The Desert Home Part 25

"At this juncture we heard Frank calling out to his brother to make for the sh.o.r.e; while, instead of retreating, he poised himself upon his skates, until Harry had pa.s.sed; and then dashed off, followed by the whole pack. Another slight turn brought him nearly in our direction.

"There was a large hole broken through the ice close by the sh.o.r.e; and we saw that, unless he turned again, he would skate into it! We thought he was watching the wolves too intently to see it, and we shouted to warn him. Not so: he knew better than we what he was about. When he had reached within a few feet of the hole, he wheeled sharply to the left, and came dashing up to the point where we stood to receive him.

The wolves, following in a close clump, and too intent upon their chase to see anything else, went sweeping past the angle; and the next moment plunged into the broken ice!

"Cudjo and I ran shouting forward, and with the heavy rail and long spear commenced dealing death amongst them. It was but a short, though exciting scene. Five of them were speared and drowned; while the sixth succeeded in crawling out upon the ice, and was making off, frightened enough at the cold ducking he had got. I thought he was going to escape us, but at that moment I heard the crack of a rifle from behind; and the wolf tumbled over, howling like a shot hound. On turning around, I saw Harry with my rifle, which Mary had brought down during the encounter, and which she had intrusted to Harry as a better marksman than herself.

The wolf was still only wounded, kicking furiously about upon the ice; but Cudjo now ran out, and, after a short struggle, finished the business with his spear.

"That was a day of great excitement in our little community. Frank, who was the hero of the day, although he said nothing, was not a little proud of his skating feat. And well might be, as, but for his manoeuvres, poor Harry would undoubtedly have fallen a prey to the fierce wolves."

CHAPTER FORTY THREE.

TAMING THE GREAT ELK.

"In the third year our beavers had increased to such numbers, that we saw it was time to thin them off, and commence laying up our store of furs. They had grown so tame that they would take food from our hands.

We had no difficulty, therefore, in capturing those we intended to kill, without giving alarm to the others. For this purpose we constructed a sort of penn, or bye-pool, with raised mud banks, near the edge of the lake, and a sluice-gate leading into it. Here we were accustomed to feed the animals; and whenever a quant.i.ty of roots of the swamp sa.s.safras was thrown into the pool, a large number of the beavers crowded into it--so that we had nothing else to do but shut down the sluice-gate, and catch them at our leisure. We accomplished all this very quietly; and as none that we trapped were ever allowed to go back and 'tell the tale,' and as at all other seasons the trap was open and free, of course the surviving beavers, with all their sagacity, never knew what became of their companions, and did not even appear to suspect us of foul play, but remained tame as ever.

"In our first crop of skins we laid by, at least 450 pounds worth, with more than 50 pounds worth of 'castoreum.' In our second year we were enabled to do still better; and the produce of that season we estimate at 1000 pounds. Wanting a place to dry and store our furs, we built a new log-cabin, which is the one we are now living in. The old one became our store-house.

"The third year of our trapping was quite as productive as the second; and so with the fourth and fifth. Each of them yielded, at least, 1000 pounds worth of furs and 'castoreum;' so that our old cabin now contains 4500 pounds of property, which we have taken care to keep in good condition. Besides, we estimate our livestock in the dam, which we can trap at any time, at 2500 pounds more; so that, you see, we are worth in all 7000 pounds at this moment. Do you not think, my friends, that we have realised the prediction of my wife, and _made a fortune in the Desert_?

"As soon as we began to collect these valuable furs, a new train of thought was suggested to us--when and how we should bring them to a market.

"Here was a grand difficulty that stared us in the face. Without a market in which to dispose of them, our furs would be of no more use to us, than a bag of gold would be to a man dying with hunger in the middle of a desert. Although surrounded with plenty for all our wants and necessities, we were still, in a manner, imprisoned in our little valley oasis. We could no more leave it, than the castaway sailor could leave his desert island. With all the animals that were subject to us, none of them were beasts of burden or draught--that is, except Pompo. He was old at the time that these reflections first occurred to us; and when we should be ready to leave our valley in a few years more, poor Pompo would be still older; in fact, barely able to carry himself, let alone a whole family of people, with several thousand beaver-skins to boot.

"Although quite happy where we were--for we were always too much occupied to be otherwise--these thoughts would intrude upon us every now and then, and they gave us a good deal of anxiety.

"As for Mary and myself, I believe we should have been contented to remain where we were, and lay our bones in this lovely, but lonely spot.

But we had others to think of--our children. To them we had a duty to perform--the duty of their education. We could not think of bringing them up ignorant of the world; and leaving them to such a wild and wayward fate as would be theirs. These reflections, I have said, at times pressed heavily upon us.

"I proposed to my wife that I should take Pompo, and endeavour to penetrate the settlements of New Mexico--where I could obtain either mules, horses, or oxen. These I should bring back to our valley, and keep them until we required them for carrying us out of the Desert.

Mary would not listen to this proposal. She would not consent that we should be separated. 'We might never,' said she, 'see each other again.' She would not allow me to go.

"Indeed, when I reflected seriously on this matter I saw that it would have been useless for me to make the attempt. Even could I have crossed the Desert in safety, where was the money wherewith to purchase these animals? I had not enough to buy either ox or a.s.s. The people of New Mexico would have laughed at me.

"'Let us be patient,' advised my wife. 'We are happy where we are.

When the time arrives, and we are ready to go forth, trust that the hand which brought us here _can_ and _will_ guide us safely back again.'

"With such words of consolation my n.o.ble wife always ended our conversation on that subject.

"I looked upon her words as almost prophetic; and so they proved in this case, as on many other occasions.

"One day--it was about the fourth year of our sojourn in the valley--we were talking on this very theme; and Mary, as usual, had just expressed her firm reliance upon the hand of Providence to deliver us from our strange captivity, when our conversation was interrupted by Harry, who came running into the house breathless with haste, and with looks full of triumph.

"'Papa! mamma!' cried he; 'two elks--two young elks--taken in the trap!

Cudjo is bringing them on in the cart,--two beautiful young elks, about as big as year-old calves.'

"There was nothing very new or strange in this announcement. We had captured elk in the pit-fall before; and we had several of them in our park--old ones. It was the fact of their being 'young elk,'--a sort we had not yet taken--which had put Harry into an unusual state of excitement.

"I thought nothing of it at the moment, but went out along with Mary and the children to have a look at our new pets.

"While Cudjo and the boys were engaged in putting them into the park, all at once I remembered what I had read of, but which had hitherto escaped my memory--that the great American elk is capable of being trained as a beast either of draught or burden.

"I need hardly tell you, my friends, that this thought at once led to a series of reflections. Could these elk be trained to draw a wagon?--to _draw us out of the Desert_?

"I lost no time in communicating my thoughts to my wife. She, too, had read of this--in fact, in a London menagerie, had seen the elk in harness. The thing, therefore, was practicable. We resolved to use every effort to make it so.

"Let me not weary you, my friends, with details. We set to work to train our young elk. No man knew better than Cudjo how to break a pair of oxen to either plough or cart; and when the elk had grown big, Cudjo yoked them to the plough, and turned up several acres of ground with them. During the winter, too, many a good load of dead-wood did Cudjo make them 'haul' up to the wood-pile that supplied our fire. In short, they worked, both in the plough and cart, as gentle as oxen."

CHAPTER FORTY FOUR.

CATCHING THE WILD HORSES.

"We had accomplished a great object. Nothing remained but to train a sufficient number of elk for our purpose. We trapped several fawns; and Cudjo proceeded in breaking them as he had done the others.

"At this time, however, an event occurred which verified my wife's prediction still more clearly, and proved that the hand of G.o.d was over and around us.

"One morning, a little after daybreak, and just before we had risen, we were all thrown into a state of consternation by a noise that came from without. It was the trampling of hoofs--of many hoofs; and there was no difficulty in perceiving that horses were about the house. Their neighing proved this--for Pompo had neighed in his stable, and we could hear a dozen of them uttering their loud responses.

"'Indians!' thought we: and we gave ourselves up for lost.

"We all ran to our arms. Harry, Frank, and I, seized hold of our rifles, while Cudjo betook himself to his great spear. I opened one of the windows, and looked cautiously out. Horses they were, sure enough, but no hors.e.m.e.n! There they were--in all nearly a dozen of them--white, black, red, speckled and spotted like hounds! They were dashing about through the open ground, neighing, snorting, rearing at each other, and tossing back their long flowing manes, while their tails swept away behind them in beautiful luxuriance. There were they, without bridle or saddle, or any other sign that the hand of man had ever touched them.

And never had it. I saw at a glance what they were. They were _mustangs_--the wild horses of the Desert.

"We were not long in resolving how to act. It was evident they had come up the stream from the eastern plains; and, seeing the valley, had been tempted by its greenness, and had strayed into it. Our design, then, was at once formed, and that was to prevent them from getting out again.

"This could be accomplished very easily, by closing up the road which led down to the valley; but, then, how were we to get to it without giving them the alarm? They were playing directly in front of the house, and we could not pa.s.s out of the door without showing ourselves.

This would at once set them off in a wild gallop, and we should never see more of them. We knew they would not allow us to approach them--for we had seen several bands of them while crossing the prairies, and these would not allow our hunters to get within less than a mile of them.

This is a curious fact--that the horse, which you would suppose to be the natural companion of man--once he has escaped from captivity, and goes wild, becomes more shy of man than any other animal, and more difficult to be approached. He seems to have an idea of what is wanted with him, and is determined not to return to slavery. I have never seen a drove of wild horses, but the thought occurred to me, that there was some old 'runaway' among them, who told the rest how he had been used, and cautioned them to keep clear of us. Certain it is, that the wild horse is the wildest of all animals.

"How, then, were we to get out, and circ.u.mvent the drove? That was soon decided. Telling Cudjo to take his axe and follow me, I climbed out at the back window of our cabin; and keeping the house between us and the horses, we crept along past our store-house and stable, until we got into the woods in the rear. We skirted through the timber, and soon reached the point where the road runs out of the valley. Here Cudjo set l.u.s.tily to work with his axe; and in half an hour we had felled a tree across the track, completely blocking it up. We took care to make it secure, by adding several rails, in such a way that no horse without wings could have leaped over it. This done, we gave ourselves no farther concern about being seen by the mustangs; and, shouldering our implements, we marched leisurely back to the house. Of course, the moment the wild horses saw us, they galloped off into the woods; but we did not care for that, as we could easily find them again. And find them we did. Pompo was saddled and bridled; a lazo was made out of raw-hide ropes; and in less than three days the whole _caballada_ of wild horses--eleven in all--was shut up in our park.

"Now, my friends, I fear I have quite tired you with our adventures. I might relate many more, and perhaps, at some future time, may do so. I might tell you how we caught and tamed the wild sheep and the antelopes;--how we captured the young buffaloes on the upper plains, and tamed them, and made cheese and b.u.t.ter from their milk;--how we reared up the kittens of the cougar and the cubs of the black bear;--how the wild geese, and swans, and cranes, and pelicans, migrated to our lake, and became quite tame with us;--how Cudjo and I with our horses made a journey across the Desert to the 'Camp of Sorrow,' as we called the place where our friends had been ma.s.sacred;--how we picked out two of the best of the wagons, and with the gunpowder which we took from the bomb-sh.e.l.ls and many other useful articles, returned again to our valley. These, and many other adventures with wolves and wolverenes, with panthers and peccaries, and porcupines and opossums, I might detail to you; but no doubt you are already wearied with the length of my story.

"It is now nearly ten years since our arrival in this valley oasis.

During all that time, we have lived contented and happy; and G.o.d has favoured our efforts, and crowned them with success. But our children have grown up almost wild, as you see,--with no other education than that which we ourselves have been able to impart to them; and we are anxious on their account once more to return to the civilised world. It is our intention then to proceed to Saint Louis in the spring. For this purpose, we have everything ready--our wagons, and horses, and furs--all except those which we intend to trap in the ensuing winter. I know not whether we may ever return to this sweet spot--though it will be always dear to us from a thousand memories. That will depend upon circ.u.mstances arising in the future, and which we cannot now foresee.

It is our intention, however, on leaving the valley, to throw open their bars and set all our captives free--to let them return once more to their wild independence.

"And now, my friends, I have but one request to make of you. It is late in the season. You have lost your trail; and, as you all know, it is very perilous to attempt crossing the prairies in winter. Remain with me, then, until spring; and let us all go together. The winter will be a short one; and I shall endeavour to make it pa.s.s pleasantly for you.

I can promise you plenty of hunting adventures; and, when the proper season arrives, we shall have a grand _battue_ of the beavers. Speak, then! What say you to remain?"

I need hardly tell you, my young reader, that we at once accepted the proposal. Our friend McKnight, would of course remain on account of the little Luisa; and as for the rest of us, we knew well the hardships we should have to encounter, should we travel the great plains during winter. We knew that in that lat.i.tude, as Rolfe had said, the winter would be a short one; and therefore we should not lose much time by staying until spring. The strange wild life which we should lead, had charms for all of us, and we willingly consented to remain.