Part 11 (1/2)
”Monkey-face is a poor Indian; his brothers have rejected him on account of his friends.h.i.+p with the Palefaces. He hoped to find among the Long-knives of the west, in the absence of friends.h.i.+p, grat.i.tude for service rendered. He is mistaken.”
”That is not the question,” the Captain continued impatiently; ”will you answer Yes or No?”
The Indian drew himself in, and walked up to the speaker close enough to touch him.
”And if I refuse?” he said, as he gave him a glance of defiance and fury.
”If you refuse, scoundrel! I forbid you ever appearing again before me; and if you disobey me, I will chastise you with my dog-whip!”
The Captain had hardly uttered these insulting words ere he repented of them. He was alone, and unarmed, with a man whom he had mortally insulted; hence he tried to arrange matters.
”But Monkey-face,” he went on, ”is a chief; he is wise; he will answer me--for he knows that I love him.”
”You lie, dog of the Palefaces!” the Indian yelled, as he ground his teeth in fury; ”you hate me almost as much as I hate you!”
The Captain, in his exasperation, raised the switch he carried in his hand; but, at the same moment, the Indian, with a panther-leap, bounded on to his horse's croup, dragged the Captain out of his stirrups, and rudely hurled him to the ground.
”The Palefaces are cowardly old women,” he said; ”the p.a.w.nee warriors despise them, and will send them petticoats.”
After uttering these words with a sarcastic accent impossible to describe, the Indian bent over the horse's neck, let loose the rein, uttered a fierce yell, and started at full speed, not troubling himself further about the Captain, whom he left severely bruised by his fall.
James Watt was not the man to endure such treatment without trying to revenge himself; he got up as quickly as he could, and shouted, in order to get together the hunters and wood-cutters scattered over the plain.
Some of them had seen what had happened, and started at full speed to help their Captain; but before they reached him, and he could give them his orders to pursue the fugitive, the latter had disappeared in the heart of the forest, toward which he had directed his rapid course.
The hunters, however, at the head of them being Sergeant Bothrel, rushed in pursuit of the Indian, swearing they would bring him in either dead or alive.
The Captain looked after them till he saw them disappear one after the other in the forest, and then returned slowly to the colony, reflecting on what had taken place between himself and the Redskin, and his heart contracted by a gloomy presentiment.
Something whispered to him that, for Monkey-face, generally so prudent and circ.u.mspect, to have acted as he had done, he must have fancied himself very strong, and quite certain of impunity.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE DECLARATION OF WAR.
There is an incomprehensible fact, which we were many times in a position to appreciate, during the adventurous course of our lengthened wanderings in America--that a man will at times feel the approach of a misfortune, though unable to account for the feeling he suffers from; he knows that he is menaced, though unable to tell when the peril will come, or in what way it will arrive; the day seems to grow more gloomy, the sunbeams lose their brilliancy, external objects a.s.sume a mournful appearance; there are strange murmurs in the air; all, in a word, seems to feel the impression of a vague and undefined restlessness.
Though nothing occurred to justify the Captain's fears after his altercation with the p.a.w.nee, not only he, but the whole population of the colony felt under the weight of dull terror on the evening of this day.
At six o'clock, as usual, the bell was rung to recall the wood-cutters and herds; all had returned, the beasts were shut up in their respective stalls, and, apparently, at any rate nothing out of the common troubled the calm existence of the colonists.
Sergeant Bothrel and his comrades, who had pursued Monkey-face for several hours, had only found the horse the Indian so audaciously carried off, and which he probably abandoned, in order to hide his trail more effectually.
Although no Indian sign was visible in the vicinity of the colony, the Captain, more anxious than he wished to appear, had doubled the sentries intended to watch over the common safety, and ordered the Sergeant to patrol round the entrenchments every two hours.
When all these precautions had been taken, the family and servants a.s.sembled on the ground floor of the tower to spend the evening, as had been their wont ever since the beginning of the settlement.
The Captain, sitting in an easy chair by the fire, for the nights were beginning to become fresh, was reading an old work on Military Tactics, while Mrs. Watt, with the servants, was engaged in mending the household linen.