第31章

CATHARINE MONTOUR

The five lay deep in the swamp, reunited once more, and full of content.The great storm in which Long Jim, with the aid of his comrades, had disappeared, was whirling off to the eastward.The lightning was flaring its last on the distant horizon, but the rain still pattered in the great woods.

It was a small hut, but the five could squeeze in it.They were dry, warm, and well armed, and they had no fear of the storm and the wilderness.The four after their imprisonment and privations were recovering their weight and color.Paul, who had suffered the most, had, on the other hand, made the quickest recovery, and their present situation, so fortunate in contrast with their threatened fate a few days before, made a great appeal to his imagination.The door was allowed to stand open six inches , and through the crevice he watched the rain pattering on the dark earth.He felt an immense sense of security and comfort.Paul was hopeful by nature and full of courage, but when he lay bound and alone in a hut in the Iroquois camp it seemed to him that no chance was left.The comrades had been kept separate, and he had supposed the others to be dead.But here he was snatched from the very pit of death, and all the others had been saved from a like fate.

"If I'd known that you were alive and uncaptured, Henry," he said, " I'd never have given up hope.It was a wonderful thing you did to start the chain that drew us all away.""It's no more than Sol or Tom or any of you would have done,"said Henry.

"We might have tried it," said Long Jim Hart, "but I ain't sure that we'd have done it.Likely ez not, ef it had been left to me my scalp would be dryin' somewhat in the breeze that fans a Mohawk village.Say, Sol, how wuz it that you talked Onondaga when you played the part uv that Onondaga runner.Didn't know you knowed that kind uv Injun lingo."Shif'less Sol drew himself up proudly, and then passed a thoughtful hand once or twice across his forehead.

"Jim," he said, "I've told you often that Paul an' me hez the instincts uv the eddicated.Learnin' always takes a mighty strong hold on me.Ef I'd had the chance, I might be a purfessor, or mebbe I'd be writin' poetry.I ain't told you about it, but when I wuz a young boy, afore I moved with the settlers, I wuz up in these parts an' I learned to talk Iroquois a heap.I never thought it would be the use to me it hez been now.Ain't it funny that sometimes when you put a thing away an'

it gits all covered with rust and mold, the time comes when that same forgot little thing is the most vallyble article in the world to you.""Weren't you scared, Sol," persisted Paul, "to face a man like Brant, an' pass yourself off as an Onondaga?""No, I wuzn't," replied the shiftless one thoughtfully, "I've been wuss scared over little things.I guess that when your life depends on jest a motion o' your hand or the turnin' o' a word, Natur' somehow comes to your help an' holds you up.I didn't get good an' skeered till it wuz all over, an' then I had one fit right after another.""I've been skeered fur a week without stoppin'," said Tom Ross;"jest beginnin' to git over it.I tell you, Henry, it wuz pow'ful lucky fur us you found them steppin' stones, an' this solid little place in the middle uv all that black mud.""Makes me think uv the time we spent the winter on that island in the lake," said Long Jim."That waz shorely a nice place an'

pow'ful comf'table we wuz thar.But we're a long way from it now.That island uv ours must be seven or eight hundred miles from here, an' I reckon it's nigh to fifteen hundred to New Orleans, whar we wuz once.""Shet up," said Tom Ross suddenly."Time fur all uv you to go to sleep, an' I'm goin' to watch.""I'll watch," said Henry.

"I'm the oldest, an' I'm goin' to have my way this time," said Tom.

"Needn't quarrel with me about it," said Shif'less Sol."A lazy man like me is always willin' to go to sleep.You kin hev my watch, Tom, every night fur the next five years."He ranged himself against the wall, and in three minutes was sound asleep.Henry and Paul found room in the line, and they, too, soon slept.Tom sat at the door, one of the captured rifles across his knees, and watched the forest and the swamp.He saw the last flare of the distant lightning, and he listened to the falling of the rain drops until they vanished with the vanishing wind, leaving the forest still and without noise.

Tom was several years older than any of the others, and, although powerful in action, be was singularly chary of speech.Henry was the leader, but somehow Tom looked upon himself as a watcher over the other four, a sort of elder brother.As the moon came out a little in the wake of the retreating clouds, he regarded them affectionately.

"One, two, three, four, five," he murmured to himself."We're all here, an' Henry come fur us.That is shorely the greatest boy the world hez ever seed.Them fellers Alexander an' Hannibal that Paul talks about couldn't hev been knee high to Henry.

Besides, ef them old Greeks an' Romans hed hed to fight Wyandots an' Shawnees an' Iroquois ez we've done, whar'd they hev been?"Tom Ross uttered a contemptuous little sniff, and on the edge of that sniff Alexander and Hannibal were wafted into oblivion.

Then he went outside and walked about the islet, appreciating for the tenth time what a wonderful little refuge it was.He was about to return to the hut when he saw a dozen dark blots along the high bough of a tree.He knew them.They were welcome blots.They were wild turkeys that had found what had seemed to be a secure roosting place in the swamp.

Tom knew that the meat of the little bear was nearly exhausted, and here was more food come to their hand."We're five pow'ful feeders, an' we'll need you," he murmured, looking up at the turkeys, " but you kin rest thar till nearly mornin'."He knew that the turkeys would not stir, and he went back to the hut to resume his watch.just before the first dawn he awoke Henry.