Nattie Nesmith/Chapter 16

by Sophia Homespun

 

Chapter XVI.

Desolation.

EMPORARY huts had been erected for the accommodation of the men employed in the forest.

It was toward these that Augustus Reid directed his steps, after leaving the house of the contractor. He knew the Frenchmen's habits of drinking and carousing to a late hour of the night, and intended, by lurking about their dwellings while they were ignorant of his proximity, to form some estimate of the degree of lawlessness that he might be called upon to restrain, should he accept the position offered to him by the contractor.

He had gone scarcely a mile before his quick scent detected a smokiness in the atmosphere. He thought, at first, that it might be occasioned by the fires of the loggers. He was very fleet of foot, and an hour's walk carried him into the midst of the forest, a distance of three and a half miles from Sibley's Corner. Here he came upon three small, rough huts, standing near each other. They were thickly surrounded by tall trees, mostly pine and hemlock, which afforded him excellent shelter from the falling rain, and also allowed him to approach very near the huts without fear of being discovered.

Lights gleamed through the loosely boarded walls, and sounds of loud laughter, interspersed with foul oaths and doggerel songs, rang out on the still, night air. The youth approached so near one of the huts as to observe the movements of the inmates, and hear their conversation. They spoke in French, but the young man under stood this as well as he did his own tongue.

There were six men, dressed in suits of coarse, gray kersey. Three of them were sitting on a bench, smoking; the other three lay on a bunk by the stove, while a dirty, tough-looking woman, of perhaps forty-five years, sat at a rough board table, mending socks by a dim candle. She seemed to be listening to the conversation of the three men on the mat, who spoke in rather low tones, yet distinctly audible to the quick ear which was laid close to a gap between the boards of the hut.

At last the woman said, in a cross, disapproving tone:

"I don't see what you wanted to do it for. Why can't you let Indian folks alone, when they are doing you no harm?"

"I hate the varmints," answered one of the three men on the floor, "and so do you, Mother Minotte. These were the poorest, meanest pack that you ever did see,—a lot of women and one sick old man."

"You ought to have pitied their helplessness, and let them alone."

"We didn't do anything only stir them up a bit, and make a good dinner from their kettle of broth," said the next man. "That was capital broth, Jacques. I don't believe that the greasy squaws made it. 'T was the white gal, I fancy."

The young man at the opening drew back at these words, while the breath came hot and quick through his closed teeth, but he resumed his former position.

"What!" exclaimed the woman, looking up quickly, "was there a white one among them?"

"One whiter than the rest," answered the third man; "but she wouldn't tell whether she was squaw or not, so we served her the same as the rest."

"How was that?" asked the woman.

The three men looked at each other, and the one who had first spoken, and who seemed a bolder rascal than his fellows, and rather gloried in recounting his deeds of lawlessness, answered, with an evil leer:

"Oh, we built them a rousing fire, and bid them good-night."

"Miserable wretch!" cried the woman; "you have burned them up, then."

"Not so fast, Mother Minotte," said the man; "that is not so easy a thing to do. I'll warrant you that they have crawled out, with nothing more than a good singeing. How tender you are of the red-skins, all at once!"

"I have no love for the race," she answered, with a dark look; "but if you have done this violence, it will soon be noised abroad, and the result will be that we shall have to quit our camp here in the woods, and tramp."

"Oh, not so bad as that, mother," the three men said, in a breath. "It is not much to light an Indian wigwam; the red-skins will crawl off to another one, somewhere; there are half a score round in these woods, most of them empty in winter."

"But what if they are burned to death in the flames?" demanded the old woman.

"Nonsense! they will take care of that," said the bold villain. "Though, admitting that they were burned, what would follow? They have no tribe to avenge them, and the Yankees wouldn't meddle; it is against their interests to mad us Frenchers; so nothing would be done if the red-skins did stay in their hut, and eat their fill of fire."

"I am not so sure of that," returned the woman, discontentedly; "and I wish that you had kept away, and let the creatures alone. At any rate, I hope you will keep close mouths now, and not let the tale go outside of this cabin."

The woman tossed the socks, which she held in her lap, on the table, and rose from her seat. As she did so, a sound like the crack of aboard was heard distinctly by the whole party.

"What was that?" asked one of the men.

"I should say that somebody had been leaning against the boards in that direction, and then suddenly removed the weight," the woman answered, pointing toward the place from which the sound had seemed to issue. "Who knows but our whole conversation may have been overheard?"

"And who cares?" was the response of the boldest villain. "We'll have a drink, a game of cards, and then to bed. I'll risk to-morrow."

Augustus Reid did not hear these closing words. He had withdrawn at the moment in which the creaking sound was heard in the hut, and was now rushing through the forest at the top of his speed. He heeded not the increasing storm, or the impediments of the way. The wigwam of the old chief, his father, which he had so lately seen in a tidy, cheerful state,—was that no more? Were the inmates burned? or still living, and writhing in tortures, exposed to the pitiless storm?

These thoughts, and others even more cruel, passed through the mind of the youth, as he flew along the forest path. When he had gained the spring at the foot of the beech tree, he paused a moment, drew his breath, and took a draught of the cold water. The moon showed herself through rifted clouds, and, turning his gaze to the hill above him, he missed the cone like summit of the wigwam. All looked blank and desolate, while a foul stench of burning pervaded the air around. He went up the hill with slackened steps, dreading the sight which must soon meet his gaze.

A heap of black, smoking ruins, in which the rain had not entirely quenched the flames, was all that he found. It was vain to search there with the expectation of finding a living creature, brute or human. Life must have long since departed from whatever lay buried there. Nor could the young man at present search for the dead amid the fire, the smoke and the suffocating odors. After the first heat of indignation toward the ruthless perpetrators had passed away, a despairing gloom seemed not only to paint itself on his face, but to envelop his whole person as in a shroud. He sat down on the great, flat rock which had lain at the entrance of the wigwam, and, with his eyes bent on the smoldering mass, rocked his lithe body to and fro, after the manner of Indians, and wailed in an undertone.

But his first words were not of sorrow for the fallen roof of his nativity and early years, nor pity for his father, the old gray-haired chieftain, who would return to find the home which he loved a blackened ruin. The first low cry that escaped the youth was:

"Oh, Nathalie, what a fate has been thine! Would it not have been better, had I obeyed my father's command to make thee my bride? Then mightest thou have escaped this horrid death. Yet, how know I but thou wouldst have preferred it to being an Indian's mate, the wife of Torch Eye, whose very name seemed hateful to thine ear? But, had my father heeded my entreaties, and taken thee back to the home from which he conveyed thee away, thou mightst now have been well and happy. What will he think when he returns? He bade me come beneath his wigwam no more till I could do his bidding, and take as my own the Great Spirit's gift which he brought to me. When he finds that the French have burned his home, and death has claimed the bride, will he not conclude that the Great Spirit, in anger at his sin of stealing the white child, has come to lay desolate his hearth and hunting grounds?"

The youth took from his vest the slip of cloth containing the lettered name, "Nathalie Norton," and looked on it in the fitful moonlight.

"Is this name all that is left of her whose lithe little form sat near me but a few hours ago? Are the bright black eyes, that changed and lighted as she talked to me in her easy, flowing English, now closed and sightless, beneath these smoking ruins? Are the slender hands, which stirred the succotash and placed a well-filled bowl in mine, charred and shapeless? Ah, Nathalie, had I been a white man's son, how proud and happy I might have been one day to call thee mine! and how did I hope, by hovering near and keeping thee in view, that I might at length be able to restore thee to thy bereaved friends! How have I pictured the look of gratitude which I might see in thine eyes, could I be so fortunate as thus to return thee to thy family! One thought may cheer me even now; thou hast never known me in my true character. As Augustus Reid, I was not disagreeable. Even though a part-blooded Indian, thou wast still friendly and turned not away from me. But as Torch-Eye, the wild Indian boy, thou hast not known me. How wouldst thou have shrunk away, could I have stood thus before thy sight! Have I not seen the loathing with which thou didst hear the name pronounced? No wonder! How could a fair, white girl look otherwise upon a savage?

"But thou didst know me, to the last, only as Augustus Reid. Perhaps the latest work of thy hands was to wreathe my name in beautiful, bright letters on a crimson band; for thus I left thee at thy embroidery stand, wondering within myself when we should next meet, nor dreaming that we might meet no more. I will keep thy name near my heart, Nathalie; and may mine be resting thus with thee, beneath these ruins. Once more I'll come here, and all that is left of thee, and thy Indian companions, shall be gathered, and laid in the greenest dell of the forest that my eye can trace. Then let me go afar, where I shall see the spot no more,—no more,—no more."

He rose, thrice waved his arm aloft, drew his blanket about him, and turned away. The rain was still heavy and the path tedious; but he thought not of these things. His heart writhed in grief; his eyes took no note of outer things.