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

by Joseph A. Altsheler

He came out, allowed himself to dry in the sun, while he flexed and tensed his powerful muscles. Then he dressed. The swim had been good, and he was glad that he had taken the risk. He was aware that the forest contained inhabitants much more dangerous than those he had looked upon that morning, but he had not yet seen any sign of them, and he was one who had learned to use his opportunities.

After luxuriating for a little while on the grass, Henry, rifle on shoulder, walked swiftly forward. He had a definite purpose and it was to rejoin his four comrades, Paul Cotter, Shif'less Sol Hyde, Long Jim Hart and Tom Ross, who were not far away in the greenwood, the five, since the repulse of the great attack upon the wagon train, continuing their chosen duties as keepers of the trail, that is, they were continually on guard in the vast forest and canebrake against the Northwestern Indians who were making such a bitter war upon the young Kentucky settlements.

Henry had known that they would come again. Kentucky had been a huge hunting ground, without any Indian villages, but for that reason it had been prized most highly by the savage. The same reason made the ground all the more dangerous for the white people, because the Indians, unhampered by their women and children, came only with chosen bands of warriors, selected for supreme skill in battle and forest lore. No seekers of new homes ever faced greater dangers than the little white vanguard that crossed the Alleghanies into the splendid new land beyond. Hidden death always lurked in the bush, and no man went beyond the palisade even on the commonest errand without his rifle.

It was a noble task that Henry and his comrades had undertaken, to act as watchers, and it appealed to them all, to him most because he was continually in the wilderness that he loved so well, and he felt that he was doing a much greater work than when he was felling trees, and helping to clear a place for crops. As for himself he would never have cut down a single tree, although there were millions and millions of them. Nature held nothing that he admired more. He knew no greater delight than to stand on a high hill and look on the forest, deep green, waving in the wind, and stretching to the complete circle of the horizon and beyond.

He was now in one of the loneliest stretches of the wilderness, far north of Wareville, and no great distance from the Ohio. A day's march would take him to a favorite crossing of the savages, and that was why he and his comrades were in this region. He increased his speed, settling into the long swinging gait which the scouts of the border always used, when they would hasten, but, in a half-hour, he stopped suddenly and his figure seemed to vanish utterly in a dense mass of green bushes.

Henry, now hidden himself, had seen. It was only a trace that scarcely any eye save his would have noticed, but in a place where the earth was soft he had observed the faint imprint of a moccasin, the toes turning inward and hence made by an Indian. Other imprints must be near, but, for a little while, he would not look, remaining crouched in the thicket. He wished to be sure before he moved that no wearer of a moccasin was in the bush. It might be that Yellow Panther, redoubtable chief of the Miamis, and Red Eagle, equally redoubtable chief of the Shawnees, were at hand with great war bands, burning to avenge their defeats.

He did not move for fully ten minutes. He had acquired all the qualities of those who live in constant danger in vast forests, and, like the animal that hides, his figure and dress blended completely with the green thicket. The air brought no menace to either eye or ear, and then he stepped forth.

He found the imprints of five or six pairs of moccasins farther on, and then they became so faint that the best trailer in the West could not follow them, although he believed that they had been made by a hunting party. It was customary for the Indians on their great raids to detach a number of men who would roam the forests for food, but he decided that he would not try to follow them any longer. He would not be deflected from his purpose to join his comrades.

Leaving the broken trail he sped north by west, the forests and thickets growing thicker as he advanced. At one point he came to a vast canebrake that seemed impassable, yet he made his way through it almost without slackening speed, and came to a grove of oaks, so large and so dense that the sunlight never entered there. He stopped at its edge and imitated the long, haunting cry of the owl. In a moment or two a note like it, but distant and faint, came. He uttered the cry a second time, and heard the reply.

Hesitating no longer he entered the oak grove. These trees with their great mossy trunks were the finest that he had ever seen. Some peculiar quality of the soil, some fertilizing agency beneath had given them an unparalleled growth. The leafy roof was complete, and he advanced as one who walks down a limitless hall, studded with a myriad of columns.