Роберт Чамберс - Cardigan

Nosing the house delicately, I perceived odours of cooking, of rum toddy, and of tobacco smoke. Clearly Butler's company were supping after their long jog on the back trail from Fortress Pitt.

Satisfied that all was safe, I had silently begun skirting the road ditch shadowed by the fence, when a dark heap, which I had taken for a stump in the road, moved, rolled over, and moaned.

I stopped, frozen motionless. After a moment's wary reconnoitring, I crept forward again along the ditch, eyes fastened on the dim shape ahead, a human form lying in the black shadows of the road.

When I came closer I understood. At my feet, in a drunken stupor, sprawled a young Cayuga girl, limbs plastered with mud, body saturated and reeking with the stench of spirits. Her black hair floated in a pool of rain which spread out reflecting stars. One helpless hand clutched the mud.

I lifted the little thing and bore her to the shadow of the fence; but here, to my amazement, lay a drunken squaw, doubtless her mother, still clinging to an empty bottle; and, along the ditch and fence, flung in beastly, breathing heaps, I counted seven more barbarians, old and young, from the infant of ten to the young buck of twenty, all apparently of the same family, and all in a sodden swoon.

This was the work, then, done by a single agent of my Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia!

Like torpid snakes they lay there, glistening in the grass, the children naked, the mother in rags, breathing out poison under the stars. The very air of morn sweated rum; candle–light from the loopholes fell across the bodies, flung limply on the grass.

There was nothing I could do for these victims of Greathouse; no aid within my power to give them. Heartsick, I turned away, and, quickening my steps, passed swiftly down the muddy trail, hastening to mend my pace ere dawn should find me missing at the council–fires burning for me on the dark Ohio.

There were no lights in the fort as I passed; the flag–staff stood out bare against the stars. On the epaulement above the outer trench something moved, probably a sentry.

But ere I reached the Ohio the eastern sky had turned saffron, through which stars still twinkled; and the drifted mist–banks lay heaped far out across the river, so I could not see the water, and must follow its course along the edge of this phantom stream, whose current was vapour and whose waves of piled–up clouds rolled noiselessly under the stars.

No birds fluted from the mist; even the winds had blown far away somewhere into the gray morning. But the Cayuga trail was broad and plain, and I took it at a wolf–trot, thoughtfully reading its countless signs by the yellow dawn as I went along, marks of white men, marks of moccasins, imprint of deer and cattle, trail of rabbit and following fox, and the hand–like traces of rambling raccoons. On, on, north upon the broad Cayuga trail, while through the brightening woods sleep fled with the mist and the world awoke around me. Land and river roused with breathing and sigh and scarce–heard stir; through earth and water the pulse of life fluttered and beat on, timed for the moment by the swift rhythm of my flying feet.

And now a thread of blue smoke, drawn far down the trail, set my nostrils wide and quivering; a flare of blinding yellow turned the world into gold; I had met the sun at the Cayuga camp; the tryst had been kept, thanks to the Lord!

Dark, uncertain forms loomed up in the eye of the sun, tall groups that never moved as I drew nigh; men who stood motionless as the pines where the council–fire smoked and flashed like a dull jewel in the sun.

"Peace!" I said, halting, with upraised hand. "Peace, you wise men and sachems!"

"Peace!" repeated a low voice. "Peace, bearer of belts!"

I moved nearer, head high, yet seeing in a blur, for the rising sun blinded me. And when I came to the edge of the fire, I drew a white belt of wampum from my bosom, and, passing it through the smoke, held it aloft, flashing in the sun, until every chief and sachem had sunk down into their blankets, forming a half–circle before me.

A miracle of speech came to me like the breath of my body; easy, sober, flowing words followed. I spoke as I had never dared hope I might speak. Forgotten phrases, caressing idioms, words long lost flew to aid me, yet not so fast that they crowded, stumbling and choking speech.

As I spoke, sight slowly returned to my dazzled eyes. I saw the sachems' painted masks, the totems of three tribes repeated on blanket and lodge, the Cayuga pipe–symbol hanging from the lodge posts, the witch–drum swinging under a bush, where ten stems had been peeled ivory white. Behind all this I saw the green amphitheatre of trees, blue films of smoke floating from unseen lodges, and over all the radiance of sunrise painting earth and sky with pale fire.

Belt after belt I passed through the fragrant birch–smoke; I spoke to them as Sir William had spoken to Quider with three belts, and my words were earnest and pitiful, for my heart was full of tenderness for Sir William and for these patient children of his, these lost ones, so far from the doors of the Long House.

The ceremony of condolence was more than a ceremony for me; with eager sympathy I raised up the three stricken tribes; I sweetened the ashes of the eternal fires; I cleared evil from the Cayuga trail, and laid the ghastly ghosts of those who stood in forest highways to confront the fifth nation of the great confederacy.

"Oonah! Oonah!" whimpered the wind in the pines, but I stilled the winds and purified them, and I cleansed the million needles of the pines with a belt and an enchanted word.

The last belt was passed, flashing through the smoke; the chief sachem of the Cayugas rose to receive it, a tall, withered man of the Wolf tribe, painted and draped in scarlet. His dim, wrinkled eyes peered at me through the smoke.

For a long time the silence was broken only by the rustling flames between us; then the old man placed the belt at his feet, straightened up, and spoke feebly:

" Brother : It is to be known that the Six Nations never meet in council when mourning, until some brother speaks as you have spoken.

" Brother : We mourn great men dead. Our Father, through you, our Elder Brother, has purified our fires, our throats, our eyes. Where the dead sat among us, three tribes have you raised up.

" Brother : Listen attentively!"

Behind him from the great painted lodge nine Indian boys entered the fire–circle and stood proudly with folded arms and heads erect. And the old sachem, in his scarlet robes, laid his shaking hand on each youth as he passed, always turning his aged eyes to peer at me as he repeated in his feeble, cracked voice of a child:

"We acquaint you that one of our sachems, called Quider, is dead; we raise up this boy in his place and give him the same name."

And, after each boy had been named from one of the dead Cayugas, he gave me a string of wampum to confirm it, while the chant of condolence rose from the seated chiefs and sachems, a never–ending repetition of brave histories, and prophecy of brave deeds from the beginning of all things through the stilled centuries into the far future locked in silence.

Hour after hour I stood with bent head and arms folded on my breast. Sometimes I prayed as I stood, that evil be averted from these wards of our King; sometimes I grew hot with anger at the men who could so vilely misuse them.

Dreaming there amid the scented birch–smoke, the chant intoning with the mourning pines, sombre visions took shape within my brain. I could not lay these ghosts, awful spectres of ruin and death crowding around a pallid, flabby, toothless creature of silks and laces, my Lord Dunmore, smirking at Terror wearing the merciless mask of Butler.