CHAPTER X.

For a few minutes, the three living men stood silent in the presence of the dead; and, then Walter exclaimed, in a tone of deep grief, "Alas, Woodchuck! what have you done?"

"Saved my scalp," answered Brooks, sternly, and fell into silence again.

There was another long pause; at last, Lord H----, mistaking in some degree the causes of the man's strong emotion, laid his hand upon the hunter's arm, saying, "Come away, my friend! Why should you linger here?"

"It's no use," answered Woodchuck, gloomily; "he had a woman with him, and it will soon be known all through the tribe."

"But for your own safety," said Walter, "you had better fly. It is very sad, indeed. What could make him attack you?"

"An old grudge, Master Walter," answered Brooks, seating himself deliberately on the ground, and laying his rifle across his knee. "I knew the crittur well--the Striped Snake they called him, and a snake he was. He tried to cheat and rob me, and I made it plain to the whole tribe. Some laughed and thought it fair; but old Black Eagle scorned and rebuked him, and he has hated me ever since. He has been long watching for this, and now he has got it."

"Well, well," returned Walter, "what's done cannot be undone. You had better get away as fast as you can; for Black Eagle told me he had left three scouts behind, to bring us tidings in case of danger, and we cannot tell how near the others may be."

"This was one of them," answered Brooks, still keeping his seat, and gazing at the Indian; "but what is safety to me, Walter? I can no more roam the forests, I can no more pursue my way of life; I must go into dull and smoky cities, and plod amongst thieving, cheating crowds of white men. The rifle and the hatchet must be laid aside for ever; the forest grass must know my foot no more. Flowers and green leaves, and rushing streams, and the broad lake, and the mountain top, are lost and gone--the watch under the deep boughs, and by the silent water. Close pressed amidst the toiling herd, I shall become sordid, and low, and filthy, as they are; my free nature lost, and gyves upon my spirit. All life's blessings are gone from me; why should I care for life?"

There was something unusually plaintive, mournful, and earnest in his tones, and Lord H---- could not help feeling for him, although he did not comprehend fully the occasion of his grief.

"But, my good friend," he said, "I cannot perceive how your having slain this Indian in your own defence can bring such a train of miseries upon you. You would not have killed him, if he had not attacked you."

"Alas for me! alas for me!" was all the answer that the poor man made.

"You do not know their habits, sir," said Walter, in a low voice; "they must always have blood for blood. If he stays here, if he ever returns, go where he will in the Indian territory, they will track him, they will follow him day and night. He will be amongst them like one of the wild beasts whom we so eagerly pursue from place to place, with the hatchet always hanging over his head. There is no safety for him, except far away in the provinces beyond those towns that Indians ever visit. Do persuade him to come away and leave the body. He can go down with me to Albany, and thence make his way to New York or Philadelphia."

For some minutes Brooks remained deaf to all arguments; his whole thoughts seemed occupied with the terrible conviction that the wild scenes and free life which he enjoyed so intensely were, with him, at an end for ever.

Suddenly, however, when Lord H---- was just about to abandon, in despair, the task of persuading him, he started up as if some new thought struck him; and, gazing first at Walter and then at the young officer, he exclaimed,--

"But I am keeping you here, and you too may be murdered. The death-spot is upon me, and it will spread to all around. I am ready to go. I will bear my fate as I can, but it is very, very hard. Come, let us be gone quick. Stay, I will charge my rifle first. Who knows how soon we may need it for more such bloody work?"

All his energy seemed to have returned in a moment, and it deserted him not again. He charged his rifle with wonderful rapidity, tossed it under his arm, and took a step as if to go. Then for a moment he paused, and, advancing close to the dead Indian, gazed at him sternly.

"Oh, my enemy!" he cried, "thou saidst thou wouldst have revenge, and thou hast had it, far more bitter than if thy hatchet had entered into my skull, and I were lying there in thy place."

Turning round as soon as he had spoken, he led the way back along the trail, murmuring, rather to himself than to his companions,--

"The instinct of self-preservation is very strong. But better for me had I let him slay me. I know not how I was fool enough to fire. Come, Walter, we must get round the falls, where we shall find some bateaux that will carry us down."

He walked along for about five minutes in silence; and then suddenly looked around to Lord H----, exclaiming,--

"But what's to become of him? How is he to find his way back again? Come, I will go back with him; it matters not if they do catch me and scalp me. I do not like to be dogged, and tracked, and followed, and taken unawares. But I can only die at last. I will go back with him as soon as you are in the boat, Walter."

"No, no, Woodchuck, that will not do," returned the lad; "you forget that if they found you with him, they would kill him too. I will tell you how we will manage it. Let him come down with us to the point; then there is a straight road up to the house, and we can get one of the bateaux-men to go with him and show him the way, unless he likes to go on with me to Albany."

"I cannot do that," replied Lord H----, "for I promised to be back at your father's house by to-morrow night, and matters of much importance may have to be decided. But I can easily land at the point, as you say--whatever point you may mean--and find my way back. As for myself, I have no fears. There seem to be but a few scattered parties of Indians of different tribes roaming about, and I trust that anything like general hostility is at an end for this year at least."

"In Indian warfare, the danger is the greatest, I have heard, when it seems the least," observed Walter Prevost; "but from the point to the house, some fourteen or sixteen miles, the road is generally safe, for it is the only one on which large numbers of persons are passing to and from Albany."

"It will be safe enough," said Woodchuck; "that way is always quiet, and, besides, a wise man and a peaceful one could travel at any time from one end of the Long House to the other without risk--unless there were special cause. It is bad shooting we have had to-day, Walter; but still I should have liked to have the skin of that painter; he seemed to me an unextinguishable fine crittur."

"He was a fine creature, and that I know, for I shot him, Woodchuck," said Walter Prevost, with some pride in the achievement. "I wanted to send the skin to Otaitsa; but it cannot be helped."

"Let us go and get it now," cried Woodchuck, with the ruling passion strong in death; "'tis but a step back. Darn those Ingians! Why should we care?"

But both his companions urged him forward; and they continued their way through the woods skirting the river for somewhat more than two miles, first rising gently to a spot where the roar of the waters was heard distinctly, and then descending to a rocky point, midway between the highest ground and the water level, where a small congregation of huts had been gathered together, principally inhabited by boatmen, and surrounded by a stout palisade. One of the most necessary parts of prudence in any body of settlers, was to choose such a site for their dwelling-place as would command a clear view of an approaching stranger, whether well or ill disposed; and the ground round this little hamlet had been cleared on all sides of every tree and shrub that could conceal a rabbit. Thus situated on the top of the eminence nearest to the water, it possessed an almost panoramic view, hardly to be surpassed in the world.

That view, however, had one principal object. On the left, at about four hundred yards' distance, the river of which I have spoken came thundering over a precipice of about three hundred feet in height. Whether worn by the constant action of the waters, or cast into that shape by some strange geological phenomenon, the rock over which the torrent poured had assumed the form of a great amphitheatre, scooped out, as it were, in the very bed of the river, which, flowing on in a mighty stream, fell over the edge at various points; sometimes in an immense green mass, sometimes in a broad and silvery sheet, sometimes in a dazzling line of sparkling foam; all the streams meeting about half-way down, and thundering and boiling in a dark abyss, which the eye from above could hardly fathom. Jutting masses of gray rock protruded themselves in strange fantastic shape about, around, and below, the chasm; and upon these, wherever a root could cling, or a particle of vegetable earth could rest, a tree, a shrub, or a flower had perched itself. The green boughs waved amidst the spray; the dark hemlock contrasted itself, in its stern grandeur, with the white, agitated waters; and the birch and the ash, with their waving branches, seemed to sport with the eddies as they leaped along.

At the foot of the precipice was a deep, whirling pool, unseen, however, from the spot where the travellers stood; and from this issued, first narrow and confined, but then spreading out gradually, between the decreasing banks, a wide and beautiful river, which, by the time it circled the point in front of the travellers, had become as calm and glossy as a looking-glass, reflecting for their eyes the blue sky and the majestic clouds which were now moving slowly over it.

The bend taken by the river shaped the hilly point of ground on which the travellers stood into a small peninsula, about the middle of the neck of which was the boatman's little hamlet which I have mentioned; and nearly at the same distance as the falls from the huts, though more than a mile and a half by the course of the stream, was a piece of broad, sandy shore, on which the woodman had drawn up ten or twelve boats, used sometimes for the purposes of fishing, sometimes for the carriage of peltries to the towns lower down; and goods and passengers returning.

Thence onward, the course of the river could be traced for eight or ten miles, flowing through a gently undulating country, densely covered with forest, while to the east and north rose up some fine blue mountains, at the distance, probably, of thirty miles.

The scene at the hamlet itself had nothing very remarkable in it. There were women sitting at the door, knitting and sewing; men lounging about, or mending nets, or making lines; children playing in the dirt, as usual, both inside and outside the palisade. The traces of more than one nation could be discovered in the features, as well as on the tongues, of the inhabitants; and it was not difficult to perceive, that here had been congregated, by the force of circumstances, into which it is not necessary to inquire, sundry fragments of Dutch, English, Indian, and even French, races, all bound together by a community of object and pursuit.

The approach of the three strangers did not in any degree startle the good people from their idleness or their occupations. The carrying trade was then a very good one, especially in remote places where travelling was difficult; and these people could always make a tolerable livelihood, without any very great or continuous exertion. The result of such a state of things is always very detrimental to activity of mind or body; and the boatmen, though they sauntered round Lord H---- and his companions, divining that some profitable piece of work was before them, showed amazing indifference as to whether they would undertake it or not.

But that which astonished Lord H---- the most, was to see the deliberate coolness with which Woodchuck set about making his bargain for the conveyance of himself and Walter to Albany. He sat down upon a large stone within the enclosure, took a knife from his pocket, a piece of wood from the ground, and began cutting the latter into small splinters, with as tranquil and careless an air as if there were no heavy thought upon his mind, no dark memory behind him, no terrible fate dogging him at the heels.

But Woodchuck and Walter were both well known to the boatmen; and though they might probably have attempted to impose upon the inexperience of the lad, they knew they had met their match in the shrewdness of his companion, and were not aware that any circumstance rendered speed more valuable to him than money.

The bargain, then, was soon concluded; but Captain Brooks was not contented till he had stipulated also for the services of two men in guiding Lord H---- back to the house of Mr. Prevost. This was undertaken for a dollar atpiece; and then the whole party proceeded to the bank of the river, where a boat was soon unmoored, and Walter and his companion set forth upon their journey; not, however, until Lord H---- had shaken the former warmly by the hand, and said a few words in the ear of Captain Brooks, adding:--

"Walter will tell you more, and how to communicate with me."

"Thank you, thank you," replied the hunter, wringing his hand hard. "A friend in need is a friend indeed; I do not want it, but I thank you as much as if I did. But you shall hear if I do; for somehow I guess you are not the man to say what you don't mean."

After seeing his two companions row down the stream for a few yards, the nobleman turned to the boatmen who accompanied him, saying--

"Now, my lads, I want to make a change of our arrangements, and to go back the short way by which we came. I did not interrupt our good friend Woodchuck, because he was anxious about my safety. There are some Indians in the forest, and he feared I might get scalped. However, we shot a panther there, which we couldn't stay to skin, as their business in Albany was pressing. Now, I want the skin, and am not afraid of the Indians--are you?"

The men laughed, and replied in the negative, saying that there were none of the red men there, except four or five Oneidas, and some Mohawks; but they added that the way, though shorter, was much more difficult and bushy, and, therefore, they must have more pay. Lord H---- was less difficult to deal with than Captain Brooks, and the bargain was soon struck.

Each of the men then armed himself with a rifle, and took a bag of parched corn with him, and the three set out. Lord H---- undertook to guide them to the spot where the panther lay; and not a little did they marvel at the accuracy and precision with which his military habits of observation enabled him to direct them step by step. He took great care not to let them approach the spot where the Indian had been slain, but, stopping about a quarter of a mile to the south, led them across the thicket to within a very few yards of the object he was in search of. It was soon found when they came near the place, and about half an hour was employed in taking off the skin and packing it up for carriage.

"Now," said Lord H----, "will you two undertake to have this skin properly cured, and dispatched by the first trader going west to the Oneida village?"

The men readily agreed to do so, if well paid for it, but of course required further directions, saying there were a dozen or more Oneida villages.

"It will be sure to reach its destination," said Lord H----, "if you tell the bearer to deliver it to Otaitsa, which I believe means the Blossom, the daughter of Black Eagle, the Sachem. Say that it comes from Walter Prevost."

"Oh ay," answered the boatmen, "it shall be done; but we shall have to pay the man who carries it."

The arrangement in regard to payment was soon made, though it was somewhat exorbitant; but to insure that the commission was faithfully executed, Lord H---- reserved a portion of the money, to be given when he heard that the skin had been delivered. He little knew the consequences which were to flow from the little act of kindness he was performing.

The rest of the journey passed without interruption or difficulty, and at an early hour of the evening the young nobleman stood once more at the door of his countryman's house.