The Boy Settlers: A Story of Early Times in Kansas

CHAPTER XIV.
MORE HOUSE-BUILDING

It was an anxious and wondering household that Sandy burst in upon next morning, when he had reached the cabin, escorted to the divide above Younkins’s place by his kind-hearted host of the night before. It was Sunday morning, bright and beautiful; but truly, never had any home looked so pleasant to his eyes as did the homely and weather-beaten log-cabin which they called their own while they lived in it. He had left his borrowed horse with its owner, and, shouldering his meal-sack, with its dearly bought contents, he had taken a short-cut to the cabin, avoiding the usual trail in order that as he approached he might not be seen from the window looking down the river.

“Oh, Sandy’s all right,” he heard his brother Charlie say. “I’ll stake my life that he will come home with flying colors, if you only give him time. He’s lost the trail somehow, and had to put up at some cabin all night. Don’t you worry about Sandy.”

“But these Indian stories; I don’t like them,” said his father, with a tinge of sadness in his voice.

Sandy could bear no more; so, flinging down his burden, he bounced into the cabin with, “Oh, I’m all right! Safe and sound, but as hungry as a bear.”

The little party rushed to embrace the young adventurer, and, in their first flush of surprise, nobody remembered to be severe with him for his carelessness. Quite the hero of the hour, the lad sat on the table and told them his tale, how he had lost his way, and how hospitably and well he had been cared for at Fuller’s.

“Fuller’s!” exclaimed his uncle. “What in the world took you so far off your track as Fuller’s? You must have gone at least ten miles out of your way.”

“Yes, Uncle Charlie,” said the boy, “it’s just as easy to travel ten miles out of the way as it is to go one. All you have to do is to get your face in the wrong way, and all the rest is easy. Just keep a-going; that’s what I did. I turned to the right instead of to the left, and for once I found that the right was wrong.”

A burst of laughter from Oscar, who had been opening the sack that held Sandy’s purchases, interrupted the story.

“Just see what a hodgepodge of a mess Sandy has brought home! Tobacco, biscuits, ginger, and I don’t know what not, all in a pudding. It only lacks milk and eggs to make it a cracker pudding flavored with ginger and smoking-tobacco!” And everybody joined in the laugh that a glance at Sandy’s load called forth.

“Yes,” said the blushing boy; “I forgot to tie the bag at both ends, and the jouncing up and down of Younkins’s old horse (dear me! wasn’t he a hard trotter!) must have made a mash of everything in the bag. The paper of tobacco burst, and then I suppose the ginger followed; the jolting of poor old ‘Dobbin’ did the rest. Ruined, daddy? Nothing worth saving?”

Mr. Howell ruefully acknowledged that the mixture was not good to eat, nor yet to smoke, and certainly not to make gingerbread of. So, after picking out some of the larger pieces of the biscuits, the rest was thrown away, greatly to Sandy’s mortification.

“All of my journey gone for nothing,” he said, with a sigh.

“Never mind, my boy,” said his father, fondly; “since you have come back alive and well, let the rest of the business care for itself. As long as you are alive, and the redskins have not captured you, I am satisfied.”

Such was Sandy’s welcome home.

With the following Monday morning came hard work,–harder work, so Sandy thought, than miserably trying to find one’s way in the darkness of a strange region of country. For another log-house, this time on the prairie claim, was to be begun at once. They might be called on at any time to give up the cabin in which they were simply tenants at will, and it was necessary that a house of some sort be put on the claim that they had staked out and planted. The corn was up and doing well. Sun and rain had contributed to hasten on the corn-field, and the vines of the melons were vigorously pushing their way up and down the hills of grain. Charlie wondered what they would do with so many watermelons when they ripened; there would be hundreds of them; and the mouths that were to eat them, although now watering for the delicious fruit, were not numerous enough to make away with a hundredth part of what would be ripe very soon. There was no market nearer than the post, and there were many melon-patches between Whittier’s and the fort.

But the new log-house, taken hold of with energy, was soon built up to the height where the roof was to be put on. At this juncture, Younkins advised them to roof over the cabin slightly, make a corn-bin of it, and wait for developments. For, he argued, if there should be any rush of emigrants and settlers to that part of the country, so that their claims were in danger of dispute, they would have ample warning, and could make ready for an immediate occupation of the place. If nobody came, then the corn-house, or bin, would be all they wanted of the structure.

But Mr. Howell, who took the lead in all such matters, shook his head doubtfully. He was not in favor of evading the land laws; he was more afraid of the claim being jumped. If they were to come home from a hunting trip, some time, and find their log-cabin occupied by a “claim-jumper,” or “squatter,” as these interlopers are called, and their farm in the possession of strangers, wouldn’t they feel cheap? He thought so.

“Say, Uncle Aleck,” said Oscar, “why not finish it off as a cabin to live in, put in the corn when it ripens, and then we shall have the concern as a dwelling, in case there is any danger of the claim being jumped?”

“Great head, Oscar,” said his uncle, admiringly. “That is the best notion yet. We will complete the cabin just as if we were to move into it, and if anybody who looks like an intended claim-jumper comes prowling around, we will take the alarm and move in. But so far, I’m sure, there’s been no rush to these parts. It’s past planting season, and it is not likely that anybody will get up this way, now so far west, without our knowing it.”

So the log-cabin, or, as they called it, “Whittier, Number Two,” was finished with all that the land laws required, with a window filled with panes of glass, a door, and a “stick chimney” built of sticks plastered with clay, a floor and space enough on the ground to take care of a family twice as large as theirs, in case of need. When all was done, they felt that they were now able to hold their farming claim as well as their timber claim, for on each was a goodly log-house, fit to live in and comfortable for the coming winter if they should make up their minds to live in the two cabins during that trying season.

The boys took great satisfaction in their kitchen-garden near the house in which they were tenants; for when Younkins lived there, he had ploughed and spaded the patch, and planted it two seasons, so now it was an old piece of ground compared with the wild land that had just been broken up around it. In their garden-spot they had planted a variety of vegetables for the table, and in the glorious Kansas sunshine, watered by frequent showers, they were thriving wonderfully. They promised themselves much pleasure and profit from a garden that they would make by their new cabin, when another summer should come.

“Younkins says that he can walk all over his melon-patch on the other side of the Fork, stepping only on the melons and never touching the ground once,” said Oscar, one day, later in the season, as they were feasting themselves on one of the delicious watermelons that now so plentifully dotted their own corn-field.

“What a big story!” exclaimed both of the other boys at once. But Oscar appealed to his father, who came striding by the edge of the field where they chatted together. Had he ever heard of such a thing?

“Well,” said Mr. Bryant, good-naturedly, “I have heard of melons so thick in a patch, and so big around, that the sunshine couldn’t get to the ground except at high noon. How is that for a tall story?”

The boys protested that that was only a tale of fancy. Could it be possible that anybody could raise melons so thickly together as Mr. Younkins had said he had seen them? Mr. Bryant, having kicked open a fine melon, took out the heart of it to refresh himself with, as was the manner of the settlers, where the fruit was so plenty and the market so far out of reach; then, between long drafts of the delicious pulp, he explained that certain things, melons for example, flourished better on the virgin soil of the sod than elsewhere.

“Another year or so,” he said, “and you will never see on this patch of land such melons as these. They will never do so well again on this soil as this year. I never saw such big melons as these, and if we had planted them a little nearer together, I don’t in the least doubt that any smart boy, like Sandy here, could walk all over the field stepping from one melon to another, if he only had a pole to balance himself with as he walked. There would be nothing very ‘wonderful-like’ about that. It’s a pity that we have no use for these, there are so many of them and they are so good. Pity some of the folks at home haven’t a few of them–a hundred or two, for instance.”

It did seem a great waste of good things that these hundreds and hundreds of great watermelons should decay on the ground for lack of somebody to eat them. In the very wantonness of their plenty the settlers had been accustomed to break open two or three of the finest of the fruit before they could satisfy themselves that they had got one of the best. Even then they only took the choicest parts, leaving the rest to the birds. By night, too, the coyotes, or prairie-wolves, mean and sneaking things that they were, would steal down into the melon-patch, and, in the desperation of their hunger, nose into the broken melons left by the settlers, and attempt to drag away some of the fragments, all the time uttering their fiendish yelps and howls.

Somebody had told the boys that the juice of watermelons boiled to a thick syrup was a very good substitute for molasses. Younkins told them that, back in old Missouri, “many families never had any other kind of sweetenin’ in the house than watermelon molasses.” So Charlie made an experiment with the juice boiled until it was pretty thick. All hands tasted it, and all hands voted that it was very poor stuff. They decided that they could not make their superabundance of watermelons useful except as an occasional refreshment.

CHAPTER XV.
PLAY COMES AFTER WORK

The two cabins built, wood for the winter cut and hauled, and the planting all done, there was now nothing left to do but to wait and see the crop ripen. Their good friend Younkins was in the same fortunate condition, and he was ready to suggest, to the intense delight of the boys, that they might be able to run into a herd of buffalo, if they should take a notion to follow the old Indian trail out to the feeding-grounds. In those days there was no hunting west of the new settlement, except that by the Indians. In that vague and mysterious way by which reports travel–in the air, as it were–among all frontier settlements, they had heard that buffalo were plenty in the vast ranges to the westward, the herds moving slowly northward, grazing as they went. It was now the season of wild game, and so the boys were sent across to Younkins’s to ask him what he thought of a buffalo-hunting trip.

Reaching his cabin, the good woman of the house told them that he had gone into the tall timber near by, thinking he heard some sort of wild birds in the underbrush. He had taken his gun with him; in fact, Younkins was seldom seen without his gun, except when he was at work in the fields. The boys gleefully followed Younkins’s trail into the forest, making for an opening about a half-mile away, where Mrs. Younkins thought he was most likely to be found. “Major,” the big yellow dog, a special pet of Sandy’s, accompanied them, although his mistress vainly tried to coax him back. Major was fond of boys’ society.

“There’s Younkins now!” cried Oscar, as they drew near an opening in the wood into which the hot sunlight poured. Younkins was half crouching and cautiously making his way into the nearer side of the opening, and the boys, knowing that he was on the track of game, silently drew near, afraid of disturbing the hunter or the hunted. Suddenly Major, catching sight of the game, bounded forward with a loud bark into the tangle of berry bushes and vines. There was a confused noise of wings, a whistle of alarm which also sounded like the gobble of a turkey, and four tremendous birds rose up, and with a motion, that was partly a run and partly a flying, they disappeared into the depths of the forest. To their intense surprise, the usually placid Younkins turned savagely upon the dog, and saying, “Drat that fool dog!” fired one barrel loaded with fine bird-shot into poor Major.

“Four as fine wild turkeys as you ever saw in your life!” he explained, as if in apology to the boys. “I was sure of at least two of ’em; and that lunkhead of a dog must needs dash in and scare ’em up. It’s too pesky blamed bad!”

The boys were greatly mortified at the disaster that they had brought upon Younkins and Major by bringing the dog out with them. But when Charlie, as the eldest, explained that they had no idea that Major would work mischief, Younkins said, “Never mind, boys, for you did not know what was going on-like.”

Younkins, ashamed, apparently, of his burst of temper, stooped down, and discovering that Major’s wounds were not very serious, extracted the shot, plucked a few leaves of some plant that he seemed to know all about, and pressed the juice into the wounds made by the shot. The boys looked on with silent admiration. This man knew everything, they thought. They had often marvelled to see how easily and unerringly he found his way through woods, streams, and over prairies; now he showed them another gift. He was a “natural-born doctor,” as his wife proudly said of him.

“No turkey for supper to-night,” said Younkins, as he picked up his shot-gun and returned with the boys to the cabin. He was “right glad,” he said, to agree to go on a buffalo hunt, if the rest of the party would like to go. He knew there must be buffalo off to the westward. He went with Mr. Fuller and Mr. Battles last year, about this time, and they had great luck. He would come over that evening and set a date with the other men for starting out together.

Elated with this ready consent of Younkins, the lads went across the ford, eager to tell their elders the story of the wild turkeys and poor Major’s exploit. Sandy, carrying his shot-gun on his shoulder, lingered behind while the other two boys hurried up the trail to the log-cabin. He fancied that he heard a noise as of ducks quacking, in the creek that emptied into the Fork just below the ford. So, making his way softly to the densely wooded bank of the creek, he parted the branches with great caution and looked in. What a sight it was! At least fifty fine black ducks were swimming around, feeding and quacking sociably together, entirely unconscious of the wide-open blue eyes that were staring at them from behind the covert of the thicket. Sandy thought them even more wonderful and beautiful than the young fawn and his dam that he had seen on the Fort Riley trail. For a moment, fascinated by the rare spectacle, he gazed wonderingly at the ducks as they swam around, chasing each other, and eagerly hunting for food. It was but for a moment, however. Then he raised his shot-gun, and taking aim into the thickest of the flock, fired both barrels in quick succession. Instantly the gay clamor of the pretty creatures ceased, and the flock rose with a loud whirring of wings, and wheeled away over the tree-tops. The surface of the water, to Sandy’s excited imagination, seemed to be fairly covered with birds, some dead, and some struggling with wounded limbs. The other two boys, startled by the double report from Sandy’s gun, came scampering down the trail, just as the lad, all excitement, was stripping off his clothes to wade into the creek for his game.

“Ducks! Black ducks! I’ve shot a million of ’em!” cried the boy, exultingly; and in another instant he plunged into the water up to his middle, gathering the ducks by the legs and bringing them to the bank, where Charlie and Oscar, discreetly keeping out of the oozy creek, received them, counting the birds as they threw them on the grass.

“Eighteen, all told!” shouted Oscar, when the last bird had been caught, as it floundered about among the weeds, and brought ashore.

“Eighteen ducks in two shots!” cried Sandy, his freckled face fairly beaming with delight. “Did ever anybody see such luck?”

They all thought that nobody ever had.

“What’s that on your leg?” asked Oscar, stooping to pick from Sandy’s leg a long, brown object looking like a flat worm. To the boys’ intense astonishment, the thing would not come off, but stretched out several inches in length, holding on by one end.

Sandy howled with pain. “It is something that bites,” he cried.

“And there’s another,–and another! Why, he’s covered all over with ’em!” exclaimed Oscar.

Sure enough, the lad’s legs, if not exactly covered, were well sprinkled with the things.

“Scrape ’em off with your knife!” cried Sandy.

Oscar usually carried a sheath-knife at his belt, “more for the style of the thing, than use,” he explained; so with this he quickly took off the repulsive creatures, which, loosening their hold, dropped to the ground limp and shapeless.

“Leeches,” said Charlie, briefly, as he poked one of them over with a stick. The mystery was explained, and wherever one of them had been attached to the boy’s tender skin, blood flowed freely for a few minutes, and then ceased. Even on one or two of the birds they found a leech adhering to the feathers where the poor thing’s blood had followed the shot. Picking up the game, the two boys escorted the elated Sandy to the cabin, where his unexpected adventures made him the hero of the day.

“Couldn’t we catch some of those leeches and sell them to the doctors?” asked the practical Oscar.

His father shook his head. “American wild leeches like those are not good for much, my son. I don’t know why not; but I have been told that only the imported leeches are used by medical men.”

“Well,” said Sandy, tenderly rubbing his wounded legs, “if imported leeches can bite any more furiously than these Kansas ones do, I don’t want any of them to tackle me! I suppose these were hungry, though, not having had a taste of a fresh Illinois boy lately. But they didn’t make much out of me, after all.”

Very happy were those three boys that evening, as, filled with roast wild duck, they sat by and heard their elders discuss with Younkins the details of the grand buffalo hunt that was now to be organized. Younkins had seen Mr. Fuller, who had agreed to make one of the party. So there would be four men and the three boys to compose the expedition. They were to take two horses, Fuller’s and Younkins’s, to serve as pack-animals, for the way to the hunting-ground might be long; but the hunting was to be done on foot. Younkins was very sure that they would have no difficulty in getting near enough to shoot; the animals had not been hunted much in those parts at that time, and the Indians killed them on foot very often. If Indians could do that, why could not white men?

The next two days were occupied in preparations for the expedition, to the great delight of the boys, who recalled with amusement something of a similar feeling that they had when they were preparing for their trip to Kansas, long ago, away back in Dixon. How far off that all seemed now! Now they were in the promised land, and were going out to hunt for big game–buffalo! It seemed too good to be true.

Bread was made and baked; smoked side-meat, and pepper and salt packed; a few potatoes taken, as a luxury in camp-life; blankets, guns, and ammunition prepared; and above all, plenty of coffee, already browned and ground, was packed for use. It was a merry and a buoyant company that started out in the early dawn of a September morning, having snatched a hasty breakfast, of which the excited boys had scarcely time to taste. Buffalo beef, they confidently said, was their favorite meat. They would dine on buffalo hump that very day.

Oscar, more cautious than the others, asked Younkins if they were sure to see buffalo soon.

“Surely,” replied he; “I was out to the bend of the Fork just above the bluffs, last night, and the plains were just full of ’em, just simply black-like, as it were.”

“What?” exclaimed all three boys, in a breath. “Plains full of them, and you didn’t even mention it! What a funny man you are.”

Mr. Howell reminded them that Mr. Younkins had been accustomed to see buffalo for so long that he did not think it anything worth mentioning that he had seen vast numbers of the creatures already. So, as they pressed on, the boys strained their eyes in the distance, looking for buffalo. But no animals greeted their sight, as they passed over the long green swales of the prairie, mile after mile, now rising to the top of a little eminence, and now sinking into a shallow valley; but occasionally a sneaking, stealthy coyote would noiselessly trot into view, and then, after cautiously surveying them from a distance, disappear, as Sandy said, “as if he had sunk into a hole in the ground.” It was in vain that they attempted to get near enough to one of these wary animals to warrant a shot. It is only by great good luck that anybody ever shoots a coyote, although in countries where they abound every man’s hand is against them; they are such arrant thieves, as well as cowards.

But at noon, while the little party was taking a luncheon in the shade of a solitary birch that grew by the side of a little creek, or runlet, Sandy, the irrepressible, with his bread and meat in his hand, darted off to the next roll of the prairie, a high and swelling hill, in fact, “to see what he could see.” As soon as the lad had reached the highest part of the swale, he turned around and swung his arms excitedly, too far off to make his voice heard. He jumped up and down, whirled his arms, and acted altogether like a young lunatic.

“The boy sees buffalo,” said Younkins, with a smile of calm amusement. He could hardly understand why anybody should be excited over so commonplace a matter. But the other two lads were off like a shot in Sandy’s direction. Reaching their comrade, they found him in a state of great agitation. “Oh, look at ’em! Look at ’em! Millions on millions! Did anybody ever see the like?”

Perhaps Sandy’s estimate of the numbers was a little exaggerated, but it really was a wonderful sight. The rolls of the prairie, four or five miles away, were dark with the vast and slow-moving herds that were passing over, their general direction being toward the spot on which the boys were standing. Now and again, some animals strayed off in broken parties, but for the most part the phalanx seemed to be solid, so solid that the green of the earth was completely hidden by the dense herd.

The boys stood rooted to the spot with the intensity of their wonder and delight. If there were not millions in that vast army of buffalo, there were certainly hundreds of thousands. What would happen if that great mob should suddenly take a notion to gallop furiously in their direction?

“You needn’t whisper so,” said Charlie, noticing the awe-struck tones of the youngsters. “They can’t hear you, away off there. Why, the very nearest of the herd cannot be less than five miles off; and they would run from us, rather than toward us, if they were to see and hear us.”

“I asked Younkins if he ever had any trouble with a buffalo when he was hunting, and what do you suppose he said?” asked Oscar, who had recovered his voice. “Well, he said that once he was out on horseback, and had cornered a young buffalo bull in among some limestone ledges up there on the Upper Fork, and ‘the critter turned on him and made a nasty noise with his mouth-like,’ so that he was glad to turn and run. ‘Nasty noise with his mouth,’ I suppose was a sort of a snort–a snort-like, as Younkins would say. There come the rest of the folks. My! won’t daddy be provoked that we didn’t go back and help hitch up!”

But the elders of the party had not forgotten that they were once boys themselves, and when they reached the point on which the lads stood surveying the sight, they also were stirred to enthusiasm. The great herd was still moving on, the dark folds of the moving mass undulating like the waves of a sea, as the buffalo rose and fell upon the surface of the rolling prairie.

As if the leaders had spied the hunters, the main herd now swung away more to the right, or northward, only a few detached parties coming toward the little group of hunters that still watched them silently from its elevated point of observation.

Younkins surveyed the movement critically and then announced it as his opinion that the herd was bound for the waters of the Republican Fork, to the right and somewhat to the northward of the party. The best course for them to take now would be to try and cut off the animals before they could reach the river. There was a steep and bluffy bank at the point for which the buffalo seemed to be aiming; that would divert them further up stream, and if the hunters could only creep along in the low gullies of the prairie, out of the sight of the herd, they might reach the place where the buffalo would cross before they could get there; for the herd moved slowly; an expert walker could far out-travel them in a direct line.

“One of you boys will have to stay here by the stuff; the rest of us will press on in the direction of the river as fast as may be,” said Uncle Aleck. The boys looked at each other in dismay. Who would be willing to be left behind in a chase so exciting as this? Sandy bravely solved the puzzle.

“Here, you take my shot-gun, Charlie,” he said. “It carries farther than yours; I’ll stay by the stuff and the horses; I’m pretty tired, anyhow.” His father smiled approvingly, but said nothing. He knew how great a sacrifice the boy was making for the others.

Left alone on the hill-top, for the rest of the party moved silently and swiftly away to the northward, Sandy felt the bitterness of disappointment as well as of loneliness while he sat on the grass watching with absorbed attention the motions of the great herds. All trace of his companions was soon lost as they passed down into the gullies and ravines that broke the ground adjacent to the Fork to the westward of the stream. Once, indeed, he saw the figures of the hunters, painted dark against the sky, rise over a distant swell and disappear just as one of them turned and waved a signal in dumb show to the solitary watcher on the hill.

“If those buffalo should get stampeded,” mused Sandy, “and make a break in this way, it would be ‘all day’ with those horses and the camp stuff. I guess I had better make all fast, for there may be a gale of wind, or a gale of buffalo, which is the same thing.” So saying, the thoughtful lad led the animals down into the gully where the noon luncheon had been taken, removed their packs, tethered them to the tree, and then ran back to the hill-top and resumed his watch.

There was no change in the situation except that there were, if possible, more buffalo moving over the distant slopes of the rolling prairie. The boy stood entranced at the sight. More, more, and yet more of the herds were slowly moving into sight and then disappearing in the gullies below. The dark brown folds seemed to envelop the face of the earth. Sandy wondered where so many creatures could find pasturage. Their bodies appeared to cover the hills and valleys, so that there could not be room left for grazing. “They’ve got such big feet,” he soliloquized aloud, “that I should think that the ground would be all pawed up where they have travelled.” In the ecstasy of his admiration, he walked to and fro on the hill-top, talking to himself, as was his wont.

“I wonder if the other fellows can see them as I do?” he asked. “I don’t believe, after all, that it is one-half so entertaining for them as it is for me. Oh, I just wish the folks at home could be here now, and see this sight. It beats all nature, as Father Dixon used to say. And to think that there are thousands of people in big cities who don’t have meat enough to eat. And all this buffalo-meat running wild!” The boy laughed to himself at the comicality of the thought. “Fresh beef running wild!”

The faint report of a gun fired afar off now reached his ear and he saw a blue puff of smoke rising from the crest of a timber-bordered hill far away. The herd in that direction seemed to swerve somewhat and scatter, but, to his intense surprise, there was no hurry in their movements; the brown and black folds of the great mass of animals still slowly and sluggishly spread out and flowed like the tides of the sea, enveloping everything. Suddenly there was another report, then another, and another. Three shots in quick succession.

“Now they are getting in their work!” shouted the boy, fairly dancing up and down in his excitement. “Oh, I wish I was there instead of here looking on!”

Now the herds wavered for a moment, then their general direction was changed from the northward to the eastward. Then there was a swift and sudden movement of the whole mass, and the vast dark stream flowed in a direction parallel with the Fork instead of toward it, as heretofore.

“They are coming this way!” shouted Sandy, to the empty, silent air around him. “I’ll get a shot at ’em yet!” Then, suddenly recollecting that his gun had been exchanged for his brother’s, he added, “And Charlie’s gun is no good!”

In truth, the herd was now bound straight for the hill on which the boy maintained his solitary watch. Swiftly running down to the gully in which the horses were tethered, Sandy got out his brother’s gun and carefully examined the caps and the load. They had run some heavy slugs of lead in a rude mould which they had made, the slug being just the size of the barrel of the shot-gun. One barrel was loaded with a heavy charge of buckshot, and the other with a slug. The latter was an experiment, and a big slug like that could not be expected to carry very far; it might, however, do much damage at short range.