CHAPTER XXVIII

THE REWARD OF A TRAITOR

One thing there was to be done ere we quitted the Indian encampment. It was to try and bring away with us those who, alas! poor souls, had come there as white prisoners and had remained of their own free will, becoming savages in all but complexion. We knew that it would be hard to tear them from those to whom they had attached themselves. We knew that girls, who should have grown up to become the wives of sturdy English colonists or trappers, had stayed willingly with the Indians to become their squaws and the mothers of their dusky children. We remembered Anuza's air of confidence when he told us how he doubted of our being able to persuade them to return with us. Yet we hoped. How our hopes succeeded you shall see.

We had remarked from our first arrival that there were no signs of any white people amongst the Indians of the various tribes who dwelt here together. Yet they had been eagerly sought for. Men from Pomfret and the small holdings round about it had scanned the stained and painted faces they gazed down upon while the fight between Anuza and Senamee had been taking place, in the hopes--perhaps, in some cases, the fears--that underneath those dreadful pigments the might recognise the features of some long lost kinsman or kinswoman. And even I, knowing the stories of those who had been carried off at various periods and had never returned, had whispered to Joice, asking her if she could see any whom she had ever known as children dwelling near her? But she had only shaken her head and answered that she could see none, and that she almost prayed she should not do so. And I knew why she thus hoped none would be forthcoming; I knew that, to her tender heart, it would be more painful to see these renegades than to gaze upon those who were born savages and had never known the blessings of dwelling in a Christian community.

Yet now she had to see them.

At a sign from Anuza an Indian servant went forth amongst the tents and wigwams, returning presently followed by three women--white! Yes, white, in spite of the stained skin, the Indian trappings of fringed moccasins and gaiters, of quills and beads and feathers, and of dressed fawn-skin tunics. Who could doubt it who saw above two of their heads the fair yellow hair of the northern European woman--was it some feminine vanity that had led them to keep this portion of their original English beauty untampered with?--and above that of the other the chestnut curls which equally plainly told that in her veins there ran no drop of savage blood.

As they stepped towards us, casting glances of no friendly nature at those of their own race, one of the women, young and comely and leading by her hand a child, went directly towards Anuza and, embracing him, disposed herself at his feet while the child played with the great hand that, but a few hours ago, had slain Senamee. Her form was lithe and graceful--in that she might have been Indian born--upon her head glistened her yellow hair which the Bear softly stroked; her garb was rich though barbaric. It consisted of a fawn-skin, bleached so white that it might have been samite, that reached below the knee, and it was fringed with beads and white shells. Her leggings were also of some white material but softer; her moccasins were stained red and fringed also with shells.

She turned her eyes up at Anuza--we saw that they were hazel ones, soft and clear--and spake some words to him in a whisper, and then was heard his answer:

"My beloved," he said, "those whom you see around us are of your race, and we have sworn but now eternal peace with them--a peace that must never more be broken. Yet to ensure that peace we have granted one request to the pale faces; we have consented that, if those who dwell with us, yet are of their land, desire to leave us and go back with them, they are free to do so. Do you desire thus to return?"

"To return!" she said, looking first with amazement at him and then at us, "to return and leave you? Oh! Anuza, Anuza! My heart's dearest love!" while, as she spoke, she embraced the knee against which she reclined.

"You see," he said to us, "you see. And as it is with her so will it be with the others. Yet make your demand if you will."

Alas! all was in vain. In vain that Joice and Miss Mills pleaded with them as women sometimes can plead with their sisters for their good--what could they hope to effect? If they implored them to return to their own people they were answered that they could not leave their husbands, for so they spoke of the chiefs to whom they were allied. If they asked them to return to Christianity the reply was that their husbands' faith was their faith. It was hopeless, and soon we knew it to be so. The lives they led now were the only lives they had any knowledge of--their earlier ones at home, amongst their own people, were forgotten if they had ever understood them; their very parents, they told us, were but the shadow of a memory.

"Why, therefore," asked the fairest complexioned of them all, she who was the squaw of the Bear and the mother of his child, "should we go back to those we know not of, even though they be still alive? Will your faith, which preaches that a woman shall leave all to cleave unto her husband, ask me to leave mine and my child and go back to I know not what?"

"In truth," I heard one old colonist whisper to O'Rourke, who stood by his side, "there would be none for her to go back to. I do think she is the child of Martin Peake, who was stolen when a babe, and, if so, her father has been long since dead. Her mother lived until a year ago hoping ever that she might return, looking up the lane that led to the woods with wistful eyes, as though she might perhaps see her coming back at last; even keeping her little room ready against her coming. Yet it was never to be, and she died with her longing ungratified," and the man dashed his rough hand across his eyes as he spoke, while I saw that those of the old adventurer also filled with tears as he listened. Then he said softly: "I can understand. I once had a daughter whom I loved dearly and--and she is dead and gone from me. Yet better so, far better than to be like this."

Therefore it was not to be! They refused to come with us, and set the love for their savage mates against all entreaties on our part. Nor could we find it in our hearts to blame them. We remembered other marriages that had taken place in earlier days between red and white; we recalled the union of John Rolfe with the Princess Pocahontas, as well as many more, and we knew that most of them had been happy. What could we do but cease to plead and go in peace?

Thus we set out again on our road to Pomfret, and, although some of the party were going back to ruined homes, I think that even so they were content. For, in so rich and wooded a land as this fertile Virginia, houses might soon be repaired and made whole again, crops easily brought to bear once more, and cattle replaced. And, against any loss that had been incurred, there was always the great set-off of peace with the Indians and security. All knew in that band--for well were they acquainted with their foes of old--that, during at least the present generation, the tribes would keep their word; if they made war again it would not be during our time. The Indian had not yet learned the art of lying--he was still uncivilised!

These did endeavour to offer some reparation for the wrong they had done the colony; they brought forth skins and furs, ornaments such as they deemed might prove acceptable, weapons, and, in some few instances, trinkets, gold, and precious stones--got we knew not whence--which they piled on the ground and bade us take, saying they had no more. But no man took aught from them, and so, after Kinchella had offered up a prayer of thanksgiving for our release and another that, if not now, at least at some future date, these poor heathens might be gathered into the true fold, we set forth. And never more did one of our party lay eyes upon any of those tribes again. As they had vowed, so the vow was kept.

As we rode on we could not but wonder what would be the fate of my wretched cousin, the author of all the woe that had recently befallen the, until now, happy little settlement.

"That they will find him and slay him," said Gregory, who knew much of their ways, "is certain. It is impossible he should escape or they forgive. Well, vile as he is, God help him!"

"Amen," said Joice, as she rode by my side. "Amen."

"Perhaps," said the old hunter, who had recognised Anuza's squaw, "he may strike the southern trail and make for the Seminoles; they hate all the Alleghany tribes like poison. If he could get them to listen to him, and promised to lead them up to their encampment, he might yet join on to them."

"Never," said Mr. Byrd. "He would have to join in the fight not shirk from it in the garb of a medicine chief. Amongst the Red Sticks[6] every man fights, and fighting is not his cue."

"What I can't fathom," remarked another, "is how the white girls never found him out. They should have known their own kind."

"It may be," Gregory said, "that he kept himself ever apart. His squaw was Indian, and, for his knowledge of our tongue, why! that he would attribute to a gift from his precious Sun God. Doubtless he told them he knew all tongues."

"And the girls," said Mr. Byrd, "were stolen when they were children. They could never have known--my God!" he exclaimed, breaking off, "what is that?" while, with his finger, he pointed to a sight that froze all our blood with horror.

We had reached the bend of a small river which joined, later on, the James, and were passing one side of it, a flat, muddy shore. On the other side there arose a stiff, almost perpendicular, bank, beneath which the river flowed; a bank that rose some seventy to eighty feet above the water's level. And here it was that we saw that which was so terrible to look upon.

Fixed into the earth was a long pole, or spar, of Virginian pine; attached to that pole was the naked body of a man--or was it the body of what had once been a man? It was bound to the staff by a cord of wampum, the arms were bound to it above the head by yet a second cord; plunged into the heart was an Indian knife, the hilt glistening in the rays of the evening sun. But worse, far worse to see than this--which we could do with ease since the stream was but a narrow one--was that the body was already nearly consumed with swarms nay, myriads--of huge ants that had crept up to it by the pole, and were already feeding on it so ravenously that, in a few more hours, there could be nothing left but the skeleton. Indeed, already our dilated eyes could see that the flesh of the lower limbs was gone--devoured; of the feet and legs there was naught left but the bones, while the body and the face were black with the host of venomous ants preying on them, so that the features could not be distinguished.

The women shrieked and hid their faces while the men sat appalled on their horses. Then with, as it seemed, one impulse, all but one of the latter dismounted and, wading through the stream that now, after the long drought, was but knee-deep, rushed at the steep bank and endeavoured to ascend it.

The impulse that so prompted all of us, except Kinchella, who remained with Joice and Miss Mills, was that _we guessed who and what that awful figure had once been_.

At first we could find no foothold by which to ascend; we strived in vain, we even endeavoured to dig out steps with our swords and hands; it was all unavailing. We should, indeed, have returned, desisting from our labour, had not at this moment one of the trappers espied, lower down, a slight path leading to the summit, a path doubtless used by the Indians when in the neighbourhood. And so, gaining that path, we reached the level above and drew near the horrid thing.

No need to ask who the creature had once been; all was answered by one quick glance. At the foot of the pole, at the foot of the thing itself, there lay a fawn-skin tunic and a silken cloak on which were wrought stars and moons and snakes, and a great blazing Sun, the insignia, or totems, of the false medicine man.

Yet, how had the deed been done? The Indians whom he had outraged and deceived lay far behind us in the mountains; they, therefore, could not have been his executioners. We had not far to seek ere this was discovered too. The crest of the bank was higher than the level behind it, which sloped downwards away from the river, and thus, when we stood on the other side, we could not see all that lay below that crest.

But now we saw, and, seeing, understood.

Near him, yet so far away that the venomous ants had not yet, at least, reached it, there was another body--the body of a woman. It lay on its back, the eyes staring up to the heavens, the tunic torn open at the left breast and in that breast another dagger buried, which still the right hand of the woman, an Indian, grasped and held as firm as when she struck herself her death blow.

So we knew all! We knew that he had escaped the vengeance of the tribe only to die at the hands of the woman who had loved him once, and whose love he had thought to replace--the hands of the woman who, having saved his life at the outset, had taken it from him when he was false to her.

And thus he perished, not by the hands of those from whom he was fleeing, but by those of Lamimi, his slighted and forsaken squaw.