The Rulers of the Lakes: A Story of George and ChamplainAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Rulers of the Lakes: A Story of George and Champlain
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
United States -- History -- French and Indian War, 1754-1763 -- Fiction
"No. They will make a new attack. They care nothing for those that have
fallen. Watch well, Dagaeoga, and keep your arrows ready."
"I think I'll become a good bowman in time," said Robert lightly, to
ease his feelings, "because I'm getting a lot of practice, and it seems
that I'll have a lot more. Perhaps I need this rest, but, so far as my
feelings are concerned, I wish the wolves would come on and make a final
rush. Their silence and invisibility are pretty hard on the nerves."
He examined the bow carefully again, and put six arrows on the floor of
the cave beside him, with the quiver just beyond them. Tayoga sat
immovable, his rifle across his knees, ready in the last emergency to
use the bullet. Thus more time passed in silence and without action.
It often seemed to Robert afterward that there was something unnatural
about both time and place. The darkness came down thicker and heavier,
and to his imaginative ear it had a faint sliding sound like the
dropping of many veils. So highly charged had become his faculties that
they were able to clothe the intangible and the invisible with bodily
reality. He glanced across at his comrade, whom his accustomed eyes
could see despite the blackness of the night. Tayoga was quite still. So
far as Robert could tell he had not stirred by a hair's breadth in the
last hour.
"Do you hear anything?" whispered the white youth.
"Nothing," replied the Onondaga. "Not even a dead leaf stirs before the
wind. There is no wind to stir it. But I think the pack will be coming
again very soon. They will not leave us until you shoot their demon
leader."
"You mean Tandakora's brother! If I get a fair chance I'll certainly
send my best arrow at him, and I'm only sorry that it's not Tandakora
himself. You persist in your belief that the soul of a wicked warrior is
in the body of the wolf?"
"Of course! As I have said, it is surely a brother of Tandakora, because
Tandakora himself is alive, and, as it cannot be his own, it must be
that of a monstrous one so much like his that it can be only a
brother's. That is why the wolf leader is so large, so fierce and so
cunning. I persist, too, in saying that all the wolves of this pack
contain the souls of wicked warriors. It is natural that they should
draw together and hunt together, and hunt men as they hunted them in
life."
"I'm not disputing you, Tayoga. Both day and night have more things than
I can ever hope to understand, but it seems to me that night has the
more. I've been listening so hard, Tayoga, that I can't tell now where
imagination ends and reality begins, but I think I hear a footfall, as
soft as that of a leaf dropping to the ground, but a footfall just the
same."
"I hear it too, Dagaeoga, and it is not the dropping of a leaf. It is a
wolf creeping forward, seeking to stalk us. He is on the right, and
there are others on both right and left. Now I know they are warriors,
or have been, since they use the arts of warriors rather than those of
wolves."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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