Missed.
With Pow-wow, now before him, now behind him, trotting out many a short,
irrelevant digression from their general course, Jervis Whitney, rifle
on shoulder, came trudging cheerfully homeward, all unwitting of the
young-feet that had met him, the young eyes that had seen him, the young
ears that had heard him--heard the very rustling of his garments--far
back yonder in the heart of the lonely forest! He was still a half mile
or more from home--the bright June afternoon by this time wearing an
evening cast--when from among the trees a little way off to one side,
the voice of Elster reached his ear, calling Sprigg in a tone of anxiety
and alarm. Surprised to find his wife so far from the house, and
evidently in quest of their boy, Jervis, somewhat alarmed himself,
hastened forward to meet her and inquire into the occasion of so
unwonted a circumstance.
"Ah! dear Jervis!" cried she, with tearful eyes and tremulous voice,
while yet her husband was coming, "You are returning, and our boy not
with you! I was hoping he might have heard the report of your rifle or
Pow-wow's bark and had gone forth to meet you, as he often delights in
doing!" Then she went on to tell how Sprigg, about 1 o'clock, had left
the house to fetch a pail of water from their favorite but more distant
spring, down there in the edge of the woods. Her mind becoming wholly
occupied with her work at the loom, she had quite lost sight of the
little circumstance, when, all at once, it had struck her that it had
now been several hours since Sprigg had left the house, nor had yet
returned. Whereat she had left off her weaving and gone forth to see
what had become of him. She had searched the clearing all around the
house, and the woods all around the clearing; yet not a trace of him had
she discovered, saving the empty bucket at the spring.
By the time the story was ended, which she told with many an anxious
detail, they had passed on by the house and reached the spring. In the
course of the day's chase the hunter had come upon a fresh Indian trail,
which made him at first apprehensive that the boy, while thus out of
sight and hearing of home, might have been crept upon and captured by
some lurking band of savages. But there were no traces at the spring,
nor near it, to justify his apprehension; nor yet that of his having
fallen a prey to wild beasts--the two sources of danger being, in those
days, always coupled in the minds of our pioneer progenitors. The prints
of the boy's bare feet were plainly enough to be seen in the path that
led down the hill; but here, at the spring, without any sign of their
having retraced themselves, they suddenly vanished. For once the
hunter's clear-seeing eye and his dog's keen-scenting nose were utterly
baffled. Those Manitou moccasins being, as you must remember, charmed,
could be worn and leave no trace of their wearer behind them that sight
of man or scent of dog could discern, be it footprint on the ground or
odor in the air. What manner of disappearance might this be?
All in a state of wonderment now, as well as distress, they hastened
back to the house, if, happily, some nook or corner had been overlooked,
where the boy had lain down and fallen asleep. They were pursuing this
forlorn hope, when Elster found herself standing, without any will or
volition of her own, directly in front of the old show bill, with her
eyes fixed upon it, as if it had been an object she had never seen there
before. Then it all came back to her mind, how that picture of the
Indian boy and his Shetland pony had charmed Sprigg's fancy and set him
to dreaming about red moccasins, and how strangely the whim had
possessed him to go to the settlement, where he might make a display of
his fantastic finery. This she told Jervis, and together they ran to the
chest to see if the moccasins were really playing a part in the
mysterious matter.
Pale as death turned Jervis Whitney when he discovered they were gone.
Backward the strong man staggered some paces, as had he been struck on
the breast by a heavy fist, and, sinking down upon an oaken settee,
exclaimed in a voice of horrified astonishment:
"Oh, Nick of the Woods! Nick of the Woods!" That elfin scene in the
forest had come flashing back to his memory, like a prophetic dream, the
interpretation whereof was now to be looked for. "My son Manitou-Echo is
burning to run a race with your son Sprigg." Thus had spoken the Manitou
king; and fantastic as the words had seemed at the time, evident enough
was it now that, couched in them, was a meaning or purpose deeper by far
than the hunter had divined. Perhaps the trial of bodily strength, or
moral virtue, or whatever it was, at which they hinted, had already
begun; and their boy now the subject of some elfish freak for his
follies, or the victim of some elfish retributions for his
transgressions.
Elster stood gazing down on her husband, where, with his face buried in
his hands, he sat, repeating the singular exclamation which had escaped
him on finding the moccasins missing. As yet, for some whimsical,
elf-prompted reason or other, Jervis had told her nothing of his
interview with Nick of the Woods, and whenever she had questioned him
touching the moccasins he had answered that they had been sent to their
boy from Fairyland, thus dodging the truth by telling the literal fact,
knowing that she would treat it as a pleasantry. She was beginning to
fear that the stroke had proved too much for the poor man's strength of
mind, when, after remaining quite silent for some moments, he raised his
head, and looking at her sorrowfully but calmly enough, addressed her:
"Dear Elster, I have not broken my fast since morning. Let me have
something to eat and I will set out for the fort at once. It is but four
or five miles to the nearest house on the way, and you can easily walk
with me that far, there to remain until my return. At present I see not
what better course is left us to follow."
A cold supper was set before him at once. While he was eating it Elster
went and busied herself about the house, preparatory to their departure.
The meal was soon dispatched, and when he had looked carefully to his
rifle and hunting accoutrements, to reassure himself that all was in
good order for service, Jervis went to assist his wife in making such
disposition of their little household concerns as their absence should
render necessary. To his surprise, he found her preparing to accompany
him all the way.
"Hardly, dear Elster!" said he. "The horses have leaped the fence and
strayed out into the woods, so that I shall be obliged to go afoot, and
for you to walk with me is quite out of the question. Twenty long
miles--many of them rough and steep, all of them dark and dangerous! You
could hardly endure it to the end."
"If the child has walked it," rejoined Elster, "so may the mother; and
if he has not, and is lost to us forever, then this lonely house is our
home no longer! I return to it no more."
Though of a gentle and yielding nature under ordinary circumstances,
Elster could meet a great trial, like the present one, with a spirit
firm and courageous enough; and knowing this, her husband forbore any
further remonstrance to her determination. The sun had set and the moon
was rising, when, having made their solitary dwelling as secure as
possible, they set out on their melancholy journey. In those days the
buffalo traces, as they were called, formed the only highways of the
wilderness, and the one our poor friends were now following led, for the
greater part of the way, through a dense and tangled forest, where the
moonlight showed itself only in straggling beams and shed but a ghostly
glimmer. At intervals the sombre wildness of the scene would be relieved
by a bluegrass glade, all agleam with moonbeams and glistering dew
drops, saving where flecked with the shadows of clumped or scattered
trees. Pleasing, however, as was the contrast they presented to the
savage solitudes around them, these bright spots left upon the spirit an
impression of sadness quite peculiar. Each had so much the appearance of
a well kept park or woodland pasture that the lonely wayfarers would
sometimes find themselves all but expecting that the next turn of the
road would bring them in sight of the stately mansion or comfortable
farmhouse to which these beautiful grounds pertained. Nothing of the
kind appearing there, the spot, from the very suggestiveness of the
homelike, would seem to them more desolate than the most unhomelike
parts of the forest.
Often would they pause and call out loudly the name of their boy; the
bare possibility that he might be near and hear them seemed too precious
to be slighted. Saving this, and, from time to time, an inquiry of
affectionate solicitude on the part of the husband, with the wife's
answer of patient reassurance that she was not weary, the two poor
hearts pursued their way in silence. In the course of every four or five
miles they would come to a solitary cabin home like their own, where
they would stop and rouse the sleeping inmates, to inquire if aught had
been seen there of their boy. Twice or thrice they heard, a far way off
in the darkness, sounds that came to their troubled ears like the cries
of a child in distress or terror. But when they had paused to listen,
and had sent the name of their loved one ringing far and wide, naught
had heard they, but the screaming of a night bird wheeling high aloft,
or, peradventure, the distant howling of a wolf abroad on his nightly
foray. At such times, with a look of dumb, distressed perplexity, first
up into their faces, then all around him, old Pow-wow would give a
plaintive whine, as if fully conscious that all was not going well with
his human friends, and that this unwonted journey had a sad reference,
in some way, to his little master. Sometimes dropping down upon his
haunches in the path, some distance in advance, and turning his muzzle
pitifully up to the moon, the affectionate old fellow would howl
outright, long and loud, nor leaving off until his master and mistress
were well up with him again. Thus, in his poor, dumb way, would Pow-wow
testify that he was their fellow-sufferer, grieving and sympathizing
with them and longing so earnestly to do something to help and comfort
them--only but show poor dog how he might set about it.