Dodge's story, which was not without its interest to Roland, though the
rapidity of their progress through the woods, and the constant necessity
of being on the alert, kept him a somewhat inattentive listener, was
brought to an abrupt close by the motions of Telie Doe, who, having
guided the party for several miles with great confidence, began at last
to hesitate, and betray symptoms of doubt and embarrassment, that
attracted the soldier's attention. There seemed some cause for
hesitation: the glades, at first broad and open, through which they had
made their way, were becoming smaller and more frequently interrupted by
copses; the wood grew denser and darker; the surface of the ground became
broken by rugged ascents and swampy hollows, the one encumbered by stones
and mouldering trunks of trees, the other converted by the rains into
lakes and pools, through which it was difficult to find a path; whilst
the constant turning and winding to right and left, to avoid such
obstacles, made it a still greater task to preserve the line of direction
which Telie had intimated was the proper one to pursue. "Was it
possible," he asked of himself, "the girl could be at fault?" The
answer to this question, when addressed to Telie herself, confirmed his
fears. She was perplexed, she was frightened; she had been long expecting
to strike the neglected road, with which she professed to be so well
acquainted, and, sure she was, they had ridden far enough to find it. But
the hills and swamps had confused her; she was afraid to proceed,--she
knew not where she was.
This announcement filled the young soldier's mind with alarm; for upon
Telie's knowledge of the woods he had placed his best reliance, conscious
that his own experience in such matters was as little to be depended on
as that of any of his companions. Yet it was necessary he should now
assume the lead himself, and do his best to rescue the party from its
difficulties; and this, after a little reflection, he thought he could
scarce fail in effecting. The portion of the forest through which he was
rambling was a kind of triangle, marked by the two roads on the east,
with its base bounded by the long looked for river; and one of these
boundaries he must strike, proceed in whatsoever direction he would. If
he persevered in the course he had followed so long, he must of necessity
find himself, sooner or later, in the path which Telie had failed to
discover, and failed, as he supposed, in consequence of wandering away to
the west, so as to keep it constantly on the right hand, instead of in
front. To recover it, then, all that was necessary to be done was to
direct his course to the right, and to proceed until the road was found.
The reasoning was just, and the probability was that a few moments would
find the party on the recovered path. But a half-hour passed by, and the
travellers, all anxious and doubting, and filled with gloom, were yet
stumbling in the forest, winding amid labyrinths of bog and brake, hill
and hollow, that every moment became wilder and more perplexing. To add
to their alarm, it was manifest that the day was fast approaching its
close. The sun had set, or was so low in the heavens that not a single
ray could be seen trembling on the tallest tree; and thus was lost the
only means of deciding towards what quarter of the compass they were
directing their steps. The mosses on the trees were appealed to in
vain,--as they will be by all who expect to find them pointing like the
mariner's needle to the pole. They indicate the quarter from which blow
the prevailing humid winds of any region of country; but in the moist and
dense forests of the interior, they are often equally luxuriant on every
side of the tree. The varying shape and robustness of boughs are thought
to offer a better means of finding the points of the compass; but none
but Indians and hunters grown gray in the woods, can profit by _their_
occult lessons. The attempts of Roland to draw instruction from them
served only to complete his confusion; and, by and by, giving over all
hope of succeeding through any exercise of skill or prudence, he left
the matter to fortune and his good horse, riding, in the obstinacy of
despair, withersoever the weary animal chose to bear him, without knowing
whether it might be afar from danger, or backwards into the vicinity of
the very enemies whom he had laboured so long to avoid.
As he advanced in this manner, he was once or twice inclined to suspect
that he was actually retracing his steps, and approaching the path by
which he had entered the depths of the wood; and on one occasion he was
almost assured that such was the fact by the peculiar appearance of a
brambly thicket, containing many dead trees, which he thought he had
noticed while following in confidence after the leading of Telie Doe. A
nearer approach to the place convinced him of his error, but awoke a new
hope in his mind, by showing him that he was drawing nigh the haunts of
men. The blazes of the axe were seen on the trees, running away in lines,
as if marked by the hands of the surveyor; those trees that were dead, he
observed, had been destroyed by girdling; and on the edge of the tangled
brake where they were most abundant, he noticed several stalks of maize,
the relics of some former harvest, the copse itself having once been, as
he supposed, a corn-field,
"It is only a tomahawk-improvement," said Telie Doe, shaking her head, as
he turned towards her a look of joyous inquiry; and she pointed towards
what seemed to have been once a cabin of logs of the smallest size--too
small indeed for habitation--but which, more than half fallen down, was
rotting away, half hidden under the weeds and brambles that grew, and
seemed to have grown for years, within its little area; "there are many
of them in the woods, that were never settled."
Roland did not require to be informed that a "tomahawk-improvement,"
as it was often called in those days, meant nothing more than the box of
logs in form of a cabin, which the hunter or land-speculator could build
with his hatchet in a few hours, a few girdled trees, a dozen or more
grains of corn from his pouch-thrust into the soil, with perhaps a few
poles laid along the earth to indicate an enclosed field; and that such
improvements, as they gave pre-emption rights to the maker, were often
established by adventurers, to secure a claim in the event of their not
lighting on lands more to their liking. Years had evidently passed by
since the maker of this neglected improvement had visited his territory,
and Roland no longer hoped to discover such signs about it as might
enable him to recover his lost way. His spirits sunk as rapidly as they
had risen, and he was preparing to make one more effort to escape from
the forest, while the daylight yet lasted, or to find some stronghold in
which to pass the night; when his attention was drawn to Telie Doe, who
had ridden a little in advance, eagerly scanning the trees and soil
around, in the hope that some ancient mark or footstep might point out a
mode of escape. As she thus looked about her, moving slowly in advance,
her pony on a sudden began to snort and prance, and betray other
indications of terror, and Telie herself was seen to become agitated and
alarmed, retreating back upon the party, but keeping her eyes wildly
rolling from bush to bush, as if in instant expectation of seeing an
enemy.
"What is the matter?" cried Roland, riding to her assistance. "Are we in
enchanted land, that our horses must be frightened, as well as
ourselves?"
"He smells the war-paint," said Telie, with a trembling voice;--"there
are Indians near us."
"Nonsense!" said Roland, looking around, and seeing, with the exception
of the copse just passed, nothing but an open forest, without shelter or
harbour for an ambushed foe. But at that moment Edith caught him by the
arm, and turned upon him a countenance more wan with fear than that she
had exhibited upon first hearing the cries of Stackpole. It expressed,
indeed, more than alarm,--it was the highest degree of terror, and the
feeling was so overpowering that her lips, though moving as in the act of
speech, gave forth no sound whatever. But what her lips refused to tell,
her finger, though shaking in the ague that convulsed every fibre of her
frame, pointed out; and Roland, following it with his eyes, beheld the
object that had excited so much emotion. He started himself, as his gaze
fell upon a naked Indian stretched under a tree hard by, and sheltered
from view only by a dead bough lately fallen from its trunk, yet lying so
still and motionless that he might easily have been passed by without
observation in the growing dusk and twilight of the woods, had it not
been for the instinctive terrors of the pony, which, like other horses,
and, indeed, all other domestic beasts in the settlements, often thus
pointed out to their masters the presence of an enemy.
The rifle of the soldier was in an instant cocked and at his shoulder,
while the pedler and Emperor, as it happened, were too much discomposed
at the spectacle to make any such show of battle. They gazed blankly upon
the leader, whose piece, settling down into an aim that must have been
fatal, suddenly wavered, and then, to their surprise, was withdrawn.
"The slayer has been here before us," he exclaimed,--"the man is dead and
scalped already!"
With these words he advanced to the tree, and the others following, they
beheld with horror the body of a savage, of vast and noble proportions,
lying on its face across the roots of the tree, and glued, it might
almost be said, to the earth by a mass of coagulated blood, that had
issued from the scalp and axe-cloven skull. The fragments of a rifle
shattered, as it seemed, by a violent blow against the tree under which
he Jay, were scattered at his side, with a broken powder-horn, a
splintered knife, the helve of a tomahawk, and other equipments of a
warrior, all in like manner shivered to pieces by the unknown assassin.
The warrior seemed to have perished only after a fearful struggle; the
earth was torn where he lay, and his hands, yet grasping the soil, were
dyed a double red in the blood of his antagonist, or perhaps in his own.
While Roland gazed upon the spectacle, amazed, and wondering in what
manner the wretched being had met his death, which must have happened
very recently, and whilst his party was within the sound of a rifle-shot,
he observed a shudder to creep over the apparently lifeless frame; the
fingers relaxed their grasp of the earth, and then clutched it again with
violence; a broken, strangling rattle came from the throat; and a spasm
of convulsion seizing upon every limb, it was suddenly raised a little
upon one arm, so as to display the countenance, covered with blood, the
eyes retroverted into their orbits, and glaring with the sightless
whites. It was a horrible spectacle,--the last convulsion of many that
had shaken the wretched and insensible, yet still suffering clay, since
it had received the death-stroke. The spasm was the last, and but
momentary; yet it sufficed to raise the body of the mangled barbarian, so
far that, when the pang that excited it suddenly ceased, and, with it,
the life of the sufferer, the body rolled over on the back, and thus lay,
exposing to the eyes of the lookers-on two gashes, wide and gory, on the
breast, traced by a sharp knife and a powerful hand, and, as it seemed,
in the mere wantonness of a malice and lust of blood which even death
could not satisfy. The sight of these gashes answered the question Roland
had asked of his own imagination; they were in the form of a _cross_; and
as the legend, so long derided, of the forest-fiend recurred to his
memory, he responded, almost with a feeling of superstitious awe, to the
trembling cry of Telie Doe:--
"It is the Jibbenainosay!" she exclaimed, staring upon the corse with
mingled horror and wonder:--"Nick of the Woods is up again in the
forest!"