The Big Brother

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Just as he had comforted himself with this thought, a new danger
assailed him. One of the Indians, it seemed, taking advantage of a
minute knowledge of the country, had saved a considerable distance by
riding through a strip of woods and cutting off an angle. When Sam first
caught sight of him, coming out of the woods, the savage was within a
dozen yards of him, and evidently gaining upon him at every step. Sam's
horse was a fleet one, but that of the Indian was apparently a
thoroughbred, whose speed remained nearly as great after a mile's run
as at the start. Knowing the Indians' skill in shooting while riding at
full speed, Sam leaned as far as he could to one side, so that as little
as possible of his person should be exposed to his pursuer's aim. He
continued to press his horse too, but the savage gained steadily.
Finding at last that he must shortly be overtaken, Sam resolved upon a
bold manoeuvre, by which to kill his foremost pursuer. Seizing the
hatchet he had brought away from the house, he suddenly stopped his
horse, and, as the Indian came along-side, aimed a savage blow at his
head.

"Don't you know me, Sam?" said the Indian in good English, dodging the
blow. "I'm Weatherford. If I'd wanted to kill you I might have done so a
dozen times in the last five minutes. You know I don't want to kill
_you_, though you're the only white man on earth I'd let go. But the
others will make an end of you if they catch you. Ride on and I'll chase
you. Turn to the left there and ride to the bluff. I'll follow you.
There's a gully through the top. Ride down it as far as you can and jump
your horse over the cliff. It's nearly fifty feet high, and may kill
you, but it's the only way. The other warriors are coming up and
they'll kill you sure if you don't jump. Jump, and I'll tell 'em I
chased you over."

Sam knew Weatherford well, and he knew why the blood-thirsty chief
wished to spare him if he could, for Sam had rescued Weatherford once
from an imminent peril at great risk to himself, though the story is too
long to be told here. Whether or not there is nobleness enough in the
Indian character to make the savage remember a benefit received, I am
sure I cannot say, but Weatherford was _three-fourths white_, and with
all his ferocity in war, history credits him with more than one generous
impulse like that by which Sam was now profiting. The two rode on,
Weatherford pretending to be in hot pursuit, shooting occasionally and
yelling at every leap of his horse. The bluff towards which they rode
was probably a hundred feet high, and was washed at its base by a deep
but sluggish creek, on the other side of which lay a densely wooded
swamp. Through the top of the bluff, however, was a sort of fissure or
ravine washed by the flow of water during the rainy season, and where it
terminated the height of its mouth above the stream was not more than
forty or fifty feet. Down this gully Sam rode furiously, so that his
horse might not be able to refuse the leap, which was a frightful one.
Coming to the edge of the precipice with headlong speed, the animal
could not draw back but plunged over with Sam sitting bolt upright on
his back. Riding back to the top of the bank Weatherford met his
warriors.

[Illustration: THE PERILOUS LEAP.]

"Where is he?" asked the foremost.

"His _body_ is down there in the creek. I drove him over the precipice,"
said the chief with well-feigned delight.[2]

[Footnote 2: This incident of the leap over the precipice is strictly
historical, else I should never have ventured to print it here.
Weatherford himself, on the 23d of December, 1813, after the battle of
Tohopeka, escaped a body of dragoons in a precisely similar manner. A
still more remarkable leap was that of Major Samuel McCullock, on the 2d
of September 1777, over a precipice fully 300 feet high near Wheeling,
West Virginia. He jumped over on horseback, thinking such a death
preferable to savage torture, but singularly enough, both he and his
horse escaped unhurt.]

His purpose evidently, was to satisfy the warriors that Sam was
certainly killed, so that they might pursue him no further. Whether he
was yet alive or not, Weatherford himself had no means of knowing. The
last he had seen of him was as he went over the precipice, sitting bolt
upright on his horse, grasping his rifle and looking straight ahead. He
heard a splash in the water below, after which everything was still.

CHAPTER IX.

WEARY WAITING.

The days seemed very long to Tom and Joe and little Judie after Sam left
on his journey. They had nothing to do but to sit still in their corners
among the roots all day, and time always drags very slowly when people
are doing nothing. Their provisions, as we know, were already
cooked,--enough of them at least, to last a week, and before Sam left he
had made them bring more than a bushel of sweet potatoes and all the
corn they could find which was still soft enough to eat, and store it
away for use if his return should be delayed in any way. The result was
that their legs got no stretching, and they became moody, dispirited and
unhappy before the second day of Sam's absence had come to an end. They
found doing nothing the hardest and the dullest work they ever had done
in their lives. Joe managed to sleep most of the time, but Tom was
nervous, and poor little Judie, without Sam to depend upon, grew
low-spirited and began to fear all sorts of evil things. Finally Sam's
week was up and Sam had not appeared. The little people were now fairly
frightened. What had become of him? they wondered. Had he fallen into
the hands of the Indians? And if so, what were they to do now? They had
never before known how dependent they were upon him. Even during his
absence they had been regulating their lives by his minute instructions,
and depending upon him for guidance after he should return. But what if
he should never return? And why hadn't he come already? These thoughts
were too much for them. Judie sat in her corner brooding over her
trouble, and crying a little now and then. Joe was simply frightened,
and his eyes grew bigger and rounder than ever. Tom was sustained in
part by the thought that the burden of responsibility was now on him,
and so he suppressed all manifestations of uneasiness, as well as he
could, and gave himself up to the duty of studying the situation,
calculating his resources and trying to decide what was the best thing
to be done if Sam should not come back at all. He hit upon several
excellent ideas, but made up his mind that before trying to put any of
them into practice he would wait at least a fortnight longer for Sam's
return. Their stock of provisions, eaten raw, would last much longer
than that, and the fields were full of sweet potatoes, wherefore he
wisely thought it best not to lose any chance of having Sam to do the
thinking and planning. He was so anxious for his brother's return that
he spent the greater part of his time on the drift-pile where he had
built himself a little observatory, so arranged that he could see in
every direction without the possibility of being seen in his turn.

Sitting there in his look-out, watching for Sam, he had time to think of
many things. His thinking was not always wise, as a matter of course,
but for a boy of his age it did very well, certainly, and one day he hit
upon a really valuable idea.

The way it came about was this. He fell into a reverie, and remembered
the happy old days at home, and one day in particular, when he was busy
all day making a little wagon in which to give Judie a ride, and he
remembered how very short that day seemed, although it was in June. Just
then it popped into his head to think that there was a reason for
everything, and that that day had seemed so short only because he had
been very busy as its hours went by. If he had known what
"generalization" means, he would have generalized this truth as
follows:--

"Time passes rapidly with busy people." He did nothing of the kind,
however. He only thought.

"If poor little Judie had something to keep her busy all the time, she
wouldn't be so miserable."

And so he cudgelled his brains to invent some plan or other by which to
set Judie at work and keep her at it all the time.

When he returned to the fortress towards night, he said to the little
woman; "Judie, I reckon poor Sam's foot is troubling him again, and
that's the reason he hasn't got back yet. He'll work along slowly and
get here after a while, but I'm afraid he'll be dreadfully tired and
sick when he comes. We must have a good soft bed ready for him so that
he can get a good rest."

To this Judie assented, though in her heart she feared she should never
see Sam again, as indeed Tom did too, though neither would admit the
fact to the other.

"Now I've been thinking," said Tom, "that it wont do, if he comes back
half sick, to let him lie on green moss with all the outside on. Let me
show you."

And taking a strand of the long moss he scraped the greenish gray
outside off, leaving a black strand like a horse hair.

"There," he said, "Sam told me once that it's the soft outside part that
holds water, while the inside is dry almost always. Now why can't we
scrape the outside off of a great deal of moss and have the dry inside
ready for Sam to sleep on when he comes back? It'll surprise him and
he'll be glad too. He never cared for himself much, but he'll be glad to
see that we care for him."

The plan pleased little Judie wonderfully well. She was always delighted
to do anything for Sam, and now that she was uneasy about him, and kept
thinking of him as dead or dying or sick somewhere, and could hardly
keep her tears back, nothing could have pleased her so well as to work
for his comfort. Tom and Joe went out after dark, and brought in a large
lot of moss, and the next morning all went to work, Judie made very
little progress with her scraping, but she kept steadily at it, and it
served its purpose in making her less miserable than before. The days
passed more rapidly to Tom and Joe, too, and the whole party grew more
cheerful under the influence of work. It was now ten days, however,
since Sam had gone away, and his non-appearance was really alarming.
When work stopped for the night, the thought of Sam was uppermost in the
minds of all three, and for the first time they talked freely of the
matter.

Tom was disposed to cheer himself by cheering the others, and so he
explained:

"It's about forty-five miles to where Fort Mims stood, so Sam told me,
and he said he might go nearly that far, if he didn't see Indians. If he
went only thirty-five miles it would take him four or five nights; say
five nights, and five more to come back would make ten. But may be his
foot got sore, or Indians got in the way, and so it has taken him longer
than he thought. I don't think we ought to be uneasy even if he should
stay two weeks in all."

That was all very well as a theory, and true enough too, but Tom was
uneasy, nevertheless, and so were Joe and Judie. The worst of it was
that none of them could hide the fact. The eleventh day came, and with
it came an excitement. Tom was the first to wake, and without waiting
for the others, he proceeded to make his breakfast off an ear of raw
corn, which was almost hard enough to grind, and altogether too hard to
be eaten as green corn at any well-regulated table. Tom ate it, however,
having nothing better, and when Judie waked he offered her a softer ear,
which he had carefully selected and laid aside. Judie tried but couldn't
eat it. She was faint and almost sick, and found it impossible to
swallow the raw corn.

"Poor little sister," said Tom. "If I had any fire I'd roast a potato
for you to-day anyhow, but the fire's all out and I can't."

"Mas' Tom!" said Joe, "I'll tell you what! I dun see a heap o' fox
grapes down dar by de creek, an' I'se gwine to git some for Miss Judie
quicker'n you kin count ten." And so saying Joe ran first to the
look-out, to make a preliminary reconnoissance. The boys rarely ever
left the trees during the daytime, and when they did so they were
careful first to satisfy themselves that there were no savages in the
neighborhood. The creek, of which Joe spoke, emptied into the river a
short distance above the root fortress, and, along its banks was a dense
mass of undergrowth, which skirted the river below, all the way to the
drift-pile. Joe had seen the grapes from the look-out, and had planned
an excursion after them. He could follow the river bank to the creek,
keeping in the bushes and moving cautiously, and if any Indians should
appear he could retreat in the same way, without discovery. Tired of raw
corn and sweet potatoes, the grapes had tempted him sorely, and it only
needed Judie's longing for a change of diet to induce him, to make this
foraging expedition.

CHAPTER X.

FIGHTING FIRE.

Before proceeding to relate the incidents which follows, it is necessary
to explain a little more fully the arrangement of the root fortress and
the drift-pile. The two trees, which were enormous ones, had originally
grown as close together as they could, and their roots had interlaced
beneath the soil. The sand in which they grew having been gradually
washed away, their great masses of roots were exposed for about fifteen
feet below the original level of the soil and as they spread out they
made two circles (one running a foot or two into the other), of about
twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great
roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with
their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and
obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is
sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being
drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring
freshets, and as it had lodged against the trees it lay only on their
upper side, where it was piled up into a perpendicular wall nearly
twenty feet high. Thence it stretched away up the river for a hundred
yards or more. Now the only entrance big enough to admit a person into
the root fortress was on the side next to the drift, and it opened only
into an alley-way which the boys had partly found and partly made
through the drift. This alley-way led past several little aisles running
out to the right and left for a dozen yards or so,--aisles formed by the
irregular piling of the logs on top of each other. In the fortress there
were a dozen places at least, where the big roots were sufficiently wide
apart to admit a grown man easily, but the boys had left the smaller
roots which covered these gaps undisturbed, and cut only the one
entrance. After cutting that on the side next the hammock, they had
moved some of the drift so as to close up the sides of the entrance and
make it open only into the alley-way. All this had been done under Sam's
supervision, and as a result of his prudence and fore thought.

Joe had been gone nearly half an hour when he burst suddenly into the
chamber in which the others were. His hands were full of the wild
grapes, but of those he was evidently not thinking. His face was of that
peculiar hue which black faces assume when if they were white faces they
would grow pale; and his lips, usually red, were of an ashy brown. His
eyes were of the shape of saucers, and seemed not much smaller. He
gasped for breath in an alarming way, and Tom saw that the poor fellow
was frightened almost out of his wits.

"What's the matter Joe? Tell me quick," said the younger boy.

"O Mas' Tom, we'se dun surrounded. I was jest a-gittin' de grapes when I
seed a'most a thousand Injuns a-comin,' an' I dun run my life a'most out
a-gittin' here. Dey did not see me, but I seed dem, an' I tell you dey's
de biggest Injuns you ever did see. I 'clar dey's mos' as tall as
trees."

"How many of 'em are there, Joe?" asked Tom standing up.

"I couldn't count 'em e'zactly, Mas' Tom, but I reckon dey's not less'n
a thousand of 'em,--maybe two thousan' for all I know."

"Where are they, and what were they doing?" asked Tom; but before Joe
could answer, the voices of the Indians themselves indicated their
whereabouts, and Tom discerned that they were disagreeably close to his
elbow.

Seeking a place in which to cook their breakfast the savages had
selected the corner formed by the root fortress and the drift-pile as a
proper place for a fire, and were now breaking up sticks with which to
start one. They were just outside the fortress, and either of the boys
could have touched them by pushing his arm out between the roots. Tom
motioned the others to keep absolutely silent, and going a little way
into the hammock, through the passage way he managed to find a place
from which he could see the intruders. He soon discovered that Joe's
account of them was slightly exaggerated in two important particulars.
They were only ordinary Indians, neither larger nor smaller than grown
Indians usually are, and instead of a thousand there were but three of
them in all.

But three fully grown Indians were enough to justify a good deal of
apprehension, and if they should discover the party in the tree, Tom
knew very well they would make very short work of their destruction. He
crept back to the tree therefore and again cautioned Joe and Judie, in a
whisper, not to speak or make any other noise. Then he returned to his
place of observation and watched the Indians. They soon made a crackling
fire and proceeded to broil some game they had killed, this and the
eating which followed occupied perhaps an hour, during which Tom made
frequent journeys to the little room, nominally for the purpose of
cautioning the others to keep still, but really to work off some portion
of his uneasiness, which was growing with every moment. He was terrified
at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old
would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some
accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two
other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to
support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at
once. He was afraid, too, that some slight noise inside the fortress
might catch the uncommonly quick ears of the Indians.

All these were dangers well worth considering; but now a new, and much
greater danger began to show itself. The drift was largely composed of
light wood, and from his hiding-place Tom could see that the fire built
by the trees had communicated itself to the hammock, and that the flames
were rapidly spreading. The danger now was that the fire would burn into
the alley-way and so cut off retreat from the fortress, and if so those
inside would be burned alive. Quitting his place of observation
therefore, he established himself as a sentry in the alley-way, having
determined, if the fire should approach the passage, to take Joe and
Judie out of the fortress and into one of the aisles near the farther
edge of the drift-pile. Having begun to plan he saw all the
possibilities of the case and tried to provide for all. He knew that if
the wind should drive the flames into the drift the whole pile would be
destroyed in a very brief time, but in that case, he reasoned, the black
smoke of the resinous pine would make it impossible for the Indians to
see very far in that direction, and so he resolved, if the worst came,
to lead his companions out of the upper end of the hammock, into the
bushes and so escape to the creek, where he hoped to find a hiding-place
of some sort. He had got this far in his planning when he heard Judie
cough, and stepping quickly into the room found it full of smoke. Seeing
that to stay there was to suffocate, he beckoned his companions to
follow, and stepping lightly they passed down the alley-way and sat down
in one of the aisles, behind a great sycamore log which ran across the
pile. Peeping over this log Tom saw the three Indians shoulder their
guns and walk away. He ran at once to the look-out, and though the smoke
almost blinded him he observed all their movements. He wanted them away
speedily, so that he and Joe might extinguish the fire if that were
still possible, and as every minute served to increase the difficulty
and lessen the chances of doing so, the loitering of the savages seemed
interminable. They stopped first to drink at the spring. Then they
amused themselves by throwing sticks, and pebbles and shells at a turtle
which was sunning himself on a log in the stream. Then they stopped to
examine the track of a turkey or of some animal, in the sand, and it
really seemed to Tom that they did not mean to go away at all.

All things have an end, however, and even the stay of disagreeable
visitors cannot last always. The three savages finally disappeared a
mile down the river, and Tom, after scanning the surrounding country and
satisfying himself that there were no others in the immediate
neighborhood, hurried to the place where Joe and Judie were hidden.

"They've gone at least," he said, "and now Joe, we must put this fire
out, if we can. Judie, you stay here, and if you find the smoke bothers
you, go further down the alley that way. Don't try to stay if the smoke
comes."

How to stop the fire was the problem. Fortunately there was very little
wind, and what there was blew chiefly from up the river. The flames had
spread over a considerable space, however, and the boys had hardly
anything with which to work.

They carried water in their hats from the river, which was only a few
yards away, now that it had risen to the bottom of the second bank.
This was altogether too slow a way of working, however, and the fire was
visibly gaining on the boys. But, slow as this process was, it served to
teach Tom a lesson or rather to remind him of one he had learned and
forgotten. He found that a hatful of water thrown on the bottom of the
fire did more good than two hatfuls thrown on top, and he remembered
that when the soot in the chimney at home caught fire once, his father
would not allow anybody to pour water down the chimney, but stood
himself by the fireplace throwing a little water, not up the chimney
but, on the blazing fire below. This water, turned into steam, went up
the chimney and soon extinguished the fire there. In the same way Tom
now discovered that when he threw a hatful of water on a burning log at
the bottom of the pile it had a perceptible effect all the way to the
top. Thinking of the chimney fire he remembered also that his father had
said at the time that a plank laid over the top of a burning chimney, or
a screen fastened over the fireplace would stop the burning of the soot
by stopping the air, and so smothering the fire. This suggested a new
plan of operations for present use. The long gray moss grew in great
abundance all around the place, and gathering this he dipped it in the
river and then threw it on top of the fire. A bunch of the moss held
greatly more water than his hat, and it served also to smother the fire.
He and Joe repeated the operation, putting some of the moss on top and
some against the sides of the burning pile of timber. The steam from
these perceptibly checked the burning, and an hour's work covered the
fire almost entirely up, so far at least as the exposed side of the
drift-pile was concerned. But just as they were disposed to congratulate
themselves upon their success in subduing the flames, they discovered
that while they had been smothering the fire on one side it had been
burning freely further in. The openness of the hammock gave free access
to the air from the other side, and just beyond the line of moss they
saw a blaze licking its tongue out from below. They were tired out,
already, and this added discouragement to weariness. Little Judie,
although the boys had urged her to remain quiet, had been hard at work
bringing moss to them, insisting upon her right to work as well as
they. She had discovered too that the sand, just below the surface was
wet, and that this served almost as good a purpose as the moss itself
when thrown on the fire. The poor little girl was utterly tired out at
last, however, and when the fire seemed to be subsiding, she had yielded
to Tom's entreaties, and going into the drift-pile had laid down to
rest. Now that all their work promised to accomplish nothing, the boys
were vexed with themselves for having permitted the frail little girl to
wear herself out in so fruitless a task. This, with their
disappointment, served to make them utterly wretched.

CHAPTER XI.

IN THE WILDERNESS.

When Sam went over the cliff, he thought of poor little Judie, and Tom
and Joe, and, for their sake more than his own, took every precaution
which might give him an additional chance of life. He knew that he
should fall into the creek, and that the blow, when he struck the water,
would be a very severe one. If he could keep his horse under him all the
way, however, the animal and not he would be the chief sufferer. Fearing
that the horse would hesitate at the cliff, blunder, and throw him a
somersault, perhaps falling on him, he held the beast's head high and
urged him forward at full speed, and so, as we have seen, the horse's
back was almost level as he leaped from the top of the bank. Sam had no
saddle or stirrups in which to become entangled, and as the horse
struck the water fairly, the blow was not nearly so severe a shock to
the boy as he had expected. Both went under the water, but rising again
in a moment Sam slid off the animal's back, to give the poor fellow a
better chance of escape by swimming. Striking out boldly Sam reached the
bank and crawling up looked for his horse. The poor beast was evidently
too severely hurt to swim with ease, and so he drifted away, Sam running
along the bank, calling and encouraging him. He struck the shore at
last, and Sam examining him found that while he was stunned and bruised
no serious damage had been done.

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