Part 30 (1/2)

”The maiden is safe, brother. There will be no more fighting at the stockade. Those who a.s.saulted us were of my own tribe, and yesterday I reasoned with them.”

Then he spoke to the chief, and translated for me.

”He says that you have endured the ordeal of the stake, and have slain your enemy in fight, and that now you will go before the great Sachem for his judgment. That is the custom of our people.”

He turned to Onotawah again, and his tone was high and scornful. He spoke as if he were the chief and the other were the minion, and, what was strangest of all, Onotawah replied meekly. Shalah rose to his feet and strode to the door, pointing down the glen with his hand. He seemed to menace the other, his nostrils quivered with contempt, and his voice was barbed with pa.s.sion. Onotawah bowed his head and said nothing.

Then he seemed to dismiss him, and the proud chief walked out of the teepee like a disconsolate schoolboy.

Instantly Shalah turned to me and inquired about my wounds. He looked at the hole in my arm and at my scorched legs, and from his belt took a phial of ointment, which he rubbed on the former. He pa.s.sed his cool hands over my brow, and felt the beating of my heart.

”You are weary, brother, and somewhat scarred, but there is no grave hurt. What of the Master?”

I told him of Ringan's end. He bent his head, and then sprang up and held his hands high, speaking in a strange tongue. I looked at his eyes, and they were ablaze with fire.

”My people slew him,” he cried. ”By the shades of my fathers, a score shall keep him company as slaves in the Great Hunting-ground.”

”Talk no more of blood,” I said. ”He was amply avenged. 'Twas I who slew him, for he died to save me. He made a Christian end, and I will not have his memory stained by more murders. But oh, Shalah, what a man died yonder!”

He made me tell every incident of the story, and he cried out, impa.s.sive though he was, at the sword-play in the neck of the gorge.

”I have seen it,” he cried. ”I have seen his bright steel flash and men go down like ripe fruit. Tell me, brother, did he sing all the while, as was his custom? Would I had been by his side!”

Then he told me of what had befallen at the stockade.

”The dead man told me a tale, for by the mark on his forehead I knew that he was of my own house. When you and the Master had gone I went into the woods and picked up the trail of our foes. I found them in a crook of the hills, and went among them in peace. They knew me, and my word was law unto them. No living thing will come near the stockade save the wild beasts of the forest. Be at ease in thy mind, brother.”

The news was a mighty consolation, but I was still deeply mystified.

”You speak of your tribe. But these men were no Senecas.”

He smiled gravely. ”Listen, brother,” he said. ”The white men of the Tidewater called me Seneca, and I suffered the name. But I am of a greater and princelier house than the Sons of the Cat. Some little while ago I spoke to you of the man who travelled to the Western Seas, and of his son who returned to his own people. I am the son of him who returned. I spoke of the doings of my own kin.”

”But what is your nation, then?” I cried.

”One so great that these little clanlets of Cherokee and Monacan, and even the mult.i.tudes of the Long House, are but slaves and horseboys by their side. We dwelt far beyond these mountains towards the setting sun, in a plain where the rivers are like seas, and the cornlands wider than all the Virginian manors. But there came trouble in our royal house, and my father returned to find a generation which had forgotten the deeds of their forefathers. So he took his own tribe, who still remembered the House of the Sun, and, because his heart was unquiet with longing for that which is forbidden to man, he journeyed eastward, and found a new home in a valley of these hills. Thine eyes have seen it. They call it the Shenandoah.”

I remembered that smiling Eden I had seen from that hill-top, and how Shalah had spoken that very name.

”We dwelt there,” he continued, ”while I grew to manhood, living happily in peace, hunting the buffalo and deer, and tilling our cornlands. Then the time came when the Great Spirit called for my father, and I was left with the kings.h.i.+p of the tribe. Strange things meantime had befallen our nation in the West. Broken clans had come down from the north, and there had been many battles, and there had been blight, and storms, and sickness, so that they were grown poor and hara.s.sed. Likewise men had arisen who preached to them discontent, and other races of a lesser breed had joined themselves to them. My own tribe had become fewer, for the young men did not stay in our valley, but drifted back to the West, to that nation we had come from, or went north to the wars with the white man, or became lonely hunters in the hills. Then from the south along the mountain crests came another people, a squat and murderous people, who watched us from the ridges and bided their chance.”

”The Cherokees?” I asked.

”Even so. I speak of a hundred moons back, when I was yet a stripling, with little experience in war. I saw the peril, but I could not think that such a race could vie with the Children of the Sun. But one black night, in the Moon of Wildfowl, the raiders descended in a torrent and took us unprepared. What had been a happy people dwelling with full barns and populous wigwams became in a night a desolation. Our wives and children were slain or carried captive, and on every Cherokee belt hung the scalps of my warriors. Some fled westwards to our nation, but they were few that lived, and the tribe of Shalah went out like a torch in a roaring river.

”I slew many men that night, for the G.o.ds of my fathers guided my arm.

Death I sought, but could not find it; and by and by I was alone in the woods, with twenty scars and a heart as empty as a gourd. Then I turned my steps to the rising sun and the land of the white man, for there was no more any place for me in the councils of my own people.

”All this was many moons ago, and since then I have been a wanderer among strangers. While I reigned in my valley I heard of the white man's magic and of the power of his G.o.ds, and I longed to prove them.