The Forest Runners: A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky

by Joseph A. Altsheler

The buffalo drank, puffing and snorting between drinks, and then stamped his way back into the forest. Still the hunters waited in ambush. Some other animal, with a long, sinuous body, crept down to the margin and lapped the water. Paul did not know what it was, and he could not break the silence to ask the others; but after drinking for a few minutes it drew its long, lithe body back through the undergrowth, and passed out of sight. Then nothing came for a while, because this was a ferocious beast of prey, and to the harmless creatures of the wilderness the air about the drinking place was filled for a space with poison.

But as the wind continued to blow lightly from the south, the dread odor passed away and the air became pure and fresh again. Back in the deeps of the forest the timid creatures found courage once more, and they crept down to the water's edge to slake their thirst. But they were small, and the ambushed marksmen in the boat still waited, silent and motionless. Paul saw them sometimes, and sometimes he did not. Then his eyes would wander to the surface of the lake, now pale, heaving silver in the moonlight, and to the wall of black forest that circled it round.

A heavier step came again, and a light puff! puff! Paul knew now that a great animal was approaching, and that the timid little ones would give it room. He looked with all his eyes, and a magnificent stag stepped into the moonlight, antlers erect, waiting and listening for a moment before he bowed his head to drink. Paul almost leaped up in the boat as a rifle cracked beside him, and he saw the stag spring into the air and fall dead, with his feet in the water.

Henry and Ross promptly shoved the boat from the bushes, and the three of them lifted the body into it, disposing it in the center with infinite care. Then, with food enough to last for days, they rowed back across the lake to the haunted island. Shif'less Sol and Jim Hart, with their rude tackle, had succeeded in catching four fish, of a species unknown to Paul, but large and to all appearances succulent.

"We'll eat the fish to-morrow, because they won't keep," said Sol, "but Jim Hart here kin jerk the venison. It will give him somethin' to do, an' Jim is a sight better off when he has to work. He ain't got no time fur foolishness."

"An' you can tan its hide," growled Jim Hart, "although your own needs tannin' most."

A few minutes later the two were amicably dressing the body of the stag, but Paul was already asleep. He assisted the next morning at a conference, and then he learned what Henry and Ross intended to do. The powder for Marlowe, as Paul had surmised, must be left for the present in its hidden place while they spied upon the great northern confederacy, now being formed for the destruction of the white settlements, and they would do what they could to impede it. Henry, Ross, and Sol would leave that night on an expedition of discovery, while Paul and Jim Hart held the haunted island. Paul, in this case, did not object to being left behind, because he had, for the present at least, enough of danger, and he knew that he was better suited to other tasks than the one on which the three great woodsmen were now departing.

Jim Hart was to row them over to the mainland, and they were to signal their return with three plaintive, long-drawn cries of the whip-poor-will. They departed at the first coming of the dusk with short good-bys, leaving Paul alone on the island. He stood near the margin under the foliage of a great beech and watched them go. The boat, as it left a trailing wake of melting silver, became a small black dot at the farther shore, and then vanished.

Paul turned back toward the center of his island, inexpressibly lonely for the while. Again he was a solitary being in the vast, encircling wilderness, and, in feeling at least, no one was nearer than a thousand miles away. He walked as swiftly as he could to the cove, where the supper fire still smoldered, and he sought companionship in the light and warmth that came from the bed of coals. No amount of hardship, no amount of experience could change Paul's vivid temperament, so responsive to the influences of time and place. He sat there, his knees drawn up to his chin, and the ring of darkness came closer and closer; but out of it presently arose the tread of footsteps, and all the brightness and cheeriness returned at once to the boy's face.

Jim Hart walked into the rim of the firelight, and his long, thin, saplinglike figure looked very consoling to Paul. He doubled into his usual jackknife formation and, sitting down by the fire, looked into the coals.