Chapter 9: The Gathering of the Five

As the report of his shot sped in echoes through the forest, Henry Ware sprang to his feet and stood there for a little space, his knees weak under him, and drops of perspiration thick on his face. The rifle was clenched in his hands, and a light smoke came from the muzzle.

Thus he stood, not yet willing to turn around and see, but when the last echo of the shot was gone there was no sound. The wind had ceased to blow. Not a leaf, not a blade of grass stirred. He was affected as he had never been in battle, because he knew that a man whose shadow alone he had seen lay dead behind him.

He shifted the rifle to one hand only, and wiped his face with the other. Then, as his knees grew stronger and he was able to control the extraordinary quivering of the nerves, he turned. The warrior, the red spot upon his forehead, lay stretched upon his back. He had died without a sound, as if he had been struck by a bolt of lightning. The handle of the tomahawk was still clutched in his fingers, but his rifle had fallen beside him. The single minute that he had paused to exult over the foe who seemed so completely in his power had been fatal.

Henry took the powder and bullets from the fallen warrior and added them to his own store--the bullets he found would fit his rifle--but he did not wish to burden himself with the extra rifle, knife, and tomahawk. Nor did he wish to abandon them. Their value was too great in the wilderness. He chose a middle course. He thrust all three in a hollow tree that he found about a mile further on. They were so well hidden in the trunk that there was not one chance in a million of anybody but himself ever finding them.

“I may need you again some day,” he murmured to the inanimate weapons, “and if so you’ll be here waiting for me.”

He noted well the locality, the trees, and the lay of the land. Everything was photographed on his memory and would remain there until such time as he needed the use of the picture. Then he continued his advance, at the long easy walk that he had learned from the frontiersmen, and soon his shaken nerves were restored.

He began to calculate now how far he might be from the Ohio, and, as he was traveling more east than south, he reckoned that it would be several days before he reached the mouth of the Licking. But he felt assured that he would reach it, despite the dangers that were still thick about him. In the afternoon he saw smoke on the horizon, and, going at once to ascertain its cause, he found a small Shawnee village in a cozy valley. He saw signs of preparation among the warriors in it, and he divined that they, too, were destined for the “landing place” on the Ohio, opposite the mouth of the Licking.

He left the village after the cursory look and plunged again into the unbroken wilderness. Two or three hours later he decided that he was being followed. He had not seen or heard anything, but it was a sort of divination. He sought to throw it aside, telling himself that it was mere foolishness, but he could not do it. The thought stayed with him, and then he knew that it must be true.

He cared little for a single warrior, but he did not wish to be delayed. He increased his speed, but the sense of being followed did not depart. He was not alarmed, but he was annoyed intensely. He had already encountered two warriors, triumphing each time, and it seemed to him that he ought now to be let alone.

He made a complete circle, coming back on his own tracks in order to convince himself absolutely that he was or was not followed, and he found a few traces in the soft earth to show him that his sixth sense had not warned him in vain. There moccasins had passed, and the owner of them was undoubtedly pursuing Henry. For what else but his life?

It was hard necessity, but he resolved to have it out with this warrior who trailed him so relentlessly. Night was coming on, and he must sleep and rest, but he could not do so with an enemy so near. Hence he now dropped the role of the pursued, and became the pursuer.

It was a difficult task, but an occasional trace in the earth helped him, and he followed unerringly. So intent was he upon his object that he did not notice for some time that he was still traveling in a circle, and that his mysterious foe was doing the same. They were going around and around. Both were pursuers and both pursued.

Henry’s annoyance increased. He had never been irritated so much before in his life. He could not continue forever with this business and let his mission go. Moreover, night was now much nearer. The western world was already sinking into darkness, and the twilight would soon reach him. He wished to deal with his enemy, while it was yet light enough to see.

He turned directly about on his own trail and, after advancing a little, lay hidden in the bushes. The warrior, unless uncommonly wary, would soon come in sight. But he did not come. Henry was not able either to see or hear a sign of him. The bushes were tinged with the reddish light of the setting sun, but they moved only in the way in which the wind blew them. His foe had not come into the trap, and Henry knew now that he would not come.

He remained a full half hour in his hiding place, and then, turning again, he tried the other way around the circle. A slight motion in the thicket behind him told that his foe was still there, and he stopped. His annoyance gave way to admiration. This was undoubtedly a great warrior who trailed him, a man of courage, the possessor of all forest skill. It must surely be the best of the whole Wyandot tribe. Henry was willing to give full credit.

But he must deal with such a foe. His safety and perhaps the safety of many others depended upon it. He could not shake him off; therefore, he must fight him, and he summoned all his energy and faculties for the task.

Now began the forest combat between invisible and noiseless forces, but none the less deadly because neither could see nor hear his foe. Yet each knew that the other was always there. It was the slight waving of a bush or the flutter of a leaf, stirred by a moccasin, that told the tale.

As the hunt, the deadliest of all hunts, proceeded, each became more engrossed in it, neglecting no precaution, seeking incessantly some minute advantage. Henry was by nature generous and merciful, but at this time he did not think of those things. Wilderness necessity did not permit it.

The reddish tint on trees and bushes faded quite away, the sun was gone, and the night came, riding down on the world like a black horseman, but the eyes of the two grew used to the dark as it came, and they continued their invisible battle, circling back and forth in the forest.

Henry’s admiration for his foe increased. He had never encountered another such warrior. Surpassing skill was his. He knew every trick, every device of the forest. Every move that Henry tried he met on equal terms, and, strive as Henry would to see him, he was still unseen.

This singular duel would have exhausted the patience of most men. One or the other, finding it unbearable, would have exposed himself, but not so these two. An hour, two hours, passed, and they were still seeking the advantage. The moon had come out and touched trees and bushes with silver, but they were still creeping to and fro, seeking a chance for a shot.

It was Henry who secured the first glimpse. He saw for an instant a face in a bush fifty yards away, and at the same moment he fired. But he knew almost before his finger ceased to pull the trigger that he would miss, and he threw down his head to escape the return shot. He was barely in time. He heard the bullet pass over him, and it seemed to him that it sung a taunting little song as it went by. But he was busy reloading his rifle as fast as he could, and he knew that his foe was doing the same.

The rifle reloaded, a sudden extraordinary idea leaped up in his brain. It seemed impossible, but the impossible sometimes comes true. It was the merest of fleeting glimpses that he had caught of that face, but his eye was uncommonly quick, and his mind equally retentive.

His mind would not let go of the idea; an impression at first, it quickly became a belief and then a conviction. He was lying on his chest, and, raising his head a little, he emitted the call of the night-owl, soft, long, and weird. He uttered the cry twice and waited. From the woods fifty yards away came the answering hoot of an owl, once, twice, thrice. Henry gave the cry twice again, and the second reply came from the same place, once, twice, thrice.

Henry, without hesitation, sprang up to his full length, and walked boldly forward. A second tall figure had risen and was coming to meet him. The moonlight streamed down in a silver shower upon the man who had stalked him so long, and revealed Shif’less Sol.

“Sol!” exclaimed Henry. “And I shot at you, thinking that you were a Wyandot.”

“You did not shoot any harder at me than I did at you,” said Shif’less Sol, “an’ me all the time thinkin’ that you wuz one o’ them renegades!”

“Thank God we both missed!” said Henry, fervently.

“An’ thank God that you’re here, an’ not tied down back thar in the Wyandot village,” said Shif’less Sol.

Their hands met in the strong firm clasp of those who have been friends through the utmost dangers.

“It’s fine to see you again, Sol,” said Henry. “Are the others well?”

“When I last saw ‘em,” replied the shiftless one.

“Tell me how you ran across my trail and what went before,” said Henry, as they sat down on a fallen log together.

“You’ll ricolleck,” said Shif’less Sol, “that you told us not to hunt you ef you didn’t come back, but to go on with the fleet. I reckon it wuz easier fur you to give that advice than for us to keep it. We knowed from what the others said that you wuz captured, but we hoped that you’d escape. When you didn’t come, we agreed right quick among ourselves that we had more business huntin’ you than we had with that fleet.

“We didn’t have much to go by. We guessed thar was a Wyandot village somewhar in these parts, an’ we hunted fur it. Last night me an’ Tom Ross saw some Injuns who wuz in camp an’ who wuz rather keerless fur them. Some white men wuz with ‘em, an’ we learned from scraps o’ talk that we could pick up that you had escaped, fur which news we wuz pow’ful glad. We heard, too, that they wuz goin’ to the Ohio at the mouth o’ the Lickin,’ whar thar wuz to be a great getherin’ o’ ‘em. One or two o’ the white men wuz to go on ahead this mornin’. So we let ‘em alone an’ we spread out so we could find you.

“When I run across your trail afore sundown, I wuz shore it belonged to one o’ them renegades I heard called Blackstaffe, and I made up my mind to git him.”