The Keepers of the Trail Part 21

"Here, you red-skinned barbarians!" he shouted. "Come into our house an'

we'll teach you how to live! The tables are all set an' the couches are beside 'em. The hummin' birds' tongues are done to a turn an' the best singers an' dancers are all on hand to entertain you!"

Henry knew that Jim's patter had come from Paul's stories of the old Romans, and now he was applying it with gusto to the wild scene lost in the vast green wilderness. But he was sure that the Indians would not return to a headlong charge. The little fortress in stone was practically impregnable to frontal attack and they would resort instead to cunning and subterfuge.

"Ain't you comin'!" thundered the voice of Long Jim. "I hev done give you an invite to the banquet an' you stop an' hang 'roun' thar in the woods, whar I can't see you. Five minutes more an' the invites are all withdrawed. Then the eatin' an' the singin' an' the playin' will all go on without you, an' ef you are found hangin' 'roun' our door I'll hev the dogs to chase you away."

No answer came from the woods, but Henry knew how the hearts of the warriors were consumed with rage. Those whom they wished to take were so near and so few and yet they held an almost invincible fortress. Rage stabbed at the Indian heart.

Long Jim continued his taunts for some time, speaking both Shawnee and Miami, and also a little Wyandot and Delaware. His vocabulary acquired a sudden richness and depth. He called them names that implied every manner of cowardice and meanness. Their ancestors had been buzzards feeding on offal, they themselves were mangy, crippled and deformed, and, when the few that were left alive by the white men returned home, they would be set to work cooking, and caring for the lodges. When they died they would return to the base forms of their ancestors. They would be snakes and toads and turtles, and the animals that walked on four legs and looked straight before them would laugh at them whenever they saw them.

Long Jim had never before been so eloquent, and never before had his voice been so unctuous. He thundered forth challenges and insults after the Indian fashion. He told them that he and his comrades found it a poor amus.e.m.e.nt to fight with such men, but when they finished with their eating and drinking and sleeping they might go north to the Indian villages and whip the warriors in the presence of their squaws with willow switches. Meanwhile they intended to sleep and rest, but if any of the old women out there came into their cavern and annoyed their slumbers he would chase every one of them out with a switch.

Henry laughed long in his throat. Long Jim was proving himself a forest warrior of the first quality. It was the way of the woods, and these taunts stung the red men to the quick. He knew that they were lying in the bushes, their hearts beating heavily with anger and the hot breath burning their lips. Two, unable to restrain themselves, fired, but their bullets merely rebounded from the stone walls of the grotto, and the defenders did not deign to answer.

Then came a long period of silence and Henry made himself as small and obscure as possible, lest the warriors, moving about, might see him.

But, fortunately the night had now turned quite dark, and where eyes might fail his acute sense of hearing would reveal the approach of any enemy. But as he lay close he again laughed inwardly more than once. The three were certainly holding the grotto in most gallant fashion, and Long Jim was fast becoming one of the greatest orators of the woods. He did not believe that the Indians could carry the fortress, but to get them out and away was another and much harder problem.

Absolute silence save for the whispering of a light wind through the leaves came over the forest. The night, to Henry's great joy, grew much darker. No sound came from the room in the cliff, nor did any come from the Indians in the thickets. Apparently the whole place was a wilderness, as lone and desolate as it was when it first emerged from the sea. Nowhere was the sign of a human being visible, but Henry knew that vigilant eyes watched at the mouth of the stone cleft and that eyes equally as keen peered continually from the thickets.

But he meant to join his comrades before dawn. He did not know yet just how he would do it, but such was his confidence that he felt quite sure he would be with his comrades before the rising of the sun.

Luckily the forest and thickets in the valley were extremely dense, enabling him to lie within a couple of hundred yards of the besieging force, and not fear detection. His figure in its green clothing blended perfectly with the green bushes.

The night turned colder, and after a while a chilly drizzle began to fall. Henry, hardened to all kinds of weather, and intent upon his task, took no note of it, except to be glad that it had come, because it would further his aims. Night and storm might enable him to slip past the besiegers and join his friends.

But the Indians, who do not despise comfort when there is no danger in it, gathered in a cup in the side of the hill, beyond rifle shot from the hollow, and built a fire. Henry, from his lair in the bushes, saw them distinctly, about thirty warriors, mostly of the Shawnee tribe, with their head chief, Red Eagle himself, present as a leader, and the two renegades Braxton Wyatt and Blackstaffe. Henry noted Blackstaffe and Wyatt closely and his heart thrilled with anger that they should turn against their own people and use the tomahawk and scalping knife, and even stand beside the stake to witness their slow death by the torture of fire.

Blackstaffe[A] was one of the worst of all the renegades, second only to Girty in cruelty and cunning, a scourge of the border destined to meet his fate from an avenging bullet years later, just after the Fallen Timbers, where Wayne crushed the allied tribes. Now he was a young man, tall, heavily built and tanned almost as dark as an Indian by weather.

He and Braxton Wyatt had become close friends, and both stood high in the councils of the Indians. Henry saw them clearly now, outlined against the firelight, engaged in close talk with the middle-aged Shawnee chief, Red Eagle.

[Footnote A: The fate of Blackstaffe is told in the author's novel, "The Wilderness Road."]

Henry had much more respect for Red Eagle than for the renegades. The Indian might be cruel, he might delight in the terrible sufferings he inflicted upon a captured enemy, but it was the immemorial custom of his race and, in fighting the white people, he was fighting those who would some day, far distant though it might be, turn the great hunting grounds into farms. Henry, so much a son of the wild himself, could understand him, but for the renegades he had no sympathy whatever. In all lands and in all the history of the world renegades have been hated and detested.

He judged by the fact that the head chief of the Shawnees and the two renegades had remained that they considered the taking of the little fort in the cliff of great importance. Doubtless they imagined that all of the five were now inside, and it would rejoice the heart of Shawnee and Miami alike if they could slay them all, or better still, take them alive, and put them to the torture. There were some old defeats that yet galled and stung, and for which revenge would be sweet. Henry recalled these things and he knew that the siege would be close and bitter.

The Indians, feeling secure from any enemy, presently sat in a circle about the fire, drawing their blankets over their shoulders to protect themselves from the drizzling rain. Henry surmised that several warriors were on watch near the mouth of the cave, and that those in the main body would take their ease before the coals. His surmise proved to be correct, as they appeared to relax and to be talking freely. They also took venison from deerskin pouches and ate. It reminded Henry that he was hungry and he too took out and ate a portion of Shif'less Sol's stolen bear steak that he had saved.

He did not move for another hour. Meanwhile the wind rose, driving the drizzling rain like sleet, and moaning down the gorge. Save for the Indians crouched around the fire no more desolate scene might have been witnessed on the continent. The old, primeval world had come back, and forgotten monsters ranged the woods while man, weaponless save for his club, crouched in his cave and listened with terror to the snarls of the great animals, so much more powerful than himself.

It seemed to him then, when the influence of the wilderness and its immensity and desolation were so strong, that he might have lived in some such time himself, ages and ages ago. It might have been the stories of Paul or it might have been some dim heritage from a dimmer past that made him, as he lay there under the soaking bushes, call up visions of the great beasts that once stalked the earth, the mammoth and the mastodon, the cave bear, the saber-toothed tiger, gigantic leopards and hyenas, and back of them the terrific stegosaurus in his armor-like hide and all his awful kin. Henry was glad that he had not lived in such a time.

The fire, even though it was that of men who would gladly scalp him and torture him to death, brought back the present and the living and throbbing realities of life. With his rifle he was more than a match for any beast that roamed the North American wilderness, and in cunning and craft he could meet the savages at their own game.

Apparently the Indians around the fire had now ceased to talk. They sat in a circle, bent a little forward, and some had drawn their blankets over their heads. The fire was a great ma.s.s of coals and Henry knew that it threw out an abundant heat. He envied them a little. He was just beginning to feel the effects of the cold rain, but their bodies glowed with warmth.

Meantime the roaring of the wind in the valley was growing and in the confined s.p.a.ce there were many tones in its voice, now a shriek, and now a howl. In spite of himself the ancient monsters of the primeval world came back again and these were the sounds they uttered in their rage. He shuddered a little, then shook himself and by the mere power of will forced the return of the present.

He reckoned that the time had come for him to make his attempt.

Doubtless the sentinels were on the slope near the mouth of the cleft, but they must be chilled to some extent by the cold rain, and, after such a long silence, would naturally relax their vigilance. He had protected his weapons from the rain with his buckskin hunting shirt, and he flexed his arms and muscles to see that they had not grown stiff from such a long stay in one position.

He began to creep through the bushes to the bottom of the valley and then up the slope toward the little fortress, and in the task he called into play all his natural and acquired powers. An eye looking down would have taken him for a large animal stalking his prey with infinite cunning and cleverness. The bushes scarcely moved as he pa.s.sed, and he made no sound but the faintest sliding motion, audible only four or five feet away.

The strain upon his body was very great. He did not really crawl, but edged himself forward with a series of muscular efforts. It was painfully slow, but it was necessary, because the Indian ears were acute, and the rustling of a bush or the breaking of a twig would draw their instant attention.

As he drew himself slowly on, like a great serpent, he watched for the Indian sentinels, and at last he saw one, a Shawnee warrior crouched in the lee of a huge tree trunk to shelter himself from the driving rain, but always looking toward the mouth of the hollow in the cliff.

Henry, inch by inch, bore away and curved about him. Twice he thought the sentinel had heard something unusual, but in each case he lay flat and silent, while the wind continued to shriek down the valley, driving the chill rain before it. Each time the suspicions of the watcher pa.s.sed and Henry moved slowly on, infinite patience allied with infinite skill.

If there was anything in heredity and reincarnation he was the greatest tracker and hunter in that old primeval world, where such skill ranked first among human qualities. As always with him, his will and courage rose with the danger. Crouched in the bush fifteen feet away he looked at the warrior, a powerful fellow, brawny in the chest but thin in the legs, as was usual among them. The Indian's eyes swept continuously in a half circle, but they did not see the great figure lying so near, and holding his life on the touch of a trigger.

Henry laughed deep in his throat. All the wild blood in him was alive and leaping. He even felt a certain exultation in the situation, one that would have appalled an ordinary scout and stalker, but which drew from him only supreme courage and utmost mastery in woodcraft. He felt within him the supreme certainty that he would succeed, and bending away from the sentinel he resumed that slow, sliding motion.

He was sure that he would find on his right another warrior on watch, and, as he was moving in that direction, he looked closely. He saw him presently, a tall fellow, standing erect among some bushes, his rifle in the crook of his arm. He seemed discontented with his situation--even the savage can get too much of cold and wet--and presently he moved a little further to the right, as if he would seek some sort of shelter from the rain. Then Henry crept straight forward toward the fortress of his friends, a scant fifty yards away.

But he did not a.s.sume that he had yet succeeded. He knew how thoroughly the Indians kept watch upon a foe, whom they expected to take, and there must be other sentinels, or at least one, and bearing that fact in mind his progress became still slower. He merely went forward inch by inch, and he was so careful that the bushes above him did not shake. All the while his eyes roved about in search of that lone last sentinel whom he was sure the Indians had posted near the entrance, in order to check any attempt at an escape.

Although it was very dark his eyes had grown used to it and he could see some distance. Yet his range of vision was not broken by the figure of any warrior, and he began to wonder. Could the vigilance of the savages have relaxed? Was it possible that they were keeping no guard near the entrance? While he was wondering he crept directly upon the sentinel.

He was a huge savage, inured to cold and wet and he had lain almost flat in the gra.s.s. Hearing a slight sound scarce a yard away he turned and the eyes of red forest runner and white forest runner looked into one another. Henry was the first to recover from his surprise and the single second of time was worth diamonds and rubies to him. Dropping his rifle he reached out both powerful hands and seized the warrior. The loud cry of alarm that had started from the chest never got past the barrier of those fingers, and the compressing grasp was so deadly that the Indian's hands did not reach for tomahawk or knife. Instead they flew up instinctively and tried to tear away those fingers of iron. But the man of old might as well have tried to escape from the jaws of the saber-toothed tiger.

The great forest runner was exerting all his immense strength, and he was nerved, too, by the imminent danger to his friends and himself. No slightest sound must escape from the red throat. A single cry would reach the warriors below, and then the whole yelling pack would be upon him. The warrior's hands grasped his wrists and pulled at them frantically. He was a powerful savage with muscles like knotted ropes, but there was no man in all the wilderness who could break that grasp.

His breath came fitfully, his face became swollen and then Henry, turning him over on his back, took his fingers away.

The warrior was not dead, but he would revive slowly and painfully and for days there would be ten red and sore spots on his throat, where the fingers had sunk in. An ordinary scout would have thrust his knife at once into the heart of the warrior. It would have been the safest way, but Henry could not do it. He saw the great chest of the savage trembling as the breath sought a way to his lungs. He took his rifle, powder horn, bullet pouch, tomahawk and knife, and, bending low in the foliage, ran swiftly for the mouth of the cave.

He was quite confident that the fallen warrior was the last sentinel, and as he approached the entrance he called again and again in a loud whisper:

"Don't fire! Don't fire! It's me, Henry!"

At last came the whisper in reply:

"All right, Henry, we're waitin'."

He recognized the voice of Silent Tom, and the next instant he was inside, his hand and that of Tom Ross meeting in a powerful grasp, while Paul and Long Jim, aroused from sleep, expressed their delight in low words and strong handshakes.

"How in thunder did you git in, Henry?" asked Long Jim.

"I was brought in a sedan chair by four strong Indians, Wyatt walking on one side and Blackstaffe on the other as an escort. I told them that of all places in the world this was the one to which I wished most to come, and they put me down at the door, their modesty compelling them to withdraw."

"It's mighty good to see you again, Henry, no matter how you got here,"

said Paul. "Where is Sol?"

"Safe outside, just as I'm safe inside. I think I'll let him know that I've been successful."

Standing just within the entrance he emitted the long-drawn howl of the wolf, piercing and carrying singularly far. They waited a moment or two in breathless silence, and then on the edge of the shrieking wind came a similar reply, fierce, long and snarling. Henry gave the howl again and as before came the answer in like fashion. It was the wilderness signal, made complete.

"It's Sol," Henry said. "I know now that he's there, and he knows that I'm here. The first part of our task is done."

A yell of rage and disappointment came from the valley below. It was so fierce that the air seemed to pulse with angry waves.