The Forge in the Forest

Being now near the Shubenacadie mouth, I durst not light a fire, but we uncomplainingly ate our black bread; and then I said:

"We will start at first gray, comrade. You will need all the sleep you can win. Good night, and kindly dreams."

"Good night, Monsieur," she said softly, and disappeared. Then going down to the water's side, I threw off my clothes, and took a swift plunge which steadied and refreshed me mightily. Swimming in the misty and murmurous darkness, my venture and my strange fellowship seemed more like a dream to me than ever, and I could scarce believe myself awake. But I was awake enough to feel it when, in stumbling ashore, I scraped my foot painfully on a jagged shell. However, that hurt was soon eased and staunched by holding it for a little under the chill gushing of the brook; after which I dressed myself, gathered a handful of ferns for a pillow, and laid myself down across the opening which led into the thicket.

Chapter XIV

My Comrade Shoots Excellently Well

From a medley of dreams, in which I saw Mizpah binding the Black Abbé with cords of her own hair – tight, tighter, till they ate into his flesh, and I trembled at the look of shaking horror in his face; in which then I saw the child chasing butterflies before the door of the Forge in the Forest, and heard Babin's hammer beating musically on his anvil, till the sound became the chiming of the Angelus over the roofs and walls of Quebec, where Mizpah and I walked hand fast together on the topmost bastion, – from such a fleeting and blending confusion as this, I woke to feel a hand laid softly on my face in the dark. I needed no seeing to tell me whose was the hand, so slim, so cool, so softly firm; and I had much ado to keep my lips from reverently kissing it.

"Monsieur, Monsieur," came the whisper, "what is that noise, that voice?"

"Pardon me, comrade, for sleeping so soundly," I murmured, sitting up, and taking her hand in mine with a rough freedom of goodwill, as merely to reassure her. "What is it you hear?"

But before she could reply, I heard it myself, a strange, chanting cry, slow and plangent, from far out upon the water. Presently I caught the words, and knew the voice.

"Woe, woe to Acadie the fair," it came solemnly, "for the day of her desolation draws nigh!"

"It is Grûl," said I, "passing in his canoe, on some strange errand of his."

"Grûl? Who is Grûl?" she questioned, clinging a little to my hand, and then dropping it suddenly.

"A quaint madman of these parts," said I; "and yet I think his madness is in some degree a feigning. He has twice done me inestimable service – once warning us of an immediate peril, and again yesterday, in leading us to the spot where you were held captive. For some reason unknown to me, he has a marvellous kindness for me and mine. But the Black Abbé he hates in deadly fashion – for some ancient and ineffaceable wrong, if the tale tell true."

"And he brought you to us?" she murmured, with a sort of stillness in her voice, which caught me strangely.

"Yes, Grûl did!" said I.

And then there was silence between us, and we heard the mysterious and solemn voice passing, and dying away in the distance. My ears at last being released from the tension of listening, my eyes began to serve me, and through the branches I marked a grayness spreading in the sky.

"We must be stirring, Madame," said I, rising abruptly to my feet. "Let us take our bread down to the brook and eat it there."

But she was already gone, snatching up the sack of bread; and in a few minutes, having righted the canoe and carried it down to a convenient landing-place, I joined her. She was stretched flat beside a little basin of the brook, her cap off, her hair in a tight coil high upon her head, her sleeves pulled up, while she splashed her face and arms in the running coolness. Without pulling down her sleeves or resuming her cap, she seated herself on a stone and held out to me a piece of bread. In the coldly growing dawn her hair and lips were colourless, the whiteness of her arms shadowy and spectral. Then as we slowly made our meal, I bringing water for her in my drinking-horn, the rose and fire and violet of sunrise began to sift down into our valley and show me again the hues of life in Mizpah's face. I sprang up, handed her the woollen cap, and tried hard to keep my eyes from dwelling upon the sweet and gracious curves of her arms.

"Aboard! Aboard!" I cried, and moved off in a bustling fashion to get the paddles. In a few minutes we were under way, thrusting out from the shore, and pushing through myriad little curling wisps of vapour, which rose in pale hues of violet and pink all over the oil-smooth surface of the tide.

For some time we paddled in silence. Then, when the sun's first rays fell fairly upon us, I exclaimed lightly: —

"You must pull down your sleeves, comrade."

"Why?" she asked quickly, turning her head and pausing in her stroke.

"For two excellent reasons besides the captain's orders," said I. "In the first place, your arms will get so sore with sunburn, that you won't be able to do your fair share of the work. In the second place, if we should meet any strangers, it would be difficult to persuade them that those arms were manly enough for a wood-ranger."

"Oh," she said quickly, and pulled down the sleeves in some confusion.

All that morning we made excellent progress, with the help of a light following wind. When the sun was perhaps two hours high, the mouth of the Shubenacadie opened before us; and because this river was the great highway of the Black Abbé's red people, I ran the canoe in shore and concealed it till I had climbed a bluff near by and scanned the lower reaches of the stream. Finding all clear, we put out again, and with the utmost haste paddled past the mouth. Not till we were behind the further point, and running along under the shelter of a high bank, did I breathe freely. Then I praised Mizpah, for in that burst of speed her skill and force had amazed me.

But she turned upon me with the question which I had looked for.

"If that is the Black Abbé's river," said she, with great eyes fixing mine, "and the Indians have gone that way, why do we pass by?"

"I owe you an explanation, comrade," said I. "I think in all likelihood, that way leads straight to your child; but if we went that way, we would be the Abbé's prisoners within the next hour, – and how would we help the child then? Oh, no; I am bound for the Black Abbé's back door. A few leagues beyond this lies the River des Saumons, and on its banks is a settlement of our Acadian folk. Many of them are of the Abbé's following, and all fear him; but I have there two faithful men who are in the counsels of the Forge. One of these dwells some two miles back from the river, half a league this side of the village. I will go to him secretly, and send him on to the Shubenacadie for information. Then we will act not blindly."

To this of course she acquiesced at once, as being the only wise way; but for all that, with each canoe-length that we left the Shubenacadie behind, the more did her paddle lag. The impulse seemed all gone out of her. Soon therefore I bade her lay down the blade and rest. In a little, when she had lain a while with her face upon her arms, – whether waking or not I could not tell, for she kept her face turned away from me, – she became herself again.

No long while after noon, we ran into the mouth of the des Saumons. I was highly elated with the success that had so far attended us, – the speed we had made, our immunity from hindrance and question. We landed to eat our hasty meal, but paused not long to rest, being urged now by the keen spur of imagined nearness to our goal. Some two hours more of brisk paddling brought us to a narrow and winding creek, up which I turned. For some furlongs it ran through a wide marsh, but at length one bank grew high and copsy. Here I put the canoe to land, and stepped ashore, bidding Mizpah keep her place.

Finding the spot to my liking, I pulled the canoe further up on the soft mud, and astonished Mizpah by telling her that I must carry her up the bank.

"But why?" she cried. "I can walk, Monsieur, as well as I could this morning – though I am a little stiff," she added naïvely.

"The good soldier asks not why," said I, with affected severity. "But I will tell you. In case any one should come in my absence, there must be but one track visible, and that track mine, leading up and away toward the settlement. You must lie hidden in that thicket, and keep guard. Do you understand, Madame?"

"Yes," said she, – "but how can you? – I am awfully heavy."

I laughed softly, picked her up as I would a child, and carried her to the edge of the woods, where I let her down on one end of a fallen tree.

"Now, comrade," said I, "if you will go circumspectly along this log you will leave no trace. Hide yourself in the thicket there close to the canoe, keep your pistols primed, and watch till I come back, – and the blessed Virgin guard you!" I added, with a sudden fervour.

Then, having lifted the canoe altogether clear of the water, I set forth at a swinging trot for Martin's farm.

I found my trusty habitant at home, and ready to do any errand of mine ere I could speak it. But when I told him what I wanted of him he started in some excitement.

"Why, Monsieur," he cried, "I have the very tidings you seek. I myself saw a canoe with two Indians pass up the river this morning; and they had a little child with them, – a child with long yellow hair."

"Up this river!" I exclaimed. "Then whither can they be taking him?"

"They did not leave him in the village," answered Martin, positively, "for the word goes that they passed on up in great haste. By the route they have taken, they are clearly bound for the Straits – "

"Ay, they'll cross to the head of the Pictook, and descend that stream," said I. "But which way will they turn then?" – For I was surprised and confused at the information.

"Well, Monsieur," said Martin, "when they get to the Straits, who knows? They may be going across to Ile St. Jean. They may turn south to Ile Royale; for the English, I hear, have no hold there, save at Louisburg and Canseau. Or they may turn north toward Miramichi. Who knows – save the Black Abbé?"

"I must overtake them," said I, resolutely. "Good-bye, my friend and thank you. If all goes well, you will get a summons from the Forge ere the moon is again at the full;" and I made haste back to the spot where Mizpah waited.

As I swung along, I congratulated myself on the good fortune which had so held me to the trail. Then I fell to thinking of my comrade, and the wonder of the situation, and the greater wonder of her eyes and hair, – which thoughts sped the time so sweetly that ere I could believe it I saw before me the overhanging willows, and the thicket by the stream. Then I stopped as if I had been struck in the face, and shook with a sudden fear.

At my very feet, fallen across the dead tree which I have already mentioned, lay the body of an Indian. Every line of the loose, sprawled body told me that he had met an instant death, – and a bullet hole in his back showed me the manner of it. Only for a second did I pause. Then I sprang into the thicket, with a horror catching at my heart. There was Mizpah lying on her face, – and a hoarse cry broke from my lips. But even as I flung myself down beside her I saw that she was not dead. No, she was shaking with sobs, – and the naturalness of it, strange to say, reassured me on the instant. I made to lift her, when she sprang at once to her feet, and looked at me wildly. I took her hand, to comfort her; but she drew it away, and gazed upon it with a kind of shrinking horror.

I understood now what had happened. Nevertheless, knowing not just the best thing to say, I asked her what was the matter.

"Oh," she cried, covering her eyes, "I killed him. He threw up his hands, and groaned, and fell like a log. How could I do it? How could I do it?"

I tried to assure her that she had done well; but finding that she would pay me no heed, I went to look at her victim. I turned him over, and muttered a thanksgiving to Heaven as I recognized him for one of the worst of the Black Abbé's flock. I found his tracks all about the canoe. Then I went back to Mizpah.

"Good soldier! Good comrade!" said I, earnestly. "You have killed Little Fox, the blackest and cruelest rogue on the whole Shubenacadie. Oh, I tell you you have done a good deed this day!"

The knowledge of this appeared to ease her somewhat, and in a few moments I gathered the details. The Indian had come suddenly to the bank, and seeing a canoe there had examined it curiously, – she, the while, waiting in great fear, for she had at once recognized him as one of her former captors, and one of whom she stood in special dread. While looking at our things in the canoe, he had appeared all at once to understand. He had picked up my coat, and examined it carefully, – and the grin that disclosed his long teeth disclosed also that he recognized it. Looking to the priming of his musket, he started cautiously up the bank upon my trail.

"As soon as he left the canoe," said Mizpah, still shaken with sobs, "I knew that something must be done. If he went away, it would be just to give the alarm, and then we could not escape, and Philip would be lost forever. But I saw that, instead of going away, he was going to track you and shoot you down. I didn't know what to do, or how I could ever shoot a man in cold blood, – but something made me do it. Just as he reached the end of the log, I seemed to see him already shooting you, away in the woods over there, – and then I fired. And oh, oh, oh, I shall never forget how he groaned and fell over!" And she stared at her right hand.

"Comrade," said I, "I owe my life to you. He would have shot me down; for, as I think of it, I went carelessly, and seldom looked behind when I got into the woods. To be so incautious is not my way, believe me. I know not how it was, unless I so trusted the comrade whom I had left behind to guard my trail. And now, here are news! They have brought the child this way, up this very river! The saints have surely led us thus far, for we are hot upon their track!"

And this made her forget to weep for the excellence of her shooting.

Chapter XV

Grûl's Hour

Though we were in a hot haste to get away, it was absolutely necessary first to bury the dead Indian, lest a hue and cry should be raised that might involve and delay us. With my paddle, therefore, I dug him a shallow grave in the soft mud at the edge of the tide, which was then on the ebb. This meagre inhumation completed, I smoothed the surface as best I could with my paddle; and then we set off, resting easy in the knowledge that the next tide would smooth down all traces of the work.

It was by this close upon sunset, and I felt a little hesitation as to what we had best do. I had no wish to run through the settlement till after dark, nor was I anxious to push on against the furious ebb of the des Saumons, against which the strongest paddlers could make slow headway. But it was necessary to get out of the creek before the water should quite forsake us; and, moreover, Mizpah was in a fever of haste to be gone. She kept gazing about as if she expected the savage to rise from his muddy grave and point at her. We ran out of the creek, therefore, and were instantly caught in the great current of the river. I suffered it to sweep us down for half a mile, having noted on the way up a cluster of haystacks in an angle of the dyke. Coming to these, I pushed ashore at once, carried the canoe up, and found that the place was one where we might rest secure. Here we ate our black bread and drank new milk, for there were many cattle pasturing on the aftermath, and some of the cows had not yet gone home to milking. Then, hiding the canoe behind the dyke, and ourselves between the stacks, in great weariness we sought our sleep.

There was no hint of dawn in the sky when I awoke with a start; but the constellations had swung so wide an arc that I knew morning was close at hand. There was a hissing clamour in the river-bed which told me the tide was coming in. That, doubtless, was the change which had so swiftly aroused me. I went to the other side of the stack, where Mizpah lay with her cheek upon her arm, her hair fallen adorably about her neck. Touching her forehead softly with my hand, I whispered: —

"Come, comrade, the tide has turned!" Whereupon she sat up quietly, as if this were for her the most usual of awakenings, and began to arrange her hair. I went out upon the shadowy marsh and soon accomplished a second theft of new milk, driving the tranquil cow which furnished it into the corner behind the stacks, that our dairy might be the more conveniently at hand. Our fast broken (and though I hinted nought of it to Mizpah, I found black bread growing monotonous), I carried the canoe down to the edge of the tide. But Mistress Mizpah's daintiness revolted at the mud, whereupon she took off her moccasins and stockings before she came to it, and I caught a gleam of slim white feet at the dewy edge of the grass. When I had carried down the paddles, pole, and baggage, I found her standing in a quandary. She could not get into the canoe with that sticky clay clinging to her feet, and there was no place where she could sit down to wash them. Carelessly enough (though my heart the while trembled within me), I stretched out my hand to her, saying: —

"Lean on me, comrade, and then you can manage it all right."

And so it was that she managed it; and so indifferently did I cast my eyes about, now at the breaking dawn, now at the swelling tide, that I am sure she must have deemed that I saw not or cared not at all how white and slender and shapely were her feet!

In few minutes we were afloat, going swiftly on the tide. The sky was all saffron as we slipped through the settlement, and a fairy glow lay upon the white cottages. The banks on either hand took on the ineffable hues of polished nacre. To the door of one cottage, close by the water, came a man yawning, and hailed us. But I flung back a mere "Bon jour," and sped on. Not till the settlement was out of sight behind us, not till the cross on the spire of the village was quite cut off from view, did I drop to the even pace of our day-long journeying. When at length we got beyond the influence of the tide, des Saumons was a shallow, sparkling, singing stream, its bed aglow with ruddy-coloured rocks. Here I laid aside my paddle and thrust the canoe onwards by means of my long pole of white spruce, while Mizpah had nought to do but lean back and watch the shores creep by.

At the head of tide we had stopped to drink and to breathe a little. And there, seeing an old man working in front of a solitary cabin, I had deemed it safe to approach him and purchase a few eggs. After this we kept on till an hour past noon, when I stopped in a bend of the river, at the foot of a perpendicular cliff of red rock some seventy or eighty feet in height. Here was a thicket wherein we might hide both the canoe and ourselves if necessary. The canoe I hid at once, that – being a matter of the more time. Then we both set ourselves to gathering dry sticks, for it seemed to me we might here risk the luxury of a fire, with a dinner of roasted eggs.

We had gathered but a handful or two, when I heard a crashing in the underbrush at the top of the cliff; and in a second, catching Mizpah by the hand, I had dragged her into hiding. Through a screen of dark and drooping hemlock boughs we gazed intently at the top of the cliff, – and I noted, without thinking worth while to remedy my oversight, that I had forgotten to release Mizpah's hand.

The crashing noise, mingled with some sharp outcries of rage and fear, continued for several minutes. Then there was silence; and I saw at the brink a pointed cap stuck full of feathers, and the glare of a black and yellow cloak.

"Grûl!" I whispered, in astonishment; and I felt an answering surprise in the tightened clasp of Mizpah's hand.

A moment more and Grûl peered over the brink, scrutinizing the upper and lower reaches of the river. He held a coil of rope, one end of which he had made fast to a stout birch tree which leaned well out over the edge.

"What is he going to do?" murmured Mizpah, with wide eyes.

"We'll soon see!" said I, marvelling mightily.

The apparition vanished for some minutes, then suddenly reappeared close to the brink. He carried, as lightly as if it had been a bundle of straw, the body of a man, so bound about with many cords as to remind me of nothing so much as a fly in the death wrappings of some black and yellow spider. To add to the semblance, the victim was dressed in black, – and a closer scrutiny showed that he was a priest.

"It is the Black Abbé, none other," I murmured, in a kind of awe; while Mizpah shrank closer to my side with a sense of impending tragedies. "Grûl has come to his revenge!" I added.

In a business fashion Grûl knotted the end of his coil of rope about the prisoner's body, the feathers and flowers in his cap, meanwhile, nodding with a kind of satisfied rhythm. Then he lowered the swathed and helpless but silently writhing figure a little way from the brink, governing the rope with ease by means of a half-twist about a jutting stump. There was something indescribably terrifying in the sight of the fettered form swinging over the deep, with shudderings and twistings, and the safe edge not a yard length above him. I pitied him in spite of myself; and I put a hand over Mizpah's eyes that she might not see what was coming. But she pushed my hand away, and stared in a fascination.

For some moments Grûl gazed down in silence upon his victim.

I fancied I caught the soul-piercing flame of his mad eyes; but this was doubtless due to my imagination rather than to the excellence of my vision. Suddenly the victim, his fortitude giving way with the sense of the deadly gulf beneath him, and with the pitiless inquisition of that gaze bent down upon him, broke out into wild pleadings, desperate entreaties, screams of anguished fear, till I myself trembled at it, and Mizpah covered her ears.

"Oh, stop it! save him!" she whispered to me, with white lips. But I shook my head. I could not reach the top of the cliff. And moreover, I had small doubt that Grûl's vengeance was just. Nevertheless, had I been at the top of the cliff instead of the bottom, I had certainly put a stop to it.

After listening for some moments, with a sort of pleasant attention, to the victim's ravings, Grûl lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm. I saw the gleam of a knife in his darting hand; and I drew a quick breath of relief.

"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.

But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.

"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.

And then I saw that Grûl had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The Abbé was swiftly freeing himself; and Grûl, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.

The Abbé, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair.

Presently Grûl spoke, – for the first time, as far as we knew.

"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbé, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.

"I know you, François de Grûl," came the reply, gasped from a dry mouth.

"Then further explanation, I think you will allow, is not needed. I will bid you farewell, and a pleasant journey," went on the same civil modulations of Grûl's voice. At the same moment he reached down with his shining blade as if to sever the rope.