Rising to his feet, Joe went toward the cabin, and soon saw the cause of the excitement. A small crowd of men and women, all laughing and talking, surrounded the Indian brave and the little stout fellow. Joe heard someone groan, and then a deep, guttural voice:
“Paleface—big steal—ugh! Injun mad—heap mad—kill paleface.”
After elbowing his way into the group, Joe saw the Indian holding Loorey with one hand, while he poked him in the ribs with the other. The captive’s face was the picture of dismay: even the streaks of paint did not hide his look of fear and bewilderment. The poor, half-witted fellow was so badly frightened that he could only groan.
“Silvertip scalp paleface. Ugh!” growled the savage, giving Loorey another blow. This time he bent over in pain. The bystanders were divided in feeling; the men laughed, while the women murmured sympathetically.
“This’s not a bit funny,” muttered Joe, as he pushed his way nearly to the middle of the crowd. Then he stretched out a long arm that, bare and brawny, looked as though it might have been a blacksmith’s, and grasped the Indian’s sinewy wrist with a force that made him loosen his hold on Loorey instantly.
“I stole the shirt—fun—joke,” said Joe. “Scalp me if you want to scalp anyone.”
The Indian looked quickly at the powerful form before him. With a twist he slipped his arm from Joe’s grasp.
“Big paleface heap fun—all squaw play,” he said, scornfully. There was a menace in his somber eyes as he turned abruptly and left the group.
“I’m afraid you’ve made an enemy,” said Jake Wentz to Joe. “An Indian never forgets an insult, and that’s how he regarded your joke. Silvertip has been friendly here because he sells us his pelts. He’s a Shawnee chief. There he goes through the willows!”
By this time Jim and Mr. Wells, Mrs. Wentz, and the girls had joined in the group. They all watched Silvertip get into his canoe and paddle away.
“A bad sign,” said Wentz, and then, turning to Jeff Lynn, who joined the party at that moment, he briefly explained the circumstances.
“Never did like Silver. He’s a crafty redskin, an’ not to be trusted,” replied Jeff.
“He has turned round and is looking back,” Nell said quickly.
“So he has,” observed the fur trader.
The Indian was now several hundred yards down the swift river, and for an instant had ceased paddling. The sun shone brightly on his eagle plumes. He remained motionless for a moment, and even at such a distance the dark, changeless face could be discerned. He lifted his hand and shook it menacingly.
“If ye don’t hear from that redskin ag’in, Jeff Lynn don’t know nothin’,” calmly said the old frontiersman.
Chapter IV
As the rafts drifted with the current the voyagers saw the settlers on the landing place diminish until they had faded from indistinct figures to mere black specks against the green background. Then came the last wave of a white scarf, faintly in the distance, and at length the dark outline of the fort was all that remained to their regretful gaze. Quickly that, too, disappeared behind the green hill, which, with its bold front, forces the river to take a wide turn.
The Ohio, winding in its course between high, wooded bluffs, rolled on and on into the wilderness.
Beautiful as was the ever-changing scenery, rugged, gray-faced cliffs on one side contrasting with green-clad hills on the other, there hovered over land and water something more striking than beauty. Above all hung a still atmosphere of calmness—of loneliness.
And this penetrating solitude marred somewhat the pleasure which might have been found in the picturesque scenery, and caused the voyagers, to whom this country was new, to take less interest in the gaily feathered birds and stealthy animals that were to be seen on the way. By the forms of wild-life along the banks of the river, this strange intruder on their peace was regarded with attention. The birds and beasts evinced little fear of the floating rafts. The sandhill crane, stalking along the shore, lifted his long neck as the unfamiliar thing came floating by, and then stood still and silent as a statue until the rafts disappeared from view. Blue herons feeding along the bars saw the unusual spectacle, and, uttering surprised “booms,” they spread wide wings and lumbered away along the shore. The crows circled above the voyagers, cawing in not unfriendly excitement. Smaller birds alighted on the raised poles, and several—a robin, a catbird and a little brown wren—ventured with hesitating boldness to peck at the crumbs the girls threw to them. Deer waded knee deep in the shallow water, and, lifting their heads, instantly became motionless and absorbed. Occasionally a buffalo appeared on a level stretch of bank, and, tossing his huge head, seemed inclined to resent the coming of this stranger into his domain.
All day the rafts drifted steadily and swiftly down the river, presenting to the little party ever-varying pictures of densely wooded hills, of jutting, broken cliffs with scant evergreen growth; of long reaches of sandy bar that glistened golden in the sunlight, and over all the flight and call of wildfowl, the flitting of woodland songsters, and now and then the whistle and bellow of the horned watchers in the forest.
The intense blue of the vault above began to pale, and low down in the west a few fleecy clouds, gorgeously golden for a fleeting instant, then crimson-crowned for another, shaded and darkened as the setting sun sank behind the hills. Presently the red rays disappeared, a pink glow suffused the heavens, and at last, as gray twilight stole down over the hilltops, the crescent moon peeped above the wooded fringe of the western bluffs.
“Hard an’ fast she is,” sang out Jeff Lynn, as he fastened the rope to a tree at the head of a small island. “All off now, an’ we’ll hev supper. Thar’s a fine spring under yon curly birch, an’ I fetched along a leg of deer meat. Hungry, little ’un?”
He had worked hard all day steering the rafts, yet Nell had seen him smiling at her many times during the journey, and he had found time before the early start to arrange for her a comfortable seat. There was now a solicitude in the frontiersman’s voice that touched her.
“I am famished,” she replied, with her bright smile. “I am afraid I could eat a whole deer.”
They all climbed the sandy slope and found themselves on the summit of an oval island, with a pretty glade in the middle surrounded by birches. Bill, the second raftsman, a stolid, silent man, at once swung his axe upon a log of drift-wood. Mr. Wells and Jim walked to and fro under the birches, and Kate and Nell sat on the grass watching with great interest the old helmsman as he came up from the river, his brown hands and face shining from the scrubbing he had given them. Soon he had a fire cheerfully blazing, and after laying out the few utensils, he addressed himself to Joe:
“I’ll tell ye right here, lad, good venison kin be spoiled by bad cuttin’ and cookin’. You’re slicin’ it too thick. See—thar! Now salt good, an’ keep outen the flame; on the red coals is best.”
With a sharpened stick Jeff held the thin slices over the fire for a few moments. Then he laid them aside on some clean white-oak chips Bill’s axe had provided. The simple meal of meat, bread, and afterward a drink of the cold spring water was keenly relished by the hungry voyagers. When it had been eaten, Jeff threw a log on his fire and remarked:
“Seein’ as how we won’t be in redskin territory fer awhile yit, we kin hev a fire. I’ll
