At daybreak the missionary, having distributed his last morsel of food, bade the unhappy wanderers farewell, and returned, with a heavy heart, to the valley.
At last the Tories, accompanied by their leaders and a greater part of the Indians under the command of Gi-en-gwa-tah and Queen Esther, marched out of the valley. Mingling with the mournful savageness of the scene there was much that was droll and ludicrous. The squaws who followed the retiring invaders were decked with the spoils taken from the burning houses, the more fortunate wearing five or six silk and chintz dresses, one over the other, and above these dropped the scalps taken from their victims, which served as hideous fringes to their new costume. Many of them were mounted on stolen horses, and one old woman rode proudly in advance upon the identical side-saddle which had so long been the chief treasure of Aunt Polly’s mansion; upon her head were perched half a dozen head-dresses of every size and hue, the old maid’s immense bonnet crowning the whole, its yellow streamers floating out on the wind with every movement of the delighted wearer.
Catharine Montour, still in the dull delirium of fever, was carried on a litter in their midst, but neither the chief nor Queen Esther ever approached it. The old queen, from time to time, cast glances of malignant passion towards the unconscious victim of their cruelty, while Gi-en-gwa-tah rode on in stern impassibility.
Tahmeroo rode by her husband’s side, and as he smiled upon her, she forgot all the suffering and horror of the past days, looking up into his face with proud affection, and bending to catch each passing glance. Butler treated her kindly now, and her love for him had recovered its first bewildering intensity; but at length her presence wearied him—he wished to converse with the chief and Queen Esther. Before the discovery of the secret which made her so precious to him, Butler would have sent her rudely away; but now he employed art instead of cruelty.
“You ought not to leave your mother so long,” he said; “she may rouse up and require something.”
“I have been cruel,” said Tahmeroo, with a pang of self-reproach. “Will you ride back with me?”
“I will join you very soon, my red bird; but now I must talk with the chief.”
Tahmeroo looked disappointed, but he patted her cheek and smiled so kindly, that she would have gone to the ends of the earth at his bidding. Without a word she rode back to the side of her mother’s litter, and kept her station there.
Butler’s eyes followed her, and his glance rested with malignant cruelty upon the litter.
“They say she is better,” he muttered; “why didn’t she die, and make an end of it? Then Tahmeroo would have been Lady Granby, and I an English landholder, with an income that dukes might envy. She shall not stand between me and this fortune; I’ll pay her off, too, for all her scorn and hatred!”