The sudden discovery startled the trail hunter, and he was about to advance upon and examine the craft, when a night owl flew by and swept its cold wings across his face, as if to keep him back. But the youth did not heed the omen of portending evil.
He crept to the seemingly stranded and abandoned craft, and peered over its side.
What did he see? A dark object lying on the bottom, a tuft of feathers, a face, deathly and covered here and there with clotted blood. He turned away, and looked again before he saw that an Indian lay beneath his gaze, rigid, as he believed, in death!
"This is the result of Catlett"s shot," he said. "I thank G.o.d that his bullet did not reach Kate"s heart. The other abandoned the canoe here, and Kate is with him somewhere in the forest."
As he uttered the last word he touched the Indian, and what was his surprise to see the limbs move and a flash light up the deathly eyes.
Oscar Parton saw the terrible embrace that was preparing for him, and tried to avoid it; but the red arms flew up as if impelled by electric mechanism, and closed around his body.
He struggled and tried to signal his companion, but in vain; his face was pressed to his foe"s, and he felt the death grip of the Wyandot crushing out his very life.
But for all that, he tried the harder to free himself from the loathsome grip. Was his young life to be given up so ignominiously? And that, too, with Kate Merriweather"s fate veiled by obscurity? The thought was awful, horrid.
Not a word fell from the Indian"s lips; the young hunter did not know that the scout"s ball had pa.s.sed through the cheek, mangling the tongue whose words had been heard in the council and on the trail.
The struggle with the dying went on, and, as was natural, the canoe was pushed nearer the river, until the tide caught it and it was afloat! Out into the starlight went the craft with the combatants on board; down the stream toward the rapids, and each succeeding moment farther from a.s.sistance by the white scout.
All things must end, and life, like the rest, reaches the shadow of death. A sudden gurgling in the throat, a quivering of the limbs, announced to Oscar Parton that his enemy was dead. Then again he tried to escape; but the limbs did not relax; they seemed destined to hold him there forever.
"G.o.d help me!" he groaned. "Must I die now, and in the arms of a dead Indian?"
The situation was so tainted with the horrible that the youth almost gave up in despair, and the boat swept down the river.
But help reached him at the eleventh hour. The boat was checked in its course, and he heard voices above the dead arms that, like great cords of steel, held him down. He groaned to tell some one, he knew not who, that he still lived, and then he felt the Indian"s arms torn apart. He was saved.
With an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of joy at his deliverance the young settler looked up, to start with a cry of amazement. For the canoe that lay against his own contained a brace of Indians, plumed and painted for the warpath!
From the clutches of the dead into those of the living did not seem to Oscar Parton, at that hour, a change for the better.
He could not resist, for his rifle lay on the river bank, and before he could collect his ideas he was lifted from his boat into that of his captors".
CHAPTER X.
LITTLE MOCCASIN"S "FATHER."
Leaving Kate Merriweather in the hands of her as yet, to the reader, unknown abductor, and Oscar Parton a captive in the warriors" canoe, let us return to two characters of whom, for a while, we have lost sight.
Deep in the forest that extended to the northern bank of the Maumee, and with but few trees felled about it, stood in the year "94 and for several years afterwards, a small cabin erected after the manner of western buildings, with logs dovetailed, strong oaken doors and heavy clapboard roof.
So thickly stood the trees around it, that the keen-eyed hunter could not have perceived it at any noticeable distance.
No little patch of Indian corn grew near to indicate the home of a settler, and no honeysuckles shaded the low-browed door to tell that a woman"s gentle hand and loving taste had guided them heavenward.
It really looked like the lair of a beast, for there were cleanly-picked bones before the door, beside which a fresh wolf skin had been nailed.
It was not the home of refinement; but he who often slept beneath its roof and called it his, could sway hearts and drench the land in blood.
It stood scarce ten miles from the scene of Kate Merriweather"s abduction, a cabin memorable in the annals of the Northwestern Territory, for beyond its threshold the darkest treacheries of the times had been plotted.
About the hour when the fugitives beside the river discovered that one of their number had been taken from their midst, a man emerged from the forest, and stepping quickly across the s.p.a.ce from door to tree, entered the cabin.
He did not have to stoop, as a tall person would have been compelled to do upon entering, for he was short in stature, but with a physique that denoted great strength.
He was clad in the garb of a backwoodsman, and carried all the weapons borne by such a character. His face, almost brutish in anatomy, denoted the glutton, and his first step was to the larder, from which he drew an enormous chunk of meat upon which he fell with great voracity.
"It must be eleven o"clock," he said, as he thrust the pewter plate empty into the cupboard, and went to the door as if to take observations. "He cannot be later than one, and, saying that it is eleven now, I have but two hours to wait. Can I trust the man? Haven"t I trusted him for six years, and where is the time that he has played me false? I have put money into his buckskin purse, and he knows that at a sign of betrayal I would kill him as heartlessly as I slew Parquatin at the council in the hollow. That council!" and the speaker clenched his lips, and his dark eyes shot flashes of fire from their lash-fringed caves of revenge.
"They made me kill the young chief," he went on, as if speaking before a stern court in his own defense. "Or I should say that _he_ made me do it. They say that I haven"t got a spark of manhood left--that I am the only devil in the Northwest Territory, and hunt and dog me on every side. I _am_ a bad man, the worst perhaps in these parts. The Indian is my companion, and when he can"t invent new deviltry, he comes to me. But I have some good traits left. The dog that steals sheep and bites children is capable of loving his master. I have a brother, and though we have together trod the paths of iniquity from the trough cradle--though he has sought to lower me in the eyes of the tribes, I would not lift a hand against him. No, Simon Girty, your brother loves you because your mother was his; but," and the renegade paused a moment, "but even a brother may wrong too deeply. Keep from me, Simon. Devil that I am, and fiend incarnate and powerful in these woods, I am capable of loving even _you_!"
These words, though spoken in a low tone, fell upon other ears than the White Whirlwind"s. Not far from his cabin door stood a great tree, gnarled and lightning-rent, and behind it, in its grotesque shadow, stood a lithe figure, girlish and graceful, and two brilliant eyes were fastened on the outlaw. The little hand that hung at the side and touched the beaded fringe of a trim frock, clutched a rifle which was c.o.c.ked ready for instant use.
"He would never tell me; he may tell me now!" fell from the lips behind the tree. "He has been talking about his bad life, and may be the Manitou is smiling in his heart."
With the last word on her lips, for the voice and figure denoted that the speaker was a girl, a figure stepped from the shadows and p.r.o.nounced the renegade"s forest name.
Jim Girty started and retreated quickly, as if to secure a weapon, but his eye caught sight of the advancing person, and he recognized her with a strange mixture of affection and hatred in his eyes.
Areotha, or Little Moccasin, soon stood before the outlaw, looking into his repulsive face as if seeking a gleam of hope.
"Oh, it is you?" he said. "Well, well, I haven"t seen you for a mighty long time, but I have heard of you," and his brow darkened.
"What has the White Whirlwind heard of Areotha?" the girl asked with childish artlessness, and she came very close to the man from whom many of her s.e.x would turn with loathing.
"Why, they say that you have been spying for Mad Anthony Wayne," he said, trying to catch the change of color on her face; but he failed, for none came. "If this is true, a bullet will find your heart some of these days, for I am an Indian as much as I am a white, and you must not spy against us. I am your father, but I cannot see how you came to love the accursed people who hunt me like wolves."
He was speaking with much bitterness, and for a moment it seemed that Little Moccasin would forswear the Americans, and cleave to him. But that were impossible; the lamb cannot espouse the wolf"s cause.
"My father, why do you fight the people whose skin is white?" she said, after a minute"s silence. "You must have had a bad heart a long time, for when we lived in the land of the Miami"s, you scalped and burned as you do now. Little Moccasin loves you, but she loves all her white skinned people--but some better than others."
The flush that came to the girl"s cheeks as she finished the last sentence did not escape Girty"s lightning glance.
"I suppose you have tumbled into love with some graceless fellow--some one who would shoot me just to marry an orphan. I know that you don"t go to the fort enough to fall in love with the British officers, and I"ll be hanged if you shall tie yourself to an American. This will never do, girl."
Her eyes fell guiltily before his flashing look, and when she looked up again it was with an altered mien.
"Areotha will hear her father if he will tell her one thing," she said.
"I"ll tell you a dozen if I can," he replied. "Bless me, girl, if Jim Girty, bad as he is, doesn"t think a mighty sight of you."
He stooped, and his brawny arm swung around her waist. She did not struggle, and he looked into her eyes. The lion seemed to be making love to the gazelle.
"My father, long ago the bullet of the white man struck you down," she said. "But you ran here and fell as the wild deer falls, in the brake beyond the hunter"s pursuit. Long you lay here; your head was wild and you said many things when the fever of the evil spirit was upon you.
Areotha never left you, my father. She watched, lest the palefaces should come; she shot the deer and gave you food----"