The Eyes of the Woods: A Story of the Ancient Wilderness. Altsheler Joseph Alexander
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our refuge here once, they’ll naturally look again for us in this place. If they catch us inside they’ll sit outside until they starve us to death.”
“Which means,” said Paul regretfully, “that we must leave our nice dry home.”
“So it does, but not, I think, before tomorrow morning, and we’ll use the hours meanwhile to good advantage. We must begin at once molding into bullets the lead that Sol and Tom brought.”
Every one of the five carried with him that necessary implement in the wilderness, a bullet mold, and they began the task immediately, all save Henry, who went outside, despite the fierce rain, and scouted a bit among the bushes and trees. The four made bullets fast, melting the lead in a ladle that Jim carried, pouring it into the molds, and then dropping the shining and deadly pellets one by one into their pouches. Three of them talked as they worked, but Silent Tom did not speak for a full hour. Then he said:
“We’ll have five hundred apiece.”
Shif’less Sol looked at him reprovingly.
“Tom,” he said, “I predicted a while ago that the time wuz soon comin’ when you’d talk us to death. You used five words then, when you know your ’lowance is only one an hour.”
Tom Ross flushed under his tan. He hated, above all things, to be garrulous. “Sorry,” he muttered, and continued his work with renewed energy and speed. The bullets seemed to drop in a shining stream from his mold into his pouch. But Shif’less Sol talked without ceasing, his pleasant chatter encouraging them, as music cheers troops for battle.
“It ain’t right fur me to hev to work this way,” he said, “me sich a lazy man. I ought to lay over thar on a blanket, an’ go to sleep while Jim does my share ez well ez his own.”
“When I’m doin’ your share, Sol Hyde,” said Long Jim, “you’ll be dead. Not till then will I ever tech a finger to your work. You are a lazy man, ez you say, an’ fur sev’ral years now I’ve been tryin’ to cure you uv it, but I ain’t made no progress that I kin see.”
“I don’t want you to make progress, Jim. I like to be lazy, an’ jest now I feel pow’ful fine, fed well, an’ layin’ here, wrapped in a blanket before a good warm fire.”
Henry went back to the cleft, and took another long look. The conditions had not changed, save that night was coming and the wilderness was chill and hostile. The wind blew with a steady shrieking sound, and the driving rain struck like sleet. Leaves fell before it, and in every depression of the earth the water stood in pools. Over this desolate scene the faint sun was sinking and the twilight, colder and more solemn than the day, was creeping. He looked at the wet forest and the coming dusk, and then back at the dry hollow and the warm fire behind him. The contrast was powerful, but only one choice was left to them.
“Boys,” he said, “we’ll have to make the most of tonight.”
“Because we must leave our home in the morning?” said Paul.
“Yes, that’s it. We’ll have to take to the woods, no matter how hard it is. Chance doesn’t favor us this time. I fancy the band led by Braxton Wyatt will make straight for our house here.”
“Since it’s the last dry bed I’ll have fur some time I’m goin’ to sleep,” said Shif’less Sol plaintively. “Everybody pesters a lazy man, an’ I mean to use the little time I hev.”
“You’ve a right to it, Sol,” said Henry, “because you’ve walked long and far, and you’ve brought what we needed most. The sooner you and Tom go to sleep the better. Paul, you join ’em and Jim and I will watch.”
The shiftless one and the silent one turned on their sides, rested their heads on their arms and in a minute or two were off to the land of slumber. Paul was slower, but in a quarter of an hour or so he followed them to the same happy region. Long Jim put out the fire, lest the gleam of the coals through the cleft should betray their presence to a creeping enemy—although neither he nor Henry expected any danger at present—and took his place beside his watchful comrade.
The two did not talk, but in the long hours of rain and darkness they guarded the entrance. Their eyes became so used to the dusk that they could see far, but they saw nothing alive save, late in the night, a lumbering black bear, driven abroad and in the storm by some restless spirit. Long Jim watched the ungainly form, as it shambled out of sight into a thicket.
“A bad conscience, I reckon,” he said. “That b’ar would be layin’ snug in his den ef he didn’t hev somethin’ on his mind. He’s ramblin’ ’roun’ in the rain an’ cold, cause’s he’s done a wrong deed, an’ can’t sleep fur thinkin’ uv it. Stole his pardner’s berries an’ roots, mebbe.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Jim,” Henry said, “and animals may have consciences. We human beings are so conceited that we think we alone feel the difference between right and wrong.”
“I know one thing, Henry, I know that b’ars an’ panthers wouldn’t leave thar own kind an’ fight ag’inst thar own race, as Braxton Wyatt an’ Blackstaffe do. That black b’ar we jest saw may feel sore an’ bad, but he ain’t goin’ to lead no expedition uv strange animals ag’inst the other black b’ars.”
“You’re right, Jim.”
“An’ fur that reason, Henry, I respeck a decent honest black b’ar, even ef he is mad at hisself fur some leetle mistake, an’ even ef he can’t read an’ write an’ don’t know a knife from a fork more than I do a renegade man who’s huntin’ the scalps uv them he ought to help.”
“Well spoken, Jim. Your sense of right and wrong is correct nearly always. Like you, I’ve a lot of respect for the black bear, and also for the deer and the buffalo and the panther and the other people of the woods. Do you think the rain is dying somewhat?”
“’Pears so to me. It may stop by day an’ give us a chance to leave without a soakin’.”
They relapsed again into a long silence, but they saw that their hope was coming true. The wind was sinking, its shriek shrinking to a whisper and then to a sigh. The rain ceased to beat so hard, coming by and by only in fitful showers, while rays of moonlight, faint at first, began to appear in the western sky. In another half hour the last shower came and passed, but the forest was still heavy with dripping waters. Henry, nevertheless, knew that it was time to go, and he awakened the sleepers.
“We must make up our packs,” he said.
The five worked with speed and skill. All the lead, newly brought, had been molded into bullets, and the powder, save that in their horns, was carried in bags. This, with the blankets and portions of food, constituted most of their packs. Some furs and skins they left to those who might come, and then they slipped from the warm hollow, which had furnished such a grateful shelter to them.
“It’s just as well,” said Henry, “that we should let ’em think we’re still in there. Then they may waste a day or two in approaching, so hide your footprints.”
The earth was soft from the rain, but the stony outcrop ran a long distance, and they walked on it cautiously so far as it went, after which they continued on the fallen trunks and brush, with which the forest had been littered by the winds of countless years. They were able, without once touching foot to ground, to reach a brook, into which they stepped, following its course at least two miles. When they emerged at last they sat down on stones and let the water run from their moccasins and leggings.
“I don’t like getting wet, this way,” said Henry, “but there was no choice. At least, we know we’ve come a great distance and have left no trail. There’ll be no chance to surprise us now. How long would you say it is till day, Sol?”
“’Bout two hours,” replied the shiftless one, “an’ I ’spose we might ez well stay here a while. We’re south o’ the hollow an’ Wyatt an’ his band are purty shore to come out o’ the north. The woods are mighty wet, but the day is goin’ to be without rain, an’ a good sun will dry things fast. What we want is to git a new home fur a day or two, in some deep thicket.”
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