As the groups broke up, Butler landed in his canoe and came towards them. Passing Catharine and Tahmeroo with a hasty nod, he approached Queen Esther and whispered in her ear:
“The man I told you of is at the fort; they tell me he spoke with you—the missionary also is near. Queen Esther need not go beyond her own camp-fires to discover the instigator of this deed.”
The queen returned no answer, but a slight shiver of the tomahawk proved that his fiendish whisper had produced its effect, and Butler moved away. Though their conference lasted scarce a second, and their glances never once wandered towards the place where she stood, Catharine Montour felt that the first threads of some plot against her safety and life had been formed above the grave of the young warrior.
She laid her hand on Tahmaroo’s arm and entered the lodge, trembling so violently from weakness and nervous agitation that she was unable to stand. The girl sat down, chilled by her husband’s coldness, and awaiting his entrance with impatience, the more harassing from a mournful consciousness that she occupied no place in that reckless man’s heart.
After a little, Queen Esther collected her own band of warriors and left the island, retracing the path towards Wintermoot’s Fort. Butler and the chief, Gi-en-gwa-tah, held a conversation together upon the shore, during which the gloomy brow of the Indian grew constantly darker, and the fire in his eyes kindled into new ferocity. At length he turned away from the young man, and entering his wife’s tent sat down in sullen quiet.
Catharine Montour sat apart, with her eyes fixed in painful apprehension on the wrathful face of the chief. There was nothing of the fierce courage in her demeanor that had formerly characterized it; a most astonishing change had been gradually wrought in her mind and person since the day which witnessed her interview with the missionary, and more visibly after Butler’s return from Johnson Hall, with intelligence of Murray’s presence in America. The healthful roundness of her person had fallen away, and her features had sharpened and grown of a cold paleness, till they seemed as if chiselled from marble. Her cheeks were hollow, her high forehead was changed in its lofty and daring expression, a calm sadness had settled upon it, and her eyes, formerly fierce and keen almost as a wild eagle’s, were full of gentle endurance, at that moment disturbed by apprehension and fear, but by no sterner emotion.
Never in the days of her loftiest pride had Catharine Montour appeared so touchingly lovely, so gentle and so woman-like, as on that evening. She had been pleading for her people with the fierce chief—pleading that vengeance should not fall on the inhabitants of the neighboring valley in retribution for the death of a single brave. But the Shawnee had taken other counsellors to his bosom within the year. Since the fierce pride of Catharine’s character had passed away, her influence over him had decreased; while that of Butler was more thoroughly established, and Queen Esther had regained all the supremacy which for a season had yielded to the influence of his wife.
When almost as stern and unyielding as himself, Catharine might command—now she could but supplicate. The higher and better portion of her nature was, like her history, a sealed book to him; he could understand and respect strong physical courage, but the hidden springs which form the fearful machinery of a highly cultivated woman, making weakness in some things a virtue, and even fear itself lovely, he could not comprehend. A terrible suspicion had been instilled in his proud nature, and he mistook her utterly; his nobility of character, which was lifted above either savage or civilized cunning, had made him the dupe of a bad man. When moral goodness began to predominate in Catharine’s character, he mistook its meek and gentle manifestations for cowardice, and she became to him almost an object of contempt. There was no longer any power in her patient perseverance and persuasive voice to win his nature to mercy; the daring spirit which had formerly awed and controlled his had departed forever beneath the gradual deepening of repentance in her heart.
Tahmeroo joined earnestly with her mother’s pleading; but he answered only with abrupt monosyllables, and even with their voices in his ear his sinewy fingers worked eagerly about the haft of his knife, conveying an answer more appalling than the fiercest words could have given. There had been silence for some time. Catharine Montour sat with one hand shading her troubled brow, pondering on some means of preventing the bloodshed which she had so much cause to apprehend, and sorely repenting that she had ever instigated the Indians to take up arms in the dispute waged between England and her colonies. Tahmeroo stole away to a corner of the tent, and resting her cheek on the palm of her hand, listened for the footstep of her husband, hoping with all the faith of affection that he would second her mother’s plea for mercy; and nestling closer and closer down, as she thought of the mother and infants whom her father’s warriors had already murdered, and whose scalps hung with their long and sunny hair streaming over the door of the lodge.
“Oh, if Butler would but come in!” she murmured, while tears started to her eyes, brought there by her mother’s sorrow and the pain which his absence during the whole night had produced, increased by the lonely vigil which she had kept over the body of her relative—“He can do anything with the tribe.”