The Young Trailers: A Story of Early KentuckyAltsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
History
The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky
Altsheler, Joseph A. (Joseph Alexander)
Kentucky -- History -- To 1792 -- Juvenile fiction
He endured the keenest thrill of agony that life had yet held for him.
All his old life, the dear familiar ties surged up, and were hot upon
his brain. His place was there! with them! not here! He had yielded too
easily to the spell of the woods and the call of the old primeval
nature. He might have escaped long ago, there had been many
opportunities, but he could not see them. His blindness had been
willful, the child of his own desires. He knew it too well now. He saw
himself guilty and guilty he was.
But in that moment of agony and fear for his own he was paying the price
of his guilt. The sense of helplessness was crushing. In two hours the
war party would start and it would flit southward like the wind, as
silent but far more deadly. No, nothing could save the innocent people
at Wareville; they were as surely doomed as if their destruction had
already taken place.
But not one of these emotions, so tense and so deep, was written on the
face of him whom even the Shawnees did not know to be white. Not a
feature changed, the Indian stoicism and calm, the product alike of his
nature and cultivation, clung to him. His eyes were veiled and his
movements had their habitual gravity and dignity.
He walked with Black Cloud to the edge of the encampment, said farewell
to the Shawnees, and then, with a great surge of joy, his resolution
came to him. It was so sudden, so transforming that the whole world
changed at once. The blood-red tint, thrown by the sunken sun, was gone
from the forest, but instead the silver sickle of the moon was rising
and shed a radiant light of hope.
He said nothing until they had gone a mile or so and then, drawing Black
Cloud aside, spoke to him words full of firmness, but not without
feeling. He made no secret of his purpose, and he said that if Black
Cloud and the others sought to stay him with force with force he would
reply. He must go, and he would go at once.
Black Cloud was silent for a while, and Henry saw the faintest quiver in
his eyes. He knew that he held a certain place in the affections of the
chief, not the place that he might hold in the regard of a white man, it
was more limited and qualified, but it was there, nevertheless.
"I am the captive of the tribe I know," said Henry. "It has made me its
son, but my white blood is not changed and I must save my people. The
Shawnees march south to-night against them and I go to give warning. It
is better that I go in peace."
He spoke simply, but with dignity, and looked straight into the eyes of
the chief, where he saw that slight pathetic quiver come again.
"I cannot keep you now if you would go," said Black Cloud, "but it may
be when you are far away that the forest and we with whom you have lived
and hunted so many seasons will call to you again, in a voice to which
you must listen."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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