Nick of the Woods; Or, Adventures of Prairie Life. Robert Montgomery Bird
of the messenger. He took advantage of the first symptom of returning serenity on the part of his host, to acquaint him with his resolution to set out immediately, the rains having ceased, and the clouds broken up and almost vanished.
"Lord, captain," said the Kentuckian, "I hoped you would have been for taking a brush with us; and it war my idea to send a messenger after your party, in hopes your men would join us in the rusty. Whar will they have such another chance? A thousand Injuns ready cut and dried for killing! Lord, what a fool I war for not setting more store by that tale of Nathan Slaughter's! I never knowed the brute to lie in such a case; for, as he is always ramping about the woods, he's as good as a paid scout. Howsomever, the crittur did'nt speak on his own knowledge; and that infarnal Stackpole was just ripe from the North side. But, I say, captain, if your men will fight, just tote 'em back, stow away the women behind the logs here, and march your guns after me; and, if thar's half the number of red niggurs they speak of to be found, you shall see an affa'r of a skrimmage that will be good for your wholesome—you will, by the etarnal!"
"If the men are of that mind," said Roland, gallantly, "I am not the one to balk them. I will, at least, see whither their inclinations tend; and that the matter may the sooner be decided, I will set out without delay."
"And we who war to escort you, captain," said the Kentuckian, with some embarrassment: "you're a soldier, captain, and you see the case!"
"I do; I have no desire to weaken your force; and, I trust, no protection is needed."
"Not an iota; the road is as safe as the furrow of a Virginnee corn-field—at least till you strike the lower Forks; and thar I've heard of no rampaging since last summer: I'll indamnify you against all loss and mischief—I will, if it war on my salvation!"
"If you could but spare me a single guide," said Forrester.
"Whar's the use, captain? The road is as broad and el'ar as a turnpike in the Old Dominion; it leads you, chock up, right on the Upper Ford, whar thar's safe passage at any moment: but, I reckon, the rains will make it look a little wrathy a while, and so fetch your people to a stand-still. But it's a pot soon full and soon empty, and it will be low enough in the morning."
"The Upper Ford?" said Roland, his dream, for so he esteemed it, recurring to his mind: "is there then a Lower Ford?"
"Ay," replied Bruce; "but thar's no passing it in the freshes; and besides, the place has a bad name. It war thar old John Ashburn pitched his Station, in '78; but the savages made murdering work of him, taking every scalp in the company; and so it makes one sad-like to pass thar, and the more partickelarly that it's all natteral fine ground for an ambush. You'll see the road, when you're six mile deep in the forest, turning off to the right, under a shivered beech-tree. You are then four miles from the river, or tharabouts, and just that distance, I reckon, from your company. No, captain," he repeated, "the road is wide and open, and a guide war mere lumber on your hands."
This was a point, however, on which the young soldier, doubly solicitous on his kinswoman's account, to avoid mistake, was not so easily satisfied: seeing which, the Kentuckian yielded to his importunity—perhaps somewhat ashamed of suffering his guests to depart entirely alone—and began to cast about him for some suitable person who could be prevailed upon to exchange the privilege of fighting Indians for the inglorious duty of conducting wayfarers through the forest. This was no easy task, and it was not until he assumed his military authority, as commander of all the enrolled militia-men in his district, empowered to make such disposition of his forces as he thought fit, that he succeeded in compelling the service of one of his reluctant followers, under whose guidance Roland and his little party soon after set out. Their farewells were briefly said, the urgent nature of his duties leaving the hospitable Bruce little opportunity for superfluous speech. He followed them, however, to the bottom of the hill, grasped Roland by the hand; and doing the same thing by Edith, as if his conscience smote him for dismissing her with so little ceremony and such insufficient attendance, he swore that if any evil happened to her on the road, he would rest neither night nor day until he had repaired it, or lost his scalp in the effort.
With this characteristic and somewhat ominous farewell, he took his leave; and the cousins, with their guide and faithful servant, spurred onwards at a brisk pace, until the open fields of the settlement were exchanged for the deep and gloomy woodlands.
CHAPTER VII.
The sun shone out clearly and brilliantly, and the tree-tops, from which the winds had already shaken the rain, rustled freshly to the more moderate breezes that had succeeded them; and Roland, animated by the change, by the brisk pace at which he was riding, and by the hope of soon overtaking his fellow-exiles, met the joyous look of his kinswoman with a countenance no longer disturbed by care.
And yet there was a solemnity in the scene around them that might have called for other and more sombre feelings. The forest into which they had plunged, was of the grand and gloomy character which the fertility of the soil and the absence of the axe for a thousand years imprint on the western woodlands, especially in the vicinity of rivers. Oaks, elms, and walnuts, tulip-trees and beeches, with other monarchs of the wilderness, lifted their trunks like so many pillars, green with mosses and ivies, and swung their majestic arms, tufted with mistletoe, far over head, supporting a canopy—a series of domes and arches without end—that had for ages overshadowed the soil. Their roots, often concealed by a billowy undergrowth of shrubs and bushes, oftener by brakes of the gigantic and evergreen cane, forming fences as singular as they were, for the most part, impenetrable, were yet at times visible, where open glades stretched through the woods, broken only by buttressed trunks, and by the stems of colossal vines, hanging from the boughs like cables, or the arms of an oriental banyan; while their luxuriant tops rolled in union with the leafy roofs that supported them. The vague and shadowy prospects opened by these occasional glades stirred the imagination, and produced a feeling of solitude in the mind, greater perhaps than would have been felt had the view been continually bounded by a green wall of canes.
The road, if such it could be called, through this noble forest was, like that the emigrants had so long pursued through the wilderness, a mere path, designated, where the wood was open, by blazes, or axe-marks on the trees; and, where the undergrowth was dense, a narrow track cut through the canes and shrubs, scarce sufficient in many places to allow the passage of two horsemen abreast; though when, as was frequently the case, it followed the ancient routes of the bisons to fords and salt-licks, it presented, as Bruce had described, a wide and commodious highway, practicable even to wheeled carriages.
The gait of the little party over this road was at first rapid and cheery enough; but by and by, having penetrated deeper into the wood, where breezes and sunbeams were alike unknown, they found their progress impeded by a thousand pools and sloughs, the consequences of the storm, that stretched from brake to brake. These interruptions promised to make the evening journey longer than Roland had anticipated; but he caught, at intervals, the fresh foot-prints of his comrades in the soil where it was not exposed to the rains, and reflected with pleasure, that, travelling even at the slowest pace, he must reach the ford where he expected to find them encamped, long before dark. He felt, therefore, no uneasiness at the delay; nor did he think any of those obstacles to rapid progress a cause for regret that gave him the better opportunity to interchange ideas with his fair kinswoman.
His only concern arose from the conduct of his guide, a rough, dark-visaged man, who had betrayed, from the first moment of starting, a sullen countenance, indicative of his disinclination to the duty assigned him; which feeling evidently grew stronger the further he advanced, nowithstanding sundry efforts Forrester made to bring him to a better humour. He displayed no desire to enter into conversation with the soldier, replying to such questions as were directed at him with a brevity little short of rudeness; and his smothered exclamations of impatience, whenever his delicate followers slackened their pace at a bog or gully, which he had himself dashed through with a manly contempt of mud and mire, somewhat stirred the choler of the young captain.
They had, perhaps, followed him a distance