After a few weeks of desperate struggle, Butler gave up all hopes of maintaining the rights he had so haughtily assumed, and departed abruptly for America, leaving his wife at Ashton, for a time unconscious of his desertion.
But when she knew that he was gone, no wild bird, torn from its mate, ever became so restless in its thralldom as she did in that princely mansion. She pined without ceasing, and, refusing all food, sat down with her face shrouded, after the manner of her race, and refused to be comforted.
In vain both Varnham and Mary strove to persuade the unhappy young creature to stay with them, and share the wealth which Catharine Montour’s violent death had undoubtedly prevented her dividing. The forest girl could not be made to comprehend the value of property. As for gold, she scarcely knew its use, or that the beautiful objects with which her mother had been surrounded, did not come naturally to those whom the Great Spirit favored, as leaves grew upon the summer boughs. She pined for the presence of her husband, and smiled with scorn when any one sought to console her for his absence with gold which she did not want and lands that bore blossoms and grain, rather than the mighty old forest trees, under which her father’s warriors had hunted all their lives.
At last a strange belief came upon her that Butler had not intentionally left her behind. She had known him called away suddenly to battle, when he had no time to warn her. Was not this occasion urgent, as those had been? She would not doubt it, in the faith of her great love she trusted in him still. One morning, when Mary went up to her sister’s chamber, hoping to comfort her, she found the room empty. Tahmeroo had left Ashton in the night, and followed after her husband.
Across the ocean she came into her own beautiful, wild country. She was told that Butler might be found in the Mohawk Valley, leading his Indians on to battle again; and to that point she bent her way. Wherever a fight had been, or a body of savages gathered, she came in breathless haste, searching for the man who had cast her off.
In October, 1781, the poor Indian wife found herself on the banks of a creek, deep in the forest, with an escort of two or three Indians who had been detached from their companions, and were glad to take charge of their chief’s daughter.
There had been a skirmish on this stream during the day, and from some of the fugitives Tahmeroo had learned that her husband was in command of the Indians. Without a thought of the dangers she was sure to encounter in a running fight of this kind, the young wife kept on her route, led forward by scattering shots, till the woods, now dun with withered foliage, were filled with the cold gloom of the coming night. As she moved on, the wind rose, filling the air with dead leaves, and above that came the rush and flap of wings. The patter of stealthy feet, and the low growl of wolves, disturbed by the approach of human beings.
A little hollow was before her, full of shadows, and with a black cloud of crows gathering over it.
Tahmeroo rode to the brink of the hollow, and looked down, stooping over the bent neck of her horse. From the side of a rock, around which a little stream of water was creeping, three ravens soared upwards, flapping their heavy wings, and roosting on a tree-branch sullenly eyed her approach. She did not heed them, for by the rock was a mass of blackness more terrible than the ravenous birds to her. She dropped slowly down the side of her horse, crept across the rock and bent over.
When her escort reached her, she lay with her face downward, and her eyes open, as they had looked on the dead body of her husband, but those eyes saw nothing, and when the savages lifted her up, she felt nothing—all the world was dark to her then.