The Wilderness Trail

by H. Bedford-Jones

Frowning, he turned to his horse and mounted. As he rode away, his friend sent him a wave of the hand; then he splashed across the shallow creek near his camp, and the strange pair of redskins were lost behind him. It was odd, undoubtedly; that refusal to shake hands had been a very manly way of saying they were enemies, yet he knew there was no Indian war going on at present.

Unable to account for the whole experience, he dismissed it from his mind. It was one of the weird silent happenings which the wilderness holds in store for those who penetrate her fastnesses; strange things, memories which remain for ever, yet which may never react upon the future, the ebb and flow of Dead Sea tides leaving nothing upon the shores of life save the brine of wasted energy. Had John Norton known who his two guests were, however, he might not have considered the incident closed, so far as he himself was concerned. To them, indeed, it might well prove a momentary thing.

So he dismissed it lightly enough, and looked ahead. As he sat by his campfire that night and considered his situation, he found it good. He was to seek a certain unnamed settlement on the Indian shore, twelve miles this side of the Blue River, and on the Kentucky side would find Red Hugh; then on to Blue River, Dodd's tavern, and the messenger from Ayres. That afternoon he had seen the river hills to the north; so by keeping due west, getting off early, and pushing hard, he might find Red Hugh's cabin by the next night. He must have come a good twenty miles, he considered, of the forty-five lying between Louisville and his destination, for all that he had taken a circuitous course.

Before sunrise he was up and on his way again. Two hours later he drew up on a rising knoll amid the hills, and saw the signal-fire of Destiny awaiting him.

It was a spiral of blue smoke, ascending from the valley beyond, and perhaps a mile away. Norton sat watching it for a moment; to his trained eye it showed a fire of green wood, too small for a careless settler's building, too large for that of Indian or backwoodsman.

Since his meeting with the two redskins, Norton had regained his caution. He knew that the Kentucky woods were filled with adventurers and peculiar individuals of all descriptions, to say nothing of Indians who might or might not be hostile. So, having made certain that there were no settlers' cabins in the vicinity, he dismounted and went forward on foot. His horse, an Indian pony he had bought at Fort Massac, followed at a little distance behind him, treading almost as silently as did Norton himself.

After proceeding some distance, he tied the beast to a tree and went on more cautiously still, for that fire interested him. It was evidently built by someone who feared nothing in the woods, yet was a stranger to woods' ways, and Norton thought for a fleeting instant that he might have chanced upon the retreat of Blacknose. With his rifle ready loaded and primed, he stole forward, using all his woodcraft.

But his all was not enough, it proved. While he was crossing a thickly overgrown hollow, he flushed up two cardinals from a canebrake just ahead, and as the birds went up Norton realized that his cunning had been in vain. He was just about to plunge into the high canebrake when the tall yellowish stalks were brushed aside to disclose a figure of nearly his own height, and a white man stepped forth.

For a moment the two men stared at each other in mutual surprise and admiration, for both were striking in looks—Norton in his capable, alert, piercing-eyed way, the stranger in sheer manly beauty. He was an inch shorter than Norton, was this stranger who had risen from the midst of the cane; the effeminacy of the long hair curling over his shoulders was at once offset by a strong nose, large mouth, and square chin, and very large, deep-set, commanding dark eyes.

Norton was startled by the appearance of this man, who seemed not of the woods and yet a woodsman. He wore a magnificent ruffled shirt of finest French linen, flung open at the throat to display a neck as bronzed as Norton's own; his coat and knee-breeches were of black satin, his knee-high moccasins of rude home make; a watch fob-ribbon hung on one side of his belt, a powder-horn and hunting-knife opposite. Over one ear was stuck a long crayon, while in his hand he held a thin board with paper fastened to it.