Chapter 8: The Chateau of Beaulieu

They noticed one day a high bluff shooting up on the eastern bank and running along for some distance. It was clothed in dense green forest, and it was rather a welcome break in the monotony of the low shores.

“A big city will be built there some day,” said the prophetic Paul.

“Now, Paul, why in tarnation do you say that?” exclaimed Tom Ross.

“Why, because it’s such a good place. It’s a high hill on a great river so well suited to navigation, and it has a vast, rich country behind it.”

But Tom Ross shook his head.

“Seems to me, Paul,” he said, “that you’re bitin’ off a lot more’n you can chaw. Things that are to happen a hundred years from now ain’t never happenin’ fur me.”

But Paul merely smiled and held to his opinion.

On the following day they tied up at a point, where the river began a sharp and wide curve around a long, narrow peninsula. It was just about dark when they stopped and, as usual, they were able to run the boat into dense foliage at the margin, where not even the keenest eye could see it.

“We’ve got plenty of goose and duck left over from dinner,” said Henry, “so I’m thinking, Jim, that you’d better not light the fire on your bricks to-night.”

“All right,” replied Jim, “I don’t mind restin’. I feel about ez lazy ez Sol Hyde looks.”

But Henry Ware had another and more important thing in mind. His was the keenest eye of them all, and just before landing he had noticed to the southward and on the other side of the peninsula a faint, dark line against the edge of the sunset. Few, even with an eye good enough to see it, would have taken it for anything but a wisp of cloud, but the physical sense of Henry Ware, so acute that it bordered upon intuition, was not deceived.

“Sol,” he said after they had eaten a little, “let’s walk across this neck of land and explore a bit.”

“It’s a dark night to be traveling,” said Paul. But Henry only laughed. Tom Ross may have had his suspicions, but he did not deem it worth while to say anything. He knew that Henry and Shif’less Sol were quite competent to achieve any task that they might be undertaking.

Henry and Sol strolled carelessly into the bush, but before they had gone a dozen steps their whole manner changed. Each became eager and alert.

“What is it, Henry?” asked Shif’less Sol. “What have you seed?”

“Smoke! the smoke of a camp fire and it’s on the other side of this neck. I think it’s the camp of Alvarez. He must have been going more slowly than we thought.”

“We’ll soon find out,” said Shif’less Sol, as they advanced.

But the task was not as easy as they had thought. The peninsula was very low and the greater part of it had been overflowed recently. Their feet, no matter how lightly they stepped, sank in the mire, and when they pulled them out again the mud emitted a sticky sigh. An owl perched in a tree, high above the marsh, began to hoot dismally, and Shif’less Sol uttered a growl.

“I wish we had the big, dry woods o’ Kentucky to go through,” he whispered to Henry. “I ain’t much o’ a mud-crawler.”

“But as we haven’t got those big, dry woods,” Henry whispered back, “we’ll have to crawl, creep, or walk through the mud.”

It was about two miles across the neck, and as they went very slowly for fear of making noise, it took them a full hour to reach the other side, or to come near enough to see what might be there. Then they found that Henry’s belief, or rather intuition, was right.

They could see quite well from the dense covert. All the Spanish boats were tied up at the shore and two or three fires had been built for the purposes of cooking. The soldiers in their picturesque costumes lounged about. The hum of conversation and now and then a laugh arose.

Henry soon marked Francisco Alvarez. The Spanish leader sat on a little heap of boughs on the highest and dryest spot in the camp, and all who approached him did so with every sign of respect--if they spoke it was hat in hand.

The firelight fell in a red blaze across the face of Francisco Alvarez and revealed every feature in minute detail to the keen eyes in the covert. It was a thin, haughty face, clear-cut and cruel, but just now it’s air was that of satisfaction, as if in the opinion of Francisco Alvarez all things were going well with his plans. Henry believed that he could guess his thoughts. “He thinks that the Spanish are already committed against us and that he and Braxton Wyatt with a force of Spaniards and the tribes will yet destroy our settlements in Kentucky.”

Thinking of Braxton Wyatt he looked for him and, as he looked, the renegade came from a point near the shore toward the commander. It was evident that Wyatt had been faring well. His frontier dress had been partly replaced with gay Spanish garments. He now wore a cap with a feather in it, and a velvet doublet. He, too, had a most complacent look.

Wyatt approached Alvarez and the commander courteously invited him to a seat on the hillock near him. When he took the seat a soldier brought the renegade a cup of wine, and he drank, first lifting the cup toward Alvarez as if he drank a toast to the success of the alliance. There could be no doubt about the perfect understanding of the two; and Henry’s anger rose. It was impossible to set a limit to what a ruthless and determined man like Francisco Alvarez might do.

Wyatt rose presently after a nod to the commander and walked among the soldiers. He seemed to have no particular object in view and his strollings brought him near to the edge of the swampy forest.

“Perhaps he’s spying about, and will come into the woods where we are,” whispered Henry. “Maybe he has those maps and plans upon him, and it would be a great thing to get them. I don’t believe he could make a new set soon.”

“It’s a risky thing to try,” said Shif’less Sol, “but ef he comes in here, an’ you think it the best thing to do, I’m ready to help.”

The two crouched a little lower and remained breathless. Braxton Wyatt strolled on. He was making a sort of vague inspection of the camp, but he was really thinking more about the great triumph that he saw ahead. Since he had turned renegade, leaving his own white race to join the Indians, a thing that was sometimes done, he had been stung by many defeats and he wished a great revenge that would pour oil upon all these wounds.

A bad nature grows worse with failure. Seeking to injure his former people and failing at every turn, Braxton Wyatt hated them more and more all the time. His wrath was particularly directed against the five who had been such great instruments in sending his careful plans astray. His scheme with the Indian league had failed chiefly through them, but he felt that he could now come with a Spanish force that would prove irresistible. That was why he glowed with internal warmth and pride. The settlements would be destroyed and he, in fact, would be the destroyer.

Braxton Wyatt entered the edge of the woods, still occupied with the cruel triumph that was to be his. He did not notice that the foliage was gradually shutting out the firelight. Presently he saw, or believed that he saw, a shadowy but terrible figure. It was the figure of the one whom he dreaded most on earth.

It was but a glimpse of a form, seen through the bushes, but Wyatt’s blood turned cold in every vein. He uttered a half-choked cry, and running back through the bushes, sprang into the firelight. Two or three Spanish soldiers looked at him in amazement, but he was not a coward, and he had pride of a kind. As soon as he leaped back into the firelight he felt that he had made a fool of himself. Henry Ware could not have been there--he and his comrades had been left behind long ago. Coming suddenly out of his thoughts, he had been deceived in the dark by a bush and imagination had done the rest. Yes, it was only fancy!

“A rattlesnake! I nearly trod on him,” he said in broken Spanish words that he had picked up, and then walked in as careless a manner as he could assume toward the mound where Francisco Alvarez sat. But he could not wholly control himself--the shock had been too great--and his body yet trembled. He did not know it, but the pallor of his face showed through the tan, and Alvarez noticed it.

“You have had a fright, Señor Wyatt,” he said in his precise, cold English. “What is it?”

“Not a fright,” replied Wyatt in tones that he sought to make indifferent, “but a start. I nearly trod on a rattlesnake that lay coiled ready to strike, and I got away just in time.”

The Spaniard regarded him with a penetrating look, but the chilly blue eyes expressed nothing. Yet Francisco Alvarez thought that a bold woodsman like Braxton Wyatt would not show so much fear after a harmless passage with any kind of a snake.

“Do you think the five, the party that you said were so much to be dreaded, are still following us?” he asked presently.

The pallor showed again for a moment through the tan in Braxton Wyatt’s face, but he answered again as carelessly as he could:

“It may be. I hate them, but I do not deny that they are bold and resourceful. They have a good boat, and they may follow; but what harm could they do?”

“As I told you, they might go before Bernardo Galvez, our Governor General at New Orleans, and spoil the pretty plan that you and I have formed. Galvez is--as he calls himself--a Liberal. He would help these rebels and fight England. How can a Spaniard lend himself to the cause of Republican rebels and injure monarchy? Cannot he foresee, cannot he look ahead a little and tell what rebel success means? It would in the end be as great a blow to Spain as to England. If Kaintock is permitted to grow she will threaten Louisiana. These men in their buckskins are daring and dangerous and we must attend to them!”

The Spaniard clenched his hands in anger, and the blue light of his eyes was singularly cruel.

“Galvez is a fool,” he continued. “He is not allowing the English to trade at New Orleans, but he is giving the American rebels full chance. He his allowed one, Pollock, Oliver Pollock, to establish a base there. This Pollock has formed a company of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston merchants, and they are sending arms and ammunition in fleets of canoes up the Mississippi and then up the Ohio to Fort Pitt, where they are unloaded and then taken eastward by land for the use of the rebels. A fleet of these canoes is to start about the time we arrive in New Orleans.”

“We might meet it,” suggested Braxton Wyatt, “and say that it attacked us.”

The Spaniard smiled.

“The idea is not bad,” he said, “and it could be done. We could sink their whole fleet of canoes with the pretty little cannon that we carry, and we could prove that they began the attack. But I do not choose to run the risk of compromising myself just yet. There is a more glorious enterprise afoot. Hark you, Señor Wyatt.”

Braxton Wyatt leaned forward and listened attentively. Francisco Alvarez had drank of wine that evening, and his blood was warm. He, too, dreamed a great dream.

“You are a man of discretion and you have helped me. I speak to you as one devoted to my cause. If you should but breathe what I say to another I would first swear that it was a lie, and then deliver you to these five gentlemen, former friends of yours, who would tear you in pieces.”

Braxton Wyatt shivered again, and the Spaniard, seeing the shiver, laughed and was convinced.

“Why should I betray you?” said the renegade. “I have no motive to do so and every possible motive to keep faith.”

“I know it,” replied Alvarez, “and that is why I speak. It is to your interest to be faithful to me and when my enterprise succeeds, as it certainly will, you shall have your proper share of the reward. Bernardo Galvez, as you know, is the Governor General of Louisiana, and his father is the Viceroy of Mexico. They are powerful, very powerful, and I am only a commander of troops under the son, but I, too, am powerful. My family is one of the first in Spain. It sits upon the very steps of the throne and more than once royal blood has entered our veins. I was a favorite at the court and I have many friends there. The King might be persuaded that Bernardo Galvez is not a fit representative of the royal interests in Louisiana.”

Francisco Alvarez leaned a little forward and his blue eyes, usually so chill, sparkled now with fire. He was speaking of what lay next to his heart. Braxton Wyatt, full of shrewdness and perception, understood at once.

“Bernardo Galvez might give way as Governor General of Louisiana,” said the renegade, “to be succeeded by a better man, one who had the real interests of Spain at heart, one who would refuse to give the slightest aid to rebels, rebels who would strike against a throne!”

The Spaniard looked pleased.

“I see that you are a man of penetration, Señor Wyatt,” he said, “and I am fortunate in having you as a lieutenant. You have divined my thought. I work, not for the interests of a man whose name has been mentioned by neither of us, but for the true interests of Spain and the divine right of kings. What is this miserable Kaintock which is springing up? We will crush it out as you would have crushed the rattlesnake! The people of New Orleans and Louisiana hate rebels! Why should they not? It is the rebels who in time will take Louisiana from us if they can, not England.”

Braxton Wyatt smiled. He was delighted to the very center of his cunning heart. His plans and those of Alvarez marched well together. Each strengthened the other.