Then he strode up rapidly, and took the warrior's hand after the white custom.
"Black Cloud! My friend!" he said.
"You know me! You have not forgotten?" replied the chief and his eyes gleamed ever so quickly.
"You have come far from your people and among hostile tribes to see me?" said Henry who instantly divined the truth.
"It is so," replied the chief, "and to ask you to go back with me. Our warriors miss you."
Henry was moved to the depths of his nature. Black Cloud had come a thousand miles to ask him this question, and he had a far, sweet vision of a life utterly wild and free. Again he saw the great plains, and again came to his ears, like rolling thunder, the tread of the myriad-footed buffalo herd. He was tempted sorely tempted and he knew it, but, with a mighty effort he put the temptation away from him and shook his head.
"It cannot be, Black Cloud," he said. "My people need me, as yours need you."
A shadow passed over the eyes of the chief, but it was gone in a moment. He knew that the answer was final, and he said not another word on the subject.
Black Cloud went on with Henry and Paul half a day, then he bade them farewell. They watched him go, but it could be only for a minute or two, because his form quickly melted away into the forest. Then the two boys, turning their faces steadily toward duty, marched on, and the great wilderness, gleaming in its reds and yellows and browns curved about them.
The Forest Runners: A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky
CHAPTER I
PAUL
Paul stopped in a little open space, and looked around all the circle of the forest. Everywhere it was the same—just the curving wall of red and brown, and beyond, the blue sky, flecked with tiny clouds of white. The wilderness was full of beauty, charged with the glory of peace and silence, and there was naught to indicate that man had ever come. The leaves rippled a little in the gentle west wind, and the crisping grass bowed before it; but Paul saw no living being, save himself, in the vast, empty world.
The boy was troubled and, despite his life in the woods, he had full right to be. This was the great haunted forest of Kain-tuck-ee, where the red man made his most desperate stand, and none ever knew when or whence danger would come. Moreover, he was lost, and the forest told him nothing; he was not like his friend, Henry Ware, born to the forest, the heir to all the primeval instincts, alive to every sight and sound, and able to read the slightest warning the wilderness might give. Paul Cotter was a student, a lover of books, and a coming statesman. Fate, it seemed, had chosen that he and Henry Ware should go hand in hand, but for different tasks.
Paul gazed once more around the circle of the glowing forest, and the shadow in his eyes deepened. Henry and the horses, loaded with powder for the needy settlement, must be somewhere near, but whether to right or left he could not tell. He had gone to look for water, and when he undertook to return he merely went deeper and deeper into the forest. Now the boughs, as they nodded before the gentle breeze, seemed to nod to him in derision. He felt shame as well as alarm. Henry would not laugh at him, but the born scholar would be worth, for the time, at least, far less than the born trailer.
Yet no observer, had there been any, would have condemned Paul as he condemned himself. He stood there, a tall, slender boy, with a broad, high brow, white like a girl's above the line of his cap, blue eyes, dark and full, with the width between that indicates the mind behind, and the firm, pointed chin that belongs so often to people of intellect.
Paul and Henry were on their way from Wareville, their home, with horses hearing powder for Marlowe, the nearest settlement, nearly a hundred miles away. The secret of making powder from the nitre dust on the floors of the great caves of Kentucky had been discovered by the people of Wareville, and now they wished to share their unfailing supply with others, in order that the infant colony might be able to withstand Indian attacks. Henry Ware, once a captive in a far Northwestern tribe, and noted for his great strength and skill, had been chosen, with Paul Cotter, his comrade, to carry it. Both rejoiced in the great task, which to them meant the saving of Kentucky.
Paul's eyes were apt at times to have a dreamy look, as if he were thinking of things far away, whether of time or place; but now they were alive to the present, and to the forest about him. He listened intently. At last he lay down and put his ear to the earth, as he had seen Henry do; but he heard nothing save a soft, sighing sound, which he knew to be only the note of the wilderness. He might have fired his rifle. The sharp, lashing report would go far, carried farther by its own echoes; but it was more likely to bring foe than friend, and he refrained.
But he must try, if not one thing, then another. He looked up at the heavens and studied the great, red globe of the sun, now going slowly down the western arch in circles of crimson and orange light, and then he looked hack at the earth. If he had not judged the position of the sun wrong, their little camp lay to the right, and he would choose that course.