The Boy Settlers Part 9

"That's the deceivingest bird I ever saw," panted Sandy, out of breath with running, and looking shamefacedly at the corn that he had spilled in his haste to catch his prey. "Why, it acted just as if its right wing was broken, and then it flew off as sound as a nut, for all I could see."

When the ploughmen met them, on the next turn of the team, Uncle Aleck said, "Did you catch the lapwing, you silly boy? That fellow fooled you nicely."

"Lapwing?" said Sandy, puzzled. "What's a lapwing?" But the ploughmen were already out of earshot.

"Oh, I know now," said Oscar. "I've read of the lapwing; it is a bird so devoted to its young, or its nest, that when it fancies either in danger, it a.s.sumes all the distress of a wounded thing, and, fluttering along the ground, draws the sportsman away from the locality."

"Right out of a book, Oscar!" cried Sandy. "And here's its nest, as sure as I'm alive!" So saying, the lad stooped, and, parting the gra.s.s with his hands, disclosed a pretty nest sunk in the ground, holding five finely speckled eggs. The bird, so lately playing the cripple, cried and circled around the heads of the boys as they peered into the home of the lapwing.

"Well, here's an actual settler that we must disturb, Sandy," said Oscar; "for the plough will smash right through this nest on the very next turn. Suppose we take it up and put it somewhere else, out of harm's way?"

"I'm willing," a.s.sented Sandy; and the two boys, carefully extracting the nest from its place, carried it well over into the ploughed ground, where under the lee of a thick turf it was left in safety.

But, as might have been expected, the parent lapwing never went near that nest again. The fright had been too great.

"What in the world are you two boys up to now?" shouted Uncle Aleck from the other side of the ploughing. "Do you call that dropping corn?

Hurry and catch up with the team; you are 'way behind."

"Great Scott!" cried Sandy; "I had clean forgotten the corn-dropping.

A nice pair of farmers we are, Oscar!" and the lad, with might and main, began to close rapidly the long gap between him and the steadily moving ox-team.

"Leg-weary work, isn't it, Sandy?" said his father, when they stopped at noon to take the luncheon they had brought out into the field with them.

"Yes, and I'm terribly hungry," returned the boy, biting into a huge piece of cold corn-bread. "I shouldn't eat this if I were at home, and I shouldn't eat it now if I weren't as hungry as a bear. Say, daddy, you cannot think how tired my leg is with the punching of that dibble into the sod; seems as if I couldn't hold out till sundown; but I suppose I shall. First, I punch a hole by jamming down the dibble with my foot, and then I kick the hole again with the same foot, after I have dropped in the grains of corn. These two motions are dreadfully tiresome."

"Yes," said his uncle, with a short laugh, "and while I was watching you and Oscar, this forenoon, I couldn't help thinking that you did not yet know how to make your muscles bear an equal strain. Suppose you try changing legs?"

"Changing legs?" exclaimed both boys at once. "Why, how could we exchange legs?"

"I know what Uncle Aleck means. I saw you always used the right leg to jam down the dibble with, and then you kicked the hole full with the right heel. No wonder your right legs are tired. Change hands and legs, once in a while, and use the dibble on the left side of you,"

said Charlie, whose driving had tired him quite as thoroughly.

"Isn't Charlie too awfully knowing for anything, Oscar?" said Sandy, with some sarcasm. Nevertheless, the lad got up, tried the dibble with his left hand, and saying, "Thanks, Charlie," dropped down upon the fragrant sod and was speedily asleep, for a generous nooning was allowed the industrious lads.

CHAPTER XI

AN INDIAN TRAIL.

The next day was Sunday, and, true to their New England training, the settlers refrained from labor on the day of rest. Mr. Bryant took his pocket Bible and wandered off into the wild waste of lands somewhere.

The others lounged about the cabin, indoors and out, a trifle sore and stiff from the effects of work so much harder than that to which they had been accustomed, and glad of an opportunity to rest their limbs.

The younger of the boy settlers complained that they had worn their legs out with punching holes in the sod while planting corn. The soles of their feet were sore with the pressure needed to jam the dibble through the tough turf. In the afternoon, they all wandered off through the sweet and silent wilderness of rolling prairie into the woods in which they proposed to lay off another claim for pre-emption.

At a short distance above their present home, cutting sharply through the sod, and crossing the Republican Fork a mile or so above their own ford, was an old Indian trail, which the boys had before noticed but could not understand. As Charlie and Oscar, pressing on ahead of their elders, came upon the old trail, they loitered about until the rest of the party came up, and then they asked what could have cut that narrow track in the turf, so deep and so narrow.

"That's an Injun trail," said Younkins, who, with an uncomfortably new suit of Sunday clothes and a smooth-shaven face, had come over to visit his new neighbors. "Didn't you ever see an Injun trail before?"

he asked, noting the look of eager curiosity on the faces of the boys.

They a.s.sured him that they never had, and he continued: "This yere trail has been here for years and years, long and long before any white folks came into the country. Up north and east of yer, on the head-waters of the Big Blue, the Cheyennes used to live,"--Younkins p.r.o.nounced it Shyans,--"and as soon as the gra.s.s began to start in the spring, so as to give feed to their ponies and to the buffalo, they would come down this yere way for game. They crossed the Fork just above yere-like, and then they struck down to the head-waters of the Smoky Hill and so off to the westwards. Big game was plenty in those days, and now the Injuns off to the north of yere come down in just the same way--hunting for game."

The boys got down on their knees and scanned the trail with new interest. It was not more than nine or ten inches across, and was so worn down that it made a narrow trench, as it were, in the deep sod, its lower surface being as smooth as a rolled wagon-track. Over this well-worn track, for ages past, the hurrying feet of wild tribes had pa.s.sed so many times that even the wiry gra.s.s-roots had been killed down.

"Did war parties ever go out on this trail, do you suppose?" asked Sandy, sitting up in the gra.s.s.

"Sakes alive, yes!" replied Younkins. "Why, the Cheyennes and the Comanches used to roam over all these plains, in the old times, and they were mostly at war."

"Where are the Cheyennes and the Comanches now, Mr. Younkins?" asked Uncle Aleck.

"I reckon the Comanches are off to the south-like somewhere. It appears to me that I heard they were down off the Texas border, somewheres; the Cheyennes are to the westwards, somewhere near Fort Laramie."

"And what Indians are there who use this trail now?" inquired Oscar, whose eyes were sparkling with excitement as he studied the well-worn path of the Indian tribes.

Younkins explained that the Pottawottomies and the p.a.w.nees, now located to the north, were the only ones who used the trail. "Blanket Indians," he said they were, peaceable creatures enough, but not good neighbors; he did not want any Indians of any sort near him. When one of the boys asked what blanket Indians were, Younkins explained,--

"There's three kinds of Injuns, none on 'em good,--town Injuns, blanket Injuns, and wild Injuns. You saw some of the town Injuns when you came up through the Delaware reserve--great lazy fellows, lyin'

round the house all day and lettin' the squaws do all the work. Then there's the blankets; they live out in the woods and on the prairie, in teepees, or lodges, of skins and canvas-like, moving round from place to place, hunting over the plains in summer, and living off'n the Gov'ment in winter. They are mostly at peace with the whites, but they will steal whenever they get a chance. The other kind, and the worst, is the wild ones. They have nothing to do with the Government, and they make war on the whites whenever they feel like it. Just now, I don't know of any wild Injuns that are at war with Uncle Sam; but the Arapahoes, Comanches, and Cheyennes are all likely to break loose any time. I give 'm all a plenty of elbow room."

As the boys reluctantly ceased contemplating the fascinating Indian trail, and moved on behind the rest of the party, Charlie said: "I suppose we must make allowance for Younkins's prejudices. He is like most of the border men, who believe that all the good Indians are dead. If the Cheyennes and the Comanches could only tell their story in the books and newspapers, we might hear the other side."

The idea of a wild Indian's writing a book or a letter to the newspapers tickled Sandy so much that he laughed loud and long.

Some two miles above the point where the settlers' ford crossed the Republican Fork, the stream swept around a bluffy promontory, and on a curve just above this was the tract of timber land which they now proposed to enter upon for their second claim. The trees were oak, hickory, and beech, with a slight undergrowth of young cottonwoods and hazel. The land lay prettily, the stream at this point flowing in a southerly direction, with the timber claim on its northwesterly bank.

The sunny exposure of the grove, the open glades that diversified its dense growth, and the babbling brook that wound its way through it to the river, all combined to make it very desirable for a timber claim.

At a short distance from the river the land rose gradually to a high ridge, and on the top of this grew a thick wood of spruce and fir.

"That's what you want for your next cabin," said Younkins, pointing his finger in the direction of the pines. "Best kind of stuff for building there is in these parts." Then he explained to the boys the process of cutting down the trees, splitting them up into shakes, or into lengths suitable for cabin-building, and he gave them an entertaining account of all the ways and means of finishing up a log-cabin,--a process, by the way, which they found then more entertaining in description than they afterward found it in the reality.

That night when Sandy lay down to refreshing sleep it was to dream of picturesque Indian fights, witnessed at a safe distance from afar.

Accordingly, he was not very much surprised next morning, while he was helping Charlie to get ready the breakfast, when Oscar ran in breathless, with the one word, "Indians!"

"Come out on the hill back of the cabin," panted Oscar. "There's a lot of 'em coming out on the trail we saw yesterday, all in Indian file.

Hurry up!" and away he darted, Sandy hastening with him to see the wonderful sight.

Sure enough, there they were, twenty-five or thirty Indians,--blanket Indians, as Younkins would have said,--strung along in the narrow trail, all in Indian file. It amazed the lads to see how the little Indian ponies managed to keep their feet in the narrow path. But they seemed to trot leisurely along with one foot before the other, just as the Indians did. Behind the mounted men were men and boys on foot, nearly as many as had pa.s.sed on horseback. These kept up with the others, silently but swiftly maintaining the same pace that the mounted fellows did. It was a picturesque and novel sight to the young settlers. The Indians were dressed in the true frontier style, with hunting-shirt and leggings of dressed deerskin, a blanket slung loosely over the shoulder, all bareheaded, and with coa.r.s.e black hair flowing in the morning breeze, except for the loose knot in which it was twisted behind. Some of them carried their guns slung on their backs; and others of them had the weapons in their hands, ready for firing on the instant.

"There they go, over the divide," said Oscar, as the little cavalcade reached the last roll of the prairie, and began to disappear on the other side. Not one of the party deigned even to look in the direction of the wondering boys; and if they saw them, as they probably did, they made no sign.

"There they go, hunting buffalo, I suppose," said Sandy, with a sigh, as the last Indian of the file disappeared down the horizon.

"Dear me! don't I wish I was going out after buffalo, instead of having to dibble corn into the sod all day! Waugh! Don't I hate it!" And the boy turned disconsolately back to the cabin. But he rallied with his natural good-humor when he had his tale to tell at the breakfast-table. He eagerly told how they had seen the Indians pa.s.sing over the old trail, and had gazed on the redskins as they went "on the warpath."

"Warpath, indeed!" laughed Charlie. "Pot-hunters, that's what they are. All the warfare they are up to is waged on the poor innocent buffalo that Younkins says they are killing off and making scarcer every year."

"If n.o.body but Indians killed buffalo," said Mr. Bryant, "there would be no danger of their ever being all killed off. But, in course of time, I suppose this country will all be settled up, and then there will be railroads, and after that the buffalo will have to go. Just now, any white man that can't saddle his horse and go out and kill a buffalo before breakfast thinks they are getting scarce. But I have heard some of the soldiers say that away up north of here, a little later in the season, the settlers cannot keep their crops, the buffalo roam all over everything so."

"For my part," put in Charlie, "I am not in the least afraid that the buffalo will be so plenty around these parts that they will hurt our crops; and I'd just like to see a herd come within shooting distance."

And here he raised his arms, and took aim along an imaginary rifle.

Later in the forenoon, when the two younger boys had reached the end of the two rows in which they had been planting, Sandy straightened himself up with an effort, and said, "This is leg-weary work, isn't it, Oscar? I hate work, anyhow," he added, discontentedly, leaning on the top of his dibble, and looking off over the wide and green prairie that stretched toward the setting sun. "I wish I was an Indian."