Often when they were miles away in the dense forest,
far from their cave, he asked Wetzel to let him try to lead the way
back to camp. And he never failed once, though many times he got off
a straight course, thereby missing the easy travelling.
Joe did wonderfully well, but he lacked, as nearly all white men do,
the subtler, intuitive forest-instinct, which makes the Indian as
much at home in the woods as in his teepee. Wetzel had this
developed to a high degree. It was born in him. Years of training,
years of passionate, unrelenting search for Indians, had given him a
knowledge of the wilds that was incomprehensible to white men, and
appalling to his red foes.
Joe saw how Wetzel used this ability, but what it really was baffled
him. He realized that words were not adequate to explain fully this
great art. Its possession required a marvelously keen vision, an eye
perfectly familiar with every creature, tree, rock, shrub and thing
belonging in the forest; an eye so quick in flight as to detect
instantly the slightest change in nature, or anything unnatural to
that environment. The hearing must be delicate, like that of a deer,
and the finer it is, the keener will be the woodsman. Lastly, there
is the feeling that prompts the old hunter to say: "No game to-day."
It is something in him that speaks when, as he sees a night-hawk
circling low near the ground, he says: "A storm to-morrow.
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