Читать книгу Tomahawk Rights - Hal G. Evarts - Страница 7

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Buckner glanced about the men who were roasting bits of venison over the coals of the morning cook fires. A wild-looking lot, these few men that made up Buckner's Rangers. There were no more than a dozen in camp, the others being out in various directions scouting for Indian sign. It was seldom that the rangers bivouacked twice in the same spot. The very nature of their work demanded constant shifting and a wide range of movement. Never numbering more than twenty men, Buckner's rangers nevertheless had proved a terrible scourge to marauding parties of savages that penetrated east of the Ohio to prey among the scattered settlers. There was no question of commissary and supply, of bedding, shelters and other cumbersome equipment to be transported when these men campaigned. They moved about with the freedom of wolves, were scarcely less wild and fierce, in fact, and rationed themselves as they traveled. Any man among them was capable of living indefinitely off the country.

All of them had lived among the Indians during peace times and had fought against them in many a bloody affray during war times. Some had hunted Indians for the Pennsylvania bounty as trappers might hunt for wolves. They thought no more of lifting a redskin's scalp than of stripping the pelt from a mink.

Two men came swinging through the timber toward the camp. Two brothers, Thomas and Archibald Herne, reported that a small war party of about twenty-five savages had crossed the Ohio ten miles south during the night and had headed eastward. Within five minutes of their arrival, the woodsmen had broken camp and were traveling south.

A few minutes later, Gilpin and another ranger reached the deserted camp from the north, where they had been scouting during the night. Gilpin inspected a crude drawing hastily sketched with charcoal on a slab of hickory bark.

"They head south for ten miles along the river, then turn east on a trail," he said. "How long have they been gone?"

The other woodsman, inspecting the deserted camp while Gilpin deciphered the map, pointed to a piece of half-cooked meat discarded near the smoking embers. Flies swarmed round it but there was only one cluster of blow-eggs upon it.

"Not more'n fifteen minutes," he said. "That meat was too sizzlin' hot for them flies to blow it first off," and he pointed to several creeping, disabled blow flies whose temerity in attempting to lay their eggs upon too hot meat had been their undoing. "But it don't take but a mighty short space for meat to cool, and ten minutes after it's cool it would be plastered with fly-blows entire."

Lacking that indisputable evidence as to the recency of the rangers' departure, he would have found other signs revealing what he wished to know.

"Then we'll head straight down river and overhaul them, 'stid of angling southeast to cut off," Gilpin said, and the other man nodded. An hour later they overtook the main body.

Before starting east on the trail of the marauding party of Hurons, hunting shirts and fur caps were cached and each man stood forth garbed only in moccasins, leather leggings and breechclout. From the paints that were an indispensable part of every warrior's equipment, each one daubed face and torso according to his individual fancy. But the war plumes which each attached to his scalp lock were the same, two feathers for each, one pure white, the other bright scarlet. And each man made some sort of white mark between his shoulder blades and another on his chest. With these means of identification, such cool and experienced fighters as these woodsmen would never be guilty of shooting a friend in the course of any forest engagement when both friends and foes were scattered and treed.

It was almost certain that the war party would post scouts in the rear to report if militia had cut the trail and were following. The two Herne brothers ranged far out to either flank and then moved some three hundred yards ahead before the main body started. Two others followed them at half that distance. Then Buckner and Gilpin took the trail, the others following at a distance of over a hundred yards in the rear. An Indian scout, posted to guard the back track of the war party, would be puzzled at the approach of the two savages on the trail. Even though suspicious, he could not be certain that they were not two allies following along to join the marauders. And any such hesitancy would cause his downfall when dealing with such men as these.

Buckner held to the trail without difficulty, though it would have been invisible to untrained eyes. A few scuffed leaves here, broken moss there, bent blades of grass and other such minor disturbances were sufficient. When the sun was five hours high the trail no longer passed through open glades but veered aside to skirt all such openings.

"Five hours behind 'em," Gilpin commented. "It had growed light when they got this far and they quit showing themselves in the openings and circled round through the timber. We'll be running up on a scout any time now."

Buckner nodded.

"There's one man with them that's neither savage nor woodsman," he said. "He puts his weight first on his heels, heavy, each step, after the fashion of the whites, while as you know, both savages and woodsmen step first on the ball of the foot and the heel track is lightest."

"So I'd observed," said Gilpin. "The man must jar his own frame to the teeth every step, landing heel-first as solid as he apparently does. What's a man who's no woodsman doing in moccasins on a redskin raid of this kind? A Britisher that aims to be dropped behind over here as a spy, think you?"

"I've been wondering. If he's disguised as an American settler, yes. If he's wearing his uniform, no. The latter would mean no more than that some ambitious soldier was eager to learn more of the ways of Indian campaigning."

The trail led along the crest of a low timbered ridge. The two scouts came presently to where the savages had broken their single-file formation to cluster at one spot, which was marked by a giant sycamore, its top shattered by lightning, that stood on the highest point of the ridge. The signs indicated that the war party had remained there for a considerable period, some of them sitting down, others sprawled flat on the ground.

Buckner lifted his voice in the single loud note of a crow as a signal for both the main body of rangers and the outflanking scouts to stand fast where they were. Then he circled the spot and picked up the trail of a single man who had ascended the slope of the ridge to join the war party at the sycamore. He followed the back track of the man and it led him down the ridge and out into a timbered flat. After following it for some three hundred yards, he came out into a bottom that had been overflowed by a creek. The land had now dried out on top and the tracks were clearly discernible.

An outflanking scout of a war party would be expected to keep track of the whereabouts of the main body and rejoin it while on the march. Yet the war party had made a lengthy halt at that giant sycamore on the ridge. Plainly, it had been a prearranged rendezvous. Settlers with Tory leanings sometimes gave aid and information to the enemy. This affair might prove to be such a case. Carefully, Buckner inspected each track.

"One foot of a white, one foot of a savage—or a woodsman," Buckner said.

The print of the right foot indicated that the man put his weight first upon the heel of it, though but slightly. With the left, he stepped not only with the weight on the ball and toes but the heel seemed scarcely to touch the earth at all, even where the ground was soft and the toes bit deep.

"Likely he has a bruise, or a thorn in his left heel, and so favors it," Buckner mused. "In which case, even a savage would land flat or heel-first with his right to take the weight off all but the toes of his left."

There was nothing further to be learned from the tracks so he rejoined Gilpin, then uttered the notes of the crow, twice in swift succession, an interval of three seconds, then two more swift crow calls as a signal for all hands to resume march.

Not until the sun had passed the noon mark by some two hours did Buckner see anything to cause another halt. Then he stooped as if to tie a moccasin lace, accompanying the movement with a low cluck. Gilpin promptly seated himself on a down log, at which signal every man of those a hundred yards in rear took instantly to cover.

"Which way is the varmint?" Gilpin queried.

"Behind a big oak a hundred yards to the right and ahead," Buckner informed without even glancing in that direction. "I saw only a slice of his face the width of two fingers. He's not sure about us and will draw off, keeping the tree in line with us."

Buckner raised his voice in the single piercing scream of a hawk. That note, less frequently heard than most other bird conversation in the forest, and hence less apt to be confusing, was the invariable signal among Buckner's Rangers to denote the sighting of an enemy. The outflanking scouts would not only halt but would take cover at once and keep an eye peeled for the enemy. The savage, too, would know it for a signal, since it rose from where the two men sat on the log, but he would be mystified as to its meaning. To the day of his death, Buckner seldom heard the scream of a wheeling hawk without an instinctive start to take cover and peer about for an enemy. This system of travel and signalling worked out by the rangers when on the track of a war party seldom failed to account for such scouts as the savages had left to watch on the trail.

After the space of a minute, Buckner and Gilpin rose and sauntered toward the tree that had sheltered the savage. They separated, each keeping a tree in line with the spot for protection, each alert for the slightest movement of a musket barrel from behind any cover ahead. Seeing this movement, no savage scout would doubt for an instant but that he had been discovered and was being stalked. He would draw off, taking advantage of all cover and keeping a watchful eye upon the enemies in the rear. While thus engaged, it was almost inevitable that he would draw within range of one or another of the four scouts that traveled ahead and out in the flanks of the party. Presently a heavy report roared through the forest, accompanied by an unearthly screech. Buckner advanced to where Tom Herne was divesting a prostrate warrior of his scalp.

"Huron," Herne said. "He was sliding along, looking back to see if you was following him, and he never knowed what hit him."

Then the formation was resumed and they continued on the trail. The sun was but two hours above the western horizon when another Huron scout was bagged in like fashion. On this occasion it was Arch Herne that lifted the scalp of the hostile. Toward sundown the trail turned off up a lofty wooded ridge and the rangers called a halt for a conference.

"Thar's nothing but ridges that way for another twelve mile," volunteered a man who knew that section intimately. "Then thar's Pape's Valley—three cabins full of Papes and their kinfolks built close in a triangle. That's whar they're headed."

"Then they won't strike until morning," Buckner said. "They'll wait over; and if we follow too close we'll run up on their scouts. Better to rest up ourselves and then you can lead us well out around them."

This plan was adopted. Two hours before dawn the little force of rangers drew near Pape's farm from an oblique angle and waited in silence a half mile from the cabins. It was certain that, cover being equal, the savages would creep up from the down-wind side on account of the dogs of the settlers. An hour passed, then another long span of minutes. It was beginning to show faintly gray in the east. Then a dog gave vent to an angry bark that subsided into a growl. Several other canines chimed in. It was evident that the dogs, even though unable to scent the approaching savages, had heard or sensed something to rouse them.

"They're drawin' in," Gilpin whispered.

Buckner rose and the rest followed suit. The rangers separated and glided noiselessly through the black shadows of the forest to come upon the rear of the savages. Only a slight lessening of that velvet black apprised Buckner of the fact that he was within twenty yards of the edge of the clearing. A noiseless shape moved ahead of him and disappeared. He knew that a Huron had stationed himself behind a tree at the edge of the forest. He moved silently forward to another tree. His keen ears detected an occasional rustle—no more. Not once was there so much as a metallic click of arms or equipment, yet he knew that there were around forty armed men within a few yards of him. The black pall lifted gradually until the dark bundle of cabins and the few trees left standing near them began to loom in the clearing. The dogs had quieted somewhat but gave vent to occasional uneasy growls.

Both rangers and savages knew that the occupants of those dark cabins were alert, eyes glued to loopholes, hoping that the dogs had been roused by the passing of bear or panther and not by the stealthy approach of hostile marauders. Buckner could now discern the back of the Huron brave who peered from a tree fifteen feet ahead. A few feet to the right of the first, another warrior was stationed. The ranger chief peered closely and could discern no white mark upon the back of either brave. Besides, a ranger would not have stationed himself behind the outermost tree at the edge of the forest, but rather farther to the rear to take the attacking party from behind. He knew that by now every ranger had been stationed for a space of minutes, most of them, no doubt, having singled out a Huron apiece. They waited now only for his signal. The dogs again began their angry barking and one made a snarling rush toward the timber but whirled and retreated, growling deep in his throat. That would mean that some few of the Indians were creeping, snakelike, through the potato patch and behind woodpiles and various other covers, to be in readiness to shoot down the first persons who would emerge from the cabins and to rush the first door that was opened.

Dawn was spreading more swiftly now. Buckner stepped from behind his tree and moved in leisurely fashion toward the savage immediately ahead. The warrior whirled at the first sound but saw only a fellow brave in the vague half-light. He turned again to peer from behind his tree. Buckner swung his tomahawk and the Huron went down without a struggle.

Even before Buckner could raise his voice in the prearranged signal for the rangers to strike, some nervous occupant of one of the cabins fired at a movement outside. On the instant, the edge of the forest resounded with the war whoop of the Hurons. Eight or ten dark figures leaped up out in the clearing and charged the cabins. As the Hurons, their every faculty riveted on the scene before them, leaped from behind their trees to charge to the aid of their fellows, the rangers struck from behind. Many a brave's skull was split before he knew that an enemy was near him. Other rangers, who had not yet stalked to within tomahawking distance of their prey, shot warriors down from behind.

The red splashes from the dark bulk of the cabins revealed the loopholes from which the occupants fired upon their assailants. Savages, their lives made up of surprise and counter surprise, never remained at a disadvantage for long. A dying Huron raised the alarm halloo from the edge of the forest. On the instant, every brave in the clearing knew that the commotion of ten seconds past had not been occasioned by the advance of the main party of Hurons to help them but by a surprise attack launched against them from the rear.

They scattered for cover, flitting figures in the dim light of dawn. A voice roared out an order in the Huron tongue. It struck a familiar chord in Buckner, and the picture of Benoit's brutal face rose for a brief flash in his consciousness.

The settlers, amazed at the sudden cessation of the turmoil outside, and peering down the barrels of their muskets for another glimpse of their recent assailants, presently witnessed a strange and incredible scene. A party of painted savages prowled all along the edge of the forest, occupied with wrenching the scalps from prostrate members of their own race. For a full minute, old man Pape stared silently at this weird performance, while from behind him sounded the breathing of terrified children. Then he straightened his tall form with a sigh of relief.

"God be praised," he gave fervent thanks. "Buckner's Rangers. Can't nothing else account for what's going on out thar. It must be Buckner's men."

Arch Herne advanced from the timber with a prisoner, his hands pinioned behind him.

"This here's likely the one as walked on his heels," he said. "I tapped him on the head, like, and tied him."

The captive, attired in the garb of the British Rangers, save for his moccasin-shod feet, wore the insignia of captain. There was something vaguely familiar about the man but Buckner could not quite place where he had seen him before. A red scar showed on the bridge of his nose and strayed across his forehead. And suddenly Buckner knew that the face was the same that he had looked upon for one second before a hasty back-hand stroke of his tomahawk had felled the Britisher during the fight at Donaldson's farm a year in the past.

Captain Kemper, the prisoner, bore his captivity with a stoical indifference akin to that which might have characterized one of his red associates. Upon reaching the Ohio, Buckner found his presence a hindrance to the free movements of the rangers. However, there was no near-by frontier fort where the captive could be delivered into the hands of the proper authorities. The Britisher, having been taken in uniform, was eligible for exchange or parole; and Buckner, as a matter of expediency, decided to take his parole on the spot.

"Will he live up to it?" Gilpin queried doubtfully.

"He is a British officer and a gentleman," Buckner said. "An officer who violates his oath loses his honor and ceases to be a man."

That was the code of gentlemen of his day. Virginians, in particular, were extremely thin-skinned on the score of their honor. Any remark, if construed as a reflection upon one's word, courage or propriety of conduct, was more apt than not to result in a meeting at dawn. And in the case of Rod Buckner, his early training having been in the hands of fiercely proud Shawnee braves, this fire-eating code of the Virginians had fallen upon fruitful soil. Both on the British side and the colonial, there were many former officers who had taken the oath of parole. Chafe against inactivity they did, violate their word of honor they would not. Captain Kemper gladly availed himself of the privilege of parole. Buckner himself returned the officer's arms and paddled him across the Ohio.

Perhaps two weeks thereafter, some forty Pennsylvania militiamen, lounging round bivouac fires, were startled by the sharp challenge of one of their sentries from out in the night. The sentry admitted two buckskin-clad figures when the challenged parties announced themselves as Tom Herne and Buckner. They presented themselves before Captain Donner, the officer commanding the detachment. Donner was an arrogant soul of small military experience and unused to Indian campaigning, commissioned for his services in recruiting men from among the yeomen settlements of Pennsylvania. His new authority rested uneasily upon him and, extremely jealous of it, he was inclined to pattern his manner after that of the British martinets.

"Captain Donner," Buckner said. "You are camped on the trail of the little war party that sacked Martin's cabin yesterday. Do you intend to follow it?"

"I do," Donner stated.

"They have crossed the Ohio by now and I wouldn't follow them beyond it," Buckner counselled.

"And why?" Donner inquired stiffly.

"There are but ten savages in that party," Buckner said. "And when ten savages, returning from a raid, leave a trail that any but an experienced tracker can unravel, it means but one thing—that they want to be followed."

"Then their wish will be granted," Captain Donner declared.

"The country beyond the Ohio is swarming with warriors hoping that a detachment of troops will follow the trail of some returning war party," Buckner persisted. "It is a regular part of their strategy. Their scouts will watch your every move and decoy you into an ambush."

"Yet I hear that Buckner's Rangers cross to the Indian country frequently," Captain Donner declared surlily. "Where you can go with twenty men, I can go with forty."

"Thar warn't but ten reds, yet they made a squaw march of their retreat that left a trail like a hull redskin town had gone visiting," Tom Herne cut in. "It appears to me like a nice inviting highway to hell, and if I was in your boots I'd never set foot on it across the Ohio."

"One might think," Donner said harshly, "that you men were commanding this detachment, not myself."

"As scouts, we report conditions as we find them," Buckner returned, his own manner stiffening.

"Then if you will confine yourself to reporting and dispense with your assumption of authority," Donner snapped, "I will proceed to act upon my own judgment as to the best course to follow."

"Very well," Buckner returned, controlling his own mounting temper. "We were merely telling you what any border scout would tell you if there was one attached to your outfit."

He turned on his heel to leave but was deterred as a man lounged from among the militiamen at another fire and came forward.

"Who says there's no scout?" he demanded. "Who knows more of savages and their ways than René Benoit?"

Buckner had heard that Benoit, in common with many French woodsmen, was fighting on the side of the colonists. He had discarded that fleeting impression that the man dislodged from behind the tree by his first shot at Donaldson's farm had been Benoit. Reason told him that his dislike of the man was occasioned merely by that childhood aversion that cropped up out of the past. Nevertheless, some animal sense of wariness rose from the depths to caution Buckner to rely upon his feelings rather than to depend upon reason. Woodsmen, in common with savages and the wild things, were quick to heed such obscure warnings, even when unsupported by reason. Buckner could not rid himself of a wary distrust of the man.

"You're a woodsman, Benoit," he said. "None better. What is your own verdict as to crossing into the Indian country with so small a detachment on a trail obviously left to be followed?"

"No harm in crossing, is there?" Benoit demanded, "long as I keep 'em from stumbling into a trap once we are on the far side?"

"No," Buckner conceded.

Benoit turned and walked back to his fire. Buckner's eyes met those of Herne in a quick exchange of discovery. The man, almost imperceptibly, favored his left foot in his stride. This defect did not rise from some temporary bruise or thorn wound, as Buckner had interpreted the tracks of the lone man who had met the Hurons at the rendezvous by the giant sycamore on the ridge. It was some sort of permanent injury, as evidenced by the slack, unfilled heel of Benoit's left moccasin. The whole picture was cleared on the instant for Buckner. Benoit, while attached as a scout with various bodies of colonial militia, was giving aid to the enemy, conveying information to war parties and guiding them upon unprotected settlements while supposed to be out on lone scouts of his own. Buckner had not been mistaken in the identity of the man dislodged from behind the tree trunk at the first shot at Donaldson's farm. Neither had his senses misled him by flashing a picture of Benoit into his consciousness at the sound of that roaring voice in the dim light of dawn at Pape's clearing. That instinctive aversion had been right where reason had been at fault.

Swiftly, he acquainted Captain Donner with his conclusions. That pompous person, however, was completely unversed in sign reading. All that was of vital significance to a woodsman seemed but far-fetched nonsense to him, and he had no hesitation in declaring it so.

"Worse than absurd!" he scornfully snorted. "Suspecting a man because of a few moccasin tracks a half-hundred miles from here weeks ago."

"A woodsman's life depends every hour on not misreading the least signs in the forest about him," Buckner said. "The wiliest redskin alive cannot cross through a hundred miles of wilderness and break his trail—strive though he may to conceal it—but what another savage or a woodsman can track him the length of it. He can leave so little sign that his tracker falls days behind him, perhaps, but lose him entirely, he cannot. Such obscure things mean to us what the printed page means to you, and are as easily interpreted. When we warn you that Benoit is a good man to watch, it is to your advantage to heed us."

He strode off into the forest with Herne and the night gave back no sound of their movements.

"Them yokels is unlarned in fighting and not one amongst 'em could distinguish between Injun sign and b'ar tracks, least of all that thick-haid who leads them," Herne said after a space. "They hail from settlements whar a musket shot ain't been heered, or a war whoop, in going on twenty year. They're stolid and subsarvient, more like European sojers, who from the cradle up ain't knowed nothing else but to obey what was told them. If Benoit leads them across the Ohio, it's for the parpose of betraying them into the hands of the savages—and they'll plod along like sheep wherever that fool Donner orders. If they was frontier settlers they'd see him in hell first."

Within the week, news reached the settlements that Donner's detachment had been cut to pieces in the wilderness across the Ohio and that only Donner and five men had made their way back. Benoit, so it was said, traveling well in advance of the outfit, had been shot down at the first fire of the savages.