At Point of Rocks
That next morning, after the fracas at the Turtle, Ben and Tom, having
nothing definite in mind for the day, decided to take a tramp north
along the shore of mighty Lake Michigan. Their destination was Point of
Rocks, four miles distant, where the fishing was said to be unsurpassed.
“The landlady says she’ll broil us a fresh lake trout, if we can catch
one,” declared Ben.
“If we do,” proposed Tom, “what say we invite in our new friend, Bill
Brown, and make it a party?”
“Good old Bill! He’s going to call on Captain Van Alstyne today about
his Injun warning. Wonder how he’ll make out.”
“Well, he wasn’t overly hopeful, you know. He maintains that the
Captain is a complete donkey.”
From the village a fairly well-worn Indian trail led northward along
the shore. The progress of the two young fishermen was, therefore,
steady and not too arduous; but the rocky point proved to be somewhat
farther from the fort than they had been led to believe.
“These western miles are longer than the ones we have back east,”
stated Tom emphatically, as he rested for a moment on a rock and gazed
out over the wide expanse of blue-green water.
“Just what I was thinking, Tom. I’d call this more like six miles than
four from the feel of my leg muscles. But perk up! Isn’t that the rocks
about a half-mile ahead?”
“Maybe so. There’s some sort of a point sticking out in the lake. Must
be the place.”
Vastly encouraged, now that the goal was close at hand, the two
red-heads pressed forward at a faster rate.
“Say, Ben,” said Tom presently, slackening his pace, “there’s someone
there ahead of us.”
“By George, there is!”
“Looks like an Injun.”
“An Injun it is, sure as I’m a foot high.”
Tom’s conjecture proved to be correct. As the boys approached the stony
point, they could make out a lithe, coppery-colored figure, naked to
the waist, squatting on a rock ledge that fell off steeply to the water.
“What’s that in his hand?” questioned Tom, peering intently up shore.
“Looks like a spear.”
“Must be spearing fish.”
“I reckon so. That’s the usual Injun way to catch them, I understand.
Or else with nets.”
In another moment the two lads were within fifty yards of the ledge,
where they could plainly see the savage fisherman.
“Well, I’ll be scalped,” exclaimed Tom, “if it isn’t Bright Star, the
young Pottawattomee!”
“By golly, it is! Looks like he came out of the big duel with nary a
scratch.”
“But he sure enough put his mark on the Wolf. What a thrilling fight it
was! I’ll never forget it.”
When the white boys had come to within a few rods of the ledge, the
lithe young chief rose to his feet fishing spear in hand.
“Ho!” he said, his tone friendly.
“Ho, Bright Star!” Tom Gordon replied, equal friendliness in his voice.
The Pottawattomee could not have failed to be surprised--greatly
surprised--by this recognition on the part of the pair of whites, but,
with traditional Indian impassiveness, not a muscle of his features
changed. Nor did the look of his eyes alter a whit.
“How you know Bright Star?” he queried, after a moment’s interval;
his association with the soldiers and traders of the Fort Dearborn
neighborhood had evidently enabled him to pick up a considerable
understanding of English.
“We saw you fight the young Sac chief, Prairie Wolf,” answered Ben
quickly.
“Ho, ho!” rejoined Bright Star.
“You are a brave fighter,” complimented Tom.
“Ho! The words of the white boy are good.”
“But you must beware of the Wolf.”
“Ho! He want my scalp. Ho! I know.”
“You must always be alert.”
“Bright Star does not fear. Only the sitting rabbit is caught by the
fox.”
The position of the sun now showed mid-day; so the twins took a
quantity of food from a canvas pouch that Ben had carried over his
shoulder. There was corn bread, some slices of cold roast duck, and
several rosy apples. A share of this they offered to their savage
companion, who accepted without demur. For a time, all three ate
hungrily and in silence, washing down the tasty victuals with draughts
of cold water from a clear spring that bubbled from the rocks and then
ran away like a tiny rivulet into the nearby lake.
“White boys are brothers to Bright Star,” asserted the Pottawattomee
presently, as he tossed away the core of an apple that he had been
munching. “Bright Star wish that all white man and all red man be like
brothers.”
“Maybe they will be from now on,” observed Tom hopefully.
“Ugh! it will not be so.”
“Not so, you say?”
The young chief was silent for a long moment; as if weighing well the
words he was to utter. The only sounds to be heard were the gentle
lapping of the waves on the rocks and the clacking of the innumerable
gulls that circled over the lake surface.
“A big chief,” he said tersely, “not come to treaty council.”
“You mean Black Hawk?” asked Ben, with a quick glance at the attentive
Tom.
“Ugh! Black Hawk, Sac chief.”
“We did hear,” commented Tom cautiously, “that Black Hawk is sulking
in his lodge beyond the big river. Does that mean bad medicine for the
whites?”
“Ugh! bad, bad medicine!”
There was a brief, tense pause.
“Have you ever seen Black Hawk?” asked Ben Gordon, finally breaking the
ice.
“Ho! many time, at big fort. Painting on his blanket, blood-red hand.”
“Holy smokes, a blood-red hand on his blanket!” exclaimed Ben.
“What does that signify?” Tom inquired.
“Blood-red hand is sign,” answered Bright Star, “that the Hawk kill and
scalp enemy when boy only fifteen years old.”
“Whew! he must be quite a warrior. Awful big and strong, I reckon.”
“Not tall.” Bright Star shook his head. “Not heavy. But big nose. Hair
plucked out. Only scalp lock left. Brave, heap brave! Pale-face run
like rabbit when he raise war-whoop.”
The Pottawattomee seemed on the verge of saying more, but suddenly
closed his lips tightly, leaped to his feet, and again caught up the
fishing spear which he had thrown to one side when he sat down to eat.
While the young chief again took post on the rocky ledge, spear ready,
looking down sharply into the lake waters, the two white boys got out
their lines, with hook and sinker attached to each.
“Guess we’ll have to catch some grasshoppers for bait,” mused Tom.
“Maybe so,” agreed Ben, “but grasshoppers don’t make the best bait in
the world. Little Bennie is no Isaac Walton, but he knows that much
about fishing.”
At this, the keen-eared Bright Star again threw down his spear on the
ledge, and with a few long bounds stood beside them.
“Me get bait,” he said. “Heap good bait.”
For a moment or two he walked along the shore, carefully surveying the
rocks at his feet. Finally he bent down and turned over a flattish
stone.
“Come!” he invited, beckoning to the whites. “See!”
With a dusky finger he pointed to a queer-looking creature, seemingly
half bug and half worm, which lay beneath the stone.
“Nice bug,” he stated. “Fish much like.”
“What do you call it?” quizzed Ben.
“Now, Ben,” broke in Tom, with mock severity, “do you mean to state
that you don’t know the name of that peculiar little thinguma-jig?”
“Of course not. How should I? And you don’t know the name of it either,
Mr. Johnny Wiseacre.”
“Yes, I do, Ben. Have you forgotten the teachings of the great
Eliphalet Doolittle, Professor of Biology at good old Litchfield
Academy, back home in Connecticut? No wonder you squeezed through that
course by the skin of your teeth.”
“Gosh, Tom,” pleaded Ben, a trifle sheepishly, “I never could remember
the names of all those confounded little bugs, beetles and butterflies.”
“Well, my boy,” went on Tom, assuming an owlish look, “the correct
name for this curious little creature is helgramite. And to elucidate
further, it is a larva, meaning the immature, wingless, and often
wormlike form in which metabolous insects hatch from the egg, and in
which they remain with increase in size and other minor changes until
they assume the pupa or chrysalis stage.”
“Very well, smart Alec,” grinned Ben, “you win. But will the dad-blamed
little things catch fish?”
“Bright Star says so. Let’s proceed to find out.”
For more than an hour, it looked as if the doughty Bright Star were
wrong, very wrong. Not a solitary nibble did either Tom or Ben secure.
And although the young savage kept constantly alert with his sharp
spear, he was unable to entice a fish within suitable throwing distance.
At long last, however, just as Tom Gordon was half dozing in the warm
spring sun, there came a prodigious tug on his line. After a spirited
battle of some five minutes, the excited lad succeeded in pulling
ashore a fine, large fish.
“What a whopper of a trout!” cried Ben, thwacking the gleaming creature
on the head with a stick, as it leaped and floundered in the grass.
Perhaps a half-hour later, Ben hooked a second trout, of about the same
dimensions. This left Bright Star as the only one who hadn’t caught a
fish; and although the trio continued their efforts until twilight, the
young brave was not able to spear one of the speckled beauties.
“Rock-bug heap good bait,” he said glumly. “Spear no catch um.”
“Never you mind, Bright Star,” said Tom consolingly, “I’ll make you a
present of mine. We can’t possibly use two fish of that size.”
By the time that the big fish were cleaned, wrapped in cool, green,
wide-bladed grass and packed away in their pouches, the twilight had
deepened rapidly. A dark cloud-bank had come up in the west to mar the
end of the bright blue day; and night would now fall with surprising
swiftness.
“High time to leg it for the fort,” said Ben, viewing the suddenly
darkening sky with some apprehension.
“We’ll never make it in daylight,” replied Tom, “that’s plain to see.”
“Well, the path is pretty fair, and we shouldn’t have too much trouble,
even though it is a mite rough in spots.”
In another hour, pitchy blackness enveloped them, and travel became
increasingly slow. A hasty, careless step on the rough trail might mean
a sprained, or even fractured, ankle. Luckily, it was a windless,
quiet evening. The restless airs over lake and prairie were still
for once, and the boughs of the scattered groves of trees, through
which they passed, did not move. After a time, however, they came
to the realization that they had lost the path; but almost at once
they blundered onto another trail, which Bright Star assured them ran
parallel to the first.
Suddenly, Tom Gordon, who was in the van as they trod the dark path,
came to an abrupt halt, and despite all his resolute nature and self
control, shuddered violently.
“Great Scott,” he cried hoarsely, “that gave me a start! I’m all over
goose-pimples as big as buckshot!”
“What in thunder’s the matter, Tom?” yelled Ben, hastening forward with
Bright Star.
“Look up in the trees!” replied his excited brother. “See those long,
dark objects! What in blazes are they?”
“Search me. What are they, Bright Star?”
“Indian burial place,” the Pottawattomee informed them.
“Oh, that’s it,” said Tom. “This is an ancient Injun burying ground.
These are mummies swinging from the boughs.”
“Wow,” groaned Ben, “what a ghostly place! Let’s get out of here in a
big hurry!”
They pressed on as rapidly as possible, trying hard to steady their
frayed nerves; but the two white boys were conscious that even the
taciturn Bright Star was upset by the incident. He feared that the
mummies swinging in the trees were those of hereditary enemies of his
tribe. This invasion of their sacred resting place might bring down
upon the trio a dreadful curse. At the best, it most certainly was not
a good omen.