University of Virginia Library

8. CHAPTER VIII.

The husband looked back but once, when the voice ceased—
then, with a shivering sort of joy that his own doom had undergone
a termination, which he now felt to be doubly fortunate—
he made a wide circuit that he might avoid the fatal neighbourhood,
and pushed on in pursuit of his friend, whom his eyes, even
when he was surrounded in the tree, had followed in his flight.
It was no easy task, however, to overtake Selonee, flying, as he
did, from the supposed pursuit of the termagant. Great however
was the joy of the young warriors when they did encounter, and
long and fervent was their mutual embrace. Conattee described
his misfortunes, and related the manner in which he was taken;
showed how the bark had encased his limbs, and how the intricate
magic had even engrossed his knife and the wolf skin which had
been the trophy of his victory. But Conattee said not a word of
his wife and her entrapment, and Selonee was left in the conviction
that his companion owed his escape from the toils to some
hidden change in the tyrannical mood of Tustenuggee, or the
one-eyed woman, his wife.

“But the skin and the knife, Conattee, let us not leave them,”
said Selonee, “let us go back and extricate them from the tree.”

Conattee showed some reluctance. He soon said, in the words
of Macbeth, which he did not use however as a quotation, “I'll
go no more.” But Selonee, who ascribed this reluctance to very
natural apprehensions of the demon from whose clutches he had
just made his escape, declared his readiness to undertake the adventure
if Conattee would only point out to his eyes the particular
excrescence in which the articles were enclosed. When the
husband perceived that his friend was resolute, he made a merit
of necessity.

“If the thing is to be done,” said he, “why should you have
the risk, I myself will do it. It would be a woman-fear were I
to shrink from the danger. Let us go.”

The process of reasoning by which Conattee came to this determination
was a very sudden one, and one, too, that will not be
hard to comprehend by every husband in his situation. It was
his fear that if Selonee undertook the business, an unlucky or
misdirected stroke of his knife might sever a limb, or remove some
portions of the bark which did not merit or need removal. Conattee
trembled at the very idea of the revelations which might
follow such an unhappy result. Strengthening himself, therefore,
with all his energies, he went forward with Selonee to the
spot, and while the latter looked on and witnessed the operation,
he proceeded with a nicety and care which amused and surprised
Selonee, to the excision of the swollen scab upon the tree
in which he had seen his wolf skin encompassed. While he performed
the operation, which he did as cautiously as if it had been
the extraction of a mote from the eye of a virgin; the beldam in
the tree, conscious of all his movements, and at first flattered with
the hope that he was working for her extrication, maintained the
most ceaseless efforts of her tongue and limbs, but without avail.
Her slight breathing, which Conattee knew where to look for,
more like the sighs of an infant zephyr than the efforts of a human
bosom, denoted to his ears an overpowering but fortunately
suppressed volcano within; and his heart leaped with a new joy,
which had been unknown to it for many years before, when he
thought that he was now safe, and, he trusted, for ever, from any
of the tortures which he had been fain to endure patiently so long.
When he had finished the operation by which he had re-obtained
his treasures, he ventured upon an impertinence which spoke
surprisingly for his sudden acquisition of confidence; and looking
up through the little aperture in the bark, from whence he had
seen every thing while in the same situation, and from whence
he concluded she was also suffered to see, he took a peep—a
quick, quizzical and taunting peep, at those eyes which he had
not so dared to offend before. He drew back suddenly from the
contact—so suddenly, indeed, that Selonee, who saw the proceeding,
but had no idea of the truth, thought he had been stung by
some insect, and questioned him accordingly.

“Let us be off, Selonee,” was the hurried answer, “we have
nothing to wait for now.”

“Yes,” replied Selonee, “and I had forgotten to say to you
that your wife, Macourah, is on her way in search of you. I left
her but a little ways behind, and thought to find her here. I suppose
she is tired, however, and is resting by the way.”

“Let her rest,” said Conattee, “which is an indulgence much
greater than any she ever accorded me. She will find me out
soon enough, without making it needful that I should go in search
of her. Come.”

Selonee kindly suppressed the history of the transactions which
had taken place in the village during the time when the hunter
was supposed to be dead; but Conattee heard the facts from other
quarters, and loved Selonee the better for the sympathy he had
shown, not only in coming again to seek for him, but in not loving
his wife better than he did himself. They returned to the
village, and every body was rejoiced to behold the return of the
hunters. As for the termagant Macourah, nobody but Conattee
knew her fate; and he, like a wise man, kept his secret until
there was no danger of its being made use of to rescue her from
her predicament. Years had passed, and Conattee had found
among the young squaws one that pleased him much better than
the old. He had several children by her, and years and honours
had alike fallen numerously upon his head, when, one day, one of
his own sons, while hunting in the same woods, knocked off one
of the limbs of the Chair of Tustenuggee, and to his great horror
discovered the human arm which they enveloped. This led him
to search farther, and limb after limb became detached under the
unscrupulous action of his hatchet, until the entire but unconnected
members of the old squaw became visible. The lad
knocked about the fragments with little scruple, never dreaming
how near was his relation to the form which he treated with so
little veneration. When he came home to the lodge and told his
story, Selonee looked at Conattee, but said nothing. The whole
truth was at once apparent to his mind. Conattee, though he still
kept his secret, was seized with a sudden fit of piety, and taking
his sons with him, he proceeded to the spot which he well remembered,
and, gathering up the bleached remains, had them carefully
buried in the trenches of the tribe.

It may properly end this story, to say that Selonee wedded the

sweet girl who, though willing to die herself to prevent him from
marrying Macourah, yet positively refused to take his life to defeat
the same event. It may be well to state, in addition, that
the only reason Conattee ever had for believing that Selonee had
not kept his secret from every body, was that Medoree, the young
wife of the latter, looked on him with a very decided coolness.
“But, we will see,” muttered Conattee as he felt this conviction.
“Selonee will repent of this confidence, since now it will never be
possible for him to persuade her to take a seat in the Arm-chair
of Tustenuggee. Had he been a wise man he would have kept
his secret, and then there would have been no difficulty in getting
rid of a wicked wife.”