Camping -- Fiction; Indians of North America -- Fiction; Scouting (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction; Scouts (Reconnaissance) -- Fiction
Whatever joy she had on again seeing her home was speedily quelled in
the fearsome discovery that she was right over the Indian camp, and the
two inmates looked so utterly, dreadfully savage that she was thankful
they had not seen her. At once she shrank back; but on recovering
sufficiently to again peer down, she saw something roasting before the
fire--“a tiny arm with a hand that bore five fingers,” as she afterward
said, and “a sickening horror came over her.” Yes, she had heard of
such things. If she could only get home in safety! Why had she tempted
Providence thus? She backed softly and prayed only to escape. What, and
never even deliver the Bible? “It would be wicked to return with it!”
In a cleft of the rock she placed it, and then, to prevent the wind
blowing off loose leaves, she placed a stone on top, and fled from the
dreadful place.
That night, when Quonab and Rolf had finished theic meal of corn and
roasted coon, the old man climbed the rock to look at the sky. The book
caught his eye at once, evidently hidden there carefully, and therefore
in cache. A cache is a sacred thing to an Indian. He disturbed it not,
but later asked Rolf, “That yours?”
“No.”
It was doubtless the property of some one who meant to return for it,
so they left it untouched. It rested there for many months, till the
winter storms came down, dismantling the covers, dissolving the pages,
but leaving such traces as, in the long afterward, served to identify
the book and give the rock the other name, the one it bears
to-day--“Bible Rock, where Quonab, the son of Cos Cob, used to live.”
Chapter 11. The Thunder-storm and the Fire Sticks
When first Rolf noticed the wigwam's place, he wondered that Quonab had
not set it somewhere facing the lake, but he soon learned that it is
best to have the morning sun, the afternoon shade, and shelter from the
north and west winds.
The first two points were illustrated nearly every day; but it was two
weeks before the last was made clear.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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