Pow-Wow Finds Him.
The gray dawn was beginning to take the sun-red glow of morning, when,
quite worn out with so long a walk, the anxious parents arrived at the
stockade station--the center and rallying point of the settlements in
that quarter of Kentucky. They had been indulging themselves in the
forlorn hope that their boy, by some strange chance, might possibly have
found his way to that place; but this vanished with the first look of
wondering-inquiry that greeted their coming. Though no tongue could give
them any tidings of the lost one, kind and sympathetic hearts were there
for comfort, with willing hands and swift feet for help. Among the
latter were several hunters, cunning in woodcraft, who could follow a
trail, whether of man or beast, the livelong day; and over ground where
nothing might be distinguished by the inexperienced eye but grass or
leaves, sand, pebbles or solid rock.
Forth on the humane errand they sped them, one and all, some to the
northward, some to the southward; many to the eastward, but none to the
westward. The little runaway's starting point had been in the East; he
might have strayed away toward the North or toward the South, but it
seemed hardly possible that he could have passed on by toward the West.
They little imagined how far the wayward young feet had followed the
setting sun!
All day long they beat the tangled wilds. Of savage beasts, traces, more
than enough, could they find, turn whither they might; and of savage
men, two or three recent trails, one of them leading directly across the
buffalo highway that traversed the forest between the settlements and
Whitney's distant cabin. Late in the afternoon the questers began
returning to the fort, dropping in, weary and disheartened, one after
one. Some had pushed the search to the very threshold of the deserted
home, and had observed how the boy's footprints, after tracing
themselves along the path down the hillside, suddenly vanished, there at
the spring, and never a sign anear the spot of living things besides,
which could suggest an explanation of the mystery. What manner of
disappearance might this be?
That morning, after having snatched a brief repose from the fatigues of
a day's chase and a night's journey, Jervis Whitney had started forth
for a few hours after the rest to renew the search, taking leave of
Elster at the fort gate. At sunset he returned, purposing that, if no
tidings had been gathered, to beat the forest toward the West until
dark. He found his wife where he had left her--where, indeed, she had
remained through all the weary, dreary intervening hours--waiting and
watching for his return. As the questers had come dropping in, she had
read in each dejected face the answer to the question which her own had
ceased to ask. She hastened forth to meet her husband, and as he sadly,
tenderly folded her in his arms, she laid her head upon his rugged
breast, and gave her pent-up sorrow relief in tears. But scarcely had
her tears begun to flow, when suddenly she checked them, and with
singular decision in manner and voice, exclaimed:
"Come, Jervis! Come!"
"Whither, dear Elster?"
"I know not," replied she. "I have heard no voice, yet I feel that we
are called! Come!"
They went at once, as in obedience to a summons, which must be answered
then or never. They went as led by a hand, which, to resist, were to
tempt their own destruction. They saw themselves drawing--felt
themselves drawn toward that side of the hill where, not a stone's throw
in the rear of the fort, it abruptly ended in the lofty precipice,
before mentioned. A few steps more and their feet had been on the very
verge, when, between it and themselves, rang out a cry of thrilling
horror, followed by peals of wild, unearthly laughter, which, beginning
at the brow of the steep, swiftly descended along its sides, till in the
edge of the forest, afar down there, they subsided into a wild,
unearthly wail. Then in a moment all was still--not a tell-tale echo
awaking to help the listening ear to determine what manner of sounds
had broken the silence.
Harrowed with horror and anguish, Jervis and Elster stood, and with no
more power to move from the spot than the senseless stones that lay
around them. Not a sign of life had they seen, where sounds of life they
had heard. It was as if the vacant air had cried; then laughed, to mock
itself for crying; then wailed, to chide itself for laughing.
Old Pow-wow had followed cowering behind them. Now he bounded forward,
and straight came bounding back again, with something in his mouth,
which he laid at their feet. Pitiful heavens! The little coonskin cap!
The next instant the dog had flung him sheer over the brink of the
steep, and now, in a succession of huge leaps from ledge to ledge, was
making his zig-zag way adown its sides, till, in the forest shadows far
below, he disappeared. One moment more and his bark came ringing
joyfully up to his friends--the sweetest, welcomest sound that had ever
greeted their ears.
"Pow-wow has found him! Wait here, Elster!"
So saying, and moved by a will, not all his own, and sustained by a
power, no more his own than had he been a child in his father's arms,
the father followed the dog, making his way in the same zig-zag manner
adown the perilous hill, till, in the dusky shadows at its base, he,
too, had plunged. A few long, rapid strides, and he was at the spot
whence Pow-wow's joyful barks had continued to resound. What found he
there? The body, indeed, of his child; but whether as a waif unto life,
or as a prize unto death--it were hard to tell. Stretched out on the
ground, all ghastly it lay; the head toward him, and just beyond the
naked feet--adjusted side by side, with their old air of easy
self-assurance, the Manitou moccasins. As the father approached, the
elfish little horrors, fetching a summerset aloft, as he had seen them
do the time before, plumped themselves directly between him and his
child, though vanishing the moment they touched the ground. But, with
the vanishing, came a voice of more than mortal tenderness, and with the
voice a perfume of more than earthly sweetness.
"Jervis Whitney--
Whom we lend our moccasins red,
Them we show how the erring are sped.
Whom we lend our coronals green,
Them we show how the erring are seen,
When the right begins to fall,
Hearts must bleed or lost is all."
They who watched from above--for, by this time, many were there with
Elster--had scarcely drawn the long, full breath, which follows a moment
of breathless suspense, when the father, bearing a burden in his arms,
reappeared at the base of the precipice. They called to him and pointed
to the path that led obliquely around the hill, as being that by which
he should ascend. A moment he paused and ran his eye along the
circuitous way; but looking upward again to the group above him, and
seeing Elster leaning over the dizzy brink, with arms outstretched, in
piteous eagerness to clasp their loved one again to her heart, he paused
no longer. To their unspeakable amazement, right up that huge and
difficult steep, all burdened as he was, came the bold, strong man, with
steps so light and swift that his ascent appeared as smooth and
uninterrupted as the gliding shadow of a flying bird. Bold and strong,
indeed, but that were a feat, if not beyond all human courage to dare,
at least beyond all human strength to perform.
"Oh! God of Love!" exclaimed the mother, as the father gained the
summit. "But our child is dead! Our child is dead!"
And with a piteous moan, the poor heart swooned away. Kind hands stayed
her fall, and taking her up and bearing her into the fort, there laid
her on a bed in grandpap's house. The same kind hands took the boy,
whom, up to this moment, the father had held tenderly clasped to his
rugged breast; took and laid him beside his senseless mother, his
garments all torn to tatters and red with blood, which still trickled
from many a wound.
"After all, the child may not be dead," said a kind voice--young Ben
Logan's mother. "See how he bleeds." And she laid her hand upon the
unheaving breast, in the forlorn hope of finding the heart still
beating. Then, after a moment of suspense, came the joyful announcement:
"It beats! It beats! The child still lives!"
The cry aroused the mother to consciousness. Clasping her child to her
bosom, in an agony of pitying love and hopeless sorrow, again and again
she cried: "Oh! God of Love! But our child is dead!"
"No, Elster, dear, your darling is not dead," said another kind
voice--little Bertha Bryant's mother. "Give him to us and we will wash
and lave his wounds and bind them up with healing salves. See how freely
they bleed. That could not be the case if he were dead."
She suffered them to take him and do with him as they would; for
herself, she still believed him dead. At the end of half an hour Jervis,
who had gone with the women to assist in the work of resuscitation,
returned to her and bade her be of good cheer; that the wounds, though
many and grievous enough, did not seem to be deep and dangerous, and the
signs of reviving life were growing every moment more and more apparent.
Thus reassured, Elster arose, and from that time forward performed her
part as beseemed the mother of the sufferer.