by Zane Grey
“I have gone mad!” cried Jonathan, tortured by the simple question of his friend. Those big, dear, wonderful eyes he loved so well, looked at him now from the gloom of the thicket. The old, beautiful, soft glow, the tender light, was there, and more, a beseeching prayer to save her.
Jonathan bowed his head, ashamed to let his friend see the tears that dimmed his eyes.
“Jack, we’ve follered the trail fer years together. Always you’ve been true an’ staunch. This is our last, but whatever bides we’ll break up Legget’s band tonight, an’ the border’ll be cleared, mebbe, for always. At least his race is run. Let thet content you. Our time’d have to come, sooner or later, so why not now? I know how it is, that you want to stick by me; but the lass draws you to her. I understand, an’ want you to save her. Mebbe you never dreamed it; but I can tell jest how you feel. All the tremblin’, an’ softness, an’ sweetness, an’ delight you’ve got for thet girl, is no mystery to Lew Wetzel.”
“You loved a lass?”
Wetzel bowed his head, as perhaps he had never before in all his life.
“Betty—always,” he answered softly.
“My sister!” exclaimed Jonathan, and then his hand closed hard on his comrade’s, his mind going back to many things, strange in the past, but now explained. Wetzel had revealed his secret.
“An’ it’s been all my life, since she wasn’t higher ’n my knee. There was a time when I might hev been closer to you than I am now. But I was a mad an’ bloody Injun hater, so I never let her know till I seen it was too late. Wal, wal, no more of me. I only told it fer you.”
Jonathan was silent.
“An’ now to come back where we left off,” continued Wetzel. “Let’s take a more hopeful look at this comin’ fight. Sure I said it was my last trail, but mebbe it’s not. You can never tell. Feelin’ as we do, I imagine they’ve no odds on us. Never in my life did I say to you, least of all to any one else, what I was goin’ to do; but I’ll tell it now. If I land uninjured amongst thet bunch, I’ll kill them all.”
The giant borderman’s low voice hissed, and stung. His eyes glittered with unearthly fire. His face was cold and gray. He spread out his brawny arms and clenched his huge fists, making the muscles of his broad shoulders roll and bulge.
“I hate the thought, Lew, I hate the thought. Ain’t there no other way?”
“No other way.”
“I’ll do it, Lew, because I’d do the same for you; because I have to, because I love her; but God! it hurts.”
“Thet’s right,” answered Wetzel, his deep voice softening until it was singularly low and rich. “I’m glad you’ve come to it. An’ sure it hurts. I want you to feel so at leavin’ me to go it alone. If we both get out alive, I’ll come many times to see you an’ Helen. If you live an’ I don’t, think of me sometimes, think of the trails we’ve crossed together. When the fall comes with its soft, cool air, an’ smoky mornin’s an’ starry nights, when the wind’s sad among the bare branches, an’ the leaves drop down, remember they’re fallin’ on my grave.”
Twilight darkened into gloom; the red tinge in the west changed to opal light; through the trees over a dark ridge a rim of silver glinted and moved.
The moon had risen; the hour was come.
The bordermen tightened their belts, replaced their leggings, tied their hunting coats, loosened their hatchets, looked to the priming of their rifles, and were ready.
Wetzel walked twenty paces and turned. His face was white in the moonlight; his dark eyes softened into a look of love as he gripped his comrade’s outstretched hand.
Then he dropped flat on the ground, carefully saw to the position of his rifle, and began to creep. Jonathan kept close at his heels.
Slowly but steadily they crawled, minute after minute. The hazel-nut bushes above them had not yet shed their leaves; the ground was clean and hard, and the course fatefully perfect for their deadly purpose.
A slight rustling of their buckskin garments sounded like the rustling of leaves in a faint breeze.
The moon came out above the trees and still Wetzel advanced softly, steadily, surely.
The owl, lonely sentinel of that wood, hooted dismally. Even his night eyes, which made the darkness seem clear as day, missed those gliding figures. Even he, sure guardian of the wilderness, failed the savages.
Jonathan felt soft moss beneath him; he was now in the woods under the trees. The thicket had been passed.
Wetzel’s moccasin pressed softly against Jonathan’s head. The first signal!
Jonathan crawled forward, and slightly raised himself.
He was on a rock. The trees were thick and gloomy. Below, the little hollow was almost in the wan moonbeams. Dark figures lay close together. Two savages paced noiselessly to and fro. A slight form rolled in a blanket lay against a tree.
Jonathan felt his arm gently squeezed.
The second signal!
Slowly he thrust forward his rifle, and raised it in unison with Wetzel’s. Slowly he rose to his feet as if the same muscles guided them both.
Over his head a twig snapped. In the darkness he had not seen a low branch.
The Indian guards stopped suddenly, and became motionless as stone.
They had heard; but too late.
With the blended roar of the rifles both dropped, lifeless.
Almost under the spouting flame and white cloud of smoke, Jonathan leaped behind Wetzel, over the bank. His yells were mingled with Wetzel’s vengeful cry. Like leaping shadows the bordermen were upon their foes.
An Indian sprang up, raised a weapon, and fell beneath Jonathan’s savage blow, to rise no more. Over his prostrate body the borderman bounded. A dark, nimble form darted upon the captive. He swung high a blade that shone like silver in the moonlight. His shrill war-cry of death rang out with Helen’s scream of despair. Even as he swung back her head with one hand in her long hair, his arm descended; but it fell upon the borderman’s body. Jonathan and the Indian rolled upon the moss. There was a terrific struggle, a whirling blade, a dull blow which silenced the yell, and the borderman rose alone.
He lifted Helen as if she were a child, leaped the brook, and plunged into the thicket.
The noise of the fearful conflict he left behind, swelled high and hideously on the night air. Above the shrill cries of the Indians, and the furious yells of Legget, rose the mad, booming roar of Wetzel. No rifle cracked; but sodden blows, the clash of steel, the threshing of struggling men, told of the dreadful strife.
Jonathan gained the woods, sped through the moonlit glades, and far on under light and shadow.
The shrill cries ceased; only the hoarse yells and the mad roar could be heard. Gradually these also died away, and the forest was still.
CHAPTER XXI
Next morning, when the mist was breaking and rolling away under the warm rays of the Indian-summer sun, Jonathan Zane beached his canoe on the steep bank before Fort Henry. A pioneer, attracted by the borderman’s halloo, ran to the bluff and sounded the alarm with shrill whoops. Among the hurrying, brown-clad figures that answered this summons, was Colonel Zane.
“It’s Jack, kurnel, an’ he’s got her!” cried one.
The doughty colonel gained the bluff to see his brother climbing the bank with a white-faced girl in his arms.
“Well?” he asked, looking darkly at Jonathan. Nothing kindly or genial was visible in his manner now; rather grim and forbidding he seemed, thus showing he had the same blood in his veins as the borderman.
“Lend a hand,” said Jonathan. “As far as I know she’s not hurt.”
They carried Helen toward Colonel Zane’s cabin. Many women of the settlement saw them as they passed, and looked gravely at one another, but none spoke. This return of an abducted girl was by no means a strange event.
“Somebody run for Sheppard,” ordered Colonel Zane, as they entered his cabin.
Betty, who was in the sitting-room, sprang up and cried: “Oh! Eb! Eb! Don’t say she’s—”
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p; “No, no, Betts, she’s all right. Where’s my wife? Ah! Bess, here, get to work.”
The colonel left Helen in the tender, skilful hands of his wife and sister, and followed Jonathan into the kitchen.
“I was just ready for breakfast when I heard someone yell,” said he. “Come, Jack, eat something.”
They ate in silence. From the sitting-room came excited whispers, a joyous cry from Betty, and a faint voice. Then heavy, hurrying footsteps, followed by Sheppard’s words of thanks-giving.
“Where’s Wetzel?” began Colonel Zane.
The borderman shook his head gloomily.
“Where did you leave him?”
“We jumped Legget’s bunch last night, when the moon was about an hour high. I reckon about fifteen miles northeast. I got away with the lass.”
“Ah! Left Lew fighting?”
The borderman answered the question with bowed head.
“You got off well. Not a hurt that I can see, and more than lucky to save Helen. Well, Jack, what do you think about Lew?”
“I’m goin’ back,” replied Jonathan.
“No! no!”
The door opened to admit Mrs. Zane. She looked bright and cheerful, “Hello, Jack; glad you’re home. Helen’s all right, only faint from hunger and over-exertion. I want something for her to eat—well! you men didn’t leave much.”
Colonel Zane went into the sitting-room. Sheppard sat beside the couch where Helen lay, white and wan. Betty and Nell were looking on with their hearts in their eyes. Silas Zane was there, and his wife, with several women neighbors.
“Betty, go fetch Jack in here,” whispered the colonel in his sister’s ear. “Drag him, if you have to,” he added fiercely.
The young woman left the room, to reappear directly with her brother. He came in reluctantly.
As the stern-faced borderman crossed the threshold a smile, beautiful to see, dawned in Helen’s eyes.
“I’m glad to see you’re comin’ round,” said Jonathan, but he spoke dully as if his mind was on other things.
“She’s a little flighty; but a night’s sleep will cure that,” cried Mrs. Zane from the kitchen.
“What do you think?” interrupted the colonel. “Jack’s not satisfied to get back with Helen unharmed, and a whole skin himself; but he’s going on the trail again.”
“No, Jack, no, no!” cried Betty.
“What’s that I hear?” asked Mrs. Zane as she came in. “Jack’s going out again? Well, all I want to say is that he’s as mad as a March hare.”
“Jonathan, look here,” said Silas seriously. “Can’t you stay home now?”
“Jack, listen,” whispered Betty, going close to him. “Not one of us ever expected to see either you or Helen again, and oh! we are so happy. Do not go away again. You are a man; you do not know, you cannot understand all a woman feels. She must sit and wait, and hope, and pray for the safe return of husband or brother or sweetheart. The long days! Oh, the long sleepless nights, with the wail of the wind in the pines, and the rain on the roof! It is maddening. Do not leave us! Do not leave me! Do not leave Helen! Say you will not, Jack.”
To these entreaties the borderman remained silent. He stood leaning on his rifle, a tall, dark, strangely sad and stern man.
“Helen, beg him to stay!” implored Betty.
Colonel Zane took Helen’s hand, and stroked it. “Yes,” he said, “you ask him, lass. I’m sure you can persuade him to stay.”
Helen raised her head. “Is Brandt dead?” she whispered faintly.
Still the borderman failed to speak, but his silence was not an affirmative.
“You said you loved me,” she cried wildly. “You said you loved me, yet you didn’t kill that monster!”
The borderman, moving quickly like a startled Indian, went out of the door.
* * * *
Once more Jonathan Zane entered the gloomy, quiet aisles of the forest with his soft, tireless tread hardly stirring the leaves.
It was late in the afternoon when he had long left Two Islands behind, and arrived at the scene of Mordaunt’s death. Satisfied with the distance he had traversed, he crawled into a thicket to rest.
Daybreak found him again on the trail. He made a short cut over the ridges and by the time the mist had lifted from the valley he was within stalking distance of the glade. He approached this in the familiar, slow, cautious manner, and halted behind the big rock from which he and Wetzel had leaped. The wood was solemnly quiet. No twittering of birds could be heard. The only sign of life was a gaunt timber-wolf slinking away amid the foliage. Under the big tree the savage who had been killed as he would have murdered Helen, lay a crumpled mass where he had fallen. Two dead Indians were in the center of the glade, and on the other side were three more bloody, lifeless forms. Wetzel was not there, nor Legget, nor Brandt.
“I reckoned so,” muttered Jonathan as he studied the scene. The grass had been trampled, the trees barked, the bushes crushed aside.
Jonathan went out of the glade a short distance, and, circling it, began to look for Wetzel’s trail. He found it, and near the light footprints of his comrade were the great, broad moccasin tracks of the outlaw. Further searching disclosed the fact that Brandt must have traveled in line with the others.
With the certainty that Wetzel had killed three of the Indians, and, in some wonderful manner characteristic of him, routed the outlaws of whom he was now in pursuit, Jonathan’s smoldering emotion burst forth into full flame. Love for his old comrade, deadly hatred of the outlaws, and passionate thirst for their blood, rioted in his heart.
Like a lynx scenting its quarry, the borderman started on the trail, tireless and unswervable. The traces left by the fleeing outlaws and their pursuer were plain to Jonathan. It was not necessary for him to stop. Legget and Brandt, seeking to escape the implacable Nemesis, were traveling with all possible speed, regardless of the broad trail such hurried movements left behind. They knew full well it would be difficult to throw this wolf off the scent; understood that if any attempt was made to ambush the trail, they must cope with woodcraft keener than an Indian’s. Flying in desperation, they hoped to reach the rocky retreat, where, like foxes in their burrows, they believed themselves safe.
When the sun sloped low toward the western horizon, lengthening Jonathan’s shadow, he slackened pace. He was entering the rocky, rugged country which marked the approach to the distant Alleghenies. From the top of a ridge he took his bearings, deciding that he was within a few miles of Legget’s hiding-place.
At the foot of this ridge, where a murmuring brook sped softly over its bed, he halted. Here a number of horses had forded the brook. They were iron-shod, which indicated almost to a certainty, that they were stolen horses, and in the hands of Indians.
Jonathan saw where the trail of the steeds was merged into that of the outlaws. He suspected that the Indians and Legget had held a short council. As he advanced the borderman found only the faintest impression of Wetzel’s trail. Legget and Brandt no longer left any token of their course. They were riding the horses.
All the borderman cared to know was if Wetzel still pursued. He passed on swiftly up a hill, through a wood of birches where the trail showed on a line of broken ferns, then out upon a low ridge where patches of grass grew sparsely. Here he saw in this last ground no indication of his comrade’s trail; nothing was to be seen save the imprints of the horses’ hoofs. Jonathan halted behind the nearest underbrush. This sudden move on the part of Wetzel was token that, suspecting an ambush, he had made a detour somewhere, probably in the grove of birches.
All the while his eyes searched the long, barren reach ahead. No thicket, fallen tree, or splintered rocks, such as Indians utilized for an ambush, could be seen. Indians always sought the densely matted underbrush, a windfall, or rocky retreat and there awaited a pursuer. It was one of the borderman’s tricks of woodcraft that he could recognize such places.
Far beyond the sandy ridge Jonathan came to a sloping, wooded hillside, upon w
hich were scattered big rocks, some mossy and lichen-covered, and one, a giant boulder, with a crown of ferns and laurel gracing its flat surface. It was such a place as the savages would select for ambush. He knew, however, that if an Indian had hidden himself there Wetzel would have discovered him. When opposite the rock Jonathan saw a broken fern hanging over the edge. The heavy trail of the horses ran close beside it.
Then with that thoroughness of search which made the borderman what he was, Jonathan leaped upon the rock. There, lying in the midst of the ferns, lay an Indian with sullen, somber face set in the repose of death. In his side was a small bullet hole.
Jonathan examined the savage’s rifle. It had been discharged. The rock, the broken fern, the dead Indian, the discharged rifle, told the story of that woodland tragedy.
Wetzel had discovered the ambush. Leaving the trail, he had tricked the redskin into firing, then getting a glimpse of the Indian’s red body through the sights of his fatal weapon, the deed was done.
With greater caution Jonathan advanced once more. Not far beyond the rock he found Wetzel’s trail. The afternoon was drawing to a close. He could not travel much farther, yet he kept on, hoping to overtake his comrade before darkness set in. From time to time he whistled; but got no answering signal.
When the tracks of the horses were nearly hidden by the gathering dusk, Jonathan decided to halt for the night. He whistled one more note, louder and clearer, and awaited the result with strained ears. The deep silence of the wilderness prevailed, suddenly to be broken by a faint, far-away, melancholy call of the hermit-thrush. It was the answering signal the borderman had hoped to hear.
Not many moments elapsed before he heard another call, low, and near at hand, to which he replied. The bushes parted noiselessly on his left, and the tall form of Wetzel appeared silently out of the gloom.
The two gripped hands in silence.
“Hev you any meat?” Wetzel asked, and as Jonathan handed him his knapsack, he continued, “I was kinder lookin’ fer you. Did you get out all right with the lass?”
“Nary a scratch.”
The giant borderman grunted his satisfaction.