第75章

"Now that I am here, I think again of the blue plates of Holland, Mr.Ware," he said."It is a dark and sanguinary time.The men whose brethren were scalped or burned alive at Wyoming will not now spare the town of those who did it.In this wilderness they give blow for blow, or perish."Henry knew that it was true, but he felt a certain sadness.His heart had been inflamed against the Iroquois, he could never forget Wyoming or its horrors; but in the destruction of an ancient town the long labor of man perished, and it seemed waste.

Doubtless a dozen generations of Iroquois children had played here on the grass.He walked toward the northern end of the village, and saw fields there from which recent corn had been taken, but behind him the cry, "Wyoming!" was repeated louder and oftener now.Then he saw men running here and there with torches, and presently smoke and flame burst from the houses.He examined the fields and forest for a little distance to see if any ambushed foe might still lie among them, but all the while the flame and smoke behind him were rising higher.

Henry turned back and joined his comrades.Oghwaga was perishing.The flames leaped from house to house, and then from lodge to lodge.There was no need to use torches any more.The whole village was wrapped in a mass of fire that grew and swelled until the flames rose above the forest, and were visible in the clear night miles away.

So great was the heat that Colonel Butler and the soldiers and scouts were compelled to withdraw to the edge of the forest.The wind rose and the flames soared.Sparks flew in myriads, and ashes fell dustily on the dry leaves of the trees.Bob Taylor, with his hands clenched tightly, muttered under his breath, "Wyoming! Wyoming!""It is the Iroquois who suffer now," said Heemskerk, as he revolved slowly away from a heated point.

Crashes came presently as the houses fell in, and then the sparks would leap higher and the flames roar louder.The barns, too, were falling down, and the grain was destroyed.The grapevines were trampled under foot, and the gardens were ruined.Oghwaga, a great central base of the Six Nations, was vanishing forever.

For four hundred years, ever since the days of Hiawatha, the Iroquois had waxed in power.They had ruled over lands larger than great empires.They had built up political and social systems that are the wonder of students.They were invincible in war, because every man had been trained from birth to be a warrior, and now they were receiving their first great blow.

From a point far in the forest, miles away, Thayendanegea, Timmendiquas, Hiokatoo, Sangerachte, "Indian" Butler, Walter Butler, Braxton Wyatt, a low, heavybrowed Tory named Coleman, with whom Wyatt had become very friendly, and about sixty Iroquois and twenty Tories were watching a tower of light to the south that had just appeared above the trees.It was of an intense, fiery color, and every Indian in that gloomy band knew that it was Oghwaga, the great, the inviolate, the sacred, that was burning, and that the men who were doing it were the white frontiersmen, who, his red-coated allies had told him, would soon be swept forever from these woods.And they were forced to stand and see it, not daring to attack so strong and alert a force.

They sat there in the darkness among the trees, and watched the column of fire grow and grow until it seemed to pierce the skies.

Timmendiquas never said a word.In his heart, Indian though he was, he felt that the Iroquois had gone too far.In him was the spirit of the farseeing Hiawatha.He could perceive that great cruelty always brought retaliation; but it was not for him, almost an alien, to say these things to Thayendanegea, the mighty war chief of the Mohawks and the living spirit of the Iroquois nation.

Thayendanegea sat on the stump of a tree blown down by winter storms.His arms were folded across his breast, and he looked steadily toward that red threatening light off there in the south.Some such idea as that in the mind of Timmendiquas may have been passing in his own.He was an uncommon Indian, and he had had uncommon advantages.He had not believed that the colonists could make head against so great a kingdom as England, aided by the allied tribes, the Canadians, and the large body of Tories among their own people.But he saw with his own eyes the famous Oghwaga of the Iroquois going down under their torch.

"Tell me, Colonel John Butler," he said bitterly, where is your great king now? Is his arm long enough to reach from London to save our town of Oghwaga, which is perhaps as much to us as his great city of London is to him?"The thickset figure of "Indian" Butler moved, and his swart face flushed as much as it could.

"You know as much about the king as I do, Joe Brant," he replied.

"We are fighting here for your country as well as his, and you cannot say that Johnson's Greens and Butler's Rangers and the British and Canadians have not done their part.""It is true," said Thayendanegea, "but it is true, also, that one must fight with wisdom.Perhaps there was too much burning of living men at Wyoming.The pain of the wounded bear makes him fight the harder, and it, is because of Wyoming that Oghwaga yonder burns.Say, is it not so, Colonel John Butler ?""Indian" Butler made no reply, but sat, sullen and lowering.The Tory, Coleman, whispered to Braxton Wyatt, but Timmendiquas was the only one who spoke aloud.

"Thayendanegea," he said, "I, and the Wyandots who are with me, have come far.We expected to return long ago to the lands on the Ohio, but we were with you in your village, and now, when Manitou has turned his face from you for the time, we will not leave you.We stay and fight by your side."Thayendanegea stood up, and Timmendiquas stood up, also.