The Star Woman/Book 3/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
SOME PROBLEMS ARE BEST LEFT UNSOLVED
A DREAM came to Crawford. It seemed that he lay beneath a huge pine, wind-twisted and curiously crooked, at the very brink of a dizzy cliff. Below and before him was outspread a magnificent panorama; a blue lake, blue as the sky, still and deep and very clear, and out beyond this mile after mile of green forest running up to the horizon, until green merged imperceptibly with blue.
As he lay here, it seemed that Phelim Burke came and stood before him. This was not the scarred and broken man he had last seen, but the laughing, gallant gentleman of earlier days, sword at side and joy of life sparkling in the gay eyes of him. Phelim stood there and smiled, took a pinch of snuff, chuckled at Crawford's astonished ejaculation.
"Faith, lad, did I not say I'd stay with ye? So here ye are, Hal, and here am I."
"Where?" asked Crawford in his dream.
"The end of our trail together, lad. Ye may deny the world, but escape it ye cannot. What's over the horizon for all men, Hal?"
"Death," said Crawford.
"Divil a bit of it," said Phelim cheerfully, and then walked away and was gone. So the dream passed, and though others followed it, Crawford remembered only this one.
Therefore, when he opened his eyes and found himself conscious, he lay for a long while in perturbed wonder. There above him was the same contorted, twisted pine tree with its wide boughs; there was that same blue outspread lake, far below; and he looked out afar upon that same green forest that climbed the distant leagues to the horizon. He was softly couched on furs and fragrant pine. As he turned his head, he saw Frontin sitting there, watching him.
"Ah!" Frontin started to him, caught his hand. "Awake, eh? She said you'd wake this morning."
"Where's Phelim Burke?" demanded Crawford. "I tell you, he was just here" and he swiftly related that dream of his. Frontin stared, then abruptly crossed himself.
"Dream? I'm not so sure. We're with the Star Woman. Here, you're to drain this cup, then I must tell her you're awake."
Crawford found a birch pannikin held to his lips, and drank. He lay back and fell asleep once more, but no further dreams came to him.
When he next wakened, it was in a glorious sunset that flooded the lake and outflung forest below with a mellow golden glow. Frontin was again with him, and gave him meat and corn, since his hunger was sharp and avid. Crawford sat up to eat; to his new astonishment he found himself, if not healed, at least able to move without pain. Frontin nodded curtly.
"Ay, you're well enough, cap'n. A week we've been here—carried you and the chief. She has tended you both with simples and herbs; a wise woman, and beautiful to boot. There below us is the lake of many stars. Here's tobacco and your pipe."
"Give me your hand," said Crawford.
Frontin lent him a pull, and he gained his feet. Except for some weakness, and the sore stiffness of his hurt body, he was well enough. Something struck his breast; and, feeling beneath the leathern shirt that clothed him, he felt the Star of Dreams. A smile touched his lips. He leaned back against the bole of the twisted pine tree, took pipe and tobacco.
"Good. Can we talk with her?"
"Easily. She speaks French as good as my own—though devil take me if I understand how she came by it! She is but a girl."
"Why hasn't she left here? Has Maclish been stopped? What has happened?"
Frontin shrugged. "My faith, she is past my comprehension! She refused to run, and Maclish is upon us. She is like all saints and holy folk—a trifle blind in the material eye, and inclined to place more emphasis on the heavenly host than the occasion warrants. If you could see over the trees here, toward the west, you'd see the smoke of Maclish's campfires. His whole force is drawing in. Well, I'd better let her know that you're awake. She thinks that Perrot will bring the Dacotah hosts and prevent a fight. See if you can put any reason into her head."
With an air of sardonic gloom, Frontin departed, and disappeared in a thick grove of trees. Crawford perceived that this cliff was a blunt point on the end of a long promontory jutting out above the lake. The little open space at the end, where he lay beneath the twisted pine, was solidly closed in by trees.
Crawford was staring out over the lake again when a quick, soft step made him turn, brought him to his feet. So he saw the Star Woman for the first time and stood astounded, silent; the sunset glow softened the sharp contour of his face, kindled a flame in his hair, quickened the deep blue of his eyes and the vibrant energy of him, so that she stared likewise as though beholding him for the first time.
To his absolute bewilderment, Crawford saw in her the actual person visioned by Moses Deakin, and the memory stabbed him. This was no ancient sorceress, no Indian hag nor even woman—but a slender girl, a creature all blue and gold, her skin white and golden, her eyes great pools of gold-flecked lapis, her hair brighter than the flame of sun, her fawnskin dress a rich unbeaded yellow. Between her breasts hung by its thong a huge star of hammered silver, all set with turquoise, stones of purest unflecked blue. Yet it was not the sheer beauty of her that held him awed, but the calm serenity that shone from her.
Suddenly her face changed, as though her astonishment was past. Crawford became sensible of the peculiarly piercing quality of her gaze, and he was disconcerted to find it not entirely friendly. When she addressed him in French, he could not mistake her attitude of quiet aloofness.
"I am glad you have recovered."
"You are—you are the Star Woman?" murmured Crawford. "Impossible! Perrot said"
"Perrot—Metaminens!" For an instant her face softened, became radiant and glorious; a sudden deep eagerness leaped in her eyes, an eagerness not untouched by pain. Then again she regarded him with that cool and aloof gaze. "How does he look? He is old?"
"Some men never grow old." Crawford was confused, staggered by all this. Surely this was not the woman Perrot had seen thirty years ago! He stood silent, wondering.
"What is your errand here?" she asked quietly. "I have talked with your friend Frontin, I know how you tricked Standing Bull into delivering my message to the wrong man, I know with what obstinate pertinacity you have fought across the wilderness to reach me—but why?"
"To see you," said Crawford, and under her steady gaze, words failed him for an instant. Then he rallied. "That is to say"
"You are a hard man," she said, ignoring his stammer. "I quite understand why you have fled into this land from your own people. I know what you seek—and you will not find it. There is no peace over the horizon. Listen!" She held up one hand. Crawford, listening, heard the sound of distant gun-shots, saw swift distress flit into her face. "They are killing my friends the animals," she said in a mournful tone. "This has been a sanctuary for man and beast alike, until now; those Stone Men are murdering my friends. And are you better than they? There is no love in your heart, for I can see into it—I have seen into it while you lay sick and muttering. You do not love your country, your fellow-men—anything! Have you ever loved, indeed? Have you any capacity for love? Or are you, too, one of the Stone Men?"
Crawford was taken terribly aback. Here, in the presence of this woman, he was suddenly speechless—he, who had dared call a king a poltroon to his very face!
He had never looked forward to his actual meeting with the Star Woman; he had left that to the future. Now he found himself indescribably impressed by the quiet poise, the splendid personality of this girl, who was hardly yet a woman. Her age, he guessed could not be much more than twenty—within a few years of it, at least.
He found himself strangely moved. It was as though she had some power which broke down all his hard shell of materialism, touching the very spirit within him. He suddenly understood why she was a person reverenced by all the red tribes. He felt that a touch of her hand would be a benison. Yet that final question of hers went straight down into the depths of his soul with its hurt, and the pipe fell unheeded from his hand. Once he had loved, indeed, and had seen his young wife stricken down by a bullet from Dutch William's troopers. And he had loved Phelim Burke
"I am what God and man have made me," he said, but the proud words faltered. Upon that, as he met her intent gaze, his face changed; the harshly masterful lines of it softened, and a swift glitter of tears stood in his blue eyes. And she, seeing these things, was startled. "You," he went on softly, "you who ask—what then do you know of love?"
She put a hand to her breast, and Crawford was dimly aware that he had given blow for blow. Somehow, this question had hurt her. A heartache sprang into her eyes.
"Ah! I think that there are two different men in you," she said quietly, and Crawford was astonished that she spoke of him, not of herself. "I have been angry because, had it not been for you, Maclish and those Stone Men might have stayed away. But I have been wrong, very wrong. You are not what I thought—you see, I have not looked into your eyes before this! After all, I think that you are an agent of destiny, which we cannot escape"
Crawford started. "Perrot said that! And now you!"
"Perrot said that? Metaminens? All my life I have hungered to see Metaminens." Her voice lingered on the name with swift tenderness. Then she put out her hand and took that of Crawford, and a smile touched her lips gloriously. "And now he is coming, and it is you who bring him to me! Ah, I was wrong to be angry against you."
Crawford was astonished and bewildered. Perrot had seen this woman thirty years ago, and again ten years afterward—yet the thing was impossible, rankly impossible! She herself implied that she had never seen Perrot! Looking into her eyes, he could think only of Perrot's words: "I think she is a saint!" Upon him rushed the feeling that he was in touch with some deeply poignant mystery, that he was treading holy ground, that from enmity he had somehow won her to friendliness and confidence; and he was awed before her clear eyes.
"I do not wonder," he said slowly, "that men look up to you as a being apart!"
She smiled slightly and loosened her grip of his hand.
"And I do not wonder that men follow you gladly," she returned. "But no, no! I am only a woman, and to protect myself I manage to rule the tribes as I have been taught. I love them, I help them, I bring common-sense and what I have learned of healing and spiritual aid to their help—that is all. Because they believe in me, they find the help they seek."
"But who, then, taught you?" Crawford could not check his words. "Who showed you this trail? Where did you come from, you who are no Indian but a white woman?"
Her eyes widened a little. He saw that same hurt look come into them, that look of heartache and pain.
"Ah, I do not know!" she said softly. "I do not know, my friend. There is only one who could tell me; and some day my mother said he would come to tell me—Metaminens! There, look on the other side of this crooked tree, this sacred tree which the tribes worship as holy—you will see who taught me."
Crawford obeyed her gesture, and rounded the bole of that great tree. There, carved in the bark, he saw a cross, and below this a little mound of grassy earth.
His eyes were opened suddenly; a rush of emotion seized upon him, as he comprehended all that this girl did not comprehend. He understood that it was not she whom Sieur Nicholas Perrot had seen in past years, but another; now he remembered that veil which had dropped over Perrot's words, that swift checking of too impulsive speech; and he knew that he had been given to understand something which must not pass his lips. He silently took the girl's hand again and bowed over it, and as he touched his lips to her fingers, they tightened on his. It was between them a tacit exchange of sympathy, of friendliness
A burst of shots sounded, and the Star Woman twisted about.
"Oh! Come quickly."
The magic spell was broken; the shots of the Stone Men were drums of materialism, grimly recalling Crawford to the present. He drew a deep breath and turned to accompany her toward the thick trees that fringed in the little point of rock. He brought himself to face what he knew well must be a desperate situation.
"How many men have you here?" he demanded, his thinly chiseled features tensed and alert once more. The Star Woman gave him a curious look, sensing the change.
"Standing Bull has fifteen of his young men here; Old Bear brought five warriors from the Teton clan, to the west. With you, Frontin, and the Mohegan, that makes twenty-five."
"Have you healed Le Talon, then, as you have me?"
A sad smile touched her lips. "I cannot do more than is humanly possible. The chief's leg will always be crippled, for flesh and muscles are shrunken."
Now, in among the thick trees, the Star Woman pointed out her own lodge, a bark structure dimly visible to the left; Crawford gathered that this was some sort of a sacred grove, where she lived inviolate. Presently the trees thinned and they came to a clearing; here were the bark lodges of the Issanti Dacotah, and two hide tepees of the Teton clan.
Now Crawford understood the lay of the land, and for a little there glowed within him a sudden flash of hope. All this abode of the Star Woman lay upon the apex of a rude triangle of rock—the lofty brow of a cliff that jutted out into the lake like a ship's prow, shielded on either con- verging side by precipitous descents to the land and water below. Across the base of this triangle the higher ground ran down steeply to the forest beyond; yet here there was a natural defence formed by a deep ravine which ran in from either side, leaving at the centre an open space of barely twenty yards in width. Crawford eyed all this with immense satisfaction, then saw Frontin approaching and turned.
At the edge of the grove, flooded with golden glory in the sunset light, were gathered some of the Star Woman's defenders—a number of Standing Bull's warriors, fitting thin iron heads to shafts for the bows; Old Bear and his handful of Tetons, wild and fierce men who carried round shields of hide; and seated against a tree was Le Talon, dressing his scalplock with grease and looking over his paint-pouch. Frontin came up, bowed with a certain air of deference to the Star Woman, and spoke to Crawford.
"How like you the situation, cap'n? Standing Bull and some of his warriors are scouting the enemy. We'll hear from them before dark."
"Things might be worse," and Crawford pointed to the narrow space between the ravines ahead. "There's the point to defend, with the ground falling away in front. Excellent! Who is in charge?"
"Ask madame," said Frontin, and Crawford turned to the Star Woman. To his surprise, she hesitated, anxiety in her face.
"I should like you to be in charge," she said. "And yet—there must be no fighting if it can be avoided! Blood must not be shed in this place. It is sacred to me, and to the red men"
As though to resolve her doubts, a thin, high yell arose from the forest below, where the green trees ran into hilly country. At sound of this yell, a delighted grunt went up from the Dacotah. One of them spoke out.
"That is the scalp-yell of Standing Bull; he has counted coup. Was-te! Good!"
"I leave everything in your hands," said the girl hastily, an expression of despair flitting across her face. She turned to the warriors, ordered them to obey Crawford, and then walked in among the trees and vanished in the direction of her own abode. Frontin glanced after her with his darkly sardonic gaze, and shrugged.
"The olden fanes fall crumbling, the chatter of priests and the mystery of woman alike are withered and desolate in the breath of ambition," he murmured. "That crooked pine-tree under which you lay, my cap'n, was a sacred tree among these people; blood must not touch this ground. Well, all that is ended! The white man has come into the land, and oddly enough he reveres the same symbol—a crooked Tree. The difference is, that his is stained with blood"
Frontin broke off abruptly, as though fearing to trace his thought farther.
"Forget your moralizing and get to work," said Crawford curtly. He walked over to Old Bear, and the Teton chief grinned at him in recognition. "Old Bear, put your warriors to work! A barricade must be laid across this narrow ground to-night. Frontin, have we any guns?"
"Half a dozen," said Frontin. "Standing Bull and his scouts are using them. Will you have the barricade laid with bastions and chevaux-de-frise in approved fashion"
"Any way at all, so it be laid," said Crawford. "What water and food have we?"
"A spring, and a fair stock of meat and corn."
The warriors fell to work, with Old Bear and Frontin ordering them. Crawford walked across to the Mohegan, who met his eyes and chuckled.
"My brother is well again; that is good! His medicine is strong. To-morrow he shall see how a chief of the Loup nation dies, that he may tell Metaminens the story."
"We'll not die to-morrow," said Crawford. "No word has come from Perrot or from the Dacotah to the south?"
"None. The place here is surrounded and cut off. Ah! Here is Standing Bull!"
Across the neck of ground appeared the old Dacotah chief, a number of warriors following with shrill yelps. He came to where Crawford stood, and a flash of exultation was in his eyes, as he touched the red object at his belt.
"We have taught the Stone Men a lesson," he said. "My brother is well? Good. Did I not say that his medicine would bring him here?"
Crawford laughed. "You old rascal! I half believe you were right about it. You have left scouts to watch the enemy?"
"Yes. The Stone Men are making camp and cooking meat. Red Bull is with them."
Crawford nodded. He knew that nothing short of death itself would stop Maclish.