The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

“They only vouchsafed as much as I have told you in order to secure the conference,” said Raymond. “I gave them to understand that the time of our ‘beloved man’ was precious and not to be expended on trifles. But they held back the nature of the demand on you and the whereabouts of the parson.”

“I pray God, they have not harmed the poor old man!” exclaimed Captain Howard fervently, with a sudden revulsion of sentiment.

They both glanced toward the gate where the deputation stood under the archway. The sun was shining faintly and the wan light streamed through the portal. The shadows duplicated the number and the attitudes of the blanketed and feather-crested figures, all erect, and stark, and motionless, looking in blank silence at the conference of the two officers. The shadows had a meditative pose, a sort of pondering attention, and when suddenly the sun darkened and the shadows vanished, the effect was as if some dimly visible councillors had whispered to the Indians and were mysteriously resolved into the medium of the air.

They received Raymond on his return with their characteristic expressionless stolidity, and when the quarter-master appeared, hard on Captain Howard’s withdrawal, with the order for their lodgement in a cluster of huts just without the works, reserved for such occasions and such guests, they repaired thither without a word, and Raymond, looking after them from the gate, soon beheld the smoke ascending from their fires and the purveying out of the good cheer of the hospitality of Fort Prince George. He noticed a trail of blood on the snow, where the quarter-master’s men had laid down for a moment a quarter of beef, and in this he recognized a special compliment, for beef was a rarity with the Indians—venison and wild-fowl being their daily fare.

As the day waxed and waned he often cast his eye thither noting their movements. They came out in a body in the afternoon and repaired together to the trading-house, situated near the bank of the river, and occupied as a home as well as a store by the Scotch trader and his corps of assistants. That fire-water would be in circulation Raymond did not doubt, for to refuse it would work more disturbance than to set it forth in moderation. There were many regulations in hindrance of its sale, but rarely enforced, and he doubted if the trader would forego his profit even at the risk of the displeasure of the commandant. Some difficulty they evidently encountered, however, in procuring it. They all came back immediately and disappeared in their huts, and there was no sign of life in all the bleak landscape, save the vague smoke from the Indian town across the river and the dark wreaths from the fires of the delegation. The woods stood sheeted and white at the extremity of the space beyond the glacis, cleared to prevent too close an approach of an enemy and the firing into the fort from the branches of trees within range. The river was like rippled steel, its motion undiscerned on its surface, and its flow was silent. The sky was still gray and sombre; at one side of the fort the prongs and boughs of the abattis thrust darkly up through the snow that lodged among them.

Somewhat after the noon hour he noticed a party of Indians, vagrant-like, kindling a fire in a sheltered space in the lee of a rock and feeding on the carcass of a deer lately killed. The feast was long, but when it was ended they sat motionless, fully gorged, all in a row, squatting, huddled in their blankets and eying the fort, seemingly aimless as the time passed and the fire dwindled and died, neither sleeping nor making any sign. When the Indians of the delegation accommodated in the huts issued again and once more hopefully took their way to the trading-house, they must have seen, coming or going, this row of singular objects, like roosting birds, dark against the snow, silently contemplating with unknown, unknowable, savage thoughts the little fort. There was no suggestion of recognition or communication. Each band was for the other as if it did not exist. The delegation wended its way to the trading-house, and presently returned, and once more sought the emporium, and again repaired to the temporary quarters. The snow between the two points began to show a heavily trampled path.

That these migrations were not altogether without result became evident when one of the Indians, zig-zagging unsteadily in the rear, wandered from the beaten track, stumbled over the stump of a tree concealed by a drift, floundered unnoticed for a time, unable to rise, and at last lay there so still and so long that Raymond began to think he might freeze should he remain after the chill of the nightfall. But as the skies darkened two of the Indians came forth and dragged him into one of their huts, which were beginning to show as dull red sparks of light in the gathering dusk. And still beyond the abattis that semblance of birds of ill-omen was discernible against the expanse of white snow, as with their curious, racial, unimagined whim the vagrant savages sat in the cold and watched the fort. They did not stir when the sunset gun sounded and the flag fluttered gently down from the staff. The beat of drums shook the thick air, and the yearning sweetness of the bugle’s tone, as it sounded for retreat, found a responsive vibration even in the snow-muffled rocks. Again and again it was lovingly reiterated, and a tender resonance thrilled vaguely a long time down the dim cold reaches of the river.

Lights had sprung up in the windows. A great yellow flare gushed out from the open door of the mess-hall, and the leaping flames of the gigantic fireplace could be seen across the parade. The barracks were loud with jovial voices. Servants bearing trays of dishes were passing back and forth from the kitchen to the commandant’s quarters. The vigorous tramp of the march of soldiers made itself heard even in the snow as the corporal of the guard went out with the relief. A star showed in the dull gray sky that betokened in the higher atmosphere motion and shifting of clouds. A faint, irresolute, roseate tint lay above the purple slope to the west with a hesitant promise of a fair morrow. The light faded, the night slipped down, and the sentries began to challenge.

CHAPTER IV

It was the fashion of the time and place to be zealous in flattering the Indian’s sense of importance, and the hospitality of the fort was constantly asserted in plying the delegation with small presents. Shortly after nightfall the quarter-master-sergeant went out to the Indian huts with some tobacco and pipes, and tafia, and the compliments of the commandant. He returned with the somewhat significant information that they needed no tafia. A few, he stated, were sober, but saturnine and grave. Others were blind drunk. The most troublesome had reached the jovial stage. From where they lay recumbent they had caught the soldier by one leg and then by the other, tumbled him on the floor, and tripped him again and again as he sought to rise; finally, he made his way by scrambling on all fours out into the snow, and running for the gate with two or three of the staggering braves at his heels.