Chapter Seventy Three.
Helpless and hopeless.
“O God!”
Charles Clancy thus calls upon his Maker. Hitherto sustained by indignation, now that the tormentor has left him, the horror of his situation, striking into his soul in all its dread reality, wrings from him the prayerful apostrophe.
A groan follows, as his glance goes searching over the plain. For there is nothing to gladden it. His view commands the half of a circle—a great circle such as surrounds you upon the sea; though not as seen from the deck of a ship, but by one lying along the thwarts of a boat, or afloat upon a raft.
The robbers have ridden out of sight, and he knows they will not return. They have left him to die a lingering death, almost as if entombed alive. Perhaps better he were enclosed in a coffin; for then his sufferings would sooner end.
He has not the slightest hope of being succoured. There is no likelihood of human creature coming that way. It is a sterile waste, without game to tempt the hunter, and though a trail runs across it, Borlasse, with fiendish forethought, has placed him so far from this, that no one travelling along it could possibly see him. He can just descry the lone cottonwood afar off, outlined against the horizon like a ship at sea. It is the only tree in sight; elsewhere not even a bush to break the drear monotony of the desert.
He thinks of Simeon Woodley, Ned Heywood, and those who may pursue the plunderers of the settlement. But with hopes too faint to be worth entertaining. For he has been witness to the precautions taken by the robbers to blind their trail, and knows that the most skilled tracker cannot discover it. Chance alone could guide the pursuit in that direction, if pursuit there is to be. But even this is doubtful. For Colonel Armstrong having recovered his daughters, and only some silver stolen, the settlers may be loath to take after the thieves, or postpone following them to some future time. Clancy has no knowledge of the sanguinary drama that has been enacted at the Mission, else he would not reason thus. Ignorant of it, he can only be sure, that Sime Woodley and Ned Heywood will come in quest of, but without much likelihood of their finding them. No doubt they will search for days, weeks, months, if need be; and in time, but too late, discover—what? His head—
“Ha!”
His painful reflections are interrupted by that which but intensifies their painfulness: a shadow he sees flitting across the plain.
His eyes do not follow it, but, directed upward, go in search of the thing which is causing it. “A vulture!”
The foul bird is soaring aloft, its black body and broad expanded wings outlined against the azure sky. For this is again clear, the clouds and threatening storm having drifted off without bursting. And now, while with woe in his look he watches the swooping bird, well knowing the sinister significance of its flight, he sees another, and another, and yet another, till the firmament seems filled with them.
Again he groans out, “O God!”
A new agony threatens, a new horror is upon him. Vain the attempt to depict his feelings, as he regards the movements of the vultures. They are as those of one swimming in the sea amidst sharks. For, although the birds do not yet fly towards him, he knows they will soon be there. He sees them sailing in spiral curves, descending at each gyration, slowly but surely stooping lower, and coming nearer. He can hear the swish of their wings, like the sough of an approaching storm, with now and then a raucous utterance from their throats—the signal of some leader directing the preliminaries of the attack, soon to take place.
At length they are so close, he can see the ruff around their naked necks, bristled up; the skin reddened as with rage, and their beaks, stained with bloody flesh of some other banquet, getting ready to feast upon his. Soon he will feel them striking against his skull, pecking out his eyes. O, heavens! can horror be felt further?
Not by him. It adds not to his, when he perceives that the birds threatening to assail him will be assisted by beasts. For he now sees this. Mingling with the shadows flitting over the earth, are things more substantial—the bodies of wolves. As with the vultures, at first only one; then two or three; their number at each instant increasing, till a whole pack of the predatory brutes have gathered upon the ground.
Less silent than their winged allies—their competitors, if it come to a repast. For the coyote is a noisy creature, and those now assembling around Clancy’s head—a sight strange to them—give out their triple bark, with its prolonged whine, in sound so lugubrious, that, instead of preparing for attack, one might fancy them wailing a defeat.
Clancy has often heard that cry, and well comprehends its meaning. It seems his death-dirge. While listening to it no wonder he again calls upon God—invokes Heaven to help him!