Beyond the sunset

There is none like your wanderer to settle himself coseywise by a warm hearth. An outcast and adventurer from boyhood, exiled from England for adherence to the Pretender, my estates forfeited, dependent for bread upon the earnings of my sword in a foreign service, Fate tossed me across the broad Atlantic to this New World of ours--and in one short year I had found Marjory and fortune!

I became straightway as sedate as any Dutch burgher betwixt Port George and the stockade of the Outward. Camp-bred and forest-schooled, I yet discovered zest in the problems of merchantry and exulted in the petty tasks of the householder. I was a model of husbandry. But Fate was not satisfied with its work. Two years of joy I had; then came the fever that the Portuguese snow brought north from the Main to scourge New York. In a week my joy was turned to ashes. She, who had braved the perils of the wilderness with me, wilted and died.

But there is justice in Fate. Give it time, and 'twill rebuild what it has marred, provided always that we who are its toys keep heads up and courage undaunted--easier deeds to write of than to perform, God knows. And truly, the day Fate stepped forward to redress the balance found me with head bowed and spirit breaking, treading bitterly the narrow groove of duties I lacked the will to escape.

I sat at my desk in the counting-room, fumbling through a file of papers. There was a breath of Spring in the air, and outside in the trees of Pearl Street the bluebirds and robins bickered together, and the people who passed the door were no less irresponsibly gay. In all New York, it seemed, none save I lacked cause for pleasure. John Allen, the young Dorset bondman whose liberty I had purchased when I hired him for clerk, whistled between his teeth as he labored his quill across the ledgers--when he was not glancing askance at me. Upstairs I heard the crooning of Scots Elspeth, and the strident plaint of my son objecting to her ministrations.

Why should that baby voice be potent only to evoke for me the bitter memories of my loss? I frowned as I sanded the last sheet of a letter to my London correspondents.

"An early Spring after an easy Winter," remarked Allen tentatively. "That should mean a rare flood of furs from the far savages, Master Ormerod."

I growled an assent. I knew the boy meant well. He was ever trying to draw me out of myself.

Upstairs a door opened, and a yelp of infant glee rang in my ears. I leaped to my feet and ran into the hall.

"Elspeth!" I roared.

Her plump features and decent gray locks appeared at the upper landing.

"Eh, sir!" she answered. "I can hear ye fine."

"And I can hear naught but mouthing of silly rhymes and puling babble," I snapped savagely.

"And gey prrroud ye micht well be of that same," she retorted. "It's what ma douce lamb that's gone wad be tellin' ye, if----"

'Twas hopeless to argue with her, and cursing, I crossed the lower hall to the room I devoted to my private affairs and slammed the door after me. But even as I sank into the chair beside the cold hearth, I knew that I might not find escape from that sweet ghost that haunted me, so real, so vital--yet so remote. Wherever I went in that house she followed me. It was as if she sat now in the opposite chair, a bit of embroidery in her lap, her brown eyes dwelling fondly on my face.

I rose and walked to the window, turning my back on the picture which persisted in shaping itself upon the hearth-rug. Westward across the houseroofs that stretched to Hudson's River the sun was slowly sinking in one of those magnificent displays of coloring that only the New World can show. It meant nothing to me. I turned impatiently, and retraced my steps.

A myriad ghosts swarmed before my eyes, ghosts of London, of Paris, of the wilderness, of many other places, kings, queens, great lords, priests, soldiers, merchants, heroes and cowards, honest men and scoundrels, Indians in war paint, courtiers in five-pound ruffles--but in front of them all stood the one ghost I could never avoid, lips always parted as if for a kiss, brown eyes glowing with love.

I shuddered.

The door opened behind me.

"Master Ormerod!" 'Twas Allen. "I knocked, but you did not hear. There are gentry to see you, sir."

"I'm in no mood to see people," I answered fiercely.

"But these----"

"Send them away. I'll not be annoyed with them."

The door was thrown open again with a crash.

"How now, Ormerod," bellowed a choleric voice. "Is this the way to treat my dignity, let alone my friendship? Must you keep me cooling my heels on your doorstep the while you consider the order of my admittance? Look to yourself, lad, or I'll have you shackled in the dungeons of Fort George. Ay, and there's another hath reason for distemper with you. Whilst I have walked so far from the Bowling Green, he is new-arrived from the Iroquois country, and mainly that he may deliver you a belt, if what I hear be true."

I jumped to my feet, shocked out of my evil mood, and chagrined by the discourtesy I had put upon the greatest man in our province, ay, the governor himself, Master Burnet, to whom we all owe more than we shall ever be able to repay for the diligent statecraft with which he nursed our community to increased wealth and prosperity. I know there are those who cry out against him, more especially since he was transferred to Massachusetts to wrestle with the dour Puritan folk and fell foul of their sanctimonious ways and contentious habits; but I account such no more than fools. He had a stern eye for the king's prerogatives, I grant you, and a jealous opinion of his own authority. But on questions of policy he was right ten times where his antagonists were right once.

He was a stout personage, ruddy of countenance and with strongly carved features, blunt, dogmatic, yet quaintly logical, a staunch friend and a fearless foe. He stood now in the doorway, feet planted wide, and drove home his words with thuds of his cane.

"Your Excellency!" I gasped. "I was at fault. I pray you----"

"Tush!"

He waved his hand in a gesture of derision, but a kindly gleam showed in his prominent eyes.

"Say no more, lad. I know what is wrong with you. 'Tis that brings me here--and other friends, too."

He stepped aside, and I exclaimed with surprise as my eyes discerned the two figures that slipped noiselessly out of the hall shadows.

"Tawannears! Peter!"

The first was an Indian, whose lithe body was naked above the tanned deerskin thigh-leggins and gaka, or breechcloth. On his chest was painted a wolf's head in yellow, white and black pigments. Tomahawk and knife hung in sheaths against either thigh. A single eagle's-feather was thrust into his scalp-lock. His bronzed face, with its high-arched nose, broad forehead and square jaw, was lit by a grim smile.

"Kwa, Otetiani,"* he said, giving me the Indian name that the Keepers of the Faith had bestowed in placing me upon the roll of the Wolf Clan of the Senecas.

* "Hail. Always-ready."

And he lifted his right hand arm-high in the splendid Iroquois gesture of salutation. I answered as befitted one who was not only my Clan brother and friend, but the war chief of the Great League, and as such, Warden of the Western Door of the Long House.

After him entered a mountain of a man, whose vast bulk was absurdly over-emphasized by the loose shirt and trousers of buckskin he wore and the coonskin cap that crowned his lank yellow locks. Others might be deceived by the rolls of fat, the huge paunch, the stupid simplicity of the broad, flat face, with insignificant features dabbed here and there, the little mild blue eyes that blinked behind ramparts of loose flesh, but I knew Peter Corlaer for the strongest, craftiest forest-runner of the frontier. Beneath his layers of blubber were muscles of forged steel and capacities for endurance that had never been plumbed.

"Zounds, man, but I'm glad to see you," I cried, trusting my fingers to his bear's grip.

"_Ja_," he answered vacantly in a tiny squeaky voice that issued incongruously from his immense frame.

I saw Allen staring at him in amazement, and I could not restrain a laugh--I who had not smiled in six months.