CHAPTER XIV
THE RETURN
Wareville lay in its pleasant valley, rejoicing in the young spring, sokind with its warm rains that the men of the village foresaw a greatseason for crops. The little river flowed in a silver current, smokerose from many chimneys, and now and then the red homemade linsey dressof a girl gleamed in the sunlight like the feathers of the scarlettanager. To the left were the fields cleared for Indian corn, and to theright were the gardens. Beyond both were the hills and the unbrokenforest.
Now and then a man, carrying on his shoulder the inevitable Kentuckyrifle, long and slender-barreled, passed through the palisade, but thecardinal note of the scene was peace and cheerfulness. The town wasprospering, its future no longer belonged to chance; there would beplenty, of the kind that they liked.
In the Ware house was a silent sadness, silent because these were sternpeople, living in a stern time, and it was the custom to hide one'sgriefs. The oldest son was gone; whether he had perished nobody knew,nor, if he had perished, how.
John Ware was not an emotional man, feelings rarely showed on his face,and his wife alone knew how hard the blow had been to him--she knewbecause she had suffered from the same stroke. But the children, theyounger brother Charles and the sister Mary could not always remember,and with them the impression of the one who was gone would grow dimmerin time. The border too always expected a certain percentage of loss inhuman life, it was one of the facts with which the people must reckon,and thus the name of Henry Ware was rarely spoken.
To-day was without a cloud. New emigrants had come across the mountains,adding welcome strength to the colony, and extending the limits of thevillage. But danger had passed them by, they had heard once or twicemore of the great war in the far-away East, but it was so distant andvague that most of them forgot it; the Indians across the Ohio had nevercome this way, and so far Henry Ware was the only toll that they hadpaid to the wilderness. There was cause for happiness, as humanhappiness goes.
A slim girl bearing in her hand a wooden pail came through the gate ofthe palisade. She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown haircoiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleamswhere the sunshine fell upon it. Her face, browned somewhat, was yetvery white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush ofhealth. She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fitsuggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure. She walkedwith strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside,and which after a short course fell into the little river.
It was Lucy Upton, grown much taller now, as youth develops rapidly onthe border, a creature nourished into physical perfection first by thegood blood that was in her, then developed in the open air, and by work,neither too little nor too much.
She reached the spring, and setting the pail by its side looked down atthe cool, gushing stream. It invited her and she ran her white roundedarm through it, making curves and oblongs that were gone before theywere finished. She was in a thoughtful mood. Once or twice she looked atthe forest, and each time that she looked she shivered because theshadow of the wilderness was then very heavy upon her.
Silas Pennypacker, the schoolmaster, came to the spring while she wasthere, and they spoke together, because they were great friends, thesetwo. He was unchanged, the same strong gray man, with the ruddy face. Hewas not unhappy here despite the seeming incongruity of his presence.The wilderness appealed to him too in a way, he was the intellectualleader of the colony and almost everything that his nature called formet with a response.
"The spring is here, Lucy," he said, "and it has been an easy winter. Weshould be thankful that we have fared so well."
"I think that most of us are," she replied. "We'll soon be a big town."
She glanced at the spreading settlement, and this launched Mr.Pennypacker upon a favorite theme of his. He liked to predict how thecolony would grow, sowing new seed, and already he saw great cities tobe. He found a ready listener in Lucy. This too appealed to herimagination at times, and if at other times interest was lacking, shewas too fond of the old man to let him know it. Presently when she hadfinished she filled the pail and stood up, straight and strong.
"I will carry it for you," said the schoolmaster.
She laughed.
"Why should I let you?" she asked. "I am more able than you."
Most men would have taken it ill to have heard such words from a girl,but she was one among many, above the usual height for her years; shecreated at once the impression of great strength, both physical andmental; the heavy pail of water hung in her hand, as if it were a triflethat she did not notice. The master smiled and looked at her with eyesof fatherly admiration.
"I must admit that you tell the truth," he said. "This West of oursseems to suit you."
"It is my country now," she said, "and I do not care for any other."
"Since you will not let me carry the water you will at least let me walkwith you?" he said.
She did not reply, and he was startled by the sudden change that cameover her.
First a look of wonder showed on her face, then she turned white, everyparticle of color leaving her cheeks. The master could not tell what herexpression meant, and he followed her eyes which were turned toward thewilderness.
From the forest came a figure very strange to Silas Pennypacker, afigure of barbaric splendor. It was a youth of great height and powerfulframe, his face so brown that it might belong to either the white or thered race, but with fine clean features like those of a Greek god. He wasclad in deerskins, ornamented with little colored beads and fringes ofbrilliant dyes. He carried a slender-barreled rifle over his shoulder,and he came forward with swift, soundless steps.
The master recoiled in alarm at the strange and ominous figure, but asthe red flooded back into the girl's cheeks she put her hand upon hisarm.
"It is he! I knew that he was not dead!" she said in an intensetremulous whisper. The words were indefinite, but the master knew whomshe meant, and there was a surge of joy in his heart, to be followed thenext moment by doubt and astonishment. It was Henry Ware who had comeback, but not the same Henry Ware.
Henry was beside them in a moment and he seized their hands, first thehands of one and then of the other, calling them by name.
The master recovering from his momentary diffidence threw his armsaround his former pupil, welcomed him with many words, and wanted toknow where he had been so long.
"I shall tell you, but not now," replied Henry, "because there is notime to spare; you are threatened by a great danger. The Shawnees arecoming with a thousand warriors and I have hastened ahead to warn you."
He hurried them inside the palisade, his manner tense, masterful andconvincing, and there he met his mother, whose joy, deep and grateful,was expressed in few words after the stern Puritan code. The father andthe brother and sister came next, but the younger people like Lucy felta little fear of him, and his old comrade Paul Cotter scarcely knew him.
He told in a few words of his escape from a far Northwestern tribe, ofthe coming of the Shawnees, and of the need to take every precaution fordefense.
"There is no time to spare," he said. "All must be called in at once."
A man with powerful lungs blew long on a cow's horn, those who were atwork in the fields and the forest hastened in, the gates were barred,the best marksmen were sent to watch in the upper story of theblockhouses and at the palisade, and the women began to mold bullets.
Henry Ware was the pervading spirit through all the preparations. Heknew everything and thought of everything, he told them the mode ofIndian attack and how they could best meet it, he compelled them tostrengthen the weak spots in the palisade, and he encouraged all thosewho were faint of heart and apprehensive.
Lucy's slight fear of him remained, but with it now came admiration. Shesaw that his was a soul fit to lead and command, the work that he wasabout to do he loved, his eyes were alight with the fire of battle; acertain joy was shining there, and
all, feeling the strength of hisspirit, obeyed him without asking why.
Only Braxton Wyatt uttered doubts with words and sneered with looks. Hetoo had become a hunter of skill, and hence what he said might have somemerit.
"It seems strange that Henry Ware should come so suddenly when he mighthave come before," he remarked with apparent carelessness to Lucy Upton.
She looked at him with sharp interest. The same thought had entered hermind, but she did not like to hear Braxton Wyatt utter it.
"At all events he is about to save us from a great danger," she said.
Wyatt laughed and his thin long features contracted in an ugly manner.
"It is a tale to impress us and perhaps to cover up something else," hereplied. "There is not an Indian within two hundred miles of us. I know,I have been through the woods and there is no sign."
She turned away, liking his words little and his manner less. Shestopped presently by a corner of one of the houses on a slight elevationwhence she could see a long distance beyond the palisade. So far asseeming went Braxton Wyatt was certainly right. The spring day was fullof golden sunshine, the fresh new green of the forest was unsullied, andit was hard to conjure up even the shadow of danger.
Wyatt might have ground for his suspicion, but why should Henry Waresound a false alarm? The words "perhaps to cover up something else"returned to her mind, but she dismissed them angrily.
She went to the Ware house and rejoiced with Mrs. Ware, to whom a sonhad come back from the dead, and in whose joy there was no flaw.According to her mother's heart a wonder had been performed, and it hadbeen done for her special benefit.
The village was in full posture of defense, all were inside the wallsand every man had gone to his post. They now awaited the attack, and yetthere was some distrust of Henry Ware. Braxton Wyatt, a clever youth,had insidiously sowed the seeds of suspicion, and already there was acrop of unbelief. By indirection he had called attention to the strangeappearance of the returned wanderer, the Indianlike air that he hadacquired, his new ways unlike their own, and his indifference to manythings that he had formerly liked. He noticed the change in Henry Ware'snature and he brought it also to the notice of others.
It seemed as the brilliant day passed peacefully that Wyatt was rightand Henry, for some hidden purpose of his own, perhaps to hide thesecret of his long absence, had brought to them this sounding alarm.There was the sun beyond the zenith in the heavens, the shadows ofafternoon were falling, and the yellow light over the forest softenedinto gray, but no sign of an enemy appeared.
If Henry Ware saw the discontent he did not show his knowledge; thelight of the expected conflict was still in his eyes and his thoughtswere chiefly of the great event to come; yet in an interval of waitinghe went back to the house and told his mother of much that had befallenhim during his long absence; he sought to persuade himself now that hecould not have escaped earlier, and perhaps without intending it hecreated in her mind the impression that he sought to engrave upon hisown; so she was fully satisfied, thankful for the great mercy of hisreturn that had been given to her.
"Now mother!" he said at last, "I am going outside."
"Outside!" she cried aghast, "but you are safe here! Why not stay?"
He smiled and shook his head.
"I shall be safe out there, too," he said, "and it is best for us allthat I go. Oh, I know the wilderness, mother, as you know the rooms ofthis house!"
He kissed her quickly and turned away. John Ware, who stood by, saidnothing. He felt a certain fear of his son and did not yet know how tocommand him.
As Henry passed from the house into the little square Lucy Uptonovertook him.
"Where are you going?" she asked.
"I think I can be of more help out there than in here," he repliedpointing toward the forest.
"It would be better for you to stay," she said.
"I shall be in no danger."
"It is not that; do you know what some of them here are saying ofyou--that you are estranged from us, that there is some purpose in this,that no attack is coming! Your going now will confirm them in thebelief."
His dark eyes flashed with a fierceness that startled her, and his wholeframe seemed to draw up as if he were about to spring. But the emotionpassed in a moment, and his face was a brown mask, saying nothing. Heseemed indifferent to the public opinion of his little world.
"I am needed out there," he said, pointing again toward the dark line ofthe forest, "and I shall go. Whether I tell the truth or not will soonbe known; they will have to wait only a little. But you believe me now,don't you?"
She looked deep into his calm eyes, and she read there only truth. Butshe knew even before she looked that Henry Ware was not one who wouldever be guilty of falsehood or treachery.
"Oh yes I know it," she replied, "but I wish others to know it as well."
"They will," he said, and then taking her hand in his for one briefmoment he was gone. His disappearance was so sudden and soundless thathe seemed to her to melt away from her sight like a mist before thewind. She did not even know how he had passed through the palisade, buthe was certainly outside and away. There was something weird about itand she felt a little fear, as if an event almost supernatural hadoccurred.
The sudden departure of Henry Ware to the forest started the slanderoustongues to wagging again, and they said it was a trap of some kind,though no one could tell how. A sly report was started that he hadbecome that worst of all creatures in his time, a renegade, a white manwho allied himself with the red to make war upon his own people. It cameto the ears of Paul Cotter, and the heart of the loyal youth grew hotwithin him. Paul was not fond of war and strife, but he had an aboundingcourage, and he and Henry Ware had been through danger together.
"He is changed, I will admit," he said, "but if he says we are going tobe attacked, we shall be. I wish that all of us were as true as he."
He touched his gun lock in a threatening manner, and Braxton Wyatt andthe others who stood by said no more in his presence. Yet the course ofthe day was against Henry's assertion. The afternoon waned, the sun, aball of copper, swung down into the west, long shadows fell and nothinghappened.
The people moved and talked impatiently inside their wooden walls. Theyspoke of going about their regular pursuits, there was work that couldbe done on the outside in the twilight, and enough time had been lostalready through a false alarm. But some of the older men, with cautiousblood, advised them to wait and their counsel was taken. Night came,thick and black, and to the more timid full of omens and presages.
The forest sank away in the darkness, nothing was visible fifty yardsfrom the palisade and in the log houses few lights burned. The littlecolony, but a pin point of light, was alone in the vast and circlingwilderness. One of the greatest tests of courage to which the human racehas ever been subjected was at hand. In all directions the forest curvedaway, hundreds of miles. It would be a journey of days to find any otherof their own kind, they were hemmed in everywhere by silence andloneliness, whatever happened they must depend upon themselves, becausethere was none to bring help. They might perish, one and all, and therest of the world not hear of it until long afterwards.
A moaning wind came up and sighed over the log houses, the youngerchildren--and few were too young not to guess what was expected--fellasleep at last, but the older, those who had reached their thinkingyears could not find such solace. In this black darkness their fearsbecame real; there was no false alarm, the forest around them hid theirenemy, but only for the time.
There was little noise in the station. By the low fires in the housesthe women steadily molded bullets, and seldom spoke to each other, asthey poured the melted lead into the molds. By the walls the men too,rifle in hand, were silent, as they sought with intent eyes to mark whatwas passing in the forest.
Lucy Upton was molding bullets in her father's house and they weremelting the lead at a bed of coals in the wide fireplace. None wassteadier of hand or more expert than she. Her face was flushed
as shebent over the fire and her sleeves were rolled back, showing her strongwhite arms. Her lips were compressed, but as the bullets shining likesilver dropped from the mold they would part now and then in a slightsmile. She too had in her the spirit of warlike ancestors and it wasaroused now. Girl, though she was, she felt in her own veins a little ofthe thrill of coming conflict.
But her thoughts were not wholly of attack and defense; they followed aswell him who had come back so suddenly and who was now gone again intothe wilderness from which he had emerged. His appearance and manner hadimpressed her deeply. She wished to hear more from him of the strangewild life that he had led; she too felt, although in a more modifiedform, the spell of the primeval.
Her task finished she went to the door, and then drawn by curiosity shecontinued until her walk brought her near the palisade where she watchedthe men on guard, their dusky figures touched by the wan light that camefrom the slender crescent of a moon, and seeming altogether weird andunreal. Paul Cotter in one of his errands found her there.
"You had better go back," he said. "We may be attacked at any time, anda bullet or arrow could reach you here."
"So you believe with me that an attack will be made as he said!"
"Of course I do," replied Paul with emphasis. "Don't I know Henry Ware?Weren't he and I lost together? Wasn't he the truest of comrades?"
Several men, talking in low tones, approached them. Braxton Wyatt waswith them and Lucy saw at once that it was a group of malcontents.
"It is nothing," said Seth Lowndes, a loud, arrogant man, the boaster ofthe colony. "There are no Indians in these parts and I'm going out thereto prove it."
He stood in the center of a ray of moonlight, as he spoke, and itlighted up his red sneering face. Lucy and Paul could see him plainlyand each felt a little shiver of aversion. But neither said anythingand, in truth, standing in the dark by themselves they were not noticedby the others.
"I'm going outside," repeated Lowndes in a yet more noisy tone, "and ifI run across anything more than a deer I'll be mighty badly fooled!"
One or two uttered words of protest, but it seemed to Lucy that BraxtonWyatt incited him to go on, joining him in words of contempt for thealleged danger.
Lowndes reached the palisade and climbed upon it by means of the crosspieces binding it together, and then he stood upon the topmost bar,where his head and all his body, above the knees, rose clear of thebulwark. He was outlined there sharply, a stout, puffy man, his faceredder than ever from the effect of climbing, and his eyes gleamingtriumphantly as, from his high perch, he looked toward the forest.
"I tell you there is not--" But the words were cut short, the gleam diedfrom his eyes, the red fled from his face, and he whitened suddenly withterror. From the forest came a sharp report, echoing in the still night,and the puffy man, throwing up his arms, fell from the palisade backinto the inclosure, dead before he touched the ground.
A fierce yell, the long ominous note of the war whoop burst from theforest, and its sound, so full of menace and fury, was more terriblethan that of the rifle. Then came other shots, a rapid pattering volley,and bullets struck with a low sighing sound against the upper walls ofthe blockhouse. The long quavering cry, the Indian yell rose and diedagain and in the black forest, still for aught else, it was weird andunearthly.
Lucy stood like stone when the lifeless body of the boaster fell almostat her feet, and all the color was gone from her face. The terrible cryof the savages without was ringing in her ears, and it seemed to her,for a few moments, that she could not move. But Paul grasped her by thearm and drew her back.
"Go into your house!" he cried. "A bullet might reach you here!"
Obedient to his duty he hastened to the palisade to bear a valiant handin the defense, and she, retreating a little, remained in the shadow ofthe houses that she might see how events would go. After the first shockof horror and surprise she was not greatly afraid, and she was conscioustoo of a certain feeling of relief. Henry Ware had told the truth, heknew of what he spoke when he brought his warning, and he had greatlyserved his own.