The Border Watch: A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Paul shuddered at the black memory.

"But we've already struck back for it," said Henry. "It caused the destruction of the Iroquois power."

Then both were silent. The schoolmaster, lying on a roll of the captured blankets, slept soundly. His breathing was steady and rhythmic, and the two youths glanced at him.

"At any rate we're bringing him back," said Paul. "They'll be glad to see him at Wareville. I've no doubt they gave him up for dead long ago."

The day came with a splendid sun shining on the green world. The spring had been very rainy, and the summer thus far had rejoiced in frequent showers. Hence no brown had yet appeared in the foliage, and the world looked fresh and young. Although they were now approaching Wareville the forest was unbroken, and no sound of civilization came to their ears. Henry told Paul, who was very tired, to go to sleep as he could paddle the boat alone. Paul lay down on the blankets beside the schoolmaster, and in a couple of minutes was off to slumberland.

Henry paddled on. Before him was a long reach of the river almost without current and the prow cut the still water, leaving behind it a long trailing wake of liquid gold. Henry had never seen a finer sun. Beneath it forest and river were vivid and intense. Birds of many kinds chattered and sang in the boughs. Battle and danger seemed far away. Peace and beauty were to attend their coming home and he was glad. His strong arms swept the paddle through the water for a long time. The action was purely mechanical. His muscles were so thoroughly trained and hardened that he was not conscious of action. He was watching instead for the first sign of Wareville's presence, and a little before noon he saw it, a thin spire of smoke rising high, until it stopped like the point of a spearhead against the sky. He knew at once that it hung over Wareville, and his heart throbbed. He loved the great wilderness with an intensity that few men felt for their own acres, but he had been away a long time, a time, moreover, so crowded with events that it seemed far greater than reality.

He did not yet awaken Paul and the schoolmaster, but, putting more power in his arms, he sent the boat on more swiftly. When he turned a point where a little peninsula, covered with forest, jutted into the river, he let the paddle swing idly for a minute or two and listened. A steady thudding sound, as regular as the beat of a drum, though slower, came to his ears. It was the woodsman's ax, and, for a moment, Henry flinched as if he himself lay beneath the blade. That ax was eating into his beloved forest, and a hundred more axes were doing the same. Then he recovered himself. The hundred axes might eat on, the hundred might become a thousand, and the thousand ten thousand, but they could eat only the edge of his wilderness which stretched away thousands of miles in every direction. The trees, and with them the deer and the bear, would be there long beyond his time, though he might live to be a hundred, and beyond that of the generation after. He took comfort in the thought, and once more felt deep content.

It was not solely as a hunter and scout that Henry loved the wilderness. Forest and river and lake touched far deeper springs in his nature. They were for him full of beauty and majesty. Green forest in spring and red forest in autumn alike appealed to him. Brooks, rivers and lakes were alive. When duty did not call he could sit perfectly motionless for hours, happy to see the wilderness and to feel that it was all about him.

He swung the paddle again, and the boat moved leisurely forward. The ring of the ax grew louder, and he heard others to the right and to the left. Presently something struck with a crash and, in spite of all his reasoning with himself, Henry sighed. A great tree cut through by the ax had fallen. Many others had gone in the same way, and many more would follow. The spire of smoke was attended now by smaller spires and Wareville could not be more than three miles away. He awakened Paul and the schoolmaster.

"We shall be at home in less than an hour," he said. "Listen to the axes!"