Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (3 page)

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slope. After sunset the air grew frosty,
and they hugged the small fire that Sam had kindled with flint and steel. With
his new iron tomahawk Otter felled a cedar tree and made a wind-break of the
branches. Into the stream Sam dropped a line with a baited fishhook, while they
ate sparingly from the provisions Fletcher Carrier had given them.

           
They slept well, Sam in his red
blanket and Otter in his fur cloak. From time to time the fire burned down, and
one or the other wakened and pushed more fuel into it. At dawn, Sam rose to
pull his fishline from the stream. A brook trout struggled on the hook. Quickly
cleaned and broiled, this was their breakfast, and they resumed their westward
journey.

           
Otter led the way, by hidden marks
of his own or perhaps by woods-trained memory. The climb was steady but not
difficult, over rocks and fallen trunks. They mounted a ridge, descended,
mounted
a higher ridge beyond, then a higher one still. From
that point they could see a vast country, spread out like a map. Behind them
lay the smaller heights they had scaled and, beyond those, gently rolling
forest. But ahead of them
rose
mountains against the
western horizon, like a row of crouching giants.

           
They did not stop for a
noon
meal, but as the sun sank halfway down the
sky they found deer sign.

           
.Then they spied the deer itself,
drinking at a quiet pool. Sam sighted carefully and touched trigger. His bullet
knocked the deer into a kicking heap.

           
Otter started violently at the
report of the rifle, the first he had ever heard. Then he ran forward and cut
the animal’s throat. U-
S.
SOBS .IS

           
“We will reach a Cherokee town
tonight,” said Otter as Sam joined him at the skinning. “When they ask us to
stay, we can give them meat.”

           
In the flayed skin they wrapped the
four quarters, the loin and tenderloin, the heart, liver and kidneys. Resuming
their journey, they came well before sundown to a small town of
Cherokee
houses, with mud- daubed walls and roofs of
bark over pole rafters.

           
Almost the first warrior Sam saw was
one with whom he had hunted the year before, and this man greeted him with
quiet politeness. Otter, too, was known at the town, for he had stopped there
on his way east. A shrivelled old chief in a bright red trade shirt made the
travellers welcome. Shy women accepted the meat and cut it up for
roasting,
bringing out in their turn corn cakes that had
been baked under clay bowls with fire heaped over them. Sam and Otter smoked a
stone pipe with the chief and ate heartily, because that was good manners among
the Cherokees. They slept in the
chiefs
winter house,
a little coop banked with earth against the chill. A fire burned on the hard
clay floor, and Sam did not need his red blanket.

           
Next morning, the
chiefs
women gave them strips of smoked venison for their journey. Again Otter led the
way. From ridge to ridge he scrambled, always looking for something. At last he
found it and pointed it out.

           
“That little stream?” said Sam.
“It’s only a trickle on the slope.”

           
“Yes, a little stream,” agreed
Otter, and for the first time since Sam had met him he smiled faintly. “But it
runs into a bigger one. That bigger stream leads to a river, and the river runs
westward.”

           
“Does it run through the mountains?”
asked Sam.

           
“No,” and Otter smiled again, “but
it will bring us to a trail that goes to another river. That river runs to my
country.”

           
On their third night they slept
within earshot of the big river Otter promised. Its muffled roar, beating up
from a valley below, lulled them to sleep like a song.

           
All the fourth day they walked along
the river’s bank, between towering cliffs and peaks. High on the brows of these
big rocks were tufts of trees, looking like shaggy hair in the upward distance.
At
noon
they
finished their smoked meat, but by night they found welcome at another village.
The chief was a lean, dark-faced old man with a gray scalp lock, and he knew
about Otter’s errand.

           
“Is this the white man you are
bringing to
Twilight
Town
?” he asked Otter. “He is young.”

           
“Chief, he is young but he is wise,”
replied Otter. “He is skilful with his fire-weapon. I saw him shoot with it.”

           
“That thing is called a gun,” said
the chief, thrusting the point of his chin at Sam’s rifle. “The white traders
sell them to my young men. They are not so wonderful.”

           
“This is not like a trade gun,”
volunteered Sam. “It is a better gun, called a rifle. It shoots farther and
straighter.”

           
“It may be,” granted the chief, and
signalled for supper to be brought.

           
In the days that followed, they
travelled along the river bank. Sometimes they stopped at villages, sometimes
they made lonely camps. Sam notched a stick to keep count of the days. He
figured that it was the tenth evening when they came to a village
beside
a strewing of big boulders across the bed of the
roaring river, to form a natural crossing.

           
“The river has been high,” the
people of the village told them. “It has gone down only today. Those rocks are
wet. Wait until they are dry again. A man’s foot could slip on them.”

           
“We’d better not,” said Sam to
Otter, gazing at clouds in the sunset sky. “More rain may come tomorrow.”

           
“My friend is right,” agreed Otter.
“We will cross tomorrow morning.”

           
At dawn, men, women and children
gathered at the river’s edge to watch the crossing. The scattered boulders,
large and small, made an uneven line from shore to shore. Among them clamored
the swift water. Small sharp rocks thrust up through the swirl, like the heads
of a waiting ambush. The spaces between the boulders were of different extents.
The first several hops from boulder to boulder were easily made, though footing
was unsure on the damp stone. Almost at the middle of the stream came a sizable
gap, full eight feet across. Standing together on one boulder, Sam and Otter
gazed at the far one.

           
“Throw the packs across,” suggested
Otter.

           
“All but my rifle,” agreed Sam.

           
They tossed one pack, then the
other, to the boulder beyond the gap. Then Sam stepped to the very edge,
studied the tumbling water, measured the distance with his eye, and fought back
a nervous tremble.

           
“I’ll try first,” he announced, and
moved as far back as he could. Balancing his rifle in his right hand, he sprang
forward.

           
Two swift steps he made, dug in his
moccasin toe at the boulder’s edge, and flung
himself
forward into space. The audience behind him whooped as he struck his feet upon
solid rock beyond, and he turned with a grin of triumph.

           
He saw Otter hurl himself forward in
turn. Another whoop from the people on shore, that suddenly turned to a wild
cry of dismay. For Otter’s toe, touching the rock at the end of the leap,
slipped away in mossy dampness. Otter swayed backward, began to fall. Sam saw
his long eyes grow suddenly wide.

           
Lightning-swift, Sam stepped toward
him. His free left hand shot out, closing on Otter’s very fingertips. His own
feet lost their grip on the wet boulder, and he dropped his rifle and fell to
one hand and one knee, still keeping hold of Otter. There was an instant of
sickening terror, for Otter’s considerable weight pulled them both down toward
the foaming, rock-studded river below.

           
But Sam fiercely flexed every muscle
in his body, and by sheer strength stopped the fall of his companion. With a
final effort he drew Otter to safety. He picked up his rifle and rose, panting
and trembling.

           
“Hai!
Hai!”
applauded the watching villagers.

           
Otter smiled at Sam, broadly this time.
He wrung and wriggled the strained fingers by which Sam had seized him. Then he
stepped close and laid his palm on Sam’s buckskinned shoulder.

           
“My brother,” he said deeply.

           
“Brother,” replied Sam, and felt an
answering smile on his own face.

           
“Without your hand, I would have
fallen down there,” said Otter. “I would not have got up again. It is a good
sign, my brother. You will save my people as you saved me.”

           
They gathered up their belongings
and safely made the rest of the way across, to a well-marked trail on the other
bank.

           
From that time forward, it was
always “brother” between the young white hunter and the older red warrior.

           
Later in the day, Sam spied and shot
a wild turkey. It was his second trial of the rifle Dan Boone had given him,
and he exulted at how neatly the bullet smashed the gobbler’s head. They
roasted the turkey for their supper that night, and by the setting of sun the
next day they camped by the river that would lead them through the mountains.

           
Again days of
riverside journey, with towering rocky heights above them.
Sometimes
chiefs of little Cherokee towns bade them stay the night, and welcome. Other
times they camped, killing and eating their own meat. Once they met a pair of
Cherokee hunters and made a camp of four. The hunters listened with grave
interest to Otter’s tale of Giluhda and of the journey to fetch back a white
champion with a fire-weapon.

           
Sam’s notched stick showed that
three weeks had passed. It was April now. The nights were still cold, but the
mountain trees showed little tufts of pale greenery. As Otter had promised, the
river brought them at last to low ground, clothed in a forest where spring was
more advanced. The dogwood and redbud trees were beginning to put forth their
flowers.

           
“Are we nearly to your
Twilight
Town
?” asked Sam.

           
Otter
smiled,
his teeth white in his brown face. He pointed with the heel of his hand, Indian
fashion.

           
“We have not covered half the
distance. But we can move faster now. In perhaps another moon—by the Planting
Moon, almost to the Green Corn Moon —we will see my home.”

           
They moved more swiftly and
directly, even as Otter had said. The days grew longer, and there were no steep
slopes to climb up or slide down. They made a good twenty miles a day, even
with pauses to hunt or fish for provisions.

           
The towns they saw were different,
too. The Chero- kees did not wear trade cloth garments, but shirts and
moccasins and cloaks of buckskin. They spoke less, too, and their accents were
like Otter’s accent. Such metal tools and utensils as they had were theirs by
trade, not with white men but with Indian towns to the east. They looked
curiously at Sam’s red-brown face and his tawny hair.

           
“Don’t mind if they stare at you,”
Otter advised Sam. “You are the first white man they ever saw.”