CHAPTER XX

THE GREAT MEDICINE CHIEF

"Hark," the Indian said again, "the great medicine chief comes to claim the white women."

Since they had offered us no violence, nor indeed had they exerted any towards their other prisoners after the fight was over and they were bound, Mary and I had scarcely changed our position from the time the fray ceased. I still sat on the floor with my darling's head upon my breast, Mary stood by Kinchella, his bound hands clasped in hers, and sometimes kissing him as, over and over again, I also kissed my lord's dear lips while attempting to staunch the flow of blood from his head. The other prisoners all bound together looked forth into the night, waiting to see what the great personage whose arrival was now welcomed might be like. On the floor O'Rourke still lay where he had fallen, and I feared that surely he must be dead. Yet when I thought of him and how bravely he had fought this night, I could not but hope, even though plunged in my own misery, that much of his past wickedness would be forgiven him in consequence of his repentance.

"The great medicine chief, eh?" said Buck to Lamb, not even troubling to lower his voice for fear it should offend our captor or any other of the Indians around us who might understand his words--and seeming as cool and reckless now as though he were one of the victors instead of the vanquished. "The great medicine chief, eh? I wonder what he's like, though we shall see soon enough. Some mean mountebank I'll bet a crown--if ever I get hold of one again--who finds hocus-pocussing these red devils a good deal easier than fighting alongside of 'em. Knows everything that happens on earth, does he? Ay! just as much as a gipsy in a booth can tell when a gentleman of the road is going to be hanged, or is able to prophecy that the mother of a dozen shall never have a child. How they howl for him, though, rot 'em, if they had any sense they'd see he had enough of his own to keep out of the way while the bustle was going on."

"He comes. He comes," again exclaimed the chief, and, even in my trouble, I could not but marvel much at seeing so powerful looking a warrior prostrate himself with such great humility upon the floor, while all the other Indians did the same.

For now, escorted by several savages who marched in front of him, and a like number behind him, this person strode into the room and stood before us. His face was not visible, excepting only the eyes which twinkled behind the light silken cloth he wore around it, but his form presented the appearance of litheness and activity, and gave the idea that, however wonderful his arts might be, he had at least acquired them young, since he was undoubtedly not even yet arrived at middle age. He was clad in a tight-fitting tunic of tanned deer skin, over which fell the long Indian blanket with devices worked on it of skulls and snakes as well as of a flaming sun and many stars, and his leggings and moccasins were stained red. His head-dress was the ordinary Indian cap, or coronet, into which was thrust a number of eagles' feathers, while on his breast he bore, hanging on to a chain of shells, a human hand dried and mummified so that the tips of the finger-bones could be seen protruding through the shrivelled flesh, and, equally dreadful sight, some _ears_ strung together!

Those twinkling eyes wandered round the wrecked saloon, taking in at one glance, as it seemed to me, the dead forms of Indians and white men, the broken furniture and the prostrate figures of the other Indians who knelt before him; and then they fixed themselves on Mary and me, while from behind the silken mask--for such indeed it was--there came a cruel, gurgling laugh. And I, driven to desperation by that sound, which augured even worse for me than what I had yet endured, softly placed my dear one's head upon the floor and, leaving him there, cast myself before the medicine chief and, at his knees and with my hands uplifted, besought his mercy.

"Oh!" I cried between my sobs, "if you can speak my tongue, as so many of your race are able to do, hear my prayer, I beseech you; the prayer of a broken-hearted, ruined woman who has never injured you or yours till driven to it in self-defence; a woman at whose people's hearths you and yours have warmed yourselves and been welcome, at whose table you and yours were once fed and treated well. Oh! what have I, a defenceless girl, done that this my home should be sacked by your warriors, my loved one slain? See, see! he who lies there was to have been my husband--these brave men around me, living and dead, would have done nought to you had you left us in peace. What, what," I continued, "have I done that you come as a conqueror to my house--what?----"

He raised his hand as thus I knelt before him, and held it up as though bidding me be silent; then, in a hollow, muffled voice, he said, speaking low: "You are Joice Bampfyld. That alone is enough," and again his cruel laugh grated on my ears.

But at that voice, muffled as it was, I sprang to my feet as did Mary, while even Buck looked startled and Mr. Kinchella amazed, and Mary exclaimed passionately:

"_You! You!_ It is you. And she has pleaded on her knees for mercy to such a thing as you. Oh! the infamy of it, the infamy for such as she is to plead to such, as you!"

The prostrate Indians raised their heads in astonishment at her words of scorn--doubtless it was incredible to them that any mortal should so dare to address their great medicine man and wonder-worker--while he, with his glittering eyes fixed on his followers, bade them at once begone and leave him alone with their captives. Alone, he said, so that he might awe these women into submission. And they, obedient to him, withdrew at his command, though still with the look of astonishment on their faces that any should have ventured to so speak to him and still live.

"Yes," he said when they had retired; and, unwrapping the silken folds from his face so that in a moment, all painted and tattooed though he was, that most unutterable villain, Roderick St. Amande, stood revealed before us, "yes, it is I. Returned at last to Pomfret Manor to repay in full all the treatment I received, and to give to all and every one in the village of Pomfret a just requital of their kindness in driving me forth, wounded and bleeding, to the savages who proved more kind than they. God! if I had had my will the whole place should have been put to slaughter long ago, and there should have been no reprieve lasting for five years."

I have said that the Indians who had captured us had left Mary and me free and untouched, so that, with the exception that there was no chance of escape, we were under no restraint. And now that freedom was seized upon by Mary, who, becoming wrought upon by the fiendish cruelty of this creature's words, seized up a pistol lying on the spinet by her side and snapped it at him--but vainly, as, since its last discharge, it had not been reloaded.

"You dog," she said as she did so, "you base dog. It can be but a righteous act to slay such as you." But, when she found that the weapon was harmless, she flung it to the floor with violence while she exclaimed that even heaven seemed against us now.

But to this Mr. Kinchella raised a protest, telling her that even in the troubles which now surrounded us it was impossible for any Christian to believe such a thing, and pointing out to her--with what I have ever since thought was unconscious scorn--that, since heaven had not seen fit even to desert one so evil as the creature before us, it would be impossible for it to do so to those who, righteously and God-fearingly, worshipped it and its ruler.

"I know not," said Roderick St. Amande, "who this fellow is, though by his garb he is a minister; but amongst the tribe to which I now belong the Christian minister, as he is termed, is ever regarded as the worst of white men, and as the one, above all, who makes the best bargain for robbing the native. The one who teaches him to drink deeper than any other white man teaches him, and who has less respect for their squaws' fidelity and their daughters' honour.[3] So, good sir, when we have safely conveyed you to our home in the mountains, I will promise you that you will have full need of the intercession of that heaven of which you speak ere you can escape torture and death."

"I shall doubtless have strength granted to endure both," the other replied calmly. "And I will, at least, undertake one thing, which is that no cowardice shall prompt me to embrace the life of a savage and a heathen to save my skin."

The villain scowled at him as he spoke these bitter words, but answered him no more; then, glancing down at some of the prostrate bodies lying at his feet, he exclaimed, "I trust all these carrion are still alive. They will be wanted for the rejoicings. Let's see for myself," while, kicking O'Rourke's body with his foot, he turned it over until it was face upwards. Then, for a moment, even he seemed appalled, recoiling from it--yet an instant afterwards bending down to gaze into the features of the unhappy adventurer.

"What!" he exclaimed, "what, O'Rourke here? O'Rourke, the clumsy fool who, when he should have shipped off my beggarly cousin shipped me in his place? O'Rourke. O'Rourke! Oh! if he but lives, how I will repay him for his folly. What a dainty dish he shall make for the torturers! How his fat body shall feed the flames! For, even though his mistake has made me a greater man than ever I could have been at home--ay, one before whom these credulous red fools bow as to a god--there is much suffering to be atoned for; the awful suffering of the passage in the _Dove_; your father's insults, my dearest Joice, and his blows; and also much else. But for that latter, you, my dear one, will repay me when you are mine and mine alone, with no rival in my heart but our haughty Mary, who shall be my dark love as you shall be my fair one."

As the wretch spoke, however, there were two things happened that he saw not, in spite of the all-seeing eyes with which he was credited by the tribe he dwelt with. He did not see that, as he turned to insult Mary and me, O'Rourke first opened his own eyes and gazed on him and then raised his head to stare at him; he did not see that, from where the window had been, the Indian chief heard all he said, and stared in amazement and looked strangely at him as he spoke of the "credulous red fools."

But Mary and Mr. Kinchella and I saw it all, as well as did Buck and Lamb. Nay, we saw more; we saw the Indian's hand feel for the hilt of his dagger and half draw it from his wampum belt, and then return it to its place while he smoothed his features to the usual impenetrable Indian calm.

"And," went on Roderick St. Amande, as he drew near to my beloved one, who still lay as I had placed him, "who is this spruce and well-dressed gentleman who was to have been the husband of my Joice. Some Virginian dandy, I presume, who, not good enough for England, is yet a provincial magnate here. Ay, it must be so"--stooping down to gaze into my lord's face--"it must be so, for I have seen those very features when in a more boyish form. Possibly he is one of the young Pringles, or Byrds, or Clibornes, whom I knew five years ago. Is't not so, Joice, my beloved Joice, my future queen of squaws?"

That he should not recognise Gerald for his own cousin, for the man who held the rank he had once falsely said would some day be his, was the first moment of happiness I had known through this dreadful night, since the fact of his not so recognising him might, I thought, save my lover from instant death, if he were not dead already. For, if that villain could but guess who he really was, I did not doubt but that he would sheath his knife in the other's heart, all helpless as he lay. This being so, I answered:

"He is a gentleman and, I fear, is dead. Is that not enough for you?"

"Nay, too much. I would not have one Virginian dead; yet, I would not have one die so easily as he is dying now, for he is not at present dead. No, no; the dead are no good to us when we return from a successful attack such as this of Pomfret; it is the living we want; the quick not the dead. For see, my Joice, and you, too, my black but bonny Mary, the dead cannot feel! Their nerves and sinews have no longer the power of suffering, their flesh is cold, their tongues paralysed, so that they can neither shriek with pain nor cry for mercy--but, with the living, how different it is! They can feel all that is done upon them, they can feel limbs twisted off, and burnings, and loppings off of--of--of, why, say of ears," and here he grinned so demoniacally while he fingered the clusters of human ears that hung on his own breast, that all of white blood in the room shuddered but himself. "Yes, all these things they can feel. And, my sweethearts," he went on, gloatingly over our horror and his own foul and devilish picturings, "shall I tell you what the Indian tortures are, what you will see--when you sit by my side, my best beloved of wives--done upon these men here. On him," pointing to Mr. Kinchella, "and him," with his finger directed to my lord, "and this old blunderer," indicating O'Rourke, "and these scum and rakings of the London gutters?" sweeping his arm round so as to denominate all the convicts and bondsmen who had fought so well for us this night, though without avail. "Shall I tell you that? 'Twill be pretty hearing."

For myself I could but sob and moan and say, "No, no. Tell us no more! Spare them, oh, spare them!" But Mary, whose spirit was of so much firmer mould than mine, and who was no more cowed by him than was Buck himself--who, indeed, had interrupted his remarks with many contemptuous and disdainful snorts and "pishes" and "pahs" and with, once, a scornful laugh--answered him in very different fashion.

"Tell us nothing, you murderous, cowardly wolf," she said, while she extended her hand defiantly at him as though she forbade him to dare to speak again, "tell us nothing, since we should not believe you. We know--God help us! we all in Virginia know--that the Indian exacts a fearful reckoning from all who have once wronged him, but we know, too, that that exactment is made upon the actual persons who have done the wrong, and not on those who have never raised hand against him, as none in this house to-night have done except in their own defence. As for you, you cowardly, crawling dog, who think you can egg on the Indians to gratify your petty spite and cruelty, what, what, think you, will they do for the gratification of your thirst for innocent blood when I, tell them who and what their great wonderworking, miracle-making medicine chief is?" and I saw her dark eyes steal into the obscurity of the ruined window frame to observe if the chief out there heard her words. But he only drew a little more in the shadow as she did so.

"Silence, woman," said Roderick St. Amande, advancing threateningly towards her. "Silence, I say, or it shall be the worse for you."

"Silence," she repeated, "silence! And why? So as to shield you from their wrath if they should know who you are? Silence! Nay, I tell you Roderick St. Amande, that when you have taken us away to wherever you herd now, I will speak out loudly and tell them all. All, all, as to what their great medicine man--their great _impostor_ is. A wonder-worker, a magician!" And she laughed long and bitterly as she spoke, so that his face became so distorted with anger that I feared he would rush at her and slay her. Yet, as she did so, and still spake further, I saw the Indian chief's eyes steal round the corner while he listened to her every word. "A wonder-worker! a magician!" she went on. "Ay! a pretty one forsooth. A magician who could not save his ear from a righteous vengeance; a bond-slave to an English colonist; a poor, pitiful drunkard! What a thing for a red man who cannot live in slavery, and who hates in his heart the fire-water he has learnt to drink, to worship! A magician who knows all. Ha! ha! A wonder-worker! who stole from out his owner's bookshelves a 'British Merlin' and a calendar because, perhaps, he knew the credulous creatures with whom he would ere long dwell."

"Ay," exclaimed Buck, "and a book of how to do tricks with cards from me, with many recipes for palming and counterfeiting. A magician, ha! ha! ha!"

And of all that was said the Indian chief had heard every word.