第67章 IN THE DARK LAND(1)

The fire was so cunningly laid that only on one side did it cast a glow, and there the light was absorbed by a dark thicket of laurels.It was built under an overhang of limestone so that the smoke in the moonlight would be lost against the grey face of the rock.But, though the moon was only two days past the full, there was no sign of it, for the rain had come and the world was muffled in it.That morning the Kentucky vales, as seen from the ridge where the camp lay, had been like a furnace with the gold and scarlet of autumn, and the air had been heavy with sweet October smells.Then the wind had suddenly shifted, the sky had grown leaden, and in a queer dank chill the advance-guard of winter had appeared--that winter which to men with hundreds of pathless miles between them and their homes was like a venture into an uncharted continent, One of the three hunters slipped from his buffalo robe and dived into the laurel thicket to replenish the fire from the stock of dry fuel.His figure revealed itself fitfully in the firelight, a tall slim man with a curious lightness of movement like a cat's.When he had done his work he snuggled down in his skins in the glow, and his two companions shifted their positions to be near him.The fire-tender was the leader of the little party The light showed a face very dark with weather.He had the appearance of wearing an untidy perruque, which was a tight-fitting skin-cap with the pelt hanging behind.Below its fringe straggled a selvedge of coarse black hair.But his eyes were blue and very bright, and his eyebrows and lashes were flaxen, and the contrast of light and dark had the effect of something peculiarly bold and masterful.Of the others one was clearly his brother, heavier in build, but with the same eyes and the same hard pointed chin and lean jaws.The third man was shorter and broader, and wore a newer hunting shirt than his fellows and a broad belt of wool and leather.

This last stretched his moccasins to the blaze and sent thin rings of smoke from his lips into the steam made by the falling rain.

He bitterly and compendiously cursed the weather.The little party had some reason for ill-temper.There had been an accident in the creek with the powder supply, and for the moment there were only two charges left in the whole outfit.Hitherto they had been living on ample supplies of meat, though they were on short rations of journey-cake, for their stock of meal was low.But that night they had supped poorly, for one of them had gone out to perch a turkey, since powder could not be wasted, and had not come back.

"I reckon we're the first as ever concluded to winter in Kaintuckee," he said between his puffs."Howard and Salling went in in June, I've heerd.

And Finley? What about Finley, Dan'l?"

He never stopped beyond the fall, though he was once near gripped by the snow.But there ain't no reason why winter should be worse on the O-hio than on the Yadkin.It's a good hunting time, and snow'll keep the redskins quiet.What's bad for us is wuss for them, says I....I won't worry about winter nor redskins, if old Jim Lovelle 'ud fetch up.It beats me whar the man has got to.""Wandered, maybe?" suggested the first speaker, whose name was Neely.

"I reckon not.Ye'd as soon wander a painter.There ain't no sech hunter as Jim ever came out of Virginny, no, nor out of Caroliny, neither.It was him that fust telled me of Kaintuck'.'The dark and bloody land, the Shawnees calls it,' he says, speakin' in his eddicated way, and dark and bloody it is, but that's man's doing and not the Almighty's.The land flows with milk and honey, he says, clear water and miles of clover and sweet grass, enough to feed all the herds of Basham, and mighty forests with trees that thick ye could cut a hole in their trunks and drive a waggon through, and sugar-maples and plums and cherries like you won't see in no set orchard, and black soil fair crying for crops.And the game, Jim says, wasn't to be told about without ye wanted to be called a liar--big black-nosed buffaloes that packed together so the whole placed seemed moving, and elk and deer and bar past counting....Wal, neighbours, ye've seen it with your own eyes and can jedge if Jim was a true prophet.I'm Moses, he used to say, chosen to lead the Children of Israel into a promised land, but I reckon I'll leave my old bones on some Pisgah-top on the borders.He was a sad man, Jim, and didn't look for much comfort this side Jordan....I wish I know'd whar he'd gotten to."Squire Boone, the speaker's brother, sniffed the air dolefully."It's weather that 'ud wander a good hunter.""I tell ye, ye couldn't wander Jim," said his brother fiercely."He come into Kaintuckee alone in '52, and that was two years before Finley.He was on the Ewslip all the winter of '58.He was allus springing out of a bush when ye didn't expect him.When we was fighting the Cherokees with Montgomery in '61 he turned up as guide to the Scotsmen, and I reckon if they'd attended to him there'ud be more of them alive this day.He was like a lone wolf, old Jim, and preferred to hunt by hisself, but you never knowed that he wouldn't come walking in and say 'Howdy' while you was reckoning you was the fust white man to make that trace.Wander Jim? Ye might as well speak of wandering a hakk.""Maybe the Indians have got his sculp," said Neely.