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My spirits sank as I reflected that now we were cut off from the Tidewater. When the last man had gone we crawled back to the clump, now gloomy with the dusk of evening. I saw that Ringan was very weary, but Shalah, after stretching his long limbs, seemed fresh as ever. "Will you come with me, brother?" he said. "We must warn the Rappahannock." "Who are they?" I asked. "Cherokees.
He seemed to menace the other, his nostrils quivered with contempt, and his voice was barbed with passion. Onotawah bowed his head and said nothing. Then he seemed to dismiss him, and the proud chief walked out of the teepee like a disconsolate schoolboy. Instantly Shalah turned to me and inquired about my wounds.
Slowly it eats its way through the forest, and fields and manors appear in the waste places, and cattle graze in the coverts of the deer. Listen, brother. Shalah has had his visions when his eyes were unsealed in the night watches. He has seen the white man pressing up from the sea, and spreading over the lands of his fathers.
With the sound Shalah had leaped from the gate, picked up Grey like a child, and in a second had him inside the palisade and the bars down. He was none too soon, for as his pursuer fell a flight of arrows broke from the thicket, and had I shot earlier Grey had died of them. As it was they were too late. The bowmen rushed into the glade, and five muskets from our side took toll of them.
Presently we came to a place where the bold spurs of the hills overhung us, and the gap we had seen opened up into a deep valley. Shalah went in advance, and suddenly we heard a word pass. We entered a cedar glade, to find our four companions unsaddling the horses and making camp. The sight of the girl held them staring. Grey grew pale and then flushed scarlet.
The pity is that I have spent my best years scratching like a hen at its doorstep instead of entering. I have a notion some day to travel straight west to the sunset. I think I should find death, but I might see some queer things first." Then Shalah spoke: "There was once a man of my own people who, when he came to man's strength, journeyed westward with a wife.
They have taught me such knowledge as the Sachems of my nation never dreamed of, and they have given me two comrades after my own heart. One was he who died yesterday, and the other is now by my side." These words of Shalah did not make me proud, for things were too serious for vanity. But they served to confirm in me my strange exaltation. I felt as one dedicated to a mighty task.
I could do nothing but pant on the ground, but Shalah cried out for news of Grey. He heard that he had gone into the woods with his musket two hours past. At this he flung up his hands with a motion of despair. "We cannot wait," he said to Ringan. "Close the gate and put every man to his post, for the danger is at hand." Ringan gave his orders.
Shalah began now to look for landmarks, and to take bearings of a sort. Among the maze of creeks and shallow bays which opened on the land side it needed an Indian to pick out a track. The sun had all but set when, with a grunt of satisfaction, he swung round the tiller and headed shorewards. Before me in the twilight I saw only a wooded bluff which, as we approached, divided itself into two.
Presently a channel appeared, a narrow thing about as broad as a cable's length, into which the wind carried us. Here it was very dark, the high sides with their gloomy trees showing at the top a thin line of reddening sky. Shalah hugged the starboard shore, and as the screen of the forest caught the wind it weakened and weakened till it died away, and we moved only with the ingoing tide.
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