War Drums (Sass)/Chapter 28
AT GRAY dawn they started. Almayne on Nunda the Moon-Face held the lead, with Little Mink striding just behind him. Jolie rode next, then O'Sullivan, then Falcon, with Lachlan and Striking Hawk in the rear. By the same tortuous way which had brought them to the grassy knoll in the heart of the swamp, Almayne led them back to the inner edge of the great canebrake. Into the brake they plunged and for miles rode onward through the canes, following the dim, winding paths, seeing no sign of man but only the wild creatures that made and used those sinuous byways.
Night found them still in the canes; that night and the next night and the next. It was Almayne's plan to follow the canebrake inland as far as possible, because inits shelter they would be safer than in the open parklike forest. This lengthened their journey greatly, for the canebrake game-paths were never straight but wound in and out like serpents, crossing and recrossing one another, dividing, rejoining, and dividing again. The brake extended inland for perhaps two hundred miles, following the winding of the river. In an unbroken evergreen belt, from half a mile to a mile or more in width, it bordered the river swamp from the tidewater country near the sea to the Santee's sources high among the hills.
Day after day they threaded their shadowy labyrinth. Almayne, moody and preoccupied at first, grew more and more cheerful as mile after mile of their journey passed and still they saw no sign of an enemy. To Jolie this vast cane thicket with its teeming life was scarcely less wonderful than the forest had been; but she grew weary of its dimness, of its hushed, furtive noises, of its endless leagues of smooth straight stems hedging her in on either side, and of the green roof of cane foliage meeting overhead and shutting out the sun. She knew that the most dangerous stage of their journey would come when they left the canebrake amid the foothills; yet she was eager for that time to come.
It came at last. The brake was much narrower, the canes were of smaller girth, and the river had dwindled to a crystal-clear, swift-flowing creek. They turned aside from it at a point where a splendid beech wood came down to the edge of the stream; and for miles they rode through a noble forest where nothing save beeches grew, clothing every hill and valley—for they were now in the rolling lands of the upper country—casting so deep a shade that no undergrowth subsisted under them.
The stately beech forest merged into an even statelier one of oak, hickory, ash, walnut, and many other broad-leafed trees beneath which they saw herds of grazing deer and many flocks of turkeys, while in the sunnier places the ground was spangled with wild flowers and everywhere the air was vocal with bird songs. Now and again the woods fell away and they skirted small forest-encircled prairies, green with grass and wild pea-vine; and in these prairies they saw not only deer in great numbers but bands of elk, small herds of shaggy buffalo, scattered troops of wild horses and lesser animals of many kinds.
Always, as they rode onward, the hills around them grew higher. From those hilltops, but for the forest that mantled them, the high rampart of the Blue Mountains, the easternmost ridge of the Appalachians, might have been seen looming against the northern sky. They were in the heart of the Cherokee country now—the country of the Erati or Lower Cherokees, who held the foothills, even as their kindred, the Otari or Upper Cherokees, held the mountains themselves.
There was danger everywhere, every moment. Erati and Otari, blood brothers of an ancient and powerful nation, were allies in this war against the Province. Almayne knew the country as well as he knew the palm of his hand, knew every Indian village in it, every hunting trail, every buffalo path. Thanks to this knowledge and to his woodcraft he kept them safe. But again and again the hunter saw signs of their enemies, signs that were plain enough to Lachlan also and to the two Muskogee warriors; and again and again he turned aside from routes that he had planned to follow, abandoning them because he saw that the danger was too great. Slowly the conviction grew upon him that he was attempting the impossible and that they were likely to pay for their boldness with their lives.
Jolie knew nothing of this. There was no need to tell her. Not until mid-afternoon of their second day among the foothills did she know. Almayne raised his hand then as a signal to halt, beckoned Lachlan to come to him, and for some minutes the two talked earnestly together. Lachlan returned to Jolie presently, nodding to the others at the same time so that they might hear what was to be said.
"Almayne believes," he told them, "that we cannot reach Fort Prince George now. There are enemies on every side, and it would be equally dangerous to return. We must do what we did in Great Santee—find a safe place and wait there for a time."
"And where, lad, shall we find a safe refuge?" Mr. O'Sullivan asked him.
"Almayne knows of one," Lachlan answered, "the peak of Sani'gilagi. He thinks we may gain it, and he thinks it is our best hope."
He turned to Jolie. "Can you ride all night?" he asked.
She smiled at him bravely.
"I think that I was never so strong or so well," she replied. "I think that this wilderness of yours is transmuting me into a man."
"God forbid!" exclaimed Mr. O'Sullivan fervently; and "God forbid!" Lachlan echoed him, then flushed to the roots of his hair upon realizing that he had spoken the words aloud.
She flashed him a smile that was like a miracle. In his mind all else was blotted out—the invisible enemies around them, the peril in which they stood. To the last of his days he was to remember her as she was at that moment—sitting at ease on Selu's back, her buckskin jacket open at the throat, her broad hat with its jaunty feather pushed back above her red-gold hair. Lachlan turned from her with a pounding in his ears and a mist swimming before his eyes.