THE RETURN
Wareville lay in its pleasant valley, rejoicing in the young spring, so
kind with its warm rains that the men of the village foresaw a great
season for crops. The little river flowed in a silver current, smoke
rose from many chimneys, and now and then the red homemade linsey dress
of a girl gleamed in the sunlight like the feathers of the scarlet
tanager. To the left were the fields cleared for Indian corn, and to the
right were the gardens. Beyond both were the hills and the unbroken
forest.
Now and then a man, carrying on his shoulder the inevitable Kentucky
rifle, long and slender-barreled, passed through the palisade, but the
cardinal note of the scene was peace and cheerfulness. The town was
prospering, its future no longer belonged to chance; there would be
plenty, of the kind that they liked.
In the Ware house was a silent sadness, silent because these were stern
people, living in a stern time, and it was the custom to hide one's
griefs. The oldest son was gone; whether he had perished nobody knew,
nor, if he had perished, how.
John Ware was not an emotional man, feelings rarely showed on his face,
and his wife alone knew how hard the blow had been to him--she knew
because she had suffered from the same stroke. But the children, the
younger brother Charles and the sister Mary could not always remember,
and with them the impression of the one who was gone would grow dimmer
in time. The border too always expected a certain percentage of loss in
human life, it was one of the facts with which the people must reckon,
and thus the name of Henry Ware was rarely spoken.
To-day was without a cloud. New emigrants had come across the mountains,
adding welcome strength to the colony, and extending the limits of the
village. But danger had passed them by, they had heard once or twice
more of the great war in the far-away East, but it was so distant and
vague that most of them forgot it; the Indians across the Ohio had never
come this way, and so far Henry Ware was the only toll that they had
paid to the wilderness. There was cause for happiness, as human
happiness goes.
A slim girl bearing in her hand a wooden pail came through the gate of
the palisade. She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown hair
coiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleams
where the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yet
very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of
health. She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fit
suggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure. She walked
with strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside,
and which after a short course fell into the little river.
It was Lucy Upton, grown much taller now, as youth develops rapidly on
the border, a creature nourished into physical perfection first by the
good blood that was in her, then developed in the open air, and by work,
neither too little nor too much.
She reached the spring, and setting the pail by its side looked down at
the cool, gushing stream. It invited her and she ran her white rounded
arm through it, making curves and oblongs that were gone before they
were finished. She was in a thoughtful mood. Once or twice she looked at
the forest, and each time that she looked she shivered because the
shadow of the wilderness was then very heavy upon her.
Silas Pennypacker, the schoolmaster, came to the spring while she was
there, and they spoke together, because they were great friends, these
two. He was unchanged, the same strong gray man, with the ruddy face. He
was not unhappy here despite the seeming incongruity of his presence.
The wilderness appealed to him too in a way, he was the intellectual
leader of the colony and almost everything that his nature called for
met with a response.
"The spring is here, Lucy," he said, "and it has been an easy winter. We
should be thankful that we have fared so well."
"I think that most of us are," she replied. "We'll soon be a big town."
She glanced at the spreading settlement, and this launched Mr.
Pennypacker upon a favorite theme of his. He liked to predict how the
colony would grow, sowing new seed, and already he saw great cities to
be. He found a ready listener in Lucy. This too appealed to her
imagination at times, and if at other times interest was lacking, she
was too fond of the old man to let him know it. Presently when she had
finished she filled the pail and stood up, straight and strong.
"I will carry it for you," said the schoolmaster.
She laughed.
"Why should I let you?" she asked. "I am more able than you."
Most men would have taken it ill to have heard such words from a girl,
but she was one among many, above the usual height for her years; she
created at once the impression of great strength, both physical and
mental; the heavy pail of water hung in her hand, as if it were a trifle
that she did not notice. The master smiled and looked at her with eyes
of fatherly admiration.
"I must admit that you tell the truth," he said. "This West of ours
seems to suit you."
"It is my country now," she said, "and I do not care for any other."
"Since you will not let me carry the water you will at least let me walk
with you?" he said.
She did not reply, and he was startled by the sudden change that came
over her.
First a look of wonder showed on her face, then she turned white, every
particle of color leaving her cheeks. The master could not tell what her
expression meant, and he followed her eyes which were turned toward the
wilderness.
From the forest came a figure very strange to Silas Pennypacker, a
figure of barbaric splendor. It was a youth of great height and powerful
frame, his face so brown that it might belong to either the white or the
red race, but with fine clean features like those of a Greek god. He was
clad in deerskins, ornamented with little colored beads and fringes of
brilliant dyes. He carried a slender-barreled rifle over his shoulder,
and he came forward with swift, soundless steps.
The master recoiled in alarm at the strange and ominous figure, but as
the red flooded back into the girl's cheeks she put her hand upon his
arm.
"It is he! I knew that he was not dead!" she said in an intense
tremulous whisper. The words were indefinite, but the master knew whom
she meant, and there was a surge of joy in his heart, to be followed the
next moment by doubt and astonishment. It was Henry Ware who had come
back, but not the same Henry Ware.
Henry was beside them in a moment and he seized their hands, first the
hands of one and then of the other, calling them by name.
The master recovering from his momentary diffidence threw his arms
around his former pupil, welcomed him with many words, and wanted to
know where he had been so long.
"I shall tell you, but not now," replied Henry, "because there is no
time to spare; you are threatened by a great danger. The Shawnees are
coming with a thousand warriors and I have hastened ahead to warn you."
He hurried them inside the palisade, his manner tense, masterful and
convincing, and there he met his mother, whose joy, deep and grateful,
was expressed in few words after the stern Puritan code. The father and
the brother and sister came next, but the younger people like Lucy felt
a little fear of him, and his old comrade Paul Cotter scarcely knew him.
He told in a few words of his escape from a far Northwestern tribe, of
the coming of the Shawnees, and of the need to take every precaution for
defense.
"There is no time to spare," he said. "All must be called in at once."
A man with powerful lungs blew long on a cow's horn, those who were at
work in the fields and the forest hastened in, the gates were barred,
the best marksmen were sent to watch in the upper story of the
blockhouses and at the palisade, and the women began to mold bullets.
Henry Ware was the pervading spirit through all the preparations. He
knew everything and thought of everything, he told them the mode of
Indian attack and how they could best meet it, he compelled them to
strengthen the weak spots in the palisade, and he encouraged all those
who were faint of heart and apprehensive.
Lucy's slight fear of him remained, but with it now came admiration. She
saw that his was a soul fit to lead and command, the work that he was
about to do he loved, his eyes were alight with the fire of battle; a
certain joy was shining there, and all, feeling the strength of his
spirit, obeyed him without asking why.
Only Braxton Wyatt uttered doubts with words and sneered with looks. He
too had become a hunter of skill, and hence what he said might have some
merit.
"It seems strange that Henry Ware should come so suddenly when he might
have come before," he remarked with apparent carelessness to Lucy Upton.
She looked at him with sharp interest. The same thought had entered her
mind, but she did not like to hear Braxton Wyatt utter it.
"At all events he is about to save us from a great danger," she said.
Wyatt laughed and his thin long features contracted in an ugly manner.
"It is a tale to impress us and perhaps to cover up something else," he
replied. "There is not an Indian within two hundred miles of us. I know,
I have been through the woods and there is no sign."
She turned away, liking his words little and his manner less. She
stopped presently by a corner of one of the houses on a slight elevation
whence she could see a long distance beyond the palisade. So far as
seeming went Braxton Wyatt was certainly right. The spring day was full
of golden sunshine, the fresh new green of the forest was unsullied, and
it was hard to conjure up even the shadow of danger.
Wyatt might have ground for his suspicion, but why should Henry Ware
sound a false alarm? The words "perhaps to cover up something else"
returned to her mind, but she dismissed them angrily.
She went to the Ware house and rejoiced with Mrs. Ware, to whom a son
had come back from the dead, and in whose joy there was no flaw.
According to her mother's heart a wonder had been performed, and it had
been done for her special benefit.
The village was in full posture of defense, all were inside the walls
and every man had gone to his post. They now awaited the attack, and yet
there was some distrust of Henry Ware. Braxton Wyatt, a clever youth,
had insidiously sowed the seeds of suspicion, and already there was a
crop of unbelief. By indirection he had called attention to the strange
appearance of the returned wanderer, the Indianlike air that he had
acquired, his new ways unlike their own, and his indifference to many
things that he had formerly liked. He noticed the change in Henry Ware's
nature and he brought it also to the notice of others.
It seemed as the brilliant day passed peacefully that Wyatt was right
and Henry, for some hidden purpose of his own, perhaps to hide the
secret of his long absence, had brought to them this sounding alarm.
There was the sun beyond the zenith in the heavens, the shadows of
afternoon were falling, and the yellow light over the forest softened
into gray, but no sign of an enemy appeared.
If Henry Ware saw the discontent he did not show his knowledge; the
light of the expected conflict was still in his eyes and his thoughts
were chiefly of the great event to come; yet in an interval of waiting
he went back to the house and told his mother of much that had befallen
him during his long absence; he sought to persuade himself now that he
could not have escaped earlier, and perhaps without intending it he
created in her mind the impression that he sought to engrave upon his
own; so she was fully satisfied, thankful for the great mercy of his
return that had been given to her.
"Now mother!" he said at last, "I am going outside."
"Outside!" she cried aghast, "but you are safe here! Why not stay?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"I shall be safe out there, too," he said, "and it is best for us all
that I go. Oh, I know the wilderness, mother, as you know the rooms of
this house!"
He kissed her quickly and turned away. John Ware, who stood by, said
nothing. He felt a certain fear of his son and did not yet know how to
command him.
As Henry passed from the house into the little square Lucy Upton
overtook him.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I think I can be of more help out there than in here," he replied
pointing toward the forest.
"It would be better for you to stay," she said.
"I shall be in no danger."
"It is not that; do you know what some of them here are saying of
you--that you are estranged from us, that there is some purpose in this,
that no attack is coming! Your going now will confirm them in the
belief."
His dark eyes flashed with a fierceness that startled her, and his whole
frame seemed to draw up as if he were about to spring. But the emotion
passed in a moment, and his face was a brown mask, saying nothing. He
seemed indifferent to the public opinion of his little world.
"I am needed out there," he said, pointing again toward the dark line of
the forest, "and I shall go. Whether I tell the truth or not will soon
be known; they will have to wait only a little. But you believe me now,
don't you?"
She looked deep into his calm eyes, and she read there only truth. But
she knew even before she looked that Henry Ware was not one who would
ever be guilty of falsehood or treachery.
"Oh yes I know it," she replied, "but I wish others to know it as well."
"They will," he said, and then taking her hand in his for one brief
moment he was gone. His disappearance was so sudden and soundless that
he seemed to her to melt away from her sight like a mist before the
wind. She did not even know how he had passed through the palisade, but
he was certainly outside and away. There was something weird about it
and she felt a little fear, as if an event almost supernatural had
occurred.
The sudden departure of Henry Ware to the forest started the slanderous
tongues to wagging again, and they said it was a trap of some kind,
though no one could tell how. A sly report was started that he had
become that worst of all creatures in his time, a renegade, a white man
who allied himself with the red to make war upon his own people. It came
to the ears of Paul Cotter, and the heart of the loyal youth grew hot
within him. Paul was not fond of war and strife, but he had an abounding
courage, and he and Henry Ware had been through danger together.
"He is changed, I will admit," he said, "but if he says we are going to
be attacked, we shall be. I wish that all of us were as true as he."
He touched his gun lock in a threatening manner, and Braxton Wyatt and
the others who stood by said no more in his presence. Yet the course of
the day was against Henry's assertion. The afternoon waned, the sun, a
ball of copper, swung down into the west, long shadows fell and nothing
happened.
The people moved and talked impatiently inside their wooden walls. They
spoke of going about their regular pursuits, there was work that could
be done on the outside in the twilight, and enough time had been lost
already through a false alarm. But some of the older men, with cautious
blood, advised them to wait and their counsel was taken. Night came,
thick and black, and to the more timid full of omens and presages.
The forest sank away in the darkness, nothing was visible fifty yards
from the palisade and in the log houses few lights burned. The little
colony, but a pin point of light, was alone in the vast and circling
wilderness. One of the greatest tests of courage to which the human race
has ever been subjected was at hand. In all directions the forest curved
away, hundreds of miles. It would be a journey of days to find any other
of their own kind, they were hemmed in everywhere by silence and
loneliness, whatever happened they must depend upon themselves, because
there was none to bring help. They might perish, one and all, and the
rest of the world not hear of it until long afterwards.
A moaning wind came up and sighed over the log houses, the younger
children--and few were too young not to guess what was expected--fell
asleep at last, but the older, those who had reached their thinking
years could not find such solace. In this black darkness their fears
became real; there was no false alarm, the forest around them hid their
enemy, but only for the time.
There was little noise in the station. By the low fires in the houses
the women steadily molded bullets, and seldom spoke to each other, as
they poured the melted lead into the molds. By the walls the men too,
rifle in hand, were silent, as they sought with intent eyes to mark what
was passing in the forest.
Lucy Upton was molding bullets in her father's house and they were
melting the lead at a bed of coals in the wide fireplace. None was
steadier of hand or more expert than she. Her face was flushed as she
bent over the fire and her sleeves were rolled back, showing her strong
white arms. Her lips were compressed, but as the bullets shining like
silver dropped from the mold they would part now and then in a slight
smile. She too had in her the spirit of warlike ancestors and it was
aroused now. Girl, though she was, she felt in her own veins a little of
the thrill of coming conflict.
But her thoughts were not wholly of attack and defense; they followed as
well him who had come back so suddenly and who was now gone again into
the wilderness from which he had emerged. His appearance and manner had
impressed her deeply. She wished to hear more from him of the strange
wild life that he had led; she too felt, although in a more modified
form, the spell of the primeval.
Her task finished she went to the door, and then drawn by curiosity she
continued until her walk brought her near the palisade where she watched
the men on guard, their dusky figures touched by the wan light that came
from the slender crescent of a moon, and seeming altogether weird and
unreal. Paul Cotter in one of his errands found her there.
"You had better go back," he said. "We may be attacked at any time, and
a bullet or arrow could reach you here."
"So you believe with me that an attack will be made as he said!"
"Of course I do," replied Paul with emphasis. "Don't I know Henry Ware?
Weren't he and I lost together? Wasn't he the truest of comrades?"
Several men, talking in low tones, approached them. Braxton Wyatt was
with them and Lucy saw at once that it was a group of malcontents.
"It is nothing," said Seth Lowndes, a loud, arrogant man, the boaster of
the colony. "There are no Indians in these parts and I'm going out there
to prove it."
He stood in the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and it
lighted up his red sneering face. Lucy and Paul could see him plainly
and each felt a little shiver of aversion. But neither said anything
and, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were not noticed
by the others.
"I'm going outside," repeated Lowndes in a yet more noisy tone, "and if
I run across anything more than a deer I'll be mighty badly fooled!"
One or two uttered words of protest, but it seemed to Lucy that Braxton
Wyatt incited him to go on, joining him in words of contempt for the
alleged danger.
Lowndes reached the palisade and climbed upon it by means of the cross
pieces binding it together, and then he stood upon the topmost bar,
where his head and all his body, above the knees, rose clear of the
bulwark. He was outlined there sharply, a stout, puffy man, his face
redder than ever from the effect of climbing, and his eyes gleaming
triumphantly as, from his high perch, he looked toward the forest.
"I tell you there is not--" But the words were cut short, the gleam died
from his eyes, the red fled from his face, and he whitened suddenly with
terror. From the forest came a sharp report, echoing in the still night,
and the puffy man, throwing up his arms, fell from the palisade back
into the inclosure, dead before he touched the ground.
A fierce yell, the long ominous note of the war whoop burst from the
forest, and its sound, so full of menace and fury, was more terrible
than that of the rifle. Then came other shots, a rapid pattering volley,
and bullets struck with a low sighing sound against the upper walls of
the blockhouse. The long quavering cry, the Indian yell rose and died
again and in the black forest, still for aught else, it was weird and
unearthly.
Lucy stood like stone when the lifeless body of the boaster fell almost
at her feet, and all the color was gone from her face. The terrible cry
of the savages without was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her,
for a few moments, that she could not move. But Paul grasped her by the
arm and drew her back.
"Go into your house!" he cried. "A bullet might reach you here!"
Obedient to his duty he hastened to the palisade to bear a valiant hand
in the defense, and she, retreating a little, remained in the shadow of
the houses that she might see how events would go. After the first shock
of horror and surprise she was not greatly afraid, and she was conscious
too of a certain feeling of relief. Henry Ware had told the truth, he
knew of what he spoke when he brought his warning, and he had greatly
served his own.