THE PRIMITIVE MAN
When Henry came back to his world he was lying upon the ground, with his
head against a log, and about him was a circle of brown faces, cold,
hard, expressionless and apparently devoid of human feeling; pity and
mercy seemed to be unknown qualities there. But the boy met them with a
gaze as steady as their own, and then he glanced quickly around the
circle. There was no other prisoner and he saw no ghastly trophy; then
his comrades had escaped, and, deep satisfaction in his heart, he let
his head fall back upon the log. They could do now as they chose with
him, and whatever it might be he felt that he had no cause to fear it.
Three other warriors came in presently, and Henry judged that all the
party were now gathered there. He was still lying near the river on
whose banks he had been struck down, and the shifting clouds let the
moonlight fall upon him. He put his hand to his head where it ached, and
when he took it away, there was blood on his fingers. He inferred that a
heavy blow had been dealt to him with the flat of a tomahawk, but with
the stained fingers he made a scornful gesture. One of the warriors,
apparently a chief, noticed the movement, and he muttered a word or two
which seemed to have the note of approval. Henry rose to his feet and
the chief still regarded him, noting the fearless look, and the hint of
surpassing physical powers soon to come. He put his hand upon the boy's
shoulder and pointed toward the north and west. Henry understood him.
His life was to be spared for the present, at least, and he was to go
with them into the northwest, but to what fate he knew not.
One of the warriors bathed his head, and put upon it a lotion of leaves
which quickly drove away the pain. Henry suffered his ministrations with
primitive stoicism, making no comment and showing no interest.
At a word from the leader they took up their silent march, skirting the
river for a while until they came to a shallow place, where they forded
it, and buried themselves again in the dark forest. They passed among
its shades swiftly, silently and in single file, Henry near the middle
of the column, his figure in the dusk blending into the brown of theirs.
He had completely recovered his strength, and, save for the separation
from his friends and their consequent wonder and sorrow, he would not
have grieved over the mischance. Instinct told him--perhaps it was his
youth, perhaps his ready adaptability that appealed to his captors--that
his life was safe--and now he felt a keen curiosity to know the outcome.
It seemed to him too that without any will of his own he was about to
begin the vast wanderings that he had coveted.
Hour after hour the silent file trod swiftly on into the northwest, no
one speaking, their footfalls making no sound on the soft earth. The
moonlight deepened again, and veiled the trunks and branches in ghostly
silver or gray. By and by it grew darker and then out of the blackness
came the first shoot of dawn. A shaft of pale light appeared in the
east, then broadened and deepened, bringing in its trail, in terrace
after terrace, the red and gold of the rising sun. Then the light swept
across the heavens and it was full day.
They were yet in the forest and the dawn was cold. Here and there in the
open spaces and on the edges of the brown leaves appeared the white
gleam of frost. The rustle of the woods before the western wind was
chilly in the ear. But Henry was without sign of fatigue or cold. He
walked with a step as easy and as tireless as that of the strongest
warrior in the band, and at all times he held himself, as if he were one
of them, not their prisoner.
About an hour after dawn the party which numbered fifteen men halted at
a signal from the chief and began to eat the dried meat of the buffalo,
taken from their pouches. They gave him a good supply of the food, and
he found it tough but savory. Hunger would have given a sufficient sauce
to anything and as he ate in a sort of luxurious content he studied his
captors with the advantage of the daylight. The full sunshine disclosed
no more of softness and mercy than the night had shown. The features
were immobile, the eyes fixed and hard, but when the gaze of any one of
them, even the chief, met the boy's it was quickly turned. There was
about them something furtive, something of the lower kingdom of the
animals. That inherited primitive instinct, recently flaming up with
such strength in him, did not tell him that they were his full brethren.
But he did not hate them, instead they interested him.
After eating they rested an hour or more in the covert of a thicket and
Henry saw the beautiful day unfold. The sunshine was dazzling in its
glory, the crisp wind made one's blood sparkle like a tonic, and it was
good merely to live. A vast horizon inclosed only the peace of the
wilderness.
The chief said some words to Henry, but the boy could understand none of
them, and he shook his head. Then the chief took the rifle that had
belonged to the captive, tapped it on the barrel and pointed toward the
southeast. Henry nodded to indicate that he had come from that point,
and then smiling swept the circle of the northwestern horizon with his
hands. He meant to say that he would go with them without resistance,
for the present, at least, and the chief seemed to understand, as his
face relaxed into a look of comprehension and even of good nature.
Their march was resumed presently and as before it was straight into the
northwest. They passed out of the forest crossed the Ohio in hidden
canoes and entered a region of small but beautiful prairies, cut by
shallow streams, which they waded with undiminished speed. Henry began
to suspect that the band came from some very distant country, and was
hastening so much in order not to be caught on the hunting grounds of
rival tribes. The northwesterly direction that they were following
confirmed him in this belief.
All the day passed on the march but shortly after the night came on and
they had eaten a little more of the jerked meat, they lay down in a
thicket, and Henry, unmindful of his captivity, fell in a few minutes
into a sleep that was deep, sweet and dreamless. He did not know then
that before he was asleep long the chief took a robe of tanned deerskin
and threw it over him, shielding his body from the chill autumn night.
In the morning shortly before he awoke the chief took away the robe.
That day they came to a mighty river and Henry knew that the yellow
stream was that of the Mississippi. The Indians dragged from the
sheltering undergrowth two canoes, in which the whole party paddled up
stream until nightfall, when they hid the canoes again in the foliage on
the western shore, and then encamped on the crest. They seemed to feel
that they were out of danger now as they built a fine fire and the
captive basked in its warmth.
Henry had not made the slightest effort to escape, nor had he indicated
any wish to do so, finding his reward in the increased freedom which the
warriors gave to him. He had never been bound and now he could walk as
he chose in a limited area about the camp. But he did not avail himself
of the privilege, for the present, preferring to sit by the fire, where
he saw pictures of Wareville and those whom he loved. Then he had a
swift twinge of conscience. When they heard they would grieve deep and
long for him and one, his mother, would never forget. He should have
sought more eagerly to escape, and he glanced quickly about him, but
there was no chance. However careless the warriors might seem there was
always one between him and the forest. He resigned himself with a sigh
but had he thought how quickly the pain passed his conscience would have
hurt him again. Now he felt much comfort where he sat; the night was
really cold, bitingly cold, and it was a glorious fire. As he sat before
it and basked in its radiance he felt the glorious physical joy that
must have thrilled some far-away primeval ancestor, as he hugged the
coals in his cave after coming in from the winter storm.
Henry had the best place by the fire and a warrior who was sitting where
his back was exposed to the wind moved over and shoved him away. Henry
without a word smote him in the face with such force that the man fell
flat and Henry thrust him aside, resuming his original position. The
warrior rose to his feet and rubbed his bruised face, looking doubtfully
at the boy who sat in such stolid silence, staring into the coals and
paying no further attention to his opponent. The Indian never uses his
fists, and his hand strayed to the handle of his tomahawk; then, as it
strayed away again he sat down on the far side of the fire, and he too
began to stare stolidly into the red coals. The chief, Black Cloud,
bestowed on both a look of approval, but uttered no comment.
Presently Black Cloud gave some orders to his men and they lay down to
sleep, but the chief took the deerskin robe and handed it to Henry. His
manner was that of one making a gift, and a gesture confirmed the
impression. Henry took the robe which he would need and thanked the
chief in words whose meaning the donor might gather from the tone. Then
he lay down and slept as before a dreamless sleep all through the night.
Their journey lasted many days and every hour of it was full of interest
to Henry, appealing alike to his curiosity and its gratification. He was
launched upon the great wandering and he found in it both the glamour
and the reality that he wished, the reality in the rivers and the
forests and the prairies that he saw, and the glamour in the hope of
other and greater rivers and forests and prairies to come.
Indian summer was at hand. All the woods were dyed in vivid colors, reds
and yellows and browns, and glowed with dazzling hues in the intense
sunlight. Often the haze of Indian summer hung afar and softened every
outline. Henry's feeling that he was one of the band grew stronger, and
they, too, began to regard him as their own. His freedom was extended
more and more and with astonishing quickness he soon picked up enough
words of their dialect to make himself intelligible. They took him with
them, when they turned aside for hunting expeditions, and he was
permitted now and then to use his own rifle. Only six men in the band
had guns, and two of these guns were rifles the other four being
muskets. Henry soon showed that he was the best marksman among them and
respect for him grew. The Indian whom he knocked down was slightly gored
by a stag when only Henry was near, but Henry slew the stag, bound up
the man's wound and stayed by him until the others came. The warrior,
Gray Fox, speedily became one of his best friends.
Henry's enjoyment became more intense; all the trammels of civilization
were now thrown aside, he never thought of the morrow because the day
with its interests was sufficient, and from his new friends he learned
fresh lore of the forest with marvelous rapidity; they taught him how to
trail, to take advantage of every shred of cover and to make signals by
imitating the cry of bird or beast. Once they were caught in a
hailstorm, when it turned bitterly cold, but he endured it as well as
the best of them, and made not a single complaint.
They came at last to their village, a great distance west of the
Mississippi, a hundred lodges perhaps, pitched in a warm and sheltered
valley and the boy, under the fostering care of Black Cloud, was
formally adopted into the tribe, taking up at once the thread of his new
life, and finding in it the same keen interest that had marked all the
stages of the great journey.
The climate here was colder than that from which he had come, and
winter, with fierce winds from the Great Plains was soon upon them. But
the camp which was to remain there until spring was well chosen and the
steep hills about them fended off the worst of the blast. Yet the snow
came soon in great, whirling flakes and fell all one night. The next
morning the boy saw the world in white and he found it singularly
beautiful. The snow he did not mind as clothing of dressed skins had
been given to him and he had a warm buffalo robe for a blanket. Now,
young as he was, he became one of the best hunters for the village and
with the others he roamed far over the snowy hills in search of game.
Many were the prizes that fell to his steady aim and eye, chief among
them the deer, the bear and the buffalo.
His fame in the village grew fast, and it would be hiding the fact to
deny that he enjoyed it. The wild rough life with its limitless range
over time and space appealed to every instinct in him, and his new fame
as a tireless and skillful hunter was very sweet to him. He thought of
his people and Wareville, it is true, but he consoled himself again with
the belief that they were well and he would return to them when the
chance came, and then he plunged all the deeper and with all the more
zest into his new life which had so many fascinations. At Wareville
there were certain bounds which he must respect, certain weights which
he must carry, but here he was free from both.
Meanwhile his body thrived at a prodigious rate. One could almost see
him grow. There was not a warrior in the village who was as strong as
he, and already he surpassed them all in endurance; none was so fleet of
foot nor so tireless. His face and hair darkened in the wind and sun,
his last vestige of civilized garb had disappeared long ago, and he was
clothed wholly in deerskin. His features grew stronger and keener and
the eyes were incessantly watchful, roving hither and thither, covering
every point within range. It would have taken more than a casual glance
now to discover that he was white.
The winter deepened. The snow was continuous, fierce blasts blew in from
the distant western plains and even searched out their sheltered valley.
The old men and the women shivered in the lodges, but sparkling young
blood and tireless action kept the boy warm and flourishing through it
all. Game grew scarce about them and the hunters went far westward in
search of the buffalo.
Henry was with the party that traveled farthest toward the setting sun,
and it was long before they returned. Winter was at its height and when
they came out of the forest into the waving open stretches which are the
Great Plains all things were hidden by the snow.
Henry from the summit of a little hill saw before him an expanse as
mighty as the sea, and like it in many of its aspects. They told him
that it rolled away to the westward, no man knew how far, as none of
them had ever come to the end of it. In summer it was covered with life.
Here grew thick grass and wild flowers and the buffalo passed in
millions.
It inspired in Henry a certain awe and yet by its very vagueness and
immensity it attracted. Just as he had wished to explore the secrets of
the forest he would like now to tread the Great Plains and find what
they held.
They turned toward the southwest in search of buffalo and were caught in
a great storm of wind and hail. The cold was bitter and the wind cut to
the bone. They were saved from freezing to death only by digging a rude
shelter through the snow into the side of a hill, and there they
crouched for two days with so little food left in their knapsacks, that
without game, they would perish, in a week, of hunger, if the cold did
not get the first chance. The most experienced hunters went forth, but
returned with nothing, thankful for so little a mercy as the ability to
get back to their half-shelter.
Henry at last took his rifle and ventured out alone--the others were too
listless to stop him--and before the noon hour he found a buffalo bull,
some outcast from the herd which had gone southward, struggling in the
snow. The bull was old and lean, and it took two bullets to bring him
down, but his death meant their life and Henry hurried to the camp with
the joyful news. It was clearly recognized that he had saved them, but
no one said anything and Henry was glad of their silence.
When the storm ceased they renewed their journey toward the south with a
plentiful supply of food and not long afterwards the snow began to melt.
Under the influence of a warm wind out of the southwest it disappeared
with marvelous quickness; one day the earth was all white, and the next
it was all brown. The warm wind continued to blow, and then faint
touches of green began to appear in the dead grass; there were delicate
odors, the breath of the great warm south, and they knew that spring was
not far away.
In a week they ran into the buffalo herd, a mighty black mass of moving
millions. The earth rumbled hollowly under the tread of a myriad feet,
and the plain was black with bodies to the horizon and beyond.
They killed as many of the buffalo as they wished and after the fashion
of the more northerly Indians reduced the meat to pemmican. Then, each
man bearing as much as he could conveniently carry, they began their
swift journey homeward, not knowing whether they would arrive in time
for the needs of the village.
Henry felt a deep concern for these new friends of his who were left
behind in the valley. He shared the anxiety of the others who feared
lest they would be too late and that fact reconciled him to the retreat
from the Great Plains, whose mysteries he longed to unravel.
As they went swiftly eastward the spring unfolded so fast that it seemed
to Henry to come with one great jump. They were now in the forests and
everywhere the trees were laden with fresh buds, in all the open spaces
the young grass was springing up, and the brooks, as if rejoicing in
their new freedom from the ice-bound winter, ran in sparkling little
streams between green banks.
The physical world was full of beauty to him, more so than ever because
his power of feeling it had grown. During the winter and by the
triumphant endurance of so many hardships his form had expanded and the
tide of sparkling blood had risen higher. Although a captive he was
regarded in a sense as the leader of the hunting party; it was obvious,
in the deference that the others, though much older, showed to him and
he knew that only his resource, courage and endurance had saved them all
from death. A song of triumph was singing in his veins.
They found the village at the edge of starvation despite the approach of
spring; two or three of the older people had died already of weakness,
and their supplies arrived just in time to relieve the crisis. There
were willing tongues to tell of his exploits, and Henry soon perceived
that he was a hero to them all and he enjoyed it, because it was natural
to him to be a leader, and he loved to breathe the air of approbation.
Yet as they valued him more they grew more jealous of him, and they
watched him incessantly, lest he should take it into his head to flee to
the people who were once his own. Henry saw the difficulty and again it
soothed his conscience by showing to him that he could not do what he
yet had a lingering feeling that he ought to do.
Good luck seemed to come in a shower to the village with the return of
the hunting party. Spring leaped suddenly into full bloom, and the woods
began to swarm with game. It was the most plentiful season that the
oldest man could recall, there was no hunter so lazy and so dull that he
could not find the buffalo and the deer.
Then the band, with the spirit of irresponsible wandering upon it, took
down its lodges and traveled slowly into the north farther and farther
from the little settlement away down in Kentucky. There was peace among
the tribes and they could go as they chose. They came at last to the
shores of a mighty lake, Superior, and here when Henry looked out upon
an expanse of water, as limitless to the eyes as the sea, he felt the
same thrill of awe that had passed through his veins when the Great
Plains lay outspread before him. As it was now midsummer and the forests
crackled in the heat they lingered long by the deep cool waters of the
lake. Here white traders, Frenchmen speaking a tongue unknown to Henry,
came to them with rifles, ammunition and bright-colored blankets to
trade for furs. More than one of them saw and admired the tall powerful
young warrior with the singularly watchful eyes but not one of them knew
that under his paint and tan he was whiter than themselves; instead they
took him to be the wildest of the wild.
Henry's heart had throbbed a little at the first sight of them, but it
was only for a moment, then it beat as steadily as ever; white like
himself they might be, but they were of an alien race; their speech was
not his speech, their ways not his ways and he turned from them. He was
glad when they were gone.
Toward the end of summer they went south again and wandered idly through
pleasant places. It was still a full season with wild fruits hanging
from the trees and game everywhere. There had been no sickness in the
little tribe and they basked in physical content. It was now a careless
easy life with the stimulus of wandering and hunting and all the old
primeval instincts in Henry, made stronger by habit, were gratified. He
fell easily into the ways of his friends; when there was nothing to do
he could sit for hours looking at the forests and the streams and the
sunshine, letting his soul steep in the glory of it all. To his other
qualities he now added that of illimitable patience. He could wait for
what he wished as the Eskimo sits for days at the air hole until the
seal appears.
In their devious wanderings they kept a general course toward the valley
in which they had passed the first winter, intending to renew their camp
there during the cold weather, but autumn, as they intended, was at hand
before they reached it. They were yet a long distance north and west of
their valley when they were threatened by a danger with which they had
not reckoned. A local tribe claimed that the band was infringing upon
their hunting grounds and began war with a treacherous attack upon a
hunting party.
The war was not long but the few hundreds who took part in it shared all
the passions and fierce emotions of two great nations in conflict. Henry
was in the thick of it, first alike in attack and defense, superior to
the Indians themselves in wiles and cunning. Several of the hostile
tribe fell at his hand, although he could not take a scalp, the remnants
of his early training forbidding it. But once or twice he was ashamed of
the weakness. The hostile party was triumphantly beaten off with great
loss to itself and Henry and his friends pursued their journey leisurely
and triumphantly. Now besides being a great hunter he was a great
warrior too.