The Keepers of the Trail: A Story of the Great Woods

by Joseph A. Altsheler

He began to creep through the bushes to the bottom of the valley and then up the slope toward the little fortress, and in the task he called into play all his natural and acquired powers. An eye looking down would have taken him for a large animal stalking his prey with infinite cunning and cleverness. The bushes scarcely moved as he passed, and he made no sound but the faintest sliding motion, audible only four or five feet away.

The strain upon his body was very great. He did not really crawl, but edged himself forward with a series of muscular efforts. It was painfully slow, but it was necessary, because the Indian ears were acute, and the rustling of a bush or the breaking of a twig would draw their instant attention.

As he drew himself slowly on, like a great serpent, he watched for the Indian sentinels, and at last he saw one, a Shawnee warrior crouched in the lee of a huge tree trunk to shelter himself from the driving rain, but always looking toward the mouth of the hollow in the cliff.

Henry, inch by inch, bore away and curved about him. Twice he thought the sentinel had heard something unusual, but in each case he lay flat and silent, while the wind continued to shriek down the valley, driving the chill rain before it. Each time the suspicions of the watcher passed and Henry moved slowly on, infinite patience allied with infinite skill. If there was anything in heredity and reincarnation he was the greatest tracker and hunter in that old primeval world, where such skill ranked first among human qualities. As always with him, his will and courage rose with the danger. Crouched in the bush fifteen feet away he looked at the warrior, a powerful fellow, brawny in the chest but thin in the legs, as was usual among them. The Indian's eyes swept continuously in a half circle, but they did not see the great figure lying so near, and holding his life on the touch of a trigger.

Henry laughed deep in his throat. All the wild blood in him was alive and leaping. He even felt a certain exultation in the situation, one that would have appalled an ordinary scout and stalker, but which drew from him only supreme courage and utmost mastery in woodcraft. He felt within him the supreme certainty that he would succeed, and bending away from the sentinel he resumed that slow, sliding motion.

He was sure that he would find on his right another warrior on watch, and, as he was moving in that direction, he looked closely. He saw him presently, a tall fellow, standing erect among some bushes, his rifle in the crook of his arm. He seemed discontented with his situation—even the savage can get too much of cold and wet—and presently he moved a little further to the right, as if he would seek some sort of shelter from the rain. Then Henry crept straight forward toward the fortress of his friends, a scant fifty yards away.

But he did not assume that he had yet succeeded. He knew how thoroughly the Indians kept watch upon a foe, whom they expected to take, and there must be other sentinels, or at least one, and bearing that fact in mind his progress became still slower. He merely went forward inch by inch, and he was so careful that the bushes above him did not shake. All the while his eyes roved about in search of that lone last sentinel whom he was sure the Indians had posted near the entrance, in order to check any attempt at an escape.

Although it was very dark his eyes had grown used to it and he could see some distance. Yet his range of vision was not broken by the figure of any warrior, and he began to wonder. Could the vigilance of the savages have relaxed? Was it possible that they were keeping no guard near the entrance? While he was wondering he crept directly upon the sentinel.

He was a huge savage, inured to cold and wet and he had lain almost flat in the grass. Hearing a slight sound scarce a yard away he turned and the eyes of red forest runner and white forest runner looked into one another. Henry was the first to recover from his surprise and the single second of time was worth diamonds and rubies to him. Dropping his rifle he reached out both powerful hands and seized the warrior. The loud cry of alarm that had started from the chest never got past the barrier of those fingers, and the compressing grasp was so deadly that the Indian's hands did not reach for tomahawk or knife. Instead they flew up instinctively and tried to tear away those fingers of iron. But the man of old might as well have tried to escape from the jaws of the saber-toothed tiger.

The great forest runner was exerting all his immense strength, and he was nerved, too, by the imminent danger to his friends and himself. No slightest sound must escape from the red throat. A single cry would reach the warriors below, and then the whole yelling pack would be upon him. The warrior's hands grasped his wrists and pulled at them frantically. He was a powerful savage with muscles like knotted ropes, but there was no man in all the wilderness who could break that grasp. His breath came fitfully, his face became swollen and then Henry, turning him over on his back, took his fingers away.