Rising at length, she wandered hour after hour along the upland, commanding a view of the distant village, the vessels shaking out their white sails to the breeze, and the fishermen drawing their nets to land. The smoke of the little hamlet rose dreamily upon the air, and the light tinkle of the herd-bell mingled with the lowing of kine and the faint echo of the ax of the woodman.
Often had Hope Vines paddled her light canoe across the Saco to meet her upon this upland, and here, with John Bonyton, they had idled away the long summer days, unconscious of that dreamy future which had now made life a desert to them all.
Tearing herself from these maddening thoughts, she stooped down and saw her ghastly face and discrowned head; she bathed her hands and burning cheeks in the stream, sitting under a shelf of rock, lest she should be seen by any of those who knew her in her days of power and her days of beauty!
She unlaced the worn moccasins and plunged her swollen feet into the cooling wave. She sat long and gloomily surveying her altered looks. Her limbs were swollen and discolored by the action of the thongs which had bound her, and her feet blistered by travel. All day she sat moody and silent, her brow contracted, but it was evident that physical pain had nothing to do with the fierce and angry passions that swayed her.
Acashee may have been perhaps between forty and fifty years of age, but, having been exempt from the ordinary labor of women in the savage state, she presented few of those hard and angular lines common to her sex. She was taller than the wont of Indian women, more slender than is customary with them at her period of life, and altogether, she presented a litheness and springiness of fiber that reminded one of Arab more than aboriginal blood. Her brow was high, retreating and narrow, with arched and sharply-contracted brows, beneath which burned her intense and restless eyes.
At length she lifted her masses of short hair, black as night, despite of time, and gnashed her teeth violently in view of the indignity to which she had been subjected. She raised herself proudly, and cried, in a passionate voice, and with a wild, bitter laugh:
“John Bonyton, I have my revenge; a thousand times I have it. In spite of you, I will sit again with chiefs and honored women; and shorn of my locks even, no tongue will wag itself against me. I am above and beyond your malice!”
We should say that, among the Indians, for a woman to have her hair cut off, is to cast suspicion upon her chastity. It is the only revenge permitted the husband for a suspicion of dishonor, but in the end, it is a sure and fatal revenge, as the woman is at once cast out of the tribe, and no one will grant her aid or succor of any kind.
Acashee pressed her burning hands again and again over her degraded head, and once more took up her march toward the rising sun. Day by day she traveled onward, now fording rivers, and now surmounting mountain hights. Bays and inlets were doubled, and often some formidable river crossed on a frail raft, or traced upward toward its source, till her feet were able to wade it.
With the quick resource of savage life, she had been able to supply her own wants by means of the bow and arrow, the rude net, and the expert trap constructed by her own hands. She found corn and beans in the deserted summer haunts of the Indians, and the woods afforded her plenty of wild fruits. Still, she grew thin and haggard, from toil, exposure and travel; but her resolute spirit never quailed—never felt even the tortures which lacerated the body. Sometimes, she rested for whole days, and then, with renewed vigor, pursued her solitary way.