Part 13 (1/2)
”Well, let's see your accommodation,” and the old fellow hopped to his feet, and was out of doors before I could get the lantern.
Mercer on a matter of this sort was a different being from the decayed landlord of the water-side tavern. His spectacled eyes peered everywhere, and his shrewd sense judged instantly of a thing's value.
He approved of the tobacco-shed as a store for arms, for he could reach it from the river by a little-used road through the woods. It was easy so to arrange, the contents that a pa.s.sing visitor could guess nothing, and no one ever penetrated to its recesses but Faulkner and myself. I summoned Faulkner to the conference, and told him his duties, which, he undertook with sober interest. He was a dry stick from Fife, who spoke seldom and wrought mightily.
Faulkner attended to Mercer's consignments, and I took once more to the road. I had to arrange that arms from the coast or the river-sides could be sent inland, and for this purpose I had a regiment of pack horses that delivered my own stores as well. I had to visit all the men on the list whom I did not know, and a weary job it was. I repeated again my toil of the first year, and in the hot Virginian summer rode the length and breadth of the land. My own business prospered hugely, and I bought on credit such a stock of tobacco as made me write my uncle for a fourth s.h.i.+p at the harvest sailing. It seemed a strange thing, I remember, to be bargaining for stuff which might never be delivered, for by the autumn the dominion might be at death grips.
In those weeks I discovered what kind of force Lawrence leaned on. He who only knew James Town and the rich planters knew little of the true Virginia. There were old men who had long memories of Indian fights, and men in their prime who had risen with Bacon, and young men who had their eyes turned to the unknown West. There were new-comers from Scotland and North Ireland, and a stout band of French Protestants, most of them gently born, who had sought freedom for their faith beyond the sway of King Louis. You cannot picture a hardier or more spirited race than the fellows I thus recruited. The forest settler who swung an axe all day for his livelihood could have felled the ordinary fine gentleman with one blow of his fist. And they could shoot too, with their rusty matchlocks or clumsy snaphances. In some few the motive was fear, for they had seen or heard of the tender mercies of the savages.
But in most, I think, it was a love of bold adventure, and especially the craving to push the white man's province beyond the narrow borders of the Tidewater. If you say that this was something more than defence, I claim that the only way to protect a country is to make sure of its environs. What hope is there of peace if your frontier is the rim of an unknown forest?
My hardest task was to establish some method of sending news to the outland dwellers. For this purpose I had to consort with queer folk.
Shalah, who had become my second shadow, found here and there little Indian camps, from which he chose young men as messengers. In one place I would get a settler with a canoe, in another a woodman with a fast horse; and in a third some lad who prided himself on his legs. The rare country taverns were a help, for most of their owners were in the secret. The Tidewater is a flat forest region, so we could not light beacons as in a hilly land. But by the aid of Shalah's woodcraft I concocted a set of marks on trees and dwellings which would speak a language to any initiate traveller. The Indians, too, had their own silent tongue, by which they could send messages over many leagues in a short s.p.a.ce. I never learned the trick of it, though I tried hard with Shalah as interpreter; for that you must have been suckled in a wigwam.
When I got back to James Town, Faulkner would report on his visitors, and he seems to have had many. Rough fellows would ride up at the darkening, bringing a line from Mercer, or more often an agreed pa.s.sword, and he had to satisfy their wants and remember their news. So far I had had no word from Lawrence, though Mercer reported that Ringan was still sending arms. That tobacco-shed of mine would have made a brave explosion if some one had kindled it, and, indeed, the thing more than once was near happening through a negro's foolishness. I spent all my evenings, when at home, in making a map of the country. I had got a rough chart from the Surveyor-General, and filled up such parts as I knew, and over all I spread a network of lines which meant my ways of sending news. For instance, to get to a man in Ess.e.x county, the word would be pa.s.sed by Middle Plantation to York Ferry. Thence in an Indian's canoe it would be carried to Aird's store on the Mattaponey, from which a woodman would take it across the swamps to a clump of hemlocks. There he would make certain marks, and a long-legged lad from the Rappahannock, riding by daily to school, would carry the tidings to the man I wanted. And so forth over the habitable dominion. I calculated that there were not more than a dozen of Lawrence's men who within three days could not get the summons and within five be at the proper rendezvous.
One evening I was surprised by a visit from Colonel Beverley. He came openly on a fine bay horse with two mounted negroes as attendants. I had parted from him dryly, and had been surprised to find that he was one of us; but when I had talked with him a little, it appeared that he had had a big share in planning the whole business. We mentioned no names, but I gathered that he knew Lawrence, and was at least aware of Ringan. He warned me, I remember, to be on my guard against some of the young bloods, who might visit me to make mischief. ”It's not that they know anything of our affairs,” he said, ”but that they have got a prejudice against yourself, Mr. Garvald. They are foolish, hot-headed lads, very puffed up by their pride of gentrice, and I do not like the notion of their playing pranks in that tobacco-shed.”
I asked him a question which had long puzzled me, why the natural defence of a country should be kept so secret. ”The Governor, at any rate,” I said, ”would approve, and we are not asking the burgesses for a single guinea.”
”Yes, but the Governor would play a wild hand,” was the answer. ”He would never permit the thing to go on quietly, but would want to ride at the head of the men, and the whole fat would be in the fire. You must know. Mr. Garvald, that politics run high in our Virginia. There are scores of men who would see in our enterprise a second attempt like Bacon's, and, though they might approve of our aims, would never hear of one of Bacon's folk serving with us. I was never a Bacon's man, for I was with Berkeley in Accomac and at the taking of James Town, but I know the quality of the rough fellows that Bacon led, and I want them all for this adventure. Besides, who can deny that there is more in our plans than a defence against Indians? There are many who feel with me that Virginia can never grow to the fullness of a nation so long as she is cooped up in the Tidewater. New-comers arrive by every s.h.i.+p from England, and press on into the wilderness. But there can be no conquest of the wilderness till we have broken the Indian menace, and pushed our frontier up to the hills--ay, and beyond them. But tell that to the ordinary planter, and he will a.s.sign you to the devil. He fears these new-comers, who are simple fellows that do not respect his grandeur. He fears that some day they may control the a.s.sembly by their votes. He wants the Tidewater to be his castle, with porters and guards to hound away strangers. Man alive, if you had tried to put reason into some of their heads, you would despair of human nature. Let them get a hint of our preparations, and there will be pet.i.tions to Council and a howling about treason, and in a week you will be in gaol, Mr. Garvald. So we must move cannily, as you Scots say.”
That conversation made me wary, and I got Faulkner to keep a special guard on the place when I was absent. At the worst, he could summon Mercer, who would bring a rough crew from the water-side to his aid.
Then once more I disappeared into the woods.
In these days a new Shalah revealed himself. I think he had been watching me closely for the past months, and slowly I had won his approval. He showed it by beginning to talk as he loped by my side in our forest wanderings. The man was like no Indian I have ever seen. He was a Senecan, and so should have been on the side of the Long House; but it was plain that he was an outcast from his tribe, and, indeed, from the whole Indian brotherhood. I could not fathom him, for he seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was, the ally of the white man against his race. His lean, supple figure, his pa.s.sionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular n.o.bility in them. To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a knowledge of things hid from human ken. In woodcraft he was a master beyond all thought of rivalry. Often, when time did not press, he would lead me, clumsy as I was, so that I could almost touch the muzzle of a crouching deer, or lay a hand on a yellow panther, before it slipped like a live streak of light into the gloom. He was an eery fellow, too.
Once I found him on a high river bank at sunset watching the red glow behind the blue shadowy forest.
”There is blood in the West,” he said, pointing like a prophet with his long arm, ”There is blood in the hills which is flowing to the waters.
At the Moon of Stags it will flow, and by the Moon of Wildfowl it will have stained the sea.”
He had always the hills at the back of his head. Once, when we caught a glimpse of them from a place far up the James River, he stood like a statue gazing at the thin line which hung like a cloud in the west. I am upland bred, and to me, too, the sight was a comfort as I stood beside him.
”The _Manitou_ in the hills is calling,” he said abruptly. ”I wait a little, but not long. You too will follow, brother, to where the hawks wheel and the streams fall in vapour. There we shall find death or love, I know not which, but it will be a great finding. The G.o.ds have written it on my heart.”
Then he turned and strode away, and I did not dare to question him.
There was that about him which stirred my prosaic soul into a wild poetry, till for the moment I saw with his eyes, and heard strange voices in the trees.
Apart from these uncanny moods he was the most faithful helper in my task. Without him I must have been a mere child. I could not read the lore of the forest; I could not have found my way as he found it through pathless places. From him, too, I learned that we were not to make our preparations unwatched.
Once, as we were coming from the Rappahannock to the York, he darted suddenly into the undergrowth below the chestnuts. My eye could see no clue on the path, and, suspecting nothing, I waited on him to return.
Presently he came, and beckoned me to follow. Thirty yards into the coppice we found a man lying dead, with a sharp stake holding him to the ground, and a raw, red ma.s.s where had been once his head.
”That was your messenger, brother,” he whispered, ”the one who was to carry word from the Mattaponey to the north. See, he has been dead for two suns.”
He was one of the tame Algonquins who dwelt by Aird's store.
”Who did it?” I asked, with a very sick stomach.