Hardscrabble; or, the fall of Chicago Part 3

"Just as you please," answered corporal Nixon. "By and bye, sogers go to the Fort--take Injin with 'em."

"Wah! Injin cross here," and as he spoke, he sprang again to the bow of the boat, and at a single bound cleared the intervening s.p.a.ce to the very stern.

Several heavy splashes in the water.--a muttered curse from the corporal--some confusion among his men, and the savage was seen nearly half-way across the river, swimming like an eel to the opposite sh.o.r.e.

"d.a.m.n the awkward brute!" exclaimed the former, angrily. "How many muskets are there overboard, Jackson?"

"Only three--and two cartouch boxes."

"ONLY three indeed! I wish the fellow had been at old Nick, instead of coming here to create all this confusion. Is the water deep at the stern?"

"Nearly a fathom I reckon," was the reply.

"Then, my lads, you must look out for other fish to-day. Jackson, can you see the muskets at the bottom?"

"Not a sign of them, corporal," answered the man, as lying flat on the boat, he peered intently into the water. "The bottom is covered with weeds, and I can just see the tails of two large pikes wriggling among them. By Gemini, I think if I had my rod here, I could take them both!"

"Never mind them," resumed the corporal, again delivering himself of a little wit; "muskets will be of far more use to us just now than pikes.

We must fish them up--there will be the devil to pay if we go home without them."

"Then there's no other way than diving for them," said Jackson, still looking downwards. "Not even the glitter of a barrel can I see. They must have buried themselves in the weeds. I say, Weston," slightly raising his head and turning his face to the party named, "You're a good diver?"

"Yes, and Collins is better than me."

"Well then, here's at it," resumed Jackson, rising and commencing to strip. "It's only by groping and feeling that we can find the arms, and when once we've tumbled on 'em, it will be easy enough to get 'em up with one hand, while we swim with the other. We must plunge here from the stern," he added, as the men whom he had named jumped on board and commenced stripping themselves.

"How came the Injin to knock the muskets overboard, Corporal?" inquired one of the party who had not yet spoken--a fat, portly man, with a long hooked nose, and a peaked chin.

"I'm dashed," replied Nixon, "if I can tell myself, though I was looking at him as he jumped from one end of the boat to the other. All I know is, the firelocks were propped against the stern of the boat as we placed them, with the backs of the cartouch boxes slung under the ramrods, and I suppose, for I don't know how else it could be done, that instead of alighting on the seat, he must have pa.s.sed it, and putting his foot on the muzzles, tipped them with the weight of his body, head over heels into the water."

"Corporal," Ventured Collins, as he removed his last garment, "you asked that painted chap if he saw anything green in your eye. Now, that's as it may be, but hang me, if it wasn't a little green to take him for a Pottawattamie?"

"And how do you know he was'nt a Pottawattamie? Who made you a judge of Indian flesh?" retorted the corporal, with an air of dissatisfaction.

"Didn't he say he was, and didn't he wear a chiefs medal?"

"Say? Yes, I'll be bound he'd say and wear anything to gull us, but I'm sure he's no Pottawattamie. I never seen a Pottawattamie of that build.

They are tall, thin, skinny, bony fellows--while this chap was square, stoat, broad-shouldered, and full of muscle."

Corporal Nixon pondered a little, because half-convinced, but would not acknowledge that he could have been mistaken. "Are you all ready?" he at length inquired, anxious, like most men, when driven into a corner on one topic, to introduce another.

"All ready," answered Jackson, taking the first plunge in the direction in which he knew the muskets must have fallen.

Before following his example, the others waited for his report. This was soon made. He had got hold of one of the muskets, and partly lifted it from its bed, but the net-work of strong weeds above it, opposing too much resistance, he had been compelled to quit his hold, and came to the surface of the water for air.

"Here's for another trial," shouted Collins, as he made his plunge in the same direction. In a few seconds he too, reappeared, bearing in his right hand, not a firelock, but the two missing cartouch boxes.

"Better luck next time," remarked corporal Nixon. "I think my lads, if two of you were to separate the weeds with your hands, so as to clear each musket, the other might easily bring it up."

The suggestion of the corporal was at once acted upon, but it was not, until after repeated attempts had been made to liberate the arms, from their Web-like canopy, that two were finally brought up and placed in the boat. The third they groped for in vain, until at length, the men, dispirited and tired, declared it was utterly useless to prosecute the search, and that the other musket must be given up as lost.

This, however, did not suit the views of the correct corporal. He said, pointedly, that he would almost as soon return without his head as without his arms, and that the day having been thus far spent without the accomplishment of the object for which they were there, he was determined to devote the remainder to the search. Not being a bad diver himself, although he had not hitherto deemed it necessary to add his exertions to those of his comrades, he now stripped, desiring those who had preceded him to throw on their shirts and rest themselves for another plunge, when he should have succeeded in finding out where the missing musket had lodged.

"What's that?" exclaimed Jackson, pointing to a small, dark object, of a nearly circular shape, which was floating about half way between the surface of the place into which the divers had plunged, and the weeds below.

His companions turned their eyes in the direction indicated, but, almost immediately after Jackson had spoken, it had disappeared wholly from view.

"What did it loot like?" asked the corporal.

"It must have been a mush rat," returned Jackson, "there's plenty of them about here, and I reckon our diving has disturbed the nest."

Corporal Nixon now took his leap, but some paces farther out from the sh.o.r.e than his companions had ventured upon theirs. The direction was the right one. Extending his arms as he reached a s.p.a.ce entirely free from weeds, his right hand encountered the cold barrel of the musket, but as he sought to glide it along, in order that he might grasp the b.u.t.t, and thus drag it endwise up, his hand disturbed some hairy substance which rested upon the weapon causing it to float slightly upwards, until it came in contact with his naked breast. Now, the corporal was a fearless soldier whose nerves were not easily shaken, but the idea of a nasty mush rat, as they termed it, touching his person in this manner, produced in him unconquerable disgust, even while it gave him the desperate energy to clutch the object with a nervous grasp, and without regard to the chance of being bitten in the act, by the small, sharp teeth of the animal. His consternation was even greater when, on enclosing it within his rough palm, he felt the whole to collapse, as though it had been a heavy air-filled bladder, burst by the compression of his fingers. A new feeling-a new chain of ideas now took possession of him, and leaving the musket where it was, he rose near the spot from which he first started, and still clutching his hairy and undesirable prize, threw it from him towards the boat, into the bottom of which it fell, after grazing the cheek of Collins.

"Pooh! pooh! pooh," spluttered the latter, moving as if the action was necessary to disembarra.s.s him of the unsightly object no longer there.

A new source of curiosity was now created, not only among the swimmers, but the idlers who were smoking their pipes and looking carelessly on. All now, without venturing to touch the loathsome looking thing, gathered around it endeavoring to ascertain really what it was. "What do you make of the creature?" asked corporal Nixon, who, now ascending the side of the boat, observed how much the interest of his men had been excited.

"I'm sure I can't say," answered Jackson. "It looks for all the world like a rat, only the hair is so long. Dead enough though, for it does not budge an inch."

"Let's see what it is," said the man with the long hooked nose, and the peaked chin.

By no means anxious, however, to touch it with his hands, he took up the spear and turned over and over the clammy and motionless ma.s.s.

"Just as I thought," exclaimed the corporal, with a shudder, as the weapon unfolding the whole to view, disclosed alternately the moistened hair and thick and b.l.o.o.d.y skin of a human head.

"Gemini," cried Jackson, "how came this scalp here, it has been freshly taken--this very day--yet how could it get here?"

"Depend upon't," said Green, "that chief that was here just now, could tell somethin' about it, if he had a mind."

"Then he must have had it in his breech-cloth," remarked the corporal seriously, for not a rag besides had he about him. "No, no it couldn't be him, and yet it's very strange."

"Of course it couldn't be him," maliciously interfered Collins, who had so far conquered his first disgust, as to take the object of discussion into his own hands, "for you know he was a Pottawattamie, and therefore wouldn't scalp for the world."

"But whose can it be?" resumed Jackson, "and how did it get here, I am sure its that of a boy."

"Could it have floated here from the farm?" half questioned Green musingly.

"Somethin' struck me like shots from that quarter, about an hour before the Injin swam across, and dash me, now I recollect it, I'm sure I heard a cry, just after the corporal left us to go after that bear."

"Nonsense," said the Virginian, "how could it float against the stream, and as for the shots you think you heard, you most have taken Ephraim Giles's axe blows for them. Besides, you couldn't hear shots at that distance. If you did, it most be from some of the hunters."

"But the cry, corporal," urged Jackson, "what say you to the cry Green says he heard when you left us?"

"All stuff; did anybody else hear it besides Green, you were all sitting on the bank with him?"

No one answering in the affirmative, Corporal Nixon declared the thing to be impossible, or he should have heard it too; nor could he see what connection there was between that cry--supposing there had been one--and the facts that had come immediately under their own observation.

"Hist," interrupted Collins, placing one hand upon the speaker's shoulder, and with the other directing his attention to what, now seen by the whole of the party, was ill calculated to re-a.s.sure them.