In all this long journey Acashee had not been alone. Sometimes she had
found food in her pathway, which she supposed had been dropped by some
family of careless husbandry, but which had been purposely left by the
secret emissary of the Sacos, who never lost sight of her in all her
journeying. When she slept, often and often a keen eye watched her
slumbers, and scared away the deadly reptile or hungry beast watching
for its prey and hushed the bark of the fox or the howl of the wolf
through the night-watches.
Even the keen ear of the savage woman failed to detect this stealthy
follower ever in her track. She had turned aside carefully from all
Indian villages, conscious that her dishonored locks would expose her
to insult and danger, except to those acquainted with her cruel and
haughty spirit, and who would appreciate the story of her captivity and
final escape. Reverent as well as watchful of his charge, the scout was
faithful to the letter of his embassy, and not only preserved her from
danger, but, with a wise forecast, provided as best he could for her
comfort.
On one occasion he even carried his protection beyond ordinary limits,
for seeing her reel and sink to the earth from exhaustion, and fearing
she might not reach her destination, he snared a rabbit in her pathway,
and left cooked beans and corn slightly concealed under pine boughs, as
if stored for the use of a hunter or trapper. These he saturated with
the juice of a well-known narcotic, sure that a long and refreshing
slumber would ensue.
Nor was he disappointed. Acashee eagerly availed herself of the hidden
viands, and slept long and well, to go onward when she awoke with
renewed vigor.
Arrived at the Androscoggin village, the duty of the scout was
incomplete till he should learn the destination of the war-party
evidently making preparations for a march.
As the chiefs of the Androscoggins sat around the council-fire that
night, and listened to the story of the woman--the silence undisturbed
save by the heavy roar of the falls, now pouring in one continuous
thunder-roar, and now suspended as by a lack of the freightage of
water--a pause like a human breath--and then bursting into its
never-ending diapason of sublime melody--there might have been seen,
prone upon the ground, a lithe, slender form, and a keen ear, that lost
not a word of all their plans, and a pair of bright eyes exulting in
the knowledge he had gained of all the movements designed.
When Acashee left the council, she did not retire to the wigwams that
were offered her, but waving her hand, forbidding the women to follow,
she descended the banks of the river to the foot of the falls, known to
the Indians by the name of Pejipscot, and in our day as Lewiston Falls.
We must pause briefly and describe this most beautiful
region--beautiful in our day even, notwithstanding the majestic falls
have been subjected to the uses of the mill and factory. The river
Androscoggin is a wild, coquettish nymph, now moving in stately grace
amid embowering trees, and now bending into abrupt and startling
curves, and anon plunging over headland rocks in one vast sheet, to
sport again amid soft savannas and placid bays, once the mooring-place
of Indian canoes when the tribes were bent upon some deadly enterprise.
In our day these warm and fertile slopes give place to cultivated
farms, from whence arise the rural sounds of flock and herd so grateful
to the spirit, and that primitive blast of horn, winding itself into a
thousand echoes, the signal for the ingathering of a household.
Cliffs, crowned with fir, overhung the waters; hills rising hundreds of
feet cast their dense shadows quite across the stream; and even in our
day, the slim canoe of the Indian may be seen poised below, while some
stern relict of the tribes sits motionless therein, and gazes upward to
the ancient sites of his people, and recalls the day when, above the
Falls of Pejipscot, a populous village sent up its council-smoke day
and night, telling of peace and the uncontested power and sway of his
tribe.
But, in the time of our story, the region stood in its untamed majesty;
the whirling mass of waters thundering to the level below in the midst
of an unbroken and boundless forest; and the great roar of the cataract
booming through the solitude like the unceasing voice of the eternal
deep.
Stealthily the Indian scout followed the woman to the base of the
cataract. He saw her stoop her head to the overhanging waters, and
she was gone. In vain he searched. The waters, at the point of her
disappearance, threw themselves forward in a semicircular curve, whence
arose masses of vapor, upon which the moonbeams playing created a
silvery bow, more lovely even than the gorgeously-hued rainbow of the
sun.
He rubbed his eyes, he threw himself prostrate upon the ground to
detect any shelf of the overhanging rocks behind which she might
have hidden herself. An owl started from a hollow tree overhead, and
with silent wing floated into the deep forest. An old withered crone
tottered down the bank, and, seating herself below where he lay, began
to gather vervain and hellebore, for the moon was at its wane, and she
was preparing some witch-broth to be used in incantation.
Slowly peering about, she turned over the damp stones, and caught
slugs, and snails also, and then a toad was dragged forth, and she
disappeared.
In vain the scout examined every nook and every spot in search of the
vanished form. Not a trace remained. He looked above and below the
fall; all was silent--no vestige of a human being, except in a canoe
drawn up under the bank amid a clump of bushes. He stooped down to
launch it, in order to cross the river, when his arms were strongly
grasped by an Indian, whose garments were dripping with water.
He was old and white-headed, but a perfect Hercules in frame, and
handled the young scout as if he had been a mere child in his hands.
The contest was quick and decisive, for the old man raised the youth
in his arms and dashed him upon the ground, where he lay stunned and
bleeding, but with sufficient consciousness left to know his antagonist
had launched the canoe, and was paddling across the river. Rousing
himself, terrified and sorely perplexed, he turned his face westward,
and sought once more the people of his tribe, ill at ease, feeling that
the full object of his mission had not been accomplished. But, as the
first duty of a soldier is to obey, so the first duty of a savage is to
tell unflinchingly the truth, and he returned to tell all just as it
had transpired.