University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

From an uneasy slumber, into which, notwithstanding
his sufferings of mind and body, he had
at last fallen, Roland was roused at the break of
day by a horrible clamour, that suddenly arose in
the village. A shrill scream, that seemed to come
from a female voice, was first heard; then a wild
yell from the lungs of a warrior, which was caught
up and repeated by other voices; and, in a few
moments, the whole town resounded with shrieks,
dismal and thrilling, and expressing astonishment
mingled with fear and horror.

The prisoner, incapable of comprehending the
cause of such a commotion, looked to his guards,
who had started up at the first cry, grasped their
arms, and stood gazing upon one another with
perturbed looks of inquiry. The shriek was repeated,
by one,—twenty,—an hundred throats; and
the two warriors, with hurried exclamations of
alarm, rushed from the wigwam, leaving the prisoner
to solve the riddle as he might. But he
tasked his faculties in vain. His first idea—and it
sent the blood leaping to his heart—that the village
was suddenly attacked by an army of white-men,
—perhaps by the gallant Bruce, the commander
of the Station where his misfortunes had begun,—
was but momentary; no lusty hurrahs were heard
mingling with the shrieks of the savages, and no
explosions of fire-arms denoted the existence of
conflict. And yet he perceived that the cries were

not all of surprise and dismay. Some voices were
uplifted in rage, which was evidently spreading
among the agitated barbarians, and displacing the
other passions in their minds.

In the midst of the tumult, and while he was yet
lost in wonder and speculation, the renegade Doe
suddenly rushed into the wigwam, pale with affright
and agitation.

“They 'll murder you, captain!” he cried,
“there's no time for holding back now—Take the
gal, and I'll save you. The village is up,—they'll
have your blood,—they're crying for it already,—
squaws, warriors and all,—ay, d—n'em, there's
no stopping 'em now!”

“What in Heaven's name is the matter?” demanded
the soldier.

“All etarnity's the matter!” replied Doe, with
vehement utterance: “the Jibbenainosay has been
in the village, and killed the chief,—ay, d—n him,
—struck him in his own house, marked him at his
own fire! he lies, dead and scalped,—ay, and
crossed too,—on the floor of his own wigwam;—
the conjurer gone, snapped up by his devil, and
Wenonga stiff and gory!—Don't you hear 'em
yelling? The Jibbenainosay, I tell you—he has
killed the chief;—we found him dead in his cabin;
and the Injuns are bawling for revenge—they are,
d—n'em, and they'll murder you;—burn you,—
tear you to pieces;—they will, there's no two ways
about it: they're singing out to murder the white-men,
and they'll be on you in no time!”

“And there is no escape!” cried Roland, whose
blood curdled, as he listened to the thrilling yells
that were increased in number and loudness, as if
the enraged barbarians, rushing madly through
the village, were gathering arms to destory the
prisoners,—“there is no escape?”

“Take the gal! jist say the word, and I'll save
you, or die with you, I will, d—n me!” exclaimed
Doe, with fierce energy. “There's hosses grazing
in the pastures; there's halters swinging above
us: I'll mount you, and save you. Say the word,
captain, and I'll cut you loose, and save you—say
it, and be quick; your life depends on it—Hark!
the dogs is coming! Hold out your arms, till I
cut the tug.—”

“Any thing for my life!” cried the Virginian;
“but if it can be only bought at the price of marrying
the girl, it is lost.”

And the soldier would have resisted the effort
Doe was making for his deliverance.

“You'll be murdered, I tell you!” re-echoed
Doe, with increased vehemence, holding the knife
ready in his hand: “they're coming on us;—I
don't want to see you butchered like an ox. One
word, captain!—I'll take your word: you're an
honest feller, and I'll believe in you: jist one word,
captain:—I'll help you; I'll fight the dogs for you;
I'll give you weapons. The gal, captain! life and
the fortun', captain!—the gal! the gal!”

“Never, I tell you, never!” cried Roland, who,
faithful to the honour and integrity of spirit which
conducted the men of that day, the mighty fathers
of the republic, through the vicissitudes of revolution
to the rewards of liberty, would not stoop to
the meanness of falsehood and deception, even in
that moment of peril and fear;—“any thing but
that,—but that never!”

But, whilst he spoke, Doe, urged on by his own
impetuous feelings, had cut the thong from his
wrists, and was even proceeding to divide those
that bound his ancles, disregarding all his protestations
and averments, or perhaps drowning them
in his own eager exclamations of, “The gal, captain,—the

word, jist one word!” when a dozen or
more savages burst into the hut, and sprang upon
the Virginian, yelling, cursing, and flourishing
their knives and hatchets, as if they would have
torn him to pieces on the spot. And such undoubtedly
was the aim of some of the younger
men, who struck at him several furious blows, that
were only averted by the older warriors at the
expense of some of their own blood shed in the
struggle, which was, for a moment, as fiercely
waged over the prisoner, as the conflict of enraged
hounds over the body of a disabled panther, that
all are emulous to worry and tear. One instant
of dreadful confusion, of shrieks, blows, and maledictions,
and the Virginian was snatched up in the
arms of two or three of the strongest men, and
dragged from the hut; but only to find himself surrounded
by a herd of villagers, men, women, and
children, who fell upon him with as much fury as
the young warriors had done, beating him with
bludgeons, wounding him with their knives, so that
it seemed impossible the older braves could protect
him much longer. But others ran to their assistance;
and forming a circle around him, so as
to exclude the mob, he was borne onwards, in
temporary security, but destined to a fate to which
murder on the spot would have been gentleness
and mercy.

The tumult had roused Edith also from her
painful slumbers; and the more necessarily, since,
although removed from the tent in which she was
first imprisoned, she was still confined in Wenonga's
wigwam. It was the scream of the hag, the
chieftain's wife, who had discovered his body,
that first gave the alarm; and the villagers all
rushing to the cabin, and yelling their astonishment
and terror, there arose an uproar, almost in

her ears, that was better fitted to fright her to
death, than to lull her to repose. She started from
her couch, and, with a woman's weakness, cowered
away in the furthest corner of the lodge,
to escape the pitiless foes, whom her fears represented
as already seeking her life. Nor was
this chimera banished from her mind, when a
man, rushing in, snatched her from her ineffectual
concealment, and hurried her towards the
door. But her terrors ran in another channel,
when the ravisher, conquering the feeble resistance
she attempted, replied to her wild entreaties
`not to kill her,' in the well-remembered voice
of Braxley:

“Kill you indeed!” he muttered, but with agitated
tones;—“I come to save you; even you
are in danger from the maddened villains: they
are murdering all! We must fly,—ay, and fast.
My horse is saddled,—the woods are open—I
will yet save you.”

“Spare me!—for my uncle's sake, who was
your benefactor, spare me!” cried Edith, struggling
to free herself from his grasp. But she
struggled in vain. “I struggle to save you,”
cried Braxley; and without uttering another word,
bore her from the hut; and, still grasping her
with an arm of iron, sprang upon a saddled
horse,—the identical animal that had once sustained
the weight of the unfortunate Pardon
Dodge,—which stood under the elm-tree, trembling
with fright at the scene of horror then represented
on the square.

Upon this vacant space was now assembled the
whole population of the village, old and young,
the strong and the feeble, all agitated alike by
those passions, which, when let loose in a mob,
whether civilized or savage, almost enforce the

conviction that there is something essentially demoniac
in the human character and composition;
as if, indeed, the earth of which man is framed,
had been gathered only after it had been trodden
by the foot of the Prince of Darkness.

Even Edith forgot for a moment her fears of
Braxley,—nay, she clung to him for protection,—
when her eye fell upon the savage herd, of whom
the chief number were crowded together in the
centre of the square, surrounding some object
rendered invisible by their bodies, while others
were rushing tumultuously hither and thither, driven
by causes she could not divine, brandishing
weapons, and uttering howls without number.
One large party was passing from the wigwam
itself, their cries not less loud or ferocious than
the others, but changing occasionally into piteous
lamentations. They bore in their arms the body
of the murdered chief,—an object of such horror,
that when Edith's eyes had once fallen upon it, it
seemed as if her enthralled spirit would never
have recovered strength to remove them.

But there was a more fearful spectacle yet to
be seen. The wife of Wenonga suddenly rushed
from the lodge, bearing a fire-brand in her hand.
She ran to the body of the chief, eyed it for a
moment, with such a look as a tigress might cast
upon her slaughtered cub; and then, uttering a
scream that was heard over the whole square, and
whirling the brand round her head, until it was
in a flame, fled with frantic speed towards the
centre of the area, the mob parting before her,
and replying to her shrieks, which were uttered
at every step, with outcries scarce less wild and
thrilling. As they parted thus, opening a vista to
the heart of the square, the object which seemed
the centre of attraction to all, was fully revealed

to the maiden's eyes. Chained to two strong posts
near the Council-house, their arms drawn high
above their heads, a circle of brush-wood, prairie-grass,
and other combustibles heaped around
them, were two wretched captives,—white-men,
from whose persons a dozen savage hands were
tearing their garments, while as many more were
employed heaping additional fuel on the pile. One
of these men, as Edith could see full well, for the
spectacle was scarce an hundred paces removed,
was Roaring Ralph, the captain of horse-thieves.
The other—and that was a sight to rend her eyeballs
from their sockets,—was her unfortunate
kinsman,—the playmate of her childhood, the
friend and lover of maturer years,—her cousin,
—brother,—her all,—Roland Forrester. It was
no error of sight, no delusion of mind; the spectacle
was too palpable to be doubted: it was Roland
Forrester whom she saw, chained to the
stake, surrounded by yelling and pitiless barbarians,
impatient for the commencement of their
infernal pastime, while the wife of the chief, kneeling
at the pile, was already endeavouring with
her brand, to kindle it into flame.

The shriek of the wretched maiden, as she beheld
the deplorable, the maddening sight, might
have melted hearts of stone, had there been even
such among the Indians. But Indians, engaged in
the delights of torturing a prisoner, are, as the
dead chief had boasted himself, without heart.
Pity, which the Indian can feel at another moment,
as deeply, perhaps, and benignly as a white-man,
seems then, and is, entirely unknown, as
much so, indeed, as if it had never entered into
his nature. His mind is then voluntarily given up
to the drunkenness of passion; and cruelty, in its
most atrocious and fiendish character, reigns predominant.

The familiar of a Spanish Inquisition
has sometimes moistened the lips of a heretic
stretched upon the rack,—the Buccaneer of the
tropics has relented over the contumacious prisoner
gasping to death under his lashes and heated
pincers; but we know of no instance where an Indian,
torturing a prisoner at the stake, the torture
once begun, has ever been moved to compassionate,
to regard with any feelings but those of exultation
and joy, the agonies of the thrice-wretched
victim.

The shriek of the maiden was unheard, or unregarded;
and Braxley,—himself so horrified by
the spectacle, that, while pausing to give it a
glance, he forgot the delay was also disclosing it
to Edith,—grasping her tighter in his arms, from
which she had half leaped in her phrensy, turned
his horse's head to fly, without seeming to be regarded
or observed by the savages, which was
perhaps in part owing to his having resumed his
Indian attire. But, as he turned, he could not resist
the impulse to snatch one more look at his
doomed rival. A universal yell of triumph sounded
over the square; the flames were already
bursting from the pile, and the torture was begun.

The torture was begun,—but it was not destined
long to endure. The yell of triumph was yet resounding
over the square and awaking responsive
echoes among the surrounding hills, when the explosion
of at least fifty rifles, sharp, rattling, and
deadly, like the war-note of the rattle-snake, followed
by a mighty hurrah of Christian voices,
and the galloping of horse into the village from
above, converted the whole scene into one of
amazement and terror. The volley was repeated,
and by as many more guns; and in an instant
there was seen rushing into the square a body of

at least an hundred mounted white-men, their
horses covered with foam and staggering with
exhaustion, yet spurred on by their riders with
furious ardour; while twice as many footmen
were beheld rushing after, in mad rivalry, cheering
and shouting, in reply to their leader, whose
voice was heard in front of the horsemen, thundering
out,—“Small change for the Blue Licks!
Charge 'em, the brutes! give it to 'em handsome!”

The yells of dismay of the savages, taken thus
by surprise, and, as it seemed, by a greatly superior
force, whose approach, rapid and tumultuous
as it must have been, their universal devotion
to the Saturnalia of blood had rendered them
incapable of perceiving; the shouts of the mounted
assailants, as they dashed into the square and
among the mob, shooting as they came, or handling
their rifles like maces and battle-axes; the
trampling and neighing of the horses; and the
thundering hurrahs of the footmen charging into
the town with almost the speed of the horse;
made a din too horrible for description. The
shock of the assault was not resisted by the Indians
even for a moment. Some rushed to the
neighbouring wigwams for their guns; but the
majority, like the women and children, fled to seek
refuge among the rocks and bushes of the overhanging
hill; from which, however, as they approached
it, a deadly volley was shot upon them
by foemen who already occupied its tangled sides.
Others again fled towards the meadows and cornfields,
where, in like manner, they were intercepted
by bands of mounted Long-knives, who seemed
pouring into the valley from every hill. In
short, it was soon made apparent that the village
of the Black-Vulture was assailed from all sides,

and by such an army of avenging white-men as
had never before penetrated into the Indian territory.

All the savages,—all, at least, who were not
shot or struck down in the square,—fled from the
village; and among the foremost of them was
Braxley, who, as much astounded as his Indian
confederates, but better prepared for flight, struck
the spurs into his horse, and still retaining his
helpless prize, dashed across the river, to escape
as he might.

In the meanwhile, the victims at the stake,
though roused to hope and life by the sudden appearance
of their countrymen, were neither released
from bonds nor perils. Though the savages
fled, as described, from the charge of the
white-men, there were some who remembered the
prisoners, and were resolved that they should
never taste the sweets of liberty. The beldam,
who was still busy kindling the pile, roused from
her toil by the shouts of the enemy and the shrieks
of her flying people, looked up a moment; and
then snatching at a knife dropped by some fugitive,
rushed upon Stackpole, who was nearest her,
with a wild scream of revenge. The horse-thief,
avoiding the blow as well as he could, saluted the
hag with a furious kick, his feet being entirely at
liberty; and such was its violence that the woman
was tossed into the air, as if from the horns of a
bull, and then fell, stunned and apparently lifeless,
to perish in the flames she had kindled with her
own breath.

A tall warrior, hatchet in hand, with a dozen
more at his back, rushed upon the Virginian. But
before he could strike, there came leaping with
astonishing bounds over the bodies of the wounded
and dying, and into the circle of fire, a

figure that might have filled a better and braver
warrior with dread. It was the medicine-man,
and former captive, the Indian habiliments and
paint still on his body and visage, though both
were flecked and begrimed with blood. In his
left hand was a bundle of scalps, the same he had
taken from the tent of Wenonga; the grizzled
scalp-lock of the chief, known by the vulture feathers,
beak, and talons, still attached to it, was
hanging to his girdle; while the steel battle-axe
so often wielded by Wenonga, was gleaming aloft
in his right hand.

The savage recoiled, and with loud yells of
“The Jibbenainosay! the Jibbenainosay!” turned
to fly, while even those behind him staggered back
at the apparition of the destroyer, thus tangibly
presented to their eyes;—nor was their awe lessened,
when the supposed fiend, taking one step after
the retreating leader of the gang, drove the fatal
hatchet into his brain, with as lusty a whoop of
victory as ever came from the lungs of a warrior.
At the same moment, he was hidden from their
eyes by a dozen horsemen that came rushing up,
with tremendous huzzas, some darting against
the band, while others sprung from their horses
to liberate the prisoners. But this duty had been
already rendered, at least in the case of Captain
Forrester. The axe of Wenonga, dripping with
blood to the hilt, divided the rope at a single blow;
and then Roland's fingers were crushed in the
grasp of his preserver, as the latter exclaimed,
with a strange, half-frantic chuckle of triumph
and delight,—

“Thee sees, friend! Thee thought I had deserted
thee? Truly, truly, thee was mistaken!”

“Hurrah for old Bloody Nathan! I'll never say
Q to a quaker agin, as long as I live!” exclaimed

another voice, broken, feeble, and vainly aiming
to raise a huzza; and the speaker, seizing Nathan
with one hand, while the other grasped tremulously
at Captain Forrester's, displayed to the latter's
eyes the visage of Tom Bruce the younger,
pale, sickly, emaciated, his once gigantic proportions
wasted away, and his whole appearance indicating
any thing but fitness for a field of battle.

“Strannger!” cried the youth, pressing the soldier's
hand with what strength he could, and
laughing faintly, “we 've done the handsome
thing by you, me and dad, thar's no denying! But
we went your security agin all sorts of danngers,
in our beat; and thar's just the occasion. But
h'yar's dad to speak for himself: as for me I rather
think breath's too short for wasting.”

“Hurrah for Kentucky!” roared the Colonel of
the Station, as he sprang from his horse, and seized
the hand his son had released, wringing and
twisting it with a fury of friendship and gratulation,
which, at another moment, would have caused
the soldier to grin with pain. “H'yar we are,
captain!” he cried; “picked you out of the yambers!—Swore
to foller you and young madam to
the end of creation,—beat up for recruits, sung
out `Blue Lick' to the people, roused the General
from the Falls,—whole army, a thousand men:—
double quick-step;—found Bloody Nathan in the
woods—whar's the creatur'? told of your fixin';
beat to arms, flew ahead, licked the enemy,—and
ha'n't we exterminated 'em?”

With these hurried, half incoherent expressions,
the gallant Kentuckian explained, or endeavoured
to explain, the mystery of his timely and most
happy appearance; an explanation, however, of
which the soldier, bewildered by the whirl of
events, the tumult of his own feelings, and not

less by the uproareous congratulations of his
friends, of whom the captain of horse-thieves, released
from his post of danger, was not the least
noisy or affectionate, heard, or understood, not a
word. To these causes of confusion were to be
added the din and tumult of conflict, the screams
of the flying Indians and the shouts of pursuing
and opposing white-men, rising from every point
of the compass; for from every point they seemed
rushing in upon the foe, whom they appeared to
have completely environed. Was there no other
cause for the distraction of mind which left the
young soldier, while thus beset by friendly hands
and voices, incapable of giving them his whole
attention? His thoughts were upon his kinswoman,
of whose fate he was still in ignorance.
But before he could ask the question prompted by
his anxieties, it was answered by a cheery hurrah
from Bruce's youngest son, Richard, who
came galloping into the square and up to the place
of torture, whirling his cap into the air, in a phrensy
of boyish triumph and rapture. At his heels, and
mounted upon the steed so lately bestridden by
Braxley, the very animal, which, notwithstanding
its uncommon swimming virtues, had left its master,
Pardon Dodge at the bottom of Salt River,
was—could Roland believe his eyes?—the identical
Pardon Dodge himself, looking a hero, he was
so begrimed with blood and gunpowder, and
whooping and hurrahing, as he came, with as much
spirit as if he had been born on the border, and
accustomed all his life to fighting Indians. But
Roland did not admire long at the unlooked-for
resurrection of his old ally of the ruin. In his
arms, sustained with an air of infinite pride and
exultation, was an apparition that blinded the Virginian's
eyes to every other object;—it was
Edith Forrester; who, extending her own arms,
as the soldier sprang to meet her, leaped to his
embrace with such wild cries of delight, such
abandonment of spirit to love and happiness, as
stirred up many a womanish emotion in the breast
of the surrounding Kentuckians.

“There!” cried Dodge, “there, capting! Seed
the everlasting Injun feller carrying her off on the
hoss; knowed the crittur at first sight; took atter,
and brought the feller to: seed it was the young
lady, and was jist as glad to find her as to find my
hoss,—if I wa' n't, it a'n't no matter.”

“Thar, dad!” cried Tom Bruce, grasping his
father's arm, and pointing, but with unsteady
finger, and glistening eye, at the two cousins,—
“that, that's a sight worth dying for!” with which
words, he fell suddenly to the earth.

“Dying, you brute!” cried the father, in surprise
and concern: “you ar'n't had a hit, Tom?”

“Not an iota,” replied the youth, faintly, “except
them etarnal slugs I fetched from old Salt; but, I
reckon, they've done for me: I felt 'em a dropping,
a dropping inside, all night. And so, father, if
you'll jist say I've done as much as my duty, I'll
not make no fuss about going.”

“Going, you brute!” iterated the father, clasping
the hand of his son, while the others, startled by
the young man's sudden fall, gathered around, to
offer help, or to gaze with alarm on his fast
changing countenance; “why, Tom, my boy, you
don't mean to make a die of it?”

“If—if you think I've done my duty to the strannger
and the young lady,” said the young man; and
added, feebly pressing the father's hand,—“and to
you, dad,—to you and mother, and the rest of
'em.”

“You have, Tom,” said the colonel, with somewhat

a husky voice,—“to the travelling strannger,
to mother, father, and all—.”

“And to Kentucky?” murmured the dying
youth.

“To Kentucky,” replied the father.

“Well, then, it's no great matter—You'll jist
put Dick in my place: he's the true grit; thar'll be
no mistake in Dick, for all he's only a young blubbering
boy; and then it'll be jist all right, as before.
And it's my notion, father—”

“Well, Tom, what is it?” demanded Bruce, as
the young man paused, as if from mingled exhaustion
and hesitation.

“I don't mean no offence, father,” said he,—
“but it's my notion, if you'll never let a poor
traveller go into the woods without some dependable
body to take care of him—”

“You're right, Tom; and I an't mad at you for
saying so; and I won't.”

“And don't let the boys abuse Bloody Nathan,
—for, I reckon, he'll fight, if you let him take it in
his own way.—And,—and, father, don't mind captain
Ralph's stealing a hoss or two out of our
pound!”

“He may steal the lot of 'em, the villian!” said
Bruce, shaking his head to dislodge the tears that
were starting in his eyes; “and he shall be none
the wuss of it.”

“Well, father,--” the young man spoke with
greater animation, and with apparently reviving
strength,—“and you think we have pretty considerably
licked the Injuns h'yar, jist now?”

“We have, Tom,—thar's no doubting it. And
we'll lick'em over and over again, till they've had
enough of it.”

“Hurrah for Kentucky!” cried the young man,
exerting his remaining strength to give energy to

the cry, so often uplifted, in succeeding years,
among the wild woodlands around. It was the
last effort of his sinking powers. He fell back,
pressed his father's and his brother's hands, and
almost immediately expired,—a victim not so much
of his wounds, which were not in themselves necessarily
fatal, nor perhaps even dangerous, had
they been attended to, as of the heroic efforts, so
overpowering and destructive in his disabled condition,
which he had made to repair his father's
fault; for such he evidently esteemed the dismissing
the travellers from the Station, without sufficient
guides and protection.