Chapter 27. A Strange Story

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XXVII. A STRANGE STORY

The amazement of Jack Carleton, when he recognized the figure before him, was beyond description. It was Otto Relstaub--the same honest German lad from whom he parted weeks previous when the two were captives in the hands of the wandering Sauks, the divisions of which took such different directions. It was the same lad--the only noticeable difference being that he was bareheaded and his garments were much frayed and torn. He held his gun in his right hand, the stock resting on the ground, while he looked with a half-inquiring expression, as if doubting the identity of the young Kentuckian who had come such a distance to help restore him to his friends. But a second stare satisfied both, and rushing toward each other, they shook hands, laughed and cried for very joy, their expressions disjointed and only clear in their evidence of the delight which overflowed in their hearts.

"Oh, I forgot!" exclaimed Jack, drawing Otto's hat from under his coat and slapping it on the yellow crown of his friend; "here's something which belongs to you."

"Vere did you got him?" asked Otto, taking it from his head and inspecting it. "I never dinks I would sees him agin."

Jack gave the particulars which the reader learned long ago, adding an account of the efforts made by Deerfoot and the Sauk to trace him, and of the despair all felt when they were told the captive had been left to die alone in the woods.

"I never expected to meet you again," said Jack, "and I couldn't understand why it was Deerfoot had any hope."

"'Cause he _knowed_," was the truthful remark.

"But what was the matter with you? You must have got well in a hurry."

Otto threw back his head and laughed in his old-fashioned, hearty style, adding:

"Do you dinks I vos _very_ sick?"

And then the lad told his strange story, which perhaps you would prefer to hear in a little better accent than that of the narrator.

The statement made to Deerfoot by Lone Bear only a few hours before was shown to be accurate in every particular by the narrative of Otto himself, but it had a phase which neither Lone Bear nor any of his comrades suspected.

The Sauks who wandered away from their fellows, taking Otto along as their prisoner, met the Pawnees, who, as the reader well knows, were a long ways from home. Otto was bartered to them, and his captors continued toward their village, many days' journey to the north and west. They went at a moderate pace, stopping and hunting by the way and making themselves familiar with the country, with a view of removing their lodges thither, provided they could find a satisfactory place.

They were many hours on this dismal tramp when Otto asked himself whether it would not be as well to give up all thought of returning home, and of becoming one of the people into whose hands he had fallen. The hardship imposed by his parents impelled him to such a course, and, more than once, he decided not to make any effort to leave the Pawnees, even if a good opportunity offered. Had it not been for Jack Carleton and his kind mother he probably would have become an adopted Pawnee.

But, as the distance between him and his humble cabin in far away Martinsville increased, a feeling of homesickness crept over him until he was utterly miserable. He finally reached the resolve that he would never rest until he was back again in the log cabin near the banks of the Mississippi; no matter how oppressive his lot, it was _home_, and that was preferable to a gilded palace.

The prisoner in the dungeon finds no difficulty in making up his mind to leave; the insurmountable task is to carry out his intention; and the days and nights passed without the first glimmer of hope appearing in the sky of Otto Relstaub.

Several times he saw chances which he believed would enable him to get away, but he feared the inevitable pursuit. He was so many miles from home that the most laborious tramping would be required for many days, even if able to proceed in a direct line.

It was this dread which prevented such an attempt on the part of Otto, while his homesickness increased until his appetite vanished and his looks were woe-begone. While in this pitiful condition the poor fellow asked himself whether he could not feign illness to such a degree that his captors would abandon him to die.

The probabilities pointed the other way. In the first place the Pawnees were quite certain to perceive the sham, and, in case they were deceived, they were likely to tomahawk Otto so as to end the annoyance. These two considerations kept him plodding along with the party, which, fortunately for him, progressed slowly.

But while the youth's physical condition was not bad enough to deceive the Indians, he became desperate, and determined to take the first opportunity that presented itself. Within an hour he found a chance to pilfer some tobacco belonging to Lone Bear. He did so with such care that he was not suspected. Straightway he swallowed it, and I need not say that it was unnecessary for Otto to pretend he was ill; he was never in such a state of collapse in his life.

His deathly paleness convinced the Pawnees that their captive was at death's door. They urged him to walk, but he could not, and they stayed in camp longer than was intended, in the hope that the patient would rally.

Otto showed a good deal of pluck when, finding himself recovering, he resolutely swallowed some more of the poisonous weed and soon became so prostrated that he really believed his last hour was at hand. He was in great danger, for the nicotine threatened the seat of life, and Otto lost interest in every thing, feeling that it would be a relief to perish and end his misery.

This was his condition when the Pawnees formed the opinion that he could not live more than an hour or two at the most. Accordingly, they covered him with leaves, laid his hat over his face, and, placing his gun beside him, went off. The youth lay hovering, as it seemed, between life and death. While in that condition, he detected a footfall near him. He was able to turn his head, but could not move his body. He recognized Red Wolf, who was standing a few steps away, knife in hand. He had returned to take the scalp of the dying lad, and would have done so, had not Lone Bear, coming from another direction, interfered. By some argument he led the other to change his mind, and both walked away.

From that moment reaction set in, and Otto rallied fast. It was beginning to grow dark, and he was soon shut in by impenetrable gloom. Fearful that Red Wolf or some one else would steal upon him in the night, he crept deeper into the wood, where he knew he could not be found when the sun was not shining.

Although his rugged system rapidly threw off the nicotine poisoning, he was weak and dizzy. He gained a few hours sleep before morning, but was awake at the earliest streakings of light and started on his return.

Otto Relstaub's previous experience in the woods now served him well. He discovered that the war party, instead of continuing westward, were retrograding and doubling on their own trail. He suspected the true reason they were prospecting for a new site for their villages. He had judged from their actions that something of the kind was in their thoughts.

As the course of the lad lay in the same direction, he wisely chose to deviate until he was far off their trail, so as to avoid any risk of them.

Otto's deliverance from captivity was singular indeed, but he was too wise to consider it complete until certain that such was the case. He feared that Red Wolf or some of his comrades would return to the spot where he had been abandoned; and, discovering the trick, instantly pursue him.

He therefore devoted many hours to elaborate efforts to obliterate his own trail, or to shape it so that even a bloodhound could not track him. He crossed all the streams he could, wading long distances through the water where the depth was too great to permit his footprints to be seen. When he finally emerged, he often did so on the same side which he entered, perhaps repeating his maneuver once or twice before leaving the stream by the opposite bank.

This played havoc with Otto's garments, which were torn and injured until it looked doubtful whether they would last him through his journey. Sometimes, while walking where the water was only a little above his knees, he would abruptly step into that which was six or eight feet deep, but he always reached bottom.

During the first day, when the vigorous system of the fugitive demanded food, and he saw the chance of bringing down a wild turkey which trotted swiftly across his path, he refrained through fear that the report of his gun would betray him. He ate a few berries that seemed to have lived over from the preceding winter (the season being rather early for any thing of the kind to have grown since), chewed some tender buds, and lying down at night, thanked heaven he felt so well.

Reaching the bank of the river across which his friends had passed several times, he felt the opportunity for which he longed had come.

With much labor, he succeeded in constructing a raft sufficiently buoyant to float him without resting any part of his body in the water. Pushing this out into the stream, he drifted fully three miles, gradually working the support toward the further shore.

"Dere," he exclaimed, when he stepped out on land, "dey won't find my tracks if dey don't look all summer."

This was the fact, so far as trailing the fugitive from the spot where he was abandoned, but it so happened that the course of the raft down stream carried him into the very section where his late captors were hunting back and forth. The wonder was that he was not discovered, for there must have been times when his enemies were on each side the river, and he was floating directly between them--and that, too, when the sun was shining.

He was so tired that he lay down beside a fallen tree and slept until near nightfall. Even then he was aroused by the report of a gun so near him that he started up and rushed off in such haste that he left his hat behind him. Soon another rifle was discharged so close that he believed he was surrounded by foes. He had missed his hat, but dared not go back after it, the last gun seeming to have been fired from a point near it. All he strove to do was to get as far from the spot as he could in the least time possible. A strong wind, accompanied by some rain, followed and hastened his footsteps.

It certainly was remarkable that the fugitive's presence so near a number of the hostiles was not discovered, but there is no reason to believe that any such suspicion entered their minds, or that they dreamed of the trick played on them by the captive when he seemed to be lying at the point of death.

Otto pressed on, until once more he felt he had the best ground for believing he would elude his enemies; but he was famishing for food, and when in the moment of temptation, a dozen wild turkeys trotted by him in the woods, he fell and let fly at the plumpest, which also fell. _

Read next: Chapter 28. A Startling Interruption

Read previous: Chapter 26. An Interesting Question

Table of content of Footprints in the Forest


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book