Murray stepped forward and stood before the queen. She looked up, neither in anger nor surprise, when he ventured thus to confront her:
“Madam,” he said, in a low tone, “I am informed that there is a clergyman in the neighborhood—will you not wait here until he can be summoned? At least, let your son be buried with the rites of your country’s faith.”
“The wilderness is my country,” she replied, in a voice the more startling from its iciness; “my son was an Indian brave; no mummeries of the pale faces shall desecrate his grave.”
She passed on without giving him an opportunity to reply, and the procession moved out of the fort, down to the bank of the river, where several canoes had been procured for the removal of the corpse.
Into the bark with the dead man stepped Tahmeroo and the old queen. The rowers bent to their task, and the canoe swept up the current. The Indian girl sat down by the body of her relative, but the old queen stood upright in the stern of the boat, the rising sun gilding the faded dun of her robes, and gleaming balefully over the murderous weapon in her hand.
A tent had been erected on the lower part of the beautiful island, and in the doorway stood Catharine Montour, watching the approach of the three canoes. The Indians, with their chief, were grouped about the shore, and as the canoes came in sight they struck up a death-song, in answer to the chant from the boats, prolonged by the women into a mournful wail which, accustomed as she was to such scenes, made Catharine’s blood run cold.
The boats came up, the old queen remained standing on the shore, while Tahmeroo sprang forward and was silently clasped to her mother’s bosom. It was the first time they had met since the girl’s flight in search of her husband, but there was no time given for joy, and, without a word, they stood side by side while the mournful ceremonies proceeded.
At the lower extremity of the island may be seen, to this day, a group of four willow trees, with their trunks distorted and bent, and when the wind is low the long branches sway to the ground with a sorrowful music, which sounds like a requiem prolonged from that funeral wail.
Under the shadow of those trees they dug the young chief’s grave and laid him therein, his face covered with war-paint and his most precious possessions by his side. Rifle and scalping-knife were placed reverently down, but when they searched for the tomahawk Queen Esther took her own decorated weapon from an Indian near by and flung it beside the body, standing erect as ever while the earth was thrown in and the grave filled quickly up.
When all was over, obeying her imperious motion, the tribe withdrew to a little distance, and she stood alone by the head of the grave, with her right hand stretched over it—once her lips moved faintly, then shut and locked themselves closer than before; but in that moment of fearful self-communion Queen Esther had registered a terrible vow.