CHAPTER XIII.
ONE! TWO! THREE! FIRE!
Alice Bradford’s instinct had correctly foreseen that Myles would narrate his adventures to his wife just as Bradford had to his; but the governor’s reason was also correct in arguing that Barbara would be likely to keep such a story to herself, and the rather that Pris Carpenter had once spoken the name of Sir Christopher Gardiner in her presence with so much of maidenly flutter that Barbara felt there was a story underneath.
So when Bradford took occasion, over a pipe in the captain’s den, to suggest that it was as well for the present to keep the story of the knight of the Golden Melice from the public, Myles replied with a laugh,—
“So says Mistress Standish. I told her, as indeed I tell her most matters; but when she had listened, her first word was, ‘I hope neither you nor the governor will noise this story abroad, for it might do much harm, and could do no good.’ A prudent woman is”—
“From the Lord,” said Bradford. “And you and I have cause to thank Him for the gift.”
The talk drifted to other matters; and as the weeks and months went on, the subject was not resumed until March came in with all the chilly rigor of a New England seashore spring, and yet with certain fitful gleams and promises of better things in store. It was in the midst of one of those tempestuous storms incident to March, and always reminding one of a fascinating naughty child’s passionate burst of temper, that Hobomok appeared at the Fort, escorting a stranger Indian.
“Weetonawah wants head chief,” announced he succinctly.
The captain looked up from his Cæsar, and laid down his pipe.
“Weetonawah is welcome,” said he in the Pokanoket dialect, which he had acquired in perfection. “But Hobomok should not bring him here. The head chief’s wigwam is below the hill.”
“Pokanokets like The-Sword-of-the-White-Men best,” replied the stranger in a final sort of manner, and Hobomok’s suppressed “Hugh!” seemed to indorse the sentiment. Standish smiled,—for who does not love to be trusted above his fellows?—and, rising, he threw his cloak about his shoulders, saying,—
“Well, we will seek the head chief together, and take counsel upon thy matters, Weetonawah.”
So, unmindful of the rain, as men who live close to Nature will still become, the three went down the hill, and found Bradford in his study reading the Georgics, until such time as the weather would permit him to plough his own fields; for now that “oxen strong to labor” had immigrated, their fellow-colonists were able to improve upon the earlier methods of agriculture, and the plough had superseded the hoe whose rude labors had slain John Carver. Laying aside the book, but with its pleasant influence upon his face, Bradford received his guests, gave a cup of metheglin to each of the Indians, who would rather it had been Nantz, and asked Standish what he would take, but the captain shook his head.
“I’ve had my noon meat, and care for nothing until night. Now, Weetonawah, tell out your tidings to the head chief.”
So Weetonawah, who spoke no English, told in his own tongue—Standish now and again translating for the benefit of Bradford, who never became as apt an Indian scholar as the captain—how he and a Massachusetts brave, while hunting, had come across a white man seated beside a camp-fire, and leaning his head upon his hand as though sick or sorry, they knew not which. Approaching with due precautions, they found him friendly, and willing to change tobacco for some birds to make a broth, for he was so fevered as not to crave solid food. But when they had parted from him a little way, the Massachusetts man halted, and choosing a war-arrow from his quiver, gave Weetonawah to understand that this was a criminal fleeing from justice, and that the white men at the Bay had bade the Indians search the woods between Shawmut and Piscataqua for him, promising a reward to whoever should bring him in.
Still, during the brief interview beside the camp-fire, both red men had silently marked how thoroughly armed, and how alert in spite of his illness, the fugitive remained, and the Massachusetts man felt that at close quarters he might fare even as Wituwamat or Pecksuot in combat with The-Sword-of-the-White-Men; so, even in their friendly parting, he had laid his plan to turn back and shoot the sick man as he crouched over his fire; and lest his comrade should claim any part of the reward, he would go upon the war-path alone, and rejoin him at the wigwams of the Namasket village.
But Weetonawah was brother to one of the men killed at Wessagussett, and he had imbibed such a terror of The-Sword-of-the-White-Men and his vengeance upon those who molested the palefaces that he would rather have killed his Massachusetts friend, and taken the chances of punishment from Massasoit, than to be named as companion of an Indian who had killed a white man. So, half by argument and half by threat, he led away the assassin, and forced from him a promise to suspend his purpose until orders should be obtained from Plymouth; consenting that if the head chief and The Sword gave permission, he should alone slay the fugitive and claim the reward.
So far, Weetonawah spoke and Bradford listened, but at this point he started up and exclaimed,—
“An Indian promise! Who knows but that even now the wretch has stolen back to slay yonder poor fugitive? Horrible! What warrant have you, Indian, for believing this murderer will refrain?”
Sternly repeating the query, and receiving the reply, Standish grimly smiled.
“He says that the Massachusetts swore upon his totem, but to make the matter sure he brought him along hither, promising him a good noggin of strong waters, and he is even now in the kitchen, waiting.”
“Have him in! Hobomok, fetch him in!” cried Bradford, still in dismay. “Kill a white man in cold blood! Shoot a sick man shivering over a camp-fire! Standish, they are savages and heathen to the end, and we may as well preach Christ to the wolves and bears as to them.”
“Your best Indian preacher is still a snaphance,” replied the captain grimly, as his mind glanced back to Pastor Robinson’s strictures upon the Wessagussett chastisement.
“Here they come! Now speak to this man in his own tongue, and make him understand that if he kills this white man we will require it at his hand, and that, after no stinted measure. Terrify him, Myles, as you well know how! They fear you more than all the power of the Bay Colony put together.”
Now the fact remains that so long as Myles Standish lived his was a name to conjure with among the red men; and although, except at Wessagussett, he seldom, if ever, was engaged in actual conflict, or was guilty of their blood, the rumor of his coming was enough to disperse many an angry party, and to restrain many incendiary counsels. Nor was it fear alone, for the savages admired and emulated, yes, and loved the man; he went freely among them, slept in their wigwams, ate beside their fires, smoked the pipe of peace with their warriors, and showed human and friendly interest in their concerns. Never at any crisis did he forget to exempt women and children from the fortunes of war, and it was under neither his leadership nor his counsels that the Pequot atrocities were committed by the soldiers of the Puritan Bay Colony.
So now, as he sternly addressed the Shawmut Indian in his own tongue, the latter visibly quailed, and, not daring to reply directly, slunk behind Hobomok, and in a torrent of muttered gutturals besought him to assure The Sword that his voice was as the voice of the Great Spirit, and he would obey it as implicitly, for if he did not his own totem would turn upon him and destroy him, as indeed he should well deserve, and— But here Standish held up a hand and impatiently interrupted with,—
“There, there, that’s enough! You understand me, Shawmut, and you know that what I promise I perform. Now then, Bradford, what is to be done?”
“Why, the man must be taken and brought in as gently as may be. Doubtless he is in some sort a lawbreaker hiding from the justice of Governor Winthrop, and it may be our duty to return him to the Bay; but the first thing is to discover who he is and of what accused. Explain, if it please you, to both these Indians that they are to find this man, and take him by force of numbers or strategy, but without violence, and bring him safely to this house. What reward have the authorities of the Bay offered for his capture?”
“A kilderkin of biscuit, a horseman’s cloak, and five ells of scarlet cloth,” reported Standish after a good deal of discussion with the two Indians.
“The Bay is rich,” replied Bradford dryly. “Tell them if they bring in this man unharmed we will give twenty pound weight of sugar, and that is a large reward, be the man who he may.”
The Massachusetts Indian listened as this proffer was repeated, and then in his guttural and sullen voice muttered something at which Standish frowned and answered angrily, while Hobomok gave way to a derisive chuckle. As the two turned and glided stealthily out of the room, the captain also laughed and said,—
“The red rascal wanted a piece and some powder and shot, or at least a pottle or two of firewater, as he calls it.”
“Ay! there’s the outcome of Thomas Morton’s work,” replied Bradford. “The Bay people dealt hardly with him, yet none too hardly when we see the despite he has done to all of us by arming the savages.”
“Hardly, do you call it?” echoed Standish. “Well, I know not. Had I been the judge the sentence should have been shorter and less spiteful. To my mind it is too much like the savages themselves to crop a man’s ears, and set him in the stocks, and pelt him with garbage, and burn his house in his own sight, and mulct him of his money, and ship him out of the country, and after all leave him at liberty to pull the wool over the eyes of the big-wigs and come back again to plague us as he did before. ’Tis womanish to invent so many ways of tormenting an offender, and yet not put further offense out of his power.”
“And if you had been judge?” asked Bradford with a shrewd smile.
For answer the captain raised an imaginary piece to his shoulder and gave the word of command,—
“One! Two! Three! FIRE!”
And with the last word he brought down his right foot with full force upon his own pipe, which had fallen unheeded from his pocket. The governor laughed, and Standish ruefully picked up the amber mouthpiece, exclaiming,—
“Now, by my faith! there goes the meerschaum that Jans Wiederhausen carved on purpose for a parting gift to me when we left Leyden ten year ago. And serves me right for wasting time on such boys’ tricks as yon brag of what I might have done had all been other than it was. Well, well! Sorry and sad I am to lose that pipe! Now I must turn to the one Hobomok has carved out of what I take to be a jasper stone, but ’t is heavy, and cannot drink up the poison of the tobacco as my meerschaum did. There’s naught for a pipe like meerschaum, Will.”
“Clay is well enough for me,” replied the governor with a smile, as he brought a new clay pipe from the cupboard and presented it to Myles.
Nor shall we be surprised to hear that when, a year later, Captain William Pierce came over in the Lyon to Boston Bay, he brought a fine meerschaum pipe as a present from Governor Bradford to his friend Captain Standish.