Henry W. Shoemaker

“ Gradually she withdrew from the society of her tribal friends, building herself a lodge-house on the hill, in what is now the cave orchard. There she led a very introspective life, grieving over the love that might have been. To console herself she imagined that some day a handsome warrior would appear, seek her out, load her with gifts, overwhelm her with love and carry her away to some distant region in triumph. He would be handsomer and braver than any youth in the whole country of the Karoondinha. She would be the most envied of women when he came. ”

“ The relations became so strained that life in the commodious lodge-house was unbearable. At length it occurred to Wisamek that he might again visit the fountain of youth, this time to revive his soul. Perhaps he had not remained in the water long enough to touch the spirit within. He informed his spouse that he was going on a long journey on invitation of the war chief of a distant tribe, and that she must accompany him. He was insanely jealous of her now. He could not bear her out of his sight. He imagined she had a young lover back of every tree, though she was honor personified. ”

“ His heart was set on reaching the evening star, to have propinquity with the heavens. Out of his strong hopes and deep desires came a tall and noble tree, growing 139in eastern Sugar Valley, a king among its kindred, off there facing the shining, beaming star. This tree would be the symbol of earth’s loftiest and highest aspirations, the bridge between the terrestrial and the celestial bodies. It was earth’s manliest, noblest and cleanest aspiration, standing there erect and immobile, the heavy plates of the bark like gilt-bronze armor, the sparse foliage dark and like a warrior’s crest. ”

“ Indians were strong believers in the power of mind over matter.
When he reached the vicinity of the cave he was fortunate enough to meet the aged Indian who was its guardian. Though his hair was snow white and he said he was so old that he had lost count of the years, Gamunk’s carriage was erect, his complexion smooth, his eyes clear and kindly. He walked along with a swinging stride, very different from Wisamek’s mental picture of him. The would-be bridegroom, who handed him the talisman, was quick to impart his mission to his new-found friend. ”

“ They arrived in what seemed like an armed camp, for all the braves had been called to arms, which plotted to drive Indians and French to the uttermost ends of the earth.
Weguarran was quickly mobilized, and a musket in one hand and tomahawk in the other, while on his back he bore the sacred pigeon, he marched toward his foes. In the excitement he had not forgotten to slip into his pouch at his belt a sprig of the Prostrate Juniper, which would be the emblem of the English race prostrate under the foot of French and Indian allies. ”

“ Like a wild cat she slipped out from under the buffalo robes, wiggled along among the wet leaves and moss, then crawled to her feet and was off like a deer towards the Panther Glade, regardless of the howling of the wolves. Hugh Gibson’s quick sense of hearing told him she was coming, and he walked out so that he stood on the path before her, and clasped her white shapely arms in heartfelt congratulations. ”

“ Neither could he see permanent peace of mind if he married her and brought her into his exclusive circles in the Quaker City.
As he was an honorable young man, and his love was real, making her truly and always happy was the solitary consideration. These thoughts marred the parting; they blistered and ravaged his spirit on the whole dreary way back to Liverpool. There his colored servant, an antic darkey, was waiting at the old Susquehanna House to ride the horse to Philadelphia.
The young man boarded the packet, riding on it to Harrisburg, where he took the steam train for home. ”

“ Long years ago, in the very earliest days of the world’s history, the great earth spirit loved the evening star, but it was such an unusual and unnatural attachment, and so impossible of consummation that the despairing spirit wished to end the cycle of existence and pass into oblivion so as to forget his hopeless love. Accordingly, with a blast of lightning he opened his side and let his anguish flow away. The great gaping wound is what we of today call Penn’s Cave, and the never ending stream of anguish is the wonderful shadowy Karoondinha, now renamed John Penn’s Creek. ”

“ Liddenah, inspired by her great love, never looked more beautiful. She was probably a trifle above the average height, gracefully, but solidly made. Her skin was very white, her eyes dark, her hair that of a raven, while her aquiline nose, high cheek bones and small, fine mouth made her resemble a high-bred Jewess more than an Indian squaw, a heritage perhaps from a remote Semitic origin beyond the Pacific. ”

“ At last, by the light which filtered down through the treetops at the cave’s mouth, he knew that the hour had come for him to emerge–emerge as Chief Wisamek–young in heart as in body. Proudly he grasped the rocky ledge and swung himself out on dry land. He arose to his feet. His head seemed very light and giddy. He fancied he saw visions of his old conquests, 308old loves. There was the sound of music in the air. Was it the martial drums, played to welcome the conqueror, or the wind surging through the feathery tops of the maple and linden trees at the mouth of the cave? ”

“ Young Stover was playing “Green Grows the Rushes” on his fiddle in the tap-room, and Sargeant sat there listening to him, dreaming and musing all the while, his consciousness singularly alert, until the closing hour came.
That night, in the old stained four-poster, in his tiny, cold room, he slept not at all. “Yet he feared to dream.” Though his thoughts carried him all over the world, the little postmistress was uppermost in every fancy. Among the other things, he wished that he had asked her to ride with him to the cave. They could have visited the subterranean marvels together. ”

“ Were they really forsaken, or were there affairs of great emergency in the realm of the evening star that made them tarry so long? They might be surprised on their return to find their hunting territories the farms of the white men, their descendants banished to arid reservations on La Belle Riviere and beyond. They had left in the twilight; they would find the Indians’ Twilight everywhere over the face of the earth. ”

“ The superb youth in war dress, with arms outstretched, on the agile war pony, rushing towards the foreground, almost in the act of leaping from the rocky panel into life, across the waters of the cave to the arms of his beloved.
It would make old Quetajaku happy to see it, she who had never known love or beauty. The youth in the mural typified what Naganit would have been himself were he the chosen, and what the “bachelor maid” would have possessed had nature favored her. ”

“ Most of the Fort Robinson and other prisoners who had been brought in from various directions since their arrival, to make a great caravan of captives to impress the commanders at Shannopin’s Town, like a Roman triumph, were allowed their liberty during the daytime. At night they were all tied together as they lay about the campfire, not far from the charred stump of the ash pole where the poor white woman had been burned to death, and where the small Indian dogs were constantly sniffing. ”

“ He could never focus his attentions on any woman for long, as in the background he always saw the slender form, the blushing face, the pansy-like eyes and the copper-brown, wavy hair of his mountain sweetheart, Elsie Vanneman. Her loveliness haunted him, and all others paled beside her. He was in easy circumstances to marry; friends less opulent were taking wives and building showy homes with Mansard roofs, along the outskirts of the muddy main thoroughfare of Pithole City, where landscape gardening often consisted of charred, blackened pine stumps and abandoned oil derricks. ”

“ No one was about as she passed the garden, which made her heart sink with loneliness for some strong man’s love.
When Kettle Creek was reached and crossed near the Cold Spring, she decided to rest awhile. After a meal, which she barely tasted, she told the Indians that she was going for a little walk in the woods.
“I am safe now,” she said, bitterly; “I have no gold.”
Past the Cold Spring she went, on and on up the wild, narrow gorge of what is now called Ole Bull Run, where a dark and dismal hemlock forest of colossal proportions bent over the torrent, keeping out the light of day. ”

“ It was hinted that he had been somewhere and renewed his youth, but as the henchmen were sworn to secrecy, how it had been done was not revealed.
The young bride seemed radiantly happy. She had every reason to be; the other Indian maids whispered from lip to lip, was she not marrying the greatest warrior and hunter of his generation, the handsomest man in a hundred tribes? Secretly envied by all of her age, possessing her stalwart prize, the fair bride started on her honeymoon, showered with acorns and good wishes. ”

“ The Indians’ twilight had come, for now the picked band of warriors and warlocks must forever linger in the star-belt, unless the earth spirit, out of his great love, again heaved such a tree from his inmost creative consciousness. ”

“ It seemed as if the earth had swallowed up the lovely object of the outlaw’s wiles, for though Girty himself was heard of everywhere, being linked with the most hideous atrocities and ambushes, no Indian prisoner, even under the most dreadful torture, could reveal the Lady Claypoole’s whereabouts. The reason for that was only two persons in the service knew, one was Mamolen, the other Girty, and Mamolen remained behind with the fair runaway. ”

“ The Indians, knowing full well the story of the hopeless romance of the earth spirit and the evening star, or Venus, as the white men called it, venerated the noble tree as the connecting link between two manifestations of sublimity. ”

“ Love is a force that is all-compelling, all-absorbing and never dies, and is the biggest thing in life, and the story of John Penn and Maria Cox will be whispered about in the backwoods cabins and wayside inns of the Pennsylvania Mountains long after seemingly greater men and minds have passed to forgetfulness. ”

“ It was not until he had gotten into the first chamber that the captives in the inner room could hear him. Sargeant had been sitting with his back propped against the cavern wall, while Caroline, very pale and white-lipped, was lying across his knees, gazing up into the darkness, imagining that she could see his face.
When they heard the cheery shouts of their deliverer they did not instantly attempt to scramble to their feet. Instead the young lover bent over; his lips touched Caroline’s, who instinctively had raised her face to meet his. ”

“ Black Chief’s daughter was certainly the best looking girl present, almost more like an American than an Indian in appearance, for her profile was certainly on refined lines, and it was only when looking her full in the face did the racial traits of breadth of the bridge of the nose, flatness of lips and deep duskiness of complexion reveal themselves. ”

“ It seems a pity that these old legends are passing with the lives of the aged people, but the coming of Ira Keeney, the grizzled Civil War veteran, as caretaker for the handsome Armstrong-Quigley hunting lodge, on the site of one of the former proposed fogderier Walhalla, has awakened anew the world of romance, of dashing exploits in the war under Sheridan and Rosecrans, of lumbering days, wolves, panthers and wild pigeons, all of which memories the venerable soldier loves to recount. ”

“ It was just at dark when the hunters saw the pantheress crouched in a rock oak at the forks, on the steep, stony face of the Keating Mountain, with the dogs leaping up frantically, the monster feline hissing and growling savagely.
Jake Hamersley was selected to give the death shot, “taking” the brute between the eyes. She fell with a thud, and with a few convulsive kicks, expired on the snow. Major Stewardson built a military campfire while Hamersley and Vallon carefully skinned the carcass, and fed the flesh to the dogs. ”

“ The moon slowly rose higher and higher until it reached the crowns of the giant rock oaks along the edge of the “Indian fields”. The gaunt form of In-nan-ga-eh could now be seen creeping steadily out of the forest, bounding across the clearing and, stone axe in hand, entered the cabin where he supposed that Quinnemongh was sleeping. ”

“ Wulaha will remain at home until after that battle, when you can come for her and claim her as your own, and we will give her to you with rejoicing.”
“What you say is surely fair enough, Father Michaelmas,” replied Weguarran, “for I would see no future for Wulaha and myself if the English are victorious in this inevitable battle. As soon as it is won–and it will be won, for the high resolve of every Indian warrior is to go in to win–I will hurry back to the banks of the Lehigh, never stopping to rest, sleep or eat, to tell you of the glad tidings, and bear away my beloved Wulaha. ”

“ After the Revolutionary War there was naturally an unsettled state of affairs, and many farmers and adventurers turned their thought to the country west of the Allegheny Mountains and River, as the land of opportunity, consequently there was much desultory travel over the Boone Road. Unemployment prevailed everywhere, and hordes of penniless ex-soldiers, turned adrift by their victorious new nation, traveled backwards and forwards along all the known highways and trails, picking up a day’s work as best they could, their precarious mode of living giving them the name of “cider tramps.” ”

“ The Pennsylvania Dutch are the most adaptable race in the world, altering the spelling of their names, their genealogies and traditions with every generation. They find success in all callings and in all walks of life like the true Nomads that they are. A Pennsylvania Dutchman’s lineage is kaleidoscopic any way–possibly German, Jewish, probably Indian, with sure admixtures of Dutch, Quaker, Swiss, Scotch-Irish, Greek, Bohemian, Spanish or Huguenot. ”