The Hooting in the Wilderness
It was night in the Tennessee Wilderness. A train of settlers from the Carolinas, with four-wheeled ox-carts and pack-horses, and attended by an armed guard, was winding its way along the trail through the forest toward the frontier-town of Nashville. They had marched thirty-six hours, a night and two days, without stopping to rest. They were keeping a vigilant outlook for savages.
At length, they reached what they thought was a safe camping-ground. The tired travellers hastened to encamp. Their little tents were pitched. Their fires were lighted. The exhausted women and children crept into the tents, and fell asleep.
The men, except those who were to stand sentinel during the first half of the night, wrapped their blankets around them and lay down under the lee of sheltering logs with their feet to the fire.
Silence fell on the camp.
All slept except the sentinels and one young man. He sat with his back to a tree, smoking a corn-cob pipe. He was not handsome; but the direct glance of his keen blue eye and his resolute expression, made him seem so in spite of a long thin face, high forehead somewhat narrow, and sandy-red hair falling low on his brow.
This young man was Andrew Jackson,—mischievous Andy of the Waxhaws,—now grown to be a clever, licensed, young lawyer. He was going with the emigrant train to Nashville in order to hang out his sign and practise on the frontier.
He sat there in the Wilderness, in the darkness, peacefully smoking. He listened to the night sounds from the forest. He was falling into a doze, when he noted the various hoots of owls in the forest around him.
“A remarkable country this, for owls,” he thought, as he closed his eyes and fell asleep.
Just then an owl, whose hooting had sounded at a distance, suddenly uttered a peculiar cry close to the camp.
In a moment, young Jackson was the widest awake man in Tennessee.
He grasped his rifle, and crept cautiously to where his friend Searcy was sleeping, and woke him quietly.
“Searcy,” said he, “raise your head and make no noise.”
“What’s the matter?” asked Searcy.
“The owls—listen—there—there again! Isn’t that a little too natural?”
“Do you think so?” asked Searcy.
“I know it,” replied young Jackson. “There are Indians all around us. I have heard them in every direction. They mean to attack before daybreak.”
In a few minutes, the men of the camp were aroused. The experienced woodsmen among them listened to the hooting, and agreed with young Jackson, that there were Indians in the forest. Jackson advised that the camp should be instantly and quietly broken up, and the march resumed.
This was done, and the company heard nothing more of the savages.
But a party of hunters who reached the same camping-ground an hour after the company had left it, lay down by the fires and slept. Before day dawned, the Indians were upon them, and killed all except one of the party.
But the long train of emigrants, men, women and children, were safely continuing their wearisome journey through the Wilderness. At last, they reached Nashville to the joy of the settlers there.
And a great piece of news young Andrew Jackson brought with him to Nashville—the Constitution of the United States had just been ratified and adopted by a majority of the States of the Union.
James Parton (Retold)