“Nom de Dieu!” cried de Sancerre, placing his hand upon his rapier, “this savage sport must end!” In another instant the reckless Frenchman, carving his way to death, would have challenged an army, single-handed, had not Katonah, reeling from the horror of her brother’s death, fallen senseless into his reluctant arms.
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH THE GRAY FRIAR DONS THE LIVERY OF
SATAN
“It was a miracle! A voice from heaven whispered in my ear, and, turning back, I left de Tonti, angry, threatening, to take his way alone. To give my Chatémuc the words of absolution at the last, the Virgin Mother led me by the hand. And now in Paradise he wears a martyr’s crown. The saints be praised!”
The earnest eyes of the Franciscan were turned upward in an ecstasy of gratitude and devotion. Seated upon a wooden bench by the gray friar’s side, de Sancerre listened musingly to Membré’s account of the Italian captain’s attempt to entice him back to de la Salle’s camp before he had learned the outcome of Chatémuc’s effort to extinguish a flame from hell.
Noco, well understanding the present temper of the sun-worshipping priesthood, and acting upon a command given to her by the Great Sun himself, had managed, with considerable difficulty, to persuade de Sancerre and Katonah to secrete themselves for a time in her unpretentious but not comfortless hut. Her rescue of Zenobe Membré from his threatening environment at the martyred Mohican’s side had been, she flattered herself, a triumph of adroitness, and she sat in a dark corner of the room at this moment whispering to her gigantic grandson. Cabanacte, warm praise of her own cleverness. She had saved the Franciscan from the immediate vengeance of the sun-worshipping priests by suggesting to the latter that the summary execution of the gray-frocked singer of unorthodox chants might arouse the anger of Coyocop, whose coming, prophecy had told them, was connected, in some occult way, with the predicted advent of the white-faced envoys from the moon. Sated with the cruel entertainment vouchsafed to them by the death-twitchings of the stoical Chatémuc, the white-robed guardians of the sun-temple had permitted the Franciscan to depart with Noco, although the latter well knew that thenceforth every movement which she and her gray-garbed companion made would be noted by the dark eyes of fanatical spies.
The room in which the refugees—for such the antagonism of the dominant sun-priests had made them—had found shelter for the night was a picturesque apartment, fifteen feet in length and breadth, and lighted by flickering gleams from the embers of a fire of walnut-wood. Upon a bed of plaited reeds, resting upon a wooden frame two feet high, lay Katonah, grief-stricken, motionless, making no sound. Heart-broken at her brother’s awful fate, the Indian maiden nursed her sorrow in loneliness and silence. In vain had the good friar attempted to console her for her irreparable loss by painting, in eloquent words, the rewards awaiting a martyr who died for love of Mother Church. Katonah was too recent a convert to the Franciscan’s faith to realize and rejoice in the unseen glories of her brother’s heroic self-sacrifice. She had listened to Membré’s soothing words with a grateful smile upon her strong, symmetrical face, but evident relief had come to her when the gray-frocked enthusiast had retired from her bedside to seat himself beside de Sancerre in the centre of the room.
“Pardieu!” muttered the Frenchman, casting a searching glance at the corner in which Noco and Cabanacte were engaged in earnest, low-voiced converse, “these people show outward signs of enlightenment, but they have a most brutal way of putting a man to death. The savage delight which those white-robed devils seemed to take in basting poor Chatémuc made my sword-point itch. ’Twas well for me Saint Maturin was kind. He checked my folly just in time! But listen, father! The martyrdom of Chatémuc must now suffice. Those imps of hell will have your life, anon, unless you foil their craft by craft. I think I hear their stealthy footsteps menacing these sun-cooked walls and making challenge of our god, the moon.”
The Franciscan put up his hand to enforce silence that he might listen to the furtive footfalls outside the hut. At that moment Noco and her grandson stole toward the centre of the room. The stalwart sun-worshipper, who now looked upon de Sancerre as a supernatural being worthy of the most reverential treatment, towered aloft in the narrow chamber like a keen-eyed, sun-burnt ogre who had lured a number of unlucky dwarfs to his den to have his grim way with them. Stretching his long body at full length before the sputtering fire, Cabanacte turned his admiring gaze toward the troubled face of his fleet-footed conqueror and waited for Noco to put into words the thoughts which fretted him.
“You—all of you—must leave here to-night, señor,” said the old woman in a guttural whisper. “The Brother of the Sun is your friend, but the priests of the temple look with suspicion upon you and the gray chanter. They would not dare to defy openly the King, but they have tracked you to this hiding-place and will work you mischief if they may.”
“But, señora, I fear them not!” exclaimed de Sancerre, drawing his rapier and allowing the fire-flashes to gleam along the steel. “Saving the father’s presence here, one sword against a priesthood is enough. My tongue’s as boastful as a Gascon’s, is it not? But list to this, señora! I leave here only when I’ve had some speech with Coyocop, the spirit of the sun. When that may be I do not know, but Louis de Sancerre, a moonbeam’s eldest son, has sworn an oath—and so, señora, my welcome I must stretch.”