Part I

THE DECEIT

When the moon fell behind the horizon, which to them were the four walls of the cabin, all was dark within except the small flashes from the guns and they served to give no real light, just sudden, ghostly flashes of red yellow. After a while the shooting died down. Then it stopped.

The silence still rang though.

A watch was arranged: Duncan, then Nathaniel, then Alice, Uncas, Gamut, and finally Cora. Everyone fell to the ground where they were, which put Cora's head on the bed of leaves and no other part of her, but she was too tired to care. She slept with her gun in her hand and an arm flung over her eyes.

At the coming of the first shade of dawn they were awakened by Alice, whose shriek alerted them all to the renewal of their enemy's approach. Nathaniel's face was drawn with care. Sweat streaked his smoke-greyed countenance as he sipped at the water flask Alice handed him. When he passed it on again he shoved his ramming rod down the barrel of his gun. He raised it and fired without taking aim. The yell from without was enough to confirm that in daylight he was just as good a shot as in the night.

Cora checked her powder and refilled both horns from the big horn. Uncas was doing the same and directing Gamut to do so too.

Nathaniel yelled something at Uncas who replied in kind, and they continued their discourse for several minutes. When it was done and Uncas had returned to the south wall, the grim expression of battle which Cora had become accustomed to was gone and in its place was an almost frantic look of worry. Despite this he did not show his distress in any movement or gesture. Had she not seen his face she would have thought him unperturbed and calm.

Moved by a sudden impulse, she reached out and touched his shoulder. He turned and faced her and she saw what the night had done to his bruised face. Half of it was black.

She asked, "What did he say to you? Was it so bad?"

He began to answer, but aborted the attempt in order to raise his gun and shoot. The belch of smoke and the loud crack disrupted the exchange further and she returned her focus to the fray.

"Our powder and lead will be out by the morrow's dawn if the intensity of the fight is light," Uncas informed her later. He had been hit by one of the horses as they passed in one of their anxious turns and he had stumbled into the wall with a great deal of force. Now he sat resting at her insistence—their flank was clear and no enemy was in sight. Uncas was looking up at her, his hands tenderly massaging his bruised face. "You know the state of our food and water stores, I think."

Cora bowed her head and wiped at her bare, sweaty arm. She had removed her jacket in the evening, loosened her bodice, and rolled up her sleeves. Every bit of her exposed skin was black, grey, or brown from smoke or dirt.

Cora had hoped that they could stave off their attackers long enough to wear them out or be rescued by a wandering party of Rangers, perhaps even a lost party of Rangers. She had known it was an idle fantasy brought on by desperation and fatigue but that hadn't kept her from hoping to preserve her sister's life.

"My uncle and I have pledged our service to you and your sister, we intend to bring you to Edward, or perhaps to William-Henry if you would prefer." He continued, "I am certain that the Captain will willingly agree to stay here with Natty—die here with him—for your sister and yourself."

"You would be escorting us to the fort?"

"Aye, the lake is only a day's run from here. It might take us a day or two longer,—Add another, to give us time to keep the French and their allies off our trail and we could reach William-Henry. If the siege is too thick to break through and reach the camp, I'll take you to the house of an old friend. He has a daughter, she's a good cook. We can hole up there till something changes."

Cora stared. He spoke so coolly of death and in the next breath he mentioned food. His uncle planned to die in order to buy them the time to flee to safety, was he really so unconcerned?

"He would do this for us, even after all the trouble we have caused?" she asked in bewilderment. "Why? What have we done to merit this sacrifice?"

He didn't answer immediately. The other defenders continued to shoot. The Indians continued to return the fire. Then, after a long time had elapsed, he rose to his feet and hefted his gun. He answered,

"It is not like that. Natty has lived a long life and it is his way to be willing to give it up for a woman in need."

In the late afternoon there was a pause in the intensity of the battle. The defenders broke their fast on the last of their food. Nathaniel explained to all the scheme he had hatched and how he intended to send the two sisters to safety.

Duncan immediately volunteered to stay. The frown which had not left his face since Saturday was gone. In its place was the resigned, peaceful look of a man who has learned the day he will die and has determined to meet it coolly.

Only Alice was distraught. She frantically pleaded with him to come with her also, but he refused. He put it in the plainest words he could.

"I love you Alice and I have been like a son to your father since my youth; it would betray his faith as well as my own conscience were I to do any other thing than stay. I have no right to speak like this to you, so put it from your mind when you are gone, but I will willingly die in your place. O sweet sunbeam, I do it willingly, but it is painful to me to give you up for another's pleasure."

Alice burst into tears and would not speak to anyone and the group uncomfortably deigned to ignore her outburst. Then Uncas suggested that the horses be set free.

"They are nervous and stressed. It does neither us nor them any good to be together. Let them go so that it will be safer here. God willing we shall find them again tonight or tomorrow."

Duncan agreed with his premise but said, "You may set free the Narragansett with my permission, but the grey is Cora's and Cora's alone."

In the end, Cora agreed to free her faithful mare. The two horses' remaining tack was removed and Nathaniel shooed them out the door. There were two erratic shots fired after them and then silence. Cora could not see from her wall whether either shot had met its mark.

The day drew on without another break in the conflict. As the fading light was deepening into blackness, the two sisters bade farewell to the three men who were to remain behind. Then Cora holstered her pistol, refilled her two powder horns and slung a musket over her shoulder. The heavy gear weighed her shoulders down and she tried to adjust the straps into a more comfortable configuration. It was a vain effort.

Uncas too had refilled his powder horn and slung a musket over his shoulder. He wore the two water canteens on his other shoulder. Their presence, half empty as they were, was a hard reminder that none of the three expected to live long enough to need water.

Gamut approached. "Miss Monro, Miss Elise, I wish to bless you before you go in the Lord's name, and to give these into your safekeeping: The songbook and my pitch-pipe. Go ye now and may the Lord bless you and keep you and make His light to shine upon you and give you peace."

He pressed the two articles into Cora's hand and kissed Alice's fingers. Then he hobbled back to the wall he was defending.

"Come, Cora," Uncas murmured. "Over the wall, I'll boost you up."

Cora set her hands on the wall and braced one foot on it too. She pulled herself up a little ways and then he took her calf and threw her up, much like he would have thrown a child onto a horse. She grappled with the mossy log in the darkness. It was an awkward task to scale a wall in a long skirt with a musket and two powder horns across her back. Her legs tangled in her skirt but she managed alright and threw her leg over.

Cora lay still a minute and got her bearings. Then she rolled off the log and landed almost silently on her feet. If not for her skirt she would have had much less trouble.

Uncas followed. He led the way into the woods, his footsteps silent and cautious. She walked by his side, her stiff skirts tangling with her legs. She did not stumble.

The wind had died and the musket smoke hung low in the small clearing and though it could not be clearly seen in the dark it covered the whole place in its thick blanket and made the darkness murky. From the northern edge, and also now the western rim, small spurts of flame illuminated the dark night accompanied by the sharp bursts of noise a musket makes.

They reached the woods and continued on till the smoke of the clearing was no longer in the air though they both smelled strongly of it themselves. There they had stopped and Uncas turned to leave her and go back for Alice.

Without warning, the sounds of the guns ceased. It was a thick silence. Uncas hesitated. Years stretched in the seconds that passed.

Then an explosion sent a tremor through the trees. It was loud, it was long, it shook the air though not the earth. It was a rare but not an unknown sound. A powder explosion. The sound was similar to that of a mortar or cannon splitting. The two stood rooted to the earth.

"Alice." It was a whisper. Only a whisper. And then she fell to her knees.

Uncas remained standing above her. He wept silently with her.