The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky

  CHAPTER V

  AFLOAT

  The boys began at once the work on their raft, a rude structure of a fewfallen logs, fastened together with bark and brush, but simple, strongand safe. They finished it in two days, existing meanwhile on the deermeat, and early the morning afterwards, the clumsy craft, bearing thetwo navigators, was duly intrusted to the mercy of the unknown river.Each of the boys carried a slender hickory pole with which to steer, andthey 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 deepchannel, and Henry became more sure than ever that it was the one thatflowed by Wareville. He was certain that the family resemblance was toostrong for him to be mistaken.

  They floated on for hours, rarely using their poles to increase thespeed of the raft and by and by they began to pass between cliffs ofconsiderable height. The forest here was very dense. Mighty oaks andhickories grew right at the water's edge, throwing out their boughs sofar that often the whole stream was in the shade. Henry enjoyed it. Thiswas one of the things that his fancy had pictured. He was now floatingdown an unknown river, through unknown lands, and, like as not, his andPaul's were the first human eyes that had ever looked upon these hillsand splendid forests. Reposing now after work and danger he breathedagain the breath of the wilderness. He loved it--its silence, itsmagnificent spaces, and its majesty. He was glad that he had come toKentucky, where life was so much grander than it was back in the oldEastern regions. Here one was not fenced in and confined and could growto his true stature.

  They ate their dinner on the raft, still floating peacefully and triedto guess how far they had come, but neither was able to judge the speedof the current. Paul fitted himself into a snug place on their queercraft and after a while went to sleep. Henry watched him, lest he turnover 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 athin dark line, lying like a thread, against the blue skies. He studiedit 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 andpeacefully 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 shadeand dim gold where the sunshine fell upon it, and the trees, a solidmass, touched already by the brown of early autumn, dropped over thestream. Afar, a fine haze, like a misty veil, hung over the forest. Theworld was full of peace and primitive beauty.

  They drifted on and the spire of smoke broadened and grew. The look ofthe river became more and more familiar. Paul still slept and Henrywould not awaken him. He looked at the face of his comrade as heslumbered and noticed for the first time that it was thin and pale. Thelife in the woods had been hard upon Paul. Henry did not realize untilthis moment how very hard it had been. The sight of that smoke had notcome too soon.

  There was a shout from the bank followed by the crash of bodies amongthe undergrowth.

  "Smoke me, but here they are! A-floatin' down the river in their ownboat, as comfortable as two lords!"

  It was the voice of Shif'less Sol, and his face, side by side with thatof Ross, the guide, appeared among the trees at the river's brink. Henryfelt 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 oldfriends 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 Rossand Sol. Ross told of the long search for the two boys. He and Mr. Wareand 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, butnowhere did they find Indian traces. Then their dread was of starvationor death by wild animals, and they had begun to lose hope.

  Both Henry and Paul were deeply moved by the story of the grief atWareville. They knew even without the telling that this sorrow had neverbeen demonstrative. The mothers of the West were too much accustomed togreat 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 Warevillewhich was really at the bottom of the smoke spire, where they werereceived, 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, hadwandered back home long ago.

  "How did you live in the forest?" asked Mr. Ware of Henry, after thefirst 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 woodswhere he again lay in the shade of mighty oaks and saw the deer comedown to drink. Mr. Ware noticed the expression on Henry's face and tookreflection. "I must not let the yoke bear too heavy upon him," was hisunspoken thought.

  But Paul's joy was unalloyed; he preferred life at Wareville to life inthe wilderness amid perpetual hardships, and when they gave the greatdinner at Mr. Ware's to celebrate the return of the wanderers he reachedthe height of human bliss. Both Ross and Shif'less Sol were present andwith them, too, were Silas Pennypacker who could preach upon occasionfor the settlement and did it, now and then, and John Upton, who next toMr. Ware was the most notable man in Wareville, and his daughter Lucy,now a shy, pretty girl of twelve, and more than twenty others. EvenBraxton 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 couldduplicate it, without sending to the uttermost parts of the earth, andperhaps 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; butthe 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 singedoff, and baked in an earthen oven. Ross, who had learned it from theIndians, showed them how to do this, and they agreed that none of themhad ever before tasted so fine a dish. When the dinner was over, Henryand Paul had to answer many questions about their wanderings, and theywere quite willing to do so, feeling at the moment a due sense of theirown importance.

  A shade passed over the faces of some of the men at the mention of theIndians, whom Henry and Paul had seen, but Ross agreed with Henry thatthey were surely of the South, going home from a hunting trip, and sothey were soon forgotten.

  Henry's work after their return included an occasional huntingexcursion, as game was always needed. His love of the wilderness did notdecrease when thus he ranged through it and began to understand itsways. Familiarity did not breed contempt. The magnificent spaces andmighty silence appealed to him with increasing force. The columns of thetrees were like cathedral aisles and the pure breath of the wind wasfresh with life.

  The first part of the autumn was hot and dry. The foliage died fast, theleaves twisted and dried up and the brown grass stems fell lifeless tothe earth. A long time they were without rain, and a dull haze of heathung over the simmering earth. The river shrank in its bed, and thebrooks 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 tohim still. He learned to sleep lightly, that is, to start up at theslightest sound, and one morning after the wilderness had been growinghotter and dryer than ever he was awakened by a faint liquid touch onthe roof. He knew at once that it was the rain, wished for so long andtalked 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 throughthe misty clouds, and the wind was light. The clouds opened but a littleat first and the great drops fell slowly.
The hot earth steamed at thetouch, and, burning with thirst, quickly drank in the moisture. The windgrew and the drops fell faster. The heat fled away, driven by the wavesof cool, fresh air that came out of the west. Washed by the rain the drygrass straightened up, and the dying leaves opened out, springing intonew life. Faster and faster came the drops and now the sound they madewas like the steady patter of musketry. Henry opened his mouth andbreathed the fresh clean air, and he felt that like the leaves and grasshe, too, was gaining new life.

  When he went forth the next day in the dripping forest the wildernessseemed to be alive. The game swarmed everywhere and he was a lazy manwho 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 crispand cool and the foliage of the forest turned to wonderful reds andyellows and browns. From the summit of the blockhouse tower Henry saw agreat blaze of varied color, and he thought that he liked this part ofthe year best. He could feel his own strength grow, and now that coldweather was soon to come he would learn new ways to seek game and newphases of the wilderness.

  The autumn and its beauty deepened. The colors of the foliage grew moreintense and burned afar like flame. The settlers lightened their workand most of them now spent a large part of the time in hunting, pursuingit with the keen zest, born of a natural taste and the relaxation fromheavy labors. Mr. Ware and a few others, anxious to test the qualitiesof the soil, were plowing up newly cleared land to be sown in wheat, butHenry 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 forestwith Paul and the others.

  The hunting was now glorious. Less than three miles from the fort andabout a mile from the river Henry and Paul found a beaver dam across atributary creek and they laid rude traps for its builders, six of whichthey caught in the course of time. Ross and Sol showed them how to takeoff the pelts which would be of value when trade should be opened withthe east, and also how to cook beaver tail, a dish which could, withtruth, be called a rival of buffalo hump.

  Now the settlers began to accumulate a great supply of game atWareville. Elk and deer and bear and buffalo and smaller animals werebeing jerked and dried at every house, and every larder was filled tothe brim. There could be no lack of food the coming winter, the settlerssaid, and they spoke with some pride of their care and providence.

  The village was gaining in both comfort and picturesqueness. Tannedskins of the deer, elk, buffalo, bear, wolf, panther and wild cat hungon the walls of every house, and were spread on every floor. The womencontrived fans and ornaments of the beautiful mottled plumage of thewild turkey. Cloth was hard to obtain in the wilderness, as it might bea 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 thedressed 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 incheslong, the bottom of which fell to the knees. The men and boys also madethemselves caps of raccoon skin with the tail sewed on behind as adecoration. Henry and Paul were very proud of theirs.

  The finest robes of buffalo skin were saved for the beds, and Ross gavewarning that they should have full need of them. Winters in Kentucky, hesaid, 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 andhover over a big fire. But the settlers provided for this also bybuilding great stacks of firewood beside each house. They were as wellequipped with axes--keen, heavy weapons--as they were with rifles andammunition, and these were as necessary. The forest around Warevillealready gave great proof of their prowess with the ax.

  Now the autumn was waning. Every morning the wilderness gleamed andsparkled beneath a beautiful covering of white frost. The brown in theleaves 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 inthe 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 whichsoon turned to snow. The wind swept out of the northwest, bitter andchill, 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 windrattled the rude shutters, to sit before the big fires and watch themsparkle and blaze.

  There was another reason why Henry should now begin to spend much of histime indoors. The Rev. Silas Pennypacker opened his school for thewinter, and it was necessary for Henry to attend. Many of the pioneerswho crossed the mountains from the Eastern States and founded the greatWestern outpost of the nation in Kentucky were men of education andcultivation, with a knowledge of books and the world. They did notintend that their children should grow up mere ignorant borderers, butthey wished their daughters to have grace and manners and their sons tobecome men of affairs, fit to lead the vanguard of a mighty race. So afirst 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 strongermen, but of fine girth and stature with a red face as round as the fullmoon, a glorious laugh and the mellowest voice in the colony. He was byrepute a famous scholar who could at once give the chapter and text ofany verse in the Bible and had twice read through the ponderous historyof the French gentleman, M. Rollin. It was said, too, that he had nearlytwenty volumes of some famous romances by a French lady, oneMademoiselle de Scudery, brought over the mountains in a box, but ofthis Henry and Paul could not speak with certainty, as a certain woodencupboard in Mr. Pennypacker's house was always securely locked.

  But the teacher was a favorite in the settlement with both men andwomen. A sight of his cheerful face was considered good enough to curechills and fever, and for the matter of that he was an expert hand withboth ax and rifle. His uses in Wareville were not merely mental andspiritual. He was at all times able and willing to earn his own breadwith his own strong hands, though the others seldom permitted him to doso.

  Henry entered school with some reluctance. Being nearly sixteen now,with an unusually powerful frame developed by a forest life, he was aslarge as an ordinary man and quite as strong. He thought he ought tohave done with schools, and set up in man's estate but his fatherinsisted upon another winter under Mr. Pennypacker's care and Henryyielded.

  There were perhaps thirty boys and girls who sat on the rough woodenbenches in the school and received tuition. Mr. Pennypacker did notundertake to guide them through many branches of learning, but what hetaught he taught well. He, too, had the feeling that these boys andgirls were to be the men and women who would hold the future of the Westin their hands, and he intended that they should be fit. There werestatesmen and generals among those red-faced boys on the benches, andthe wives and mothers of others among the red-faced girls who sat nearthem, and he tried to teach them their duty as the heirs of awilderness, soon to be the home of a great race.

  Among his favorite pupils was Paul who had not Henry's eye and hand inthe forest, but who loved books and the knowledge of men. He couldfollow the devious lines of history when Henry would much rather havebeen following the devious trail of a deer. Nevertheless, Henrypersisted, borne up by the emulation of his comrade, and the knowledgethat it was his last winter in school.