The Riflemen of the Ohio: A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River"
"An' naterally," said Shif'less Sol, "he'd go whar the walkin' wuz easiest, but whar thar wuz kiver so he couldn't be seen by warriors. So he'd choose the easy slope under them big trees thar, an' go south toward that valley."
"Reckon you're right," said Long Jim in a convinced tone. "That's just about what Paul would do."
They descended the slope, an easy one, for a quarter of a mile, and came to a valley thickset with bushes and blackberry vines containing sharp briars.
"Paul wouldn't go crashin' into a briar patch," said Long Jim.
"He wouldn't, an' fur that reason he'd take this path," said Tom Ross, pointing to a narrow opening in the bushes and briars.
It was evidently a trail made by animals, trodden in the course of time in order to avoid a long circuit about the thicket, but they followed it, believing that Paul had gone that way. When nearly through, Henry saw something lying in the path. He stooped and held up the stem of a rose with one or two faded petals left upon it.
"It fell out o' his coat, an' he never noticed it," said Shif'less Sol.
"Right, uv course," said Tom Ross.
Not far beyond the thicket was a brook of uncommon beauty, a clear little stream bordered by wild flowers.
"Paul would stop here to drink an' look at all these here bee-yu-ti-ful scenes," said Shif'less Sol.
"He would," said Henry, "and, being terribly hungry, he would then climb that wild plum tree there beyond the oaks."
"Might throw up a stick an' knock 'em down," said Long Jim.
"There is no fallen wood here," said Henry, "and, being so ragingly hungry, Paul would not hunt for a stick. He'd shin up that tree at once."
"Tree itself will show," said Tom Ross.
"And it certainly does show," said Henry as they looked.
Little pieces of the bark on the trunk were broken off, evidently by a heavy body as it had struggled upward. Shif'less Sol also found two plum skins on the ground not far from the tree. The shiftless one held them up for the others to see.
"Now, ain't that Paul all over?" Tom Ross said. "Knows all about how the Carthygenians fit the French, an' how the English licked the Persians, but here he goes droppin' plum skins on the groun' fur any wanderin' warrior to see."
"Don't you go to attackin' Paul," said Shif'less Sol, "'cause Paul is a scholar like me. I ain't had the opportunities fur learnin', but I take naterally to it, 'specially history. So I kin understand why Paul, thinkin' all the time about Hannibal an' Belisarry an' all them great battles a long time ago, should throw his plum skins 'roun' loose, knowin' thar ain't no Carthygenians an' Persians about these days to see 'em."
"Paul is shorely a good boy," said Tom Ross, "an' ef he wants to throw plum skins, he kin. Now, we've got to figger on what he'll do next."
"Let's go to the top of that hill over there," said Henry, "and take a look at the country."
The survey showed a tangled mass of forest and low hills, which seemed to be monotonously alike in every direction. They could not see the Ohio from their summit.
"I think it likely," said Henry, "that Paul has got lost. Maybe he has been wandering about in a circle. I heard my Indians say that one lost on the Great Plains often did that."
"Might be a good guess," said Shif'less Sol. "Let's go back to the plum tree and try to take up his trail."
Paul's trail from the plum tree led in a northeasterly direction, and they were sure now that he was lost, as the river lay to the south. But the trail could not be followed more than twenty yards, and then they held another council.
"Bein' lost," said Tom Ross, "it ain't likely that he's ever got more'n two or three miles from here. Been spendin' his time goin' up an' down an' back an' forth. Ef we'd fire a rifle he might hear it."
Henry shook his head.
"I wouldn't," he said. "We would be just as likely to draw the Indians upon us, and we can find him, anyhow."
"Guess you're right," said Tom. "S'pose we spread out in a long line an' go huntin' through the thickets, follerin' the general direction that his little piece of trail showed."
The suggestion was approved, and in ten minutes a whistle from Tom Ross drew them to a central point.
"Paul killed a wild turkey here," said Tom. "These woods seem to be full uv 'em, an' he lighted a fire with his flint and steel. Had a hard time doin' it, too. Knelt down here so long tryin' to knock out a blaze that the prints uv his knees haven't gone away yet."
"But he did get it to goin' at last," said Shif'less Sol, "an' he cooked his turkey an' et it, too. Here's the wishbone, all white an' shinin', jest ez he throwed it down."
"And down here is the spring where he picked the turkey after he heated it on the fire, and where he washed it," said Henry. "Paul was so hungry he never thought about hiding the feathers, and a lot of 'em are left, caught in the grass and bushes."
"I don't blame Paul," said Long Jim, his gastronomic soul afire. "Ef I wuz hungry ez he must have been, I'd hev et it ef all the warriors uv all the tribes on this continent wuz standin' lookin' on."
"Paul felt a pow'ful sight better after eatin'," said Shif'less Sol, "an' he took the rest uv the turkey with him. Seems likely to me that Paul would follow the brook, thinkin' it would flow into the Ohio."
"That's almost a certainty," said Henry.
They went with the stream, but it was one of those brooks common throughout the West—it came out of the ground, and into the ground it went again, not more than half a mile from the point at which they took up its course. The stream disappeared under a natural stone arch in the side of the hill.
"Paul was greatly disappointed," said Henry, "and of course he went to the top of the hill to see if he could get a reckoning."
But the new hill merely revealed the same character of country.
"Seein' that he wuzn't gittin' anywhar, Paul, o' course, changed his direction," said Shif'less Sol.
"Naturally," said Henry.
"Now which way do you figger that he would go?" said Tom Ross.
"Down through that big grove there," replied Henry. "Having killed one turkey, he'd be on the look-out for another, and he knows that they roost in tall trees."
"Looks to me like a kind o' mind readin'," said Shif'less Sol, "but I think it's right. Lead on, Henry. Whar A-killus Ware will go, the dauntless soul o' Hector Hyde ain't afeard to foller."
They searched for some time among the trees, and then Henry pointed to a great elm. A section of bark nearly a foot square had been cut from it. The bark was lying on the ground, but the inner lining had been clipped from it and was gone.
"I jedge that this wuz done about a day ago," said Shif'less Sol. "Now, what in thunder did Paul do it fur?"
"Suppose you ask him," said Henry, who had gone on ahead, but who had now turned back and rejoined his comrades.
Astonished, they looked at him.
"He's sitting in a little valley over there, hard at work," said Henry. "Come and see, but don't make any noise. It would be a pity to disturb him."
Henry endeavored to speak lightly, but he felt an immense relief. They followed him silently and looked cautiously into a pleasant little glade. There they beheld Paul, alive, and to all appearances strong and well.
But Paul was absorbed in some great task. He sat upon the ground. His rifle lay on the grass beside him. A sheet of white was supported upon his knees, and his face was bent over it, while he drew lines there with the point of his hunting knife. So intensely interested was he, and so deeply concentrated was his mind, that he did not look up at all.
"It's the inner bark of the elm tree, and he's drawing something on it," said Henry.
Jim Hart stirred. His knee struck a little stick that broke with a snap. Paul heard it, and instantly he threw down the bark, snatched up his rifle, and began to investigate.
"He'll come up here spyin'," whispered Shif'less Sol. "While he's lookin', let's steal his bark away from him an' see what's on it."
"We'll do it," said Henry, and while Paul, rifle in hand, ascended the slope to see what had caused the noise, they deftly slipped away, descending to the other side of the glade.
When Paul entered the bushes, Shif'less Sol ran out, picked up the roll of bark, and returned silently with it to his comrades, who lay in a dense thicket. Filled with curiosity, all looked at it promptly.
"It's a map," whispered Henry, "and he's trying to locate himself in that way. See, this long line is the Ohio, here is the route of our own flight, this place is where he thinks he left us, and this line, I suppose, shows his own course after he dropped out. This deep mark here indicates where he now is. It's pretty good, but he's got everything turned around. South is where east ought to be, and north has taken the place of west."
"But what good is a map ef it don't take you anywhar?" asked Jim Hart.
"That's a plum' foolish question fur you to ask, Jim Hart," said Shif'less Sol disdainfully. "Great scholars like me an' Paul always draw maps. What does it matter ef you don't git anywhar? Thar's your map, anyhow."
"Sh!" whispered Tom Ross. "He's comin' back, havin' diskivered that thar's nothin' in the bushes. Now what'll he do?"
Paul, his mind relieved, returned to the glade, put back his rifle on the grass, and looked for the precious map that was costing him so much time and thought. It was not there, and great was the boy's amazement. He had certainly laid it down at that very spot, and he had not been gone a minute. He looked all around, and even up into the air, and the four in the brush were forced to smile at his puzzled face.
Paul stood staring at the place where his precious map had lain, but where it lay no more, and his amazement deepened. They admired Paul and had a deep affection for him, but they thought that their little joke might keep him nearer to the earth when he was in a dangerous Indian country.
"Mebbe he thinks Alfred the Great an' his Mogul Tartars hev come an' took it away," whispered Shif'less Sol.
Then Paul held up his hand.
"Feelin' o' the wind," said Shif'less Sol. "He hez now come to the conclusion that the wind took his map away, and so he thinks ef he kin find out which way it's blowin' he kin find out which way the map hez blowed, too."
Paul concluded that the light wind was blowing toward the east, and going in that direction he began to search for his map among the bushes that enclosed the glade. The moment his figure was hidden Henry whispered to the others:
"Come on!"
They came silently from the thicket, ran to the center of the glade, where Henry, kneeling down, spread out the map on the ground and began to examine it with the greatest attention. The others knelt beside him, and they also became absorbed in a study of the map. The four heads almost touched over the sheet of bark.
Paul, failing to find his map in the bushes, turned back to the glade. Then he stood transfixed with astonishment. He saw four figures, the backs of two, and the heads and shoulders of two more. Heads, backs, and shoulders were familiar. Could it really be they? He winked his eyes rapidly to clear away any motes. Yes, it was they, the four faithful comrades with whom he had roved and hunted and fought so long. He uttered a shout of joy and rushed toward them.
Paul's hands were shaken so often and so hard that his fingers were numbed. A little moisture gathered on the eyelids of the sensitive boy when he saw how glad they were to see him.
"You've found me," he said, "and it's so good to see you again that I enjoy with you the little trick you've played on me."
"Pow'ful fine map, this o' yours, Paul," said Shif'less Sol, holding up the sheet of bark. "'Pears to me you kin find everything on it, 'cept whar you are."
"That was just the trouble with it, Sol," said Paul frankly. "It looked fine to me, but I couldn't make it work."
"Well," said Henry, "here we are, together again, all five of us, ready for anything. Isn't that so, boys, and isn't it fine?"
"Shorely," said Shif'less Sol, speaking for them all.
"Now, Paul," said Henry, "what were you trying to do?"
"I had an idea that I could reach the river," said Paul. "If I did so, then I might be able to swim across it in the night, and take a warning to Fort Prescott, if it wasn't too late."
"Got anything to eat left?" asked Tom Ross.
"I've had wild fruit," replied Paul, "and I shot a turkey, the last of which went this morning, but I was hoping for more luck of that kind."
"Well," said Tom, "we, too, hev about et up all that we had. So we'll hev to take a little hunt together. 'Twon't take long. Country's full uv game."
They shot a deer within an hour, feasted abundantly and retained enough more to last them several days.
"Wish we had Jim Hart's oven here," said Shif'less Sol as they ate. "While Jim wuz waitin', Paul, he made more improvements in the art o' cookin'."
Long Jim grinned with appreciation. It was a compliment that he liked.
"Now," said Henry, "the next thing for us to do is to find the fleet. Mr. Boone told me that it was being held up in a narrow part of the river by the Indian sharpshooters. I suppose that Adam Colfax doesn't want to lose any more men for fear that he will grow short-handed before he reaches Pittsburgh."
"But he's got to get through, an' he's got to help the fort, too," said Shif'less Sol.
"That's so," said Henry, "and we must find him just as soon as we can."
Rising, they sped toward the southwest.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE HALTING OF THE FLEET
Adam Colfax had been making slow progress up the Ohio, far slower than he had hoped, and his brave soul was worn by hardships and troubled by apprehensions. A great hurricane had caused him serious alarm for his smaller boats. They had been saved from sinking with the greatest difficulty, and the precious stores had to be kept well and guarded well.
He was grieved and troubled, too, over the disappearance of the five, the valiant five who had continually been doing him such great service from the very moment of the start at New Orleans. He liked them all, and he mourned them for their own sakes as well. He also realized quickly that he had lost more than the five themselves. His fleet seemed to have come into a very nest of dangers. Men who went ashore to hunt never returned. At narrow points in the river they were fired upon from the dense forest on the bank, and if they sent a strong force ashore, they found nothing. If they camped at night, bullets drew blood or scattered the coals at their feet.
Invisible but none the less terrible foes hung upon them continually, and weakened their spirits. The men in the fleet were willing and eager to fight a foe whom they could see, but to be stung to death by invisible hornets was the worst of fates.
Adam Colfax missed the "eyes of the fleet" more and more every day. If Henry Ware and Shif'less Sol and their comrades had been there, they could have discovered these unseen foes, and they could have told him what to do. At night he often saw signal fires, blazing on either side of the Ohio and, although he did not know what they meant, he felt sure that they were lighted by his enemies, who were talking to one another.
Two or three of his men who had been originally woodsmen of the great valley told him that the allied tribes had come to destroy him. They had seen certain signs in the forest that could not be mistaken. The woods were full of warriors. They had heard, too, that further on was a fort on the river bank which the Indians had probably taken by this time, and which they would certainly use against the fleet. Adam Colfax wished once more for the five, who were more familiar than anybody else with the country, and who were such magnificent scouts. Never had he felt their absence more.
He came at last to the narrowest place in the river that he had yet seen, enclosed on either bank by jutting hills. As the fleet approached this watery pass a tremendous fire was opened upon it from either shore. The bullets not only came from the level of the water, but from the tops of the hills, and the sides of the boat offered no protection against the latter. The men of the fleet returned the fire, but their lead was sent into the forest and the undergrowth, and they did not know whether it hit anything except inoffensive wood and earth.
Adam Colfax drew back. He felt that he might have forced the pass, but the loss in men and stores would be too great. It was not his chief object to fight battles even if every battle should prove a victory.
When he withdrew, the forest relapsed into silence, but when he attempted the passage again the next day he was attacked by a similar, though greater, fire. He was now in a terrible quandary. He did not wish another such desperate battle as that which he had been forced to fight on the Lower Mississippi. He might win it, but there would be a great expenditure of men and ammunition, and at this vast distance from New Orleans neither could be replaced.
He drew back to a wider part of the river and decided to wait a day or two, that is, to take counsel of delay.
Adam Colfax was proud of his fleet and the great amount of precious stores that it carried. The reinforcements after the Battle of the Bayou had raised it to more than its original strength and value. All the men had recovered from their wounds, and everybody was in splendid health. He had made up his mind that fleet and cargo should be delivered intact at Pittsburgh, otherwise he could never consider his voyage wholly a success.
The night after he fell back from the watery pass he held a council of his captains and guides on his own flat boat, which had been named the Independence. He had with him Adolphe Drouillard, a brave and devoted French Creole from New Orleans; James Tilden, a Virginian; Henry Eckford, a south Carolinian; Charles Turner, a New Yorker, and William Truesdale, and Eben Barber, New Englanders, and besides these, Nat Thrale and Ned Lyon, the best of the scouts and guides since the disappearance of the five, were present.
The fleet was anchored in the middle of the river, out of rifle shot for the present, but Adam Colfax knew very well that the enemy was in the dense wood lining either bank. He had sent skirmishers ashore in the afternoon, and they did not go many yards from the stream before they were compelled to exchange shots with the foe. Thrale and Lyon, who were on the southern bank, reported that the Indians were still thick in the forest.
"They see us here on the river," said Thrale, "an' ef we don't keep well in the middle uv it they kin reach us with thar bullets. But we won't be able to see the least speck or sign uv them."
Adam Colfax had sighed when he heard these words, and now, as his little council gathered, it seemed that all predictions of evil were about to be fulfilled. A smoky red sun had set behind the hills, and the night, true to the promise of the sun, had come on dark and cloudy. It was not exactly the cloudiness of rain; it was rather that of heat and oppressiveness, and it had in it a certain boding quality that weighed heavily upon the spirits of Adam Colfax.
The boats were anchored in a double row in the exact center of the stream, swaying just a little with the gentle current. All those carrying sails had taken them down. Adam Colfax's boat was outside the two lines, slightly nearer to the southern shore, but still beyond rifle shot.
While the leader sat in the stern of his boat waiting for the two scouts who were last to come, he surveyed the fleet with the anxious eyes of one who carries a great responsibility. In the darkness the boats were not much more than dark lines on the darker river. Now and then they were lighted up by flares of heat lightning, but the eyes of Adam Colfax turned away from them to the banks, those high banks thick with forest and undergrowth, which contained so many dangers, real dangers, not those of the imaginary kind, as he had ample proof. Now and then a shot, apparently as a taunt, was fired from either shore, and two or three times he heard the long, whining yell which is the most ominous of human cries. This, too, he knew, was a taunt, but in every case, cunning, ferocity and power lay behind the taunt, which was another truth that he knew.
They were all soon gathered on the deck of the little Independence, and the faces of the two scouts who came last were very grave.
"What do you think of it, Lyon?" said Adam Colfax.
Lyon gave his head one brief shake.
"We're right in the middle of the biggest hornet's nest the country ever saw," he replied. "Looks ez ef we couldn't git past without another terrible fight."
"And you, Drouillard?" Adam Colfax asked of the Creole.
"Eet ees hard to go on," replied Drouillard in his broken English, "but we cannot go back at all. So eet ees true that we must go on. Eet ees is the only thing we can do."
"But how?" said Adam Colfax. "We cannot use up all the ammunition that we have in these battles. If we were to reach Pittsburgh in that condition we'd be a burden instead of a help."
"But as Mr. Drouillard says, we can't go back," said Truesdale.
They sat dumbly a minute or two, no one knowing what to propose, and all looking toward the southern bank, where they believed the chief danger to lie. The dark green forest made a high black line there in the night, a solid black until it was broken by a pink dot, which they knew to be the flash of a rifle.
"They are jeering at us again," said Adam Colfax.
"'Tain't no jeer, either," said Thrale, as five or six pink dots appeared where the one had been, and faint sounds came to their ears.
Lyon confirmed the opinion of his brother scout.
"So many wouldn't let off their guns at once jest fur fun," he said. "I wonder what in tarnation it means!"
The spray of pink dots did not reappear, and they turned their minds once more to their great problem, which seemed as insoluble as ever. The flowing of the current, gentle but deep and strong, swung the Independence a little further from the two lines of boats, but those on board, in their absorption, did not notice it. Three or four minutes passed, and there was the report of a rifle shot from the southern bank, followed an instant later by another. Two bullets splashed in the water near the Independence.
"We'd better pull back a leetle," said Drouillard. "We are drifting within range of ze warriors."
"So we are," said Lyon, laying his hand on a sweep. "Now, what under the moon is that?"
He pointed to a dark object, a mere black dot on the dusky surface of the river. But it was not a stationary dot, and in its movement it came toward the Independence.
"Shorely they don't mean to come swimmin' to attack us," said the other guide, Thrale. "That's a human head on top uv the water an' thar's a body belongin' to it under the water. An' see, thar's another head behind it, an' behind that another, an' likely thar's more."
"Eet ees certainlee the warriors trying to reach us on the water," said Adolphe Drouillard, and, raising his rifle, he took aim at the first swimming head.
"Hold a little," said Adam Colfax, pushing down the barrel of the weapon. "Look, as they come closer now, you can see a fourth and a fifth head and then no more. Five swimming heads on the water must mean something, I hope; yet I'm afraid I hope too much."
The foremost of the swimming figures raised a hand out of the water, and held it high in token of amity. Instantly the four behind did the same thing.
"Most amazing," said Adolphe Drouillard. "Ees eet possible that they are friends?"
"I think it not only possible, but probable," said Adam Colfax with a rising tone of joy in his voice. "They are near now, and that first head looks familiar to me. I devoutly hope that I'm not mistaken."
The leader's head, propelled by the powerful strokes of the arms below, came within a yard or two of the Independence, and some stray rays of the moon, falling upon it, brought it from dusk into light. It was the face of a young river god, strong features cut cleanly, a massive projecting chin, and long yellow hair from which the water flowed in streams.
The head was raised from the water, the hands grasped the edge of the boat, and the figure sprang lightly on board, standing perfectly erect for a moment, while the water ran from his fringed hunting shirt, his moccasins, the knife and tomahawk at his belt, and flowed away over the boards.
