Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  Reason enough, moreover, for if there were no signs except that single imprint, it was clear that the man who left that mark was wading the river because he wished to leave no trail. And who is not suspicious of those who appear to be at pains to conceal their tracks?

  There is something terrifying in the sudden apparition of a fellow-creature in the woods. When one has been living alone in the forest solitude, day after day, perhaps even craving company, I know nothing so shocking as the unexpected sight of another man in the wilderness.

  Why this is so, why fear, caution, and anger are invariably the primal instincts, I do not fully understand.

  Sometimes, lying perdu, I have seen the tasselled ears of a wild-cat flatten at first sight of a stranger cat; I have seen the wolverine snarl hideously as he winded a strange comrade; I have seen the solitary timber-wolf halt, hair on end and every hot fang bared, where a brother wolf had crossed his trail an hour before.

  So I; for as I slunk away from that foot-mark in the sand-willows, I found myself priming my rifle and looking behind me with all the horror of a Robinson Crusoe, though I had miles of country to avoid the unknown man withal.

  Early that morning, having crossed, as nearly as I could make out, the boundary between our Province of New York and the Province of Pennsylvania, I had approached, somewhat nearer than I meant to, the carrying-place on the Alleghany, which lies directly in the Fort Pitt trail.

  Now, at mid-day, the sun heating the forest, I found my pack very heavy and my shirt wet with exertion, but dared not halt until I had circled around that carrying-place. So I toiled on, the very rifle in my hand heavy as lead, and my eyes nearly blinded with the sweat that poured from my hair and neck, bathing me in a sort of stinging coolness. My stomach, too, was asking the hour, and the green-eyed deer-flies whirled over me, fierce for blood, for I durst not lag even to wash my face in oil of pennyroyal.

  It was only when at last above the trees in the east I perceived the blue peak of a mountain that I knew I was safe enough; for the peak in the east belonged to the Alleghany range, and I had steered a fine circle without losing a mile.

  However, I jogged on along a runway made hard by the hoof of countless deer herds, until I came to a thread of water curving through the moss like a sword-blade on green velvet. Here I knelt, let go my pack, and rolled over on the moss, dog-tired.

  Hands clasped on my empty stomach I lay looking up at the sky through the matted leaves that thatched my forest roof, too tired even to drink. But the accursed deer-flies drove me to water as they drive the deer, and I drank my fill and smeared me with pennyroyal and tallow, face and wrists.

  For the first time since I had entered the wilderness I made no fire, but munched a cold breast of partridge and 133 drove it into my stomach with bits of ash-cake, drinking a mouthful between bites to moisten the dry cheer. I ate very slowly, my eyes making their mechanical circuit of the silent trees, my ears ever flattened for a noise behind me.

  Silence breeds silence; man’s movements in the woods are soft and cat-like where caution is an instinct. I speak of true woodsmen — those who know the solitary life — not of loud and careless men who swagger into God’s woodland mysteries as to a tavern tap-room.

  Now, as I sat there, crumbs on my knees yet unbrushed, a sudden instinct arose in me that I had been followed; nay, not so sudden, either, for the vague idea had been slowly taking shape since I had seen that sign in the river-bed among the willows.

  I had absolutely no reason for believing this; the foot-print was three days old and it pointed north. Yet, at the mere thought, the skin on my neck began to roughen and my nose gave little twitches. Unconsciously I had already risen, priming my rifle, and for a moment, I stood there, ankle deep in moss. Then, moved by no impulse of my own, I swear, I lifted my pack and passed swiftly along the little brook towards the main trail. Presently, through the willows to the right, I caught a glimpse of a shallow stream rushing noiselessly over a sand bottom, and on the other side of the stream I saw a notched tree, the Fort Pitt trail!

  Now I deliberately made a string of plain foot-tracks along the sandy stream, pointing towards the shallowest spot. Here I forded, and made more tracks in the mud, entering the Fort Pitt trail. I ran down this trail till I came to a brier, and on the thorns of a spray which crossed the broad, hard trail, I left a few strings from my fringed hunting-shirt. Then I began to walk backward till I reached the spot where I had entered the trail from the sandy stream. I backed down this bank, forded the shallows, then, instead of coming out on the sand, I waded up stream to my little thread of a brook, and up that brook till I found a great log choking it. And behind this log I squatted, panting, and astonished at my own performance.

  Yet, even now, I could not find reason to blush at my timid precautions, for that feeling of being followed still 134 haunted me. It was neither a coward’s panic nor a cool man’s alarm; it was something that drove me to cover my tracks. The white hare does it when unpursued by hounds; the grouse do it when no pointer follows — why? I know no more than the white hare or the grouse.

  From my form among the ferns, rabbit-like I huddled with palpitating flanks and nose atwitch in the wind. Nothing stirred save those sad, deformed leaves that drift earthward, dead ere spring is fled. Bubble! bubble! dripped the stream, its tiny waterfall full of voices, now clear, now indistinct, but always calling sweetly, “Michael! Michael! Michael!” And if your name be not Michael, nevertheless it will call you by your name. And the voice is ever the voice of the best beloved.

  Alert, sniffing the air, I still could hear the voice of Silver Heels, down under the waterfall, and sometimes she called through laughter, “Michael!” and sometimes far away like a wind-blown cry, and sometimes like a whisper close to my face.

  So rang her voice as an old song in my ears, the while my eyes scanned the dappled tree-trunks of a silvery beechwood, east and west, and through a long vista where, across a sunny streak of water, the Fort Pitt trail ran southwest.

  The sun had spanned an hour’s length on the blue dial of the sky, yet nothing moved in the woods. Still, strangely, I felt no impatience, no desire to chide myself for good time lost in groundless watchfulness. One by one the tall trees shed young leaves too early dead; the voices in the waterfall made low melody; the white sun-spots waned and glowed, mottling the silvered tree-trunks, lacing the water with a paler fretwork.

  I sat now with my cheek on the cool, moist log, my rifle in my lap, watching the trees along the Fort Pitt trail. And, as I watched, I saw a man come out on the sandy bank of the stream and kneel down where my tracks crossed to the water’s edge.

  I was not astonished, but all over me my flesh moved, and without a sound I sank down behind my log into a soft ball of buckskin.

  The man was Walter Butler. I knew him, though God 135 alone knows how I could, for he wore the shirt of a Mohawk and beaded leggings to the hips, and at that distance might have been an Indian. He bore a rifle, and there was a hatchet in his beaded belt, and on his head he wore a round cap of moleskin under which his black, coarse hair, freed from the queue, fell to his chin.

  He crouched there, examining my tracks with closest attention for full a minute, then rose gracefully and followed, tracing them up to the Fort Pitt trail.

  Here I saw two other men come swiftly through the trees to meet him, but, though they gesticulated violently and pointed down the stream, they spoke too low for me to hear a single whisper.

  Suddenly, to my horror, a canoe shot across my line of sight and stopped as suddenly, held by the setting-pole in midstream. It contained a white man, who leaned on the setting-pole, silently awaiting the result of the conference on the bank above.

  The conference ended abruptly; I saw two of the men start south towards Fort Pitt, while Butler came hastily down to the water’s edge and waded out to the canoe.

  He boarded the frail craft from the bow, straddling it skilfully and working his way to his place. Then the two setting-poles flashed in t
he sunshine and the canoe shot out of sight.

  My mind was working rapidly now, but, at first, anger succeeded blank perplexity. What did Captain Butler mean by following me through the forests? The answer came ere the question had been fully formed, and I knew he hated me and meant to kill me.

  How he had learned of my mission, whether he had actually learned of it, or only suspected it from my disappearance, concerned me little. These things were certain: he was Lord Dunmore’s emissary as I was the emissary of Sir William; he was bound for Cresap’s camp as was I; and he intended to intercept me and kill me if that meant the winning of the race. Ay, he meant to kill me, anyhow, for how could he ever again appear in Johnstown if I lived to bear witness to his treachery?

  I must give up my visit to the Cayugas for the present. It 136 was to be a race now to Cresap’s camp, and, though they had their canoe to speed withal, the advantage lay on my side; for I was seeking no man’s life, whereas they must soon find that they had over-run their scent and would spend precious time in ambushes. Besides, they doubtless believed that somewhere I had a canoe hid, and that would keep them hanging around the carry-trails while I made time by circling them.

  One thing disturbed me: two of them had gone by water and two by the Fort Pitt trail, and this threw me hopelessly into the wilderness without the ease of a trodden way.

  Slowly I resumed my pack, reprimed my rifle, and turned my nose southward, bearing far enough west to keep out of earshot from the river and the trail.

  At first I had looked upon Fort Pitt as a hospitable wayside refuge, marking nine-tenths of my journey towards Cresap’s camp. But now I dared not present myself there, with Walter Butler hot on my trail, armed not only with hatchet and rifle, but also doubtless with some order of Lord Dunmore which might compel the officers at Fort Pitt to hand me over to Butler on his mere demand.

  For, although Fort Pitt was rightfully on Pennsylvania soil, it had long been claimed by Virginia, and it was a Virginia garrison that now held it. Thus, should I stop there, I should be under the laws of Virginia and under the claw-thumb of Dunmore or anybody who might claim authority to represent him.

  There is, I have been told, a vast region which lies between the Alleghany Mountains and the Mississippi, a desolate wilderness save for a few British garrisons at Natchez, at Vincennes, and at Detroit. These troops are placed there in order to establish the claim of our King to the region lately wrested from the French. Fort Pitt commanded the gateway to this wilderness, and the Ohio flowed through it; and for years Virginia and Pennsylvania had disputed for the right to control this gateway. Virginia held it by might, not right. Through it Daniel Boone had gone some years before; now Cresap had followed; and who could doubt that the Governor of Virginia had urged him on?

  But the march of Cresap not only disturbed Sir William 137 in his stewardship; it angered all Pennsylvania, and this is the reason:

  The Virginians under Cresap went to settle, and to keep the Indians at a distance; the Pennsylvanians, on the other hand, went only to trade with the Cayugas, and they were furious to see Cresap’s men spoil their trade. This I learned from Sir William on our evening walks about Quider’s hut; and I learned, too, that Fort Pitt was a Virginia fortress on Pennsylvania soil, guarded not only against the savages, but also against the Pennsylvanians, who traded powder and shot and rifles with the Cayugas, and thus, according to my Lord Dunmore practically incited the savages to resist such philanthropists as himself.

  Clearly then, no emissary of Sir William would be welcomed at Pittsburg fortress or town; and I saw nothing for it but to push on through the gateway of the west, avoiding Butler’s men as best I could, and seeking the silly, deluded Cresap under the very nose of my Lord Dunmore.

  My progress was slow; at times I sank between tree-roots, up to the thighs in moss; at times the little maidens of the flowering briers bade me tarry in their sharp, perfumed embrace. Now it was a wiry moose-bush snare that enlaced my ankles and sent me sprawling, pack and all; now the tough laurel bound me to the shoulders in slender ropes of blossoms which only my knife could sever. Tired out while yet the sun sent its reddening western rays deep into the forest, I knelt again, dropped my pack under a hemlock thicket, and crawled out to a heap of rocks which overhung a ravine.

  The sunlight fell full in my face and warmed my body as I crept through a mat of blueberry bushes and peered over the edge of the crag down into the ravine.

  A hundred feet below the Alleghany flowed, a glassy stream tinted with gold, reflecting forest and cliff and a tiny triangle of cobalt sky. Its surface was a mirror without a flaw, save where a solitary wild-duck floated, trailing a rippled wake, or steered hither and thither, craning its green neck after water-flies and gnats.

  How still it was below; how quiet the whole world was — quieter for the hushed rumour of the winds on some far mountain spur.

  The little blue caps which every baby peak had worn all day were now changed for night-caps of palest rose; the wild plum’s bloom dusted every velvet mountain flank, the forest was robed in flowing purple to its roots, which the still river washed in sands of gold.

  Below me a brown hawk wheeled, rising in narrowing spirals like a wind-blown leaf, higher, higher, till of a sudden its bright eye flashed level with mine and it sheered westward with a rush of whistling feathers. I watched it drifting away under the clouds into the sunset, with a silly prayer that wings might be fastened to my tired feet, as Minnomonedo, leaning out from the centre of heaven, dipped the first bird in Mon-o-ma, the Spirit Water, which was also I-ós-co, the Water of Light. “Te-i-o! Te-i-o!” I murmured, “On-ti-o — I-é nia, oh, Mon-a-kee!”

  For God knows — and forgives — that, at sixteen, I was but an Algonquin in superstition, fearing Minnomonedo and seeking refuge in that God whom I did not dread.

  In towns and cities the savage legends which I had imbibed with my first milk vanished from my mind completely, leaving no barriers to a calm worship of the Most High. But in the woods it was different; every leaf, every blossom represented links in those interminable chains of legends with which I had been nourished, and from which nothing but death can entirely wean me.

  To me, the birds that passed, the shy, furry creatures that slipped back into the demi-light, the insects, the rocks, water, clouds, sun, moon, and stars were comrades with names and histories and purposes, exercising influences on each other and on me, and calling for an individual and intimate recognition which I cared not to disregard in the forest, though I might safely forget them amid the crowded wastes of civilization.

  I do not mean to say that I credited the existence of such creatures as the wampum bird, nor did I believe that the first belt was made of a quill dropped to earth from the fearsome thing. This was nonsense; even at night I dared mock at it. But still every human being knows that, in the midnight wilderness, strange things do pass which no man can explain — strange beasts move, strange shapes dance by elf-fires, 139 and trees talk aloud, one to another. If this be witchcraft, or if it be but part of a life which our vast black forests hide forever from the sun, I know not. Sir William holds that there are no witches, yet I once heard him curse a Huron hag for drying up his Devon cattle with a charm. We Christians know that a red belt lies ever between God and Satan. And I, as a woodsman, also know that, if there be demons in Biskoona, a thousand bloody belts lie for all time twixt Minno and Mudjee, call them what you will, and their voices are in the passing thunder and in the noises of the eight great winds.

  Sprawling there on the warm rocks like a young panther in the sun, ears attuned to the faintest whisper of danger, I gnawed a strip of dried squirrel’s flesh and sucked up the water from a dripping mossy cleft, sweet cheer to an empty belly.

  As for fire, that was denied me by my sense, though I knew that the coming night would stiffen me. But I cared little for that: what occupied my thoughts was how to obtain food when a single shot might bring Butler and his trackers hot on the scent ere the rifle smoke had blown c
lear of the trees.

  It was not always that one might knock down a stupid partridge with a stick, nor yet were there trout in every water-crack. I looked down at the darkening river, where the wild mallard still circled and darted its neck after unseen midges; and my mouth watered, for he was passing plump, this Southern lingerer, fresh from the great gulf.

  “If he be there in the morning,” thought I, “perhaps I may risk a shot and take to my heels.” For had I not thrown Butler and his crew from my trail as easily as I brush a bunch of deer-flies from my hunting-shirt? And if I could do it once, I could repeat the trick in a dozen pretty ways of my own knowledge and of Thayendanegea’s invention. Still I knew he was no forest blunderer, this Butler man; he had proved that in the Canadas; and I did not mean to be over-confident nor to rock caution to sleep in my first triumph.

  And Lord! — how I hated him and wished him evil, waking, sleeping, in sickness and in health, ay, living or dead, I wished him evil and black mischance on his dark soul’s flight to the last accounting. So, with thoughts of hatred and revenge, 140 I saw the cinders of the sun go out behind the forest and the web of night settling over the world. Wrapped in my blanket, curled up in a bed of blueberry, I folded my hands over my body like a chipmunk and said a prayer to the God whom I did not fear. After that I reprimed my rifle, covering flint and pan to keep out the dew, settled the stock in a crevice near my head, and lay down again to watch for the full moon, whose yellow light was already soaring up behind a black peak in the east. And all night long I lay on that borderland of sleep which men in danger dare not traverse lest a sound find them unready. Slumbering, again and again I saw the moon through slitted lids, yet I rested and slept a sweet wholesome sleep which renewed my vigour by its very lightness.