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Updated: May 17, 2025
And yet it seemed that our enemy's scouts had come far down into the Tidewater, and knew enough to single out for death a man we had enrolled for service. Shalah slipped off without a word, and I was left to continue my journey alone. I will not pretend that I liked the business.
I shut my eyes as I heard the steel clash. Then very soon came silence. I looked again, and saw Ringan wiping his blade on a bunch of grass, and a body lying before him. He was speaking speaking, I suppose, about the successor to the dead man, whom two negroes had promptly removed. Suddenly at my shoulder Shalah gave the hoot of an owl, followed at a second's interval by a second and a third.
He made a Christian end, and I will not have his memory stained by more murders. But oh, Shalah, what a man died yonder!" He made me tell every incident of the story, and he cried out, impassive though he was, at the sword-play in the neck of the gorge. "I have seen it," he cried. "I have seen his bright steel flash and men go down like ripe fruit.
I seemed to see Doctor Blair hunted by Cherokees, with his coat-tails flying and his wig blown away, and what vexed me was that I could not find Elspeth anywhere in the landscape. At earliest light, with the dew heavy on the willows and the river line a coil of mist, Shalah woke me for the road.
"Your magic hath prevailed, brother," Shalah said. "In an hour's time they will have crossed the Shenandoah, and at nightfall they will camp on the farther mountains." That sight gave me my first assurance of success. At any rate, I had fulfilled my trust, and if I died in the hills Virginia would yet bless her deliverer. And yet my strongest feeling was a wild regret.
My recollection of that day is one of heavy fatigue and a pressing hopelessness. Shalah behaved oddly, for he was as restive as a frightened stag. No covert was unsuspected by him, and if I ventured to raise my head on any exposed ground a long brown arm pulled me down. He would make no answer to my questions except a grunt.
His God hath told him so runs the tale that He hath chosen the Children of the Sun for His peculiar people, and laid on them the charge of sweeping the white men off the earth and reigning in their stead from the hills to the Great Waters." "Do you believe in this madman, Shalah?" I asked. "I know not," he said, with a troubled face. "I fear one possessed of God.
He ate a little food, while I stripped off the garments I did not need, carrying only the one pistol. I bade the others travel slowly towards the mountains, scouting carefully ahead, and promised that we should join them before the next sundown. Then Shalah beckoned me, and I plunged after him into the forest.
That conversation made me wary, and I got Faulkner to keep a special guard on the place when I was absent. At the worst, he could summon Mercer, who would bring a rough crew from the water-side to his aid. Then once more I disappeared into the woods. In these days a new Shalah revealed himself. I think he had been watching me closely for the past months, and slowly I had won his approval.
Verily Shalah had spoken truth when he said that this man had bodily converse with the devils. Then I threw him quite easily, for his limbs were going limp in the extremity of his horror. He lay gasping and foaming, his eyes turning back in his head, while I bound his arms to his sides with my belt. I found some cords in the tent, and tied his legs together.
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