In the Days of Poor Richard Part 28

Late in the second day out, they came suddenly on a young moose. Jack presented his piece and brought the animal down. They skinned him and cut out the loins and a part of each hind quarter. When Solomon wrapped the meat in a part of the hide and slung it over his shoulder, night was falling.

"Cat's blood an' gunpowder! The ol' night has a sly foot," said Solomon. "We won't see no Crow Hill tavern. We got t' make a snow house."

On the south side of a steep hill near them was a deep, hard frozen drift. Solomon cut the crust with his hatchet and began moving big blocks of snow. Soon he had made a cavern in the great white pile, a fathom deep and high, and as long as a full grown man. They put in a floor of balsam boughs and spread their blankets on it. Then they cut a small dead pine and built a fire a few feet in front of their house and fried some bacon and a steak and made snow water and a pot of tea.

The steak and bacon were eaten on slices of bread without knife or fork. Their repast over, Solomon made a rack and began jerking the meat with a slow fire of green hardwood smoldering some three feet below it. The "jerk" under way, they reclined on their blankets in the snow house secure from the touch of a cold wind that swept down the hillside, looking out at the dying firelight while Solomon told of his adventures in the Ohio country.

Jack was a bit afflicted with "snow-shoe evil," being unaccustomed to that kind of travel, and he never forgot the sense of relief and comfort which he found in the snow house, or the droll talk of Solomon.

"You're havin' more trouble to git married than a Mingo brave," Solomon said to Jack. "'Mongst them, when a boy an' gal want to git married, both fam'lies have to go an' take a sweat together. They heat a lot o'

rocks an' roll 'em into a pen made o' sticks put in crotches an'

covered over with skins an' blankets. The hot rocks turn it into a kind o' oven. They all crawl in thar an' begin to sweat an' hoot an'

holler. You kin hear 'em a mile off. It's a reg'lar hootin' match.

I'd call it a kind o' camp meetin'. When they holler it means that the devil is lettin' go. They're bein' purified. It kind o' seasons 'em so they kin stan' the heat o' a family quarrel. When Injuns have had the grease sweat out of 'em, they know suthin' has happened. The women'll talk fer years 'bout the weddin' sweat."

Now and then, as he talked, Solomon arose to put more wood on the fire and keep "the jerk sizzling." Just before he lay down for the night, he took some hard wood coals and stored them in a griddle full of hot ashes so as to save tinder in the morning.

They were awakened in the night by the ravening of a pack of wolves at the carca.s.s of the slain moose, which lay within twenty rods of the snow camp. They were growling and snapping as they tore the meat from the bones. Solomon rose and drew on his boots.

"Cat's blood an' gunpowder! I thought the smell o' the jerk would bring 'em," Solomon whispered. "Say, they's quite a pa.s.sel o' wolves thar--you hear to me. No, I ain't skeered o' them thar whelps, but it's ag'in' my principles to go to sleep if they's nuthin' but air 'twixt me an' them. They might be jest fools 'nough to think I were good eatin'; which I ain't. I guess it's 'bout time to take keer o'

this 'ere jerk an' start up a fire. I won't give them loafers nothin'

but h.e.l.l, if they come 'round here--not a crumb."

Solomon went to work with his ax in the moonlight, while Jack kindled up the fire.

"We don't need to tear off our b.u.t.tons hurryin'," said the former, as he flung down a dead spruce by the fireside and began chopping it into sticks. "They won't be lookin' for more fodder till they've picked the bones o' that 'ere moose. Don't make it a big fire er you'll melt our roof. We jest need a little belt o' blaze eround our front. Our rear is safe. Chain lightnin' couldn't slide down this 'ere hill without puttin' on the brakes."

Soon they had a good stack of wood inside the fire line and in the pile were some straight young birches. Solomon made stakes of these and drove them deep in the snow close up to the entrance of their refuge, making a stockade with an opening in the middle large enough for a man to pa.s.s through. Then they sat down on their blankets, going out often to put wood on the fire. While sitting quietly with their rifles in hand, they observed that the growling and yelping had ceased.

"They've got that 'ere moose in their packs," Solomon whispered. "Now keep yer eye peeled. They'll be snoopin' eround here to git our share.

You see."

In half a moment, Jack's rifle spoke, followed by the loud yelp of a wolf well away from the firelight.

"Uh, huh! You warmed the wax in his ear, that's sart'in;" said Solomon as Jack was reloading. "Did ye hear him say 'Don't'?"

The scout's rifle spoke and another wolf yelped.

"Yer welcome," Solomon shouted. "I slammed that 'er hunk o' lead into the pack leader--a whale of a wolf. The ol' Cap'n stepped right up clus. Seen 'im plain--gray, long legged ol' whelp. He were walkin'

towards the fire when he stubbed his toe. It's all over now. They'll snook erway. The army has lost its Gin'ral."

They saw nothing more of the wolf pack and after an hour or so of watching, they put more wood on the fire, filled the opening in their stockade and lay down to rest. Solomon called it a night of "one-eyed sleep" when they got up at daylight and rekindled the fire and washed their hands and faces in the snow. The two dead wolves lay within fifty feet of the fire and Solomon cut off the tail of the larger one for a souvenir.

They had more steak and bread, moistened with tea, for breakfast and set out again with a good store of jerked meat in their packs. So they proceeded on their journey, as sundry faded clippings inform us, spending their nights thereafter at rude inns or in the cabins of settlers until they had pa.s.sed the village of the Mohawks, where they found only a few old Indians and their squaws and many dogs and young children. The chief and his sachems and warriors and their wives had gone on to the great council fire in the land of Kiodote, the Th.o.r.n.y Tree.

They spent a night in the little cabin tavern of Bill Scott on the upper waters of the Mohawk. Mrs. Scott, a comely woman of twenty-six, had been a sister of Solomon's wife. She and the scout had a pleasant visit about old times in Cherry Valley where they had spent a part of their childhood, and she was most thoughtful and generous in providing for their comfort. The Scotts had lost two children and another, a baby, was lying asleep in the cradle. Scott was a hard working, sullen sort of a man who made his living chiefly by selling rum to the Indians. Solomon used to say that he had been "hooked by the love o'

money an' et up by land hunger."

"You'll have to git away from The Long House," Solomon said to Scott.

"One reason I come here was to tell ye."

"What makes ye think so?" Scott asked.

"The Injuns'll hug ye when they're drunk but they'll hate ye when they're sober," Solomon answered. "They lay all their trouble to fire-water an' they're right. If the cat jumps the wrong way an' they go on the war-path, ye got to look out."

"I ain't no way skeered," was Scott's answer. He had a hoa.r.s.e, damp voice that suggested the sound of rum gurgling out of a jug. His red face indicated that he was himself too fond of the look and taste of fire-water.

"Ye got to git erway from here I tell ye," Solomon insisted.

Scott stroked his sandy beard and answered: "I guess I know my business 'bout as well as you do."

"Le's go back to Cherry Valley, Bill," the woman urged.

"Oh, keep yer trap shet," Scott said to her.

"He's as selfish as a he-bear," said Solomon as he and Jack were leaving soon after daylight. "Don't think o' nuthin' but gittin' rich.

Keeps swappin' firewater fer land an' no idee o' the danger."

They left the woman in tears.

"It's awful lonesome here. I'll never see ye ag'in," she declared as she stood wiping her eyes with her ap.r.o.n.

"Here now--you behave!" Solomon exclaimed. "I'll toddle up to your door some time next summer."

"Mirandy is a likely womern--I tell ye," Solomon whispered as they went away. "He is a mean devil! Ain't the kind of a man fer her--nary bit.

A rum bottle is the only comp'ny he keers fer."

They often spoke of the pathetic loneliness of this good-looking, kindly, mismated woman. Jack and Solomon reached the council on the fifth day of their travel. There, a level plain in the forest was covered with Indians and the snow trodden smooth. Around it were their tents and huts and houses. There were males and females, many of the latter in rich silks and scarlet cloths bordered with gold fringe.

Some wore brooches and rings in their noses. Among them were handsome faces and erect and n.o.ble forms.

In the center of the plain stood a great stack of wood and green boughs of spruce and balsam built up in layers for the evening council fire.

Old Kiodote knew Solomon and remembered Jack, whom he had seen in the great council at Albany in 1761.

"He says your name was 'Boiling Water,'" Solomon said to Jack after a moment's talk with the chief.

"He has a good memory," the young man answered.

The two white men were invited to take part in the games. All the warriors had heard of Solomon's skill with a rifle. "Son of the Thunder," they called him in the League of the Iroquois. The red men gathered in great numbers to see him shoot. Again, as of old, they were thrilled by his feats with the rifle, but when Jack began his quick and deadly firing, crushing b.u.t.ternuts thrown into the air, with rifle and pistol, a kind of awe possessed the crowd. Many came and touched him and stared into his face and called him "The Brother of Death."

3

Solomon's speech that evening before the council fire impressed the Indians. He had given much thought to its composition and Jack had helped him in the invention of vivid phrases loved by the red men. He addressed them in the dialect of the Senecas, that being the one with which he was most familiar. He spoke of the thunder cloud of war coming up in the east and the cause of it and begged them to fight with their white neighbors, under the leadership of The Great Spirit for the justice which He loved. Solomon had brought them many gifts in token of the friendship of himself and his people.

Old Theandenaga, of the Mohawks, answered him in a speech distinguished by its n.o.ble expressions of good will and by an eloquent, but not ill-tempered, account of the wrongs of the red men. He laid particular stress on the corrupting of the young braves with fire-water.

"Let all bad feeling be buried in a deep pool," Solomon answered.

"There are bad white men and there are bad Indians but they are not many. The good men are like the leaves of the forest--you can not count them--but the bad man is like the scent pedlar [the skunk].