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

by Joseph A. Altsheler

"Perhaps it's because they don't see the remotest sign of an enemy here."

"Partly that I reckon, an' fur other reasons too. Thar, they're goin' away! I expect, Henry, that them warriors are a part o' the band that wuz lookin' fur us. They don't keer to come into the valley, but they might hev been tempted hard to come, ef they'd a' saw us. Mebbe it's a good thing that we came here into Adam's an' Eve's home."

"It was certainly not the wrong thing. Those warriors are gone now, and I predict that none will come in their place."

"That's a shore thing. Now, ez I've had my nap, Henry, you take yourn. Rec'lect that it's always watch an' watch with us."

Henry knew that the shiftless one would not like it, if he did not take his turn, and, making his leafy bed, he was soothed to quick sleep by the singing of the birds.

Then the shiftless one propped his back against a bank of leaves between him and the trunk of a tree, and, with the rifle across his knees, watched. The great peace that he had felt continued. The fact that the Indians had merely come to the crest of the hill and looked into the valley, then going away, confirmed him in his beliefs. As long as Henry and he stayed there, they would be safe. But safety beyond that day was not what they were seeking. That night they must surely reach the other three, although they would enjoy the present to the full.

Shif'less Sol's plastic and sensitive mind had been affected by his meeting with Henry. Despite his great confidence in the skill and strength of the young leader, he had been worried by his long absence and his meeting with him had been an immense relief. This and their coming into the happy valley had put him in an exalted state. The poetical side of nature always met with an immediate response in him, and like the Indian he personified the winds, and the moon and stars and sun, and all the objects and forces that were factors in wild life.

Lying closely among his leaves he watched the buffaloes and the deer. Some of the bigger animals as the day grew and the sun increased, lay down in the grass near him, showing no sign of fear, although they must have been aware of his presence. A flight of wild geese descended from the sky, drank at the stream, swam a little, then rose again and were gone, their forms blending into a single great arrow shooting northward through the blue.

Shif'less Sol did not wonder that they had dropped down into the valley for a moment or two, breaking their immeasurable flight into the far north. They had known that they would be safe in this little way station, and it was yet another confirmation of his beliefs. He watched the arrow so sharply outlined against the blue until it was gone in the vast sky, and a great wonder and awe filled the soul of the shiftless one. He had seen such flights countless times before, but now he began to think about the instinct that sent them on such vast journeys through the ether from south to north and back again, in an endless repetition as long as they lived. What journeys and what rivers and lakes and forests and plains they must see! Man was but a crawler on the earth, compared with them. Then wild ducks came, did as the geese had done, and then they too were gone in the same flight into the illimitable north that swallowed up everything.

It was in the mind of the shiftless one that he too would like to go into that vast unknown North some day, if the fighting in Kentucky ever came to an end. He had been in the land of the Shawnees and Miamis, and Wyandots and he knew of the Great Lakes beyond, but north of them the wilderness still stretched to the edge of the world, where the polar ice reigned, eternal. There was no limit to the imagination of Shif'less Sol, and in all these gigantic wanderings the faithful four, his friends, were with him.