War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 26
FROM the forest of oak where they had found the tracks of the war party, the land sloped gradually until the oaks thinned and Jolie saw in front of her a solid rampart of tall, dense canes. That rampart seemed impenetrable. So closely set were the straight, smooth stems that no creature larger than a fox could have made its way through them. But Almayne turned to the right, and, before they had ridden fifty yards along the edge of the brake, a path opened before them leading straight into the canes.
Into this narrow opening the hunter led the way. Soon Jolie discovered that the whole canebrake was a labyrinth of winding game-trails, so narrow that there was barely room for a horseman to ride. Underfoot the damp black soil was carpeted with fallen cane leaves; on either side the slender green cane stems walled them in. The sun was still high when they entered the brake, yet here it was already dusk; for the foliage of the canes, meeting over their heads, made a roof many feet thick through which only an occasional shaft of light could penetrate.
The air was still and very hot. The cane leaves above her were motionless, yet on all sides she heard mysterious rustlings, heard or seemed to hear mysterious, furtive footfalls. For a time she saw no creature of any kind, but somehow she knew that all around her was life. Suddenly, to the right and seemingly near at hand, sounded a loud snort, deep-throated, raucous, menacing. Startled, she turned to Lachlan, riding just behind her.
"Buffalo," he whispered. "There are some in these brakes, though the big herds are farther inland."
He listened a moment, his black eyes sparkling. The snorting became a mighty bellow, and Jolie heard hoof-beats and the noise of a heavy body galloping over dead cane leaves.
Lachlan smiled. "There must be another path in there," he said, "running close to this one. A buffalo bull met something in the path—a bear, perhaps, or a wolf—and ordered it out of his way."
The dimness, those eerie rustlings of unseen feet, worked on Jolie's nerves. She had not ridden fifty yards when a piercing scream, again on her right and close at hand, drove the blood from her cheeks. This time it was Almayne who enlightened her. Turning in his saddle, he smiled at her.
"Don't be frightened, Mistress," he said in a low voice, "though I don't wonder if you are. A fox can yell worse than a panther. I think something caught that fellow."
As they advanced, the canes grew larger. They were as tall as small trees now, Jolie thought, although she could not see their tops. At frequent intervals the path that they were following was crossed by other paths or gave off branches to right or left. Before the light grew too dim to see, she had abundant evidence of the cause of those mysterious rustlings. Glancing down the side paths that they crossed, she caught many glimpses of the wild things that walked the shadowy tunnels of the canebrake. Once it was a troop of deer in a path opening to her right; once it was a wild black cow; twice she saw foxes; and once Almayne himself uttered a low exclamation of surprise as Nunda the Moon-Face stopped suddenly with a snort, and a huge dim shape reared itself suddenly upward in the trail ahead.
"Zooks, what a bear!" Almayne muttered, and held his rifle on the beast while Nunda capered under him.
For a moment Jolie was sick with fear. Reared on its hind legs, looming doubly gigantic in the dusk, the creature seemed to fill the opening ahead of them. For perhaps a quarter of a minute it stood thus, and Lachlan, urging his horse forward, crowded past Jolie, his rifle ready. Then the bear dropped on all fours, turned deliberately and ambled off, disappearing at once around a bend of the winding path.
Almayne laughed quietly. "By my soul," he said to Lachlan, "that one was as big as any I ever saw in the Blue Mountains."
As suddenly as they had entered it they emerged from the labyrinth of the canes. Above them now towered a mixed growth of cypress, pine, and gum, gigantic trees, bearded and bannered with Spanish moss. Where the cypress and the gums grew the ground was wet or under water, and here and there they came upon small ponds or lagoons, sometimes open, sometimes densely grown up with trees.
It was late afternoon now, and the light was dimming, though brighter than in the canes. In the still water of the lagoons Jolie saw the huge shapeless heads of alligators, while on the banks and on fallen logs sprawled many saurians, some of them twelve or fifteen feet in length. There were snakes, too, some mottled brown, some coppery red, and terrapins innumerable, and large, wide-winged, ghostly birds that flew without a sound. If that flower-strewn sun-lit forest through which they had ridden for so many miles had seemed to Jolie the Garden of God, this spectral, reptile-haunted swamp was the borderland of Hell.
Later, when they had made camp on a dry grassy knoll in the heart of this fastness, and the night had shut down, the place seemed more than ever the abode of fiends and of lost souls. Lachlan had told her of the wild music of the beasts in the great low-country swamps, but she had not imagined so fearful a chorus of howls and screams. Almayne and Lachlan made a lean-to of bark and pine boughs for her, and, being very tired, she lay down at once, while the men roasted venison over a small fire; and afterward, with Lachlan standing the first watch, she tried in vain to sleep.
She remembered now what Lachlan had told her: that this wilderness which she had found so beautiful had claws and fangs and worse things than these. She thought of Meg Pearson and Jock, and of Mr. O'Sullivan, and of the others with the pack train, unconscious of danger, unaware that suddenly the peaceful woods had swarmed with painted savage foes. She thought of the dangers through which she and her companions must pass before she could reach the place where Gilbert Barradell was held captive. Yes, it was a mad quest; yet even now she was not wholly sorry that she had come because in Charles Town her father awaited her, and the man Falcon, whom she dreaded as she had never dreaded any other man.
Outside near the fire she could see Lachlan sitting motionless, his rifle close beside him, his face lit by the flames. It was a handsome face, she reflected, in spite of its thinness—very handsome, very keen, very strong; but there was something in it of which she was vaguely afraid.
With the voices of the wilderness in her ears and the image of Lachlan's face in her mind, she fell asleep at last.
Jolie awoke to a different world. Already the sun was high above the tree-tops. Instead of the fierce voices of the hunting beasts, the songs of innumerable birds filled the air. In front of her little lean-to the grassy ground sloped gently to the edge of a small lagoon ringed round on both sides and at the back by young cypresses, bright green with the fresh foliage of spring. The placid waters were of a most vivid and beautiful blue; and presently down to the young cypresses bordering them floated a host of milk-white birds, slender, plumed, and graceful. By scores and hundreds they came eddying down from the higher air, crowding the cypresses at the water's edge, covering them so densely that in places they seemed to be mantled with snow.
She lay motionless, listening to the music of the singing birds, watching the scene before her.
Still the wide-winged, immaculate egrets floated down, like giant snowflakes almost as light as air, until all the cypresses were white with them and hundreds stood in the shallow waters around the margins of the blue lagoon. Twice, as she watched, flocks of wild turkeys flew out of the woods on one side of the lagoon into the woods on the other side; and once she heard the shrill screeching of parrakeets and saw a regiment of brilliant green and yellow forms shoot at incredible speed across the open space before her. Above the water a company of fork-tailed kites, as swift and buoyant as swallows, swooped and swerved with marvellous grace in an intricate aerial maze; while along a grassy tongue of land thrusting out from the farther shore a troop of five deer walked slowly down to the water's edge and for some minutes stood there drinking, lifting their heads now and then to gaze curiously across the lagoon at the little lean-to of boughs and bark where Jolie lay watching them.
She had no sense of fear now. The weariness and weakness of the night before had gone. Her long sleep had renewed her strength. That terror of the wilderness which had come upon her had vanished.
She rose presently and emerged from the lean-to. The three horses grazed near by, but of Lachlan and Almayne she saw nothing. She went and talked to the horses.
"Selu," she said, patting the claybank's forehead. "Good boy, Selu! We taught Almayne something yesterday." From him she passed to Nunda, the moon-faced piebald. "You're a good boy, too, old Nunda," she told him, "but you're getting on in years and I'm glad we outran you yesterday because it taught Almayne not to despise me for being a woman."
Tuti the Snowbird, jealous of her attentions, thrust a chestnut nose over the girl's shoulder, and she smiled.
"Poor little Tuti," she whispered, stroking the mare's neck, "you're a pretty lass, but nobody ever notices you because your master is so handsome."
Struck by a sudden thought, she walked down to the water's edge, startling the white birds in clouds. In a battered mirror of Meg Pearson's she had viewed herself in her buckskin costume and had found the image not unsatisfactory. Now she wished to see herself again as Lachlan McDonald saw her, and for some minutes she studied her reflection in the water, finding it, however, but an indifferent looking-glass. She turned away with a smile at her foolish whim, and saw Lachlan and Almayne walking towards her from the woods beyond the lean-to.
She went to meet them. Almayne carried a wild turkey dangling from his left hand, and she noticed with surprise that Lachlan carried not only his rifle but a bow also. She clapped her hands over the gobbler, though declaring it a shame to kill so handsome a bird, and appropriated one of its long tail feathers for her hat; then she exclaimed over Lachlan's bow—a rude weapon made out of a hickory sapling, with a length of thin buckskin as a string.
The swamp turkeys were so tame, Lachlan told her, that it was easy to approach them. Almayne and he had made this bow, with sharpened canes for arrows, because even here in the heart of the swamp the sound of a rifle might betray them to some enemy.
They breakfasted on cold venison, on certain roots which Almayne had prepared in the Indian fashion, and on corn-cakes made from meal, of which both Lachlan and Almayne carried a supply. In high spirits she pronounced it as good a breakfast as any she had ever had in London, and Almayne, obviously pleased, promised her a greater variety when dinner was served. He was telling her of the wild vegetables of the woods and of the fine bass that they could kill in the lagoon with Lachlan's cane arrows when suddenly, in the midst of a sentence, he stopped.
He was listening, she knew. She saw the sudden light in his eyes, caught his quick glance at Lachlan, who also was listening, his black eyes bright, his thin lips compressed. She waited, tense, expectant; and in a moment she saw Lachlan nod, and saw Almayne answer with a nod. Lachlan turned towards her.
"That was a logcock calling yonder," he said with a smile, "a logcock that was not really a logcock. It was Little Mink's signal. He is coming."
He made no move, and Almayne, too, sat quiet, munching a corn-cake. They were very sure of this signal, thought Jolie, perhaps too sure. What if they were mistaken? What if some enemy were using Little Mink's call to deceive them?
She saw an Indian emerge from the woods. At that distance she could not be sure of his identity. Close behind him appeared a horseman, and a half-smothered cry burst from her. The man on horseback was Lance Falcon.
Lachlan and Almayne were on their feet. She heard the hunter's oath of amazement, saw Lachlan leap for his rifle and halt midway. The Indian walking in front of Falcon had raised his hand above his head, palm outward. She saw now that the Indian was Little Mink; and now behind Falcon she saw another horseman whose great shock of white hair told her at once that he was Mr. O'Sullivan. Behind O'Sullivan walked the other Muskogee, Striking Hawk.
They came on slowly. Almayne's face was still blank with amazement; Lachlan was frowning. Jolie stepped swiftly to his side.
"Mr. McDonald," she said quickly, "there is one thing that I wish you to remember. I fear Captain Falcon even more than I loathe him and I loathe him as I have never loathed any living man."
She was standing beside Lachlan when the four who had come out of the forest halted in front of them. It was O'Sullivan who spoke the first word.
"Thank God, you are safe," he said soberly. "They attacked the pack train. Meg and Jock and four more are dead; the others are fled towards Charles Town."
He paused and glanced at Falcon, sitting erect and self-contained on his big roan, his brown head bare, his white shirt open at the throat, his bold eyes fixed on Jolie Stanwicke's face.
Mr. O'Sullivan frowned.
"I owe my life to this man," he said shortly, nodding towards Falcon. "I ask you all to bear that fact in mind."