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Updated: July 17, 2025
Once more Shalah put his mouth to my ear, with a swift motion like a snake, and whispered, "The Master." We crawled flat on our bellies round the edge of the cup. The trees had gone, and the only cover was the long grass and the low sumach bushes. We moved a foot at a time, and once the Indian turned in his tracks and crawled to the left almost into the open.
My impulse was to try to get her back to the Rappahannock; but, on putting this to Shalah, he shook his head. "It is too late," he said. "If you seek certain death, go towards the Rappahannock. She must come with us to the mountains. The only safety is in the hill-tops." This seemed a mad saying. To be safe from Indians we were to go into the heart of Indian country. But Shalah expounded it.
For Shalah and myself there might be torture, and at the best an arrow in our hearts, but for her there would be things unspeakable. I remembered the little meadow on the Rapidan, and the tale told by the grey ashes. There was only one shot in my pistol, but I determined that it should be saved for her.
He spoke in the old stiff tones of the man I had quarrelled with. I turned to Shalah. "Is there any hope of getting to the South Fork?" He looked me very full in the face. "As much hope as a dove has who falls broken-winged into an eyrie of falcons! As much hope as the deer when the hunter's knife is at its throat! Yet the dove may escape, and the deer may yet tread the forest.
Shalah was a graven image, and I was too tensely strung to have any of the itches and fervours which used to vex me in hunting the deer when stillness was needful. Through the fretted greenery, I saw the dim shadows of men passing swiftly. The thought of the horse worried me. If the confounded beast grazed peaceably down the other side of the hill, all might be well.
Then I counted very slowly to myself up to four hundred, and looked again. The vale was empty. We lay still, hardly believing in our deliverance, for the matter of a quarter of an hour, and then Shalah, making a sign to me to remain, turned and glided up lull. I put my hand behind me, found Elspeth's cheek, and patted it.
I thought it queer, for a hawk does not scream twice in the same hour. I looked at Shalah, who stood by the gate, every sinew in his body taut with expectation. He caught my eye. "That hawk never flew on wings," he said. Then an owl hooted, and from near at hand came the cough of a deer. The thicket was alive with life, which mimicked the wild things of the woods.
That is the custom of our people." He turned to Onotawah again, and his tone was high and scornful. He spoke as if he were the chief and the other were the minion, and, what was strangest of all, Onotawah replied meekly. Shalah rose to his feet and strode to the door, pointing down the glen with his hand.
I could only pray that Nicholson's levies would turn up in time to protect the valley. "Time passes, brother," said Shalah. "We came by swiftness, but we return by guile. In three hours it will be dawn. Sleep till then, for there is much toil before thee." I saw the wisdom of his words, and went promptly to bed in a corner of the stockade.
She made ready our supper of cold meat as if she had no other thought in the world. Waiting on an attack is a hard trial for mortal nerves. I am not ashamed to confess that in those minutes my courage was little to boast of. I envied Ringan his ease, and Bertrand his light cheerfulness, and Donaldson his unshaken gravity, and especially I envied Shalah his godlike calm.
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