The Keepers of the Trail Part 9

"In my opinion, sir," said Braxton Wyatt, smoothly but with just a trace of irony, "it was done by Ware and his comrades."

"Impossible! Impossible!" said Alloway, testily. "The careless Indians left powder in the scows and in some manner equally careless it's been exploded. The tale of the canoe that floated upstream of its own accord was an invention to cover up their neglect."

"Do you wish us to translate for you and to state that opinion to the chiefs?" asked Blackstaffe.

Alloway gave him an angry glance, but he had prudence enough to say:

"No, of course not. After all, there may have been a canoe. But whatever it was it was most unfortunate. It delays us greatly, and it preys upon the superst.i.tions of the warriors."

"They are very susceptible, sir, to such things," said Wyatt. "They dread the unknown, and this event has affected them unpleasantly. But I'm quite sure it was done by Ware, although I don't know how."

"Ware! Ware!" exclaimed Alloway, impatiently. "Why should a force like ours dread a single person?"

"Because, sir, he does things that are to be dreaded."

Yellow Panther, who had been sitting in silence, his arms folded across his great bare chest, arose and raised his hand. Braxton Wyatt turned toward him respectfully and then said to Colonel Alloway:

"The head chief of the Miamis wishes to speak, sir, and if you will pardon me for saying so, it will be wise for us to listen."

"Very well," said Alloway. "Tell us what he says."

Thus spoke Yellow Panther, head chief of the Miamis, veteran of many wars, through the medium of Braxton Wyatt:

"We and our brethren, the Shawnees, have come with many warriors upon a long war path. Our friends, the white men whom the mighty King George has sent across the seas to help us, have brought with them the great cannon which will batter down the forts of the Long Knives in Kaintuckee. But the signs are bad. The boats which were to carry the cannon on the river have been blown up. An enemy stands across our path and before we go farther we must hunt him down. If we cannot do it then Manitou has turned his face away from us."

Wyatt translated and Alloway sourly gave adhesion. It was hard for him to think that a single little group of borderers could hold up a great force like theirs, armed with cannon too. But he was acute enough to see that the menace of a rupture would become a reality if he insisted upon having his own way.

Henry had watched them while they talked, and then he turned aside to a point nearer the river's brink, from which he could see two pairs of their strongest canoes lashed together in the stream, ready for the reception of the cannon when they should come. How was he to get at them? He knew that he could not use a fire boat again, but these rafts, for such they were, must be destroyed in some manner.

Lying deep in the thickets he considered his problem. One of the reasons why he excelled nearly all the scouts of the border was because he thought so much harder and longer, and now he concentrated all his faculties for success.

It did not take him long to mature his plan, and when he had done so he moved down the stream, where the chance of an Indian sentinel discovering him was much smaller. There he waited a s.p.a.ce, while the night darkened still more, the moon and stars being shut out entirely. A wind arose and little crumbling waves pursued one another on the surface of the river, which was flooded and yellow from spring rains.

He saw only one or two sentinels and they showed but dimly. Farther down the Englishmen, the chiefs and the renegades were sitting about the low fire, and he felt sure that the white men, at least, would sleep there by the coals. From his covert in the bushes he saw them presently spreading their blankets, and then they lay down with their feet to the smoldering fire. The chiefs soon followed them and elsewhere the warriors also rolled themselves in their blankets. They seemed to think that he would not come back, reasoning like the white men that the lightning would not strike in the same place twice.

So he waited long and patiently. This quality of patience was one in which the Caucasian was usually inferior to the Indian, but in the incessant struggle on the border it was always needed. Henry, through the power of his will and his original training among the Northwestern Indians, had acquired it in the highest degree. He could sit or lie an almost incredible length of time, so still that he would seem to blend into the foliage, and now as he lay in the bushes some of the little animals crept near and watched him. A squirrel, not afraid of the fire in the distance, came down the trunk of a tree, and hanging to the bark not five feet away regarded him with small red eyes.

Henry caught a glimpse of the little gray fellow and turning his head ever so slightly regarded him. The red eyes looked back at him half bold and half afraid, but Henry had lived in the wild so much that the two felt almost akin. The squirrel saw that the gigantic figure on the ground did not move, and that the light in the eyes was friendly. He crept a little nearer, devoured by curiosity. He had never seen a human being before, and instinct told him that he could escape up the tree before this great beast could rise and seize him. He edged cautiously an inch nearer, and the blue eyes of the human being smiled into the little red eyes of the animal.

The two gazed at each other for a half minute or so. It was a look of the utmost friendliness, and then the squirrel went noiselessly back up the tree. It was a good omen, thought Henry, but he still waited with the illimitable patience which is a necessity of the wild. He saw the fire, before which the white men and the chiefs lay sleeping, sink lower and lower. The night remained dark. The heavy drifting clouds which nevertheless were not ready to open for rain, moved overhead in solemn columns. The surface of the river grew dim, but now and then there was a light splash as a strong fish leaped up and fell back into the current.

The Indian guards knowing well what made them, paid no attention to these sounds.

The wind increased and Henry saw all the canoes, including those lashed together, rocking in the current. The blast made a whistling sound among the bushes and boughs and he concluded that the time for him to act had come. He took off all his clothing, made it, his weapons and ammunition in a bundle which he fastened on his head, and then swam across the river. He went some distance down the bank, deposited everything except his heavy hunting knife securely in the bush, and then, with the knife in his teeth, dropped silently into the river.

The lashing of the wind and the perceptible rise of the stream from flooded tributaries farther up, made a considerable current, and Henry floated with it. But the bank on the camp side of the river was considerably higher than the other and first he swam across to its shelter.

It was so dark now that not even the keen eye of an Indian could have seen his dark head on the dark surface of the stream, and he was so powerful in the water that he swam like a fish without noise. Once or twice he caught the gleam of the fire on the bank, but he knew that he was not seen.

In a few minutes he dropped in behind the lashed canoes, and with the heavy hunting knife cut holes in their bark bottoms. He was skillful and strong, but it took him a half-hour to finish the task, and he stopped at intervals to see if the sentinels had noticed anything unusual.

Evidently they dreamed as little of this venture as of that of the fire boat.

He cut a small hole in every one at first, and then enlarged them in turn, and when he saw the water rising in the boats he swam rapidly away, still keeping in the shelter of the near sh.o.r.e. Then he dived, rose just behind a curve and walked out on the opposite bank, his figure gleaming white for a moment before he crept into the woods where his clothes and weapons lay. He dressed with rapidity and still lying hidden he heard the first Indian cry.

The sentinels, hearing the gurgling of the water, had looked over and seen the sinking canoes. Even as they looked, and as the alarm brought others, the canoes filled with water and sank fifteen feet to the bottom of the stream.

A few rays of moonlight forced their way through the clouds just at that moment, and Henry saw the amazement on the faces of the warriors, and the anger on the faces of the white men, because Alloway and the others, awakened by the alarm, had hurried to the banks of the river.

He laughed low to himself but with deep and intense satisfaction. He was enough a son of the wild to understand the emotions of the Indians. He knew that the second destruction of the boats, but in a different way, would fill them with awe. They could attach no blame to the sentinels who watched as only Indians could watch.

Henry saw them lift the remaining canoes upon the bank for safety, and then send out scouts and runners in search of the dangerous foe who had visited them twice. None had yet come to his side of the river, but he knew that they would do so in time, and feeling that the deed was sufficient for the night, he fled away in the darkness.

CHAPTER V

THE FOREST JOKER

It was Henry's first thought to return to his comrades, but the way was long and he must pa.s.s by the greater Indian camp, which surely had out many sentinels. So he changed his mind and resolved to spend the night in the woods. Shif'less Sol and the others would not be alarmed about his absence. They too had acquired the gift of infinite patience and would remain under cover, until he returned, content with their stone walls and roof, having plenty of venison, and fresh water running forever in their home itself.

It was his idea to seek some thicket at a distance and lie hidden there until the next night, when he might achieve a fresh irruption upon the enemy. He had succeeded so far that he was encouraged to new attempts, and all the wilderness spirit in him came to the front. The civilization of the house and the city sank quite away. He was for the time being wholly a creature of the primeval forest, and while his breath was the very breath of the wild he felt with it a frolic fancy that demanded some outlet. He must sleep, but he would like to play a new trick upon his enemies before he slept.

The spirit of the Faun, in which the old Greeks believed, was re-created within him, and where could a better place for its re-creation have been found than in this vast green wilderness stretching from east to west a thousand miles, and from north to south fifteen hundred miles, a region almost untouched by the white man, the like of which was not to be found elsewhere on the globe.

He laughed a little in his triumph, though silently. As he strode along a stray ray of moonlight fell upon him now and then, and disclosed the tall, splendid figure, the incarnation of magnificent youth, the forest superman, one upon whom Nature had lavished every gift for the life that he was intended to live. Although his step was light and soundless, his figure expressed strength in every movement. It was shown in the swing of the mighty shoulders, and the long stride which without effort dropped the miles behind him.

It was destined, too, that he should have his wish for another achievement that night, one that would please the sportive fancy now so strong in him. After recrossing the river he saw on his left an opening of considerable size, and he heard grunts and groans coming from it. He knew that a buffalo troop was resting there. The foolish beasts had wandered into the Indian vicinity, but they would learn the proximity of the warriors the next day and wander away. Meanwhile Henry needed them and would use them. Now and then he reverted to the religious imagery which he had learned when he was with Red Cloud and his Northwestern tribe. Manitou had really sent this buffalo herd there for his particular benefit. It was the largest that he had ever seen in Kentucky. Fully five hundred of the great brutes rested in the opening and he needed numbers.

He pa.s.sed into the thick forest near them, and then with infinite patience lighted a fire with his flint and steel. Securing long sticks of dead wood he ignited them both until they burned with a steady and strong flame. Strapping his rifle upon his back and holding aloft a flaming torch in either hand, and uttering fierce and wild shouts he charged directly upon the buffaloes.

He showed prodigious activity. All the extraordinary life that was in him leaped and sang in his veins. He rushed back and forth, uttering continuous shouts, whirling each torch until it made a perfect circle of fire. Doubtless to the heavy eyes of the buffaloes the single human being seemed twenty, every one enveloped in bursts of flame which they dreaded most of all things.

A big bull buffalo, the leader of the herd, crouched at the very edge of the opening, decided first that it was time to move. The whirling circles of fire with living beings inside of them filled him with terror. His ton of flesh quivered and quaked. He rose with a mighty heave to his feet and then with a bellow of fright took flight from the flashing devils of fire.

The whole herd was in a panic in an instant and followed the leader.

They might have scattered in their fright, but they were shepherded by a human mind, which had allied with it a body without an equal in all that million and a half square miles of forest. As he leaped to and fro, shouting and whirling his torches, he drove the herd straight toward the camp on the river where the English officers and chiefs were even now asleep.

A few animals broke off from the herd and were lost in the bushes, but the rest ran, packed close, a long column, tapering at the front like an arrow head, with the big bull as its point. They bellowed with fright and made a tremendous crashing as they raced over the mile that divided them from the Indian camp. Warriors heard the uproar, like the bursting of a storm in the night, and leaped to their feet.

Now Henry fairly surpa.s.sed every effort that he had made hitherto. He leaped more wildly than ever, and redoubled his fierce shouting. He was so close upon the flank of the last buffaloes that they felt the torches singeing their hair, and, mad with fear lest they go to their buffalo heaven sooner than they wished they charged directly upon the Indian camp.

The wild yells of the warriors joined with Henry's shouts. Alloway, Cartwright and the others leaped up to see the red eyes, the short crooked horns and the huge, humped shoulders of the buffaloes bearing down upon them. Nothing could withstand that rush of mighty bodies and white men and Indians alike ran for their lives.

The buffaloes came up against the river, and blocked by its deep flood, turned, and, running over the camp again, crashed away toward the west.

Henry, stopping at a convenient distance, tossed his torches into the river, and taking the rifle from his back sank into the bushes. Here he laughed once more, under his breath, but with the most intense delight.

It was the hugest joke of all.

Without any great danger to himself he had made the buffaloes serve him, and he could still hear them bellowing and crashing in their frantic flight. Although no lives had been lost, everything in the camp had been trodden flat. All of their cooking utensils had been smashed, many of their rifles had been broken, and, the canoes drawn upon the bank, had been ground under the hoofs of the buffaloes. A hurricane could not have made a wreck more complete.