CHAPTER XXV
AT BAY
The "old Indian" asserted itself in Deerfoot the Shawanoe. Whileevery act, and in deed every thought, of the wonderful young warriorwas prompted by conscience, yet his views of duty under certaincircumstances, were fitted to bring a smile to the face of animpartial judge.
While standing behind the tree on the crest of the elevation, he wassure of two things: he had little time to lose in going to the helpof Jack Carleton and Otto Relstaub, and the Shawanoes who weretrailing him were close at hand. He settled the dispute by decidingto stay where he was a few minutes longer. If his enemies did notappear within that brief period, he would hasten from the spot.
This conclusion on the part of the young Shawanoe presaged adesperate encounter between him and his foes, and he made preparationfor it. He set his rifle on the ground, with the muzzle leaningagainst the tree which served to screen his body, and brought hislong bow to the front. Drawing an arrow from its quiver, he glancedat it as if looking for some defect, but he knew none was there, norwas a single shaft of the score and a half in the quiver imperfectin any respect. The youth always made his own weapons. He glued onthe feather which guided and steadied the missile in its flight, andhe fastened the heads with metal obtained from the whites. Every oneof his possessions had been tested and proven.
Deerfoot grasped the bow loosely in the centre, one finger of thesame band also holding the arrow in place, with the notch againstthe deer sinew, not yet drawn backward. The amateur archer willunderstand that he was in form to bring the shaft to a head on theinstant it should become necessary.
It was some five minutes after he had assumed this position, andwhile looking back over his own trail, that two Shawanoe warriorssilently emerged from the bushes fifty yards off, and stealthilyapproached him. They moved absolutely without noise, for theirwoodcraft told them they were close upon the most dangerous beingthey had ever undertaken to hunt.
The foremost lifted his foot just clear of the ground and placed itsquarely down again. His head and shoulders were thrown forward, sothat most of his long, coarse, black hair dangled on both sides ofhis neck and over his chest. It hung in front of his face also,and, as his forehead was very low, he had the appearance, whilecontinually glancing from side to side and in front, of a wild beastglaring from behind a hedge. He trailed his rifle in his righthand, the left resting on the handle of a knife, which, with that ofa tomahawk, protruded from his girdle. He wore the usual hunting-shirt,leggings and moccasins, his body and limbs being well protected. Hisblanket would have been only an encumbrance, and while he was engagedin such delicate business, it was left with the canoe on the bank ofthe Mississippi. The ears when visible through the dangling hair, wereseen to hold enormous rings of bone, while the nose hooked over anddipped in a fashion that showed that the organ had at some time held apendant in the way of an ornament.
The countenance was blackened and disfigured with paint, in thestyle already made familiar to the reader, and the protuberant nosewas rendered more striking by the retreating chin. The Shawanoe wascrafty, cunning, treacherous and revengeful, which characteristicsit may be said belong to the entire American race.
The second warrior, with the exception of his features, was thecounterpart of the leader. Dress, paint, and ornaments, even to thestrings of wampum around the neck, were similar. He carried hisrifle in the same style, and his left hand rested on the weapons inhis girdle. Both were strong and sinewy, and their sight lost notthe slightest object in their field of vision.
It was this precaution which apprised them, at the same instant,that they were confronted by the most terrifying picture on whichtheir eyes had ever rested. They halted as if transfixed by alightning stroke.
Deerfoot the Shawanoe stood behind the trunk of an oak, a foot indiameter, with his arrow drawn to a head and pointed at the heart ofthe foremost warrior. The matchless youth was at bay, and in theexact posture for launching his deadly weapon--right foot forward,bow grasped in the centre, arrow held by the fingers of the lefthand, which were drawn backward of the shoulder, while the bowitself, on account of its great length, was held diagonally infront.
The two Shawanoes who suddenly became aware of their danger, did notsee all that has been described, for Deerfoot utilized the shelterso far as he could. Most of his body was carefully protected, and,though the bow was slanted, the lowermost point scarcely showed onthe opposite side of the tree from the top of the weapon.
The warriors saw the head, left shoulder and hands of Deerfoot andthe upper part of the bow, whose arrow was on the very point ofspeeding toward them. Directly over the shaft, with head slightlyinclined, like that of a hunter sighting over his gun, were thegleaming eyes and face of the young Shawanoe. It looked as if hehad turned his head to one side that he might catch the music madeby the twang of the string when it should dart forward with thespeed of the rattlesnake striking from its coil.
No more startling sight can be imagined than that of a gun aimedstraight at us, with the finger of the marksman pressing thetrigger. The first proof the pursuers received that they werewithin sight of the youth they were seeking was of that nature.Both stood for a second or more unable to stir. But their trainingprevented the spell lasting more than the briefest while.
The second warrior made a tremendous bound directly backward,dropping to a squatting posture as he landed, and then scrambling tocover with a quickness the eye could hardly follow. While employedin doing so, his companion emitted an ear-splitting screech whichmade the woods echo. He caught a shadowy glimpse of him as heleaped high in the air and fell backward, carrying with him thearrow of the marvelous archer, which had gone clear and cleanthrough his body, and remained projecting both from the breast andback. A defiant shout rang from the elevation, and, peeping timidlyforth, the crouching red man saw Deerfoot holding his bow aloft withone hand, while he swung the gun with the other and strode off, hisface toward his pursuers.
"Where are the Shawanoes? Do they love to follow Deerfoot acrossthe great river? His heart was sad for them because so many bowedto his bow and arrow--so he left them that his eyes might not lookon their warriors who fell by his hand; the Shawanoes are fools,because they follow Deerfoot. They cannot harm him, for he is thefriend of the white man, and the Great Spirit gives him his care;let the Shawanoes send Tecumseh and the Hurons send Waughtauk;Deerfoot stayed his hand when the time had come for Waughtauk tosing his death-song, but if the chief trails him across the greatriver, Deerfoot will not spare him."
The young warrior doubtless would have indulged in further annoyingremarks, had he not kept moving all the time, so that his last wordswere uttered while he was beyond sight of the terrified Shawanoecrouching on the ground; but the voice of Deerfoot was raised to akey which prevented any observation being lost.
The declaration, following the act of the youth, showed that in hismind his relations toward his enemies changed when they followed himbeyond the Mississippi. In Kentucky all stood on the same footing,and he often showed mercy, but if they pursued him into Louisianathey became his persecutors, and whoever crossed his path or soughtto molest him, did so at his peril. He had voluntarily withdrawnfrom their chosen hunting-grounds, and they would be wise if theyleft him alone. He would not flee from them like a hunted deer, butwould teach them severer lessons than they had ever yet learned.
The death-yell of the stricken Shawanoe was certain to bring othersto the spot, but Deerfoot cared nothing for that. It mattered notif there were a score, for, if he chose to flee, he could out-speedthe swiftest runner on either side the Mississippi. With thethousands upon thousands of miles of mountain, prairie, river, andwilderness at his back, he could laugh to scorn the rage of hisenemies.
Though he had lived several months in this section, it was the firsttime his deadly foes had attempted to molest him. Self-defensedemanded that they should be shown it would not pay to repeat theattempt.
Still retaining gun and bow, he passed rapidly
down the slope, and,having previously fixed in his mind the course to pursue, pushedforward at an easy pace, which was much swifter than would besupposed.
Fast as he journeyed, he had not gone far when five Shawanoes(including him who had so narrowly escaped his bow), hurried to thespot where the smitten warrior lay. They had heard agonized cry inbattle and knew what it meant. The second survivor was given but aminute to flee, when he encountered the others rushing thither, andhe turned about and joined them. They would have been less arduoushad they not known that the terrible Deerfoot was gone, as was shownby his defiant shout, which came from distant point in the woods.
Precisely eight Shawanoes (not a Miami among them) paddled over theMississippi to hunt the youth: the only two absent from this partywere pursuing Jack Carleton and Otto Relstaub, while they journeyedtoward the northwest, after the stray horse. The occasion,therefore, was a fitting one in which to consult as to the line ofpolicy to be followed.
It may seem incredible, but it is an unquestioned fact, that five ofthe best warriors of the most formidable tribe in the West decidedto give up the attempt to capture or kill a single one of their racewhose years were considerably less than those of the youngest memberof the party, and that, too, on the ground that the undertaking wastoo dangerous. One of those five Shawanoes, became converted toChristianity after the war of 1812, and settled in Kentucky, nearthe home of Ned Preston, to whom he gave the particulars of thecouncil held by him and his comrades more than twenty years before.
Of course no one of the five admitted that personally he was afraidof Deerfoot. All expressed the greatest eagerness to meet him,where a chance to engage in fatal combat could be gained.Apparently no greater boon could befall them than such extreme goodfortune.
But they could not shut their eyes to one or two discouraging facts:they had entered a country entirely strange to them, but which wasfamiliar in a great measure to the fleet-footed traitor, who couldnever find himself lacking for some hole in which to hide himself.It was very much like hunting in an endless forest for the fawn thatleaves no scent for the dog to follow.
But worse than all, the Shawanoes could not doubt that the execratedDeerfoot had formed alliance with the Osages, who would give himhelp whenever wanted. Such being their theory followed that theywere not fleeing from a despised foe, but from a whole tribe ofIndians. For five warriors to withdraw in the face of suchoverwhelming odds, could not be construed as cowardice, but only aswise discretion.
Such were the grounds on which the party based their decision, whichwas accompanied fierce lamentations that the fates had interposed tosave Deerfoot from their vengeance.
"We talk that way," said the old Indian, long years afterward, whiletelling the story in broken English, "and," he added with a laughtwinkle in his dark eyes, "we much brave--we want to meet Deerfootbut we looked to see he did not come; if he came, then we wouldn'tbe so much brave; we turn, and run like buffalo, we much afraid ofDeerfoot; we no want to see him."
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