The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky, Joseph A. Altsheler [best android ereader TXT] 📗

"Maybe it ain't becomin', but it's safe," said Ross.

"At least we are far enough away now," continued the master, "and we might rest here comfortably until dawn. We haven't seen or heard a sign of pursuit."

"You don't know the natur' of the red warriors, Mr. Pennypacker," said the leader deferentially but firmly, "when they make the least noise then they're most dangerous. Now I'm certain sure that they struck our trail not long after we left Big Bone Lick, an' in these woods the man that takes the fewest risks is the one that lives the longest."

It was a final statement. In the present emergency the leader's authority was supreme. They rested about an hour with no sound save the shuffling feet of the horses which could not be kept wholly quiet; and then they started on again, not going so quickly now, because the night was dark, and they wished to make as little noise as possible, threshing about in the undergrowth.

Paul pressed up by the side of Henry.

"Do you think we shall have to go on all night, this way?" he asked. "Wasn't Mr. Pennypacker right, when he said we were out of danger?"

"No, the schoolmaster was wrong," replied Henry. "Tom Ross knows more about the woods and what is likely to happen in them than Mr. Pennypacker could know in all his life, if he were to live a thousand years. It's every man to his own trade, and it's Tom's trade that we need now."

After hearing these sage words of youth Paul asked no more questions, but he and Henry kept side by side throughout the night, that is, when neither of them was riding, because Henry, like all the others, now took turns on horseback. Twice they crossed small streams and once a larger one, where they exercised the utmost caution to keep their precious salt from getting wet. Fortunately the great pack saddles were a protection, and they emerged on the other side with both salt and powder dry.

When the night was thickest, in the long, dark hour just before the dawn, Henry and Paul, who were again side by side, heard a faint, distant cry. It was a low, wailing note that was not unpleasant, softened by the spaces over which it came. It seemed to be far behind them, but inclining to the right, and after a few moments there came another faint cry just like it, also behind them, but far to the left. Despite the soft, wailing note both Henry and Paul felt a shiver run through them. The strange low sound, coming in the utter silence of the night, had in it something ominous.

"It was the cry of a wolf," said Paul.

"And his brother wolf answered," said Henry.

Shif'less Sol was just behind them, and they heard him laugh, a low laugh, but full of irony. Paul wheeled about at once, his pride aflame at the insinuation that he did not know the wolf's long whine.

"Well, wasn't it a wolf—and a wolf that answered?" he asked.

"Yes, a wolf an' a wolf that answered," replied Shif'less Sol with sardonic emphasis, "but they had only four legs between 'em. Them was the signal cries of the Shawnees, an', as Tom has been tellin' you all the time, they're hot on our trail. It's a mighty lucky thing for us we didn't undertake to stay all night back there where we stopped."

Paul turned pale again, but his courage as usual came back. "Thank God it will be daylight soon," he murmured to himself, "and then if they overtake us we can see them."

Faint and far, but ominous and full of threat came the howl of the wolf again, first from the right and then from the left, and then from points between. Henry noticed that Ross and Shif'less Sol seemed to draw themselves together, as if they would make every nerve and muscle taut, and then his eyes shifted to Mr. Pennypacker, and seeing him, he knew at once that the master did not understand; he had not heard the words of Shif'less Sol.

"It seems that we are pursued by a pack of wolves instead of a war party," said Mr. Pennypacker. "At least we are numerous enough to beat off a lot of cowardly four-footed assailants."

Henry smiled from the heights of his superior knowledge.

"Those are not wolves, Mr. Pennypacker," he said, "those are the Shawnees calling to one another."

"Then, why in Heaven's name don't they speak their own language!" exclaimed the exasperated schoolmaster, "instead of using that which appertains only to the prowling beast?"

Henry, despite himself, was forced to smile, but he turned his face and hid the smile—he would not offend the schoolmaster whom he esteemed sincerely.

The dawn now began to brighten. The sun, a flaming red sword, cleft the gray veil, and then poured down a torrent of golden beams upon the vast, green wilderness of Kentucky. Henry, as he looked around upon the little band, realized what a tiny speck of human life they were in all those hundreds of miles of forest, and what risks they ran.

Ross gave the word to halt, and again they ate of cold food. While the others sat on fallen timber or leaned against tree trunks, Ross and Sol talked in low tones, but Henry could see that all their words were marked by the deepest earnestness. Ross presently turned to the men and said in tones of greatest gravity:

"All of you heard the howlin' just afore dawn, an' I guess all of you know it was not made by real wolves, but by Shawnees, callin' to each other an' directin' the chase of us. We've come fast, but they've come faster, an' I know that by noon we'll have to fight."

The schoolmaster's eyes opened in wonder.

"Do you really mean to say that they are overhauling us?" he asked.

"I shore do," replied Ross. "You see, they're better trained travelers for woods than we are, an' they are not hampered by anythin'."

Mr. Pennypacker said nothing more, but his lips suddenly closed tightly and his eyes flashed. In the great battle ground of the white man and the red man, called Kentucky, the early schoolmaster was as ready as any one else to fight.

Ross and Sol again consulted and then Ross said:

"We think that since we have to fight it would be better to fight when we are fresh and steady and in the best place we can find."

All the men nodded. They were tired of running and when Ross gave the word to stop again they did so promptly. The questioning eyes of both Ross and Sol roamed round the forest and finally and simultaneously the two uttered a low cry of pleasure. They had come into rocky ground and they had been ascending. Before them was a hill with a rather steep ascent, and dropping off almost precipitously on three sides.

"We couldn't find a better place," said Ross loud enough for all to hear. "It looks like a fort just made for us."

"But there is no line of retreat," objected the schoolmaster.

"We had a line of a retreat last night and all this mornin' an' we've been followin' it all the time," rejoined the leader. "Now we don't need it no more, but what we do need to do is to make a stan'-up fight, an' lick them fellers."

"And save our salt," added the master.

"Of course," said Ross emphatically. "We didn't come all these miles an' work all these days just to lose what we went so far after an' worked so hard for."

They retreated rapidly upon the great jutting peninsula of rocky soil, which fortunately was covered with a good growth of trees, and tethered the horses in a thick grove near the end.

"Now, we'll just unload our salt an' make a wall," said Ross with a trace of a smile. "They can shoot our salt as much as they please, just so they don't touch us."

The bags of salt were laid in the most exposed place across the narrowest neck of the peninsula and they also dragged up all the fallen tree trunks and boughs that they could find to help out their primitive fortification. Then they sat down to wait, a hard task for men, but hardest of all for two boys like Henry and Paul.

Two of the men went back with the horses to watch over them and also to guard against any possible attempt to scale the cliff in their rear, but the others lay close behind the wall of salt and brushwood. The sun swung up toward the zenith and shone down upon a beautiful world. All the wilderness was touched with the tender young green of spring and nothing stirred but the gentle wind. The silky blue sky smiled over a scene so often enacted in early Kentucky, that great border battle ground of the white man and the red, the one driven by the desire for new and fertile acres that he might plow and call his own, the other by an equally fierce desire to retain the same acres, not to plow nor even to call his own, but that he might roam and hunt big game over them at will.

The great red eye of the sun, poised now in the center of the heavens, looked down at the white men crouched close to the earth behind their low and primitive wall, and then it looked into the forest at the red men creeping silently from tree to tree, all the eager ferocity of the man hunt on the face of everyone.

But Paul and Henry, behind their wall, saw nothing and heard nothing but the breathing of those near them. They fingered their rifles and through the crevices between the bags studied intently the woods in front of them, where they beheld no human being nor any trace of a foe. Henry looked from tree to tree, but he could see no flitting shadow. Where the patches of grass grew it moved only with the regular sweep of the breeze. He began to think that Ross and Sol must be mistaken. The warriors had abandoned the pursuit. He glanced at Ross, who was not a dozen feet away, and the leader's face was so tense, so eager and so earnest that Henry ceased to doubt, the man's whole appearance indicated the knowledge of danger, present and terrible.

Even as Henry looked, Ross suddenly threw up his rifle, and, apparently without aim, pulled the trigger. A flash of fire leaped from the long slender muzzle of blue steel, there was a sharp report like the swift lash of a whip, and then a cry, so terrible that Henry, strong as he was, shuddered in every nerve and muscle. The short high-pitched and agonizing shout died away in a wail and after it came silence, grim, deadly, but so charged with mysterious suspense that both Henry and Paul felt the hair lifting itself upon their heads. Henry had seen nothing, but he knew well what had happened.

"They've come and Ross has killed one of 'em," he whispered breathlessly to Paul.

"That yell couldn't mean anything else," said Paul trembling. "I'll hear it again every night for a year."

"I hope we'll both have a chance to hear it again every night for a year," said Henry with meaning.

The master crouched nearer to the boys. He was one of the bravest of the men and in that hour of danger and suspense his heart yearned over these two lads, his pupils, each a good boy in his own way. He felt that it was a part of his duty to get them safely back to Wareville and their parents, and he meant to fulfill the demands of his conscience.

"Keep down, lads," he said, touching Henry on his arm, "don't expose yourselves. You are not called upon to do anything, unless it comes to the last resort."

"We are going to do our best, of course, we are!" replied Henry with some little heat.

He resented the intimation that he could not perform a man's full duty, and Mr. Pennypacker, seeing that his feelings were touched, said no more.

A foreboding silence followed the death cry of the fallen warrior, but the brilliant sunshine poured down on the woods, just as if it were a glorious summer afternoon with no thought of strife in a human breast anywhere. Henry again searched the forest in front of them, and, although he could see nothing, he was not deceived now by this appearance of silence and peace. He knew that their foes were there, more thirsty than ever for their blood, because to the natural desire now was added the tally of revenge.

More than an hour passed, and then the forest in front of them burst into life. Rifles