*CHAPTER XXX*
*THE BACKWARD TRACK*
Landless turned to the pathway by which they had come, but the Indianshook his head, and pointing to the stream which, making a sudden turn,brawled along at their very feet, stepped noiselessly down into thewater, first, however, possessing himself of Luiz Sebastian's gun, whichlay upon the ground beside the hut. Landless, following him in silence,would have turned his face towards the river, but again theSusquehannock shook his head and began to make his way slowly and warilyup stream.
The other knew how to obey. Holding with one arm the unconscious formof the woman he had come so many leagues to seek, and with the othersteadying himself by boulder and projecting cliff, he followed hiscompanion past the sleeping Ricahecrians, out of the shadow of the greatarch, into the splendor of the moonlight beyond. It was not until theyhad gone a long distance, past vast, scarred cliffs, through close,dark, scented tunnels formed by the overarching boughs of greatarbor-vitaes, up smooth slides where the water came down upon them inlong, unbroken, glassy green slopes, that Landless said, in a low voice:"Why do we go up this stream instead of back to the river? It is theirroad we are traveling."
The faint, reluctant smile of the Indian crossed the Susquehannock'sface. "The white man is very wise except when he is in the woods. Thenhe is as if every brook ran fire-water and he had drunk of them all. Apappoose could trick him. When these Algonquin dogs wake and find thefawn fled and the yellow slave killed, they will cast about for ourtrail, and they will find that we came up from the river. Then, whenthey find no backward track, but only that we entered the water there,before the maiden's hut, they will think that we have gone down thestream, back to the river. They will go down to the river themselves,but when they have reached it they will not know what to do. They willthink, 'They who come after the Ricahecrians into the Blue Mountainsmust be many, with great hearts and with guns.' They will think, 'Theycame in boats, and one of their braves and one Iroquois, stealing upthis stream, came upon the Ricahecrians when Kiwassa had closed theireyes and their ears, and stole away the fawn that the Ricahecrians hadtaken, and killed the man who fled with them from the palefaces.' Andit will take a long time for them to find that there were no boats andthat but two real men have followed them into the Blue Mountains, for Icovered our trail where this stream runs into the river very carefully.After a while they will find it, and after another while they will findthat the chief of the Conestogas and his white brother and the maidenhave gone up the stream, and they will come after us. But that will notbe until after the full sun power, and by then we must be far fromhere."
"It is good," said Landless briefly. "Monakatocka has the wisdom of thewoods."
"Monakatocka is a great chief," was the sententious reply.
"Do you think they will follow us when they find how greatly we have thestart of them?"
"They will be upon our track, sun after sun, keen-eyed as the hawk,tireless as the wild horses, hungry as the wolf, until we reach thetribes that are friendly to the palefaces. And that will be many sunsfrom now. I told my brother that we followed Death into the BlueMountains. Now Death is upon our trail."
They came to a rivulet that emptied itself into the larger stream, andthe Susquehannock led the way up its bed. Presently they reached agently sloping mass of bare stone, a low hill running some distance backfrom the margin of the stream.
"Good," grunted the Susquehannock. "The moccasin will make no mark herethat the sun will not wipe out."
They clambered out upon the rock and stood looking down the ravinethrough which they had come. "My brother is tired," said the Indian."Monakatocka will carry the maiden."
"I am not tired," Landless answered.
The Indian looked at the face, thrown back upon the other's shoulder."She is fair, and whiter than the flowers the maidens pluck from thebosom of the pleasant river."
"She is coming to herself," said Landless, and laid her gently down uponthe rock.
Presently she opened her eyes quietly upon him as he knelt beside her."You came," she said dreamily. "I dreamt that you would. Where are myfather and my cousin?"
"Seeking you still, madam, I doubt not, though I have not seen themsince the day after you were taken. They went up the Pamunkey and somissed you. Thanks to this Susquehannock, I am more fortunate."
She lay and looked at him calmly, no surprise, but only a great peace inher face. "The mulatto," she said, "I feared him more than all therest. When I saw him enter the hut I prayed for death. Did you killhim?"
"I trust so," said Landless, "but I am not certain, I was in too greathaste to make sure."
"I do not care," she said. "You will not let him hurt me--if helives--nor let the Indians take me again?"
"No, madam," Landless said.
She smiled like a child and closed her eyes. In the moonlight whichblanched her streaming robe and her loosened hair that, falling to herknees, wrapped her in a mantle of spun gold, she looked a wraith, acreature woven of the mist of the stream below, a Lorelei sleeping uponher rock. Landless, still upon his knee beside her, watched her with abeating heart, while the Susquehannock, leaning upon his gun, bent hisdarkly impassive looks upon them both. At length the latter said, "Wemust be far from here before the dogs behind us awake, and the Gold Haircannot travel swiftly. Let us be going."
"Madam," said Landless.
She opened her eyes and he helped her to her feet. "We must hasten on,"he said gently. "They will follow us and we must put as many leagues aspossible between us before they find our trail."
"I did not think of that!" she said, with dilating eyes. "I thought itwas all past--the terror--the horror! Let us go, let us hasten! I amquite strong; I have learned how to walk through the woods. Come!"
The Indian glided before them and led the way over the friendly rocks.They left them and found themselves upon a carpet of pine needles, andthen in a dell where the fern grew rankly and the rich black earth gavelike a sponge beneath their feet. Here the Indian made Landless carryPatricia, and himself came last, walking backwards in the footprints ofthe other, and pausing after each step to do all that Indian cunningcould suggest to cover their trail. They came to more rocky ledges andwalked along them for a long distance, then found and went up a wide andshallow stream. Slowly the pale light of dawn diffused itself throughthe forest. In the branches overhead myriads of birds began to flutterand chirp, the squirrels commenced their ceaseless chattering, andthrough the white mist, at bends of the stream, they saw deer comingfrom the fern of the forest to drink. A great hill rose before them,bare of trees, covered only with a coarse growth of grass and short bluethistles in which already buzzed a world of bees; they climbed it andfrom the summit watched a ball of fire rise into the cloudless blue. Themorning wind, blowing over that illimitable forest, fanned their brows,and a tide of woodland sound and incense swept up to them from the worldbelow. Around them were the Blue Mountains--gigantic masses, cloudypeaks, vast ramparts rising from a sea of mist--mysterious fastnesses,scarcely believed in and never seen by the settlers of the level land--amagic country in which they placed much gold and the wandering colonistsof Roanoke, the South Sea, and long-gowned Eastern peoples.
"Oh, the mountains!" said Patricia. "The dreadful, frowning mountains!When will we be quit of them? When, will we reach the level land andthe blue water?"
"Before many days, I trust," said Landless. "See, our faces are set tothe east---towards home."
She stood in silence for a moment, her face lifted, the color slowlycoming back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, then saidsuddenly:--
"Did my father send you after me?"
"No, madam."
"Then how are you here?"
He looked at her with a smile. "I broke gaol--and came."
A shadow crossed her face, but it was gone in a moment. "I am verygrateful," she said. "You have saved me from worse than death."
; "It is I that am thankful," he answered.
They descended the hill in silence and found the Susquehannock, who hadpreceded them, squatted before a fire which he had kindled upon a flatrock beside one of the innumerable streamlets that wound here and thereover the land.
"The dogs yonder will need Iroquois eyes to spy out this trail," he saidwith grim satisfaction, as they came up to him. "Let my brother and theGold Hair rest by the fire, and Monakatocka will go into the forest andget them something to eat."
He was gone, his gigantic figure looking larger than life as he movedthrough the mist which still filled the hollow between the hills, andLandless and Patricia sat themselves down beside the fire. Landlesspiled upon it the dead wood with which the ground was strewn, and theflames leaped and crackled, sending up thin blue smoke against thehillside and reddening the bosom of the placid stream. When he hadfinished his task and taken his seat, there fell a silence andconstraint upon the man and woman, brought through so many strange andwayward paths, through lives so widely differing, to this companionshipin the heart of a waste and savage world. They sat opposite each otherin the ruddy light of the fire, and each, looking into the dark orglowing hollows, saw there the same thing--the tobacco house and whathad there passed.
"I wish to believe in you," said Patricia at last, lifting appealingeyes to the opposite face. "But how can I? You lied to me!"
Landless raised his head proudly. "Madam, will you listen to me--to mydefense if you will? You are a Royalist: I am a Commonwealth man. Canyou not see, that as ten years ago, in the estimation of you and yours,it was all that was just and heroic for a Cavalier to plot the downfallof the Government which then was, both here and at home, so they of theCommonwealth saw no disgrace in laboring for their cause, a cause asreal and as high and as holy to them, madam, as was that of the Stuartand the Church to the Cavalier.... And will not the slave fight for hisliberty? Is it of choice, do you think, that men lie rotting in prison,in the noisome holds of ships, are bought and sold like oxen, arechained to the oar, to the tobacco field, are herded with the refuse ofthe earth, are obedient to the finger, to the whip? We--they who areknown as Oliverians, and they who are felons, and I who am, if youchoose, of both parties, were haled here with ropes. What allegiancedid we owe to them who had cast us out, or to them who bought us as theybuy dumb beasts? As God lives, none! We were no longer regarded asmen, we were chattels, animals, slaves, caged, and chained. And as thecaged beast will break his bars if he can, so we strove to break ours.You have been a captive, madam. Is not freedom sweet to you? We alsolonged for it. We staked our lives upon the throw--and lost. Thatdream is over,--let it go! ... There is honor among rebels, madam, asamong thieves. That morning after the storm, I had the choice of lyingto you or of becoming a traitor indeed.... But as to what I had beforeasked you to believe, that was the truth, is the truth. I know that inyour eyes I am still the rebel to the King, well deserving the doomwhich awaits me, but if, after what I say to you, by the faith of agentleman, before the God who is above the stillness of these hills, youstill believe me criminal in aught else, you wrong me much, you wrongyourself!"
He ceased abruptly, and rising, began to heap more wood upon the fire.The figure of the Indian, with something dark upon its shoulder, emergedfrom the spectral forest, and came towards them through the mist.
"Monakatocka has found our breakfast," said Landless, forcing himself tospeak with indifference, and without looking at his companion. "I amglad of it, for you must be faint from hunger."
"I am very thirsty," she said in a low voice.
"If you will come to the water's edge, that at least can be quicklyremedied."
She rose from the rock upon which she had been seated and followed himdown to the brink of the little stream. "I would I had a cup of gold,"he said, "and here is not even a great leaf. Will you drink from myhands, madam?"
"Yes," she said; then deliberately, after a pause, "for I well believethem to be clean hands."
Her own hand touched his as she spoke, and he put it to his lips insilence. Kneeling upon the turf by the stream, he raised the water inhis hands and she stooped and drank from them, and then they went backto the fire and sat beside it without speaking until the arrival ofMonakatocka, laden with a wild turkey. An hour later the Susquehannockcarefully extinguished the fire, raked all the embers and ashes into thestream, hid beneath great rocks the debris of their morning meal,obliterated all moccasin prints, and having made the little hollowbetween the hills to all appearance precisely as it was a few hoursbefore, when the foot of man had probably never entered it, stepped intothe stream and announced that they were ready to pursue their journey.Before midday, the stream winding to the south, they left it, andplunging into the dark heart of the forest pushed rapidly on with theirfaces to the east.