Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Read Online Free Page B

headed westward there,
just inside the line of riverside trees. Not a sound did he make as he
advanced. Mark, too, moved noiselessly. Months of scouting and hunting in these
woods had made him able to do that. He peered into thickets, past big trunks,
but saw and heard nothing.
                They had accomplished more than two
miles, and the sunrise had turned the dim gray light to soft rose, when Tsukala
put his hand behind him, palm toward Mark, to signal a halt. Then Tsukala crept
forward alone, bending double, toward a sort of clearing by the river. It had
been a drinking place for deer in the first days of the Jarretts’ adventures at
Bear Paw Gap. Tsukala looked cautiously this way and that, across the river,
and among the trees on the clearing’s far side. Then he ventured into the open.
He dropped to one knee and motioned for Mark to join him.
                 “See,”
whispered Tsukala, and lifted a big patch of bark. “I hid track with this.”
                 Mark
studied the moccasin print. As Tsukala said, it was not a familiar one—Mark,
too, knew the tracks of his fellow-settlers by study. This was larger and
longer even than the prints of the big feet of Joseph Shelton or Lapham
Phillips.
                 “Indian
track,” pronounced Tsukala.
                 “How
do you know?”
                 Tsukala
gestured. “Deep here, at the outside. White men set whole foot to the ground.
Indians walk on outside, toes turn in.”
                 That
was a new thought to Mark, but he had become used to learning trail wisdom from
Tsukala. “It points westward,” he said.
                 “Yuh. Come, we
will go west, too.”
                 Again
Tsukala led the way, in the direction to which the big track pointed. He moved
more slowly, questing this way and that. Some twenty
paces farther along, he grunted and bent to look at a slight scrape in moist
earth. Mark, also examining this trace, judged that it was hours old, probably made
the day before. Tsukala turned away from the river, and squatted on his heels
to peer at the ground again. He waved Mark close.
                 “More
than one man,” he said under his breath.
                 Mark
saw a flat piece of stone the size of his hand, with a smaller chunk upon it
and a second pebble against it on the westward side. “What does that mean,
Tsukala?”
                 “Indian
sign,” Tsukala replied. “Stone with little stone on top—that
means a trail. Little stone to one side, that shows which way to go. Cherokees do that.”
                 “A
Cherokee should be your friend,” Mark suggested.
                 “Maybe,”
said Tsukala darkly. “Cherokees are like white men—some good, some bad. Come.”
                 Watchfully
they moved westward. Mark judged that they must be almost due south of
Durwell’s new mill. Tsukala signaled another halt, and inspected the trunk of a
tall oak. He gazed up among its branches, then looked
in all directions. The morning sun gave clear light by now.
                 “Somebody
climbed this tree,” he said as Mark joined him, and stooped to survey the ground. “Aht, the big
foot.” He pointed with the heel of his hand to where a blurred track was
visible between two outspread roots. “He jumped, caught hold of that branch up
there. See, his foot scraped the bark. He climbed to look at your friends, over
there at what you call the mill.”
                 “When
did he climb, Tsukala?”
                 “More
times than one, I think. Wessah watched from the roof. Wessah knew he was in
this tree, looking. See, Big Foot left his gun here to climb.”
                 He
laid his palm on the trunk, and Mark saw a slight nick in the bark, where a gun
sight had leaned. “Anyway, he didn’t climb up there to shoot at us,”