The blade sank deep, and as it did so I turned my left fist which gripped the loose skin, turned it so my knuckles pressed hard against the cat's neck. A paw came up, clawing at my hand. It ripped the buckskin of my jacket, tore the flesh on my forearm, but to let go was to die. I stabbed again and again with the knife.
It was ripping with one hindleg, but the fierce claws were digging the earth, not me. There were only short, convulsive movements from the other hind foot.
I stabbed again, and it seemed the struggles grew weaker. Again and again--suddenly I threw the cat from me.
It lay there, bloody and exhausted, staring at me with all the insane fury such a beast contained. The grass and leaves were spattered with blood. Some of mine was mingled with it, but my knife had stabbed deep, again and again. The cat stared, tried to move, and then fell over. Once more it tried to come to itself and failed to rise. The wild eyes glared their hatred, and the beast died.
My one good leg was ripped and raw, with deep lacerations. My arm had been bitten, when I did not recall, but my forearms and shoulder had also been clawed. My scalp was also torn by teeth, and a string hung near my eye. Yet I was conscious and aware.
Whatever had been my troubles before, they were more than doubled now. The claws and fangs of a wild beast are poisoned from the fragments of decaying meat around them. I needed to get to the stream, cleanse myself, and try to patch up this poor creature I had become.
Taking my bow and quiver, I started to crawl, and then I stopped. I had come for meat, and I was leaving meat behind me. A Catawba whom we knew had once said that panther meat was best of all, and Yance, who had eaten it on one of his forays into the deep woods, agreed. So I peeled back the hide and cut a fair-sized chunk from the panther. Then, on my feet and with my crutch and bow, I hobbled back to my camp.
Falling on the ground I crawled to the stream and lay in its shallow waters near the edge, letting the cool water run slowly over me. And when I looked up, there were stars. My fingers dug into the mud of the stream and I plastered my wounds with it.
Weak from exhaustion and loss of blood I crawled from the stream applying more mud to my wounds. Somewhere I had been told mud was useful, but I did not remember why. I cared only that it was here and that somehow the bleeding must be stopped.
Crawling to my bed I pulled the blanket over me and lay shivering. Whether I simply lost consciousness or slept I do not know, but when I opened my eyes I fumbled some sticks into the fire before passing out again.
It was daylight when my eyes opened. A few tendrils of smoke lifted from my coals and I coaxed them to flame once more, dipped water into the bark dish, and suspended it above the fire. I cut a piece of the meat and dropped it in with some other things gathered when crawling about.
After a long time I opened my eyes and the water had boiled down leaving a kind of mush of my stew. With my wooden spoon I managed a few mouthfuls before passing out again.
There was a long while then when I fought wild battles with gigantic cats, when buffalo stampeded over me and Kapata returned with his spear. It was delirium, and I knew it, and from time to time I crawled to the stream and drank. Once I made chicory coffee and then passed out still again.
Once I chewed on raw meat, and finally I slept, a deep, long sleep almost like the sleep of death.
In it I felt gentle hands--my wounds were being treated and I was home again.
Consciousness returned and my eyes opened. I was clearly awake and there was no delirium. I turned my head. An Indian sat by the fire, eating.
It was Keokotah.
Chapter Eleven.
"One leg no good," Keokotah said, and took another bite from the meat in his hands.
"I fell," I explained.
"Not you." He pointed into the brush where I had fought the panther. "Him." He chewed for a minute. "No catch deer, catch you."
"You mean that cat had a bad leg?" I struggled to sit up.
He motioned for me to be still. "You stay. You much scratch. I fix."
With gentle fingers I felt of my wounds. Where the flesh had been torn by the panther's talons my wounds were bound with some kind of poultice. It had not been a dream, then. My wounds had been treated. "I'm obliged," I said. "Are you a medicine man, too?"
He chuckled and gave me a wry look. "No medicine man. All know." He showed me the slender trunk of a young pine no thicker than two of my fingers. Then he indicated the inner bark of the plum. He had pounded them together with some wild cherry bark also, boiled the concoction, and made a poultice.
"You no come. I know something wrong. I come to look." He pointed. "I find him. He dead. Some meat gone, so I look for you."
He had killed a deer, and he made a broth of the meat, bone marrow, and some herbs. I ate it slowly, savoring every bit. Then I was tired and I lay back, resting and willing to rest.
"Kapata was here?" said Keokotah.
When I had told my story he shrugged. "I find tracks. They go to Great River." He chewed in silence and then glanced at me again. Then he placed my bow and quiver close at hand and lay down and went to sleep.
It was night and I was tired, but no longer wished to sleep. Keokotah had come back to look for me, and a lucky thing. Could I have survived? I think so. I knew of herbs to treat wounds. I could have survived, yet he had returned. He was my friend.
Listening to the night I heard no sounds but those natural to the forest and the night--only the wind in the long grass of the cove and the chuckling sound from the stream near the cave mouth. I closed my eyes but not to sleep, only to think.
When I was up and about, we must move with speed. Kapata would seek Itchakomi and might find her before we could. He was a hard, stubborn man and not to be frustrated by any woman, yet from what Ni'kwana had said this was no ordinary woman. Still, we must hurry. I would deliver the message from Ni'kwana and protect her from Kapata if that were necessary, and then go on about my business.
It was a new land out there, and I wished to see it. I wanted to wander down the long hills, seek out the wooded canyons, follow its running streams. I wanted to live from the country, breathe the air of the high mesas, and climb where the streams were born from under the slide rock.
Now I must become well quickly. It was no time to be lying here. I finished what remained of the broth. I would need strength for the bow, strength for walking the long miles, strength for the paddle of my canoe.
Did Kapata have a canoe? Perhaps not. In that might lie an advantage.
Wind bent the tall grass, stirred among the leaves, fluttered the small flame of my fire. I closed my eyes. A morning would come.
Gently, I eased my broken leg. I could manage that leg in a canoe. I would have to sit and not kneel as I most often did, but the bone would knit as well in a canoe as lying here.
How many days had passed? I had kept no record, had only the vaguest idea. I had slept and awakened, but how long had I slept? Was I not unconscious a part of the time? No matter. It was time to move on and I would move, if only a mile a day.
How long had Keokotah been with me? Again I had no idea and when I asked he merely shrugged.
Yet for two days longer I rested, gathering strength, moving about the camp, making a better crutch, planning our move. Of one thing I was sure. Someday I would return to this place, to this grassy cove.
There was a trail that led through it, and Keokotah was convinced the stream in the cave was the same that issued far below in the Sequatchie valley. I had seen but little of the valley, yet it was a place I could come to love. It was a place where we Sacketts belonged.
On a tree near the cave I carved an A, but this time I carved an arrow beneath it, pointing down.
The first day we traveled but five miles before I tired too greatly to go on, but on the second day we reached my canoe.
The river called Tenasee flowed south, described a great curve, and turned back to the north to empty into the river the Iroquois called Ohio. There was, Keokotah warned, a great
whirlpool not far south of where we were. Many canoes had been lost there and Indians drowned. Keokotah had sat on the cliffs above and watched canoes go through or into the Suck, as it was sometimes called. It was a place where Indians said, "the mountains look at each other." The waters above were about a half mile wide, but where they entered the deep gorge they were compressed into a space of less than seventy yards.
"Can we go through?" I asked.
Keokotah shrugged. "It is best to hold to the south," he said. "I have seen some canoes go through."
There was a whirlpool where boats were seized and swept round and round, and some were carried into the depths, whence only bits and pieces came to the surface.
We beached our canoe above the narrow river, and on a small point of land among some willows we ate and slept. Keokotah had not known chicory before but was developing a taste for it. I shaved some of the dried and roasted root into a bark dish and made enough for each of us.
It was in my mind to collect more of the root, for I had seen less and less of it and doubted it would grow beyond the Great River, where not many white men had been.
We rested there above the gorge, and at night when all was still we could hear the muffled roar of the waters below us. It was a dangerous place for a man to go, even more so with my crippled leg. If I had to swim against a powerful current ...
Well, one must take some chances, and to go west and not to follow the river would be hard indeed.
When evening came I paused by the water before going to sleep, and stood there facing westward toward the unknown lands.
What mystery lay waiting to be solved? What strange lands to be seen? I might well be the first white man other than the men of De Soto to see these lands. Even he had seen but little, and the Far Seeing Lands beyond ... who knew of them?
Even the Indians had not seen most of those lands. Water was scarce and a man could not carry enough. Someday men would come with horses that could carry them far out on those wide, mysterious plains.
Were there buffalo there? Could a man break a buffalo to ride? The idea seemed ridiculous, but it stayed with me. Why not, if one was captured young and taught from birth to be friendly to a man and if the man fed and cared for it and broke it gradually to the idea?
When morning came we put the canoe into the water and shoved off, but no sooner were we in the current than we felt the difference. The river seemed to have taken on a new power. The water was dark and swift and the canoe shot forward. There was no visible turbulence, no white water, just a sense of rushing power that swept us along. Keokotah, who was in the bow, turned once to glance at me and then gave all his attention to the canoe.
Faster and faster we went until suddenly the canoe shot around a point of rocks and plunged into a rocky defile where the river hurled itself against the rock walls, against great boulders, throwing water high into the air. Keokotah was a master, and crippled though I was I had great skill at handling canoes both in rivers and on the sea. The river roared and foamed about us. Dead ahead was a mighty shelf of rock fallen from the cliff above and we were thrown at it with what seemed tremendous force, and then the water whipped us away just as we seemed about to crash. Our eyes were blinded by splashing water as spray was hurled like stones into our faces. We dipped a paddle here and there, fighting for the south edge, which had seemed safest to Keokotah watching from above.
Suddenly the great whirlpool was just before us, and we whipped around it, but riding the high side toward the south we were flung free and in a moment were sliding downstream at a faster speed than I had ever traveled in a canoe. Then we were in swift but quiet water. Drenched in cold sweat I looked at Keokotah, but his back was squarely toward me and I could not judge his fear, had there been any.
We were in a deep canyon and found no place to escape the river. Chewing jerked venison we traveled on. It was after sundown when we came upon an island. Easing behind it, we found a small beach of gravel where he could draw up our canoe.
We prepared no food, nor did we talk. Exhausted, we rolled in our blankets and slept, and did not awaken until the sun was high.
There followed days of traveling the river. We fished, we hunted, we slept on the banks, and twice we had brief fights with strange Indians, but my longbow carried yards further than could their bows. In the first encounter, the Indians drew off after a man was wounded before they were within bow range. On the second occasion there was an ineffectual exchange of arrows, and then our lighter and faster canoe drew away from them.
We saw game everywhere--numerous deer and occasional small herds of buffalo. For mile upon mile we saw no human life or signs of any. Several times we saw bears fishing at the edges of rivers. They ignored us for the most part, one standing up to see us the better. After looking us over and deciding we were of no consequence it went back to scooping fish from the water.
The river turned north, and after a while we entered the Ohio, a much larger river. There was an Indian village near where the Tenasee entered the Ohio but we passed it at night. Dogs barked and a few Indians came from their lodges to look about. We were far out on the water and they saw us not. Some miles further we camped the night on a sandbar covered with willows, building a small fire for the smoke to keep the mosquitoes away, and at daybreak we were in the canoe once more. Ahead of us lay the Great River, which some Indians called the Mississippi.
My leg was now much better, and soon I would discard the crutch. Whenever possible I moved without it, trying to get the muscles working again.
Having no experience with broken limbs I had no idea when to get rid of the crutch.
The Mississippi, if such it was called, proved a different river. It wound and twisted through the land, carrying much debris, huge trees torn from its banks, once even a cut board, which puzzled us indeed. The other river for which we sought would be several days travel away to the south. How far I did not know.
Keokotah had been there, of course. He had waited there for me and had come looking only when he was sure something had gone wrong.
We camped on the Great River, on a sandy island partly made up of gigantic old trees that had drifted together, moored to the bottom by their own roots and branches. These were drifted trees from somewhere far upstream. Debris and mud had gathered about them, and an island had been created of several acres. Willows had grown up and some other larger stuff had started. No doubt the island would remain until some spring flood tore it loose and scattered its bits and pieces.
Our fire was going in a sheltered place behind great roots, and fish were broiling.
I said to Keokotah, "The Englishman? How did he come to be with you?"
Direct questions rarely brought a response. He shrugged, and stripped the backbone from a fish in his hands. "He good man." He glanced at me. "Talk, all the time talk."
"To whom?"
"To me. He talk to me. He say I am his brother." Keokotah chewed a moment. "He come in canoe. Like yours. He not a big man. Smaller than you, but strong."
After a few minutes of silence he added, "He cough, much cough. I think he sick. I say so."
The fire crackled, and I added sticks. "He say he not well and he say, 'You wrong. No sick. I die soon.'
"He look much at small packet." He shaped a rectangle with his fingers. "Many leaves sewn at the back. The leaves have small signs on them. He looks at them and sometimes he smiles or speaks from them. I ask what it is and he say this isbook and it speaks to him.
"I listen, no hear it speak."
"The signs in this book spoke to him," I said. "When you look at a trail in the morning, it speaks to you of who passed in the night. It was so with him."
"Ah? It could be so." He looked at me. "You have book?"
"At my home there were many books," I said, "and I miss them very much." I tapped my head. "Many books up here. Like you remember old trails, I remember books. Often I think of what the books have said to me."
"What do books say?"
"Many thing
s, in many ways. You sit by the knees of your old men and hear their tales of warpath and hunt. In our books we have made signs that tell such stories, not only of our grandfathers but of their grandfathers.
"We put upon leaves the stories of our great men, and of wars, but the best books are those that repeat the wisdom of our grandfathers."
"The Englishman's book was like that?"
"I do not know what book he had, but you said he read from the book. Do you remember what he read?"
"What he reads sings. I think he has medicine songs, but he say, 'Only in a way.' He speaks of the 'snows of yesteryear.' "
"Frangois Villon," I said.
"What?"
"That line was written by a French poet, a long, long time ago."
"French? He say Frenchmans his enemy!"
"That was probably right," I said, "but that would not keep him from liking his poetry. Did you never sing the songs of another tribe?"
He started to say no and then shrugged. "We change them. Anyway, they were our songs once ... I think."
"My leg is better. Tomorrow I shall walk without a crutch."
"Better you walk," Keokotah said. "I think much trouble come. I think we have to fight soon."
We slept, and once I awakened in the night. Our fire was down to coals, and above us the stars had gone. The air smelled like rain and I thought of us alone in all that vast and almost empty land.
It was a lonely, eerie feeling. Alone ... all, all alone!
I drew my blanket around my shoulders and listened to the rustling of the river.
It was a long time before I was again asleep.
Chapter Twelve.
Now I made ready my pistols. I did not wish to use them but the need might be great. My bow was ever beside me, an arrow ever ready.
Endlessly wound the river along its timbered banks, brushing the roots of leaning trees, heavy with foliage. Dead trees, uprooted far upstream, were a danger to birchbark canoes, and at no time dared we relax. Around each bend, and the twists and turns were many, might lie enemy Indians or some obstruction to rip our bottom out.
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