Chapter 16: The Return Trail

Henry, with the aid of Boone and Kenton, rolled the trunk of a small fallen tree to the river. Then he took off his clothes, made them and his arms and ammunition into a bundle, which he put on the log, said good-by to the two men, and launched himself and his fortunes once more upon the Ohio. He pushed the log before him, taking care to keep it steady, and swam easily with one hand.

Fifty yards back he looked out and saw the two hunters standing on the bank, leaning on the muzzles of their long rifles. They were watching him and he waved his free hand in salute. Boone and Kenton took off their raccoon skin caps in reply. He did not look back again until he was nearly to the northern shore, and then they were gone.

He reached the bank without obstruction, moored his log among some bushes, and, when he was dry, dressed again. Then he went down stream along the shore for several miles, keeping a watch for landmarks that he had seen before. It was a difficult task in the night, and after an hour he abandoned it. Finding a snug place among the bushes, he lay down there and slept until dawn. Then he renewed his search.

Henry, at present, was not thinking much of the fleet. His mind was turning to his faithful comrades who had dropped one by one on the way. Both fleet and fort could wait a while. So far as he was concerned, they must wait. He roved now through the bushes and along the water’s edge, looking always for something. It was a familiar place that he sought, one that might have been seen briefly, but, nevertheless, vividly, one that he could not forget. He came at last to the spot where he and Shif’less Sol had sprung into the water. Just there under the bank the shiftless one had drifted away, while he swam on, drawing the pursuit after him. It had been only a glimpse in the dusk of the night, but he was absolutely sure of the place, and as he continued along the bank he examined every foot of it minutely.

Henry did not expect to find any traces of footsteps after so many days, but the bank for some distance was high and steep. It would not be easy to emerge from the river there, but he felt sure that Shif’less Sol had left it--if he survived--at the first convenient point.

In about three hundred yards he came to a dip in the high bank, a gentle slope upon which a man could wade ashore. Shif’less Sol, wounded and drifting with the current, would certainly reach this place and use it. Henry, without hesitation, turned aside into the woods and began to look for a trail or a sign of any kind that would point a way. Twenty yards from the landing he found a dark stain on an oak tree, a little higher than a man’s waist.

“Shif’less Sol,” he murmured. “He was wounded and he leaned here against this tree to rest after he came from the river. Now, which way did he go?”

He tried to make a reckoning of the point at which Tom Ross had been compelled to turn aside, and he reckoned that it lay northwest. It seemed likely to him that Shif’less Sol, if he could travel at all, would go in the direction or supposed direction of Tom Ross, and Henry went northwestward for about a mile before stopping, following a narrow little valley, leading back from the river and not well wooded. The traveling was easy here, and easy traveling was what a wounded man would certainly seek. His stop was made because he had come to a brook, a clear little stream that flowed somewhere into the Ohio.

Henry again used his reasoning faculties first, and his powers of observation afterward. Wounds made men hot and thirsty, and hot and thirsty men would drink cool water at the first chance. He got down on his knees and examined the grass minutely up and down the brook on both banks. He was not looking for footprints. He knew that time would have effaced them here as it had done back by the river. He was searching instead for a dim spot, yellowish red, somber and ugly.

He came presently to the place, larger and more somber than he had anticipated. “Here is where Sol knelt down to drink,” he murmured, “and his blood flowed upon the grass while he drank. Poor old Sol!” He was afraid that Sol had been steadily growing weaker and weaker, and he dreaded lest he should soon find a dark, still object among the bushes.

A hundred yards further he found something else that his eyes easily read. The ground had been soft when a man passed and, hardening later, had preserved the footsteps. The trail lay before him, clear and distinct for a distance of about a rod, but it was that of a staggering man. A novice even could have seen it. The line zigzagged, and the footprints themselves were at irregular distances. “Poor old Sol,” Henry murmured again. Just beyond the soft ground he found another of the somber splotches, and his heart sank. No one could stand a perpetual loss of blood, and for a dark moment or two Henry was sure that Shif’less Sol had succumbed. Then his natural hopefulness reasserted itself. Shif’less Sol was tough, enduring, the bravest of the brave. It seemed to Henry’s youthful mind that his lion-hearted comrade could not be killed.

He continued his advance, examining the ground carefully everywhere, and following that which offered the least obstacle to a wounded and weak man. He saw before him a mass of grass, high and inviting, and when he looked in the center of it he found what he hoped, but not what he dreaded. Some one had lain down there and had rested a long time or slept, perhaps both, and then had been able to rise again and go on.

The crushed grass showed plainly the imprint of the man’s body, and the somber stains were on either side of the impression. But the grass had not been threshed about. The man, when he lay there, had scarcely moved. Henry was in doubt what inference to draw. It was certain that Shif’less Sol had not been feverish, or he might have lain in utter exhaustion.

As long as the grass lasted, its condition, broken or swept aside, showed the trail, but when he came into the woods again it was lost. There was no grass here and the ground was too hard. Nor did the lie of the land itself offer any hint of Shif’less Sol’s progress. It was all level and one direction was no more inviting than another. Henry paused, at a loss, but as he looked around his eyes caught a gleam of white. It came from a spot on a hickory tree where the bark had been deftly chipped away with a hatchet or a tomahawk, leaving the white body of the tree, exposed for two or three square inches. Henry read it as clearly as if it had been print. In fact, it was print to him, and he knew that it had been so intended. Shif’less Sol had felt sure that Henry would come back after his friend, and this was his sign of the road. Shif’less Sol knew, too, that the attention of the tribes would be concentrated upon the fort and the fleet, and the warriors would not be hunting at such a time for a single atom like himself.

Henry found a second chipped tree, a third, and then a fourth. The four made a line pointing northwestward, but more west than north. He was quite sure now of the general direction that he must pursue, and he advanced, the chipped trail leading deeper and deeper into a great forest. At the crossing of another brook he looked for the somber sign, but it was not there. Instead, a short distance farther on, he found some tiny fragments of buckskin, evidently cut into such shape with a sharp knife. Near them were several of the reddish stains, but much smaller than any he had seen before.

It was again a book of open print to Henry, and now he felt a surge of joyous feeling. Shif’less Sol had washed his wound at the brook back there and he had stopped here to bind it up with portions of his buckskin clothing, cutting the bandage with his sharp knife. The act showed, so Henry believed, that he was gaining in strength, and when he next saw a chipped tree he observed the mark carefully. It was about the same in width and length, but it was much deeper than usual. A piece of the living wood had gone with the bark.

Henry smiled. His strong imagination reproduced the scene. There was Shif’less Sol standing erect and comparatively strong for the first time since the last night of the flight. He had raised his tomahawk, and then, in the pride of his strength, had sunk it four times into the tree, cutting out the thick chip. Henry murmured something again. It was not now “Poor old Sol,” it was “Good old Sol.”

He lost the trail at the end of another mile, but after some searching found it again in another chipped tree, and then another close by. It still pointed in a northwesterly direction, more west than north, and Henry hence was sure that he could never lose it long. Soon he came upon a little heap of ashes and dead coals with feathers and bones lying about. The feathers were those of the wild turkey, and this chapter of the book was so plain that none could mistake it. Sol had shot a wild turkey, and here he had cooked it and eaten of it. His fever had gone down or he would have had no appetite. Undoubtedly he was growing much stronger.

He traveled several miles further without seeing anything unusual, and then he came abruptly out of the deep forest upon a tiny lake, a genuine jewel of a little lake. It was not more than a half of a mile long, perhaps a hundred and fifty yards across, and its deep waters were very clear and beautiful.

The chipped trail--the last tree was not more than twenty feet back--pointed straight to the middle of this lake and Henry was puzzled. His own shore was low, but the far one was high and rocky.

Henry was puzzled. He could not divine what had been in Shif’less Sol’s mind, and, a tall erect figure, rifle on shoulder, he stared at the lake. Across the water came a mellow, cheerful hail: “Henry! Oh-h-h, Henry!”

Henry looked up--he had recognized instantly the voice of Shif’less Sol, and there he was, standing on the bluff of the far shore. “Swim over!” he called, “and visit me in my house!” Henry looked down toward the end of the lake. It would be a half mile walk around it, and he decided in favor of swimming. Again he made his clothes and arms into a bundle, and in three or four minutes was at the other side of the lake.

As he came to the cliff Shif’less Sol extended a helping hand, but Henry, noticing that he was pale and thin, did not take it until he had sprung lightly upon the rocks. Then he took it in a mighty clasp that the shiftless one returned as far as his strength would permit.

“I’m pow’ful glad to see you, Henry,” said Shif’less Sol, “but I don’t think you look respeckable without some clothes aroun’ you. So put ‘em on, an’ I’ll invite you into my house.”

“It’s fine to see you again, Sol! Alive and well!” exclaimed Henry joyfully.

“Wa’al, I’m alive,” said Shif’less Sol, “but I ain’t what you would sca’cely call well. A bullet went clean through my side, and that’s a thing you can’t overlook just at the time. I ain’t fit yet for runnin’ races with Injuns, or wrastlin’ with b’ars, but I’ve got a good appetite an’ I’m right fond o’ sleep. I reckon I’m what you’d call a mighty interestin’ invalid.”

“Invalid or not, you’re the same old Sol,” said Henry, who had finished dressing. “Now show me to this house of yours.”

“I can’t say rightly that it’s the mansion o’ a king,” said Shif’less Sol solemnly. “A lot o’ the furniture hasn’t come, an’ all the servants happen to be away at this minute. Guess I’ll have to show you ‘roun’ the place myself.”

“Go ahead; you’re the best of guides,” said Henry, delighted to be with his old comrade again.

The shiftless one, still going rather weakly, led the way a few steps up the almost precipitous face of the rock toward some bushes growing in the crevices. Then he disappeared. Henry gazed in amazement, but Shif’less Sol’s mellow laugh came back.

“Walk right in,” he said. “This is my house.”

Henry parted the bushes with his hand and stepped into a deep alcove of the rock running back four or five feet, with a height of about five feet. The entrance was completely hidden by bushes.

“Now, ain’t this snug?” exclaimed Shif’less Sol, turning a glowing face upon Henry, “an’ think o’ my luck in findin’ it jest when I needed it most. Thar ain’t a better nateral house in all the west.”

It was certainly a snug niche. The floor was dry and covered with leaves, some pieces of wood lay in a corner, on a natural shelf was the dressed body of a wild turkey, and near the entrance was a heap of ashes and dead coals showing where a fire had been.

“It is a good place,” said Henry emphatically, “and you certainly had wonderful luck in finding it when you did. How did it come about, Sol?”

“I call it Fisherman’s Home,” returned the shiftless one, “because me that used to be a hunter, scout, explorer an’ Injun-fighter, has to fish fur a while fur a livin’. When I wuz runnin’ away from the warriors, with my side an’ my feelin’s hurtin’ me, I come to this lake. I knowed that jest ez soon ez you got the chance, providin’ you wuz still livin’, you’d foller to find me, an’ so I blazed the trail. But when I got here it set me to thinkin’. I saw the high bank on this side, all rocks an’ bushes. I reckoned I could come over here an’ hide among ‘em an’ still see anybody who followed my trail down to the other side. I wuz strong enough by that time to swim across, an’ I done it. Then when I wuz lookin’ among the rocks an’ bushes fur a restin’ place, I jest stumbled upon this bee-yu-ti-ful mansion. It ain’t furnished much yet, ez I told you, but I’ve sent an order to Philadelphy, an’ I’m expectin’ a lot o’ gor-gee-yus things in a couple o’ years.”