Loolowcan bagged my three trophies and added them to the first. Henceforth the thought of a grouse supper became a fixed idea with me. I dwelt upon it with even a morbid appetite. I rehearsed, in prophetic mood, the scene of plucking, the scene of roasting, that happy festal scene of eating. So immersed did I become in gastronomic revery, that I did not mind my lookout, as I dashed after Loolowcan, fearless and agile cavalier. A thrust awoke me to a sense of passing objects, a very fierce, lance-like thrust, full at my life. A wrecking snag of harsh dead wood, that projected up in the trail, struck me, and tore me half off my horse, leaving me jerked, scratched, disjointed, and shuddering. Pachydermatous leggins of buckskin, at cost of their own unity, had saved me from impalement. Some such warning is always preparing for the careless.
I soon had an opportunity to propitiate Nemesis by a humane action. A monstrous trunk lay across the trail. Loolowcan, reckless steeplechaser, put his horse at it, full speed. Gubbins, instead of going over neatly, or scrambling over cat-like, reared rampant and shied back, volte face. I rode forward to see what fresh interference of Tamanoüs was here,—nothing tamanoüs but an unexpected sorry object of a horse. A wretched castaway, probably abandoned by the exploring party, or astray from them, essaying to leap the tree, had fallen back beneath the trunk and branches, and lay there entangled and perfectly helpless. We struggled to release him. In vain. At last a thought struck me. We seized the poor beast by his tail, fortunately a tenacious member, and, heaving vigorously, towed him out of prison.
He tottered forlornly to his feet, looking about him like one risen from the dead. "How now, Caudal?" said I, baptizing him by the name of the part that saved his life; "canst thou follow toward fodder?" He debated the question with himself awhile. Solitary confinement of indefinite length, in a cramped posture, had given the poor skeleton time to consider that safety from starvation is worth one effort more. He found that there was still a modicum of life and its energy within his baggy hide. My horses seemed to impart to him some of their electricity, and he staggered on droopingly. Lucky Caudal, if life is worth having, that on that day, of all days, I should have arrived to rescue him. Strange deliverances for body and soul come to the dying. Fate sends unlooked-for succor, when horses or men despair.
Luckily for Caudal, the weak-kneed and utterly dejected, Sowee's prairie was near,—near was the prairie of Sowee, mighty hunter of deer and elk, terror of bears. There at weird night Sowee's ghost was often seen to stalk. Dyspeptics from feather-beds behold ghosts, and are terrified, but nightwalkers are but bugbears to men who have ridden from dawn to dusk of a long summer's day over an Indian trail in the mountains. I felt no fear that any incubus in the shape of a brassy-hued Indian chief would sit upon my breast that night, and murder wholesome sleep.
Nightfall was tumbling down from the zenith before we reached camp. The sweet glimmers of twilight were ousted from the forest, sternly as mercy is thrust from a darkening heart. Night is really only beautiful so far as it is not night,—that is, for its stars, which are sources of resolute daylight in other spheres, and for its moon, which is daylight's memory, realized, softened, and refined.
Night, however, had not drawn the pall of brief death over the world so thick but that I could see enough to respect the taste of the late Sowee. When he voted himself this farm, and became seized of it in the days of unwritten agrarian laws, and before patents were in vogue, he proved his intelligent right to suffrage and seizure. Here in admirable quality were the three first requisites of a home in the wilderness, water, wood, and grass. A musical rustle, as we galloped through, proved the long grass. All around was the unshorn forest. There were columnar firs making the Sowee house a hypæthral temple on a grand scale.
There had been here a lodge. A few saplings of its framework still stood, but Sowee had moved elsewhere not long ago. Wake siah memloose,—not long dead was the builder, and viator might camp here unquestioned.
Caudal had followed us in an inane, irresponsible way. Patiently now he stood, apparently waiting for farther commands from his preservers. We unpacked and unsaddled the other animals. They knew their business, namely, to bolt instantly for their pasture. Then a busy uproar of nipping and crunching was heard. Poor Caudal would not take the hint. We were obliged to drive that bony estray with blows out to the supper-field, where he stood aghast at the appetites of his new comrades. Repose and good example, however, soon had their effect, and eight equine jaws instead of six made play in the herbage.
"Alki mika mamook pire, pe nesika klatawah copa klap tsuk; now light thou a fire, and we will go find water," said Loolowcan. I struck fire,—fire smote tinder,—tinder sent the flame on, until a pyre from the world's free wood-pile was kindled. This boon of fire,—what wonder that men devised a Prometheus greatest of demigods as its discoverer? Mortals, shrinking from the responsibility of a high destiny and dreading to know how divine the Divine would have them, always imagine an avatar of some one not lower than a half-god when a gift of great price comes to the world. And fire is a very priceless and beautiful boon,—not, as most know it, in imprisonment, barred with iron, or in sooty chimneys, or in mad revolt of conflagration,—but as it grows in a flashing pyramid out in camp in the free woods, with eager air hurrying in on every side to feed its glory. In the gloom I strike metal of steel against metallic flint. From this union a child is born. I receive the young spark tenderly in warm "tipsoo," in a soft woolly nest of bark or grass tinder. Swaddled in this he thrives. He smiles; he chuckles; he laughs; he dances about, does my agile nursling. He will soon wear out his first infantile garb, so I cover him up in shelter. I feed him with digestible viands, according to his years. I give him presently stouter fare, and offer exhilarating morsels of fatness. All these the hearty youth assimilates, and grows healthily. And now I educate him to manliness, training him on great joints, shoulders, and marrowy portions. He becomes erelong a power and a friend able to requite me generously for my care. He aids me in preparing my feast, and we feast together. Afterward we talk,—Flame and I,—we think together strong and passionate thoughts of purpose and achievement. These emotions of manhood die away, and we share pensive memories of happiness missed, or disdained, or feebly grasped and torn away; regrets cover these like embers, and slowly over dead fieriness comes a robe of ashy gray.
Fire in the forest is light, heat, and cheer. When ours was nurtured to the self-sustaining point, we searched to find where the sage Sowee kept his potables. Carefully covered up in sedges was a slender supply of water, worth concealing from vulgar dabblers. Its diamond drops were hidden away so thoroughly that we must mine for them by torchlight. I held a flaring torch, while Loolowcan lay in wait for the trickle, and captured it in a tin pot. How wild he looked, that youth so frowzy by daylight, as, stooping under the tall sedges, he clutched those priceless sparkles.