Chapter 18: The Test

The people of Wareville had good reason alike for pride and for sorrow, pride for victory, and sorrow for the fallen, but they spent no time in either, at least openly, resuming at once the task of founding a new state.

Henry Ware, the hero of the hour and the savior of the village, laid aside his wild garb and took a place in his father’s fields. The work was heavy, the Indian corn was planted, but trees were to be felled, fences were to be cut down, and as he was so strong a larger share than usual was expected of him. His own father appreciated these hopes and was resolved that his son should do his full duty.

Henry entered upon his task and from the beginning he had misgivings, but he refused to indulge them. He handled a hoe on his first day from dawn till dark in a hot field, and all the while the mighty wilderness about him was crying out to him in many voices. While the sun glowed upon him, and the sweat ran down his face he could see the deep cool shade of the forest--how restful and peaceful it looked there! He knew a sheltered glade where the buffalo were feeding, he could find the deer reposing in a thicket, and to the westward was a new region of hills and clear brooks, over which he might be the first white man to roam.

His blood tingled with his thoughts, but he never said a word, only bending lower to his task, and hardening his resolve. The voices of the wilderness might call, and he could not keep from hearing them, but he need not go. The amount of work he did that day was wonderful to all who saw, his vast strength put him far ahead of all others and back of his strength was his will. But they said nothing and he was glad they did not speak.

When he went home in the dusk he overtook Lucy Upton near the palisade. She was in the same red dress that she wore when she ran the gantlet and in the twilight it seemed to be tinged to a deeper scarlet. She was walking swiftly with the easy, swinging grace of a good figure and good health, but when he joined her she went more slowly.

He did not speak for a few moments, and she gave him a silent glance of sympathy. In her woman’s heart she guessed the cause of his trouble, and while she had been afraid of him when he appeared suddenly as the Indian warrior yet she liked him better in that part than as she now saw him. Then he was majestic, now he was prosaic, and it seemed to her that his present rôle was unfitting.

“You are tired,” she said at last.

“Well, not in the body exactly, but I feel like resting.”

There was no complaint in his tone, but a slight touch of irony.

“Do you think that you will make a good farmer?” she asked.

“As good as the times and our situation allow,” he replied. “Wandering parties of the savages are likely to pass near here and in the course of time they may send back an army. Besides one has to hunt now, as for a long while we must depend on the forest for a part of our food.”

It seemed to her that these things did not cause him sorrow, that he turned to them as a sort of relief: his eyes sparkled more brightly when he spoke of the necessity for hunting and the possible passage of Indian parties which must be repelled. Girl though she was, she felt again a little glow of sympathy, guessing as she did his nature; she could understand how he thrilled when he heard the voices of the forest calling to him.

They reached the gate of the palisade and passed within. It was full dusk now, the forest blurring together into a mighty black wall, and the outlines of the houses becoming shadowy. The Ware family sat awhile that evening by the hearth fire, and John Ware was full of satisfaction. A worthy man, he had neither imagination nor primitive instincts and he valued the wilderness only as a cheap place in which to make homes. He spoke much of clearing the ground, of the great crops that would come, and of the profit and delight afforded by regular work year after year on the farm. Henry Ware sat in silence, listening to his father’s oracular tones, but his mother, glancing at him, had doubts to which she gave no utterance.

The days passed and as the spring glided into summer they grew hotter. The sun glowed upon the fields, and the earth parched with thirst. In the forest the leaves were dry and they rustled when the wind blew upon them. The streams sank away again, as they had done during the siege, and labor became more trying. Yet Henry Ware never murmured, though his soul was full of black bitterness. Often he would resolutely turn his eyes from the forest where he knew the deep cool pools were, and keep them on the sun-baked field. His rifle, which had seemed to reproach him, inanimate object though it was, he hid in a corner of the house where he could not see it and its temptation. In order to create a counter-irritant he plunged into work with the most astonishing vigor.

John Ware, in those days, was full of pride and satisfaction, he rejoiced in the industrial prowess of his son, and he felt that his own influence had prevailed, he had led Henry back to the ways of civilization, the only right ways, and he enjoyed his triumph. But the schoolmaster, in secret, often shook his head.

The summer grew drier and hotter, it was a period of drought again and the little children gasped through the sweating nights. Afar they saw the blaze of forest fires and ashes and smoke came on the wind. Henry toiled with a dogged spirit, but every day the labor grew more bitter to him; he took no interest in it, he did not wish to calculate the result in the years to come, when all around him, extending thousands of miles, was an untrodden wilderness, in which he might roam and hunt until the end, although his years should be a hundred.

It was worst at night, when he lay awake by a window, breathing the hot air, then the deep cool forest extended to him her kindest invitation, and it took all his resolution to resist her welcome. The wind among the trees was like music, but it was a music to which he must close his ears. Then he remembered his vast wanderings with Black Cloud and his red friends, how they had crossed great and unnamed rivers, the days in the endless forest and the other days on the endless plains, and of the mighty lake they had reached in their northernmost journey--how cool and pleasant that lake seemed now! His mind ran over every detail of the great buffalo hunts, of those trips along the streams to trap the beaver and the events in the fight with the hostile tribe.

All these recollections seemed very vivid and real to him now, and the narrow life of Wareville faded into a mist out of which shone only the faces of those whom he loved--it was they alone who had brought him back to Wareville, but he knew that their ways were not his ways, and it was hard to confine his spirit within the narrow limits of a settlement.

But his long martyrdom went on, the summer was growing old, with the work of planting and cultivating almost done and the harvest soon to follow, and whatever his feelings may have been he had never flinched a single time. Nourished by his great labors the Ware farm far surpassed all others, and the pride of John Ware grew. He also grew more exacting with his pride, and this quality brought on the crisis.

Henry was building a fence one particularly hot afternoon, and his father coming by, cool and fresh, found fault with his work, chiefly to show his authority, because the work was not badly done--Mr. Ware was a good man, but like other good men he had a rare fault-finding impulse. The voices in the woods had been calling very loudly that day and Henry’s temper suddenly flashed into a flame. But he did not give way to any external outburst of passion, speaking in a level, measured voice.

“I am sorry you do not like it,” he said, “because it is the last work I am going to do here.”

“Why--what do you mean?” exclaimed his father in astonishment.

“I am done,” replied Henry in his firm tones, and dropping the fence rail that he held he walked to the house, every nerve in him thrilling with expectation of the pleasure that was to come. His mother was there, and she started in fear at his face.

“It is true, mother,” he said, “I am not going to deceive you, I am going into the forest, but I will come again and often. It is the only life that I can lead, I was made for it I suppose; I have tried the other out there in the fields, and I have tried hard, but I cannot stand it.”

She knew too well to seek to stop him. He took his rifle from its secluded corner, and the feeling of it, stock and barrel, was good to his hands. He put on the buckskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins, fringed and beaded, and with them he felt all his old zest and pride returning. He kissed his mother and sister good-by, shook hands with his younger brother, did the same with his astonished father at the door, and then, rifle on shoulder, disappeared in the circling forest.

That night Braxton Wyatt sneered and said that a savage could not keep from being a savage, but Paul Cotter turned upon him so fiercely that he took it back. The schoolmaster made no comment aloud, but to himself he said, “It was bound to come and perhaps it is no loss that it has come.”

Meanwhile Henry Ware was tasting the fiercest and keenest joy of his life. The great forest seemed to reach out its boughs like kind arms to welcome and embrace. How cool was the shade! How the shafts of sunlight piercing the leaves fell like golden arrows on the ground! How the little brooks laughed and danced over the pebbles! This was his world and he had been too long away from it. Everything was friendly, the huge tree trunks were like old comrades, the air was fresher and keener than any that he had breathed in a long time, and was full of new life and zest. All his old wilderness love rushed back to him, and now after many months he felt at home.