Camp-fire and Wigwam

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

But the slumber of the couple was genuine. They did not stir or do anything except to breathe in their sonorous fashion. Jack took hold of the bison skin to draw it aside, when he found the door was locked. It was an easy matter, however, to unfasten it, and a single step placed him outside the wigwam.

Instead of hurrying away, as his impatience prompted him to do, the youth stood several minutes surveying the scene around him. The Sauk village was asleep, and the scrutiny which he made of the collection of wigwams failed to show a single star-like twinkle of light. The night was clear, and a gibbous moon was high in the sky. Patches of clouds drifted in front of the orb, and fantastic shadows whisked across the clearing and over the wigwams and trees. The dwellings of the Indians looked unsightly and misshapen in the shifting light, and Jack felt as though he were gazing upon a village of the dead.

Turning to the southward, he faced the narrow, winding river. From the front of the chieftain's lodge, he caught the glimmer of its surface and the murmur of its flow, as it swept by in the gloom on its way to the distant Gulf. A soft roaring sound, such as we notice when a sea-shell is held to the ear crept through the solitude like the voice of silence itself.

Jack was impressed by the scene, but when he saw a shadowy figure flit between two of the wigwams, and was certain he heard a movement in the lodge behind him, he hastily concluded it was the time for action and not meditation. With a start that might have betrayed him, he quickly left his position and hastened away.

It was natural that the many hours devoted by Jack during his convalescence, to forming his plan of procedure, should have fixed the plan he meant to follow. Thus it was that the few minutes spent in front of the chieftain's lodge were not occupied in debating the proper course to take, and, when he once made a start, he went straight ahead without turning to the right or left.

The reader will readily see how great were the advantages on the side of the fugitive. He was certain of a fair start, which ought to have made his position absolutely safe, for if the American Indian is phenomenally skillful in following the trail of an enemy through the wilderness, that enemy, if he suspects such pursuit, ought to be able to throw him irrecoverably from the scent.

Furthermore, it is scarcely conceivable that the trail of Jack Carleton could be taken at the door of Ogallah's wigwam and followed as the warriors trailed a fugitive through the woods; for the ground whereon he walked had been tramped hard by multitudinous feet, and the faint impressions of the boy's shoes could not be individualized among the thousand footprints. It was far different from fleeing from a camp in the woods, where his trail crossed and was interfered with by no other, and where the slightest depression or overturning of the leaves was like the impression on the dusty highway.

The fugitive's first intention was to take to the woods, and guiding his course by the moon and sun, travel with all the speed and push at his command. Fortunately he was enabled to see that such a course was almost certain to bring disaster. Instead of doing that, he went directly to the river side, where he had seen the Indians frolicking in the water, and he himself had so often sighed for the same delicious privilege.

There were five canoes partly drawn up the bank and waiting the will of their owner. They were made of bark with curved ends, fantastically painted, and each was capable of carrying, at least, six or eight able-bodied warriors. They were so light that the lad found no trouble in shoving the first clear of the shore, and sending it skimming out into the stream. As it slackened its pace, it turned part way round, like a bewildered swan, as if uncertain which way to go. Then it sailed triangularly down current, much after the manner of Ogallah's dog when on a trot.

It was not more than fairly under way, when the second glided out after it, then the third, the fourth and finally the fifth and last. This contained Jack Carleton who took the long ashen paddle in hand and began plying it with considerable skill. He was paying less attention to his own progress than to the manipulation of the other canoes, which he had set free for a special purpose.