Part 4 (2/2)
This man Weatherford, the fiercest enemy the whites had, with a party of about twenty-five Indians, bivouacked, the night before, in the edge of the woods, and when Sam mounted his horse that morning the Indians were lying asleep immediately in his path as he rode blindly out of the thicket. The first intimation he had of their presence was a grunt from a big savage who lay almost under his horse's feet. Coming to himself in an instant, Sam took in the whole situation at a glance, and with the rapidity and precision which people who are accustomed to the dangers and difficulties of frontier life always acquire, he mentally weighed all the facts bearing upon the question of what to do, and decided. He saw before him the savages, rising from the ground at sight of him. He saw their horses browsing at some little distance from them. He saw a rifle, on which hung a powder-horn and a bullet-pouch, standing against a bush. He saw that he had already aroused the foe, and that he must stand a chase. His first impulse was to turn around and ride back, in the direction whence he had come; but in that direction lay the thicket through which he could not ride rapidly, and so if he should take that course, he would lose the advantage which he hoped to gain from the fleetness of his particularly good horse. Besides, in the thicket he must of course leave a trail easily followed. Just beyond the group of Indians he saw the open fields, and he made up his mind at once that he would push his horse into a run, dash right through the camp of the savages, pick up the convenient rifle if possible, and reaching the open country make all the speed he could. In this he knew he would have an advantage, inasmuch as he would get a good many hundred yards away before the savages could catch and mount their horses for the purpose of pursuing him, and he even hoped that they, seeing how far he was in advance of them, would abandon the idea of pursuit altogether. All this thinking, and weighing of chances, and deciding was the work of a single half second, and the plan, once formed, was executed instantly. Without pausing or turning he pushed his horse at a full run through the group of savages, receiving a glancing blow from a war club and dodging several others as he went. He succeeded in getting possession of the rifle which stood by the bush, and reached the field before a gun could be aimed at him. It was now his purpose to get so far ahead as to discourage pursuit, and with this object in view he continued to urge his horse forward at his best speed. This hope was a vain one, as he soon discovered. The Indians, infuriated by his boldness, mounted their horses and gave chase immediately. Sam had an excellent habit, as we know, of keeping his wits about him, and of preparing carefully for difficulties likely to come. The first thing to be done was to escape, if possible, and so he continued to press his high-spirited colt forward, while he debated the probabilities of being overtaken, and discussed with himself the resources at his command if the savages should come up with him. He was armed now, at any rate, and if running should prove of no avail, he could and would sell his life very dearly.
Indeed the possession of the rifle roused all the spirit of battle there was in him, and great as the odds were against him, he was sorely tempted to pause long enough to shoot once at least. He remembered Tom and Judie and Joe, however, and their dependence upon him for guidance and protection, and for their sake more than for his own, suppressed the impulse and continued his flight. The Indians were nearly half a mile behind him, and, as nearly as he could tell, were not gaining upon him very rapidly. His colt seemed equal to a long continued race, and as yet showed no sign of faltering or fatigue. The question had now resolved itself, Sam thought, into one of endurance. How long the Indians would continue a pursuit in which he had the advantage of half a mile the start, he had no way of determining, but that his horse's endurance was as great at least as their perseverance, he had every reason to hope.
Just as he had comforted himself with this thought, a new danger a.s.sailed him. One of the Indians, it seemed, taking advantage of a minute knowledge of the country, had saved a considerable distance by riding through a strip of woods and cutting off an angle. When Sam first caught sight of him, coming out of the woods, the savage was within a dozen yards of him, and evidently gaining upon him at every step. Sam's horse was a fleet one, but that of the Indian was apparently a thoroughbred, whose speed remained nearly as great after a mile's run as at the start. Knowing the Indians' skill in shooting while riding at full speed, Sam leaned as far as he could to one side, so that as little as possible of his person should be exposed to his pursuer's aim. He continued to press his horse too, but the savage gained steadily.
Finding at last that he must shortly be overtaken, Sam resolved upon a bold manoeuvre, by which to kill his foremost pursuer. Seizing the hatchet he had brought away from the house, he suddenly stopped his horse, and, as the Indian came along-side, aimed a savage blow at his head.
”Don't you know me, Sam?” said the Indian in good English, dodging the blow. ”I'm Weatherford. If I'd wanted to kill you I might have done so a dozen times in the last five minutes. You know I don't want to kill _you_, though you're the only white man on earth I'd let go. But the others will make an end of you if they catch you. Ride on and I'll chase you. Turn to the left there and ride to the bluff. I'll follow you.
There's a gully through the top. Ride down it as far as you can and jump your horse over the cliff. It's nearly fifty feet high, and may kill you, but it's the only way. The other warriors are coming up and they'll kill you sure if you don't jump. Jump, and I'll tell 'em I chased you over.”
Sam knew Weatherford well, and he knew why the blood-thirsty chief wished to spare him if he could, for Sam had rescued Weatherford once from an imminent peril at great risk to himself, though the story is too long to be told here. Whether or not there is n.o.bleness enough in the Indian character to make the savage remember a benefit received, I am sure I cannot say, but Weatherford was _three-fourths white_, and with all his ferocity in war, history credits him with more than one generous impulse like that by which Sam was now profiting. The two rode on, Weatherford pretending to be in hot pursuit, shooting occasionally and yelling at every leap of his horse. The bluff towards which they rode was probably a hundred feet high, and was washed at its base by a deep but sluggish creek, on the other side of which lay a densely wooded swamp. Through the top of the bluff, however, was a sort of fissure or ravine washed by the flow of water during the rainy season, and where it terminated the height of its mouth above the stream was not more than forty or fifty feet. Down this gully Sam rode furiously, so that his horse might not be able to refuse the leap, which was a frightful one.
Coming to the edge of the precipice with headlong speed, the animal could not draw back but plunged over with Sam sitting bolt upright on his back. Riding back to the top of the bank Weatherford met his warriors.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PERILOUS LEAP.]
”Where is he?” asked the foremost.
”His _body_ is down there in the creek. I drove him over the precipice,”
said the chief with well-feigned delight.[2]
[Footnote 2: This incident of the leap over the precipice is strictly historical, else I should never have ventured to print it here.
Weatherford himself, on the 23d of December, 1813, after the battle of Tohopeka, escaped a body of dragoons in a precisely similar manner. A still more remarkable leap was that of Major Samuel McCullock, on the 2d of September 1777, over a precipice fully 300 feet high near Wheeling, West Virginia. He jumped over on horseback, thinking such a death preferable to savage torture, but singularly enough, both he and his horse escaped unhurt.]
His purpose evidently, was to satisfy the warriors that Sam was certainly killed, so that they might pursue him no further. Whether he was yet alive or not, Weatherford himself had no means of knowing. The last he had seen of him was as he went over the precipice, sitting bolt upright on his horse, grasping his rifle and looking straight ahead. He heard a splash in the water below, after which everything was still.
CHAPTER IX.
WEARY WAITING.
The days seemed very long to Tom and Joe and little Judie after Sam left on his journey. They had nothing to do but to sit still in their corners among the roots all day, and time always drags very slowly when people are doing nothing. Their provisions, as we know, were already cooked,--enough of them at least, to last a week, and before Sam left he had made them bring more than a bushel of sweet potatoes and all the corn they could find which was still soft enough to eat, and store it away for use if his return should be delayed in any way. The result was that their legs got no stretching, and they became moody, dispirited and unhappy before the second day of Sam's absence had come to an end. They found doing nothing the hardest and the dullest work they ever had done in their lives. Joe managed to sleep most of the time, but Tom was nervous, and poor little Judie, without Sam to depend upon, grew low-spirited and began to fear all sorts of evil things. Finally Sam's week was up and Sam had not appeared. The little people were now fairly frightened. What had become of him? they wondered. Had he fallen into the hands of the Indians? And if so, what were they to do now? They had never before known how dependent they were upon him. Even during his absence they had been regulating their lives by his minute instructions, and depending upon him for guidance after he should return. But what if he should never return? And why hadn't he come already? These thoughts were too much for them. Judie sat in her corner brooding over her trouble, and crying a little now and then. Joe was simply frightened, and his eyes grew bigger and rounder than ever. Tom was sustained in part by the thought that the burden of responsibility was now on him, and so he suppressed all manifestations of uneasiness, as well as he could, and gave himself up to the duty of studying the situation, calculating his resources and trying to decide what was the best thing to be done if Sam should not come back at all. He hit upon several excellent ideas, but made up his mind that before trying to put any of them into practice he would wait at least a fortnight longer for Sam's return. Their stock of provisions, eaten raw, would last much longer than that, and the fields were full of sweet potatoes, wherefore he wisely thought it best not to lose any chance of having Sam to do the thinking and planning. He was so anxious for his brother's return that he spent the greater part of his time on the drift-pile where he had built himself a little observatory, so arranged that he could see in every direction without the possibility of being seen in his turn.
Sitting there in his look-out, watching for Sam, he had time to think of many things. His thinking was not always wise, as a matter of course, but for a boy of his age it did very well, certainly, and one day he hit upon a really valuable idea.
The way it came about was this. He fell into a reverie, and remembered the happy old days at home, and one day in particular, when he was busy all day making a little wagon in which to give Judie a ride, and he remembered how very short that day seemed, although it was in June. Just then it popped into his head to think that there was a reason for everything, and that that day had seemed so short only because he had been very busy as its hours went by. If he had known what ”generalization” means, he would have generalized this truth as follows:--
”Time pa.s.ses rapidly with busy people.” He did nothing of the kind, however. He only thought.
”If poor little Judie had something to keep her busy all the time, she wouldn't be so miserable.”
And so he cudgelled his brains to invent some plan or other by which to set Judie at work and keep her at it all the time.
When he returned to the fortress towards night, he said to the little woman; ”Judie, I reckon poor Sam's foot is troubling him again, and that's the reason he hasn't got back yet. He'll work along slowly and get here after a while, but I'm afraid he'll be dreadfully tired and sick when he comes. We must have a good soft bed ready for him so that he can get a good rest.”
To this Judie a.s.sented, though in her heart she feared she should never see Sam again, as indeed Tom did too, though neither would admit the fact to the other.
”Now I've been thinking,” said Tom, ”that it wont do, if he comes back half sick, to let him lie on green moss with all the outside on. Let me show you.”
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