“Take care!” answered Butler, fiercely; “you have indulged in these taunts more than is wholesome for you. At any rate, you are not hired to insult the king’s officers.”
“Hired!” said Brant; “hired!”
“Yes, hired; do your people bring in a scalp which is not paid for in so much gold or silver? It is a better business than trapping mink, and so you take it.”
Not another word passed between those two men, but their fierce eyes met as Butler turned upon his heel and left the tent, and that glance told of the mortal enmity which must henceforth exist between them. Still they slept under the same blanket for an hour or two before the day broke that morning.
CHAPTER XVII
THE LAKE BY STARLIGHT
A thousand stars shone upon Seneca Lake; clear stars that smiled goldenly alike on scenes of strife, such as we have left, and pictures of thrifty peace, to which we now turn.
On the shore lay Catharinestown, the Shawnee village, one of the most lovely spots in the world. All the land between the shore and that charming cluster of lodges was richly cultivated; fruit trees stood thick where the hemlocks and oaks had fallen. If a grove or thicket was left here and there, it was the result of Catharine Montour’s fine taste, for her gold had served to turn the wilderness on that lone shore into a paradise, and her own poetic spirit had shed beauty on everything she touched. Thus grape-arbors screened the humbler lodges, and bowers of peach-trees drooped over the unseemly wigwams. What Sir William Johnson had done for his estate in the Mohawk Valley, Catharine Montour, in less time, and with better taste, had accomplished at the head of Seneca Lake.
If she had achieved nothing more than this advance in civilization, the life of that unhappy woman had not been utterly thrown away since she came to the wilderness. With her benevolence, her gold, and those wonderful powers of persuasion, with which no woman was ever more richly endowed, she had softened many a savage heart, and won many a rough acre of forest into smiling culture. The large stone mansion which Queen Esther haughtily denominated her palace was by far the most imposing building in the settlement. But nearer the brink of the lake, and sheltered by a grove of sugar-maples, was a smaller lodge of hewn logs, on a foundation of stone, with a peaked roof and deep windows, neatly shingled and glazed. The walls were covered on one end by a massive trumpet vine, that crept half over the roof, where its burning flowers lay in great clusters through all the late summer weeks. Wild honeysuckles, sweet-brier, and forest-ivy crept over the front, and a majestic tulip-tree sheltered it with a wealth of great golden blossoms when these were out of flower. Thus, with the rude logs clothed with foliage, the windows brilliant with pure glass, and no uncouth feature visible, Catharine Montour’s residence was far more beautiful than that of her fiercer mother-in-law, and a stranger might well have marvelled to see anything so tasteful in the neighborhood of an Indian settlement.
From this dwelling, Catharine Montour and her daughter looked out upon the lake on that starlit night. Queen Esther and the chief had each gone forth with a detachment of warriors to their separate warpaths. Thus, but a few of the tribe remained at home, and these were under Catharine’s direct control, for the younger brother of Gi-en-gwa-tah had accompanied the chief, and no meaner authority was acknowledged in the tribe.
It was a pleasant scene upon which Catharine gazed. A hundred canoes, each with a burning torch at its prow, lay, as it were, sleeping upon the waters. At her command, the warriors left behind by her mother-in-law and husband had gone out to spear salmon, and she was watching the picturesque effect of the canoes on the water, with a gentle thrill of admiration of which her heart had been incapable a few months before. Tahmeroo was at her feet, resting against her lap, and looking—oh, how wistfully!—far beyond the group of canoes with their flaming lights, that fell like meteors on the waters. Her heart, poor girl, was full of wild longings and those vague fears which always follow want of trust in a beloved object.