the stars of Arcady are in the quiet pools, the placid bosoms of gently flowing rivers, and far out in seas that are beyond our ken. They sparkle in the smooth curves of heavy swells on distant deeps, and shine far below coral worlds in ocean depths. These stars are measureless. They gleam in awful profundities and illumine a world of dreams. We may look down to them from the windows of a fair castle in which a noble spirit dwells, but beyond its walls we may not go. There are travellers in that dimly lighted vault, for dark wings blur the points of pallid radiance in swift and silent flight. Eternity is not there, for its constellations will tremble and vanish with a passing zephyr on the surface of the pool.

A white web of mist gathers on the water. A phosphorescent trunk in the distance glows with ghostly light. The fluffy movement of the wings of a small owl is visible against a patch of sky, and a moment later the dusky form whisks by in the gloom. Agile bats wheel and plunge noiselessly in pursuit of invisible prey. A few bulrushes in a near-by clump are slightly disturbed. The night life has begun to move in the slough, for it is nature’s law that it must kill to live.

The veil of mist thickens--the stars in the depths disappear--the moon’s reflection becomes a nebula of pale effulgence, and is finally lost in vaporous obscurity. Like the soft fabric of forgetfulness that time weaves over sorrow, the mist envelopes the tarn. Like wraiths of dead years, filmy wreaths trail tenderly and delicately through the solemn woods. The purple darkness has become gray. A clammy wetness clings to the tall grasses. Beads of crystal on their bending points mirror feeble beams of light, and the heaviness of humidity is upon the boughs and fallen leaves.

The moods of Nature are manifold in expression and power. In her infinite alchemy she reflects a different ray into every facet of the human soul. She echoes its exaltation, has sweet unguents for its weariness, and leads it upon lofty paths of promise when hope has died. The music of her strings brings forth hidden melodies, and it is with her that we must go if we would reach the heights.

The dark morass becomes a dreamland. Through it stately legions go. Ethereal aisles wind through the trees. Cloudy walls rise along its borders, and beyond them are kingdoms in elf-land where fancy may spin fabrics of gossamer and build mansions remote from earthly being.

There is a life of the soul as well as of the body. We may ponder as to its immortality, but undeniably it is in the present, if not in a state to come. Hope grasps at a shadowy vision of the future that dissolves at our touch. Reason gives only the substance of the present, elusive though it be. We live in a world of illusion, where seeming realities may be but phantoms. We wander in a maze of speculative thought. The paths are intricate and only lead to narrow cells. The Forest Gods that dwell in the high and hidden places speak a language that is without words. The fallen leaf is as eloquent as established dogma or voice of hoary seer. In our own hearts must we find our shrines, for the obscurity beyond the borderland of philosophy is as deep as the mould below the leaves. The multitudes that have come upon the earth and vanished have left no clue.

The key lies at the bottom of the tarn, and the story is in the marsh.

HOLY ZEKE

“_And mine eye shall not spare, neither will I have pity; I will recompense thee according to thy ways and thine abominations that are in the midst of thee; and ye shall know that I am the Lord that smiteth._”--EZEKIEL 7:9

After an industrious day with my sketch book among the dunes, I walked over to the lake shore and looked up the beach toward Sipes’s shanty. In the gathering twilight a faint gleam came through the small window. Not having seen my old friend for nearly a year, I decided to pay him a visit. My acquaintance with him had brought me many happy hours as I listened to his reminiscences, some of which are recorded in former stories.

He had been a salt water sailor, and, with his shipmate Bill Saunders, had met with many thrilling adventures. He had finally drifted to the sand-hills, where he had found a quiet refuge after a stormy life. Fishing and hunting small game yielded him a scanty but comparatively happy livelihood. He was a queer, bewhiskered little man, somewhere in the seventies, with many idiosyncrasies, a fund of unconscious humor, much profanity, a great deal of homely philosophy, and with many ideas that were peculiarly his own.

He wore what he called a “hatch” over the place which his right eye formerly occupied, and explained the absence of the eye by telling me that it had been blown out in a gale somewhere off the coast of Japan. He said that “it was glass anyway” and he “never thought much of it.” Saunders figured more or less in all of his stories of the sea.

On approaching the nondescript driftwood structure, I heard a stentorian voice, the tones of which the little shanty was too frail to confine, and which seemed to be pitched for the solemn pines that fringed the brink of the dark ravine beyond.

“Now all ye hell-destined sinners that are in this holy edifice, listen to me! Ye who are steeped in sin shall frizzle in the fires o’ damnation. The seethin’ cauldrons yawn. Ye have deserved the fiery pit an’ yer already sentenced to it. Hell is gaping fer this whole outfit. The flames gather an’ flash. The fury o’ the wrath to come is almost ’ere. Yer souls are damned an’ you may all be in hell ’fore tomorrer mornin’. The red clouds o’ comin’ vengeance are over yer miserable heads. You’ll be enveloped in fiery floods fer all eternity--fer millions of ages will ye sizzle. Ye hang by a slender thread. The flames may singe it any minute an’ in ye go. Ye have reason to wonder that yer not already in hell! Yer accursed bodies shall be laid on live coals, an’ with red-hot pitch-forks shall ye be sorted into writhin’ piles an’ hurled into bottomless pits of endless torment. I’m the scourge o’ the Almighty. I’m Ezekiel-seven-nine. This is yer last chance to quit, an’ you’ve got to git in line, an’ do it quick if ye want to keep from bein’ soused in torrents o’ burnin’ brimstone, an’ have melted metal poured into yer blasphemous throats!”

At this point the door partially opened and a furtive figure slipped out. “Let all them that has hard hearts an’ soft heads git out!” roared the voice. The figure moved swiftly toward me and I recognized Sipes.

“Gosh! Is that you? You keep away from that place,” he sputtered, as he came up.

“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked.

“It’s Holy Zeke an’ he’s cussin’ the bunch. It looks like we’d all have a gloomy finish. He was up ’ere this mornin’ an’ ast me if ’e could ’ave a reevival in my place tonight. He’s ’ad pretty much ev’rythin’ else that was loose ’round ’ere, an’ like a damn fool I told ’im O. K., an’ this is wot I git. I thought it was sump’n else. You c’n go an’ listen to ’is roar if you want to, but I got some business to ’tend to ’bout ten miles from ’ere, an’ I wont be back ’till tomorrer, an’ w’en I come back it’ll be by water. I’m goin’ to lay fer that ol’ skeet with my scatter gun, an’ he’ll think he’s got hot cinders under ’is skin w’en I git to ’im. I’ll give ’im all the hell I can without murderin’ ’im.” Sipes then disappeared into the gloom, muttering to himself.

His “scatter gun” was a sinister weapon. It had once been a smooth-bore army musket. The barrel had been sawed off to within a foot of the breach. It was kept loaded with about six ounces of black powder, and, wadded on top of this, was a handful of pellets which the old man had made of flour dough, mixed with red pepper, and hardened in the sun. He claimed that, at three rods, such a charge would go just under the skin. “It wouldn’t kill nothin’, but it ’ud be hot stuff.”

I sat on a pile of driftwood for some time and waited for the turmoil in the shanty to subside. Finally the door opened and four more figures emerged. I was glad to recognize my old friend “Happy Cal,” whom I had not seen since his mysterious departure from the sand-hills several years ago, after his dispute with Sipes over some tangled set-lines. Evidently the two old derelicts had amicably adjusted their differences, and Cal had rejoined the widely scattered colony. Another old acquaintance, “Catfish John,” was also in the party. After greetings were exchanged, John introduced me to a short stocky man with gray whiskers.

“Shake hands with Bill Saunders,” said he.

This I did with pleasure, as Sipes’s yarns of the many exploits of this supposedly mythical individual invested him with much interest.

“This ’ere’s Ezekiel-seven-nine,” continued John, indicating the remaining member of the quartette.

I offered “Ezekiel-seven-nine” my hand, but it was ignored. He looked at me sternly. “Yer smokin’ a vile an’ filthy weed,” said he. “It defiles yer soul an’ yer body. It’s an abomination in the sight o’ the Lord. Yer unclean to my touch.” With that he turned away.

I glanced at his hands and if anything could be “unclean” to them its condition must be quite serious. I quite agreed with him, but from a different standpoint, that the cigar was “an abomination,” and, after a few more doubtful whiffs, I threw it away, as I had been tempted to do several times after lighting it. Its purchase had proved an error of judgment.

Zeke’s impressions of me were evidently not very favorable. He walked away a short distance and stopped. In the dim light I could see that he was regarding us with disapproval. He took no part in the conversation. He finally seated himself on the sand and gazed moodily toward the lake for some time, probably reflecting upon the unutterable depravity of his present associates, and calculating their proximity to eternal fire.

“Holy Zeke,” as Sipes had called him, was about six feet two. His clothes indicated that they had been worn uninterruptedly for a long time. The mass of bushy red whiskers would have offered a tempting refuge for wild mice, and from under his shaggy brows the piercing eyes glowed with fanatic light.

Calvinism had placed its dark and heavy seal upon his soul, and the image of an angry and pitiless Creator enthralled his mind--a God who paves infernal regions with tender infants who neglect theology, who marks the fall of a sparrow, but sends war, pestilence and famine to annihilate the meek and pure in heart.

The wonderful drama of the creation, and the beautiful story of Omnipotent love carried no message for him. Lakes of brimstone and fire awaited all of earth’s blindly groping children who failed to find the creed of the self-elect. Notwithstanding the fact that the national governing board of an orthodox church, with plenary powers, convened a few years ago, officially abolished infant damnation, and exonerated and redeemed all infants, who up to that time had been subjected to the fury of Divine wrath, Zeke’s doctrine was unaltered. It glowed with undiminished fervor. He was a restless exponent of a vicious and cruel man-made dogma, which was as evil as the punishments it prescribed, and as futile as the rewards it promised.

To me Holy Zeke was an incarnation. His eyes and whiskers bespoke the flames of his theology, and his personality was suggestive of its place in modern thought. His battered plug hat was also Calvinistic. It looked like hades. It was indescribable. One edge of the rim had been scorched, and a rent in the side of the crown suggested the possibility of the escape of volcanic thought in that direction. Like his theology, he had picturesque quality.

If he had been a Mohammedan, his eyes would have had the same gleam, and he would have called the faithful to prayer from a minaret with the same fierce fervor as that with which he conjured up the eternal fires in Sipes’s shanty. Had not Calvinism obsessed him, his type of mind might have made him a murderous criminal and outlaw, who, with submarines and poison gas, would deny mercy to mankind, for there was no quality of mercy in those cruel orbs. They were the baleful eyes of the jungle, that coldly regard the chances of the kill. In Holy Zeke’s case the kill was the forcible snatching of the quarry from hell, not that he desired its salvation, but was anxious to deprive the devil of it. He had no idea of pointing a way to righteousness. There was no spiritual interest in the individual to be rescued. He was the devil’s implacable enemy, and it was purely a matter of successful attack upon the property of his foe. Predestination or preordination did not bother him. He made no distinctions. There was no escape for any human being whose belief differed from his; even the slightest variation from his infallible creed meant the bottomless pit.

Zeke had one redeeming quality. He was not a mercenary. No board of trustees paid him the wages of hypocrisy. He did not arch his brows and fingers and deliver carefully prepared eloquent addresses to the Creator, designed more for the ears of his listeners than for the throne above. He did not beseech the Almighty for private favors, or for money to pay a church debt. He regarded himself as a messenger of wrath, and considered that he was authorized to go forth and smite and curse anything and everything within his radius of action. This radius was restricted to the old derelicts who lived in the little driftwood shanties along the beach and among the sand-hills. There were but few of them, but the limited scope of Zeke’s labors enabled him to concentrate his power instead of diffusing and losing it in larger fields.

Zeke soon left our little party and followed a path up into the ravine. After his departure we built a fire of driftwood, sat around it on the sand, and discussed the “scourge.”

“I hate to see anythin’ that looks like a fire, after wot we’ve been up ag’inst tonight,” remarked Cal, as he threw on some more sticks, “but as ’e ain’t ’ere to chuck us in, I guess we’ll be safe if we don’t put on too much wood. Where d’ye s’pose ’e gits all that dope? I had a Bible once’t, but I didn’t see nothin’ like that in it. There was a place in it where some fellers got throwed in a fiery furnace an’ nothin’ happened to ’em at all, an’ there was another place where it said that the wicked ’ud have their part in hell fire, but I didn’t read all o’ the book an’ mebbe there’s a lot o’ hot stuff in it I missed. W’en did you fust see that ol’ cuss, John?”

Catfish John contemplated the fire for a while, shifted his quid of “natural leaf,” and relighted his pipe. He always said that he “couldn’t git no enjoyment out o’ tobacco without usin’ it both ways.”

“He come ’long by my place one day ’bout three years ago,” said the old man. “It was Sunday an’ ’e stopped an’ read some verses out of ’is Bible while I was workin’ on my boat. He said the Lord rested on the seventh day, an’ I’d go to hell if I didn’t stop work on the Sabbath. I told ’im that my boat would go to hell if I didn’t fix it, an’ they wasn’t no other day to do it. Then ’e gave me wot ’e called ‘tracks’ fer me to read an’ went on. The Almighty’s got some funny fellers workin’ fer ’im. This one’s got hell on the brain an’ ’e ought to stay out in the lake where it’s cool. Ev’ry little while ’e comes ’round an’ talks ’bout loaves an’ fishes, an’ sometimes I give ’im a fish, w’en I have a lot of ’em. He does the loaf part ’imself, fer sometimes ’e sticks ’round fer an hour or two. Then ’e tells me some more ’bout hell an’ goes off some’r’s, prob’ly to cook ’is fish.”

“Sipes must ’a’ come back. Let’s go over there,” suggested Saunders, as he called our attention to the glimmer of a light in the shanty.

As we approached the place the light was extinguished, and a voice called out, “Who’s there?”

After the identity of the party had been established, and the assurance given that Holy Zeke was not in it, the light reappeared and we were hospitably received.

“Wot did you fellers do with that hell-fire cuss?” demanded Sipes when we were all seated in the shanty. “Look wot’s ’ere!” and he picked up a small, greasy hymn book which the orator had forgotten in the excitement. Sipes handed me the book. I opened it at random and read:

“_Not all the blood of beasts, on Jewish altars slain,_ _Can give the guilty conscience peace, or wash away the stain._”