Edward Brabourne - Uncle Joe's Stories

"'Pale-face broder come now. "Moon-eye" show way.'

"I obeyed without hesitation, and prepared to go wherever she led, for in fact I had no alternative. It was very unlikely that the girl was alone in the forest, and if not, the eyes and ears of her friends might even at this moment be within sight and hearing, in which case my policy, as well as my inclination, would be to appear to be upon the best possible terms with her, and to approach them in her company and under her guidance. I felt somewhat weak when I attempted to walk, but as it was only weakness, I knew it would soon pass away, and so said nothing, but quietly followed my guide. She walked down to the little stream before mentioned, then turned along its bank and proceeded for several hundred yards until she came to a place where the water was so shallow as to enable us easily to wade over, which we did, and plunged into the woods on the other side. By this time, I thought I might as well try to get a little more conversation out of my friend, and therefore accosted her with some ordinary question, but she immediately turned round and, placing her finger on her lips, said, in a voice so low as to be little more than a whisper:

"'No talkee – enemy in woods. Moon-eye prisoner once. No want catchee again.'

"For the first time the truth now dawned upon me, and I understood the reason of the exceeding kindness bestowed upon me by the Indian damsel, which I had previously attributed either to her own natural humanity, or to admiration for my noble and prepossessing appearance. But, as I afterwards discovered,'Moon-eye' had been carried off from her tribe by a party of thieving Indians, who, in order to elude pursuit, had divided in their journey, ten of them being entrusted with the captive maiden. While passing through this part of the woods, they had struck my trail, and, seeing it to be recent, had left the prisoner bound, and hastily followed, intending to finish me off before they continued their journey. Fortunately for me it had turned out otherwise, but it might not have been fortunate for 'Moon-eye' had she not succeeded in freeing herself from the bonds in which she had been left. They must have been less carefully tied than most Indian fastenings that I have seen; but I fancy the girl had rather deceived her captors by pretending to go with them more willingly than was really the case, and perchance a desire to avoid injuring her in any way had induced the Indians to fasten her less tightly and securely than they might otherwise have done. Anyhow, she contrived to get loose, and also to find her way to the spot where I lay senseless, and where, as we have seen, she treated me with a care and tenderness which I little expected to encounter in the depth of the forest.

"Being admonished to silence I said no more, and we tramped on in silence, followed by the brave Jumbo. We had gone thus above a mile, when we heard a yell which proceeded from the direction of the place we had quitted. My companion stopped short, and turning to me, said, in a low voice:

"'More bad Indian. Him hear shot. Him come back and find him broder shot. Him follow soon now. If catchee Moon-eye and pale-face broder, him killee for sartain.'

"This being very much my own opinion, I asked the girl how far off her friends were, and as she now saw that something more than mere curiosity dictated the question, she replied at once:

"'Two – tree – twenty mile. Bad Indian catchee before get to camp.'

"On further inquiry I found that she thought there must have been full fifty of the robbers who had attacked the camp of her people when most of the warriors were absent – that they had captured several other prisoners besides herself – that they had divided into three parties, doubtless for the sake of greater safety in their flight, and that one of these parties had sundry horses laden with plunder, whilst the other party had the remaining captives. In all probability the shots fired during my combat with the ten Indians, who had been in charge of her, had been heard by one or both of these parties, and the cries we now heard proceeded from them. They would certainly follow upon our trail, and our chances of escape depended as much upon the numbers of our pursuers as upon any skill or strength of ours. For if thirty or forty warriors were behind us, not only would resistance be vain, but we should probably be surrounded before we had travelled far, whereas if only a few of the savages had returned, and made the discovery of the death of their friends, there was greater hope that we might elude them. Our only chance was to push on, and, having more than a mile start, we must make the best of it. Accordingly,'Moon-eye' advanced rapidly and cautiously, and I followed her, through the forest, and we must have gone quite another mile before we exchanged a word. By this time we had arrived at a sort of hill, upon which the trees grew less thickly than at other parts of the forest. At the foot of this hill the ground broke away to the right, the trees became still more scanty, and a wide chasm yawned at the distance of some twenty yards from where we stood, the descent into which was down a precipice many feet in height, whilst on the other side of the chasm the forest rose again, and grew on in unbroken continuity. To the left the trees were somewhat thicker, and some forty or fifty yards before us, as we bore to that side in ascending the hill, we perceived a building of some sort, towards which my companion directed her way. Making me a sign to remain where I was for a moment, she crept forward to reconnoitre, and presently returning, motioned me to follow her, whilst she made her way directly to the right, in the direction of the precipice, to the very edge of which she advanced. Thence we looked down into a frightful abyss, down which, if one had tumbled, one would have had no chance of escape. Bits of jagged rock projected here and there; vegetation seemed suspended for some distance down, and then the eye rested upon thick and tangled bushes jutting out from the sides of the rock, and completely concealing the bottom of the chasm, if, indeed, it had any bottom at all, for it might be endless as far as one could see from the top. Leaning carefully forward, my companion tore a branch or two from the bushes growing near the edge of the precipice, and gave the place the appearance of having been disturbed by the passage of some heavy body. She then took from my neck a handkerchief, which I had on by way of a neck-cloth, and which I did not in the least want to part with, but, of course, gave it up readily at her request; then she calmly dropped it over the side of the precipice, so that it hung upon one of the few bushes which grew a little way down the chasm. She then turned to me and said, in a low voice:

"'Bad Indian tink him fall down cliff – no follow any more;' and with these words noiselessly retraced her way, treading so carefully in her former footsteps as to make it appear as if there was only one trail, and that pointing towards the precipice.

"When we had arrived at the spot from which she had previously gone to reconnoitre, we slowly ascended by the same way she had travelled before, carefully covering up and hiding all trace of our footsteps until we had reached the building to which I have already alluded.

"It was apparently composed entirely of logs, and seemed as if it had been built for the lodge, or more likely a place of refuge, for some hunting party. The logs were roughly hewn, but skilfully laid together, forming a strong building, with only one entrance, and that by means of a door which had long since been broken down and destroyed. There were, however, two stories to the building, and as soon as we had entered the doorway, we found ourselves in a large room, some ten feet high at least, with a strong flooring of logs overhead. 'Moon-eye' rapidly made her way to one corner of this place, where stood some rude wooden steps, above which was an opening in the flooring above. These she ascended, motioning me to follow, and we presently crept through the opening into the upper room. This was lighted by two windows, one at each side, and had a stout roof overhead. There was no furniture whatever in it, but only a number of dried leaves, which seemed to have blown in at the windows from time to time, since the place had been deserted. 'Moon-eye' trod gently across the floor towards one of those windows, and on following her I found that it commanded a view in the direction from which we had come, but a view limited of course by the trees which grew within a short distance of the building. Turning to me, the girl now whispered in her own guttural accents: