At last, by the light which filtered down through the treetops at the cave’s mouth, he knew that the hour had come for him to emerge–emerge as Chief Wisamek–young in heart as in body. Proudly he grasped the rocky ledge and swung himself out on dry land. He arose to his feet. His head seemed very light and giddy. He fancied he saw visions of his old conquests, old loves. There was the sound of music in the air. Was it the martial drums, played to welcome the conqueror, or the wind surging through the feathery tops of the maple and linden trees at the mouth of the cave? He started to climb the steep path. He seemed to be treading the air. Was it the buoyant steps of youth come again? He seemed to float rather than walk. The sunlight blinded his eyes. Suddenly he had a flash of normal consciousness. He dropped to the ground with a thud like an old pine falling. Then all was blackness, silence. Jaybirds complaining in the treetops alone broke the stillness.
His bodyguards, who were waiting for him at old Gamunk’s lodge-house, close to where the hotel now stands, became impatient at his non-appearance, as the hour was past. Accompanied by the venerable watchman they started down the path. To their horror they saw the dead body of a hideous, wrinkled old man, all skin and bones, like a desiccated mummy, lying stretched out across it, a few steps from the entrance to the cave. When they approached closely they noticed several familiar tattoo marks on the forehead, which identified the body as that of their late master, Wisamek.
Frightened lest they would be accused of his murder, and shocked by his altered appearance, the bodyguards turned and took to their heels. They disappeared in the trackless forests to the north and were never seen again.
Old Gamunk, out of pity for the vain-glorious chieftain, buried the remains by the path near where he fell. As for poor Annapalpeteu, the beautiful, she waited patiently for many days by the Beaver Dam, but her waiting was in vain. At length, concluding that he had been slain in battle in some valorous encounter, she started for her old home on the Bohundy.
It is related that on the way she met and married a warrior of her own age, living happily ever afterwards in a comfortable cabin somewhere in the majestic Bower Mountains. In him she found the loving response, the congeniality of pleasures which had been denied the dried, feeble soul of Wisamek, who bathed too often in the fountain of youth.
XXIII
Compensations
It seemed that Andrew McMeans and Oscar Wellendorf were born to be engaged in rivalry[rivalry], although judging by their antecedents, the former was in a class beyond, McMeans being well-born, of old Scotch-Irish stock, a valuable asset on the Allegheny. Wellendorf, of Pennsylvania Dutch origin, of people coming from one of the eastern counties, was consequently rated much lower socially, had much more to overcome in the way of life’s obstacles. The boys were almost of school age; Wellendorf, if anything, was a month or two older. In school in Hickory Valley neither was a brilliant scholar, but they were evenly matched, and although not aspiring to lead their classes, felt a keen rivalry between one another.
When school days were over, and they took to rafting as the most obvious occupation in the locality, their rivalries as to who could run a fleet quickest to Pittsburg, and come back for another, was the talk of the river. In love it was not different, and despite the talk in McMean’s family that he should marry Anna McNamor, daughter of his father’s life-long friend, Tabor McNamor, the girl showed an open preference for Oscar Wellendorf.
The old Scotch-Irish families were, as the London Times said in commenting on some of the characteristics of the late Senator Quay (inherited from his mother, born Stanley) “clannish to degree,” and Anna’s “people” were equally anxious that she marry one of her own stock, and not ally herself with the despised and socially insignificant “Dutch”. Old Grandmother McClinton called attention to the fact that the headstrong beauty was not without a strain of “Dutch” blood herself, for her great, great grandmother had been none other than the winsome Madelon Ury, a Swiss-Huguenot girl of Berks County, who, when surprised in the field hoeing corn by a blood-thirsty Indian, had dropped her hoe and taken to her heels. She ran so fast over the soft ground that she would have escaped her moccasined pursuer had she not taken time to cross a stone fence. This gave the red man the chance to throw his tomahawk, striking her in the neck, and she fell face downward over the wall. Just as her foe was overtaking her, Martin McClinton, a sword maker from Lancaster, who was passing along the Shamokin trail en route to deliver a sabre to Colonel Conrad Weiser, at Heidelberg, rushed to her rescue and shot down the Indian, so that he fell dead across his fair victim.