Thrice I tested the flint, pouring a little powder into the pan, and thrice the pan flashed, and the ball of vapour shot up to the ceiling. So all was ready. I lingered only to buckle my money-belt under my shirt, pouch a dozen new flints and a case of wadding, then hoisted my pack to my shoulders, strapped it on the hips, blew out the candle, and stole into the hallway, trailing my rifle.
Passing the door of Silver Heels's chamber, my heart suddenly grew tender and I hesitated. But the memory of her many misdeeds hardened it immediately, and I went on, tasting contentedly of a perverse resentment which smacked pleasantly of martyrdom. All asses, they say, are born to martyrdom.
I crept past the nursery without accident, but barked my shins on the stocks in the hallway. Yet Mistress Molly did not awake—or was it that she knew what errand I was bound on? Perhaps. Still, to this day I do not know whether or not Sir William had confided in her. God rest her! I never saw her again.
I went softly through the lower hall, through the card-room, and tapped at the library door. It was opened without a sound.
We gazed silently at each other for a long time. I, for one, could not trust myself to speak. All the joy and exhilaration of adventure had suddenly left me; I felt the straps of my pack straining my shoulders, but the burden on my back was not as heavy as my heart's full load.
He seemed so old, so tired, so gray; his eyes had acquired that peering look which one notices in faces scored by care. What a blight had come upon him in these few weeks! Where was that ruddy glow, that full swell of muscle as he moved,that clear-eyed, full-fronted presence that I knew so well! How old his hands appeared under the cuff's limp lace; how old his loose face, all in ashy seams; how old his slow eyes—how old, old, old!
He rose as though his back, instead of mine, bore the burden, and together, without a word, we passed through the dark house and out to the porch. Dawn silvered the east, but the moon in its first quarter lay afloat in the western clouds, and a few stars looked down through a sky caked with frosted fleece.
He embraced me in silence, holding me a long time to his breast, yet never a word was said, and never a sound fell on the night air save my desperate gulps to crush back the sob that strained in my throat.
Presently I was conscious that I had left him, and was running fast through the darkness, blind as a bat for the tears, breathless, too, for, as I halted and turned to look back, far away against the dawn I saw our house as a black mass, with a single candle twinkling in the basement. So I knew Sir William still kept his vigil in the library.
The streets of Johnstown were dark, save for the rare lanthorns of the watchmen, but there seemed to be many people abroad, most of them noisy and quarrelsome. To tell the truth, I had never before seen so much swaggering and drunkenness in Johnstown, and I marvelled at it as I hastened on. Once, as I passed a tavern, two men, journeying in opposite directions, hailed each other with a new phrase: "Greeting, friend! God save our country!" At which a drunken soldier from the tavern bawled out: "God save our country—eh? That's the Boston rebels' password! God save the King and damn the country!—you yellow-bellied Whigs!"
A small crowd gathered, but I hastened on; yet behind me I heard oaths and blows and cries of: "Lobster! Tory! Kill the red-coat!" And everywhere along the street windows were raised and men looked out, some shouting: "Rebel!" "Traitor!" or "Bloody-back!" "Tea-sot—toss-pot!" and some called for the watch.
Many people began to rush hither and thither. A little peddler got under my feet and fell sprawling and squealingtill I picked him up and set him on his legs. He was a small Hebrew man, Saul Shemuel, who came a-peddling often to our servants; but in his terror he did not know me, and he fled madly into Rideup's Tavern with a soldier after him, vowing he'd have one rebel scalp even though it were a Jewish one.
I had no time to linger, yet behind me I heard a sharp fight begin at Rideup's Tavern, which is another pot-house much frequented by Boston men. Presently as I climbed the hill I heard the drums at the guard-house beating the alarm, and I knew the fray would soon end with the patrol's arrival from their barracks.
But what had come over our staid towns-people and farmers and tenants that they should damn each other for rebels and Tories? It amazed me to see old neighbours shaking their fists out of windows and cursing one another with such extraordinary and unnecessary fury.
Truly, if in our village this question of tuppence worth o' tea drove men mad, what wonder Sir William and Governor Tryon should frown and shake their heads over a pinch o' snuff?
But I was to leave all this trouble behind me now. Already the misty wilderness loomed up in the south, vague as a ghostly vision in the moon's beams. Ah, my woods!—my dear, dear woods! One plunge into that dim, sweet shadow and what cared I for King or rebel or any woman who ever lived?
My first three weeks in the woods were weeks of heaven. Never had I seen the forest so beautiful, never had the soft velvet lights clothed the wilderness with such exquisite mystery. Along the stony beds of lost ravines I passed and saw the frosty bowlders lie like silver mounds in the dawn, glimmering through steaming waters. I passed at eventide when the sunset turned the cliffs to crumbling crags of gold, and I saw massed mountain peaks reflected in pools where the shadows of great fish moved like clouds.
I ate and drank and slept in the dim wood stillness undisturbed; I waked when my guide, the sun, flamed through the forest, and I followed in his lead, resting when he hung circling in the noonday heavens, following again when he resumed the sky-trail towards the west, seeking my couch when he lay down below the world's blue edge to fold him in the blanket of the night.
Twice came the rain, delicately perfumed showers shaking down through a million leaves, leaving frail trails of vapour errant through the trees, and powdered jewels on every leaf.
And I lived well on that swift trail where the gray grouse scuttled through the saplings, and in every mossy streamlet the cold, dusky troutlings fought for the knot of scarlet yarn on my short hand-line. Once I saw bronzed turkeys, all huddled in a brood at twilight, craning and peering from their tree-perch; but let them go, as I had meat to spare. Once, too, at dawn, I heard a bull-moose lipping tree-buds, and lay still in my blanket while the huge beast wandered past, crack! crash! and slop! slop! through the creek, his hide all smeared with clay and a swarm of forest flies whirling over him. Lord, how rank he did smell, but for all that I was glad the wind set not the other way, for it is sometimes the toss of a coin what your bull-moose will do, run or fightat sight; nor is it even doubtful in September, when the moose-cow wallows and bawls across the marshes for her antlered gallant on the ridge.
I saw but one moose, for there are not many in our forests, though they say the Canadas do swarm with them, and also with elks and caribous.
There were few birds to be seen except near rivers: a blue-gray meat-bird here and there whining in the hemlocks, a great owl huddled on a limb, and sometimes a troop of black-cheeked chickadees that came cheerfully to hand for a crumb of corn. Squirrels were everywhere—that is, everywhere except through the pine belts, and there I had to make out with the bitter flesh of those villain partridges which feed on spruce-tips. I'd as soon eat a hawk in winter or dine on slices of fried spruce-gum, for truly there is more nourishment in a moccasin than in these ignoble birds dressed up like toothsome partridges.
I had not met a soul on the trail, nor had I found any fresh signs save once, and that was the print of a white man's moccasin on the edge of a sandy strip near the head-waters of the Ohio, which is called the Alleghany, north of Fort Pitt.
This foot-mark disturbed me, although it was three days old and pointing north. But that signified nothing, for the man who made it had come in a canoe, yet I could find no sign that a canoe had been beached there, nor, indeed, any further marks of moccasins, and I made moderate haste to get under cover, as I am timid about things I cannot account for.
Reason enough, moreover, for if there were no signs except that single imprint, it was clear that the man who left that mark was wading the river because he wished to leave no trail. And who is not suspicious of those who appear to be at pains to conceal their tracks?
There is something terrifying in the sudden apparition of a fellow-creature in the woods. When one has been living alone in the forest solitude, day after day, perhaps even craving company, I know nothing so shocking as the unexpected sight of another man in the wilderness.
Why this is so, why fear, caution, and anger are invariably the primal instincts, I do not fully understand.
Sometimes, lying perdu, I have seen the tasselled ears of a wild-cat flatten at first sight of a stranger cat; I have seen the wolverine snarl hideously as he winded a strange comrade; I have seen the solitary timber-wolf halt, hair on end and every hot fang bared, where a brother wolf had crossed his trail an hour before.
So I; for as I slunk away from that foot-mark in the sand-willows, I found myself priming my rifle and looking behind me with all the horror of a Robinson Crusoe, though I had miles of country to avoid the unknown man withal.
Early that morning, having crossed, as nearly as I could make out, the boundary between our Province of New York and the Province of Pennsylvania, I had approached, somewhat nearer than I meant to, the carrying-place on the Alleghany, which lies directly in the Fort Pitt trail.
Now, at mid-day, the sun heating the forest, I found my pack very heavy and my shirt wet with exertion, but dared not halt until I had circled around that carrying-place. So I toiled on, the very rifle in my hand heavy as lead, and my eyes nearly blinded with the sweat that poured from my hair and neck, bathing me in a sort of stinging coolness. My stomach, too, was asking the hour, and the green-eyed deer-flies whirled over me, fierce for blood, for I durst not lag even to wash my face in oil of pennyroyal.
It was only when at last above the trees in the east I perceived the blue peak of a mountain that I knew I was safe enough; for the peak in the east belonged to the Alleghany range, and I had steered a fine circle without losing a mile.
However, I jogged on along a runway made hard by the hoof of countless deer herds, until I came to a thread of water curving through the moss like a sword-blade on green velvet. Here I knelt, let go my pack, and rolled over on the moss, dog-tired.
Hands clasped on my empty stomach I lay looking up at the sky through the matted leaves that thatched my forest roof, too tired even to drink. But the accursed deer-flies drove me to water as they drive the deer, and I drank my fill and smeared me with pennyroyal and tallow, face and wrists.
For the first time since I had entered the wilderness I made no fire, but munched a cold breast of partridge anddrove it into my stomach with bits of ash-cake, drinking a mouthful between bites to moisten the dry cheer. I ate very slowly, my eyes making their mechanical circuit of the silent trees, my ears ever flattened for a noise behind me.
Silence breeds silence; man's movements in the woods are soft and cat-like where caution is an instinct. I speak of true woodsmen—those who know the solitary life—not of loud and careless men who swagger into God's woodland mysteries as to a tavern tap-room.
Now, as I sat there, crumbs on my knees yet unbrushed, a sudden instinct arose in me that I had been followed; nay, not so sudden, either, for the vague idea had been slowly taking shape since I had seen that sign in the river-bed among the willows.
I had absolutely no reason for believing this; the foot-print was three days old and it pointed north. Yet, at the mere thought, the skin on my neck began to roughen and my nose gave little twitches. Unconsciously I had already risen, priming my rifle, and for a moment, I stood there, ankle deep in moss. Then, moved by no impulse of my own, I swear, I lifted my pack and passed swiftly along the little brook towards the main trail. Presently, through the willows to the right, I caught a glimpse of a shallow stream rushing noiselessly over a sand bottom, and on the other side of the stream I saw a notched tree, the Fort Pitt trail!
Now I deliberately made a string of plain foot-tracks along the sandy stream, pointing towards the shallowest spot. Here I forded, and made more tracks in the mud, entering the Fort Pitt trail. I ran down this trail till I came to a brier, and on the thorns of a spray which crossed the broad, hard trail, I left a few strings from my fringed hunting-shirt. Then I began to walk backward till I reached the spot where I had entered the trail from the sandy stream. I backed down this bank, forded the shallows, then, instead of coming out on the sand, I waded up stream to my little thread of a brook, and up that brook till I found a great log choking it. And behind this log I squatted, panting, and astonished at my own performance.
Yet, even now, I could not find reason to blush at my timid precautions, for that feeling of being followed stillhaunted me. It was neither a coward's panic nor a cool man's alarm; it was something that drove me to cover my tracks. The white hare does it when unpursued by hounds; the grouse do it when no pointer follows—why? I know no more than the white hare or the grouse.
From my form among the ferns, rabbit-like I huddled with palpitating flanks and nose atwitch in the wind. Nothing stirred save those sad, deformed leaves that drift earthward, dead ere spring is fled. Bubble! bubble! dripped the stream, its tiny waterfall full of voices, now clear, now indistinct, but always calling sweetly, "Michael! Michael! Michael!" And if your name be not Michael, nevertheless it will call you by your name. And the voice is ever the voice of the best beloved.
Alert, sniffing the air, I still could hear the voice of Silver Heels, down under the waterfall, and sometimes she called through laughter, "Michael!" and sometimes far away like a wind-blown cry, and sometimes like a whisper close to my face.
So rang her voice as an old song in my ears, the while my eyes scanned the dappled tree-trunks of a silvery beechwood, east and west, and through a long vista where, across a sunny streak of water, the Fort Pitt trail ran southwest.
The sun had spanned an hour's length on the blue dial of the sky, yet nothing moved in the woods. Still, strangely, I felt no impatience, no desire to chide myself for good time lost in groundless watchfulness. One by one the tall trees shed young leaves too early dead; the voices in the waterfall made low melody; the white sun-spots waned and glowed, mottling the silvered tree-trunks, lacing the water with a paler fretwork.
I sat now with my cheek on the cool, moist log, my rifle in my lap, watching the trees along the Fort Pitt trail. And, as I watched, I saw a man come out on the sandy bank of the stream and kneel down where my tracks crossed to the water's edge.
I was not astonished, but all over me my flesh moved, and without a sound I sank down behind my log into a soft ball of buckskin.
The man was Walter Butler. I knew him, though Godalone knows how I could, for he wore the shirt of a Mohawk and beaded leggings to the hips, and at that distance might have been an Indian. He bore a rifle, and there was a hatchet in his beaded belt, and on his head he wore a round cap of moleskin under which his black, coarse hair, freed from the queue, fell to his chin.
He crouched there, examining my tracks with closest attention for full a minute, then rose gracefully and followed, tracing them up to the Fort Pitt trail.
Here I saw two other men come swiftly through the trees to meet him, but, though they gesticulated violently and pointed down the stream, they spoke too low for me to hear a single whisper.
Suddenly, to my horror, a canoe shot across my line of sight and stopped as suddenly, held by the setting-pole in midstream. It contained a white man, who leaned on the setting-pole, silently awaiting the result of the conference on the bank above.
The conference ended abruptly; I saw two of the men start south towards Fort Pitt, while Butler came hastily down to the water's edge and waded out to the canoe.
He boarded the frail craft from the bow, straddling it skilfully and working his way to his place. Then the two setting-poles flashed in the sunshine and the canoe shot out of sight.
My mind was working rapidly now, but, at first, anger succeeded blank perplexity. What did Captain Butler mean by following me through the forests? The answer came ere the question had been fully formed, and I knew he hated me and meant to kill me.
How he had learned of my mission, whether he had actually learned of it, or only suspected it from my disappearance, concerned me little. These things were certain: he was Lord Dunmore's emissary as I was the emissary of Sir William; he was bound for Cresap's camp as was I; and he intended to intercept me and kill me if that meant the winning of the race. Ay, he meant to kill me, anyhow, for how could he ever again appear in Johnstown if I lived to bear witness to his treachery?
I must give up my visit to the Cayugas for the present. Itwas to be a race now to Cresap's camp, and, though they had their canoe to speed withal, the advantage lay on my side; for I was seeking no man's life, whereas they must soon find that they had over-run their scent and would spend precious time in ambushes. Besides, they doubtless believed that somewhere I had a canoe hid, and that would keep them hanging around the carry-trails while I made time by circling them.
One thing disturbed me: two of them had gone by water and two by the Fort Pitt trail, and this threw me hopelessly into the wilderness without the ease of a trodden way.
Slowly I resumed my pack, reprimed my rifle, and turned my nose southward, bearing far enough west to keep out of earshot from the river and the trail.
At first I had looked upon Fort Pitt as a hospitable wayside refuge, marking nine-tenths of my journey towards Cresap's camp. But now I dared not present myself there, with Walter Butler hot on my trail, armed not only with hatchet and rifle, but also doubtless with some order of Lord Dunmore which might compel the officers at Fort Pitt to hand me over to Butler on his mere demand.
For, although Fort Pitt was rightfully on Pennsylvania soil, it had long been claimed by Virginia, and it was a Virginia garrison that now held it. Thus, should I stop there, I should be under the laws of Virginia and under the claw-thumb of Dunmore or anybody who might claim authority to represent him.
There is, I have been told, a vast region which lies between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi, a desolate wilderness save for a few British garrisons at Natchez, at Vincennes, and at Detroit. These troops are placed there in order to establish the claim of our King to the region lately wrested from the French. Fort Pitt commanded the gateway to this wilderness, and the Ohio flowed through it; and for years Virginia and Pennsylvania had disputed for the right to control this gateway. Virginia held it by might, not right. Through it Daniel Boone had gone some years before; now Cresap had followed; and who could doubt that the Governor of Virginia had urged him on?
But the march of Cresap not only disturbed Sir Williamin his stewardship; it angered all Pennsylvania, and this is the reason:
The Virginians under Cresap went to settle, and to keep the Indians at a distance; the Pennsylvanians, on the other hand, went only to trade with the Cayugas, and they were furious to see Cresap's men spoil their trade. This I learned from Sir William on our evening walks about Quider's hut; and I learned, too, that Fort Pitt was a Virginia fortress on Pennsylvania soil, guarded not only against the savages, but also against the Pennsylvanians, who traded powder and shot and rifles with the Cayugas, and thus, according to my Lord Dunmore practically incited the savages to resist such philanthropists as himself.
Clearly then, no emissary of Sir William would be welcomed at Pittsburg fortress or town; and I saw nothing for it but to push on through the gateway of the west, avoiding Butler's men as best I could, and seeking the silly, deluded Cresap under the very nose of my Lord Dunmore.
My progress was slow; at times I sank between tree-roots, up to the thighs in moss; at times the little maidens of the flowering briers bade me tarry in their sharp, perfumed embrace. Now it was a wiry moose-bush snare that enlaced my ankles and sent me sprawling, pack and all; now the tough laurel bound me to the shoulders in slender ropes of blossoms which only my knife could sever. Tired out while yet the sun sent its reddening western rays deep into the forest, I knelt again, dropped my pack under a hemlock thicket, and crawled out to a heap of rocks which overhung a ravine.
The sunlight fell full in my face and warmed my body as I crept through a mat of blueberry bushes and peered over the edge of the crag down into the ravine.
A hundred feet below the Alleghany flowed, a glassy stream tinted with gold, reflecting forest and cliff and a tiny triangle of cobalt sky. Its surface was a mirror without a flaw, save where a solitary wild-duck floated, trailing a rippled wake, or steered hither and thither, craning its green neck after water-flies and gnats.
How still it was below; how quiet the whole world was—quieter for the hushed rumour of the winds on some far mountain spur.
The little blue caps which every baby peak had worn all day were now changed for night-caps of palest rose; the wild plum's bloom dusted every velvet mountain flank, the forest was robed in flowing purple to its roots, which the still river washed in sands of gold.
Below me a brown hawk wheeled, rising in narrowing spirals like a wind-blown leaf, higher, higher, till of a sudden its bright eye flashed level with mine and it sheered westward with a rush of whistling feathers. I watched it drifting away under the clouds into the sunset, with a silly prayer that wings might be fastened to my tired feet, as Minnomonedo, leaning out from the centre of heaven, dipped the first bird in Mon-o-ma, the Spirit Water, which was also I-ós-co, the Water of Light. "Te-i-o! Te-i-o!" I murmured, "On-ti-o—I-é nia, oh,Mon-a-kee!"
For God knows—and forgives—that, at sixteen, I was but an Algonquin in superstition, fearing Minnomonedo and seeking refuge in that God whom I did not dread.
In towns and cities the savage legends which I had imbibed with my first milk vanished from my mind completely, leaving no barriers to a calm worship of the Most High. But in the woods it was different; every leaf, every blossom represented links in those interminable chains of legends with which I had been nourished, and from which nothing but death can entirely wean me.
To me, the birds that passed, the shy, furry creatures that slipped back into the demi-light, the insects, the rocks, water, clouds, sun, moon, and stars were comrades with names and histories and purposes, exercising influences on each other and on me, and calling for an individual and intimate recognition which I cared not to disregard in the forest, though I might safely forget them amid the crowded wastes of civilization.
I do not mean to say that I credited the existence of such creatures as the wampum bird, nor did I believe that the first belt was made of a quill dropped to earth from the fearsome thing. This was nonsense; even at night I dared mock at it. But still every human being knows that, in the midnight wilderness, strange things do pass which no man can explain—strange beasts move, strange shapes dance by elf-fires,and trees talk aloud, one to another. If this be witchcraft, or if it be but part of a life which our vast black forests hide forever from the sun, I know not. Sir William holds that there are no witches, yet I once heard him curse a Huron hag for drying up his Devon cattle with a charm. We Christians know that a red belt lies ever between God and Satan. And I, as a woodsman, also know that,ifthere be demons in Biskoona, a thousand bloody belts lie for all time twixtMinnoandMudjee, call them what you will, and their voices are in the passing thunder and in the noises of the eight great winds.
Sprawling there on the warm rocks like a young panther in the sun, ears attuned to the faintest whisper of danger, I gnawed a strip of dried squirrel's flesh and sucked up the water from a dripping mossy cleft, sweet cheer to an empty belly.
As for fire, that was denied me by my sense, though I knew that the coming night would stiffen me. But I cared little for that: what occupied my thoughts was how to obtain food when a single shot might bring Butler and his trackers hot on the scent ere the rifle smoke had blown clear of the trees.
It was not always that one might knock down a stupid partridge with a stick, nor yet were there trout in every water-crack. I looked down at the darkening river, where the wild mallard still circled and darted its neck after unseen midges; and my mouth watered, for he was passing plump, this Southern lingerer, fresh from the great gulf.
"If he be there in the morning," thought I, "perhaps I may risk a shot and take to my heels." For had I not thrown Butler and his crew from my trail as easily as I brush a bunch of deer-flies from my hunting-shirt? And if I could do it once, I could repeat the trick in a dozen pretty ways of my own knowledge and of Thayendanegea's invention. Still I knew he was no forest blunderer, this Butler man; he had proved that in the Canadas; and I did not mean to be over-confident nor to rock caution to sleep in my first triumph.
And Lord!—how I hated him and wished him evil, waking, sleeping, in sickness and in health, ay, living or dead, I wished him evil and black mischance on his dark soul's flight to the last accounting. So, with thoughts of hatred and revenge,I saw the cinders of the sun go out behind the forest and the web of night settling over the world. Wrapped in my blanket, curled up in a bed of blueberry, I folded my hands over my body like a chipmunk and said a prayer to the God whom I did not fear. After that I reprimed my rifle, covering flint and pan to keep out the dew, settled the stock in a crevice near my head, and lay down again to watch for the full moon, whose yellow light was already soaring up behind a black peak in the east. And all night long I lay on that borderland of sleep which men in danger dare not traverse lest a sound find them unready. Slumbering, again and again I saw the moon through slitted lids, yet I rested and slept a sweet wholesome sleep which renewed my vigour by its very lightness.
Long before the sun had done painting the sky-scenes for his royal entry, I had brushed the dew from cap and blanket, primed my rifle afresh, and cautiously crawled to the cliff's brink.
Mist covered the river; I could not have seen a canoe had it been floating under my own crag; neither could I see my wild duck, though at times I heard his drowsy quack somewhere below, and the answering quack of his mate, now rejoining her lord and master. Perhaps a whole flock had come in by night.
Now, the intense stillness of early morn did not reassure me, nor did the careless quacking of the ducks convince me that the river and shore were untenanted save for them. Many a drowsing mallard has been caught by a lean fox or knocked on the head with a paddle. I had no mind to creep down and risk a shot at a shadow on the misty water, not knowing what else that mist might conceal. However, I was fiercely hungry, and I meant to have a duck. So, shivering, I undressed, and, stark naked, I picked my way down the clefts to the base of the cliff and slipped into the water like a mink.
The water was warmer than the air; I swam without a splash, straight towards the quacking sound, seeing nothing but the blank fog as yet, but meaning to seize the first duck by the legs if he were asleep, or by his neck if he dived.
Now, although I made no sound in the water, all aroundme I felt the presence of live creatures stirring, and soon there began a peevish sound of half-awakened water-fowl, so that I knew I was near to a flock of them.
Suddenly, right in my face, a duck squawked and flapped; I grasped at the bird, but held only a fistful o' feathers. In an instant the mist around me rang with strong wings beating the water, and with a whistling roar the flock drove past, dashing me with spray till I, smothered and choked, flung up my arm towards a floating tree-trunk. To my horror the log rolled completely over, and out of it two men fell, shrieking, on top of me, for the log I had grasped was a bark canoe, and I had spilled out my enemies on my own head.
We all went down, but I sank clear of the unseen men and rose again to swim for my life. They came to the surface behind me; I could see their shadowy heads over my shoulder, for the mist was lifting.
They were shouting now, evidently to others on the opposite bank, but my way led not thither, and I swam swiftly for the foot of my cliff, missing it again and again in the fog, until I found it at last, and ran panting and dripping up the cleft.
When I reached my rifle I leaned over the crag to look, but the river gorge remained choked with vapour, though here above all was bright gray dawn. The shouting below came clearly to my ears, also the splashing. I judged that the two men had thrown their arms over the capsized canoe, and thus, hands clasped, were making out to keep afloat; for in this manner only can a capsized canoe serve two men.
Drying my bruised feet and dripping skin in my blanket, I hastened to dress and strap on my pack, keeping a restless eye on the gulf below. When I was prepared, the sun, pushing up behind the peaks in the east, was already scattering the mist into long, thin clouds, and at intervals I made out the canoe floating bottom up, close inshore, and I heard the wrecked men paddling with their hands.
Presently Walter Butler's voice sounded from the bank, cautioning the swimming men to proceed slowly, and inquiring what was the cause for their upsetting.
They replied that a deer, swimming the river, had planted one foot in their bow while they slept, and so overturned thecanoe. But I knew that Walter Butler would not be long in discovering the tracks of my naked feet in the shore-sands where I had landed while searching for my cliff, so I prepared to leave without further ado, though angrily tempted to make a target of the phantom group below.
So, with a stomach stayed with a mouthful of corn and water, I started silently westward, meaning to make a circle, and, hiding my tracks, recross the river to take advantage of their sure pursuit by travelling on the Fort Pitt trail until again hunted into the forest.
Munching my corn as I plodded on, I still kept a keen lookout behind, though in the forest one can seldom see but a rod or two, and sometimes not even a yard except down the vista of some woodland stream.
It was useless to attempt to cover my tracks, for I could neither avoid breaking branches in the tangle, nor keep from leaving foot-prints on the soft moss which even a Boston schoolmaster might read a-running. But I could trot along the tops of fallen logs like a partridge, and use every watercourse that wound my way, so breaking my trail for all save a hound or an Indian. And this I did to check the pursuit which I knew must begin sooner or later.
It began even sooner than I expected, and almost caught me napping, for, resting a moment to scrutinize a broad stretch of barren ground, around which I had just circled in order to keep cover, I saw a man creeping among the rocks and berry-scrub, doubtless nosing about for my trail. A moment later another man moved on the eastern edge of the mountain flank, and at the same time, far up the river, I saw the canoe floating.
That was enough for me, and I started on a dog-trot down the slope and along the river-bed, plunging through willows and alders till I came to a bend from which the naked shoulder of the mountain could not be seen.
Thayendanegea had taught me to do what people thought I would be likely to do, but to accomplish it so craftily that they would presently think I had done something else.
When at length those who pursued me should find my trail on the southern border of the open scrub-land, they would have no difficulty in following me down the long incline tothe river where I now stood, ankle-deep in icy water. I had halted exactly opposite to the mouth of a rocky stream, and it was natural that I should ford the rapids here and continue, on the other bank, up that stream to hide my trail. They would expect me to do it, so this I did, and ran up the bed of the stream for a few rods, carelessly leaving a tiny dust line of corn-meal on the rocks as though in my headlong flight my sack had started a seam.
Then I turned around and waded down the brook again to the river, out to the shallow rapids, and so, knee-deep, hastened southward again to put the next bend between me and the canoe.
I was making but slow progress, for my sack galled me, the slippery, wet buckskin leggings chafed knee and ankle raw, and my soaked hunting-shirt glued its skirts to my thighs, impeding me at every stride. My drenched moccasins also left wet tracks on the Fort Pitt trail, which I knew the sun could not dry out for hours yet; but I did not believe that Butler and his crew would come up in time to see them.
I was mistaken; scarcely half an hour had passed ere their accursed canoe appeared bobbing down the rapids, paddles flashing in the sun; and I took to the forest again at a lively gait, somewhat disturbed, though my self-confidence permitted no actual anxiety to assail me.
I now played them one of Brant's tricks, which was to change moccasins for a brand-new pair of larger size, and soled with ridged bear-hide. I also reversed them, toe pointing to the rear, and they made a fine mark on the moss.
Every twenty paces I stooped to brush up the pile of the velvet moss and so obliterate my tracks for the next twenty paces.
In this manner I travelled for three hours without sign of pursuit, and had it not been for my pack I could have jogged on till night. But my galled shoulders creaked for mercy, and I struggled out once more into the Fort Pitt trail and stood panting and alert, drenched with sweat.
The trail had been trodden within the hour; I saw fresh sign of two different moccasins, and of a coarse boot of foreign style, all pointing southward. The moccasins werelike one pair I had in my pack, of Albany make; the wearer of the boots toed in. These things I noticed quicker than I could relate them, and instinctively I changed my moccasins for the third time, and ran on, stepping carefully in the tracks of him who wore the Albany moccasins, and keeping a sharp eye ahead.
I had run nearly half a mile, and was beginning to look about for a vantage spot to rest on, when a turn in the trail brought me out along the river.
I scanned the stream thoroughly, and discovered nothing to balk at, but I could not see the opposite bank very plainly because the forest rose from the water's edge, and all was dusky where the low-arched branches screened the shore.
Under this a canoe might lie, or might not; there was no means of telling. I sniffed at the dusky screen of leaves, but had my sniffing for my trouble, as nothing moved there.
It was clear I could not remain in the Fort Pitt trail with at least two of the Butler crew behind me. Should I take to the tangled forest again? My shoulders begged me not to, but my senses jogged me to the prudent course. However, at certain times in men's careers, when body and mind clamour for different answers, a moment comes, even to the most cautious, when a risk smacks as sweet as a banquet.
One of those moments was coming now; I knew the risk of traversing that open bit of trail, but the hazard had a winy flavour withal, and besides it was such a few feet to safety—such a little risk. And I trotted out on the open trail.
Instantly a shot echoed in the gorge, and the pack on my back jerked. I never made such a jump in all my life before, for I had cleared the open like a scared fawn, and now stood glued to a tree, peering at the blue cloud of smoke which trailed along the opposite shore.
There it was!—there came their accursed canoe like a live creature poking its painted snout out of the leafy screen, and I cocked and primed my rifle and waited.
There were two men in the canoe; one paddled gingerly, the other had reloaded his rifle and was now squatting in the bow. But what astonished and enraged me was that I knew the men, Wraxall the barber, and Toby Tice, perfectly well. They were, moreover, tenants of Sir William, living withtheir families in Johnstown, and their murderous treachery horrified me.
I had never shot at a man; I raised my rifle and held them on the sights for a moment, but there was no fever of the chase in me now, only a heart-sick horror of taking a neighbour's life.
In a choked and shaky voice I hailed them, warning them back; my voice gave them a start, for I believe they thought me hard hit.
"Go back, you clowns!" I called. "Shame on you, Toby Tice! Shame on you, Wraxall! What devil's work is this? Are you turned Huron then with your knives and hatchets and your Seneca belts? Swing that canoe, I say! Au large! Au large!—or, by God, I'll drill you both with one ball!"
Suddenly Wraxall fired. Through the blue cloud I saw Tice sweep au large, and I stepped out to the shore and shot a ripping hole through their canoe as it heeled.
Wraxall was reloading desperately; Tice started to send the canoe towards me once more, but suddenly catching sight of the leaking bottom, dropped on his knees and tried to draw the ripped flaps together.
Behind my tree I tore a cartridge open, rammed in a palmful of buckshot, primed, and fired, tearing the whole bow out of their flimsy bark craft. The canoe stood up like a post, stern in the air, and Wraxall lay floundering, while Tice shrieked and fell sprawling into the river, head first, like a plunging frog, paddles, poles, and rifle following.
They were swimming my way now, but I shouted to them to sheer off, and at rifle point warned them across the river to land where they might and thank God I had not driven them to the bottom with an ounce of buck.
I was still watching them to see they landed safely, and had half turned to take the trail again, when, almost under my feet, a human hand shot up above the river-bank and seized my ankle, tripping me flat. The next moment a man leaped up from the shore where he had been crouching, but as I lay on my back I gave him a violent kick in the face and rolled over out of reach. Before I could grasp my rifle, his hatchet flew, pinning one flap of my hunting-shirt to the ground; and I wrenched the hatchet free and hurled it backat him, so that the flat of the blade smacked his face, and he dropped into the water with a scream.
Shaking all over, I rose and lifted my rifle, instinctively repriming. But the sight of the man in the mud, crawling about, gasping and blowing bloody bubbles, made me sick, and the next moment I turned tail and ran like a rabbit.
As I sped down the trail, over my shoulder I saw Walter Butler, planted out in the shoals of the river, taking steady aim at me, and I seized a tree and checked my course as his bullet sang past my face. Then I ran on, setting my teeth and vowing to repay that shot when my life was my own to risk again.
It was late in the afternoon when I turned once more from the trail and limped into the forest; and I was now close enough to exhaustion to feel for the first time in my life a touch of that desperation which makes a fury out of a cornered creature, be it panther or mouse.
For I had not been able to shake off pursuit, double and twist as I might. They were distant, it is true, but they plodded tirelessly, unerringly. Again and again I saw them on the rocks, on the vast arid reaches of the mountains, heads down to the trail, jogging along with horrid patience.
Once I doubled on them so close that I could see one of the band with his face tied up in a rag, doubtless the fellow who had tasted of his own toothsome hatchet. Walter Butler I could also distinguish, ever in the lead, rifle trailing. Only one among the others bore a rifle. I had certainly upset their canoe to good advantage. But now I began to repent me that I had not shot them in the water when I had the chance; for truly I was in a sorry condition to proceed farther, through forest or on trail; my limbs at times refused their service, and a twig tripped me when I needs must leap a log.
I fired my first long shot at them as they were entering a ravine below me, and I missed, for my hands were unsteady from my labouring breath. Yet I should have marked a deer where I pleased at that range.
This shot, however, delayed them, and they now advanced more slowly and cautiously, alert for another ambush. An hour later I gave them a second shot. My aim was wavering; my bullet only made one man duck his head.
I was fighting for time now. If I could keep on until dark I had no fear for the morrow. To tell the truth, I had no actual fear then; it seemed so impossible that these Johnstown yokels really meant to take my life, even if they caught me—this ass of a Toby Tice whom I had tipped for holding my stirrup more than once. And Wraxall, the red-headed barber sot, who had shaved me in the guard-house! How many times had he snatched off his greasy cap to me, as he loafed in tavern doors, sweating malt like a hop-vat!
But the nearness of Walter Butler was a very different affair. Even when I was but a toddling child at Mistress Molly's knee the sight of Walter Butler ever sent me fearfully hiding behind the first apron I could snatch at. Year by year my distrust and aversion deepened, until I had come to look forward serenely to that mortal struggle between us which I knew must come. But I had never expected it to come like this.
As I crept once more into the forest my hatred for this man gave me new strength, and I staggered on, searching for a vantage coign where I might take another shot at the grotesque crew. Up and up I crawled, faintly alarmed at my increasing weakness, for now, when a vine tripped me, I could scarce make out to rise again. In vain I whipped and spurred my lagging strength with stinging memories of all the scores I should wipe out with one clean bullet through Butler's head; it was nigh useless; I could barely move, and how was I to shoot with my brier-torn hands shaking so I could neither hold them still nor close my swollen fingers on the trigger? I needed rest; an hour would have sufficed to steady the palsy of exhaustion. If only the night would come quickly! But there were two hours of daylight yet, two long hours of light in which to track my every step.
I caught a distant glimpse of them far below me, searching the ravine and river-bank. How they had been lured off to the river I know not, but it gave me a brief chance for breath, though not for a shot; and I rested my face on my rifle-stock and closed my eyes.
I had been kneeling behind a granite rock in a bare waste of blueberry-scrub, close to the edge of the woods; and presently as I attempted to rise I fell down, and began to clawaround like a blind kitten. Stand up I could not, and worst of all, I had little inclination to attempt it, the bed of rough bushes was so soothing, and the granite rock invited my heavy head. All over me a sweet numbness tingled; I tried to think, I strove to rouse. In vain I heard a sing-song drowsing in my ears: "They will kill you! They will kill you!" but there was no terror in it. What would it be, I wondered—a hatchet?—a knife at the throat like the deer's coup-de-grâce? Maybe a blow with a rifle-stock. What did I care? Sleep was sweet.
Then a quiver swept through me like an icy wind; with a pang I remembered my mission and the wampum pledges, the boast and the vow to Sir William. Darkness crowded me down; my head reeled, yet I rose again to my knees, swaying and clutching at the rock which I could barely see. All around a thick night seemed to hem me in; I groped through a chilly void for my rifle; it was gone. Panic-stricken I staggered up, drenched with dew, and I saw the moon staring at me over a mountain's ghostly wall.
Slowly I realized that I had slept; that death had passed me where I lay unconscious in the open moorland. But how far had death gone?—and would he not return by moonlight, stealthily, casting no shadow? Ay, what was that under the tree there, that shape watching me?—moving, too,—a man!
As I shrank back my heel struck my rifle. In an instant I was down behind the rock to prime with dry powder, but to my horror I found flint missing, charge drawn, pan raised, and ramrod sticking helplessly out of the barrel. The shock stunned me for a moment; then I snatched at knife and hatchet only to find an empty belt dangling to my ankles.
In the impulse of fury and despair, I crouched flat with clinched fists, trembling for a spring; and at the same instant a tall figure rose from the bushes at my elbow, laughing coolly.
"Greeting, friend," he said; "God save our country!"
Speechless and dazed, I turned to face him, but he only leaned quietly on a long rifle and pinched his chin and chuckled.
"There are some gentlemen yonder looking for you, youngman," he said. "I sent them south, for somehow I thought you might not be looking for them."
Weakness had dulled my wits, but I found speech presently to ask for my knife and hatchet.
He laid his head on one side and contemplated me in mock admiration.
"Now! Now! Let us go slow, friend," he said. "Let us converse on several subjects before you begin bawling for your playthings. In the first place your manners need polish. I said to you, 'Greeting, friend; God save our country!' and you make me no polite reply."
Something in the big fellow's impudence and careless good-humour struck me as familiar. I had heard that voice before, and under pleasant circumstances, it seemed to me; somewhere I had seen him standing as he was standing now, in his stringy buckskins and his coon-skin cap, with the fluffy tail falling like a queue.
"If you please," I said, weakly, "give me my hatchet and knife and receive my thanks. Come, my good fellow, you detain me, and I have far to travel."
"Well, of all impudence!" he sneered. "Wait a bit, my young cock o' the woods. I don't know you yet, but I mean to ere you go out strutting o' moonlight nights."
"Will you give me my hatchet?" I asked, sharply, edging towards him.
Before the words left my lips he snatched my rifle from me and stepped back, putting the rock between us.
"Now," he said, grimly, "you come into camp and take supper with me, or I'll knock your head off and drag you in by the heels!"
Aching with fatigue and mortification, I stood there so perfectly helpless that the great oaf fell a-laughing again, and, with a shrug of good-humoured contempt, handed me back my rifle as though I were an infant.
"Don't grind your teeth at me," he chuckled. "Come to the camp, lad. I mean no harm to you. If I did, there's men yonder who'd slit your pipes for the pleasure, I warrant."
He took a step up the slope, looked around in the moonlight encouragingly, then abruptly returned to my side and passed his great arm around me.
"I'm dog-tired," I said, weakly, making an effort to walk; but my knees had no strength in them, and I must have fallen except for his support.
Up, up, up we passed through the foggy moonlight, he almost dragging me, and my feet a-trail behind. However, when we reached the plateau, I made out to stumble along with his aid, though I let him relieve me of my rifle, which he shouldered with his own.
After a minute or two I smelled the camp-fire, but could not see it. Even in the darkest night a fire amid great trees is not visible at any considerable distance.
My big companion, striding along beside me, had been constantly muttering under his breath, and presently I distinguished the words he was singing: