The Masters of the Peaks: A Story of the Great North Woods, Joseph A. Altsheler [the top 100 crime novels of all time txt] 📗

"It may be," said Tayoga, gravely. "It is at least a wise thought, since, for a while, we must live like bears."

Robert would have chafed, any other time, at a stay that amounted to imprisonment, but peace and shelter were too welcome now to let him complain. Moreover, there were many little but important house-hold duties to do. They made needles of bone, and threads of sinew and repaired their clothing. Tayoga had stored suitable wood and bone and he turned out arrow after arrow. He also made another bow, and Robert, by assiduous practice, acquired sufficient skill to help in these tasks. They did not drive themselves now, but the hours being filled with useful and interesting labor, they were content to wait.

For three or four days, while the snow still fell, they ate cold food, but when the clouds at last floated away, and the air was free from the flakes, they went outside and by great effort—the snow being four or five feet deep—cleared a small space near the entrance, where they cooked a good dinner from their stores and enjoyed it extravagantly. Meanwhile the days passed. Robert was impatient at times, but never a long while. If the mental weariness of waiting came to him he plunged at once into the tasks of the day.

There was plenty to do, although they had prepared themselves so well before the great snowfall came. They made rude shovels of wood and enlarged the space they had cleared of snow. Here, they fitted stones together, until they had a sort of rough furnace which, crude though it was, helped them greatly with their cooking. They also pulled more brushwood from under the snow, and by its use saved the store they had heaped up for impossible days. Then, by continued use of the bone needles and sinews, they managed to make cloaks for themselves of the bearskins. They were rather shapeless garments, and they had little of beauty save in the rich fur itself, but they were wonderfully warm and that was what they wanted most.

Tayoga, after a while, began slow and painstaking work on a pair of snowshoes, expecting to devote many days to the task.

"The snow is so deep we cannot pass through it," he said, "but I, at least, will pass upon it. I cannot get the best materials, but what I have will serve. I shall not go far, but I want to explore the country about us."

Robert thought it a good plan, and helped as well as he could with the work. They still stayed outdoors as much as possible, but the cold became intense, the temperature going almost to forty degrees below zero, the surface of the snow freezing and the boughs of the big trees about the valley becoming so brittle that they broke with sharp crashes beneath the weight of accumulated snow. Then they paused long enough in the work on the snowshoes to make themselves gloves of buckskin, which were a wonderful help, as they labored in the fresh air. Ear muffs and caps of bearskin followed.

"I feel some reluctance about using bearskin so much," said Robert, "since the bears about us are inhabited by the souls of great warriors and are our friends."

"But the bears that we killed did not belong here," said Tayoga, "and were bears and nothing more. It was right for us to slay them because the bear was sent by Manitou to be a support for the Indian with his flesh and his pelt."

"But how do you know that the bears we killed were just bears and bears only?"

"Because, if they had not been we would not have killed them."

Thus were the qualms of young Lennox quieted and he used his bearskin cap, gloves and cloak without further scruple. The snowshoes were completed and Tayoga announced that he would start early the next morning.

"I may be gone three or four days, Dagaeoga," he said, "but I will surely return. I shall avoid danger, and do you be careful also."

"Don't fear for me," said Robert. "I'm not likely to go farther than the brook, since there's no great sport in breaking your way through snow that comes to your waist, and which, moreover, is covered with a thick sheet of ice. Don't trouble your mind about me, Tayoga, I won't roam from home."

The Onondaga took his weapons, a supply of food, and departed, skimming over the snow with wonderful, flying strokes, while Robert settled down to lonely waiting. It was a hard duty, but he again found solace in work, and at intervals he contemplated the mouths of the bears' caves, now almost hidden by the snow. Tayoga's belief was strong upon him, for the time, and he concluded that the warriors who inhabited the bodies of the bears must be having some long and wonderful dreams. At least, they had plenty of time to dream in, and it was an extraordinary provision of nature that gave them such a tremendous sleep.

Tayoga returned in four days, and Robert, who had more than enough of being alone, welcomed him with hospitable words to a fire and a feast.

"I must first put away my spoils," said the Onondaga, his dark eyes glittering.

"Spoils! What spoils, Tayoga?"

"Powder and lead," he replied, taking a heavy bundle wrapped in deerskin from beneath his bearskin overcoat. "It weighs a full fifty pounds, and it made my return journey very wearisome. Catch it, Dagaeoga!"

Robert caught, and he saw that it was, in truth, powder and lead.

"Now, where did you get this?" he exclaimed. "You couldn't have gone to any settlement!"

"There is no settlement to go to. I made our enemies furnish the powder and lead we need so much, and that is surely the cheapest way. Listen, Dagaeoga. I remembered that to the east of us, about two days' journey, was a long valley sheltered well and warm, in which Indians who fight the Hodenosaunee often camp. I thought it likely they would be there in such a winter as this, and that I might take from them in the night the powder and lead we need so much.

"I was right. The savages were there, and with them a white man, a Frenchman, that Charles Langlade, called the Owl, from whom we fled. They had an abundance of all things, and they were waxing fat, until they could take the war path in the spring. Then, Dagaeoga, I played the fox. At night, when they dreamed of no danger, I entered their biggest lodges, passing as one of them, and came away with the powder and lead."

"It was a great feat, Tayoga, but are you sure none of them will trail you here?"

"The surface of the snow and ice melts a little in the noonday sun, enough to efface all trace of the snowshoes, and my trail is no more than that made by a bird in its flight through the air. Nor can we be followed here while we are guarded by the bears, who sleep, but who, nevertheless, are sentinels."

Tayoga took off his snowshoes, and sank upon a heap of furs in the cave, while Robert brought him food and inspected the great prize of ammunition he had brought. The package contained a dozen huge horns filled with powder, and many small bars of lead, the latter having made the weight which had proved such a severe trial to the Onondaga.

"Here's enough of both lead and powder to last us throughout the winter, whatever may happen," said Robert in a tone of intense satisfaction. "Tayoga, you're certainly a master freebooter. You couldn't have made a more useful capture."

Each, after the invariable custom of hunters and scouts, carried bullet molds, and they were soon at work, melting the lead and casting bullets for their rifles, then pouring the shining pellets in a stream into their pouches. They continued at the task from day to day until all the lead was turned into bullets and then they began work on another pair of snowshoes, these intended for Robert.

Despite the safety and comfort of their home in the rock, both began to chafe now, and time grew tremendously long. They had done nearly everything they could do for themselves, and life had become so easy that there was leisure to think and be restless, because they were far away from great affairs.

"When my snowshoes are finished and I perfect myself in the use of them," said Robert, "I favor an attempt to escape on the ice and snow to the south. We grow rusty, you and I, here, Tayoga. The war may be decided in our absence and I want to see Dave, too. I want to hear him tell how he got through the savage cordon to the lake."

"Have no fear about the war, Dagaeoga," said the Onondaga. "It will not be ended this winter nor the next. Before there is peace between the French king and the British king you will have a chance to make many speeches. Yet, like you, I think we should go. It is not well for us to lie hidden in the ground through a whole winter."

"But when we leave our good home here I shall leave many regrets behind."

He looked around at the cave and its supplies of skins and furs, its stores of wood and food. Fortune had helped their own skill and they had made a marvelous change in the place. Its bleakness and bareness had disappeared. In the cold and bitter wilderness it offered more than comfort, it was luxury itself.

"So shall I," said Tayoga, appreciatively, "but we will heap rocks up to the very top of the door, so that only a little air and nothing else can enter, and leave it as it is. Some day we may want to use it again."

Having decided to go, they became very impatient, but they did not skimp the work on the snowshoes, knowing how much depended on their strength, but that task too, like all the others, came to an end in time. Robert practiced a while and they selected a day of departure. They were to take with them all the powder and bullets, a large supply of food and their heavy bearskin overcoats. They had also made for themselves over-moccasins of fur and extra deerskin leggings. They would be bundled up greatly, but it was absolutely necessary in order to face the great cold, that hovered continuously around thirty to forty degrees below zero. The ear muffs, the caps and the gloves, too, were necessities, but they had the comfort of believing that if the fierce winter presented great difficulties to them, it would also keep their savage enemies in their lodges.

"The line that shut us in in the autumn has thinned out and gone!" exclaimed Robert in sanguine tones, "and we'll have a clear path from here to the lake!"

Then they rolled stones, as they had planned, before the door to their home, closing it wholly except a few square inches at the top, and ascended on their snowshoes to the crest of the ridge.

"Our cave will not be disturbed, at least not this winter," said Tayoga confidently. "The bears that sleep below are, as I told you, the silent sentinels, and they will guard it for us until we come again."

"At least, they brought us good luck," said Robert. Then, with long, gliding strokes they passed over the ridge, and their happy valley was lost to sight. They did not speak again for hours, Tayoga leading the way, and each bending somewhat to his task, which was by no means a light one, owing to the weight they carried, and the extremely mountainous nature of the country. The wilderness was still and intensely cold. The deep snow was covered by a crust of ice, and, despite vigorous exertion and warm clothing, they were none too warm.

By noon Robert's ankle, not thoroughly hardened to the snowshoes, began to chafe, and they stopped to rest in a dense grove, where the searching north wind was turned aside from them. They were traveling by the sun for the south end of Lake George, but as they were in the vast plexus of mountains, where their speed could not be great, even under the best of conditions, they calculated that they would be many days and nights on the way.

They stayed fully an hour in the shelter of the trees, and an hour later came to a frozen lake over which the traveling was easy, but after they had passed it they entered a land of close thickets, in which their progress was extremely slow. At night, the cold was very great, but, as they scooped out a deep hollow in the snow, though they attempted no fire, they were able to