"Silence, woman," said Roderick St. Amande, advancing threateningly towards her. "Silence, I say, or it shall be the worse for you."
"Silence," she repeated, "silence! And why? So as to shield you from their wrath if they should know who you are? Silence! Nay, I tell you Roderick St. Amande, that when you have taken us away to wherever you herd now, I will speak out loudly and tell them all. All, all, as to what their great medicine man--their great impostor is. A wonder-worker, a magician!" And she laughed long and bitterly as she spoke, so that his face became so distorted with anger that I feared he would rush at her and slay her. Yet, as she did so, and still spake further, I saw the Indian chief's eyes steal round the corner while he listened to her every word. "A wonder-worker! a magician!" she went on. "Ay! a pretty one forsooth. A magician who could not save his ear from a righteous vengeance; a bond-slave to an English colonist; a poor, pitiful drunkard! What a thing for a red man who cannot live in slavery, and who hates in his heart the fire-water he has learnt to drink, to worship! A magician who knows all. Ha! ha! A wonder-worker! who stole from out his owner's bookshelves a 'British Merlin' and a calendar because, perhaps, he knew the credulous creatures with whom he would ere long dwell."
"Ay," exclaimed Buck, "and a book of how to do tricks with cards from me, with many recipes for palming and counterfeiting. A magician, ha! ha! ha!"
And of all that was said the Indian chief had heard every word.
[CHAPTER XXI]
IN CAPTIVITY
Although the villain knew not that the chief--whose name I learnt hereafter was Anuza, signifying in the Shawnee and Doeg tongue, the Bear--had heard all, his rage was terrible. He gesticulated so before Mary that again I feared for her, he struck at Buck, calling him thief and other opprobrious names, and he kicked at O'Rourke's body as though he would kick in his ribs. Then, swearing and vowing that if Mary spoke before his followers--for so he called them--as she had spoken now he would, instead of taking her for one of his squaws, have her tongue cut out of her mouth so that she should never speak again, he called for the Indians to enter from without. And they, coming in a moment or so afterwards, showed no signs upon their impassive faces of having overheard, or understood, one word that had been uttered.
The dawn had come now, and the light as it crept in to my ruined saloon served but to increase my sense of the horrors of the night. At the side of the window to which they had been pushed by Anuza and the others, so as to allow for easy ingress and exit, lay huddled together numberless dead Indians, two or three of my poor servants, and the bodies of the mastiffs, all of which had been slain after a fierce resistance. The carpets and rugs for which my father had sent to London were torn and slit and drenched with blood, the spinet and the harpsichord were both ruined, ornaments were broken, and the pictures splashed with blood. Oh, what a scene of horror for the sun to rise upon!
"Let all the prisoners who are alive be taken to the woods at once," exclaimed Roderick to Anuza; "to-night we start back to the mountains. Our work is done. Pomfret is destroyed, or destroyed so much that years shall not see it again as it was."
Once more, as at his coming, Anuza and his followers prostrated themselves low before him, whereby I feared that, after all Mary's denunciations, they still might not have understood how vile a creature was this whom they worshipped--and then, addressing us, the impostor said: