THE SHADOW IN THE WATER
Henry Ware and the Wyandot warrior were clasped so tightly in each
other's arms that their hold was not broken as they fell. They whirled
over and over, rolling among the short bushes on the steep slope, and
then they dropped a clear fifteen feet or more, striking the hard earth
below with a sickening impact.
Both lay still a half minute, and then Henry rose unsteadily to his
feet. Fortune had turned her face toward him and away from the Wyandot.
The warrior had been beneath when they struck, and in losing his life
had saved that of his enemy. Henry had suffered no broken bones, nothing
more than bruises, and he was recovering rapidly from the dizziness
caused by his fall. But the warrior's neck was broken, and he was stone
dead.
Henry, as his eyes cleared and his strength returned, looked down at the
Indian, a single glance being sufficient to tell what had happened. The
warrior could trouble him no more. He shook himself and felt carefully
of his limbs. He had been saved miraculously, and he breathed a little
prayer of thankfulness to the God of the white man, the Manitou of the
red man.
He did not like to look at the fallen warrior. He did not blame the
Wyandot for pursuing him. It was what his religion and training both had
taught him to do, and Henry was really his enemy. Moreover, he had made
a good fight, and the victor respected the vanquished.
It was his first impulse to plunge at once into the forest and hasten
away, but it got no further than an impulse, His was the greatest
victory that one could win. He had not only disposed of his foe; he had
gained much beside.
He climbed back up the hill and took the gun from the bushes where it
had fallen. He had expected a musket, or, at best, a short army rifle
bought at some far Northern British post, and his joy was great when he
found, instead, a beautiful Kentucky rifle with a long, slender barrel,
a silver-mounted piece of the finest make. He handled it with delight,
observing its fine points, and he was sure that it had been taken from
some slain countryman of his.
He recovered the knife, too, and then descended the hill again. He did
not like to touch the dead warrior, but it was no time for
squeamishness, and he took from him a horn, nearly full of powder, and a
pouch containing at least two hundred bullets to fit the rifle. He
looked for something else which he knew the Indian invariably
carried--flint and steel--and he found it in a pocket of his hunting
shirt. He transferred the flint and steel to his own pocket, put the
tomahawk in his belt beside the knife, and turned away, rifle on
shoulder.
He stood a few moments at the edge of the forest, listening. It seemed
to him that he heard a far, faint signal cry and then another in answer,
but the sound was so low, not above a whisper of the wind, that he was
not sure.
Whether a signal cry or not, he cared little. The last half hour had put
him through a wonderful transformation. Life once more flowed high in
every vein never higher. He, an unarmed fugitive whom even the timid
rabbits did not fear, he, who had been for a little while the most
helpless of the forest creatures, had suddenly become the king of them
all. He stood up, strong, powerful, the reloaded rifle in his hands, and
looked and listened attentively for the foe, who could come if he chose.
His little wound was forgotten. He was a truly formidable figure now,
whom the bravest of Indian warriors, even a Wyandot, might shun.
Still hearing and seeing nothing that told of pursuit, he entered the
forest and sped on light foot on the journey that always led to the
southeast. The low rolling hills came again, and they were covered
densely with forest, not an opening anywhere. The foliage, not yet
touched with brown, was dark green and thick, forming a cool canopy
overhead. Tiny brooks of clear water wandered through the mass and among
the tree trunks. Many birds of brilliant plumage flew among the boughs
and sang inspiringly to the youth as he passed.
It was the great, cool woods of the north, the woods that Long Jim Hart
had once lamented so honestly to his comrades when they were in the far
south. Henry smiled at the memory. Long Jim had said that in these woods
a man knew his enemies; the Indians did not pretend to be anything else.
Jim was right, as he had just proved. The Wyandots had never claimed to
be anything but his enemies, and, although they had treated him well for
a time, they had acted thus when the time again came.
Henry smiled once more. He had an overwhelming and just sense of
triumph. He had defeated the Wyandots, the bravest and most skillful of
all the Western tribes. He had slipped through the hundred hands that
sought to hold him, and he was going back to his own, strong and armed.
The rifle was certainly a splendid trophy. Long, slender, and silver
mounted, he had never seen a finer, and his critical eye assured him
that its quality would be equal to its appearance.
He did not stop running while he examined the rifle, and when he put it
back on his shoulder the wind began to blow. Hark! There was the song
among the leaves again, and now it told not merely of hope, but of
victory achieved and danger passed. Henry was sure that he heard it. He
had an imaginative mind like all forest-dwellers, like the Indians
themselves, and he personified everything. The wind was a living,
breathing thing.
He stopped at the end of two or three hours. The sun was sailing high in
the heavens, and he had come at last to a little prairie. Game, it was
likely, would be here, and he meant now to have food, not blackberries,
but the nutritious flesh that his strong body craved. He could easily
secure it now, and he stroked the beautiful rifle joyously.
Except for the great villages at Chillicothe, Piqua, and a few other
places, the Indians shifted their homes often, leaving one region that
the game might increase in it again, until such time as they wished to
come back, and Henry judged that the country in which he now was had
been abandoned for a while. If so, the game should be plentiful and not
shy.
The prairie was perhaps a mile in length, and at its far edge two deer
were grazing. It was not difficult to stalk them, and Henry, choosing
the doe, brought her down with an easy shot. He carried the body into
the woods, skinned it, cut off the tenderer portions, and prepared for a
solid dinner. With his food now before him, he realized how very hungry
he was. Yet he was fastidious, and, as usual, he insisted upon doing all
things in season, and properly.
He brought forth the Indian's flint and steel--he was very glad now that
he had had the forethought to take them--and after much effort set about
kindling a fire. Flint and steel are not such easy things to use, and it
took Henry five minutes to light the blaze, but five minutes later he
was broiling tender, juicy slices of deer meat on the end of a twig, and
then eating them one by one. He ate deliberately, but he ate a great
many, and when he was satisfied he put out the fire. He crushed the
coals into the earth with his heels and covered them with leaves,
instinctive caution making him do it. Then he went deep into the forest,
and, lying down in a thicket, rested a long time.
He knew that the Indian tribes intended to gather at Tuentahahewaghta
(the site of Cincinnati), the place where the waters of the Licking,
coming out of the wild Kentucky woods, joined the Ohio, and he believed
that the best thing for him to do was to go to that point. He calculated
that, despite his long delay at the Wyandot village, he could yet arrive
there ahead of the fleet, and after seeing the Indian mobilization, he
could go back to warn it. Only one thing worried him much now. Had his
four faithful comrades taken his advice and stayed with the fleet, or
were they now in the forest seeking him? He well knew their temper, and
he feared that they had not remained with the boats after his absence
became long.
But these comrades of his were resourceful, and he was presently able to
dismiss the question from his mind. He had acquired with the patience of
the Indian another of his virtues, an ability to dismiss all worries,
sit perfectly still, and be completely happy. This quality may have had
its basis originally in physical content, the satisfaction that came to
the savage when he had eaten all he wished, when no enemy was present,
and he could lie at ease on a soft couch. But in Henry it was higher,
and was founded chiefly on the knowledge of a deed well done and
absolute confidence in the future, although the physical quality was not
lacking.
He felt an immense peace. Nothing was wrong. The day was just right,
neither too hot nor too cool. The blaze of the brilliant skies and of
the great golden sun was pleasantly shaded from his eyes by the green
veil of the leaves. Those surely were the finest deer steaks that he had
ever eaten! There could not be such another wilderness as this on the
face of the earth! And he, Henry Ware, was one of the luckiest of human
beings!
He lay a full two hours wrapped in content. He did not move arm or leg.
Nothing but his long, deep breathing and his bright blue eyes, shaded by
half-fallen lashes, told that he lived. Every muscle was relaxed. There
was absolutely no effort, either physical or mental.
Yet the word passed by the forest creatures to one another was entirely
different from the word that had been passed the night before. The
slackened human figure that never moved was dangerous, it was once more
the king of the wilderness, and the four-footed kind, after looking once
and fearfully upon it, must steal in terror away.
The wolf felt it. Slinking through the thicket, he measured the great
length of the recumbent shape, observed the half-opened eye, and
departed in speed and silence; a yellow puma smelt the human odor,
thought at first that the youth was dead, but, after a single look,
followed the wolf, his heart quaking within him. A foolish bear, also,
shambled into the thicket, but he was not too foolish, after he saw
Henry, to shamble quickly away.
When Henry rose he was as thoroughly refreshed and restored as if he had
never run a gantlet, made a flight of a night and a day, and fought with
a Wyandot for his life. The very completeness of it had made him rest as
much in two hours as another would have rested in six. He resumed his
flight, taking with him venison steaks that he had cooked before he put
out his fire, and he did not stop until the night was well advanced and
the stars had sprung out in a dusky sky. Then he chose another dense
thicket and, lying down in it, was quickly asleep.
He awoke about midnight and saw a faint light shining through the woods.
He judged that it was a long distance away, but he resolved to see what
made it, being sure in advance that it was the glow of an Indian camp
fire.
He approached cautiously, looked from the crest of a low hill into a
snug little valley, and saw that his surmise was true.
About fifty warriors sat or lay around a smouldering fire, and he
inferred from their dress and paint that they were Shawnees. Four who
sat together were talking earnestly, and he knew them to be chiefs. It
was impossible to hear what they said, but he believed this to be a
party on the way to the great meeting at the mouth of Licking. It was
evident that he had not escaped too soon, and he withdrew as cautiously
as he had approached.
An excitable youth would have hastened on in the night at full speed,
but Henry knew better and could do better. He returned to his nest in
the thicket and fell asleep again, as if he had seen nothing alarming.
But he rose very early in the morning, and after a breakfast on the cold
deer meat, made a circle around the Indian camp, and continued his
southeastern journey at great speed.
He traveled all that day, and he saw that he was well into the enemy's
country. Indian signs multiplied about him. Here in the soft earth was
the trace of their moccasins. There they had built a camp fire and the
ashes were not yet cold. Further on they had killed and dressed a deer.
There was little effort at concealment, perhaps, none. This was their
own country, where only the roving white hunter came, and it was his
business, not theirs, to hide. Henry felt the truth of it as he advanced
toward the Ohio. He was compelled to redouble his caution, lest at any
moment he plunge into the very middle of a war band.
He passed more than a half dozen trails of large parties, and he felt
sure that, according to arrangement, they were converging on the Ohio,
at the point where the Licking emptied the waters and silt of the
Kentucky woods into the larger stream. Timmendiquas, no doubt, would be
there, and Henry's heart throbbed a little faster at the thought that he
would meet such a splendid foe.
He lay in a thicket about noonday, and saw over a hundred warriors of
the Ottawas, worshipers of the sun and stars, go by. They were all in
full war paint, and he had no doubt that they had come from the far
western shore of Lake Huron to join the great gathering of the tribes at
Tuentahahewaghta and to help destroy the fleet and all river posts if
they could.
That evening, taking the chances that the Indians would or would not
hear him, he shot a wild turkey in a tree, traveled two or three miles
further, built a small fire in the lee of a hill, where he cooked it,
then ran in a curve three or four miles further, until he came to a
thicket of pawpaw bushes, where he ate heartily by a faint moonlight. He
watched and listened two hours, and then, satisfied that no one had
heard the shot, he went to sleep with the ease and confidence of one who
reposes at home, safe in his bed.
The night was warm. Sleeping in the open was a pleasure to such as Henry
Ware, and he was not disturbed. He had willed that he should wake before
daylight, and his senses obeyed the warning. He came back from slumber
while it was yet dark. But he could feel the coming dawn, and, eating
what was left of the turkey, he sped away.
He saw the sun shoot up in a shower of gold, and the blue spread over
the heavens. He saw the green forest come into the light with the
turning of the world, and he felt the glory of the great wilderness, but
he did not stop for many hours. The day was warmer than the one before,
and when the sun was poised just overhead he began to feel its heat. He
was thirsty, too, and when he heard a gentle trickling among the bushes
he stopped, knowing that a brook or spring was near.
He pressed his way through the dense tangle of undergrowth and entered
the open, where he stood for a few minutes, cooling his eyes with the
silver sparkle of flowing water and the delicate green tints of the
grass, which grew thickly on the banks of the little stream. He was
motionless, yet even in repose he seemed to be the highest type of
physical life and energy, taller than the average man, despite the fact
that he was yet but a boy in years, and with a frame all bone and sinew.
Blue eyes flashed out of a face turned to the brown of leather by a life
that knew no roof-tree, and the uncut locks of yellow hair fell down
from the fur cap that sat lightly upon his head.
Around him the wilderness was blazing with all the hues of spring and
summer, yet untouched by autumn brown. The dense foliage of the forest
formed a vast green veil between him and the sun. Some wild peach trees
in early bloom shone in cones of pink against the green wall. Shy little
flowers of delicate purple nestled in the grass, and at his feet the
waters of the brook gleamed in the sunshine in alternate ripples of
silver and gold, while the pebbles shone white on the shallow bottom.
He stood there, straight and strong like a young oak, a figure in
harmony with the wilderness and its lonely grandeur. He seemed to fit
into the scene, to share its colors, and to become its own. The look of
content in his eyes, like that of a forest creature that has found a
lair to suit him, made him part of it. His dress, too, matched the flush
of color around him. The fur cap upon his head had been dyed the green
of the grass. The darker green of the oak leaves was the tint of his
hunting shirt of tanned buckskin, with the long fringe hanging almost to
his knees. It was the tint, too, of the buckskin leggings which rose
above his moccasins of buffalo hide.
But the moccasins and the seams of the leggings were adorned with
countless little Indian beads of red and blue and yellow, giving dashes
of new color to the green of his dress, just as the wild flowers and
peach blossoms and the silver and gold of the brook varied the dominant
green note of the forest. A careless eye would have passed over him, his
figure making no outline against the wall of forest behind him. It was
the effect that he sought, to pass through wood and thicket and across
the green open, making slight mark for the eye.
Henry was not only a lover of the wilderness and its beauty, but he was
also a conscious one. He would often stop a moment to drink in the glory
of a specially fine phase of it, and this was such a moment. Far off a
range of hills showed a faint blue tracery against the sky of deeper
blue. At their foot was a band of silver, the river to which the brook
that splashed before him was hurrying. Everywhere the grass grew rich
and rank, showing the depth and quality of the soil beneath. A hundred
yards away a buffalo grazed as peacefully as if man had never come, and
farther on a herd of deer raised their heads to sniff the southern wind.
It was pleasant to Henry to gaze upon the stretch of meadow before him.
So he stood for a minute or two, looking luxuriously, his rifle resting
across his shoulder, the sun glinting along its long, slender, blue
barrel. Then he knelt down to drink, choosing a place where a current of
the swift little brook had cut into the bank with a circular sweep, and
had formed a pool of water as clear as the day, a forest mirror.
Henry did not feel the presence of any danger, but he retained all his
caution as he knelt down to drink, a caution become nature through all
the formative years of practice and necessity. His knees made no noise
as they touched the earth. Not a leaf moved. Not a blade of grass
rustled. The rifle remained upon his shoulder, his right hand grasping
it around the stock, just below the hammer, the barrel projecting into
the air. Even as he rested his weight upon one elbow and bent his mouth
to the water, he was ready for instant action.
The water touched his lips, and was cool and pleasant. He had come far,
and was thirsty. He blew the bubbles back and drank, not eagerly nor in
a hurry, but sipping it gently, as one who knows tastes rare old wine.
Then he raised his head a little and looked at his shadow in the water,
as perfect as if a mirror gave back his face. Eyes, mouth, nose, every
feature was shown. He bent his head, sipping the water a little more,
and feeling all its grateful coolness. Then he raised it again and saw a
shadow that had appeared beside his own. The mirror of the water gave
back both perfectly.
An extraordinary thrill ran through him but he made no movement. The
blood was leaping wildly in his veins, but his nerves never quivered. In
the water he could yet see his own shadow as still as the shadow that
had come beside it.
Henry Ware, in that supreme moment, did not know his own thoughts, save
that they were full of bitterness. It hurt him to be trapped so. He had
escaped so much, he had come so far, to be taken thus with ease;
although life was full and glorious to him, he could have yielded it
with a better will in fair battle. There, at least, one did not lose his
forest pride. He had gloried in the skill with which he had practiced
all the arts of the wilderness, and now he was caught like any beginner!
But while these thoughts were running through his mind he retained
complete command of himself, and by no motion, no exclamation, showed
his knowledge that he was not alone. He suppressed his rebellious
nerves, and refused to let them quiver.
The shadow in the water beside his own was distinct. He could see the
features, the hair drawn up at the top of the head into a defiant
scalp-lock, and the outstretched hand holding the tomahawk. He gazed at
the shadow intently. He believed that he could divine his foe's
triumphant thoughts.
The south wind freshened a little, and came to Henry Ware poignant with
the odors of blossom and flower. The brook murmured a quiet song in his
ears. The brilliant sunshine flashed alike over grass and water. It was
a beautiful world, and never had he been more loth to leave it. He
wondered how long it would be until the blow fell. He knew that the
warrior, according to the custom of his race, would prolong his triumph
and exult a little before he struck.
Given a chance with his rifle, Henry would have asked no other favor.
Just that one little gift from fortune! The clutch of his fingers on the
stock tightened, and the involuntary motion sent a new thought through
him. The rifle lay unmoved across his shoulder, its muzzle pointing
upward. Before him in the water the shadow still lay, unchanged, beside
his own. He kept his eyes upon it, marking a spot in the center of the
forehead, while the hand that grasped the rifle crept up imperceptibly
toward the hammer and the trigger. A half minute passed. The warrior
still lingered over his coming triumph. The boy's brown fingers rested
against the hammer of the rifle.
Hope had come suddenly, but Henry Ware made no sign. He blew a bubble or
two in the water, and while he seemed to watch them break, the muzzle of
the rifle shifted gently, until he was sure that it bore directly upon
the spot in the forehead that he had marked on the shadow in the water.
The last bubble broke, and then Henry seemed to himself to put all his
strength into the hand and wrist that held the rifle. His forefinger
grasped the hammer. It flew back with a sharp click. The next instant,
so quickly that time scarcely divided the two movements, he pulled the
trigger and fired.