Camp-fire and Wigwam

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The elevation was similar to those with which the reader became familiar long ago, and the sun had not yet reached the horizon when the lithe warrior had climbed to the crest of the ridge, and was scanning the wilderness which opened to the south and west. He was in a region where he was warranted in looking for Indian villages, and his penetrating eyes traveled over the area with a minuteness of search hardly imaginable by the reader. The country was so broken by mountain, hill, and wood, that the survey was much less extended than would be supposed. He was disappointed in one respect, however: he could detect no Indian village in the whole range of vision.

But, besides the dim smoke from the camp he had left a short time before, he observed another to the westward, and a third to the south; he concluded to make his way to the last, though he half suspected it was the camp of another party of trappers, from whom he could not gather the first morsel of information.

Deerfoot pushed toward the valley, less than a mile distant, from which the tell-tale vapor ascended, and was quite close to the camp, when he became aware that an altogether unexpected state of affairs existed. Despite his usual caution, his approach was detected, and the Shawanoe found himself in no little peril.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to make clear how it was Deerfoot discovered this singular state of affairs; but he was more than a hundred yards from the camp, which was screened by a dense undergrowth and rocks, when he stopped abruptly, warned to do so by that subtle instinct which is like a sixth sense.

He did not leap behind a tree, nor fall on his face and creep to the rear of the large boulder on his right, but he stood erect, using the faculties of hearing and sight with a delicate power and unerring skill which were marvelous in the highest degree.

The black eyes glanced around, as he slowly turned his head from side to side, and he saw everything in front, rear, at his right, left, and above, among the limbs and on the ground. He heard the silken rustling of several leaves in the top of a beach overhead, and he knew it was caused by one of those slight puffs of wind which make themselves known in that manner.

The inhalation through his nostrils brought the faint odor of the elm, the oak, the hickory, the chestnut, the sycamore, and the resinous pine. He identified them, I say, as well as the peculiar and indescribable odor given off by the decaying leaves, the mossy rocks, and even the rotting twigs and branches; but among them all he detected nothing of a foreign nature.

But it was his hearing upon which he mainly depended, though his eyes were forced to their highest skill. When the pinnated leaf of a hickory was shaken loose by the wind puff it had hardly floated from its stem before he caught sight of it, and followed it in its downward course until it fluttered slowly to the ground.

It may be said that the danger which threatened Deerfoot was "in the air," if it be conceivable that there is anything in the expression. He was as certain of it as he was of his own existence, and yet he stood motionless, displaying an incredible confidence in his ability to discover the nature of the peril before it could take effective shape.

Had he leaped lightly behind a tree, he might have placed himself on the side which would have left him exposed to the stealthy shot; had he dropped to the ground and crept to one side of the moss-covered boulder, the same fatal mistake was likely to be made. Therefore he stood as rigid as iron, until he could learn the direction from which he was threatened.