The morning, soft and warm enough, threatened now to break the fair weather promise of the starlit night. Away in the east a heavy cloud bank curtained off the sunrise, and in the fields the few dry maize3 blades left by the partizan harriers were whispering to the gusts4.
In the great forest all was yet dim and shadowy, and silent as the grave but for the whispering murmur5 of the rising wind in the higher tree-tops; a sound so like the babbling6 of brooks7 as most cunningly to deceive the ear and make it set the eye at work to look for water where there was none.
Not to take a certain hazard for the sake of better speed, we shunned8 the road, and for the first hour or so were not greatly hindered by keeping to the forest paths. In vast areas this virgin9 wood was free of undergrowth, open and park-like as a well-kept grove10. Fireside tradition on the border tells how the Indians kept the forest clear by yearly burnings of the smaller growth; this for the better hunting of the deer. I vouch11, not for the truth of this accounting12 for the fact, but for the fact itself. For endless miles between the watercourses these park-like stretches covered hill and dale; a vast mysterious temple of God's own building, its naves13 and choirs14 and transepts columned by the countless15 trees, with all their leafy crowns to interlace and form the groined arches overhead.
Through these pillared aisles16 we tramped abreast17, shunning18 the road, as I have said, yet holding it parallel with our course where its direction served. In the open vistas19 we had frequent glimpses of it, winding20, at feud21 with all the points of the compass, among the trees. But farther on we came into the lower land of a creek22 bottom, and here a thickset undergrowth robbed us of any view and made the march a toilsome struggle with the bushes.
It was in the densest23 of this underwood, when we could hear the purring of the stream ahead, that Jennifer stopped suddenly and began to sniff24 the air.
"Smoke," he said, briefly25, in answer to my query26. "A camp-fire, with meat abroil. Never tell me you can't smell it."
I said I could not—did not, at all events.
"Then you are not as sharp set for breakfast as I am. Call up your woodcraft and we'll stalk it." And, suiting the action to the word, he dropped noiselessly on hands and knees to inch his way cautiously out of the thicket27.
I followed at his heels, marveling at his skill in threading the maze28 with never a snapped twig29 to betray him. For though I have called him a youthling, he came of great, square-shouldered English stock, and was well upon fourteen stone for weight. Yet upon occasion, as now, he could be as lithe30 and cat-like as an Indian, stealthy in approach and tiger-strong to spring.
In due time our creeping progress brought us out of the thicket on the brink31 of the higher creek bank. Just here the stream ran in a shallow ravine with shelving banks of clay, and on its hither margin32 was a bit of grassy33 intervale big enough for a horse to roll upon. Though it was sadly out of season, the carcass of a deer, fresh killed, hung upon a branch of the nearest tree, with a rifle leaning against the trunk as if to guard it. In the middle of the bit of sward a tiny camp-fire burned; and at the fire, squatting34 with their backs to us and each toasting a cut of the deer's meat on a forked stick, were two men.
One of these men would pass by courtesy as a white. His hunting-shirt and leggings were of deer skin, well grimed and greasy35, with leather fringes at the seams of leg and sleeve. For all the summer heat, he wore a cap fashioned of raccoon-skin with the fur on; and for this great cap his iron-gray hair, matted and unkempt, served as a fringe to keep the other tasselings in countenance36. The hunting-shirt was belted at the waist, and in the belt was thrust a sheathless knife huge enough to serve a butcher's purpose. From two leather thongs37 crossed upon his shoulders hung the powder-horn and bullet-pouch; and these, with the knife and rifle, summed up his accoutrements.
The other was a red man, and his attire38 was simpler. Like all our southern Indians, he went naked to the waist; but the savage's love of ornament39 showed forth1 in the fringe of colored porcupine40 quills41 on his leggings and in his raven42 hair bestuck with feathers. For arms he had an arsenal43 in his belt; two great pistols, a tomahawk, and the scalping-knife, this last smaller than the white man's carving44 tool, but far more vicious looking.
For a moment or two we crouched45 irresolute46 on the brink of the ravine, neither of us recognizing the two below. Then my young rashling must needs let out a yell.
"Now, by all that's lucky!" he cried, and would have leaped to his feet. But at the instant the earth-edge gave way under him, and he was sent tumbling with the small landslide47 of clay down upon the twain at the fire.
It went within a trembling hair's-breadth of a tragedy. The two at the fire sprang up as one man; and the bound that set the hunter afoot brought his long rifle to his shoulder. But that the Indian was the quicker, Richard's life would have paid the penalty of his slip, I think. At the trigger-pulling instant the Catawba thrust the thick of his hand between stone and steel, and the flint bit, harmless for Jennifer, into the palm of the Indian.
"Wah!" he ejaculated, in his soft guttural. "No want kill Captain Jennif', hey?"
Ephraim Yeates lowered his weapon and released the pinched hand held fast by the gun-flint.
"Well, I'm daddled, fair and square, Cap'n Dick!" he declared. "Jest one more shake of a dead lamb's tail, and I'd 'a' had ye on my mind, sartain sure! I allowed ye knowed better than to come whammling down that-away behint a man whilst he's a-cooking his ven'son."
Dick laughed and called to me to follow as I could. And his answer to the old borderer was no answer at all.
"'Tis to be hoped you and the chief don't mean to be niddering with that deer's meat. We were guessing but a half-hour back, Captain Ireton and I, whether or no we'd have to take up belt-slack for our breakfast."
At the word the Catawba whipped out his knife and fell to work hospitably
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