CONFUSED.
The two Indians who had startled Sam, were on the point of entering the
old dwelling house, and seemingly were unaccompanied by any others. Sam
happened fortunately to be standing in shadow, and they passed without
seeing him. But what was he now to do? He was at the back of the house,
and a high picket fence around the place made it impossible for him to
escape by the front-way, towards which the savages had gone. Looking
through the door-way, he saw that the pair had passed through the room
nearest him and into the adjoining apartment. He knew that other Indians
were in the neighborhood, and that a dozen of them might wander into the
enclosure at any moment. Resolving upon a bold manoeuvre, he stepped
lightly into the rear room of the house, and climbed up inside the wide
mouthed chimney. Whether the Indians heard him or not he never knew, but
at any rate he was none too soon in hiding, for he had hardly cleared
the fireplace in his ascent when four or five savages came into the room
and began to demolish the few articles of furniture left in the house.
They had got whiskey somewhere, and having drank freely were even
noisier than white men get under the influence of strong drink. They
remained but a short time, when, setting fire again to the half-burned
house, they left the place yelling as savages only can. Sam escaped as
soon as he could from his uncomfortable quarters and made his way to the
grove. Mounting his horse he rode away in the direction of the root
fortress, keeping in the woods as well as he could and taking every
precaution to avoid coming suddenly upon savages.
As he rode only at night, the Indians' almost universal habit of
building camp-fires wherever they stop for the night, helped him to
avoid them. When morning came he sought a place deep in the forest, when
he turned his horse loose to graze all day, while he slept at some
distance from the animal, so that the noise of the beast's stamping and
browsing might not lead to the discovery of his own whereabouts.
As the evening of the second day of his return came round, Sam found
himself genuinely sick. His foot and leg were much inflamed, and the
excitement of the preceding night, together with his continued exposure
to the drenching dews of the Southern autumn, had brought back his fever
with increased violence, and a very brief experiment convinced him that
he could not go further that night. He mounted his horse, but had ridden
less than a mile when he felt a giddiness coming over him and found it
necessary to abandon the effort to ride that night. He could hardly see,
and the pain in his head, neck, back and limbs was excruciating. He
dismounted and threw himself down on the ground without taking the
trouble even to separate himself from his horse. The truth is, Sam had
what they call in South Carolina country fever, a high type of malarial
fever, which stupefies and benumbs its victim almost as soon as it
attacks him. The dews in the far South, especially in the fall, are so
heavy that the water will drip and even stream off the foliage of the
trees all night, and Sam had been drenched every night during both his
journeys, having no fire by which to warm himself or dry his clothes.
Even without this drenching the poisonous exhalations of the swamps and
woods would doubtless have given him the fever, and as it was he had it
very severely. He laid down again almost under his horse's feet and fell
into a sort of stupor. He knew that his fever required treatment, and
that it would rapidly sap his strength, and the thought came to him:
What if he should die there and never get back to the tree fortress? He
was too sick to care for himself, but the thought of little Judie
haunted his dreams, and he was seized with a semi-delirious impulse to
remount his horse and ride straight away to the hiding-place in which he
had left her, regardless of Indians, and of everything else. He dreamed
a dozen times that he was doing this, and finally, when morning came, he
forgot all about the danger of travelling by daylight, and mounting his
horse in a confused, half-delirious way, rode straight out of the woods
towards the open country, which he had hitherto so carefully avoided.