Oonomoo the Huron

by Edward Sylvester Ellis

CHAPTER V.

THE HOME OF THE HURON.

Tis nature's worship—felt—confessed,
Far as the life which warms the breast!
The sturdy savage midst his clan,
The rudest portraiture of man,
In trackless woods and boundless plains,
Where everlasting wildness reigns,
Owns the still throb—the secret start—
The hidden impulse of the heart.—BYRON.

The Huron, after his escape from the Shawnees, quickened his pace, as we have stated, and went many a mile before he changed his long, sidling trot into the less rapid walk. When he did this, it was upon the shore of a large creek, which ran through one of the wildest and most desolate regions of Ohio. In some portions the banks were nothing more than a continuous swamp, the creek spreading out like a lake among the reeds and undergrowth, through which glided the enormous water-snake, frightened at the apparition of a man in this lonely spot. The bright fish darted hither and thither, their sides flashing up in the sunlight like burnished silver.

The agile Indian sprung lightly from one turf of earth to another, now balancing himself on a rotten stump or root, now walking the length of some fallen tree, so decayed and water-eaten that it mashed to a pulp beneath his feet, and then leaping to some other precarious foothold, progressing rapidly all the time and with such skill that he hardly wetted his moccasin.

While treading a log thus, which gave back a hollow sound, the head of an immense rattlesnake protruded from a hole in the tree, its tail giving the deadly alarm, as it continued issuing forth, as if determined to dispute the passage of man in this desolate place. The fearless Huron scarcely halted. While picking his way through the swamp he had carried his rifle lightly balanced in his left hand, and he now simply changed it to his right, grasping it by the muzzle, so that the stock was before him. He saw the cavernous mouth of the snake opened to an amazing width; the thin tongue, that resembled a tiny stream of blood; the small, glittering eyes; the horn-like fangs, at the roots of which he well knew were the sacks filled almost to bursting with the most deadly of all poisons; the thin neck, swelling out until the scaly belly of the loathsome reptile was visible.

The Huron continued steadily approaching the revolting thing. He was scarcely a yard distant when the neck of the snake arched like a swan's, and the head was drawn far back to strike. In an instant the stock of his rifle swept over the top of the log with the quickness of lightning. There followed a sharp, cracking noise, like the explosion of a percussion-cap, and the head of the rattlesnake spun twenty feet or more out over the swamp. It struck the branch of a tree, and, dropping to the water, sunk out of sight. The headless body of the reptile now writhed and doubled over itself, and smote the tree in the most horrible agony. Oonomoo walked quietly forward, and with his feet shoved it from the log. Still twisting and interlocking, it sunk down, down, down into the clear spring-like waters until it could be seen on the gravelly bottom, where its struggles continued as he passed on.

Not affected by this occurrence, the Huron walked on as quietly as before, his dark, restless eye seemingly flitting over every object within his range of vision. The character of the swamp continued much the same. A broad sheet of water, from nearly every portion of which rose numerous trees, like thin, dark columns, here and there twisted round and round, and, seemingly, smothered by some luxuriant vine; others prostrate, the roots sunk out of sight, and the trunk protruding upward, as if a giant had used them for spears and hurled them into the swamp; shallow portions, where the water was but a few inches deep, and then others, where you could gaze down for twenty feet, as if you were looking through liquid air. These were the peculiarities of this singular spot in the wilderness, through which the Huron was journeying.

He must have proceeded fully a half-mile into this water wilderness, when he reached what might properly be termed the edge of the swamp; that is, the one through which he had been making his way, for there was still another a short distance from him. The growth of trees terminated almost in a mathematical line, and a lake of water, something less than a quarter of a mile in width, stretched out before him, perfectly clear of every obstruction. The Indian stood a long time, looking about in every direction. What was unusual, there was an expression of the most intense anxiety upon his countenance. Well might there be; for, sooner than to have a human eye (whether it was that of the white or red man) to witness the movements he was now about to make, he would have suffered death at the stake a thousand times!