The Big Brother: A Story of Indian War

by George Cary Eggleston

CHAPTER V.

SAM'S FORTRESS.

Sam's companions kept perfectly still. Their reverence for Sam had grown with every foot of their travels, and their confidence in his ability to get out of any difficulty, and ultimately to accomplish his purposes in the face of any obstacle, was now quite unbounded. And so, when he told them it was impossible to reach the fort and that he wanted to think, they patiently awaited the results of his thinking, confident that he would presently hit upon precisely the right thing to do.

After a while he raised his head from his hands and said:

"Come on, we must get clear away from here before morning;" but he said not a word about where he was going. His course was now nearly south-east, and just as the day was breaking he stopped and said:

"There is the river at last. Now let's go to sleep."

They obeyed him unquestioningly, though they had not the faintest idea where they were or what river it was which he had seen a little way ahead. When Sam waked it was nearly noon, and he ate a little of the palmetto cabbage left in his pockets, while the others slept. His face was very pale, however, and he sat very still until his companions aroused themselves. Then he explained.

"When I found that we could not get to Fort Glass, the question was, where should we go? Fort Stoddart is probably surrounded by Indians too, and so the only thing to do was to make our way down through the Tensaw Country to Mobile; but that is about eighty or a hundred miles away, and the fact is I am a little sick from my wound. My foot and leg are all swelled up, and I've been having a fever, so that I can't travel much further. It seemed to me that the best thing to do, under the circumstances, was to find a good hiding-place where it will be easy to get something to eat, and to stay there till I get better, or something turns up, and so I thought of the Alabama River as the very best place, because mussels and things of that kind are better than sweet potatoes, and here we are; now the next thing is to find a hiding-place, and I think I know where one is. It has a spring by it, too, which is a good thing, for drinking this swamp and creek water will make us all sick. I was all through here on a camp-hunt once, and I remember a place on the other side of the river where two big hollow trees stand right together on top of a sort of bluff. About fifty yards further down the river there is a spring, just under the bluff. We must find the place if we can, to-night, and to do it we must first get across the river. It's so low now we can easily wade it, I think, and Judie can be pushed across on a log."

As soon as night fell the plan was put into execution. The river was extremely low at the time, and Sam was confident that by choosing a wide place for their crossing, they could wade the stream easily; but lest there might be a channel too deep for that, he fastened four logs together with grapevines, and putting Judie on this raft bade the two boys tow it over, telling them that if they should find the water too deep for wading at any point, they could easily support themselves by clinging to the logs. They had no difficulty, however, and were soon on the east bank of the stream. Sam's task was a much harder one. The current was very rapid and the bottom too soft for the easy use of his crutch, while his strength was almost gone. His spirit sustained him, however, and after a while he reached the shore. When all were landed, the search began for the hiding-place Sam had described. It proved to be more than a mile higher up the river, and when they found it, the day was breaking. The trees were not hollow, as Sam had supposed. The river bank in that place is in three terraces, and the two great trees stood almost alone on the second one of these. The sandy soil had been gradually washed out from under the great trunks, so that the trees proper began about fifteen feet from the ground, the space below being occupied by a great net-work of exposed roots, some of them a foot or two in thickness, and others varying in size all the way down to mere threads. The freshets which had washed the earth away from the roots, had piled a great mass of drift-wood against one side of them. Sam made a careful examination of the place, and then all went to work. The two boys so disposed some of the drift-wood as to make a sort of covered passage from the edge of the bank to the two trees whose roots were interlaced with each other. Sam cut away some of the roots with his jackknife so as to make an entrance, and once inside the circle of outer roots, he was not long in making a roomy hiding-place for the whole party, immediately under the great trees.