This plea for cruel kindness cut me to the marrow of my bones; and lacking means to save his life, I thought I might at least make shift to try to put him out of misery.
The enemy's dispositions favored me. The savages, drunk with lust of blood, leaped and danced around their victim. Falconnet sat his horse apart beneath the maples, and with his bodyguard of troopers, was well within the borderland of lurid shadow where the fire light mingled with the night.
I crept away and made a swift detour to the right to come behind the rearmost horseman of the troop. As his ill luck would have it, his horse, affrighted at the firelit pandemonium, was in the act of wheeling to run away. Being cumbered with a musket, the man made clumsy work of handling his mount, and when the beast came down in a snorting tremble to rear afresh at sight of me, the man flung away the musket and drew his sword.
In cooler blood I might have given him his soldier's chance, but here again it was another's life or mine. Even so, I might have fought him fair, had he but held his tongue and fought in silence. But this he would not, so I had to quiet him or have the others about my ears upon his shoutings.
That done, I snatched the musket that had cost the man his life, and, staying not to see what should befall, ran back to cover. In the interval of weapon-getting the fire against the cabin wall had gnawed its way from log to log and now was lapping with its yellow tongues beneath the eaves. But lest the victim should not suffer long enough, the Indians were at work in yelling frenzy, flogging the blaze with green branches broken from the trees so that the fire itself should not be merciful.
I waited till the slowly spinning figure of the black should turn and make a mark I could not miss. The pause gave space for some swift steadying of the nerves, but with the colder thought it also brought a fierce and terrible temptation. The finger on the musket's trigger held a life in pawn, and I might pick and choose and say what life I'd take.
I glanced aside at Falconnet. He was a fairer mark than my poor Tomas, and by the laws of God and man had earned his death. The tortured slave had little time to suffer at the worst, and with the bullet that would give him surcease I could well avenge him. More than this; that bullet planted in my enemy's heart would save my lady Margery harmless, leaving me free to go to my own place and so to right the wrong that I had done.
All in the pivoting instant of the pause the musket swung slowly round as of its own volition, and through its sights I saw the slashings, gold on red, across the breasting of his captain's riding coat. One little crooking of the trigger-finger and the lead had gone upon its errand. But at the balancing instant that piteous cry was lifted once again: "O Massa! Massa Cap'm! God 'a' mussy—shoot po' nigga and let 'um die!"
I did as any other man would do, as you have guessed. The great king's musket swept another arc, and roared and belched and spat its messenger of death; and my poor Tomas had the boon he prayed for.
And then, as if the musket flash and roar had been a lodestone and these fierce Cherokees so many bits of steel to cluster thick upon it, I was surrounded in the twinkling of an eye, and whizzing hatchets and rifle bullets whining sibilant were but an earnest of the fate I had invited.