"I'll tell you what it is, Lord H----," answered Woodchuck, "I must go myself. There's no one can save Walter Prevost but Brooks. He's the man who must do it."
"And do you think it possible?" asked Lord H----, seeing the great probability of his companion himself being captured by the Indians, and yet hesitating whether he ought to say a word to deter him from his purpose.
"I do think it possible," said Woodchuck, with a grim smile, "for you see if these Indians get the man they want they can't and daren't take another."
Lord H---- grasped the rough hand of the hunter, saying in a tone of much feeling: "You are, indeed, a noble-hearted man, Captain Brooks, if I understand you rightly, to go and give yourself up to these savages to save your young friend. Nobody could venture to propose such a thing to you, because his having fallen into their hands was not your fault, and life is dear to everyone; but----"
"Stay! stay! stay!" cried Woodchuck. "Don't get along too fast! You've said two or three things already that want an answer. As to life, it is dear to everyone, and I myself am such a fool that I'd rather by a good bit go lingering on here amongst all this smoke and dirt, and dull houses, and rogues innumerable, than walk up there and be tomahawked, which is but the matter of a moment, after all; for them Ingians isn't long about their work, and do it completely. Howsoever, one always clings to hope, and so I think that if I can get up there amongst the woods and trails I know so well, I may, perhaps, find out some means of saving the poor boy and my own life, too; and if I can, I'll do it; for I'm not going to throw away my life like a bad shilling. If I can't do it, why then I'll save his life, cost what it will. I shall soon know all about it when I get up there, for the squaws are all good, kind-hearted critters, and if I can get hold of one of them she'll be my scout soon enough, and fish out the truth for me as to where the boy is, and when they are going to make the sacrifice. Lord bless you, they set about these things, them Ingians, just as orderly as a trial at law. They'll do nothing in a hurry; and so I shall have time to look about and see what's to be done without risking Walter's life in the meanwhile. Then you see, my lord, I've got this great advantage: I shall have a walk or two in my old haunts among them beautiful woods. The snow will be out by that time; and to my mind there's no season when the woods look and the air feels so fresh and free as on a wintry day, with the ground all white, and wreaths of snow upon every vine and briar, and them great big hemlocks and pines rising up like black giants all around me. Some folks don't like the winter in the woods, but I could walk on or go on in a sleigh through them forever. Why, that month among the woods, if I'm not caught sooner, would be worth ever so many weeks in this dull, dirty place, or any other city; for Albany, I take it, is as good as most of them, and perhaps better."
"But I am afraid in the winter your plan of getting information would not succeed very well," said Lord H----. "In the first place, the Indian women are not likely to go very far from their wigwams, amongst which you would hardly venture; and in the next place, your feet would be easily tracked in the snow, for these Indians, I am told, are most cunning and pertinacious hunters, and will follow any tracks they see for miles and miles."
"I've dodged an Ingian afore now," said Captain Brooks, with a look of some self-importance, "and in the snow, too. I've got the very snowshoes I did it in. I can walk in my snowshoes either way, one as well as t'other; and so I made 'em believe that I was going east when I was going west, and going west when I was going east. Sometimes I had the shoes on the right way, and sometimes the wrong, so they couldn't make nothing of it, and they think still--for, Lord help you, they are sometimes as simple as children--that the devil must have given me a lift now and then; for when I got where the trees grew thick together, so that the big branches touched, and I could catch a great bough over my head by a spring, I would get up and climb along from one to another, like a bear or squirrel, sometimes two or three hundred yards, before I came down again. I saw a set of them once upon the trail, and when they came to where the tracks stopped they got gaping up the tree, with their rifles in their hands, as if they were looking after a painter; but I was a hundred yards off or more, and quite away from the right line. Then, as to the women, I've thought about that, and I've laid a plan in case I can't get hold of any of the women. Now, I'm going to tell you something very strange, my lord. You've heard of Free Masons, I dare say?"
Lord H---- nodded his head, with a smile; and Woodchuck continued: "Well, they've got Free Masons among the Ingians; that's to say, not exactly Free Masons, but what comes much to the same thing,[[2]] people who have got a secret among themselves, and who are bound to help each other in good or evil, in the devil's work or God's, against their own nation or their own tribe, or their own family, and who, on account of some deviltry or other, dare not for the soul of them refuse what a brother asks them. It's a superstition at the bottom of it, and it's very strange, but so it is."
While he had been speaking he had unfastened his coat at the collar, drawn his arm out of the sleeve and bared it up above the elbow, where there appeared a small blue line tattooed on the brown skin. "There," he said; "there's the mark."
"You do not mean to say that you are one of this horrible association?" asked Lord H----, with a grave look.