THE SQUAT BOWMEN
I did what I might to staunch Peter's terrible wounds, but that was
very little. We had no medicines and no cloths, save a handful or
two of tow-wadding for the cleaning of our pieces. I used this stuff
to pack the worst gashes, and bound the lips of other wounds with
strips of hide cut from my shirt that I wound about his body. Then I
scrambled over to his musket and loaded and fired it twice, in case
Tawannears had not heard the first report. This much accomplished, I
accumulated a stack of twigs and damp leaves and set them alight with
my flint and steel. I knew the plume of smoke would attract the
Seneca's eye, if his attention had been drawn by the musket-shots,
and moreover, 'twould serve to guide him to us all the quicker.
Afterwards I made Peter comfortable as best I could, stacking a
pillow of leaves beneath his head and searching his inert form for
concealed wounds that I had missed in my first hasty examination. He
was scratched from instep to scalp, scarce an inch of skin left
whole. Yet he breathed, as I convinced myself by holding my
knife-blade to his lips, and his pulse still fluttered feebly. His
heart I could not hear. His eyes were closed. He had not uttered a
sound after that last expiring flicker of vitality when he promised
himself "a fine robe of dot pelt"; and I was certain he was dying.
My one idea was to ease him out with as little suffering as possible.
But Tawannears refused to accept my theory when he climbed the
hillside an hour later.
"Corlaer will not die today," he declared looking up from the
Dutchman's scarred body. "Otetiani stopped the bleeding in time."
"'Tis impossible," I protested. "You have not seen how dreadfully he
is hurt. And the bleeding is not stopped."
Tawannears removed the pack I had inserted in one of the ghastliest
of the wounds in Peter's belly.
"See!" he said, holding back the flaps of flesh. "It is a clean
wound--or it will be when I have drawn the poison from it. No
ordinary man could have lived through this, but Corlaer is not
ordinary. His fat has saved him. None of these hurts goes deep
enough to kill."
I joined the Seneca and probed the gashes with a knife-blade seared
in the flame. Tawannears was correct. In no case had the bear's
claws sliced through the overlying blubber into the vital parts.
Such wounds would have meant the slashing of our intestines for
Tawannears or me, but they had done no more than drain Peter of some
of the blood that always poured in a torrent through his giant frame.
His shoulder was badly torn where the beast had nipped him with its
teeth, and we could not be certain whether the bone was broken; but
aside from loss of blood and the chance of poisoning, here again
'twas a mere flesh wound, more ill to look upon than to cure, as
Tawannears asserted.
"There is the chance that Peter will die," he admitted. "Not today,
but tonight or tomorrow or the day after that. If we are to save him
we must have him under cover. We must secure herbs to dress his
wounds. We must have warmth to fan his life-spark alight.
"Otetiani must first skin the bear here. We shall have need of the
hide and the meat, and the fat will make grease for a healing salve.
In the meantime, Tawannears will seek shelter. We must hurry,
brother. Before night we must have him settled quietly. He should
be moved before his mind escapes from the cloud that is over it."
When Tawannears returned he brought two young saplings, which he had
laced together with vines to form a litter, and we rolled Peter--my
swollen ankle would not permit me to exert my full strength--upon it.
He had also cut a stick for me so that I could hobble beside him and
be of some aid in handling the litter.
"We owe much to the bear," remarked Tawannears grimly. "He had a
comfortable den at the foot of this slope. We will lower Peter to
it, and then you shall clean it whilst Tawannears hunts herbs to
mingle with the bear's grease. If Hawenneyu's face is smiling,
Corlaer will be a whole man before the Winter's snow is gone."
It was a back-breaking task to work down-hill with that inert weight,
and most of the effort fell upon Tawannears. But we made it, and
dragged the litter slowly into the mouth of a shallow cave under the
shadow of a jutting pinnacle of rock. The bear had left visible
traces of his occupation in the shape of a litter of bones and filth,
and I made shift to sweep out the rock chamber with a broom of
pine-boughs, and later burned over the floor and walls with torches
of light-wood. A fire in a convenient corner by the entrance drove
out the dampness and the lingering beast odor, and long before
Tawannears was back I had carried water from a near-by brook that fed
our little river.
All this time Peter had not moved a muscle. He lay like a lump of
tallow, white and wan, exactly as if he were a corpse. The shaking
he had received in being moved down from the ledge to this level had
reopened several of his wounds, but I contrived to staunch the blood
with bunches of leaves that Tawannears indicated to me as possessing
styptical properties, and even washed the gore from his head and arms
and torso. I met Tawannears as I was limping up from the brook with
a second potful of water, and he took it from my hand and directed me
to cut pine-boughs for bedding for the three of us.
Neither of us slept much that night, however, he because there was
too much to be done, I in part because of the need to help him, and
likewise because of the throbbing of my ankle. From the slabs of fat
that I had hacked from the bear's belly Tawannears brewed a heavy
grease, and when this had boiled to a paste he mixed with it
quantities of leaves and roots, and bits of bark shredded fine,
stirring the mess so that it might not catch fire. It had a fine,
savory smell. When it was of such a consistency that the stick he
used in stirring would stand upright he withdrew it from the fire,
and between us we laid bare Peter's mangled body.
Tawannears' first thought was to wash those parts which I had not
attended to, and after that he overspread the wounds with his salve,
one by one. Next we boiled out the meager handfuls of tow I had used
to pack the wounds and reëmployed them for dressings, cutting up
portions of our own garments for bandages. We cast aside the
remnants of Peter's shirt and breeches and reclad him in Tawannears'
and mine, I offering the upper and Tawannears the nether garment,
slitting them to make room for his cumbrous form. And lest he take
cold in the night we covered him with aromatic pine-boughs and built
up the fire to a roaring blaze.
Then, Peter being attended to, Tawannears turned his attention to my
ankle, prepared a plaster of leaves immersed in boiling water and
wrapped the whole in mud, bidding me sleep; and when I demanded to
stand my watch, promised to awake me in due time. But the bare truth
is that I collapsed from sheer weariness and suffering in that hour
which precedes the dawn when life is at its lowest ebb, and I did not
awaken until Tawannears touched my shoulder as the noon sun beat into
the cavern entrance. He put aside my protests with a smile, and
handed me a barken bowl of bear's broth.
"Drink," came Peter's voice weakly. "Dot bear makes goodt soup.
_Ja!_"
There across the cave the big Dutchman lay with his eyes open again
and a grin on his marred face.
"Is he--alive?" I asked in amazement.
Tawannears nodded, still smiling, and Peter's grin broadened.
"Dis time Peter hafe der choke on you, eh?" He shook a feeble fist
at me.
"You t'ink I die, eh? Nein, we need bear's grease for der Winter,
dot's all."
But it was many a long week before Peter was able to be up and out
with us at our daily chores in the valley. Most of his wounds healed
rapidly, thanks to the magic salve that Tawannears had concocted, and
the healing balsam pitch of the fir-trees; but his mangled shoulder
was stubborn, and we made him give it time. After the first month
there were plenty of small undertakings for him about the cave, and
in his own placid fashion he was able to keep sufficiently amused;
but no other man I ever knew would have suffered the torments Corlaer
did in regaining his health, let alone the physical strain of his
struggle with the bear, and come through alive and untouched in
sanity.
We never built the cabin we had planned, for we could not have moved
Peter with safety a second time. Instead, Tawannears and I sealed up
the entrance to the cave with bowlders and mud from the river,
leaving a recess for fireplace and smoke-hole. 'Twas a tight,
weather-proof habitation, the most comfortable we enjoyed upon our
travels. But Tawannears and I were seldom within doors except for
meals and sleeping, for there was more work to be done than we could
well attend to, especially in the opening months of Winter.
Naked as we had been before Peter's fight with the bear, we were less
covered there afterward; and we had pressing urgency for furs to
shield us from the cold. But for the hardihood we had acquired we
must have died from exposure during the first week, whilst we were
tanning skins of deer and sheep and drying sinews for use as thread.
If I stick to the truth, I shall admit that we made no very careful
job of that first tanning emprise. Our wants were too pronounced.
But later Tawannears took the pride of his people in curing and
dressing to the softness of woven goods the store of pelts we
captured.
For lack of the required materials he could not use the Iroquois
method, which I hold to be unmatchable; but, assisted by the devices
of the Plains tribes, he turned out robes and garments that no white
man could have matched. In place of cornmeal for the dressing
process he cooked a paste of brains and liver. His final stage,
after soaking, scraping and dressing, was to rub the skin over the
rounded top of a tree-stump. Squaw's work, he called it, laughing;
but it made a pelt as pliable as a woolen shirt, and of course, 'twas
vastly warmer.
We did not want for anything all Winter long. We killed only what we
required, and the animals that swarmed in the valley were not
frightened away. We had firewood in abundance within twenty steps of
our door. We had a warm, dry house. And we found delight in
manufacturing for ourselves all manner of little utensils that we had
dispensed with on our wanderings, vessels crudely molded in
clay--Peter would have toyed with these by the hour; barken bowls and
containers; cups and knives and spoons carved from horn.
We furnished our abode with the loving care of housewives. We
labored tirelessly over tricksy devices which were unnecessary,
merely to surprise one another. But in the long run we wearied of
it. The call of the unknown country beyond the Eastern vent of the
valley cast its spell upon us. The hunger for the untrodden trail
welled up again in our hearts.
One evening as we listened through the open doorway to the drip of
the melting snow on the lower hillsides I broke a prolonged silence,
a silence compounded of three men's unspoken thoughts.
"Peter," I said, "how many miles did you do today!"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Aroundt der valley--how many miles I don't know."
"Does your shoulder pain you?"
He flexed his arm and shoulder muscles for answer.
I bent my eyes upon Tawannears.
"We have had a long rest, brother. 'Tis time we resumed our quest."
His face lighted with the glad zest it had owned when we first
started from the Long House.
"Tawannears is ready," he said.
Corlaer yawned sleepily.
"_Ja_," he muttered. "We better go. If we stay der moss grows on
us. We better go."
We slung on our equipment and tramped out of the valley in the
morning, bound we knew not whither. But after beating
indiscriminately through the mountains for a week we decided to
strike due east, at least, until we discovered a reason for altering
our course. And God knows there was no reason for heading otherwise
in this devil's country we were soon swallowed up in.
Beyond the range of snow mountains surrounding our happy valley we
traversed first a high plateau, well-watered; but a few days' journey
eastward conditions changed.
At intervals were low ranges of mountains or hills. Betwixt the
ranges were barren plateaus or basins. Sometimes they were covered
with coarse grass. Along the infrequent streams were patches of
dwarf timber. But often we tramped over bare, blistered rock or dry
sand deserts, where the wind, when it blew, scorched us like the
breath of an oven.
Many times we should have died had it not been for the forethought of
Tawannears, who, during the Winter, had sewn up two sheepskins into
water-bags. 'Twas these saw us safe across the deserts.
In the beginning the heat was not bad, but as we continued, and
Spring turned to Summer it became severe. The dust of these high
deserts had some chemical reaction upon the skin, and our faces were
cracked and creased with crusted blood. Food was hard to come at,
and when we killed an antelope or deer we must take pains to jerk
every shred of meat.
Twice we thought of turning back, but we had a feeling that this
country would have to be passed before we could gain more favorable
lands, and we did not like to spoil our record of overcoming every
difficulty that offered. So we kept on, and always, as we advanced,
our privations became more extreme, so much so, that whatever had
been our former reasons for continuing, we were now governed rather
by dread of what we had seen than by fear of the unknown ahead.
Three months after leaving our happy valley we had our first gleam of
hope. We were crossing a barren country of rocks when Tawannears'
keen eyes perceived the glitter of sunlight on water. We pressed on
eagerly, thinking of drinking without stint, of being able to bathe
our hot bodies; and as we drew nearer, our excitement grew, for the
water stretched away into the far distance, with no visible banks or
boundaries. We concluded it must be a lake of considerable size.
But when we rushed down to the shore and buried our faces in the
nearest pool, its water choked and burned our throats. 'Twas bitter
salt.
"Der sea again!" exclaimed Peter, puzzled.
"We have gone in a circle," said Tawannears, glumly.
"We have walked for three months with our backs to the westering
sun," I cried. "We could not have circled."
"It is another sea," said Tawannears.
"_Ja_," agreed Corlaer, "der Spanish Sea, eh?"
But I was sure it could not be. I had studied the southern section
of the continent fairly drawn upon Master Golden's maps, and I was
convinced we could not possibly have reached the coast of the Mexican
Gulf of the Main. We were thousands of miles North and West of it.
There was also the thought that we had seen no signs of Spanish
influence, had not even seen savages for months. And finally, the
water was salter than the spray of the Western Ocean.
I suggested, then, that we follow the salt water southward, and this
proved me right, for three days' journey disclosed it to be no more
than a great lake. We struck off to the southeast where mountains
loomed across the sky, and were overjoyed at last to find a
sufficiency of water. But we saw smoke-signals on the horizon, and
deemed it wisest to continue into the mountains in case the Indians
were watching us. Our ammunition was very low, and we could not
afford to fight unless we must.
It is strange by what trivial incidents men's lives are influenced.
Instead of turning south along the shores of the Salt Lake we might
equally as well have turned north. And but for the smoke-signals I
have referred to we should certainly have plunged on eastward. In
either event the issue of this story would have been different.
Strange, indeed! But if we speak of strangeness in our own petty
affairs, how much more strange that that Salt Lake should be isolated
a thousand miles from the salt sea which doubtless mothered it.
After all, what is strange?
In these mountains we discovered the easiest progress was gained by
following the channels of the streams that flowed through them, and
they carried us south of east into a country more terrifying than the
nightmare ranges of mountains and deserts we had recently traversed.
It was a country of monstrous plateaus intersected by abysmal
ravines, ay, sometimes many thousands of feet in depth, so buried in
the bowels of the earth that we, in pursuing the course of a river,
could scarce see the daylight overhead. And the rocks were most
astonishingly colored, almost as though it had been done by painters'
brushes, in lurid streaks, chromatic, dazzling. And there was never
a tree or blade of true grass, only occasionally a few stunted
bushes, rooted in a sediment of pulverized rock.
Did I say the other was a nightmare country? This was far worse! So
empty, so appallingly desolate!
We were picking our way amidst the bowlders in the bottom of one of
these ravines when an arrow shattered against a rock under
Tawannears' arm. In the same breath Peter leveled his gun and fired,
and a squat savage came twirling down through the air and landed
almost at our feet. Such of him as was left showed him to have been
naked, with long, lank hair and primitive weapons; and whilst we
viewed him his comrades assailed us with a continued patter of
arrows. We hurried on, thinking to placate them by retreat. But we
were mistaken.
They harried us all that day, and we remained awake most of the night
in fear of a surprise-attack. In the morning they were at our heels
again. Day succeeded day, and they clung to us. After their first
experience they never tried to rush us, but they were numerous and
persistent and uncannily skillful in utilizing the cover of the
rocks; and we were obliged to fire at them every so often, in order
to hold them off. And this meant a steady drain upon our ammunition,
which compelled us to cut bullets in half and reduce the
powder-charge.
A week of this, and we lost our sense of direction, for we had
difficulty in estimating the sun's course. We did not know where we
were or how we were heading. Two or three times we had emerged
temporarily from the gloomy light of ravines into wide, rocky
valleys, scattered with square, table-like rock-masses, rising
abruptly from the valley-floor. But invariably the squat bow-men, no
matter how deadly our fire, would swarm over the valley behind us and
on both flanks and herd us into another ravine.
Two things we were thankful for. We had enough water, and they never
attacked at night. So confident did we become on this last score
that we abandoned attempts to watch, and slept, all three of us, from
dusk to daylight, for we were always dog-tired.
But now we reached a ravine which was waterless. One of our
water-skins was punctured by an arrow and useless. The other was
rapidly diminishing in contents. Our jerked meat was running out.
Thirst and hunger confronted us. We were in desperate plight, and
our relentless pursuers knew it. They crept closer and closer. We
must move as carefully as they if we were to escape an arrow in the
chest.
A charge, attended by a waste of powder and lead, drove them back
temporarily, but they had caught up with us again when we sighted an
elbow turn in the ravine ahead of us. They seemed to be oddly
excited. We could hear their guttural calls from cliff to cliff,
could see them running between the bowlders and along the
cliff-ledges. They came after us with increasing confidence, and we
dodged under their arrows and raced around the elbow of the cliff.
Tawannears was leading us, and he froze stiff at the first glimpse of
the valley below. But it was not at the valley he was looking. I
saw that at once. His eyes were glued on the figure of the shepherd
maid, who stood lithely in front of her feathered flock, bow raised
and arrow on string, challenging our approach.