Part I

THE DECEIT

"I have spoken to Colonel Webb," Captain Hayward announced as he sat down with them, "and I have requested that we take a route different from the main highroad; he has agreed." Alice looked up at him in surprise, but Cora remembered the conversation she had overheard the night before. There was silence for a moment. Then—

"May I ride with Billy?" Will asked, his boyish excitement bubbling up in his eyes. He knew the gravity of the situation, but being assured that papa was not dead, he had little worries concerning their journey. Hayward smiled at him but shook his head.

"No, the smaller our party, the less likely it is to be noticed by any enemy that might have come this far from his company. The servants will take the baggage and ride with the column, I hope you understand." This last was addressed to the women and they nodded. But Dennis looked troubled and even Hayward's smile did not reach his eyes.

Then Captain Hayward gave Cora his hand and he handed her up onto the sturdy mount she had brought over from Ireland.

Beneath her veil she smiled with gratitude at her friend's chivalry. Once Captain Hayward had handed up Alice and Will onto their respective animals, he mounted his own steed. The small group raised their hands in salute to Colonel Webb, who stood before his cabin watching them. Then Cora gently nudged her horse forward and the rest followed her example and Captain Hayward took the lead taking care to keep his impatient mount to a slow amble.

They rode out the gate alongside the column of soldiers that was making its way swiftly over the road to Fort William-Henry. A few moments passed, then Alice let out a gasp of surprise which drew Cora's eyes away from her brother. An Indian runner had jogged silently up behind them and crossed directly before them. He continued there, almost as though he were escorting them.

"Are such spectres frequent in the woods, Hayward; or is this sight an especial entertainment on our behalf?" Alice asked with a forced gaiety; she was greatly troubled by their journey, almost as much as Cora was, and felt the insecurity of their small party acutely. The presence of an unknown man, one she would, doubtless, have trouble addressing, only added to her discomfort. "If the latter," she continued, "gratitude must close our mouths; but if the former, we shall have a need to draw largely on that stock of hereditary courage which we boast, even before we are made to encounter the redoutable Montcalm."

"Yon Indian is a runner of the army," Hayward replied, quietly. "He has volunteered to guide us to the lake, by path but little known, sooner than if we followed the tardy movements of the column: and, by consequence, more agreeably." His face was still grim though the bitterness in his tone was almost hidden by his softness.

Cora and Will turned their attention to their sister. "I like him not," she declared. "You know him, Duncan, or you would not trust yourself so freely to his keeping?"

Cora pressed her lips firmly together; she had hoped that their guide would pass her sister's test.

"Say, rather, Miss Elise, that I will not trust you," Hayward exclaimed, his voice rising. "I am only recently come into these parts, but Webb tells me he is a good man, or he would not have my confidence, and least of all at this moment." He turned in his saddle to face them and continued more quietly, "He said to be a Canadian, too; and yet he served with our friends the Mohawks, who, as you know, are one of the six allied nations. He was brought among us, as I have heard, by some strange accident in which your father was interested, and in which he was rigidly dealt by—but I forgot the idle tale; it is enough that he is now our friend."

"If he has been my father's enemy, I like him still less!" Alice cried and her horse shied to the right. "Will you not speak to him, Captain Hayward, that I may hear his tones? Foolish though it might be, you have often heard me avow my faith in the tones of the human voice!"

"It would be in vain; though he may understand it, he affects, to be ignorant of English. But he stops;" he pointed ahead to where the man had halted and was looking back, "the path by which we are to journey is at hand."

Cora studied the man. She did not know his name or what he had done that had put him at odds with her father in the last few months. During her brief stay at the lake and in Albany she had observed the dress and manner of many of their native allies, this man was overdressed for summer. She had never seen an Indian in his shirt in the hot sun but she put it off as a courtesy to herself and her sister.

Alice's voice drew her from her musings, but before she looked away she realised that the guide was watching her just as intently as she had been watching him. "Cora, what think thou?" her sister asked. "If we journey with the troops, though we may find their presence irksome, shall we not feel better assurance of safety?"

The Royal Americans were still passing them and the curious eyes of many men swept over them. Cora considered her answer but before she could speak Captain Hayward cut in—

"Being little accustomed to the practices of the savages, Alice, you mistake the place of real danger. If enemies have reached the portage at all, a thing by no means probable, as our scouts are abroad, they will surely be found skirting the column where scalps abound the most. The route of the detachment is known, while ours, having been determined within the hour, must still be secret."

Cora nodded at her sister in agreement, and spoke. She could not have known what pain those words heralded or the path they set. "Should we distrust the man because his manners are not our manners, and that his skin is dark? If he is our ally shall we not trust him?"

Will took the words as permission to kick his pony forward off of the road onto the faint trail through a flowing willow's branches, and Alice followed suit uneasily. Cora nudged her own horse forward but allowed Captain Hayward to hold aside the low branches of the tree for her. She thanked him softly and rode on into the dim woodland.

Several minutes passed while the two women minded their horses with an eye on their brother who was keeping pace just behind their guide. Cora had just opened her mouth to ask Alice to draw off the path so that she could ride just behind Will when the sound of clattering hooves reached her from behind. She drew up on her rains and the rest followed her example. Soon the perpetrators of the noise came into view.

They were two horses; one led by the other by a lead-line. The gait of the first was hard to define for the hind legs of the horse maintained a sort of lopsided Canterbury gallop while the forelegs only assisted for doubtful moments and generally maintained a slow trot. The rider, too, was an anomaly. He was thin, but his height was impossible to determine by his riding. At times he would rise in his stirrups to a great height, but a moment later he would settle himself again and assume the regular proportions of man. The second beast was a foal, following its mother.

Cora began to smile, and Alice and Will giggled, even Captain Hayward's lips twitched and the perpetual frown that had rested on his brow from the moment they had seen him three days ago relaxed.

"What is your name? Seek you any here?" Captain Hayward demanded when the man had halted before them. "I trust you are no messenger evil tidings?"

"Even so," said the stranger, breathing hard in the thick air and fanning his face with his hat, but that did not conceal his thick accent.

As Cora waited for him to continue she inspected his person. His head was large and balding with a few grey hairs and his face was kindly; his shoulders narrow; his arms long and dangling; while his hands were small and delicate. His legs were thin but of extraordinary length and his knees and feet were tremendous. He wore a sky-blue coat with short and broad skirts and a low cape which exposed his long thin neck. His breaches were of yellow nankeen and were tied at his knees by large knots of sullied white ribbon. His white stockings and shoes, on one of which was a plated spur, completed his outfit.

Then he spoke again in a soft voice, "I am David Gamut. I hear you are riding to William-Henry; as I am journeying thitherward myself, I concluded good company would seem consistent to the wishes of both parties."

Silence followed this strange and bold account.

"You appear to possess the privilege of a casting vote," Captain Hayward declared finally, "yet we are three, whilst you have consulted no one but yourself."

"Even so," the man agreed. He continued, "The first point to be obtained is to know one's own mind. Once sure of that, and where women are concerned, it is not easy, the next is to act up to the decision. I have endeavoured to do both, and here I am." Cora turned to her sister with an incredulous expression. Alice looked near to tears as she suppressed her laughter; Cora bit her lip to keep in her own.

"If you journey to the lake," Captain Hayward advised, "you have mistaken your route; the highway thither is at least half a mile behind you."

"Even so," the man repeated for a third time. "I have tarried at Edward a week, and I should be dumb not to have inquired the road I was to journey; and if dumb there would be an end to my calling." The expression on the man's face seemed to imply some pun or joke had been made, but none of her party could discern its nature. After a moment he continued his explanation when he saw that they had not understood. "It is not prudent for any one of my profession to be too familiar with those he is to instruct; for which reason I follow not the line of the army. Besides which, I conclude that a gentleman of your character has the best judgement in matters of wayfaring. I have therefore decided to join company in order that the ride may be made agreeable."

"A most arbitrary, if not a hasty decision!" Captain Hayward exclaimed angrily. "But you speak of instruction, and of a profession; are you an adjunct to the provincial corps, as a master of the noble science of defence and offence; or, perhaps, you are one who draws lines and angles, under the pretence of expounding the mathematics?"

"Of offence," the stranger replied puzzledly, "I hope there is none to the party: of defence, I make none—by God's good mercy, having committed no palpable sin since last entreating His pardoning grace. I understand not your allusions about lines and angles; and I leave expounding to those who have been called and set apart for that holy office. I lay claim to no higher gift than a small insight into the glorious art of petitioning and thanksgiving, as practised in psalmody."

There was silence for a moment amongst the party. Their guide watched the going's on with a muted interest, but said nothing nor made any move to reveal what he thought of the man. Will looked from adult to adult with a sort of grave, worried expression. Cora saw Alice take note of their brother's solemn attitude and frown and make a decision.

"The man is, most manifestly, a disciple of Apollo," she declared, with a forced smile, "and I take him under my own especial protection." Captain Hayward made as though to object but Alice rebuked him, "Nay, lay aside that frown, Hayward, and in pity to my longing ears suffer him to journey in our train." She cast a pointed glance at Will. He followed her gaze and sighed, but he desisted. Captain Hayward gestured to the guide and he turned and led them down the trail.

This time Cora rode beside Will and Alice took the back with the stranger and his mare and foal. Behind her she felt more than saw Captain Hayward's scowl—she did not turn in her saddle—and from farther still she heard the murmur of her sister's voice and laughter mingle with the tones of the group's newest addition. Will broke the silence.

"Do you think that Papa will be very sad if I asked him about Mother?"

"No," Cora replied thoughtfully, "I think not. He loved her very much, but she is your mother and he would gladly tell you of her. I did not know her as well as he did, but Alice and I, we would be glad to tell you of her too." They rode on in silence while he mulled over her words.

"Did she like the Regiment?"

"Martha thought the Regiment to be romantic. It never once occurred to her, I think, that a soldier is a man of war, no matter how long he has remained at peace. So yes, Will, she liked the Regiment." There was a bitterness in her words; Cora had never known her stepmother, she hadn't tried to know her, and she had resented her for her illusionary view of her father and his profession. It had seemed to her to undercut her own loss of her fiancé. That was not to say that she had disliked her brother's mother. She had just been too locked in her grief to push herself to do more than superficially welcome Martha into the family and had spent too little time with her to come to love her deeply before she had died. "She had nothing to dislike about the Regiment," she concluded. He nodded with all the understanding a ten year old could have.

Suddenly the swell of song burst out behind them—

"How good it is, O see,
And how to pleaseth well,
Together e'en in unity,
For brother so to dwell.
It's like the choice ointment,
From the head to the beard did go:
Down Aaron's beard, that downward went,
His garment's skirts unto."

Cora started abruptly at the music, and her mare, who could be as skittish as her dam, shied. This movement caused Will's pony to bolt. Three things happened at once: Will cried out and tried to bring his pony back into his control, the guide turned around and said something to Captain Hayward and entirely missed the accident, and Cora flicked her horse lightly with her whip and surged after her brother. She came up alongside him in moments, and releasing the reins, she held onto her mount's neck. Leaning parallel to the ground she caught the pony's bridle, and jerked both horses to a halt. She righted herself.

"Will, are you—"

He nodded and whispered, "Don't let him know I was scared, please."

She released the bridle and squeezed his shoulder, "Wild horses couldn't drag it from me." He grinned.

She touched her hat, which had come askew as she rode, and then unpinned it. She smiled back at her brother, her face now on full display. "I think I'll be a girl again. I'll put the hat back on when we reach the lake." She set it in her lap and slid the sharp pins into her sleeve for safekeeping. Captain Hayward and the guide reached them and after earnestly inquiring into their health led them back to the path.

After the excitement had settled, though, Captain Hayward was furious.

"Though we are not in danger,"—he addressed both the singer and Alice—"common prudence would teach us to journey through this wilderness in as quiet a manner as possible. You will, then, pardon me, Miss Elise, should I diminish your enjoyments by requesting this gentleman to postpone his chant until a safer opportunity. Your safety, and that of Miss Monro and your brother, is far dearer to me than could be any orchestra of Handel's music." There was a deep silence, broken only by the swish of the horses' tails as they flicked flies away, while his words sank in. Then, chagrined, the two scolded parties bowed their heads and the group moved on.