The Forest Runners Part 29

They picked and cleaned the turkeys, and then hung the dressed bodies from the boughs of a tree near the hut, where they would be frozen, and thus keep.

The hunters returned that afternoon with two deer, and were delighted with Jim and Paul's zeal and success.

"Ef things go on this swimmin' way," said Shif'less Sol, "we'd be able to feed an army this winter, ef it wuz needed."

It was very cold that evening, and they built the fire higher than usual.

Great mellow rays of heat fell over all the five, and lighted up the whole interior of the cabin with its rich store of skins and nuts and dressed meats, and other spoil of the wilderness. The five, though no one of them ever for a moment forgot their great mission of saving Kentucky, had a feeling of content. Affairs were going well.

"Paul," said Shif'less Sol, "you've read books. Tell us about some o' them old fellers that lived a long time ago. I like to hear about the big ones."

"Well," said Paul, "there was Alexander. Did you ever hear of him, Sol?"

Shif'less Sol shook his head and sighed.

"I can't truly call myself an eddicated man," he replied, "though I have the instincks o' one. But I ain't had the proper chance. No, Paul, me an'

Alexander is strangers."

"Then I'll make you acquainted," said Paul. He settled himself more comfortably before the fire, and the others did likewise.

"Alexander lived a long, long time ago," said Paul. "He was a Greek--that is, he was a Macedonian with Greek blood in him--I suppose it comes to the same thing--and he led the Greeks and Macedonians over into Asia, and whipped the Persians every time, though the Persians were always twenty to one."

"Who writ the accounts o' them thar battles?" asked Shif'less Sol.

"Why, the Greeks, of course."

"I thought so. Why, Jim Hart here must be a Greek, then. To hear him tell it, he's always whippin' twenty men at a time. But it ain't in natur' for one man to whip twenty."

"I never said once in my life that I whipped twenty men at a time,"

protested Jim Hart.

"We'll let it pa.s.s," said Paul, "and Sol may be right about the Greeks piling it up for themselves; but so they wrote it, and so we have to take it. Well, Alexander, although he wasn't much more than a boy, kept on whipping the Persians until at last their king, Darius, ran away with his wives."

Shif'less Sol whistled.

"Do you mean to tell me, Paul," he said, "that any white man ever had more than one wife! I thought only Injun chiefs had 'em?"

"Why, it was common a long time ago," replied Paul.

"What a waste!" said Shif'less Sol. "One man havin' a lot uv wives, an'

Jim Hart here ain't ever been able to get a single one."

"An' you ain't, either, Sol Hyde," said Jim Hart.

"Oh, me!" replied Shif'less Sol carelessly. "I'm too young to marry."

"Let him go on about Alexander, the fightin' feller," interrupted Tom Ross.

"Alexander conquered all Asia," resumed Paul, "but it didn't agree with him. The more he conquered the more he wanted to conquer."

"Jest like a little boy eatin' turkey," said Shif'less Sol. "Can't hold enough to suit him. Stummick ain't ez big ez his appet.i.te, an' he hez to cry about it. I don't think your Alexander wuz such a big man, after all."

"He was not, from one point of view, Sol, but he was certainly a general.

After conquering all the world, he fell to drinking too much, and quarreling with his best friends. One day he got raging drunk, which made him hot all over, and he jumped into an icy river to cool off. That gave him a fever, and he died right away. He was only thirty-two."

Shif'less Sol sniffed in disgust.

"Dead at thirty-two!" he said. "Now, I call him a plumb failure. With fightin' goin' on all the time, an' fevers layin' aroun' fur you, I call it somethin' jest to live, an' I mean to stay in these parts till I'm a hundred. Why, that Alexander never had time, Paul, to think over what he'd done. I wouldn't change places with him, I think I'm a heap sight better off."

"I agrees with Sol ag'in," said Tom Ross, who had been in deep thought.

"In dang'rous times it's doin' a heap jest to live, an' a man who dies off at thirty-two, all through his own foolishness, ain't much to brag about."

Henry laughed.

"Paul," he said, "you'll have to bring out better examples of greatness to satisfy Sol and Tom."

Paul laughed, too.

"I just tell things as they are," he said. "Maybe they are right."

Henry went to the door and looked out. The air was full of raw chill, and he heard the leafless boughs rustling in the winter wind. All around him was the dark wilderness, and, natural hunter and warrior though he was, he was glad to have the shelter, the fire, and his comrades. He turned back and closed the door tightly, in order to shut out any stray gust that might be of an unusually penetrating quality.

"I'm thinking that we'd better start away hunting again very early in the morning," he said. "The big snows are bound to come soon. That first little one was only a taste of what we're going to get."

They were off again at daybreak, and this time Paul went with them. The party turned to the southward, in order to avoid the chance of meeting Shawnees or Miamis, and soon had the luck to run into a small buffalo herd. They killed only what they could carry, and then returned with it toward the island. Henry continually watched the skies as they traveled, and he uttered an exclamation of relief when they landed. The heavens all the while had been leaden and somber, and there was no wind stirring.

"See," he said, "the great snow comes!"

The sullen skies opened, and big white flakes dropped down as they hurried with their fresh supplies to the cabin.

CHAPTER XVI

NOEL

The snow fell three days and nights without ceasing, and they rejoiced greatly over their foresight in preparing so well for it, because it was a big snow, a very big snow. "It ain't jest snowin'," said Shif'less Sol; "the bottom o' the sky hez dropped out, an' all the snow's tumblin' down."

The great flakes never ceased for a moment to fall. The sun did not get a single chance to shine, and as fast as one cloud was emptied, another, huge and black, was drawn in its place across the sky. The island ceased to be an island, because the snow heaped up on the frozen surface of the lake, and it was impossible to tell where land ended and water began. The boughs of the trees bent and cracked beneath their load, and some fell to the ground. At times the sound of snapping boughs was like stray rifle shots.

Paul watched the snow deepen before their door. First an inch, then two, then four, then six, and on and on. The roof began to strain and creak ominously beneath the great weight. All rushed forth at once into the storm, and with poles and their rude shovels they thrust the great ma.s.s of acc.u.mulated snow from the roof. This task they repeated at intervals throughout the three days, but they had little else to do, except cook, eat, and sleep. They had recourse again to the chessmen and Paul's stories, and they reverted often to their friends and relatives at Wareville.

"At any rate," said Henry, "Kentucky is safe so long as this great snow lasts. What holds us holds the Shawnees and the Miamis, too; they can't go south through it."

"That's so," said Paul, with intense satisfaction, as he ran over all the chances of success or failure in their great task.

At the end of the third day the snow ceased. It lay three feet deep on the level, and deeper in the hollows and gullies. Then all the clouds floated away, the sun came out, and the whole world was a dazzling globe of white, so intense that it hurt Paul's eyes.