HOW BIG BLACK BURL FIGURED IN A QUANDARY.
A broad red glare, striking full upon his closed eyelids, and bringing
with it the alarming thought that Fort Reynolds had been set on fire by
an army of besieging Indians, roused Big Black Burl from the deepest,
heaviest sleep he had ever known. With a huge start he had scrambled to
his feet, and, blinded by the glare, was rushing out of his cabin, so he
thought, to rescue Miss Jemima and Bushie from the flames, when his foot
striking something soft and bulky, down with a tremendous squelch he
fell to the ground. The next moment, now wide-awake, he saw that he had
stumbled over his trusty sentinel Grumbo--when all the rest struck like
a lightning flash upon his mind, fell like a thunderbolt upon his heart.
Sad, sad to tell, the night, the friendly night, like a slighted ally,
was gone; and with it the golden chance for vengeance to the warrior,
deliverance to the captive. The day, the unwished for, the unprayed for,
the most unwelcome day, like a challenged foe, had come; and with it new
perils, tenfold risk of failure and disaster. "O Burlman Reynolds, born
of Ebony as thou wert, how couldst thou so far lose sight of the
besetting weakness of thy race, as thus, in a moment like this, on the
critical edge of hazard and hope, to trust thy limbs and senses to the
deceitful embraces of sleep? Black sluggard, avaunt! The Fighting Nigger
be upon thee!"
Full of the bitterest self-reproach, and with a feeling of
disappointment bordering on despair, Burl looked bewilderingly about
him. The newly risen sun, as if taunting him with the sorry miscarriage
of his well-laid plans, was winking at him with its great impertinent
eye, from over the hairy shoulder of a giant hill, upon whose shaggy
head stood smiling the beautiful first of June. Curling up lightly into
the clear morning air, from out a clump of lofty trees which plumed the
crest of the opposite hill, rose a slender column of smoke, betokening
the Indians already astir, and busy about their breakfast over the
rekindled camp-fire. Observing this, and that he was running some risk
of being discovered--if he had not betrayed himself already--Burl slunk
back into a thicket of papaw bushes which grew a a few paces behind him,
whence, with safety he might reconnoiter the enemy, and acquaint himself
with the nature of the neighboring grounds, if peradventure they must be
made the field of present operations.
At his feet, and putting an air-line of about four hundred yards between
his hill and the more commanding height where the Indians were camped,
ran a beautiful little valley, having its head among a cluster of lofty
hills, about two miles to the eastward, and open to view for about the
same distance to the westward, where it lost itself among another
cluster of hills. Its sides sloped smoothly down to the banks of a small
but deeply bedded river, which, though a stream of considerable volume
during the winter, was now so drought-shrunken as at intervals to ripple
over its rocky bottom, filling the valley with pleasant murmurings,
audible from the tops of the hills around. The slopes, for a mile above
and below, were nearly bare of trees, being covered instead with a
luxuriant growth of blue-grass, the peculiar green whereof was relieved
with pleasing effect by the rich purple bloom of the iron-weed, which in
dense patches mottled all the glade. If we may except the grass and
iron-weeds, which grew everywhere, and the clump of trees from out of
which was rising the smoke of the Indian camp-fire, the opposite hill
showed a bare front, and sloped steeply, but smoothly, to the edge of
the river, where it was snubbed short by an overleaning bank twenty feet
high.
To Big Black Burl, as a game-hunter, this valley-glade, with its verdant
slopes, affording the richest pasturage to the wild herds of the forest,
would have been a right delectable prospect; but to him as an
Indian-hunter, it was a sight disheartening enough, running, as it did,
square across his war-path, and seeming to offer scarce the shadow of a
shade for an ambush, without which it would be desperation itself to
push the adventure to the perilous edge. Judging from the general
direction he had traveled since quitting Fort Reynolds, and from the
length of time it had taken him to reach that spot, he guessed that he
must be within a very few miles of the Ohio River--and if he suffered
the savages to put that broad barrier between themselves and pursuit,
scarcely one chance in a thousand could be left of his ever being able
to overtake them and rescue his little master. Now, or never, must be
struck the telling blow. But how?
At one moment he felt an impulse--so desperate seemed the case--to dash
across the open valley, and scaling the untimbered height, right in the
face of the watchful foe, open a way of deliverance to his little
master; or, failing in the attempt, bring life to the bitter end at
once. But this was a thought not worth the second thinking. And in
another moment he had nearly determined to make a wide circuit, in order
to gain the rear of the enemy's stronghold. Perhaps by bursting suddenly
on them from that unexpected quarter, he and Grumbo, by the very
strangeness, not to say terribleness, of their aspect, with their
mingled howlings and yellings, might strike the Indians with such a
panic as to send them scampering, helter-skelter, down the hill, with
never a glance behind them to see what manner of varmints they had at
their heels--a man, or bogey, or devil. Thus, by a bloodless victory,
might they accomplish the chief object of their adventure--the rescue of
their little master; though, to the Fighting Nigger's taste, a victory
without blood were but as a dram without alcohol, gingerbread without
ginger, dancing without fiddling--insipid entertainment. This brilliant
stratagem, smacking more of Burlman Reynolds's lively fancy than of the
Fighting Nigger's slower judgment, was another thought scarce worth the
second thinking. After all their trouble, they might gain the rear of
the enemy's hill only to find the camp deserted, the Indians by that
time well into their canoes, far out on the broad Ohio, paddling
peacefully for "home, sweet home." Or, finding the enemy still there,
they might not find the woods and thickets to ambush in and burst out
from in the startling, overwhelming manner proposed, as the back of the
hill might be as bare of trees and bushes as the grassy breast before
him.
What, then, was to be done? O that treacherous, that thievish sleep,
which had robbed him of his golden chance! Should he perish in the
attempt to rescue his little master, what a sad account should he have
to render the dead father of the sacred trust confided to him under a
promise so solemn and binding! Or, should his little master, in spite of
his utmost efforts, be borne away into lasting captivity, how could he
return to tell the widowed mother that she was childless, though the
dear one, henceforth to be mourned as dead, had not yet gone to the dead
father? O that he had not slept! And with the big tears in his eyes,
bespeaking the dumb anguish of his heart, the poor fellow turned to take
another and a seventh survey of the valley, if haply he might not spy
out some feature of the ground which, hitherto unnoted and favoring
concealment, might enable him, without too great risk of detection, to
come at the enemy and the dear object of his adventure.
The seventh essay--as the seventh essay so often does--resulted in
bringing the fortunate turn. Suddenly a look, first of recognition, then
of glad surprise, made light all over that huge black face. Fetching his
thigh a mighty blow of the fist, the Fighting Nigger, abruptly and in
the most peremptory manner, called upon Burlman Reynolds, that
"sleepy-headed ol' dog," to come up and report what he had been doing
all this time with "dem eyes o' his'n." Failing to render satisfactory
account, that "eberlastn' ol' fool" was taken severely to task by his
superior, and ordered to hand over the organs in question to
somebody--the Fighting Nigger, say--who could use them to some purpose,
and find for himself, instead, a "pa'r uf specs." Smarting under these
biting sarcasms, Burlman Reynolds, that "blare-eyed ol' granny," retired
to the back part of the house to keep as much as possible out of the
way, while the Fighting Nigger, having now the undivided use of "our
eyes," proceeded to look about them, if haply something might not yet be
done to straighten "our nose," which that "balky ol' dog" had run into
the wrong hole and got knocked out of joint.
The particular object which had caught Burl's eye was a mammoth
sycamore-tree which, with two huge white arms outstretched, as if to
embrace a graceful beech directly in front of it, overhung the mouth of
a glen on the opposite side of the valley. This tree, by its
peculiarities of form and situation, had served to call up in his mind a
train of recollections which told him that he had seen that valley-glade
before--though, up to this moment, in his trouble and confusion of mind,
the remembrance of the circumstance had been dodging in and out of his
memory like a half-forgotten dream. All was now as clear us the
unwelcome daylight. Three or four years before he had visited this spot
with a company of white hunters, who, with Captain Kenton for their
leader, had come thither on a hunting excursion, and for more than a
week had kindled their camp-fire at night on the self-same hill where
now was burning that of the Indians whose footsteps he was dogging. The
mammoth sycamore he had the best of reasons to remember, for just there,
round and round its great hollow trunk, over and over its great gnarled
roots, he had then fought the biggest bear-fight of all his hunting
experience--forever excepting the one wherein Grumbo had proved himself
a dog of "human feelin's."
From the acquaintance with the neighboring country which that excursion
had enabled him to make, Burl knew that the glen marked by the leaning
sycamore ran in but about two hundred yards between the opposite hills,
where it divided itself into two prongs, the more easterly one of which
led up to a deep, dark dingle in the very core of the enemy's hill. On
that side, as he remembered, the hill was heavily timbered and
thicketed, thus offering excellent covert for ambush almost to the
summit. With this discovery, or rather reaewakening in his mind of what
he knew already, came a clearer perception of his surroundings, so that
he could now see how, without great risk of discovery, he could gain the
bottom of the valley by availing himself of a shallow gulley which,
furrowing the slope to his left, and fringed with grass and iron-weeds,
ran down to the bank of the river. A similar feature in the ground on
the farther side would favor him in gaining the mouth of the glen. He
now felt that his chances were again coming within the limits of the
possible; and for more than this--so fair did it seem, in contrast with
the apparent hopelessness of the prospect but a few moments before--he
would not ask, to brave the adventure to the crisis, still bristling, as
it was, with neck-or-nothing hazards. Let them but succeed in reaching,
undiscovered, the shelter of yonder glen, and all might yet go well with
Burlman Reynolds and the Fighting Nigger.