New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
A brief struggle. San twisted and got the dagger, stabbed with it.
Lentz gave a shuddering cry and relaxed.
San climbed to his feet, white and shaken. Lea was trembling.
"Got him, Lea. Accursed traitor."
San's first thought was the controls. Lea stopped him.
"Wait! How do we know Alan is dead? A lie, perhaps, what Lentz told us."
They went to the windows. There was no one in sight. A groan from Lentz
brought them back. He lay, gruesome on the floor, with the knife in him
and a red stain widening. But he was not dead. Lea bent over him.
"Lea--I want to--tell you the truth."
He died in a moment, but before he died he gasped out the truth of what
had happened. He had lurked in the woods and seen us captured by the
Dutchmen. Had followed us--himself like an Indian, for he was skilled
in woodcraft. He had been here before with Turber, laying plans to get
the treasure. He knew these woods well.
He had seen us finally thrown into the fort with half a dozen Dutchmen
left to guard us. Then he had gone to Turber. Had told what happened.
Turber had set off to see Stuyvesant. Lentz had come back to the tower.
If he had killed San, he would perhaps have killed Lea also, and
escaped with the tower.
But now he lay dead. He gasped his last words of the confession. Blood
gushed from his lungs.
* * * * *
Lea turned away. There was barely time for her to tell San what Lentz
had said--they were standing at the doorway--when they became aware of
dark figures in the shadowed glade near at hand! Again San would have
flung the tower into Time. But again Lea stopped him.
Figures of savages were out there--not menacing, but prostrate upon
the ground at the edge of the near-by thickets. It was so dark by the
forest edge--the figures were dark and motionless--that Lea and San
might not have seen them had not there come a low wail. Mournful cry! A
prostrate savage placating this magic god of the forest. This strange
tower, with a god and goddess in its doorway standing in this glade
which the redskins well knew to be usually empty of such a vision.
Lea's thoughts were swift. Alan and I and Nanette were held by the
Dutch in an isolated fort some two or three miles to the south. Lea
could control these Indians. She had already proved her power upon one
of their chieftains.
She murmured her plans to San. It was hardly a minute from the time
they had first seen the prostrate figures.
San stood alert, watching. Lea advanced to the top of the tower steps.
She called in the Indian dialect: "Rise up, children of the forest. I
would not hurt you. I bring you only good."
She descended the steps slowly. San called anxiously:
"Careful, Lea!"
"Yes, San. Stand on your feet, men of the forest."
Slowly she advanced upon them. Watchful.
They rose at the gesture of her upraised arms. Some ten of them--young
braves prowling here in the forest, attracted by the tower's dim light.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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