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It was a weird procession, through the shifting night-shadows; and although I could catch but fleeting glimpses of those savage faces and half-naked forms, the knowledge of their presence, and our own helplessness if they proved treacherous, caused my heart to throb till I could hear it in the painful silence like the beat of a drum.
"You deceive me, Monsieur; yet I know, and will speak with her," was the quick decision. "Mother of God! 'tis a voice too dear ever to be forgotten." She was beside them with a step, seeming no doubt a most fair vision to be born so instantly of the night-shadows. "Marie Faneuf!" she exclaimed, eagerly.
"It seems as if we'd make good targets in this light." The gravity of the woodsman's face relaxed. "You will pursue them?" asked Helen. "They've melted into the night-shadows long ago," he replied. "Who was your guide?" "I hired him at Fort Pitt. He left us suddenly this morning. A big man, with black beard and bushy eyebrows. A bit of his ear had been shot or cut out," Sheppard replied.
There stole from his fingers the soft, slow sound of lapsing waters, the rocking on the tide, the long sway of some idle weed. Here a jet of tune was flung out from a distant bark, here a high octave flashed like a passing torch through night-shadows, and lofty arching darkness told in clustering chords.
I know not; but this I swear, I held him there until every struggle ceased, until answering yells from the westward told me others were already close at hand, and then, breathless and trembling from the struggle, blinded by blood and faint from wounds, I sprang forward into the night-shadows, dimly conscious that my sole hope for escape lay lakeward.
"Valois was talking to himself, with his eyes fixed on the dark night-shadows hiding the Federal lines. A stern, defiant gaze. Peyton shivered with a nervous chill. "Colonel, this must not be." In the silence of the brooding night, it seems a ghastly call from another world, this message of death. Valois proudly checks himself. "Peyton, I have few friends left in this land now.
It was the hush of portent, the hush of watchfulness, the hush of a threatening tension. In the wide heart of the valley the waters of the river laughed, and sang, and frollicked on their way, while under cover of the deep night-shadows lurking figures waited, with nerves set, and weapons of destruction ready to fulfill their deadly mission.
This stranger of royal bearing, riding a rough Western pony as if it were decked with golden trappings, with his bright hair gleaming like Roman gold in the sun, and his blue-gray eyes looking into hers with the gladness of his youth; this one who had come to her out of the night-shadows of the wilderness and led her into safety! Yes, she was glad to see him.
Then it slowly sank from sight, and, like wraiths of the dying day, the night-shadows began to creep out from the shore, deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer, until they engulfed the little craft and its owner. With a sudden decision, Donald played out the sheet and put the tiller over. The boat swung around into the path of the wind and fled seaward again. He could not go home, now.
Where I lay that night I could see a wide space of star-gemmed sky, the blue night-sky of the Southwest, and I wondered, as I looked up into the starry deeps, how God could keep so many bright bodies afield up there, and yet take time to guard all the wandering children of men. With the day-dawn the strange events of the night seemed as unreal as the vanishing night-shadows.
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