The Frontiersmen

by Charles Egbert Craddock

Gazing cautiously over the verge of the precipice, he saw the animal despite the gathering shadows. The horse was quite safe, having doubtless slipped down in the soft densities of a great drift dislodged from the crevice by his own weight. His pack was still on his back, now piled twice as high with snow. He lifted his arched neck as he sprang about with undiminished activity, vainly seeking to ascend the almost sheer precipice.

Daylight, however, was essential for his rescue. The effort now on these icy steeps might cost either man or beast a broken limb, if no more. With an instinct of self-protection the animal had chosen the lee of a great buttress of the cliff, and could stand there safely all night though the temperature should fall still lower. The young pack-man called out a word or two of encouragement, listening fearfully as the sound struck back in the silence from the icy bank of the river, the craggy hillsides, and the resonant walls of the deserted houses in the old "waste town." Himself suddenly stricken to silence, he realized as he turned that the night had at last closed in. It lay dark and desolate in the limitless woods, where a vague sense of motion gave token that the snow was still viewlessly falling in the dense obscurities.

But in the "waste town" itself a pallid visibility lingered in the open spaces where the trees were few, and gloomily showed the empty cabins, the deserted council-house, the vacant "beloved square." Somehow, turn as he would, this dim scene in the midst of the dense darkness of the stormy night was before his eyes. Again and again he plunged into the woods seeking to follow the well-known trail of the trading-path to the camp and rejoin his companions, but invariably he would emerge from the wilderness after a toilsome tramp, entering the old "waste town" at a different angle.

He perceived at length that he could not keep the direction, that he was wandering in a circle after the manner of those lost in forests. His clothing, freezing upon his body, was calculated for warmer weather; the buckskin shirt and leggings, the garb of the frontiersmen, copied from the attire of the Indians, were of a thin and pliable texture, owing to the peculiar skill of the savages in dressing peltry. An early historian describes such costume in a curiously sophisticated phrase as the "summer visiting dress of the Indians." The southern tribes were intensely averse to cold, for in winter they wore furs and garments made of buffalo hides, the shaggy side inward; this raiment was sewed with the sinews of deer and a kind of wild hemp for thread, and with needles dexterously fashioned of fishbone.

Barnett had now no thought of the ghosts of the old "waste town." His first care was to save his life this cruel night; without fire, without food, without shelter, it might be that he had indeed come to the end. He was induced by this reflection to climb the mound to the old council-house. For here the walls, plastered both within and without with the strong adhesive red clay of the region, admitted no wind, while in the cabins which had been dwellings the drifts lay deep beneath the rifts in the dilapidated roofs and the crevices in the wall, and the flying flakes sifted in as the keen gusts surged through. He had had the forethought to gather as he went bits of wood, now a loose clapboard or piece of bark from low-hanging eaves, now a fragment of half-rotten puncheon from a doorstep, and as he groped into the dense darkness of the council-house with his steel and flint he set them alight on the hearth in the centre of the floor.

When he was once more warm and free of the fear of death, other fears took hold upon him. In the first glimmers of the fire he could see through the tall narrow doorless portal only the dark night outside and a flickering glimpse against its blackness of the quivering crystals of the snow,—these but vaguely, for the blue smoke eddying through the great room veiled the opposite side, there being no chimney or window, and he sat in the interior behind the fire.

He gazed furtively over his shoulder ever and anon, as the flames flared up, revealing the deeply red walls of the dome-like place with here and there a buffalo skin suspended against them, the inside of the hide showing, painted in curious hieroglyphics, brilliant with color, and instinct with an untranslated meaning; a number of conch shells lay about, with jars and vases of clay, and those quaintly fashioned earthen drums, the heads of tightly stretched deerskin,—all paraphernalia of the savage worship which the cheera-taghe had conducted, now abandoned as bewitched.

Sitting here comfortably in the place of those men of the "divine fire," Cuthbert Barnett, his rifle by his side, his knife in his belt, his coonskin cap pushed back from his face, once more florid, warm, tingling from the keen wind of the day and the change to this heated air, and with perchance a drowsy eyelid, began to marvel anew as to the fate of the cheera-taghe. Hardly a drowsy eyelid, he consciously had, however, for he had resolved that he would not sleep. His situation here alone was too dangerous; he feared wolves,—the fire that would otherwise affright them might untended sink too low. He feared also some wandering Indian. Should he be discovered here by means of the unaccustomed light he might be wantonly murdered as he slept, or in revenge for the sacrilege of his intrusion among these things that the savages had esteemed sacred.

Therefore, when he suddenly saw the cheera-taghe he saw them quite plainly. Tall, stately, splendidly arrayed in their barbaric garb, draped with their iridescent feather-wrought mantles, their heads dressed with white plumes, a staff of cane adorned with white feathers in the right hand, a green bough in the left, preceded by those curiously sonorous earthen drums, of which the drone blended with the notes of the religious song, Yo-he-wah-yah! Yo-he-wah-yah! they thrice led the glittering procession of the "holy dance" around and around the "beloved square."

A blank interval ensued. And then again he saw them, nearer now, more distinct; they were entering the temple; they were close at hand; triumphant of mien, assured, so full of life!—he could laugh to think that he had had a dream, or had heard somehow, that they were dead or lost or vaguely gone. For here, without seeming in the least to notice his presence, they kindled anew with friction of bits of poplar or white oak the fire for the new year, the cheera, the "sacred flame," to bear it outside to distribute it to the assembled people of Nilaque Great. Without was summer; the trees were full of green leaves; canoes were glancing along the shimmering river; the "beloved square" was crowded with braves,—he saw their feathered crests wave and glisten; the wind was blowing fresh and cool; the sun shone.