The Lost Trail - Edward Sylvester Ellis (novels to read txt) 📗

and Miss Cora stands in the door this minute, 'xpacting this owld spalpaan?"

"No go till arternoon," said the savage.

"What time might it be jist now?"

"'Tain't noon yit--soon be--bimeby."

"It's all the same; I shan't be fit to go home afore night, whin I might bist stay away altogether. And you, Mr. Copperskin, was the maans of gittin' me in this trouble."

"_Me_ make you drink him?" asked the savage. "You not ax for jug, eh? You not want him?"

"Yes, begorrah, it was me own fault. Whisky is me waikness. Its illigant perfume always sits me wild fur it. Mister Harvey was belaving, whin he brought me here, that I wouldn't be drinking any of the vile stuff, for the good rais'n that I couldn't git none; but, what'll he say now? Niver was I drunker at Donnybrook, and only once, an' that was at me father's fourteenth weddin'."

"Don't want more?"

"NO!" thundered Teddy. "I hope I may niver see nor taste another drop so long as I live. I here asserts me ancient honor agin, an' I defy the jug, ye spalpeen of a barbarian what knows no better." Teddy's reassertion of dignity was very ludicrous, for a tree had to support him as he spoke; but he evidently was in earnest.

"Neber gib it--if don't want it."

"They say an Indian never will tell a lie to a friend," said Teddy, dropping his voice as if speaking to himself. "Do you ever lie, Mr. What's-your-name?"

"No," replied the savage, thereby uttering an unmitigated falsehood.

"You give me your promise, then, that ye'll niver furnish me anither drap?"

"Yis."

"Give me yer hand."

The two shook hands, Teddy's face, despite its vacant expression, lighting up for the time with a look of delight.

"Now I'll fish," said Teddy. "P'raps it is best that ye l'ave these parts; not that I intertains inmity or bad-will toward you, but thin ye know----hello! yees are gone already, bees you?"

The Indian had departed, and Teddy turned his attention toward securing the bait. In a few moments he had cast the line out in the stream and was sound asleep, in which condition he remained until night set in.


CHAPTER IV.

AN OMINOUS RENCOUNTER.

"I will work him
To an exploit now rich in my device,
Under the which he shall not choose but fall."

The sun passed the meridian, on that summer day in 1821 and Harvey Richter, the young missionary, came to the door of his cabin, intending to set forth upon his walk to the Indian village. It was rather early; the day was pleasant and as his wife followed him, he lingered awhile upon the steps, loth to leave a scene of such holy joy.

The year which the two had spent in that wilderness had been one of almost unalloyed happiness. The savages, among whom they had come to labor, had received them more kindly than they deemed it right to anticipate, and had certified their esteem for them in numberless ways. The missionary felt that a blessing was upon his labor.

An infant had been given them, and the little fellow brought nothing but gladness and sunlight into the household. Ah! none but a father can tell how precious the blue-eyed image of his mother was to Harvey Richter; none but a mother can realize the yearning affection with which she bent over the sleeping cherub; and but few can enter into the rollicking pride of Teddy over the little stranger. At times, his manifestations were fairly uproarious, and it became necessary to check them, or to send him further into the woods to relieve himself of his exuberant delight.

Harvey lingered upon the threshold, gazing dreamily away at the mildly-flowing river, or at the woods, through which for a considerable distance, he could trace the winding path which his own feet had worn. Cora, his wife, stood beside him, looking smilingly down in his face, while her left hand toyed with a stray ringlet that would protrude itself from beneath her husband's cap.

"Cora, are you sorry that we came into this wild country?"

The smile on her face grew more radiant, as she shook her head without speaking. She was in that pleasant, dreamy state, in which it seems an effort to speak--so much so that she avoided it until compelled to do so by some direct question.

"You are perfectly contented--happy, are you?"

Again the same smile, as she answered in the affirmative by an inclination of the head.

"You would not change it for a residence at home with your own people if you could?"

The same sweet denial in pantomime.

"Do you not become lonely sometimes, Cora, hundreds of miles away from the scenes of your childhood?"

"Have I not my husband and boy?" she asked, half reproachfully, as the tears welled up in her eyes. "Can I ask more?"

"I have feared sometimes, when I've been in the village, that perhaps you were lonely and sorrowful, and often I have hurried my footsteps that I might be with you a few moments sooner. When preaching and talking to the Indians, my thoughts would wander away to you and the dear little fellow there. And what husband could prevent them?" said Harvey, impulsively, as he drew his wife to him, and kissed her again and again.

"You must think of the labor before you."

"There is scarcely a moment of my life in which I don't, but it is impossible to keep you and him from my mind. I am sorry that I am compelled to leave you alone so often. It seems to me that Teddy has acted in a singular manner of late. He is absent every afternoon. He says he goes hunting and yet he rarely, if ever, brings anything back with him."

"Yesterday he returned shortly after you left, and acted so oddly, I did not know what to make of him. He appeared very anxious to keep me at a distance, but once he came close enough for me to catch his breath, and if it did not reveal the fumes of liquor then I was never more mistaken in my life."

"Impossible! where could he obtain it?"

"The question I asked myself and which I could not answer; nevertheless his manner and the evidence of his own breath proved it beyond all doubt to my mind. You have noticed how set he is every afternoon about going away in the woods. Such was not his custom, and I think makes it certain some unusual attraction calls him forth."

"What can it all mean?" asked the missionary of himself. "No; it cannot be that he brought any of the stuff with him and concealed it in the boat. It must have been discovered."

"Every article that came with us is in this house."

"Then some one must furnish him with it, and who now can it be?"

"Are there not some of your people who are addicted to the use of liquor?"

"Alas! there are too many who cannot withstand the tempter; but I never yet heard of an Indian who knew how to _make_ it. It is only when they visit some of the ports, or the Red river settlement, that they obtain it. Or perhaps a trader may come this way, and bring it with him."

"And could not Teddy have obtained his of such a man?"

"There has been none here since last autumn, and then those who visited the village had no liquor with them. They always come to the village first so that I could not avoid learning of their presence. Let me see, he has been away since morning?"

"Yes; he promised an early return."

"He will probably make his appearance in the course of an hour or so. Watch him closely. I will be back sooner to-day, and we shall probe this matter to the bottom. Good-by!"

Again he embraced his wife, and then strode rapidly across the Clearing in the direction of the woods. His wife watched his form winding in and out among the trees, until it finally disappeared from view; and then, waiting a few moments longer, as if loth to withdraw her gaze from the spot where she had last seen him, she finally turned within the house to engage in her domestic duties.

The thrifty housewife has seldom an idle moment on her hands, and Cora passed hither and thither, performing the numerous little acts that were not much in themselves, but collectively were necessary, if not indispensable, in her household management. Occasionally she paused and bent over her child, that lay sleeping on the bed, and like a fond mother, could not restrain herself from softly touching her lips to its own, although it was at the imminent risk of awaking it.

An hour passed. She went to the door and looked out to see whether Teddy was in sight; but the woods were as silent as if they contained no living thing. Far away over the river, nearly opposite the Indian village, she saw two canoes crossing the stream, resembling ordinary-sized water-birds in the distance. These, so in harmony with the lazy, sunshiny afternoon, were all that gave evidence that man had ever invaded this solitude.

Cora Richter could but be cheerful, and, as she moved to and fro, she sung a hymn, one that was always her husband's favorite. She sung it unconsciously, from her very blithesomeness of spirits, not knowing she was making music which the birds themselves might have envied.

All at once her ear caught the sound of a footstep, and confident that Teddy had come, she turned her face toward the door to greet him. She uttered a slight scream, as she saw, instead of the honest Hibernian, the form of a towering, painted savage, glaring in upon her.

Ordinarily such a visitor would have occasioned her no surprise or alarm. In fact, it was rare that a day passed without some Indian visiting the cabin--either to consult with the missionary himself, or merely to rest a few moments. Sometimes several called together, and it often happened that they came while none but the wife was at home. They were always treated kindly, and were respectful and pleased in turn. During the nights in winter, when the storm howled through the forest, a light burned at the missionary's window, and many a savage, who belonged often to a distant tribe, had knocked at the door and secured shelter until morning. Ordinarily we say, then, the visit of an Indian gave the young wife no alarm.

But there was something in the appearance of this painted sinewy savage that filled her with dread. There was a treacherous look in his black eyes, and a sinister expression visible in spite of vermilion and ocher, that made her shrink from him, as she would have shrunk from some loathsome monster.

As the reader may have surmised, he was no other than Daffodil or Mahogany, who had left Teddy on purpose to visit the cabin, while both the servant and his master were absent. In spite of the precaution used, he had taken more liquor than he intended; and, as a consequence, was just in that reckless state of mind, when he would have hesitated at no deed, however heinous. From a jovial, good-natured Indian, in the company of the Hibernian, he was transformed into a sullen, vindictive savage in the presence