University of Virginia Library

3. CHAPTER III.

But where was Conattee himself during all this period? Some
hours had elapsed since he had taken the river after the tiger that
he had slain, and it was something surprising to Selonee that he
should have remained absent and without his clothes so long.
The weather was cold and unpleasant, and it could scarce be a
matter of choice with the hunter, however hardy, to suffer all its
biting bleaknesses when his garments were within his reach.
This reflection made Selonee apprehensive that some harm had
happened to his companion. He shouted to him, but received no
answer. Could he have been seized with the cramp while in the
stream, and drowned before he could extricate himself. This
was a danger to which the very best of swimmers is liable at
certain seasons of the year, and in certain conditions of the body.
Selonee reproached himself that he had not waited beside the
stream until the result of Conattee's experiment was known.
The mind of the young hunter was troubled with many fears and
doubts. He went down the bank of the river, and called aloud
with all his lungs, until the woods and waters re-echoed, again
and again, the name of Conattee. He received no other response.
With a mind filled with increasing fears, each more unpleasant
than the last, Selonee plunged into the creek, and struck off for
the opposite shore, at the very point at which the tiger had been
about to turn, under the influence of the current, when Conattee
went in after him. He was soon across, and soon found the
tracks of the hunter in the gray sands upon its margin. He
found, too, to his great delight, the traces made by the carcass of
the tiger—the track was distinct enough from the blood which
dropped from the reeking skin of the beast, and Selonee rejoiced
in the certainty that the traces which he followed would soon lead
him to his friend. But not so. He had scarcely gone fifty yards
into the wood when his tracks failed him at the foot of a crooked,
fallen tree, one of the most gnarled and complicated of all the

crooked trees of the forest; here all signs disappeared. Conattee
was not only not there, but had left no sort of clue by which to
follow him further. This was the strangest thing of all. The
footprints were distinct enough till he came to the spot where lay
the crooked tree, but there he lost them. He searched the forest
around him, in every direction. Not a copse escaped his search
—not a bay—not a thicket—not an island—and he came back to
the spot where the tiger had been skinned, faint and weary, and
more sorrowful than can well be spoken. At one time he fancied
his friend was drowned, at another, that he was taken prisoner
by the Cherokees. But there were his tracks from the river, and
there were no other tracks than his own. Besides, so far as the
latter supposition was concerned, it was scarcely possible that so
brave and cunning a warrior would suffer himself to be so completely
entrapped and carried off by an enemy, without so much
as being able to give the alarm; and, even had that been the case,
would it be likely that the enemy would have suffered him to pass
without notice. “But,” here the suggestion naturally arose in
the mind of Selonee, “may they not even now be on the track!”
With the suggestion the gallant youth bounded to his feet. “It
is not fat turkey that they seek!” he exclaimed, drawing out an
arrow from the leash that hung upon his shoulders, and fitting it
to his bow, while his busy, glancing eye watched every shadow
in the wood, and his keen, quick ear noted every sound. But
there were no signs of an enemy, and a singular and mournful
stillness hung over the woods. Never was creature more
miserable than Selonee. He called aloud, until his voice grew
hoarse, and his throat sore, upon the name of Conattee. There
was no answer, but the gibing echoes of his own hoarse accents.
Once more he went back to the river, once more he plunged into
its bosom, and with lusty sinews struck out for a thick green island
that lay some quarter of a mile below, to which he thought it not
improbable that the hunter might have wandered in pursuit of
other game. It was a thickly wooded but small island, which he
traversed in an hour. Finding nothing, he made his weary way
back to the spot from which his friend had started on leaving him.
Here he found his clothes where he had hidden them. The
neighbourhood of this region he traversed in like manner with
the opposite—going over ground, and into places, which it was
scarcely in the verge of physical possibility that his friend's person
could have gone.

The day waned and night came on, and still the persevering
hunter gave not up his search. The midnight found him at the
foot of the tree, where they had parted, exhausted but sleepless,
and suffering bitterly in mind from those apprehensions which
every moment of hopeless search had necessarily helped to
accumulate and strengthen. Day dawned, and his labour was
renewed. The unhappy warrior went resolutely over all the
ground which he had traversed the night before. Once more he
crossed the river, and followed, step by step, the still legible foot
tracks of Conattee. These, he again noted, were all in the opposite
direction to the stream, to which it was evident he had not
returned. But, after reaching the place where lay the fallen
tree, all signs failed. Selonee looked round the crooked tree,
crawled under its sprawling and twisted limbs, broke into the
hollow which was left by its uptorn roots, and again shouted, until
all the echoes gave back his voice, the name of Conattee, imploring
him for an answer if he could hear him and reply. But the
echoes died away, leaving him in a silence that spoke more loudly
to his heart than before, that his quest was hopeless. Yet he
gave it not up until the day had again failed him. That night,
as before, he slept upon the ground. With the dawn, he again
went over it, and with equally bad success. This done, he determined
to return to the camp. He no longer had any spirit to
pursue the sports for which alone he had set forth. His heart
was full of sorrow, his limbs were weary, and he felt none of that
vigorous elasticity which had given him such great renown as a
brave and a hunter, among his own and the neighbouring nations.
He tied the clothes of Conattee upon his shoulders, took his bow
and arrows, now sacred in his sight, along with him, and turned
his eyes homeward. The next day, at noon, he reached the
encampment.