The Way of the Wild (Sass)/Black Bull of Ahowhe

by Herbert Ravenel Sass

Black Bull of Ahowhe

Black Bull of Ahowhe

DURING the night fierce unearthly voices had screamed or roared in the darkness. With the coming of morning, other and More numerous voices were added to those of the hunting beasts.

From the sunlit tops of tall cypresses near at hand a hundred wild turkey cocks sent out a rolling incessant clamor of defiant and amorous calls. Another great flock took up the challenge, another flock, and another, until the whole swamp for miles around rang and echoed with the noise. Fifty feet above the cypress summits sailed an army of giant white cranes, raining down repeated volleys of clear, resonant, whooping cries. Wilder by far, the deep reverberant dragon music of huge alligators shook the air, while, like a sharper echo of these tremendous love bellowings, the hunting cry of a wolf pack trailing a deer through high pine woods a mile away rose and fell in sinister cadence as the fitful breeze freshened and lulled. Twice the hoarse coughing roar of a bear rolled from the depths of the cypress fastness; once from a greater distance came the long-drawn melancholy wail of a puma; again and again three wildcats hunting together screeched savagely to startle and confuse their prey.

Such was the chorus which greeted Black Bull at the hour of his birth on an April morning when the Low Country was young and the fear of the white man had not yet settled over the wilderness and stilled the wilderness voices. The spring had been damp and cold. This was the first warm clear dawn in many weeks, and for that reason the outcry of the preying beasts and the great birds which frequented the cypress swamp swelled louder and longer than usual. The wild black cow, standing guard over her first-born in the recesses of a vast canebrake, shook her horns and glanced apprehensively to right and left. Many times she had listened to this fearful concert of the primeval forest—listened unmoved and indifferent, because she was a child of the forest herself and knew how to meet its dangers. But on this morning, when she had just become a mother, she was afraid.

Her calf, glossy black from nose to tail tip, lay on a dry bed of leaves in the midst of canes which towered thirty feet above him. For forty miles or more the canebrake stretched between the great swamp and the dry upland woods, forming an evergreen belt a half mile in width, the height and girth of the canes attesting the richness of the dark moist soil from which they sprang. So close together stood the smooth green stems that no creature larger than a fox could make its way between them; but through every part of the brake wound well-trodden paths made by the buffalo and the deer and now used also by the wild black cattle which abounded in certain regions of the swamp country. It was at the intersection of two of these paths that the black calf was lying.

His mother could scarcely have chosen a more perilous spot for the bringing forth of her young. From any one of four directions danger might come, and she could not guard all four approaches at once. The wild cow seemed fully aware of the disadvantages of the situation. She stood squarely over the calf, facing that one of the paths which led straight into the depths of the brake; and, as though already warned of the approach of some formidable foeman along this shadowy tunnel, she presently took six steps forward, lowered her head and flourished her long sharp-pointed horns in a gesture of angry defiance.

Yet it was from the opposite direction that the first intruder came. The light breeze blew from the heart of the canebrake. It had brought news of danger in that quarter and had concentrated her attention there. The moccasined feet of the tall young Indian hunter approaching from the canebrake's edge fell soft as velvet on the damp leafy carpet of the trail behind the black cow. Noiseless as a stalking lynx, the lithe brown form, naked above the waist, stole swiftly nearer. In the deceptive twilight of the cane thicket the black calf, motionless on its bed of fallen leaves, was all but invisible at a little distance. Not until he had come within fifteen feet of it did Keenta the Beaver see the baby bull.

He halted, undecided. Catching her unawares and having her at a disadvantage in the—narrow path, he had meant to attack the wild cow; but, discovering that she was the mother of a newly born calf, he realized that his spear could not save him when she charged, and he had dropped his long bow in the trail behind him so that he could use both hands in driving the spear home. Yet Keenta, boldest of young hunters, disliked to draw back from an adventure; and when he had set out from the village, well before daylight, Ahowhe the Long-Haired had bade him remember that she was weary of venison.

A young bear's paws would suit her taste well, she had said, or, better yet, a haunch of beef from the wild black cattle which had spread inland from the white men's settlements near the coast and now ranged in hundreds through the swamps. Keenta had rejoiced when, as he stole along the trail through the canes, he saw the black cow in the path ahead of him, up the wind from him and with her head turned the other way. With good luck he could come within arm's length of her and he knew a thrust which would kill her before she could travel twenty bow shots. But seeing the calf, Keenta knew that the wild cow would not run when the thrust had been delivered. She would wheel and charge like lightning; and Keenta the Beaver was a bold hunter, but no fool.

A moment the young Indian stood motionless, considering; then, with dramatic suddenness, fate solved his problem for him. Already his eyes had been searching the path beyond the cow, for he had noted the tossing of her head, the nervous lashing of her tail, and he knew that along that dim winding tunnel through the canes some great beast must be coming. Wolves, bears and pumas walked the canebrake paths, and from the cow's actions Keenta judged that she had scented one of these three; but, alert and expectant though he was, the swiftness of the tragedy surprised him.

For a fraction of a second he glimpsed a vague shape at the bend of the trail beyond the cow—a shadowy, indeterminate form which seemed to fill the path and in the midst of which two large eyes gleamed cold and bright like jewels. Then, instantaneously, the puma was blotted from his view by the black bulk of the cow impetuously charging her foeman.

Keenta the Beaver stood and watched, his nerves a-tingle. The puma was the Cat of God, the greatest hunter of all the wild hunters; but surely this puma, confronted in that narrow trail by those long sharp horns rushing down upon him, must turn and run or perish. Halfway to the bend in the trail the black cow stumbled slightly, her forefoot bogged in a deep hole in the treacherous floor of the pathway; and in that same instant Keenta saw the tawny master of the wilderness hurl his long sinewy bulk upon his victim. Just how the thing was done even the quick vision of the red warrior could not distinguish. But a moment later the cow lay motionless in the path, her neck broken, while upon her body stood the great Cat of God, his long tail waving slowly to and fro, his round, cold, passionless eyes fixed steadfastly upon the young Indian.

For perhaps a minute Keenta the Beaver returned that glassy stare, standing erect in his tracks, his spear poised in his right hand. The Cat of God was no coward in those days. The white man's weapons had not then broken his spirit. He was no fool, like the buffalo bull, to rush heedless to destruction. But he knew his own might and was master of the wild creatures of the primeval forest; and the copper-colored men of the forest respected him and did him honor, because he was the greatest of all hunters and killed only to satisfy his need. Be tween them and him a sort of truce existed; yet it was a truce which was sometimes broken in time of stress when the red man tried to take the puma's kill. So for a while Keenta the Beaver and the black cow's tawny slayer watched each other warily in the twilight of the overarching canes, neither knowing what the other might do.

Presently Keenta, his gaze never straying from those cold inscrutable eyes, began to speak. First and at great length he paid the puma many compliments, hailing him as the forest's lord, extolling his lithe beauty, praising his skill as a hunter, lauding the niceness and cleanliness of his feeding habits. Then, with glowing eloquence, he told of the loveliness of Ahowhe the Long-Haired and of her capriciousness and of how she had wearied of deer's meat. In conclusion, he proposed a bargain. The Cat of God should keep his kill, he should feast on the cow that he had stricken down; and Keenta the Beaver, young warrior of the Yemassees, would take as his share the little black bull calf and carry it alive to Ahowhe.

He paused, searching the unwavering yellow eyes for a sign. Then, thrusting his spear into the ground, he walked slowly forward. The great yellow-brown form looming above the body of the cow stiffened and crouched, the cold eyes narrowed and gleamed. But Keenta walked on, smiling a little in satisfaction with his own valor. Calmly he knelt beside the calf. He could no longer see the puma, because his back was turned. He knew that at one bound the huge cat could strike him lifeless. Yet he stopped to stroke the calf and to speak to it gently.

"Little black bull," he said, "Ahowhe, who sent me to hunt, has saved you, for the great beast yonder would have killed you had I not come. With Ahowhe you will be safe, for she loves all young things. And some day you will be known as Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, the Master of the Herds."

Slowly he lifted the calf and slung it across his broad bare shoulders. Turning, he faced the puma and made with his right hand the stately gesture of farewell. Then he strode off along the canebrake trail.

 

Burliegh, the English hunter, coming down to Charles Town with a small mounted caravan from the trading posts of the Muskogee country, camped for the night near the head of the great cypress swamp. Again it was spring, the season of late jasmine and Indian rose. At first dawn Burliegh, awakened by the bellowing of great alligators and the incessant tumult of tall white egrets roosting in thousands in a black gum bay near by, mounted his wiry Chickasaw pony and rode out in advance of his comrades to get meat, his larder being empty. In a land of miraculous plenty, where the poorest man—provided he could shoot—might dine on the choicest of meats, Burliegh craved plain and common food. Surfeited with venison and bears' paws, with wood duck and wild turkey, he yearned for a breakfast of roasted rabbit.

Leaving camp, he rode along the outer edge of the canebrake through wild pea vines and dark green rushes as high as his horse's back. Away to his right stretched a long narrow prairie, two miles long and half a mile wide, a natural meadow reaching deep into the virgin forest, which walled it in on either side. Down this green vista Burliegh's gaze roved casually, viewing familiar things—deer grazing in herds of thirty or forty, a droveof fifty wild black cattle, a flock of ten thousand passenger pigeons flying like the wind, a swarm of vultures crowding about a carcass, a lordly bull elk striding through a group of whitetails toward the forest's rim. On the prairie the pea-vine growth was luxuriant, but not so tall, and in the moister places it was supplanted by short vivid green grass. One such spot, an acre or more in extent, gleamed white as snow—a solid mass of big birds of various sizes, some of them almost as tall as a man; whooping cranes, wood ibises, white ibises and egrets of two kinds.

Where the deer paths entered the canebrake the tall rushes through which the hunter rode fell away. In one of these openings at the entrance of a path his horse stopped suddenly with a snort. A small black bear which had just emerged from the brake wheeled with ludicrous haste and vanished amid the canes. At the next opening, warned by an ominous sound, Burliegh scanned the ground ahead of him, tickled his horse's flanks with his heels and spoke two words. The pony, well trained and unafraid, bounded forward, then jumped. His small hoofs passed high over the obstacle—a sixfoot diamond rattlesnake, coiled at the threshold of the canebrake trail.

Presently the hunter found a spot suited to his purpose—the entrance of a wide path striking straight into the cane thicket and crossing another path thirty feet from the thicket's edge. Burleigh halted, sitting motionless in his saddle, his rifle ready, his eyes fixed on the place where the two trails crossed. Two raccoons, a whitetail doe and five swamp rabbits came and went before he saw and shot a rabbit big enough to suit him.

Securing his game, he rode on, still skirting the cane thicket, intending to stop and cook his breakfast in the woods just ahead where no rushes or wild pea vines cumbered the ground. On the prairie a group of ten deer, feeding in tall grass close to the forest edge, scattered suddenly in all directions. Burliegh craned his neck and saw a sinuous movement in the grass as though a huge snake were winding through it.

It was a young puma, he concluded, young and small; or else an old and very wily one, wily enough to crouch low as it made its way through the grass and thus keep its body hidden. After a minute, he swore softly. Proud of his woodcraft, he permitted himself no excuses. The serpentine weaving of the grass had ceased at the edge of a small circular opening around a sink hole, and across this opening had passed four black wolves of the small Low Country breed, one trotting behind the other.

Burliegh stared moodily at the spot where they had reëntered the grass, frowning over his mistake as though some misfortune had befallen him. Suddenly his expression changed. Rising in his stirrups and pushing back his wide-brimmed hat, he gazed for a long minute at a dark object far down the prairie, a bow shot from the edge of the woods.

A troop of whitetails intercepted his view and he rode on a dozen yards, then halted to examine the distant object again. Presently he was satisfied. No bull of the wild black cattle, which were generally lean and undersized, could bulk so large. It was a buffalo, he was sure; yet for years buffalo had been practically unknown in the Low Country—where, indeed, they had never been abundant, preferring the uplands where the prairie-meadows were more extensive. Burliegh marked the spot where the bull was feeding, then rode on at a quicker pace to the edge of the woods.

There he decided that breakfast could wait. The lone bull out on the prairie interested him and something in its shape puzzled him. A short ride just within the forest margin would afford him a better view. He broke a sapling to show his comrades the direction he had taken. Then he set off at a brisk canter at right angles to his former course.

No undergrowth hampered his pony's progress through the splendid parklike forest of gigantic white oak and red oak, hickory, magnolia and beech, alive with gray squirrels and fox squirrels, some of the latter coal-black save for white noses and ears. Many times deer lying just within the woods-edge bounded away before him, most of them running out into the open. A large flock of brilliant green and yellow parrakeets, screaming like mad, passed low over his head. Alighting on the ground a little distance to the left, they covered a space fifty feet square with a gorgeous carpet of rich green and vivid gold. Alarmed at his approach, they took wing again and flew with shrill screechings out of the woods and across the prairie.

Burliegh paid no attention to them, but marveled a little at the wild turkeys. The place was evidently a courting ground for the big flocks which roosted in the cypress swamp beyond the belt of canes; and on every side, as he rode amid the far-spaced trees, he saw great bronze gobblers strutting and pacing before coquettish hens. Once or twice he fingered his weapon nervously as some exceptionally magnificent gobbler tempted him; but remembering the object of his quest, he rode on.

Black Bull, lazily cropping the succulent prairie grasses a bow shot from the forest's edge, raised his head often to look and listen. Six springs had passed since, as a newly born calf, he had been borne out of the canebrake, ten miles farther down, on the strong young shoulders of Keenta the Beaver, who had carried him to Ahowhe the Long-Haired and laid him at the girl's feet. Thus he had become Ahowhe's pet and had so continued through his babyhood. Later he was known as Black Bull of Ahowhe; and later still, when he had attained his full astonishing bulk, there were some—Keenta among them—who called him Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, though in truth that name belonged rightfully to the buffalo. Yet there was warrant for the title, for very soon it became evident that—the black calf's sire had been a bison—some lone wanderer from the herds of the upper country who in his loneliness had found a mate among the wild black cattle of the Low Country swamps.

Black Bull showed plainly his buffalo blood. His great size, his splendid frontlet and beard, his highhumped shoulders, the shaggy coat of hair on neck and hump—all these came from his sire. But he was jet-black instead of brown; his tail was long; his horns, of much greater length and curving forward, were far more serviceable weapons than a buffalo's horns. From his mother's race he had inherited also something even more valuable than those long forward-pointing pikes—a brain alert instead of sluggish. The wild black cattle of the swamps, originating as strays from the vast herds of the rich white planters near the coast, had deteriorated in size but increased enormously in numbers despite the preying beasts with which the great swamps teemed. With each generation they had grown sharper of wit, keener of scent and of hearing, until in these respects they rivaled even the deer. In bulk and in form, in massive head and shaggy coat, Black Bull was his father's son. But the brain in that head was not the brain of a buffalo.

All this Keenta had pointed out to Ahowhe long before Black Bull was full grown and while he still grazed with tame cattle about the outskirts of the Indian village. Ahowhe, lover of all young things, had loved the little black calf which she had reared from infancy, providing it with a foster mother and caring for it herself; but when it had become a yearling bull her affection for it had cooled.

Not only was the bull of great stature for its age but it was also of a proud and dangerous temper. Ahowhe, comely as ever, but still childless, transferred her affections to other young things—fawns which Keenta brought her from the forest, a baby bear, two young ring-tailed raccoons; and Black Bull, grown more and more arrogant as his bulk increased, would have been dealt with as a menace to the village had not Keenta's influence protected him until the time came, as Keenta knew it would, when Black Bull bade the village farewell.

Even then, so far as was possible, Keenta continued to watch over him. All the tribesmen knew why. Kanakaw the conjurer had read in the writhing entrails of a slaughtered kid that Keenta's fate was bound up with the fate of the black bull calf which he had taken from under the eyes of the great Cat of God; that a day would come when Keenta, in peril of death, must perish unless Black Bull chose to save him; that not until then would Ahowhe bear him the son that he desired.

It was a great prophecy and all the village approved it. Black Bull, as wild and wary now as the deer, ranged far and wide. Keenta could not follow him on all his journeyings, and for weeks at a time never saw him. Yet the young warrior knew the wild bull's favorite ranges, trailed him when opportunity offered, and viewed him from the thickets to make sure that no bullet had harmed him, that no snake had struck him and that his health was good.

A white hunter's bullet, a rattlesnake's venom, disease—these were the dangers which Keenta feared for Black Bull. The red hunters, aware of the prophecy, would not shoot him. His strength and his cunning would keep him safe from puma and bear and wolf pack, and from the huge alligators lurking in ambush in the lagoons and rivers where the deer and the wild black cattle drank. Most of all, Keenta feared the white hunters. These seldom came into Black Bull's range, because the region on that side of the great cypress swamp was recognized as an Indian hunting ground. But sometimes small parties of them passed through, and their long, heavy rifles shot straight and far.

 

Black Bull, cropping the grasses languidly and often lifting his massive shaggy head to look about him, saw a herd of ten deer, far away up the prairie, suddenly scatter in all directions. He shook his head and snorted. He knew what that lively commotion of the whitetails meant. Some hunting beast—puma or bear or wolf—had made a foray from the forest's edge. Black Bull had no dread of any of these, but the thought of them angered him. Again he snorted and flourished his horns, then turned to look at his herd of fifteen black cows lying in the wild pea vines a hundred yards behind him.

A half mile away grazed a much larger herd, including many bulls; but Black Bull was not interested in these. Overawing all rivals, he had: taken his pick of the cows and he concerned himself only with these favorites. A glance showed him that they were well out on the prairie, safe from any marauder that might be lurking in the cover of the woods. For himself, he feared nothing. He resumed his feeding, moving closer and closer to the forest's edge.

Presently he saw a buck run at full speed out of the woods near the spot where the other whitetails had taken fright. A few minutes later three wild turkeys flew out; then, nearer at hand, another deer emerged, and another still nearer. Soon a large flock of green-and-yellow parrakeets appeared, screeching shrilly. Plainly the marauder, whatever it was, was moving along the edge of the forest just within the outermost ranks of the trees, its progress marked by the deer, turkeys and parrakeets which its advance drove out into the open.

Black Bull made up his mind that the unseen enemy steadily drawing nearer within the forest margin was a puma. He tossed his huge head and blew loudly through his nose. Another deer dashed out of the woods not more than a hundred yards away. Lashing his tail, Black Bull marched majestically across the narrow strip of prairie and into the woods, his arrogant eyes searching the long sun-spotted vistas for the big tawny cat that had dared approach the feeding ground of his wives.

He saw no puma, nor any other foeman worthy of his attention. Only the smaller folk of the forest were visible—a troop of fox squirrels, a grizzled opossum nosing about amid the leaves, a flock of flickers searching the ground for insects, a scarlet-crested ivory-billed woodpecker, as big as a duck, scaling the bark from a rotting log.

Black Bull waited and watched, snorting at intervals and pawing the ground. There was no undergrowth to impede his view; but the sun rays, slanting down through the high roof of dense foliage, dazzled his vision somewhat and made a deceptive ever-changing mosaic of light and shadow on the forest carpet amid the huge upstanding pillars of gray hickory and mottled sycamore. Black Bull, facing into the light, failed to distinguish the buckskin-clad form of the white hunter sitting still as a graven image on his sorrel pony, which, at a whispered word, had frozen into statuelike immobility.

Burliegh gazed at the great beast before him with narrowed eyes which plainly betrayed his astonishment. Having the sun behind him, he could distinguish every detail, and he knew at once that this huge coal-black creature was of a kind which he had never met with before and which no other hunter had ever described to him. Probably because of the bull's great size and because he had never heard of an instance of the sort, Burliegh did not suspect a cross of buffalo and wild black cattle. Here, he concluded naturally enough, was a new species of buffalo the like of which no other white man had ever seen—a buffalo black instead of brown, longer horned than the common sort, lower humped, yet longer limbed, a little less shaggy, yet royally clad in a thick sable coat which would bring a high price in the fur market.

Burliegh, confident of his own invisibility and thankful that he was to leeward of his quarry, studied the bull with the most minute care to impress indelibly upon his memory every detail of the animal's appearance in life. Years might pass before he saw another of its kind. He wanted to learn all he could about this one before he shot it.

Black Bull, unconscious of the scrutiny, impatiently awaiting the puma whose coming he still expected, stood in an open sunny spot midway between two giant white oaks whose boughs interlaced forty feet above him. For a space of minutes he stood thus, tossing his head and stamping, a superb picture of massively proportioned strength and defiant fearlessness. Then, as no enemy answered his challenge, he turned broadside to the hunter and walked slowly toward the larger white oak.

Burliegh moved not a muscle. His practiced eye told him that the bull was going to lie down; and he would probably lie with his back to the sun, thus facing away from the hunter and making possible a closer approach.

It was as Burliegh expected, but even better. The great bull moved deliberately across the glade, chose a shady place close to the oak, lowered his massive body to the ground with a sinuous writhing of bulging muscles under the sleek hide of his hind quarters. Not only was his head turned away from the hunter but the latter knew that the vital spot behind the bull's shoulder was widely exposed for a fatal shot.

Burliegh touched the Chickasaw pony's flank with his heel, tightened and twitched the bridle. The pony, ears pricked, moved forward very slowly, his small hoofs delicately pressing the ground. Burliegh dropped the bridle rein, raised his long rifle halfway to his shoulder. The pony would halt at a whisper. The hunter hoped to get yards closer to his prey but would shoot the instant the bull took alarm.

Ten feet to the left of the white oak a long reddish-brown snake, flowing silently across the leaves, stopped suddenly. Black Bull had flicked an ear to dislodge a fly and the snake's beady eyes had caught the motion. Four inches of the serpent's slender tail quivered rapidly, making a slight but distinctly audible rattling noise amid the dead leaves. Black Bull's shaggy head swung quickly toward the sound.

The Chickasaw pony stopped. Burliegh's rifle went to his shoulder. The long barrel wavered a fraction of a second, then steadied. Burliegh, peering along the rifle barrel, his finger caressing the trigger, saw a small white object flash downward. Twenty feet in front of him a white-feathered arrow stood quivering, its head buried in the ground.

 

The Chickasaw pony bounded forward as heels dug into his flanks, wheeled to the right as the iron bit wrenched his mouth, steadied and stiffened as the bridle rein tightened. Already Burliegh, crouching low in his saddle behind—the horse's neck, had the Indian covered.

The hunter's square-jawed, sun-tanned face glowed a dark red with excitement or anger; his gray eyes, narrow and sparkling, not only scanned the approaching red man but searched also the forest vistas behind him and the tree trunks to right and left.

The Indian, very tall and straight, naked save for a single deerskin garment about his waist, walked calmly forward, carrying his bow in his left hand. As he came on, he made with his right hand the gesture of peace. Burliegh, gazing grimly along his rifle barrel, made no sign or movement in reply. Fifteen paces from the rifle muzzle the red man halted.

"It is Keenta the Beaver who speaks," he said in the Yemassee tongue, "and Keenta is alone. The white hunter need not shoot. The arrow was not meant to do harm."

Burliegh's narrowed eyes searched the other's face. His frown darkened.

"Arrows are not sent as tokens of peace," he said in the same language. "Why did Keenta the Beaver drop an arrow at Burliegh's feet if he comes as a friend? Let him speak quickly and plainly, for Burliegh's trigger finger itches and his eyes long to see daylight through Keenta's head."

The tall Indian's face remained utterly impassive.

"Keenta has heard of Burliegh of Wadboo," he said, his voice a little deeper than before, "and has learned that his words are strong. It pleases him now to threaten. Yet Keenta will do the white warrior's bidding. Let Burliegh listen.

"The, black bull which Burliegh saw on the prairie is the bull of Ahowhe, Keenta's woman. When Burliegh rose in his stirrups and viewed the bull, Keenta was watching from the canebrake. When Burliegh turned and rode through the forest, Keenta knew that he sought the black bull. Keenta followed, but was almost too late. Burliegh's rifle was at his shoulder. Keenta winged a slow arrow over Burliegh's head. He could as easily have sent that arrow into Burliegh's back. Now that he has spoken, he asks that Burliegh spare Ahowhe's bull."

The white hunter's frown had become a scowl. Burliegh was of that school which ruled the red men by overawing them. It was his boast among his fellows that he could read in any Indian's countenance the quality of his courage and that there was not one red man in ten whom he could not bend to his will. Largely, he was right; for from Santee to Edisto, from Kiawah to Unaka Kanoos, Burliegh of Wadboo was respected and feared. He ripped out an oath.

"Keenta the Beaver is a liar," he said in a voice as hard as steel. "He is a liar like all his race. And he is a serpent, hiding in canebrakes and spying on honest men. The black bull is a wild bull. Burliegh will shoot him from this spot while Keenta looks on."

The Indian started to speak. Burliegh cut him short.

"Let Keenta listen," he said. "With Burliegh are five Englishmen, great warriors and hunters, including Almayne himself. By now they have broken camp beside the cane thicket and are following Burliegh's trail to this place. Keenta is a liar, but no fool."

Contemptuously he turned his back upon the Indian and wheeled the pony around. Black Bull, hearing the sound of voices, had risen. The red hunters had never harmed him; the white hunters he had never chanced to meet; hence he had little or no fear of man. He stood tossing his head defiantly, more inclined to charge than to retreat.

Burliegh, a little surprised at the bull's boldness, nevertheless recalled the proverbial stupidity of many buffalo. Evidently these black buffalo were sometimes as slow-witted as the brown. He leveled his weapon, aiming at the brain. It was a long shot, but so much the better. The Indian would be the more impressed.

The pony moved a fraction of an inch. Burliegh growled a reprimand and readjusted his aim. Keenta must not see him miss. He took plenty of time, drawing a fine and careful bead.

Burliegh, his shoulder turned to the Indian, saw nothing of the latter's movements. They were few, but marvelously swift. It was because Keenta excelled with the bow that he still hunted with the weapons of his fathers, though many of his tribesmen now used the white man's powder and shot.

Burliegh never knew whether Keenta threw the arrow with his hand or shot it from his bow. It must have been the latter, for the arrow pierced Burliegh's throat and made a deep dent in the hard wood of the rifle stock pressed against his chin.

The rifle dropped from the white hunter's hand. Turning slowly in his saddle, he stared dully at the Indian while blood jetted over his chest. Then, as the Chickasaw pony reared, he fell forward, clasping the horse's neck. The pony wheeled and galloped wildly along the back trail. Just before it vanished amid the tree trunks, Keenta saw Burliegh fall from the horse's back.

Keenta the Beaver turned and faced Black Bull. A strange light shone in his eyes, a light born of the thoughts and the hopes racing through his brain. Somehow he knew suddenly that the time had come, the time for the testing of the prophecy, the hour which would determine his fate and, if he lived, perhaps bring promise of the son for whom he yearned. He had waited long for that hour and he was weary of waiting. In a sudden burst of light, knowledge had come to him that, if he had courage for the test, he could bring it to pass now.

Burliegh's comrades had already broken camp. This Keenta knew, for before he took up the hunter's trail he had seen them stirring. They, too, would follow Burliegh's tracks. Any moment might bring them, their coming hastened by the riderless horse. If they found Keenta, there would be drama in the forest—and Keenta knew the methods of Almayne. There would be no doubt as to Keenta's fate if he awaited the coming of Burliegh's friends and if Black Bull, on whom his fate depended, chose to let him die.

Keenta the Beaver, after the manner of his race, addressed to Black Bull, standing in the middle distance, a long and solemn speech. Then, as the Indian's quick eye caught a movement amid the trees near the spot where Burliegh had fallen, he crouched low, ran swiftly to a sycamore and stood behind its stout trunk. There he fitted another arrow to his bow.

Almayne, stooping beside Burliegh's body, wasted little time there. The dying man had whispered half a dozen words: "Keenta the Beaver—alone—on foot." In an instant Almayne was on his horse again, giving his orders. The five horsemen spread out in a wide are and moved on, Almayne himself in the center, following the tracks of Burleigh's pony. They rode forward silently but swiftly, their grim eyes searching the woods ahead, their rifles ready.

Suddenly, straight in front of Almayne, Keenta the Beaver stepped into view from behind a sycamore. His long bow was in his hand, an arrow fitted to the string; but his back was turned to the white hunter, as though he were unaware of the latter's approach.

Slowly he lifted the bow and drew the shaft to the head. Almayne, looking where the arrow pointed, saw for the first time a great black bull standing motionless a long bow shot away.

Carefully Keenta aimed, seemingly unaware of his peril, his back still turned to the white hunter; and swiftly Almayne slipped from his horse and ran forward, his moccasined feet making no sound.

The long bow twanged. Keenta bent forward, his eyes following the arrow's flight. The shaft sped true. It entered Black Bull's right shoulder a half second before Almayne leaped upon Keenta's back and bore him to the ground.

What happened then happened quickly. Keenta, writhing and heaving under Almayne's weight, heard the noise of hurrying hoofs as the other horsemen dashed up from both sides—heard and saw them fling themselves from their saddles and rush to their leader's aid. In that same instant, too, he heard another sound—Black Bull's thunderous bellow as red rage surged up in him after the first shock of pain. It was then that Keenta prayed to his gods, for there was one chance that he had overlooked—the chance that Black Bull would charge the horses instead of the struggling mass of men.

Keenta heard Almayne's hoarse cry, "Take him alive," felt the ground shake under a mightier tread than the tread of any horse, heard a white hunter's shout of amazement and alarm. Next moment Black Bull was upon them. Two men leaped clear in time. A third, who saved himself from death by clinging to Black Bull's horns as the irresistible sable avalanche rushed past, was tossed and broke his leg as he struck ground. A fourth lay on his back, groaning; and a fifth, Almayne himself, sprawled on his face utterly still, stunned by the impact of a flying hoof.

Keenta the Beaver, uninjured save for a long gash on his left arm, leaped to his feet and in an instant reached the nearest horse, rearing with terror but too well trained to bolt. Lithe as a lynx, he bounded upon the horse's back. The light of triumph, the joy of fulfillment in his eyes, he gave the long war whoop of his tribe. Then, as two white hunters dashed for their horses and their guns, he dug his heels into the pony's flanks and raced for the canebrake and the swamp where ten thousand hunters could not track or find him.

 

The chuck-will's-widows, those strange night fowls which are like the whippoorwills but much larger, do not understand the nature of moonlight. Ordinarily they sing chiefly at dusk and toward dawn; but when the moon shines in spring they think that the whole night is one long dusk or one long dawn, and they sing unceasingly from sunset to sunrise.

All night, in a sparkleberry thicket near Ahowhe's round hut in the village, a chuck-will's-widow had been singing. It was only one of many, for these birds were plentiful about the Yemassee town. Ahowhe, wakeful because of the trouble that had befallen, had listened to the bird for hours, scarcely aware that she heard it, her mind being full of other things.

She knew that Sinnawa, the aged chief, must bow to Almayne's demand. At dusk the famous white warrior and four others, one of them groaning with a broken rib, another nursing a smashed leg, had ridden into the village and brought word that Keenta the Beaver had killed the English hunter, Burliegh of Wadboo. Almayne's order was that Keenta the Beaver, the moment he returned, be sent a captive to Charles Town to pay the death penalty. Failing this, Almayne had said, the white troopers would come and burn the town.

Two hours before dawn, when clouds had obscured the moon, Ahowhe realized suddefily that the chuck-will's-widow sang with a new note. No one saw her when she went out into the darkness. No one saw her when she returned. No one saw her when she went out a second time.

Nor was Ahowhe ever seen in that village again; and Keenta the Beaver, Ahowhe's warrior, was seen there no more. Years afterwards, a young man of that village, returning from a mission to Moytoy of Tellequo, Emperor of the Nations, said that he had met Keenta and Ahowhe in a town of the Cherokees beyond the mountains, and that with them was a young boy, their son. His mother called the boy Black Bull of Ahowhe; but Keenta called him Yanasa, the Very Great Bull, the Master of the Herds.