The Masters of the Peaks Part 18

"But how do you know that the bears we killed were just bears and bears only?"

"Because, if they had not been we would not have killed them."

Thus were the qualms of young Lennox quieted and he used his bearskin cap, gloves and cloak without further scruple. The snowshoes were completed and Tayoga announced that he would start early the next morning.

"I may be gone three or four days, Dagaeoga," he said, "but I will surely return. I shall avoid danger, and do you be careful also."

"Don't fear for me," said Robert. "I'm not likely to go farther than the brook, since there's no great sport in breaking your way through snow that comes to your waist, and which, moreover, is covered with a thick sheet of ice. Don't trouble your mind about me, Tayoga, I won't roam from home."

The Onondaga took his weapons, a supply of food, and departed, skimming over the snow with wonderful, flying strokes, while Robert settled down to lonely waiting. It was a hard duty, but he again found solace in work, and at intervals he contemplated the mouths of the bears' caves, now almost hidden by the snow. Tayoga's belief was strong upon him, for the time, and he concluded that the warriors who inhabited the bodies of the bears must be having some long and wonderful dreams. At least, they had plenty of time to dream in, and it was an extraordinary provision of nature that gave them such a tremendous sleep.

Tayoga returned in four days, and Robert, who had more than enough of being alone, welcomed him with hospitable words to a fire and a feast.

"I must first put away my spoils," said the Onondaga, his dark eyes glittering.

"Spoils! What spoils, Tayoga?"

"Powder and lead," he replied, taking a heavy bundle wrapped in deerskin from beneath his bearskin overcoat. "It weighs a full fifty pounds, and it made my return journey very wearisome. Catch it, Dagaeoga!"

Robert caught, and he saw that it was, in truth, powder and lead.

"Now, where did you get this?" he exclaimed. "You couldn't have gone to any settlement!"

"There is no settlement to go to. I made our enemies furnish the powder and lead we need so much, and that is surely the cheapest way.

Listen, Dagaeoga. I remembered that to the east of us, about two days'

journey, was a long valley sheltered well and warm, in which Indians who fight the Hodenosaunee often camp. I thought it likely they would be there in such a winter as this, and that I might take from them in the night the powder and lead we need so much.

"I was right. The savages were there, and with them a white man, a Frenchman, that Charles Langlade, called the Owl, from whom we fled.

They had an abundance of all things, and they were waxing fat, until they could take the war path in the spring. Then, Dagaeoga, I played the fox. At night, when they dreamed of no danger, I entered their biggest lodges, pa.s.sing as one of them, and came away with the powder and lead."

"It was a great feat, Tayoga, but are you sure none of them will trail you here?"

"The surface of the snow and ice melts a little in the noonday sun, enough to efface all trace of the snowshoes, and my trail is no more than that made by a bird in its flight through the air. Nor can we be followed here while we are guarded by the bears, who sleep, but who, nevertheless, are sentinels."

Tayoga took off his snowshoes, and sank upon a heap of furs in the cave, while Robert brought him food and inspected the great prize of ammunition he had brought. The package contained a dozen huge horns filled with powder, and many small bars of lead, the latter having made the weight which had proved such a severe trial to the Onondaga.

"Here's enough of both lead and powder to last us throughout the winter, whatever may happen," said Robert in a tone of intense satisfaction. "Tayoga, you're certainly a master freebooter. You couldn't have made a more useful capture."

Each, after the invariable custom of hunters and scouts, carried bullet molds, and they were soon at work, melting the lead and casting bullets for their rifles, then pouring the s.h.i.+ning pellets in a stream into their pouches. They continued at the task from day to day until all the lead was turned into bullets and then they began work on another pair of snowshoes, these intended for Robert.

Despite the safety and comfort of their home in the rock, both began to chafe now, and time grew tremendously long. They had done nearly everything they could do for themselves, and life had become so easy that there was leisure to think and be restless, because they were far away from great affairs.

"When my snowshoes are finished and I perfect myself in the use of them," said Robert, "I favor an attempt to escape on the ice and snow to the south. We grow rusty, you and I, here, Tayoga. The war may be decided in our absence and I want to see Dave, too. I want to hear him tell how he got through the savage cordon to the lake."

"Have no fear about the war, Dagaeoga," said the Onondaga. "It will not be ended this winter nor the next. Before there is peace between the French king and the British king you will have a chance to make many speeches. Yet, like you, I think we should go. It is not well for us to lie hidden in the ground through a whole winter."

"But when we leave our good home here I shall leave many regrets behind."

He looked around at the cave and its supplies of skins and furs, its stores of wood and food. Fortune had helped their own skill and they had made a marvelous change in the place. Its bleakness and bareness had disappeared. In the cold and bitter wilderness it offered more than comfort, it was luxury itself.

"So shall I," said Tayoga, appreciatively, "but we will heap rocks up to the very top of the door, so that only a little air and nothing else can enter, and leave it as it is. Some day we may want to use it again."

Having decided to go, they became very impatient, but they did not skimp the work on the snowshoes, knowing how much depended on their strength, but that task too, like all the others, came to an end in time. Robert practiced a while and they selected a day of departure.

They were to take with them all the powder and bullets, a large supply of food and their heavy bearskin overcoats. They had also made for themselves over-moccasins of fur and extra deerskin leggings. They would be bundled up greatly, but it was absolutely necessary in order to face the great cold, that hovered continuously around thirty to forty degrees below zero. The ear m.u.f.fs, the caps and the gloves, too, were necessities, but they had the comfort of believing that if the fierce winter presented great difficulties to them, it would also keep their savage enemies in their lodges.

"The line that shut us in in the autumn has thinned out and gone!"

exclaimed Robert in sanguine tones, "and we'll have a clear path from here to the lake!"

Then they rolled stones, as they had planned, before the door to their home, closing it wholly except a few square inches at the top, and ascended on their snowshoes to the crest of the ridge.

"Our cave will not be disturbed, at least not this winter," said Tayoga confidently. "The bears that sleep below are, as I told you, the silent sentinels, and they will guard it for us until we come again."

"At least, they brought us good luck," said Robert. Then, with long, gliding strokes they pa.s.sed over the ridge, and their happy valley was lost to sight. They did not speak again for hours, Tayoga leading the way, and each bending somewhat to his task, which was by no means a light one, owing to the weight they carried, and the extremely mountainous nature of the country. The wilderness was still and intensely cold. The deep snow was covered by a crust of ice, and, despite vigorous exertion and warm clothing, they were none too warm.

By noon Robert's ankle, not thoroughly hardened to the snowshoes, began to chafe, and they stopped to rest in a dense grove, where the searching north wind was turned aside from them. They were traveling by the sun for the south end of Lake George, but as they were in the vast plexus of mountains, where their speed could not be great, even under the best of conditions, they calculated that they would be many days and nights on the way.

They stayed fully an hour in the shelter of the trees, and an hour later came to a frozen lake over which the traveling was easy, but after they had pa.s.sed it they entered a land of close thickets, in which their progress was extremely slow. At night, the cold was very great, but, as they scooped out a deep hollow in the snow, though they attempted no fire, they were able to keep warm within their bearskins.

A second and a third day pa.s.sed in like fas.h.i.+on, and their progress to the south was unimpeded, though slow. They beheld no signs of human life save their own, but invariably in the night, and often in the day, they heard distant wolves howling.

On the fourth day the temperature rose rapidly and the surface of the snow softened, making their southward march much harder. Their snowshoes clogged so much and the strain upon their ankles grew so great that they decided to go into camp long before sunset, and give themselves a thorough rest. They also sc.r.a.ped away the snow and lighted a fire for the first time, no small task, as the snow was still very deep, and it required much hunting to find the fallen wood. But when the cheerful blaze came they felt repaid for all their trouble. They rejoiced in the glow for an hour or so, and then Tayoga decided that he would go on a short hunting trip along the course of a stream that they could see about a quarter of a mile below.

"It may be that I can rouse up a deer," he said. "They are likely to be in the shelter of the thick bushes along the water's edge, but whether I find them or not I will return shortly after sundown. Do you await me here, Dagaeoga."

"I won't stir. I'm too tired," said Robert.

The Onondaga put on his snowshoes again, and strapped to his back his share of the ammunition and supplies--it had been agreed by the two that neither should ever go anywhere without his half, lest they become separated. Then he departed on smooth, easy strokes, almost like one who skated, and was soon out of sight among the bushes at the edge of the stream. Robert settled back to the warmth and brightness of the fire, and awaited in peace the sound of a shot telling that Tayoga had found the deer.

He had been so weary, and the blaze was so soothing that he sank into a state, not sleep, but nevertheless full of dreams. He saw Willet again, and heard him tell the tale how he had reached the lake and the army with Garay's letter. He saw Colonel Johnson, and the young English officer, Grosvenor, and Colden and Wilton and Carson and all his old friends, and then he heard a crunch on the snow near him. Had Tayoga come back so soon and without his deer? He did not raise his drooping eyelids until he heard the crunch again, and then when he opened them he sprang suddenly to his feet, his heart beating fast with alarm.

A half dozen dark figures rushed upon him. He s.n.a.t.c.hed at his rifle and tried to meet the first of them with a bullet, but the range was too close. He nevertheless managed to get the muzzle in the air and pull the trigger. He remembered even in that terrible moment to do that much and Tayoga would hear the sharp, las.h.i.+ng report. Then the horde was upon him. Someone struck him a stunning blow on the side of the head with the flat of a tomahawk, and he fell unconscious.

When he returned to the world, the twilight had come, the hole in the snow had been enlarged very much, and so had the fire. Seated around it were a dozen Indians, wrapped in thick blankets and armed heavily, and one white man whose attire was a strange compound of savage and civilized. He wore a three-cornered French military hat with a great, drooping plume of green, an immense cloak of fine green cloth, lined with fur, but beneath it he was clothed in buckskin.

The man himself was as picturesque as his attire. He was young, his face was lean and bold, his nose hooked and fierce like that of a Roman leader, his skin, originally fair, now tanned almost to a mahogany color by exposure, his figure of medium height, but obviously very powerful. Robert saw at once that he was a Frenchman and he felt instinctively that it was Langlade. But his head was aching from the blow of the tomahawk, and he waited in a sort of apathy.

"So you've come back to earth," said the Frenchman, who had seen his eyes open--he spoke in good French, which Robert understood perfectly.

"I never had any intention of staying away," replied young Lennox.

The Frenchman laughed.

"At least you show a proper spirit," he said. "I commend you also for managing to fire your rifle, although the bullet hit none of us. It gave the alarm to your comrade and he got clean away. I can make a guess as to who you are."

"My name is Robert Lennox."

"I thought so, and your comrade was Tayoga, the Onondaga who is not unknown to us, a great young warrior, I admit freely. I am sorry we did not take him."

"I don't think you'll get a chance to lay hands on him. He'll be too clever for you."