Part 9

"It's his face!" gasped the other. "There upon the table! I put my hand upon it. It's cold!"

Landless rushed to the fireplace where he knew the tinder-box to be kept, and then groped for and found the heap of pine knots. A moment more and the fat wood was burning brightly, casting its red light throughout the hut, and choking back the pale daylight.

The familiar room with its familiar furnishing of chest and settle and pallet, of hanging nets and piles of dingy sail, sprung into sight, but with it sprung into sight something unfamiliar, strange, and dreadful.

It was the body of the mender of nets, flung face upwards across the rude table, the head hanging over the edge, and the face, which but a few short hours before had looked upon Landless with such a bright and patient serenity, blackened and distorted. Upon the throat were dark marks, the print of ten murderous fingers.

With a bitter cry Landless fell upon his knees beside the table, and pressed his face against the cold hand flung backwards over the head of the murdered man. Porringer began to curse. With white lips and burning eyes he hurled anathemas at the murderer. He cursed him by the powers of light and darkness, by the earth, the sea, and the air: by all the plagues of the two Testaments. Landless broke the torrent of his maledictions.

"Silence!" he said sternly. "_He_ would have forgiven." Presently he rose from the ground, and taking the body in his arms, placed it upon the pallet, and reverently composed the limbs. Then he turned to the fireplace. It was easy to see that the hiding-place had been visited. The spring was broken, and the lid had been struck and jammed into place by a powerful and hasty hand. Landless wrenched it off. Before him lay the pistols; but the gold and papers were gone. He turned to the Muggletonian, standing beside him with staring eyes.

"Listen!" he said. "There was gold here. The wretch whom we passed but now knew of it--never mind how--and for it he has murdered the only friend I had on earth. There will come a day when I will avenge him. There were papers here, lists with the signatures of Oliverians, Redemptioners, sailors,--of all classes concerned in this undertaking, save only the slaves and the convicts. There were letters from Maryland and New England, and a correspondence which would provide whipping-post and pillory for other Nonconformists than the Quakers. All these, the actual proofs of this conspiracy, are in his--that murderer's--hands,--where they must not stay."

"What wilt thou do, friend?" said the Muggletonian eagerly. "Wilt thou take the murderer aside in the gate to speak with him quietly, and smite him under the fifth rib, as did Joab to Abner the son of Ner, who slew his brother Asahel?"

"God forbid," said Landless. "But I will take them from him before he knows their contents. One moment, and we will go."

He crossed to the pallet and stood beside it, looking down on the shell that lay upon it with a stern and quiet grief. One of the cold white hands was clenched upon something. He stooped, and with difficulty unclasped the rigid fingers. The something was a ragged lock of coarse red hair.

"You see," he said.

"Ay," said the Muggletonian grimly. "It's evidence enough. There 's but one man in this county with hair like that. Leave that lock where it is, and that dead man holds the rope that will hang his murderer."

"It shall be left where it is," said Landless, and reclosed the fingers upon it.

He took a piece of sail-cloth from the floor, and with it covered the dead man from sight. Next he turned to the hollow above the fireplace, and took from it the pistols, concealing them in his bosom. "I may need them," he said. "Come."

They left the hut and its dead guardian, and rowed back through the summer dawn. The sky was barred with crimson and gold, the fiery rim of the sun just lifting above the eastern waters, the mist, a bridal veil of silver and pearl drawn across the face of a virgin earth.

They rowed in silence until they neared the wharf, when Porringer said, "You are leader now."

The other raised his haggard eyes. "It is a trust. I will go through with it, God helping me. But I would I were lying dead beside him in yonder hut."

They left the boat at the wharf, and went towards the quarters. Meeting one of the blowzed and slatternly female servants, Landless asked where they might find the overseer. He had gone to the three-mile field half an hour ago, after bestowing upon the two dilatory servants a hearty cursing, and promising to reckon with them at dinner-time. "Where was the master?" He had gone to the mouth of the inlet with Sir Charles Carew, who had grown impatient, and had sailed away under the Nancy's patched sail. The under overseer was in the far corn-field, two miles off.

"Are all the men in the fields, Barb?" asked Landless.

Barb informed him that they were, "as he might very well know, seeing that the sun was half an hour high."

"Have you seen the man called Roach?"

No: Barb had not seen him; but she had heard the overseer tell Luiz Sebastian to take two men and go to the strip of Orenoko between the inlet and the third tobacco house, and Luiz Sebastian, had been calling for Roach and Trail.

Landless thanked her, and moved away without offering to bestow upon her that which Barb probably thought her information merited.

"Do you find Woodson," he said to the Muggletonian, "and report this murder, saying nothing, however, of what we know. I myself will go to the tobacco house."

"Had I not best come with thee to hold up thy hands?" said Porringer. "I would take up my text from the thirty-fifth of Numbers, and from Revelation, twenty-second, thirteen, and deal mightily with the murderer."

"No," answered Landless. "Woodson must be seen at once, or we ourselves will fall under suspicion. And, friend, ask that thou and I may be the ones to bury _him_."

*CHAPTER XIII*

*IN THE TOBACCO HOUSE*

The third tobacco house was built upon a point of land jutting into the larger inlet, and screened off from the wide expanse of fields by a belt of cedars. It was a lonely, retired spot, and the high, dark, windowless structure with its heavy, low-browed door had a menacing aspect. Landless expected to find the men within the building, instead of outside attending to their work, and he was not disappointed. As he walked through the doorway into the pungent gloom the three started up from the debris of casks, sticks, and pegs, amidst which they had been squatting, with their heads ominously close together.

Landless strode up to Roach. "You murderer!" he said.

The convict recoiled; then with a bestial sound, half snarl, half bellow of rage, he gathered himself for a rush. Landless awaited him with bent body and sinewy, outstretched arms; but the mulatto interposed. Laying his long, beautifully shaped, yellow hands upon Roach, he forced him back against a cask, and, pinning him there, whispered in his ear. The face of the wretch gradually resumed its usual expression of low brutality, though an ugly sweat broke out upon it, and the mouth opened and shut as though he had been running. He turned upon Landless with a half threatening, half cringing air.

"So you 've found out what I was about last night, eh, pardner? But you 'll keep a still tongue. You 're not one to peach on your comrade as was in hell or Newgate with you, and as crossed the ocean with you to this d--d Virginia, and as has always liked you, and has the same spite as you have against the man what bought us. You say naught, comrade, and you 'll not stand to lose by it."

"I go from here to give you up to Colonel Verney," said Landless.

The wretch gave a snarl of rage and fear. Luiz Sebastian laid a soothing hand upon his shoulder.

"If I thought that," snarled the convict, "you 'd never live to reach that door."

"I shall live to see you hanged," said the other coolly.

Here the mulatto slipped something into Roach's hand. "So you 'll give me up?" said the latter in a peculiar voice.

"I have said so."

"Then, by the Lord! I 'll be even with you!" Roach cried with savage triumph. "Do you see this, and this, and this?" fluttering a mass of folded papers before the other's eyes. "Ah! I was wise, I was, when I could n't hide everything about me, to take the papers, and leave the weapons. I 've got you now. Here 's the lists that the old fool who is dead and gone to hell had hidden behind the gold! Here 's enough to hang you and your d--d Cromwellians higher than Haman. There will be more than one giving up, I 'm thinking! I 've got you under my thumb, and I 'll squeeze you!"

"You cannot read; you do not know what those papers contain," said Landless steadily.

"But I can," put in Trail smoothly. "I was but just running them over to our friend whose education has been so sadly neglected, when you came in."

Landless drew a pistol from his bosom, cocked it, and leveled it at the murderer. "You see," he said with an ominously quiet eye and voice, "you were not altogether wise to leave the weapons. Now, give me those lists."

"Damnation!" cried the convict, and Luiz Sebastian glided towards the door.

Landless, quick of eye and active of body, saw the movement, and sprang backwards to the opening before the other could reach it. He covered the three with his pistol.

"I will shoot the first of you that stirs," he said sternly. "You, Roach, lay those papers upon that bit of board, and push them towards me with your foot."

"I 'll go to hell first," was the sullen reply.

"As you please. I will give you until I count twenty. If those papers are not in my hands, then I will shoot you like the dog you are."

The murderer uttered a dreadful curse. Landless began to count. Roach made an irresolute motion or the hand that held the lists. Landless counted on, "fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen--" With another oath and a grin of rage Roach dropped the papers upon the board at his feet. "Now push it towards me," said Landless.

With a brow like midnight the other did as he was bid. Still covering his men, Landless stooped quickly, and took up the precious papers, assured himself that they were all there, and placed them in his bosom.

"Now," he said, leaning his back against the door-post, and regarding the three baffled rogues with a grim eye, "I have a few words to say to you. I speak first to you, Trail, and to you, Luiz Sebastian. These papers have told you little that you did not know before. It was not the information that you gained from them that made them so valuable; it was the possession of them, the possession of actual proofs of this conspiracy which you might hold over our heads, or, if the notion took you, might sell to Colonel Verney?"

"Senor Landless sees the thing as it is," said Luiz Sebastian.

"Well, you no longer possess these proofs, and are therefore just where you were yesterday."

"Listen, Senor Landless," said Luiz Sebastian gloomily. "This plot does not please us. It is too much in the hands of those who call themselves soldiers and martyrs, whom our master calls fanatic Oliverians, and whom I, Luiz Sebastian, call accursed heretics. The servants have no say in the matter; they are to follow like sheep where these others lead. The slaves are not even to know of it until the last moment. A handful of us who have white blood in our veins are let into the secret, that we may incite the blacks when the time is come; but are we consulted? Are our opinions asked, our wishes deferred to? I, Luiz Sebastian, who have been through three insurrections in the Indies, and who know how such things should be managed; has my advice been craved as to this or that? You make us promises. Mother of God! how do we know that those promises will be kept? By St. Jago! the insurrection may arrive, and the planters be put down, and next year may find us slaves still, with but a change of masters!"

"It is too late now for such questions," said Landless steadily. "You must accept the conspiracy as it is. In liberating themselves, these men will of necessity free you even as they will free me, who am not, as you know, of their class. I shall take my chance, as I think you will take yours."

The mulatto played with a tobacco peg, striking it against his great, white teeth. At length he said slowly and with a sinister upward glance at the figure by the door, "Certainly, Senor Landless, it seems our best, our only chance, for freedom."

And with this Landless had perforce to be content. He turned to the murderer, saying sternly, "Now for my word with you. I hold your life in my hands, for I heard you last night in the marsh, and Porringer and I saw you stealing from the creek this morning, and I can swear that you knew of the gold hidden in the hut. You have it on you at this moment. I could hold you here with this pistol until the overseer should come and search you. But I let you go, choosing rather your safety than the endangerment of that which was dearer than life to the man you murdered. The unsupported assertion of a murderer as to the contents of papers which he had not got to show, might not go for much, but I prefer that you should not make it. I have warned you;--you had best make your escape at once."

"If you hold your tongue, there 's no reason why I should run."

"Oh, yes, there is! There is a reason in the hut on the marsh."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that clasped in the hand of the man you murdered is the missing half of that torn lock upon your forehead."

With a yell Roach sprang to the door only to be confronted by the muzzle of Landless' pistol.

"Wait a moment," he said composedly. "Oh, you need not be afraid! I intend to let you go. But you don't leave this tobacco house until after I have left it myself."

"Curse you!" cried the other, foaming at the lips.

"You are ungrateful. I not only promise not to witness against you, but I aid you to escape."

"For reasons of your own," suggested Trail.

"Precisely: for reasons of my own. If you are taken, I will hold my tongue just so long as you hold yours. If you escape now, I will pray that my day of reckoning will yet come. And it will be a heavy reckoning."

"Ay, that it will!" cried the murderer with brutal fury. "You 've got the upper hand now: but wait! Every dog has his day, and I 'll have mine! and when it comes, I 'll do for you! I 'll smash your beauty! I 'll draw more blood from you than ever the whip of the overseer did! I 'll use you worse than I used that old man last night, who writhed and struggled, and tried to pray! I 'll--"

With white lips and blazing eyes Landless sprang forward, and clapped the mouth of the pistol to the ruffian's temple. Roach recoiled, then sunk upon his knees with an abject whine for mercy.

Landless let his hand drop, and moved slowly back to the door. "You had need to cry for mercy," he said in a low, distinct voice, "for you were never so near to death before. I let you go now, but one day I shall kill you. Until which day--take care of yourself!" Still with his face upon them he passed out of the door, then turned and walked away with a steady step, but with a heart bleeding for the loss of his friend, and heavy with forebodings for the future.

In the tobacco house the murderer, the forger, and the mulatto sat stricken into silence until the last crisp footfall had died away. Then amidst a torrent of curses Roach made for the door. Trail plucked him back. "Where are you going?" he cried.

"I don't know! To the devil!"

"The bloodhounds will be upon your trail before noon."

The wretch cried out and struck his hand against the wall with a force that laid the knuckles bare and bleeding.

"There is a way," said Luiz Sebastian slowly, "a way that only I know. You must take to the inlet here, and swim up it until you come to the mouth of the brook yonder in the forest. You must wade up that brook until you come to a second, and up that until you come to a third. When you have gone a mile up that one, leave it, and strike through the woods, going towards the north. Another mile will bring you to a village of the Chickahominies upon the Pamunkey.[#] They are at odds with Governor and Council, and they will hide you. Moreover, I once did their sachem a service, and they are my friends."

[#] The modern York.

"I 'm off," said Roach, breaking from the detaining grasp.

"Wait," said Luiz Sebastian. "There as time enough. Woodson will not come for a long while. When he does, he shall find Senor Trail and myself busily at work there outside, and we will say that you left us, and went down the inlet a long time before. But now we want to talk to you."

"Be quick then," growled the other, "I 've no mind to swing for this job."

Luiz Sebastian brought his handsomely malevolent face close to the other's hideous countenance.

"Would you not like to ruin that devil who but now robbed you of your hard-earned property?"

"Would I not?" cried the murderer with a tremendous oath. "I 'd give everything but life and gold to do it, as that cunning devil well knew. I 'd give my soul!"

"Would you like to be shown how to get more gold than old Godwyn's store, twenty times told? To get your freedom? To have some black, sweet hours in which to work your will on them at the house yonder? To plunge your arms to the elbow in the master's money chest, to become drunken with his wine; to strike him down, and that smiling imp his cousin, and that other devil, Woodson; to hear the women cry for mercy--and cry in vain? You would like all this?"

"Show me the way!" cried the brute with a ferocious light in his bloodshot eyes. "Show me the way to do it safely, and I 'll--" He broke off and threatened the air with malignant fists.

"Go to the village on the Pamunkey," said Luiz Sebastian with his most feline expression. "I will come to you there the first night I can slip away, I and our friend, the Senor Trail. There we will have our little conference. Mother of God! Senor Landless may find that others can plot as well as he and his accursed heretics."

*CHAPTER XIV*

*A MIDNIGHT EXPEDITION*

Four nights later, the hour before midnight found Landless walking steadily through the forest, bound upon a mission which he had had in his mind since the night after the murder of Godwyn. This was the first night since that event upon which he had deemed it advisable to leave the quarters, having no mind to be captured as a runaway by one of the many search parties which were scouring the peninsula between the two great rivers for the murderer of Robert Godwin. But the search was now trending northward towards Maryland, to which colony runaways usually turned their steps, and he felt that he might venture.

There was little undergrowth in the primeval forest, and the rows of vast and stately trees were as easy to thread as the pillared aisles of a cathedral. When he came to one of the innumerable streamlets that caught the land in a net of silver, he removed his coarse shoes and stockings, and waded it. The great branches overhead shut in a night that was breathlessly hot and still. He could see the stars only when he crossed the streams or emerged into one of the many little open glades. He walked warily, making no sound, and now and then stopping to listen for the distant halloo, or bark of a dog, which might denote that he was followed, or that there was a search party abroad, but he heard nothing save the usual forest sounds,--the dropping of acorns, the sighing leaves, the cry of some night bird,--sounds that seemed to make the night more still than silence.

He was nearing his destination when from out a shadowy clump of alders, standing upon the bank of the stream which he had just crossed, there shot a long arm, and the next moment he was wrestling with a dark and powerful figure whose naked body slipped from his hold as though it had been greased. But Landless, too, was strong and determined, and the two swayed and strained backwards and forwards through the darkness, wary and resolute, neither giving his antagonist advantage. The hand of the unknown writhed itself from the other's clasp and stole downwards towards his waist. Landless felt the motion and intercepted it. Then the figure, with an angry guttural sound, began to put forth its full strength. The arms encircled Landless with a slowly tightening iron band; the great dark shoulder came forward with the force of a battering-ram; the limbs twined like boa-constrictors around the limbs of the other. Locked together, the two reeled into a little fairy glade, where the short grass, pearled with dew, lay open to the moon. Here, borne backwards by the overwhelming force of his assailant, Landless fell heavily to the ground. The figure falling with him, pinned him to the earth with its knee upon his breast. In the moonlight he saw the gleam of the lifted knife.

He had had but time for a half-tittered, half-thought prayer when the pressure upon his breast relaxed; the knife fell, indeed, but harmlessly upon the grass, and the figure rose to its height with an astonished "Ugh!"

Landless, rising also, began to think that he recognized the gigantic form towering through the pale moonlight.

"Ugh!" said the figure again. "The great Spirit threw us into the light in time. Monakatocka had been forever shamed had his knife drunk the life of his friend."

"Why did you set upon me?" demanded Landless, still breathless from the struggle, while the Indian was as calmly composed as upon the day of their first meeting.

"Monakatocka took you for the man for whom they hunt with dogs through the forest, scaring the deer from the licks and the partridge from the fern. Two nights ago Major Carrington said to Monakatocka, 'Find me that man and kill him, and to the twenty arms' length of roanoke which the county will pay to Monakatocka, I will add a gun with store of powder, and with a bullet for every stag between Werowocomico and Machot.' When he heard you a long way off, moving over the leaves, trying to make no sound, Monakatocka thought he held the gun of the pale-face Major in his hand. But now--" he waved his hand with a gesture eloquent of resignation.

"I am sorry to disappoint you," said Landless, amused at his air of calm regret.

"I am glad to have proved the strength of my brother," was the sententious reply. "Where goes my brother through the woods, which are full of danger to him to-night? Or has he a pass?"

"I have business at Rosemead," answered Landless. "I am close to the house, I think?"

The Indian pointed through the trees. "It lies twelve bowshots before you. The overseer with the dogs has gone to the great swamp to look for the man with the red hair."

"Thanks for the information, friend," said Landless. "I ask you, moreover, to say nothing of this encounter. I have no pass."

"I have but one friend," answered the Indian. "His secret is my secret."

"Are you, too, then, so lonely?" asked Landless, touched by his tone.