The Reckoning

Oh, yes, there might well be phantoms in this ghastly mansion; but they had nothing to do with me; only the absent master of the house was any concern of mine; and, finding at last the window I sought for, I shoved it open and climbed to the sill, landing upon the floor inside, my moccasined feet making no more sound than the padded toes of a tree-cat.

Then to prowl and mouse, stepping cautiously, stooping warily to examine dusty scraps lying on the bare boards—a dirty newspaper, an old shoe with buckle missing, a broken pewter spoon—all the sordid trifles that accent desolation. Once or twice I thought to make out moccasin tracks in the dust, as though some furtive prowler had anticipated me here, but the light filtering through the crusted panes was meager and uncertain, and, after all, it mattered nothing to me.

The house was divided by a hallway; there were two rooms on either side, all bare and empty save for scraps here and there, and in one room the collapsed and dusty carcass of a rat. On the walls there was nothing except a nail driven into the clay, which was crumbling between the facing of whitewashed brick. From the heavy oaken timbers of the wooden ceilings hung smutty banners of ancient cobwebs, stirring above me as I moved. It was the very abomination of sinister desolation.

Some vague idea of finding something that might aid me—some scrap of evidence I might chance on to kindle hope with—some neglected trifle to damn him and proclaim this monstrous marriage void—it was this instinct that led me into a house abhorred. Nothing I found, save, on one foul window-pane, names, diamond-cut, scrawled again and again: "Lyn," and "Cherry-Maid," repeated a score of times.

And long I lingered, pondering who had written it, and what it might mean, and who was "Lyn." As for "Cherry-Maid," the name was used in the False Faces rites; and at that terrific orgy held on the Kennyetto before the battle of Oriskany, where the first split came in the walls of the Long House, and where that hag-sorceress, Catrine Montour, had failed to pledge the Oneidas to the war-post, the Cherry-Maid had taken part. Indeed, some said that she was a daughter of the Huron witch; but Jack Mount, who saw the rite, swore that the Cherry-Maid was but a beautiful child, painted from brow to ankle–

Suddenly I thought of the hag's daughter as Carolyn. Carolyn? Lyn! By heaven, the Cherry-Maid was Carolyn Montour, mistress of Walter Butler! Here in bygone days she had scrawled her name—here her title. And Walter Butler had been present at that frantic debauch where the False Faces cringed to their prophetess, Magdalen Brant. Perhaps it was there that this man had met his match in the lithe young animal whelped by the Toad-Woman—this slim, lawless, depraved child, who had led the False Faces in their gruesome rites and sacrifice!

I stared at the diamond scrawl; and before my eyes I seemed to see the three fires burning, the clattering rows of wooden masks, the white blankets of the sachems, the tawny, naked form of the Cherry-Maid, seated between samphire and hazel, her pointed fingers on her hips, her heavy hair veiling a laughing face, over which the infernal fire shadow played.

Ah, it was well! Beast linked to beast—what need of priest in the fierce mating of such creatures of the dusk? He was hers, and she his by all laws of nature, and in the eternal fitness of things vast and savage. They must live and breed in the half-light of forests; they must perish as the sun follows the falling trees, creeping ever inexorably westward.

Somberly brooding, I turned and descended into the cellar. There was little light here, and I cared not to strike flint. Groping about I touched with my foot remains of bottles of earthenware, then made my way to the door again and began to ascend.

The stairway seemed steeper and more tortuous to me. As I climbed I became uneasy at its length. Then, in a second, it flashed on me that I had blundered upon a secret stairway[1 - Evidences of this stairway still exist in the ancient house of Walter Butler.] leading upward from the cellar. At this same instant my head brushed the ceiling; I gave a gentle push, and a trap-door lifted, admitting me to another flight of stairs, up which I warily felt my way. This must end in another trap-door on the second floor—I understood that—and began to reach upward, feeling about blindly until my hands fell on a bolt. This I drew; it was not rusty, and did not creak, and, as I slid it back, to my astonishment my fingers grew wet and greasy. The bolt had been recently oiled!

Now all alert as a gray wolf sniffing a strange trail that cuts his own, I warily lifted the trap to a finger's breadth. The crack of light dazzled me; gradually my blurred sight grew clearer; I saw a low, oblong window under the eaves of the steep, pointed roof; and, through it, the sunlight falling on the bare floor of a room all littered with papers, torn letters, and tape-bound documents of every description. Could these be the Butler papers? I had heard that all documents had been seized by the commissioners after the father and son had fled. But the honorable commissioners of sequestration had evidently never suspected this stairway.

In spite of myself I started! How had I, then, entered it? Somebody must have mounted it before me, leaving the secret door open in the cellar, and I, groping about, had chanced upon it. But whoever left it open must have been acquainted with the house—an intimate here, if not one of the family!

When had this unknown entered? Was any one here now? At the thought my skin roughened as a dog bristles. Was I alone in this house?

Listening, motionless, nostrils dilated, every sense concentrated on that narrow crack of light, I crouched there. Then, very gradually, I raised the trap, higher, higher, laying it back against the upright of white oak.

I was in a tiny room—a closet, lighted by a slit of a window. Everywhere around me in the dust were small moccasin prints, pointing in every direction. I could see no door in the wooden walls of the closet, but I stepped out of the stair-well and leaned over, examining the moccasin tracks, tracing them, until I found a spot where they led straight up to the wall; and there were no returning tracks to be seen. A chill crept over me; only a specter could pass through a solid wall. The next moment I had bent, ear flattened to the wooden wainscot. There was something moving in the next room!

CHAPTER XII

THENDARA

Motionless, intent, holding my breath, I listened at the paneled wall. Through the wainscot I could hear the low rustling of paper; and I seemed to sense some heavier movement within, though the solid floor did not creak, nor a window quiver, nor a footfall sound.

And now my eyes began traveling cautiously over the paneled wall, against which I had laid my ear. No crack or seam indicated a hidden door, yet I knew there must be one, and gently pressed the wainscot with my shoulder. It gave, almost imperceptibly; I pressed again, and the hidden door opened a hair's breadth, a finger's breadth, an inch, widening, widening noiselessly; and I bent forward and peered into another closet like the one I stood in, also lighted by a loop for rifle-fire. As my head advanced, first a corner of the floor littered with papers came into my range of vision, then an angle of the wall, then a shadowy something which I could not at first make out—and I opened the door a little wider—scarcely an inch—holding it there.

The shadowy something moved; it was a human foot; and the next instant my eyes fell on a figure, partly in shade, partly in the light from the loophole—an Indian, kneeling, absorbed in deciphering a document held flat on the bare floor.

Astounded, almost incredulous, I glared at the vision. Gradually the shock of the surprise subsided; details took shape under my wondering eyes—the slim legs, doubled under, clothed with fringed and beaded leggings to the hips, the gorgeously embroidered sporran, moccasins, and clout, the smooth, naked back, gleaming like palest amber under curtains of stiffly strung scarlet-and-gold traders' wampum—traders' wampum? What did that mean? And what did those heavy, double masses of hair indicate—those soft, twisted ropes of glossy hair, braided half-way with crimson silk shot with silver, then hanging a cloudy shock of black to the belted waist?

Here was no Iroquois youth—no adolescent of the Long House attired for any rite I ever heard of. The hip-leggings were of magnificent Algonquin work; the quill-set, sinew-embroidered moccasins, too. That stringy, iridescent veil of rose, scarlet, and gold wampum on the naked body was de fantasie; the belt and knife-sheath pure Huron. As for the gipsy-like arrangement of the hair, no Iroquois boy ever wore it that way; it hinted of the gens de prairie. What on earth did it mean? There was no paint on limb or body to guide me. Never had I seen such a being so dressed for any rite or any practise in North America! Oh, if Little Otter were only here! I stole a glance out of the loop, but saw nothing save the pale sunshine on the weeds. If the Oneida had arrived, he had surely already found my horse tied in the lilac thicket, and surely he would follow me where the weeds showed him I had passed. He might wait for a while; but if I emerged not from the house I knew he would be after me, smelling along like a wolfhound until he had tracked me to a standstill. Should I wait for him? I looked at the kneeling figure. So absorbed was the strange young Indian in the document on the floor that I strained my eyes to make out its script, but could not decipher even the corner of the paper exposed to my view. Then it occurred to me that it was a strange thing for an Indian to read. Scarce one among the Iroquois, save Brant and the few who had been to Dr. Wheelock's school, knew A from Zed, or could more than scrawl their clan-mark to a birchen letter.

Suspicious lest, after all, I had to do with a blue-eyed Indian or painted Tory, I examined the unconscious reader thoroughly. And, after a little while, a strange apprehension settled into absolute conviction as I looked. So certain was I that every gathered muscle relaxed; I drew a deep, noiseless breath of relief, smiling to myself, and stepped coolly forward, letting the secret door swing to behind me with a deadened thud.

Like a startled tree-cat the figure sprang to its feet, whirling to confront me. And I laughed again, for I was looking into the dark, dilated eyes of a young girl.

"Have no fear," I began quietly; and the next instant the words were driven into my throat, for she was on me in one bound, hunting-knife glittering.

Round the walls we reeled, staggering, wrestling, clinched like infuriated wolverines. I had her wrist in my grip, squeezing it, and the bright, sparkling knife soon clattered to the boards, but she suddenly set her crooked knee inside mine and tripped me headlong, hurling us both sideways to the floor, where we rolled, desperately locked, she twisting and reaching for the knife again and again, until I kicked it behind me and staggered to my feet, dragging her with me in all her fury. But her maddened strength, her sinuous twisting, her courage, so astonished me that again and again she sent me reeling almost to my knees, taxing my agility and my every muscle to keep her from tripping me flat and recovering her knife. At length she began to sway; her dark, defiant eyes narrowed to two flaming slits; her distorted mouth weakened into sullen lines, through which I caught the flash of locked teeth crushing back the broken, panting breath. I held her like a vise; she could no longer move. And when at last she knew it, her rigid features, convulsed with rage, relaxed into a blank, smooth mask of living amber.

For a moment I held her, feeling her whole body falling loose-limbed and limp—held her until her sobbing breath grew quieter and more regular. Then I released her; she reeled, steadying herself against the wall with one hand; and, stepping back, I sank one knee, and whipped the knife from the floor.

That she now looked for death at my hands was perfectly evident, I being dressed as a forest-runner who knows no sex when murder is afoot. I saw the flushed face pale slightly; the lip curl contemptuously. Proudly she lifted her head, haughtily faced me.

"Dog of bastard nation!" she panted; "look me between the eyes and strike!"

"Little sister," I answered gravely, using the soft Oneida idiom, "let there be peace between us."

A flash of wonder lit her dark eyes. And I said again, smiling: "O Heart-divided-into-two-hearts, te-ha-eho-eh, you are like him whom we name, after 'The Two Voices'—we of the Wolf. Therefore is there peace and love 'twixt thee and me."

The wonder in her eyes deepened; her whole body quivered.

"Who are you with a white skin who speak like a crested sachem?" she faltered.

"Tat-sheh-teh, little sister. I bear the quiver, but my war-arrows are broken."

"Oneida!" she exclaimed softly, clasping her hands between her breasts.

I stepped closer, holding out my arms; slowly she laid her hands in mine, looking fearlessly up into my face. I turned her palms upward and placed the naked knife across them; she bent her head, then straightened up, looking me full in the eyes.

Still smiling, I laid both my hands on the collar of my hunting-shirt, baring throat and chest; and, as the full significance of the tiny tattoo dawned upon her, she shivered.

"Tharon!" she stammered. "Thou! What have I done!" And, shuddering, cast the knife at my feet as though it had been the snake that rattles.

"Little sister–"

"Oh, no! no! What have I done! What have I dared! I have raised my hand against Him whom you have talked with face to face–"

"Only Tharon has done that," I said gently, "I but wear his sign. Peace, Woman of the Morning. There is no injury where there is no intent. We are not yet 'at the Forest's Edge.'"

Slowly the color returned to lip and cheek, her fascinated eyes roamed from my face to the tattooed wolf and mark of Tharon crossing it. And after a little she smiled faintly at my smile, as I said:

"I have drawn the fangs of the Wolf; fear no more, Daughter of the Sun."

"I—I fear no more," she breathed.

"Shall an ensign of the Oneida cherish wrath?" I asked. "He who bears a quiver has forgotten. See, child; it is as it was from the beginning. Hiro."

I calmly seated myself on the floor, knees gathered in my clasped hands; and she settled down opposite me, awaiting in instinctive silence my next words.

"Why does my sister wear the dress of an adolescent, mocking the False Faces, when the three fires are not yet kindled?" I asked.

"I hold the fire-right," she said quickly. "Ask those who wear the mask where cherries grow. O sachem, those cherries were ripe ere I was!"

I thought a moment, then fixed my eager eyes on her.

"Only the Cherry-Maid of Adriutha has that right," I said. My heart, beating furiously, shook my voice, for I knew now who she was.