第34章 ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL(1)

And now we had our hands upon the latch, and God alone knew what was behind the gate.Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it.Death, perchance.

But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence did not frighten.As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange aptness a quaint saying of my father's that Kaintuckee was the Garden of Eden, and that men were being justly punished with blood for their presumption.

As if to crown that judgment, the day was dark and lowering, with showers of rain from time to time.And when we spoke,--Polly Ann and I,--it was in whispers.The trace was very narrow, with Daniel Boone's blazes, two years old, upon the trees; but the way was not over steep.

Cumberland Mountain was as silent and deserted as when the first man had known it.

Alas, for the vanity of human presage! We gained the top, and entered unmolested.No Eden suddenly dazzled our eye, no splendor burst upon it.Nothing told us, as we halted in our weariness, that we had reached the Promised Land.The mists weighed heavily on the evergreens of the slopes and hid the ridges, and we passed that night in cold discomfort.It was the first of many without a fire.

The next day brought us to the Cumberland, tawny and swollen from the rains, and here we had to stop to fell trees to make a raft on which to ferry over our packs.

We bound the logs together with grapevines, and as we worked my imagination painted for me many a red face peering from the bushes on the farther shore.And when we got into the river and were caught and spun by the hurrying stream, I hearkened for a shot from the farther bank.While Polly Ann and I were scrambling to get the raft landed, Tom and Weldon swam over with the horses.

And so we lay the second night dolefully in the rain.But not so much as a whimper escaped from Polly Ann.Ihave often told her since that the sorest trial she had was the guard she kept on her tongue,--a hardship indeed for one of Irish inheritance.Many a pull had she lightened for us by a flash of humor.

The next morning the sun relented, and the wine of his dawn was wine indeed to our flagging hopes.Going down to wash at the river's brink, I heard a movement in the cane, and stood frozen and staring until a great, bearded head, black as tar, was thrust out between the stalks and looked at me with blinking red eyes.The next step revealed the hump of the beast, and the next his tasselled tail lashing his dirty brown quarters.I did not tarry longer, but ran to tell Tom.He made bold to risk a shot and light a fire, and thus we had buffalo meat for some days after.

We were still in the mountains.The trail led down the river for a bit through the worst of canebrakes, and every now and again we stopped while Tom and Weldon scouted.

Once the roan mare made a dash through the brake, and, though Polly Ann burst through one way to head her off and I another, we reached the bank of Richland Creek in time to see her nose and the top of her pack above the brown water.There was nothing for it but to swim after her, which I did, and caught her quietly feeding in the cane on the other side.By great good fortune the other horse bore the powder.

``Drat you, Nancy,'' said Polly Ann to the mare, as she handed me my clothes, ``I'd sooner carry the pack myself than be bothered with you.''

``Hush,'' said I, ``the redskins will get us.''

Polly Ann regarded me scornfully as I stood bedraggled before her.

``Redskins!'' she cried.``Nonsense! I reckon it's all talk about redskins.''

But we had scarce caught up ere we saw Tom standing rigid with his hand raised.Before him, on a mound bared of cane, were the charred remains of a fire.The sight of them transformed Weldon.His eyes glared again, even as when we had first seen him, curses escaped under his breath, and he would have darted into the cane had not Tom seized him sternly by the shoulder.As for me, my heart hammered against my ribs, and I grew sick with listening.It was at that instant that my admiration for Tom McChesney burst bounds, and that I got some real inkling of what woodcraft might be.Stepping silently between the tree trunks, his eyes bent on the leafy loam, he found a footprint here and another there, and suddenly he went into the cane with a sign to us to remain.It seemed an age before he returned.Then he began to rake the ashes, and, suddenly bending down, seized something in them,--the broken bowl of an Indian pipe.

``Shawnees!'' he said; ``I reckoned so.'' It was at length the beseeching in Polly Ann's eyes that he answered.

``A war party--tracks three days old.They took poplar.''

To take poplar was our backwoods expression for embarking in a canoe, the dugouts being fashioned from the great poplar trees.

I did not reflect then, as I have since and often, how great was the knowledge and resource Tom practised that day.Our feeling for him (Polly Ann's and mine) fell little short of worship.In company ill at ease, in the forest he became silent and masterful--an unerring woodsman, capable of meeting the Indian on his own footing.And, strangest thought of all, he and many Icould name who went into Kentucky, had escaped, by a kind of strange fate, being born in the north of Ireland.

This was so of Andrew Jackson himself.

The rest of the day he led us in silence down the trace, his eye alert to penetrate every corner of the forest, his hand near the trigger of his long Deckard.I followed in boylike imitation, searching every thicket for alien form and color, and yearning for stature and responsibility.

As for poor Weldon, he would stride for hours at a time with eyes fixed ahead, a wild figure,--ragged and fringed.

And we knew that the soul within him was torn with thoughts of his dead wife and of his child in captivity.

Again, when the trance left him, he was an addition to our little party not to be despised.