Part 3

The old woman’s eyes almost started out of their sockets, two great tears burst from them--and then the door opened and Gray Eagle re-entered, carrying the rolled blanket. He laid it in the cradle without comment, and went out, closing the door behind him.

Presently there came a distant sound that made Mistress Estill shrink and quiver--the triumphant scalp-halloo of the Iroquois, receding.

Then silence reigned. There was no sound from the cradle. Granny had long ceased to struggle. The candle guttered and went out; the embers on the hearth died into blackness. Night passed.

* * * * *

With the first faint gray of dawn, galloping hoofs approached, then the voice of Ezra Todd was to be heard calling strongly: “Polly, Polly, my wife! I am here, coming.” A short, sharp cry, and Ezra appeared in the doorway, grasping at the sides of it like one spent.

“Dark in here, dark,” he muttered. “I must make a light--oh, my God, I dare not! Polly, _Polly_, are you here?” His voice rose to a cry, then steadied itself. “What chance, with the negro dead, and an Indian body in the yard! They were in haste, to have left that. Oh, damn them!” He was moving about like a drunken man, feeling for the candle. Granny made a slight sound. He started violently. “What’s that? Not all dead? Oh, quick, quick!” His shaking hand managed at last to strike a spark from the tinder box. The candle flared. He leaped toward the old woman.

“Ah-h! Only you! What have they done with her? Where is my wife? But you can’t speak yet, of course not! Patience, man, patience.” Thus exhorting himself, he removed the gag, loosened her, brought water, liquor, all in a terrible, clumsy haste, muttering as he worked.

“They told me at Cook’s that Indian canoes had been seen. I turned back, rode all night--the mare’s foundered. But too late. Ben killed, Polly gone--where, where? Ah! Now you can speak. Quick, woman!”

Granny struggled for her voice. Perhaps she was also struggling for time to collect her wits.

“Come, come, in mercy’s name!” groaned Ezra. “Tell me at least if they got Polly!”

Granny nodded, gulping.

“And the child--they took the baby, too?”

Granny shook her head, pointing a tremulous hand toward the cradle at which she did not look.

“So! They separated my poor lass from her child? The hell hounds! And now, which way? Answer me!” In hysterical impatience he shook her. “Tell me which _way_ they went, up or down stream?”

The old woman gulped and gurgled unintelligibly, and he sprang away as if he could bear no more.

“If you won’t help me, I must go. I’m sorry for you, I will send neighbors--but I must go!”

Granny made a hoarse effort: “Go--where?”

“Where? In God’s name! To find my wife.”

“No use,” croaked Granny.

Ezra cried out. “No use? Don’t, don’t say it, woman! I’ve not lost my wits, or my woodcraft. See, I’m quite steady!” He held out a hand that trembled like a leaf. “There’ll be some trace, we’ll find her. The neighbors are out. We found her before, we shall again---”

“No use,” Granny croaked once more. The tears streamed unheeded down her cheeks.

It was the tears that made him understand--Mistress Estill was no weeping female. He backed from her until he reached a table, and leaned on it heavily, as if he could no longer stand erect.

“You are trying to tell me--that they did not take Polly--alive?”

Granny had found her voice at last. She told her lie with pride.

“Take Polly alive? How should they take her alive--my granddaughter! You think she would not hold herself too dear for that? Your wife, the mother of your son? She might well have gone with them unharmed; some women do, more shame to them! But not her. She fought them off, fought them like any wildcat. ‘Take your foul hands from me,’ she said, ‘for I belong to the one man only--my husband! Dead you may take me if you can, but living no other man shall have me--never!’”

The man’s head slowly lifted. A strange look came over his ravaged face, a look almost of relief.

“She said that, did she? My Polly! My brave, loving, loyal little mate! I might have known----”

The old woman, closely watching him, lied with growing confidence.

“And so, seeing they could not get her otherwise, they killed her, son; killed her clean and swift as a body would want to die, not lingering on after the heart has gone out of her, beyond her time--but fighting to the last, like any man, for the things she holds dearer than life, her home, her child, her--her love----”

Ezra burst into a terrible sobbing, and the old woman, rising with infinite difficulty, managed to hobble over to him by the aid of stools and table, and held his head against her breast. She was whispering under her breath, “God forgive me, God forgive me!”

At last he stirred, saying dully, “Her body--perhaps they will have left me that---”

“No, no,” said Granny in startled haste, “not even that. You see”--she had need to think rapidly--“they--they dragged Polly down to the river, she struggling every step of the way, calling on your name, cursing them--no, no, not cursing!--what am I thinking of? That was another child of mine, her father.” She passed a distracted hand over her brow. “But, anyway, ’twas there they had killed her, Ezra, because she--she wouldn’t get into the canoe, you see, they could not force her away from you. Ah, a grand fight she made of it! And so they--they did the thing, and cast her body into the river. ’Tis a swift water, son. She’ll be far from this by now, drifting who knows where--who knows where?”

* * * * *

The man’s head fell upon his breast. It did not occur to him to ask further questions, to wonder how the woman could have seen so much, bound as she was, and through a closed door.

In the silence that followed, the baby awoke and cried.

“God be praised!” gasped Granny. “He is alive then, alive! I have not dared to ask, or to look. So still he was---”

“Like his mother,” said Ezra. He went to the cradle and stood gazing, his face a-quiver. Suddenly he stooped and took something out of the baby’s clenched fist; a long, gray feather. “What is this?” he asked, dully.

Granny started. The Indian, then had left his sign, his warning! But she managed to answer, carelessly:

“Oh, that? Why, he must have pulled it out of his mother’s feather duster, strong little man that he is! Come, Ezra, make up the fire, son. ’Tis time for the child’s nursing bottle.”

For Mistress Estill, builder of empire, had little energy left to waste on grief.

[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 1923 issue of McClure’s Magazine.]