Chapter XX: The Argosy of Furs

"To the left," sobbed the voice from the bear's mask.

We turned between the trunks of the pines, the mat of fallen needles springy underfoot. Behind us the fires of the Dancing-Place were a faint radiance in the dusk. Branches crashed; bodies hurtled against each other; a bedlam of shrieks resounded to the skies.

"Let me help you," I panted to our rescuer.

"There will be no need," she answered, running stride for stride beside us.

"At the least, slip off your mask," urged Ta-wan-ne-ars.

"I shall be wanting it presently," she returned. "Do not be concerned for me. Many a mile I have run with the gillies over the Highland hills."

She stumbled as she spoke, and I set my hand under her elbow. Ta-wan-ne-ars did the same on the other side, and so we ran for a space, three and three, our bruised and rusty joints gradually limbering with the effort.

Presently we came to an opening amongst the pines, with a huge, flat rock in the center and before the rock the ashes of a fire. My foot struck something round, and a human skull, blackened and charred, bounded ahead of us. I felt a shudder pass through the slender figure in the mask.

"'Tis the altar of the False Faces," she murmured. "If Père Hyacinthe only knew!"

"What dreadful----" I started to say.

"No, no," she said. "Do not be asking me. I can not think of it without pain. But there is this to be thankful for: none but the Ga-go-sa will dare to follow us through the wood."

"Was that your thought?" I questioned.

"No. I was helpless. 'Twas the Mistress--she bade me call her Ga-ha-no--thought of everything."

Ta-wan-ne-ars stopped in his stride.

"What of Ga-ha-no?" he demanded sternly.

She glanced fearfully backward along the way we had come.

"We may not stay," she answered rapidly. "I will talk as we run. Oh, haste, haste, or all will be lost!"

The Seneca resumed his steady gait, but the moonlight filtering through the branches revealed the agony in his face, an agony which the ordeal at the stake had not been able to produce.

"Ga-ha-no thought of all," gasped our companion, her voice strangely muffled by the mask. "She came to me this morning--whilst I was pleading with them--told me how it might be done--fetched me here--procured me the mask and costume--taught me the dance. 'Twas she secured the delay--in your torture--made them send you food--bolstered your strength."

"Where is she now?" asked Ta-wan-ne-ars hardly.

She looked sidewise at him--I think in pity.

"With the Chevalier de Veulle," she said reluctantly.

Then with quick earnestness:

"'Twas part of her plan. It might not--otherwise be done."

He was silent, and we ran on for as much as a quarter-hour, coming then to the bank of a small stream, where a trail marked a ford.

"Under those bushes," she said, pointing, "you will find your clothes and weapons. We hid them this evening."

I scurried into the undergrowth and started to don the tattered leather garments which were fastened in a bundle to the barrel of my musket--the musket that Juggins had given to me, years and years ago, it seemed, in London, and which I had expected never to see again. But she halted me.

"No, no, Mr. Ormerod!" she exclaimed. "There is not time. You must go on alone, the two of you. They will expect you to strike into the Doom Trail. 'Tis the quickest way to the settlements. Ga-ha-no bade me tell you to go west instead, making for Oswego at the mouth of the Onondagas River. So you may shake off the pursuit of the Keepers."

"But you?" I cried, standing up, bundle and musket in hand.

"'Tis my part to lead them into the Doom Trail."

Ta-wan-ne-ars joined with me in a violent protest. But she waved us aside.

"There is no other way."

"We can fight them off," I asserted.

"But I do not wish to leave," she said.

"What? You would stay here in this place of evil, knowing what goes on!"

"There is no other way," she repeated. "I will have learned much since my coming here, Master Ormerod, and amongst other things, to think the less harshly of you."

"For that I am thankful," I replied, "but sure, you must let us take you back to Fort Orange. Governor Burnet will care for you."

"It can not be," she insisted. "My place is here. Wicked as they be, these men here--and he who is called my father is not the cleanest of them--they work in a good cause. 'Tis for me to stay by and see they do what is expected of them for it."

"We will force you to come with us," I declared hotly.

She shook her cumbrous mask.

"You would not do so. Now be off, sir. The False Faces will be on us any moment--and I am not wishing to be caught by them, even though they would not venture to do me harm."

A burst of ferocious yelling came from the heart of the pine wood.

"They have seen traces of us in the open space by the altar," interpreted Ta-wan-ne-ars.

He swung musket and bundle to his shoulder, and faced the bear-mask, a splendid figure in bronze.

"Sister Ne-e-ar-go-ye," he said gravely, "did Ga-ha-no give you any message for Ta-wan-ne-ars?"

She hesitated.

"She said that if you asked for her I was to tell you to forget Ga-ha-no, that she was unworthy of your memory. But you were to believe that what she did for you tonight was in reparation for her first great wrong."

He bowed his head.

"And oh, Ta-wan-ne-ars," she went on impulsively, "she pays a bitter price. Forgive her."

Ta-wan-ne-ars looked up.

"Say this to Ga-ha-no," he answered. "Say Ta-wan-ne-ars thinks of her as a Lost Soul, tarrying for a while with Ata-ent-sic, and in the end he will come for her and bring her home again to his lodge. Say that Ta-wan-ne-ars never forgets."

He raised his right arm in the gesture of farewell, and stepped into the current of the stream.

"We part once more, Marjory," I said, offering my hand.

She took it.

"For certain words I have spoken to you, I am sorry," she said. "I know more now. You may be my enemy, but I believe you not to be a traitor."

"Thank you. And is that all you have to say to me?"

"That is all," she replied softly, withdrawing her hand.

"Do you take this knife, then," I said, sparring for time against my judgment and all expediency.

She refused it.

"If I am caught they will not harm me."

I shivered at thought of the hands of the brutal priests of So-a-ka-ga-gwa on her unsullied body.

"I will not leave you," I cried, and made to walk with her along the trail.

But she pushed me back.

"You will not be helping me by so acting," she insisted in her quaint Gaelic speech which had won me when I first heard it. "And--and some day I may need your help more than I do tonight."

"Will you call upon me then?"

"Yes."

The yelling of the False Faces burst forth much nearer in the wood.

"Please go, Master Ormerod," she begged. "If I am not overtaken, this mask will protect me as far as the chapel, where my own clothes are awaiting me. They dare not enter there."

I captured her hand again and carried it to my lips.

"My name is Harry," I answered. "And I have never forgotten the song in the cabin of the New Venture."

"Thank you, Harry," she returned with a trill of elfin laughter. "And I do assure you I know other songs."

With that she was gone. Yet I had a feeling I had never known before that she was still with me, and I stepped into the water with joy in my heart.

A score of paces down the bank I found Ta-wan-ne-ars, and we crouched under the pendant branches of a willow to see what would happen, muskets primed and ready.

The yelling in the wood increased in volume as the False Faces followed the course we had taken by broken branches and footprints in the pinemold. A misshapen figure with the head of some fabled beast squattered into the trail and galloped around, nose to ground like a hound seeking a lost scent. In a moment the ugly head was lifted, and a howl of satisfaction greeted the other monstrous shapes which joined it. The whole pack gave tongue and vanished up the trail after Marjory.

Ta-wan-ne-ars waited to give the stragglers time to appear, then rose and led the way along the bed of the stream westward.

"Can you pick your path at night?" I inquired anxiously.

He pointed upward to a group of four stars that sparkled in the velvet blue of the Summer sky.

"So long as Gwe-o-ga-ah[1] shines Ta-wan-ne-ars can not be lost," he answered.

[1] The Loon.

We walked in the water for more than a mile, when the stream turned to the north and we stepped out upon a rock and dressed. Afterward we caught the overhanging bough of a tree and swung ourselves on to dry ground above the bank, never leaving a trace of our course up to that time. From this point we traveled on through the forest, pursuing no settled path, but holding to the westward in the direction of Oswego on the shore of the Cadarakui Lake.

We did not stop until after midday. Ta-wan-ne-ars knocked over a wild turkey with his tomahawk, kindled a fire of dry sticks and broiled the juicy bird before the coals. He insisted that I should sleep first, promising to arouse me at the end of two hours--he reckoned time, I should explain, by the declension of the sun. But when he finally did arouse me the sun was close to setting, and I saw by the sunken look of his eyes that he had not slept during his watch.

"Why did you not wake me?" I asked angrily.

"Ta-wan-ne-ars had no wish for sleep," he returned.

"Nonsense," I retorted. "You can not go indefinitely without rest."

"I had my thoughts for company," he said simply. "They are not happy thoughts, brother. They would not let me sleep."

I was shaken by a profound revulsion of feeling. It came over me that I had never fully appreciated the extreme degree of the mental suffering to which he had been exposed.

"Your sorrow is great," I acknowledged, "but sure you know that she for whom you mourn----"

"She is a sick soul," he said. "She has offended the Great Spirit, and he has permitted Ha-ne-go-ate-geh to cast his shadow over her. But some day she will have performed the penance Ha-wen-ne-yu asks of her, and in that day he will permit Ta-wan-ne-ars to reclaim her."

"I hope so," I replied, stunned by the amazing confidence in eternal justice, the Christian charity, of this man who was, properly speaking, a lettered savage.

"Ta-wan-ne-ars knows it," he asserted confidently. "But I can not help thinking of the wickedness of my enemy."

His hand flew to his knife-hilt.

"I am confident of what will come, but I sorrow over what has been and is."

"I wish I had not spared him when his life was in my hand," I cried.

"My brother did not know," answered Ta-wan-ne-ars. "And already then the harm was done, the evil was sowed, the soul was corrupted."

He smiled gravely.

"Your search is ended, brother," he added.

"What do you mean?"

"The soul you sought has been found. It is no longer sick."

"Mayhap," I agreed, "but none the less 'tis out of reach and in great danger."

"We shall save it," he encouraged me. "Ta-wan-ne-ars knows. We must wait. The time will come."

He refused again to sleep, and we ate the remainder of the turkey--our hunger was prodigious--and pushed on, traveling most of the night. Not once did we see a trace of the Keepers, and when we halted Ta-wan-ne-ars said that we were on the marches of the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks. We slept together the remainder of that night, without a fire and on the top of a steep rock which was set with boulders which the foot of any climber must set in motion.

In the late morning we killed a rabbit, broiled and ate it and tramped the virgin forest until long past sunset. That day we ventured to discharge our firearms, and to my vast pride I killed a small deer. The following afternoon we caught our first view of the inland sea from a height of land, and the next morning we sighted the stockade of Oswego, the fort which Governor Burnet had established on the shores of the lake in his effort to divert the far-western fur-trade from the French posts.

The gate was closed, but as we approached it opened, and an enormous, pot-bellied figure in buckskin and fur cap sauntered out to meet us.

"Ja, idt is you," Corlaer hailed us. "I knew that Joncaire was oop to another of his tricks."

"What do you mean?" I asked as he turned to walk back beside us, his fat face as solemn as ever.

"I hafe hadt a scare," he said. "I came back to De-o-nun-da-ga-a from a hundting-party to find a Tahsagrondie messenger from Joncaire who says he is to tell me you fooled der Gofernor of Jagara, but now you are caught andt hafe gone to La Vierge du Bois. Andt der Tahsagrondie says Joncaire is sorry. Ha, ha! I thought it was a funny message."

"Funny mayhap," I replied feelingly. "But 'twas amazingly true."

Ta-wan-ne-ars nodded confirmation, and for an instant I thought Corlaer was going to betray surprize. But he shut his gaping mouth with resolution.

"What has happened?" he demanded. "I hafe come here to scout der Doom Trail andt learn how you diedt--andt you are alife."

So we told him, whilst the lieutenant in command of the post and his garrison of twenty lusty frontiersmen gathered in a knot to listen over each other's shoulders.

"Budt--budt," expostulated Peter, "you hafe been in La Vierge du Bois!"

"True."

"Budt nobody has efer been in La Vierge du Bois----"

"And come out alive," I amended. "I fear many poor souls have been sacrificed by those fiendish priests."

"Andt you fooled Joncaire!" repeated Peter admiringly.

'Twas that indeed which pleased him most. He insisted upon our repeating the tale with all details, and I believe he would have required a third account had it not been for the interruption which came during the afternoon.

We were sitting in the commandant's quarters on the upper floor of the block-house when the sentries on the stockade announced a large fleet of canoes approaching from the west. The lieutenant promptly issued orders to get out the trade-goods, and prepared for an impressive reception of the savages, deeming them emissaries of some tribe come to exchange their fur-catch of the Winter.

But the leading canoes held on past the fort, and none of those which followed gave indication of intent to steer inshore.

"Hafe you a canoe?" asked Corlaer of the bewildered lieutenant. "_Ja_? Well, my friendts andt I will go andt ask what this means."

We launched the canoe from the water-gate, and with Peter and Ta-wan-ne-ars at the paddles, sped out into the lake. Some distance from shore we overhauled the rear squadron of the fleet, every canoe loaded deep with packages of furs.

"Ho, brothers," called Ta-wan-ne-ars. "Who are you?"

The nearest canoe hove to.

"We are Necariagues," answered a paddler. "In front of us are Ottawas and Missisakies."

"The Chief of the English fort, who commands here in the name of Ga-en-gwa-ra-go, invites you to come ashore and trade with him."

Up stood a large, stout man with lanky black hair, dressed in the uniform of the French marine troops, who had been ensconced behind a bale of furs.

"Ha, 'tis my friend from Arles," he shouted, "and his companion, the noble warchief! So the Keepers did not keep you?"

"No, Monsieur de Joncaire," I replied. "We are still alive to plague you."

"_Venire St. Remi_, 'tis not sorry I am! Try it again, my lad. Only try it again!"

"And what are you doing with these people?"

He roared with laughter.

"No more than shepherding them past the temptations of this English."

Ta-wan-ne-ars called again to the Indians in the canoes.

"Come ashore, brothers. We have rich goods to trade with you."

"We do not need to trade with the English," replied the Necariague who had spoken before. "We are glad we can trade with our fathers, the French. They have plenty of goods to offer us. Onontio has sent word he will pay better than the English now."

"Ha, ha, ha," exploded Joncaire. "Ho, ho, ho! _Mort de ma vie_! _Tonerr-rr-re de Dieu_! 'Tis an odd world! The boot is on the other leg, Monsieur l'Arlesien!

"Present my compliments to Monsieur Burnet, Peter Corlaer. You may tell him I am not so discouraged as I once was. No, no, many things have happened.

"_Au revoir_--and avoid the Keepers. Avoid the keepers by all means. I am told they keep a strict watch upon the Doom Trail these days."

His paddlers dipped their blades, and his bellows of laughter were wafted back to us as his canoe followed the fur argosy down the lake toward the French posts on the St. Lawrence--posts whose magazines were already beginning to swell with the life-blood of English trade which was pouring over the Doom Trail.