Chapter 27
"How could you know before you saw me and I had once made plain my business?"
"Birds come and go; but eagles see their natal nest once more before they die."
"I do not understand you, Mayaro."
He made no answer.
"Merely to hear my name from this child's lips, you say you guessed my business with you?"
"Surely, Loskiel--surely. It was all done by magic. And, at once, I knew that I should also speak to her, there in the storm, and answer her her question."
"And did you do so?"
"Yes, Loskiel. I said to her: 'Little sad rosy-throated pigeon of the woods, the vale Yndaia lies by a hidden river in the West. Some call it Catharines-town.'"
I shook my head, perplexed, and understanding nothing.
"Yndaia? Did you say Yndaia, Mayaro?"
Then, as he looked me steadily in the eye, my gaze became uneasy, s.h.i.+fted, fell by an accident upon the blood-red bear reared on his hind legs, pictured upon his breast. And through and through me pa.s.sed a shock, like the dull thrill of some forgotten thing clutched suddenly by memory--yet clutched in vain.
Vain was the struggle, too, for the faint gleam pa.s.sed from my mind as it had come; and if the name Yndaia had disturbed me, or seeing the scarlet ensign on his breast, or perhaps both coupled, had seemed to stir some distant memory, I did not know. Only it seemed as though, in mental darkness, I had felt the presence of some living and familiar thing--been conscious of its nearness for an instant ere it had vanished utterly.
The Sagamore's face had become a smooth, blank mask again.
"What has this maid, Lois, to do with Catharines-town?" I asked.
"Devils live there in darkness."
"She did not say."
"You do not know?"
"No, Loskiel."
"But," said I, troubled, "why did she journey hither?"
"Because she now believes that only I in all the world could guide her to the vale Yndaia; and that one day I will pity her and take her there."
"Doubtless," I said anxiously, "she has heard at the forts or hereabouts that we are to march on Catharines-town."
"She knows it now, Loskiel"
"And means to follow?" I exclaimed in horror.
"My brother speaks the truth."
"G.o.d! What urges the child thither?"
"I do not know, Loskiel. It seems as though a madness
"Catharine Montour!"
"The Toad-woman herself--and all her sp.a.w.n."
"The Senecas?"
"And the others," he said in a low voice.
A sudden and terrible misgiving a.s.sailed me. I swallowed, and then said slowly:
"Two scalps were taken late last night by Murphy and Elerson. And the scalps were not of the Mohawk. Not Oneida, nor Onondaga, nor Cayuga.
Mayaro!" I gasped. "So help me G.o.d, those scalps are never Seneca!"
"Erie!" he exclaimed with a mixture of rage and horror. And I saw his sinewy hand quivering on his knife-hilt. "Listen, Loskiel! I knew it!
No one has told me. I have sat here all the day alone, making my steel bright and my paint fresher, and singing to myself my people's songs.
And ever as I sat at the lodge door, something in the summer wind mocked at me and whispered to me of demons. And when I rose and stood at gaze, troubled, and minding every river-breeze, faintly I seemed to scent the taint of evil. If those two scalps be Erie, then where the Cat-People creep their Sorcerer will be found."
"Amochol," I repeated under my breath. And s.h.i.+vered.
For, deep in the secret shadows of that dreadful place where this vile hag, Catharine Montour, ruled it in Catharines-town, dwelt also all that now remained of the Cat-Nation--Eries--People of the Cat--a dozen, it was rumoured, scarcely more--and demons all, serving that horrid warlock, Amochol, the Sorcerer of the Senecas.
What dreadful rites this red priest and his Eries practiced there, none knew, unless it were true that the False Faces knew. But rumour whispered with a thousand tongues of horrors viewless, nameless, inconceivable; and that far to the westward Biskoonah yawned, so close indeed to the world's surface that the waters boiling deep in h.e.l.l burst into burning fountains in the magic garden where the red priest made his sorcery, alone.
These things I had heard, but vaguely, here and there--a word perhaps at Johnson Hall, a whisper at Fort Johnson, rumours discussed at Guy Park and Schenectady when I was young. But ever the same horror of it filled me, though I believed it not, knowing full well there were no witches, sorcerers, or warlocks in the world; yet, in my soul disturbed concerning what might pa.s.s deep in the shadows of that viewless Empire.
"Mayaro," I said seriously, "do you go instantly to the fort and view those scalps."
"Were the braids fastened at the roots with tree-cat claws?"
"Aye!"
"No need to view them, then, Loskiel."
"Are they truly Erie?"
"Cats!" He spat the word from his lips and his eyes blazed.
"And--Amochol!" I asked unsteadily.
"The Cat People creep with the Seneca high priest, mewing under the moon."
"Then--he is surely here?"
"Aye, Loskiel."
"G.o.d!" said I, now all a-quiver; "only to slay him! Only to end this demon-thing, this poison sp.a.w.n of the Woman-Toad! Only to glimpse his scarlet rags fairly along my rifle sight!"
"No bullets touch him."