16 Autumn’s Last Glory

Our way led through the wilderness, where oak and beech and hickory grew in dense clusters, the space below their boughs now filled with twining thickets, through which we forced our way, now open like the aisles of a park, where we trod a carpet of turf with naught to hold us back. Modest little flowers of pink or purple, blooming late, peeped above the grass or snuggled between the roots of the trees. We leaped the brooks of running water, and when we came to a creek too deep for wading or jumping we swam it with swift strokes, holding our rifles and ammunition in one hand above our heads. Once we disturbed a deer with mighty antlers who crashed through the thickets, and at the crossing of the creek the beaver dived from their new house in the stream into the deep waters.

It was the mighty wilderness as the first white man found it, a country of great forests and little prairies, with the fiercest foe that our race ever encountered lurking in its depths.

There is no finer region on the globe, and I knew that it was destined in the next century to be the seat of many cities and a great population, but I felt a regret that the forest and its true inmates should ever go. I think it will be a dreary world when all of it is known and measured by the land surveyors, and there is no place left where man may hunt the wild deer and perhaps be hunted by wilder man.

These were but fleeting impressions, the vague thoughts of a moment, and we never ceased our race to the south. Osseo was beside me, stride for stride, the earth giving back no sound as his moccasins touched it, the leaves and bushes silent too as he passed through them. How he did it was his secret, and sometimes I used to think that the forest contained no mystery for him. He read all its signs and understood all its tongues.

We came in the afternoon to a little glade, in the centre of which lay some charred pieces of wood. Here was where the Englishman and the girl had camped the night before, and we stopped but a moment, following swiftly upon the traces of their footsteps.

The sun was now dropping down in the west, and touching the edge of the forest with a glow of red gold. Presently we saw a thin dark line like a thread appear against the horizon, and Osseo’s white, even teeth showed in a smile.

“See, the trader signals to all the wilderness that he is here,” said he. “Verily, the children of the cities are as babes when they come into the woods, and the white learns wisdom but slowly from his teacher, the red man.”

We reached in fifteen minutes the little glade in which Winchester had made the camp. I must give him the credit of good selection, as he had chosen a spot in the lee of a hill, sheltered, moreover, by the trunk and roots of a large and half-fallen beech tree. Here he had scraped up a heap of leaves, evidently intended for the girl’s resting-place in the night, and now he was bent over the fire, cooking some venison, his honest red face glowing with the heat. The girl sat on a log near by, resting from the long journey. Yet she seemed cheerful, and her face was not so pale as it was when I beheld her in captivity.

“Listen! she is talking of Lee,” whispered Osseo, putting his hand on my arm.

“You said to me that Mr. Lee would escape, that his Indian comrade would rescue him; how do you know this?” she asked.

Winchester’s red face grew redder.

“No one can be sure of the future,” he said, “but this I think will come true.”

I knew that Winchester did not expect it to come true.

She said nothing, but looked sadly into the coals, and I felt a strange pleasure to see melancholy in her eyes.

“Come, let’s join them,” I said to Osseo.

We walked silently into the glade, and they did not see us until we were very near. Then both sprang to their feet, the girl with a cry of fright, the face of Osseo the Indian first meeting her eyes, and Winchester with an exclamation of surprise and confusion because he had not seen our approach sooner. Miss Carew turned her wide bright eyes upon me, and a deep flush swept over her face. I could read her thoughts as clearly as if she had told them herself. She remembered first what she had said back there in my prison lodge, but the flush gave way in a moment to a look of glad surprise. She held out both her hands, and as I took them I felt a supreme content.

She said but little, but I knew that her joy was great, not because I was John Lee, but because she could never have been happy knowing that another had suffered to save her. Then I introduced Osseo as my best and most skilful friend, and she gave him, too, both her hands while he looked his admiration.

My attention was arrested a moment later by a splutter of indignation from Winchester. Osseo was kicking apart the sticks of his fire and trampling upon the coals. Nor did he stop until the last of them ceased to smoke.

“It is necessary,” I said to Winchester.

“Why so?” asked Miss Carew.

“The forest is haunted,” I replied.

“I know,” she said, and she shuddered. Truly she knew.

“I beg your pardon for forgetting,” said Winchester to me a little later, “but I thought that we had come far enough to escape pursuit.”

“So we have, I think,” I replied, “but in the wilderness one can never omit caution.”

Ours was a most cheerful party despite our lack of a camp fire and the knowledge that danger still hung on our skirts. We made for Miss Carew a bed of leaves and soft boughs under the sheltering foliage of the largest tree, and then we induced her to wrap herself in the blanket that Winchester carried and go to sleep there. It required but little persuasion, as she was weary, and, moreover, she was fast learning the discipline of the wilderness. In a short time we heard her regular breathing, and we knew that she slept. As for ourselves, we watched by turns, and I stood guard near the morning hour. I was restless, but my nervousness came from neither fear nor sorrow. A strange satisfaction took hold of me, and when I looked at the sleeping form of the girl I felt that I had done a good deed. None of us can afford to despise the memory of such a thing.

We rose at daylight, and, having eaten a little dried venison, resumed our flight, curving in a wide semicircle toward the northwest, as we knew better than to travel straight toward Fort Jefferson, with the chance of being caught on the way by war parties, which were certainly between us and the fort. We preferred a long road around to the short and dangerous path.

We adopted under the guidance of Osseo many cunning devices to hide the traces of our flight from a pursuing enemy, such as wading for long distances on the pebbly bottoms of brooks; stepping now and then from one fallen tree to another, which often in the great Northwestern woods are spread thickly thus for miles, and again walking where the fallen leaves lay in dense showers of russet brown. So we travelled, and we neither saw danger before us nor heard the sound of it behind us. Swiftly my fear of a recapture in which the girl might be included passed. We were three men with her, all strong and alert, and at least two of us adept in forest lore. Fortune, in truth, would be a most fickle jade if she did not serve us now.

It seemed that Fortune, instead of being fickle, had become most kind. The wilderness, its treacheries stilled, lay at peace, and over it hung the glory of Indian summer’s last days. But little snow had fallen where we trod, and the forest was yet red and yellow and brown, and every colour grew deeper in the clear gold of the late sunshine. We walked on the brown carpet of leaves, and the air that blew in our faces was tonic in its freshness.

I watched Miss Carew curiously, and I saw the influence of the wilderness peace fall upon her. She was a child of the East caught suddenly in forest dangers, and yet she showed all the border courage and endurance. Rescued from the worst of fates, her spirits rebounded, and she became the gayest of forest maids. She deemed all danger past now that her eyes saw none. The colours of the woods were too intense, the world was too beautiful for foes to be lurking there, and she was the brightest of creatures, talking of many things, asking us of our own lives, and now and then humming to herself little songs, the familiar notes of which after all these years gave me a deep and painful thrill. She was a constant wonder to us; her variable moods, though never a bad one among them, her deep interest in all things around her, and her good fellowship, kept us watching to see what phase of character she would show next. Once she said to me:

“This wilderness is beautiful now, but I have known that it can become terrible.” She looked around at the glowing forest, but at that moment its vivid hues did not appeal to her. Instead, I saw her shudder.

“Why should one choose to live in it?” she asked. “I can understand why white men as wild as the Indians, men who know nothing of civilized life, should come here and roam the woods far away from the things that we value most, and exposed every moment of their lives to the danger of a cruel death. But you? You are different.”

She was looking straight at me, and there was the old inquiry, even curiosity in her gaze. I was startled a little, but replied:

“And how am I different, Miss Carew?”

“Your speech, your manner, are those of an educated man; they are habits that you can not discard. You have not passed all your life here. Does shooting wild animals and fighting savages gratify your whole ambition?”

A glow appeared on her face as she asked me these questions, and her look became eager. She had touched again that old chord in my nature, and I was surprised to find how it vibrated. The ancient memories came back, fresh and strong. But I would not allow them place. I closed my mind again to that part of my life, and lied to her, deliberately lied, with that earnest young face before me.

“In truth, Miss Carew,” I said, “you give me credit for what I never had, and you make me more than I am. I am but a plain hunter, not without some skill in the trade, I hope, nor wholly lacking in knowledge of the white man’s and red man’s tricks. I know that I can never equal Osseo there in forest lore, because he was born to it, but I am willing to match myself against anybody of my race that I know.”

She sighed gently, why I was not sure, and I continued:

“And you wrong the wilderness, too, Miss Carew. It has its delights, attractions that can not be found elsewhere. Think of its freedom. I may roam my own master from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, a matter of three thousand miles, and in all that space there is not a foot of land fenced and shut off by the white man from his kind, nor is there any day’s march in it in which my rifle will not find me all the food I need. There are wolves on the way, it is true, but they are not wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

“It may be well enough for men,” she said, “but not for women.”

I would not dispute with her upon that point; in truth, I agreed with her fully, and she herself at that very moment was an example; yet she seemed in a few moments to forget what she had said, as if it were a mere fleeting emotion, and again she became the forest sprite.

It pleased her for awhile to consider herself a queen, us three her subjects, and the forest her kingdom, which latter was so contrary to the truth that her fancy gave me a curious pleasure. Yet we were most willing subjects, obeying all her little commands with a zest and quickness that drew high approval from her Majesty. Once she plucked a little purple wild flower in late bloom, and asked me to wear it in my cap. I had thought my time for such youthful folly long past, but I put it in the cap and wore it all that day, though Osseo said to me when none other could hear:

“Beware, Lee! A little maid may blind the eyes of a great chief.”

His words sank deep in my mind. Now the joy that I found in her presence was uneasy because I knew that it must soon cease. I was troubled, too, by a sense of wrong, because I was not what I seemed to her. Yet she did not notice it, making me the mark for the shafts of her wit and fancy, and then repaying me by her constant intimation that I was the chief cause of her rescue, and the one to whom her debt was greatest.

She could not understand our caution when we refused to build a fire at night. She said she wanted to see the light of the flames shining through the great forest, and hear the crackle of the wood as the blaze ate into its fibre. It would have been a most cheerful sight, as she said, but neither Osseo nor I would have dreamed of such an act; and even Winchester, with his limited experience of the wilderness, merely shook his head now and smiled when she spoke of it. But we made excuses, saying the first thing that came into our minds, and thus we went on, the great forest dropping behind us, mile on mile.

It is an old story that the taste of forbidden fruit is pleasant, and after many years of loss the society of a woman, one’s equal, who can talk of the things one values most, has an intoxicating effect. Despite Osseo’s warning, I lingered near her, and surely as leader of our little party I had good excuse. I did not know until then how I longed to hear over and over of that old life of mine and those who had been a part of it, and she, though all unaware, was the link between. Once, I think it was about the third day of our flight, she said:

“Ours is a strange country. Truly, extremes meet in it. What a contrast between these great and silent woods and a town like Philadelphia, crowded with human beings!”

“You speak truly,” I said. “’Tis in reality a great town back there. I wish that I could see it now.”

“Then you have seen it before?” she exclaimed, “and you are not the mere hunter that you pretend to be. I knew it—I knew it from the first.”

And unless I was much mistaken I saw an eager light in her eyes, a wish that I should confirm what she said. I was confused for a moment, but then I recovered my poise and shook my head. “It is as I told you before,” I replied. “I know naught of the great towns. These woods are my home.”

She laughed and looked at me with a provoking smile.

“Then yours must be a most peculiar mind,” she said, “since you cultivate a speech and accent that men acquire only on paved streets. I predict that you shall soon he again in New York or Philadelphia, and that you will not find the ways of either strange.”

Her smile became most winning. I knew that the Mother Eve in her was finding delight as thus she touched upon what she thought a mystery, and I fell into her humour.

“Your prediction can not come true,” I said. “Do you know, Miss Carew, that all the prophets have been men?”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because the Superior Wisdom knows whom to trust.”

“Now, I am sure that you have not lived all your life in the woods,” she cried, “or you could not talk that way.”

I did not answer her, contenting myself with silence, and she did not return to the subject. She perceived now that I would avoid it, and it was not in her nature to hurt or embarrass any one through mere idle talk. There was a fine delicacy in all her words, whether she chose to banter us or to pretend that she, too, was of the woods. She drew easily from Winchester his secret of the girl in England, and showed an interest not by any means assumed, that won his heart completely, and established a frank friendship between them. But it was not such a friendship of which any lover of hers back in Kentucky could be jealous. A third and invisible person, a blonde girl five thousand miles away, was the tie between them.

“Lee,” he said to me one night, “she could be dangerous if she wished.”

“But a good woman never wishes,” I replied.

He looked at me critically, and then smiled.

“I do not know much about women, but I know better than that,” he said.

The glory of the lingering autumn grew as we advanced. The wilderness seemed to have acquired a strange new splendour. Always that fine haze softening and deepening every colour hung like a misty veil in the air. The trees were brilliant masses of red and yellow and brown foliage, and when the leaves, shaken by the wind, fell to the ground, they fell softly and without complaint.

The game was plentiful and wondrous tame. Troops of deer were grazing in the glades, and scarce raised their heads unless we passed too near. The fish leaped up in the brooks and the silver bubbles marked where they sank again. Thus the peace of the wilderness infolded us, and each night the red sun sank in a blaze behind the black forest, to come up again in the same splendour the next morning, with the bars of red and gold piling above each other like terraces in the sky.

When a few days had passed, Miss Carew would fall into brief periods of depression, as if she were troubled by her thoughts or memories, but she would soon cast them off and become cheerful again. I wondered that they did not last longer, not understanding how she was able to bear herself so bravely, but I said nothing, knowing that she would not wish to hear such words.

She spoke sometimes of St. Clair’s great defeat, and of all that it would cost us, but said that another American army would be sent against the tribes, and sooner or later we should surely win.

At last I told her that in a few days we should be at Fort Jefferson. She was silent, and a minute later I saw her turn white. I threw my arm around her and held her just in time. She had fainted. Osseo stopped and turned. Nothing—not even a long-drawn breath—seemed to escape his notice.

“There is a brook near, I hear its trickle,” he said. “Take her there. The water will bring her back to the earth.”

I lifted her in my arms. How slender and weak she felt! I wondered again how the women who helped us to conquer our Western world could ever be paid back for their sufferings. In very truth, they were forced to tread the wilderness road. Osseo led us to the brook, a silver thread winding through green moss under the shade of mighty beech trees. The cool drops on her face revived her, and for a moment she did not recall where she was. When memory came back she was ashamed, the pink flushing into her cheeks while her tone became appealing.

“I promise, Mr. Lee, that I shall not faint again,” she said. “It was weak and unworthy, but—but I could not help it.”

I assured her that no woman in the world could have endured more or have been braver than she had been, and Osseo came to her relief handsomely. She was fully recovered in a few moments, and then we went on.

►   ▲