Complete weird tales of.., p.184
Complete Weird Tales of Robert W Chambers, page 184
“They say the False-Faces’ rites are terrific,” he muttered. “Thank God, that child will not be lured into those hideous orgies by Walter Butler!”
We walked towards the house where Mount had prepared our food. I sat down on the door-step to eat my porridge and think of what lay before me and how best to accomplish it. And at first I was minded to send Sir George back with Magdalen Brant and take only Mount with me. But whether it was a craven dread of despatching to Dorothy the man she was pledged to wed, or whether a desire for his knowledge and experience prompted me to invite his attendance at the False-Faces’ rites, I do not know clearly, even now. He came out of the house presently, and I asked him if he would go with me.
“One of us should stay here with Magdalen Brant,” he said, gravely.
“Is she not safe here?” I asked.
“You cannot leave a child like that absolutely alone,” he answered.
“Then take her to Varicks’,” I said, sullenly. “If she remains here some of Butler’s men will be after her to attend the council.”
“You wish me to go up-stairs and rouse her for a journey — now?”
“Yes; it is best to get her into a safe place,” I muttered. “She may change her ideas, too, betwixt now and dawn.”
He re-entered the house. I heard his spurs jingling on the stairway, then his voice, and a rapping at the door above.
Jack Mount appeared, rifle in hand, wiping his mouth with his fingers; and together we paced the yard, waiting for Sir George and Magdalen Brant to set out before we struck the Iroquois trail.
Suddenly Sir George’s heavy tread sounded on the stairs; he came to the door, looking about him, east and west. His features were pallid and set and seamed with stern lines; he laid an unsteady hand on my arm and drew me a pace aside.
“Magdalen Brant is gone,” he said.
“Gone!” I repeated. “Where?”
“I don’t know!” he said, hoarsely.
I stared at him in astonishment. Gone? Where? Into the tremendous blackness of this wilderness that menaced us on all sides like a sea? And they had thought to tame her like a land-blown gull among the poultry!
“Those drops of Mohawk blood are not in her veins for nothing,” I said, bitterly. “Here is our first lesson.”
He hung his head. She had lied to him with innocent, smooth face, as all such fifth-castes lie. No jewelled snake could shed her skin as deftly as this young maid had slipped from her shoulders the frail garment of civilization.
The man beside me stood as though stunned. I was obliged to speak to him thrice ere he roused to follow Jack Mount, who, at a sign from me, had started across the dark hill-side to guide us to the trysting-place of the False-Faces’ clan.
“Mount,” I whispered, as he lingered waiting for us at the stepping-stones in the dark, “some one has passed this trail since I stood here an hour ago.” And, bending down, I pointed to a high, flat stepping-stone, which glimmered wet in the pale light of the stars.
Sir George drew his tinder-box, struck steel to flint, and lighted a short wax dip.
“Here!” whispered Mount.
On the edge of the sand the dip-light illuminated the small imprint of a woman’s shoe, pointing southeast.
Magdalen Brant had heard the voices in the Long House.
“The mischief is done,” said Sir George, steadily. “I take the blame and disgrace of this.”
“No; I take it,” said I, sternly. “Step back, Sir George. Blow out that dip! Mount, can you find your way to that sulphur spring where the flat stones are piled in little heaps?”
The big fellow laughed. As he strode forward into the depthless sea of darkness a whippoorwill called.
“That’s Elerson, sir,” he said, and repeated the call twice.
The rifleman appeared from the darkness, touching his cap to me. “The horses are safe, sir,” he said. “The General desires you to send your report through Sir George Covert and push forward with Mount to Stanwix.”
He drew a sealed paper from his pouch and handed it to me, saying that I was to read it.
Sir George lighted his dip once more. I broke the seal and read my orders under the feeble, flickering light:
“TEMPORARY HEADQUARTERS,
VARICK MANOR,
June I, 1777.
To Captain Ormond, on scout:
Sir, — The General commanding this department desires you to employ all art and persuasion to induce the Oneidas, Tuscaroras, and Onondagas to remain quiet. Failing this, you are again reminded that the capture of Magdalen Brant is of the utmost importance. If possible, make Walter Butler also prisoner, and send him to Albany under charge of Timothy Murphy; but, above all, secure the person of Magdalen Brant and send her to Varick Manor under escort of Sir George Covert. If, for any reason, you find these orders impossible of execution, send your report of the False-Faces’ council through Sir George Covert, and push forward with the riflemen Mount, Murphy, and Elerson until you are in touch with Gansevoort’s outposts at Stanwix. Warn Colonel Gansevoort that Colonel Barry St. Leger has moved from Oswego, and order out a strong scout towards Fort Niagara. Although Congress authorizes the employment of friendly Oneidas as scouts, General Schuyler trusts that you will not avail yourself of this liberty. Noblesse oblige! The General directs you to return only when you have carried out these orders to the best of your ability. You will burn this paper before you set out for Stanwix. I am, sir,
“Your most humble and obedient servant,
“JOHN HARROW,
Major and A.D.C. to the Major-General Commanding.
(Signed) PHILIP SCHUYLER,
Major-General Commanding the Department of the North.”
Hot with mortification at the wretched muddle I had already made of my mission, I thrust the paper into my pouch and turned to Elerson.
“You know Magdalen Brant?” I asked, impatiently.
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a chance,” I said, “that she may return to that house on the hill behind us. If she comes back you will see that she does not leave the house until we return.”
Sir George extinguished the dip once more. Mount turned and set off at a swinging pace along the invisible path; after him strode Sir George; I followed, brooding bitterly on my stupidity, and hopeless now of securing the prisoner in whose fragile hands the fate of the Northland lay.
* * *
XV
THE FALSE-FACES
FOR A LONG time we had scented green birch smoke, and now, on hands and knees, we were crawling along the edge of a cliff, the roar of the river in our ears, when Mount suddenly flattened out and I heard him breathing heavily as I lay down close beside him.
“Look!” he whispered, “the ravine is full of fire!”
A dull-red glare grew from the depths of the ravine; crimson shadows shook across the wall of earth and rock. Above the roaring of the stream I heard an immense confused murmur and the smothered thumping rhythm of distant drumming.
“Go on,” I whispered.
Mount crawled forward, Sir George and I after him. The light below burned redder and redder on the cliff; sounds of voices grew more distinct; the dark stream sprang into view, crimson under the increasing furnace glow. Then, as we rounded a heavy jutting crag, a great light flared up almost in our faces, not out of the kindling ravine, but breaking forth among the huge pines on the cliffs.
“Their council-fire!” panted Mount. “See them sitting there!”
“Flatten out,” I whispered. “Follow me!” And I crawled straight towards the fire, where, ink-black against the ruddy conflagration, an enormous pine lay uprooted, smashed by lightning or tempest, I know not which.
Into the dense shadows of the debris I crawled, Mount and Sir George following, and lay there in the dark, staring at the forbidden circle where the secret mysteries of the False-Faces had already begun.
Three great fires roared, set at regular intervals in a cleared space, walled in by the huge black pines. At the foot of a tree sat a white man, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. The man was Walter Butler.
On his right sat Brant, wrapped in a crimson blanket, his face painted black and scarlet. On his left knelt a ghastly figure wearing a scowling wooden mask painted yellow and black.
Six separate groups of Indians surrounded the fires. They were sachems of the Six Nations, each sachem bearing in his hands the symbol of his nation and of his clan. All were wrapped in black-and-white blankets, and their faces were painted white above the upper lip as though they wore skin-tight masks.
Three young girls, naked save for the beaded clout, and painted scarlet from brow to ankle, beat the witch-drums tump-a-tump! tump-a-tump! while a fourth stood, erect as a vermilion statue, holding a chain belt woven in black-and-white wampum.
Behind these central figures the firelight fell on a solid semicircle of savages, crowns shaved, feathers aslant on the braided lock, and all oiled and painted for war.
A chief, wrapped in a blue blanket, stepped out into the circle swinging the carcass of a white dog by the hind-legs. He tied it to a black-birch sapling and left it dangling and turning round and round.
“This for the Keepers of the Fires,” he said, in Tuscarora, and flung the dog’s entrails into the middle fire.
Three young men sprang into the ring; each threw a log onto one of the fires.
“The name of the Holder of the Heavens may now be spoken and heard without offence,” said an old sachem, rising. “Hark! brothers. Harken, O you wise men and sachems! The False-Faces are laughing in the ravine where the water is being painted with firelight. I acquaint you that the False-Faces are coming up out of the ravine!”
The witch-drums boomed and rattled in the silence that followed his words. Far off I heard the sound of many voices laughing and talking all together; nearer, nearer, until, torch in hand, a hideously masked figure bounded into the circle, shaking out his bristling cloak of green reeds. Another followed, another, then three, then six, then a dozen, whirling their blazing torches; all horribly masked and smothered in coarse bunches of long, black hair, or cloaked with rustling river reeds.
“Ha! Ah-weh-hot-kwah!
Ha! Ah-weh-hah!
Ha! The crimson flower!
Ha! The flower!”
they chanted, thronging around the central fire; then falling back in a half-circle, torches lifted, while the masked figures banked solidly behind, chanted monotonously:
“Red fire burns on the maple!
Red fire burns in the pines.
The red flower to the maple!
The red death to the pines!”
At this two young girls, wearing white feathers and white weasel pelts dangling from shoulders to knees, entered the ring from opposite ends. Their arms were full of those spectral blossoms called “Ghost-corn,” and they strewed the flowers around the ring in silence. Then three maidens, glistening in cloaks of green pine-needles, slipped into the fire circle, throwing showers of violets and yellow moccasin flowers over the earth, calling out, amid laughter, “Moccasins for whippoorwills! Violets for the two heads entangled!” And, their arms empty of blossoms, they danced away, laughing while the False-Faces clattered their wooden masks and swung their torches till the flames whistled.
Then six sachems rose, casting off their black-and-white blankets, and each in turn planted branches of yellow willow, green willow, red osier, samphire, witch-hazel, spice-bush, and silver birch along the edge of the silent throng of savages.
“Until the night-sun comes be these your barriers, O Iroquois!” they chanted. And all answered:
“The Cherry-maid shall lock the gates to the People of the Morning! A-e! ja-e! Wild cherry and cherry that is red!”
Then came the Cherry-maid, a slender creature, hung from head to foot with thick bunches of wild cherries which danced and swung when she walked; and the False-Faces plucked the fruit from her as she passed around, laughing and tossing her black hair, until she had been despoiled and only the garment of sewed leaves hung from shoulder to ankle.
A green blanket was spread for her and she sat down under the branch of witch-hazel.
“The barrier is closed!” she said. “Kindle your coals from Onondaga, O you Keepers of the Central Fire!”
An aged sachem arose, and, lifting his withered arm, swept it eastward.
“The hearth is cleansed,” he said, feebly. “Brothers, attend! She-who-runs is coming. Listen!”
A dead silence fell over the throng, broken only by the rustle of the flames. After a moment, very far away in the forest, something sounded like the muffled gallop of an animal, paddy-pad! paddy-pad, coming nearer and ever nearer.
“It’s the Toad-woman!” gasped Mount in my ear. “It’s the Huron witch! Ah! My God! look there!”
Hopping, squattering, half scrambling, half bounding into the firelight came running a dumpy creature all fluttering with scarlet rags. A coarse mat of gray hair masked her visage; she pushed it aside and raised a dreadful face in the red fire-glow — a face so marred, so horrible, that I felt Mount shivering in the darkness beside me.
Through the hollow boom-boom of the witch-drums I heard a murmur swelling from the motionless crowd, like a rising wind in the pines. The hag heard it too; her mouth widened, splitting her ghastly visage. A single yellow fang caught the firelight.
“O you People of the Mountain! O you Onondagas!” she cried. “I am come to ask my Cayugas and my Senecas why they assemble here on the Kennyetto when their council-fire and yours should burn at Onondaga! O you Oneidas, People of the Standing Stone! I am come to ask my Senecas, my Mountain-snakes, why the Keepers of the Iroquois Fire have let it go out? O you of the three clans, let your ensigns rise and listen. I speak to the Wolf, the Turtle, and the Bear! And I call on the seven kindred clans of the Wolf, and the two kindred clans of the Turtle, and the four kindred clans of the Bear throughout the Six Nations of the Iroquois confederacy, throughout the clans of the Lenni-Lenape, throughout the Huron-Algonquins and their clans!
“And I call on the False-Faces of the Spirit-water and the Water of Light!”
She shook her scarlet rags and, raising her arm, hurled a hatchet into a painted post which stood behind the central fire.
“O you Cayugas, People of the Carrying-place! Strike that war-post with your hatchets or face the ghosts of your fathers in every trail!”
There was a deathly silence. Catrine Montour closed her horrible little eyes, threw back her head, and, marking time with her flat foot, began to chant.
She chanted the glory of the Long House; of the nations that drove the Eries, the Hurons, the Algonquins; of the nation that purged the earth of the Stonish Giants; of the nation that fought the dreadful battle of the Flying Heads. She sang the triumph of the confederacy, the bonds that linked the Elder Brothers and Elder Sons with the Esaurora, whose tongue was the sign of council unity.
And the circle of savages began to sway in rhythm to her chanting, answering back, calling their challenge from clan to clan; until, suddenly, the Senecas sprang to their feet and drove their hatchets into the war-post, challenging the Lenape with their own battle-cry:
“Yoagh! Yoagh! Ha-ha! Hagh! Yoagh!”
Then the Mohawks raised their war-yelp and struck the post; and the Cayugas answered with a terrible cry, striking the post, and calling out for the Next Youngest Son — meaning the Tuscaroras — to draw their hatchets.
“Have the Seminoles made women of you?” screamed Catrine Montour, menacing the sachems of the Tuscaroras with clinched fists.
“Let the Lenape tell you of women!” retorted a Tuscarora sachem, calmly.
At this opening of an old wound the Oneidas called on the Lenape to answer; but the Lenape sat sullen and silent, with flashing eyes fixed on the Mohawks.
Then Catrine Montour, lashing herself into a fury, screamed for vengeance on the people who had broken the chain-belt with the Long House. Raving and frothing, she burst into a torrent of prophecy, which silenced every tongue and held every Indian fascinated.
“Look!” whispered Mount. “The Oneidas are drawing their hatchets! The Tuscaroras will follow! The Iroquois will declare for war!”
Suddenly the False-Faces raised a ringing shout:
“Kree! Ha-ha! Kre-e!”
And a hideous creature in yellow advanced, rattling his yellow mask.
Catrine Montour, slavering and gasping, leaned against the painted war-post. Into the fire-ring came dancing a dozen girls, all strung with brilliant wampum, their bodies and limbs painted vermilion, sleeveless robes of wild iris hanging to their knees. With a shout they chanted:
“O False-Faces, prepare to do honor to the truth! She who Dreams has come from her three sisters — the Woman of the Thunder-cloud, the Woman of the Sounding Footsteps, the Woman of the Murmuring Skies!”
And, joining hands, they cried, sweetly: “Come, O Little Rosebud Woman! — Ke-neance-e-qua! O-gin-e-o-qua! — Woman of the Rose!”
And all together the False-Faces cried: “Welcome to Ta-lu-la, the leaping waters! Here is I-é-nia, the wanderer’s rest! Welcome, O Woman of the Rose!”
Then the grotesque throng of the False-Faces parted right and left; a lynx, its green eyes glowing, paced out into the firelight; and behind the tawny tree-cat came slowly a single figure — a young girl, bare of breast and arm; belted at the hips with silver, from which hung a straight breadth of doeskin to the instep of her bare feet. Her dark hair, parted, fell in two heavy braids to her knees; her lips were tinted with scarlet; her small ear-lobes and finger-tips were stained a faint rose-color.
In the breathless silence she raised her head. Sir George’s crushing grip clutched my arm, and he fell a-shuddering like a man with ague.
The figure before us was Magdalen Brant.
The lynx lay down at her feet and looked her steadily in the face.
Slowly she raised her rounded arm, opened her empty palm; then from space she seemed to pluck a rose, and I saw it there between her forefinger and her thumb.
A startled murmur broke from the throng. “Magic! She plucks blossoms from the empty air!”
