Part 13 (2/2)

”What do I care!” burst out Butler, his dark eyes a golden blaze. ”Am I not an Ormond-Butler? Why should a Clinton affront an Ormond-Butler? By Heaven! I must swallow his airs and his stares and his shrugs because he is my superior; but I may one day rise in military rank as high as he--and I shall do so, mark me well, Mr. Renault!--and when I am near enough in the tinseled hierarchy to reach him at thirty paces I shall use the privilege, by G.o.d!”

”There are,” said I blandly, ”many subalterns on his staff who might serve your present purpose, Captain Butler.”

”No, no,” he said impatiently, his dark eyes wandering about the chamber, ”I have too much at stake to call out fledglings for a sop to injured pride. No, Mr. Renault, I shall first take vengeance for a deeper wrong--and the north lies like an unreaped harvest for the sickle that Death and I shall set a-swinging there.”

I bent my head, meditating; then looking up:

”You say I know where this Thendara lies?”

”Yes,” he answered sullenly. ”You know as well as I do _what is written_ in the Book of Rites.”

At first his words rang meaningless, then far in my memory a voice called faintly, and a pale ray of light grew through the darkened chambers of my brain. And now I knew, now I remembered, now I understood where that lost town must lie--the town of Thendara, lost ever and forever, only to be forever found again as long as the dark Confederacy should endure.

Awed, I sat in silence; and he turned his gloomy eyes now on me, now on the darkened window, gnawing his lip in savage retrospection.

Instantly I was aware that he doubted me, and why. I looked up at him, astounded; he lifted his brooding head and I made a rapid sign, saying in the Mohawk tongue: ”Karon-ta-Ke?--at the Tree?”

”Karon-ta-Kowa-Kon--at the great tree. Sat-Kah-tos--thou seest. There lies the lost town of Thendara. And, save for the council, where you and I have a Wolf's clan-right, no living soul could know what that word Thendara means. G.o.d help the Oneida who betrays!”

”Since when and by what nation have _you_ been raised up to sit in the council of condolence?” I asked haughtily; for, strange as it may appear to those who know not what it means to wear the Oneida clan-mark of n.o.bility, I, clean-blooded and white-skinned, was as fiercely proud of this Iroquois honor as any peer of England newly invested with the garter. And it was strange, too, for I was but a lad when chosen for the mystic rite; but never except once--the day before I left the north to serve his Excellency's purpose in New York--had I been present when that most solemn rite was held, and the long roll of dead heroes called in honor of the Great League's founder, Hiawatha.

And so, though I am pure white in blood and bone and every instinct, and having nigh forgotten that I wore the Wolf--and, too, the Long House being divided and I siding with the Oneidas, and so at civil war with the shattered league that served King George--yet I turned on Walter Butler as a Mohawk might turn upon a Delaware, scornfully questioning his credentials, demanding his right to speak as one who had heard the roll-call of those Immortals who founded the ”Great Peace” three hundred years ago.

”The Delawares named me, and the council took me,” he said with perfect calmness. ”The Delaware nation mourned their dead; and now I sit for the Wolf Clan--my elder brother, Renault.”

”A Delaware clan is not named in the Rite,” I said coldly--”nor is there kins.h.i.+p between us because you are adopted by the Delawares. I am aware that clans.h.i.+p knows no nations; and I, an Oneida Wolf, am brother to a Cayuga Wolf; but I am not brother to you.”

”And why not to the twin clan of my adopted nation?” he asked angrily.

”Yours is a cleft ensign and a double clan,” I sneered; ”which are you, Gray Wolf or Yellow Wolf?”

”Yellow,” he said, struggling to keep his temper; ”and if we Delawares of the Wolf-Clan are not named in the Book of Rites, nevertheless we sit as ensigns among the n.o.ble, and on the same side of the council-lodge as your proud Oneidas. We have three in the council as well as you, Mr. Renault. If you were a Mohawk I should hold my peace, but a Delaware may answer an Oneida. And so I answer you, sir.”

How strange it seems now--we two white men, gentlemen of quality, completely oblivious to blood, birth, tradition, breeding--our primal allegiance, our very individualities sunk in the mystical freemasonry of a savage tie which bound us to the two nations we a.s.sumed to speak for, Oneida and Delaware--two nations of the great Confederacy of the Iroquois that had adopted us, investing us with that clan n.o.bility of which we bore the ensign.

And we were in deadly earnest, too, standing proudly, fiercely, for our prerogatives; he already doubly suspicious of me because the Oneida nation which had adopted me stood for the rebel cause, yet, in his mealy-mouthed way, a.s.suming that by virtue of Wolf clans.h.i.+p, as well as by that sentiment he supposed was loyalty to the King, I would do nothing to disrupt the council which I now knew must decide upon the annihilation of the Oneida nation, as well as upon the raid he contemplated.

”Do you imagine that I shall sit with head averted while four nations and your Delawares combine to plan the murder of my Oneidas?” I demanded pa.s.sionately. ”When the council sits at Thendara I shall send a belt to every clan in the Oneida nation, and I care not who knows it!”

He rose, pale and menacing. ”Mr. Renault,” he said, ”do you understand that a word from you would be a treason to the King? You can be a clansman of the Wolf and at the same time be loyal to the King and to the Iroquois Confederacy; but you can not send a single string of wampum to the Oneidas and be either loyal to the Six Nations or to your King. The Oneidas are marked for punishment; the frontier is doomed--doomed, even though this frittering commander in New York will neither aid me nor his King. A word of warning to the Oneidas is a warning to the rebels. And that, sir, I can not contemplate, and you must shrink from.”

”Do you deceive yourself that I shall stand silent and see the Oneida nation ruined?” I asked between my teeth.

”Are you Oneida, or are you a British subject of King George? Are you an Iroquois renegade of the renegade Oneida nation, or are you first of all an Iroquois of the Wolf-Clan? As a white man, you are the King's subject; as an Iroquois, you are still his subject. As an Oneida only, you must be as black a rebel as George Was.h.i.+ngton himself. That is the limpid logic of the matter, Mr. Renault. A belt to the Oneidas, and you become traitor to the Confederacy and a traitor to your King. And that, I say, you can not contemplate!”

I fairly ground my teeth, subduing the rage and contempt that shook me.

”Since when, Captain Butler,” I sneered, ”have the Oneidas learned to swallow Delaware threats? By G.o.d, sir, the oldest man among the council can not remember when a Delaware dared speak without permission of an Iroquois! As an Iroquois and an Oneida, I bid the Delawares to speak only when addressed. But as a white man, I answer you that I require no instruction concerning my conduct, and shall merely thank you for your good intentions and your kind advice, which is the more generous because unsolicited and wholly undesired!”

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