The wonder stick

by Stanton A. Coblentz

Two or three hours had passed before Ru would venture away from the shelter of the lake. And when finally he paddled to land, he chose a point a mile or more from the scene of the conflict—a secluded little inlet not far below the mouth of the Harr-Sizz River. Here, he knew, he was secure from the gaze of his foes, even had they been watching for him. But he could not be sure that others of their kind were not lurking in the woods; and it was with extreme caution that he took his way along the beaches and around the dense clumps of greenery, his club gripped in readiness for immediate action.

No sign of anything hostile appeared, however, save now and then a serpent squirming out of his path. Neither wild beast nor wild man seemed to be abroad; he gained the Harr-Sizz River unmolested; and, with tension relaxed, followed its turbulent course toward the spot where his tribe had crossed.

This point proved to be somewhat farther than he had expected. More than once, as he glided through the seemingly endless woods just above the river bank, he asked himself whether he might not be following the wrong stream by mistake. But he continued in spite of his doubts; and at last, shortly before sundown, his efforts were rewarded. Rounding an abrupt turn in the river, he recognized all of a sudden the scene of his recent misfortune, the fording place of his people.

After a few minutes' search, he found the clear marks of their passage. Innumerable tracks stared at him from the soft soil, as plainly as if made only that day—tracks of all sizes, which wandered from the river bank into the shadowy wilderness, trampling down the grass and underbrush and curving through the open spaces in long meandering loops.

It was with mixed feelings that Ru read these silent messages from his kinsmen. He had something of the feelings of an exile who beholds from afar the shore-line of his country; the full bitterness of his loneliness flooded back over him again, the sense of isolation and of loss, mingled with renewed anger that—through no fault of his own—he should have been subjected to such humiliation, suffering, and peril. But, above all, the remembrance of Yonyo the Smiling-Eyed came back to him. Useless for him to reflect that she was unworthy of his attention, that she would only laugh at his wretchedness, ridicule his misfortunes, and contemptuously forget him were he to die—the thought of her filled him at once with fury and with a deep but tender emotion.

Yet Ru lost no time in idle ruminations. Having found his people's tracks, he followed them as far as the waning daylight permitted, then warily set about the business of finding a tree for the night.

This time he was to be disturbed by no mysterious screams. There were only the usual night noises—the cry of some nocturnal bird, the far-off call of some predatory beast, the stirring and the rustling of the breeze amid the foliage.

The following morning he awakened in happier spirits. Now, for the first time, he felt that he was actually on the way back to his people! He realized, to be sure, that they had preceded him by nearly three days; but, retarded as they were by implements and provisions, by women with babes in arms and by the younger children, they could travel no farther in two hours than he could travel in one.

For many miles he followed hopefully on their trail, which ran through the forest up a slope that ascended first gently and then with bold and difficult grades, until Ru realized with apprehension that he was climbing a mountainside. Enormous boulders littered his way, and there were places where he had to crawl on hands and knees up the steep and jutting rocks; a tumultuous stream ran at his side, foaming in loud rapids or plunging in cascades; above him, through rifts in the woods, he caught glimpses from time to time of appalling slopes of white. Had his people mounted straight into that snowy desolation? He could not believe they had; but that they had passed this way was all too evident, not only from their tracks where the soil was damp and leaf-matted, but from the clues they had left even in the rockier places—here a flint tool that had been unwittingly dropped; there the rib of a buffalo or wild boar, chewed and discarded; yonder the torn-off strip of a deerskin robe.

Once or twice, indeed, Ru did fear that he had lost the tracks, and for a while wandered about aimlessly amid a stony wilderness. But always, after a few minutes, he discovered some reassuring token, and continued on his way. The sun stood about midway in the heavens when at length, to his relief, the trail swerved and led him over an open shoulder of the mountain, then down toward a gently sloping wooded valley, so wide that the farther end was lost in a blue haze.