Читать книгу The Wolf Queen; or, The Giant Hermit of the Scioto - T. C. Harbaugh - Страница 3

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The sun was sinking, a great fiery ball, in the leaden west, at the close of an autumn day, in the year 1804, when a solitary canoe descended the Scioto, then vastly swollen by recent rains.

The single occupant of the tiny bark was a youth of two and twenty summers, clad in buck-skin. His beardless face gave him an extremely womanish expression. Its smooth surface was yet untanned by the rays of the sun, which fairness of skin proclaimed him a novice in backwoods life.

He plied the oars deftly and noiselessly, and kept in the middle of the stream. Ever and anon he glanced upward at the ragged cliffs that hung over the murky and turbulent waters like the hand of doom. But, at last, he passed beyond the precipitous banks, and gained the mouth of the Scioto’s nosiest tributary.

Here he rested upon his oars a moment, as if to decide a mental debate, then ran his canoe up the new stream, toward the left bank of which he presently steered.

“So far without accident,” he murmured in an audible tone, not before glancing furtively around. “Simon Kenton may be a great hunter; but he is a sorry prophet. What! did he think I would wait until he returned from the hazardous expedition he is about to undertake, and leave Eudora the while in Jim Girty’s hands? And when, in the ebullition of anger, as I will admit—I called him a lunatic, and told him that I would rescue the girl without the aid of his potent arm, he said, with a sneer I shall never forget: ‘Go, rash boy, and meet the reward for spurning the counsels of your elders. Go to the death prepared for you by the Wolf-Queen.’”

“The Wolf-Queen!” the young man continued, after a sneer for the prophecy of the king of backwoodsmen. “If such a creature exists, I want to meet her; and I have no reason for doubting her existence, for Simon Kenton says he once trembled in her presence. And Simon Kenton never lies. I will pit my strength against the Amazon, and her wolfish guard. Though rash and young in the ways of the woods, Mayne Fairfax is not a coward, else why came he from cultivated Virginia to the dark death-paths of Ohio? No; I—My God!”

The exclamation was called into being by the terrible sight that suddenly burst upon the young hunter’s vision.

Scarce the distance of a hundred yards up-stream, a canoe shot from the bush-fringed bank, and bore down upon the young Virginian.

In the center of the bark stood the very person he had lately expressed a desire to meet—the dreaded Wolf-Queen—dreaded alike by Indians and whites.

She towered six feet above her moccasins, and her frame seemed built of iron. She wore a frock of tanned doe-skin, the fringes of which touched her knees. The leggins which fitted her nether limbs to a fault, were composed of panther skins, secured to the moccasins by painted strips of deer-hide. Over all these garments she wore a long, dark robe whose ample folds disappeared in the canoe, and lent a royal aspect to its strange wearer. Her head was surrounded by a dress, composed of white heron-feathers, and among her raven locks, which streamed over her shoulders, and covered her beaded bosom, were curiously, but not distastily, woven the gaudy feathers of the North American oriole.

The features, more than the dress of the singular being so suddenly encountered on the swollen stream, commanded the hunter’s attention.

They belonged to a woman in the noon, or summer of life. Here and there a wrinkle was to be seen, and a sadly strange beauty pervaded her countenance. But the eyes—those faithful indexes of the human heart—proclaimed their possessor—a white woman—mad!

Yes, the unmistakable fire of insanity blazed fiercely in those baleful orbs, and told the single beholder that she was a perfect demon, when the paroxysm of lunacy swayed her.

But she was not alone.

On either side of her stood a huge black wolf, while at her feet sat a monster gray one. A collar of deer-skin, elaborately beaded, encircled the necks of the fierce brutes, and from their shaggy backs the muddy water dripped.

The sight was enough to blanch the boldest cheek, and Mayne Fairfax could not repress a shriek of terror. It bubbled to his lips unsummoned.

He now had ocular proof that the dreadful Wolf-Queen was not a myth.

The canoe and its terrible freight approached with an impetus received from the swift waters. No oars were needed to keep it in the center of the stream—a swift current did this service for the Wolf-Queen, who stood erect in the bark, clutching a drawn bow.

Mayne Fairfax’s presence of mind soon returned. He griped his rifle, but ere it struck his shoulder the twang of a bow-string smote his ears, and a barbed shaft buried itself in his right breast. Instantaneously a faintness stole over him, but the courageous hunter repressed it, as the canoe of the Amazon grated against his.

He would not die without a struggle, and therefore seized his rifle for the second time, for the purpose of braining his antagonist.

At that moment the gray wolf left his post.

The clubbed rifle dropped into the canoe, as the wolf buried his fangs in the hunter’s throat, and the brave fellow staggered back, trying to tear the mad animal from his breast.

In that terrible moment Simon Kenton’s last words burst doomfully and prophetically upon his mind!

But his end was not yet.

For in the fateful moment that followed the lupine attack, the sharp report of a rifle rent the air; the wolf relinquished his hold with a groan, and fell at Mayne Fairfax’s feet—dead!

The Wolf-Queen turned toward the shore, and saw a great coonskin cap surmounting a clump of prickly pears. Instantly a cry, but half earthly, escaped her lips, and a minute later she was flying down the stream, vainly trying to stanch the crimson tide that flowed from the gray wolf’s heart; while at her feet crouched the black monsters, drinking the warm blood of their lifeless companion.

The young hunter’s canoe began to drift toward the Scioto, and upon its gory bottom, as motionless as a corpse, lay Mayne Fairfax.

Suddenly the pear bushes parted, and a backwoods giant, bearing a long but deadly-looking rifle sprung into the stream, and intercepted the drifting canoe.

He looked over the side, and shook his head doubtingly.

“Poor lad! poor lad!” he murmured, with rough but genuine indications of sorrow. “I’m afraid he’s going to cross the river.”

Then, standing in the water in the middle of the tributary, he stanched the blood that poured from the lacerated throat, which he bound with the soft linings of his grotesque cap.

“There!” he cried, surveying his work. “That doctoring will do until I reach home. This young chap must not die. He’s too brave to perish in the springtime of his life. I wonder what brought him alone to these parts!”

Then with the interrogative still quivering his lips, he towed the boat ashore, moored it to a clump of alder bushes, and raising the unconscious youth in his arms, darted away into the great forest, where strange fortunes and adventures awaited him and the human burden he bore.