The Spirit of the Border Page 27

  For the first time in many years he had failed. He took his defeat hard, because he had been successful for so long he thought himself almost infallible, and because the failure lost him the opportunity to kill his great foe. In his passion he cursed himself for being so weak as to let the prayer of a woman turn him from his life's purpose.

  With bowed head and slow, dragging steps he made his way westward. The land was strange to him, but he knew he was going toward familiar ground. For a time he walked quietly, all the time the fierce fever in his veins slowly abating. Calm he always was, except when that unnatural lust for Indians' blood overcame him.

  On the summit of a high ridge he looked around to ascertain his bearings. He was surprised to find he had traveled in a circle. A mile or so below him arose the great oak tree which he recognized as the landmark of Beautiful Spring. He found himself standing on the hill, under the very dead tree to which he had directed Girty's attention a few hours previous.

  With the idea that he would return to the spring to scalp the dead Indians, he went directly toward the big oak tree. Once out of the forest a wide plain lay between him and the wooded knoll which marked the glade of Beautiful Spring. He crossed this stretch of verdant meadow-land, and entered the copse.

  Suddenly he halted. His keen sense of the usual harmony of the forest, with its innumerable quiet sounds, had received a severe shock. He sank into the tall weeds and listened. Then he crawled a little farther. Doubt became certainty. A single note of an oriole warned him, and it needed not the quick notes of a catbird to tell him that near at hand, somewhere, was human life.

  Once more Wetzel became a tiger. The hot blood leaped from his heart, firing all his veins and nerves. But calmly noiseless, certain, cold, deadly as a snake he began the familiar crawling method of stalking his game.

  On, on under the briars and thickets, across the hollows full of yellow leaves, up over stony patches of ground to the fern-covered cliff overhanging the glade he glided—lithe, sinuous, a tiger in movement and in heart.

  He parted the long, graceful ferns and gazed with glittering eyes down into the beautiful glade.

  He saw not the shining spring nor the purple moss, nor the ghastly white bones—all that the buzzards had left of the dead—nor anything, save a solitary Indian standing erect in the glade.

  There, within range of his rifle, was his great Indian foe,

  Wingenund.

  Wetzel sank back into the ferns to still the furious exultations which almost consumed him during the moment when he marked his victim. He lay there breathing hard, gripping tightly his rifle, slowly mastering the passion that alone of all things might render his aim futile.

  For him it was the third great moment of his life, the last of three moments in which the Indian's life had belonged to him. Once before he had seen that dark, powerful face over the sights of his rifle, and he could not shoot because his one shot must be for another. Again had that lofty, haughty figure stood before him, calm, disdainful, arrogant, and he yielded to a woman's prayer.

  The Delaware's life was his to take, and he swore he would have it! He trembled in the ecstasy of his triumphant passion; his great muscles rippled and quivered, for the moment was entirely beyond his control. Then his passion calmed. Such power for vengeance had he that he could almost still the very beats of his heart to make sure and deadly his fatal aim. Slowly he raised himself; his eyes of cold fire glittered; slowly he raised the black rifle.

  Wingenund stood erect in his old, grand pose, with folded arms, but his eyes, instead of being fixed on the distant hills, were lowered to the ground.

  An Indian girl, cold as marble, lay at his feet. Her garments were wet, and clung to her slender form. Her sad face was frozen into an eternal rigidity.

  By her side was a newly dug grave.

  The bead on the front sight of the rifle had hardly covered the chief's dark face when Wetzel's eye took in these other details. He had been so absorbed in his purpose that he did not dream of the Delaware's reason for returning to the Beautiful Spring.

  Slowly Wetzel's forefinger stiffened; slowly he lowered the black rifle.

  Wingenund had returned to bury Whispering Winds.

  Wetzel's teethe clenched, an awful struggle tore his heart. Slowly the rifle rose, wavered and fell. It rose again, wavered and fell. Something terrible was wrong with him; something awful was awakening in his soul.

  Wingenund had not made a fool of him. The Delaware had led him a long chase, had given him the slip in the forest, not to boast of it, but to hurry back to give his daughter Christian burial.

  Wingenund was a Christian!

  Had he not been, once having cast his daughter from him, he would never have looked upon her face again.

  Wingenund was true to his race, but he was a Christian.

  Suddenly Wetzel's terrible temptation, his heart-racking struggle ceased. He lowered the long, black rifle. He took one last look at the chieftain's dark, powerful face.

  Then the Avenger fled like a shadow through the forest.

  Chapter XXX.

  It was late afternoon at Fort Henry. The ruddy sun had already sunk behind the wooded hill, and the long shadows of the trees lengthened on the green square in front of the fort.

  Colonel Zane stood in his doorway watching the river with eager eyes. A few minutes before a man had appeared on the bank of the island and hailed. The colonel had sent his brother Jonathan to learn what was wanted. The latter had already reached the other shore in his flatboat, and presently the little boat put out again with the stranger seated at the stern.

  "I thought, perhaps, it might be Wetzel," mused the colonel, "though

  I never knew of Lew's wanting a boat."

  Jonathan brought the man across the river, and up the winding path to where Colonel Zane was waiting.

  "Hello! It's young Christy!" exclaimed the colonel, jumping off the steps, and cordially extending his hand. "Glad to see you! Where's Williamson. How did you happen over here?"

  "Captain Williamson and his men will make the river eight or ten miles above," answered Christy. "I came across to inquire about the young people who left the Village of Peace. Was glad to learn from Jonathan they got out all right."

  "Yes, indeed, we're all glad. Come and sit down. Of course you'll stay over night. You look tired and worn. Well, no wonder, when you saw that Moravian massacre. You must tell me about it. I saw Sam Brady yesterday, and he spoke of seeing you over there. Sam told me a good deal. Ah! here's Jim now."

  The young missionary came out of the open door, and the two young men greeted each other warmly.

  "How is she?" asked Christy, when the first greetings had been exchanged.

  "Nell's just beginning to get over the shock. She'll be glad to see you."

  "Jonathan tells me you got married just before Girty came up with you at Beautiful Spring."

  "Yes; it is true. In fact, the whole wonderful story is true, yet I cannot believe as yet. You look thin and haggard. When we last met you were well."

  "That awful time pulled me down. I was an unwilling spectator of all that horrible massacre, and shall never get over it. I can still see the fiendish savages running about with the reeking scalps of their own people. I actually counted the bodies of forty-nine grown Christians and twenty-seven children. An hour after you left us the church was in ashes, and the next day I saw the burned bodies. Oh! the sickening horror of the scene! It haunts me! That monster Jim Girty killed fourteen Christians with his sledge-hammer."

  "Did you hear of his death?" asked Colonel Zane.

  "Yes, and a fitting end it was to the frontier 'Skull and

  Cross-bones'."

  "It was like Wetzel to think of such a vengeance."

  "Has Wetzel come in since?"

  "No. Jonathan says he went after Wingenund, and there's no telling when he'll return."

  "I hoped he would spare the Delaware."

  "Wetzel spare an Indian!"

  "But the chief was a
friend. He surely saved the girl."

  "I am sorry, too, because Wingenund was a fine Indian. But Wetzel is implacable."

  "Here's Nell, and Mrs. Clarke too. Come out, both of you," cried

  Jim.

  Nell appeared in the doorway with Colonel Zane's sister. The two girls came down the steps and greeted the young man. The bride's sweet face was white and thin, and there was a shadow in her eyes.

  "I am so glad you got safely away from—from there," said Christy, earnestly.

  "Tell me of Benny?" asked Nell, speaking softly.

  "Oh, yes, I forgot. Why, Benny is safe and well. He was the only Christian Indian to escape the Christian massacre. Heckewelder hid him until it was all over. He is going to have the lad educated."

  "Thank Heaven!" murmured Nell.

  "And the missionaries?" inquired Jim, earnestly.

  "Were all well when I left, except, of course, Young. He was dying. The others will remain out there, and try to get another hold, but I fear it's impossible."

  "It is impossible, not because the Indian does not want

  Christianity, but because such white men as the Girty's rule. The

  beautiful Village of Peace owes its ruin to the renegades," said

  Colonel Zane impressively.

  "Captain Williamson could have prevented the massacre," remarked

  Jim.

  "Possibly. It was a bad place for him, and I think he was wrong not to try," declared the colonel.

  "Hullo!" cried Jonathan Zane, getting up from the steps where he sat listening to the conversation.

  A familiar soft-moccasined footfall sounded on the path. All turned to see Wetzel come slowly toward them. His buckskin hunting costume was ragged and worn. He looked tired and weary, but the dark eyes were calm.

  It was the Wetzel whom they all loved.

  They greeted him warmly. Nell gave him her hands, and smiled up at him.

  "I'm so glad you've come home safe," she said.

  "Safe an' sound, lass, an' glad to find you well," answered the hunter, as he leaned on his long rifle, looking from Nell to Colonel Zane's sister. "Betty, I allus gave you first place among border lasses, but here's one as could run you most any kind of a race," he said, with the rare smile which so warmly lighted his dark, stern face.

  "Lew Wetzel making compliments! Well, of all things!" exclaimed the colonel's sister.

  Jonathan Zane stood closely scanning Wetzel's features. Colonel Zane, observing his brother's close scrutiny of the hunter, guessed the cause, and said:

  "Lew, tell us, did you see Wingenund over the sights of your rifle?"

  "Yes," answered the hunter simply.

  A chill seemed to strike the hearts of the listeners. That simple answer, coming from Wetzel, meant so much. Nell bowed her head sadly. Jim turned away biting his lip. Christy looked across the valley. Colonel Zane bent over and picked up some pebbles which he threw hard at the cabin wall. Jonathan Zane abruptly left the group, and went into the house.

  But the colonel's sister fixed her large, black eyes on Wetzel's face.

  "Well?" she asked, and her voice rang.

  Wetzel was silent for a moment. He met her eyes with that old, inscrutable smile in his own. A slight shade flitted across his face.

  "Betty, I missed him," he said, calmly, and, shouldering his long rifle, he strode away.

  * * *

  Nell and Jim walked along the bluff above the river. Twilight was deepening. The red glow in the west was slowly darkening behind the boldly defined hills.

  "So it's all settled, Jim, that we stay here," said Nell.

  "Yes, dear. Colonel Zane has offered me work, and a church besides. We are very fortunate, and should be contented. I am happy because you're my wife, and yet I am sad when I think of—him. Poor Joe!"

  "Don't you ever think we—we wronged him?" whispered Nell.

  "No, he wished it. I think he knew how he would end. No, we did not wrong him; we loved him."

  "Yes, I loved him—I loved you both," said Nell softly.

  "Then let us always think of him as he would have wished."

  "Think of him? Think of Joe? I shall never forget. In winter, spring and summer I shall remember him, but always most in autumn. For I shall see that beautiful glade with its gorgeous color and the dark, shaded spring where he lies asleep."

  * * *

  The years rolled by with their changing seasons; every autumn the golden flowers bloomed richly, and the colored leaves fell softly upon the amber moss in the glade of Beautiful Spring.

  The Indians camped there no more; they shunned the glade and called it the Haunted Spring. They said the spirit of a white dog ran there at night, and the Wind-of-Death mourned over the lonely spot.

  At long intervals an Indian chief of lofty frame and dark, powerful face stalked into the glade to stand for many moments silent and motionless.

  And sometimes at twilight when the red glow of the sun had faded to gray, a stalwart hunter slipped like a shadow out of the thicket, and leaned upon a long, black rifle while he gazed sadly into the dark spring, and listened to the sad murmur of the waterfall. The twilight deepened while he stood motionless. The leaves fell into the water with a soft splash, a whippoorwill caroled his melancholy song.

  From the gloom of the forest came a low sigh which swelled thrillingly upon the quiet air, and then died away like the wailing of the night wind.

  Quiet reigned once more over the dark, murky grave of the boy who gave his love and his life to the wilderness.

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