Dodge's story, which was not without its interest to Roland, though the rapidity of their progress through the woods, and the constant necessity of being on the alert, kept him a somewhat inattentive listener, was brought to an abrupt close by the motions of Telie Doe, who, having guided the party for several miles with great confidence, began at last to hesitate, and betray symptoms of doubt and embarrassment, that attracted the soldier's attention. There seemed some cause for hesitation: the glades, at first broad and open, through which they had made their way, were becoming smaller and more frequently interrupted by copses; the wood grew denser and darker; the surface of the ground became broken by rugged ascents and swampy hollows, the one encumbered by stones and mouldering trunks of trees, the other converted by the rains into lakes and pools, through which it was difficult to find a path; whilst the constant turning and winding to right and left, to avoid such obstacles, made it a still greater task to preserve the line of direction which Telie had intimated was the proper one to pursue. "Was it possible," he asked of himself, "the girl could be at fault?" The answer to this question, when addressed to Telie herself, confirmed his fears. She was perplexed, she was frightened; she had been long expecting to strike the neglected road, with which she professed to be so well acquainted, and, sure she was, they had ridden far enough to find it. But the hills and swamps had confused her; she was afraid to proceed,—she knew not where she was.
This announcement filled the young soldier's mind with alarm; for upon Telie's knowledge of the woods he had placed his best reliance, conscious that his own experience in such matters was as little to be depended on as that of any of his companions. Yet it was necessary he should now assume the lead himself, and do his best to rescue the party from its difficulties; and this, after a little reflection, he thought he could scarce fail in effecting. The portion of the forest through which he was rambling was a kind of triangle, marked by the two roads on the east, with its base bounded by the long looked for river; and one of these boundaries he must strike, proceed in whatsoever direction he would. If he persevered in the course he had followed so long, he must of necessity find himself, sooner or later, in the path which Telie had failed to discover, and failed, as he supposed, in consequence of wandering away to the west, so as to keep it constantly on the right hand, instead of in front. To recover it, then, all that was necessary to be done was to direct his course to the right, and to proceed until the road was found.
The reasoning was just, and the probability was that a few moments would find the party on the recovered path. But a half-hour passed by, and the travellers, all anxious and doubting, and filled with gloom, were yet stumbling in the forest, winding amid labyrinths of bog and brake, hill and hollow, that every moment became wilder and more perplexing. To add to their alarm, it was manifest that the day was fast approaching its close. The sun had set, or was so low in the heavens that not a single ray could be seen trembling on the tallest tree; and thus was lost the only means of deciding towards what quarter of the compass they were directing their steps. The mosses on the trees were appealed to in vain,—as they will be by all who expect to find them pointing like the mariner's needle to the pole. They indicate the quarter from which blow the prevailing humid winds of any region of country; but in the moist and dense forests of the interior, they are often equally luxuriant on every side of the tree. The varying shape and robustness of boughs are thought to offer a better means of finding the points of the compass; but none but Indians and hunters grown gray in the woods, can profit by their occult lessons. The attempts of Roland to draw instruction from them served only to complete his confusion; and, by and by, giving over all hope of succeeding through any exercise of skill or prudence, he left the matter to fortune and his good horse, riding, in the obstinacy of despair, withersoever the weary animal chose to bear him, without knowing whether it might be afar from danger, or backwards into the vicinity of the very enemies whom he had laboured so long to avoid.
As he advanced in this manner, he was once or twice inclined to suspect that he was actually retracing his steps, and approaching the path by which he had entered the depths of the wood; and on one occasion he was almost assured that such was the fact by the peculiar appearance of a brambly thicket, containing many dead trees, which he thought he had noticed while following in confidence after the leading of Telie Doe. A nearer approach to the place convinced him of his error, but awoke a new hope in his mind, by showing him that he was drawing nigh the haunts of men. The blazes of the axe were seen on the trees, running away in lines, as if marked by the hands of the surveyor; those trees that were dead, he observed, had been destroyed by girdling; and on the edge of the tangled brake where they were most abundant, he noticed several stalks of maize, the relics of some former harvest, the copse itself having once been, as he supposed, a corn-field,
"It is only a tomahawk-improvement," said Telie Doe, shaking her head, as he turned towards her a look of joyous inquiry; and she pointed towards what seemed to have been once a cabin of logs of the smallest size—too small indeed for habitation—but which, more than half fallen down, was rotting away, half hidden under the weeds and brambles that grew, and seemed to have grown for years, within its little area; "there are many of them in the woods, that were never settled."
Roland did not require to be informed that a "tomahawk-improvement," as it was often called in those days, meant nothing more than the box of logs in form of a cabin, which the hunter or land-speculator could build with his hatchet in a few hours, a few girdled trees, a dozen or more grains of corn from his pouch-thrust into the soil, with perhaps a few poles laid along the earth to indicate an enclosed field; and that such improvements, as they gave pre-emption rights to the maker, were often established by adventurers, to secure a claim in the event of their not lighting on lands more to their liking. Years had evidently passed by since the maker of this neglected improvement had visited his territory, and Roland no longer hoped to discover such signs about it as might enable him to recover his lost way. His spirits sunk as rapidly as they had risen, and he was preparing to make one more effort to escape from the forest, while the daylight yet lasted, or to find some stronghold in which to pass the night; when his attention was drawn to Telie Doe, who had ridden a little in advance, eagerly scanning the trees and soil around, in the hope that some ancient mark or footstep might point out a mode of escape. As she thus looked about her, moving slowly in advance, her pony on a sudden began to snort and prance, and betray other indications of terror, and Telie herself was seen to become agitated and alarmed, retreating back upon the party, but keeping her eyes wildly rolling from bush to bush, as if in instant expectation of seeing an enemy.
"What is the matter?" cried Roland, riding to her assistance. "Are we in enchanted land, that our horses must be frightened, as well as ourselves?"
"He smells the war-paint," said Telie, with a trembling voice;—"there are Indians near us."
"Nonsense!" said Roland, looking around, and seeing, with the exception of the copse just passed, nothing but an open forest, without shelter or harbour for an ambushed foe. But at that moment Edith caught him by the arm, and turned upon him a countenance more wan with fear than that she had exhibited upon first hearing the cries of Stackpole. It expressed, indeed, more than alarm,—it was the highest degree of terror, and the feeling was so overpowering that her lips, though moving as in the act of speech, gave forth no sound whatever. But what her lips refused to tell, her finger, though shaking in the ague that convulsed every fibre of her frame, pointed out; and Roland, following it with his eyes, beheld the object that had excited so much emotion. He started himself, as his gaze fell upon a naked Indian stretched under a tree hard by, and sheltered from view only by a dead bough lately fallen from its trunk, yet lying so still and motionless that he might easily have been passed by without observation in the growing dusk and twilight of the woods, had it not been for the instinctive terrors of the pony, which, like other horses, and, indeed, all other domestic beasts in the settlements, often thus pointed out to their masters the presence of an enemy.
The rifle of the soldier was in an instant cocked and at his shoulder, while the pedler and Emperor, as it happened, were too much discomposed at the spectacle to make any such show of battle. They gazed blankly upon the leader, whose piece, settling down into an aim that must have been fatal, suddenly wavered, and then, to their surprise, was withdrawn.