HOW BIG BLACK BURL FIGURED IN THE FIGHT.
Will the boy never move? To the black hunter, there lying in ambush, the
suspense was becoming all but insupportable. With an interest far more
intense than that of the boy did he watch the nimble fingers of the
young Indian, as the whittling task went on--the heavy-footed seconds
creeping draggingly by, and made, by the suspense, to seem as long as
minutes. At last the hatchet was handled and delivered to the impatient
Bushie, who, the moment he received it, sprung forward to try its edge
on the bark of a large walnut that grew a few paces in front of them.
That same instant, while yet the pitying, good-humored smile, with which
he watched the movements of the little captive, was still bright on the
young brave's handsome face, the ambushed rifle rang out on the quiet
scene, and with loud yells the two Indians fell over backward behind the
log, and after a few convulsive struggles, there lay as dead.
"I yi, you dogs!" And with this his battle-cry shaking the lonely wilds,
and finding echo in a deep-mouthed howl from the brindled dog in the
dingle below, the Fighting Nigger burst from his ambush, all the lion of
his nature now roused and rampant within him. Throwing himself with a
prodigious bound into the arena, on with huge strides he came, his
ponderous battle-ax in broad, bright circles gleaming high over his
head. "I yi, you dogs!"
With a terrible cry, half as a yell of astonishment, half as a whoop of
defiance, Black Thunder--the red giant being, in fact, none other than
that redoubtable Wyandot brave--leaped to his feet, and wrenching his
tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full
at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick
of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous
missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high
up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had
planted himself square in front of his antagonist just as a second
tomahawk was on the tip of leaping at him, which he sent ringing after
the other, before it had quitted the red giant's grasp. Foiled again,
and seeing the ax uplifted, himself this time the mark for the impending
blow, Black Thunder, pushed to desperation, darted sheer under the
descending arm, thus bringing his shoulder under the handle of the
weapon, instead of his head under its cleaving edge, and causing the
force of the blow to be spent harmless on the ground behind him.
Then did those doughty giants close and grapple together in the wrestle
for life and death. The red giant had the advantage in height, if not in
weight; the black giant in strength of muscle, if not in suppleness of
limbs. Again, though not so good a wrestler, the red was better
breathed, while the black, though fighting in a better cause, had not
yet eaten his breakfast. So, when we come to weigh them fairly, it will
be found that the advantages which each had over the other made the
chances of war about nip and tuck between the black and the red.
Pushing and pulling, writhing and tugging and twisting, round and round
with whirl and fling they went--now over the logs, now into the bushes,
then driving right through the fire, and scattering the smoldering
embers broadcast over the ground, and everywhere plowing up great
furrows with their heels in the mellow soil. To the negro, with his
prodigious strength of arm, it was an easy matter to toss up the Indian
from the ground; but when he would essay to fetch the final fling, the
nimble savage, let his legs be ever so high in the air and wide apart,
was always sure to bring the very foot down to the very place to stay
his fall, though as quickly to jerk it up again, to shun the leveling
sweep of those enormous black feet, so persistently making at his
ankles. The combat had waged for many seconds without any decided
advantage gained on either side, when, chancing to glance over Black
Thunder's shoulder, Burl spied a new danger threatening him from quite
an unexpected quarter.
Though shot through the body and mortally wounded, the grim savage had
so far recovered his strength as to be able to drag himself to the
nearest rifle, and now, with the weapon laid on the log to steady his
aim, was covering the combatants therewith, awaiting the moment when,
without danger to his comrade, he could let fly, and thus beforehand
revenge his own death. Black Thunder perceiving this as soon, it became
at once the aim of each to keep the other exposed to the leveled
weapon--the negro to hold the Indian between it and himself as a shield,
the Indian to hold the negro sideways to it long enough to let his
wounded comrade steady his aim and fire. Time and again did each whirl
his antagonist round, point-blank to the threatened danger; yet as often
did the other regain the lost advantage. Burning to revenge himself
before his feeble spark of life went out, the dying savage, with his
fiery eyes glaring along the barrel, continued to shift his rifle from
side to side as the struggle shifted from place to place. The red giant
was on the point of covering the black giant between a tree and a log,
there for the telling instant to hold him fast, when a fierce growl was
heard in the thicket behind him. The next moment, swift to his master's
call, far swifter than would seem from the length of time it has taken
to describe the combat up to this point, the brindled dog leaped like a
little lion into the arena. No stopping to smell noses, or count them,
either, but with Bonaparte-like contempt of the cut-and-dried in
warfare, right at the throat of the wounded savage, with one long bound,
he sprung; and straightway there was a dying yell and the bang of a gun,
the bullet sent whistling away through the tree-tops. The dog had turned
the scale of battle.
This danger happily averted, Burl, finding it impossible to come near
enough to his antagonist "to lock legs or kick ankles," bethought him of
a stratagem by which, without much additional risk to himself, he might
end this long wrestle and gain a decided advantage. He would suffer
himself to be thrown. Once flat of his back on the ground--the ground,
where never by man of martial might had he yet been matched--he would
find it an easy matter, he doubted not, to bring the long, supple savage
underneath; and secure of this advantage, he should then have nothing to
do but to wind up his morning's work in the way that should please his
fancy best.
Accordingly, to play off his cunning device, he provoked his antagonist
to a push of unusual vigor; when, still within each other's arms, down
came the giant warriors, with an appalling squelch, to the ground--the
red above, the black below. But in a twinkling there was a Titanic
flounce, when behold, the black was above, the red below. Planting his
knee with crushing weight on the breast of his prostrate foe, the
Fighting Nigger felt for his knife with which to deal the final blow,
but found that in the struggle it had slipped from its sheath; and when
he would have seized and used the Indian's, that too was gone, lost in
like manner. Glancing round for some murderous stone or club, he spied
his ax, where it lay on the ground not three feet off to his right, and
tickling himself with the thought, with the lucky chance thus offered
of giving his work the finishing touch in tip-top style, he eagerly
reached out to gather it up; but before he could do so and regain his
perpendicular, the wary savage, snatching at his opportunity, gave in
his turn a Titanic flounce, which sent the already uplifted weapon with
a side-long fling into the air, and brought his foe the second time to
the earth. In a trice, however, the wheel of fortune had made another
turn, not only bringing the black again to the top, but both black and
red clean over the brink of the hill, whence, as elsewhere noticed, its
grassy slope sunk steeply but smoothly down to the edge of the river,
there ending in an overleaning bank twenty feet high.
Perceiving that he had lost his vantage-ground, upon the holding of
which depended the successful result of his stratagem, and that the
steep hill-side to which he had unwittingly shifted the struggle, gave
the long and nimble savage a decided advantage over him, Burl determined
to shift again. Desperate though it might seem, he would, by rolling
with him thither, bear his antagonist bodily down to the foot of the
hill, where on level ground once more, as he trusted, he should still be
able to make his stratagem go. To this intent putting forth all his huge
strength, he grappled yet closer with the Indian, locking his legs
around him as well as his arms. Then with a heave on his part, like the
roll of a buffalo-bull, unwittingly seconded by a big flounce on the
part of the savage, down the precipitous slope did these redoubtable
giants, leaving their wake to be traced by the weeds laid flat to the
hill, and hugging yet tighter and tighter, go rolling and whirling and
tumbling, over and over, each uppermost, undermost, all in a wink--till
over the river bank whirlingly pitching, they dropped, with a splash too
terrific to tell or conceive, into water full twenty feet deep. And a
smooth, round, ponderous stone, which the force of their downward career
had pushed from its seat on the hill, came rolling and leaping behind
them with frightfully growing momentum, and tumbled in after
them--plump! Verily, the wheel of fortune had never before made so many
turns in so short a time! Its axle fairly smoked as it rolled into the
water.
Tightly locked together in the mortal hug, as were the two warriors when
they vanished beneath the shivered mirror of the stream, the next moment
when the plumed crest of the red giant and the shaggy top of the black
giant heaved above the surface, it was found that they had put full
thirty feet of the river between them. Dashing the water from his eyes,
and seeing that the chances of war were still about nip and tuck between
them, the Fighting Nigger, with ardor all undampened by his ducking,
began, with long oar-like sweeps of his arms, manfully pulling again for
the foe; but too prudent to trust himself again within the ireful grasp
of the bushy-headed brave, and thinking, doubtless, that his
vantage-ground lay elsewhere than in water twenty feet deep, Black
Thunder began as manfully pulling for land. The negro had proved the
stronger wrestler; but the Indian, proving the swifter swimmer, was the
first to land, and to prevent his antagonist from landing, began beating
him back with stones. One of the missiles, better aimed than the rest,
brought the black hunter a sounding thump on his bear-skin war-cap,
where it still stuck fast and firm to his head, never to quit that place
but with the scalp it covered, or with victory. The blow, however, hurt
him no more than had his woolen knob been a messy pine-knot; though it
did send him with a quick dive to the bottom of the river, that he might
come up again at a more respectful distance.
Now, the Fighting Nigger, as we have seen, had calculated on finding,
not water, but good level ground at the bottom of the hill, where, in
his superior skill as a wrestler, he might regain the advantage he had
lost by shifting the struggle to the steep hill-side; but he was too
quick and expedient, and of too sturdy a spirit to be completely
staggered by any blow of outrageous fortune, even though it should be
backhanded and ever so unexpected. So finding that the tide of battle
was setting strong and stiff against him in the straits to which he had
brought himself, he held a short council of war with Burlman Reynolds,
his right-hand man, and promptly determined upon a new course of action.
In the first place, they must quit them of an element which offered so
few facilities for the dodging and avoiding of well-aimed missiles. This
accomplished, they must then bespeed them to the top of the hill again,
where two loaded rifles yet remained, in whose leaden bullets lay, as
they trusted, the golden chance of victory.
Just below the point where the two giants had made their involuntary
dive, the river-bank was crowned with a small cane-brake, whose roots,
striking through its overleaning edge, formed a ragged, yellow,
rope-like fringe, that hung down almost to the surface of the water. In
these roots, Burl saw a means of extricating himself from his present
predicament, and of escaping from the very enemy this self-same brake
had aided him in coming at the hour before. Accordingly, making a deep
dive, that under cover of the water he might unanticipated take the
first step in his new course of action, he came up a few moments after
directly under the brake, with an upward shoot that brought him within
reach of the rooty fringe. Grasping a bunch, he began drawing himself
up, hand over hand, at the same time widely gathering in the ropy mass
with his knees, not only to expedite his climbing and reenforce his
arms, but to lessen the strain on the smaller bunch, which could be
grasped but by his hands. He had made but half the ascent, when becoming
aware that the enemy had silenced his battery of stones, he glanced over
his shoulder, still climbing, to discover the cause, and found to his
dismay that his design had been frustrated. Black Thunder was seen
running with prodigious swiftness along the opposite shore, to cross the
river at the shallows about one hundred and fifty yards below, where the
bank, losing its jutting feature, allowed of an easier passage, though
less direct than that his black antagonist had chosen. The ascent was
effected quickly enough, considering how desperate and novel the means.
But by the time the negro had drawn himself over the bank and forced his
way through the break, the Indian had come dashing over at the shallows,
and now was seen running across the narrow strip of bottom land which
down there the river, in making a bend, had left between itself and the
foot of the hill.
Now followed an uphill race more desperate, if that were possible, than
the downhill roll. The black giant was nearer the goal, but the red
giant had longer and nimbler legs, which made it again about nip and
tuck between the black and the red. Leaving their tracks to be traced by
great handfuls of iron-weeds, caught at and uprooted in the scramble, up
they struggled, with might and main, and with feet that could not
quicken their speed, however fear might urge or hope incite. Panting and
all but spent, the two giants gained the top of the hill at the same
instant--Burl nearest his ax, where it lay on the ground, Black Thunder
nearest his gun, where it leaned against the log. Five long strides more
and the Indian had laid his hand on the loaded weapon, when having
snatched up his ax, the negro hurled it with engine-like force at the
savage, the ponderous head striking him full on the hip and sending him
sprawling to the ground. Burl was making all speed to recover his
weapon, this time, with its cleaving edge, to deal the death-blow
without fail, when, before he could do so, Black Thunder, though
powerless to walk or stand, whirled himself from under his victor's
uplifted hand, and with a few gigantic flounces had regained the brink
of the steep. Burl sent his battle-ax after him with a right good will,
though not with right good aim, the missile merely inflicting a flesh
wound in the enemy's arm. The next moment, with a loud whoop of defiance
and scorn, Black Thunder had flung him away sheer over the brink of the
steep. Hastily snatching up one of the Indian's rifles, Burl ran to the
brow of the hill, and taking deliberate aim at the rolling body far down
there, fired. Up came ringing a cry--a death-yell, so it would seem, so
fierce it was, and wild and drear. The moment thereafter, now rolling
with frightful rapidity, over the river bank vanished the Wyandot
giant.