The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky
CHAPTER VII
THE GIANT BONES
About this time many people in Wareville, particularly the women andchildren began to complain of physical ills, notably lassitude and alack of appetite; their food, which consisted largely of the gameswarming all around the forest, had lost its savor. There was no mysteryabout it; Tom Ross, Mr. Ware and others promptly named the cause; theyneeded salt, which to the settlers of Kentucky was almost as precious asgold; it was obtained in two ways, either by bringing it hundreds ofmiles over the mountains from Virginia in wagons or on pack horses, orby boiling it out at the salt springs in the Indian-haunted woods.
They had neither the time nor the men for the long journey to Virginia,and they prepared at once for obtaining it at the springs. They hadalready used a small salt spring but the supply was inadequate, and theydecided to go a considerable distance northward to the famous Big BoneLick. Nothing had been heard in a long time of Indian war parties southof the Ohio, and they believed they would incur no danger. Moreover theycould bring back salt to last more than a year.
When they first heard of the proposed journey, Paul Cotter pulled Henryto one side. They were just outside the palisade, and it was a beautifulday, in early spring. Already kindly nature was smoothing over the cruelscars made by the axes in the forest, and the village within thepalisade began to have the comfortable look of home.
"Do you know what the Big Bone Lick is, Henry?" asked Paul eagerly.
"No," replied Henry, wondering at his chum's excitement.
"Why it's the most wonderful place in all the world!" said Paul, jumpingup and down in his wish to tell quickly. "There was a hunter here lastwinter who spoke to me about it. I didn't believe him then, it soundedso wonderful, but Mr. Pennypacker says it's all true. There's a greatsalt spring, boiling out of the ground in the middle of a kind of marsh,and all around it, for a long distance, are piled hundreds of largebones, the bones of gigantic animals, bigger than any that walk theearth to-day."
"See here, Paul," said Henry scornfully, "you can't stuff my ears withmush like that. I guess you were reading one of the master's oldromances, and then had a dream. Wake up, Paul!"
"It's true every word of it!"
"Then if there were such big animals, why don't we see 'em sometimesrunning through the forest?"
"My, they've all been dead millions of years and their bones have beenpreserved there in the marsh. They lived in another geologic era--that'swhat Mr. Pennypacker calls it--and animals as tall as trees strolled upand down over the land and were the lords of creation."
Henry puckered his lips and emitted a long whistle of incredulity.
"Paul," he said, reprovingly, "you do certainly have the gift ofspeech."
But Paul was not offended at his chum's disbelief.
"I'm going to prove to you, Henry, that it's true," he said. "Mr.Pennypacker says it's so, he never tells a falsehood and he's a scholar,too. But you and I have got to go with the salt-makers, Henry, and we'llsee it all. I guess if you look on it with your own eyes you'll believeit."
"Of course," said Henry, "and of course I'll go if I can."
A trip through the forest and new country to the great salt spring wastemptation enough in itself, without the addition of the fields of bigbones, and that night in both the Ware and Cotter homes, eloquent boysgave cogent reasons why they should go with the band.
"Father," said Henry, "there isn't much to do here just now, and they'llwant me up at Big Bone Lick, helping to boil the salt and a lot ofthings."
Mr. Ware smiled. Henry, like most boys, seldom showed much zeal formanual labor. But Henry went on undaunted.
"We won't run any risk. No Indians are in Kentucky now and, father, Iwant to go awful bad."
Mr. Ware smiled again at the closing avowal, which was so frank. Just atthat moment in another home another boy was saying almost exactly thesame things, and another father ventured the same answer that Mr. Waredid, in practically the same words such as these:
"Well, my son, as it is to be a good strong company of careful andexperienced men who will not let you get into any mischief, you can goalong, but be sure that you make yourself useful."
The party was to number a dozen, all skilled foresters, and they were tolead twenty horses, all carrying huge pack saddles for the utensils andthe invaluable salt. Mr. Silas Pennypacker who was a man of his own willannounced that he was going, too. He puffed out his ruddy cheeks andsaid emphatically:
"I've heard from hunters of that place; it's one of the greatcuriosities of the country and for the sake of learning I'm bound to seeit. Think of all the gigantic skeletons of the mastodon, the mammoth andother monsters lying there on the ground for ages!"
Henry and Paul were glad that Mr. Pennypacker was to be with them, as inthe woods he was a delightful comrade, able always to make instructionentertaining, and the superiority of his mind appealed unconsciously toboth of these boys who--each in his way--were also of superior cast.
They departed on a fine morning--the spring was early and heldsteady--and all Wareville saw them go. It was a brilliant littlecavalcade; the horses, their heads up to scent the breeze from thefragrant wilderness, and the men, as eager to start, everyone with along slender-barreled Kentucky rifle on his shoulder, the fringed andbrilliantly colored deerskin hunting shirt falling almost to his knees,and, below that deerskin leggings and deerskin moccasins adorned withmany-tinted beads. It was a vivid picture of the young West, so young,and yet so strong and so full of life, the little seed from which somighty a tree was soon to grow.
All of them stopped again, as if by an involuntary impulse, at the edgeof the forest, and waved their hands in another, and, this time, in alast good-by to the watchers at the fort. Then they plunged into themighty wilderness, which swept away and away for unknown thousands ofmiles.
They talked for a while of the journey, of the things that they mightsee by the way, and of those that they had left behind, but before longconversation ceased. The spell of the dark and illimitable woods, inwhose shade they marched, fell upon them, and there was no noise, butthe sound of breathing and the tread of men and horses. They dropped,too, from the necessities of the path through the undergrowth, intoIndian file, one behind the other.
Henry was near the rear of the line, the stalwart schoolmaster just infront of him, and his comrade Paul, just behind. He was full ofthankfulness that he had been allowed to go on this journey. It allappealed to him, the tale that Paul told of the giant bones and thegreat salt spring, the dark woods full of mystery and delightful danger,and his own place among the trusted band, who were sent on such anerrand. His heart swelled with pride and pleasure and he walked with alight springy step and with endurance equal to that of any of the menbefore him. He looked over his shoulder at Paul, whose face also wastouched with enthusiasm.
"Aren't you glad to be along?" he asked in a whisper.
"Glad as I can be," replied Paul in the same whisper.
Up shot the sun showering golden beams of light upon the forest. The airgrew warmer, but the little band did not cease its rapid pace northwarduntil noon. Then at a word from Ross all halted at a beautiful glade,across which ran a little brook of cold water. The horses were tetheredat the edge of the forest, but were allowed to graze on the young grasswhich was already beginning to appear, while the men lighted a smallfire of last year's fallen brushwood, at the center of the glade on thebank of the brook.
"We won't build it high," said Ross, who was captain as well as guide,"an' then nobody in the forest can see it. There may not be an Indiansouth of the Ohio, but the fellow that's never caught is the fellow thatnever sticks his head in the trap."
"Sound philosophy! sound philosophy! your logic is irrefutable, Mr.Ross," said the schoolmaster.
Ross grinned. He did not know what "irrefutable" meant, but he did knowthat Mr. Pennypacker intended to compliment him.
Paul and Henry assisted with the fire. In fact they did most of thework, each wishing to make good his assertio
n that he would prove of useon the journey. It was a brief task to gather the wood and then Ross andShif'less Sol lighted the fire, which they permitted merely to smolder.But it gave out ample heat and in a few minutes they cooked over ittheir venison and corn bread and coffee which they served in tin cups.Henry and Paul ate with the ferocious appetite that the march and theclean air of the wilderness had bred in them, and nobody restrictedthem, because the forest was full of game, and such skillful hunters andriflemen could never lack for a food supply.
Mr. Pennypacker leaned with an air of satisfaction against the upthrustbough of a fallen oak.
"It's a wonderful world that we have here," he said, "and just to thinkthat we're among the first white men to find out what it contains."
"All ready!" said Tom Ross, "then forward we go, we mustn't waste timeby the way. They need that salt at Wareville."
Once more they resumed the march in Indian file and amid the silence ofthe woods. About the middle of the afternoon Ross invited Mr.Pennypacker and the two boys to ride three of the pack horses. Henry atfirst declined, not willing to be considered soft and pampered, but asthe schoolmaster promptly accepted and Paul who was obviously tired didthe same, he changed his mind, not because he needed rest, but lest Paulshould feel badly over his inferiority in strength.
Thus they marched steadily northward, Ross leading the way, andShif'less Sol who was lazy at the settlement, but never in the woodswhere he was inferior in knowledge and skill to Ross only, covering therear. Each of these accomplished borderers watched every movement of theforest about him, and listened for every sound; he knew with the eye ofsecond sight what was natural and if anything not belonging to the usualorder of things should appear, he would detect it in a moment. But theysaw and heard nothing that was not according to nature: only the windamong the boughs, or the stamp of an elk's hoof as it fled, startled atthe scent of man. The hostile tribes from north and south, fearful ofthe presence of each other, seemed to have deserted the great wildernessof Kentucky.
Henry noted the beauty of the country as they passed along; the gentlyrolling hills, the rich dark soil and the beautiful clear streams. Oncethey came to a river, too deep to wade, but all of them, except theschoolmaster, promptly took off their clothing and swam it.
"My age and my calling forbid my doing as the rest of you do," said theschoolmaster, "and I think I shall stick to my horse."
He rode the biggest of the pack horses, and when the strong animal beganto swim, Mr. Pennypacker thrust out his legs until they were almostparallel with the animal's neck, and reached the opposite bank,untouched by a drop of water. No one begrudged him his dry and unlaboredpassage; in fact they thought it right, because a schoolmaster wasmightily respected in the early settlements of Kentucky and they wouldhave regarded it as unbecoming to his dignity to have stripped, and swumthe river as they did.
Henry and Paul in their secret hearts did not envy the schoolmaster.They thought he had too great a weight of dignity to maintain and theyenjoyed cleaving the clear current with their bare bodies. What! bedeprived of the wilderness pleasures! Not they! The two boys did notremount, after the passage of the river, but, fresh and full of life,walked on with the others at a pace so swift that the miles droppedrapidly behind them. They were passing, too, through a country rarelytrodden even by the red men; Henry knew it by the great quantities ofgame they saw; the deer seemed to look from every thicket, now and thena magnificent elk went crashing by, once a bear lumbered away, and twicesmall groups of buffalo were stampeded in the glades and rushed off,snorting through the undergrowth.
"They say that far to the westward on plains that seem to have no endthose animals are to be seen in millions," said Mr. Pennypacker.
"It's so, I've heard it from the Indians," confirmed Ross the guide.
They stopped a little while before sundown, and as the game was soplentiful all around them, Ross said he would shoot a deer in order tosave their dried meat and other provisions.
"You come with me, while the others are making the camp," he said toHenry.
The boy flushed with pride and gratification, and, taking his rifle,plunged at once into the forest with the guide. But he said nothing,knowing that silence would recommend him to Ross far more than words,and took care to bring down his moccasined feet without sound. Nor didhe let the undergrowth rustle, as he slipped through it, and Rossregarded him with silent approval. "A born woodsman," he said tohimself.
A mile from the camp they stopped at the crest of a little hill, thicklyclad with forest and undergrowth, and looked down into the glade beyond.Here they saw several deer grazing, and as the wind blew from themtoward the hunters they had taken no alarm.
"Pick the fat buck there on the right," whispered Ross to Henry.
Henry said not a word. He had learned the taciturnity of the woods, andleveling his rifle, took sure aim. There was no buck fever about himnow, and, when his rifle cracked, the deer bounded into the air anddropped down dead. Ross, all business, began to cut up and clean thegame, and with Henry's aid, he did it so skillfully and rapidly thatthey returned to the camp, loaded with the juicy deer meat, by the timethe fire and everything else was ready for them.
Henry and Paul ate with eager appetites and when supper was over theywrapped themselves in their blankets and lay down before the fire underthe trees. Paul went to sleep at once, but Henry did not close his eyesso soon. Far in the west he saw a last red bar of light cast by thesunken sun and the deep ruddy glow over the fringe of the forest. Thenit suddenly passed, as if whisked away by a magic hand, and all thewilderness was in darkness. But it was only for a little while. Out camethe moon and the stars flashed one by one into a sky of silky blue. Asouth wind lifting up itself sang a small sweet song among the branches,and Henry uttered a low sigh of content, because he lived in thewilderness, and because he was there in the depths of the forest on animportant errand. Then he fell sound asleep, and did not awaken untilRoss and the others were cooking breakfast.
A day or two later they reached the wonderful Big Bone Lick, and theyapproached it with the greatest caution, because they were afraid lestan errand similar to theirs might have drawn hostile red men to thegreat salt spring. But as they curved about the desired goal they saw noIndian sign, and then they went through the marsh to the spring itself.
Henry opened his eyes in amazement. All that the schoolmaster and Paulhad told was true, and more. Acres and acres of the marsh lands werefairly littered with bones, and from the mud beneath other and fargreater bones had been pulled up and left lying on the ground. Henrystood some of these bones on end, and they were much taller than he.Others he could not lift.
"The mastodon, the mammoth and I know not what," said Mr. Pennypacker ina transport of delight. "Henry, you and Paul are looking upon theremains of animals, millions of years old, killed perhaps in fights withothers of their kind, over these very salt springs. There may not beanother such place as this in all the world."
Mr. Pennypacker for the first day or two was absolutely of no help inmaking the salt, because he was far too much excited about the bones andthe salt springs themselves.
"I can understand," said Henry, "why the animals should come here afterthe salt, since they crave salt just as we do, but it seems strange tome that salt water should be running out of the ground here, hundreds ofmiles from the sea."
"It's the sea itself that's coming up right at our feet," replied theschoolmaster thoughtfully. "Away back yonder, a hundred million yearsago perhaps, so far that we can have no real conception of the time, thesea was over all this part of the world. When it receded, or the groundupheaved, vast subterranean reservoirs of salt water were left, and now,when the rain sinks down into these full reservoirs a portion of thesalt water is forced to the surface, which makes the salt springs thatare scattered over this part of the country. It is a process that isgoing on continually. At least, that's a plausible theory, and it's asgood as any other."
But most of the salt-makers did not bother themselves
about causes, andthey accepted the giant bones as facts, without curiosity about theirorigin. Nor did they neglect to put them to use. By sticking them deepin the ground they made tripods of them on which they hung their kettlesfor boiling the salt water, and of others they devised comfortable seatsfor themselves. To such modern uses did the mastodon come! But to theschoolmaster and the two boys the bones were an unending source ofinterest, and in the intervals of labor, which sometimes were prettylong, particularly for Mr. Pennypacker, they were ever prowling in theswamp for a bone bigger than any that they had found before.
But the salt-making progressed rapidly. The kettles were always boilingand sack after sack was filled with the precious commodity. At nightwild animals, despite the known presence of strange, new creatures,would come down to the springs, so eager were they for the salt, and themen rarely molested them. Only a deer now and then was shot for food,and Henry and Paul lay awake one night, watching two big bull buffaloes,not fifty yards away, fighting for the best place at a spring.
Ross and Shif'less Sol did not do much of the work at the salt-boiling,but they were continually scouting through the forest, on a labor noless important, watching for raiding war parties who otherwise mightfall unsuspected upon the toilers. Henry, as a youth of great promise,was sometimes taken with them on these silent trips through the woods,and the first time he went he felt badly on Paul's account, because hiscomrade was not chosen also. But when he returned he found that hissympathy was wasted. Paul and the master were deeply absorbed in thetask of trying to fit together some of the gigantic bones that is, tore-create the animal to which they thought the bones belonged, and Paulwas far happier than he would have been on the scout or the hunt.
The day's work was ended and all the others were sitting around the campfire, with the dying glow of the setting sun flooding the springs, themarshes and the camp fire, but Paul and the master toiled zealously atthe gigantic figure that they had up-reared, supported partly withstakes, and bearing a remote resemblance to some animal that lived a fewmillion years or so ago. The master had tied together some of the boneswith withes, and he and Paul were now laboriously trying to fit asection of vertebrae into shape.
Shif'less Sol who had gone with Henry sat down by the fire, stuffed apiece of juicy venison into his mouth and then looked with eyes ofwonder at the two workers in the cause of natural history.
"Some people 'pear to make a heap o' trouble for theirselves," he said,"now I can't git it through my head why anybody would want to work witha lot o' dead old bones when here's a pile o' sweet deer meat justwaitin' an' beggin' to be et up."
At that moment the attempt of Paul and the schoolmaster to reconstruct aprehistoric beast collapsed. The figure that they had built up with somuch care and labor suddenly slipped loose somewhere, and all the bonesfell down in a heap. The master stared at them in disgust and exclaimed:
"It's no use! I can't put them together away out here in thewilderness!"
Then he stalked over to the fire, and taking a deer steak, ate hungrily.The steak was very tender, and gradually a look of content and peacestole over Mr. Pennypacker's face.
"At least," he murmured, "if it's hard to be a scholar here, one canhave a glorious appetite, and it is most pleasant to gratify it."
As the dark settled down Ross said that in one day more they ought tohave all the salt the horses could carry, and then it would be best todepart promptly and swiftly for Wareville. A half hour later all wereasleep except the sentinel.