The Young Trailers
J >> Joseph A. Altsheler >> The Young TrailersThe slight swaying motion of his body ceased suddenly and he remained as
still as a rock. He seemed to be a part of the green bushes that grew
around him, yet he was never more watchful, never more alert. The
indefinable sixth sense, developed in him by the wilderness, had taken
alarm; there was a presence in the forest, foreign in its nature; it was
not sight nor hearing nor yet smell that told him so, but a feeling or
rather a sort of prescience. Then an extraordinary thrill ran through
him; it was an emotion partaking in its nature of joy and anticipation;
he was about to be confronted by some danger, perhaps a crisis, and the
physical faculties, handed down by a far-off ancestor, expanded to meet
it. He knew that he would conquer, and he felt already the glow of
triumph.
Presently he sank down in the undergrowth so gently that not a bush
rustled; there was no displacement of nature, the grass and the foliage
were just as they had been, but the figure, visible before to the
trained eye at a dozen paces, could not have been seen now at all. Then
he began to creep through the grass with a swift easy gliding motion
like that of a serpent, moving at a speed remarkable in such a position
and quite soundless. He went a full half mile before he stopped and rose
to his knees, and then his face was hidden by the bushes, although the
eyes still searched every part of the forest.
His look was now wholly changed. He might be the hunted, but he bore
himself as the hunter. All vestige of the civilized man, trained to
humanity and mercy, was gone. Those who wished to kill were seeking him
and he would kill in return. The thin lips were slightly drawn back,
showing the line of white teeth, the eyes were narrowed and in them was
the cold glitter of expected conflict. Brown hands, lean but big-boned
and powerful, clasped a rifle having a long slender barrel and a
beautifully carved stock. It was a figure, terrible alike in its
manifestation of physical power and readiness, and in the fierce eye
that told what quality of mind lay behind it.
He sank down again and moved in a small circle to the right. His
original thrill of joy was now a permanent emotion; he was like some one
playing an exciting game into which no thought of danger entered. He
stopped behind a large tree, and sheltering himself riveted his eyes on
a spot in the forest about fifty yards away. No one else could have
found there anything suspicious, anything to tell of an alien presence,
but he no longer doubted.
At the detected point a leaf moved, but not in the way it should have
swayed before the gentle wind, and there was a passing spot of brown in
the green of the bushes. It was visible only for a moment, but it was
sufficient for the attuned mind and body of Henry Ware. Every part of
him responded to the call. The rifle sprang to his shoulder and before
the passing spot of brown was gone, a stream of fire spurted from its
slender muzzle, and its sharp cracking report like the lashing of a whip
was blended with the long-drawn howl, so terrible in its note, that is
the death cry of a savage.
The bullet had scarcely left his gun before he fell back almost flat,
and the answering shot sped over his head. It was for this that he sank
down, and before the second shot died he sprang to his feet and rushed
forward, drawing his tomahawk and uttering a shout that rolled away in
fierce echoes through the forest.
He knew that his enemies were but two; in his eccentric course through
the forest he had passed directly over their trail, and he had read the
signs with an infallible eye. Now one was dead and the other like
himself had an unloaded gun. The rest of his deed would be a mere matter
of detail.
The second savage uttered his war cry and sprang forward from the
bushes. He might well have recoiled at the terrible figure that rushed
to meet him; in all his wild life of risks he had never before been
confronted by anything so instinct with terror, so ominous of death. But
he did not have time to take thought before he was overwhelmed by his
resistless enemy.
It was an affair of but a few moments. The Indian threw his tomahawk but
Henry parried the blade upon the barrel of his rifle which he still
carried in his left hand, and his own tomahawk was whirled in a
glittering curve about his head. Now it was launched with mighty force
and the savage, cloven to the chin, sank soundless to the earth; he had
been smitten down by a force so sudden and absolute that he died
instantly.
The victor, elate though he was, paused, and quickly reloaded his
rifle--wilderness caution would allow nothing else--and afterwards
advancing looked first at the savage whom he had slain in the open and
then at the other in the bushes. There was no pity in him, his only
emotion was a great sense of power; they had hunted him, two to one, and
they born in the woods, but he had outwitted and slain them both. He
could have escaped, he could have easily left them far behind when he
first discovered that they were stalking him, but he had felt that they
should be punished and now the event justified his faith.
It was not his first taking of human life, and while he would have
shuddered at the deed a year ago he felt no such sensation now; they
were merely dangerous wild animals that had crossed his path, and he had
put them out of it in the proper way; his feeling was that of the hunter
who slays a grizzly bear or a lion, only he had slain two.
He stood looking at them, and save for the rustling of the young grass
under the gentle western wind the wilderness was silent and at peace.
The sun was shooting up higher and higher and a vast golden light hung
over the forest, gilding every leaf and twig. Henry Ware turned at last
and sped swiftly and silently to the south, still thrilling with
exultation over his deed, and the sequel that he knew would quickly
come. But in the few brief minutes his nature had reverted another and
further step toward the primitive.
When he had gone a half mile in his noiseless flight he stopped, and,
listening intently, heard the faint echo of a long-drawn, whining cry.
After that came silence, heavy and ominous. But Henry only laughed in
noiseless mirth. All this he had expected. He knew that the larger party
to which the two warriors belonged would find the bodies, with hasty
pursuit to follow after the single cry. That was why he lingered. He
wanted them to pursue, to hang upon his trail in the vain hope that they
could catch him; he would play with them, he would enjoy the game
leading them on until they were exhausted, and then, laughing, he would
go on to the south at his utmost speed.
A new impulse drove him to another step in the daring play, and, raising
his head, he uttered his own war cry, a long piercing shout that died in
distant echoes; it was at once a defiance, and an intimation to them
where they might find him, and then, mirth in his eyes, he resumed his
flight, although, for the present, he chose to keep an unchanging
distance between his pursuers and himself.
That party of warriors may have pursued many a man before and may have
caught most of them, but the greatest veteran of them all had never hung
on the trail of such another annoying fugitive. All day he led them in
swift flight toward the south, and at no time was he more than a little
beyond their reach; often they thought their hands were about to close
down upon him, that soon they would enjoy the sight of his writhings
under the fagot and the stake, but always he slipped away at the fatal
moment, and their savage hearts were filled with bitterness that a lone
fugitive should taunt them so. His footsteps were those of the white
man, but his wile and cunning were those of the red, and curiosity was
added to the other motives that drew them on.
At the coming of the twilight one of their best warriors who pursued at
some distance from the main band was slain by a rifle shot from the
bushes, then came that defiant war cry again, faint, but full of irony
and challenge, and then the trail grew cold before them. He whom they
pursued was going now with a speed that none of them could equal, and
the darkness itself, thick and heavy, soon covered all sign of his
flight.
Henry Ware's expectations of joy had been fulfilled and more; it was the
keenest delight that had yet come into his life. At all times he had
been master of the situation, and as he drew them southward, he
fulfilled his duty at the same time and enjoyed his sport. Everything
had fallen out as he planned, and now, with the night at hand, he shook
them off.
Through the day he had eaten dried venison from his pouch, as he ran,
and he felt no need to stop for food. So, he did not cease the flight
until after midnight when he lay down again in a thicket and slept
soundly until daylight. He rose again, refreshed, and faster than ever
sped on his swift way toward Wareville.
CHAPTER XIV
THE RETURN
Wareville lay in its pleasant valley, rejoicing in the young spring, so
kind with its warm rains that the men of the village foresaw a great
season for crops. The little river flowed in a silver current, smoke
rose from many chimneys, and now and then the red homemade linsey dress
of a girl gleamed in the sunlight like the feathers of the scarlet
tanager. To the left were the fields cleared for Indian corn, and to the
right were the gardens. Beyond both were the hills and the unbroken
forest.
Now and then a man, carrying on his shoulder the inevitable Kentucky
rifle, long and slender-barreled, passed through the palisade, but the
cardinal note of the scene was peace and cheerfulness. The town was
prospering, its future no longer belonged to chance; there would be
plenty, of the kind that they liked.
In the Ware house was a silent sadness, silent because these were stern
people, living in a stern time, and it was the custom to hide one's
griefs. The oldest son was gone; whether he had perished nobody knew,
nor, if he had perished, how.
John Ware was not an emotional man, feelings rarely showed on his face,
and his wife alone knew how hard the blow had been to him--she knew
because she had suffered from the same stroke. But the children, the
younger brother Charles and the sister Mary could not always remember,
and with them the impression of the one who was gone would grow dimmer
in time. The border too always expected a certain percentage of loss in
human life, it was one of the facts with which the people must reckon,
and thus the name of Henry Ware was rarely spoken.
To-day was without a cloud. New emigrants had come across the mountains,
adding welcome strength to the colony, and extending the limits of the
village. But danger had passed them by, they had heard once or twice
more of the great war in the far-away East, but it was so distant and
vague that most of them forgot it; the Indians across the Ohio had never
come this way, and so far Henry Ware was the only toll that they had
paid to the wilderness. There was cause for happiness, as human
happiness goes.
A slim girl bearing in her hand a wooden pail came through the gate of
the palisade. She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown hair
coiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleams
where the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yet
very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of
health. She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fit
suggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure. She walked
with strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside,
and which after a short course fell into the little river.
It was Lucy Upton, grown much taller now, as youth develops rapidly on
the border, a creature nourished into physical perfection first by the
good blood that was in her, then developed in the open air, and by work,
neither too little nor too much.
She reached the spring, and setting the pail by its side looked down at
the cool, gushing stream. It invited her and she ran her white rounded
arm through it, making curves and oblongs that were gone before they
were finished. She was in a thoughtful mood. Once or twice she looked at
the forest, and each time that she looked she shivered because the
shadow of the wilderness was then very heavy upon her.
Silas Pennypacker, the schoolmaster, came to the spring while she was
there, and they spoke together, because they were great friends, these
two. He was unchanged, the same strong gray man, with the ruddy face. He
was not unhappy here despite the seeming incongruity of his presence.
The wilderness appealed to him too in a way, he was the intellectual
leader of the colony and almost everything that his nature called for
met with a response.
"The spring is here, Lucy," he said, "and it has been an easy winter. We
should be thankful that we have fared so well."
"I think that most of us are," she replied. "We'll soon be a big town."
She glanced at the spreading settlement, and this launched Mr.
Pennypacker upon a favorite theme of his. He liked to predict how the
colony would grow, sowing new seed, and already he saw great cities to
be. He found a ready listener in Lucy. This too appealed to her
imagination at times, and if at other times interest was lacking, she
was too fond of the old man to let him know it. Presently when she had
finished she filled the pail and stood up, straight and strong.
"I will carry it for you," said the schoolmaster.
She laughed.
"Why should I let you?" she asked. "I am more able than you."
Most men would have taken it ill to have heard such words from a girl,
but she was one among many, above the usual height for her years; she
created at once the impression of great strength, both physical and
mental; the heavy pail of water hung in her hand, as if it were a trifle
that she did not notice. The master smiled and looked at her with eyes
of fatherly admiration.
"I must admit that you tell the truth," he said. "This West of ours
seems to suit you."
"It is my country now," she said, "and I do not care for any other."
"Since you will not let me carry the water you will at least let me walk
with you?" he said.
She did not reply, and he was startled by the sudden change that came
over her.
First a look of wonder showed on her face, then she turned white, every
particle of color leaving her cheeks. The master could not tell what her
expression meant, and he followed her eyes which were turned toward the
wilderness.
From the forest came a figure very strange to Silas Pennypacker, a
figure of barbaric splendor. It was a youth of great height and powerful
frame, his face so brown that it might belong to either the white or the
red race, but with fine clean features like those of a Greek god. He was
clad in deerskins, ornamented with little colored beads and fringes of
brilliant dyes. He carried a slender-barreled rifle over his shoulder,
and he came forward with swift, soundless steps.
The master recoiled in alarm at the strange and ominous figure, but as
the red flooded back into the girl's cheeks she put her hand upon his
arm.
"It is he! I knew that he was not dead!" she said in an intense
tremulous whisper. The words were indefinite, but the master knew whom
she meant, and there was a surge of joy in his heart, to be followed the
next moment by doubt and astonishment. It was Henry Ware who had come
back, but not the same Henry Ware.
Henry was beside them in a moment and he seized their hands, first the
hands of one and then of the other, calling them by name.
The master recovering from his momentary diffidence threw his arms
around his former pupil, welcomed him with many words, and wanted to
know where he had been so long.
"I shall tell you, but not now," replied Henry, "because there is no
time to spare; you are threatened by a great danger. The Shawnees are
coming with a thousand warriors and I have hastened ahead to warn you."
He hurried them inside the palisade, his manner tense, masterful and
convincing, and there he met his mother, whose joy, deep and grateful,
was expressed in few words after the stern Puritan code. The father and
the brother and sister came next, but the younger people like Lucy felt
a little fear of him, and his old comrade Paul Cotter scarcely knew him.
He told in a few words of his escape from a far Northwestern tribe, of
the coming of the Shawnees, and of the need to take every precaution for
defense.
"There is no time to spare," he said. "All must be called in at once."
A man with powerful lungs blew long on a cow's horn, those who were at
work in the fields and the forest hastened in, the gates were barred,
the best marksmen were sent to watch in the upper story of the
blockhouses and at the palisade, and the women began to mold bullets.
Henry Ware was the pervading spirit through all the preparations. He
knew everything and thought of everything, he told them the mode of
Indian attack and how they could best meet it, he compelled them to
strengthen the weak spots in the palisade, and he encouraged all those
who were faint of heart and apprehensive.
Lucy's slight fear of him remained, but with it now came admiration. She
saw that his was a soul fit to lead and command, the work that he was
about to do he loved, his eyes were alight with the fire of battle; a
certain joy was shining there, and all, feeling the strength of his
spirit, obeyed him without asking why.
Only Braxton Wyatt uttered doubts with words and sneered with looks. He
too had become a hunter of skill, and hence what he said might have some
merit.
"It seems strange that Henry Ware should come so suddenly when he might
have come before," he remarked with apparent carelessness to Lucy Upton.
She looked at him with sharp interest. The same thought had entered her
mind, but she did not like to hear Braxton Wyatt utter it.
"At all events he is about to save us from a great danger," she said.
Wyatt laughed and his thin long features contracted in an ugly manner.
"It is a tale to impress us and perhaps to cover up something else," he
replied. "There is not an Indian within two hundred miles of us. I know,
I have been through the woods and there is no sign."
She turned away, liking his words little and his manner less. She
stopped presently by a corner of one of the houses on a slight elevation
whence she could see a long distance beyond the palisade. So far as
seeming went Braxton Wyatt was certainly right. The spring day was full
of golden sunshine, the fresh new green of the forest was unsullied, and
it was hard to conjure up even the shadow of danger.
Wyatt might have ground for his suspicion, but why should Henry Ware
sound a false alarm? The words "perhaps to cover up something else"
returned to her mind, but she dismissed them angrily.
She went to the Ware house and rejoiced with Mrs. Ware, to whom a son
had come back from the dead, and in whose joy there was no flaw.
According to her mother's heart a wonder had been performed, and it had
been done for her special benefit.
The village was in full posture of defense, all were inside the walls
and every man had gone to his post. They now awaited the attack, and yet
there was some distrust of Henry Ware. Braxton Wyatt, a clever youth,
had insidiously sowed the seeds of suspicion, and already there was a
crop of unbelief. By indirection he had called attention to the strange
appearance of the returned wanderer, the Indianlike air that he had
acquired, his new ways unlike their own, and his indifference to many
things that he had formerly liked. He noticed the change in Henry Ware's
nature and he brought it also to the notice of others.
It seemed as the brilliant day passed peacefully that Wyatt was right
and Henry, for some hidden purpose of his own, perhaps to hide the
secret of his long absence, had brought to them this sounding alarm.
There was the sun beyond the zenith in the heavens, the shadows of
afternoon were falling, and the yellow light over the forest softened
into gray, but no sign of an enemy appeared.
If Henry Ware saw the discontent he did not show his knowledge; the
light of the expected conflict was still in his eyes and his thoughts
were chiefly of the great event to come; yet in an interval of waiting
he went back to the house and told his mother of much that had befallen
him during his long absence; he sought to persuade himself now that he
could not have escaped earlier, and perhaps without intending it he
created in her mind the impression that he sought to engrave upon his
own; so she was fully satisfied, thankful for the great mercy of his
return that had been given to her.
"Now mother!" he said at last, "I am going outside."
"Outside!" she cried aghast, "but you are safe here! Why not stay?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"I shall be safe out there, too," he said, "and it is best for us all
that I go. Oh, I know the wilderness, mother, as you know the rooms of
this house!"
He kissed her quickly and turned away. John Ware, who stood by, said
nothing. He felt a certain fear of his son and did not yet know how to
command him.
As Henry passed from the house into the little square Lucy Upton
overtook him.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I think I can be of more help out there than in here," he replied
pointing toward the forest.
"It would be better for you to stay," she said.
"I shall be in no danger."
"It is not that; do you know what some of them here are saying of
you--that you are estranged from us, that there is some purpose in this,
that no attack is coming! Your going now will confirm them in the
belief."
His dark eyes flashed with a fierceness that startled her, and his whole
frame seemed to draw up as if he were about to spring. But the emotion
passed in a moment, and his face was a brown mask, saying nothing. He
seemed indifferent to the public opinion of his little world.
"I am needed out there," he said, pointing again toward the dark line of
the forest, "and I shall go. Whether I tell the truth or not will soon
be known; they will have to wait only a little. But you believe me now,
don't you?"
She looked deep into his calm eyes, and she read there only truth. But
she knew even before she looked that Henry Ware was not one who would
ever be guilty of falsehood or treachery.
"Oh yes I know it," she replied, "but I wish others to know it as well."
"They will," he said, and then taking her hand in his for one brief
moment he was gone. His disappearance was so sudden and soundless that
he seemed to her to melt away from her sight like a mist before the
wind. She did not even know how he had passed through the palisade, but
he was certainly outside and away. There was something weird about it
and she felt a little fear, as if an event almost supernatural had
occurred.
The sudden departure of Henry Ware to the forest started the slanderous
tongues to wagging again, and they said it was a trap of some kind,
though no one could tell how. A sly report was started that he had
become that worst of all creatures in his time, a renegade, a white man
who allied himself with the red to make war upon his own people. It came
to the ears of Paul Cotter, and the heart of the loyal youth grew hot
within him. Paul was not fond of war and strife, but he had an abounding
courage, and he and Henry Ware had been through danger together.
"He is changed, I will admit," he said, "but if he says we are going to
be attacked, we shall be. I wish that all of us were as true as he."
He touched his gun lock in a threatening manner, and Braxton Wyatt and
the others who stood by said no more in his presence. Yet the course of
the day was against Henry's assertion. The afternoon waned, the sun, a
ball of copper, swung down into the west, long shadows fell and nothing
happened.
The people moved and talked impatiently inside their wooden walls. They
spoke of going about their regular pursuits, there was work that could
be done on the outside in the twilight, and enough time had been lost
already through a false alarm. But some of the older men, with cautious
blood, advised them to wait and their counsel was taken. Night came,
thick and black, and to the more timid full of omens and presages.
The forest sank away in the darkness, nothing was visible fifty yards
from the palisade and in the log houses few lights burned. The little
colony, but a pin point of light, was alone in the vast and circling
wilderness. One of the greatest tests of courage to which the human race
has ever been subjected was at hand. In all directions the forest curved
away, hundreds of miles. It would be a journey of days to find any other
of their own kind, they were hemmed in everywhere by silence and
loneliness, whatever happened they must depend upon themselves, because
there was none to bring help. They might perish, one and all, and the
rest of the world not hear of it until long afterwards.
A moaning wind came up and sighed over the log houses, the younger
children--and few were too young not to guess what was expected--fell
asleep at last, but the older, those who had reached their thinking
years could not find such solace. In this black darkness their fears
became real; there was no false alarm, the forest around them hid their
enemy, but only for the time.