Nick of the Woods; Or, Adventures of Prairie Life

by Robert Montgomery Bird

This ceremony completed, Roland was again visited by his Piankeshaw friend, and the two young warriors who had saved his life before, and were perhaps still fearful of trusting it entirely to the tender mercies of the senior. It was fortunate for Roland that he was thus attended; for the old warrior had no sooner approached him than he began to weep and groan, uttering an harangue, which although addressed, as it seemed, entirely to the prostrate captive, was in the Indian tongue, and therefore wholly wasted upon his ears. Nevertheless, he could perceive that the Indian was relating something that weighed very heavily upon his mind, that he was warming with the subject, and even working himself up into a passion; and, indeed, he had not spoken very long before his visage changed from grief to wrath, and from wrath to the extreme of fury, in which he began to handle his hatchet as on the previous occasion, making every demonstration of the best disposition in the world to bury it in the prisoner's brain. He was again arrested by the young savages, who muttered something in his ear as before; and again the effect was to convert his anger into merriment, the change being effected with a facility that might well have amazed the prisoner, had his despair permitted him to feel any lighter emotion. "Good!" cried the old warrior, as if in reply to what the others had said; "Long-knife go Piankeshaw nation,—make great sight for Piankeshaw!" And so saying, he began to dance about, with many grimaces of visage and contortions of body, that seemed to have a meaning for his comrades, who fetched a whoop of admiration, though entirely inexplicable to the soldier. Then seizing the latter by the arm, and setting him on his feet, the warrior led or dragged him a little way down the hill, to a place on the road-side, where the victors were assembled, deliberating doubtless upon the fate of their prisoners.

They seemed to have suffered a considerable loss in the battle, twelve being the whole number now to be seen; and most of these, judging from the fillets of rags and bundles of green leaves tied about their limbs, had been wounded, two of them to all appearance very severely, if not mortally, for they lay upon the earth a little apart from the rest, in whose motions they seemed to take no interest.

As Roland approached, he looked in vain amid the throng for his kinswoman. Neither she nor Telie Doe was to be seen. But casting his eye wildly around, it fell upon a little grove of trees not many yards off, in which he could perceive the figures of horses, as well as of a tall barbarian, who stood on its edge, as if keeping guard, wrapped, notwithstanding the sultriness of the weather, in a blanket, from chin to foot, while his head was as warmly invested in the ample folds of a huge scarlet handkerchief. He stood like a statue, his arms folded on his breast, and lost under the heavy festoons of the blanket; while his eyes were fastened upon the group of Indians on the road-side, from which they wandered only to glare a moment upon the haggard and despairing visage of the soldier. In that copse, Roland doubted not, the savages had concealed a hopeless and helpless captive, the being for whom he had struggled and suffered so long and so vainly, the maid whose forebodings of evil had been so soon and so dreadfully realised.

In the meanwhile, the Indians on the road-side began the business for which they had assembled, that seemed to be, in the first place, the division of spoils, consisting of the guns, horses, and clothes of the dead, with sundry other articles, which, but for his unhappy condition, Roland would have wondered to behold: for there were among them rolls of cloth and calico, heaps of hawks'-bells and other Indian trinkets, knives, pipes, powder and ball, and other such articles, even to a keg or two of the fire-water, enough to stock an Indian trading-house. These, wherever and however obtained, were distributed equally among the Indians by a man of lighter skin than themselves,—a half-breed, as Roland supposed,—who seemed to exercise some authority among them, though ever deferring in all things to an old Indian of exceedingly fierce and malign aspect, though wasted and withered into the semblance of a consumptive wolf, who sat upon a stone, buried in gloomy abstraction, from which, time by time, he awoke, to direct the dispersion of the valuables, through the hands of his deputy, with exceeding great gravity and state.

The distribution being effected, and evidently to the satisfaction of all present, the savages turned their looks upon the prisoner, eyeing him with mingled triumph and exultation; and the old presiding officer, or chief, as he seemed to be, shaking off his abstraction, got upon his feet and made him a harangue, imitating therein the ancient Piankeshaw; though with this difference, that, whereas the latter spoke entirely in his own tongue, the former thought fit, among abundance of Indian phrases, to introduce some that were sufficiently English to enable the soldier to guess, at least, a part of his meaning. His oration, however, as far as Roland could understand it, consisted chiefly in informing him that he was a very great chief, who had killed abundance of white people, men, women, and children, whose scalps had, for thirty years and more, been hanging in the smoke of his Shawnee lodge,—that he was very brave, and loved a white man's blood better than whisky, and that he never spared it out of pity,—adding as the cause, and seeming well pleased that he could boast a deficiency so well befitting a warrior, that he had "no heart,"—his interior being framed of stone as hard as the flinty rock under his feet. This exordium finished, he proceeded to bestow sundry abusive epithets upon the prisoner, charging him with having put his young men to a great deal of needless trouble, besides having killed several; for which, he added, the Longknife ought to expect nothing better than to have his face blacked and be burnt alive,—a hint that produced a universal grunt of assent on the part of the auditors. Having received this testimony of approbation, he resumed his discourse, pursuing it for the space of ten minutes or more with considerable vigour and eloquence; but as the whole speech consisted, like most other Indian speeches, of the same things said over and over again, those same things being scarce worth the trouble of utterance, we think it needless to say anything further of it; except that, first, as it seemed to Roland, as far as he could understand the broken expressions of the chief, he delivered a furious tirade against the demon enemy of his race, the bloody Jibbenainosay, the white man's War-Manito, whom he declared it was his purpose to fight and kill, as soon as that destroyer should have the courage to face him, the old Shawnee chief, like a human warrior,—and that it inspired several others to get up and make speeches likewise. Of all these the burden seemed to be the unpardonable crime of killing their comrades, of which the young soldier had been guilty; and he judged by the fury of their countenances, that they were only debating whether they should put him to death on the spot, or carry him to their country to be tortured.

The last speaker of all was the old Piankeshaw, whose meaning could be only guessed at from his countenance and gestures, the one being as angry and wo-begone as the latter were active and expressive. He pointed, at least a dozen times over, to two fresh and gory scalps,—the most highly valued trophies of victory,—that lay at the feet of the Shawnee chief, as many times to the horses, and thrice as often at the person of Roland, who stood now surveying his dark visage with a look of sullen despair, now casting his eyes, with a gaze of inexpressible emotion, towards the little copse, in which he still sought in vain a glimpse of his Edith. But if the old warrior's finger was often bent towards these three attractive objects, innumerable were the times it was pointed at the two or three little whisky-kegs, which, not having been yet distributed, lay untouched upon the grass. The words with which he accompanied these expressive gestures seemed to produce a considerable effect upon all his hearers, even upon the ancient chief; who, at the close of the oration, giving a sign to one of his young men, the latter ran to the copse and in an instant returned, bringing with him one of the horses, which the chief immediately handed over, through his deputy, to the orator, and the orator to one of the two young warriors, who seemed to be of his own tribe. The chief then pointed to a keg of the fire-water, and this was also given to the Piankeshaw, who received it with a grin of ecstacy, embraced it, snuffed at its odoriferous contents, and then passed it in like manner to his second follower. The chief made yet another signal, and the deputy, taking Roland by the arm, and giving him a piercing, perhaps even a pitying, look, delivered him likewise into the hands of the Piankeshaw; who, as if his happiness were now complete, received him with a yell of joy, that was caught up by his two companions, and finally joined in by all the savages present.

This shout seemed to be the signal for the breaking up of the convention. All rose to their feet, iterating and reiterating the savage cry, while the Piankeshaw, clutching his prize, and slipping a noose around the thong that bound his arms, endeavoured to drag him to the horse, on which the young men had already secured the keg of liquor, and which they were holding in readiness for the elder barbarian to mount.

At that conjecture, and while Roland was beginning to suspect that even the wretched consolation of remaining in captivity by his kinswoman's side was about to be denied him, and while the main body of savages were obviously bidding farewell to the little band of Piankeshaws, some shaking them by the hands, while others made game of the prisoner's distress in sundry Indian ways, and all uttering yells expressive of their different feelings, there appeared rushing from the copse, and running among the barbarians, the damsel Telie Doe, who, not a little to the surprise even of the ill-fated Roland himself, ran to his side, caught the rope by which he was held, and endeavoured frantically to snatch it from the hands of the Piankeshaw.

The act, for one of her peculiarly timorous spirit, was surprising enough; but a great transformation seemed to have suddenly taken place in her character, and even her appearance, which was less that of a feeble woman engaged in a work of humanity, than of a tigress infuriated by the approach of hunters against the lair of her sleeping young. She grasped the cord with unexpected strength, and her eyes flashed fire as they wandered around, until they met those of the supposed half-breed, to whom she called with tones of the most vehement indignation,—"Oh, father, father! what are you doing? You won't give him up to the murderers? You promised, you promised—"

"Peace, fool!" interrupted the man thus addressed, taking her by the arm, and endeavouring to jerk her from the prisoner; "away with you to your place, and be silent."