Роберт Чамберс - Cardigan

Into my nostrils crept the stench of burnt flesh; it grew stronger and stronger. Silence fell, soothed by the whispering rain; then out of the night came the dull noise of many people stirring. They were coming!

As I rose, a Cayuga youth seized me and threw me heavily against the post I had seen the woman embed in the mud. I fought and strained and writhed, but they tied me, bracing me up stiff against the wet stake, trussed like a fowl for basting.

Around me the crowd was thickening; hundreds of tongues loaded me with insults; thrice a young girl reached out and struck me in the face.

They had begun piling wood around my feet, and stuffing the spaces full of dry moss, but before the heap reached my knees they decided to face me towards the fort, so the work accomplished had to be undone, my bonds loosened and retied, and my body shifted to breast the south.

Through the falling rain I saw morning lurking behind the eastern hills, and I cursed it, for the shock and terror had driven me out of my senses. I remember hearing a voice calling on God, but for a long time I did not know the voice was mine. It was only when the same young girl who had struck me lighted a splinter of yellow pine and thrust it through my arm that my senses returned. I opened my eyes as from a swoon, seeing clearly the faces around me, red under the torches. And foremost among those in front stood Tamarack in his scarlet robes, just as I had seen him at dawn through the smoke of the sacred fire. Now my voice came back, seeking my lips; my parched tongue moved, and I called on Tamarack to hear me, but he shook his head, though I adjured him by the belts I had borne and received, by the sanctuary of the council–fire whose smoke I had sweetened, and by the three tribes I had raised up.

"Lies," he said; "you come not from Johnstown! Your belts are lies; your words lie; your tongue is forked! You come from Cresap! Cresap shall see how you can die for him!"

"I speak the truth!" I cried out, in my agony. "I am a belt–bearer! I have laid the ghosts of your slain ones! Who dares send my spirit to teach your dead that you betray their ashes?"

There was a dead silence. Presently somebody in the throng said, distinctly: "If he speaks the truth, let him go. We honour our dead." And other voices repeated:

"We honour our dead."

"He lies," said Tamarack.

"I speak truth!" I groaned. "If you honour your dead, if you honour those whom I have raised up in their places, free me, brothers of the Cayugas!"

"Free him!" cried many.

For a space the throng was quiet, then a distant movement to my left made me turn hopefully. The throng wavered, parted, opened, and a white man came elbowing his way to the stake.

He whispered to Tamarack; the aged sachem stretched out his arm, making a mystic sign.

Eagerly the white man turned and looked at me, and I cried out with rage and horror, for I was face to face with Walter Butler.

He spoke, but I scarcely heard him urging my death.

Terror, which had gripped me, gave place to fury, and that in turn left me faint but calm.

I heard the merciless words in which he delivered me to the savages; I heard him denounce me as a spy of Cresap and an agent of rebels. Then I lost his voice.

I was very still for a while, trying to understand that I must die. The effort tired me; lassitude weighed on me like iron chains. To my stunned mind death was but a word, repeated vaguely in the dark chamber of life where my soul sat, listening. Thought was suspended; sight and hearing failed; there was a void about me, blank and formless as my mind.

"'THEY'VE HIT HIM,' SAID MOUNT, RELOADING HASTILY"

Presently I became conscious that things were changing around me. Lights moved, voices struggled into my ears; forms took shape, pressing closer to me. An undertone, which I had heard at moments through my stupor, grew, swelling into a steady whisper. It was the ceaseless rustle of the rain.

A torch blazed up crackling close in front. My eyes opened; a thrill of purest fear set every sense a–quiver. Amid the dull roar of voices, I heard women laughing and little children prattling. Faces became painfully distinct. I saw Sowanowane, the war–chief, thumb his hatchet; I saw Butler, beside him, catch an old woman by the arm. He told her to bring dry moss. It rained, rained, rained.

They were calling to me from the crowd now; everywhere voices were calling to me: "Show us how Cresap's men die!" Others repeated: "He is a woman; he will scream out! Logan's children died more bravely. Oonah! The children of Logan!"

Butler watched me coolly, leaning on his rifle.

"So this ends it," he said, with his deathly grimace. "Well, it was to be done in one way or another. I had meant to do it myself, but this will do."

I was too sick with fear, too close to death, to curse him. Pain often makes me weak; the fear of pain sickens me. It was that I dreaded, not death. Where my father had gone, I dared follow, but the flames—the thought of the fire—

I said, faintly, "Turn your back to me when I die; I have much pain to face, Mr. Butler; I may not bear it well."

"No, by God! I will not!" he burst out, ferociously. "I'm here to see you suffer, damn you!"

I turned my head from him, but he struck me in the face so that my mouth was bathed in blood; twice he struck me, crying: "Listen! Listen, I tell you!" And, planting himself before the stake, he cursed me, vowing that he could tear me with his bared teeth for hatred.

"Know this before they roast you," he snarled; "I shall possess your pretty baggage, Mistress Warren, spite of Sir William! I shall use her to my pleasure; I shall whip her to my feet. I may wed her, or I may choose to use her otherwise and leave her for Dunmore. Ah! Ah! Now you rage, eh?"

I had hurled my trussed body forward on the cords, struggling, convulsed with a fury so frantic that the blood sprayed me where the bonds cut.

Indians struck me and thrust me back with clubs, for the great post at my back had been partly dragged out of its socket by my frenzy, but I did not feel the blows; I fixed my maddened eyes on Butler and struggled.

But now the sachems were calling him sharply, and he backed away from me as the circle surged forward. Again the girl came out, bearing a flaming fagot. She looked up at me, laughed, and thrust the burning sticks into the moss and tinder which was stacked around me. A billow of black smoke rolled into my face, choking and blinding me, and the breath of the flames passed over me.

Twice the rain quenched the fire. They brought fresh heaps of moss, laughing and jeering. Through the smoke I saw the fort across the valley, its parapets crowded with people. Jets of flame and distant reports showed they were firing rifles, hoping perhaps to kill me ere the torture began. It was too far. The last glimpse of the fort faded through the downpour; a new pile of moss and birch–bark was heaped at my feet.

This time the girl was thrust aside and a young Indian advanced, waving a crackling branch of pitch–pine, roaring with flames. As he knelt to push it between my feet, a terrific shout burst from the throng—a yell of terror and amazement. Through the tumult I heard women screaming; in front of me the crowd shrank away, huddling in groups. Some backed into me, stumbling among the fagots; the young Indian let his blazing pine–branch fall hissing on the wet ground and stood trembling.

And now into the circle stalked a tall figure, coming straight towards me through the sheeted rain—a spectre so hideous that the cries of terror drowned his voice, for he was speaking as he came on, moving what had once been a mouth, this dreadful thing, all raw and festering to the bone.

Two blazing eyes met mine, then rolled around on the cringing throng; and a voice like the voice of the dead broke out: