Footprints in the Forest

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

The dread that the boy felt, when first left alone, that time would hang heavily on his hands was gone. He knew the Shawanoe well enough to feel certain that he would keep things moving.

And so he did. I will not repeat the story of Deerfoot's experience, which partook more of a comedy than of a tragedy. The young Kentuckian held his breath when Lone Bear drew his knife and rushed upon the Shawanoe, and his excitement was almost irrestrainable as the latter began dancing backward with his infuriated assailant plunging and striking at him. When the Pawnee sprawled, with his feet kicking the air, Jack forgot where he was and laughed with delight.

"Hurrah for Deerfoot!" he called; "the whole crowd ain't enough for you! you are worth all of them!"

The Pawnees were on their feet hurrying toward the combatants, and scarcely less excited than the young Kentuckian perched in the tree-top. But, stirring as was the incident, it was very brief. With the exceptions already made known, the red men dashed into the woods in hot pursuit of the fugitive.

"Deerfoot against the world!" exclaimed Jack, jerking off his cap, as though he was about to fling it toward the clouds, but he restrained himself and the cheer which could not be locked between his lips was so impeded in its escape that it reached no ears on the other side the river.

"Deerfoot beats the beaters," he added, bringing his feelings under control; "I don't believe there ever was such a fellow; it must be that Providence intends him for some work, and like Washington he can not be killed until that work is done."

Jack had made a similar remark to his mother, when they were talking about the Shawanoe some weeks previous, and he now recalled with a shudder her comment, to the effect that the slightest of causes would bring death to him just as quickly as to any one else, and, sooner or later, he must succumb to the inevitable. It seemed not unlikely that the prowess of the young Shawanoe was an element of peril to him, since he relied too much upon it.

But the youth had eluded the hostiles, when they seemed about to overwhelm him, and Jack was confident now that he had the cover of the woods, where he was at home, that he could laugh his enemies to scorn. The reports of guns, however, which reached his ears, could not but produce a disquieting effect, which the lad felt for a long time afterward.

"I wonder whether any one could have heard me," he muttered some minutes later, when his nerves became calmer. "I forgot myself, as the Indians themselves did, but I guess no one noticed it."

That prudence which should never leave the frontiersman, suggested that he ought to descend the tree, and seek some other place of hiding. Unfortunately, he decided to stay for awhile where he was.