The appearance of the man, too, rather troubled Enoch. He was said to be tall and lean, with a very black face, a huge nose and fiery eyes. The youth remembered how Simon Halpen looked a few weeks before when he saw him at Westminster, and this pretty well described the scoundrel. Halpen was in the Grants–or had been recently. Perhaps he had dared come across the mountains toward the lake on some errand for the Tory party, and the thought that the man who had murdered his father and who had tried to take his own life, might be within rifle shot, troubled the youth exceedingly. He could not drive away this thought and when finally he was forced to stop for rest he trembled to think that perhaps the light of his campfire would attract an enemy more to be feared than either the wolves or catamounts.
But he built his fire, broiled a piece of meat which the last settler he spoke to had given him, ate his supper, and then prepared to sleep for a few hours. The moon would rise late, and he desired to set forward on his journey again as soon as it was light enough in the forest. Just at present the darkness shrouded all objects. But when he lay down with his feet toward the blaze and his head upon a heap of moss for a pillow, he could not sleep, tired though he was. His nerves were all alive. His limbs twitched so that he could not keep them still. Every sound of the forest smote upon his ear with insistence. Although his muscles were wearied his eyes would not close.
Who was the Yorker that had crossed his path so many times during the past few hours? What did he desire here in the Otter country? Was he a spy for the British? or was he upon his own business? And, above all, was he, Nuck Harding, in danger? The stranger might be roaming the forest even then, hunting for the messenger of the Green Mountain chieftain. He had likely heard that Nuck was going from farmer to farmer, as Nuck had heard of his presence, and the man might contemplate stopping him. It would be easy for him to creep upon and shoot the defenseless youth as he lay before the fire.
Nuck’s only weapons were his knife and the hatchet stuck in his belt. Lying there within the circle of light cast by the flames he would be an easy mark for any enemy. As minute after minute passed it seemed utterly impossible for him to quench this fear and he finally rose to his feet and got out of the fire light. He stood in the deep shadow of a tree trunk and cast searching glances around the tiny clearing in which he had established his camp. Not a living thing did he observe.
But if there was an enemy on his trail, and he should come near the camp and see it deserted he would suspect a trap at once. Either he would circle about so as to finally find Enoch, or he would fly from the ambush at once. “I expect I am very foolish,–losing good sleep that I need, too!” muttered the young fellow. “But still—”
He could not explain the strange unrest that possessed him. He was not of a particularly nervous temperament; therefore his present mood troubled him the more. There was danger menacing him; he felt it, if he could not see nor understand it. The only possibility of peril which reason suggested was through the agency of that stranger. “I must have things here so that he will not suspect that I am on my guard,” the youth muttered.
Forthwith he dragged a piece of a broken tree-trunk to the fire, wrapped his coat about it and placed his cap at the end of the stick farthest from the blaze. He was careful to place the rude dummy far enough away from the fire so that its flickering light should not be cast upon it too strongly. It really looked, when he was through, as though some person lay there asleep. He did not feed the flames too generously, but left burning some hardwood sticks, the glowing coals of which would lend but little light to the scene. Then he retired again to the shadow of the tree where, crouching between two huge exposed roots, he waited with sleepless eyes for that which was, perhaps, merely the phantom of his fears.
CHAPTER XIX
THE RISING OF THE CLANS
As still as the shadow of the tree itself, Enoch lay with his face toward the camp. Truly, had the forest not been so dark outside the radiance of the fire, he would have set out again upon his journey, and left this spot which seemed to his troubled mind the lurking place of some serious danger. The minutes grew to an hour, however, without a suspicious sound reaching his ears. The usual noises of the forest–the hooting of the owl, the wolf’s cry, the whimper of the wild-cat–were all that disturbed the repose of the wilderness.