Chapter 42 - Wood Rangers: The Trappers of Sonora by Mayne Reid
The Blackbird
Death seemed to the eyes of the Indians to reign over the island—for the hunters held even their breath—and yet they advanced with the utmost care.
The foremost man, who was the “Blackbird” himself, had reached a place where the water began to be deep, as the last man was just leaving the bank. But just as Fabian was about to take aim against the chief, to the great regret of Pepé, the “Blackbird,” either fearful of danger, or because a ray of moonlight gleaming on the rifles told him his enemy still lived dived suddenly under the water.
“Fire!” cried Bois-Rose, and immediately the last Indian of the file fell to rise no more, and two others appeared struggling in the water, and were quickly borne off by the stream. Pepé and Bois-Rose then threw their rifles behind them as agreed upon, for Fabian to reload, while they themselves stood upon the bank, knives in hand.
“The Apaches are still seven,” shouted Bois-Rose, in a voice of thunder, anxious to finish the struggle, and feeling all his hatred of the Indians awakened within him, “will they dare to come and take the scalps of the whites?”
But the disappearance of their chief and the death of their comrades had disconcerted the Indians; they did not fly, but they remained undecided and motionless, as black rocks bathed by the shining waters of the river.
“Can the red warriors only scalp dead bodies?” added Pepé with a contemptuous laugh. “Are the Apaches like vultures who only attack the dead? Advance then, dogs, vultures, women without courage!” shouted he, at the sight of their enemies, who were now rapidly regaining the bank. Suddenly, however, he noticed a body floating on its back, whose bright eyes showed that it was not a corpse, as the extended arms and motionless body seemed to indicate.
“Don Fabian, my rifle! there is the ‘Blackbird’ pretending to be dead and floating down the stream.”
Pepé took the rifle from Fabian, and aimed at the floating body, but not a muscle stirred. The hunter lowered his rifle. “I was wrong,” said he, aloud, “the white men do not, like the Indians, waste their powder on dead bodies.”
The body still floated, with outspread legs and extended arms. Pepé again raised his rifle and again lowered it. Then, when he thought that he had paid off anguish for anguish to the Indian chief, he fired, and the body floated no longer.
“Have you killed him?” asked Bois-Rose.
“No, I only wished to break his shoulder bone, that he may always have cause to remember the shudder he gave, and the treason he proposed to me. If he were dead, he would still float.”
“You might have done better to have killed him. But what is to be done now? I hoped to finish with these demons, and now our work is still to be done. We cannot cross the river to attack them.”
“It is the best thing we can do.”
“With Fabian, I cannot decide to do it, or I should be now on the bank opposite, where you know as well as I do they still are breathing their infernal vengeance.”
The Spaniard shrugged his shoulders with stoical resignation.
“Doubtless,” said he, “but we must decide either to fly or to stay.”
“Carramba!” continued he, “if we two were alone we would gain the opposite bank in a minute; the seven who are left would catch us no doubt, but we should come out of it, as we have out of more difficult situations.”
“It would be better than to stay here like foxes in their hole.”
“I agree: but Fabian! and the unlucky scalped man, whom we cannot abandon thus to the mercy of the wretches who have already treated him so cruelly. Let us wait at least until the moon has set, and darkness comes on.”
And the old man hung his head with an air of discouragement—which made a painful impression on the Spaniard—raising it only to glance anxiously at the sky; where the moon held on her ordinary course over the starry blue.
“So be it,” said Pepé; “but, stay! we killed first five Indians, then three, that makes eight; there should have been twelve left; why did we only count ten in the water? Depend upon it, the Blackbird has sent the two others to seek for reinforcements.”
“It is possible: to remain here or to fly are both terrible.”
For some time the hunters thus continued to deliberate; meanwhile the moonbeams began to fall more obliquely, and already a part of the tops of the trees were in shadow. More than an hour had elapsed since the attempt of the Indians, and Pepé, less absorbed than Bois-Rose, was watching anxiously.
“That cursed moon will never go down,” said he, “and it seems to me that I hear something like the noise of feet in the water; the buffaloes do not come down to drink at this time of night.”
So saying, he rose and leaning right and left, looked up and down the stream, but on each side extended an impenetrable veil of fog. The coolness of the American nights which succeeds the burning heat of the day, condenses thus in thick clouds the exhalations of the ground, and of the waters heated by the sun.
“I can see nothing but fog,” said he.
Little by little the vague sounds died away, and the air recovered its habitual cairn and silence. The moon was fast going down, and all nature seemed sleeping, when the occupants of the island started up in terror.
From both sides of the river rose shouts so piercing that the banks echoed them long after the mouths that uttered them were closed. Henceforth flight was impossible; the Indians had encompassed the island.
“The moon may go down now,” cried Pepé with rage. “Ah! with reason I feared the two absent men, and the noises that I heard; it was the Indians who were gaining the opposite bank. Who knows how many enemies we have around us now?”
“What matter,” replied Bois-Rose gloomily, “whether there are one hundred vultures to tear our bodies, or a hundred Indians to howl round us when we are dead?”
“It is true that the number matters little in such circumstances, but it will be a day of triumph for them.”
“Are you going to sing your death-song like them, who, when tied to the stake, recall the number of scalps they have taken?”
“And why not? it is a very good custom, it helps one to die like a hero, and to remember that you have lived like a man.”
“Let us rather try to die like Christians,” replied Bois-Rose.
Then drawing Fabian towards him, he said:
“I scarcely know, my beloved child, what I had dreamed of for you; I am half savage and half civilised, and my dreams partook of both. Sometimes I wished to restore you to the honours of this world—to your honours, your titles—and to add to them all the treasures of the Golden Valley. Then I dreamed only of the splendour of the desert, and its majestic harmonies, which lull a man to his rest, and entrance him at his waking. But I can truly say that the dominant idea in my mind was that of never quitting you. Must that be accomplished in death? So young, so brave, so handsome, must you meet the same fate as a man who would soon be useless in the world?”
“Who would love me when you were gone?” replied Fabian, in a voice which their terrible situation deprived neither of its sweetness nor firmness. “Before I met you, the grave had closed upon all I loved, and the sole living being who could replace them was—you. What have I to regret in this world?”
“The future, my child; the future into which youth longs to plunge, like the thirsty stag into the lake.”
Distant firing now interrupted the melancholy reflections of the old hunter; the Indians were attacking the camp of Don Estevan. The reader knows the result.
Suddenly they heard a voice from the bank, saying, “Let the white men open their ears!”
“It is the ‘Blackbird’ again,” cried Pepé. It was indeed he, supported by two Indians.
“Why should they open their ears?” answered Pepé.
“The whites laugh at the menaces of the ‘Blackbird,’ and despise his promises.”
“Good!” said the Indian; “the whites are brave, and they will need all their bravery. The white men of the south are being attacked now; why are the men of the north not against them?”
“Because you are a bird of doleful plumage! because lions do not hunt with jackals, for jackals can only howl while the lion devours. Apply the compliment; it is a fine flower of Indian rhetoric,” cried Pepé, exasperated.
“Good! the whites are like the conquered Indians, insulting his conqueror. But the eagle laughs at the words of the mocking-bird, and it is not to him that the eagle deigns to address himself.”
“To whom then?” cried Pepé.
“To the giant, his brother, the eagle of the snowy mountains, who disdains to imitate the language of other birds.”
“What do you want of him?” said Bois-Rose.
“The Indian would hear the northern warrior ask for life,” replied the Blackbird.
“I have a different demand to make,” said the Canadian.
“I listen,” replied the Indian.
“If you will swear on the honour of a warrior, and on your father’s bones, that you will spare my companions’ lives, I shall cross the river alone without arms, and bring you my scalp on my head. That will tempt him,” added Bois-Rose.
“Are you mad, Bois-Rose?” cried Pepé.
Fabian flew towards the Canadian: “At the first step you make towards the Indian, I shall kill you,” cried he.
The old hunter felt his heart melt at the sound of the two voices that he loved so much. A short silence followed, then came the answer from the bank.
“The Blackbird wishes the white man to ask for life, and he asks for death. My wish is this, let the white man of the north quit his companions, and I swear on my father’s bones, that his life shall be saved, but his alone; the other three must die.”
Bois-Rose disdained to reply to this offer, and the Indian chief waited vainly for a refusal or an acceptance. Then he continued: “Until the hour of their death, the whites hear the voice of the Indian chief for the last time. My warriors surround the island and the river. Indian blood has been spilled and must be revenged; white blood must flow. But the Indian does not wish for this blood warmed by the ardour of the combat, he wishes for it frozen by terror, impoverished by hunger. He will take the whites living; then, when he holds them in his clutches, when they are like hungry dogs howling after a bone, he will see what men are like after fear and privation; he will make of their skin a saddle for his war-horse, and each of their scalps shall be suspended to his saddle, as a trophy of vengeance. My warriors shall surround the island for fifteen days and nights if necessary, in order to make capture of the white men.”
After these terrible menaces the Indian disappeared behind the trees. But Pepé not willing that he should believe he had intimidated them, cried as coldly as anger would permit, “Dog, who can do nothing but bark, the whites despise your vain bravados. Jackal, unclean polecat, I despise you—I—I”—but rage prevented him from saying more, and he finished off by a gesture of contempt; then with a loud laugh he sat down, satisfied at having had the last word. As for Bois-Rose he saw in it all only the refusal of his heroic sacrifice.
“Ah!” sighed the generous old man, “I could have arranged it all; now it is too late.”
The moon had gone down; the sound of distant firing had ceased, and the darkness made the three friends feel still more forcibly how easy it would have been to gain the opposite bank, carrying in their arms the wounded man. He, insensible to all that was passing, still slept heavily.
“Thus,” said Pepé, first breaking silence, “we have fifteen days to live; it is true we have not much provision, but carramba! we shall fish for food and for amusement.”
“Let us think,” said Bois-Rose, “of employing usefully the hours before daylight.”
“In what?”
“Parbleu! in escaping!”
“But how?”
“That is the question. You can swim, Fabian?”
“How else should. I have escaped from the Salto de Agua?”
“True! I believe that fear confuses my brain. Well! it would not be impossible, perhaps, to dig a hole in the middle of this island, and to slip through this opening into the water. The night is so dark, that if the Indians do not see us throw ourselves into the water, we might gain a place some way off with safety. Stay, I shall try an experiment.” So saying, he detached, with some trouble, one of the trunks from the little island; and its knotty end looked not unlike a human head. This he placed carefully on the water, and soon it floated gently down the stream. The three friends followed its course anxiously; then, when it had disappeared, Bois-Rose said:
“You see, a prudent swimmer might pass in the same manner; not an Indian has noticed it.”
“That is true; but who knows that their eyes cannot distinguish a man from a piece of wood?” said Pepé. “Besides, we have with with us a man who cannot swim.”
“Whom?”
The Spaniard pointed to the wounded man; who groaned in his sleep, as though his guardian angel warned him that there was a question of abandoning him to his enemies.
“What matter?” said Bois-Rose; “is his life worth that of the last of the Medianas?”
“No,” replied the Spaniard; “and I, who half wanted a short time ago to abandon the poor wretch, think now I would be cowardly.”
“Perhaps,” added Fabian, “he has children, who would weep for their father.”
“It would be a bad action, and would bring us ill luck,” added Pepé.
All the superstitious tenderness of the Canadian awoke at these words, and he said—
“Well, then, Fabian, you are a good swimmer, follow this plan: Pepé and I will stay here and guard this man, and if we die here, it will be in the discharge of our duty, and with the joy of knowing you to be safe.”
But Fabian shook his head.
“I care not for life without you; I shall stay,” said he.
“What can be done then?”
“Let us think,” said Pepé.
But it was unluckily one of those cases in which all human resources are vain, for it was one of those desperate situations from which a higher power alone could extricate them. In vain the fog thickened and the night grew darker; the resolution not to abandon the wounded man opposed an insurmountable obstacle to their escape, and before long the fires lighted by the Indians along each bank, threw a red light over the stream, and rendered this plan impracticable. Except for these fires, the most complete calm reigned, for no enemy was visible, no human voice troubled the silence of the night. However, the fog grew more and more dense, the stream disappeared from view, and even the fires looked only like pale and indistinct lights under the shadowy outline of the trees.