THE FATHER OF WATERS
We heard no whooping of aroused savages, as must have attended
discovery of our escape; but we dared not trust unduly in Le Moyne's
generosity, and we ran throughout the night, steering in a
northwesterly direction by the stars, in order to avoid the Ouabache
villages and the French post at Vincennes. We came to a halt only
when the sunrise showed us to be approaching the verge of the forest
country. Beyond the thinning tree trunks a perspective of rolling
savannahs stretched to the horizon's rim. Not a single tree broke
the monotonous outline, and the tall grass rippled under a gentle
breeze like the green billows of the ocean.
"We have gone far enough, brothers," said Tawannears. "Out there a
man is visible for miles. Let us rest now and make sure we are not
followed."
We swung by a pendant grape-vine into the center of a thorny patch of
wild berry-bushes, chopped out a space to recline in, arranged the
bushes we had demolished in the fashion of a roof so as to preserve
the contour of the patch, and abandoned ourselves to sleep. It was
noon when we awakened again. Indeed, Tawannears swung himself out of
our hidey-hole as I opened my eyes. He was gone for half an hour and
returned to announce that he had been unable to find any trace of
pursuit along our trail.
"That means we are safe," I exclaimed jubilantly. "To-night we can
steal back to the river and take a canoe from one of the Ouabache
villages."
"My brother's wits are clouded," returned Tawannears. "Our enemies
will be watching for us to do that very thing."
"_Ja_," agreed Peter, yawning awake. "Andt if we got away they would
follow us."
"True talk," said the Seneca. "They would follow us and they would
catch us. That way we should lose our scalps."
"Then what can we do?" I demanded.
He pointed to the expanse of the savannahs--or prairies, as the
French call them--which we could just see over the tree-tops.
"From here to the Father of Waters, brother, most of the country is
like that. Corlaer and Tawannears know, because when we made this
journey before, we came all the way by land from the Door of the Long
House. The open country begins even farther to the east as you go
north toward the Lakes. Over such country we can travel almost as
rapidly as in the canoe, and also, brother, we can travel in a
straight line. The Ohio twists like a snake and it bears away to the
south, so that after it carried us to the Great River we should have
to paddle north again against the current, for it is my purpose to
make for the country of the Dakota, above the other great river, the
Missouri, which pours into the Father of Waters on its west side.
Corlaer and Tawannears dwelt a while with the Dakota, before the
message came summoning us to return to the Long House, and it is my
thought that they might help us farther upon this journey, where
other peoples would seek to plunder us or take our scalps."
"You are right, as always, brother," I said. "If Peter agrees, let
us start."
Peter heaved himself ponderously to his feet, seized his musket and
stood ready for Tawannears to lead the way.
"_Ja_," he squeaked placidly. "Now we get some buffalo-hump."
"What?" I asked, as Tawannears started down the hillock.
"He means the wild cattle of the plains, brother," explained the
Seneca. "You have seen their skins in the lodges of my people, and
once, the forefathers tell us through the Keeper of the Wampum, the
buffalo ranged up to the Doors of the Long House; but now they are
seldom seen east of the Ouabache. Their meat is sweet and tender at
this time of the year, especially the hump of a young cow. It will
be a welcome change after jerked deerflesh."
"_Ja_," affirmed Corlaer, licking his lips.
And I was amused to notice the display of vigilance with which he
surveyed the country around us as we left the protection of the
forest for the open sweep of the savannahs. To be sure, the fat
Dutchman was never as dull as he allowed himself to seem, and he had
developed the faculties of seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling to a
pitch as acute as the savages' which is the highest praise I can
offer. But he usually employed his ability without ostentation.
Now, he was as palpably interested in his surroundings as I was, and
his growing disappointment, as the afternoon waned and we had no
sight of a living creature, was comical. Indeed, he was much put out
when I rallied him upon it, and his silence when we halted at evening
was gloomily expressive.
Our camp that night was beside a tiny rill of water that tickled
along a fold in the rolling waves of earth. There was no underbrush
available, let alone trees, and the long prairie grass that grew
waist-high was too green to burn readily, so we had no fire. But we
did not feel the want of it, for the heat was terrible on the
unshaded savannahs. All day the sun had been beating down upon the
earth, and all day the earth had been drinking in the heat--to exude
it through the night like a dry sweat.
Peter and I came to envy Tawannears his nakedness, and in the morning
we stripped off our leathern shirts and rolled them in bundles to
sling from the thongs of our food-pouches, suffering the Seneca to
coat us with bear's-grease which he carried in a horn-box, a
precaution which diminished notably the ardency of the sun's rays.
Without its aid my unweathered shoulders must have been broiled pink,
whereas under the layer of grease they baked gradually until in days
to come they turned a warm brown not unlike the dusky bronze hue of
Tawannears himself.
We had not pushed far this morning when we came upon a broad swath of
trampled grass leading from south to north. Hoof-marks showed in the
pulverized earth, and Peter's little eyes glistened.
"Buffalo!" he shrilled, excited as a boy. "Oof, now we get some nice
hump for supper."
Eyes fixed on the horizon, he set off northward at a jog-trot, and
Tawannears and I followed him, really as anxious as he to vary the
monotony of our diet. Most of our burnt corn and maple-sugar was
gone, and we had had scarcely anything but jerked deer-flesh for
three days.
"How does he know the buffalo went north?" I questioned. "The trail
leads in both directions."
"They always travel north at this season," rejoined Tawannears. "In
the fall of the year they will turn south again. Yes, Peter is
right. This grass was trampled only yesterday. They must be near
us."
A yelp came from the Dutchman at that moment, and his enormous body
crouched forward.
"See!" he cried.
We joined him on the summit of a slight rise. Several miles across
the grassy sea moved a desultory procession of brown objects,
hundreds of them.
"A large herd," I commented.
Peter gave me a scornful look, and Tawannears laughed.
"Beyond the Father of Waters, brother," said the Seneca, "you will
see the buffalo in such myriads as the wild pigeons that flew over
the Ohio. The thundering of their hoofs will shake the ground. They
will cover the prairie for two days' fast marching."
Peter plucked a blade of grass and tossed it in the air. There was
very little wind but what there was wafted it over our heads.
"_Goodt!_" he grunted. "Dey are upwindt."
"Will Corlaer stalk the buffalo without assistance?" inquired
Tawannears with his customary courtesy.
"One shot is enough," returned Peter, and he lumbered away through
the grass, his body huddled over until he was wholly concealed.
I started to sit down to watch the Dutchman's exploit, but
Tawannears, with a light of mischief in his eyes, prodded me off to
the right, and broke into a run as soon as we had placed one of the
deceptive swells of the prairie between us and our comrade.
"What ploy is this?" I panted.
"We will surprise Peter," he answered, laughing. "He thinks to stalk
the buffalo, Otetiani, and instead we will make the buffalo stalk
him."
We fetched a wide semicircle northeastward, and came up on the flank
of the herd. But before we approached closely Tawannears halted, and
we picked bunches of grass which he arranged on our heads, so that at
even a short distance we were indistinguishable from our grassy
background. Then we continued, working slowly around the flank of
the herd until we were in its rear. Corlaer was nowhere to be seen.
"Now, brother!" said Tawannears.
He cast off his head-dress, and advanced openly upon the animals. I
imitated him, and an old bull gave a bellow of warning. A medley of
noises answered the alarm, mooing of cows and bleating of frightened
calves and over all the bellowing of other bulls. The herd milled
around and gave ground before us. Tawannears waved his arms, and it
broke into a run.
"They will go over Peter!" I exclaimed.
"No," answered Tawannears. "If it were a large herd, perhaps. But
we have only made it easier for Peter, who said he needed no help.
He will shoot into the herd when it approaches him, and the buffalo
will split right and left on either side of him."
The herd topped the first swell to the south, and a shot boomed
suddenly.
"Watch!" said Tawannears.
The frenzied mass of huge, shaggy creatures divided as if a giant
sword had sliced down from the blazing sky overhead. I ran up the
slope behind them and reached its brow in time to see the halves
reunite a quarter of a mile farther on. Directly beneath me lay the
body of a fat cow, and Peter already was at work upon it with his
knife. Tawannears raised the war-whoop, but Peter carved stolidly on.
"_Ja_," he remarked when we joined him, "you think you put der choke
on Peter, eh? Well, you don't. I look back once andt I don't see
you. Andt den der herd begins to mofe, andt it stampedes. 'Ho,' I
said to myself. 'Funny tricks! _Ja_, funny tricks.' But I shoot me
der best cow in der lot, yust der same. We hafe some nice hump for
supper. _Ja_."
Fortunately for Peter's appetite, we were able to camp that night in
a grove of dwarf trees that bordered a small river, and the broiled
buffalo hump was all that he had anticipated. We seized the
opportunity afforded by a plentiful supply of firewood to jerk the
balance of the choice cuts, about four stone in weight, which
detained us in the grove all of the next day. Of course, we could
not make a thorough job of it, but it sufficed to preserve the meat
untainted in that searing heat for three or four days longer, and at
the end of that time we had worked into a different kind of country
where game was more plentiful.
Here lush meadows alternated with dense patches of low timber and
swamps and bottomlands, these latter backwaters of the river, which
were forest-covered, yet never completely drained. The increasing
natural difficulties slowed our pace, and we were three days in
traversing this broken country; but Tawannears encouraged us with the
assurance that it indicated our nearness to the Great River, which
always in the Spring inundated the lands along its course, sometimes
for many miles.
This country was neither pleasant nor healthful by contrast with the
cool forests and open savannahs we had known, and we were pestered
unmercifully by a plague of gnats. But on the other hand we were
never at a loss for fresh meat. We knocked over squirrels with
sticks and dragged the wild turkeys from their roosts at night.
There was a kind of partridge, too, that plumped up under our feet, a
stupid bird easily to be slain with the tomahawk. And one time a
black bear barred our path and stood growling at us. We let him go,
for we needed no meat and we must husband our powder.
The third day we waded knee-deep through a flooded forest-tract and
came without warning upon the margin of a wide, brown stream. I
hailed it for the Mississippi, at last; but Tawannears asserted it to
be the Illinois, a tributary, which flowed down from the vicinity of
the Lake of the Michigans and entered the Mississippi opposite to and
a short distance above the Missouri. This knowledge was valuable,
inasmuch as it told us approximately where we were, and we turned
back to nominally dry ground and headed southwest, following the
general trend of the Illinois. But our progress was slower than
ever, for the luxuriance of the undergrowth in those moist lowlands
baffles description. Briars tore our skin; creepers tripped us;
bushes grew so thickly that we had to hack our way step by step,
taking turns at trail-breaking.
The next day we won to higher ground, a ridge from which we caught
occasional glimpses of the Illinois; and in mid-afternoon we stumbled
unawares upon a trail that led from the northeast and straddled the
saddle of the ridge.
"Back!" hissed Tawannears, as we smashed carelessly through the
brushwood into the grooved slot.
Ostensibly, the trail was deserted. A lightning glance revealed it a
vacant, green-walled tunnel. But appearances meant nothing in the
Wilderness, and we slid behind a fallen trunk, straining our ears for
sounds of other men. Bees buzzed over us in the soft yellow light.
We heard water running somewhere. Birds sang in the tree-tops. That
was all. Minute by minute, we waited for the purr of an arrow, the
crash of a shot, the yell of the war-whoop. But nothing happened,
and at last Tawannears motioned for us to crawl after him to a
position offering ready access to the choked lands on the river side
of the ridge. There he left us, to scout the neighborhood alone. An
hour passed, as Peter and I knelt back to back in the underbrush, our
eyes roaming the woods on every side. Another hour, and I became
restless. Evening was darkening when the hoot of an owl announced
Tawannears' approach. He crawled into our lair, and dropped a worn
moccasin in Peter's lap.
"Chippewa," he murmured.
Peter nodded confirmation, slowly turning the footgear in his pudgy
hands.
"A war-party," continued Tawannears. "They were going across the
Father of Waters. Their footprints all point toward the river."
"Der trail is fresh?" queried Corlaer.
"I found the ashes of a fire two days old," returned the Seneca. "It
is my counsel that we lie here until morning. I think the Chippewas
are planning to cross the Great River to hunt for Dakota scalps and
buffalo robes. The Dakota are my brothers. They are brave warriors,
but they have no muskets. The Chippewas are allies of the French.
They have muskets, and it is easier for them to steal furs from the
Dakota than to hunt the wild creatures themselves. Let us give them
time to cross the river. Afterward we will follow them and carry a
warning to the Dakota."
Morning brought rain, and we were afoot with the light, avoiding the
trail itself, slinking by preference through the woods parallel with
it. It was a weary day of physical discomfort and cautious progress,
but we had our reward. In the late afternoon we splashed out of a
backwater to emerge upon a shelving bluff, grassy and well-timbered.
From its western edge we stared at a vast yellow sea, its farther
shore dim under driving sheets of rain.
"The Father of Waters," said Tawannears.
I gasped. Miles wide the yellow waters rolled as far as the eye
could see. Sullen, threatening, overpowering in its surge and
breadth, the river pulsed along with a majestic rhythm almost like a
living thing.
"But how shall we cross it?" I stammered.
Tawannears waved a hand toward the saplings that crowded the bluff.
"We have our hatchets. We must build a raft."
We chose for our camp the site the Chippewas had occupied, a recess
under the bluff that had been dug by the Spring freshets when the
water was higher even than now, and the débris of their raft-building
told my comrades that they had not numbered more than twenty or
thirty, an ordinary raiding party of young warriors. It was too late
to begin work then on the raft, but in the morning, with sunshine to
hearten us, we fell to with our hatchets and chopped down a score or
two of sturdy young trees, dragged them to a point just above
water-level, and left them there, whilst we invaded the backwaters to
collect grape-vines and other creepers, which we carried back to the
bluff by the armload.
These were Tawannears' materials, and under his direction we formed
them into a remarkably buoyant raft. His theory was to take a number
of saplings and bind them one to another. On these transversely he
placed a second layer, which were first bound together and then
staunchly fastened to the bottom layer. Two additional layers were
superimposed upon these, with the result that he had a high-riding,
practically water-tight conveyance, ample to float the three of us.
The one difficulty we foresaw was in forcing our way across the
current, and we met this as well as we could by whittling crude
paddles and poles for pushing in shallow water. We were vastly proud
of our achievement when we wiped the sweat from our eyes after two
days of labor and admired the raft as it rode to a withe cable
hitched to a convenient stump.
"She floats as grandly as a frigate," I exclaimed.
"And no snag can sink Her," added Tawannears. "The Father of Waters
is conscious of his might. He is jealous of those who would travel
him. He has knives hidden in his bosom to wreck the unwary, but
we----"
"Hark!" interrupted Corlaer, hand upraised.
From inland came the crashing noise made by a heavy body moving
carelessly through the undergrowth, the mutter of a voice
unrestrained. We snatched up our rifles and ran to cover. It was
useless to think of flight on the raft. An enemy could riddle us as
we strove to force its unwieldy bulk out into the stream. No, our
only chance was to stand to it, conscious that we had our backs to
the river and therefore could not be surrounded. Perhaps night would
furnish an opportunity for us to escape by dropping down with the
current--if we were not overwhelmed by numbers before that. Only a
strong force, unafraid, would crash towards us in that reckless way.
It was like white men, not Indians. The thought sent a shiver down
my spine. I rolled over beside Tawannears.
"Is it the French, brother?" I asked.
"We shall soon see," he answered grimly. "Someone is walking there
between the trees--to your right."