CAPTURED BY THE SHAWNEES
As the ring of the rifle died away, the little band in the hut reached
for their fire-arms; with pieces cocked and ready, they stole out and
crouched close to the ground, silently waiting. But nothing followed;
whoever fired the shot was a long distance away and the firing of the
shot had nothing to do with them.
“It may have been a signal,” said Boone, as he arose on one knee,
his keen eyes searching the great shafts of gray moonlight which lay
trailing on the mountain-side. “But it’s not likely. If we’ve enemies
hereabouts they’d not take that way of getting news of us to each
other. For one thing, we’d hear it; for another, powder is a hard thing
for a redskin to get, at best, and I reckon they’re not in a hurry to
waste any of it.”
“Must have been a shot by some red hunter to stop a catamount that had
come to his camp,” said Finley. “This looks to be a likely country for
critters of that kind.”
The shot, so surprising and unexpected, formed a subject for
conversation during the remainder of the evening; then, posting a guard
outside the hut, the explorers rolled themselves in their blankets and
went quietly to sleep.
After a breakfast of broiled squirrel next morning, Boone, Finley and
Stuart started out, their muskets across their shoulders, to examine
the aspect of the surrounding country. If what they had come through
in crossing the ridge had seemed trackless, this was infinitely more
so; there were myriads of small animals and birds; the deer seemed
merely wondering and possessed no fear of them. Near by was one of the
northern branches of the Louisa, and this they followed for miles; each
day was given to a venture, during the entire summer and the ensuing
fall. Always some of the party remained at the hut in the gorge, while
the others took the buffalo paths in search of new discoveries.
November came with its chilly nights; then fell December with its
sudden frosts, its flurries of snow and its long nights; and it was in
that same month of December that the first mishap befell them.
It was but a few days before Christmas that Boone and Stuart started
off in a direction seldom taken on former occasions. There was a
light snow upon the ground--not enough to impede their progress--but
sufficient to plainly show the tracks of anything that had passed
that way. The timber wolves had grown especially numerous since the
winter had set in, and their prints were scattered all about in the
cane-brakes and through the woods. Once they came upon the clear trace
of a catamount, and nothing would have pleased them better than to have
followed the beast and tried their rifles upon it; however, they were
in the wilderness for more important things than mere hunting, so they
passed the tempting trail and pushed on, intent upon the lay of the
ground, the quality of the soil, the timber and the natural drainage.
They had gone on for some hours in this way when Stuart heard Boone,
who was some yards in advance, give an exclamation of surprise. The
backwoodsman had paused and was bending over, studying something
intently.
“What is it?” asked Stuart, as he hastened forward.
Silently Boone pointed at the snow; there, distinctly printed, was the
trail of many moccasined feet.
“Injuns!” said Stuart, astonished.
Strange as it might seem, the little band of adventurers had not
caught sight of a red man since they had started out in the previous
spring; and this had, somehow, caused the idea to grow among them that
this particular region was being avoided by the Indian hunting parties,
at any rate for the time being.
Closely Boone studied the trail; some peculiarity of the moccasin
imprints struck him.
“They are Shawnees,” said he; “and as far as I can make out, there must
be a score of them.”
“That many, at least,” spoke Stuart, his eyes also examining the trail.
“A hunting party pushing toward the river; maybe in search of fur.”
Boone nodded, but somewhat dubiously. The sudden appearance of a large
band of savages at that precise time disquieted him; he felt in it the
promise of future danger.
[Illustration: CLOSELY BOONE STUDIED THE TRAIL]
“They’ve found meat scarce, I suppose,” suggested Stuart, as they went
on through the forest, “and so they had to go farther away from home.”
“It would have pleased me just as well if they’d taken another
direction, then,” said Boone. “We’re getting on too well with our work
to be disturbed just now.”
Ahead was a dense clump of dark, gloomy pine woods, on the edge of
which was a fringe of dwarf oaks. A heavy growth of bush and climbing
thorns had sprung up among these last; and as the two whites came to
this, their long rifles in the hollow of their arms, there came a
sudden rush, a fierce yell of exultation, and they found themselves
borne to the ground, disarmed and bound with leather thongs.
With their rifles, hatchets and hunting knives in the possession of
their captors, and their hands firmly secured behind their backs, they
were permitted to rise, and found themselves looking into a circle of
grim, copper-colored faces, and being examined by narrow, threatening
eyes.
It was a party of Shawnees, and evidently the same whose tracks they
had come across a short time before. The braves were in their full
panoply of war; they carried bows and scalping knives, quivers of
arrows were on their backs, tomahawks were in their belts; a few
ancient looking rifles were the only fire-arms to be seen among them,
however, and the powder-horns and bullet-pouches were fewer still.
A powerful looking savage, evidently a chief, and the leader of the
band, now spoke.
“The white faces hunt in the hunting-grounds of the Shawnee,” said he,
in very bad English.
But Boone looked at him with cool, humorous eye.
“The great chief is mistaken,” said he. “The white man would not so
wrong his red brother.”
The Shawnee chief said something to his followers, no doubt
interpreting the saying of the backwoodsman; there came a series of
grunts and ejaculations from them; their copper-colored faces grew
grimmer still, their eyes even more threatening than before.
“Yesterday we heard the rifle of the white face,” spoke the Shawnee
leader, turning again to Boone; “to-day we have heard it. We have seen
the remains of deer and buffalo which he has killed; we have seen his
beaver traps in the streams.” There was a moment’s pause, then the
savage added: “What has the white face to say?”
“You might have heard our rifles speak for many days, if you had been
here,” replied Boone. “And that you have seen the carcasses of deer and
other animals which we have killed is quite likely. But what of that?
The country is open to hunters, is it not? Do not the Chickasaws and
the Cherokees hunt their meat and fur in these woods and mountains?
Why, then, do the Shawnees claim it as their own?”
“The Chickasaws and the Cherokees are thieves!” pronounced the Shawnee
chief. “We have taken the war-path against them; we will make a wailing
in their lodges, an emptiness in their villages.”
“You treat your white brother with injustice when you ambush him
and take away his arms. You have suffered no wrong at his hands,”
maintained Boone.
Again the chief translated to his braves, and again came the grunts and
ejaculations. But in spite of the threatening looks and the tightening
of the savage circle, the backwoodsman proceeded fearlessly.
“If any one hunts in this region without right, it is the red man,”
declared he. “The whole of the country below the great river belongs to
the white face. Many moons ago, at the great council at Fort Stanwix,
the league of the Iroquois turned over this land to the colonists. Does
the red brother deny this? Does he not mean to keep faith?”
What Boone said was true, and the Shawnee knew it, but in the southern
tribes the right of the league to cede the territory had always been
denied. So the chief regarded Boone with fierce-eyed anger.
“The white face is as cunning as the snake,” said he, “and his tongue
is as crooked.”
Then turning away from them he gave a signal; the band at once started
off, the two captives in their midst, guarded by a half dozen lean,
hawk-like braves. Some miles away among the hills was the Shawnee camp,
a dozen or more deerskin lodges erected in a sheltered place. Fires
were burning outside the tepees; several young men were cooking strips
of meat upon pointed sticks.
The whites were bound to heavy stakes driven firmly into the ground;
then the band gathered about the fires, and when the meat was cooked
began to eat it in silence.
“Well,” said Stuart, who had said very little since their capture, “it
has a bad look.”
“It might be worse,” replied Boone, coolly, his calm eyes studying the
Shawnees at the camp-fires. “There is a good chance for us yet.”
“To escape?”
Boone nodded.
“But how?”
The calm eyes twinkled as they turned upon the speaker.
“Don’t offer me any puzzles to answer,” said Boone. “I have no more
notion ‘how’ than you have. But the chance will come in some way; and
it will be for us to be ready to take hold of it.”
Though Boone had never been taken captive by the Indians before, he
knew, from talks with those who had, and from his knowledge of savage
ceremony, that in cases like their own, a certain form was always gone
through before torture and death were resorted to.
“They’ll keep us,” he told Stuart, “and try to get us to come into the
tribe. It’s a strange kink in their natures that though they hate the
white, they seldom fail to try to make him one of them by adoption if
they have the chance.”
“You think they’ll try and make Shawnees of us?”
“It’s like as not,” answered Boone.
“Before I’ll be a renegade, I’ll die,” said Stuart, stoutly.
Boone nodded.
“I don’t know as I blame you in that,” spoke he. “A renegade is as mean
a critter as walks the earth. But it’d be just as well if we kept our
feelings on that point from the Shawnees.”
“You mean----”
“That if we’re asked to join the tribe, we’d better not refuse. It’s
life if we can deceive them, and death by horrible torture if we
refuse.”
“I don’t like the notion of even seeming to be an Injun,” spoke Stuart,
who was a brave man and stubborn in his courage. “But whatever you
think best, that I will do.”
That night they were given a couple of bearskins to lie upon, and
their bonds were looked to with much care. They slept fairly well but
were awake at dawn when the savages began to stir about the camp. Some
meat and a sort of porridge made of Indian corn, crushed between two
smooth stones, was given to them; and after they had eaten, the Shawnee
chief approached, followed by the eldest of his warriors. Silently
they sat before their prisoners, seeming to study them with the utmost
attention. After a space the chief spoke.
“The white faces are prisoners; they were taken in war by Black Wolf
and his braves; they are without arms, they are helpless.”
Neither Stuart nor Boone made any reply to this; but the warriors, upon
the words of Black Wolf being interpreted to them, expressed their
approval by nods and throaty murmurs.
“Far away, toward the rising sun, are the friends of the white face,
far away where the morning first touches the forest are his lodges.
Neither friends nor lodges will he ever see again.”
There was another pause; Black Wolf studied the expressions of their
faces intently. But still they made no reply. The chief then resumed:
“You have killed in the hunting-grounds of the Shawnees, and for this
your lives belong to Black Wolf and his braves. But the chief would
spare you; he does not wish to see you die. Rather would he see you,
his brothers, living in the wigwams of the Shawnees and taking to the
war-path against his people’s foes.”
This being repeated in the Shawnee tongue to the elder warriors, was
greeted with a chorus of approving grunts. And then Black Wolf asked:
“What does the white face say?”
“The Shawnee chief is a noble hunter and a warrior whose fame runs
beyond the blue ridge,” said Daniel Boone. “And his words are as
straight as the young birch by the waterside. It is true that the
pale-face’s friends are far away, and that his lodge is many days
across the hills; and for both of these his heart is sore. But he would
not lose his life. Other friends he can make; other lodges he can
build; but he has one life only, and when that is gone he cannot call
it back.”
Black Wolf repeated this to his counselors and again came the chorus of
grunted approval.
“It is well spoken,” praised the Shawnee chief. “Do you, then, give up
your people and will you go to the villages of the Shawnee and make
them your home?”
“To save my life--yes.”
“And you?” asked Black Wolf, his eyes going to Stuart.
“I say the same,” replied that worthy.
“It is well,” said the chief.
He arose, and the elder braves did likewise; turning to them he spoke
briefly and to what he said they apparently agreed with readiness. One
of the warriors took out his knife, approached the captives and severed
the thongs which bound them.
Black Wolf signed for them to get up.
“My young men are about to start upon a hunt,” said he. “It were well
if the white brothers went with them.”
The hunting party was already making ready; and in half an hour or so
it filed out of the camp and along a buffalo track which led toward
the west. The two white men trudged along the track, Boone whistling a
snatch of an old English air, Stuart morose and heavy of brow.
Finally the latter spoke.
“Why are we taken out with a hunting party and provided with no
weapons? It hasn’t a reasonable look!”
Boone stopped his whistling.
“The whole idea of this party is just a little game of the redskins.
It’s not their purpose to hunt,” said he.
“Not their purpose to hunt?” echoed the other.
Boone nodded.
“Just keep your eye peeled,” spoke he. “Do you see how the varmints go
along--careless and never noticing us? Never a look do they give us, so
far as I can see. But,” and he covertly clutched his companion’s arm in
his strong grip, “they’re noticing us, never fear. They see everything
we do, every look we give away from the track we’re following. This is
not a hunt, comrade; it’s a test of our intentions. They are trying us.
And the trial will go on in different ways for days. Some one will
always be watching us; to try and escape will mean death for us.”
“A pleasant outlook,” said Stuart, gloomily.
“But don’t forget,” said Boone, “that this watch upon us will not last
always. Let us make it seem as if we were contented enough. If they lay
little traps for us to fall into, let us step over them. No matter how
good the chance seems for a while, we must not try to get away; for
it will only win us a dozen or so arrows in our backs. After a little
while they’ll grow slack in their watching. If they see us living
quietly as they live, doing the things they do, they’ll come to trust
us more and more. And then our chance will come--and we’ll make the
best of it.”
Keeping up an intent observation of the savages, Stuart gradually came
to the conclusion that what Boone said was true. Not a moment passed
but they found themselves closely watched by the Shawnees. And so he
came to see that his friend’s plan was the solution of their situation.
The gloomy look vanished and the frowns followed; his manner grew as
care-free as could well be imagined; he also whistled a catch now and
then; and more than once he laughed light-heartedly over some small
incident of the march, a thing which was not thrown away upon their red
brothers.
That night they spent in a lodge which Black Wolf gave up to them;
as before, they were not bound and apparently were unguarded. But
both knew that the sharp eyes of the bronze warriors were peering
at the lodge, that lurking forms hung silently in the shadows, and
swift-winged arrows were ready to sing their death song should they
make an attempt to escape.
And so it went one day after another until a full week had passed.
Adventure after adventure did the Shawnees take them upon; at times
they were left apparently alone for hours in the forest; the
temptation was great, but they conquered it; and always were they glad
they had done so, for it was shown afterward that in each case the
savages had been at no great distance, and that the thing had been one
of the traps which Boone had foretold.
Little by little, in the face of this plainly shown content of the
white brothers for their lot, the Shawnees became lax in their
vigilance, and finally upon the seventh night of their captivity, the
active-minded Boone saw their first real chance of escape. All was
still in the redskin camp; the fires smouldered under coverings of
ash; a pale, wintry moon looked down upon the wilderness. It had been
an active day for the savages; it had been thought that a party of
Cherokees had entered the region, and all the warriors of Black Wolf’s
band had been ranging the woods searching for their trail. And so
these braves, whose duty it was to keep a careful eye upon the adopted
whites, grew heavy eyed as the night wore on; their deep breathing
told the wide-awake Boone that all were asleep.
Stuart, also, was asleep; carefully Boone awoke him.
“The time’s come,” he whispered in the ear of the surprised
backwoodsman. “Make no noise; all the critters are as sound as rocks.”
Softly they crept through the opening in the lodge; like cats they
moved among the other wigwams until they gained the shadows. Then Boone
halted.
“What now?” asked Stuart, in a whisper.
“We’ve left our rifles behind. Wait here.”
“You don’t mean to go back!” Stuart was amazed.
“I must. Do you realize what it would mean to be away here in the
wilderness without the means of getting game for food? Man, we’d die.”
Seeing the force of this, Stuart released the hold he had taken upon
Boone’s shoulder. Back into the Indian encampment stole Daniel Boone;
straight to the tepee of Black Wolf he went, and, from his place in the
shadows, Stuart saw the brave pioneer stoop and enter. Then followed
a long pause. The waiting man could hear the heavy throbs of his own
heart. Each moment he expected to hear the war-whoop of the Shawnee,
and to see the camp spring into activity.
But fortune smiled upon the daring Boone, for after a time he appeared,
the two rifles in his hands, and their powder-horns and bullet-pouches
slung upon his shoulders. Silently he recrossed into the shadows;
quietly he gave Stuart his own piece, his own horn and pouch; then
creeping like wild things of the wilderness, they stole away into the
depths where the night would hide them from all hostile eyes.