The Last of the Mohicans; A narrative of 1757
a cold and discouraging eye; “the thing might do its work among arrows,
or even knives; but these Mengwe have been furnished by the Frenchers with a
good grooved barrel a man. However, it seems to be your gift to go unharmed
amid fire; and as you have hitherto been favored—major, you have left
your rifle at a cock; a single shot before the time would be just twenty scalps
lost to no purpose—singer, you can follow; we may find use for you in the
shoutings.”
“I thank you, friend,” returned David, supplying himself, like his
royal namesake, from among the pebbles of the brook; “though not given to
the desire to kill, had you sent me away my spirit would have been
troubled.”
“Remember,” added the scout, tapping his own head significantly on
that spot where Gamut was yet sore, “we come to fight, and not to
musickate. Until the general whoop is given, nothing speaks but the
rifle.”
David nodded, as much to signify his acquiescence with the terms; and then
Hawkeye, casting another observant glance over his followers made the signal to
proceed.
Their route lay, for the distance of a mile, along the bed of the water-course.
Though protected from any great danger of observation by the precipitous banks,
and the thick shrubbery which skirted the stream, no precaution known to an
Indian attack was neglected. A warrior rather crawled than walked on each flank
so as to catch occasional glimpses into the forest; and every few minutes the
band came to a halt, and listened for hostile sounds, with an acuteness of
organs that would be scarcely conceivable to a man in a less natural state.
Their march was, however, unmolested, and they reached the point where the
lesser stream was lost in the greater, without the smallest evidence that their
progress had been noted. Here the scout again halted, to consult the signs of
the forest.
“We are likely to have a good day for a fight,” he said, in
English, addressing Heyward, and glancing his eyes upward at the clouds, which
began to move in broad sheets across the firmament; “a bright sun and a
glittering barrel are no friends to true sight. Everything is favorable; they
have the wind, which will bring down their noises and their smoke, too, no
little matter in itself; whereas, with us it will be first a shot, and then a
clear view. But here is an end to our cover; the beavers have had the range of
this stream for hundreds of years, and what atween their food and their dams,
there is, as you see, many a girdled stub, but few living trees.”
Hawkeye had, in truth, in these few words, given no bad description of the
prospect that now lay in their front. The brook was irregular in its width,
sometimes shooting through narrow fissures in the rocks, and at others
spreading over acres of bottom land, forming little areas that might be termed
ponds. Everywhere along its bands were the moldering relics of dead trees, in
all the stages of decay, from those that groaned on their tottering trunks to
such as had recently been robbed of those rugged coats that so mysteriously
contain their principle of life. A few long, low, and moss-covered piles were
scattered among them, like the memorials of a former and long-departed
generation.
All these minute particulars were noted by the scout, with a gravity and
interest that they probably had never before attracted. He knew that the Huron
encampment lay a short half mile up the brook; and, with the characteristic
anxiety of one who dreaded a hidden danger, he was greatly troubled at not
finding the smallest trace of the presence of his enemy. Once or twice he felt
induced to give the order for a rush, and to attempt the village by surprise;
but his experience quickly admonished him of the danger of so useless an
experiment. Then he listened intently, and with painful uncertainty, for the
sounds of hostility in the quarter where Uncas was left; but nothing was
audible except the sighing of the wind, that began to sweep over the bosom of
the forest in gusts which threatened a tempest. At length, yielding rather to
his unusual impatience than taking counsel from his knowledge, he determined to
bring matters to an issue, by unmasking his force, and proceeding cautiously,
but steadily, up the stream.
The scout had stood, while making his observations, sheltered by a brake, and
his companions still lay in the bed of the ravine, through which the smaller
stream debouched; but on hearing his low, though intelligible, signal the whole
party stole up the bank, like so many dark specters, and silently arranged
themselves around him. Pointing in the direction he wished to proceed, Hawkeye
advanced, the band breaking off in single files, and following so accurately in
his footsteps, as to leave it, if we except Heyward and David, the trail of but
a single man.
The party was, however, scarcely uncovered before a volley from a dozen rifles
was heard in their rear; and a Delaware leaping high in to the air, like a
wounded deer, fell at his whole length, dead.
“Ah, I feared some deviltry like this!” exclaimed the scout, in
English, adding, with the quickness of thought, in his adopted tongue:
“To cover, men, and charge!”
The band dispersed at the word, and before Heyward had well recovered from his
surprise, he found himself standing alone with David. Luckily the Hurons had
already fallen back, and he was safe from their fire. But this state of things
was evidently to be of short continuance; for the scout set the example of
pressing on their retreat, by discharging his rifle, and darting from tree to
tree as his enemy slowly yielded ground.
It would seem that the assault had been made by a very small party of the
Hurons, which, however, continued to increase in numbers, as it retired on its
friends, until the return fire was very nearly, if not quite, equal to that
maintained by the advancing Delawares. Heyward threw himself among the
combatants, and imitating the necessary caution of his companions, he made
quick discharges with his own rifle. The contest now grew warm and stationary.
Few were injured, as both parties kept their bodies as much protected as
possible by the trees; never, indeed, exposing any part of their persons except
in the act of taking aim. But the chances were gradually growing unfavorable to
Hawkeye and his band. The quick-sighted scout perceived his danger without
knowing how to remedy it. He saw it was more dangerous to retreat than to
maintain his ground: while he found his enemy throwing out men on his flank;
which rendered the task of keeping themselves covered so very difficult to the
Delawares, as nearly to silence their fire. At this embarrassing moment, when
they began to think the whole of the hostile tribe was gradually encircling
them, they heard the yell of combatants and the rattling of arms echoing under
the arches of the wood at the place where Uncas was posted, a bottom which, in
a manner, lay beneath the ground on which Hawkeye and his party were
contending.
The effects of this attack were instantaneous, and to the scout and his friends
greatly relieving. It would seem that, while his own surprise had been
anticipated, and had consequently failed, the enemy, in their turn, having been
deceived in its object and in his numbers, had left too small a force to resist
the impetuous onset of the young Mohican. This fact was doubly apparent, by the
rapid manner in which the battle in the forest rolled upward toward the
village, and by an instant falling off in the number of their assailants, who
rushed to assist in maintaining the front, and, as it now proved to be, the
principal point of defense.
Animating his followers by his voice, and his own example, Hawkeye then gave
the word to bear down upon their foes. The charge, in that rude species of
warfare, consisted merely in pushing from cover to cover, nigher to the enemy;
and in this maneuver he was instantly and successfully obeyed. The Hurons were
compelled to withdraw, and the scene of the contest rapidly changed from the
more open ground, on which it had commenced, to a spot where the assailed found
a thicket to rest upon. Here the struggle was protracted, arduous and seemingly
of doubtful issue; the Delawares, though none of them fell, beginning to bleed
freely, in consequence of the disadvantage at which they were held.
In this crisis, Hawkeye found means to get behind the same tree as that which
served for a cover to Heyward; most of his own combatants being within call, a
little on his right, where they maintained rapid, though fruitless, discharges
on their sheltered enemies.
“You are a young man, major,” said the scout, dropping the butt of
“killdeer” to the earth, and leaning on the barrel, a little
fatigued with his previous industry; “and it may be your gift to lead
armies, at some future day, ag’in these imps, the Mingoes. You may here
see the philosophy of an Indian fight. It consists mainly in ready hand, a
quick eye and a good cover. Now, if you had a company of the Royal Americans
here, in what manner would you set them to work in this business?”
“The bayonet would make a road.”
“Ay, there is white reason in what you say; but a man must ask himself,
in this wilderness, how many lives he can spare. No—horse[1],”
continued the scout, shaking his head, like one who mused; “horse, I am
ashamed to say must sooner or later decide these scrimmages. The brutes are
better than men, and to horse must we come at last. Put a shodden hoof on the
moccasin of a red-skin, and, if his rifle be once emptied, he will never stop
to load it again.”
[1]
The American forest admits of the passage of horses, there being little
underbrush, and few tangled brakes. The plan of Hawkeye is the one which has
always proved the most successful in the battles between the whites and the
Indians. Wayne, in his celebrated campaign on the Miami, received the fire of
his enemies in line; and then causing his dragoons to wheel round his flanks,
the Indians were driven from their covers before they had time to load. One of
the most conspicuous of the chiefs who fought in the battle of Miami assured
the writer, that the red men could not fight the warriors with “long
knives and leather stockings”; meaning the dragoons with their sabers and
boots.
“This is a subject that might better be discussed at another time,”
returned Heyward; “shall we charge?”
“I see no contradiction to the gifts of any man in passing his breathing
spells in useful reflections,” the scout replied. “As to rush, I
little relish such a measure; for a scalp or two must be thrown away in the
attempt. And yet,” he added, bending his head aside, to catch the sounds
of the distant combat, “if we are to be of use to Uncas, these knaves in
our front must be got rid of.”
Then, turning with a prompt and decided air, he called aloud to his Indians, in
their own language. His words were answered by a shout; and, at a given signal,
each warrior made a swift movement around his particular tree. The sight of so
many dark bodies, glancing before their eyes at the same instant, drew a hasty
and consequently an ineffectual fire from the Hurons. Without stopping to
breathe, the Delawares leaped in long bounds toward the wood, like so many
panthers springing upon their prey. Hawkeye was in front, brandishing his
terrible rifle and animating his followers by his example. A few of the older
and more cunning Hurons, who had not been deceived by the artifice which had
been practiced to draw their fire, now made a close and deadly discharge of
their pieces and justified the apprehensions of the scout by felling three of
his foremost warriors. But the shock was insufficient to repel the impetus of
the charge. The Delawares broke into the cover with the ferocity of their