The trail was clear and obvious. There were the marks of the Indians’ feet, of the girl’s moccasins, and the hoofs of the loaded horse, of the cow, and the grunting drove of pigs, that straggled every now end then as they went along, and were driven into order, or goaded to advance at the point of a lance. They were able in this way, with so sure a track, to proceed with considerable activity and ease, the more that the route was a beaten trail which the Indians were wont to use on their many friendly visits to the Crow’s Nest, where hitherto they had been received with extreme friendliness by the hearty woodman, who had often hunted with them, and even fought with them, when quite a boy, against their hereditary foes.
They trod upon the trail then, one after another in deep silence, until the wind began to sigh over the trees, the gloom to collect overhead, and the forest began to assume that mysterious and solemn appearance which is always presented by extensive woods on the first approach of night. It was about a quarter of an hour before dark that they came in sight of a stream, one of the tributaries of the Scioto river.
“Hist!” said Custa to his companions, who were moving listlessly on, Harvey admiring with the eye of an artist the changes produced on the leaves by the crepuscular light, the Silent Hunter moodily reflecting on the past, and brooding on the future.
All three stood instantly like statues, though a tremulous nervousness shook for an instant the stout frame of Harrod. Then they gazed curiously where the finger of the Indian pointed to a small column of smoke rising from the water’s edge. They again advanced, but no longer on the trail, having concealed themselves beneath the deep shadows of the interior of the forest. In another instant they saw that it was an abandoned fire, and they immediately emerged freely into the small open space by the banks of the stream. All three instantly sought the trail on that side first, and then on the other, by wading. But all trace of the whole party was gone.
“This is Indian devilry with a vengeance,” said Harvey, angrily. “Have they spirited her away, or have they hid in the trees?”
“Hist!” replied Custa, “there are ears in the forest. Look at the stricken pine—he has no tongue—he is silent as the tall tree of the forest that rocks the hummingbird to rest, and sings no lullaby that can wake the echoes.”
“If he ain’t got a tongue, and alocrumis inconvenient to him,” continued Harvey, smiling, “he has got eyes—look, he has found something.”
Harrod was on the other side of the stream near the fire, and when they joined him they found that he had discovered the bones and some small parts of the cow, which had been slaughtered and in part devoured. The horse was also immediately afterwards found, just behind the bushes, cropping some grass, and so hoppled that it could not go far away.
“Ugh!” told Custaloga, in a low whisper.
“This is the queerest start I ever saw. I guess we’ve got an ounce of dust in our eyes, or we can’t see for the dark. I suspect they are just hid close by.”
The Silent Hunter shook his head.
“Water is soft, and earth is hard; but the earth leaves a mark and water shows no trail.”
“That’s it,” said Harvey; “they had canoes—by gum, they must be in force. They’ve slummucked the pigs and the cow-beef, and left no mark.”
“In the morning we will rub our eyes and see clear,” replied Custa; “they have put the plunder and prisoners in the canoes, andhave walked. But they are not coons: they will not deceive a Wyandot. In the morning we will find their trail.”
“I suppose you are about right,” said Harvey, “and that we’re bound to wait. But this is a hottish place for a camp, I conclude, Custa. My scalp kind of crawls at the idea of sleeping here.”
The Silent Hunter made a sign for them to follow him. They clearly understood by his manner that he had a better place to show them, and they had already, by his directions, entered the bed of the river in an upward direction, and were fifty feet from the fire, when he clutched them both violently, and imposed solemn silence by a gesture which was not to be mistaken.
The gloom had now settled on forest and plain, the song of birds, the gobble of the turkey, the cry of the sandhill crane had ceased, and naught was heard save the low whispering of the trees, as their heads met and kissed, and that mysterious song of nature, a kind of low, hushed, broken chord of some Eolian harp, that often accompanies in vast solitudes the setting of the hot sun—the fall of night being felt almost as well as heard.
But a step was in the forest—a step advancing stealthily, it is true, but with some little want of caution at times, as if the benighted stranger were sure of finding friends round the fire which he saw blazing in the distance; for the woodmen had purposely roused it from its dying state and made it blaze on high.
Then a dark form appeared on the edge of the circle of light, the very extreme edge, peering slowly around, listening with the ear of a startled deer. Something made him dart back to seek cover, but it was too late. Simultaneous with the click came the sheet of flame and the swift messenger of death. He bounded on high, gave a wild yell, and then fell flat near the fire. Harrod, who had done this deed, went quietly back, finished the unfortunate wretch, and then came to join his companions, who conversed in inaudible whispers relative to the conduct of Harrod, which was clearly that of a man who had bound himself down to a mission of revenge.
In another instant he was by their side, and passing them, led up the stream toward what the two hunters well knew as the Devil’s Gully. They had implicit reliance on the woodcraft of their huge and fearless companion, who knew every turning in the forest; but still they had so often, during panther and deer hunts, visited the spot, that they could not understand how he was about to use that place for the purposes of concealment.
In about ten minutes the water began to rush swiftly by, the banks came nearer and nearer, they were wading far above their knees, and then they stood at the mouth of the Devil’s Gully.
The night was dark, but, their eyes now growing accustomed to the gloom, they could distinguish the principal features of the scene. The banks of the river were now suddenly projected upward to a hight of fifty feet, about half the way up precipitous rock, with a bush desperately clinging here and there, the other half a shelving mixture of earth and stone dotted with trees and shrubs. Below, in the depths of the gully, all was dark; even the silvery thread of water, that in the day, when the sun dived down to cool its rays in the very caverns of the night, might be seen running swiftly along, could now only be heard, rumbling, rushing, dashing by like the waters of a sluice.
Harvey could not restrain an exclamation.
“This is almighty grand!” he said. “I guess they don’t beat this in the island.”
“Come,” replied Custa.
Harrod had disappeared.
“Hillo! where is he?” exclaimed Harvey. “He ain’t carried away by the water, is he?”
“Come,” said Custa, again; “there is a trail in the swift water. Let your hand never leave the left rock. The eyes of an eagle could not see—we must feel like moles.”
Harvey obeyed, and found, by keeping his hand gliding along the rock, that he thus walked on a ledge, that was scarcely covered by the water, which swept furiously by, deep, within two inches of where he walked. They moved in utter darkness. They saw nothing but the rock they touched with their hands; they heard nothing but the swift current to their right.
Harvey was advancing, still wondering when all this groping in the dark would end, peering forward to try and catch a glimpse of those who preceded him, when suddenly his hand slipped from the damp, cold rock onto what appeared stubble, and he heard the voice of Custa by his side instead of before.
“Wagh,” said the Indian, whose manners, language, mien, actions, were one continual struggle between his savage and civilized instincts, those of childhood and those of manhood—“a beaver in a dam, a fox in a hollow tree, an otter in a hole, never made such acacheas this. Wagh! it is good.”
A torch which the Silent Hunter now lit with his tinder-box, revealed to Harvey the nature of the place. It was a niche in the rock, about fifteen feet high, ten across the mouth, and as many deep, overhung so by the two banks that even a fire could not betray it, while even in the daytime smoke would have been dispersed ere it reached the summit of the tall trees.
“It’s a rare burrow—a reg’lar fox’s hole. I expect many an old four-legged red-skin has done the dogs here, and will ag’in. My! It’s beautiful. This is your oldcache, when you came up here afore there were any settlers in these parts.”
Harrod bowed his head.
He had fixed the torch in a piece of wood which had been cut and planted for the purpose. He left the two friends to do the rest, though he showed them a hole in a corner, where there were wood, deer-meat, a jug, and some skins. Harvey and Custa quickly made a fire and cooked their supper, which having finished—in this passively imitated by Harrod—they lit their pipes and prepared for a “big talk” on the duties they had to perform—duties which did not affect them in an equal degree; for what can equal, what be like, the earnest solicitude of a passionate lover, whose mistress is in the hands of such ruthless beings as the wild savages of North America?
And Custaloga, the brave and devoted Wyandot, did love Amy with all the wild ardor of his half-tamed nature—loved her, too, without hope, without future, without an idea that his love could ever be aught save a dream—and thus, perhaps, had his affection risen to the greater hight, as it was invested with a melancholy and sadness, which to his wayward nature, but half conquered by education, was not without its charm.
Custaloga loved Amy, the affianced bride of Squire Barton, for whom he had an instinctive dislike, which, however, had never manifested itself as yet in any way save that already described. He ignored his existence.
Amy saw this and wondered.
But her secrets we are not privileged to reveal until the day and hour when she avows them herself, and deprives them of that vail of obscurity and doubt which we may not raise, even though, from the journals, notes, and letters before us, we have already mastered the mystery.
“What is Harrod up to?” whispered Harvey, as soon as he hadloaded his pipe to his own satisfaction.
Custaloga looked not to the right or left, and yet his eagle eye had caught the outward character of his occupation in an instant. He was whittling.
In his hand was a long piece of pine-wood, which he was striving to bring into shape with his hunting-knife. After some labor he succeeded to his satisfaction, for he ceased and proceeded to bore a hole through one end, through which he afterward passed a thong.He then, with a grim and ghastly smile, cut one notch.
All this while the two friends, who were thinking over their plans, had watched him in silence. But as he cut the notch Harvey gave a cry of surprise and horror.
“It’s a tally, Custa. Hundred thunders!” cried he, “what a mole-eyed, one-eyed gunner I am not to have seen it afore. It’s a tally, and that notch is for the first Indian. Why that stick will hold a matter of two hundred.”
“On the waters of the wide lake,” said Custa, holding up his hand toward the north, “the red-skins wear a bead for every scalp. Our white brother cuts a mark in a little bit of wood. Carry it about like the little gods of the priests.”
“Bah!” said Harvey, “not our priests; you will confound the Romans with us.”
“They all worship the same Father,” replied Custa, in a low tone, talking rather to himself than to Harvey; “why does one man say one thing, one another?”
Custa sighed. As yet religion had not fully touched his heart. He understood Christianity to a certain extent, and yet the faith was not in him, though Amy and Jane had both striven for years, aided by Clara’s father, to open his eyes.
The Eccentric Artist made no reply, not wishing to enter upon a topic which had often induced heated arguments between them. He smoked his pipe with redoubled vigor, and gazed with a mysterious awe at the bereaved husband, whose kindly nature and warm heart appeared to have utterly fled before the fierce, untamed passion of revenge.
To speak to him he knew was useless now while the night of sorrow and wrath was on his soul, concealing all that was bright and good on earth, and prompting him only to deeds of darkness.
“Harvey,” said Custaloga, when he had smoked his calumet pipe in peace for some time, “my heart is very sad; the singing-bird is safe in the wigwam of her father; but the queen-bird is silent in the lodge of the Shawnees.”
“She is, Custa,” replied Harvey, moodily, “and must be got out, if we fight the whole tribe of dingy catamounts.”
“My brother,” said Custa, affectionately, “is a brave, and not a boaster; he talks of fighting a cloud of men, but he does not mean it. The Shawnee villages are as many as the weeks of the year, and each village has more warriors than there are days.”
“Then by all the b’ars in Kentuck, what is to be done?” exclaimed Harvey, impatiently.
“When a fox sees a fat partridge in the grass he does not fly at it, because he has no wings; he creep and glides, while the birds nestle; and though they do fly, he is quicker than they, and runs into the woods with his prize.”
“I understand you, Custa; you are up to some devilry you learnt among the Wyandots. Well, well, it’s your natur’, Custa, and I won’t gainsay it. Besides, in the woods it’s right—I know it is. Indians ain’t regiments, and forests ain’t regular battle-fields. What do you propose?”
The young Indian rose to speak. There was none of the semi-educated gentleman about him now. He was all red. He laid down his calumet and his rifle, and assumed all the dignified mien of a chiefand a warrior. The two white men looked at him—Harrod vacantly and listlessly, Harvey with that deep earnestness, that strong affection, which, by some strange instinct, the secret of which he little knew, he had always felt for Custaloga.
“The Shawnees are women. There are beasts in the forest, and birds in the air, and fish in the streams, and warriors in the great hunting-ground under the setting sun; but they are too lazy to hunt the forest, too idle to shoot the bird, too stupid to fish the stream, too cowardly to fight with men. There are a few long-knives in the woods, men who make themselves wigwams, and grow corn to make themselves their bread, and hunt, and fish like red-men, doing them no harm. And they buried the hatchet, and smoked the calumet of peace with the Indians. But the Shawnees are skunks—they shake hands with the right arm, and kill with the left. They have come like red foxes, and they have stolen the queen bird”—here he spoke fiercely, and then his voice sunk to a melancholy softness that was quite musical in its deep mellow sadness—“they came like cowards, like skunks and polecats, and they have killed a woman, and the little pappoose that could not walk, and stolen the little bounding-deer, the son of the pale-face with the large heart. They are gone, like beasts, to burrow in their holes. But men are behind. Let them look, and they will gaze on warriors; one of them has already seen the face of a brave.”
And he bowed gracefully to Harrod, who, however, made no sign.
“The great heart is weary; the friends of Custa need rest. Let them lie in the cache to-night, and follow on the trail when the sun lights the earth. Custa will go alone.
“Where to?” asked Harvey, quickly.
Custaloga then developed his plan, which was simple enough.
There was an Indian village about nine or ten miles off, and though in a straight line, the way was difficult, yet one used to the woods could go and return in a night. Custaloga, believed from his intimate knowledge of the tribe to which Tecumseh—the young chief who had saved Amy—belonged, that the prisoners would in the first instance be taken to that place, as the nearest, and also because it was close to the village of Tecumseh himself, who doubtless would claim Amy as his prize.
“But how do you know it was Tecumseh at all?” said Harvey.
“My brother is very quick of eye, but he is not an Indian, born in the woods. Can you read the little marks on a book?”
“Well, Custa, what a question; you know I can.”
“And an Indian can read the print of a foot,” said the warrior, with a grim smile, as he saw the pun, but could not check it.
“Now for an Injun to make a joke about the print of a foot and the print in a book, is mighty queer,” put in Harvey; “wouldn’t Jane laugh and show her pretty teeth. She’d say six years’ study had done you good, too.”
Custaloga remained silent a moment, as if ashamed of his weakness, and then continued his explanation in the same dignified and solemn manner in which he had commenced it.
He proposed to enter the village under cover of the night, trusting to his skin, and discover, roaming about, whether Amy was really there, as this would materially aid their plan the next day. He undertook to return before daylight, in time for a short rest.
“’Tis plaguy risky,” said Harvey, moodily. “I don’t like it Custa. A pretty kettle of fish if you get took.”
“I will not be taken,” replied Custa, simply.
“I know you won’t—but you’ll be worse,” continued Harvey, sulkily.
“Custa will not be scalped—he has long legs,” said the Indian, again.
“You promise that? Now mind—if you are found, you’ll make tracks and run.”
Custa made signs that he would, and then began taking off every particle of dress that looked like an assumption of civilized garb. In an instant he stood almost in a state of nature, an apology for a tunic beginning at his waist and hanging to within four inches of his knees, and his moccasins, being his whole dress. He then took from his hunting-bag the necessary materials, and began painting himself with great care. Harrod, however, quickly took the matter out of his hand, and finished him off so perfectly, that Harvey quite started.
“I wouldn’t advise you to let Amy see you,” he said, gravely.
“Ugh,” replied Custaloga with the deepest guttural sound he had yet uttered.
“You know she don’t like you in any Indian fixings—but in that she’d hate you.”
The young warrior looked very grave, but made no reply. He was ready, and standing up, his rifle in hand, his horn and shot-pouch hanging from his naked shoulder, he said a quiet good-by, and prepared to depart.
“Nonsense, I’ll come down the gully with you—”
“The night is very dark, the stones are slippery—stay—the red-skin warrior will go alone.”
“Willful and obstinate, like all his race,” said Harvey to himself. “Ah me! it’s a risky thing, a very risky thing. The lad must be in love with Amy.”
And thus roused, his ideas took another road, and soon led him on to think of Jane; and once directed into this current he lost all recollection of every thing else, and sunk into one of those dreamy visions of love and hope and joy, which come sometimes in the still solitude of night, whether we lie in down-beds, or on the hard rock or grassy earth; with naught above us but the canopy of heaven.
At last Harvey fell asleep, but he did not sleep long, for when his eyes opened again, the fire burnt still brightly, and Harrod lay in so deep and heavy a slumber that he could scarcely have replenished it. Harvey sat up, lit a pipe, and his thoughts turning toward the young Indian, he began to feel extremely uneasy. What he had undertaken he knew to be perilous in the extreme—one of those Indian artifices, which succeed sometimes from their extreme boldness and audacity, but which are attended with an amount of danger and difficulty which make them rarely used, or only in extreme cases like the present, where the feelings of the actor impelled him even to the verge of rashness.
Harvey gazed at the sleeper with pity. He lay still now; his stormy passions, his fearful sorrows, his regrets, his anxieties, his burning desire for vengeance, all at rest; and perhaps—who can say?—some sweet and cheering dream of the dear ones, some soft vision of the night was his, giving to his soul some of that pleasant rest which the body derives from cessation from labor.
“He sleeps—poor fellow; I must not wake him,” said the artist, gently. He always liked that fearless spirit, that warm-hearted though wild hunter. “How hushed and still this place is! Ah, what is that?”
He leaned down carefully in the dark shadow of the rock, clutching his rifle, as a heavy body was clearly heard above, making its way through the bushes. On the opposite side of the gully the bank rose about twenty feet precipitously, and then sloped back—an inclined plane, covered by shrubs and trees. Through these some body of considerable weight hadappeared to slide, and then stopped close to the edge of the cliff.
Harvey peered cautiously up—it was bright moonlight now—and raised his rifle, expecting every minute to see the glaring eyeballs of an Indian looking down upon them from that hight. The noise continued, the bushes parted, and the head of a panther, that had scented out, with his keen and horrid instinct, the presence of men, came looming out in the pale moonlight.
“My!” muttered Harvey, and then without a moment’s hesitation, he fired.
A roar, a yell, and then a bound, proclaimed that the savage beast had fallen, or made a spring at them. Harvey instinctively drew back to clutch his knife. The smoke of the gun prevented his seeing any thing at first, and then he beheld—the panther, which, wounded and bewildered for an instant, had missed its aim and fallen into the river, preparing for another spring.
The fierce, untamed brute, the only approach to lion or tiger on the American continent, glared wildly at Harvey, and hung out his horrid tongue, just as he prepared for the fatal spring. The artist shuddered, and dropping his gun stood with his back to the wall, his long, keen hunting-knife presented at the beast, the handle resting on his chest. The panther give a low whine, wagged its tail, and advanced its paws onto the edge of the niche.
This moment was fatal, for at the same instant a dark, shiny object swung in the air, and a huge and ponderous American ax came down with irresistible force on the cranium of the beast, which, stunned, its head split open, fell back with a savage cry and was carried away by the rushing stream.
“My!” said Harvey, drawing a long breath, “that was a sledge-hammer hit, I don’t think. Harrod, I’m much beholden to you. I did feel mighty skeered—that fellow would have eat me up slick. Well, you’re off again, are you? You take it quiet I expect. I don’t. I mean to have that skin—it’s a beauty.”
And taking only his knife, Harvey descended onto the ledge, and began groping his way down the gully, which was a little more light than in the evening, under the influence of the moon’s pale, cold, and quivering rays, that dropped here and there through the open space between trees and boughs. He advanced the whole length of the gully before he saw any sign of the unfortunate brute; but there at the mouth of the ravine it lay by the bank, motionless, still, quite dead. The tremendous force of the woodman’s ax, wielded by such an arm, had caused death to be instantaneous.
“It’s a mighty tall brute,” said Harvey, who now was a rude trapper—“a mighty tall brute. I expect that skin will make a fine rug for Miss Jane—so, lest the wolves should tear it, whichwudbe a pity, I’ll just skin it on the spot.”
And he did. He drew it ashore, and there, regardless of danger, laughing at the wolves, forgetting his own lesson to Custaloga, forgetting that the loping and murderous Indians were about, he sat down, and never stopped until the skin was quite clear of the carcass. Then, and only then, he started on his way upward to the niche, carrying his prize in triumph.
He laid it up safely, and then, somewhat tired of his strange occupation, he went soon to sleep, and slept so heavily, that nothing disturbed him, not even the howling of the wolves, as they fought and gorged themselves over the body of the dead panther.