With eager haste, Boone and Kenton followed in the footsteps of Lark.
On through the station, without turning to the right or left, but
heading straight toward the forest, Lark went.
Amazed at his strange action, they strove to overtake him, but the
madman--for the two borderers had but little doubt that Lark had been
attacked by sudden madness--entered the shadows of the wood before the
others could overtake him.
The two paused on the edge of the timber and looked at each other for a
moment in astonishment.
“Well, dern my old hide, ef I know what to make of this!” exclaimed
Boone, breaking the silence.
“Shall we follow him?” asked Kenton.
“Yes,” replied Boone, decidedly. “I never see’d anything like this hyer
afore, and I feel a nat’ral curiosity to see the end onto it. We were
a-goin’ to make a scout, and ef we foller him, why, it’s pretty much
the same thing.”
So, without further conversation, the two plunged into the wood.
They tracked Lark easily, for he crashed through the wood without
caution, making fully as much noise as a huge bear.
Lark was heading straight for the Ohio; in fact, retracing the course
the three had taken in coming from the Indian village of Chillicothe.
“Ef we should happen to run into a war-party of Shawnees, they’d make
mince-meat out of us afore you could say Jack Robingson,” growled
Kenton to Boone, as they raced through the tangled mazes of the
thicket, in their endeavor to keep up with the madman’s headlong course.
“Yes, it’s lucky that thar ain’t any chance of meetin’ the red heathens
this side of the big drink.” Boone was referring to the Ohio.
“Derned ef I ain’t gitting short-winded,” said his companion, breathing
heavily.
“Well, I ain’t got any more wind than I want myself,” Boone replied.
Still onward through the forest Lark went, never slacking his headlong
speed, stopping not for bush nor brier.
At last he reached the river’s bank.
The shades of night were descending fast upon the earth, covering
forest and river with a mantle of inky blackness. Afar off in the
eastern sky, the moon, like a sword of fire, was rising above the
forest’s dark line.
Calmly on rolled the great river, its turbid waves lashing the banks
that bound its pathway with many a dull and sullen moan as though
impatient of restraint.
When Boone and Kenton reached the river’s side, Lark had just drawn a
canoe from its hiding-place in the bushes that ringed the bank. The
canoe was the same that the three had used before when they had crossed
the stream.
Lark dragged the canoe to the river and launched the frail bark on the
dark and sullen waters.
The two scouts, profiting by the delay, overtook Lark just as he gave
the canoe to the embrace of the dark stream.
“Hallo, man! what on yearth has got into yer?” cried Boone.
For the first time, Lark turned and looked upon his pursuers.
One look the hardy bordermen took at the face of their companion, and
then they felt that the warm life current in their veins was congealing
with horror.
They looked not upon the face of a man, but rather on the face of a
corpse, newly risen from its grave.
White as the stainless marble was the face of Lark, and his large eyes
glared with demoniac fires.
Like men inspired with sudden fear, the stout-hearted borderers
recoiled.
Then, to their amazement, Lark raised his hand and pointed to the
canoe, that rocked and danced like a thing of life upon the turbid
waters.
“He wants us for to git in and cross the ‘drink’ with him,” said Boone,
in a voice that showed plainly the feeling of horror that had taken
possession of the old Indian-fighter.
“Shall we go?” asked Kenton, scarcely speaking above his breath.
“Yes; it’s our duty as Christian men to see that this madman comes to
no harm. I’m afeard that we are a-goin’ to see something terrible,”
Boone answered.
Again, and with a gesture of command, Lark pointed to the frail boat,
that was dancing like an eggshell on the bosom of the surging tide.
The two obeyed the gesture and entered the canoe.
Then Lark seized the paddle, and the little craft, with its human
freight, sped rapidly across the river.
The white-capped billows--the children of the wind--surged and dashed
against the sides of the canoe as if eager to tear from their frail
shelter the mortals that dared to risk their lives amid the turbid
waves of the Ohio.
The rising wind whistled and surged through the frail forest trees;
the waves were turbid and angry; the moon, a ray of lurid light, was
darting lambent fires through the dark cloud-banks.
The scouts looked around them and shuddered. A terrible depression was
upon their feelings. The very air they breathed seemed full of evil.
The bow of the canoe touched the bank.
With a sweep of the broad paddle, Lark brought the canoe sideways to
shore. Boone and Kenton at once gained the bank. Lark followed slowly.
On the bank Lark halted. In his hand he held the “painter” of the
canoe, a sprig of grapevine.
A moment he looked at the trail bark and then deliberately drove his
foot through the bottom and cast it adrift to the mercy of the swollen
waters.
Eagerly, like living things, the sullen waves leaped over and around
the canoe as it sunk from mortal sight in their chill embraces.
“Jerusalem! how on yearth are we a-goin’ to git across the drink
ag’in?” muttered Boone, in dismay.
Kenton did not reply, for he was watching Lark eagerly.
The stalwart borderer, who was acting so strangely, watched the canoe
until the dark waters hid it from his sight. Then, without paying any
more attention to the two who stood by his side on the bank, than
if they had been sticks or stones, he plunged into the thicket that
fringed the river’s side.
Utterly dumbfounded at his unaccountable actions, Boone and Kenton
again followed on his track.
This time, however, Lark did not proceed carelessly and without
caution, as before, but, on the contrary, crept through the tangled
underwood with all the care of a wild beast stealing upon its prey.
The two woodmen had but little difficulty in following their strange
companion.
Seconds lengthened into minutes, minutes into hours. The great moon,
rising slowly up, no longer flecked the sky with swords of fire, but
beamed a flood of soft, silvery light, save when the flying clouds
crossed her path, and, like agents of evil, hid her rays from sight.
“We must be near Ke-ne-ha-ha’s village,” muttered Kenton to Boone,
after a weary tramp through the pathless wilderness, trailing Lark’s
erratic course.
“Putty near,” replied Boone.
Hardly had the words left the lips of the old woodman when, as suddenly
as if he had sunk into the earth Lark disappeared from sight.
The woodmen stood aghast. They had followed Lark easily. He had not
seemed to notice that the two were near him, and had not attempted to
evade them.
“Where on yearth _has_ he gone to?” muttered Boone, in astonishment,
and rubbing his eyes as if he doubted the evidence of his own senses.
“Down into the yearth or up into the air,” answered Kenton, who was
as much astonished as his companion at the sudden and mysterious
disappearance.
Then the two advanced to the spot whereon Lark had stood when they had
seen him last.
It was too dark for them to attempt to follow his trail, if he had left
one, and so, defeated in their pursuit, they halted to counsel what
their next move should be.
“Let’s go on a little way; maybe we’ll find some trace of him ahead,”
said Boone, thoughtfully.
Then the two proceeded onward till they came to a little open glade,
whereon the moonbeams shone.
As the two reached the glade and stood within the timber that fringed
its edge, a slight noise fell upon their ears.
“Hush!” cried Boone, in a cautious whisper, and he laid his hand
lightly upon Kenton’s arm as he spoke.
Stout Sim hardly needed the caution, for his quick ear had caught the
sound.
“It’s some one coming through the forest,” said Kenton, in a whisper.
“Yes,” replied Boone, listening intently.
“Can it be Lark?”
“No, I think not,” said the old woodman; “it’s more likely to be an
Injun. We must be mighty nigh to the Injun village.”
“Maybe we’ve run into a hornet’s nest,” said Kenton, coolly.
“We’ll have to git out, then,” observed Boone, nothing terrified.
“Whoever it is, he don’t seem to be afeard of any thing, for he’s
marching right along as if he owned the hull wood.”
“Let’s to timber,” said Boone, curtly.
A second more and the stalwart forms of the two scouts had disappeared.
Like snakes they nestled in the grass and waited for the man who walked
through the wood so carelessly.
The two did not have long to wait, for the sound of the steps grew
louder and louder, and then an Indian warrior, decked in the gaudy
war-paint and prepared for battle, stepped into the little glade
whereon the moonbeams shone.
In his hand the warrior carried a tomahawk. The moonbeams danced upon
the edge of the steel.
The warrior paused in the center of the glade and looked around him as
though expecting some one. Then he spoke, defiantly:
“I am the White Dog, a great brave of the Shawnee nation. I seek the
Wolf Demon in the forest. If he has a heart as big as a weasel’s, he
will come from his lair and face me.”