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Title: Boys of the Old Sea Bed: Tales of Nature and Adventure

Author: Charles Allen McConnell

Release date: January 21, 2020 [eBook #61211]
                Most recently updated: October 17, 2024

Language: English

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BOYS OF THE OLD SEA BED

Tales of Nature and Adventure

by

CHARLES ALLEN McCONNELL






Publishing House of the
Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene
Kansas City, Missouri
1913

Copyright, 1913
Publishing House of the
Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene




DEDICATION


TO THE MEMORY OF MY BROTHER ROBERT, ONE OF THE “BOYS OF THE OLD SEA
BED,” WHO, THOUGH PASSING OUT INTO THE GREAT BEYOND WHILE YET YOUNG,
WROTE HIS NAME HIGH UP AMONG THOSE TO WHOM THE WORLD ACCORDS FAME, THIS
LITTLE VOLUME OF BOYHOOD TALES IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

                                                             THE AUTHOR.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER.                                PAGE

      I. _In the Bed of an Ancient Sea_      9

     II. _Catching the Fawn_                16

    III. _The Great Blue Heron_             23

     IV. _The Forest Fire_                  29

      V. _The First Deer Hunt_              36

     VI. _The Indian War Dance_             42

    VII. _The Floating Bog_                 55

   VIII. _The Wayside Tavern_               63

     IX. _Adventure on Lake Cheteck_        69

      X. _The Paint Mine_                   79

     XI. _Trapping Game Birds_              91

    XII. _The Moundbuilders_               103

   XIII. _Cooking in Camp_                 114

    XIV. _Winter in the Lumber Woods_      128

     XV. _Over the Rapids_                 140

    XVI. _The Gift of the Flood_           151

   XVII. _The Tragedy of the Mounds_       160

  XVIII. _College Days_                    169




FOREWORD


These tales are at last put upon paper, after having served the demands
of a generation of little folk--now grown tall--for stories of “when
papa was a boy.” All the tales are founded upon facts, and many are
incidents and experiences reproduced as faithfully as memory paints the
pictures.

The red men are gone; the great forest is no more; railroads and cities
and farms occupy the bottom of the “Old Sea Bed.” But the same courage
and hardihood and clean living which marked the pioneers of near a half
century ago is still the hope of America.

                                                CHARLES ALLEN MCCONNELL.

_Kansas City, Mo._, October, 1913.




CHAPTER I

IN THE BED OF AN ANCIENT SEA


Men of science who have made a study of the earth’s surface, say that
Lake Erie, from which flows Niagara river northward into Lake Ontario,
will, in a certain, or uncertain, number of years, go dry, and what is
now a wide though shallow sheet of water become a plain, through which
may meander a slowly-flowing river. The reason for this prediction is
that Niagara Falls, which have cut their way back from Lewiston through
a gorge some seven miles, and are still eating their way through the
limestone and the softer underlying shale at the rate of more than two
feet a year, will finally accomplish their journey, and the great lake
be reached and drained.

A similar event seems really to have occurred in the past history of
the earth near the geographical center of the state of Wisconsin.
Draw a line through the center of the map of this state, from north
to south, and then another from east to west, at a little more than
one-third of the way up from the southern boundary, and at the
intersection you will have the location of the lower end of what
appears to have been an ancient lake, or inland sea.

The eastern boundary, evidently, was a range of hills some forty
miles to the east, along whose sides, fifty years ago, were easily
recognized traces of successive diminishing shore lines, in rows of
water-worn pebbles and shells.

The southern boundary is marked by sandstone bluffs, which bear the
fantastic carving of waves. Rising nearly perpendicular from the sands
like the front of some gigantic ramparts of a fortress, an hundred or
more feet, the upper portions are fashioned into turrets, bastions, and
domes, until at a distance it is difficult to believe that one is not
looking upon some mighty work of man.

Here and there, many miles apart, huge granite rocks rear their heads
hundreds of feet above the plain--islands of the old sea.

Of course caves abound in these water-worn bluffs, and these were
found, in the early days of settlement, to be the homes and hiding
places of bears, wolves, panthers, and the even more dreaded
“Indian-devil,” or northern lynx. Not infrequently they were utilized
for temporary human habitation. Indeed, one of these very caves became
the last hiding place of Black Hawk, the famous Indian chief, as he
sought escape from the white man after the failure of the war he had
waged, like his predecessor, Tecumseh, in hope of uniting the various
tribes against the crowding, appropriating paleface.

Near the present city of Kilbourn, at what is known as the Delles,
the Wisconsin river breaks through the rocky barrier and pours its
foaming flood down a narrow gorge that is only exceeded in size, and
not at all in wild beauty and grandeur, by the gorge and rapids below
Niagara. The falls have worn their way through, but evidently, here was
the Niagara of the ancient sea.

The shallower part of the old sea was the eastern portion, where in
width of fifty miles or more, in the time of which I write, there
stretched a level waste of sand. It was to this floor of the old sea
that people from the eastern states flocked by thousands, at the time
of the “hop boom,” when it was discovered that this vine could be
grown and would bear fairly good crops upon these sands. The ground
was easily worked, and while the hop plant required two years to come
into bearing, the profit from the dried blossoms was enormous, and the
settlers saw great fortunes ahead. Money was borrowed, possessions in
many cases mortgaged, fine houses erected, drying kilns built, hop
roots planted, and the slender tamarack poles upon which the vines
were to climb to the ripening sunlight, were set into the ground. The
country was settled. The first immigrants harvested one crop at the
bonanza price. Then rumors came of an enormous crop thrown upon the
market from the fields of Washington and Oregon, new lands of the
Pacific coast. The second season found the market overstocked, and
prices tumbled from sixty cents to eight and ten cents per pound,
which was less than would pay the expense of picking. Hundreds of the
settlers never harvested their first crop. For years afterward one
could travel miles across the sand and see nothing but deserted houses
with abandoned farms growing up to stunted pines.

Among those who had lost in the hop venture, was the family of John
Allen, in which were two boys, Robert and Ed, lads of twelve and ten
years. The Allens, coming of the rugged Scotch-Irish stock, had no
thought of returning to their old home “back east” defeated, but pushed
further westward into the wilderness. Coming to the river in the time
of low water, they easily crossed the broad bed of the “Ouis-kon-sin,”
or, as the modern spelling has it, the “Wisconsin” river, and pushed on
past the sandy plains west of the river over into the western half of
the old lake bed. It was among the beautiful hardwood trees that lined
the banks of the golden-hued Ne-ce-dah, or Yellow river, that they
halted and said, “This shall be home.”

To the city-bred boys the land was one of perpetual wonder, and their
sturdy bodies and enquiring minds were actively employed. Of course
there was much work to do, fencing and clearing willow shrubs from
the land, making hay for the winter use of their stock, but Mr. Allen
was wise enough to give the boys a large portion of time for their
“education,” as he called their excursions into the forest and along
the river.

Coming home from one of these trips, the boys were seen to be in a
state of excitement, and almost before they were near enough to be
understood they were shouting, “Neighbors, neighbors! Just around the
big bend.” It was a happy discovery for the Allens, as the new-found
neighbors proved to be a family who had come, several years before,
from Ohio, and whose young son, Dauphin, was about the age of the Allen
boys. The name of the family was Thompson, the wife, Ruth, being the
only daughter of “Old John Brown,” whose soul “goes marching on.”

During the years the Allens were neighbors to this family, they came to
learn much of the life and character of that strange man who was hated
as no other man by the slaveholders of his time, and, probably, was
as little understood by those of the north who apologized for him. To
this humble home of their only sister, in the wilderness, there came,
as occasional guests, one and another of the sons who remained of the
man who threw away his life at Harper’s Ferry, that a people might be
aroused to a knowledge of the sin of human slavery. Ruth, they said,
was the womanly image of her father. She had an abundance of red hair
like his, had his features, and more, was like him in spirit. With all
the ardor of youthful hero-worship the Allen boys bestowed homage upon
John Brown’s daughter, Ruth Thompson. If she was like her father, he
had been patient in trial, sweet of spirit in affliction, tender in
love for the unfortunate, and utterly void of any desire of retaliation
for injuries received. The hair of the Allen boys is silvering, and
Ruth has long ago passed to her rest, yet they do not forget an
incident which reveals the Christ-like spirit of the daughter of “Old
John Brown”--and perhaps of the father.

It was upon the visit of John Brown, Jr., the son who had charge of the
Canadian end of the “underground railway” over which so many of the
slaves of the South had found their way to freedom, that Mr. Thompson
and “Uncle Sam,” a younger brother, both of whom were in the attack
upon the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, and had lost other brothers in that
raid, were recalling the time when John, Jr., had been taken by the
“bushwhackers,” tied to the tail of a horse and compelled to run at
great speed for several miles, or be dragged to death. John, Jr., was a
heavy man, and the fearful experience brought on a heart trouble from
which he suffered all the rest of his life. The men, as they talked
over those days of sorrow and trial, would occasionally utter some
stout words against their persecutors, but quickly Ruth would break in,
in her gentle voice--“Boys, boys! Speak evil of none. ‘Vengeance is
mine, saith the Lord.’ It may be those poor men thought they were doing
right.”

Never did the Allen boys hear one unkind word from this daughter
against the government, the individuals, or the section that had
imposed upon her father an ignominious death.

Dauphin Thompson and the Allen boys became great friends and
inseparable companions, and in the “education” of the latter the
grandson of “Old John Brown” not only joined, but was able to initiate
them into many of the mysteries of wood and stream. The Allen boys had
new breech-loading shotguns, but Dauphin was the proud possessor of
the carbine which his father had carried from Osawatomie to Harper’s
Ferry, and which had been fitted for small-shot cartridges.

To the north, from which the Yellow river flowed, lay the vast,
unbroken forests of pine; to the west stretched many miles of swamp and
low-lying prairie. In the summer these prairies were covered with grass
often so high as to completely hide the tallest man walking through.
Game abounded. Deer were so unafraid that frequently the boys would
find them quietly feeding among the cattle when they went at night to
bring home the milch cows. Bears, panthers, and wild cats came at night
to call, and left their “cards” in great tracks on the sand along the
river front of the new home.

Here, in the bottom of the ancient sea, these boys began lessons which
made of two of them stalwart, honored men, and which one of them had
the good fortune to supplement, at a later day, in college.




CHAPTER II

CATCHING THE FAWN


The first winter after the Allen family moved to their new home on the
Necedah river was unusually severe and long. While in that section of
Wisconsin deep snows were not uncommon, this year they had started
in about the middle of October, and by Christmas lay piled in great
drifts, like small hills, in places, while on the level even the top
rail of the “stake-and-rider” fence about the buildings was covered,
and over which the boys, Rob and Ed, hauled loads of hay in their
sleds. Between the house and stable there was one huge drift, higher
than either building, through which the boys cut a tunnel large enough
to drive through with their team of steers and bob-sled.

Uncle Sam Thompson, who was wise in the ways of weather, prophesied
a spring flood that would sweep away the fences and come up into the
houses; and, indeed, such a flood did occur a few years later, but this
year the winter held on so late into the spring, and the snows melted
away so slowly and gradually, that the feared high water did not come.

The Allen boys were initiated into a new and delightful experience
in the latter days of March. Warm days would be followed by freezing
nights, which, Uncle Sam declared, were ideal “sap” conditions.
Hundreds of great maple trees lined the river, and while they were not
of the “rock,” or regular sugar variety, but the “soft” maple, yet the
sap held enough of sweet to yield a fair amount of sugar.

To less sturdy youths the trudging through melting snow and wading in
icy water would have been accounted anything but a pastime, but the
Allen boys and their chum, Dauphin Thompson, worked at the sugar making
with zeal and zest. Uncle Sam showed them how to “tap” the trees.
First, a hole would be bored into the tree trunk with an inch augur,
then a V-shaped notch would be cut through the bark just above it. Into
the augur hole would be driven a “spile,” or piece of grooved wood,
down which the sap from the V-shaped cut would run. At the foot of the
tree, under the spout, would be placed a wooden trough, hollowed out
from a block of the light linden, or “basswood.”

To carry the sap home to the big kettles which were kept constantly
boiling, reducing the thin sap to syrup, and finally “sugaring off”
into the delectable sweet cakes, a yoke of ash was made fitting over
the shoulders, with projecting ends. To these ends were attached ropes
which were fastened each to a large bucket. These buckets the boys
would fill with sap from the trees, and from the farthest point, trudge
home a mile through water and melting snow. It was no easy play, and
aching backs and limbs severely tested their courage, yet the boys felt
amply repaid for it all in the two hundred pounds of cakes of the
delicious sweet they thus harvested during the two weeks of the “run.”

By the time the sugar harvest was over, wild ducks had begun to appear,
and the lagoons and deep places in the marshes were noisy at night and
early morning with their quacking. While most of the wild fowl passed
on to their summer home in the lake region of Canada, some of the ducks
built their nests and reared their young in the marshes and along the
rivers of that section. Among these were the mallards, large, beautiful
birds.

The boys had frequently noticed a pair of these ducks at Round Slough
in the latter days of their sap gathering, and had planned to hunt for
the nest and secure the eggs which they proposed to place for hatching
under a hen. Mrs. Thompson had told the boys that she had known the
mallards to be domesticated when hatched away from the wild mother, but
care had to be taken to keep them confined at migrating-time in the
fall, else they would try to follow off their wild cousins as they flew
over.

Spring work pressed so heavily that the boys did not get to visit
Round Slough until in May, when one bright day came with the coveted
vacation. The slough was back from the river perhaps a quarter of a
mile. It was several rods in diameter, of great depth, and perfectly
round. The banks were high and sloped away from the hole, as well as
toward the water. No trees were growing near the edge, but the sides of
the rim were covered with “blue-joint” grass already waist high.

The boys approached the slough cautiously. “There they are,” whispered
Dauphin. “But see what the old ducks have.” For, sporting in the water,
standing on their heads, waving their funny, big feet in the air, and
chasing water bugs, were a dozen downy, yellow ducklings.

“Let’s drive them to land and catch them,” said Ed.

So the boys dashed up to the water’s edge and began to throw in sticks
and to “shoo.” The father duck flew away, but the mother kept with her
babies and paddled to the other side.

“I’ll watch this side and keep up the fuss,” said Rob, “and you boys
can run around and catch them in the grass. You see just where they
went out.”

“Why, there they are,” called Dauphin, “away over on that side.” And
sure enough, there were the mother duck and her babies skirting the
bank, in the water again. Time and again the boys chased the little
family from the slough, only to lose sight of them entirely “just where
they went out.” The boys were separated now on three sides of the
slough, when suddenly there was a great splash in the water and a doe
came swimming across, making, as the boy thought, straight for Rob. A
deer is no mean antagonist, and Rob scrambled out of the way, while the
animal went crashing through the bushes.

Over where Dauphin had been there was a great threshing about in the
grass, and a boy’s voice shouting, “Help! help! come quick.” Ed and Rob
hurried around the slough, and there was Dauphin trying to hold down a
young fawn which was making desperate efforts to escape. But for the
arrival of the other boys it might have succeeded in tumbling Dauphin
into the deep water. The three boys easily handled the little creature,
but Rob’s hand bore the imprint of one of its sharp hoofs for many a
day.

“I almost stumbled over the old deer,” said Dauphin, “and I never would
have discovered this little chap if I hadn’t fallen over him. However
did they manage to hide so well and keep so still while we were running
all about them?”

The fawn, which was probably two weeks old, was “all legs,” as the
Allen boys expressed it. The back of his brown coat was flecked with
spots of white, while his under parts were pure white. Tying both his
front and hind legs with their handkerchiefs, the boys took turns in
carrying their new pet home, where they soon succeeded in teaching
it to drink milk. When it was caught it could easily run about under
the kitchen table, but it throve and grew so rapidly and became so
boisterous in its manifestations of friendship, that, in a few weeks,
Mrs. Thompson declared it had outgrown its place of household pet.

The boys built a pen of rails, and cut fresh grass for it every day,
and later in the season at the advice of Mr. Thompson, added the twigs
of the poplar or aspen to its diet. They would cut down a young tree
and stand it in the corner of the pen. When the fawn had nibbled all
the tender twigs from the lower limbs he would rise upon his hind legs
and walk about the tree on two feet, browsing from the higher branches,
just as though that was the natural way for a deer to get about, as
indeed it was in a situation of that kind.

As the fall approached the young deer began to lose his spotted coat of
brown, and take on a winter suit of grey. Little hard knobs could be
felt on his head where the “spikes,” or one-prong horns would appear
the following months. Like a rapidly developing boy he began to take on
“manish” ways, and to show an intention of “seeing the world.” Although
the boys increased the height of his pen to ten rails, even that would
not hold him when the desire to roam came too strongly upon him.

On one of these occasions, when the boys had missed him from the
pen, they came across him a quarter of a mile away in the meadow,
acting in a peculiar manner. Long before they reached him they could
hear his angry snorts and could see the hair along the ridge of his
back sticking up like quills upon a porcupine. The young deer was
dancing around in a circle, face toward the center, now advancing, now
springing quickly back, all the time his eyes fixed upon one spot.
Just as the boys were drawing near he gave a spring into the air, and,
bunching his four feet together, came down like a bolt out of the sky.
The stroke was evidently effective, for on the ground was the writhing
threshing body of a huge black rattlesnake, the dreaded massasauger,
with head severed from the body as cleanly as if cut with a knife. The
sharp hoofs had done quick and sure execution.

Unable to keep the deer in confinement as he would grow larger the boys
disposed of him for a good sum to a collector for an eastern city park.




CHAPTER III

THE GREAT BLUE HERON


“Dauph,” said Robert Allen one morning in early spring, “I saw a pair
of wood ducks over in Cut-off Slough yesterday, and the drake had the
handsomest plumage I ever saw on a bird. He would make a fine specimen
for your collection.”

Dauphin was a “born naturalist,” as his father called him, which meant
that the lad had a sense of the beauty and wonder of nature, and went
about with his eyes open. From the furred and feathered dwellers of the
wilderness into which the family had moved, when Dauphin was a small
child, he had secured and mounted a collection of specimens that would
have graced the great college which it was his ambition some day to
attend.

“Let’s go over and have a look at him in the morning, Rob,” eagerly
responded Dauphin.

Rob agreed, but it was rather late in the afternoon instead of early in
the morning, as they had planned, before the boys were ready for their
trip.

Cut-off Slough had once been a part of the river. A long bend, a mile
around, had, in a time of unusual high water, been cut off by the
flood breaking over and wearing a new channel through the narrow neck
of land, not more than fifty feet across. The hundred or more acres
enclosed in the great bend had now become an island, and the old bed of
the river a deep lagoon, or slough, as it was called, making an ideal
home for fish and wild fowl. The wearing of the new channel of the
river had formed a bar of sand across the mouth of the lagoon, high and
dry during the summer, but now, in the spring rise, overflowed, so that
the boys waded knee deep in the cold water to gain its banks.

Great trees, oak, maple, linden, birch, and ash, overhung the still
water, and the western sun cast dark shadows almost across its surface.

“It’s lucky for us it isn’t July,” said Dauphin, “or we couldn’t stay
in this place without face nets; the mosquitoes would eat us alive.”

“Seems to me they are bad enough now,” replied Rob, slapping at a dozen
big fellows that had struck his face. “Sh-sh! there is our beauty and
his sober wife. Over there by the stump with the white streaks, and the
limb sticking up.”

“Too far for these small shot,” whispered Dauphin; “I don’t want to use
large shot; spoils the plumage. Let’s crawl closer.”

The two boys crouched down, and on hands and knees slowly crawled
through the tall grass and reeds to where a point of land jutting out
into the water would give them the advantage they sought. But just as
Dauphin was about the fire the shot that would add another valuable
specimen to his collection, something occurred that drove all thoughts
of ducks from their mind. The “stump” lowered its “limb” that had
been sticking straight up, and out from its sides spread two wings,
fully eight feet from tip to tip. As the “limb” bent over, the white
streaks down the “stump” stood out in regal plumes from the crest of a
magnificent bird.

“Oh, Rob,” gasped Dauphin, “it must be the Great Blue Heron. I have
never seen one before, but Professor Hodge’s son Clifton, at Carleton,
sent me the picture of one, and told me to keep my eyes open for him.
He says they are rare now, though they used to be numerous, especially
in the northern part of the state, and the college has no specimen of
the bird.”

“Let me get him for you,” said Rob. “The heavy shot in my gun will do
surer work than your fine shot.” But before Rob could get aim, the
great bird began to move about in such a peculiar way that both boys
could only stare in wonder. Stepping out upon the sandbar the heron
crouched or squatted down, and began to go around and around, backward
and forward, in a sort of hop and skip. Then the boys saw coming down
the sand from out the shadows the cause of all this strange bowing
and scraping by the big bird. A second heron, not bright blue as the
first, but clad in more somber garments of bluish-grey, walked solemnly
toward her prospective lord and master. Approaching each other, both
birds stood perfectly still--as motionless as statues, their long bills
pointing straight up, and each balancing upon one foot. They stood
this way for a full minute, as if in solemn contemplation, and then
both joined in the mysterious gyrations. Approaching each other with
wings out-stretched, in the indescribably funny waltz step, they would
touch the tips of their bills and bow to the ground two or three times.
Then they would separate and go waltzing past each other with the hop
and skip, back and forth, around and around, finally to come and touch
bills and go to bowing again.

The whole performance was so comical that the boys rolled over in the
grass shaking with merriment, and Rob, unable to restrain his hilarity,
gave a loud “ha! ha!” At once there was a flap of wings and the female
bird went sailing over the tops of the trees. The blue heron, he of the
royal plumes, however, after one upward spring, settled down and stood
in dignified stolidity, apparently gazing at the sky.

“Shoot! Rob, shoot!” cried Dauphin. “Get him before he can get away.”

“No, no,” said Rob. “Don’t you see he’s fast some way? He’s wound some
of that tough grass around one of his legs. Let’s catch him alive.
Think of the money we can make taking him around showing him. Or maybe
we can sell him to the professor in your college for a big sum. Surely
a live bird will bring more than a mere specimen.”

The boys threw down their guns and made a rush in the direction of the
great bird. But the ground where the dancing party had been held was
more adapted to bird than human feet, and their progress was slow as
they sank half way to their knees in the soft earth and water.

“You stay on this side while I’ll go around behind, and we’ll make a
grab at him together. We can hold him all right,” said Rob.

“Now,” said Dauphin, “catch him around his wings, and I’ll hold his
legs.” And both boys made a rush. The big bird made another unavailing
attempt to rise, then, awaiting the attack, drew back the long neck,
and with the white plumes standing straight out behind, sent his bill
like a sword-thrust straight at Dauphin’s breast. There was a sound of
the impact of the blow, a moan from the boy, who sank crumpled up to
the ground, and, with another mighty lift of the huge wings the Great
Blue Heron was free.

Plunging through the rushes and mud, Rob reached his chum, carried him
up the bank, and opened his thick hunting jacket and shirt. The long
bill of the bird had evidently broken a rib, but had not penetrated
the flesh. In a moment Dauphin opened his eyes. “My! what was it? I
can’t breathe. Who would have thought that pesky bird could strike like
that?” And, indeed, Dauphin was fortunate to have escaped with the
discomfort of a broken rib, that would be “as good as new” in a couple
of weeks. The strength and thickness of his buckskin jacket probably
saved his life, for less than a fortnight later a young Indian of a
nearby camp, struck upon the bare side by the bill of a “sandhill”
crane, a much smaller bird than the Great Blue Heron, was pierced to
the heart and instantly killed.

“Well,” said Rob, “we didn’t get any specimens, but we did get to
attend the heron’s ball.”

“Yes,” replied Dauphin, “but I think the next time I go will be when I
am an _invited_ guest.”




CHAPTER IV

THE FOREST FIRE


Those who were boys and girls in the Middle West in the year 1871,
will have a vivid remembrance of the great comet that moved across the
northern sky during the month of August. It was so large and brilliant,
that before the sun had been altogether hidden in the west, the fiery
orb of this celestial stranger could be seen glowing and as night came
on the long tail would appear spreading out in a fan of light half way
across the heavens. Mr. Allen was an educated man, whose favorite study
in his school days had been astronomy, and although he had instructed
his young sons as to the facts concerning comets, their relation to
other heavenly bodies and to the earth, the rumor which had found its
way into this Wisconsin wilderness home, that the world was to be
destroyed by the “fervent heat” of this flaming visitor, had its effect
upon the boys.

To the natural fear of the marvelous and unusual in the sky, was added
the alarming conditions of a severe drouth, all over the county.
Dauphin had told the boys how a burning wad from his gun had set fire
to the dry peat in a marsh to the west, and the “ground” had been
burning there in great holes for more than a week. Before the close
of July the river had ceased to run, and water was only to be found
in the deep holes of its bed. The sky was brassy-looking in the day,
and at night the moon had the appearance of blood. Then came weeks
when a thick haze hung over all the land, and the sickly, yellow-hued
sun could be looked upon with naked eyes. It seemed as if all nature
was disturbed, frightened, and awaiting some impending calamity. The
wild creatures of the forest, birds and animals, became strangely
numerous. Deer were seen about the water holes in the day time, and
seemed scarcely frightened when approached. Grey, black, and big, red
fox-squirrels swarmed in the trees and on the fences. The little patch
of sod corn the boys had planted on the “new breaking” that spring was
harvested in the milk by the southward-moving emigrants of the forest.

A timber scout stopped over night at the hospitable home of Mr.
Thompson and told how the little, lumber-manufacturing town of
Peshtigo, up in the big woods northwest, had been wiped out by fire,
scores of the inhabitants perishing before they could reach the river,
so sudden was the coming of the storm of flame over the forest. Many
others had been suffocated with smoke or overcome by the fierce heat
and drowned even after they had reached the water. “The big woods from
Lake Superior to Green Bay are burning,” said the traveler.

But what caused the more anxiety to the Allens was the rumor he had
heard at Pete-en-well Ferry that Chicago had been destroyed by fire,
and nearly all the people burned.

The closing up of a matter of his former business had called Mr. Allen
to that city some two weeks previous, and as it was past the time set
for his return, the rumor brought by the timberman filled the family
with alarm. Letters were rare with dwellers in that forest wilderness,
but occasional trips were made to Dexter Crossing, where “tote” teams
passing to the camps along the rivers of the far north would leave mail
forwarded on to these settlers by the postmasters at the towns below.

Rob being the elder of the boys, proposed to make the trip at once to
Dexter Crossing in the chance of a letter having been sent there to
them by their father. There was, of course, danger that the great fire
of the northeast might sweep down upon them any day, and as Dexter was
well within the big woods the fate of one caught out there could be
fearfully imagined. But the anxiety of the family as to the safety of
Mr. Allen outweighed their caution, and Mrs. Allen gave her consent for
Rob to make the trip.

The lad reached the settlement at Dexter Crossing safely, and to his
joy found there a letter from his father. A great fire had indeed swept
over the very heart of Chicago, destroying almost the entire business
portion, and hundreds of lives had been lost. Fortunately Mr. Allen had
been in a district not reached by the flames, and while he had been
delayed by the catastrophe, would be able to reach home the following
week.

Impatient to be back at home with the good news, Rob resolved to start
upon the return trip that night, walking ten miles or so, then resting
until daybreak. Thoroughly wearied with his long tramp, he slept
soundly when he finally lay down upon his bed of pine “needles.” When
he awoke it was with a start and sense of discomfort. His watch said it
was morning, past six o’clock, although it was still dark. The air was
close and heavy and carried a pungent odor that made breathing somewhat
difficult. Rob sprang to his feet, and munching his bread and bacon as
he went, resumed his journey. Before he had traveled an hour, the tops
of the tall pines had begun to moan in a rising wind, and a cloud of
smoke was settling down like a pall from the sky. With a clutch of fear
at his heart, Rob realized the meaning--the forest fire had reached
that section; his hope of safety lay in reaching the more open country
about his home before the storm of fire should be upon him.

Breaking into a “long run,” an exercise which the boys had practiced
until they were able to keep up the gait for two or three miles, Rob
began the race. The smoke grew more dense; tears ran down the boy’s
face from smarting eyes. Choking for air, he bound his handkerchief
about his mouth and nose, and ran on. Again and again he would stumble
and fall over tree-roots rising in the way. Finally he noticed that
close to the ground there was a current of cool, pure air, and so,
lying flat on his face, he would fill his lungs, then rise and dash
forward as far as he could, and fall to the earth to breathe again.

While he lay gasping for breath after a long run, there came to his
ears the sound as of a waterfall in the distance. The volume of sound
increased until it became a roar, and all at once the pall of darkness
broke out into a glare of blinding flame--the tempest of fire was upon
him. The very air seemed to be on fire. A great pine would start into
a blaze, and an ascending current of air snatching a limb or a burning
bunch of cones would hurl it on into the top of another tree an hundred
feet away. The first rush was quickly over. The resinous foliage of the
green trees was soon licked up by the flames, but the awful destruction
would continue for days.

The bed of dry “needles,” fallen leaves of the yearly shedding of
the pines, made excellent kindling to light the great trunks of the
forest giants, which, catching, would burn until consumed, or until
extinguished by a heavy rain. Fortunately the latter usually occurred.
Whether or not it be founded in fact, there is a saying widely accepted
that every large battle and great fire is followed by a hard rainstorm.
Thus it is that the greatest damage in forest fires is to the young
timber, the small trees growing close together being left bare and
dead, if not consumed at once. Among the big trees there is little
underbrush, and while the foliage and small limbs are destroyed, and
great holes sometimes burned in the trunks near the ground, the trees
recover, and put forth their green again the following spring.

All sense seemed to leave Rob except the one to keep going. No longer
could he stand to run more than a few feet in the fierce heat. His hair
was singed; the thick soles of his boots were cracked and shriveled
up from stepping upon embers and burning limbs. His woolen jacket and
trousers were a protection to his body, but when a dead tree, all
ablaze, fell with a crash just in front of him, he felt that he could
go no further. Almost without volition he crawled off to one side--and
for a time lost consciousness. Soon he came to himself and realized
that his blistered face and hands were deliciously cool, and that he
was breathing easily. He had fortunately crawled into a little “swale,”
one of the small, moss-covered depressions that mark the edge of the
big forest, as it opens out into the small timber and marshes of the
ancient lake. The little basin, filled with moss, was like a great
sponge from which not all the moisture had been wrung by the fierce
heat of the summer, and it meant life to Rob as he buried his face in
it.

Danger to the lad from falling trees and flying firebrands was not
over, but he was not far from the open prairie, now a blackened waste,
and with heart anxious for the loved ones at home, he pushed on.

The fire had, after all, not been connected with the great fire of
the northeast, but was local in extent, covering some ten miles from
north to south, and perhaps fifteen from its eastern starting point,
to where it was stopped by the deep marshes on the west. The humble
home on the Necedah river was unharmed, and great was the rejoicing
that night as Rob returned alive, with the letter, although it was
many weeks before the lad fully recovered from the experiences of that
fearful trip through the burning forest.




CHAPTER V

THE FIRST DEER HUNT


The question of food supply is always an important one where there is
a family of growing children, but especially is it so in a wilderness
of forest, far from stores and the supplies of towns and cities. The
question is not so much one of variety as of quantity, as the vigorous
out-of-door life of the pioneer gives an appetite which dainties
prepared by a famous _chef_ would not tempt from the generous dish of
“pork and beans,” or roast beef and potatoes.

This question became a pressing one to our settlers in the “old lake
bottom,” by the Necedah river. The severe summer drouth had cut short
the yield of their potato crop upon which high hopes had rested at the
spring planting, and a great horde of migrating squirrels had harvested
their little field of corn before it had ripened.

Ruffled grouse, or “prairie-chickens,” as they were called, were
abundant up to the time of the big fires in August. Indeed, from the
first of July the young birds had furnished a supply of meat for the
table more delicious than the boys of the family had ever known.

The old sow, which they had succeeded in bringing through the winter,
had been turned out into the hardwood timber along the river to care
for herself, and Uncle Sam Thompson reported having seen her on Big
Bend with a fine litter of pigs, which would thrive upon the “mast,”
the nuts of oak and hickory, and furnish good “hams” and “sides” by
Christmas.

The fire which had come down out of the big woods during the summer,
burning over the low prairies and shallow marches had been followed by
a week of heavy rains, and what had been a wide stretch of blackened
waste was soon transformed by the springing grass into an emerald
garden. While light frosts occasionally nipped the top, through
September, the grass grew rapidly and luxuriantly, and Mr. Allen’s few
cows and yoke of young oxen were rolling with fat by October.

Families and herds of deer might be seen any day a mile west from the
Allen home, though they appeared to be more difficult of approach as
the cold season came on. As many as twenty in one herd were counted
by the boys at one time. While they had become expert with their guns
in securing small game, neither Rob nor Ed had as yet tried their
marksmanship upon the larger animals.

There was, at that time, no “closed” season for its protection, but
the settlers, as a rule, never killed game wantonly, nor for “sport.”
No deer were shot in the summer, especially while the young needed
the care of its mother. But when the sharp, frosty nights of October
came, the hunter’s appetite was allowed to match the woods-wisdom and
cunning of the “antlered lords of the forest.”

The moonlight nights of October is the mating season, and then the
hunters know that the deer keep to regular paths or “runs” through the
forest. Rough platforms of boughs were built upon the low branches of
some tree at the crossing or intersection of two runs, and upon this
the hunter will take his seat and watch, while a comrade starts off,
and making a wide detour, starts a “drive” in the direction of the
ambush. The watcher in the tree must be alert, quick of sight, and sure
of aim, for the buck will come bounding toward him with prodigious
leaps and be gone again in a flash.

Uncle Sam had promised his nephew Dauphin and the Allen boys a deer
hunt on the night of the full moon in October, but Rob Allen was
impatient. “You needn’t be in such a hurry,” said Dauphin. “You
couldn’t hit a deer the first time, anyway. One always has ‘buck-fever’
the first time.”

“You’ll see,” boasted Rob; “I’ll show you that the laugh will not be on
me.”

If Rob had been wise, he would have awaited the time set, and acted
under the direction of the experienced hunter, but the taunt of Dauphin
spurred him on to prove his prowess. So the next afternoon he slipped
off with his gun in the direction of Round Slough. Approaching the
water from the west he came to a swale where some long-past tornado
from the southwest had laid the aspen trees in great windrows. The
breeze from the east brought to Rob the quacking of ducks over in the
slough, and as he slowly and as quietly as possible, clambered over the
fallen tree trunks, he thought, “Well, I can change the buckshot in my
gun to a cartridge of 4’s, and take home a mess of mallards anyway.”

Then, from the further side of the very windrow of tree trunks
upon which he was clambering, there sprang high into the air, and
in a mighty bound clearing the last barrier of trees, a splendid,
eight-pronged buck. For a second Rob stood in open-mouthed wonder, then
seizing his gun in one hand he started on a run after the deer, yelling
at the top of his voice. There was a flash of the great antlers above
the underbrush of the slough, and the deer was gone.

“Well,” said Rob, coming to himself, “I had it, didn’t I! So that is
‘buck fever.’ Why I never once thought of my gun. The boys will have
their laugh now.”

Coming out into the open forest, the lad struck into a deer “run” and
started for home. He had not gone far when he caught the sound of
animals running, coming toward him. Quickly he dodged behind a big
pine. In a moment two deer burst into sight, the second one carrying
a pair of branching antlers. Rob could feel his heart beating like a
trip-hammer, but he drew a bead upon the antlers, and, just as they
passed, fired. The buck dropped, rolled over and over, then lay still.

“Hurrah!” shouted Rob. “I have you now;” and, dropping his gun, he ran
quickly, drawing his hunting knife. The deer was a four-year-old, and
would probably weigh a hundred and fifty pounds. The boy put one foot
upon the neck of the fallen animal, when a startling thing occurred.
As though the solid earth had risen beneath his feet, Rob felt himself
lifted and flung over upon his back on the pine needles as if he had
been the merest trifle, and in great leaps and bounds he saw his deer
disappearing in the distance.

“Of all things,” gasped the lad, “this beats me. If I caught the ‘buck
fever’ the first time, I must now have reached the delirious stage. Who
ever heard of a dead deer acting in that way!”

It was now growing dark, and impossible to follow the trail of the deer
even had it been seriously wounded, so the lad struck out for home. He
had gone perhaps half a mile, and was approaching the open prairie not
far from his home, when, in a small swale, to the left of the trail,
he heard a snort, then a quick, impatient pawing of a hoof like a
challenge. Dropping to his knees he waited, and in a moment discovered
the gleam of two eyes shining through the darkness. Carefully raising
his gun, he fired. Springing straight up into the air, the animal came
down with a thud. This time Rob did not throw down his gun, but made
ready with the second barrel in case of need, as he cautiously went
up to where his quarry lay. But the charge had gone true, and a fine,
fat yearling, a “spike” buck--his first deer--was a prize to the young
hunter.

The boy’s heart beat proudly as he shouldered his game and bore it home.

With well assumed modesty Rob accepted the praises of Dauphin and Ed,
but being an honest lad he finally confessed to his attack of “buck
fever,” and then related the astonishing action of the second deer.

But Uncle Sam explained it. “You ‘creased’ him,” said he. “Your aim
was too high, but one of the buckshot grazed the top of his head and
stunned him for the time. Probably he was not at all seriously hurt. I
saw that trick played many a time when we were crossing the plains to
California in an early day. When we were on the llanos of northern and
western Texas bands of wild horses would occasionally circle about our
wagon train. None of the saddle horses were anything like a match for
the wild fellows in speed, but the plainsmen had a way of occasionally
capturing one of the band. Where the lay of the ground would permit,
a picked man would be detailed to creep toward the herd until within
shooting distance. Selecting the horse that pleased his fancy, he would
shoot, not to kill or wound the animal, but to just graze the skin
along the top of its head. The trick required the highest skill in
marksmanship, but many horses were secured in that way, as the force
of the bullet would stun the animal for a time and it could be secured
with ropes, and finally be broken to service.”




CHAPTER VI

THE INDIAN WAR DANCE


When the Jesuit Fathers, those early French path-finders for
civilization in the central region of the American continent, pushed
down from Canada over the lakes and by the rivers into the great forest
that stretched from the inland sea to the great river, they found a
people warlike, indeed, yet hospitable and kindly; reserved and shy,
yet open-hearted and unsuspicious; uncivilized according to Old World
standards, yet wise in the great secrets of nature; poor as to stores
of gold, yet rich in the abundance of all that went to make for their
simple necessities, their comfort and their pleasure. So entranced were
the Frenchmen with the natural, free, and abundant life of these red
men of the forest, and with their noble physical bearing, and untutored
courtesy and dignity, that many then and there forever forsook the land
and ways of their fathers, and bequeathed the names of France to dusky
families, and to streams and lakes and heights.

The Great Sioux Nation, not a people, but a federation of peoples, lay
principally to the west--the land of Hiawatha--in what was to become
Minnesota, and extended well across the barren plains of Dakota to the
Missouri river where possession was disputed by the Blackfeet. The
eastern border of the nation rested upon the shores of the two fresh
water seas. The central portion of the great forest was the home,
principally, of two tribes: to the eastward the Menominees, and to the
westward the Winnebagoes. To the south was the land of the Sac and Fox.

From the standpoint of the red man, this land between the Mississippi
river and the great lakes could only be equalled by that Happy Hunting
Ground on the Isle of the Blest, the home of Manitou, the Great Spirit.
Little lakes and running streams, teeming with fish, abounded. Wild
fowl and the smaller fur- and game-animals were ever within reach of
even the arrows of the unclad children. Blackberries grew in riotous
profusion in sandy openings of the forest; while blueberries in the
summer and huckleberries in early fall gave a welcome change of diet.
Food was plentiful. And as for wild creatures whose taking would test
the sagacity and valor of the wisest and bravest, were there not the
bear, the panther, and the lynx? While upon the plains west of the
great river the neighbors depended upon the bison for winter’s meat,
for tent covering and a large portion of their clothing, the great
forest afforded the Winnebagoes, for these necessities, the flesh and
skins of deer.

It is true that such a bountiful nature bred an improvident
disposition, and times of lack and suffering had come to them in the
past, but so rare were they, that the tales of such disasters became
great epics to be rehearsed and chanted about winter fires.

To this forest had come the welcomed priests and their friendly
companions--but that was indeed the beginning of a new order; where
one white man puts a foot, there other white men spring up. It would
seem strange that from the time of pathfinder Pierre Marquette to the
time of pathfinder John C. Fremont, the simple, free, self-sufficient
lives of these forest tribes should have been so little disturbed,
and yet there was a reason. From the Atlantic coast the white
man’s civilization had spread westward, ever westward, opening up
farms, building cities--always crowding before it the red man, and
appropriating his lands. After the bloody days of the establishing
of New England upon the eastern shore, there came, later, Tecumseh,
with his vain hope of stemming the tide of invasion. Then still later,
in the newer west, Black Hawk, with impassioned words strove to turn
the faces of his warriors toward the coming horde. But steadily,
surely, the white man pressed forward. As a stream is turned aside by
a barrier, to seek some other and easier course, so was this human
stream of immigration and occupation for a long time held back by the
vast forests of Wisconsin. As yet there was no lack of fertile prairies
ready for the plow, and so the tide swept below and on around the home
of the Winnebagoes. It crept up into Minnesota, and, still westward,
planted its outpost at beautiful little lake Cheteck, the head of
the Des Moines river. Here the red men of the plains called a halt.
From Cheteck to New Ulm they wrote their fearful warning in blood and
fire. The answer of the whites was quick and no less terrible, and
so relentless, that many of these plains folk took refuge among their
neighbors in the Winnebago forests. For three hundred years the history
of the Winnebagoes and Menominees had been one of almost unbroken peace
with the whites. While there had been settlements made here and there,
so far there had been no serious crowding. There was yet room and food
in plenty; and abundance of food predisposes to peace.

But the white dwellers of the cities and on the plains farms increased;
always new homes were to be built; the small forests were soon
exhausted, and the lumber scout came on to view the great woods of
Wisconsin.

In early days when white men desired the skin of otter or beaver
possessed by an Indian he might give the red man a bit of copper wire
as barter, but he took the skin. So it was when the great forests of
pine and oak and ash became desirable to the white man, he did not
steal outright the home of the red man; he made some sort of present
in return, as he took the land. To the Winnebagoes was allotted,
as exchange for their claim to the forests which had sheltered and
nourished the generations of their ancestors, a treeless, waterless
tract in the far south, in what had been called the “Indian Territory.”
To be sure they had had nothing to say as to the trade, and entertained
no notion of going to their new “home,” but the white man had appeased
his conscience, and the red man would now be considered an intruder in
the forest.

When Rob and Ed Allen came with their father’s family to live upon
the Necedah river there was a band of perhaps an hundred Winnebagoes
making their lodge in Big Bend. The chief, following custom, had taken
a “white” name, after that of a man who had befriended him, and was
known, not as Jim Miner, but as “Miner Jim.” Miner Jim’s wife was the
daughter of a Menominee chief, and was called by the whites “Menominee
Mary.” Mary was every inch a red princess. Magnificently proportioned,
and of nature imperious, her word held at least equal authority in the
tribe with the chief. While it was customary among the Indians for a
brave, and especially a chief, to have several wives, Menominee Mary
reigned the sole spouse in the tepee of the Winnebago chief. Their
eldest child was Ka-li-cha-goo-gah, and, according to Indian custom,
which traces descent through mother to son, instead of through father
to son, the lad was considered a Menominee.

Between this Indian lad of about their own age, and the Allen boys, and
their neighbor, Dauphin Thompson, there sprang up a warm friendship.
The white boys and the red one were together upon many a hunting trip,
and in the berry season gathered their basswood-bark baskets full
of fruit side by side. Buckskin moccasins ornamented with elaborate
beadwork designs by Menominee Mary, broad, ash-bowed snow shoes for
winter hunting, and a soft, lynx-fur robe attested the love the son
of the chief bore his white comrades. And in return his delight was
great in the gift of a score of steel traps with which he would gather
in a harvest of muskrat pelts from the lodges on Iron Creek marsh
during the months of deep snow. Living as members of this band were two
young people, a boy nearly grown, whose red, stubby hair, and smiling,
freckled face was, as Dauphin declared, a “plain map of Ireland.” The
other was a girl apparently twelve or thirteen years of age, with wavy,
dark brown hair, and eyes as blue as a summer sky. Whether these young
folk were able to speak English, the white boys could not tell. They
never answered a question put to them in that tongue, and the older
Indians seemed adverse to having them associate with the white lads.
Uncle Sam Thompson told the boys the story of the Minnesota massacre
and gave, as his suspicion, that some of this band of the Big Bend were
really refugees from the Sioux who were in that uprising, and that the
two evidently white children were really captives taken at that time.

During the year of which I write the boys had been freely received at
the Indian camp, and, what few whites had been permitted to behold,
had been allowed to attend their stated occasions of worship, the
ceremonial dances. The Fish Dance in the spring, the Green Corn Dance
in the summer, the Harvest Dance and the Hunting Moon Dance in the
autumn, were of strange interest to these town-bred boys.

“I tell you what I’d like to see,” said Ed Allen, as they were going
home from one of these, to them, grotesque performances, “I would like
to go to a sure-enough scalp dance, or war dance.”

“You can be thankful, young man,” replied Dauphin, “that you are
permitted to see what you have seen without having those other dances
added. White men who have been spectators have seldom found either of
these performances pleasant, if indeed they had any opportunity to tell
about them afterward.”

As the winter season approached, there seemed to come a change in the
attitude of the Indians toward their visitors. Kalichigoogah was often
silent and moody with his friends, and the older Indians, while never
rude, offered little welcome to the whites.

There had been a series of more or less disastrous fires here and there
in the great forest, and the lumbermen who were busily gaining title
to these lands laid the blame upon the Indians. The representation
they made to the government at Washington was that the Indians, if not
revengefully guilty, were at least carelessly so, as forest fires would
be sure to be kindled from their campfires. Moreover, they declared,
the Winnebagoes were trespassers in the forest; the government had
allotted them a reservation in the Indian Territory, and they called
upon the authorities at Washington to see that these Indians were
“returned” to the place where they belonged.

To one acquainted with the manner of Indian life, the charge that
forest fires were set from the campfires of the red men, would be
ridiculous. Such fires might, and doubtless did, start from the
campfires of white hunters and timber scouts, but never from a fire
built by an Indian. In the first place, the forest was the very life
of the Indian. He understood that any harm to the big woods meant harm
to himself. A white man would build his fire by a log or dry stump,
and pile on plenty of sticks and limbs. He would have a big fire--and
go away leaving it burning careless of consequences. On the contrary,
the Indian, who for generations had lived in the possible presence of
a keen-eyed enemy, was very cautious about letting a smoke rise above
the tree tops to call attention to himself. Consequently his fire was
small--just a few little sticks, or pieces of bark brought together,
and _always_ the fire extinguished, and generally the very ashes
concealed, as the hunter or warrior left his camping place.

Friends among the whites had sent word to the Winnebagoes of the
purpose of the Great Father at Washington to take them from the land of
their fathers and hold them upon the bleak prairies where there was no
forest shade, no cool lakes, no sparkling rivers, but fierce winds, and
dust clouds, and marauding Comanches.

The red man is called cruel and treacherous, but to the Winnebagoes the
white race, at this time, seemed the incarnation of all that is unjust
and hateful. It is small wonder that Miner Jim’s band grew moody, and
distant in their attitude toward their former friends.

Spring came in somewhat late. Up until April the river was still
floating large cakes of ice. In that latitude the corn-growing season
is none too long at best, and the Allen boys would have to make every
hour count when the land became dry enough to work.

“Rob,” said Ed, one bright, warm day, “I believe that upper meadow
could be plowed now, if we had another yoke of steers to hitch to our
14-inch plow. I’m going over to see if Dauph won’t hitch in with his
steers for a few days and work time about.”

It was late in the evening before Ed and Dauphin finished their
arrangements for the partnership plowing, and when Ed reached Big Bend,
twilight had fallen over the prairie; within the wood it was already
dark. The long-drawn cry of a grey timber wolf came sharp and clear
to the boy on the frosty spring air. In a moment it was answered by
the house dogs of the distant farm. A Great Horned Owl, lingering late
before departing for his summer home in the arctic region, boomed a
deep-voiced “Hoo-hoo-ah” as it arose like a ghost all in white from
a limb above the path. Then there came to the ears of the boy other
sounds, so strange and confusing that he was compelled to stop and
listen. Evidently the noise was over in Big Bend. The Indian camp!
But what was going on? The Indians are not accustomed to much noise
making. Could it be that some vicious white man, as had occurred at
other places, had brought in the forbidden “fire water” to inflame and
debauch the red men for their own evil ends?

For himself, the lad did not think of being afraid. These Indians
were his friends. If wicked white men were there, seeking them harm,
his father would see that they received merited punishment. It was not
yet late; he could easily reach home in time. He would go over to the
Indian camp and learn the cause of the commotion.

As he drew near, a lean cur with hair standing like bristles upon its
back, made a dash at his heels, but slunk away as it took the familiar
scent of one it had learned was a friend. As the lad came within fifty
yards of the place he had a view of what was going on. A large space
to the east of the camp had been cleared, and around this space, in a
circle, were squatted the women and children of the tribe. Small fires,
here and there, but partially lit up the camp, and threw weird shadows,
now upon the surrounding forest, now upon the cleared ground. All about
in the circle were different ones beating upon tom-toms, small drums
fashioned by stretching buckskin tightly over ash hoops. They were
chanting some song in a high-pitched, monotonous, though not unmusical
tone, and in perfect cadence. Ed’s gaze lifted from the musicians to
the top of the pole planted in the center of the circle, from which
dangled--what was it? Hair! Yes, unmistakably, a number of dried human
scalps. A cold hand seemed to grip the spine of the boy, and each
individual hair of his head seemed trying to pull itself out by the
roots. He sank to the thick bed of pine needles on the ground, thankful
that he had been standing in the shadow of a great tree.

It was well that he was hidden, for just then began the strangest
ceremony he had ever witnessed, and which few, indeed, of the white
race had ever beheld and come away to describe. The Indians sprang
into the circle, stark naked save for the narrow loin-cloth, their
bodies painted black, with broad red and yellow stripes, their faces
“decorated” with hideous lines and patches of color. Those who had been
warriors, wore upon their heads the bonnet or headdress ornamented
with eagle feathers, each feather marking some great deed, which the
voice of the old men of the tribe had decided to be a claim to honor.
The younger Indians had each one or two, or possibly three feathers
fastened in the thick braids of black hair which hung down their backs.
As they sprang into the circle, it could be seen that all carried
some kind of weapon. With bodies swaying and gesticulating, they went
around and around, one following the other, in perfect time with the
beating of the tom-toms and the shrill singing of the women. At first
all seemed to be a confusion of gesture, but as the dance proceeded the
boy on the ground saw that each Indian was acting out in pantomime a
story, and that story was the pursuit, capture, and death of an enemy.
Crouching, crawling, springing, running, aiming with gun, striking with
tomahawk, scalping with the knife, and leaping away in triumph, all
were unmistakably portrayed by the redmen dancing in perfect rhythm
about the scalp-decked pole.

“It is a war dance,” gasped the watching lad. “They’re getting ready
to go on the war path. I must get home and warn the folks--if I can.”

Slowly he began to crawl backward into the deeper shadows, away from
that fearful place. What if the dogs should come upon him and bark,
even in sport? What if quick ears should hear the snap of a broken
twig? Would they not think him a spy? Would they take him along as a
prisoner; or would they build a fire about that pole in the center and
tie him there after having added his scalp to their collection?

It seemed that he was hours in crawling backward out of the light of
those fires, away from the horrid din, away from the all too suggestive
dancing of those hideous, naked figures. All at once he found himself
at the river bank. Creeping down, he quietly let himself into the
cold water, and clutching grass and root, and overhanging branch, he
cautiously, and with painful slowness, made his way down stream. He
was numb with the fright of his experience, as well as the chill of
the water, and scarcely able to walk, when he reached the opening of
the forest, half a mile from the Indian camp. As he was about entering
the path leading to his home, he stumbled and nearly fell over someone
lying prostrate on the dead leaves.

“It is some watcher. I’m lost,” flashed through the mind of the boy.
But a familiar movement of an arm of the stretched-out figure caught
his attention. Could it be? it was Kalichigoogah. For some moments the
Indian boy would answer no question of his white friend, but finally he
burst out in a sob.

“Me no let dance. Me no let fight. Them say no Winnebago, me Menominee.”

The two white families made such preparations as were possible to
withstand an attack, but no harm appeared during the night, and a
cautious investigation the following day showed the camp deserted; the
women and children as well as the war party gone.

Two days later the cause for the strange action of the Indians was
learned, when Captain Hunt, in charge of a squad of regular soldiers,
appeared at the home of Mr. Thompson. The Indians had been warned that
the petition of the lumbermen had been granted by the authorities at
Washington, and that they were to be forcibly removed from their forest
home to the inhospitable plains of the South. They did not seek war
with their brothers, but they would not tamely give up their home.
They would take the women and children to the friendly care of the
Menominee, and then, if they must, they would die as befitted a brave
race.

The soldiers easily caught the trail of the fleeing band, and on the
third day after the war dance, the entire band, women, children, and
warriors, were surrounded, captured, and taken away to the Indian
Territory.

I may say that the stay of these Winnebagoes upon their reservation was
not long. One after another, stragglers from the band came back, until
before the close of the second season the majority were again living in
their beloved forest home.




CHAPTER VII

THE FLOATING BOG


In settling up some business affairs, Mr. Allen had come into
possession of a tract of two thousand acres of swamp land lying toward
the western side of the bed of the ancient sea. At the time of which I
write there were vast tracts of such supposedly valueless land owned by
the state, and which could be purchased for ten dollars per “forty,”
twenty-five cents per acre. Timber scouts had ranged over it, and
selecting the forties upon which there were sand knolls covered with
a goodly amount of pine timber, the land would be purchased by their
employers, the lumber companies, to be cut over at their convenience.

The low-lying prairies, flooded in the spring season, and the lower
marshes covered with water much of the year, were thought to be not
worth the twenty-five cents per acre asked by the state. In later
years, by a system of drainage, and through scientific farming, much of
this land became highly productive and valuable.

In some of the deeper marshes, where there had been an abundance of
water for several years, cranberry vines had covered the surface of the
moss and yielded astonishing crops of mottled green and red berries.
This was the character of much of the land of which Mr. Allen found
himself possessed. A granite rock rising with nearly perpendicular
sides over three hundred feet above the level surface of the country,
gave the name of North Bluff marsh to the locality, as distinguished
from the country about a similar bluff some ten miles to the south.

After considerable persuasion on the part of the boys, Mr. Allen had
leased this cranberry marsh to Rob and Ed, and their chum Dauphin. The
boys already had a good start on the fund they were gathering for a
planned year in college, and if they should be successful in getting
the berries from the North Bluff to market, it would bring them nearer
to the desired goal.

While the cranberry, as it is picked from the vine, is as firm and
meaty as a little apple, it bruises easily in handling, and so requires
great care in getting to market. The boys had purposed using two-bushel
grain sacks for the transportation of the crop, but Mr. Allen wisely
persuaded them to make a preliminary trip to Lisbon and secure light
ash barrels to take with them to the marsh and so prevent much loss
from bruised and damaged berries.

On the twentieth of August the boys had their outfits assembled: two
yokes of oxen hitched to two broad-tired wagons, upon which were long
racks each containing thirty empty barrels. With these they carried a
tent, cooking utensils, supplies of bacon, flour, brown sugar, matches,
axes, guns, and ammunition, sacks to carry the berries from the marsh
to dry land, and not least in importance, three cranberry rakes. Of
these latter Uncle Sam Thompson had made one for each of the boys.
A slab of ash was taken and fingers about ten inches long sawn and
whittled down smooth in one end. Sides and back were put to this, with
a handle on top and back. With these “rakes” the boys would literally
scoop up the berries from the vines.

The trip of fifty miles to the marsh was, in itself, a great
undertaking. There were no roads; logs and tree roots had to be
chopped out of the way, and overhanging limbs cleared from before
the stacks of barrels. More serious were the occasional deep bogs
encountered, through which the oxen, though accustomed to wallowing
in mud, were unable to pull the wagons. Over these the boys were
obliged to build a “corduroy,” sometimes for several rods. To one
accustomed to a boulevard or even a macadam pike, the corduroy would
seem an impossibility as a means of travel, but pioneers are frequently
required to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Small trees are felled
and cut into lengths suitable to the width of the wagon, and these
placed side by side until the way across has been covered. When the
marsh is unusually deep and soft, a second layer of smaller logs is
placed upon the first. It is not a good road, nor easy to ride over,
but it can be crossed, and that is the main thing.

Not alone were the bad roads, or lack of roads, a cause of distress
to the boys and their teams; mosquitoes in clouds attacked them day
and night. Frequently they were compelled to make “smudges” of fire
covered with green grass, so that in the smoke they might be able
to eat their meals in some sort of comfort. At night the oxen were
likewise protected from the attacks of the pestiferous insects. Much
annoyance and no little suffering were caused by a spotted fly, called
from its markings, the “deer fly,” which persistently crawled up into
their hair and under their clothing, its bite always drawing blood.

The boys averaged not quite five miles a day on the trip, and it was
the last day of August before the camping place at the foot of North
Bluff was reached.

The first day of their arrival was spent in arranging camp; putting up
the tent, digging the shallow well in the sand at the marsh’s edge,
and building moss-lined pole-pens in which to store the berries as
they should be picked. Cranberry harvest and the arrival of frost are
usually too close together to allow any time to be taken away from the
one occupation of picking. So the boys would sort over and clean the
berries and then barrel them after the frosts had come.

The bog was a wonder to the Allen boys. Around the edge, for perhaps
ten rods out into the marsh, were growing tamarack trees, from little
switches a dozen feet high that could be easily pulled up by hand, to
older ones six inches in diameter, and thirty feet in height. Further
out, beyond the line of tamaracks, the bog looked much like a prairie
covered with moss, with here and there a sandy mound upon which
blackberry vines, huckleberry bushes, and a few scattering pine trees
were growing.

When they had walked out into the marsh several rods over shoe-top deep
in the moss, Dauphin called out, “Stand still a minute, boys, I want
to show you something,” and he began to spring up and down in rhythmic
motion. In a few moments, at first slightly, then in increasing motion
the trees began to sway and bend, and the surface of the bog, for many
rods around, could be seen in regular, wave-like motion, trees and all
rising and falling, bending and rolling as if on the bosom of a rolling
sea.

“It is like this,” said Dauphin in answer to the boys’ astonished
questioning, “this marsh is really a lake over which the moss has
grown until it is now completely covered. Here, near the edge where
it started in to grow and spread over the water, the old moss falling
down each year has been succeeded by the new growing up, and so for
ages, until there is now quite a solid covering at the surface, enough
even to support the trees, but, as you see, it is only after all a
floating cover to a lake. Not all over is the moss so thick as here,
and there are places dangerous to try to walk over. One might easily
drop through. Then--”

“Don’t, Dauph,” exclaimed Ed; “I don’t want to think of anything so
horrible.”

“You had best pick your steps, then,” replied Dauphin; “if you attempt
to cross the bog, or you may find something worse than hearing about
it.”

“How far is it to the bottom?” asked Rob.

“We can soon see,” replied Dauphin. Cutting down a slender dead
tamarack he thrust it down through the moss until it rested upon the
solid sand.

“Twelve feet!” exclaimed the boys as the pole was drawn up and
measured. Further out from the edge they took a measurement of sixteen
feet from the mossy surface to the bottom.

There was a fine crop of cranberries on the vines, and the boys were
busy from early morning until late at night with their rakes. The
unaccustomed stooping all day was back-breaking work, and it was not
at all pleasant to stand in cold water wet to the knees, but the
two-bushel sack of berries each boy was able to carry to camp every
half day made the labor endurable.

As the best patches near the camp were soon raked over, the boys would
take turns searching for new places. On one of these excursions Rob had
an adventure which came near to a tragedy for him, but which led to
happy termination. In a cove of perhaps an acre, jutting up into one
of the pine islands, lying nearly a mile out into the bog, Rob found a
patch of beautiful “bell” berries, and over near the edge it appeared
as though the vines had been recently disturbed. Closely scanning the
land nearby he at length discovered a mound of freshly-pulled moss over
which pine boughs had been carelessly strewn, as if in attempt to hide
something. His curiosity was of course aroused, and digging away the
moss he came upon several sacks filled with berries. Evidently somebody
had been there at work. He determined to carry one of the sacks of
berries to camp with him, and then get the boys and hunt for the
trespassers. Instead of returning in the way he came, Rob struck out
straight across the bog, his mind full of excited imaginings about his
find. Suddenly he found himself dropping, and like a flash he realized
that he had come upon a thin place in the bog, and was falling through
to the cold, dark depths of the lake beneath. Instinctively he had
thrown himself forward, with arms out-stretched, his hands clutching
the moss. This stayed him for a moment, but the heavy sack of berries
was upon him, forcing his head and shoulders down into the moss. He
could feel himself sinking; the water seemed to be rising about his
face. He thought of how the boys would miss him, of their fruitless
search, for the moss would soon close over him leaving no mark to show
where he had gone down. Then the thought came that he must not die;
that he might work backward from under the sack and get free. It was a
desperate struggle, and before he succeeded his face was under water,
and his strength nearly exhausted for lack of breath. But at last he
was free, and throwing his arms up over the sack he raised his head,
regained his breath, and rested. Slowly he pulled his body up, and
using the sinking sack for a foothold, he threw himself sprawling upon
the track over which he had come. He crawled in the moss for several
yards before he dared to rise to his feet and resume his journey to the
camp.

“I should like to see that lake drained,” said Dauphin, as Rob told of
his narrow escape. “Think of the different kinds of animals that have
probably left their bones on the sands of that lake bottom in the ages
past.”

“Well, I’m glad that your future scientist will not have the pleasure
of classifying my bones, anyway,” replied Rob.

Next day the boys found the trespassers to be a band of Winnebago
Indians, and they were able to make satisfactory arrangements whereby
the Indians stayed and helped them harvest the crop of berries, which
the boys finally got safely to market.




CHAPTER VIII

THE WAYSIDE TAVERN


“Uncle Henry,” said Ed, as the boys were enjoying themselves in the
pleasant living room of the Thompson home, “what kind of a mound is
that in front of Slater’s tavern? It looks like a grave right there
in front of the house. I noticed it when I was going to Lisbon after
cranberry barrels last fall, and I started to ask Mr. Slater who had
been buried there, but one of the teamsters stopping there for dinner
with me looked scared, and hushed me up.”

“Ruth can tell you the story; it’s mighty sad,” replied Mr. Thompson.

“Yes, boys, it is indeed a sad story, but its lesson may do you good,”
replied Mrs. Thompson.

And this is the story she related.

Among the pioneers of settlement in the great forest wilderness of
northern Wisconsin, were Jared Slater, a middle-aged tavernkeeper, from
Vermont, and his young wife. Margaret Strong had been left an orphan at
an early age, and had gone into domestic service as her only available
means of honest support. Of course her education was of the most meager
sort, yet she combined a store of good sense, so often miscalled
“common,” with a character of sterling worth. Especially did she make
known her abhorrence of the traffic in intoxicating liquors, common at
that time to all hotels, or “taverns,” of the country. And, indeed,
she had good cause to know and feel the evils of strong drink, as her
father had gone by this path to the ruin of his own soul and body, and
the destruction of his home.

When Margaret was wooed by Jared Slater, she told him that she would
never link her life with one who was in any way bound with the chains
of the demon alcohol, whether as a user or dispenser to others. Jared
went away, but his love for the young woman was true, and again he
sought her and proposed that he sell his tavern, and then they would
marry and move to the great forests of Wisconsin, where they could
begin life anew, unhampered by old surroundings. Margaret finally
consented, and they moved west.

Jared spent the first year in clearing up a little field for the plow,
and in erecting the necessary farm buildings; and by the time the
baby boy came, things about the place were taking on a comfortable,
homelike appearance. The little family were not utterly alone in this
far-away land, for the “tote-road,” over which supplies from the
distant railroad station, for the farther away camps of the north, were
hauled, ran past their door, and their home became a stopping place for
teamsters and other travelers.

It was not long before Jared’s thrifty, Yankee mind saw the opportunity
for gain lying to his hand in opening his place as a regular tavern,
and he told his wife of his intention. But Margaret objected.

“Ye know, Jared,” said she, “I don’t mind the work. I’m able for that
a-plenty; but ye well know I married ye and came here to get rid of the
tavern. I will not have the rum about me.”

“But, Margaret,” replied Jared, “we’ll have no drink in the tavern;
just lodging and the eating.”

Thus it was for a time; but the old habits of life were revived by the
frequent demands of their guests for liquor, as they would come in from
the long, cold drives, and Jared’s cupidity at length got the better
of his honesty and his faith with his wife, and he began to keep and
dispense liquor again.

At first he endeavored to keep his sin from the knowledge of his wife;
but greed bred carelessness and indifference, and before the third year
of their wilderness home, Jared had his barroom open as a feature of
the roadhouse.

Faithfully Margaret pleaded and earnestly did she warn her husband that
“Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” but he refused to
be moved. “I don’t drink it myself, ye know, an’ if these fools want to
part with good money for the stuff, it’s their affair. Some one else
will let them have it if I don’t, and I may as well have the money as
any one else.”

It was not long before the effects of the stream of damnation that
flowed out from Slater’s roadhouse began to show themselves. When
John Pollard went home and beat his wife, so that the life of a
soon-expected little one was snuffed out, and the mother lingered long
at death’s door, it was whispered that the blame lay in Jared Slater’s
barroom. And when that winter a tote team arrived at a camp further
north with the body of the driver stark and stiff, an empty bottle from
Jared’s shelf told the story.

Not only did the tavernkeeper sell his liquid hell to white travelers,
but his Indian neighbors, although especially protected by a law of the
land, became his customers on the sly, and Jared’s eyes gloated over
the piles of rich pelts stored in the back room, that represented to
him but a paltry outlay in liquor.

“It’ll come on ye, Jared, it’ll come on ye. I’m afeared for ye. Ye know
how the drink sets the red men wild. It’ll come back on ye, as sure as
God lives,” solemnly protested Margaret.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was one of those beautiful days in the late spring, when all nature
seemed to be trying to show man a picture of heaven. The soft air was
singing in the pine tops, the blackbirds were holding a song chorus
nearby, and the open glade was brilliant with spring blossoms. The babe
was making happy little noises in the sunshine, as it came through
the open door. The shadow seemed for the moment to be lifted from the
heart of Margaret, and she sang a hymn as she went about her work. Then
suddenly she instinctively turned her eyes toward the door, with a
feeling of fear. There stood three Indians silently watching. As they
saw the woman notice them, one spoke a single word, “Whisk!” Margaret
stood as if turned to stone. The Indian again spoke, “Give whisk quick!”

The woman saw her danger, but never would she handle the accursed
stuff. The Indians crowded into the room, and stalking past Margaret,
proceeded to help themselves at the bar. Then Margaret turned upon them
like a fury. For their own sakes, for her sake and the baby’s, they
should not get the fiery liquor. Bravely she struggled; then came the
flash of a tomahawk, one shrill scream, and the lifeless form of the
young mother lay upon the floor.

The Indians drank their fill; they drank until escape for themselves
was impossible, and they lay sprawled upon the floor in drunken stupor.

At near sundown Jared Slater returned to his home. The baby, stained in
his mother’s blood, crying upon her lifeless body, the three drunken
Indians lying upon the floor, told the whole story. The brain of the
man gave way. In the center of the road in front of the house he
quickly dug a deep hole, and into that hole dragged the bodies of the
three Indians--whether dead or alive, no one knows.

That grave in the middle of the road, and the tragic story connected
with it, preached a temperance sermon more effective, perhaps, than
could have been spoken by the faithful woman who gave her life in a
protest against the fearful traffic.

The boys never forgot the story and its lesson, and it may be that its
effect was felt when, in later life one of them put the strength of
his manhood into years of successful warfare against the liquor traffic.

Jared Slater lived many years, but he never sold another drop of
liquor. His crazed mind seemed to connect both whiskey and Indians with
his trouble, and never did he see a bottle or shelf of liquor, but that
he made an attempt to destroy it; and when, as occasionally happened,
an Indian would be found in the woods mysteriously killed, it would be
whispered that Jared Slater had been again taking his revenge.

God’s law is certain: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”




CHAPTER IX

ED’S ADVENTURE ON LAKE CHETECK


“Listen, boys,” said Mr. Allen, one night in November, as he looked up
from a letter which a passing tote-teamster had left at the farm. “Here
is a letter from my old friend Taylor, out in Minnesota, and he wants
me to send him a ‘likely boy’ to work during the winter.”

Mr. Taylor was a miller whose old-fashioned grist mill, run by its
large waterwheel, situated where the Des Moines river flows out of Lake
Cheteck, its source, was flour-headquarters for the hardy pioneers of a
large section of that country.

Sturdy Ed begged so earnestly to be permitted to take the place with
their father’s old friend for the winter, that, after much hesitancy,
and no little planning, the consent of Mr. and Mrs. Allen was given.

It was a serious journey for a boy at that time. The country, just
emerging from the awful paralysis of the civil war, was but entering
upon that era of railroad building which was to cover the west with
a network of shining steel. As yet there were few railroads in that
state which in a short time was to take front rank in grain raising and
milling. Saint Paul was scarcely more than a big village, and the now
magnificent metropolis at the falls of St. Anthony had not yet emerged
from its swaddling clothes.

From the town of New Ulm Ed would have a long, cold ride by stage to
the little mill out at the edge of civilization.

The few years’ experience he had had on the new farm in Wisconsin, had
hardened his muscles, and, as he was not at all afraid of work, Ed soon
found and fitted into his place at the mill. It was a little lonesome
so far from home, and the work was somewhat monotonous, but the coming
of the farmers with their loads of grain to be made into or exchanged
for flour, gave opportunity for some sociability, and their stories of
the great Indian uprisings, known to history as the New Ulm Massacre,
were of thrilling interest.

As the winter came on it proved to be one of unusual severity, although
there was little snow. The canal, or “race” by which the water of the
lake was fed to the big millwheel, and from it to be tumbled foaming
into the river at the foot of the rapids, usually maintained an even
height, winter and summer, so, the supply of power being steady, it was
possible for the millers to make preparation late in the evening, and
leave the wheels to take care of the grist until early morning.

This winter, however, the ice in the river and race froze to the
depth of three feet, and the power of the old mill was diminished to
that extent. One night, not far from midnight, in the latter part of
January, Ed found himself suddenly awake, sitting up in bed. Something
had happened. What could be the matter? Oh, yes, he had been awakened
by silence--not a noise, but the stopping of the noise of the mill
had disturbed him. The hum of the burrs had ceased, the old wheel was
still--the mill had shut down. He groped about and got his clothes,
and hastened down-stairs into the wheel pit. Sure enough, there stood
the old wheel at rest, for perhaps the first time in many years. In
the runway there was a small stream of water falling, but nothing like
enough to turn the wheel with the machinery of the mill geared on.
Ed threw over the gear lever, and the released wheel slowly began to
revolve again. Then he went up-stairs where he found Mr. Taylor, who
had also been wakened as the accustomed hum of the stones ceased, and
had come over from the house to investigate the cause.

“There has been some stoppage at the intake,” said he. “Either the lake
has lowered, and the ice frozen nearly to the bottom of the channel at
the mouth of the race, or there has some trash floated in. When you
have had your breakfast, take an axe and the hook and go up and see
what the trouble is.”

As soon as daylight came Ed was ready for the trip. He buckled on a
pair of skates, as the ice was in prime condition, and taking the tools
across his shoulder, was soon skimming up the river.

As he came to the canal mouth, he struck with the axe upon the ice, and
it gave forth a hollow sound. Evidently the decrease in the flow was
not caused by the water freezing to the bottom. There must be some
obstruction at the intake.

It was no small work to cut through thirty-six inches of ice and locate
the exact spot of the obstruction, but before ten o’clock Ed had
discovered it. Some wood choppers, during the summer had been clearing
on an island half a mile out into the lake, and small branches thrown
into the water had, by the slow-moving current, been carried along
finally to the mouth of the canal. One branch lodging and freezing,
became the occasion for the stoppage of others, and then the mass had
swung around and across the mouth of the canal, almost cutting off its
supply.

It was no job for a weakling to cut and hook out those limbs and brush
from the icy water, but finally Ed had the satisfaction of seeing the
race fill again, and knowing that the old wheel would be at its work of
preparing the farmers’ grist once more.

Ed had never explored the little lake, and the stories the settlers
had told him of the Indian uprising had made him anxious to visit some
of the scenes of that tragedy so near by. From the intake, past the
island, he could see, jutting out into the lake, Massacre Point, where
was still standing the log house in which thirteen whites had met their
death at the hands of the savages. While it would mean the loss of his
dinner, the lad thought that as he was so near, he would skate over
to that point, which appeared to be not over a mile away, and take a
closer look at the tragic place.

As he was passing the island, there appeared at the edge of a clump of
low box-elders the largest dog he had ever seen. It was nearly white
and not only tall, but long in body, and gaunt. It started as if it
would come to the boy, and he whistled to it. However, as it sprang
upon the smooth ice, Ed saw it slip and slide, and then, as it regained
its footing, slowly make its way back to the island.

Little had been changed about the old log house since that fearful day
when the family, with the few neighbors who had gathered with them for
protection, had at last succumbed to the rifle and tomahawk of the red
foes. A rusty kettle was standing in the fireplace. Rude benches were
still around the table where the victims had eaten their last meal. In
one corner a cradle, hollowed out of a log, told of a baby’s share in
that day of horror.

As Ed turned away full of sad thoughts and questionings, he scarcely
noticed his approach to the island upon the return journey. As he
rounded the point of timber, there sprang upon the ice not only one
big white “dog,” but three, with lolling tongues, making straight for
him. Then he realized what these animals were; not dogs, but the big,
fierce, dreaded timber wolves. However, Ed was not much frightened. He
rather enjoyed the thought of a race with them. There seemed to be only
enough danger to add spice to the adventure. On his skates he could
outrun them, and he had smooth going all the way home.

But he had not reckoned upon the power of those long, lank bodies,
and muscular limbs, nor upon the hunger that drove them to attack
a human being in daylight. He had not reached the edge of the lake
before he heard teeth snap like the spring of a steel trap, and almost
involuntarily he sprang to one side while the wolves slid by upon
their haunches, endeavoring to stop. Then, with another dodge, as they
turned and again came at the lad on the ice, he passed them and gained
a considerable distance toward home. Twice he was able to escape them
through this maneuver before they reached the channel of the river.

Here came new tactics on the part of the wolves. Upon the ground
they could outrun the boy, and they sprang up the bank, speeding on
ahead, and as he came up all made a dash for him, full in the face. In
desperation Ed threw at them the heavy ice-hook, which they attempted
to dodge, but only two got away uninjured, while the third dragged
himself off with a broken leg. “Well, you brutes,” the boy shouted, “I
have but two of you to deal with now.”

His respite was not to be a long one, for as he entered a part of the
river where the banks widened out into a tiny but deep lakelet, they
sprang again from the shore in such a spurt of savage fury that in a
few moments Ed could hear the panting breath from those blood-flecked,
foamy mouths close upon his heels.

Ed whirled his sharp axe around as he sped forward, and with an almost
involuntary cry to God for help, brought it behind him in a mighty
swing. A dull thud, as it left his hand, told him that it had struck
home, and he knew that another one of the horrid pursuers would not
trouble him more. But even as the thought of rejoicing came, Ed felt
the steel-trap-like snap of the remaining wolf’s jaws close together
in one of his heavy boots--and in that same instant the ice gave away,
as the river seemed to rise up from beneath and overwhelm both boy and
beast.

In his anxiety to escape the wolves, Ed had not noticed the condition
of the ice they were approaching, nor the fact that from the chunks
of ice scattered about, some settlers had been to this place earlier
in the day for blocks to store away for summer use. The intense cold
had quickly skimmed over with thin ice the place from which the great
blocks had been taken, but not of strength sufficient to bear the heavy
weight of boy and wolf.

Ed had gone clear under--the water had closed over his head--but
fortunately, as they went down, the big brute had loosened his hold
upon the boy’s leg, and fortunately also, the ice, although not strong
enough for support, was thick enough to break the force of the speed
with which they were coming, and as he rose to the surface, Ed’s head
came up in the place from which the thick ice had been taken away.

The wolf was less fortunate, for the boy never saw it again. In his
kicking and struggling to come to the surface, he may have pushed it
down under the thick ice. However, I do not think he was sorry then--or
since, for that matter.

But, although the wolf was gone, the boy was by no means out of
danger. No one who has not been in a like predicament can realize
the difficulty of one who has broken through the ice, in getting out
without aid. In fact, there are very few cases on record where such
happy terminations have ensued. The numbing cold of the water, so
quickly paralyzing the vital forces; the weight of the heavy clothing
pulling down; the lack of any object by which one can pull himself upon
the ice, make the condition of one in such a plight most desperate.

Ed can not remember of being greatly frightened; certainly he did
not fall into a panic. If he had, he would have soon gone under. He
realized that he must keep cool--I mean in his thoughts; for he was
cool enough otherwise--and use every possible means to extricate
himself. He was facing downstream, and nearly at the side of the place
from which the thick ice had been cut, for the speed at which he had
been going had carried him some distance upon the thin ice. Ed knew
that if he reached the thick ice on the downstream side, the current
would draw his legs under the ice, and he could not hope to get out.
He must turn about and make his way up stream to that edge of the hole
his body had made as he had broken in. There Ed began with his fists
and elbows to break away the thin ice so that he could reach that which
was thick and firm. The current of the river and his heavy boots and
clothing seemed determined to drag him away and under. Again and again
he was forced to pause for breath. But the numbness was creeping over
the boy. He dared not stop in his efforts.

At last he reached the firm ice. Oh, for some one to reach a hand
now! but he was so far away he could hope for no help from the mill.
If the ice was only rough he might get some sort of hold upon it with
his bleeding fingers--but it was as smooth as polished glass, and the
water, that in his struggles was thrown upon the ice, made it that much
more impossible for him to grasp a hold.

Something had to be done, and that at once, or the lad’s body would
soon be slowly floating beneath the ice along with that of the
wolf--perhaps never to be found; at least not until the spring sun
should unlock the icy prison. What would Mr. Taylor think when he
should find the axe and the other wolf? What would be the feelings of
the folks in the far-away Wisconsin home?

But the lad would not give up; he must try again! He began to spring up
and down in the water, throwing himself forward each time he came up.
At last, by a supreme effort, he did not slip back into that yawning,
watery grave, but found himself balanced over upon the ice.

For some seconds Ed was too much exhausted to pull his legs entirely
out of the water, but lay gasping for breath; all in a tremble. He
could not rise to his feet, but knowing that even a short inaction now
would prove as fatal as if he were still in the water, he rolled over
and over, away from the hole, beating his arms upon his body, until
at length he was able to sit up, then to rise to his knees, and then
stagger to his feet.

Ed will never forget the rest of that trip home. He struck out to
skate, clumsily enough at first, and, as the blood began to course to
the extremities, it seemed as though a thousand red-hot needles were
piercing his flesh. The bitter cold soon caused his outer clothing
to encase him like a coat of mail, in which only the most strenuous
exertions kept enough pliability to allow him to move at all.

Ed did reach the mill, after a while, and, strange to say, suffered
very little ill effect from his adventure. His bruised hands healed
quickly, and frozen toes and ears were so usual in that winter climate,
as to not be mentioned among casualties.




CHAPTER X

THE PAINT MINE


Occasionally cows seem to be like folks--that is, possessed with the
thing which, in despair of classifying, we call “human nature.” A
manifestation of this trait appeared several times in the spring, as
each patch of tender, green grass seemed to say to the wandering cows,
“It is just a little sweeter and juicier in the next swale, further
on. Don’t stop here.” And so they would wander, like folks, on and on,
never quite satisfied with the present good, but always expecting to
reach the goal of desire at the next place ahead.

This wandering propensity was a source of much annoyance and loss of
time to the boys in their busy spring work. Often the cows would fail
to reach home until away in the night--only then impelled by over-full
udders, and a tardy remembrance of the new calves in the barn lot.

But finally there came a night when no din of bawling aroused the boys
to a late milking, and morning light revealed but a lot of half-starved
calves at the barn.

“This won’t do at all,” said Rob; “we’ve got to go after those cows,
even if it means the loss of a precious day.”

The straight trail leading to their usual feeding grounds was easily
followed, but there little trails led about in all directions. To the
west lay the deep Iron Creek marsh, a vast morass fully a mile wide,
supposed to be impassible except in the driest seasons. Really, it was
a sluggish, scarcely-moving, shallow river, overgrown with rushes and
coarse grass, through which water moved slowly along, down from the
great north country.

This had always acted as an effective barrier to the westward-roving
of the cattle, and to the north lay the big woods, with their scanty
growth of grass. Until late in the afternoon the boys hunted off
towards the south, circling around this low-lying island, climbing a
tree on that, in hopes of discovering the bunch resting somewhere,
hidden away. Disheartened at last, they turned their faces homeward.

Shortly after noon Mrs. Allen heard a great lowing of cows, accompanied
with bleating of frantic calves, and going to the north door had seen
the cows coming in on a run, the milk trickling in little streams from
their udders--full almost to bursting. Indeed it was now great concern
those mothers were feeling for their offspring. She wisely let down
the bars, and it was not long before the misery of over-fulness was
transferred from the cows to the calves.

The return of the cows presented puzzling aspects to the boys, but
there was another mystery to be solved, which was not able to be
cleared up until later.

“See the cows’ legs!” exclaimed Rob. “They’ve found another berry
patch.” Several times during those June days the cattle had returned
home with shanks dyed red from crushing the long-stemmed wild
strawberries, which grew in great profusion in patches on the higher
portions of the marsh.

“Strawberries never stained that high up,” answered Ed, going over to
the cattle. “Maybe the mosquitoes have been at them again. See, their
udders even are all red, and the calves have rubbed it all over their
heads too.” Ed’s supposition was a reasonable one, for not infrequently
the insects had appeared in the marshes in such swarms as to drive the
cattle in to dark shelter of the stables, even in day time, the poor
beasts coming in frantic and all bloody from the attack of these pests.
But this time the color was not the stain of strawberries, nor that of
blood drawn by insects.

“Come here, look at this, Rob,” called Ed as he held up his hand
all red, where he had passed it over the belly of Old Spot. “_Some
one has painted our cows!_ This is nothing else than red paint.” A
quick examination showed that the entire bunch had received the same
treatment--a thick, bright red plaster covered all their legs and the
under parts of the body.

Who had done such a thing, and why? The thought of their Indian
neighbors flashed into the minds of both boys; they had paint like that
with which in some of their ceremonial dances they smeared themselves.
Had they held the cows overnight and painted them up this way? If so,
what could have been the motive?

Had Mr. Allen been at home he might have ventured a shrewder guess as
to the nature of the material with which the cows had been decorated,
but he, too, would have lacked the revelation of the secret which came
to the boys a little later.

The corn and oats were all in and growing nicely, and the boys had
promised that before haying should begin, they would accompany their
Indian friend, Kalichigoogah, and his people, blueberrying, over across
Iron Creek marsh, to the somewhat higher swales and little sandy
islands of the Little Yellow river, where this luscious berry found its
natural habitat.

This pilgrimage was an annual custom of the red men. Here, when the low
bushes, growing luxuriantly in moist earth, were so heavily laden with
great clusters, from a little distance it appeared as if a section of
the sky had fallen upon the ground. Then the Indians would come and
camp for a couple of weeks, while squaws and papooses--and sometimes
the men, when they felt in the mood--would pick and spread the fruit
out to dry in the hot sun, to be afterwards stored away in linden bark
baskets, for their feasting in the lean months of snow and cold. So
much of providence had the Indian learned from the white man.

Accompanying their red friends, the boys set forth one early morning.
Their guns were reluctantly left at home, for they would have provision
to last them a week to pack one way, and some heavy loads of the half
dried berries, they hoped, on the return. The Indians shaped their
course not due west, as the boys had supposed they would, to the Iron
Creek marsh, but northwest, to where the timber belt came close down
to the deep morass. It seemed to the boys a long way around, but it
proved to be about the only way across. The rapid, swinging, half-trot
soon brought them into a well-worn trail, leading in their desired
direction. Whether this was a deer trail, or a path worn deep by
generations of Indians passing this way, as was their custom, in single
file, the boys could not tell. Probably men and beasts both had a part
in the formation of this easily travelled, narrow road.

As they reached the place where the timber came down to the edge of the
marsh they saw why the trail had led that way. The marsh was narrow at
this point, and nearly across, at some time in the long ago, beavers
had constructed a dam, which probably for centuries had resisted the
force of flood and current, and held back the waters in a little lake.
Along this grass-grown solid embankment the travellers passed dry-shod
nearly to the further side of the swamp, where a break had been made,
probably started by the hole-boring-crawfish.

Except in the highest stages of the spring flood, all the waters of the
big marsh passed through this break. Dark and cold, and waist deep,
the strong current was soon passed through, each of our boys, as well
as the squaws, bearing upon their shoulders a big-eyed papoose, in
addition to their packs of provision. The Indian braves carried their
guns--and much dignity.

Above the dam were perhaps an hundred turf houses, resembling miniature
Indian lodges, standing in the shallow water. “Beavers?” enquired Rob
of his red friend. “Musquash,” replied the Indian boy. “Beaver go.
Smell ’um white man--no like.” Whether muskrat or beaver, the boys
determined to come that way trapping in the fall.

As they reached the western side of the marsh, a strange sight met
their eyes. A long, flat bank--how long they could not tell--lay up
against the shore, gleaming in colors of yellow, orange and red. There
were tracks where some kind of animals had come down across to drink at
the running current.

“Look at that, boys!” shouted Rob. “Did you ever hear such a thing?
It’s a regular paint mine. There’s where our cows came, and they
plastered themselves so well that the stuff didn’t all wash off when
they waded through this water.”

Rob and Ed were for turning aside at once to investigate. “Why, there
must be tons and tons of that stuff.” “How far do you suppose it
extends toward the north?” “I wonder how deep the bed is.” “What is the
stuff, any how?” “There’s enough of it in sight to paint the world.”
“If we can get that to market our fortune’s made.” These were some of
the eager exclamations of the boys.

However, the Indians seemed to be not in the least excited, but rather
were anxious to reach their camping place, and refused to stop, pushing
ahead at the steady, rapid pace. The trail led across a wide, sandy
ridge covered with Norway pines. Here and there were depressions of
from one to two acres in extent, already covered with a luxuriant
growth of blue-joint grass, nearly waist high.

Occasionally a deer would bound away from behind a fallen tree. The doe
and her fawn were safe from the Indian’s rifle, but the fat, grass-fed
buck had best be wary. Once the procession stopped for a moment as a
huge _lucivee_, the Canadian lynx--“Indian devil” as it was called and
dreaded by the early white hunters of the far north--dropped down from
a pine tree into the trail in front of them. With insolent, yellow eyes
the big cat looked them over, and, seeming to conclude that it was not
worth his while to dispute the way, moved leisurely off. The Indians,
though armed, had a wholesome respect for this animal’s fighting
qualities, who seemed to have not only the traditional nine lives of
the cat, but a big added store of invincibility on his own account. Any
one of them, however, might have tackled the big brute, had they been
alone, but all together would let him go in peace, if so he elected,
for the sake of the women and little ones with them.

In a space bare of trees or other growth, the boys caught sight of some
noble deer antlers, yet attached to bare skulls, and about which were
scattered many white bones. Here was the scene of a woods-folk tragedy.
The brave antlers on the two bare skulls were inextricably locked
together. The picture came to the boys as they trudged on:--

The crisp brightness of an October morning--mating time; the meeting
of the two gallant knights of the forest; the quick call of challenge;
the fierce stamping of slender hoofs; the rush; the shock of impact,
head to head; the great horns locked, prong in prong, the attempt
to break away for thrust and stroke with knife-like hoof; the long
day of alternate fierce struggle for freedom and panting exhaustion.
Then came night--and the wolves, for there were to be no more days,
long-drawn-out with suffering, for these brave warriors.

It is the law of the wild that none of the woods-folk shall die of
old age, neither shall very many suffer long of wounds, but, when the
strength and cunning that nature has given, no longer protects, their
flesh shall pass to add to the strength of the stronger.

The days of a week passed rapidly, as the boys gathered berries, which
dried quickly on the clean, hot sand. However, they could not rid
themselves of the thought of the great “paint mine,” as they called
it, and the desire to investigate and learn its real value, possessed
them. They already had twice as many berries, Rob said, as the family
could eat in a year. But Ed argued that the paint mine could wait a
little, while the berries would not. Besides, he had a plan to sell a
lot of this dried fruit to the men going up into the big woods, next
fall. After talking over the matter, they concluded to go back after
the steers and light wagon, as now they knew the trail, and bring more
provision, and something in which to pack the dried berries. Also,
they would bring a barrel, which they would fill with the paint.

Taking along a few quarts of the half-dried fruit for their mother,
the boys started for home about sundown, preferring to make the trip
of eight miles by the light of the moon, rather than in the heat of
the day, for old Sol had now begun to show his strength in the short
northern summer. Of course there would be no chance of an investigation
of the paint mine, though Ed would fill a pocket with the pasty, red
stuff, to show to mother.

The berries were harvested, a goodly store, and for which they found
a ready sale among the north-bound lumbermen, the next fall, at ten
cents per pound. Returning, they spent half a day at the red bank,
inspecting the paint mine. Where the bank lay clear and free from grass
it extended for perhaps an hundred yards up stream, where it seemed to
shelve off into the water, and there the grass and rushes were growing
up through it. The deposit in the bank was not gritty, but smooth and
slippery, like fine clay, apparently free from soil or dirt, and ranged
in color from an orange yellow, to a deep brown. In several places
where they dug, it was a full foot in depth, though perhaps half of
that would be an average depth.

“Just look at it, Ed,” exclaimed Rob. “How many tons of it do you
suppose there is? If it wasn’t so far from some railroad, we could make
our fortune shipping this.”

“But, Rob,” replied sturdy Ed, “it’s only about four miles straight to
the river; and we could easily fill the five barrels that we have, and
build a raft and float them down to Necedah. I am sure we could sell
it to Mr. Blake; he always keeps the mill buildings painted. And then,
perhaps, we could raft another lot down to Kilbourne.”

Mr. Allen had arrived at home when the boys reached there with their
specimen barrel, and was greatly interested in their account of the
paint mine. “It is a very pure specimen of ocher, boys, and some day,
when the railroads push out into this country, will be of commercial
value.”

“What is ocher, father?” asked Rob.

“Chemically speaking, son, it is iron peroxide. In plain terms--iron
rust.”

“But why is some of it red and some yellow?” questioned Ed.

Father laughed. “That calls for some more hard words, words that tell
_what_, but not so much _why_ or _how_. That part you will have to
puzzle out when you are in college. The red receives its color from the
sesquioxide, and the yellow from the hydrous sesquioxide of iron.”

“But where has all that iron rust come from?” asked Rob. “Are there any
iron mines about here?”

“No,” replied Mr. Allen, “I have seen no indication of iron in the
rock of the bluffs which push up through the surface here. Yet the
water of all these marshes seems to be more or less impregnated with
iron. And it is that fact which gives to this section its peculiar
value in the culture of cranberries. Somewhere at the north--how far,
who can say?--this water of the Iron Creek marsh, you may be sure,
flows over a bed of iron ore. Who knows but that some day you boys may
be the ones to locate that iron mine?”

Mr. Allen believed that boys, in order to become well-developed, strong
men, should be allowed a wide range for experiment, thinking that
the lessons thus learned would be of more permanent value than those
learned in books or from mere advice. So he agreed to the plan the boys
had explained, of rafting their five barrels of ochre down the river to
Necedah.

Two days were spent in mining and bringing the mineral to the bank of
the stream, another day in building the raft, and, as the river was
half-bank full with the June rise, but two more days were required to
bring them to the big sawmill town at the foot of the great granite
bluff.

The boys had many questions to answer, when they had found the
good-natured lumberman, but he took the raw “paint” off their hands,
and the boys with happy hearts turned their faces homeward with five
crisp five-dollar bills in their pockets.

These youngsters were not to be the discoverers of the hidden iron mine
away to the north, for many necessary duties pressed in upon them, and
they found no time to spare for so uncertain a trip, but when they
had grown to manhood, the railroads did indeed come, and even before
their coming, the mine was laid open. As the boys were bargaining with
Mr. Blake for the sale of their ocher, they noticed in the crowd of
interested bystanders “Old John T.”, as everybody called the great
man of all that country. “His eyes were like two sharp augers under
those heavy eyebrows,” said Rob, “as he asked questions regarding the
deposit, the lay of the land, and the direction of the flowing water.”

It is a matter of history that not long after this incident the
great Gogebic iron range, which has made Wisconsin famous as an iron
producing state, was discovered in the northern part of the state, and
“Old John T.” was one of its large owners to the day of his death.




CHAPTER XI

TRAPPING GAME BIRDS


In one of their cow-hunting expeditions, the Allen boys went some seven
or eight miles to the west, where they came to a deep but narrow little
river, running down through a broad marsh, or wet prairie, which was
more than a mile in width. The water in the little river was clear and
quite cool. Up and down the stream, as far as the eye could see, the
marsh was covered with luxuriant, nutritious “blue-joint” grass, in
many places growing to a height above the boys’ heads.

Of the purchase money received for the Wisconsin “swamp land,” a
certain portion was set aside for its reclamation, the direction of
which work was placed in the hands of the county authorities. Mr.
Allen was a natural, as well as practical civil engineer, and his
investigation of the land convinced him of the value of this great
tract, if it might be properly drained and dammed to take care of the
annual floods coming down from the melting snows of the north. He found
a place where, by cutting through one high sand knoll, a ditch might be
constructed all the way in the easily-worked peat, and the waters of
the little stream be thus turned into the Yellow river.

Some wealthy friends were found who were willing to back Mr. Allen’s
judgment, with the purchase money, and more than ten thousand acres of
this land were secured. Mr. Allen was able himself to obtain from the
county the contract for the drainage works.

It was late in August before arrangements could be completed for
beginning the big ditch, which was to turn the waters of one river into
another, and give such control over the irrigation of some thousands of
acres of level land, that it might be planted with cranberry vines, and
the water be held upon it during the summer months, or, drained dry, to
be converted into choice farm lands, as the future should determine.

A camp house was built upon the pine knoll where the deep cut would be
made, and a score of men secured who would labor as shovelers and dam
builders. First, the course of the little river was to be straightened,
by the meanderings being cut across, then a big dam thrown across
the wide expanse of marsh, back of which the waters could be held if
needful.

I suppose that never was there such another dam constructed, and yet
it served its purpose well, and endured for many years. The soil of
that great marsh was not what we are accustomed to call “soil”--sand
or clay mixed with humus--but was composed of peat. Ages of moss and
other vegetable growth had fallen and decayed into a brown mass, into
which grass roots had crept, weaving the whole into a tough, fibrous
blanket of from three to ten feet in thickness. The line of the ditch
was staked out across the marsh, and with knives whose blades were as
broad as one’s two hands, and three feet long, lateral lines were cut
deep into this tough peat. Then cross cuts were made the width of the
to-be ditch forming squares ten inches or a foot each way. Then, with
a many-pronged bent fork these squares were pulled up by the men, and
there were huge “bricks” of peat, three feet long, to be laid into the
wall of the dam on the downstream side.

Of course, as the water drained from the blocks of peat, the dam would
be a light affair, as to weight, but as the shovelers following raised
it to a height of five feet, and plastered all crevices and both sides
with the soft peat from the bottom of the ditch, it formed a very
compact whole.

Mr. Allen figured, and so it proved, that the grass roots would
continue to grow, and in the course of a season or two the entire dam
would be able to withstand with safety the pressure of a two or three
feet head of water.

Rob and Ed found the work upon the dam fascinating, notwithstanding
the necessity of wet feet, and back-wrenching lifting of the huge
peat “bricks,” but the work at the farm prevented them from taking
the permanent part they desired. Upon one of his visits home, it was
evident that Mr. Allen was undergoing some unusual distress or worry of
mind, and as it was the custom of the family to discuss together the
problems that would come up, Mr. Allen finally acknowledged that the
ditchers were at that time in an ugly mood.

“It seems to be a question of fresh meat,” said he. “We have one or two
constitutional growlers in camp, and while they are too valuable for me
to turn away, they have the men stirred up against the salt pork and
corned beef we have. I have made several trips to Necedah and Lisbon to
try and arrange for a supply of fresh beef, but the drouth and fire of
last year seem to have cut down the supply of beef cattle.”

“Father, I have an idea,” exclaimed Ed. “Do you suppose you could get
along if you furnished a big dinner of game three times a week?”

“To be sure we could, son,” replied Mr. Allen, “but who is the mighty
Nimrod who could shoot enough game to satisfy thirty men three times a
week? and who is the millionaire who would pay for the ammunition?”

“That’s all right, father,” said Rob, “if you will give Ed and Dauphin
and me the contract at the same price you would have to pay for fresh
beef, I see how we can do it.”

With all due seriousness and in due form Mr. Allen drew up the contract
whereby Robert Allen, Ed Allen, and Dauphin Thompson, parties of the
first part, were to deliver, three times per week, until freezing
weather, from twenty-five to fifty pounds, according to their pleasure,
of properly dressed wild meat at the ditching camp on the Little Yellow
River. In consideration of which delivery of meat, Mr. Allen, party of
the second part, agreed to pay to the aforesaid parties of the first
part the sum of ten cents per pound for all such meat so delivered.

“Hurray!” shouted the boys, when the document was signed. “Now you’ll
see who the millionaires are you are talking about.”

Mr. Allen laughed, but he returned to the ditching camp with a lighter
brow, for he knew that his boys were resourceful, and it might be that
they had hit upon some plan which would give good results.

Upon several acres of sod plowing, buckwheat had been sown, and had so
thriven that the early September frosts had found an abundant harvest
of the queer little three-cornered grains already matured. The boys
found it back-breaking work to cut this field with their old-fashioned
scythes, but at last it had been finished, and then raked up into piles
to be thoroughly cured before being stacked.

The buckwheat harvest seemed to be taken as an invitation to feast,
by the innumerable prairie chickens of the vicinity, with all their
kinfolk. And they came. The boys had no reason to object as long as the
birds confined themselves to gleaning the scattered grains from the
field, but when they proceeded to tear down the raked-up piles, and the
boys saw their hard work about to be brought to naught, their ire began
to arise against the marauders.

Be it said to their credit, that the thought of killing more of the
prairie chickens than could be used for food never occurred to them.
But when the opportunity presented itself of saving the ditching job
with fresh meat, the boys eagerly fell in with Ed’s plan of making the
birds pay for their feeding.

So the very next morning the boys crept along the stake-and-rider
fence, until they came close to where the birds were noisily helping
themselves to the buckwheat harvest. The birds were taken by surprise
and ten of them were left flopping on the ground as the flock arose at
the noise of the guns. The boys carefully cleaned and picked the birds,
stuffing the carcasses with fresh grass. Again, when the flock came
back to its evening meal, the maneuver of sneaking along the fence was
repeated, as the sun was sinking in the west. Eight birds this time
fell victims to the three guns, and were quickly prepared, for Dauphin
was to make a moonlight ride to the camp with the forty pounds of the
longed-for fresh meat.

If the children of Israel were greedy when the quails came as the
result of their murmurings, these ditchers were none the less so when
it became known what Dauphin had brought, and it required all the
diplomacy the cook possessed to put the men off until breakfast for
their prairie chicken stew.

Dauphin would be at the camp over night, so the following morning Rob
and Ed took their guns and began to slowly creep along the fence toward
the buckwheat field. But before they came into firing distance, they
heard a shrill “ka-r-rh!” from the top of a tall, dead poplar standing
near, and the whole flock took wing and sailed away to safety. The
birds had posted a sentinel upon that lookout, and it was clear that
some other plan must now be hit upon if the boys would be able to carry
out their contract.

“I tell you what we can do to fool those fellows,” said Rob, “We’ll
get out before daylight, and cover ourselves with the buckwheat straw,
and be all ready for the beggars when they come for their sunrise
breakfast.”

This they did, and chuckled as they saw the sentinel posted in the tree
top, peering this way and that with craning neck. All unsuspicious, the
big birds settled down over the field, and began noisily to tear at the
bundles of grain, when, “bang! bang! bang!” the three guns rang out at
an agreed signal, and, all together again, with the second barrels, as
the flock took wing.

That was a famous haul, for nineteen birds were secured. As there was
no way, in those days, or place of preserving fresh meats in cold
storage, the boys waited for their next ambuscade until the following
morning, when nearly as many chickens were secured. At the third
morning, however, the prairie chickens lit in trees and upon the rail
fence, at a safe distance from the guns; and while they protested their
hunger with many a “ka-r-rh,” they did not come down into the field,
much to the disgust of the boys.

When the same result obtained for the next day, the boys saw that some
new scheme must be hit upon to save their contract. Deadfalls, “figure
4’s,” and coop traps were suggested and discussed, but it was decided
that the big flock had grown so wise that these were not practicable.
At last Dauphin spoke up with a brightening face: “How many of those
little steel traps have you, boys?”

“About fifty, I guess,” Ed replied.

“Well, I’ve a notion. Let’s get out some of them and I’ll show you what
I mean,” continued Dauph.

The traps were brought out, and Dauph proceeded to demonstrate his
plan. The chain of the trap would be fastened to a block of wood,
then a little hole dug in the ground large enough to hold the trap,
leaving the “pan,” or flat trigger, nearly level with the surface.
About the trap was scattered the buckwheat straw, and on the “pan” of
the trap was heaped a little pile of grain, temptingly ready for a bird
breakfast.

“Now we are ready for them,” said Dauph. “They may set their old
sentinels, and we’ll let them see us--at a distance.”

The plan worked. There would be a momentary flutter as a bird would be
caught by the neck when the trap sprung at its pecking, or as a chicken
would vainly try to fly away with the block of wood when the steel jaws
closed upon a thickly feathered leg, but hearing no gun, and taking
note of the human foes still at a safe distance, the foolish actions
of their individual neighbors were considered to be of no concern to
the rest of the flock. And never did they come to the knowledge that
they were being trapped. The boys were able to harvest, each day from
the traps they set, from fifteen to twenty of the big birds from their
buckwheat field, and not only saved the day for the big ditching job,
but through their contract were able to lay up a nice sum toward their
future projects.

The drainage operations closed down in October, but not before a ditch
had been run for two miles from the Yellow river to the big sand knoll.
It was through this that the more serious part of the work would be
found, and here again, in the latter part of March, Mr. Allen brought a
crew.

“Father,” said Ed, one day, “what are you doing this spring for fresh
meat? Of course we can’t get you any prairie chickens, but we would
like to earn a little more money before planting time.”

Mr. Allen laughed. “Why, I haven’t heard any complaint from the men as
yet about their fare, but we might take a mess of fish once in a while.”

“Fish!” exclaimed Rob. “Why, you know, father, that we have never been
able to get the fish to bite to any extent since we have lived here.”

“Well, come over and look in the big ditch,” responded Mr. Allen with a
smile.

The boys took the hint, and when they came to the big ditch they
saw, crowding up stream along the sandy bottom of its clear waters,
multitudes of long, slender pickerel, one of the most prized game
fish of the Wisconsin waters. “I might have thought of that,” said
naturalist Dauphin. “These fish crowd into every little stream each
spring and swim up as far as they can, to deposit their eggs.”

With the three-tined spears that Uncle Sam Thompson made for them, the
boys enjoyed great sport in the shallow water of the big ditch, and
put away several more dollars as a result of the fish dinners served to
the ditchers.

Then came the days of the flight of the “passenger pigeons,” and a new
idea entered the heads of the boys.

To one who was not for himself privileged to see, the tales of the
great size of the flocks of these birds, of their nesting places, of
their daily flights for food, must appear gross exaggeration. Yet I am
but stating an historical fact when I say that at times the sky would
be darkened as by a heavy thunder cloud, and the rush of wings could be
likened only to the roar of a mighty waterfall, at the passage of the
innumerable multitudes of these birds.

In the section of the state concerning which I write, there was no
form of animal life in such apparent prodigal abundance. Much has been
written of the “passenger pigeon;” the beauty of its long, blue and
bluish-white body; its rapid flight; its habits of nesting at a remote
distance from its feeding ground--and then the mystery of the sudden
and complete extinction of this the most numerous of all birds. For it
was, that one day the woods were full of their nestlings, the skies
darkened by their flight--and then they were not, forever.

The mystery of the “passenger pigeon” is indeed like that of that
prehistoric race, the builders of the strange mounds of that
region--without doubt, a great and numerous people, spreading from the
Rockies to the Alleghanies--but who, in some long-past days were not,
leaving no answer to Why, and When, and How.

The clouds of these birds spread over the boys at their fishing.
“Dauph,” said Rob, “do you know where these birds will nest?”

“Yes,” replied Dauphin, “over in the dead pines in Adams county, some
fifteen miles from here. Uncle Sam says there were millions upon
millions of nests there last year.”

“Well, I’m for taking a trip over that way to see what we can do for
another fresh meat contract,” said Ed.

The boys carried out their plan, and when they came to the abandoned
fields of dead pines they found the crudely built nests of the past
year in inconceivable numbers. About three o’clock in the afternoon
the birds began to arrive from their feeding place over in Minnesota,
and the noise and apparent confusion were indescribable. As they came
crowding into their roosting place it was not guns that the boys needed
for their capture, but simply clubs to swing, and in almost no time
they had as many of these game birds as they could make use of at a
time.

“Boys, I’ve an idea. It’s clearly too far over here for us to come for
what the camp could use of the game for one day, or even two. But if
we could make a lot of coops and take back a load of live pigeons, we
could feed them and use them as they would be needed.”

“Yes, that’s all right,” replied Rob, “but catching ’em alive is
another thing.”

“Well, wait until I explain,” replied Ed. “Did you notice how the
birds came flying in so closely packed together that they had no
chance to get out of our way? Well, I’ve been thinking of the four
big, close-woven hammocks mother has at home. If we would fasten them
together and stretch them up among the trees, I believe the birds would
fly against them and get tangled up in the meshes, and we could take a
lot of them alive.”

“Good scheme! Good scheme!” shouted the other boys. “We’ll do that very
thing.”

It was ten days later, however, before the boys were able to secure the
team with which to make the trip, and then they found brooding mothers
already hovering over the stick nests, each of which contained two
white eggs.

The boys were disappointed, but that the birds might be disturbed while
rearing their young was not to be thought of. “Well,” said Rob, “it
means waiting until next spring.” But the next spring the pigeons did
not return, and to this day the scientists are discussing what became
of the “passenger pigeon.”




CHAPTER XII

THE MOUNDBUILDERS


“Father,” said Ed one evening, as he came in from a short hunting trip,
“were there ever any armies encamped here, or battles fought in this
part of the country?”

“No, son,” replied Mr. Allen, “not that history gives account of. There
may have been some fighting between the Indian tribes and the voyageurs
who accompanied the Jesuit Fathers as they explored this land, in the
early days of settlement of our country, but nothing like armies or
battles have been known here.”

“Well, I found some old fortifications, or what looked like them,
today. I had started up a deer near the Round Slough, and found that it
took to a trail leading almost due west. About a mile from the slough I
came to what evidently had been an old bed of the river, where sometime
in the long past it had made a big bend, up near the high sand knolls.
Now it was entirely dry, and I ran down into the old bed and across,
and clambered up the west bank. It was there I found the earthworks. At
first, where I ran across it, I thought it was a ridge of dirt some big
flood had left upon the bank, but as I followed it along for several
rods I came to the conclusion that it must have been the work of men.
It was of uniform height and size, and followed the curve of the river.
Soon I came to a large mound, some twelve feet across, just where the
bend in the river had come, and saw that another embankment, like the
one upon which I was walking, stretched out from this central mound on
the other side.

“It was for all the world as though some army had cast up earthworks at
this bend of the river as a protection from an enemy coming either up
or down the river.

“I was after that deer, so I did not wait to examine the old fort
more closely. My trail led northward from there, and when I had gone
about two miles, reaching that big hill we have so often seen in the
distance, I had my second surprise. I was approaching the hill from
the west, as I had lost track of the deer I had been following, and
had turned for home. On that side the hill was so nearly straight up
and down that a fellow would have a hard time in getting to the top. I
thought I might as well see the other side of the hill; perhaps I might
find a place there where I could climb up and look over the country.
Sure enough, there was a place where I could clamber to the top. This,
the east side, was covered with timber, oak and basswood being mixed
with the pine trees. As I looked up at the top the hill took on the
funniest appearance; something like a big squat bottle with a rim
around its mouth and a cork stuck in.

“I scrambled up. About two-thirds from the bottom I came to the rim
of the bottle--the obstruction, whatever it was. With considerable
difficulty I got up and over. It was plainly another case of
fortifying--this time a hill instead of a river. The earth had been
scraped away to the solid sandstone rock beneath, and brought forward
into a ridge clear across the face of the hill. A thousand soldiers
would have been safe behind that embankment on that side of the hill,
from even the missiles of a modern army.”

“Well, son,” replied Mr. Allen, “your finds are certainly interesting.
They are undoubtedly the work of the moundbuilders. We must examine
them some day, and perhaps may find something that will tell us of
their story.”

“But, father,” asked Rob, “who were the moundbuilders? and when did
they live here? and who was it that was after them?”

“You have asked some hard questions, my boy. The scientists have
guessed and guessed again. The earthworks they reared are really all we
know about them. The Indians have no traditions concerning them.”

“But, father,” persisted Ed, “what became of them? Did they kill each
other off, or did they all die of some great epidemic?”

“As I said, son, these are questions which can only receive conjectures
for answer. It may be that they were the descendants of some roving
tribe that came over from Asia by the way of the Behring Strait, after
the Lord scattered the people abroad from the plains of Shinar. They
may have continued their migrations southward before some later horde
from the Old World, and become the ancestors of the cliff-dwellers of
Arizona, or the Toltecs and Aztecs of Mexico and Yucatan.

“However, it is evident that the moundbuilders were in possession of
a much less degree of civilization than the prehistoric ancestors
of the South Mexicans, for the moundbuilders have left nothing but
their earthworks, while the ruined cities and temples of the ancient
ancestors of the Toltecs and Aztecs show a civilization that must have
rivalled that of old Egypt, or even famous Babylon itself.”

“Is it about the moundbuilders you are speaking, Mr. Allen?” enquired
Dauphin Thompson, who had just come in. “If you can spare the time some
day I would like to take you to what seems to have been a town laid out
by those old fellows. It is about four miles south, and I suppose half
way between the Necedah and the Wisconsin rivers. I came across it last
fall when hunting our cattle that had strayed over on that side of the
river. I confess that the strangeness of it--like some great graveyard
of giants, made me feel a little creepy, in the twilight. I did pluck
up courage, though, to ride my pony to the top of what appeared to be
the large central mound and look about.

“In the fading light that filtered through the trees I could not see
well nor very far, but the mounds seemed to extend for several rods
each way. They were laid off in regular lines, north and south, and
east and west in what seemed to be a perfect square. There must have
been fifty or perhaps more, of the mounds. They were not all of the
same size, although they may have once been--save the mound which I
had ridden upon; that was as large as three or four of the others. I
asked my young Menominee friend, Kalichigoogah, about them once, but he
looked scared and wouldn’t talk. All he would say was ‘No know, me. Big
medicine. White boy keep away.’”

“I understand,” said Mr. Allen, “the feeling our Indians have for such
objects and places. The mysterious to them is sacred. It is their
religion to worship or give tribute and offerings to whatever they can
not understand. I have read that from the earliest times certain tribes
of Indians have used these mounds as burial places for their own dead,
so great a reverence had they for them.

“Indeed, in some of the accounts given by the followers of La Salle, or
Marquette, or Hennepin, I do not recall which, it is stated that near
the junction of the Fox and Wolf rivers in this state, they came upon
several large mounds of this kind. These voyageurs, ever greedy of the
gold supposed to be hidden away in the New World, dug into them. But
instead of the coveted treasure, they found a few simple trinkets, and
very many human bones. So they gave the place the name of Buttes des
Mort, ‘mounds of the dead.’

“But, father, isn’t there _anyone_ who can tell us about these people?”
demanded Ed. “I want to know why they made those breastworks on the
bend of the old river, and why they went up to that hill and made a
fort. Who was it that was after them? and which side won? Were they
hunters? or did they plant crops? What kind of houses did they live in?
and what did they look like?”

“My dear boy, if I could answer those questions correctly at this
moment, I would suddenly find myself one of the famous men of the
country. As I have said, this departed race has left but little to tell
of its existence, but that little the scientists are taking, and by
comparison and deduction, may finally build up a plausible story.

“It would be something like the work done by a famous naturalist who,
it is said, from a single fossil bone of an extinct fish, that had been
found, constructed its probable framework entire. Years afterwards
the whole skeleton of this rare, ancient fish was dug up, and the
professor’s guess found to be marvellously near the truth.

“While there are a few indications of the moundbuilders west of the
Rockies and east of the Alleghanies, they seem to have inhabited the
Mississippi valley, the mounds being most numerous in the states of
Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and Ohio. Indeed, there were so many in
the vicinity of the city of St. Louis, that place was nicknamed ‘Mound
City.’

“While their civilization seems to have far exceeded that of our
present race of Indians, there is also indication that they lived in
constant menace of some other, more warlike people. As we go eastward
toward the Alleghanies we find the mounds grow more defensive in their
characteristics.

“One of the finest specimens of these defensive constructions is known
as ‘Fort Ancient,’ and is near the Little Miami river, in Ohio. It is
on the top of a steep hill, its stiff clay walls ranging from five to
twenty-five feet in height. The wall crooks and turns and twists about,
until it is several miles in length, yet it encloses only land enough
for a common-sized farm.

“At Chillicothe there is the largest of this kind of mounds, embracing
145 acres. In connection with this old fortress there are several high
mounds which may have been used for lookout stations.

“As a rule, the mounds in the valleys are not of the warlike shapes,
but are laid off in squares or octagons, like the little “town”
Dauphin has told us about on the other side of the river. These are
usually called “sacred” mounds, though it would be difficult to give
a good reason why, other than the Indians’ reverence for that which
is mysterious and unexplained. Perhaps the best known example of this
class of mounds are those at Newark, Ohio. There is an octagon of 50
acres, a square of 35 acres, and two circles, one of 29 and the other
of 20 acres. They are all joined by avenues and surrounded by ditches.

“The temple mounds are fewer in number than those of the other classes,
but may, in the future, prove to yield more interest as they are
compared with similar pyramids found in Mexico and Central America.
In this country, the best specimen of the temple mounds is at Cahokia,
Ills. It is nearly an hundred feet high, and is more than 200 rods
around the base.

“Perhaps the most curious of the work of the ancient people are the
‘animal’ mounds, fashioned after a crude representation of different
beasts. One of these in the southern part of this state is a very fair
reproduction of the outlines of an elephant.”

“But, father,” exclaimed Ed, “how could that be? Where could these
people have seen an elephant? Did elephants live in America then? or
did the people come from the land of elephants?”

“My boy, that is a part of the mystery of the past of this mysterious
race. The fact is that the Grant county mound was clearly made to
represent an elephant, and the rest we must guess at.

“However, the larger number of mounds that have been examined were used
for burial places, undoubtedly first by the moundbuilders themselves,
as well as later by the Indians.”

That night the boys could scarcely sleep for planning excavations in
all three of the collections of mounds near them. Mr. Allen had hinted
that some day some mound might be uncovered which would yield the
long-looked-for key that would unlock the history of this past and
forgotten people. Why might not it be they who would be the discoverers?

Ed was for making the first investigation at the hill fort. If there
had been an assault upon those works, he argued, it must have been a
fierce one, and no doubt there would be found many of the weapons of
the attacking party buried in the soft earth beneath the steep walls.
Rob contended that if the mounds between the rivers were, indeed, the
site of one of their towns, more relics would be found there to show
what manner of people they were in their everyday life. Especially
would it be so, he argued, if they had been suddenly driven from their
homes by an enemy.

“You remember, Ed, when Captain Hunt and his soldiers came after the
Winnebagoes and they left their camps in a hurry, they first buried
many of their household utensils in the ground. You know how they
then smoothed down the earth and built a fire over the place, so that
the ashes and coals would give the ground an appearance of not having
been disturbed. I imagine we may find some such caches in that mound
village.”

Necessary work interfered with the boys’ plans for several weeks, and
the first flakes of late October snow were falling when they set off
upon their ten miles’ walk to the mound city.

After some discussion they decided to attack the largest, central mound
first, “For,” said Dauphin, “this must have been the mound of the
chief, if these mounds were the sites of their homes.”

Carefully they dug a hole six feet across, searching carefully through
each spadeful of dirt. In the first two feet down there was nothing
discovered; then Ed ran across two long, flint arrow- or spear-heads.
A little further down they came upon a human skeleton, the bones of
which crumbled so badly, as they were brought out to the air, that the
boys were able to save only the top of the skull and one thigh bone
intact.

It was only when they reached the depth of about four feet, nearly
at the level of the surrounding ground, that their spades struck
unmistakable evidences of fire--discolored earth, small coals, ashes,
and some brown fragments, the nature of which they could not at once
determine. “We have found it, Hurray!” shouted Rob. “They cached their
goods and built their fire over them just like our Indians did.”

“Now, boys,” counseled Dauphin, “let’s not be too hasty. Let’s examine
every spadeful carefully as we dig.”

Now the finds became more numerous: A stone mortar and pestle, such
as the Indians now use for preparing their meal from maize; a red,
stone pipe, curiously carved; several pure white arrow-heads, others
coal-black; a stone axe, grooved near the head for its fastening to
the handle; some broken earthenware vessels, decorated with queer,
spear-point designs; and most valuable of all, a copper knife in fairly
good state of preservation.

Then they came to a great quantity of brown fragments, which upon
examination, proved to be charred bone.

Down through the burned earth they dug in feverish haste toward the
treasure they believed to be hidden there. But alas! although they
toiled until dark, they were forced to acknowledge to themselves that
the ground beneath the fire had never been disturbed before.

“Well,” said Ed, “We didn’t find the ‘key’ to unlock the history of
these mounds, but we’ve got one of the old fellows, with some of his
dishes, his axe, his pipe, his spears and arrows, and his wife’s grist
mill. That’s pretty good for one day.”

And indeed it was, although the skeleton proved, according to the
decision of the professor of science at Carleton College, for whose
inspection the boys sent the relics, to be that of a modern Indian,
who had been buried probably not over an hundred years. He also
wrote the boys that of the various things they had dug up, only the
broken pottery could with probability be assigned to the time of the
moundbuilders. He added, however, that the large amount of fragments of
burned bones went to confirm the theory that the mounds of that class
had been used as places in which human bodies had been burned, either
in sepulchre or sacrificial rites.

Other excavations were planned by the boys, but the strenuous duties
of their pioneer life crowded in upon them, and the trips were put off
from time to time, until it so came about that their first exploration
into the affairs of the lost race, proved to be their last.




CHAPTER XIII

COOKING IN CAMP


As Robert and Ed Allen had no elder sisters, and the health of their
mother was far from robust, they were early trained to the simple
duties of the home. Rob, especially, prided himself that “there was no
woman who could beat him in plain cooking,” and, indeed, his bread was
voted, even by Mr. Allen, to be “almost as good as Mother’s.”

As the frosts began to increase, and November clouds hung gray and
heavy, tote teams, with their winter supplies for the camps in the big
woods, would frequently stop at Mr. Thompson’s for the night. With
one of these outfits there was a crew of twenty men with their cook,
bound for the upper waters of the Wisconsin river to get out a special
contract of “pumpkin pine,” a good sized tract of these forest giants
having been located during the previous summer. This variety of pine
was very white, exceedingly soft, and grainless, and not infrequently
would yield three cuts of logs of sixteen feet each in length, entirely
free from knots. These logs would saw into planks sixteen feet long,
with a width of from three to six feet. Of course such timber was very
valuable, even in those days of timber prodigality.

The Allen boys heard that the crew boss was young Medford, whom they
had met in Necedah. He was a clean, energetic young fellow, just out
of college, and, destined to take his father’s place in the great
lumbering operations of the state, was winning his way up in practical
service. But this morning, while his greeting was pleasant, young
Medford’s face showed a considerable anxiety to the boys. Pete Lateur,
the cook, while wholly dependable once within the big woods, had broken
faith with the boss, and had smuggled a flask of whiskey in with his
dunnage. During this, their first night’s stop, the liquor had provoked
a brawl in which the cook emerged with a broken arm. After the rude
surgery that he was able to give, Mr. Thompson would take him back to
the town for a month’s lay up. But there was no one else among the crew
who could take his place, and no time to send a team back to hunt a
cook in town.

“Rob,” said Ed, “you’re always bragging about your cooking, why don’t
you take the job?”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Medford, overhearing what had been spoken in
jest, “Can you cook, Rob?”

“He certainly can, Mr. Medford,” replied Ed, not waiting for Rob to
reply, “He can beat Mother baking beans, and as for bread--”

“Stop your foolishness, Ed,” broke in Rob, blushing red.

“But see here, boys, I must have a cook, and if you will take the
place, Rob, I will give you forty-five dollars a month for four months,
and your wages will begin today.”

Rob gasped at the thought of so much money. “I’ll see father” he
replied.

Mrs. Allen was averse to allowing her boy to spend the winter among
such rough men as the woods crews were known to be, but Mr. Allen said
it would “toughen the fiber of the lad” and gave his consent.

Alas, how many parents mistakenly think that association with evil, and
even evil experiences are a necessary part of the education of youth.
Nothing can be further from the truth. Instead of a benefit, such
association can but result in harm. If, in after life, the youth should
come into clean ways, the deep scars of evil will remain, and he will
carry with him to the grave that which he would fain forget.

For the first fifty miles the crew were able to get their meals at
least twice a day at rough wayside taverns, themselves but little
better than camps, but which afforded shelter and an abundance of food,
such as it was. Then the trail led up into the unbroken wilderness of
forest, where camps must needs be made at night, and there Rob’s winter
work began.

There was something solemn and majestic about the big woods. There
was little undergrowth, and the ground was covered deep with the
rich, brown carpet of needles. The tall trunks of the great pines
rose straight to the dark canopy above, like the pillars of some vast
cathedral. The very silence was suggestive of worship--the low moaning
of the high-up tops came to the ears as a soft, opening, minor strain
from some grand organ.

A dead, dry pine was felled, logs sawed from it and split, a fire
built, and soon a bed of glowing coals was ready for the great pans of
frying salt pork. Two crotched sticks were driven into the ground a
few feet apart, and a pole laid across them, upon which the big coffee
kettle was swung, and under it a good fire was soon going. Then biscuit
dough was mixed--not with milk, but with clear, cold water from the
river--and placed in the baker. This arrangement was something like
a three-leaved book made of tin, with folding legs for the upper and
lower leaves. When opened before the bed of glowing coals--the bread
being placed upon the middle leaf--it was a no mean substitute for an
oven.

Tin plates and cups, iron knives and forks and spoons, were
distributed; a jug of molasses and a bowl of brown sugar were
placed handy, and the cry of “Chuck’s ready!” was given. Not very
appetizing!--perhaps not to you, my reader, but with these hardy men,
living out of doors, at strenuous labor, bread and meat and strong
coffee, with plenty of fats and sweets to fortify against the bitter
cold, were eagerly consumed, especially when on the march. Later, when
in permanent camp, a greater variety of food would be prepared.

Wearied though he was with the long day’s tramp, and with his efforts
to satisfy the ravenous appetites of the score of men, Rob could not
roll up in his blanket before the fire with the rest, as they finished
their meal. In a little hollow scooped out near the log fire, were
to be placed a half bushel of Irish potatoes, with a jab of his knife
through the skin of each one to let out the steam. Over them the hot
ashes were raked and packed down tight, then a few coals, and here
they would bake slowly through the night, to be eaten in their mealy
whiteness, cold, with salt, at the hasty noon meal the next day. The
coffee kettle was replaced by another containing great chunks of corned
beef, and from the baker came several batches of delicately browned
biscuit to be packed away in a box for the morrow. There would be no
time allowed at the noon rest for more than the preparing of the hot
coffee.

It seemed to the lad that he had no more than closed his eyes, as he
finally rolled himself into his blanket--his boots under his head for
pillow--than he found himself sitting up, panting for breath, as though
exhausted by running, and trembling all over. Clearly he had been
frightened in his sleep; but by what? The horses, securely tied near
by, were snorting and frantically trying to break away. The men, here
and there, were rising upon elbows. Then, from the tall pine, seemingly
right over their heads, came the scream as of a woman in such agony,
despair, and heart-breaking entreaty, that it seemed to Rob nothing in
all the world could express more hopeless misery. With a “Sh-h, keep
quiet, boys,” Mr. Medford grasped his winchester and slipped around to
quiet the horses, peering up into the thick branches as he went. Again
that hideous cry--and Mr. Medford fired at the place from which the
sound seemed to come.

“What is it?” whispered Rob to teamster Jackson, next him.

“A panther. There is no danger. Lie still.”

There was the noise of something bounding from limb to limb, high up in
the pines, then all was still.

Exhausted, though he was, with the day’s march and labor, Rob was so
thoroughly awakened, that long after the quieted teams were again
munching their corn, and the men were snoring, he lay, looking up at
the one far-away star peeping through the boughs, and starting up now
and then as a soft pad-pad, or sniff-sniff, or low growl, or bark,
announced the presence of some other visiting woods-folk.

When at last they had reached the timber tract, a little knoll not far
back from the river, was selected as the site for the permanent camps.
These would be three in number--the main building where the men would
sleep and eat, and one end of which would serve as kitchen; a second
for the snug stable for the teams; and the third to be used as repair
shop and storehouse.

All hands went to work at once putting up the houses. It was now
the second week of November, and the fierce winter storms might be
looked for at any time. The buildings were constructed of logs, about
twelve inches in diameter, the cracks between chinked in with moss
and clay. The roof was made of split logs, the split faces being laid
together, breaking the joints. There was always plenty of chance for
ventilation. After the roaring fires in the sheet iron stoves should
finally succeed in drying them out, these rooms would be warm and
comfortable.

For nearly a week, during the house-building, the men slept in tents
which opened one end toward the big log fire. At this fire also, with
its undiminished abundance of live coals, Rob baked and boiled and
roasted. Now that there was to be no more traveling, the supplies
were overhauled, and great dishes of dried fruit--prunes, peaches,
and apples, were stewed. Later, Mr. Medford would have a team bring
in fresh beef and pork. Pea soup, hot, and rich with pork fat, was an
almost daily ration, and then the great staple--baked beans! Lucky for
Rob, indeed, was that accomplishment of which Ed had boasted for him.
Surely even Boston itself never knew such appetizing dish as that Rob
brought forth from the “bean hole.”

This is the way in which the delicacy was prepared: First, a hole
two feet in depth, filled with live coals; the big pot with just the
right amount of beans--(be careful to not put in too many, or you will
duplicate Mark Twain’s experience with dried apples), molasses, a chunk
of fat pork, salt and pepper to season--then water enough to swell the
dish full when done (a few disastrous experiments will teach you the
right amount), then the coals raked out and the pot, tightly covered,
placed in the hole; ashes packed around and over; more live coals
heaped above all--and everybody go away and forget it for twenty-four
hours--if you can--and then!

Bread, potatoes, meat, coffee, some kind of dried fruit--_and
beans_--such is the usual fare of the lumber woods.

With the completion of the camps, Rob found his duties a little more
complicated, but he was able to arrange his long hours so that, while
work was hard, he had the meals on time, well-cooked, and of abundant
quantity. At four o’clock in the morning the chopping boss would call
“Cookee!” and Rob would crawl out from his “feather bed” of pine boughs
covered with its heavy Mackinaw blanket. No time to roll over and take
the “forty winks” these mornings. Soon he would have the pitch-pine
roaring in the big sheet-iron stove for the men; then he would cross
over to the kitchen side, where the fire in the great range would set
to steaming the big pots of food. By the time the hot biscuits were
ready, the teamsters would be in from the stables, where they had fed,
curried and harnessed the horses, and the choppers and skidders would
be plunging through a hasty toilet. By five o’clock Rob would cry, “All
ready!” and then would come a rush, each man crowding in where he could
and more like a pack of hungry wolves than supposedly civilized men,
the crew would fall upon the food.

I must make one exception--a teamster who was early dubbed “Parson.”
This man, a little past middle age, never sat down to a meal without
silently bowing his head in thanksgiving. There was no spirit of
bravado in the act; cant seemed to be impossible to the man. He took
the ofttimes brutal gibes of the men with a kindly smile, and went his
own way. At night when the lanterns were swung from the ridgepole,
and the men, during the hour between supper and bed, would be playing
cards, telling stories, or singing songs of their wood and river life,
Mr. Jackson would take out a well-worn, black Testament and read, and
then, with always a kind word to Rob, and often some little helpful
act, would climb into his bunk.

Breakfast over, Rob had the bunks to put in order, and the house to
thoroughly sweep--for Mr. Medford’s camps must be kept clean and tidy.
Then, if the crew happened to be working at a considerable distance,
dinner must be put on at once, for an hour before noon a team would be
sent in for it, and it must be ready, safely packed in large, tightly
covered cans. What a job it was to get an out-of-doors dinner for
twenty hungry woodsmen! Actually, one of those men would often eat at a
meal as much as would be placed upon the table for a half dozen in the
city boarding house.

Dishes washed and the table set, the sponge, started the night before,
for sixteen loaves of bread (for it would take this number daily, in
addition to hot biscuits), would be kneaded down and placed in a warm
place to rise. Then there was the woodpile to tackle, and a big stack
of dry pine and birch cut and piled up for both cook stove and heater.
If dinner was to be eaten at the camp, there were a half-dozen pies
to be made from the dried fruit, or two great pans of pudding to
be baked, before the sixteen loaves of bread would demand the oven.
Peeling potatoes and turnips, and giving attention to the bean-hole
outside, helped to fill to the full every moment of the forenoon.

After dinner dishes were attended to, there came a chance for two
hours of sleep--and insomnia, at this time, was not even a passing
acquaintance of Rob’s. At four o’clock preparations for supper must
begin. Then serving the meal, washing dishes again, and making ready,
as far as possible, for the morning meal, filled the time until ten
o’clock.

It is not good for man to be alone. Explorers of the polar regions
declare that the terrors of that trackless waste are not found in the
intense cold, but that it is the awfulness of solitude, driving men
insane, that is most dreaded.

A strange malady of peevishness, discontent, developing into downright
meanness, seems to creep over a company of men shut in together for a
lengthened time. Seamen on long voyages mutiny; soldiers in isolated
barracks commit ugly acts of insubordination, or take desperate chances
to desert.

So it is not strange that during the long winters, when a score of men
are shut up together with little or no reading matter, no news from the
outside world--nothing to take their thoughts away from themselves,
or break the deadly monotony of their daily lives, that this untoward
trait of human nature should show itself. Usually, before spring comes,
the ill-nature of a crew settles upon some particular one, and from
becoming at first the butt of good natured jokes, he finally is the
object of genuine persecution. Woe be to that one if he be weak in body
or in mind, or if he be a boy.

It was perhaps natural that this crew, all unawakened to and untrained
in the higher sensibilities and ideals of life, and hardened by much
gross sin, should fall upon the teamster Jackson, who was so unfailing
in his religious observances. He seemed out of place to them; his very
presence was a rebuke to their profanity and foul stories and songs,
even more so than the sharp command of young Medford, that occasionally
brought them to silence. But to all of the chaffing and sneers and
cursing Jackson presented a quiet, even temper, and his smile held a
world of pity. As Jackson’s kindness to Rob became noticed, it appeared
to the crew that here was a way by which they could reach the teamster,
and all the devilish annoyances and coarse brutality of a dozen man
were directed against the boy. They began by growling about the “weak”
coffee, although, as swamper Flynn said, “Sure, ’tis as black as me
hat, and ’twould float me iron wedge, entirely.” The bread was “no
good,” the meat was “tough.” Day after day, Rob, having prepared a meal
that would do credit to a high-priced hotel, would be reduced almost
to tears through mortification, by the brutal complaints. That Jackson
stood up for the lad, and told the rude fellows that by their grumbling
they showed they had not been accustomed to good food at home, did not
help matters.

From complaints, the persecution passed to personal annoyances. Rob’s
axe would be hidden, and he compelled to gather dry limbs to keep
the fire going; one morning he found after the breakfast had been
delayed and the bunk house filled with smoke, that the stovepipe had
been filled with moss. At another time, his wool socks and felt boots
disappeared, and he was compelled to go about all day in bare feet.
Again, as he crawled into his bunk late one night, worn out, he found
that the blanket and boughs had all been saturated with water, and he
slept upon the hard floor in his overcoat.

At last, the ringleader in the meanness, John Dolve, a big Swede,
coming in at night and not finding supper upon the table, although it
was not yet time, declared he would fix it so that the boss would have
to get another cook.

“Come on, boys,” he cried, “he’s too fresh. Let’s put him in pickle.”
With the help of two or three of the others, he lifted the struggling
lad and forced him down into one of the big barrels half filled with
brine, from which the meat had been taken, and fastened on the cover.
The rough men roared with laughter over the “good joke on the cook,”
but the result might have been altogether serious had not Mr. Jackson
opportunely arrived. With face gone white, as they explained the
situation to him, he thrust the men right and left, and liberated the
poor boy.

“Now, Rob,” said he, as he fitted the boy out in some of his own warm,
dry clothing, “just keep yourself quiet; that’s the best way. Mr.
Medford is due to be back from below and when he comes there will be a
change in this camp for good.”

But Robert had not yet found that source of inner strength which kept
the teamster undisturbed in the midst of fiery trial. The boy had
reached the limit of human endurance. He kept his own counsel, but
determined to submit no longer to such indignities. He would start for
home that very night. That the way lay an hundred miles through what
was practically a wilderness, mattered not. No fear of hunger nor cold,
nor death itself, should keep him in the camp one day longer.

Mr. Medford, urging on his team the next day, in order to reach camp in
good season, caught sight of a figure staggering along the tote road
in the distance. At first he took it to be an Indian, but as he drew
nearer there was something that appeared familiar about the person.
What was his surprise as he came close, to discover that the traveler
was Rob.

The lad was so nearly exhausted that he could scarcely speak, yet he
endeavored to resist, as Mr. Medford, springing to him where he had
sunk down in the snow, picked him up in his arms and placed him in the
sleigh. More from what he guessed, than what he was able to get from
Rob, did he get an idea of what had occurred.

“Now, young fellow,” said he, “we’re going back; it’s the only thing
to do. You’ve good stuff in you, although the battle has been a severe
one, and now I’ll see about bringing up the reserves.”

With the first out-going tote team went the brutal Dolve and two of
his companions, and soon there came a change in the atmosphere of the
camp, and the attitude of the men toward the cook was as friendly and
appreciative as formerly it had been unjust and cruel.

Rob made good in his work, and the hearty commendation of Mr. Medford
was as precious balm to heal his wounded spirit. When the four months
were passed, and the camp broke up for the spring, the heart of the
lad glowed with pleasure as Mr. Medford, handing him a check for two
hundred dollars, said, “The extra is because you’ve been a extra good
cook. If you’ll agree, I’ll sign you now for next winter at sixty-five
dollars.”

Two hundred dollars meant much to the Allen family that spring, for by
it the mother was enabled to go to Chicago for treatment by a famous
specialist, who said she had come just in time.




CHAPTER XIV

WINTER IN THE LUMBER WOODS


When Mr. Thompson proposed, as an act of kindness, to take the cook,
Peter Lateur, back to Necedah that he might receive proper attention
for his broken arm, he did not know that it would prove to be an
opening to a profitable winter’s contract, but so it was.

As he stepped into the office of the Medford Lumber Company, “Old
Man” Medford, who was in earnest conversation with a keen-eyed,
brisk-appearing gentleman, looked up, and as his eyes fell upon Mr.
Thompson, he exclaimed, “The very thing. Here’s the man, Mr. Norman,
that can do the job.” “Mr. Norman, this is Mr. Thompson, one of the
up-river settlers. Mr. Norman is at the head of the Construction
Company that has a contract to build the grade and bridges of the new
railroad that is coming into town next summer,” was Mr. Medford’s form
of introduction.

“The lay of the land is such,” went on Mr. Medford, “that the road
must cross the head of the big boom pond, and that calls for a long
trestle. I’ve been telling him that our regular crews have all gone
into the woods, and we can’t get out the piling he wants, this season;
but he insists that he going to have that timber on the bank of the
river to come down in the spring drive. Now what do you think of such a
man?”

“I think he means to get his work done,” replied Mr. Thompson.

The big man’s eyes twinkled. “I may have to pay a little extra, of
course, but I shall see that piling down here in the boom by the time
my bridge builders are ready for them.”

Mr. Medford’s company owned a tract of young timber over which a fire
had swept, and, while its thick growth had worked its ruin in that
the trees had been killed, the trunks had not been destroyed, but
stood tall and straight, and, if cut before the borers got in their
destructive work, would make ideal piling timber.

The opportunity for securing a good price for this otherwise useless
timber, as well as his confidence in Mr. Thompson, urged the lumberman
to give bond for him that the required number and lengths of piling
would be deposited upon the banks of the river in time for the spring
drive.

By offering the extra high wages, which a successful completion of his
contract would enable him to do, Mr. Thompson picked up a crew among
the settlers along the river. Among them was Ed Allen, who, hardy and
strong for his age, was well able to fulfill the duties of “swamper.”

As the contract would call but for one winter’s work, the camp houses
were not so elaborate and substantial as those of the big woods further
north, yet they were made fairly comfortable. After the cabins were
up, the first thing was to lay out the main logging road from the tract
of timber to the river. While the road must be as direct as possible,
it was necessary that the route selected keep to level ground. There
could be no going up hill and down dale with the great stack-like loads
which would pass over it.

By the time the hollows were filled, the trees cut away, and their
stumps dug out, and even the small brush cut, so that a clear, level
track extended all the way to the river, the foreman had selected a
number of trees of the required length and diameter, and marked them
with a “blaze” on the side.

Sites were chosen for the skidways upon little knolls, where the logs
would be rolled up in great piles, to be loaded upon the sleds.

And the chopping began.

The success or failure of a lumberman in the northern woods depended
as much upon the weather conditions, as does the success or failure of
the farmer. Long-continued and severe storms may shut in the crew for
a week of precious time. Great snows may double the labor of swamping,
skidding, and loading. But more to be dreaded by the loggers is a
winter thaw. A mild winter, when the snow melts in the middle of the
day, is, to the logger, as a rainless summer to the husbandman.

With this contract it was not a matter of how many of the logs might
be hauled to the river, but a question whether the whole number
was delivered. So every hour would count; every advantage of the
peculiarities of the weather must be taken, both in felling the trees
and in hauling.

It seemed to Ed that he would barely stretch himself in his bunk at
night before he would hear the foreman’s “All out” in the morning, and
with the others he would hasten into his mackinaws and felt boots, his
sleep-heavy eyes hardly open before their plunge into the icy water, as
the cry “Chuck’s ready” would be heard from the cook.

As soon as one could “see to swing an axe” the crew would be in the
timber tract, ready for the strenuous labor of the day. What matter
if the mercury would register zero, and the snow lay knee deep on the
level? did not their pulses bound with the rich wine of life? was
not the very air a tonic? and the hard work filled with the joy of
achievement?

From about the tree selected the underbrush would be carefully cut
away, for not only must there be free room for the rythmic swing of
the keen axes, but the life of a chopper often depended upon a quick,
unhindered leap to one side, as the forest giant sprang, swinging from
its stump. The inclination of the tree is noted, and the place selected
for its fall. The sharp bits of the axes eat a clean “scarf” straight
across the trunk. A few inches higher up, a second cut prepares for
great chips between, and a third drives the scarf beyond the center
of the tree. A shallower cut on the opposite side of the trunk, a
snap, a creaking shudder--a quick warning is called; there is a sound
of rending branches overhead, the rush of a mighty wind, and then a
crashing roar as the great body stretches its length upon the ground.

With a rapid movement the woodsman measures with his axe helve the
prostrate trunk up to the point where length calls for certain
diameter, and the sawyers, having already squared the butt are ready to
sever the top. What limbs there are upon the body are cut cleanly away,
and the long log, or pile, is ready for the skids.

In that day the “swamping” was done by ox teams. It was the work of
the swamper to see that there was a clear pathway for the team to the
fallen trunk, then, as it came alongside, to slip the heavy logging
chain under the body, and bring it up and clasp the hook. At the word
of command--and often cruel proddings with sharp goads accompanied,
alas! by the shocking profanity of the driver, the animals would brace
themselves into the yoke, straining this way and that, until finally
the great log would be started from its bed in the deep snow and
dragged to its place to be rolled with others upon the loading skids.
The stacking up of these piles was work that could often be done when
hauling operations were impossible. However, the hauling was not a less
interesting part of the work.

The logging sled, or “hoosier,” bears about the same relation to the
common road sled that a Missouri river barge bears to a pleasure
skiff. It is hewn from the toughest beams of oak, and its huge
runners--tracking six feet apart--are shod with plates of iron three
to four inches in thickness. The beams, or “bunks,” upon which the
load will rest, are often ten feet long, so that the loads may be of
that width, and as high as the lifting power of the loading teams and
the ingenuity of the men can stack the logs--provided always sufficient
power can be attached to the load to pull it.

From the main road to the skids, a temporary road is packed down in
the snow, and the huge sled is brought into position below the skids.
Timbers are run to the bunks and securely fastened, for a slip may
mean a broken rib, or possibly a life quickly crushed out. A chain
is fastened to the top log of the skid with a rolling hitch, and the
loading team on the other side of the sled, across from the skid,
slowly rolls the great trunk from the pile onto the sled. The first
tier of logs fills the bunks; a second tier, or perhaps a third, is
rolled into place, and the load is fastened securely with the binding
chains and pole. Then the loading team is hitched on ahead of the sled
team, and with great pulling and tugging the mammoth load is brought to
the main road. Here the head team is released, to repeat the process of
loading for the next team, while the load continues its journey to the
river.

So level and so smooth is the track that comparatively little force is
needed to move these immense loads--but they must be kept in motion.
There can be no stopping to rest once the load is started, for it is
probable, in that case, the sled would remain at rest until a second
team would come along to add its strength for another start.

Arriving at the river, the “brow boss” measures each log, entering the
figures, in his “brow record,” giving also the totals of the loads
and name of driver. Then each log is “end marked” and with cant hooks
rolled off into the river, or “browed,” as the operation is called.
Often the river bed is filled and piled high from bank to bank; then a
new brow is selected up or down stream.

The second week of chopping, which brought the time up to Christmas,
saw the contract well under way. While four or five nationalities were
represented in the crew, the men were of that class which came into
the wilderness to make homes--faithful, steady, and willing to give
full measure of service for their wages. In many respects they differed
widely from the “big woods” crew, gathered, as they might be in those
days, from the very riff-raff of creation.

A spirit of friendly rivalry was shrewdly fostered by the foreman,
among the choppers and the teamsters, which was not long in dividing
the camp into factions loyally supporting the claims of their
respective champions. Antoine Ravenstein’s half-Norman dapple greys
had, so far, a slight lead in the record of big loads over Bert
Clumpner’s bays, while the giant Dane, Olaf Bergstrom, was scarcely
able to keep even with his smaller, wiry, dark-skinned rival chopper,
Jim Dacora.

The work was now so well under way that Mr. Thompson suggested that the
men celebrate Christmas day in holding a holiday of sports, and he
would have the cook prepare a big dinner for the occasion. Jumping,
wrestling, boxing, throwing the hammer, and pitching horseshoes, were
enjoyed with a hearty, noisy abandon, in which these big, strong men
sought to hide the tinge of homesickness that would creep in with the
memories of the day.

As the fun was at its height, two men, one clad in a sleek, brown
minkskin, the other in a coal-black bearskin overcoat, were noticed
approaching the cabins. The one with the bearskin coat, whose bristling
red hair and stubby beard proclaimed his Hibernian ancestry, walked up
to Mr. Thompson, and without other ceremony or salutation began, “This
is Calhoun, the sheriff of this county, an’ I’m Phelan. We’ve come to
see what ye mane by cuttin’ the timber on my land.”

Without waiting for a reply, he proceeded, “Av ye pile yer dunnage onto
yer tote teams an’ lave at onct, ye can give me yer bill o’ sale to the
timber ye’ve browed, an’ we’ll let it drop. Ave ye don’t, well, ye know
what we do here to timber thaves.”

The crew had gathered about, and a sound came from them like a low
growl of an angry beast. The hand of the sheriff went to his hip, but
Mr. Thompson’s voice rang out clear and cold: “Stop, men! I handle
this. Now you, Larry Phelan, I’ve heard of you. You certainly are
qualified to talk about timber thieves--but you’ve got the wrong man
this time. Mr. Medford took precaution to give me the field notes of
this tract, and I have run the lines and know exactly where I am. Now
I give you just ten minutes, you and your bogus sheriff, to get out of
sight, or my men and I will start a new game--and it won’t be a game of
bluff.”

There was that in the voice of the speaker which left no doubt that he
meant what he said. And while Phelan cursed and vowed he would “have a
posse upon them that would move them,” the two strangers turned away to
where their team was standing in the distance.

Mr. Thompson was not altogether easy in his mind over the affair,
although he felt sure as to his legal right upon the tract. He knew
Larry Phelan to be the most unscrupulous timber thief in that section
of the state, and who was more than suspected of having arrangements
for his own advantage with certain officers of the courts. But more
serious were his apprehensions of the threat of Phelan as to his
“posse,” for a more reckless and desperate band of outlaws never served
another villain than this Irishman had gathered about him in that
northern wilderness. If Phelan considered the stake large enough, a
descent upon the camp by these ruffians was something to be taken into
consideration.

Shortly after the opening of the new year, the successful completion
of the winter’s work was threatened in a way that served to put all
thoughts of Larry Phelan out of mind. It came with a “January thaw.”
Day after day the sun rose clear and bright in the heavens, and the
south wind came in spring-like mildness. The melting snows filled the
hidden hollows in the woods with slush and water, into which the
choppers unsuspectingly dropped, sometimes waist deep, while the wet
snow kept the clothing of the entire crew constantly saturated.

Notwithstanding the growing discomfort of the situation, no let up on
the work could be allowed, as hope argued for a soon return of zero
weather.

The pressure of the immense loads upon the main road had made of it an
almost solid bed of ice, and so it was that with the aid of an extra
team from the skidways to the main road, the hauling operations were
not seriously interfered with at the first.

But the warm days continued, and the sharp calks of the horseshoes
began to tear up the surface of the icy road. “If we could only keep
the smooth ice surface on the road, we could make it; but a few more
days of such cutting and the road is ruined,” gloomily exclaimed Mr.
Thompson, as the crew gathered for a noon meal.

Ed started to speak, but being only a boy, and fearing the railery of
the men, waited until he could talk to Mr. Thompson privately. “I don’t
know, Mr. Thompson, that the plan would work here, but I’ve an idea
that you might think over, and try if you wished,” said he.

“Go ahead, boy,” replied Mr. Thompson. “Any sort of a suggestion will
be welcome just now.”

“Well,” said Ed, “we boys used to slide down a hill one winter on
skis, and when some warm days came that threatened to spoil our track,
we watered it at night, and the coating of ice held where the snow
would have melted. I thought--”

“Boy, you’ve hit it! I suspect you’ve saved the contract,” exclaimed
Mr. Thompson.

That was a busy afternoon for Lars Olson, the carpenter-blacksmith, but
by nine o’clock that night a water-tight tank had been fitted upon a
sled, with a rude attachment something like a street sprinkler, under
control of the driver.

While the contrivance was open to improvement (which it later received
as it took its place in the necessary equipment for logging operations)
it enabled Mr. Thompson to give his road a coating of ice before
morning, and, with the operation repeated night after night, to defy
the sun’s destroying rays a little longer.

It would be interesting to tell how, in the race for the chopping
championship, big Olaf grew careless and had a leg crushed by the
unexpected side swing of a falling tree; how Mr. Thompson, at the risk
of failing on the contract, fixed up a comfortable bed on a pung,
and sent Ed with an illy-spared team to carry the wounded man to his
home. It would make another story how Ed was lost upon his return
trip, in the great snow storm that marked the end of the warm spell,
and was saved from death by an old Irishman after he had already
become unconscious. We would like to tell how, when the cold days
returned, Antoine Ravenstein’s grays beat the bays with a prodigious
load, that was talked about for years, as the record for hauling, in
those northern camps. We would like to live again with the reader the
glorious days of February, in which the contract was completed, and in
addition to the agreed wages, each man was given a bonus of ten dollars
by Mr. Thompson. But I must leave these stories to be told at another
time.

The winter passed; March came with its rains, and finally those of
the crew who had elected to remain at the camp in order to be at hand
to join the “drive,” one day were startled to hear the report as of a
heavy cannon, in the direction of the brows on the river.

When they reached that place they found Bally Tarbox with his crew
of brow-breakers loosening up, with charges of dynamite, the great
ice-locked dams of logs which were filling the river bed.

“Hullo, you lop-eared nesters!” shouted the boss at the sight of the
men from the camp. “Time for you to be hitting the trail and grabbing a
peavy. Wangan’s above Big Bull.”

“Where’d you get that woodchuck?” he called as he caught sight of Ed.
“Oh, it’s one of the Allen boys, ain’t it. Say, little sawed-off, your
big Bud is comin’ down North Fork now.”

The next morning Ed started with the others of his crew up river to
join his brother Rob on the spring drive.




CHAPTER XV

OVER THE RAPIDS


Following the river trail, and being welcomed freely to the temporary
camps of the gangs of “brow-breakers,” at a little past noon of the
second day, Ed and his companions of the winter’s logging camp came to
the head of the drive on North Fork.

The heavy rains had set in, and the river, swollen by the floods of
melted snow, was already a torrent of crashing, grinding ice cakes.
As the ice went out, the river would be filled with the booming
logs, which floated loosely, often banks full for miles, from the
disintegrating “brows” along the stream.

Instead of meeting his brother, as he had hoped, Ed was informed that
Rob had been sent over to the wangan above Big Bull, where the drive on
the main stream was already in motion. The boss, looking over the small
stature of Ed, remarked, “They’re wanting polers over there, and we
don’t want any more here. As a sacker you wouldn’t be any more account
than a muskrat, anyhow.”

Although Ed was stockily built, he was quick with his feet, and
practice had gained him confidence upon the floating logs, so poling
would be just what he would desire.

Ten miles across the country of forest and swamp, where the land
was a “saturated solution” and every little creek aspiring to be a
river, was not a pleasing prospect for a boy, but there was no other
way open. That journey lived in Ed’s memory for years as a hideous
nightmare. Plashing in mud, tearing through thickets of briers and
underbrush, wading shallow, icy creeks--and swimming one that was
too deep to wade--losing himself in the darkness, stumbling along
blindly, by chance--or, we had better say, by the guiding hand of good
Providence--Ed finally came to the brink of the river, and knew by the
depth of the overflow that he had reached the stream above Big Bull dam.

Again Providence guided his choice, and he turned downstream and soon
came in view of the campfires of the drive. Too utterly exhausted to do
aught else, Ed stretched himself by a big log fire among the sleeping
men, to get what rest he might, in the short space of the night that
remained.

It was yet dark when the voice of the boss aroused him, and he followed
with the men to their early breakfast of pork and beans, biscuit and
syrup, and strong, black coffee.

There he soon found Rob, and the meeting compensated Ed for the
hardship of the journey. Rob told him that Bally Tarbox had arrived the
night before, and had taken charge of the drive, and he had looked for
Ed to come over and join the polers.

While the work of the polers was more dangerous than that of the
sackers, it was much more agreeable, and, too, the wages were three
dollars a day, while the pay of the sackers was but a dollar and a
quarter to a dollar and a half.

By the time a dim twilight told that another cloudy day had begun, Rob
and Ed, with their long ash poles to balance themselves, were upon the
river, riding the logs as they floated along with the rapid current.
The water had been held back by the big dam until a great drive of
logs had gathered, and then the gates were opened for the logs to rush
through and on down the river with the falling waters. It was the work
of the polers to see that none of the logs lodged in the mouths of the
little creeks, and to keep them moving while they were in the river.

It was inevitable that some of the logs should remain stranded upon
the banks as the water receded, and this brought in the work of the
sackers. Their implements were not long poles, such as the log riders
used, but stout staves about five feet in length. Upon one side of
each was a steel hook, and in the end a long, sharp spike. These were
called “peaveys.” Where the stranded log was small and at some distance
from the water, a row of men would approach it upon either side, and,
picking it up bodily with their hooks, would carry it to the river.
Where the log was too large to carry, it would be rolled over and over
at a rapid rate until it went splashing into the water.

It not infrequently happened that a big log would be found in such a
position that the sackers would be obliged to wade out into the icy
water waist deep before the great trunk would float free.

Many a time Ed and Rob had been thankful for their good fortune as
polers when they would hear the boss roll out a torrent of curses upon
the sackers as they hesitated upon the icy plunge on some particularly
cold morning.

While the sackers might count on being wet every day, and nearly all
day of every day, the polers were by no means exempt from that source
of discomfort. Frequently, in making the jump from one log to another,
a foot would slip, or, the distance miscalculated, a sudden bath be
provided among the crashing logs.

Again, a moment of careless inattention would deliver the log rider to
the tender mercies of a “sweep,” or an unsettling blow from another
log. Sometimes, when the river must needs be crossed, a log would be
selected as the ferrying raft which would prove too light to sustain
the weight of the rider, and the sackers would howl their derision at
the poler being “bucked” into the water by his “steed.”

Rob never forgot one such experience he had on Easter Sunday of that
year. It was just after the gates had been lifted at Jennie Bull dam,
and the crew of an hundred and fifty men were striving with all their
might to hurry all the logs through before the water should go down.
The day had opened bleak and dreary. A raw wind swept down the river
from the north, cutting faces like a saw, and the poor sackers, wet to
the waist, were in the depths of misery. Then, shortly after noon,
the leaden skies began to spit snow, and a little scum of ice appeared
along the edges of the stream. What an Easter Day! Rob and Ed, to whom
memories of other Resurrection Sabbaths in the city came, with their
lilies and joy and song, could be thankful that, so far, they were on
the logs, dry, and compared with the sackers, warm.

The polers were stationed on the booms--long logs fastened
together--and by throwing their poles with the sharp, steel spikes
into the floating logs would pull them along and so hasten their exit
through the gate of the dam.

At four o’clock it was already dark, and it would be impossible to see
clearly enough to work more than an hour longer--but the drive must
be taken through; there could be no waiting until tomorrow. Hurry!
hurry! were the orders. Rob, in his hurry, as he threw his weight upon
a backward pull with his pick pole, suddenly felt his hold give way,
and over he went backward into the river. Luckily, the logs were not
running thickly where he came to the surface hatless, and that he was
a strong swimmer, for a few strokes brought him to the boom and to
possession again of his pole.

Oh, if he might go to the wangan camp, there before the logheap fire to
wring out his streaming, freezing clothing and get back a little warmth
into his stiffening limbs. But no! _The logs must be run through the
dam_, and that at once. Every man was needed, and nothing short of
death itself would be recognized by the boss as an excuse for failure
to stay by the job. During the next hour Rob many times wondered if he
would not be able to give that excuse and so escape from the misery of
his position, as he labored clumsily in his freezing clothes.

Day by day the cooking outfit, with the sleeping blankets--one for each
man--went down river ahead of the drivers as far as the day’s work
would probably land them. It can be imagined that stores necessary
for nearly two hundred men, to be carried by boats, would be of the
simplest character--pork, flour, beans, syrup, and coffee, made the
basis for the daily fare, but the five meals a day were eaten with a
hearty relish by these strenuous toilers.

As a rule a dry spot was selected for the camping place, and big tents
stretched for protection overhead, but the one blanket to the man and
the bare ground for the bed, left something to be desired, even in
dry weather. When, of necessity, the camping place was wet, and the
weather freezing, the day suffering of the men was but a prelude to the
real agony of the night. On this drive of which I write it happened
that more than once the wet clothing of the Allen boys, in which they
“slept,” was found to be frozen to the earth in the morning.

Running the river was no job for a weakling--such a one never undertook
the experience the second time, nor long for the first time. It was
work that told heavily upon the strongest of constitutions; few of
these men lived to be old, the majority falling victims to pneumonia or
tuberculosis.

A little below the third of the big dams the river cuts through a
stretch of rocky country, ending in a rather steep rapids which have a
drop of something like twenty feet. From the points of rock sticking
out at almost regular intervals, across the stream, above the current
in low water, the falls became known as “Squaw Walk Rapids.” Just below
the rapids the river takes a sharp turn, and there, in the great, deep
whirlpool was Dead Man’s Hole--a place believed by the rivermen to be
sure to take its toll of human life each spring.

No log rider was so foolhardy as to attempt the passage over the rapids
and through the whirlpool of his own will; few indeed--none, it was
said--had made the trip in safety, having been caught in the fierce
rush of the waters above, and drawn over the rapids on their logs.

The day had been clear, and, the depression of spirit caused by the
days of suffering lifting, a spirit of roystering play and rough joking
possessed the men. The polers, selecting small logs, just large enough
to sustain their weights, were giving exhibitions of fancy riding in
mid-stream.

A great shout of glee from Ed Allen caused Rob to look back up the
river. There he saw, coming majestically down toward them, a great log
upon which were seven or eight sackers, taking an unauthorized ride.
But there was something in the program of that ride which they had not
planned, for quickly, relentlessly, they were approaching a low-hanging
“sweep”--a tree stretched out over the water. Frantically they paddled
with their peaveys, striving to throw the course of the big log out
into the stream away from the threatening danger, but without avail.
The log struck the sweep, the momentum bending the body of the tree
sharply--when, as the log rolled slightly, it was released, and with a
lightning-like spring, as with a mighty hand the men were brushed off,
helter-skelter into the river.

The whole occurrence was indescribably funny to the onlookers, and the
polers were dancing up and down on their logs in high glee, shouting
mock encouragement to the luckless men in the water--when a roar
suddenly brought a check to their merriment. Glancing again down stream
the boys saw the logs ahead of them begin to rise and plunge in the
foaming water, and they realized that they were nearing the rapids.

Now was the time for putting forth all their strength. Unless they
should be able to bring their logs to shore, they would be carried over
into the boiling cauldron below. How puny was their strength matched
against the grip of that mighty current. The banks seemed to be rushing
by. Here and there jagged rocks rose above the surface as if to drag
them down. Their small logs were dancing like corks. It was almost
impossible to retain footing.

“It’s no use--were’s in for it,” shouted Rob above the roar of the
water and crashing of the logs, as he threw the sharp point of his pole
into Ed’s log and brought the two together. “Stick your pole into my
log and hold on--we’ll go together.”

The boys never lost the picture of that awful moment at the brink of
the rapids--the sharp rocks churning the river into milky foam; the
logs leaping and, striking, going end over end; the indescribable roar
and confusion--the coming of Death with the demand that he be looked
squarely in the face. I am sure that both boys prayed--and then the
blue sky, and the sun overhead, the rushing river, and the crashing
logs--and themselves, ceased to exist.

How or by whom they were rescued from the river below, neither of the
boys ever knew. But their apparently lifeless bodies had been carried
to camp and there, after long exertion, they had been brought back to
life and consciousness.

For that season, at least, Dead Man’s Hole had been robbed of its prey.

After the drive had come through the lowest dam and passed the rapids
there came days so ideal that the rivermen could not believe they were
the same fellows that so short a time ago would have almost welcomed
death, if only they might have escaped their miseries.

Great, snow-white clouds lazily floated overhead in the deep blue; the
sun filtered down upon the river in patches of golden warmth; the men,
out of sight of the boss, stretched themselves luxuriously upon big
logs, and floated with the current. Save for the occasional stoppage of
a jam the days were, as Bally Tarbox put it, “one continual picnic with
five hot meals a day throwed in.”

There were occasional days of shivering cold; days of lowering clouds
and steady rain, when river and sky seemed to mingle, and beds of
sodden earth brought no comfort at the close of sodden days. But each
day’s run brought the drive further down into the deeper channel and
higher banks of the lower river, where the labor was less severe, and a
night of dry lodging and a meal of home cooking could occasionally be
had from the home of some pioneer settler.

The days grew longer, the trees budded, and some varieties broke forth
into tender leaf. From overhead shrill choruses of red-wing blackbirds
greeted the slow-moving procession. Woodducks and mallards and teal,
in all their courting finery, sailed along in the clear spaces between
the floating logs, quick to make a distinction between the peaveys of
the river men and the gun of the cook. Squirrels, red and grey and coal
black, chattered and scolded as they scampered from bough to bough.
Occasional glimpses were had of raccoons fishing for “crabs” on jutting
sand bars, and the sliding plunge of an otter might be heard as one
awakened in the night.

Life was coming back to revel and riot in the big woods, and the men
passing through were not untouched by its tide.

While the main drive passed down the river rapidly, it was inevitable
that the slower work of the sackers would leave many logs hung upon the
banks by the failing waters. These would be more slowly worked to the
river bed, in some cases with ox teams, and then, a good deal of water
having been stored up above the dams to augment the later rains, a
“sack drive” would bring the stragglers down to the big boom at Necedah.

By the time the Allen boys reached the half-mile stretch of straight
river which marked one boundary of their home place, there was not much
need of their services as polers longer, as the river banks were high,
and there was little work save for the jam breakers at the head of the
drive. So it was, that as the familiar buildings came into view, they
bade farewell to their river companions and were welcomed at home.




CHAPTER XVI

THE GIFT OF THE FLOOD


The wages from Ed’s winter’s work at the logging camp, together with
the sixty dollars each had earned on the drive in the spring, enabled
the Allen boys to purchase a fine span of half-blood, two-years-old
Norman colts, from “Old Man” LaDauger, a half-woodsman, half-farmer,
whose capacious cabin was a stopping place for rivermen, and for
teamsters going to and from the lumber camps. The colts, though huge
fellows, were as gentle, if as playful, as kittens, and Ed soon had
them well broken to such tasks as were suitable to their age and
strength.

Several acres of the rich, level land had been cleared of willow
bushes, and the larger bunches of their roots dug out. Now, with the
sprightly yoke of young oxen hitched in front of the colts, the boys
had a breaking team not to be despised.

It had been a busy summer for the lads, and the toil was severe, but
they had a goal ahead, and to them hardship and weariness were but
milestones on the road to its realization. By the time November snows
were heralded by the “honk, honk” of wild geese, there had been a large
field of well-plowed land ready for the mellowing frosts, and later
planting of corn.

Uncle Henry Thompson pronounced the white oak leaves to be “as large
as squirrel ears,” which marked corn planting time. Now the days were
hardly long enough for the boys. From gray dawn to twilight of evening
they “dropped and covered” (modern machinery was unknown to that time
and country) until the last hill in the last row was planted with a
shout.

The soft showers fell, and the corn sprouted and grew. But an
occasional riverman brought word of heavy rains up on “headwaters.”
Signs of weakness had been noticed in “Big Bull” dam, and if that
should break, “Jennie Bull” and “Grandfather,” below, would be swept
away also.

“What did that mean? That means a second Noah’s flood for you fellows,”
said the rivermen.

Steadily the rains fell, and steadily the river rose. “She is nearly
bank full,” announced Ed, coming in from an inspection late one night.
“Lucky that the main drive has gone down, or the lumbermen would have
an all summer job hauling their logs out of these high-water sloughs.”

In the night the boys were awakened by the “boom! boom!” as of steady
cannonading at a distance. “It must be the ‘sack drive,’” said Rob. “It
would take big logs to make that booming.”

“But, Rob, listen! That booming is on the west side of the house. You
know the river isn’t over there.” The boys sprang from their bed, and
in the early morning light beheld a vast expanse of wildly-rushing
water all about them. Fences were gone, but so far, the substantially
framed log buildings of the farm were intact.

“It’s the flood!” exclaimed Ed. “Big Bull dam has given way! See those
big logs sailing right across our corn field.”

Indeed, it was a disheartening situation that daylight brought to view.
Undoubtedly their corn crop was ruined, and Rob’s school days were
removed to a more distant, shadowy future. But another misfortune was
to be revealed. Wading out to the big pine on the river bank, to which
their flat-bottomed boat was moored, Ed brought it to the house, and
the boys paddled out to the barn lots. There they found the cattle
safe, though knee deep in water, under the sheds. But when they came to
the sheep fold, the fences were all gone, and not a woolly animal was
in sight.

“Dead!” exclaimed Rob. “Every last one of them drowned! And we expected
the coming lambs would double our flock.” “Maybe they’re not all dead,”
replied Ed. “Sheep can swim when they have to, though of course not
far in their heavy wool. But see! the current here sets in to Big Bend
timber where there are some patches of high ground. We may find some of
them stranded there. We’ll take the boat after breakfast, and have a
hunt for them.”

Happily, Ed’s surmise proved to be correct. Upon the small patches of
high ground in the big bend they found here and there a half-drowned
sheep, and in two days of exhausting toil they rescued and carried back
to life and safety eighteen of their flock of twenty-six.

The crest of the flood past, the waters receded as quickly as they had
come, and after a few days of bright sunshine the boys were able to
learn the extent of damage done to their crop. As soon as they came
upon the ground they saw that it could not have been worse. Not only
the growing corn, but the soil itself, as deep as the plow had loosened
it, was washed away. Not only that, but here and there, scattered over
the field, were logs--hundreds of them--left stranded by the receding
waters.

“What shall we do, Ed?” exclaimed Rob. “It will take us all summer to
get them off our land, and that means almost a whole year lost.”

Practical Ed was silent a few moments and then replied, “Don’t worry,
Rob, maybe we can get the job of hauling them into the river. Let’s see
whose mark is on them.” Examining the hack marks on the sides of the
logs, and the brand in the ends, Rob said, “Well, about all of them are
the I F brand--they’re Isaac Fitts’ logs.”

“Whew!” said Ed, “that old bear; but I believe we can haul them back
into the river cheaper for him than he can bring a crew up here from
Necedah and do it. We’ll try him, anyway.”

However, the Allen boys were not the only ones who were interesting
themselves in stray logs left ashore by the breaking of the big dams.
Next morning as they were preparing for their trip to the sawmill town,
there appeared a crew of swampers with teams, who, without so much as
“By your leave” were proceeding to haul the logs into the river. A big
man with red whiskers was directing the work, with many a shouted oath
and curse. “It’s not Fitts’ crew,” said Ed. “It’s some up-river folks.
Rob, I believe they’re rebranding those logs! They’re going to steal
them from old Fitts. It’s Larry Phelan, the timber thief and gambler.
I’m going to stop him. He has no rights on our ground anyway. You run
down after Mr. Thompson, he’s a Justice, and I’ll go warn Larry.”

Although Ed was but a lad, he blustered up to the big Irishman, and
demanded that he leave those logs alone. Back and forth they parleyed.
At last Larry exclaimed, “They’re my logs, an I’ll do as I plaze wid
thim.” Then to his men who had come up to listen, he roared, “Be aff
wid ye to yer work. What are ye doin’ here!”

“You are trespassing on this land,” insisted Ed, “and these are Isaac
Fitts’ logs. I can see what you are doing--making an L out of the I and
a P out of the F and putting your own brand over his on the ends.”

“Git out o’ here, or I’ll brain ye wid this peavey!” shouted the boss,
lifting his heavy cant-hook threateningly.

“Hold on! Hold on!” called Mr. Thompson, coming up with Rob. “I’m a
peace officer of this township, and I warn you that you are committing
trespass on this land. Don’t lay the weight of your finger on that lad,
or you’ll get something more than a fine.”

As Larry looked into the eyes of the old man, he saw something that
had not glowed there since the old days at Harper’s Ferry, when Mr.
Thompson had watched his own young brothers, riddled with bullets,
floating down the river--and he quieted down.

But the stakes were too large--here were at least two thousand dollars
worth of logs, and nobody but the boy had seen the changing of the
brands. All that the Justice had charged him with could be settled by a
fine, at the worst, and his lawyer could probably beat that case with a
jury.

“Misther Thompson, ye ould nigger-stealer, will ye tind yer own
affairs. I know what I’m doin’. Go awn, boys.” But no more marks were
changed while Mr. Thompson stayed.

“Well, boys,” said Uncle Henry, “it’s no use for us to get into a fight
with that mob. I’m too old now, and you are too young.”

“Uncle Henry,” spoke up Rob, “How much nearer is it to Necedah by the
woods trail than by the prairie road?”

“A matter of four miles,” replied Mr. Thompson; “but there is no
crossing at Little Yellow.”

“But I can swim it, even if the water is cold. Four from sixteen miles
leaves but twelve, and I believe I can make it with the ‘long trot’ in
two hours. We’ve just got to get Mr. Fitts here. Those logs that Larry
Phelan is rolling into the river are his.”

“Good, lad! I believe you can do it. The roads are something fearful,
but if old man Fitts learns that Larry Phelan is stealing his timber,
he’ll drive his buckskins here if he has to swim ’em through the mud
half way and run ’em over stumps the other half.”

There remained yet two hours of daylight as Rob swung into the forest
trail on the long trot his Indian friend Kalichigoogah had taught him.
Little Yellow was reached, and in spite of the numbing cold of the
water, was safely crossed, the lad swimming with one hand, while he
held the bundle of his clothes high and dry in the other. Then on he
sped in the long race of eight more miles.

The sun had been down for half an hour when the gruff old lumberman
opened his door at Rob’s knock. “Well, an’ what do ye want? We don’t
feed tramps here. What! What’s that ye say! My logs--an’ ’tis that
blackguard gambler Larry Phelan puttin’ his brand on ’em and bankin’
’em!” And, to tell the truth, the language of the old man was as
explosive as had been that of Larry himself.

“Jim, put the buckskins to the light ‘democrat.’ But lad, you’re hungry
an’ tired. Come in, come in an’ have a snack. Ran it in two-thirty, did
ye? An’ swam the river! Well, well! But we’ll tend to the rascal this
night.”

However, as the old man cooled down, the needlessness of a night ride
over the waste of ruined roads and flood-piled debris convinced him
of the wisdom of waiting until the light of day to make the journey.
By the time the birds were fairly awake, Mr. Fitts and Rob were well
upon their way, and Rob had broached the matter of securing the job of
hauling the logs into the river. The old man turned his keen eyes upon
the boy. “An’ what would ye do with all the money if ye got the job?
College! What for would a likely lad with good sense and good arms fool
away his time in college? Humph! Well, we’ll see.”

Phelan and his men and teams had not been idle: all night long they had
worked, and fully two hundred of the five hundred or more stray logs
were already piled in the river, bearing the changed marks, ready to go
down to the Necedah boom with the next rise.

Old man Fitts charged the swamping outfit like an enraged bull. “So yer
at yer old tricks, are ye, Larry? I’ve been wantin’ to ketch ye for a
long time. An’ now I’ve got the witnesses on ye.”

Phelan started in to bluster and curse, but evidently the presence of
Fitts was something he had not calculated upon, nor the fact that Henry
and Sam Thompson, who now arose from where they had been in hiding,
were witnesses to the felonious changing of the log marks.

Larry changed his mood. “Perhaps the men may have made a mistake in
the dark, Misther Fitts. If they’re yer logs ye can pay us what is
raysonable fer bankin’ av thim, and we’ll jist call it square.”

“No, we won’t, ye thief!” roared the old man. “Those logs in the river
are your logs now, do ye understand? They’ve got yer mark on ’em, every
one, an’ they’ll be put into your chute at the boom. An’ they’ve cost
ye just fifteen dollars the thousand, board measure. Do ye understand?
We’ll lump ’em at twelve hundred dollars, an’ ye’ll write the check fer
that just now. I can trust ye not to stop payment on that check.”

Counter threat and curses; calling the old man a robber (for Fitts had
made a gilt edge price on his logs), were of no avail. Larry Phelan, at
the end of many evil deeds, faced an open prison door, and he knew it.
After all, the twelve hundred dollars would not be all loss--and the
check was written.

“Well, now, boys,” said Mr. Fitts, when the men and teams had departed,
“what about the balance of these logs?--three hundred, I should say.
How would a dollar apiece do? Yes, that’s fair. Ye can worry them
all in by fall. An’ young man,” said he, turning to Rob with a queer
smile, “You can count the hauling of the two hundred already in the
river, as your share, for that college nonsense. I tacked that much
onto that thief, Larry Phelan. I reckon college won’t utterly ruin a
lad who can run twelve miles an’ swim an icy river.”




CHAPTER XVII

THE TRAGEDY OF THE MOUNDS


Notwithstanding the strenuous work of the summer, the boys got together
frequently to talk over their plans for the future. Dauphin and Rob
would begin together their studies in the preparatory department of
Carlton College, while Ed would look forward to the time when he would
be older and could join them.

Professor Hodge had written Dauphin that the college would accept his
Natural History collection at a price which would enable him to finish
his preparatory course and enter college, by working a part of his
time, and the care of Science Hall was offered him to supply that need.
Rob had no friends or acquaintances in the college town, but that fact
did not dismay him. Mr. Allen had taught his boys that difficulties
were but stepping stones up the heights of achievement, to the one who
had a clean life and steady will. Rob had both, and, whatever the price
demanded of effort and grit, he determined to have an education.

Dauphin would be a naturalist. He would need the training of the
college to give him quick perception, ability to classify his
knowledge, and arrive at correct conclusions. He would need to study
the languages in order that what had been revealed in the research of
men of other lands might be his.

Rob had not yet chosen the line of his life work, but he was equally
sure with Dauph that success and fame awaited boys who would apply
themselves as they intended to do. Many were the happy, earnest hours
spent by the boys in talking over the years they had spent together,
as well as the years that were to come. How marvelously their lives
had been spared, many times, since they had made their home in the
forest wilderness. Through dangers of fire and drowning and freezing,
one or another of them had been snatched back from the grave. The work
of these pioneer boys had been hard, but it had developed them into
lads of tough fiber, both of body and brain. They had had no idle
hours; whether at work out of doors, or during the long evenings of the
winters, they had their purpose in view--to prepare for life through
college. If their few dollars earned were jealously put away for this
purpose, no less were their minds trained by study for the necessary
preparation.

The days of August were drawing rapidly to a close; soon farewells must
be said, and the delights of forest and stream, as well as the duties
of the farm, be laid aside by the older boys for years, if not forever.

“Boys,” said Dauphin, “Professor Hodge, in one of his letters,
suggested that he would like the measurements of the hill and river
forts, and the old mound city, for a paper he is preparing on ‘The
Moundbuilders in Wisconsin.’ Let’s take a couple of days, and do a
little more exploring, and sketch the mounds, and take the measurements
for the professor.”

The boys readily agreed to the plan, and Ed suggested that they go by
the Indian camp at the mouth of Little Yellow, opposite Jim Dacora’s,
and persuade their friend Kalichigoogah to accompany them over to the
mound village.

The young Indian welcomed the boys to the camp, and his mother,
Menominee Mary, invited them to rest a bit in the wigwam. The earth
floor was as neat and wholesome as the floor of a parlor. Around the
sides were the couches, platforms raised about a foot from the floor
and heavily covered with the soft-dressed and ornamented skins of
bear, lynx, raccoon, and deer. The Indian mother offered the boys
sweet, ripe blackberries in white, birchbark dishes, but when they
mentioned the object of their expedition there came over her a quick
stiffening of body, and a startled look, almost of fear in her eyes.
“Butte-des-morts” said she using the French description, “much bad.
White boys stay here--not go.” But the boys, of course, were determined
to go on, notwithstanding the warning of the Indian woman, which they
were wholly at loss to understand. After the return of the Winnebagoes
from the South, Mary had placed her son in a mission school where
he had learned to read, and had acquired much of the way, and some
of the habits of thought of the white race; but there are things of
one’s early life that no subsequent training or polish will be able to
remove. Thus it was with the Indian lad’s veneration or superstitious
fear of the mysterious relics of the moundbuilders--places of “big
medicine.”

He was willing to explain to the boys the cause of his mother’s
warning, but was as loth as she that these sacred places should be
disturbed. “They mounds of dead,” said Kalichigoogah. “Big men, tall
like trees, make camp there. One day come snake, long like Minnenecedah
[the Yellow river]--big men make medicine; snake turn into long mound.
One day come great beast--two spears like logs in mouth [elephant]--big
men make medicine, great beast turn into big mound. Not good white boys
go near mounds. Angry spirit wake up; kill boy.”

The white boys agreeing that they would not dig into the mounds at
this time, but only take measurements, and make a plan of the old
encampment, the Indian mother consented, though with great reluctance,
for her son to accompany the party. But first she would put into his
keeping a little buckskin sack containing “strong medicine”--potent
charms--which might be able to protect them from the vengeance of the
spirits, should they be aroused.

As there was no need for them to hunt game, and the danger from bears,
or wild cats, panthers or lynx small indeed, at that time of year, the
boys had not burdened themselves with their guns, but Kalichigoogah
wrapped his blanket about his new 16-shot winchester, which the boys
accused him of taking along to shoot the ghosts. The Indian lad made no
reply to their chaffing, but strode off in silence.

The Yellow river was waded on a sandbar, and the river flat, a mile or
more in width, crossed. Here, the annual overflows had cut the soft
alluvial soil into deep, wide ditches, so that the land looked like a
succession of long breastworks. The flat was heavily timbered with oak
and hickory and linden, with an occasional gigantic pine rearing its
head high above the deciduous trees, like a sentinel of the forest.
Here the woods-folk still dwelt in comparative safety from their most
ferocious brother animal--man. It was going to be hard for Dauph and
Rob to part from this paradise of the nature-lover.

Up, out of the river flats, they came upon the sandy plain which
stretched eastward to the Wisconsin river, and then on to the shore
of the old sea bed. Gnarled, stunted pines covered the ground, in
some places growing in such profusion as to form almost impenetrable
thickets, but generally in more open growths, so that walking was even
less difficult than in the river “bottoms.”

Several times as they, boy-like, threshed through one of the thickets
they would start up a doe and her half-grown fawn, and once they
aroused a splendid buck, with the season’s antlers now full grown.

“Boys,” said Ed, “aren’t we somewhere in the neighborhood of the
mounds?”

“I am not sure,” replied Dauph, who was taking the lead, “I have never
come upon them from this direction, but unless I am mistaken, they lie
just beyond that thicket of scrub pine. How about it, Kali?”

But the Indian boy would make no reply. Evidently the expedition was
not at all to his liking.

In “Indian file” the boys entered the thicket of dwarfed pines, the
deerskin cap of Dauphin, the leader, who was the tallest, just showing
above the foliage. They had gone perhaps twenty rods into the thicket,
when a rifle shot rang out sharp and clear, and Dauphin sprang high
into the air with a loud cry, and fell in a crumpled heap at the feet
of Kalichigoogah. Like a flash out came the winchester from beneath the
blanket of the Indian boy, as he placed himself over the prostrate body
of his white friend, ready to give his own life in defense, if need be.

For a moment Ed and Rob were paralyzed with fear. Who had fired the
shot? Were they all about to be murdered? Then, as there was no second
shot, their courage returned, and they crashed through the thicket to
the opening on the side from which the report seemed to come, but there
was not a soul in sight: neither was it possible, because of the bed of
pine needles strewing the ground, to discover any track.

Thoroughly mystified, they hastened back to their wounded comrade.
There they found Dauphin with his head raised upon the lap of the
Indian lad, conscious, but rapidly weakening from loss of blood from an
ugly wound in his side. Rob tore off his cotton shirt and as best he
could applied a bandage to stop the flow of blood.

“We’ve got to get a doctor right away, and we’ve got to get Dauph
home,” announced Ed. “We might do more harm than good if we tried to
carry him ourselves, so, Kali, you had better hurry over to your camp
and have the men come on their ponies, and rig up a litter.” The Indian
lad looked up in a mute appeal to not be sent away from his stricken
friend, but as it became clear that this was perhaps the only chance to
save Dauphin’s life, he hastened away on his errand.

“Rob, you are the best runner; you had better get down to Necedah as
soon as you can, and get Doctor Cook up. We can’t tell how badly Dauph
is hurt.”

Who can describe the thoughts of that young lad, left alone with his
dying comrade? for the wound proved, indeed to be unto death. Ed was
not naturally superstitious, but the unexplained shot following the
Indian’s warning could not help but have a terrifying effect, deepening
as the hours brought darkness upon him.

Some of the time the wounded boy was delirious, and imagined that the
Indians were attacking them, and in his endeavors to spring up it was
all Ed could do to restrain him. At length the Indians arrived on their
ponies, and a rude but serviceable litter was made, upon which the red
men, two at a time, carried Dauphin to his home.

Mr. and Mrs. Thompson had been no strangers to sorrow and death; their
lives had known many bereavements and years of suffering, but Ed never
forgot the agony of the hour in which he bore to them the knowledge of
the accident to their young son.

Before morning Rob arrived with Doctor Cook, from Necedah, but it
was too late. The spirit of the lad they had all so fondly loved, had
passed out, and Dauph was dead.

Mr. Allen at once notified the authorities and a thorough search was
made for some clue to the one who had fired the fatal shot, but without
success; and it was not until years afterward that a man in a distant
state confessed to the facts. He said that with a companion he had been
on a hunting trip to the northern part of the state, and shortly after
having passed the old mounds they saw a patch of gray deerskin moving
along in the top of a thicket, and supposed it to be a part of the
head of a deer and had fired. The cry of a human being that followed
had shown their horrible mistake, and in a cowardly fear of possible
consequences they had hidden in the thicket until after dark and then
slipped away.

A new experience had entered the life of the Allen boys--Death. For the
first time they had looked in the still face of one who had been near
and dear, and heard it said “He is dead.”

What is death! Where was the boy who, just a few hours before, had been
with them so full of hope and joy and vigor? Had he ceased to exist?
Was that dead body, so soon to turn to dust, all that was left of their
friend? Or, was the real Dauphin somewhere, yet alive, and entering
upon an existence in which all his powers and aspirations would have
full scope, unhindered by earthly limitations?

Was it not really true that somewhere there was a God, who had made
all this marvelous universe, and man with the ability to discover
and enjoy its secrets? Did He make man like Himself? Would not man
of necessity have to be like Him in order to enjoy all that He had
created? What did it mean to be like God? Were they like God? If not,
how could they become so?

Not the words of these questions, but that which stood for them, filled
the hearts of the boys, as they looked upon the silent face of their
lost comrade. A new realm, a spiritual, was even then being opened to
them, and their angel was bidding their feet to enter.

The plan for happy college years together for Dauph and Rob was at an
end. Alone the lad would leave home and start forth upon his journey
into the strange, untried world. Yet not alone, for, although the
dear face of flesh was hidden from sight, he felt that the bright,
pure spirit of his comrade was still with him to beckon him on to the
heights.




CHAPTER XVIII

COLLEGE DAYS


Had you met him as he trudged along the dusty road on that day of
early September, you would have little suspected that you had come
into the presence of a hero; but the stuff of which heroes are made is
not carried in the way of outward observing, having its place within.
Records of the world’s great deeds give the place of honor and fame to
those who have taken cities and subdued peoples, but the Book of books
says that a greater hero than he who conquers a city is he who rules
his own spirit.

That he was one of the “greater heroes” Robert Allen was to make proof.

Had your curiosity prompted you to question the lad, as you met him, he
would have told you that he was on his way to enter Carlton College:
and had there crept into your voice a note of friendliness, enthusiasm
would have kindled in his blue-gray eyes, and he would have confided
to you the great ambitions that had been crowding in upon the fifteen
years of his young life. As he recounted the sacrifices that had been
made in his humble home, and the purpose and high courage for the years
of struggle before him, you would not have seen the poor clothes, the
awkward, uncouth manner, but would have given heed to the strong,
clean, manly soul within.

Robert Allen found employment at the college by which, working half his
time, he could spend the other half with his books. That he was the
victim of hard circumstances, or that there was any sort of injustice
to him in the fact that he had to saw and carry up wood for the wealthy
boys, and do other menial labor, never entered his thoughts. That his
grand dreams were coming true, and he was actually privileged to study
in a college, and sometime would be able to graduate, was too wonderful
and precious to allow any other sentiment than gratitude to have place
in his heart.

While Rob was, for his age, a well-read boy and at home with many of
the great ones of literature, he found it difficult at first to bring
his mind to the habits of study required by a college course. The class
room was a place of especial torture; of the twenty-six students in
his class, more than half were young ladies, and when, after hours
spent upon _amo, amas, amat_, etc., Rob would arise to recite he would
feel the eyes of all those elegant girls fixed upon him and his poor
clothes. Then, the sheep before his shearer was no more dumb than Rob
before the Latin teacher.

After several trials and failures Rob sought the kind-hearted professor
and requested the privilege of reciting privately to him in his room,
telling him of his confusion and its cause. The professor, with kindly
tact and Christly love, soon had the boy at his ease, and drew from him
the story of his aspirations and purposes. Then, instead of granting
his request, he said, “Robert, you prepare your lesson and come to the
class room as usual, and when you are called upon to recite, look into
my eyes, and remember that you are speaking to a friend who knows and
understands.”

It was not long before the personal sympathy of the young professor
made itself felt in greater confidence, and the boy was able to hold
his place in the class.

In the winter term a revival meeting was held in the college church.
Rob had never become a Christian, though often he had wished he might
be. He had been well reared, morally, and his life knew nothing of the
grosser sins common to so many of our young men and boys. Swearing,
Sabbath-breaking, drinking, smoking, and card-playing were evils of
which he had no experimental knowledge; but he knew that he was not a
Christian; that he had not been born of the Spirit. While his roommate,
Tom Wright, made sport of the preacher, and would bring in his set of
rough boys for a “high time” after the services, Rob was thoughtful and
serious. One night Professor Jackson, his Latin teacher, walked home
with him from the meeting and in an earnest, friendly way urged Rob to
become a Christian; adding the assurance that he was praying for him.

Rob thanked the professor and walked up to his room. One time, at
least, Satan helped, for Tom Wright and his fellows remained out nearly
all night upon a wild lark. Rob, his heart strangely stirred, felt that
he could not sleep, and at last flung himself at the side of his bed
crying, “O God, I want to be a Christian. I don’t know how, but You
know how to make me one, and I’ll never leave this bedside until I am
saved.”

Rob prayed on in his stumbling way until it seemed that he could do no
more, when all at once there came into his heart a beautiful stillness.
He felt as light as a feather, and as happy as a bird. He could not
stay in his room; and throwing open the door he ran down the corridor
to Professor Jackson’s room and awoke him with the glorious tidings
that his prayer had been answered and he was saved.

Rob’s first real test came the following night at bedtime. When he
was ready for bed there were two or three of Tom Wright’s gang in the
room with him, and when Rob, with the courage of a genuine hero, knelt
by the bedside and began to thank God for His goodness, and claim His
promise for future help and guidance, the boys were, for the moment,
dumbfounded. Then they broke out into cursing and reviling. They
declared they would have no pious hypocrite around there, even if they
had to throw him down stairs.

Night after night the persecution kept up, whenever one of the others
would be in the room at bedtime. They would tie Rob to the bedpost as
he prayed; they drenched him with ice water; and, harder than all to
bear, they followed his praying with vile and hideous blasphemy. But
Rob had enlisted under the banner of Jesus Christ, Who, when He was
reviled, reviled not again, and Who blessed when He was cursed; so the
fierce trial but deepened his real experience of grace. He became an
active worker for his Master among his college mates, and had the joy
of seeing several converted through his efforts.

Serious breaches of discipline had occurred in the dormitory some
two months after Robert’s conversion, and one Sunday night Professor
Jackson was deputized by the Faculty to stay in his room during the
church service and endeavor to get some clue to the transgressors.
After church had well begun, Tom Wright and his crowd, who were all
supposed to be at the service, got out an old fiddle, and with some
rough characters from the town, proceeded to have a dance in the halls,
all unconscious of the presence of the professor in the adjoining room.
The “fun” became furious, and one of the boys undertook to act the
character of “pious Bob Allen” for the amusement of the strangers, the
others using the name of Robert as if he were really present.

As the other students began to return from the service, the uproar
subsided, and when Rob reached his room his roommate was already there,
apparently having just returned from church. The next day, with a very
grave face, Professor Jackson called Rob into his room. Rob went in
smilingly, but his smile faded quickly at the stern look of his friend.


“Where were you last night, Robert? I want to give you a chance to
confess.”

“Why, I was at church. Where should I have been?”

“Do you mean to tell me that you know nothing of the disgraceful
occurance last night in the hall?”

“What occurance, sir? Indeed, I know nothing. I was at church.”

“Robert, Robert, I am so disappointed in you! I believed you to be a
manly young man, and a Christian. How could you so forget yourself as
to engage in such an affair, and then pretend that you were at church!
I was here in my room throughout, and heard your name called again and
again. Because of your previous perfect record, no public punishment
will be given you by the Faculty, but the other boys will be severely
dealt with.”

“Professor, I have told you the truth. Goodbye,” and Robert staggered
out to his own room, unable to fathom the depth of his misery. His
poverty and his life of toil isolated him from the most of the
students. How he longed for the quick understanding and sympathy of his
lost friend Dauphin. He had made comparatively few acquaintances in
college, and there had been but one, the young Latin professor, whom
his heart had really claimed for a friend. And now that one was lost!
That one despised him for a breaker of rules, and a liar. O it was too
much! The tempter came, as he always does in the moment of our stress,
and said, “Give it up. Give it all up. It’s no use. Go back home.”

The battle was fierce, and not soon over. But victory came--came
through the stretched-out Hand that had brought him salvation. In the
darkness of his extremity, the thought came to him that there was One
who knew all, and, he knelt and poured out his soul to the comforting
Christ.

Not for a moment afterward did Rob relax his conscientious work either
in the class room or in such Christian duties as came his way. His
manner became graver, if possible, and a little shyer, but there
glowed upon the face of the lad a steady light that would often cause
a wondering look from those who passed him by. He had conquered his
own spirit, and trusting, he looked to God for his vindication and his
reward.

Just before the commencement in June, an escapade of unusual
viciousness caused the expulsion of Tom Wright and two of his fellows.

As the students gathered in the college chapel on the last day of
school to hear the awards of prizes and scholarships that had been won
during the year, and the white-haired president had come to the Ira
Morton prize of $50 for the best Latin grades for the year, he paused,
and wiping his spectacles, said, “In connection with the award of
this prize, the Faculty have delegated to me another pleasant duty.
The confessions of some students whom we were obliged to send home,
during the past term, opened our eyes to the fact that we have had in
our midst as true a hero as any knight of old; a lad whose courage and
faithfulness under severe trial and severer suspicion and accusation
has shown a quality of manhood and Christian spirit that honors this
institution.” Briefly the president sketched the career of the boy,
then added, “To the $50 Morton prize, the Faculty have added another
$50 in recognition of the conflict and glorious victory of this young
man. Mr. Robert Allen, come forward and receive the honor which is your
due.”

In the years that were to come Robert Allen was to rise high in the
world, and receive honor from his fellow men, but no honor nor applause
ever was able to gladden his heart as did this vindication and victory
he had won through Jesus Christ.




      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.



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