Two Little Savages Part 7

The idea of giving up college to go on a farm had been a hard one for him to accept, but he had sullenly bowed to his father's command and then at length learned to like the prospect of getting away from Bonnerton into the country. After all, it was but for a year, and it promised so much of joy. Sunday-school left behind. Church reduced to a minimum. All his life outdoors, among fields and woods--surely this spelled happiness; but now that he was really there, the abomination of desolation seemed sitting on all things and the evening was one of unalloyed misery. He had nothing to tell of, but a cloud of black despair seemed to have settled for good on the world. His mouth was pinching very hard and his eyes blinking to keep back the tears when Mrs. Raften came into the room. She saw at a glance what was wrong.

"He's homesick," she said to her husband. "He'll be all right to-morrow," and she took Yan by the hand and led him upstairs to bed.

Twenty minutes later she came to see if he was comfortable. She tucked the clothes in around him, then, stooping down for a good-night kiss, she found his face wet with tears. She put her arms about him for a moment, kissed him several times, and said, "Never mind, you will feel all right to-morrow," then wisely left him alone.

Whence came that load of misery and horror, or whither it went, Yan never knew. He saw it no more, and the next morning he began to interest himself in his new world.

William Raften had a number of farms all in fine order and clear of mortgages; and each year he added to his estates. He was sober, shrewd, even cunning, hated by most of his neighbours because he was too clever for them and kept on getting richer. His hard side was for the world and his soft side for his family. Not that he was really soft in any respect. He had had to fight his life-battle alone, beginning with nothing, and the many hard knocks had hardened him, but the few who knew him best could testify to the warm Irish heart that continued unchanged within him, albeit it was each year farther from the surface. His manners, even in the house, were abrupt and masterful. There was no mistaking his orders, and no excuse for not complying with them. To his children when infants, and to his wife only, he was always tender, and those who saw him cold and grasping, overreaching the sharpers of the grain market, would scarcely have recognized the big, warm-hearted happy-looking father at home an hour later when he was playing horse with his baby daughter or awkwardly paying post-graduate court to his smiling wife.

He had little "eddication," could hardly read, and was therefore greatly impressed with the value of "book larnin'," and determined that his own children should have the "best that money could git in that line," which probably meant that they should read fluently. His own reading was done on Sunday mornings, when he painfully spelled out the important items in a weekly paper; "important" meant referring to the produce market or the prize ring, for he had been known and respected as a boxer, and dearly loved the exquisite details of the latest bouts. He used to go to church with his wife once a month to please her, and thought it very unfair therefore that she should take no interest in his favourite hobby--the manly art.

Although hard and even brutal in his dealings with men, he could not bear to see an animal ill used. "The men can holler when they're hurt, but the poor dumb baste has no protection." He was the only farmer in the country that would not sell or shoot a worn-out horse. "The poor brute has wurruked hard an' hez airned his kape for the rest av his days." So Duncan, Jerry and several others were "retired" and lived their latter days in idleness, in one case for more than ten years.

Raften had thrashed more than one neighbour for beating a horse, and once, on interfering, was himself thrashed, for he had the ill-luck to happen on a prizefighter. But that had no lasting effect on him. He continued to champion the dumb brute in his own brutal way.

Among the neighbours the perquisites of the boys were the calfskins.

The cows' milk was needed and the calves of little value, so usually they were killed when too young for food. The boys did the killing, making more or less sport of it, and the skins, worth fifty cents apiece green and twenty-five cents dry, at the tannery, were their proper pay. Raften never allowed his son to kill the calves. "Oi can't kill a poor innocent calf mesilf an' I won't hev me boy doin' it," he said. Thus Sam was done out of a perquisite, and did not forget the grievance.

Mrs. Raften was a fine woman, a splendid manager, loving her home and her family, her husband's loyal and ablest supporter, although she thought that William was sometimes a "leetle hard" on the boys. They had had a large family, but most of the children had died. Those remaining were Sam, aged fifteen, and Minnie, aged three.

Yan's duties were fixed at once. The poultry and half the pigs and cows were to be his charge. He must also help Sam with various other ch.o.r.es.

There was plenty to do and clear rules about doing it. But there was also time nearly every day for other things more in the line of his tastes; for even if he were hard on the boys in work hours, Raften saw to it that when they did play they should have a good time. His roughness and force made Yan afraid of him, and as it was Raften's way to say nothing until his mind was fully made up, and then say it "strong," Yan was left in doubt as to whether or not he was giving satisfaction.

II

Sam

Sam Raften turned out to be more congenial than he looked. His slow, drawling speech had given a wrong impression of stupidity, and, after a formal showing of the house under Mr. Raften, a real investigation was headed by Sam. "This yer's the paaar-le-r," said he, unlocking a sort of dark cellar aboveground and groping to open what afterward proved to be a dead, buried and almost forgotten window. In Sanger settlement the farmhouse parlour is not a room; it is an inst.i.tution.

It is kept closed all the week except when the minister calls, and the one at Raften's was the pure type. Its furniture consisted of six painted chairs (fifty cents each), two rockers ($1.49), one melodeon (thirty-two bushels of wheat--the agent asked forty), a sideboard made at home of the case the melodeon came in, one rag carpet woofed at home and warped and woven in exchange for wool, one center-table varnished (!) ($9.00 cash, $11.00 catalogue). On the center-table was one tintype alb.u.m, a Bible, and some large books for company use.

Though dusted once a week, they were never moved, and it was years later before they were found to have settled permanently into the varnish of the table. In extremely uncostly frames on the wall were the coffin-plates of the departed members of the family. It was the custom at Sanger to honour the dead by bringing back from the funeral the name-plate and framing it on a black background with some supposed appropriate scripture text.

The general atmosphere of the room was dusty and religious as it was never opened except on Sundays or when the parson called, which inst.i.tuted a sort of temporary Sunday, and the two small windows were kept shut and plugged as well as m.u.f.fled always, with green paper blinds and cotton hangings. It was a thing apart from the rest of the house--a sort of family ghost-room: a chamber of horrors, seen but once a week.

But it contained one thing at least of interest--something that at once brought Sam and Yan together. This was a collection of a score of birds' eggs. They were all mixed together in an old gla.s.s-topped cravat box, half full of bran. None of them were labelled or properly blown. A collector would not have given it a second glance, but it proved an important matter. It was as though two New Yorkers, one disguised as a Chinaman and the other as a Negro, had accidently met in Greenland and by chance one had made the sign of the secret brotherhood to which they both belonged.

"Do you like these things?" said Yan, with sudden interest and warmth, in spite of the depressing surroundings.

"You bet," said Sam. "And I'd a-had twice as many only Da said it was doing no good and birds was good for the farm."

"Well, do you know their names?"

"Wall, I should say so. I know every Bird that flies and all about it, or putty near it," drawled Sam, with an unusual stretch for him, as he was not given to bragging.

"I wish I did. Can't I get some eggs to take home?"

"No; Da said if I wouldn't take any more he'd lend me his Injun Chief gun to shoot Rabbits with."

"What? Are there Rabbits here?"

"Wall, I should say so. I got three last winter."

"But I mean _now_," said Yan, with evident disappointment.

"They ain't so easy to get at _now_, but we can try. Some day when all the work's done I'll ask Da for his gun."

"When all the work's done," was a favourite expression of the Raftens for indefinitely shelving a project, it sounded so reasonable and was really so final.

Sam opened up the lower door of the sideboard and got out some flint arrow-heads picked up in the ploughing, the teeth of a Beaver dating from the early days of the settlement, and an Owl very badly stuffed.

The sight of these precious things set Yan all ablaze. "Oh!" was all he could say. Sam was gratified to see such effect produced by the family possessions and explained, "Da shot that off'n the barn an' the hired man stuffed it."

The boys were getting on well together now. They exchanged confidences all day as they met in doing ch.o.r.es. In spite of the long interruptions, they got on so well that Sam said after supper, "Say, Yan, I'm going to show you something, but you must promise never to tell--Swelpye!" Of course Yan promised and added the absolutely binding and ununderstandable word--"Swelpme."

"Le's both go to the barn," said Sam.

When they were half way he said: "Now I'll let on I went back for something. You go on an' round an' I'll meet you under the 'rusty-coat' in the orchard." When they met under the big russet apple tree, Sam closed one of his melancholy eyes and said in a voice of unnecessary hush, "Follow me." He led to the other end of the orchard where stood the old log house that had been the home before the building of the brick one. It was now used as a tool house. Sam led up a ladder to the loft (this was all wholly delightful). There at the far end, and next the little gable pane, he again cautioned secrecy, then when on invitation Yan had once more "swelped" himself, he rummaged in a dirty old box and drew out a bow, some arrows, a rusty steel trap, an old butcher knife, some fish-hooks, a flint and steel, a box full of matches, and some dirty, greasy-looking stuff that he said-was dried meat. "You see," he explained, "I always wanted to be a hunter, and Da was bound I'd be a dentist. Da said there was no money in hunting, but one day he had to go to the dentist an' it cost four dollars, an' the man wasn't half a day at the job, so he wanted me to be a dentist, but I wanted to be a hunter, an' one day he licked me and Bud (Bud, that's my brother that died a year ago. If you hear Ma talk you'll think he was an angel, but I always reckoned he was a crazy galoot, an' he was the worst boy in school by odds). Wall, Da licked us awful for not feeding the hogs, so Bud got ready to clear out, an' at first I felt just like he did an' said I'd go too, an'

we'd j'ine the Injuns. Anyhow, I'd sure go if ever I was licked again, an' this was the outfit we got together. Bud wanted to steal Da's gun an' I wouldn't. I tell you I was hoppin' mad that time, an' Bud was wuss--but I cooled off an' talked to Bud. I says, 'Say now, Bud, it would take about a month of travel to get out West, an' if the Injuns didn't want nothin' but our scalps that wouldn't be no fun, an' Da ain't really so bad, coz we sho'ly did starve them pigs so one of 'em died.' I reckon we deserved all we got--anyhow, it was all dumb foolishness about skinnin' out, though I'd like mighty well to be a hunter. Well, Bud died that winter. You seen the biggest coffin plate on the wall? Well, that's him. I see Ma lookin' at it an' cryin' the other day. Da says he'll send me to college if I'll be a dentist or a lawyer--lawyers make lots of money: Da had a lawsuit once--an' if I don't, he says I kin go to--you know."

Here was Yan's own kind of mind, and he opened his heart. He told all about his shanty in the woods and how he had laboured at and loved it.

He was full of enthusiasm as of old, boiling over with purpose and energy, and Sam, he realized, had at least two things that he had not--ability with tools and cool judgment. It was like having the best parts of his brother Rad put into a real human being. And remembering the joy of his Glen, Yan said:

"Let's build a shanty in the woods by the creek; your father won't care, will he?"

"Not he, so long as the work's done."

III

The Wigwam

The very next day they must begin. As soon as every ch.o.r.e was done they went to the woods to select a spot.

The brook, or "creek," as they called it, ran through a meadow, then through a fence into the woods. This was at first open and gra.s.sy, but farther down the creek it was joined by a dense cedar swamp. Through this there was no path, but Sam said that there was a nice high place beyond. The high ground seemed a long way off in the woods, though only a hundred yards through the swamp, but it was the very place for a camp--high, dry and open hard woods, with the creek in front and the cedar swamp all around. Yan was delighted. Sam caught no little of the enthusiasm, and having brought an axe, was ready to begin the shanty.

But Yan had been thinking hard all morning, and now he said: "Sam, we don't want to be _White_ hunters. They're no good; we want to be Indians."

"Now, that's just where you fool yourself," said Sam. "Da says there ain't nothin' an Injun can do that a White-man can't do better."

"Oh, what are you talking about?" said Yan warmly. "A White hunter can't trail a moccasined foot across a hard granite rock. A White hunter can't go into the woods with nothing but a knife and make everything he needs. A White hunter can't hunt with bows and arrows, and catch game with snares, can he? And there never yet was a White man could make a Birch canoe." Then, changing his tone, Yan went on: "Say, now, Sam, we want to be the best kind of hunters, don't we, so as to be ready for going out West. Let's be Injuns and do everything like Injuns."

After all, this had the advantage of romance and picturesqueness, and Sam consented to "try it for awhile, anyhow." And now came the point of Yan's argument. "Injuns don't live in shanties; they live in teepees. Why not make a teepee instead?"

"That would be just bully," said Sam, who had seen pictures enough to need no description, "but what are we to make it of?"