CHAPTER XII.

How Bee was Abducted--and the End.

A tornado of flame was sweeping over St. Davids, and women with their children stumbled through the burning, choking fog of smoke. Betty's little household were still standing helplessly together by the ruins of their cottage, when two men, in the war-paint of the Mohawks, leaped out of the smoke, seized Bee, and vanished with her in the fog. Chloe rushed after them screaming, while the other two women, cumbered with the babies they carried, could do nothing.

Then more men, in Indian dress and paint, were round them, roughly demanding their names. They were gone too, in the smoke and confusion, as some Americans rode up, and Betty implored them to rescue Bee.

"Madam," said their officer coldly, "our Indians are still the other side of the river. The Mohawk devils are in your pay, not ours. You had better look among the British lines for the girl."

For endless miles now, it seemed, Betty and Mrs. Ferguson tramped the hot roads, with the other refugees of St. Davids. At last they reached Queenston, and Percy. He himself had been about to set out for St. Davids with Dr. Tam, a wagon, and two men--Ned and Tim Kelly. The Americans had told them to send, under a flag of truce, and fetch the sick and injured from the burnt village.

So they rode off, Ned stunned to think that Bee was abducted, and probably by men worse than any savages--Sells' gang of deserters. They heard nothing of Bee at St. Davids, though some of Sells' men had been seen near disguised as Indians, and an American company, with Eli Goode in command, was out searching for them.

They were returning when Kawque met them; he first whispered to Ned--"Come and mock your enemy. He is a prisoner in the woods, and you can taunt him, telling him he can never ride with the British soldiers again, for he whined when he thought Sells would torture him, and he told where Bee Goode was, that they might steal her."

With his black eyes glittering, the Mohawk repeated his story to Percy, and without a word the four men left the wagon, and followed the Indian to the hut. It was empty except for a man who lay bound face down on a bench, the upper part of his body covered with a blanket. He did not seem conscious, but groaned deeply as Tim cut the ropes, and brought water. Ned did nothing but look with loathing upon his enemy's disgrace.

Percy took hold of the blanket to lift it, but Vere, speaking for the first time, though he kept his face hidden, cried, "Don't touch it. Don't touch me. I can't bear it."

"Dr. Tam is just behind us," said Percy. Then signing the others to go out, he added fiercely, "and you betrayed Bee, to save your skin?"

Vere cringed at the savagery in his tone. "They burnt me for hours," he whispered faintly. "At last I did not know what I said."

Percy moved back quickly to keep himself from striking a wounded man, then as Dr. Tam came in, he went out. Ned was waiting to speak to him. "We are wasting time, sir," he said crisply, "Kawque says he can follow Sells' trail, but he is afraid of being killed by the American soldiers if he goes alone and they capture him. Will you let me go with him? We can leave plenty of marks for Captain Goode to follow, and as she was only stolen this morning we might even be able to rescue her, before she is harmed."

"Go certainly," said Percy in an unsteady voice, for his soul was sick at the thought of Vere's cowardice.

With a gesture of farewell Ned turned from him, and followed Kawque into the bush. Knowing that the only way to keep himself quiet and sane was to work hard, he set the pace through the brush at a rate that made Kawque look at him admiringly. The Mohawk was a primitive man, he understood strength, but not weakness.

Dr. Tam came out, and Percy asked--"Are his injuries likely to be fatal, doctor?"

Dr. Tam smiled grimly. "When I was a lad at college, Major Haslem, we had an awful way of initiating freshmen. We ought to have been expelled for it. We stripped the victim to his waist, and tied him, while we heated irons red-hot before his eyes, and told him we were going to do some fancy marking on his back with them. Then we blindfolded him, and brought out some raw meat and sealing wax. We dug the iron into the meat holding it at his back, for him to smell, and hear too, the flesh scorching under them, while we touched his skin with the hot wax--and I've known strong lads to faint away. Suggestion, just suggestion."

"Doctor," cried Percy, irritably, "what are you telling me this for?"

"Because Sells must have learnt some college hazing tricks. That's what he did to our man in there. Vere Haslem has a couple of skin burns that usually he wouldn't have sworn at for more than a minute. I kicked him, and told him to get up and put on his clothes."

Vere was on his feet, dressed, and just fastening on his sword when Percy came in. "Give that to me," the older man said.

"When it is known you were not captured by the enemy," he continued, "you will be marked 'missing', and inquiries will be made. You must stop here, and I will bring you plain clothes and money. Then you can cross the river, and get to France as soon as you can. You must take another name there, and I will see you are provided with funds. Kawque and Dr. Tam will tell all that happened here, and I will ask that the Court which condemned Ned Edgar at Kingston re-open the case, and consider what your word as a witness is worth."

So the cup Vere had filled once for another, came back to him. Leaning against the side of the hut he saw the world of military trappings and music that his soul loved, slip away from him forever.

* * *

That evening, Edgar with Tahata, the Mohawk chief, and a dozen Indians, went recklessly out to seek for his son, and his one-time ward, Bee Goode. At midnight they were challenged by an American picket, and Edgar went forward with a white handkerchief tied on his sword. "I am looking for a girl whom Sells' gang has stolen," he said. "If you will let us pass, I give you my word, to return and surrender as your prisoner, as soon as I have found her--Bee Goode."

"Major Edgar," said Eli's voice in the darkness, "I think we can both forget the war for a little while--till we find Bee Goode. I shall be very glad of your help, and we can go on together."

For a week they pressed after the gang, wondering that they never saw a trace of the marks Ned and Kawque were to leave for them to follow. Edgar and Eli were afraid to put what they feared into words, but Tahata said bluntly--"We are on the Sells' gang trail, getting near him, yes; but Kawque never passed here; maybe him and Ned find Sells' camp first night, and creep in to get the girl, and--", Tahata finished his sentence with a significant gesture of his tomahawk. Edgar thought he would never see his son again, and an agony of remorse and sorrow swept over him.

* * *

It was a hot, dark night in the vast unexplored forest that covered all the country back of the lake fronts. The allies, united to save Bee, Canadian, American, and Mohawk, were camped round their fire, and their chiefs, Edgar, Eli, and Tahata, sat apart in council. Said Edgar--"We have found the man's stronghold, and he knows we are here, yet he does not send any word--evidently he does not hold Bee."

"In other words," said Eli hoarsely, "she is dead in his hands before this, either by the mercy of God, or the--the handling of men."

"We live, we are men, we can attack and do justice upon him," said Tahata the Mohawk, sententiously.

[Illustration: "Then on the other side of the tree they saw her--or her spirit."]

Then on the other side of the fire they saw her--or her spirit. In the beaded buckskin bravery of an Indian belle, with white feathers in her hair, she smiled at them, still the light-hearted girl who had never received anything but knightly treatment from any man. And behind her in the shadows they saw the faces of Ned, Chloe, and Kawque.

"Papa Edgar, and Brother Eli, don't you know me?" she cried; and coming round the fire, she touched them with warm human hands, talking quickly as she told how after hearing Vere betray her, Kawque with a friend had rushed off to St. Davids. The place was on fire, Sells was close behind and the Americans coming. Kawque had no time to explain, he snatched the girl away, telling her who he was as Chloe caught up to them. Then because they were cut off from getting to the English lines, the other Indian took Bee to the Mohawk village deep in the forest, leaving Kawque to tell Bee's friends; but wishing the unhappy Vere to bear the full weight of Percy's anger, the scout said nothing of Bee till he was alone in the bush with Ned. Then they had gone to fetch the girl, and brought her after her brother's party.

In silent thanksgiving Eli kissed his sister, and Edgar looked at Ned, standing up very straight in the fire-glow--"Will you--can you, shake hands?" he said huskily, holding out his own.

Ned clasped it instantly, knowing that his honour among men was restored.

Leaving Bee and Chloe carefully hidden, the men then went on to attack, capture--and dispose of Sells' gang, with the rough justice of the wild.

It was Sir John of whom Bee was thinking when Eli came to tell her that he was about to start for the American lines. Would she come with him, or stay, to be a Canadian, among Canadians?

"Must you go," she said brokenly, "to fight Ned--and Papa Edgar?" There was white pain in her face, for like many another woman on the Canadian-American border, her heart was torn by the horror of this almost civil war. She clung to him pathetically, as though afraid to let him go.

"I must go to my grandfather," she half whispered. "I know no one can comfort him now, still he did love me, and I must go to him."

"Take care of her," said Eli briefly, as he left, and he looked at Ned, not Edgar.

For a week Bee and her friends travelled through the thick bush, and then on Sunday, July twenty-fourth, they rested, hearing far-off the thunder of Niagara. It was here that to the keen hearing of the Indians came the sound of church bells ringing a frantic alarm, and hastily they broke camp, to push on, guessing their meaning--a fresh advance of the invader.

And away in Niagara Sir John was still in ignorance of his shame, although it was three weeks since Vere had disappeared. Believing him to be a prisoner and comparatively safe, his whole anxiety was for his little grand-daughter.

That torridly hot Monday afternoon, July twenty-fifth, Sir John sat on his horse, stiffly correct, in a little graveyard near the Falls. Behind was a gray church, and all round the cemetery ran a stone wall where berry bushes grew thick. In front, the ground sloped down to a road--Lundy's Lane--with thick orchards of apple and peach on either side.

The previous Sunday had been one of alarm in Niagara. A week before the enemy had fallen back on Chippewa, and the British had followed as far as the Falls. Then Winfield Scott managed to deceive them so completely as to his intentions, that Riall sent twelve hundred men under Drummond to Fort George. Only sixteen hundred were still with him at Lundy's Lane; Sir John was watching as his little battery clattered in among the gravestones, and the guns took position where they could sweep the road.

Then in came Fitzgibbons' men with their famous bush-fighting leader, and news--five thousand Americans were marching from Chippewa. Riall ordered a retreat to Queenston, and half his force had started when the enemy came down Lundy's Lane. It was an unpremeditated battle on both sides. The British were trying to get away, and the enemy thought they were at Queenston. Scott, however, attacked instantly, afraid they might escape into the bush, hurling his men up the hill to where the battle flag of England waved over the church, and the guns vomited death above the graves of the quiet dead.

For half an hour the battery had the battle to itself. The blue-coated men dashed forward, crouching behind the cemetery wall to fire a volley through the bushes, then springing across, rushed on the gunners. Now the rest of the army were back in position, and the battle raged. Men fired at men a stone's throw off their musket muzzles, or fought savagely hand to hand with clubbed guns and the deadly bayonet.

Sir John was wounded. Half-stunned, he was pulled from under his dead horse, and saw Percy. "How goes it?" he murmured with faint eagerness.

"Drummond is back with his twelve hundred, sir. Marched to Fort George and back without stopping; did the last mile on a run too, in this heat. The enemy has brought his guns into action, you can hear them. Our left is smashed up, and General Riall is captured. But I guess we can stick it out. Can I do anything for you? We have no water."

"No, I can hear it all going over the Falls," said Sir John, wandering a little. "I would like to know that Bee was safe."

Percy left him in the church and went out. There was a lull in the fighting. It was now nine o'clock at night, and the battle had lasted since six. The moon had risen, throwing a pale light on the dead and wounded heaped among the graves and down the hill, and all along the road between the orchards. The heat was terrific, no coolness having come with the night, and neither army had a drop of water. The fighting men, many of whom had been marching all day, suffered intolerably with thirst, and the wounded, torn with the frightful bayonet and scorching in an inferno of heat and pain, soon grew delirious.

The moon was hidden by clouds, and in the black darkness out flashed the enemy's guns into the orchards. From both sides came charging crowds of wildly yelling men upon the British centre, where their guns sent back a flaming answer. Men fired wherever they saw fire, then closed into the dark with their foes. All order was lost. Lundy's Lane and the graveyard hill, were covered with men fighting with sword and pistol, stabbing with shortened bayonet, and clenching like wild beasts.

The British guns were captured, but the Americans could neither fire nor move them, such was the fury of the mob of men that threw themselves upon them. And above all, the crash of musketry, and the yells and whoops of the fighting men, rose the screaming of the wounded.

* * *

Almost under the feet of plunging, crazy horses; knocked down more than once by excited men; with bullets whistling round her, Bee stumbled through the dark with a pail of water. Other women were there too, on the same attempt at mercy. The few men who had seen them ordered them back instantly, but being women they did not obey.

A fitful gleam of moonlight showed men twisting on the ground before her, and she knelt to put water to the pitiful lips. Then she had a glimpse of Ned, fighting furiously with his clubbed musket. Someone pushed her into the wreck of the church, and there she found her grandfather.

"Thank God, you are safe, little Bee," he said, roused to a last flash of consciousness by her voice.

"Happy man," murmured Percy, as they laid him, bleeding with a dozen wounds, by the dead baronet, "he need never know of Vere now."

The battle of Lundy's Lane had ended, as suddenly as it began.

* * *

Scott, with the captured British general and guns, retreated back to Buffalo, where he reported that he had won the battle, but that to follow up his victory, he must have a far larger army, to overcome the savage resistance of the Canadians.

But there were no more invasions of Canada, for the battleships of England were off the American coast. In vain the Tzar of Russia offered to arbitrate; Washington was burnt on August twenty-fourth. The English were driven back from Baltimore, but made raids on the shores of the Democrat States, who were blamed for the invasion of Canada.

At last, on December twenty-fourth, 1814, peace was signed at Ghent, no word being said in its articles about the "Right to Search," which had been used as a cry to incite the American people to war, but without steamer or telegraph it was weeks before the news could cross the Atlantic, and the bloody battle of New Orleans, an English defeat, was fought in the January after peace was signed.

York raised her flags in joyful thanksgiving, and Percy saw them as he sat up for the first time. Haslem Towers stood empty, in England, and men talked of the "wicked baronet" somewhere abroad. Percy intended to make his home in Canada, and he was very disappointed that Ferguson would not stay with him. Instead of remaining as the trusted servant of a man he had always liked with high wages and sure provision for his old age, the Methodist had heard the call of the nation that was being born in Canada. He longed to be a preacher to the men who had fought so well for an earthly country at Lundy's Lane and many a fight before. So he applied to Conference, and they were about to advance the money to buy his discharge, and then accept him as one of their itinerant preachers.

Ned was in the old pasture, tramping through the snow, and thinking of the summer morning when he had crept there, with his spirit broken, and a girl had healed him by her kiss of faith. Eli was with him, he had returned to take his sister back to Boston, if she would come.

"But I am not surprised that she refuses," Eli was saying. "She was so young when she went to Canada to live, and Canada is so loyal to the British flag. If we had only known your real feelings we would never have fought you. May the peace between us endure."

Then Ned spoke, but not of politics, and Eli smiled--"My father trusted your father with my sister, so I cannot do less than trust her to you. The Haslems are willing, so the only person whose consent you need is--Bee Goode."