Harvey Catlett and his companion were received with great joy at the camp near the river bank.
The fugitives took new hope with their appearance, and seemed to think that the remainder of the journey to Wayne would be accomplished without further trouble.
Mrs. Merriweather so expressed herself, when the young woodsman shook his head and replied:
“We cannot save you in and of ourselves,” he said; “but we will do all we can. The trails to Wayne’s army are dark and perilous. I do not seek to keep anything back.”
“That is right, sir,” said the father quickly. “My wife is prone to exaggerate good fortune. I do not want her to remain deceived. I comprehend the situation, and am prepared for it.”
“That is right,” said Wolf Cap. “In these times one must know something about Indian affairs.”
“Now that we have exchanged our guide for you gentlemen, I am sure that our fortunes will mend.”
“Where is the guide of whom you have spoken?” asked Catlett, addressing the head of the family.
“Across the river, I suppose,” Abel Merriweather answered with a smile.
“Deserted?”
“Yes.”
“Just like the worthless guides of these days. It is a wonder that he did not get you into the Indian’s power.”
“He attempted to, but failed.”
“Just so.”
At Wolf Cap’s request Merriweather related the attempt made to get the boat ashore, and the two scouts listened attentively to the recital.
“Now, how come he to leave you this morning? Let us know all, Mr. Merriweather.”
The story of Little Moccasin’s appearance in the camp, and John Darknight’s hasty desertion was then told.
“Now what do you think of the girl?” the young scout said in a low tone to Wolf Cap.
There was a tinge of triumph in the youth’s voice.
“What have I already told you about her?” was the reply. “I allow that her action is strange, but those Indian witches can outdo anything in the woods. I have my opinion, and shall stick to it. Of course you will let me do this, boy.”
“Certainly, Abner. I shall do nothing to embarrass you in it; but it puzzles me because you can see no good in the girl.”
“I’m sorry, boy—indeed I am. I wish I could tell you what I really think about some things; but not now, if you please. I’m going down to the river. Talk to the folks here; you know what to say. We are here to take them to Mad Anthony or die in the attempt.”
Having finished, the tall scout withdrew from the little group and betook himself to the water’s edge, shaded by the leafy boughs of a giant tree.
Harvey Catlett glanced over his shoulder atthe retreating figure and then addressed the fugitives with a smile.
“He is a mystery; one of the many that inhabit the backwoods. Why, he does not place any confidence in Little Moccasin; he seems to hate her, and yet I believe she has never lifted a finger of harm against him. But we have unaccountable antagonisms, and here in the woods one finds them plentiful.”
“But who can hate that dear girl?” said Kate Merriweather’s musical voice. “I could easily call her sister, and live forever at her side. She is not an Indian, though she calls her mother Madgitwa. She cannot be treacherous to our people.”
“Thanks,” said Harvey Catlett, bowing to the fair young speaker. “I rejoice to hear you speak thus of the girl.”
“I fear that Kate is thus partial because of her pretty eyes. I must confess that I do not like her. Her desertion means no good to us.”
The last speaker was Carl Merriweather, ever ready to join in a conversation where any one crossed swords with his opinions.
“We will not argue the matter now,” Harvey said, seeing the youth’s flushed cheeks, and not liking to incur the displeasure of any of the fugitives.
“Perhaps we had best not,” responded Carl with a slight sneer and a meaning glance at his friend Darling. “Let us drop the subject, nor call it up again. I have my opinion, you yours, Mr Catlett.”
The young scout turned from the boy and began to talk in a confidential tone to the settler, which seemed to be a signal for a general disbanding of the group, and the two were left alone.
“It is deuced queer,” Carl Merriweather hastened to say to George Darling. “He is taking her part, and I am satisfied that she is full of treachery.”
“I am of the same opinion, and that he, one of Wayne’s scouts, should defend her, is beyond my comprehension. She is drawing him on, and it may be that she really loves him. But it looks to me as if she were using him for a purpose. That scene between her and our guide was too theatrical to be genuine. They overdid it. It was a preconcerted affair, for it gave Darknight a chance to show his hand and get away. They are together now, my word for it.”
The boy shared his companion’s opinion concerning the witch of the woods, and they formed a cabal against her beneath the tree whose shadows fell upon the murmuring Maumee.
By and by Wolf Cap came up from the river and rejoined the occupants of the camp.
“He has seen something; look at his white face,” whispered Abel Merriweather to his nephew.
“No ghosts, at any rate, for one does not see them at this hour,” was the reply. “He will probably enlighten us.”
But the scout did not do so, but talked about the journey and Wayne’s army, and the pallor gradually left his face.
The noonday meal was discussed, after which the journey was resumed.
As the woods were not very clear of underbrush, the progress was of necessity quite slow, and at nightfall the party halted in a picturesque ravine through which in years gone by some woodland stream had poured its waters into the Maumee.
Wild, luxuriant grass covered the bed of the place, and the bank on either side was clothed in that verdure which so beautifies the woods in summer. It was a fit camping place for the night, for the mouth of the ravine was hidden by a fallen tree, and a fire could not have been noticed from the river.
Darkness settled rapidly down upon the camp, and Harvey Catlett tore himself from talkative Kate Merriweather, and prepared to guard her while she slept in the boat.
He took up a position at the mouth of the ravine and near the river. Not far away Wolf Cap kept his vigils, and little Carl Merriweather, determined to be of some service, kept sentry at the old hunter’s side.
Brighter and brighter grew the stars in the heavens that bent lovingly above the river, and the night winds stirred the leaves with a sweet melody.
Now and then the cry of some night bird or animal would startle the sentries, but they would soon turn therefrom and listen for more important sounds.
Harvey Catlett was on the alert, and his ears at length caught a sound that roused him. It seemed the peculiar tread of the panther, dying away like the step of the beast, and recurring no more. It was in vain that he listened for a repetition of the sound. The very silence told him that he had permitted something important to escape investigation.
“It may not be too late to follow yet,” he said to himself. “I am a fool that I permitted——”
The strange cry that the night hawk sends forth when frightened from its perch, fell startlingly upon his ears, and he severed his sentence.
“That is my panther!” he said. “There is mischief afoot.”
We have said that he was near the river.
The cry, or signal, as the young scout hastened to interpret the sound, seemed to emanate from a spot not forty feet away, and with the skill of the experienced trailer, he glided toward it.
The cry was repeated, then there was a response which seemed to have crossed the river, and that in turn was answered from the very shore which the daring scout was noiselessly approaching.
All at once he halted and hugged the dark ground, for the night caller was before him.
It was not a hawk, nor was it the stealthypanther that greeted young Catlett’s gaze; but the figure of an Indian!
Ready to spring upon the redskin, the scout resolved to witness the result of the bird calls.
He expected to see several boats cross the river for an attack upon the camp; but was doomed to disappointment.
A sound to his left drew his attention in that direction.
The Indian heard it, rose and started toward the river. At the edge of the water he was joined by a figure that carried a burthen. The scout could not distinguish it in the uncertain light.
A few whispered words passed between the twain who had stepped into a boat, and Catlett was about to try the effect of a shot, when a startling shriek rose from the ravine.
It was a woman’s voice!
The occupants of the boat heard it, and shoved the craft from shore. Out into the stream it shot like an arrow from a bow.
Harvey Catlett sprang to his feet and fired at the disappearing boat.
A wild cry followed the shot, and the sound was still echoing in the wood when Abel Merriweather reached his side.
It did not need the settler’s white face to tell the scout what had happened. Mrs. Merriweather’s shriek had already told him.
Kate was gone!
There was no disguising the fact that Kate Merriweather was missing.
Harvey Catlett felt that the stealthy tread which had fallen upon his ears was that of her abductor, and he upbraided himself for what he self-accusingly termed his inactivity.
It is true that the hawk cry which he construed into a preconcerted signal had roused him to action; but the boat and its occupants, one of whom was doubtless the settler’s daughter, had left the shore. And he had fired into the craft without thinking that his ball might find the heart of the fair girl, and imperil his own life.
It was a startled group that surrounded the young scout, and almost uncontrollable anger flashed in Oscar Parton’s eyes. Kate had been abducted during Catlett’s hour on guard!
The fact was sufficient to give birth to a new and bitter forest feud. But the young borderer avoided the lover’s gaze, as he did not desire to enter into a controversy which calmer moments would make appear ridiculous.
With remarkable tact and secrecy the girl had been stolen from the couch in the boat. Even Carl’s wakefulness had failed to baffle the thief.
Since the scout’s arrival a feeling of security had settled over the camp, and the sleep of its inmates was deeper than it had been for many nights.
The abductor probably knew this; but at any rate he had carried out his scheme at a propitious moment.
In the exciting council that followed the abduction an hundred suggestions were offered, to be rejected. Wolf Cap and his friend hardly unsealed their lips, but listened attentively to all that was said.
“Now what say you, Wolf Cap?” said Abel Merriweather, appealing to the tall man. “You have not said ten words about my dear child’s peril, and we know that you are a king in these forests; and you have said that you would get us to Wayne or die in the attempt. For God’s sake suggest some plan of swift rescue, for we are tortured almost beyond endurance.”
Slowly Wolf Cap turned upon the settler, who held his white-faced, anguish-stricken wife to his bosom, waiting for a reply which he felt would be freighted with salvation or doom.
“Talk to the boy, there!” he said, pointing to Harvey Catlett. “He was on guard whenithappened. What he says will be done.”
All eyes fell upon the youthful scout.
“I will save her if I can,” he said quickly, and with determination. “Wolf Cap must remain. You may need him. Pursue the journey; it may be death to tarry here.”
“And worse than that to proceed;” Mrs. Merriweather said.
“I think not, madam. Keep stout hearts in your bosoms. Mr. Parton, will you follow me?”
“On the trail?” inquired the young man, to whom the question was unexpected.
“Certainly, sir. I see that you have been thinking pretty hard of me to-night.”
Oscar Parton blushed.
“Forgive me,” he said, putting out his hand. “We are apt to think unadvisedly on the spur of the moment. I trust we shall be friends, and work together in all things.”
Catlett took the extended hand in a pledge of friendship, and pressed it heartily.
“Come!” he said; “we must cross the river.”
Parton turned to press the hands of his friends.
“No time for that,” said Wayne’s scout. “In these times we must say farewell with our lips. We have lost time already.”
He turned to the water’s edge, and Kate’s lover dropped Carl’s hand to follow.
“Can you swim?” asked Catlett.
“Certainly.”
“Then here we go. Keep alongside of me and swim noiselessly.”
A moment later the twain glided into the water, leaving an anxious group on the shadowy shore.
Silently, so far as the form of swimming was concerned, the friends kept together and approached the northern bank of the Maumee.
“Do you know who took the girl?” Catlett asked his companion.
“How should I?” was the question that met his.
Wayne’s scout smiled.
“I thought that you might have formed an opinion,” he said.
“No;” and then came the question, “what do you know about it?”
“Not much; but if she escapes us, the terror of these woods will see her.”
Oscar Parton’s face became pale.
“Do you mean——”
He paused, as if afraid to utter the name.
“I mean that man!” said Catlett, as if his companion had finished his sentence. “Jim Girty has caused more anguish in this part of the world than the tomahawks and fire brands of a whole red nation. I believe that John Darknight was here to-night, and he and the White Whirlwind have been friends.”
The whispered conversation grew still, for the gloomy shore was discernible, and the thought of Kate Merriweather in the hands of the greatest renegade in the northwest, was enough of itself to seal Oscar Parton’s lips.
A long fringe of woodland welcomed the swimmers, and they drew themselves from the water. No noise save the plash of the ripples at their feet broke the stillness, and the sound was so musical that they could scarcely believe that the woods and the waves beautified a land of death.
Wringing the water from their garments, the scouts inaugurated a search for the trail, or, in other words, for the spot where the boat had been drawn from the water.
A line of moonshine lay along the edge of the stream, and this underwent a close examination, Harvey Catlett hunting down and his companion up the river.
While Oscar Parton was not an experienced woodman, like his friend, the mysteries of the trail were not great ones to him. He had been reared in the forests, and from the very tribes that now sought his heart’s blood he had learned much of the science of tracking man and beast. He felt proud of the notice which Catlett had taken of his woodcraft in permitting him to search alone for Kate’s trail, and he inwardly hoped that he would have the good fortune to find it. The circumstance would elevate him in the eyes of the young scout.
Now through the forest, and now back to the river, with its edging of moonlight, the two men crept like ghosts, letting nothing escape them.
One could not distinguish the other for the dimly lighted distance that lay between them, but preconcerted calls told from time to time that the search had not been abandoned.
Oscar Parton began to despair. He had passed beyond the line of search marked out by his companion and was on the eve of returning when he came suddenly upon a canoe with its keel just beyond the reach of the tide.
The sudden discovery startled the trail hunter, and he was about to advance upon and examine the craft, when a night owl flew by and swept its cold wings across his face, as if to keep him back. But the youth did not heed the omen of portending evil.
He crept to the seemingly stranded and abandoned craft, and peered over its side.
What did he see? A dark object lying on the bottom, a tuft of feathers, a face, deathly and covered here and there with clotted blood. He turned away, and looked again before he saw that an Indian lay beneath his gaze, rigid, as he believed, in death!
“This is the result of Catlett’s shot,” he said. “I thank God that his bullet did not reach Kate’s heart. The other abandoned the canoe here, and Kate is with him somewhere in the forest.”
As he uttered the last word he touched the Indian, and what was his surprise to see the limbs move and a flash light up the deathly eyes. Oscar Parton saw the terrible embrace that was preparing for him, and tried to avoid it; but the red arms flew up as if impelled by electric mechanism, and closed around his body.
He struggled and tried to signal his companion, but in vain; his face was pressed to his foe’s, and he felt the death grip of the Wyandot crushing out his very life.
But for all that, he tried the harder to free himself from the loathsome grip. Was his young life to be given up so ignominiously? And that, too, with Kate Merriweather’s fate veiled by obscurity? The thought was awful, horrid.
Not a word fell from the Indian’s lips; the young hunter did not know that the scout’s ball had passed through the cheek, mangling the tongue whose words had been heard in the council and on the trail.
The struggle with the dying went on, and, as was natural, the canoe was pushed nearer the river, until the tide caught it and it was afloat! Out into the starlight went the craft with the combatants on board; down the stream toward the rapids, and each succeeding moment farther from assistance by the white scout.
All things must end, and life, like the rest, reaches the shadow of death. A sudden gurgling in the throat, a quivering of the limbs, announced to Oscar Parton that his enemy was dead. Then again he tried to escape; but the limbs did not relax; they seemed destined to hold him there forever.
“God help me!” he groaned. “Must I die now, and in the arms of a dead Indian?”
The situation was so tainted with the horrible that the youth almost gave up in despair, and the boat swept down the river.
But help reached him at the eleventh hour. The boat was checked in its course, and heheard voices above the dead arms that, like great cords of steel, held him down. He groaned to tell some one, he knew not who, that he still lived, and then he felt the Indian’s arms torn apart. He was saved.
With an ejaculation of joy at his deliverance the young settler looked up, to start with a cry of amazement. For the canoe that lay against his own contained a brace of Indians, plumed and painted for the warpath!
From the clutches of the dead into those of the living did not seem to Oscar Parton, at that hour, a change for the better.
He could not resist, for his rifle lay on the river bank, and before he could collect his ideas he was lifted from his boat into that of his captors’.
Leaving Kate Merriweather in the hands of her as yet, to the reader, unknown abductor, and Oscar Parton a captive in the warriors’ canoe, let us return to two characters of whom, for a while, we have lost sight.
Deep in the forest that extended to the northern bank of the Maumee, and with but few trees felled about it, stood in the year ’94 and for several years afterwards, a small cabin erected after the manner of western buildings, with logs dovetailed, strong oaken doors and heavy clapboard roof.
So thickly stood the trees around it, that the keen-eyed hunter could not have perceived it at any noticeable distance.
No little patch of Indian corn grew near to indicate the home of a settler, and no honeysuckles shaded the low-browed door to tell that a woman’s gentle hand and loving taste had guided them heavenward.
It really looked like the lair of a beast, for there were cleanly-picked bones before the door, beside which a fresh wolf skin had been nailed.
It was not the home of refinement; but he who often slept beneath its roof and called it his, could sway hearts and drench the land in blood.
It stood scarce ten miles from the scene of Kate Merriweather’s abduction, a cabin memorable in the annals of the Northwestern Territory, for beyond its threshold the darkest treacheries of the times had been plotted.
About the hour when the fugitives beside the river discovered that one of their number had been taken from their midst, a man emerged from the forest, and stepping quickly across the space from door to tree, entered the cabin.
He did not have to stoop, as a tall person would have been compelled to do upon entering, for he was short in stature, but with a physique that denoted great strength
He was clad in the garb of a backwoodsman, and carried all the weapons borne by such a character. His face, almost brutish in anatomy, denoted the glutton, and his first step was to the larder, from which he drew an enormous chunk of meat upon which he fell with great voracity.
“It must be eleven o’clock,” he said, as he thrust the pewter plate empty into the cupboard, and went to the door as if to take observations. “He cannot be later than one, and, saying that it is eleven now, I have but two hours to wait. Can I trust the man? Haven’t I trusted him for six years, and where is the time that he has played me false? I have put money into his buckskin purse, and he knows that at a sign of betrayal I would kill him as heartlessly as I slew Parquatin at the council in the hollow. That council!” and the speaker clenched his lips, and his dark eyes shot flashes of fire from their lash-fringed caves of revenge.
“They made me kill the young chief,” he went on, as if speaking before a stern court in his own defense. “Or I should say thathemade me do it. They say that I haven’t got a spark of manhood left—that I am the only devil in the Northwest Territory, and hunt and dog me on every side. Iama bad man, the worst perhaps in these parts. The Indian is my companion, and when he can’t invent new deviltry, he comes to me. But I have some good traits left. The dog that steals sheep and bites children is capable of loving his master. I have a brother, and though we have together trod the paths of iniquity from the trough cradle—though he has sought to lower me in the eyes of the tribes, I would not lift a hand against him. No, Simon Girty, your brother loves you because your mother was his; but,” and the renegade paused a moment, “but even a brother may wrong too deeply. Keep from me, Simon. Devil that I am, and fiend incarnate and powerful in these woods, I am capable of loving evenyou!”
These words, though spoken in a low tone, fell upon other ears than the White Whirlwind’s. Not far from his cabin door stood a great tree, gnarled and lightning-rent, and behind it, in its grotesque shadow, stood a lithe figure, girlish and graceful, and two brilliant eyes were fastened on the outlaw. The little hand that hung at the side and touched the beaded fringe of a trim frock, clutched a rifle which was cocked ready for instant use.
“He would never tell me; he may tell me now!” fell from the lips behind the tree. “He has been talking about his bad life, and may be the Manitou is smiling in his heart.”
With the last word on her lips, for the voice and figure denoted that the speaker was a girl, a figure stepped from the shadows and pronounced the renegade’s forest name.
Jim Girty started and retreated quickly, as if to secure a weapon, but his eye caught sight of the advancing person, and he recognized her with a strange mixture of affection and hatred in his eyes.
Areotha, or Little Moccasin, soon stood beforethe outlaw, looking into his repulsive face as if seeking a gleam of hope.
“Oh, it is you?” he said. “Well, well, I haven’t seen you for a mighty long time, but I have heard of you,” and his brow darkened.
“What has the White Whirlwind heard of Areotha?” the girl asked with childish artlessness, and she came very close to the man from whom many of her sex would turn with loathing.
“Why, they say that you have been spying for Mad Anthony Wayne,” he said, trying to catch the change of color on her face; but he failed, for none came. “If this is true, a bullet will find your heart some of these days, for I am an Indian as much as I am a white, and you must not spy against us. I am your father, but I cannot see how you came to love the accursed people who hunt me like wolves.”
He was speaking with much bitterness, and for a moment it seemed that Little Moccasin would forswear the Americans, and cleave to him. But that were impossible; the lamb cannot espouse the wolf’s cause.
“My father, why do you fight the people whose skin is white?” she said, after a minute’s silence. “You must have had a bad heart a long time, for when we lived in the land of the Miami’s, you scalped and burned as you do now. Little Moccasin loves you, but she loves all her white skinned people—but some better than others.”
The flush that came to the girl’s cheeks as she finished the last sentence did not escape Girty’s lightning glance.
“I suppose you have tumbled into love with some graceless fellow—some one who would shoot me just to marry an orphan. I know that you don’t go to the fort enough to fall in love with the British officers, and I’ll be hanged if you shall tie yourself to an American. This will never do, girl.”
Her eyes fell guiltily before his flashing look, and when she looked up again it was with an altered mien.
“Areotha will hear her father if he will tell her one thing,” she said.
“I’ll tell you a dozen if I can,” he replied. “Bless me, girl, if Jim Girty, bad as he is, doesn’t think a mighty sight of you.”
He stooped, and his brawny arm swung around her waist. She did not struggle, and he looked into her eyes. The lion seemed to be making love to the gazelle.
“My father, long ago the bullet of the white man struck you down,” she said. “But you ran here and fell as the wild deer falls, in the brake beyond the hunter’s pursuit. Long you lay here; your head was wild and you said many things when the fever of the evil spirit was upon you. Areotha never left you, my father. She watched, lest the palefaces should come; she shot the deer and gave you food——”
“And saved the worst life in God’s world, didn’t you, girl?” interrupted the renegade, displaying more feeling as he drew the speaker to him than he had ever been credited with.
“Areotha did what she could,” was the reply. “One night, when the wolves went howling down the forest after the fawn which Areotha’s rifle had failed to kill, the White Whirlwind said something that made his child wonder. He made her know that he took her one night when she was a little girl; took her from a burning wigwam beyond the big river. She asked him then to tell her all, but he said: ’Wait till the sickness leaves me,’ and she waited. Now she is here; now she says, ’my father, tell me all, for in this war the bullet may find your heart, and Areotha will never know. Old Madgitwa did not bring me into the world; no, my father!”
The face and voice were so full of pleading that none but a Girty could resist.
His arm left the pliant waist, and his eyes resumed their old look.
“You are too inquisitive!” he said. “It doesn’t matter where I got you. You are mine, and the man—”
He paused as if he was about to reveal something, which he would rather keep back.
“My father, the Manitou, may send for Areotha, and the leaves will fall upon her before she can know who her real father is. Tell her. This may be the last time that she——”
“Tell you? No!” was the harsh interruption, and all the revenge in Girty’s nature seemed in his voice. “There are secrets which the stake could not force from me; this is one of them. There lives one man whom I wouldn’t make happy to save my own life, and sooner than see you in his arms, I would drive this knife to your heart.”
With a cry Little Moccasin started from the blade that flashed in the starlight, and threw herself on the defensive, with rifle half raised and eyes flashing angrily.
“You will not tell?” she cried.
“Never!”
The next instant she stepped toward the gnarled tree, and her rifle covered the renegade of the Maumee.
“You’ve got me!” he said, looking into Areotha’s face without a tremor of fear; “but I did not think that you would ever lift a rifle against the man who has been so kind to you. Kill me here, now, and the secret will be kept from you forever!”
There was a spark of hope in his voice, and all at once the girl lowered the weapon. The outlaw was spared to scourge the region of the Maumee a while longer.
Areotha put herself into his power when she lowered the rifle. With one of those panther-like bounds for which he was famous, Girty could have sprung upon her and removed her forever from his path. But he restrained himself; he even put up the knife, and did not seek to detain her when he heard her say:
“My father, I am going!”
With a look that spoke volumes, Little Moccasin turned on her heel, and plunged into the forest, leaving the renegade to his own reflections.
“I think a mighty sight of her!” was all he said.
He might have killed her, but he would not.
Girty, the renegade, remained in his cabin door until the footsteps of Little Moccasin died away in the forest, and silence again pervaded the spot.
There was a cloud on the outlaw’s brow, and the longer he listened the more impatient and perplexed he became.
The minutes resolved themselves into hours, and when he believed that the ghostly hour of one had arrived, an oath fell from his lips, and he turned into the cabin. But he soon reappeared with a short-barreled rifle, and left the hut as if bent upon hunting for some one whom he had been expecting.
“Something unlooked for may have transpired,” he murmured. “Wolf Cap and that young fellow may have disarranged my plans by appearing suddenly at the camp; but I am sure that Wells will never get the message which they left in the tree.”
Girty smiled as he recalled the theft of Harvey Catlett’s message from the forest letter box, and congratulated himself that Wells and Hummingbird (a famous chief and spy in Wayne’s employ) would find the tree empty when they should reach it. The self-congratulations still lingered in his heart when the report of a distant rifle, faint, but clear enough, nevertheless, struck his practiced ear.
He stopped suddenly and listened.
“A rifle, but no death cry,” he said, addressing himself. “But too far off for that, perhaps.”
Then he stooped and put his ear to the ground, in which attitude he remained for several moments. But the stillness of death brooded over the vicinity. When Girty rose it was with a perplexed look; the shot seemed to revolve itself into a mystery, to which he attached the utmost importance.
“There is one person in these parts whose bullets never make a death cry,” he said; “but if she shothim, I don’t see why, for she knows that we are friends. However, I’m going down to see what the matter is.”
He started toward the river at a brisk walk. It was ten miles distant, but he knew that the mysterious shot had been fired not far away.
By and by his walk resolved itself into the dog-trot of the Indian, and he hastened through the woods as if a regular path stretched before him.
The dew lay on the grass pressed by his dingy moccasin, and, save now and then the snapping of a twig, his progress sent forth no noise.
All at once, as he reached the summit of a wooded knoll, he was brought to a stand.
At his feet, as it were, was a space of ground over which a hurricane had at some time swept with relentless fury. The results of its work, broken trees and fallen ones, were apparent to the eye. Into this place the starlight fell, and the rays of the moon, soon to bathe herself in the waters of the Maumee, penetrated like shafts of silver.
The scene that presented itself to the outlaw was enough to startle him.
He saw two figures in the light—two living ones, we mean—but not far remote, with face upturned to the stars, lay a giant form, motionless as the earth itself.
A second look told the renegade the author of the midnight shot. She stood beside a young girl, and these words in a well known voice greeted his ears:
“White girl tired, but Areotha will save her if she will go.”
“Go?” cried the one addressed, and her voice sent a thrill of pleasure to the heart beating wildly on the top of the knoll. “Go, Areotha? You cannot name a place whither I will not fly with you at this hour. I wonder if they do not believe me dead already. My God! I see through the treachery of that man,” and she glanced at the body on the ground. “Girl, is every one in these parts like him? He came to our home and persuaded father to fly to Wayne, offering to guide us; but he meditated treachery all the time. I see it now.”
“He makes no more bloody boats on the big river,” Little Moccasin said with triumph. “He was bold to steal white girl alone.”
“No, no, girl. An Indian called Oskaloo assisted, but he was killed in the boat by some one on the shore—Mr. Catlett, perhaps. He was on guard.”
Little Moccasin’s eyes gleamed with pride at the mention of the young scout’s name.
“He good hunter,” she said with growing enthusiasm. “Areotha will take the white girl back to him.”
“Yes, yes, and then I will find all of them. Let us go now. Some person may find us here if we tarry.”
Some person? Yes; that “person” was already near, and as Kate Merriweather and her protector started to fly, Jim Girty, with a single bound, reached the foot of the hillock, and stood before them.
The twain started back with a cry of terror; but Kate’s retreat was quickly checked by the renegade’s hand.
“Not so fast, my beauty!” he cried with a hideous smile, a mixture of sensuality and triumph. “I am convinced that I did not arrive a moment too late. That man was playing me false!” and he nodded at the dead. “He wasn’t on the trail that leads to mycabin. I suspect, miss, that he got struck with your beauty, and thought that he would outwit his employer and make you his own wife.”
Kate Merriweather did not reply. White faced and trembling, she stood before the outlaw, whose eyes devoured her peerless beauty, and from whose clutches she longed to escape.
“John Darknight proved to be a traitor, and your companion paid him for his treachery, though I guess that she did not suspect that she was serving me when she pulled the trigger. Perhaps you do not know me,” and there was a grim smile on Girty’s face.
“I do not, though——”
“Though you may have heard of me, you were going to say. I fancy that my name has reached your ears. There isn’t a woman in the Northwest Territory who has not heard of me. My name is Girty!”
The settler’s daughter uttered a cry of mingled terror and disgust.
“Simon Girty, the renegade?”
“No! his brother James—the worse devil of the two!” said the outlaw with a sardonic grin and a glance at the bewildered Little Moccasin.
“But you are not lost to every attribute of manhood, James Girty,” said the captive in a pleading tone that might have softened a heart of flint. “There are hearts that bleed for me to-night. Do not deal with me as they say you have dealt with others; but restore me to my dear ones, and win the lasting gratitude of all who love me.”
Following hard upon Kate Merriweather’s last word came a laugh which seemed the incarnation of fiendishness. The renegade’s eyes seemed filled with the heartless merriment.
“Restore you to the boat? Let you go, after I have gone to the pains of getting John Darknight to guide you into my hands? Why, girl, you have not studied the character of Jim Girty.”
Kate’s hope fled away, and she looked without a word upon the forest beauty at her side.
“My father, let the white girl go,” Little Moccasin said, venturing to meet the outlaw’s flashing eyes. “See! I have killed the traitor. He will never betray my father again.”
“You served him right; but you were going to take this girl back to the river when I came up,” was the reply. “She is mine, and the hand that is raised to tear her from me will fall in death. Come, my bird.”
He drew the settler’s daughter toward him, and as his eyes flashed their fire upon her cheek, Kate uttered a shriek and hung senseless in his grasp.
“Now go!” he cried to the mystery, as he pointed over her shoulder into the gloom of the forest. “Do not lift your rifle against me, for then you would never know who you are. Go! and follow me not. Don’t cross my path too often!”
She saw the outstretched hand that pointed her into forced exile; she noted the murderous eyes that darted from her into the depths of the tarn, and with a final pitying glance upon the unconscious girl, hanging over Girty’s strong arm, she obeyed. For the second time that night he had sent her from his presence.
“No man ever baffled Jim Girty!” he said, looking down into the white face which looked like death’s own in the starlight. “For this moment I have plotted. Now I can desert the tribes to their own war, for she takes away all my warlike ambition. They may not see me in the next great battle. The hand of man shall not take her from me.”
Then for a moment he studied his captive’s face in silence, admiring its contour and matchless loveliness.
At length he started forward and stood over John Darknight.
“Quite dead!” he said with evident satisfaction. “That young girl saved me a bit of lead and powder.”
Yes, the treacherous guide was dead. From that night there would be fewer bloody boats on the Maumee, and not a soul in the Northwest Territory was to regret Little Moccasin’s aim.
Leaving John Darknight where he had fallen, a prey to the vultures and the wolf, Girty turned away, and, with his still unconscious captive, hastened toward his cabin.
The outlaw had achieved another triumph; but the avenger of blood was on his trail, and on a day memorable in the history of Ohio he was to expiate the crime which we have already witnessed.
Oscar Parton did not resist when his captors drew him into their boat, which was paddled into the middle of the stream.
He saw that resistance would prove futile, for his struggle with the dead warrior had wearied him.
His captors were real red athletes, with great breadth of chest, and strong arms. They regarded him with much curiosity, and did not speak until the boat began to ascend the stream.
“The Blacksnake’s spy!” said one, half interrogatively, as he peered into the young man’s face.
His accent told Parton that he was a Shawnee.
“I am not a spy,” was the reply, “I have never trailed the Indian, with a rifle ready to take his life.”
The red men exchanged significant glances, and the youngest, a youth of eighteen, spoke:
“Pale face is a Yengee.”[C]
“I am an American,” Oscar said, knowing that an attempt to conceal his national identity would result in no good to him. “I have lived at the mouth of the Swift River,[D]lifting no arm against the Indian.”
“But why is white man here?” asked the Shawnee.
Then followed the narrative of the flight of the Merriweather family, and the story of Kate’s abduction. The two Indians listened without interruption; but at certain stages of the narration they exchanged meaning looks.
It was evident that they credited the story, for the young man told it in a plain, straightforward manner, embellishing it with no rhetoric.
“White guide steal girl?” the young Indian—a Seneca—said, and the elder nodded his head in confirmation. “Him bad man. Decoys boats to the wrong side of river for the red man. Parquatoc no like him, for he makes war on women and children.”
For several moments the savages conversed together in whispers, and in the Indian tongue, of which the captive caught but few words which he understood. His fate appeared to be the subject of conversation, and he waited with much anxiety and impatience for the end of the council.
Escape was not to be thought of, for his limbs were bound, and he would have sank beneath the waves like a stone if he had thrown himself from the boat.
At last the dark heads separated, and the young settler looked into the Indian’s eyes as if seeking the decision there before he should hear it from their tongues.
But he was doomed to disappointment, for the red Arabs did not speak, though the one who had called himself Parquatoc guided the boat toward the shore.
Oscar thought that the youth’s eye had a kindly gleam, and tried to make himself believe that no murderous light was in the orbs of his companion.
Parquatoc sent the boat to the bank with strong, rapid strokes, and it finally struck with a dull thud that made the light craft quiver. Then he severed Oscar’s leg bonds, and the settler stood erect on the shore, ten miles below the scene of his capture.
His thoughts were of Harvey Catlett, whom he had left so unceremoniously, and who might think that he had deserted him to hunt alone for the stolen girl.
He did not quail before the uncertain fate that stared him in the face; but resolved to meet it, dread as it might be, like a man.
The boat was drawn upon the bank, and lifted into the boughs of a huge tree, which told that it was not to kiss the waves again that night.
The Shawnee deposited it there while the young Seneca guarded the settler. But such vigilance was useless, for Oscar had resolved to attempt no escape that did not offer the best signs of success.
Having deposited the boat in the tree so well that none but the keenest of eyes could have found it, the eldest savage gave his companion a look, and the next moment a knife flashed in his hand.
Oscar thought that his doom was near at hand, for Parquatoc stepped forward, his scarlet fingers encircling the buckhorn handle of the keen blade. But though the youth’s eyes flashed and his well-knit figure quivered, there was no gleam of murder in his eyes.
The Shawnee looked on without a sign of interference.
“The pale face has said that he does not hate the Indian!” the youth said.
“Why should I? He has never done me harm.”
“But he kills the whites, and now the Blacksnakes come among his wigwams with rifle and torch.”
“True; but the Blacksnake, as you call our great soldier, would not be marching into this country if the bad whites had not stirred up the tribes by lies and rum.”
The young settler spoke with great boldness, looking straight into the eyes of the pair.
“The pale face hates the king’s men and the renegades?”
“He does.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Does he hate the White Whirlwind?”
“He hates Jim Girty with all his heart!”
The Shawnee nodded to Parquatoc with manifest satisfaction.
“Then let the pale man bare his breast.”
For the first time since the landing, a pallor swept over Oscar Parton’s face.
If the savages were friends to the Girtys, and there were few Indians who would not have followed them to death, his replies had fated him to die, and the command to bare his breast seemed to settle the question of his life.
He hesitated, but not through fear.
“Is the white man afraid?” asked the boy-warrior with a sneer.
“No!” was the quick reply, and the next instant the settler’s hands were lifted to obey the command; but the deer thongs that bound them prevented him.
Parquatoc smiled, and cut the bonds.
Then Oscar tore his jacket open, and exposed his flesh to the Indian’s gaze.
“The white man hates the British and the white renegades. He must join our band.”
Then while the last word still quivered the speaker’s lips, the knife flashed across his breast and a spurt of blood told that it had left a horrid trail behind. The youth did not fall, but remained erect, while the Indians regarded the work of the blade with satisfaction.
“Listen,” said Parquatoc, laying his hand on Oscar’s shoulder and looking straight intohis eyes. “You are one of us now and forever. There was a council the other dark (night) in the long hollow. The White Whirlwind came and raised his voice for war. Many chiefs followed him; but there were many more who were afraid to lift their voices for peace. The Indian can’t fight the Blacksnake. He will sweep them from his path as the hurricane sweeps the leaves from the trees. Parquatin, our brother, rose and spoke for peace. He told the council that war meant starving squaws, desolated maize fields, and gameless hunting grounds to the Indian. He called White Whirlwind a bad man, who would desert the red man to trail a white girl through the forest. It was a talk that made the Whirlwind mad; and there in the council before the assembled braves of seven nations, he drove his tomahawk into our brother’s brain. We have raised our hands to the Manitou like the white men do when they want to make their words strong, and said that we hate the palefaces who have lied the Indian into the fight. We strike at the renegade; we trail the White Whirlwind; and he shall die for the blow which he struck at the council in the long hollow. White man, you are one of us now. You carry the sign of the brotherhood. Wherever you go you will find red brethren. No other paleface belongs to us. In danger, show the mark; our people are many, and after the next great battle, the cold white faces among the tribes will not be few. You are free; but if you go with us we will step upon the trail of the white rose stolen from you.”
To the young warrior’s speech, uttered in that eloquence which now and then adorns the pages of savage history, Oscar Parton listened with wonderment and strange emotions. It is true that Parquatoc’s words, as he advanced, prepared him for the finale, but his transition from thoughts of doom to freedom was yet swift and startling. He found himself initiated into a cabal of Indians who had sworn to make war against certain white people—himself the sole white member of the organization.
There was a something about the young Parquatoc that made the settler admire him; and now that he knew that Jim Girty had basely slain his brother, he saw a motive for the boy-warrior’s intense hatred.
He resolved to cultivate his friendship; but he did not know how soon the bonds sealed that night were to be broken.
“Come!” said Parquatoc, breaking in upon his thoughts. “The light is not very far away, and we must not be here when the white arrows fall upon the river.”
“But white man no gun,” said the Shawnee, speaking for the first time since the landing.
“Never mind; gun come soon enough,” was the Seneca’s reply.
A moment later the tree and concealed boat were left behind, and the trio hurried from the river.
Oscar Parton walked beside the boy, never dreaming of escape, though his freedom had been restored, for his new brethren had promised to aid him in his search for Kate.
He was thinking about his thrilling initiation, and wondering what would come of it.
The reader will recollect that we left Harvey Catlett, the young scout, searching for John Darknight’s trail on the banks of the Maumee. We will now return to him.
For a long time the youth prosecuted his search with vigor, confident that he would soon be enabled to strike the trail and start in pursuit of the treacherous guide, whose hands had, he doubted not, taken Kate Merriweather from the camp. But the minutes passed without bringing him success, and he at last began to fear that the abductor had not landed at any point opposite the bivouac.
With this idea gaining strength in his mind, he resolved to rejoin his companion and suggest new operations. But Oscar Parton did not respond to his oft-repeated signals, and the young scout sought him in turn until the gray streaks of light announced the dawn of another day. He did not hear the boat that drifted past him in the night, nor catch a sound of the struggle between the living and the dead which was taking place on board.
He was inclined to charge Oscar Parton with desertion, attributing it to the young man’s zeal for Kate’s welfare, for whom he—Oscar—preferred perhaps to hunt alone.
“Well, let him go!” Catlett said at last, standing on the shore with the daylight in his face. “If he does not like to trail with me, I am sure that I will not lift a hand against him. He might have been a stumbling block, any way, and on the whole I am not sorry that he has rid me of himself.”
Speaking thus—as the reader knows, unjustly—of Oscar Parton, the young scout started up the river. A few steps brought him to a rifle which lay on the ground. A glance told him that it belonged to the man whom he had just charged with desertion; but now he regretted his words. The discovery of the weapon told him that Parton was in trouble.
His keen eyes, used to the woods and their trails, could not show him any signs of a struggle, for the tide had removed the stranding place of the canoe, and after a long and unsuccessful search, Catlett looked mystified. He looked at the rifle, but it told no story of its owner’s mishaps; it lay in his hands dumb—provokingly so.
“It beats me!” were the only audible words that escaped him, after a long silence of study and conjecture.
Then he thrust the weapon into the hollow of a tree near by, and started into the forest.
He had another mystery to solve besides Kate Merriweather’s abduction—Oscar Parton’swhereabouts. He felt assured, however, that the settler’s daughter had fallen into Darknight’s hands, and it was known to him that the guide and James Girty were staunch friends.
It was toward the renegade’s cabin, ten miles distant, that the scout hastened. He examined the ground over which he walked, and the light growing stronger, at last penetrated the forest.
The morning was not far advanced when a young man paused suddenly in a glen where the trees had felt the fury of a hurricane, and looked into the face of a person whose clothes were damp with still glistening dew.
The cold white face was upturned to the blue sky, and in the eyes was the ghastly stare of the dead. Beside the body lay a dark-stocked rifle clutched tightly by a rigid right hand. Under the left ear was a mass of clotted blood, which proclaimed the gateway of the bullet of death.
“John Darknight!” exclaimed Harvey Catlett, stooping down to examine the dead. “Little did I think that your trail would end so suddenly, and so fatally to you. Now a new mystery begins. Where is the girl?”
An examination of the glen told the trailer that several persons besides the unfortunate guide had been there, and he was examining a track so peculiar as to attract attention, when a noise greeted his ears.
Raising his head and looking over his shoulder, he saw standing not far away the person of all others whom he would meet at that hour—Little Moccasin.
There was a smile on her face as she came forward and submitted to the kiss which he imprinted on her cheek.
“They have been talking hard of you, girl, in the camp over the river,” Harvey said. “They accuse you of deserting them.”
“Areotha go to follow him!” she said, and her glance wandered to the dead man in the dewy grass. “But he eluded her, and for a long time she saw him not.”
“And too late you have found him. He is there.”
“Areotha saw him fall with his face to the stars. He lay so still, and never groaned in his throat.”
The young scout looked into the fair face, flushed with triumph.
“Did you do it, girl?”
“Areotha shot him when he was taking the white girl through the forest.”
Harvey Catlett started.
“Then you rescued Kate!” he cried.
The girl shook her head.
“White girl taken from Areotha,” was her answer. “Will Fair Face listen?”
“I will.”
In simple language Little Moccasin detailed her trailing of John Darknight and his captive through the forest, and how in the hurricane-swept glen she had put an end to his crimes with a bullet. Then, of course, followed the account of James Girty’s interference, and his subsequent flight with the settler’s daughter.
The scout listened without interrupting her.
“The new trail begins here,” he said, addressing the beautiful creature. “There is a ball in my rifle that may rid the Northwest Territory of its incarnate curse.”
“No, no!” cried Little Moccasin, and her hand fell on his arm. “If Fair Face kills the Whirlwind, he will never tell.”
Catlett looked into the forest beauty’s eyes as a puzzled expression settled upon his face.
“Never—never tell!” repeated the girl, mystifying him the more.
“Never tell what, Moccasin?” exclaimed the scout, as he put his arm about her and drew her near him.
“He knows Areotha’s true father.”
“No!”
“He said so last night in his own cabin door, and when he said he would not tell, Areotha raised her rifle; but he told her to shoot, and never, never know, and—she let the rifle fall. My father knows, for when the wound-fever was upon him he said strange things, and made me go away when I came near.”
Catlett was silent, busy with his thoughts, and when he started he saw Areotha’s eyes fixed upon him.
“The brute may know,” he said. “I wish I could wrest the secret from him.”
“Fair Face will not kill him, then?” said the girl, pleading for the life of the scourge of the settlements. “When the right time comes he will tell.”
“That time, in his opinion, will never come. When Jim Girty hates, he hates forever.”
“But will Fair Face spare him?”
“I would not spare the wolf that has trailed me for years, nor would I be lenient with the hound that has spilled the blood of women and their little ones. Wolf and hound is this very man whom you have called father these many years.”
“He is very bad!” the girl said, dropping her eyes. “But he knows!”
“Then for your sake I will not slay him, save in self defense. Otherwise on sight would I shoot the human blood-hound.”
Before Harvey Catlett had ceased to speak a pair of arms encircled his neck, and he felt hot kisses on his face.
Areotha had conquered him.
“We part here,” he said, gently releasing himself.
“Does Fair Face go to trail the Whirlwind?”
“I go to wrench Kate Merriweather from his grasp. This is my sole mission; then back to Mad Anthony, to fight in the battle near at hand.”
“And Areotha?”
“Go to the camp over the river, and tell Wolf Cap what I have done.”
A pallor of fear and distrust came over the girl’s face.
“He hates Areotha, and the young men do not like her.”
“Do not fear the tall hunter now,” Harvey said.
“Does he like Areotha?” she cried, brightening up. “She often dreams about him, but a shadow comes between us, and in his place is the Whirlwind and his home.”
“You need not fear him, though he may act strangely sometimes. He will protect you from the two young men of the party. You may be of assistance to the fugitives. Stay with them until I come. Go, little one. God bless you.”
They parted in the glen, and Harvey Catlett did not stir until the wood witch had vanished from his sight.
“I believe it stronger than ever, now,” he said. “I hope it may be so. Jim Girty, I have virtually sworn to spare your life—for on this trail we are bound to meet—and there is but one woman in the world who could have made me promise.”
A moment later the storm swept glen was not tenanted save by the man who would never, never leave it.
Harvey Catlett, with tightened belt and ready rifle, had stepped upon a new trail, destined to be fraught with strange adventures.