 | CHAPTER II. The wigwam and the cabin |  |
2. CHAPTER II.
Well, Conattee and Selonee were out of sight of the smoke of
“Turkey-town,” and, conscious of his freedom as he no longer
heard the accents of domestic authority, the henpecked husband
gave a loose to his spirits, and made ample amends to himself, by
the indulgence of joke and humour, for the sober constraints which
fettered him at home. Selonee joined with him in his merriment,
and the resolve was mutual that they should give the squaws the
slip and not linger in their progress till they had thrown the Tiger
river behind them. To trace their course till they came to the
famous hunting ground which bordered upon the Pacolet, will
scarcely be necessary, since, as they did not stop to hunt by the
way, there were necessarily but few incidents to give interest to
their movements. When they had reached the river, however,
they made for a cove, well known to them on previous seasons,
which lay between the parallel waters of the Pacolet, and a little
stream called the Thicketty—a feeder of the Eswawpuddenah, in
which they had confident hopes of finding the game which they desired.
In former years the spot had been famous as a sheltering place
for herds of wolves; and, with something like the impatience of a
warrior waiting for his foe, the hunters prepared their strongest
shafts and sharpest flints, and set their keen eyes upon the closest
places of the thicket, into which they plunged fearlessly. They
had not proceeded far, before a single boar-wolf, of amazing size,
started up in their path; and, being slightly wounded by the arrow
of Selonee, which glanced first upon some twigs beneath
which he-lay, he darted off with a fearful howl in the direction of
Conattee, whose unobstructed shaft, penetrating the side beneath
the fore shoulders, inflicted a fearful, if not a fatal wound, upon
the now thoroughly enraged beast. He rushed upon Conattee in his
desperation, but the savage was too quick for him; leaping behind
a tree, he avoided the rashing stroke with which the white tusks
threatened him, and by this time was enabled to fit a second arrow
went quivering into the shaggy monster's heart; who, under the
pang of the last convulsion, bounded into the muddy waters of the
Thicketty Creek, to the edge of which the chase had now brought
all the parties. Conattee beheld him plunge furiously forward
—twice—thrice—then rest with his nostrils in the water, as the
current bore him from sight around a little elbow of the creek.
But it was not often that the Indian hunter of those days lost the
game which he had stricken. Conattee stripped to it, threw his
fringed hunting shirt of buckskin on the bank, with his bow and
arrows, his mocasins and leggins beside it, and reserving only his
knife, he called to Selonee, who was approaching him, to keep
them in sight, and plunged into the water in pursuit of his victim.
Selonee gave little heed to the movements of his companion, after
the first two or three vigorous strokes which he beheld him make.
Such a pursuit, as it promised no peril, called for little consideration
from this hardy and fearless race, and Selonee amused himself
by striking into a thick copse which they had not yet traversed,
in search of other sport. There he started the she-wolf,
and found sufficient employment on his own hands to call for all
his attention to himself. When Selonee first came in sight of her,
she was lying on a bed of rushes and leaves, which she had prepared
under the roots of a gigantic Spanish oak. Her cubs, to the
number of five, lay around her, keeping a perfect silence, which
she had no doubt enforced upon them after her own fashion, and
which was rigidly maintained until they saw him. It was then
that the instincts of the fierce beasts could no longer be suppressed,
and they joined at once in a short chopping bark, or cry, at
the stranger, while their little eyes flashed fire, and their red jaws,
thinly sprinkled with the first teeth, were gnashed together with a
show of that ferocious hatred of man, which marks their nature,
but which, fortunately for Selonee, was too feeble at that time to
make his approach to them dangerous. But the dam demanded
greater consideration. With one sweep of her fore-paw she drew
all the young ones behind her, and showing every preparedness
for flight, she began to move backward slowly beneath the over-hanging
limbs of the tree, still keeping her keen, fiery eye fixed
upon the hunter. But Selonee was not disposed to suffer her to
sufficient provocation to make him silently resolve that the she-wolf—who
is always more to be dreaded than the male, as, with
nearly all his strength, she has twice his swiftness, and, with her
young about her, more than twice his ferocity—should testify
more completely to his prowess than the victory just obtained by
his companion could possibly speak for his. His eye was fixed upon
hers, and hers, never for a moment, taken from him. It was
his object to divert it, since he well knew, that with his first movement,
she would most probably spring upon him. Without lifting
his bow, which he nevertheless had in readiness, he whistled
shrilly as if to his dog; and answered himself by a correct imitation
of the bark of the Indian cur, the known enemy of the wolf,
and commonly his victim. The keen eye of the angry beast
looked suddenly around as if fearing an assault upon her young
ones from behind. In that moment, the arrow of Selonee was
driven through her neck, and when she leaped forward to the
place where he stood, he was no longer to be seen.
From a tree which he had thrown between them, he watched
her movements and prepared a second shaft. Meanwhile she
made her way back slowly to her young, and before she could
again turn towards him a second arrow had given her another
and severer wound. Still, as Selonee well knew the singular
tenacity of life possessed by these fierce animals, he prudently
changed his position with every shaft, and took especial care to
place himself in the rear of some moderately sized tree, sufficiently
large to shelter him from her claws, yet small enough to
enable him to take free aim around it. Still he did not, at any
time, withdraw more than twenty steps from his enemy. Divided
in her energies by the necessity of keeping near her young, he
was conscious of her inability to pursue him far. Carrying on
the war in this manner he had buried no less than five arrows in
her body, and it was not until his sixth had penetrated her eye,
that he deemed himself safe in the nearer approach which he now
meditated. She had left her cubs, on receiving his last shot, and
was writhing and leaping, blinded, no less than maddened, by the
wound, in a vain endeavour to approach her assailant. It was
now that Selonee determined on a closer conflict. It was the
while he yet struggled, to tear the quick quivering heart from his
bosom. He placed his bow and arrows behind the tree, and
taking in his left hand a chunk or fragment of a bough, while he
grasped his unsheathed knife in his right, he leapt in among the
cubs, and struck one of them a severe blow upon the head with
the chunk. Its scream, and the confusion among the rest, brought
back the angry dam, and though she could see only imperfectly,
yet, guided by their clamour, she rushed with open jaws upon the
hunter. With keen, quick eyes, and steady resolute nerves, he
waited for her approach, and when she turned her head aside, to
strike him with her sharp teeth, he thrust the pine fragment which
he carried in his left hand, into her extended jaws, and pressing
fast upon her, bore back her haunches to the earth. All this while
the young ones were impotently gnawing at the heels of the warrior,
which had been fearlessly planted in the very midst of them.
But these he did not heed. The larger and fiercer combatant
called for all his attention, and her exertions, quickened by the
spasms of her wounds, rendered necessary all his address and
strength to preserve the advantage he had gained. The fierce
beast had sunk her teeth by this into the wood, and, leaving
it in her jaws, he seized her with the hand, now freed, by the
throat, and, bearing her upward, so as to yield him a plain and
easy stroke at her belly, he drove the deep knife into it, and drew
the blade upwards, until resisted by the bone of the breast. It
was then, while she lay writhing and rolling upon the ground in
the agonies of death, that he tore the heart from the opening he
had made, and hurled it down to the cubs, who seized on it with
avidity. This done, he patted and caressed them, and while they
struggled about him for the meat, he cut a fork in the ears of
each, and putting the slips in his pouch, left the young ones
without further hurt, for the future sport of the hunter. The
dam he scalped, and with this trophy in possession, he pushed
back to the place where he had left the accoutrements of Conattee,
which he found undisturbed in the place where he had
laid them.
| CHAPTER II. The wigwam and the cabin | |