Camp-fire and Wigwam

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

"I am many long, long miles from home," he reflected, as a sharp pain gyrated through his brain, and the flickering fire seemed to be bobbing up and down and back and forth in a witches' dance; "and little hope is there of my ever seeing mother again. Ah, if I was only there now!"

He let his head fall back and heaved a deep sigh. He recalled his plain but comfortable bed, which became the most deliciously comfortable the mind can conceive, when his mother shoved the blankets in about him, or "tucked him up," as she never failed to do every evening he was at home; the good-night kiss from those affectionate lips; the magic touch of those fingers which pushed back the hair from his forehead, ere she bent over him with the last salute; the loving, caressing care when he was threatened with the slightest illness, which made the boy long for illness for the sake of such care: these and other blessed memories came back with a power which caused the eyes to overflow with sorrow.

Ah, fortunate is that boy, even though his years carry him to the verge of full manhood, who has his mother to watch over his waking and sleeping hours, and her prayers to follow his footsteps through life.

The pattering rain, the sighing wind, and the ghostly, semi-darkness soothed the sachem and his wife, but Jack Carleton was as wide awake as when pushing across the Mississippi in the half overturned canoe, with the fierce Shawanoes firing at him and his friends. Probably, in the entire Indian village, he was the only one who was awake. Had a band of Sioux or Iroquois stolen through the woods and descended on the Sauks they would have been found defenceless and unprepared.

Through one of the crevices behind Jack, came a draught of wind which, striking him on his shoulders, caused him to shiver. He moved a little distance away, and drew the bison robe closer about him, for though a raging fever was coursing through his veins, he knew the danger of subjecting himself to such exposure.

He was consumed with thirst, and seeing the clumsy gourd by the side of the sleeping squaw, he crawled forward on his hands and knees in the hope of finding water in it. Fortunately there was an abundance and he took a long, deep draught of the fluid, which was not very fresh nor cold, but which was the most refreshing he had ever swallowed.

Creeping back to his primitive couch, he continued a deep mental discussion of the question whether the best thing he could do was not to steal out of the lodge and make a break for home. There could be little, if any doubt, as to the ease with which such a start could be made. He had only to rise to his feet, pass through the deer-skin door, which was merely tied in position, and he could travel miles before morning and before his absence would be noted. The falling rain would obliterate his trail, so that the keen eyes of the Sauks would be unable to follow it, and he could make assurance doubly sure by taking to the water until a bloodhound would turn up his nose in disgust. Furthermore, he was confident that he would be able to obtain possession of his rifle and enough ammunition with which to provide himself food on the way home.

This was what may be called the rose-colored view of the scheme, which had a much more practical side. While under ordinary circumstances Jack would have been able to take care of himself at a much greater distance from home, and in a hostile country, yet the alarming fact remained, that he was seriously ill and such exposure was almost certain to drive him delirious, with the certainty of death to follow very speedily.

Though he took such a gloomy view of his own position among the Sauks (whose tribal name, of course, he had not yet learned), he was not without a certain degree of hope. He had suffered no harm thus far and it is always the unexpected which happens. While he had declared to himself that Ogallah was simply training him for the torture, as it may be expressed, yet it might be the chieftain being without children, meant to adopt him as a son. If such was his intention, manifestly, the best thing for Jack to do was to lie still and prayerfully await the issue of events. No doubt if you or I were in his sad predicament, that is the course that would have been followed, but Jack could not bring himself to submit to such inactivity when the prospect of liberty was before him. Allowance, too, must be made for the condition of the boy. He was scarcely himself, when, compressing his lips, he muttered,

"I won't stay here! They mean to kill me and I may as well die in the woods! I will take my gun and go out in the night and storm, and trust in God to befriend me as He has always done."