The amulet: A novel

by Charles Egbert Craddock

The two officers approached each other and the sentinel, losing interest in their unheard, whispered conference as Mervyn gave the parole, turned his eyes to the wild waste without. He was startled to see vaguely, dubiously, in some vagrant, far glimmer of the flare from the guard-house door or the swinging flicker of the lantern carried by one of the two men who, with a non-commissioned officer, was preparing to accompany the officer of the day on his rounds, a strange illusion, as close as the parapet of the covered way. There were dark figures against the snow, crouching dog-like or wolf-like—and yet he knew them to be Indians. They were gazing at the illuminated military manœuvre set in the flare of yellow light in the midst of the dark night. The sentinel could not be sure of their number, their distance. He cried out harshly—“Who goes there! The guard! The guard!”

In one moment the guard, put to double-quick, was under the archway of the gate. A detail was sent out in swift reconnaissance with the corporal’s lantern and returned without result. There was naught to be found. The barren wintry expanse of the glacis was vacant. Nothing stirred save a wind blowing in infrequent, freakish gusts that struck the snow with sudden flaws and sent a shower of stinging icy particles upward into the chill red faces as the men rushed hither and thither. The huts of the Indians were silent, dark, the inmates apparently locked in slumber. Bethinking himself of the untoward possibilities of a sudden tumult among the Indians in the confusion and darkness,—whether they might interpret the demonstration from the fort as aggression or consternation,—Raymond on this account ordered the party to return silently to Fort Prince George through the sally-port. The same idea had occurred to Mervyn, for when the ensign rejoined him at the main gate he was administering a sharp rebuke to the sentry for raising a false alarm. It seemed, however, to Raymond that it left much to the discretion of an ordinary soldier to permit him to discriminate between inaction and the reference to his officer’s judgment of such a demonstration as he had described.

“You saw nothing,” Mervyn said, severely. “You are either demented, or drunk, or dreaming.”

He turned away, then suddenly stepped back to admonish the sentry to raise no such disturbance when Robin Dorn should return from the trader’s.

“Don’t mistake the drummer-boy for an army with banners!” he said, scornfully. And having concluded his visit to the guard he once more flung off and disappeared in the darkness of the parade. Raymond lingered after ordering the guard within. Perhaps it was a bit of meddlesome jealousy, perhaps a resentment of Mervyn’s manner, which seemed unwontedly high-handed to-night, although there had been naught but the official business between them, perhaps he thought it dangerous to curb so severely the zeal of a sentry under these peculiar circumstances, but he plied the soldier with questions and considerately weighed his contradictory statements and seemed sympathetically aware that these inconsistencies were not intentional perversions of fact, but the impossibility of being sure of aught when all was invested with mystery. Raymond’s mind bent to the conviction that there was no admixture of fancy in the sentry’s story. Whatever was the intent of the demonstration on the part of the Indians,—whether to rush the gate and overpower the guard, or merely the malicious joy in creating an alarm and a fierce relish of being an object of terror, or even, simpler still, a childish curiosity in the military routine of going the rounds—it was certainly a genuine fact and no vision, drowsy or drunken.

It had latterly been the habit to leave the gates open for the sheer sake of convenience, after the foolhardy fashion of the frontier. Strange as it may seem in view of the universal distrust of the good faith of the Indians, the universal conviction of their inherent racial treachery, the repeated demonstration of their repudiation of the sanctities of all pledges, many a massacre found its opportunity in the heedless disregard of the commonest precautions. Raymond now ordered the gates to be closed and barred, and instructed the sentinel to send Robin Dorn for admittance to the sally-port beneath the rampart. He repaired to the guard-house, and, still doubtful, he ordered the corporal with two men to attend him, stating to the sergeant, as next in rank, his intention to reconnoitre from the northern ramparts and the slope of the abattis, to discover if the curious birds of ill-omen still crouched at gaze or whither they had betaken themselves and with what intent. It was understood that he would return in a quarter of an hour, and quiet settled down on the precincts of the guard-room.

Robin Dorn was of that unclassified species, too tall, too long of limb, too stalwart of build for a boy, and yet too young, too raw, too inconsequent and unreasoning for a man. The simple phrase, “hobble-de-hoy,” might adequately describe his estate in life. His errand had been to secure from the trading-house the drum-sticks of a new drum to replace one with a burst cylinder, which the commandant had ordered in Charlestown, through the trader. The instrument had been duly delivered, but the drum-sticks had been overlooked. Upon this discovery the drummer had requested leave to repair to the trader’s in the hope that the sticks were among the smaller commodities of the cargo, just arrived by pack-train, the convoy, indeed, under whose protection the ladies of the captain’s household and he himself had travelled. The confusion incident upon opening a variety of goods which had been packed with the sole effort to compress as much as possible in the smallest compass was not a concomitant of speed. Robin’s efforts to tousle and tumble through the whole stock in his search were sternly repressed by the trader’s assistants, and even the merchant now and then admonished him with—“Wow, pig, take your foot out the trough!” He was fain at last to sit on a keg of gun-powder, and watch the unrolling of every bit of merchandise, solemnly disposed in its place on the shelf before the next article was handled. Now and again a cheerful,—“Heigh, sirs! Here they are!” called out in the unrolling of a piece of stroud cloth, wherein was folded wooden spoons, or a dozen table-knives, or a long pistol, heralded a disappointment which Robin manifested so dolorously that the trader was fain to mutter—“Bide a wee, Robbie, bide a wee—” and offer a sup of liquid consolation. So long the search continued that the new goods were all sorted and fairly ranged upon the shelves before the drum-sticks revealed themselves, stuffed separately in a pair of leggings which they inadequately filled out, and the night had long ago descended upon the snowy environs of the little fort.

“If the sentry winna pass me ye’ll hae to gie me a bit sup o’ parritch an’ my bed the nicht,” he stipulated, modestly, in reply to the profuse apologies and commiseration of his host. “I kenna the countersign, an’ ye wad na hae me shake down wi’ them Injuns in the huts yon. I mis-doubt they hae fleas, though ’tis winter.”

“Dinna ye gae nigh ’em, bairn,” the kindly trader seriously admonished him. “Fleas is not the way thae dour savages will let your blood. Gif the sentry winna let ye come ben e’en turn back, callant;—but if ye are thinkin’ they winna sort ye for it, ye are welcome to stay the nicht here, without seeking to win the fort.”

“Na—na—I’m fair fain to hear how these birkies will march to the tune of ‘Dumbarton’s Drums’!”