Part 26

"A'-right," he pronounced laboriously.

Buckshot explained to us his plans.

"Tawabinisáy tell me," said he, "he don' been to Kawágama seven year. To-morrow he go blaze trail. Nex' day we go."

"How would it be if one or two of us went with him to-morrow to see how he does it?" asked Jim.

Buckshot looked at us strangely.

"I don't want to follow him," he replied, with a significant simplicity. "He run like a deer."

"Buckshot," said I, pursuing the inevitable linguistics, "what does Kawágama mean?"

Buckshot thought for quite two minutes. Then he drew a semicircle.

"W'at you call dat?" he asked.

"Crescent, like moon? half-circle? horseshoe? bow?" we proposed.

Buckshot shook his head at each suggestion. He made a wriggling mark, then a wide sweep, then a loop.

"All dose," said he, "w'at you call him?"

"Curve!" we cried.

"Áh hah," assented Buckshot, satisfied.

"Buckshot," we went on, "what does Tawabinisáy mean?"

"Man-who-travels-by-moonlight," he replied promptly.

The following morning Tawabinisáy departed, carrying a lunch and a hand-axe. At four o'clock he was back, sitting on a log and smoking a pipe. In the meantime we had made up our party.

Tawabinisáy himself had decided that the two half-breeds must stay at home. He wished to share his secret only with his own tribesmen. The fiat grieved Billy, for behold he had already put in much time on this very search, and naturally desired to be in at the finish. Dick, too, wanted to go, but him we decided too young and light for a fast march. Dinnis had to leave the River in a day or so; Johnnie was a little doubtful as to the tramp, although he concealed his doubt--at least to his own satisfaction--under a variety of excuses. Jim and Doc would go, of course. There remained Doug.

We found that individual erecting a rack of many projecting arms--like a Greek warrior's trophy--at the precise spot where the first rays of the morning sun would strike it. On the projecting arms he purposed hanging his wet clothes.

"Doug," said we, "do you want to go to Kawágama to-morrow?"

Doug turned on us a sardonic eye. He made no direct answer, but told the following story:--

"Once upon a time Judge Carter was riding through a rural district in Virginia. He stopped at a negro's cabin to get his direction.

"'Uncle,' said he, 'can you direct me to Colonel Thompson's?'

"'Yes, sah,' replied the negro; 'yo' goes down this yah road 'bout two mile till yo' comes to an ol' ailm tree, and then yo' tu'us sha'p to th' right down a lane fo' 'bout a qua'ter of a mile. Thah you sees a big white house. Yo' wants to go through th' ya'd, to a paf that takes you a spell to a gate. Yo' follows that road to th' lef till yo' comes to three roads goin' up a hill; and, jedge, it don' mattah which one of them thah roads yo' take, yo' gets lost surer 'n hell anyway!'"

Then Doug turned placidly back to the construction of his trophy.

We interpreted this as an answer, and made up an outfit for five.

The following morning at six o'clock we were under way. Johnnie Challán ferried us across the river in two instalments. We waved our hands and plunged through the brush screen.

Thenceforth it was walk half an hour, rest five minutes, with almost the regularity of clockwork. We timed the Indians secretly, and found they varied by hardly a minute from absolute fidelity to this schedule. We had at first, of course, to gain the higher level of the hills, but Tawabinisáy had the day before picked out a route that mounted as easily as the country would allow, and through a hardwood forest free of underbrush. Briefly indicated, our way led first through the big trees and up the hills, then behind a great cliff knob into a creek valley, through a quarter-mile of bottom-land thicket, then by an open strip to the first little lake. This we ferried by means of the bark canoe carried on the shoulders of Tawabinisáy.