The Young Trailers
J >> Joseph A. Altsheler >> The Young TrailersMeanwhile his body thrived at a prodigious rate. One could almost see
him grow. There was not a warrior in the village who was as strong as
he, and already he surpassed them all in endurance; none was so fleet of
foot nor so tireless. His face and hair darkened in the wind and sun,
his last vestige of civilized garb had disappeared long ago, and he was
clothed wholly in deerskin. His features grew stronger and keener and
the eyes were incessantly watchful, roving hither and thither, covering
every point within range. It would have taken more than a casual glance
now to discover that he was white.
The winter deepened. The snow was continuous, fierce blasts blew in from
the distant western plains and even searched out their sheltered valley.
The old men and the women shivered in the lodges, but sparkling young
blood and tireless action kept the boy warm and flourishing through it
all. Game grew scarce about them and the hunters went far westward in
search of the buffalo.
Henry was with the party that traveled farthest toward the setting sun,
and it was long before they returned. Winter was at its height and when
they came out of the forest into the waving open stretches which are the
Great Plains all things were hidden by the snow.
Henry from the summit of a little hill saw before him an expanse as
mighty as the sea, and like it in many of its aspects. They told him
that it rolled away to the westward, no man knew how far, as none of
them had ever come to the end of it. In summer it was covered with life.
Here grew thick grass and wild flowers and the buffalo passed in
millions.
It inspired in Henry a certain awe and yet by its very vagueness and
immensity it attracted. Just as he had wished to explore the secrets of
the forest he would like now to tread the Great Plains and find what
they held.
They turned toward the southwest in search of buffalo and were caught in
a great storm of wind and hail. The cold was bitter and the wind cut to
the bone. They were saved from freezing to death only by digging a rude
shelter through the snow into the side of a hill, and there they
crouched for two days with so little food left in their knapsacks, that
without game, they would perish, in a week, of hunger, if the cold did
not get the first chance. The most experienced hunters went forth, but
returned with nothing, thankful for so little a mercy as the ability to
get back to their half-shelter.
Henry at last took his rifle and ventured out alone--the others were too
listless to stop him--and before the noon hour he found a buffalo bull,
some outcast from the herd which had gone southward, struggling in the
snow. The bull was old and lean, and it took two bullets to bring him
down, but his death meant their life and Henry hurried to the camp with
the joyful news. It was clearly recognized that he had saved them, but
no one said anything and Henry was glad of their silence.
When the storm ceased they renewed their journey toward the south with a
plentiful supply of food and not long afterwards the snow began to melt.
Under the influence of a warm wind out of the southwest it disappeared
with marvelous quickness; one day the earth was all white, and the next
it was all brown. The warm wind continued to blow, and then faint
touches of green began to appear in the dead grass; there were delicate
odors, the breath of the great warm south, and they knew that spring was
not far away.
In a week they ran into the buffalo herd, a mighty black mass of moving
millions. The earth rumbled hollowly under the tread of a myriad feet,
and the plain was black with bodies to the horizon and beyond.
They killed as many of the buffalo as they wished and after the fashion
of the more northerly Indians reduced the meat to pemmican. Then, each
man bearing as much as he could conveniently carry, they began their
swift journey homeward, not knowing whether they would arrive in time
for the needs of the village.
Henry felt a deep concern for these new friends of his who were left
behind in the valley. He shared the anxiety of the others who feared
lest they would be too late and that fact reconciled him to the retreat
from the Great Plains, whose mysteries he longed to unravel.
As they went swiftly eastward the spring unfolded so fast that it seemed
to Henry to come with one great jump. They were now in the forests and
everywhere the trees were laden with fresh buds, in all the open spaces
the young grass was springing up, and the brooks, as if rejoicing in
their new freedom from the ice-bound winter, ran in sparkling little
streams between green banks.
The physical world was full of beauty to him, more so than ever because
his power of feeling it had grown. During the winter and by the
triumphant endurance of so many hardships his form had expanded and the
tide of sparkling blood had risen higher. Although a captive he was
regarded in a sense as the leader of the hunting party; it was obvious,
in the deference that the others, though much older, showed to him and
he knew that only his resource, courage and endurance had saved them all
from death. A song of triumph was singing in his veins.
They found the village at the edge of starvation despite the approach of
spring; two or three of the older people had died already of weakness,
and their supplies arrived just in time to relieve the crisis. There
were willing tongues to tell of his exploits, and Henry soon perceived
that he was a hero to them all and he enjoyed it, because it was natural
to him to be a leader, and he loved to breathe the air of approbation.
Yet as they valued him more they grew more jealous of him, and they
watched him incessantly, lest he should take it into his head to flee to
the people who were once his own. Henry saw the difficulty and again it
soothed his conscience by showing to him that he could not do what he
yet had a lingering feeling that he ought to do.
Good luck seemed to come in a shower to the village with the return of
the hunting party. Spring leaped suddenly into full bloom, and the woods
began to swarm with game. It was the most plentiful season that the
oldest man could recall, there was no hunter so lazy and so dull that he
could not find the buffalo and the deer.
Then the band, with the spirit of irresponsible wandering upon it, took
down its lodges and traveled slowly into the north farther and farther
from the little settlement away down in Kentucky. There was peace among
the tribes and they could go as they chose. They came at last to the
shores of a mighty lake, Superior, and here when Henry looked out upon
an expanse of water, as limitless to the eyes as the sea, he felt the
same thrill of awe that had passed through his veins when the Great
Plains lay outspread before him. As it was now midsummer and the forests
crackled in the heat they lingered long by the deep cool waters of the
lake. Here white traders, Frenchmen speaking a tongue unknown to Henry,
came to them with rifles, ammunition and bright-colored blankets to
trade for furs. More than one of them saw and admired the tall powerful
young warrior with the singularly watchful eyes but not one of them knew
that under his paint and tan he was whiter than themselves; instead they
took him to be the wildest of the wild.
Henry's heart had throbbed a little at the first sight of them, but it
was only for a moment, then it beat as steadily as ever; white like
himself they might be, but they were of an alien race; their speech was
not his speech, their ways not his ways and he turned from them. He was
glad when they were gone.
Toward the end of summer they went south again and wandered idly through
pleasant places. It was still a full season with wild fruits hanging
from the trees and game everywhere. There had been no sickness in the
little tribe and they basked in physical content. It was now a careless
easy life with the stimulus of wandering and hunting and all the old
primeval instincts in Henry, made stronger by habit, were gratified. He
fell easily into the ways of his friends; when there was nothing to do
he could sit for hours looking at the forests and the streams and the
sunshine, letting his soul steep in the glory of it all. To his other
qualities he now added that of illimitable patience. He could wait for
what he wished as the Eskimo sits for days at the air hole until the
seal appears.
In their devious wanderings they kept a general course toward the valley
in which they had passed the first winter, intending to renew their camp
there during the cold weather, but autumn, as they intended, was at hand
before they reached it. They were yet a long distance north and west of
their valley when they were threatened by a danger with which they had
not reckoned. A local tribe claimed that the band was infringing upon
their hunting grounds and began war with a treacherous attack upon a
hunting party.
The war was not long but the few hundreds who took part in it shared all
the passions and fierce emotions of two great nations in conflict. Henry
was in the thick of it, first alike in attack and defense, superior to
the Indians themselves in wiles and cunning. Several of the hostile
tribe fell at his hand, although he could not take a scalp, the remnants
of his early training forbidding it. But once or twice he was ashamed of
the weakness. The hostile party was triumphantly beaten off with great
loss to itself and Henry and his friends pursued their journey leisurely
and triumphantly. Now besides being a great hunter he was a great
warrior too.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CALL OF DUTY
They arrived at their valley and prepared for the second winter there,
returning to the place for several reasons, chief among them being the
right of prescription, to which the other tribes yielded tacit consent.
The Indian recks little of the future, but in his reversion to primitive
type Henry had taken with him much of the acquired and modern knowledge
of education. He looked ahead, and, under his constant suggestion,
advice and pressure they stored so much food for the winter that there
was no chance of another famine, whatever might happen to the game.
Before they went into winter quarters Henry clearly perceived one
thing--he was first in the little tribe; even Black Cloud, the chief,
willingly took second place to him. He was first alike in strength and
wisdom and it was patent to all. He was now, although only a boy in
years, nearly at his full height, almost a head above an ordinary
warrior, with wonderfully keen eyes, set wide apart, and a square
projecting chin, so firm that it seemed to be carved of brown marble.
His shoulders were of great breadth, but his lean figure had all the
graceful strength and ease of some wild animal native to the forest. He
was scrupulous in his attire, and wore only the finest skins and furs
that the village could furnish.
Henry felt the deference of the tribe and it pleased him. He glided
naturally into the place of leader, feeling the responsibility and
liking it. He was tactful, too, he would not push Black Cloud from his
old position, but merely remained at his right hand and ruled through
him. The chief was soothed and flattered, and the arrangement worked to
the pleasure of both, and to the great good of the village which now
enjoyed a winter of prosperity hitherto unknown to such natives of the
woods. Nobody had to go hungry, there was abundant provision against the
cold. Henry, though not saying it, knew that with him the credit lay,
and just now the world seemed very full. As human beings go he was
thoroughly happy; the life fitted him, satisfied all his wants, and the
memory of his own people became paler and more distant; they could do
very well without him; they were so many, one could be spared, and when
the chance came he would send word to them that he was alive and well,
but that he would not come back.
When the buds began to burst they traveled eastward, until they came to
the Mississippi. The sight of its stream brought back to Henry a thought
of those with whom he had first seen it and he felt a pang of remorse.
But the pang was fleeting, and the memory too he resolutely put aside.
They crossed the Mississippi and advanced into the land of little
prairies, a green, rich region, pleasant to the eye and full of game.
They wandered and hunted here, drifting slowly to the eastward, until
they came upon a great encampment of the fierce and warlike nation,
known as the Shawnees. The Shawnees were in their war paint and were
singing warlike songs. It was evident to the most casual visitor that
they were going forth to do battle.
It was late in the afternoon when Henry, Black Cloud and two others came
upon this encampment. His own band had pitched its lodges some miles
behind, but the kinship of the forest and the peace between them, made
the four the guests of the Shawnees as long as they chose to stay.
At least a thousand warriors were in all the hideous varieties of war
paint, and the scene, in the waning light, was weird and ominous even to
Henry. The war songs in their very monotony were chilling, and full of
ferocity, and in all the thousand faces there was not one that shone
with the light of kindness and mercy.
Long glances were cast at Henry, but even their keen eyes failed to
notice that he was not an Indian, and he stood watching them, his face
impassive, but his interest aroused. A dozen warriors naked to the waist
and hideously painted were singing a war song, while they capered and
jumped to its unrhythmic tune. Suddenly one of them snatched something
from his girdle and waved it aloft in triumph. Henry knew that it was a
scalp, many of which he had seen, and he paid little attention, but the
Indian came closer, still singing and dancing, and waving his hideous
trophy.
The scalp flashed before Henry's eyes, and it displayed not the coarse
black locks of the savage, but hair long, fine and yellow like silk. He
knew that it was the scalp of a white girl, and a sudden, shuddering
horror seized him. It had belonged to one of his own kind, to the race
into which he had been born and with which he had passed his boyhood.
His heart filled with hatred of these Shawnees, but the warriors of his
own little tribe would take scalps, and if occasion came, the scalps of
white people, yes, of white women and white girls! He tried to dismiss
the thought or rather to crush it down, but it would not yield to his
will; always it rose up again.
He walked back to the edge of the encampment, where some of the warriors
were yet singing the war songs that with all of their monotony were so
weird and chilling. Twilight was over the forest, save in the west,
where a blood-red tint from the sunken sun lingered on trunk and bough,
and gleamed across the faces of the dancing warriors. In this lurid
light Henry suddenly saw them savage, inhuman, implacable. They were
truly creatures of the wilderness, the lust of blood was upon them, and
they would shed it for the pleasure of seeing it flow. Henry's primeval
world darkened as he looked upon them.
He was about to leave with Black Cloud and his friends when it occurred
to him to ask which way the war party was going and who were the
destined victims. He spoke to two or three warriors until he came to one
who understood the tongue of his little tribe.
The man waved his hand toward the south.
"Off there; far away," he said. "Beyond the great river."
Henry knew that in this case "great river" meant the Ohio and he was
somewhat surprised; it was still a long journey from the Ohio to the
land of the Cherokees, Chickasaws and Choctaws with whom the Northern
tribes sometimes fought, and he spoke of it to the warrior, but the man
shook his head, and said they were going against the white people; there
was a village of them in a sheltered valley beside a little river, they
had been there three or four years and had flourished in peace; freedom
so long from danger had made them careless, but the Shawnee scouts had
looked from the woods upon the settlement, and the war band would slay
or take them all with ease.
The man had not spoken a half dozen words before Henry knew that
Wareville was the place, upon which the doom was so soon to fall. The
chill of horror that had seized him at sight of the yellow-haired scalp
passed over him again, deeper, stronger and longer than before. And the
colony would fall! There could be no doubt of it! Nothing could save it!
The hideous band, raging with tomahawk and knife, would dash without a
word of warning, like a bolt from the sky upon Wareville so long
sheltered and peaceful in its valley. And he could see all the phases of
the savage triumph, the surprise, the triumphant and ferocious yells,
the rapid volleys of the rifles, the flashing of the blades, the burning
buildings, the shouts, the cries, and men, women and children in one red
slaughter. In another year the forest would be springing up where
Wareville had been, and the wolf and the fox would prowl among the
charred timbers. And among the bleaching bones would be those of his own
mother and sister and Lucy Upton--if they were not taken away for a
worse fate.
He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him.
All his old life, the dear familiar ties surged up, and were hot upon
his brain. His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too
easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval
nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many
opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been
willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw
himself guilty and guilty he was.
But in that moment of agony and fear for his own he was paying the price
of his guilt. The sense of helplessness was crushing. In two hours the
war party would start and it would flit southward like the wind, as
silent but far more deadly. No, nothing could save the innocent people
at Wareville; they were as surely doomed as if their destruction had
already taken place.
But not one of these emotions, so tense and so deep, was written on the
face of him whom even the Shawnees did not know to be white. Not a
feature changed, the Indian stoicism and calm, the product alike of his
nature and cultivation, clung to him. His eyes were veiled and his
movements had their habitual gravity and dignity.
He walked with Black Cloud to the edge of the encampment, said farewell
to the Shawnees, and then, with a great surge of joy, his resolution
came to him. It was so sudden, so transforming that the whole world
changed at once. The blood-red tint, thrown by the sunken sun, was gone
from the forest, but instead the silver sickle of the moon was rising
and shed a radiant light of hope.
He said nothing until they had gone a mile or so and then, drawing Black
Cloud aside, spoke to him words full of firmness, but not without
feeling. He made no secret of his purpose, and he said that if Black
Cloud and the others sought to stay him with force with force he would
reply. He must go, and he would go at once.
Black Cloud was silent for a while, and Henry saw the faintest quiver in
his eyes. He knew that he held a certain place in the affections of the
chief, not the place that he might hold in the regard of a white man, it
was more limited and qualified, but it was there, nevertheless.
"I am the captive of the tribe I know," said Henry. "It has made me its
son, but my white blood is not changed and I must save my people. The
Shawnees march south to-night against them and I go to give warning. It
is better that I go in peace."
He spoke simply, but with dignity, and looked straight into the eyes of
the chief, where he saw that slight pathetic quiver come again.
"I cannot keep you now if you would go," said Black Cloud, "but it may
be when you are far away that the forest and we with whom you have lived
and hunted so many seasons will call to you again, in a voice to which
you must listen."
Henry was moved; perhaps the chief was telling the truth. He saw the
hardships and bareness of the wilderness but the life there appealed to
him and satisfied the stronger wants of his nature; he seemed to be the
reincarnation of some old forest dweller, belonging to a time thousands
of years ago, yet the voice of duty, which was in this case also the
voice of love, called to him, too, and now with the louder voice. He
would go, and there must be no delay in his going.
"Farewell, Black Cloud," he said with the same simplicity. "I will think
often of you who have been good to me."
The chief called the other warriors and told them their comrade was
going far to the south, and they might never see him again. Their faces
expressed nothing, whatever they may have felt. Henry repeated the
farewell, hesitated no longer and plunged into the forest. But he
stopped when he was thirty or forty yards away and looked back. The
chief and the warriors stood side by side as he had left them,
motionless and gazing after him. It was night now and to eyes less keen
than Henry's their forms would have melted into the dusk, but he saw
every outline distinctly, the lean brown features and the black shining
eyes. He waved his hands to them--a white man's action--and resumed his
flight, not looking back again.
It was a dark night and the forest stretched on, black and endless, the
trunks of the trees standing in rows like phantoms of the dusk. Henry
looked up at the moon and the few stars, and reckoned his course.
Wareville lay many hundred miles away, chiefly to the south, and he had
a general idea of the direction, but the war party would know exactly,
and its advantage there would perhaps be compensation for the superior
speed of one man. But Henry, for the present, would not think of such a
disaster as failure; on the contrary he reckoned with nothing but
success, and he felt a marvelous elation.
The decision once taken the rebound had come with great force, and he
felt that he was now about to make atonement for his long neglect, and
more than neglect. Perhaps it had been ordained long ago that he should
be there at the critical moment, see the danger and bring them the
warning that would save. There was consolation in the thought.
He increased his pace and sped southward in the easy trot that he had
learned from his red friends, a gait that he could maintain
indefinitely, and with which he could put ground behind him at a
remarkable rate. His rifle he carried at the trail, his head was bent
slightly forward, and he listened intently to every sound of the forest
as he passed; nothing escaped his ear, whether it was a raccoon stirring
among the branches, a deer startled from its covert, or merely the wind
rustling the leaves. Instinct also told him that the forest was at
peace.
To the ordinary man the night with its dusk, the wilderness with its
ghostly tree trunks, and the silence would have been full of weirdness
and awe, black with omens and presages. Few would not have chilled to
the marrow to be alone there, but to Henry it brought only hope and the
thrill of exultation. He had no sense of loneliness, the forest hid no
secrets for him; this was home and he merely passed through it on a
great quest.
He looked up at the moon and stars, and confirmed himself in his course,
though he never slackened speed as he looked. He came out of the forest
upon a prairie, and here the moonlight was brighter, touching the crests
of the swells with silver spear-points. A dozen buffaloes rose up and
snorted as he flitted by, but he scarcely bestowed a passing glance upon
the black bulk of the animals. The prairie was only two or three miles
across, and at the far edge flowed a shallow creek which he crossed at
full speed, and entered the forest again. Now he came to rough country,
steep little hills, and a dense undergrowth of interlacing bushes, and
twining thorny vines. But he made his way through them in a manner that
only one forest-bred could compass, and pressed on with speed but little
slackened.
When the night became darkest, in the forest just before morning he lay
down in the deepest shadow of a thicket, his hand upon his rifle, and in
a few minutes was sleeping soundly. It was a matter of training with him
to sleep whenever sleep was needed and he had no nerves. He knew, too,
despite his haste that he must save his strength, and he did not
hesitate to follow the counsels of prudence.
It was his will that he should sleep about four hours, and, his system
obeying the wish, he awoke at the appointed time. The sun was rising
over the vast, green wilderness, lighting up a world seemingly as lonely
and deserted as it had been the night before. The unbroken forest,
touched with the tender tints of young spring and bathed in the pure
light of the first dawn, bent gently to a west wind that breathed only
of peace.
Henry stood up and inhaled the odorous air. He was a striking figure,
yet a few yards away he would have been visible only to the trained eye;
his half-savage garb of tanned deerskin, stained green and trimmed at
the edges with green beads and little green feathers, blended with the
colors of the forest and merely made a harmonious note in the whole. His
figure compact, powerful and always poised as if ready for a spring
swayed slightly, while his eyes that missed nothing searched every nook
in the circling woods. He was then neither the savage nor the civilized
man, but he had many of the qualities of both.