The Young Trailers
J >> Joseph A. Altsheler >> The Young Trailers"Sink down, Paul! Sink down!" he cried, and grasping his comrade by the
shoulder he bore him down among the thick bushes, going down with him.
"Don't move for your life!" he whispered. "Men are about to pass and
they cannot be our kind!"
Paul at once became as still as death. He too under the strain of the
wilderness life and the need of caring for oneself was becoming
wonderfully acute of the senses and ready of action. The two boys
crouched close together, their heads below the tops of the bushes,
although they could see between the leaves and twigs, and neither moved
a hair.
Almost hidden in the foliage a line of Indian warriors, like dusky
phantoms, passed, in single file, and apparently stepping in one
another's tracks. Well for the boys that Paul had felt his impulse to
leave the vicinity of the besieged tree, because the course of the
warriors would carry them very near it, and they could not fail to
detect the alien presence. But no such suspicion seemed to enter their
minds now, and, like the wolves, they were traveling fast, but
southward.
The boys stared through the leaves and twigs, afraid but fascinated.
They were fourteen in all--Henry counted them--but never a warrior spoke
a word, and the grim line was seen but a moment and then gone, though
their dark painted faces long remained engraved, like pictures, on the
minds of both. But to Paul it was, for the instant, like a dream. He saw
them, and then he did not. The leaves of the bushes rustled a little
when they passed, and then were still.
"They must be Southern Indians," whispered Henry. "Cherokees most
likely. They come up here now and then to hunt, but they seldom stay
long, for fear of the more warlike and powerful Northern Indians, who
come down to Kaintuckee for the same purpose, at least that's what I
heard Ross and Sol say."
"Well, they did seem to be traveling fast," breathed Paul, "and I'm
mighty glad of it. Do you think, Henry, they could have done any harm at
Wareville?"
Henry shook his head.
"I have no such fear," he said. "We are a good long distance from home,
and they've probably gone by without ever hearing of the place. Ross has
always said that no danger was to be dreaded from the south."
"I guess it's so," said Paul with deep relief, "but I think, Henry, that
you and I ought to go down to the river's bank, and build that raft as
soon as we can."
"All right," said Henry calmly. "But we'll first eat our venison."
They quickly did as they agreed, and felt greatly strengthened and
encouraged after a hearty breakfast. Then with bold hearts and quick
hands they began their task.
CHAPTER V
AFLOAT
The boys began at once the work on their raft, a rude structure of a few
fallen logs, fastened together with bark and brush, but simple, strong
and safe. They finished it in two days, existing meanwhile on the deer
meat, and early the morning afterwards, the clumsy craft, bearing the
two navigators, was duly intrusted to the mercy of the unknown river.
Each of the boys carried a slender hickory pole with which to steer, and
they also fastened securely to the raft the remainder of their deer,
their most precious possession.
They pushed off with the poles, and the current catching their craft,
carried it gently along. It was a fine little river, running in a deep
channel, and Henry became more sure than ever that it was the one that
flowed by Wareville. He was certain that the family resemblance was too
strong for him to be mistaken.
They floated on for hours, rarely using their poles to increase the
speed of the raft and by and by they began to pass between cliffs of
considerable height. The forest here was very dense. Mighty oaks and
hickories grew right at the water's edge, throwing out their boughs so
far that often the whole stream was in the shade. Henry enjoyed it. This
was one of the things that his fancy had pictured. He was now floating
down an unknown river, through unknown lands, and, like as not, his and
Paul's were the first human eyes that had ever looked upon these hills
and splendid forests. Reposing now after work and danger he breathed
again the breath of the wilderness. He loved it--its silence, its
magnificent spaces, and its majesty. He was glad that he had come to
Kentucky, where life was so much grander than it was back in the old
Eastern regions. Here one was not fenced in and confined and could grow
to his true stature.
They ate their dinner on the raft, still floating peacefully and tried
to guess how far they had come, but neither was able to judge the speed
of the current. Paul fitted himself into a snug place on their queer
craft and after a while went to sleep. Henry watched him, lest he turn
over and fall into the river and also kept an eye out for other things.
He was watching thus, when about the middle of the afternoon he saw a
thin dark line, lying like a thread, against the blue skies. He studied
it long and came to the conclusion that it was smoke.
"Smoke!" said he to himself. "Maybe that means Wareville."
The raft glided gently with the current, moving so smoothly and
peacefully that it was like the floating of a bubble on a summer sea.
Paul still lay in a dreamless sleep. The water was silver in the shade
and dim gold where the sunshine fell upon it, and the trees, a solid
mass, touched already by the brown of early autumn, dropped over the
stream. Afar, a fine haze, like a misty veil, hung over the forest. The
world was full of peace and primitive beauty.
They drifted on and the spire of smoke broadened and grew. The look of
the river became more and more familiar. Paul still slept and Henry
would not awaken him. He looked at the face of his comrade as he
slumbered and noticed for the first time that it was thin and pale. The
life in the woods had been hard upon Paul. Henry did not realize until
this moment how very hard it had been. The sight of that smoke had not
come too soon.
There was a shout from the bank followed by the crash of bodies among
the undergrowth.
"Smoke me, but here they are! A-floatin' down the river in their own
boat, as comfortable as two lords!"
It was the voice of Shif'less Sol, and his face, side by side with that
of Ross, the guide, appeared among the trees at the river's brink. Henry
felt a great flush of joy when he saw them, and waved his hands. Paul,
awakened by the shouts, was in a daze at first, but when he beheld old
friends again his delight was intense.
Henry thrust a pole against the bottom and shoved the raft to the bank.
Then he and Paul sprang ashore and shook hands again and again with Ross
and Sol. Ross told of the long search for the two boys. He and Mr. Ware
and Shif'less Sol and a half dozen others had never ceased to seek them.
They feared at one time that they had been carried off by savages, but
nowhere did they find Indian traces. Then their dread was of starvation
or death by wild animals, and they had begun to lose hope.
Both Henry and Paul were deeply moved by the story of the grief at
Wareville. They knew even without the telling that this sorrow had never
been demonstrative. The mothers of the West were too much accustomed to
great tragedies to cry out and wring their hands when a blow fell.
Theirs was always a silent grief, but none the less deep.
Then, guided by Ross and the shiftless one, they proceeded to Wareville
which was really at the bottom of the smoke spire, where they were
received, as two risen from the dead, in a welcome that was not noisy,
but deep and heartfelt. The cow, the original cause of the trouble, had
wandered back home long ago.
"How did you live in the forest?" asked Mr. Ware of Henry, after the
first joy of welcome was shown.
"It was hard at first, but we were beginning to learn," replied the boy.
"If we'd only had our rifles 'twould have been no trouble. And father,
the wilderness is splendid!"
The boy's thoughts wandered far away for a moment to the wild woods
where he again lay in the shade of mighty oaks and saw the deer come
down to drink. Mr. Ware noticed the expression on Henry's face and took
reflection. "I must not let the yoke bear too heavy upon him," was his
unspoken thought.
But Paul's joy was unalloyed; he preferred life at Wareville to life in
the wilderness amid perpetual hardships, and when they gave the great
dinner at Mr. Ware's to celebrate the return of the wanderers he reached
the height of human bliss. Both Ross and Shif'less Sol were present and
with them, too, were Silas Pennypacker who could preach upon occasion
for the settlement and did it, now and then, and John Upton, who next to
Mr. Ware was the most notable man in Wareville, and his daughter Lucy,
now a shy, pretty girl of twelve, and more than twenty others. Even
Braxton Wyatt was among the members although he still sneered at Henry.
Theirs was in very truth a table fit for a king. In fact few kings could
duplicate it, without sending to the uttermost parts of the earth, and
perhaps not then. Meat was its staple. They had wild duck, wild goose,
wild turkey, deer, elk, beaver tail, and a half dozen kinds of fish; but
the great delicacy was buffalo hump cooked in a peculiar way--that is,
served up in the hide of a buffalo from which the hair had been singed
off, and baked in an earthen oven. Ross, who had learned it from the
Indians, showed them how to do this, and they agreed that none of them
had ever before tasted so fine a dish. When the dinner was over, Henry
and Paul had to answer many questions about their wanderings, and they
were quite willing to do so, feeling at the moment a due sense of their
own importance.
A shade passed over the faces of some of the men at the mention of the
Indians, whom Henry and Paul had seen, but Ross agreed with Henry that
they were surely of the South, going home from a hunting trip, and so
they were soon forgotten.
Henry's work after their return included an occasional hunting
excursion, as game was always needed. His love of the wilderness did not
decrease when thus he ranged through it and began to understand its
ways. Familiarity did not breed contempt. The magnificent spaces and
mighty silence appealed to him with increasing force. The columns of the
trees were like cathedral aisles and the pure breath of the wind was
fresh with life.
The first part of the autumn was hot and dry. The foliage died fast, the
leaves twisted and dried up and the brown grass stems fell lifeless to
the earth. A long time they were without rain, and a dull haze of heat
hung over the simmering earth. The river shrank in its bed, and the
brooks became rills.
Henry still hunted with his older comrades, though often at night now,
and he saw the forest in a new phase. Dried and burned it appealed to
him still. He learned to sleep lightly, that is, to start up at the
slightest sound, and one morning after the wilderness had been growing
hotter and dryer than ever he was awakened by a faint liquid touch on
the roof. He knew at once that it was the rain, wished for so long and
talked of so much, and he opened the shutter window to see it fall.
The sun was just rising, but showed only a faint glow of pink through
the misty clouds, and the wind was light. The clouds opened but a little
at first and the great drops fell slowly. The hot earth steamed at the
touch, and, burning with thirst, quickly drank in the moisture. The wind
grew and the drops fell faster. The heat fled away, driven by the waves
of cool, fresh air that came out of the west. Washed by the rain the dry
grass straightened up, and the dying leaves opened out, springing into
new life. Faster and faster came the drops and now the sound they made
was like the steady patter of musketry. Henry opened his mouth and
breathed the fresh clean air, and he felt that like the leaves and grass
he, too, was gaining new life.
When he went forth the next day in the dripping forest the wilderness
seemed to be alive. The game swarmed everywhere and he was a lazy man
who could not take what he wished. It was like a late touch of spring,
but it did not last long, for then the frosts came, the air grew crisp
and cool and the foliage of the forest turned to wonderful reds and
yellows and browns. From the summit of the blockhouse tower Henry saw a
great blaze of varied color, and he thought that he liked this part of
the year best. He could feel his own strength grow, and now that cold
weather was soon to come he would learn new ways to seek game and new
phases of the wilderness.
The autumn and its beauty deepened. The colors of the foliage grew more
intense and burned afar like flame. The settlers lightened their work
and most of them now spent a large part of the time in hunting, pursuing
it with the keen zest, born of a natural taste and the relaxation from
heavy labors. Mr. Ware and a few others, anxious to test the qualities
of the soil, were plowing up newly cleared land to be sown in wheat, but
Henry was compelled to devote only a portion of his time to this work.
The remaining hours, not needed for sleep, he was usually in the forest
with Paul and the others.
The hunting was now glorious. Less than three miles from the fort and
about a mile from the river Henry and Paul found a beaver dam across a
tributary creek and they laid rude traps for its builders, six of which
they caught in the course of time. Ross and Sol showed them how to take
off the pelts which would be of value when trade should be opened with
the east, and also how to cook beaver tail, a dish which could, with
truth, be called a rival of buffalo hump.
Now the settlers began to accumulate a great supply of game at
Wareville. Elk and deer and bear and buffalo and smaller animals were
being jerked and dried at every house, and every larder was filled to
the brim. There could be no lack of food the coming winter, the settlers
said, and they spoke with some pride of their care and providence.
The village was gaining in both comfort and picturesqueness. Tanned
skins of the deer, elk, buffalo, bear, wolf, panther and wild cat hung
on the walls of every house, and were spread on every floor. The women
contrived fans and ornaments of the beautiful mottled plumage of the
wild turkey. Cloth was hard to obtain in the wilderness, as it might be
a year before a pack train would come over the mountains from the east,
and so the women made clothing of the softest and lightest of the
dressed deer skin. There were hunting shirts for the men and boys,
fastened at the waist by a belt, and with a fringe three or four inches
long, the bottom of which fell to the knees. The men and boys also made
themselves caps of raccoon skin with the tail sewed on behind as a
decoration. Henry and Paul were very proud of theirs.
The finest robes of buffalo skin were saved for the beds, and Ross gave
warning that they should have full need of them. Winters in Kentucky, he
said, were often cold enough to freeze the very marrow in one's bones,
when even the wildest of men would be glad enough to leave the woods and
hover over a big fire. But the settlers provided for this also by
building great stacks of firewood beside each house. They were as well
equipped with axes--keen, heavy weapons--as they were with rifles and
ammunition, and these were as necessary. The forest around Wareville
already gave great proof of their prowess with the ax.
Now the autumn was waning. Every morning the wilderness gleamed and
sparkled beneath a beautiful covering of white frost. The brown in the
leaves began to usurp the yellows and the reds. The air, crisp and cold,
had a strange nectar in it and its very breath was life. The sun lay in
the heavens a ball of gold, and a fine haze, like a misty golden veil,
hung over the forest. It was Indian summer.
Then Indian summer passed and winter, which was very early that year,
came roaring down on Wareville. The autumn broke up in a cold rain which
soon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, bitter and
chill, and the desolate forest, every bough stripped of its leaves,
moaned before the blast.
But it was cheerful, when the sleet beat upon the roof and the cold wind
rattled the rude shutters, to sit before the big fires and watch them
sparkle and blaze.
There was another reason why Henry should now begin to spend much of his
time indoors. The Rev. Silas Pennypacker opened his school for the
winter, and it was necessary for Henry to attend. Many of the pioneers
who crossed the mountains from the Eastern States and founded the great
Western outpost of the nation in Kentucky were men of education and
cultivation, with a knowledge of books and the world. They did not
intend that their children should grow up mere ignorant borderers, but
they wished their daughters to have grace and manners and their sons to
become men of affairs, fit to lead the vanguard of a mighty race. So a
first duty in the wilderness was to found schools, and this they did.
The Reverend Silas was no lean and thin body, no hanger-on upon stronger
men, but of fine girth and stature with a red face as round as the full
moon, a glorious laugh and the mellowest voice in the colony. He was by
repute a famous scholar who could at once give the chapter and text of
any verse in the Bible and had twice read through the ponderous history
of the French gentleman, M. Rollin. It was said, too, that he had nearly
twenty volumes of some famous romances by a French lady, one
Mademoiselle de Scudery, brought over the mountains in a box, but of
this Henry and Paul could not speak with certainty, as a certain wooden
cupboard in Mr. Pennypacker's house was always securely locked.
But the teacher was a favorite in the settlement with both men and
women. A sight of his cheerful face was considered good enough to cure
chills and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand with
both ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental and
spiritual. He was at all times able and willing to earn his own bread
with his own strong hands, though the others seldom permitted him to do
so.
Henry entered school with some reluctance. Being nearly sixteen now,
with an unusually powerful frame developed by a forest life, he was as
large as an ordinary man and quite as strong. He thought he ought to
have done with schools, and set up in man's estate but his father
insisted upon another winter under Mr. Pennypacker's care and Henry
yielded.
There were perhaps thirty boys and girls who sat on the rough wooden
benches in the school and received tuition. Mr. Pennypacker did not
undertake to guide them through many branches of learning, but what he
taught he taught well. He, too, had the feeling that these boys and
girls were to be the men and women who would hold the future of the West
in their hands, and he intended that they should be fit. There were
statesmen and generals among those red-faced boys on the benches, and
the wives and mothers of others among the red-faced girls who sat near
them, and he tried to teach them their duty as the heirs of a
wilderness, soon to be the home of a great race.
Among his favorite pupils was Paul who had not Henry's eye and hand in
the forest, but who loved books and the knowledge of men. He could
follow the devious lines of history when Henry would much rather have
been following the devious trail of a deer. Nevertheless, Henry
persisted, borne up by the emulation of his comrade, and the knowledge
that it was his last winter in school.
CHAPTER VI
THE VOICE OF THE WOODS
To study now was the hardest task that Henry had ever undertaken. It was
even easier to find food when he and Paul were unarmed and destitute in
the forest. The walls of the little log house in which he sat inclosed
him like a cell, the air was heavy and the space seemed to grow narrower
and narrower. Then just when the task was growing intolerable he would
look across the room and seeing the studious face of Paul bent over the
big text of an ancient history, he would apply himself anew to his labor
which consisted chiefly of "figures," a bit of the world's geography,
and a little look into the history of England.
Mr. Pennypacker would neither praise nor blame, but often when the boy
did not notice he looked critically at Henry. "I don't think your son
will be a great scholar," he said once to Mr. Ware, "but he will be a
Nimrod, a mighty hunter before men, and a leader in action. It's as
well, for his is the kind that will be needed most and for a long time
in this wilderness, and back there in the old lands, too."
"It is so," replied Mr. Ware, "the clouds do gather."
Involuntarily he looked toward the east, and Mr. Pennypacker's eyes
followed him. But both remained silent upon that portion of their
thoughts.
"Moreover I tell you for your comfort that the lad has a sense of duty,"
added the teacher.
Henry shot a magnificent stag with great antlers a few days later, and
mounting the head he presented it to Mr. Pennypacker. But on the
following day the master looked very grave and Henry and Paul tried to
guess the cause. Henry heard that Ross had arrived the night before from
the nearest settlement a hundred miles away, but had stayed only an
hour, going to their second nearest neighbor distant one hundred and
fifty miles. He brought news of some kind which only Mr. Ware, Mr.
Upton, the teacher and three or four others knew. These were not ready
to speak and Paul and Henry were well aware that nothing on earth could
make them do so until they thought the time was fit.
It was a long, long morning. Henry had before him a map of the Empire of
Muscovy but he saw little there. Instead there came between him and the
page a vision of the beaver dam and the pool above it, now covered with
a sheet of ice, and of the salt spring where the deer came to drink, and
of a sheltered valley in which a herd of elk rested every night.
Mr. Pennypacker was singularly quiet that morning. It was his custom to
call up his pupils and make them recite in a loud voice, but the hours
passed and there were no recitations. The teacher seemed to be looking
far away at something outside the schoolroom, and his thoughts followed
his eyes. Henry by and by let his own roam as they would and he was in
dreamland, when he was aroused by a sharp smack of the teacher's
homemade ruler upon his homemade desk.
But the blow was not aimed at Henry or anybody in particular. It was an
announcement to all the world in general that Mr. Pennypacker was about
to speak on a matter of importance. Henry and Paul guessed at once that
it would be about the news brought by Ross.
Mr. Pennypacker's face grew graver than ever as he spoke. He told them
that when they left the east there was great trouble between the
colonies and the mother country. They had hoped that it would pass away,
but now, for the first time in many months, news had come across the
mountains from their old home, and had entered the great forest. The
troubles were not gone. On the contrary they had become worse. There had
been fighting, a battle in which many had been killed, and a great war
was begun. The colonies would all stand together, and no man could tell
what the times would bring forth.
This was indeed weighty news. Though divided from their brethren in the
east by hundreds of miles of mountain and forest the patriotism of the
settlers in the wilderness burned with a glow all the brighter on that
account. More than one young heart in that rude room glowed with a
desire to be beside their countrymen in the far-off east, rifle in hand.
But Mr. Pennypacker spoke again. He said that there was now a greater
duty upon them to hold the west for the union of the colonies. Their
task was not merely to build homes for themselves, but to win the land
that it might be homes for others. There were rumors that the savages
would be used against them, that they might come down in force from the
north, and therefore it was the part of everyone, whether man, woman or
child to redouble his vigilance and caution. Then he adjourned school
for the day.
The boys drew apart from their elders and discussed the great news.
Henry's blood was on fire. The message from that little Massachusetts
town, thrilled him as nothing in his life had done before. He had a
vague idea of going there, and of doing what he considered his part, and
he spoke to Paul about it, but Paul thought otherwise.
"Why, Henry!" he said. "We may have to defend ourselves here and we'll
need you."
The people of Wareville knew little about the causes of the war and
after this one message brought by Ross they heard no more of its
progress. They might be fighting great battles away off there on the
Atlantic coast, but no news came through the wall of woods. Wareville
itself was peaceful, and around it curved the mighty forest which told
nothing.
Mountains and forest alike lay under deep snow, and it was not likely
that they would hear anything further until spring, because the winter
was unusually cold and a man who ventured now on a long journey was
braver than his fellows.