The Eyes of the Woods: A Story of the Ancient Wilderness

by Joseph A. Altsheler

Henry stood a full fifteen minutes beside the brown trunk of the tree, of which in the dark he seemed to be a part, and so great was his physical power and elasticity that the time was sufficient to restore all his strength. When he thought he caught a glimpse of a bush moving behind him, he resumed the long running walk that covered ground so rapidly. An hour later he came to a brook, in the bed of which he walked fully a mile. But he did not expect this to bother his pursuers very long. They would send warriors up and down either bank until in the moonlight they struck the trail anew, and then they would follow as before. But it would give him time, and not doubting that he would find some new circumstance to aid him, it came sooner than he had expected or hoped.

Less than half a mile farther he encountered the wreckage left by a hurricane of some former season, a path not more than three hundred yards wide, a perfect tangle of fallen trees, amid which bushes were already growing. The windrow led two or three miles to the northeast, and he walked all the way on the trunks, slipping lightly from tree to tree. It was now late, and as the night fortunately began to turn considerably darker, he bethought himself of a place in which to sleep, because in time sleep one must have, whether or not a fugitive.

As he considered, he heard ahead of him a faint puffing and blowing which he knew to come from buffaloes, and their presence indicated one of the little prairies in which the country north of the Ohio abounded. He made his way through the bushes, came to the prairie and saw that it was black with the herd.

The buffalo, although numerous east of the Mississippi, invariably grazed in small bands, owing to the wooded nature of the country, and the present herd, four or five hundred at least, was the largest that Henry had ever seen away from the Great Plains. As the wind was blowing from him toward them, and they showed, nevertheless, no sign of flight, he surmised that the weaker members had been harassed much by wolves, and that the herd was unwilling to move from its present place of rest. They shuffled and puffed and panted, but there was no alarm.

He stood a few moments and gazed at them, his look full of friendliness. The Indians hunted the buffalo and they also hunted him. For the time being these, the most gigantic of North American animals, were his brethren, and then came his idea.

A little ridge ran into the prairie, terminating in a hillock, and it was clear of the buffaloes, as they naturally lay in the lower places. Henry walked down among the buffaloes along the ridge until he came to the hillock, where he took the blanket from his back, wrapped it about him, and reclined with his head on his arm. The buffaloes puffed and snorted and some of them moved uneasily, but they did not get up. Perhaps Henry was wholly a wild creature himself then and they discerned in him something akin to themselves, or perhaps they had been harassed by wolves so much that they would not stir for anything now. But as the human intruder lay soundless and motionless, they, too, settled into quiet.

Henry’s friendly feeling for the buffaloes increased, and it had full warrant. He was surrounded by an army of sentinels. He knew that if the Indians attempted to cross the prairie, coming in a band, they would rise up at once in alarm, and if he fell asleep he would be awakened immediately by such a multitudinous sound. Hence he would go to sleep, and quickly.

If the buffaloes felt their kinship with Henry, he felt his kinship with them as strongly. Since they had sunk into silence they were like so many friends around him, ready to fend off danger or to warn him. From the crest of the low mound upon which he lay he saw the big black forms dotting the prairie, a ring about him. Then he calmly composed himself for the slumber which he needed so much.

But sleep did not come as speedily as he had expected. Wolves howled in the forest, and he knew they were real wolves, hanging on the flank of the buffalo herd, cutting out the calves or the weak. The big bull buffaloes moved and snorted again at the sound, but, when it was not repeated, returned to their rest, all except one that lumbered forward a step or two and then sank down directly on the little ridge by which Henry had come to his hillock, as if he were a rear guard, closing the way to the fugitive. He saw in it at once an omen. The superior power that was watching over him had put the buffalo there to protect him, and, free from any further apprehension, he closed his eyes, falling asleep without delay.

Henry always felt afterward that he must have been wholly a creature of the wild that night, else the buffaloes would have taken alarm at his presence and probably would have stampeded. But the kinship they recognized in him must have endured, or they had been harried so much by the wolves that they did not feel like moving because of an intruder who was so quiet and harmless that he was really no intruder at all. The huge bull, crouched across the path by which he had come, puffed and groaned at intervals, but he did not stir from his place. He was in very truth, if not in intent, a guardian of the way.