FALLING SPRING
A dozen watch-fires flashed up in a semicircle, flinging a broad light over the whole enclosure and gleaming redly on the waving vines, the weeping birches, and the budding hemlocks that intermingled along its broken ramparts. A hundred swarthy forms, half-naked and hideously painted, were moving about, and others lay crouching in the grass, apparently terrified by the tempest gathering so blackly above them.
The untrodden grass and fresh herbage told that this hollow had recently been made a place of encampment; yet, in the enclosure was one lodge, small and but rudely constructed—a sylvan hut, more picturesque than any cabin to be found in the settlements. How recently it had been constructed might be guessed by the green branches yet fresh on the half-hewn logs. A score of savage hands had been at work upon it the whole day, for the Chief of the Shawnees never rested in the open air with the lower members of his tribe when his fierce mother, his haughty wife, or beautiful daughter was of his hunting party.
Tahmeroo had wandered upward from the path which led to the encampment. She had madly clambered to the highest chain of rocks which surrounded the enclosure, when she should have made her way around its base to the opening which gave egress to the forest. She arose from the edge of the rock, where she had been lying, high above the encampment, and was about to descend to the path she had missed, when a sound like the roar and tramp of a great army came surging up from the forest. The tall trees swayed earthward, flinging their branches and green leaves to the whirlwind as it swept by. Heavy limbs were twisted off, and mighty trunks, splintered midway, mingled the sharp crash of their fall with the hoarse roar of the tempest. The thunder boomed among the rocks, peal after peal, and the quick lightning darted through the heaving trees like fiery serpents wrangling with the torn foliage.
The very mountain seemed to tremble beneath the maiden’s feet. She threw herself upon the ledge, and with her face buried in its moss lay motionless, but quaking at heart, as the whirlwind rushed over her.
A still more fearful burst of the elements struck upon the heights, lifted a stout oak from its anchorage and hurled it to the earth. The splintered trunk fell with a crash, and the topmost boughs bent down the young saplings with a rushing sweep and fell like the wings of a great bird of prey, above the prostrate Indian. She sprang upward with a cry, and seizing the stem of a vine swung herself madly over the precipice. Fortunately the descent was rugged, and many a jutting angle afforded a foothold to the daring girl as she let herself fearlessly down—now clinging among the leaves of the vine—now grasping the sharp point of a rock, and dropping from one cleft to another. Twice she forced herself back, as if she would have sunk into the very rock, and dragged the heavy vines over her, when a fresh thunder-burst rolled by, or a flash of lightning blazed among the leaves; but when they had passed she again swung herself downward, and finally dropped unharmed upon the grass back of her father’s lodge.
The enclosure was now perfectly dark; for the rain had extinguished the watch-fires and the lightning but occasionally revealed a group of dark forms cowering together, awed by the violence of the tempest, and rendered abject by superstitious dread.
A twinkling light broke through the crevices of the lodge; but Tahmeroo lingered in the rain, for now that the fierceness of the storm was over she began to have a new fear—the dread of her mother’s stern presence. Cautiously, and with timid footsteps, she advanced to the entrance and lifted the huge bear-skin that covered it. She breathed freely; for there was no one present save her father, the great Chief of the Shawnees. He was sitting on the ground, with his arms folded on his knees, and his swarthy forehead buried in his robe of skins. The heart of the Indian King was sorely troubled, for he knew that the wing of the Great Spirit was unfolded in its wrath above his people.
Tahmeroo crept to the extremity of the lodge and sat down in silence upon the ground. She saw that preparations had been made for her comfort. A pile of fresh berries and a cake of cornbread lay on a stool nearby, and a couch of boughs woven rudely together stood in the corner heaped with the richest furs and overspread with a covering of martin-skins lined and bordered with fine scarlet cloth. A chain of gorgeous beadwork linked the deep scallops on the border, and heavy tassels fell upon the grass from the four corners. The savage magnificence of that couch was well worthy the daughter of a great chief.
Another couch, but of less costly furs, and without ornament, stood at the opposite extremity. Tahmeroo threw one timid look towards it, then bent her head, satisfied that it was untenanted, and that her mother was indeed absent. As if suddenly recollecting herself, she half-started from the ground and disentangled the string of coral from her damp hair. With her eyes fixed apprehensively on the chief, she thrust it under the fur pillows of her couch, and stole back to her former position.