Chapter XIII: The Trailers

"Shall we return and face them?" I asked eagerly.

Ta-wan-ne-ars permitted himself a smile of friendly sarcasm.

"If we can hear them, surely they can hear us," he said. "No, we will keep on. There is a place farther along the trail from which we can look back upon them. Come, Ormerod, you and I will run ahead. Peter will follow us."

"But why does he not come with us!" I objected. "If there is danger----"

"If there is danger we will all front it together," interrupted Ta-wan-ne-ars. "Peter is to walk behind us so that the trailers may not detect our haste."

"_Ja,_" assented Peter.

Ta-wan-ne-ars shifted his musket to his shoulders, and broke into a long, loping stride. I followed him.

Half a mile up the trail we came to a clearing where some storm of bygone years had battered down a belt of sturdy timber. We ran for another half-mile beyond this before Ta-wan-ne-ars slowed his pace and commenced to study the leaf barriers that walled the slot of the trail. Presently he stopped.

"Walk in my tracks, brother," he said. "And be certain that you do not bruise a twig."

With the utmost caution he parted the screen of underbrush on our right hand, and revealed a tunnel through the greenery into which he led the way, hesitating at each step until he had gently thrust aside the intervening foliage. Once in the tunnel, however, his care was abandoned, and he ran quickly to the trunk of a huge pine which soared upward like a monumental column, high above the surrounding trees. He leaned his musket against the pitchy bole.

"The symbol of the Long House," he said tapping the swelling girth of it. "Strength and symmetry and grandeur. We will climb, brother."

He swung himself up into the branches, which formed a perfect ladder, firm under foot, behind the screen of the pine-needles. When the other tree-tops were beneath us, he straddled a bough and cleared a loop-hole from which we might look out over the forest we had traversed.

"How did you know this tree was here?" I questioned curiously.

"Upon occasion enemies penetrate the Long House, so we must be able to see who follow us."

"Do you know that those who follow us are enemies?"

He shook his head.

"If they were friends 'twas strange they did not try to overtake us, brother. My people like company when they travel."

He said no more, but fixed his eyes on the forest below. It swept away in billows of green that rolled in gigantic combers across ridge and hillock and tossed plumes of spray aloft whenever a breeze rustled the tree-tops. There was an effect of continuity, of boundless size such as the ocean gives. From my lofty perch I could survey the four quarters of the horizon, and in every direction the forest stretched to the sky-line. The Great Trail of the Iroquois was hidden from sight. The one gap in the vista of emerald and jade was the narrow slash of the clearing we had recently crossed.

I saw that Ta-wan-ne-ars had concentrated his attention upon this spot, where the exit of the trail was indicated by a ragged fringe of undergrowth. We looked for so long, without anything happening, that my eyeballs ached. But at last there was a movement like the miniature upheaval which is caused by an ant in breaking ground. Boughs quivered, and a figure appeared in the open. 'Twas Corlaer. He glanced around him and strode on. In a moment he had passed the clearing and disappeared in the forest.

Ta-wan-ne-ars hitched forward and peered through the loop-hole with tense muscles. And again there was a wait which seemed endless. My eyelids blinked from the strain of watching.

The desolation and loneliness of the wilderness were so complete that it seemed inconceivable another human being could be within view. And whilst this thought occupied my mind a dark figure crawled on hands and knees from the mouth of the trail.

The newcomer feared a trap. His ear sought the ground. His eye studied the sky above him. He looked in every direction. But his instincts were baffled. He stole forward across the clearing with musket poised. At that distance all we could see of his costume was the clump of feathers that bristled from his scalp-lock.

He followed Peter into the trail on our side of the clearing, and there was a second and briefer pause. Then as silently as ghosts a string of figures flitted into the clearing. There were six of them, each with musket in the hollow of his arm, each with bristling feather headdress. They walked one behind the other, with a peculiar effect, even at that distance, of stealth and watchfulness.

Ta-wan-ne-ars emitted a guttural grunt, quite unlike his usual rather musical utterances.

"Cahnuagas!" he exclaimed, and spat.

"What?" I answered.

"Down!" he rasped. "Down! The time is scant!"

All the way during our descent he was muttering to himself in his own tongue, and a black scowl covered his face. At the foot of the pine he snatched up his musket without a word, and turned into the green tunnel that debouched upon the screen of the trail.

As we stepped into the worn slot Peter came into view.

"Well!" he said phlegmatically.

"Cahnuagas," answered Ta-wan-ne-ars.

The Seneca's face became convulsed with fury.

"Cahnuaga dogs! They dare to invade territory of the Long House!"

"We can cross der Mohawk to der south branch of der trail," proposed Corlaer. "They wouldt not dare to follow us there."

"No," snarled Ta-wan-ne-ars; "we shall not step aside for them. We will attend to them ourselves."

"Hafe you a plan?" inquired the Dutchman amicably.

He never lost his temper when other people did.

"Yes," said the Seneca briefly. "And now we will go along as if we did not know they were near us."

"Are they not likely to attack?" I interposed.

"No, they will not attack unless they have to for we are still near the Mohawk Castle, although 'tis upon the opposite bank of the river. They will leave us alone until night."

"But why can not we attack them!"

A look of ferocity which was almost demoniac changed his usually pleasant features into an awful mask.

"In an ambuscade one might escape. No, my brother Ormerod, we will wait until they attack us. Then----"

He paused significantly.

"Not one of the Keepers shall return to tell Murray how his brothers died."

We took up the march. 'Twas already mid-afternoon, and shortly the dimness of twilight descended upon the trail, as the level rays of the setting sun were turned aside by the interlacing masses of vegetation.

Once, I remember, we passed along the edge of a swampy tract, and I saw for the first time that industrious animal, the beaver, whose pelt was the principal stake for which France and England contended in the great game upon the issue of which depended the future of a continent. They had erected a dam across one end of a stream to make a pond, and their engineers were busily at work floating trees into place to reënforce a weak point in the structure. Other trees a few feet from the trail were gnawed in preparation for felling.

"How is it they are able to exist here so close to the white man's country?" I called to Ta-wan-ne-ars.

He flung a haughty look cross his shoulder. Since we had identified the Cahnuagas a startling change had transformed him. The veneer of deferential courtesy which ordinarily he wore was cracked. He was all Indian. More than that, he was contemptuous of what was not Indian. Aye, of whatever was not Iroquois like himself, of the bone and sinew of the League.

"This is not the white man's country," he answered. "You are within the portals of the Long House."

"But the beaver's skin is no less valuable to the Indian than to the white man," I persisted.

"Yes," he agreed, "yet the Indian does not slay game only for gain. If it were not for the dam those beavers built the Great Trail we walk upon would be overflowed. So long ago in the time of my forefathers that tradition can not fix the date the forefathers of those beavers built that dam, and when the Founders drove the trail they decreed that the beavers should be safe forever--that the trail might be safe."

Twilight faded into dusk and still we kept on. Ta-wan-ne-ars had eyes like a cat's, and I, too, accustomed myself to perception of hanging branches and the unexpected turns and twists in the groove of the path. The stars were out in the sky overhead when we stepped from the shelter of the forest into a rocky dell divided by a tiny brook.

"We will camp here," said Ta-wan-ne-ars.

He rested his musket on a boulder and began to collect firewood.

"Why a fire?" I asked.

"The trailers must not think we suspect them," he replied curtly. "If we lit no fire they would know for certain that we were suspicious."

I helped him, whilst Corlaer crouched by the opening of the trail on watch. We soon had a respectable pile of wood, but before kindling it the Seneca bade us strip off our leathern shirts and stuffed them with underbrush into a semblance of human shapes. A third figure to represent himself he contrived out of the packs and several branches.

The three dummies were then disposed to the satisfaction of Ta-wan-ne-ars and, striking flint and steel to some rotten wood, a bright blaze sent the shadows chasing each other around the confines of the glade.

"Peter," he said, "you had best take post by that boulder on the other side of the fire, Ormerod and Ta-wan-ne-ars will lie together upon this side."

"You need not think it necessary to keep me by your side," I said indignantly. "'Tis not the first time I shall have heard musketry."

A gleam of humorous intelligence chased the gloomy ferocity from the Seneca's face.

"Ta-wan-ne-ars does not doubt the valor of his brother," he said, "but Ormerod has never fought with Cahnuagas. They are dogs, but they are skilled in forest war."

He did not give me a chance to answer, but putting his fingers to his lips to enjoin silence sank down behind a boulder next to the one by which I stood. Corlaer had been swallowed by the dancing shadows beyond the fire.

I dropped beside Ta-wan-ne-ars, and like him dusted fresh powder into the pan of my musket, drew tomahawk and knife from their sheaths and laid them on the ground within reach.

How long we waited I can not say, but the suspense which had racked me in the swaying branches of the pine that afternoon was nothing compared to the agony of the hours that followed. For it must have been at least two hours after we had taken cover that Ta-wan-ne-ars touched my arm, and the light from the glowing bed of coals revealed a feathered head crouching forward where the trail entered the glade.

It hovered around the edge of the firelight like a monstrous reptilian fiend, body bent nearly double, a glint of steel showing whenever the hands moved. Presently he withdrew into the trail, and it seemed that two more hours dragged by on leaden feet, although it was probably less than half that time.

The fire was lower, but Ta-wan-ne-ars did not need to warn me when the Keepers reappeared. It was as if a mist of evil preceded them. My senses were alert, and I saw the first feathered head emerge from the trail and each one of the six who followed their leader. I counted every step of their approach until the yellow paint which streaked the ribs of the one nearest to me glimmered in the light of the embers.

"_Hah-yah-yah-eeee-eee-ee-e!_"

Ta-wan-ne-ars sounded the war-whoop as he fired, and instinctively I aimed my piece at those ocher-tinted ribs and pressed the trigger. The report of my musket carried on the echoes which had been roused by the Seneca's. Corlaer's discharged as I bounded to my feet.

The Cahnuagas yelled in surprize; three of them were thrashing out their lives on the rocks. But the four survivors did not hesitate. The French called them "Praying Indians," and perhaps they did pray occasionally for Black Robe, to placate him sufficiently in order that they might practise their own horrid rites in secret. They fought now like the devils they really were.

One of them was on me immediately, bounding over the boulders with screeches that split the night. His knife and hatchet cut circles around my head--then chopped at my bowels. His activity was extraordinary, and he fought better than I, for he knew his weapons and they were strange to me.

It was the realization of this which saved me. Fending awkwardly with knife or hatchet against a foe whose handling of them was the result of lifelong training, I was at a disadvantage. I could not hope to beat him by his own methods.

So I changed the tomahawk to my left hand, and grasped the knife by the hilt as if it were a sword, thrusting with it point first instead of slashing as the Indian did. And now my skill at fence was in my favor.

The Cahnuaga's knife was no longer than mine. We were on equal terms--or rather the advantage inclined toward me. Bewilderment showed in the Indian's face. He did not understand this fighting with passes and parries and swift, stabbing assaults. I touched him in the thigh, and he struck at my knife-arm with his hatchet; but my tomahawk was ready to meet him.

He side-stepped to attack me from a new quarter, but I pivoted on my heel as I had often done in the _salle des armes_, and he retreated, circling warily in search of an opportunity to return to the style of fighting he preferred. My chance came the next time he charged me, goaded into desperation by these strange tactics. I aimed a smashing blow at his head with the tomahawk, and, as he lifted his own hatchet to guard, I thrust for his belly, parried his knife and ripped him open.

His death-yell was in my ears as I leaped over his body and looked to see how my comrades were doing. Ta-wan-ne-ars had just knifed his man and was running to the help of Peter, who had two assailants on his hands. As Ta-wan-ne-ars came up, the Dutchman closed with one, dashed the defending weapons aside and grasped the struggling savage in his powerful arms. The last Cahnuaga turned to flee, but Ta-wan-ne-ars did not even attempt to pursue him. Without any appearance of haste the Seneca balanced his tomahawk, drew back his arm and hurled it after the fugitive. The keen blade crushed the man's skull before he had passed from the circle of firelight, and Ta-wan-ne-ars sauntered across and scalped him.

"That time Ta-wan-ne-ars did not miss, brother," he observed to me as I watched with fascinated horror the bloody neatness with which he dispatched his task.

"But why do you scalp your enemies, Ta-wan-ne-ars?" I answered. "Surely----"

"I am an Indian, not a white man."

"Yet you----"

"I have forgotten what the missionaries taught me," he replied impatiently. "All except what I think may be useful to my people."

Peter brought up his captive and tossed the man down in front of us.

"Oof, that was a goodt fight!" he commented placidly.

"Why a prisoner, Peter!" asked Ta-wan-ne-ars.

"We will ask him of der Doom Trail," returned Corlaer.

He jerked the man to his feet.

"Where is der Doom Trail?" he demanded.

The Cahnuaga, badly shaken though he was, drew himself erect and folded his arms across his painted chest.

"The Rat can go to the torture-stake and not answer that question, Corlaer," he said quite simply.

"We will take you to the nearest village and let you make good your boast," threatened Ta-wan-ne-ars.

The Cahnuaga smiled.

"If I told you, none the less should I suffer at the stake," he said, "for the Ga-go-Sa Ho-nun-as-tase-ta[1] knows all. Do your worst, Chief of the Long House."

[1] Mistress of the False Faces.

A tinge of mockery colored his voice.

"Be sure that whatever you do you can not equal the ingenuity of the Ga-go-sa. Yes, I think you will come to know more about them some day, Iroquois. I seem to see pictures in the firelight of a stake, and a building with a tower and a bell that rings, and many of the Ga-go-sa dance around you, and your pain is very great. Aye, you are shrieking like a woman; you----"

He sprang, not at the Seneca but at me. His hands were around my throat before I could move. His eyes blazed into mine. His teeth gnashed at my face. A gout of blood, thick and warm, deluged me. The next thing I remembered was seeing Ta-wan-ne-ars bending over me.

"My brother is whole?" he asked anxiously.

The ferocity was gone from his face, and his fingers prodded me tenderly in search of hurts.

"Yes," I said, sitting up and rubbing a very sore throat, "except that I shall not be able to swallow for a time."

"You were choked, brother."

"And the Cahnuaga?"

"That dog is dead. Do you sleep now, for the dawn grows near and we must be upon our way."