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Two Little Savages

by Ernest Thompson Seton · English · Gutenberg #13499 · 631,092 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Two Little Savages

Author: Ernest Thompson Seton


        
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                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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TWO LITTLE SAVAGES

Being the ADVENTURES of Two BOYS Who Lived as INDIANS and What They
LEARNED

With Over Three Hundred Drawings

Written & Illustrated by

ERNEST THOMPSON SETON

Author of _Wild Animals I have Known_, _Lives of the Hunted_,
_Biography of a Grizzly_, _Trail of the Sandhill Stag_, etcetera,
& Naturalist to the Government of Manitoba.

1917







Preface


Because I have known the torment of thirst I would
dig a well where others may drink.

E.T.S.



In this Book the designs for Title-page, Jackets, and general make-up
were done by Grace Gallatin Seton.




The Chapters

Part I

Glenyan & Yan


I.     Glimmerings
II.    Spring
III.   His Adjoining Brothers
IV.    The Book
V.     The Collarless Stranger
VI.    Glenyan
VII    The Shanty
VIII   The Beginnings of Woodlore
IX     Tracks
X.     Biddy's Contribution
XI.    Lung Balm
XII.   A Crisis
XIII.  The Lynx
XIV.   Froth




The Chapters

Part II

Sanger & Sam


I.      The New Home
II.     Sam
III.    The Wigwam
IV.     The Sanger Witch
V.      Caleb
VI.     The Making of the Teepee
VII.    The Calm Evening
VIII.   The Sacred Fire
IX.     The Bows and Arrows
X.      The Dam
XI.     Yan and the Witch
XII.    Dinner with the Witch
XIII.   The Hostile Spy
XIV.    The Quarrel
XV.     The Peace of Minnie




The Chapters

Part III

In the Woods


I.      Really in the Woods
II.     The First Night and Morning
III.    A Crippled Warrior and the Mud-Albums
IV.     A "Massacree" of Palefaces
V.      The Deer Hunt
VI.     War Bonnet, Teepee and Coups
VII.    Campercraft
VIII.   The Indian Drum
IX.     The Cat and the Skunk
X.      The Adventures of a Squirrel family
XI.     How to See the Woodfolk
XII.    Indian Signs and Getting Lost
XIII.   Tanning Skins and Making Moccasins
XIV.    Caleb's Philosophy
XV.     A Visit from Raften
XVI.    How Yan Knew the Ducks Afar
XVII.   Sam's Woodcraft Exploit
XVIII.  The Owls and the Night-School
XIX.    The Trial of Grit
XX.     The White Revolver
XXI.    The Triumph of Guy
XXII.   The Coon Hunt
XXIII.  The Banshee's Wail and the Huge Night Prowler
XXIV.   Hawkeye Claims Another Grand Coup
XXV.    The Three-fingered Tramp
XXVI.   Winning Back the farm
XXVII.  The Rival Tribe
XXVIII. White Man's Woodcraft
XXIX.   The Long Swamp
XXX.    A New Kind of Coon
XXXI.   On the Old Camp Ground
XXXII.  The New War Chief



List of Full Pages

Part I


 1. "Gazing spellbound in that window"
 2. "He already knew the Downy Woodpecker"
 3. "Yan's Toilet"
 4. "The Coon Track"
 5. "There in his dear cabin were three tramps"
 6. "It surely was a Lynx"

Part II

 7. "The wigwam was a failure"
 8. "Get out o' this now, or I'll boot ye"
 9. "Pattern for Teepee"

10. "Pattern of Thunder Bull's Teepee and of Black
       Bull's Teepee"
11. "'Clicker-a-clicker!' he shrieked ... and down like
       a dart"
12. "Rubbing-sticks for fire-making"
13. "The Archery Outfit"
14. "The dam was a great success"
15. "Ugh! Heap sassy"
16. "There stood Raften, spectator of the whole affair"




Part III


17. "If ye kill any Song-birds, I'll use the rawhoide
     on ye"
18. "Where's the axe?"
19. "He soon appeared, waving a branch"
20. "The War Bonnet"
21. "The old Cat raged and tore"
22. "Indian Signs"
23. "The Two Smokes"
24. "The Fish and River Ducks"
25. "The Sea Ducks"
26. "Owl-stuffing plate"
27. "Guy gave a leap of terror and fell"
28. "Well, sonny, cookin' dinner?"
29. "He nervously fired and missed"




I

Glimmerings


Yan was much like other twelve-year-old boys in having a keen interest
in Indians and in wild life, but he differed from most in this, that
he never got over it. Indeed, as he grew older, he found a yet keener
pleasure in storing up the little bits of woodcraft and Indian lore
that pleased him as a boy.

His father was in poor circumstances. He was an upright man of refined
tastes, but indolent--a failure in business, easy with the world and
stern with his family. He had never taken an interest in his son's
wildwood pursuits; and when he got the idea that they might interfere
with the boy's education, he forbade them altogether.

There was certainly no reason to accuse Yan of neglecting school. He
was the head boy of his class, although there were many in it older
than himself. He was fond of books in general, but those that dealt
with Natural Science and Indian craft were very close to his heart.
Not that he had many--there were very few in those days, and the
Public Library had but a poor representation of these. "Lloyd's
Scandinavian Sports," "Gray's Botany" and one or two Fenimore Cooper
novels, these were all, and Yan was devoted to them. He was a timid,
obedient boy in most things, but the unwise command to give up what
was his nature merely made him a disobedient boy--turned a good boy
into a bad one. He was too much in terror of his father to disobey
openly, but he used to sneak away at all opportunities to the fields
and woods, and at each new bird or plant he found he had an exquisite
thrill of mingled pleasure and pain--the pain because he had no name
for it or means of learning its nature.

The intense interest in animals was his master passion, and thanks to
this, his course to and from school was a very crooked one, involving
many crossings of the street, because thereby he could pass first a
saloon in whose window was a champagne advertising chromo that
portrayed two Terriers chasing a Rat; next, directly opposite this,
was a tobacconist's, in the window of which was a beautiful effigy of
an Elephant, laden with tobacco. By going a little farther out of his
way, there was a game store where he might see some Ducks, and was
sure, at least, of a stuffed Deer's head; and beyond that was a
furrier shop, with an astonishing stuffed Bear. At another point he
could see a livery stable Dog that was said to have killed a Coon, and
at yet another place on Jervie Street was a cottage with a high
veranda, under which, he was told, a chained Bear had once been kept.
He never saw the Bear. It had been gone for years, but he found
pleasure in passing the place. At the corner of Pemberton and Grand
streets, according to a schoolboy tradition, a Skunk had been killed
years ago and could still be smelled on damp nights. He always
stopped, if passing near on a wet night, and sniffed and enjoyed that
Skunk smell. The fact that it ultimately turned out to be a leakage of
sewer gas could never rob him of the pleasure he originally found in
it.

[Illustration: "Gazing spellbound in that window"]

Yan had no good excuse for these weaknesses, and he blushed for shame
when his elder brother talked "common sense" to him about his follies.
He only knew that such things fascinated him.

But the crowning glory was a taxidermist's shop kept on Main Street by
a man named Sander. Yan spent, all told, many weeks gazing spellbound,
with his nose flat white against that window. It contained some Fox
and Cat heads grinning ferociously, and about fifty birds beautifully
displayed. Nature might have got some valuable hints in that window
on showing plumage to the very best advantage. Each bird seemed more
wonderful than the last.

There were perhaps fifty of them on view, and of these, twelve had
labels, as they had formed part of an exhibit at the Annual County
Fair. These labels were precious truths to him, and the birds:

Osprey                    Partridge or Ruffed Grouse
Kingfisher                Bittern
Bluejay                   Highholder
Rosebreasted Grosbeak     Sawwhet Owl
Woodthrush                Oriole
Scarlet Tanager           * * * * * * *

were, with their names, deeply impressed on his memory and added to
his woodlore, though not altogether without a mixture of error. For
the alleged Woodthrush was not a Woodthrush at all, but turned out
to be a Hermit Thrush. The last bird of the list was a long-tailed,
brownish bird with white breast. The label was placed so that Yan
could not read it from outside, and one of his daily occupations was
to see if the label had been turned so that he could read it. But it
never was, so he never learned the bird's name.

After passing this for a year or more, he formed a desperate plan. It
was nothing less than to _go inside_. It took him some months to
screw up courage, for he was shy and timid, but oh! he was so hungry
for it. Most likely if he had gone in openly and asked leave, he
would have been allowed to see everything; but he dared not. His home
training was all of the crushing kind. He picked on the most curious
of the small birds in the window--a Sawwhet Owl then grit his teeth
and walked in. How frightfully the cowbell on the door did clang! Then
there succeeded a still more appalling silence, then a step and the
great man himself came.

"How--how--how much is that Owl?"

"Two dollars."

Yan's courage broke down now. He fled. If he had been told ten cents,
it would have been utterly beyond reach. He scarcely heard what the
man said. He hurried out with a vague feeling that he had been in
heaven but was not good enough to stay there. He saw nothing of the
wonderful things around him.




II

Spring


Yan, though not strong, revelled in deeds of brawn. He would rather
have been Samson than Moses--Hercules than Apollo. All his tastes
inclined him to wild life. Each year when the spring came, he felt the
inborn impulse to up and away. He was stirred through and through when
the first Crow, in early March, came barking over-head. But it fairly
boiled in his blood when the Wild Geese, in long, double, arrow-headed
procession, went clanging northward. He longed to go with them.
Whenever a new bird or beast appeared, he had a singular prickling
feeling up his spine and his back as though he had a mane that was
standing up. This feeling strengthened with his strength.

All of his schoolmates used to say that they "liked" the spring, some
of the girls would even say that they "dearly loved" the spring, but
they could not understand the madness that blazed in Yan's eyes when
springtime really came--the flush of cheek--the shortening breath--the
restless craving for action--the chafing with flashes of rebellion at
school restraints--the overflow of nervous energy--the bloodthirst
in his blood--the hankering to run--to run to the north, when the
springtime tokens bugled to his every sense.

Then the wind and sky and ground were full of thrill. There was
clamour everywhere, but never a word. There was stirring within and
without. There was incentive in the yelping of the Wild Geese; but it
was only tumult, for he could not understand why he was so stirred.
There were voices that he could not hear--messages that he could not
read; all was confusion of tongues. He longed only to get away.

"If only I could get away. If--if--Oh, God!" he stammered in torment
of inexpression, and then would gasp and fling himself down on some
bank, and bite the twigs that chanced within reach and tremble and
wonder at himself.

Only one thing kept him from some mad and suicidal move--from joining
some roving Indian band up north, or gypsies nearer--and that was the
strong hand at home.




III

His Adjoining Brothers


Yan had many brothers, but only those next him in age were important
in his life. Rad was two years older--a strong boy, who prided himself
on his "common sense." Though so much older, he was Yan's inferior
at school. He resented this, and delighted in showing his muscular
superiority at all opportunities. He was inclined to be religious,
and was strictly proper in his life and speech. He never was known to
smoke a cigarette, tell a lie, or say "gosh" or "darn." He was plucky
and persevering, but he was cold and hard, without a human fiber or a
drop of red blood in his make-up. Even as a boy he bragged that he had
no enthusiasms, that he believed in common sense, that he called a
spade a spade, and would not use two words where one would do. His
intelligence was above the average, but he was so anxious to be
thought a person of rare sagacity and smartness, unswayed by emotion,
that nothing was too heartless for him to do if it seemed in line
with his assumed character. He was not especially selfish, and yet he
pretended to be so, simply that people should say of him significantly
and admiringly: "Isn't he keen? Doesn't he know how to take care of
himself?" What little human warmth there was in him died early, and he
succeeded only in making himself increasingly detested as he grew up.

His relations to Yan may be seen in one incident.

Yan had been crawling about under the house in the low wide cobwebby
space between the floor beams and the ground. The delightful sensation
of being on an exploring expedition led him farther (and ultimately to
a paternal thrashing for soiling his clothes), till he discovered a
hollow place near one side, where he could nearly stand upright. He
at once formed one of his schemes--to make a secret, or at least a
private, workroom here. He knew that if he were to ask permission
he would be refused, but if he and Rad together were to go it might
receive favourable consideration on account of Rad's self-asserted
reputation for common sense. For a wonder, Rad was impressed with the
scheme, but was quite sure that they had "better not go together to
ask Father." He "could manage that part better alone," and he did.

Then they set to work. The first thing was to deepen the hole from
three feet to six feet everywhere, and get rid of the earth by working
it back under the floor of the house. There were many days of labour
in this, and Yan stuck to it each day after returning from school.
There were always numerous reasons why Rad could not share in the
labour. When the ten by fourteen-foot hole was made, boards to line
and floor it were needed. Lumber was very cheap--inferior, second-hand
stuff was to be had for the asking--and Yan found and carried boards
enough to make the workroom. Rad was an able carpenter and now took
charge of the construction. They worked together evening after
evening, Yan discussing all manner of plans with warmth and
enthusiasm--what they would do in their workshop when finished--how
they might get a jig-saw in time and saw picture frames, so as to
make some money. Rad assented with grunts or an occasional Scripture
text--that was his way. Each day he told Yan what to go on with while
he was absent.

The walls were finished at length; a window placed in one side; a door
made and fitted with lock and key. What joy! Yan glowed with pleasure
and pride at the triumphant completion of his scheme. He swept up the
floor for the finishing ceremony and sat down on the bench for a grand
gloat, when Rad said abruptly:

"Going to lock up now." That sounded gratifyingly important. Yan
stepped outside. Rad locked the door, put the key in his pocket, then
turning, he said with cold, brutal emphasis:

"Now you keep out of my workshop from this on. _You_ have nothing
to do with it. It's mine. I got the permission to make it." All of
which he could prove, and did.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alner, the youngest, was eighteen months younger than Yan, and about
the same size, but the resemblance stopped there. His chief aim in
life was to be stylish. He once startled his mother by inserting into
his childish prayers the perfectly sincere request: "Please, God,
make me an awful swell, for Jesus sake." Vanity was his foible, and
laziness his sin.

He could be flattered into anything that did not involve effort. He
fairly ached to be famous. He was consuming with desire to be pointed
out for admiration as the great this, that or the other thing--it did
not matter to him what, as long as he could be pointed out. But he
never had the least idea of working for it. At school he was a sad
dunce. He was three grades below Yan and at the bottom of his grade.
They set out for school each day together, because that was a paternal
ruling; but they rarely reached there together. They had nothing in
common. Yan was full of warmth, enthusiasm, earnestness and energy,
but had a most passionate and ungovernable temper. Little put him in a
rage, but it was soon over, and then an equally violent reaction set
in, and he was always anxious to beg forgiveness and make friends
again. Alner was of lazy good temper and had a large sense of humour.
His interests were wholly in the playground. He had no sympathy with
Yan's Indian tastes--"Indians in nasty, shabby clothes. Bah! Horrid!"
he would scornfully say.

These, then, were his adjoining brothers.

What wonder that Yan was daily further from them.




IV

The Book


But the greatest event of Yan's then early life now took place. His
school readers told him about Wilson and Audubon, the first and last
American naturalists. Yan wondered why no other great prophet had
arisen. But one day the papers announced that at length he had
appeared. A work on the Birds of Canada, by ..., had come at last,
price one dollar.

Money never before seemed so precious, necessary and noble a thing.
"Oh! if I only had a dollar." He set to work to save and scrape. He
won marbles in game, swopped marbles for tops, tops for jack-knives as
the various games came around with strange and rigid periodicity. The
jack-knives in turn were converted into rabbits, the rabbits into cash
of small denominations. He carried wood for strange householders;
he scraped and scraped and saved the scrapings; and got, after some
months, as high as ninety cents. But there was a dread fatality
about that last dime. No one seemed to have any more odd jobs; his
commercial luck deserted him. He was burnt up with craving for that
book. None of his people took interest enough in him to advance the
cash even at the ruinous interest (two or three times cent per cent)
that he was willing to bind himself for. Six weeks passed before he
achieved that last dime, and he never felt conscience-clear about it
afterward.

He and Alner had to cut the kitchen wood. Each had his daily
allotment, as well as other chores. Yan's was always done faithfully,
but the other evaded his work in every way. He was a notorious little
fop. The paternal poverty did not permit his toilet extravagance to
soar above one paper collar per week, but in his pocket he carried a
piece of ink eraser with which he was careful to keep the paper collar
up to standard. Yan cared nothing about dress--indeed, was inclined to
be slovenly. So the eldest brother, meaning to turn Alner's weakness
to account, offered a prize of a twenty-five-cent necktie of the
winner's own choice to the one who did his chores best for a month.
For the first week Alner and Yan kept even, then Alner wearied, in
spite of the dazzling prize. The pace was too hot. Yan kept on his
usual way and was duly awarded the twenty-five cents to be spent on a
necktie. But in the store a bright thought came tempting him. Fifteen
cents was as much as any one should spend on a necktie--that's sure;
the other ten would get the book. And thus the last dime was added to
the pile. Then, bursting with joy and with the pride of a capitalist,
he went to the book-shop and asked for the coveted volume.

He was tense with long-pent feeling. He expected to have the
bookseller say that the price had gone up to one thousand dollars, and
that all were sold. But he did not. He turned silently, drew the book
out of a pile of them, hesitated and said, "Green or red cover?"

"Green," said Yan, not yet believing. The book-man looked inside, then
laid it down, saying in a cold, business tone, "Ninety cents."

"Ninety cents," gasped Yan. Oh! if only he had known the ways of
booksellers or the workings of cash discounts. For six weeks had
he been barred this happy land--had suffered starvation; he had
misappropriated funds, he had fractured his conscience and all to
raise that ten cents--that unnecessary dime.

He read that book reverentially all the way home. It did not give him
what he wanted, but that doubtless was his own fault. He pored over
it, studied it, loved it, never doubting that now he had the key to
all the wonders and mysteries of Nature. It was five years before
he fully found out that the text was the most worthless trash ever
foisted on a torpid public. Nevertheless, the book held some useful
things; first, a list of the bird names; second, some thirty vile
travesties of Audubon and Wilson's bird portraits.

These were the birds thus maligned:

Duck Hawk                     Rose-breasted Grosbeak
Sparrow Hawk                  Bobolink
White-headed Eagle            Meadow Lark
Great Horned Owl              Bluejay
Snowy Owl                     Ruffed Grouse
Red-headed Woodpecker         Great Blue Heron
Golden-winged Woodpecker      Bittern
Barn-swallow                  Wilson's Snipe
Whip-poor-will                Long-biller Curlew
Night Hawk                    Purple Gallinule
Belted Kingfisher             Canada Goose
Kingbird                      Wood Duck
Woodthrush                    Hooded Merganser
Catbird                       Double-crested Cormorant
White-bellied Nuthatch        Arctic Tern
Brown Creeper                 Great Northern Diver
Bohemian Chatterer            Stormy Petrel
Great Northern Shrike         Arctic Puffin
Shore Lark                    Black Guillemot

[Illustration: "He already knew the Downy Woodpecker"]


But badly as they were presented, the pictures were yet information,
and were entered in his memory as lasting accessions to his store of
truth about the Wild Things.

Of course, he already knew some few birds whose names are familiar
to every schoolboy: the Robin, Bluebird, Kingbird, Wild Canary,
Woodpecker, Barn-swallow, Wren, Chickadee, Wild Pigeon, Humming-bird,
Pewee, so that his list was steadily increased.




V

The Collarless Stranger


  Oh, sympathy! the noblest gift of God to man.
  The greatest bond there is twixt man and man.
  The strongest link in any friendship chain.
  The single lasting hold in kinship's claim.
  The only incorrosive strand in marriage bonds.
  The blazing torch where genius lights her lamp.
  The ten times noble base of noblest love.
  More deep than love--more strong than hate--the biggest thing
  in all the universe--the law of laws.
  Grant but this greatest gift of God to man--this single link
  concatenating grant, and all the rest are worthless or comprised.

Each year the ancient springtime madness came more strongly on Yan.
Each year he was less inclined to resist it, and one glorious day of
late April in its twelfth return he had wandered northward along to a
little wood a couple of miles from the town. It was full of unnamed
flowers and voices and mysteries. Every tree and thicket had a
voice--a long ditch full of water had many that called to him.
"_Peep-peep-peep_," they seemed to say in invitation for him to
come and see. He crawled again and again to the ditch and watched
and waited. The loud whistle would sound only a few rods away,
"_Peep-peep-peep_," but ceased at each spot when he came
near--sometimes before him, sometimes behind, but never where he was.
He searched through a small pool with his hands, sifted out sticks and
leaves, but found nothing else. A farmer going by told him it was only
a "spring Peeper," whatever that was, "some kind of a critter in the
water."

Under a log not far away Yan found a little Lizard that tumbled out of
sight into a hole. It was the only living thing there, so he decided
that the "Peeper" must be a "Whistling Lizard." But he was determined
to see them when they were calling. How was it that the ponds all
around should be full of them calling to him and playing hide and seek
and yet defying his most careful search? The voices ceased as soon as
he came near, to be gradually renewed in the pools he had left. His
presence was a husher. He lay for a long time watching a pool, but
none of the voices began again in range of his eye. At length, after
realizing that they were avoiding him, he crawled to a very noisy pond
without showing himself, and nearer and yet nearer until he was within
three feet of a loud peeper in the floating grass. He located the spot
within a few inches and yet could see nothing. He was utterly baffled,
and lay there puzzling over it, when suddenly all the near Peepers
stopped, and Yan was startled by a footfall; and looking around, he
saw a man within a few feet, watching him.

Yan reddened--a stranger was always an enemy; he had a natural
aversion to all such, and stared awkwardly as though caught in crime.

The man, a curious looking middle-aged person, was in shabby clothes
and wore no collar. He had a tin box strapped on his bent shoulders,
and in his hands was a long-handled net. His features, smothered in a
grizzly beard, were very prominent and rugged. They gave evidence of
intellectual force, with some severity, but his gray-blue eyes had a
kindly look.

He had on a common, unbecoming, hard felt hat, and when he raised it
to admit the pleasant breeze Yan saw that the wearer had hair like his
own--a coarse, paleolithic mane, piled on his rugged brow, like a mass
of seaweed lodged on some storm-beaten rock.

"F'what are ye fynding, my lad?" said he in tones whose gentleness was
in no way obscured by a strong Scottish tang.

Still resenting somewhat the stranger's presence, Yan said:

"I'm not finding anything; I am only trying to see what that Whistling
Lizard is like."

The stranger's eyes twinkled. "Forty years ago Ah was laying by a pool
just as Ah seen ye this morning, looking and trying hard to read the
riddle of the spring Peeper. Ah lay there all day, aye, and mony
anither day, yes, it was nigh onto three years before Ah found it oot.
Ah'll be glad to save ye seeking as long as Ah did, if that's yer
mind. Ah'll show ye the Peeper."

Then he raked carefully among the leaves near the ditch, and soon
captured a tiny Frog, less than an inch long.

"Ther's your Whistling Lizard: he no a Lizard at all, but a Froggie.
Book men call him _Hyla pickeringii_, an' a gude Scotchman he'd
make, for ye see the St. Andrew's cross on his wee back. Ye see the
whistling ones in the water put on'y their beaks oot an' is hard to
see. Then they sinks to the bottom when ye come near. But you tak
this'n home and treat him well and ye'll see him blow out his throat
as big as himsel' an' whistle like a steam engine."

Yan thawed out now. He told about the Lizard he had seen.

"That wasna a Lizard; Ah niver see thim aboot here. It must a been
a two-striped _Spelerpes_. A _Spelerpes_ is nigh kin to a
Frog--a kind of dry-land tadpole, while a Lizard is only a Snake with
legs."

This was light from heaven. All Yan's distrust was gone. He warmed to
the stranger. He plied him with questions; he told of his getting the
Bird Book. Oh, how the stranger did snort at "that driveling trash."
Yan talked of his perplexities. He got a full hearing and intelligent
answers. His mystery of the black ground-bird with a brown mate was
resolved into the Common Towhee. The unknown wonderful voice in the
spring morning, sending out its "_cluck, cluck, cluck, clucker_,"
in the distant woods, the large gray Woodpecker that bored in some
high stub and flew in a blaze of gold, and the wonderful spotted bird
with red head and yellow wings and tail in the taxidermist's window,
were all resolved into one and the same--the Flicker or Golden-winged
Woodpecker. The Hang-nest and the Oriole became one. The unknown
poisonous-looking blue Hornet, that sat on the mud with palpitating
body, and the strange, invisible thing that made the mud-nests inside
old outbuildings and crammed them with crippled Spiders, were both
identified as the Mud-wasp or _Pelopæus_.

A black Butterfly flew over, and Yan learned that it was a Camberwell
Beauty, or, scientifically, a _Vanessa antiopa_, and that this
one must have hibernated to be seen so early in the spring, and yet
more, that this beautiful creature was the glorified spirit of the
common brown and black spiney Caterpillar.

The Wild Pigeons were flying high above them in great flocks as they
sat there, and Yan learned of their great nesting places in the far
South, and of their wonderful but exact migrations without regard to
anything but food; their northward migration to gather the winged nuts
of the Slippery Elm in Canada; their August flight to the rice-fields
of Carolina; their Mississippi Valley pilgrimage when the acorns and
beech-mast were falling ripe.

What a rich, full morning that was. Everything seemed to turn up for
them. As they walked over a piney hill, two large birds sprang from
the ground and whirred through the trees.

"Ruffed Grouse or 'patridge', as the farmers call them. There's a pair
lives nigh aboots here. They come on this bank for the Wintergreen
berries."

And Yan was quick to pull and taste them. He filled his pockets with
the aromatic plant--berries and all--and chewed it as he went. While
they walked, a faint, far drum-thump fell on their ears. "What's
that?" he exclaimed, ever on the alert. The stranger listened and
said:

"That's the bird ye ha' just seen; that's the Cock Partridge drumming
for his mate."

The Pewee of his early memories became the Phoebe of books. That day
his brookside singer became the Song-sparrow; the brown triller, the
Veery Thrush. The Trilliums, white and red, the Dogtooth Violet, the
Spring-beauty, the Trailing Arbutus--all for the first time got
names and became real friends, instead of elusive and beautiful, but
depressing mysteries.

The stranger warmed, too, and his rugged features glowed; he saw in
Yan one minded like himself, tormented with the knowledge-hunger, as
in youth he himself had been; and now it was a priceless privilege to
save the boy some of what he had suffered. His gratitude to Yan grew
fervid, and Yan--he took in every word; nothing that he heard was
forgotten. He was in a dream, for he had found at last the greatest
thing on earth--sympathy--broad, intelligent, comprehensive sympathy.

That spring morning was ever after like a new epoch in Yan's mind--not
his memory, that was a thing of the past--but in his mind, his living
present.

And the strongest, realest thing in it all was, not the rugged
stranger with his kind ways, not the new birds and plants, but the
smell of the Wintergreen.

Smell's appeal to the memory is far better, stronger, more real than
that of any other sense. The Indians know this; many of them, in time,
find out the smell that conjures up their happiest hours, and keep it
by them in the medicine bag. It is very real and dear to them--that
handful of Pine needles, that lump of Rat-musk, or that piece of
Spruce gum. It adds the crown of happy memory to their reveries.

And yet this belief is one of the first attacked by silly White-men,
who profess to enlighten the Red-man's darkness. They, in their
ignorance, denounce it as absurd, while men of science know its simple
truth.

Yan did not know that he had stumbled on a secret of the Indian
medicine bag. But ever afterward that wonderful day was called back to
him, conjured up by his "medicine," this simple, natural magic, the
smell of the Wintergreen.

He appreciated that morning more than he could tell, and yet he did a
characteristic foolish thing, that put him in a wrong light and left
him so in the stranger's mind.

It was past noon. They had long lingered; the Stranger spoke of the
many things he had at home; then at length said he must be going.
"Weel, good-by, laddie; Ah hope Ah'll see you again." He held out his
hand. Yan shook it warmly; but he was dazed with thinking and with
reaction; his diffidence and timidity were strong; he never rose to
the stranger's veiled offer. He let him go without even learning his
name or address.

When it was too late, Yan awoke to his blunder. He haunted all those
woods in hopes of chancing on him there again, but he never did.




VI

Glenyan


Oh! what a song the Wild Geese sang that year! How their trumpet clang
went thrilling in his heart, to smite there new and hidden chords that
stirred and sang response. Was there ever a nobler bird than that
great black-necked Swan, that sings not at his death, but in his flood
of life, a song of home and of peace--of stirring deeds and hunting
in far-off climes--of hungerings and food, and raging thirsts to meet
with cooling drink. A song of wind and marching, a song of bursting
green and grinding ice--of Arctic secrets and of hidden ways. A song
of a long black marsh, a low red sky, and a sun that never sets.

An Indian jailed for theft bore bravely through the winter, but when
the springtime brought the Gander-clang in the black night sky, he
started, fell, and had gone to his last, long, hunting home.

Who can tell why Jericho should fall at the trumpet blast?

Who can read or measure the power of the Honker-song?

Oh, what a song the Wild Geese sang that year! And yet, was it a new
song? No, the old, old song, but Yan heard it with new ears. He was
learning to read its message. He wandered on their trailless track, as
often as he could, northward, ever northward, up the river from the
town, and up, seeking the loneliest ways and days. The river turned to
the east, but a small stream ran into it from the north: up that Yan
went through thickening woods and walls that neared each other, on and
up until the walls closed to a crack, then widened out into a little
dale that was still full of original forest trees. Hemlock, Pine,
Birch and Elm of the largest size abounded and spread over the clear
brook a continuous shade. Fox vines trailed in the open places, the
rarest wild-flowers flourished, Red-squirrels chattered from the
trees. In the mud along the brook-side were tracks of Coon and Mink
and other strange fourfoots. And in the trees overhead, the Veery, the
Hermit-thrush, or even a Woodthrush sang his sweetly solemn strain, in
that golden twilight of the midday forest. Yan did not know them all
by name as yet, but he felt their vague charm and mystery. It seemed
such a far and lonely place, so unspoiled by man, that Yan persuaded
himself that surely he was the first human being to stand there, that
it was his by right of discovery, and so he claimed it and named it
after its discoverer--Glenyan.

This place became the central thought in his life. He went there at
all opportunities, but never dared to tell any one of his discovery.
He longed for a confidant sometimes, he hankered to meet the stranger
and take him there, and still he feared that the secret would get out.
This was his little kingdom; the Wild Geese had brought him here, as
the Seagulls had brought Columbus to a new world--where he could lead,
for brief spells, the woodland life that was his ideal. He was tender
enough to weep over the downfall of a lot of fine Elm trees in town,
when their field was sold for building purposes, and he used to suffer
a sort of hungry regret when old settlers told how plentiful the Deer
used to be. But now he had a relief from these sorrows, for surely
there was one place where the great trees should stand and grow as in
the bright bygone; where the Coon, the Mink and the Partridge should
live and flourish forever. No, indeed, no one else should know of it,
for if the secret got out, at least hosts of visitors would come and
Glenyan be defiled. No, better that the secret should "die with him,"
he said. What that meant he did not really know, but he had read the
phrase somewhere and he liked the sound of it. Possibly he would
reveal it on his deathbed.

Yes, that was the proper thing, and he pictured a harrowing scene of
weeping relatives around, himself as central figure, all ceasing their
wailing and gasping with wonder as he made known the mighty secret of
his life--delicious! it was almost worth dying for.

So he kept the place to himself and loved it more and more. He would
look out through the thick Hemlock tops, the blots of Basswood green
or the criss-cross Butternut leafage and say: "My own, my own." Or
down by some pool in the limpid stream he would sit and watch the
arrowy Shiners and say: "You are mine, all; you are mine. You shall
never be harmed or driven away."

A spring came from the hillside by a green lawn, and here Yan would
eat his sandwiches varied with nuts and berries that he did not like,
but ate only because he was a wildman, and would look lovingly up the
shady brookland stretches and down to the narrow entrance of the glen,
and say and think and feel. "This is mine, my own, my very own."




VII

The Shanty


He had none but the poorest of tools, but he set about building a
shanty. He was not a resourceful boy. His effort to win the book
had been an unusual one for him, as his instincts were not at all
commercial. When that matter came to the knowledge of the Home
Government, he was rebuked for doing "work unworthy of a gentleman's
son" and forbidden under frightful penalties "ever again to resort to
such degrading ways of raising money."

They gave him no money, so he was penniless. Most boys would have
possessed themselves somehow of a good axe and spade. He had neither.
An old plane blade, fastened to a stick with nails, was all the axe
and spade he had, yet with this he set to work and offset its poorness
as a tool by dogged persistency. First, he selected the quietest
spot near the spring--a bank hidden by a mass of foliage. He knew no
special reason for hiding it, beyond the love of secrecy. He had
read in some of his books "how the wily scouts led the way through a
pathless jungle, pulled aside a bough and there revealed a comfortable
dwelling that none without the secret could possibly have discovered,"
so it seemed very proper to make it a complete mystery--a sort of
secret panel in the enchanted castle--and so picture himself as the
wily scout leading his wondering companions to the shanty, though, of
course, he had not made up his mind to reveal his secret to any one.
He often wished he could have the advantage of Rad's strong arms and
efficacious tools; but the workshop incident was only one of many that
taught him to leave his brother out of all calculation.

Mother Earth is the best guardian of a secret, and Yan with his crude
spade began by digging a hole in the bank. The hard blue clay made the
work slow, but two holidays spent in steady labour resulted in a hole
seven feet wide and about four feet into the bank.

In this he set about building the shanty. Logs seven or eight feet
long must be got to the place--at least twenty-five or thirty would
be needed, and how to cut and handle them with his poor axe was a
question. Somehow, he never looked for a better axe. The half-formed
notion that the Indians had no better was sufficient support, and he
struggled away bravely, using whatever ready sized material he could
find. Each piece as he brought it was put into place. Some boys would
have gathered the logs first and built it all at once, but that
was not Yan's way; he was too eager to see the walls rise. He had
painfully and slowly gathered logs enough to raise the walls three
rounds, when the question of a door occurred to him. This, of course,
could not be cut through the logs in the ordinary way; that required
the best of tools. So he lifted out all the front logs except the
lowest, replacing them at the ends with stones and blocks to sustain
the sides. This gave him the sudden gain of two logs, and helped the
rest of the walls that much. The shanty was now about three feet high,
and no two logs in it were alike: some were much too long, most were
crooked and some were half rotten, for the simple reason that these
were the only ones he could cut. He had exhausted the logs in the
neighbourhood and was forced to go farther. Now he remembered seeing
one that might do, half a mile away on the home trail (they were
always "trails"; he never called them "roads" or "paths"). He went
after this, and to his great surprise and delight found that it was
one of a dozen old cedar posts that had been cut long before and
thrown aside as culls, or worthless. He could carry only one at a
time, so that to bring each one meant a journey of a mile, and the
post got woefully heavy each time before that mile was over. To
get those twelve logs he had twelve miles to walk. It took several
Saturdays, but he stuck doggedly to it. Twelve good logs completed
his shanty, making it five feet high and leaving three logs over for
rafters. These he laid flat across, dividing the spaces equally. Over
them he laid plenty of small sticks and branches till it was thickly
covered. Then he went down to a rank, grassy meadow and, with his
knife, cut hay for a couple of hours. This was spread thickly on the
roof, to be covered with strips of Elm bark then on top of all he
threw the clay dug from the bank, piling it well back, stamping on it,
and working it down at the edges. Finally, he threw rubbish and leaves
over it, so that it was confused with the general tangle.

Thus the roof was finished, but the whole of the front was open. He
dreaded the search for more logs, so tried a new plan. He found,
first, some sticks about six feet long and two or three inches
through. Not having an axe to sharpen and drive them, he dug pairs of
holes a foot deep, one at each end and another pair near the middle of
the front ground log.

Into each of these he put a pair of upright sticks, leading up to the
eave log, one inside and one outside of it, then packed the earth
around them in the holes. Next, he went to the brook-side and cut a
number of long green willow switches about half an inch thick at the
butt. These switches he twisted around the top of each pair of stakes
in a figure 8, placing them to hold the stake tight against the bottom
and top logs at the front.

Down by the spring he now dug a hole and worked water and clay
together into mortar, then with a trowel cut out of a shingle, and
mortar carried in an old bucket, he built a wall within the stakes,
using sticks laid along the outside and stones set in mud till the
front was closed up, except a small hole for a window and a large hole
for a door.

Now he set about finishing the inside. He gathered moss in the woods
and stuffed all the chinks in the upper parts, and those next the
ground he filled with stones and earth. Thus the shanty was finished;
but it lacked a door.

The opening was four feet high and two feet wide, so in the woodshed
at home he cut three boards, each eight inches wide and four feet
high, but he left at each end of one a long point. Doing this at home
gave him the advantage of a saw. Then with these and two shorter
boards, each two feet long and six inches wide, he sneaked out to
Glenyan, and there, with some nails and a stone for a hammer, he
fastened them together into a door. In the ground log he pecked a hole
big enough to receive one of the points and made a corresponding hole
in the under side of the top log. Then, prying up the eave log, he put
the door in place, let the eave log down again, and the door was hung.
A string to it made an outside fastening when it was twisted around a
projecting snag in the wall, and a peg thrust into a hole within made
an inside fastener. Some logs, with fir boughs and dried grass, formed
a bunk within. This left only the window, and for lack of better cover
he fastened over it a piece of muslin brought from home. But finding
its dull white a jarring note, he gathered a quart of butternuts, and
watching his chance at home, he boiled the cotton in water with the
nuts and so reduced it to a satisfactory yellowish brown.

His final task was to remove all appearance of disturbance and to
fully hide the shanty in brush and trailing vines. Thus, after weeks
of labour, his woodland home was finished. It was only five feet high
inside, six feet long and six feet wide--dirty and uncomfortable--but
what a happiness it was to have it.

Here for the first time in his life he began to realize something
of the pleasure of single-handed achievement in the line of a great
ambition.




VIII

Beginnings of Woodlore


During this time Yan had so concentrated all his powers on the shanty
that he had scarcely noticed the birds and wild things. Such was his
temperament--one idea only, and that with all his strength.

His heart was more and more in his kingdom now he longed to come
and live here. But he only dared to dream that some day he might be
allowed to pass a night in the shanty. This was where he would lead
his ideal life--the life of an Indian with all that is bad and cruel
left out. Here he would show men how to live without cutting down all
the trees, spoiling all the streams, and killing every living thing.
He would learn how to get the fullest pleasure out of the woods
himself and then teach others how to do the same. Though the birds and
Fourfoots fascinated him, he would not have hesitated to shoot one
had he been able, but to see a tree cut down always caused him
great distress. Possibly he realized that the bird might be quickly
replaced, but the tree, never.

To carry out his plan he must work hard at school, for books had
much that he needed. Perhaps some day he might get a chance to see
Audubon's drawings, and so have all his bird worries settled by a
single book.

That summer a new boy at school added to Yan's savage equipment. This
boy was neither good nor bright; he was a dunce, and had been expelled
from a boarding school for misconduct, but he had a number of
schoolboy accomplishments that gave him a tinge of passing glory.
He could tie a lot of curious knots in a string. He could make a
wonderful birdy warble, and he spoke a language that he called Tutnee.
Yan was interested in all, but especially the last. He teased and
bribed till he was admitted to the secret. It consisted in spelling
every word, leaving the five vowels as they are, but doubling each
consonant and putting a "u" between. Thus "b" became "bub," "d" "dud,"
"m" "mum," and so forth, except that "c" was "suk," "h" "hash," "x"
"zux," and "w" "wak."

The sample given by the new boy, "sus-hash-u-tut u-pup yak-o-u-rur
mum-o-u-tut-hash," was said to be a mode of enjoining silence.

This language was "awful useful," the new boy said, to keep the other
fellows from knowing what you were saying, which it certainly did. Yan
practised hard at it and within a few weeks was an adept. He could
handle the uncouth sentences better than his teacher, and he was
singularly successful in throwing in accents and guttural tones that
imparted a delightfully savage flavour, and he rejoiced in jabbering
away to the new boy in the presence of others so that he might bask in
the mystified look on the faces of those who were not skilled in the
tongue of the Tutnees.

He made himself a bow and arrows. They were badly made and he could
hit nothing with them, but he felt so like an Indian when he drew the
arrow to its head, that it was another pleasure.

He made a number of arrows with hoop-iron heads, these he could
file at home in the woodshed. The heads were jagged and barbed and
double-barbed. These arrows were frightful-looking things. They seemed
positively devilish in their ferocity, and were proportionately
gratifying. These he called his "war arrows," and would send one into
a tree and watch it shiver, then grunt "Ugh, heap good," and rejoice
in the squirming of the imaginary foe he had pierced.

He found a piece of sheepskin and made of it a pair of very poor
moccasins. He ground an old castaway putty knife into a scalping
knife; the notch in it for breaking glass was an annoying defect until
he remembered that some Indians decorate their weapons with a notch
for each enemy it has killed, and this, therefore, might do duty as a
kill-tally. He made a sheath for the knife out of scraps of leather
left off the moccasins. Some water-colours, acquired by a school swap,
and a bit of broken mirror held in a split stick, were necessary parts
of his Indian toilet. His face during the process of make-up was
always a battle-ground between the horriblest Indian scowl
and a grin of delight at his success in diabolizing his visage with
the paints. Then with painted face and a feather in his hair he would
proudly range the woods in his little kingdom and store up every scrap
of woodlore he could find, invent or learn from his schoolmates.

[Illustration: Yan's toilet]

Odd things that he found in the woods he would bring to his shanty:
curled sticks, feathers, bones, skulls, fungus, shells, an old
cowhorn--things that interested him, he did not know why. He made
Indian necklaces of the shells, strung together alternately with
the backbone of a fish. He let his hair grow as long as possible,
employing various stratagems, even the unpalatable one of combing it
to avoid the monthly trim of the maternal scissors. He lay for hours
with the sun beating on his face to correct his colour to standard,
and the only semblance of personal vanity that he ever had was
pleasure in hearing disparaging remarks about the darkness of his
complexion. He tried to do everything as an Indian would do it,
striking Indian poses, walking carefully with his toes turned in,
breaking off twigs to mark a place, guessing at the time by the sun,
and grunting "Ugh" or "Wagh" when anything surprised him. Disparaging
remarks about White-men, delivered in supposed Indian dialect, were
an important part of his pastime. "Ugh, White-men heap no good" and
"Wagh, paleface--pale fool in woods," were among his favourites.

He was much influenced by phrases that caught his ear. "The brown
sinewy arm of the Indian," was one of them. It discovered to him that
his own arms were white as milk. There was, however, a simple remedy.
He rolled up his sleeves to the shoulder and exposed them to the full
glare of the sun. Then later, under the spell of the familiar phrase,
"The warrior was naked to the waist," he went a step further--he
determined to be brown to the waist--so discarded his shirt during the
whole of one holiday. He always went to extremes. He remembered now
that certain Indians put their young warriors through an initiation
called the Sun-dance, so he danced naked round the fire in the blazing
sun and sat around naked all one day.

He noticed a general warmness before evening, but it was at night that
he really felt the punishment of his indiscretion. He was in a burning
heat. He scarcely slept all night. Next day he was worse, and his arm
and shoulder were blistered. He bore it bravely, fearing only that the
Home Government might find it out, in which case he would have fared
worse. He had read that the Indians grease the skin for sunburn, so he
went to the bathroom and there used goose grease for lack of Buffalo
fat. This did give some relief, and in a few days he was better and
had the satisfaction of peeling the dead skin from his shoulders and
arms.

Yan made a number of vessels out of Birch bark, stitching the edges
with root fibers, filling the bottom with a round wooden disc, and
cementing the joints with pine gum so that they would hold water.

In the distant river he caught some Catfish and brought them
home--that, is, to his shanty. There he made a fire and broiled
them--very badly--but he ate them as a great delicacy. The sharp bone
in each of their side fins he saved, bored a hole through its thick
end, smoothed it, and so had needles to stitch his Birch bark. He kept
them in a bark box with some lumps of resin, along with some bark
fiber, an Indian flint arrow-head given him by a schoolmate, and
the claws of a large Owl, found in the garbage heap back of the
taxidermist's shop.

One day on the ash heap in their own yard in town he saw a new,
strange bird. He was always seeing new birds, but this was of unusual
interest. He drew its picture as it tamely fed near him. A dull, ashy
gray, with bronzy yellow spots on crown and rump, and white bars on
its wings. His "Birds of Canada" gave no light; he searched through
all the books he could find, but found no clew to its name. It was
years afterward before he learned that this was the young male Pine
Grosbeak.

Another day, under the bushes not far from his shanty, he found a
small Hawk lying dead. He clutched it as a wonderful prize, spent an
hour in looking at its toes, its beak, its wings, its every feather;
then he set to work to make a drawing of it. A very bad drawing it
proved, although it was the labour of days, and the bird was crawling
with maggots before he had finished. But every feather and every spot
was faithfully copied, was duly set down on paper. One of his
friends said it was a Chicken-hawk. That name stuck in Yan's memory.
Thenceforth the Chicken-hawk and its every marking were familiar to
him. Even in after years, when he had learned that this must have been
a young "Sharp-shin," the name "Chicken-hawk" was always readier on
his lips.

But he met with another and a different Hawk soon afterward. This one
was alive and flitting about in the branches of a tree over his head.
It was very small--less than a foot in length. Its beak was very
short, its legs, wings and tail long; its head was bluish and its back
coppery red; on the tail was a broad, black crossbar. As the bird flew
about and balanced on the boughs, it pumped its tail. This told him
it was a Hawk, and the colours he remembered were those of the male
Sparrow-hawk, for here his bird book helped with its rude travesty of
"Wilson's" drawing of this bird. Yet two other birds he saw close at
hand and drew partly from memory. The drawings were like this, and
from the picture on a calendar he learned that one was a Rail; from
a drawing in the bird book that the other was a Bobolink. And these
names he never forgot. He had his doubts about the sketching at
first--it seemed an un-Indian thing to do, until he remembered that
the Indians painted pictures on their shields and on their teepees. It
was really the best of all ways for him to make reliable observation.

The bookseller of the town had some new books in his window about this
time. One, a marvellous work called "Poisonous Plants," Yan was eager
to see. It was exposed in the window for a time. Two of the large
plates were visible from the street; one was Henbane, the other
Stramonium. Yan gazed at them as often as he could. In a week they
were gone; but the names and looks were forever engraved on his
memory. Had he made bold to go in and ask permission to see the work,
his memory would have seized most of it in an hour.




IX

Tracks


In the wet sand down by the edge of the brook he one day found some
curious markings--evidently tracks. Yan pored over them, then made a
life-size drawing of one. He shrewdly suspected it to be the track of
a Coon--nothing was too good or wild or rare for his valley. As soon
as he could, he showed the track to the stableman whose dog was said
to have killed a Coon once, and hence the man must be an authority on
the subject.

"Is that a Coon track?" asked Yan timidly.

"How do I know?" said the man roughly, and went on with his work. But
a stranger standing near, a curious person with shabby clothes, and
a new silk hat on the back of his head, said, "Let me see it." Yan
showed it.

"Is it natural size?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yep, that's a Coon track, all right. You look at all the big trees
near about whar you saw that; then when you find one with a hole in
it, you look on the bark and you will find some Coon hars. Then you
will know you've got a Coon tree."

[Illustration: The Coon track]

Yan took the earliest chance. He sought and found a great Basswood
with some gray hairs caught in the bark. He took them home with him,
not sure what kind they were. He sought the stranger, but he was gone,
and no one knew him.

How to identify the hairs was a question; but he remembered a friend
who had a Coon-skin carriage robe. A few hairs of these were compared
with those from the tree and left no doubt that the climber was a
Coon. Thus Yan got the beginning of the idea that the very hairs of
each, as well as its tracks, are different. He learned, also, how wise
it is to draw everything that he wished to observe or describe. It
was accident, or instinct on his part, but he had fallen on a sound
principle; there is nothing like a sketch to collect and convey
accurate information of form--there is no better developer of true
observation.

One day he noticed a common plant like an umbrella. He dug it up by
the root, and at the lower end he found a long white bulb. He tasted
this. It was much like a cucumber. He looked up "Gray's School
Botany," and in the index saw the name, Indian Cucumber. The
description seemed to tally, as far as he could follow its technical
terms, though like all such, without a drawing it was far from
satisfactory. So he added the Indian Cucumber to his woodlore.

On another occasion he chewed the leaves of a strange plant because he
had heard that that was the first test applied by the Indians. He soon
began to have awful pains in his stomach. He hurried home in agony.
His mother gave him mustard and water till he vomited, then she boxed
his ears. His father came in during the process and ably supplemented
the punishment. He was then and there ordered to abstain forever from
the woods. Of course, he did not. He merely became more cautious about
it all, and enjoyed his shanty with the added zest of secret sin.




X

Biddy's Contribution


An Irish-Canadian servant girl from Sanger now became a member of
their household. Her grandmother was an herb-doctor in great repute.
She had frequently been denounced as a witch, although in good
standing as a Catholic. This girl had picked up some herb-lore, and
one day when all the family were visiting the cemetery she darted into
various copses and produced plants which she named, together with the
complaint that her grandmother used them for.

"Sassafras, that makes tea for skin disease; Ginseng, that's good to
sell; Bloodroot for the blood in springtime; Goldthread, that cures
sore mouths; Pipsissewa for chills and fever; White-man's Foot, that
springs up wherever a White-man treads; Indian cup, that grows where
an Indian dies; Dandelion roots for coffee; Catnip tea for a cold;
Lavender tea for drinking at meals; Injun Tobacco to mix with boughten
tobacco; Hemlock bark to dye pink; Goldthread to dye yellow, and
Butternut rinds for greenish."

All of these were passing trifles to the others, but to Yan they were
the very breath of life, and he treasured up all of these things
in his memory. Biddy's information was not unmixed with error and
superstition:

"Hold Daddy Longlegs by one leg and say, 'tell me where the cows are,'
and he will point just right under another leg, and onct he told me
where to find my necklace when I lost it.

"Shoot the Swallows and the cows give bloody milk. That's the way old
Sam White ruined his milk business--shooting Swallows.

"Lightning never strikes a barn where Swallows nest. Paw never rested
easy after the new barn was built till the Swallows nested in it. He
had it insured for a hundred dollars till the Swallows got round to
look after it.

"When a Measuring-worm crawls on you, you are going to get a new suit
of clothes. My brother-in-law says they walk over him every year in
summer and sure enough, he gets a new suit. But they never does it in
winter, cause he don't get new clothes then.

"Split a Crow's tongue and he will talk like a girl. Granny knowed a
man that had a brother back of Mara that got a young Crow and
split his tongue an' he told Granny it was _just_ like a girl
talking--an' Granny told me!

"Soak a Horse-hair in rainwater and it will turn into a Snake. Ain't
there lots uv Snakes around ponds where Horses drink? Well!

"Kill a Spider an' it will rain to-morrow. Now, that's worth knowin'.
I mind one year when the Orangeman's picnic was comin', 12th of July,
Maw made us catch twenty Spiders and we killed them all the day
before, and law, how it did rain on the picnic! Mebbe we didn't laugh.
Most of them hed to go home in boats, that's what our paper said. But
next year they done the same thing on us for St. Patrick's Day, but
Spiders is scarce on the 16th of March, an' it didn't rain so much as
snow, so it was about a stand-off.

"Toads gives warts. You seen them McKenna twins--their hands is a
sight with warts. Well, I seen them two boys playing with Toads like
they was marbles. So! An' they might a-knowed what was comin'. Ain't
every Toad just covered with warts as thick as he can stick?

"That there's Injun tobacco. The Injuns always use it, and Granny
does, too, sometimes." (Yan made special note of this--he must get
some and smoke it, if it was _Indian_.)

"A Witch-hazel wand will bob over a hidden spring and show where to
dig. Denny Scully is awful good at it. He gets a dollar for showing
where to sink a well, an' if they don't strike water it's because they
didn't dig where he said, or spiled the charm some way or nuther, and
hez to try over.

"Now, that's Dandelion. Its roots makes awful good coffee. Granny
allers uses it. She says that it is healthier than store coffee, but
Maw says she likes boughten things best, and the more they cost the
better she likes them.

"Now, that's Ginseng. It has a terrible pretty flower in spring.
There's tons and tons of it sent to China. Granny says the Chinese
eats it, to make them cheerful, but they don't seem to eat enough.

"There's Slippery Elm. It's awfully good for loosening up a cold, if
you drink the juice the bark's bin biled in. One spring Granny made a
bucketful. She set it outside to cool, an' the pig he drunk it all up,
an' he must a had a cold, for it loosened him up so he dropped his
back teeth. I seen them myself lying out there in the yard. Yes, I
did.

"That's Wintergreen. Lots of boys I know chew that to make the girls
like them. Lots of them gits a beau that way, too. I done it myself
many's a time.

"Now, that is what some folks calls Injun Turnip, an' the children
calls it Jack-in-a-Pulpit, but Granny calls it 'Sorry-plant,' cos she
says when any one eats it it makes them feel sorry for the last fool
thing they done. I'll put some in your Paw's coffee next time he licks
yer and mebbe that'll make him quit. It just makes me sick to see ye
gettin' licked fur every little thing ye can't help.

"A Snake's tongue is its sting. You put your foot on a Snake and see
how he tries to sting you. An' his tail don't die till sundown. I seen
that myself, onct, an' Granny says so, too, an' what Granny don't know
ain't knowledge--it's only book-larnin'."

These were her superstitions, most of them more or less obviously
absurd to Yan; but she had also a smattering of backwoods lore and Yan
gleaned all he could.

She had so much of what he wanted to know that he had almost made up
his mind to tell her where he went each Saturday when he had finished
his work.

A week or two longer and she would have shared the great secret, but
something took place to end their comradeship.




XI

Lung Balm


One day as this girl went with him through a little grove on the edge
of the town, she stopped at a certain tree and said:

"If that ain't Black-cherry!"

"You mean Choke-cherry."

"No, Black-cherry. Choke-cherry ain't no good; but Black-cherry bark's
awful good for lung complaint. Grandma always keeps it. I've been
feeling a bit queer meself" [she was really as strong as an ox].
"Guess I'll git some." So she and Yan planned an expedition together.
The boldness of it scared the boy. The girl helped herself to a
hatchet in the tool box--the sacred tool box of his father.

Yan's mother saw her with it and demanded why she had it. With ready
effrontery she said it was to hammer in the hook that held the
clothesline, and proceeded to carry out the lie with a smiling face.
That gave Yan a new lesson and not a good one. The hatchet was at once
put back in the box, to be stolen more carefully later on.

Biddy announced that she was going to the grocery shop. She met Yan
around the corner and they made for the lot. Utterly regardless of
property rights, she showed Yan how to chip off the bark of the
Black-cherry. "Don't chip off all around; that's bad luck--take it
on'y from the sunny side." She filled a basket with the pieces and
they returned home.

Here she filled a jar with bits of the inner layer, then, pouring
water over it, let it stand for a week. The water was then changed to
a dark brown stuff with a bitter taste and a sweet, aromatic smell.

"It's terrible good," she said. "Granny always keeps it handy. It
cures lots of people. Now there was Bud Ellis--the doctors just guv
him up. They said he didn't have a single lung left, and he come
around to Granny. He used to make fun of Granny; but now he wuz plumb
scairt. At first Granny chased him away; then when she seen that he
was awful sick, she got sorry and told him how to make Lung Balm. He
was to make two gallons each time and bring it to her. Then she took
and fixed it so it was one-half as much and give it back to him. Well,
in six months if he wasn't all right."

Biddy now complained nightly of "feelin's" in her chest. These
feelings could be controlled only by a glass or two of Lung Balm.
Her condition must have been critical, for one night after several
necessary doses of Balm her head seemed affected. She became
abusive to the lady of the house and at the end of the month a less
interesting help was in her place.

There were many lessons good and bad that Yan might have drawn from
this; but the only one that he took in was that the Black-cherry bark
is a wonderful remedy. The family doctor said that it really was so,
and Yan treasured up this as a new and precious fragment of woodcraft.

Having once identified the tree, he was surprised to see that it was
rather common, and was delighted to find it flourishing in his own
Glenyan.

This made him set down on paper all the trees he knew, and he was
surprised to find how few they were and how uncertain he was about
them.

  Maple--hard and soft.
  Beach.
  Elm--swamp and slippery.
  Ironwood.
  Birch--white and black.
  Ash--white and black.
  Pine.
  Cedar.
  Balsam.
  Hemlock and Cherry.

He had heard that the Indians knew the name and properties of every
tree and plant in the woods, and that was what he wished to be able to
say of himself.

One day by the bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of
the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam. The shells were common enough, but
why all together and marked in the same way? Around the pile on the
mud were curious tracks and marks. There were so many that it was hard
to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering the Coon track,
he drew a picture of it. It was too small to be the mark of his old
acquaintance. He did not find any one to tell him what it was, but one
day he saw a round, brown animal hunched up on the bank eating a clam.
It dived into the water at his approach, but it reappeared swimming
farther on. Then, when it dived again, Yan saw by its long thin
tail that it was a Muskrat, like the stuffed one he had seen in the
taxidermist's window.

He soon learned that the more he studied those tracks the more
different kinds he found. Many were rather mysterious, so he could
only draw them and put them aside, hoping some day for light. One
of the strangest and most puzzling turned out to be the trail of a
Snapper, and another proved to be merely the track of a Common Crow
that came to the water's edge to drink.

The curios that he gathered and stored in his shanty increased in
number and in interest. The place became more and more part of
himself. Its concealment bettered as the foliage grew around it again,
and he gloried in its wild seclusion and mystery, and wandered through
the woods with his bow and arrows, aiming harmless, deadly blows at
snickering Red-squirrels--though doubtless he would have been as sorry
as they had he really hit one.

Yan soon found out that he was not the only resident of the shanty.
One day as he sat inside wondering why he had not made a fireplace, so
that he could sit at an indoor fire, he saw a silent little creature
flit along between two logs in the back wall. He remained still. A
beautiful little Woodmouse, for such it was, soon came out in plain
view and sat up to look at Yan and wash its face. Yan reached out for
his bow and arrow, but the Mouse was gone in a flash. He fitted a
blunt arrow to the string, then waited, and when the Mouse returned he
shot the arrow. It missed the Mouse, struck the log and bounded back
into Yan's face, giving him a stinging blow on the cheek. And as Yan
rolled around grunting and rubbing his cheek, he thought, "This is
what I tried to do to the Woodmouse." Thenceforth, Yan made no attempt
to harm the Mouse; indeed, he was willing to share his meals with it.
In time they became well acquainted, and Yan found that not one, but a
whole family, were sharing with him his shanty in the woods.

Biddy's remark about the Indian tobacco bore fruit. Yan was not a
smoker, but now he felt he must learn. He gathered a lot of this
tobacco, put it to dry, and set about making a pipe--a real Indian
peace pipe. He had no red sandstone to make it of, but a soft red
brick did very well. He first roughed out the general shape with his
knife, and was trying to bore the bowl out with the same tool, when
he remembered that in one of the school-readers was an account of the
Indian method of drilling into stone with a bow-drill and wet sand.
One of his schoolmates, the son of a woodworker, had seen his father
use a bow-drill. This knowledge gave him new importance in Yan's eyes.
Under his guidance a bow-drill was made, and used much and on many
things till it was understood, and now it did real Indian service by
drilling the bowl and stem holes of the pipe.

He made a stem of an Elderberry shoot, punching out the pith at home
with a long knitting-needle. Some white pigeon wing feathers trimmed
small, and each tipped with a bit of pitch, were strung on a stout
thread and fastened to the stem for a finishing touch; and he would
sit by his camp fire solemnly smoking--a few draws only, for he did
not like it--then say, "Ugh, heap hungry," knock the ashes out, and
proceed with whatever work he had on hand.

Thus he spent the bright Saturdays, hiding his accouterments each
day in his shanty, washing the paint from his face in the brook, and
replacing the hated paper collar that the pride and poverty of his
family made a daily necessity, before returning home. He was a little
dreamer, but oh! what happy dreams. Whatever childish sorrow he found
at home he knew he could always come out here and forget and be happy
as a king--be a real King in a Kingdom wholly after his heart, and all
his very own.




XII

A Crisis


At school he was a model boy except in one respect--he had strange,
uncertain outbreaks of disrespect for his teachers. One day he amused
himself by covering the blackboard with ridiculous caricatures of the
principal, whose favourite he undoubtedly was. They were rather clever
and proportionately galling. The principal set about an elaborate plan
to discover who had done them. He assembled the whole school and began
cross-examining one wretched dunce, thinking him the culprit. The lad
denied it in a confused and guilty way; the principal was convinced of
his guilt, and reached for his rawhide, while the condemned set up a
howl. To the surprise of the assembly, Yan now spoke up, and in a tone
of weary impatience said:

"Oh, let him alone. I did it."

His manner and the circumstances were such that every one laughed. The
principal was nettled to fury. He forgot his manhood; he seized Yan
by the collar. He was considered a timid boy; his face was white; his
lips set. The principal beat him with the rawhide till the school
cried "Shame," but he got no cry from Yan.

That night, on undressing for bed, his brother Rad saw the long black
wales from head to foot, and an explanation was necessary. He was
incapable of lying; his parents learned of his wickedness, and new and
harsh punishments were added. Next day was Saturday. He cut his usual
double or Saturday's share of wood for the house, and, bruised and
smarting, set out for the one happy spot he knew. The shadow lifted
from his spirit as he drew near. He was already forming a plan for
adding a fireplace and chimney to his house. He followed the secret
path he had made with aim to magnify its secrets. He crossed the open
glade, was, nearly at the shanty, when he heard voices--loud, coarse
voices--_coming from his shanty_. He crawled up close. The door
was open. There in his dear cabin were three tramps playing cards and
drinking out of a bottle. On the ground beside them were his shell
necklaces broken up to furnish poker chips. In a smouldering fire
outside were the remains of his bow and arrows.

Poor Yan! His determination to be like an Indian under torture
had sustained him in the teacher's cruel beating and in his home
punishments, but this was too much. He fled to a far and quiet corner
and there flung himself down and sobbed in grief and rage--he would
have killed them if he could. After an hour or two he came trembling
back to see the tramps finish their game and their liquor; then they
defiled the shanty and left it in ruins.

The brightest thing in his life was gone--a King discrowned,
dethroned. Feeling now every wale on his back and legs, he sullenly
went home.

This was late in the summer. Autumn followed last, with shortening
days and chilly winds. Yan had no chance to see his glen, even had he
greatly wished it. He became more studious; books were his pleasure
now. He worked harder than ever, winning honour at school, but
attracting no notice at the home, where piety reigned.

The teachers and some of the boys remarked that Yan was getting very
thin and pale. Never very robust, he now looked like an invalid; but
at home no note was taken of the change. His mother's thoughts were
all concentrated on his scapegrace younger brother. For two years she
had rarely spoken to Yan peaceably. There was a hungry place in
his heart as he left the house unnoticed each morning and saw his
graceless brother kissed and darlinged. At school their positions
were reversed. Yan was the principal's pride. He had drawn no more
caricatures, and the teacher flattered himself that that beating was
what had saved the pale-faced head boy.

He grew thinner and heart-hungrier till near Christmas, when the
breakdown came.

       *       *       *       *       *

"He is far gone in consumption," said the physician. "He cannot live
over a month or two"

[Illustration: "There in his dear cabin were three tramps"]

"He _must_ live," sobbed the conscience-stricken mother. "He must
live--O God, he must live."

All that suddenly awakened mother's love could do was done. The
skilful physician did his best, but it was the mother that saved him.
She watched over him night and day; she studied his wishes and comfort
in every way. She prayed by his bedside, and often asked God to
forgive her for her long neglect. It was Yan's first taste of
mother-love. Why she had ignored him so long was unknown. She was
simply erratic, but now she awoke to his brilliant gifts, his steady,
earnest life, already purposeful.




XIII

The Lynx


As winter waned, Yan's strength returned. He was wise enough to use
his new ascendency to get books. The public librarian, a man of broad
culture who had fought his own fight, became interested in him, and
helped him to many works that otherwise he would have missed.

"Wilson's Ornithology" and "Schoolcraft's Indians" were the most
important. And they were sparkling streams in the thirst-parched land.

In March he was fast recovering. He could now take long walks; and one
bright day of snow he set off with his brother's Dog. His steps bent
hillward. The air was bright and bracing, he stepped with unexpected
vigour, and he made for far Glenyan, without at first meaning to go
there. But, drawn by the ancient attraction, he kept on. The secret
path looked not so secret, now the leaves were off; but the Glen
looked dearly familiar as he reached the wider stretch.

His eye fell on a large, peculiar track quite fresh in the snow. It
was five inches across, big enough for a Bear track, but there were no
signs of claws or toe pads. The steps were short and the tracks had
not sunken as they would for an animal as heavy as a Bear.

As one end of each showed the indications of toes, he could see what
way it went, and followed up the Glen. The dog sniffed at it uneasily,
but showed no disposition to go ahead. Yan tramped up past the ruins
of his shanty, now painfully visible since the leaves had fallen, and
his heart ached at the sight. The trail led up the valley, and crossed
the brook on a log, and Yan became convinced that he was on the track
of a large Lynx. Though a splendid barker, Grip, the dog, was known to
be a coward, and now he slunk behind the boy, sniffing at the great
track and absolutely refusing to go ahead.

Yan was fascinated by the long rows of footprints, and when he came
to a place where the creature had leaped ten or twelve feet without
visible cause, he felt satisfied that he had found a Lynx, and the
love of adventure prompted him to go on, although he had not even a
stick in his hand or a knife in his pocket. He picked up the best club
he could find--a dry branch two feet long and two inches through, and
followed. The dog was now unwilling to go at all; he hung back, and
had to be called at each hundred yards.

They were at last in the dense Hemlock woods at the upper end of the
valley, when a peculiar sound like the call of a deep-voiced cat was
heard.

_Yow! Yow! Yowl!_

Yan stood still. The dog, although a large and powerful retriever,
whimpered, trembled and crawled up close.

The sound increased in volume. The yowling _meouw_ came louder,
louder and nearer, then suddenly clear and close, as though the
creature had rounded a point and entered an opening. It was positively
blood-curdling now. The dog could stand it no more; he turned and went
as fast as he could for home, leaving Yan to his fate. There was no
longer any question that it was a Lynx. Yan had felt nervous before
and the abject flight of the dog reacted on him. He realized how
defenseless he was, still weak from his illness, and he turned and
went after the dog. At first he walked. But having given in to his
fears, they increased; and as the yowling continued he finally ran his
fastest. The sounds were left behind, but Yan never stopped until he
had left the Glen and was once more in the open valley of the river.
Here he found the valiant retriever trembling all over. Yan received
him with a contemptuous kick, and, boylike, as soon as he could find
some stones, he used them till Grip was driven home.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most lads have some sporting instinct, and his elder brother, though
not of Yan's tastes, was not averse to going gunning when there was a
prospect of sport.

Yan decided to reveal to Rad the secret of his glen. He had never been
allowed to use a gun, but Rad had one, and Yan's vivid account of his
adventure had the desired effect. His method was characteristic.

[Illustration: "It surely was a Lynx."]

"Rad, would you go huntin' if there was lots to hunt?"

"Course I would."

"Well, I know a place not ten miles away where there are all kinds of
wild animals--hundreds of them."

"Yes, you do, I don't think. Humph!"

"Yes, I do; and I'll tell you, if you will promise never to tell a
soul."

"Ba-ah!"

"Well, I just had an adventure with a Lynx up there now, and if you
will come with your gun we can get him."

Then Yan related all that had passed, and it lost nothing in his
telling. His brother was impressed enough to set out under Yan's
guidance on the following Saturday.

Yan hated to reveal to his sneering, earthy-minded brother all the
joys and sorrows he had found in the Glen, but now that it seemed
compulsory he found keen pleasure in playing the part of the crafty
guide. With unnecessary caution he first led in a wrong direction,
then trying, but failing, to extort another promise of secrecy, he
turned at an angle, pointed to a distant tree, saying with all the
meaning he could put into it: "Ten paces beyond that tree is a trail
that shall lead us into the secret valley." After sundry other
ceremonies of the sort, they were near the inway, when a man came
walking through the bushes. On his shoulders he carried something.
When he came close, Yan saw to his deep disgust that that something
was the Lynx--yes, it surely was _his_ Lynx.

They eagerly plied the man with questions. He told them that he had
killed it the day before, really. It had been prowling for the last
week or more about Kernore's bush; probably it was a straggler from up
north.

This was all intensely fascinating to Yan, but in it was a jarring
note. Evidently this man considered the Glen--his Glen--as an
ordinary, well-known bit of bush, possibly part of his farm--not by
any means the profound mystery that Yan would have had it.

The Lynx was a fine large one. The stripes on its face and the wide
open yellow eyes gave a peculiarly wild, tiger-like expression that
was deeply gratifying to Yan's romantic soul.

It was not so much of an adventure as a might-have-been adventure;
but it left a deep impress on the boy, and it also illustrated the
accuracy of his instincts in identifying creatures that he had never
before seen, but knew only through the slight descriptions of very
unsatisfactory books.




XIV

Froth


From now on to the spring Yan was daily gaining in strength, and he
and his mother came closer together. She tried to take an interest in
the pursuits that were his whole nature. But she also strove hard to
make him take an interest in her world. She was a morbidly religious
woman. Her conversation was bristling with Scripture texts. She had
a vast store of them--indeed, she had them all; and she used them on
every occasion possible and impossible, with bewildering efficiency.

If ever she saw a group of young people dancing, romping, playing any
game, or even laughing heartily, she would interrupt them to say,
"Children, are you sure you can ask God's blessing on all this? Do you
think that beings with immortal souls to save should give rein to such
frivolity! I fear you are sinning, and be sure your sin will find
you out. Remember, that for every idle word and deed we must give an
account to the Great Judge of Heaven and earth."

She was perfectly sincere in all this, but she never ceased, except
during the time of her son's illness, when, under orders from the
doctor, she avoided the painful topic of eternal happiness and tried
to simulate an interest in his pursuits. This was the blessed truce
that brought them together.

He found a confidante for the first time since he met the collarless
stranger, and used to tell all his loves and fears among the woodfolk
and things. He would talk about this or that bird or flower, and hoped
to find out its name, till the mother would suddenly feel shocked that
any being with an immortal soul to save could talk so seriously
about anything outside of the Bible; then gently reprove her son and
herself, too, with a number of texts.

He might reply with others, for he was well equipped. But her
unanswerable answer would be: "There is but one thing needful. What
profiteth it a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?"

These fencing bouts grew more frequent as Yan grew stronger and the
doctor's inhibition was removed.

After one of unusual warmth, Yan realized with a chill that all her
interest in his pursuits had been an affected one. He was silent a
long time, then said: "Mother! you like to talk about your Bible. It
tells you the things that you long to know, that you love to learn.
You would be unhappy if you went a day without reading a chapter or
two. That is your nature; God made you so.

"I have been obliged to read the Bible all my life. Every day I read a
chapter; but I do not love it. I read it because I am forced to do it.
It tells me nothing I want to know. It does not teach me to love God,
which you say is the one thing needful. But I go out into the woods,
and every bird and flower I see stirs me to the heart with something,
I do not know what it is; only I love them: I love them with all my
strength, and they make me feel like praying when your Bible does not.
They are my Bible. This is my nature. God made me so."

The mother was silent after this, but Yan could see that she was
praying for him as for a lost soul.

A few days later they were out walking in the early spring morning.
A Shore-lark on a clod whistled prettily as it felt the growing
sunshine.

Yan strained his eyes and attention to take it in. He crept up near
it. It took wing, and as it went he threw after it a short stick he
was carrying. The stick whirled over and struck the bird. It fell
fluttering. Yan rushed wildly after it and caught it in spite of his
mother's calling him back.

He came with the bird in his hand, but it did not live many minutes.
His mother was grieved and disgusted. She said. "So this is the great
love you have for the wild things; the very first spring bird to sing
you must club to death. I do not understand your affections. Are not
two sparrows sold for one farthing, and yet not one of them falls to
the ground without the knowledge of your heavenly Father."

Yan was crushed. He held the dead bird in his hand and said,
contradictorily, as the tears stood in his eyes, "I wish I hadn't; but
oh, it was so beautiful."

He could not explain, because he did not understand, and yet was no
hypocrite.

Weeks later a cheap trip gave him the chance for the first time in his
life to see Niagara. As he stood with his mother watching the racing
flood, in the gorge below the cataract, he noticed straws, bubbles and
froth, that seemed to be actually moving upstream. He said:

"Mother, you see the froth how it seems to go up-stream."

"Well!"

"Yet we know it is a trifle and means nothing. We know that just below
the froth is the deep, wide, terrible, irresistible, arrowy flood,
surging all the other way."

"Yes, my son."

"Well, Mother, when I killed the Shore-lark, that was froth going the
wrong way, I did love the little bird. I know now why I killed it.
Because it was going away from me. If I could have seen it near and
could have touched it, or even have heard it every day, I should never
have wished to harm it. I didn't mean _to kill it_, only _to
get it_. You gather flowers because you love to keep them near you,
not because you want to destroy them. They die and you are sorry. I
only tried to gather the Shore-lark as you would a flower. It died,
and I was very, very sorry."

"Nevertheless," the mother replied, "the merciful man is merciful unto
his beast. He who hearkens when the young Ravens cry, surely took note
of it, and in His great Book of Remembrance it is written down against
you."

And from that time they surely drifted apart.






PART II

SANGER & SAM




I

The New Home


Yan was now fourteen years old long-legged, thin, and growing fast The
doctor marked this combination and said: "Send him on a farm for a
year."

Thus it was that an arrangement was made for Yan to work for his board
at the farmhouse of William Raften of Sanger.

Sanger was a settlement just emerging from the early or backwoods
period.

The recognized steps are, first, the frontier or woods where all
is unbroken forest and Deer abound; next the backwoods where small
clearings appear; then a settlement where the forest and clearings are
about equal and the Deer gone; last, an agricultural district, with
mere shreds of forest remaining.

Thirty years before, Sanger had been "taken up" by a population
chiefly from Ireland, sturdy peasantry for the most part, who brought
with them the ancient feud that has so long divided Ireland--the
bitter quarrel between the Catholics or "Dogans" (why so called none
knew) and Protestants, more usually styled "Prattisons." The colours
of the Catholics were green and white; of the Protestants orange
and blue; and hence another distinctive name of the latter was
"Orangemen."

These two factions split the social structure in two vertically. There
were, in addition, several horizontal lines of cleavage which, like
geological seams, ran across both segments.

In those days, the early part of the nineteenth century, the British
Government used to assist desirable persons who wished to emigrate to
Canada from Ireland. This aid consisted of a free ocean passage. Many
who could not convince the Government of their desirability and yet
could raise the money, came with them, paying their regular steerage
rate of $15. These were alike to the outside world, but not to
themselves. Those who paid their way were "passengers," and were, in
their own opinion, many social worlds above the assisted ones, who
were called "Emmy Grants." This distinction was never forgotten among
the residents of Sanger.

Yet two other social grades existed. Every man and boy in Sanger was
an expert with the axe; was wonderfully adroit. The familiar phrase,
"He's a good man," had two accepted meanings: If obviously applied to
a settler during the regular Saturday night Irish row in the little
town of Downey's Dump, it meant he was an able man with his fists;
but if to his home life on the farm, it implied that he was unusually
dexterous with the axe. A man who fell below standard was despised.
Since the houses of hewn logs were made by their owners, they
reflected the axemen's skill. There were two styles of log
architecture; the shanty with corners criss-cross, called hog-pen
finish, and the other, the house with the corners neatly finished,
called dovetail finish. In Sanger it was a social black eye to live in
a house of the first kind. The residents were considered "scrubs" or
"riff-raff" by those whose superior axemanship had provided the
more neatly finished dwelling. A later division crept in among the
"dovetailers" themselves when a brickyard was opened. The more
prosperous settlers put up neat little brick houses. To the surprise
of all, one Phil O'Leary, a poor but prolific Dogan, leaped at once
from a hog-pen log to a fine brick, and caused no end of perplexity
to the ruling society queens, simply paralyzing the social register,
since his nine fat daughters now had claims with the best. Many,
however, whose brick houses were but five years old, denounced the
O'Learys as upstarts and for long witheld all social recognition.
William Raften, as the most prosperous man in the community, was
first to appear in red bricks. His implacable enemy, Char-less (two
syllables) Boyle, egged on by his wife, now also took the red brick
plunge, though he dispensed with masons and laid the bricks himself,
with the help of his seventeen sons. These two men, though Orangemen
both, were deadly enemies, as the wives were social rivals. Raften was
the stronger and richer man, but Boyle, whose father had paid his own
steerage rate, knew all about Raften's father, and always wound up
any discussion by hurling in Raften's teeth: "Don't talk to me, ye
upstart. Everybody knows ye are nothing but a Emmy Grant." This was
the one fly in the Raften ointment. No use denying it. His father
had accepted a free passage, true, and Boyle had received a free
homestead, but what of that--that counted for nothing. Old Boyle had
been a "PASSENGER," old Raften an "EMMY GRANT."

This was the new community that Yan had entered, and the words Dogan
and Prattison, "green" and "orange and blue," began to loom large,
along with the ideas and animosities they stood for.

The accent of the Sangerite was mixed. First, there was a rich Irish
brogue with many Irish words; this belonged chiefly to the old folks.
The Irish of such men as Raften was quite evident in their speech, but
not strong enough to warrant the accepted Irish spelling of books,
except when the speaker was greatly excited. The young generation
had almost no Irish accent, but all had sifted down to the peculiar
burring nasal whine of the backwoods Canadian.

Mr. and Mrs. Raften met Yan at the station. They had supper together
at the tavern and drove him to their home, where they showed him into
the big dining-room--living-room--kitchen. Over behind the stove was
a tall, awkward boy with carroty hair and small, dark eyes set much
aslant in the saddest of faces. Mrs. Raften said, "Come, Sam, and
shake hands with Yan." Sam came sheepishly forward, shook hands in a
flabby way, and said, in drawling tones, "How-do," then retired behind
the stove to gaze with melancholy soberness at Yan, whenever he could
do so without being caught at it. Mr. and Mrs. Raften were attending
to various matters elsewhere, and Yan was left alone and miserable.
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
chores.

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 institution.
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 album, 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
instituted a sort of temporary Sunday, and the two small windows were
kept shut and plugged as well as muffled 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 glass-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 chores. 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 chore 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 grassy, 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?"

"Well," answered Yan, promptly assuming the leadership and rejoicing
in his ability to speak as an authority, "the Plains Injuns make their
teepees of skins, but the wood Injuns generally use Birch bark."

"Well, I bet you can't find skins or Birch bark enough in this woods
to make a teepee big enough for a Chipmunk to chaw nuts in."

"We can use Elm bark."

"That's a heap easier," replied Sam, "if it'll answer, coz we cut a
lot o' Elm logs last winter and the bark'll be about willin' to peel
now. But first let's plan it out."

This was a good move, one Yan would have overlooked. He would probably
have got a lot of material together and made the plan afterward, but
Sam had been taught to go about his work with method.

So Yan sketched on a smooth log his remembrance of an Indian teepee.
"It seems to me it was about this shape, with the poles sticking up
like that, a hole for the smoke here and another for the door there."

"Sounds like you hain't never seen one," remarked Sam, with more point
than politeness, "but we kin try it. Now 'bout how big?"

Eight feet high and eight feet across was decided to be about right.
Four poles, each ten feet long, were cut in a few minutes, Yan
carrying them to a smooth place above the creek as fast as Sam cut
them.

"Now, what shall we tie them with?" said Yan.

"You mean for rope?"

"Yes, only we must get everything in the woods; real rope ain't
allowed."

"I kin fix that," said Sam; "when Da double-staked the orchard fence,
he lashed every pair of stakes at the top with Willow withes."

"That's so--I quite forgot," said Yan. In a few minutes they were
at work trying to tie the four poles together with slippery stiff
Willows, but it was no easy matter. They had to be perfectly tight or
they would slip and fall in a heap each time they were raised, and it
seemed at length that the boys would be forced to the impropriety of
using hay wire, when they heard a low grunt, and turning, saw William
Raften standing with his hands behind him as though he had watched
them for hours.

The boys were no little startled. Raften had a knack of turning up at
any point when something was going on, taking in the situation fully,
and then, if he disapproved, of expressing himself in a few words of
blistering mockery delivered in a rich Irish brogue. Just what view
he would take of their pastime the boys had no idea, but awaited with
uneasiness. If they had been wasting time when they should have been
working there is no question but that they would have been sent with
contumely to more profitable pursuits, but this was within their
rightful play hours, and Raften, after regarding them with a searching
look, said slowly: "Bhoys!" (Sam felt easier; his father would have
said "_Bhise_" if really angry.) "Fhat's the good o' wastin' yer
time" (Yan's heart sank) "wid Willow withes fur a job like that? They
can't be made to howld. Whoi don't ye git some hay woire or coord at
the barrun?"

The boys were greatly relieved, but still this friendly overture might
be merely a feint to open the way for a home thrust. Sam was silent.
So Yan said, presently, "We ain't allowed to use anything but what the
Indians had or could get in the woods."

"An' who don't allow yez?"

"The rules."

"Oh," said William, with some amusement. "Oi see! Hyar."

He went into the woods looking this way and that, and presently
stopped at a lot of low shrubs.

"Do ye know what this is, Yan?"

"No, sir."

"Le's see if yer man enough to break it aff."

Yan tried. The wood was brittle enough, but the bark, thin, smooth and
pliant, was as tough as leather, and even a narrow strip defied his
strength.

"That's Litherwood," said Raften. "That's what the Injuns used; that's
what we used ourselves in the airly days of this yer settlement."

The boys had looked for a rebuke, and here was a helping hand. It all
turned on the fact that this was "play hours," Raften left with a
parting word: "In wan hour an' a half the pigs is fed."

"You see Da's all right when the work ain't forgot," said Sam, with
a patronizing air. "I wonder why I didn't think o' that there
Leatherwood meself. I've often heard that that's what was used fur
tying bags in the old days when cord was scarce, an' the Injuns used
it for tying their prisoners, too. Ain't it the real stuff?"

Several strips were now used for tying four poles together at the top,
then these four were raised on end and spread out at the bottom to
serve as the frame of the teepee, or more properly wigwam, since it
was to be made of bark.

After consulting, they now got a long, limber Willow rod an inch
thick, and bending it around like a hoop, they tied it with
Leatherwood to each pole at a point four feet from the ground. Next
they cut four short poles to reach from the ground to this. These were
lashed at their upper ends to the Willow rod, and now they were ready
for the bark slabs. The boys went to the Elm logs and again Sam's able
use of the axe came in. He cut the bark open along the top of one log,
and by using the edge of the axe and some wooden wedges they pried off
a great roll eight feet long and four feet across. It was a pleasant
surprise to see what a wide piece of bark the small log gave them.

Three logs yielded three fine large slabs and others yielded pieces of
various sizes. The large ones were set up against the frame so as to
make the most of them. Of course they were much too big for the top,
and much too narrow for the bottom; but the little pieces would do to
patch if some way could be found to make them stick.

Sam suggested nailing them to the posts, and Yan was horrified at the
idea of using nails. "No Indian has any nails."

"Well, what _would_ they use?" said Sam.

"They used thongs, an'--an'--maybe wooden pegs. I don't know, but
seems to me that would be all right."

"But them poles is hard wood," objected the practical Sam. "You can
drive Oak pegs into Pine, but you can't drive wooden pegs into hard
wood without you make some sort of a hole first. Maybe I'd better
bring a gimlet."

"Now, Sam, you might just as well hire a carpenter--_that_
wouldn't be Indian at all. Let's play it right. We'll find some way. I
believe we can tie them up with Leatherwood."

So Sam made a sharp Oak pick with his axe, and Yan used it to pick
holes in each piece of bark and then did a sort of rude sewing till
the wigwam seemed beautifully covered in. But when they went inside
to look they were unpleasantly surprised to find how many holes
there were. It was impossible to close them all because the bark was
cracking in so many places, but the boys plugged the worst of them and
then prepared for the great sacred ceremony--the lighting of the fire
in the middle.

They gathered a lot of dry fuel, then Yan produced a match.

"That don't look to me very Injun," drawled Sam critically. "I don't
think Injuns has matches."

"Well, they don't," admitted Yan, humbly. "But I haven't a flint and
steel, and don't know how to work rubbing-sticks, so we just got to
use matches, _if_ we _want_ a fire."

"Why, of course we want a fire. I ain't kicking," said Sam. "Go ahead
with your old leg-fire sulphur stick. A camp without a fire would be
'bout like last year's bird's nest or a house with the roof off."

Yan struck a match and put it to the wood. It went out. He struck
another--same result. Yet another went out.

Sam remarked:

"Pears to me you don't know much about lightin' a fire. Lemme show
you. Let the White hunter learn the Injun somethin' about the woods,"
said he with a leer.

Sam took the axe and cut some sticks of a dry Pine root. Then with his
knife he cut long curling shavings, which he left sticking in a fuzz
at the end of each stick.

"Oh, I've seen a picture of an Indian making them. They call them
'prayer-sticks,'" said Yan.

"Well, prayer-sticks is mighty good kindlin'" replied the other. He
struck a match, and in a minute he had a blazing fire in the middle of
the wigwam.

"Old Granny de Neuville, she's a witch--she knows all about the woods,
and cracked Jimmy turns everything into poetry what she says. He says
she says when you want to make a fire in the woods you take--

  "First a curl of Birch bark as dry as it kin be,
  Then some twigs of soft-wood, dead, but on the tree,
  Last o' all some Pine knots to make the kittle foam,
  An' thar's a fire to make you think you're settin' right at home."

"Who's Granny de Neuville?"

"Oh, she's the old witch that lives down at the bend o' the creek."

"What? Has she got a granddaughter named Biddy?" said Yan, suddenly
remembering that his ancient ally came from this part of Sanger.

"Oh, my! Hain't she? Ain't Biddy a peach--drinks like a fish, talks
everybody to death about the time she resided in Bonnerton. Gits a
letter every mail begging her to come back and 'reside' with them some
more."

"Ain't this fine," said Yan, as he sat on a pile of Fir boughs in the
wigwam.

"Looks like the real thing," replied Sam from his seat on the other
side. "But say, Yan, don't make any more fire; it's kind o' warm here,
an' there seems to be something wrong with that flue--wants sweepin',
prob'ly--hain't been swep' since I kin remember."

The fire blazed up and the smoke increased. Just a little of it
wandered out of the smoke-hole at the top, then it decided that this
was a mistake and thereafter positively declined to use the vent. Some
of it went out by chinks, and a large stream issued from the door, but
by far the best part of it seemed satisfied with the interior of the
wigwam, so that in a minute or less both boys scrambled out. Their
eyes were streaming with smoke-tears and their discomfiture was
complete.

"'Pears to me," observed Sam, "like we got them holes mixed. The dooer
should 'a 'been at the top, sence the smoke has a fancy for usin' it,
an' then _we'd_ had a chance."

"The Indians make it work," said Yan; "a White hunter ought to know
how."

"Now's the Injun's chance," said Sam. "Maybe it wants a dooer to
close, then the smoke would have to go out."

They tried this, and of course some of the smoke was crowded out, but
not till long after the boys were.

"Seems like what does get out by the chinks is sucked back agin by
that there double-action flue," said Sam.

It was very disappointing. The romance of sitting by the fire in one's
teepee appealed to both of the boys, but the physical torture of
the smoke made it unbearable. Their dream was dispelled, and Sam
suggested, "Maybe we'd better try a shanty."

"No," said Yan, with his usual doggedness. "I know it can be done,
because the Indians do it. We'll find out in time."

But all their efforts were in vain. The wigwam was a failure, as far
as fire was concerned. It was very small and uncomfortable, too; the
wind blew through a hundred crevices, which grew larger as the Elm
bark dried and cracked. A heavy shower caught them once, and they were
rather glad to be driven into their cheerless lodge, but the rain came
abundantly into the smoke-hole as well as through the walls, and they
found it but little protection.

[Illustration: "The wigwam was a failure."]

"Seems to me, if anything, a _leetle_ wetter in here than
outside," said Sam, as he led in a dash for home.

That night a heavy storm set in, and next day the boys found their
flimsy wigwam blown down--nothing but a heap of ruins.

Some time after, Raften asked at the table in characteristic stern
style, "Bhoys, what's doin' down to yer camp? Is yer wigwam finished?"

"No good," said Sam. "All blowed down."

"How's that?"

"I dunno'. It smoked like everything. We couldn't stay in it."

"Couldn't a-been right made," said Raften; then with a sudden
interest, which showed how eagerly he would have joined in this forty
years ago, he said, "Why don't ye make a rale taypay?"

"Dunno' how, an' ain't got no stuff."

"Wall, now, yez have been pretty good an' ain't slacked on the wurruk,
yez kin have the ould wagon kiver. Cousin Bert could tache ye how to
make it, if he wuz here. Maybe Caleb Clark knows," he added, with a
significant twinkle of his eye. "Better ask him." Then he turned to
give orders to the hired men, who, of course, ate at the family table.

"Da, do you care if we go to Caleb?"

"I don't care fwhat ye do wid him," was the reply.

Raften was no idle talker and Sam knew that, so as soon as "the law
was off" he and Yan got out the old wagon cover. It seemed like an
acre of canvas when they spread it out. Having thus taken possession,
they put it away again in the cow-house, their own domain, and Sam
said: "I've a great notion to go right to Caleb; he sho'ly knows more
about a teepee than any one else here, which ain't sayin' much."

"Who's Caleb?"

"Oh, he's the old Billy Goat that shot at Da oncet, just after Da beat
him at a horse trade. Let on it was a mistake: 'twas, too, as he
found out, coz Da bought up some old notes of his, got 'em cheap, and
squeezed him hard to meet them. He's had hard luck ever since.

"He's a mortal queer old duck, that Caleb. He knows heaps about the
woods, coz he was a hunter an' trapper oncet. My! wouldn't he be down
on me if he knowed who was my Da, but he don't have to know."




IV

The Sanger Witch

  The Sanger Witch dwelt in the bend of the creek,
  And neither could read nor write;
  But she knew in a day what few knew in a week,
  For hers was the second sight.
  "Read?" said she, "I am double read;
  You fools of the ink and pen
  Count never the eggs, but the sticks of the nest,
  See the clothes, not the souls of men."

  --Cracked Jimmy's Ballad of Sanger.


The boys set out for Caleb's. It was up the creek away from the camp
ground. As they neared the bend they saw a small log shanty, with some
poultry and a pig at the door.

"That's where the witch lives," said Sam.

"Who--old Granny de Neuville?"

"Yep, and she just loves me. Oh, yes; about the same way an old hen
loves a Chicken-hawk. 'Pears to me she sets up nights to love me."

"Why?"

"Oh, I guess it started with the pigs. No, let's see: first about the
trees. Da chopped off a lot of Elm trees that looked terrible nice
from her windy. She's awful queer about a tree. She hates to see 'em
cut down, an' that soured her same as if she owned 'em. Then there
wuz the pigs. You see, one winter she was awful hard up, an' she had
two pigs worth, maybe, $5.00 each--anyway, she said they was, an' she
ought to know, for they lived right in the shanty with her--an' she
come to Da (I guess she had tried every one else first) an' Da he
squeezed her down an' got the two pigs for $7.00. He al'ays does that.
Then he comes home an' says to Ma, 'Seems to me the old lady is
pretty hard put. 'Bout next Saturday you take two sacks of flour and
some pork an' potatoes around an' see that she is fixed up right.'
Da's al'ays doin' them things, too, on the quiet. So Ma goes with
about $15.00 worth o' truck. The old witch was kinder 'stand off.'
She didn't say much. Ma was goin' slow, not knowin' just whether to
give the stuff out an' out, or say it could be worked for next year,
or some other year, when there was two moons, or some time when the
work was all done. Well, the old witch said mighty little until the
stuff was all put in the cellar, then she grabs up a big stick an'
breaks out at Ma:

"'Now you git out o' my house, you dhirty, sthuck-up thing. I ain't
takin' no charity from the likes o' you. That thing you call your
husband robbed me o' my pigs, an' we ain't any more'n square now, so
git out an' don't you dar set fut in my house agin'.

"Well, she was sore on us when Da bought her pigs, but she was five
times wuss after she clinched the groceries. 'Pears like they soured
on her stummick."

"What a shame, the old wretch," said Yan, with ready sympathy for the
Raftens.

"No," replied Sam; "she's only queer. There's lots o' folk takes her
side. But she's awful queer. She won't have a tree cut if she can help
it, an' when the flowers come in the spring she goes out in the woods
and sets down beside 'em for hours an' calls 'em 'Me beauty--me little
beauty,' an' she just loves the birds. When the boys want to rile her
they get a sling-shot an' shoot the birds in her garden an' she just
goes crazy. She pretty near starves herself every winter trying to
feed all the birds that come around. She has lots of 'em to feed right
out o' her hand. Da says they think its an old pine root, but she has
a way o' coaxin' 'em that's awful nice. There she'll stand in freezin'
weather calling them 'Me beauties'.

"You see that little windy in the end?" he continued, as they came
close to the witch's hut. "Well, that's the loft, an' it's full o' all
sorts o' plants an' roots."

"What for?"

"Oh, for medicine. She's great on hairbs."

"Oh, yes, I remember now Biddy did say that her Granny was a herb
doctor."

"Doctor? She ain't much of a doctor, but I bet she knows every plant
that grows in the woods, an' they're sure strong after they've been up
there for a year, with the cat sleepin' on them."

"I wish I could go and see her."

"Guess we can," was the reply.

"Doesn't she know you?"

"Yes, but watch me fix her," drawled Sam. "There ain't nothin' she
likes better'n a sick pusson."

Sam stopped now, rolled up his sleeves and examined both arms,
apparently without success, for he then loosed his suspenders, dropped
his pants, and proceeded to examine his legs. Of course, all boys
have more or less cuts and bruises in various stages of healing. Sam
selected his best, just below the knee, a scratch from a nail in the
fence. He had never given it a thought before, but now he "reckoned
it would do." With a lead pencil borrowed from Yan he spread a hue
of mortification all around it, a green butternut rind added the
unpleasant yellowish-brown of human decomposition, and the result
was a frightful looking plague spot. By chewing some grass he made a
yellowish-green dye and expectorated this on the handkerchief which he
bound on the sore. He then got a stick and proceeded to limp painfully
toward the witch's abode. As they drew near, the partly open door was
slammed with ominous force. Sam, quite unabashed, looked at Yan and
winked, then knocked. The bark of a small dog answered. He knocked
again. A sound now of some one moving within, but no answer. A third
time he knocked, then a shrill voice: "Get out o' that. Get aff my
place, you dirthy young riff-raff."

Sam grinned at Yan. Then drawling a little more than usual, he said:

"It's a poor boy, Granny. The doctors can't do nothin' for him," which
last, at least, was quite true.

There was no reply, so Sam made bold to open the door. There sat the
old woman glowering with angry red eyes across the stove, a cat in her
lap, a pipe in her mouth, and a dog growling toward the strangers.

"Ain't you Sam Raften?" she asked fiercely.

"Yes, marm. I get hurt on a nail in the fence. They say you kin git
blood-p'isinin' that way," said Sam, groaning a little and trying to
look interesting. The order to "get out" died on the witch's lips. Her
good old Irish heart warmed to the sufferer. After all, it was rather
pleasant to have the enemy thus humbly seek her aid, so she muttered:

"Le's see it."

Sam was trying amid many groans to expose the disgusting mess he had
made around his knee, when a step was heard outside. The door opened
and in walked Biddy.

She and Yan recognized each other at once. The one had grown much
longer, the other much broader since the last meeting, but the
greeting was that of two warm-hearted people glad to see each other
once more.

"An' how's yer father an' yer mother an' how is all the fambily? Law,
do ye mind the Cherry Lung-balm we uster make? My, but we wuz greenies
then! Ye mind, I uster tell ye about Granny? Well, here she is.
Granny, this is Yan. Me an' him hed lots o' fun together when I
'resided' with his mamma, didn't we, Yan? Now, Granny's the one to
tell ye all about the plants."

A long groan from Sam now called all attention his way.

"Well, if it ain't Sam Raften," said Biddy coldly.

"Yes, an' he's deathly sick," added Granny. "Their own docther guv him
up an said mortal man couldn't save him nohow, so he jest hed to come
to me."

Another long groan was ample indorsement.

"Le's see. Gimme my scissors, Biddy; I'll hev to cut the pant leg
aff."

"No, no," Sam blurted out with sudden vigour, dreading the
consequences at home. "I kin roll it up."

"Thayer, thot'll do. Now I say," said the witch. "Yes, sure enough,
thayer _is_ proud flesh. I moight cut it out," said she, fumbling
in her pocket (Sam supposed for a knife, and made ready to dash for
the door), "but le's see, no--that would be a fool docther trick. I
kin git on without."

"Yes, sure," said Sam, clutching at the idea, "that's just what a fool
doctor would do, but you kin give me something to take that's far
better."

"Well, sure an' I kin," and Yan and Sam breathed more freely.
"Shwaller this, now," and she offered him a tin cup of water into
which she spilled some powder of dry leaves. Sam did so. "An' you
take this yer bundle and bile it in two gallons of wather and drink a
glassful ivery hour, an' hev a loive chicken sphlit with an axe an'
laid hot on the place twicet ivery day, till the proud flesh goes, an'
it'll be all right wid ye--a fresh chicken ivery toime, moind ye."

"Wouldn't--turkeys--do--better?" groaned Sam, feebly. "I'm me mother's
pet, Granny, an' expense ain't any objek"--a snort that may have meant
mortal agony escaped him.

"Niver moind, now. Sure we won't talk of yer father an' mother;
they're punished pretty bad already. Hiven forbid they don't lose
the rest o' ye fur their sins. It ain't meself that 'ud bear ony
ill-will."

A long groan cut short what looked like a young sermon.

"What's the plant, Granny?" asked Yan, carefully avoiding Sam's gaze.

"Shure, an' it grows in the woods."

"Yes, but I want to know what it's like and what it's called."

"Shure, 'tain't like nothin' else. It's just like itself, an' it's
called Witch-hazel.

  "'Witch-hazel blossoms in the faal,
  To cure the chills and Fayvers aall,'

"as cracked Jimmy says."

"I'll show you some av it sometime," said Biddy.

"Can it be made into Lung-balm?" asked Yan, mischievously.

"I guess we'll have to go now," Sam feebly put in. "I'm feeling much
better. Where's my stick? Here, Yan, you kin carry my medicine, an'
be _very_ keerful of it."

Yan took the bundle, not daring to look Sam in the face.

Granny bade them both come back again, and followed to the door with a
hearty farewell. At the same moment she said:

"Howld on!" Then she went to the one bed in the room, which also was
the house, turned down the clothes, and in the middle exposed a lot of
rosy apples. She picked out two of the best and gave one to each of
the boys.

"Shure, Oi hev to hoide them thayer fram the pig, for they're the
foinest iver grew."

"I know they are," whispered Sam, as he limped out of hearing, "for
her son Larry stole them out of our orchard last fall. They're the
only kind that keeps over. They're the best that grow, but a trifle
too warm just now."

"Good-by, and thank you much," said Yan.

"I-feel-better-already," drawled Sam. "That tired feeling has left me,
an' sense tryin' your remedy I have took no other," but added aside,
"I wish I could throw up the stuff before it pisens me," and then,
with a keen eye to the picturesque effect, he wanted to fling his
stick away and bound into the woods.

It was all Yan could do to make him observe some of the decencies
and limp a little till out of sight. As it was, the change was quite
marked and the genial old witch called loudly on Biddy to see with
her own eyes how quickly she had helped young Raften "afther all the
dochters in the country hed giv him up."

"Now for Caleb Clark, Esq., Q.C.," said Sam.

"Q.C.?" inquired his friend.

"Some consider it means Queen's Counsel, an' some claims as it stands
for Queer Cuss. One or other maybe is right."

"You're stepping wonderfully for a crippled boy the doctors have given
up," remarked Yan.

"Yes; that's the proud flesh in me right leg that's doin' the high
steppin'. The left one is jest plain laig."

"Let's hide this somewhere till we get back," and Yan held up the
bundle of Witch-hazel.

"I'll hide that," said Sam, and he hurled the bundle afar into the
creek.

"Oh, Sam, that's mean. Maybe she wants it herself."

"Pooh, that's all the old brush is good for. I done more'n me duty
when I drank that swill. I could fairly taste the cat in it."

"What'll you tell her next time?"

"Well, I'll tell her I put the sticks in the right place an' where
they done the most good. I soaked 'em in water an' took as much as I
wanted of the flooid.

"She'll see for herself I really did pull through, and will be a
blamed sight happier than if I drank her old pisen brushwood an' had
to send for a really truly doctor."

Yan was silenced, but not satisfied. It seemed discourteous to throw
the sticks away--so soon, anyway; besides, he had curiosity to know
just what they were and how they acted.




V

Caleb


A mile farther was the shanty of Caleb Clark, a mere squatter now on a
farm once his own. As the boys drew near, a tall, round-shouldered man
with a long white beard was seen carrying in an armful of wood.

"Ye see the Billy Goat?" said Sam.

Yan sniffed as he gasped the "why" of the nickname.

"I guess you better do the talking; Caleb ain't so easy handled as the
witch, and he's just as sour on Da."

So Yan went forward rather cautiously and knocked at the open door of
the shanty. A deep-voiced Dog broke into a loud bay, the long beard
appeared, and its owner said, "Wall?"

"Are you Mr. Clark?"

"Yep." Then, "Lie down, Turk," to a black-and-tan Hound that came
growling out.

"I came--I--we wanted to ask some questions--if you don't mind."

"What might yer name be?"

"Yan."

"An' who is this?"

"He's my chum, Sam."

"I'm Sam Horn," said Sam, with some truth, for he was Samuel
Horn Raften, but with sufficient deception to make Yan feel very
uncomfortable.

"And where are ye from?"

"Bonnerton," said Yan.

"To-day?" was the rejoinder, with a tone of doubt.

"Well, no," Yan began; but Sam, who had tried to keep out of notice
for fear of recognition, saw that his ingenuous companion was being
quickly pumped and placed, and now interposed: "You see, Mr. Clark, we
are camped in the woods and we want to make a teepee to live in. We
have the stuff an' was told that you knew all about the making."

"Who told ye?"

"The old witch at the bend of the creek."

"Where are ye livin' now?"

"Well," said Sam, hastening again to forestall Yan, whose simple
directness he feared, "to tell the truth, we made a wigwam of bark in
the woods below here, but it wasn't a success."

"Whose woods?"

"Oh, about a mile below on the creek."

"Hm! That must be Raften's or Burns's woods."

"I guess it is," said Sam.

"_An' you look uncommon like Sam Raften_. You consarned young
whelp, to come here lyin' an' tryin' to pull the wool over my eyes.
Get out o' this now, or I'll boot ye."

[Illustration: "Get out o' this now, or I'll boot ye."]

Yan turned very red. He thought of the scripture text, "Be sure your
sin will find you out," and he stepped back. Sam stuck his tongue in
his cheek and followed. But he was his father's son. He turned and
said:

"Now see here, Mr. Clark, fair and square; we come here to ask a
simple question about the woods. You are the only man that knows or we
wouldn't 'a' bothered you. I knowed you had it in for Da, so I tried
to fool you, and it didn't go. I wish now I had just come out square
and said, 'I'm Sam Raften; will you tell me somethin' I want to know,
or won't you?' I didn't know you hed anything agin me or me friend
that's camping with me."

There is a strong bond of sympathy between all Woodcrafters. The mere
fact that a man wants to go his way is a claim on a Woodcrafter's
notice. Old Caleb, though soured by trouble and hot-tempered, had a
kind heart; he resisted for a moment the first impulse to slam the
door in their faces; then as he listened he fell into the tempter's
snare, for it was baited with the subtlest of flatteries. He said to
Yan:

"Is your name Raften?"

"No, sir."

"Air ye owt o' kin?"

"No, sir."

"I don't want no truck with a Raften, but what do ye want to know?"

"We built a wigwam of bark, but it's no good, but now we have a big
canvas cover an' want to know how to make a teepee."

"A teepee. H-m--" said the old man reflectively.

"They say you've lived in them," ventured Yan.

"Hm--'bout forty year; but it's one thing to wear a suit of clothes
and another thing to make one. Seems to me it was about like this,"
and he took up a burnt stick and a piece of grocer's paper. "No--now
hold on. Yes, I remember now; I seen a bunch of squaws make one oncet.

"First they sewed the skins together. No, first thar was a lot o'
prayin'; ye kin suit yerselves 'bout that--then they sewed the skins
together an" pegged it down flat on the prairie (B D H I, Cut No. 1).
Then put in a peg at the middle of one side (A). Then with a burnt
stick an' a coord--yes, there must 'a' been a coord--they drawed a
half circle--so (B C D). Then they cut that off, an' out o' the pieces
they make two flaps like that (H L M J and K N O I), an' sews 'em on
to P E and G Q. Them's smoke-flaps to make the smoke draw. Thar's a
upside down pocket in the top side corner o' each smoke-flap--so--for
the top of each pole, and there is rows o' holes down--so (M B and N
D, Cut No. 2)--on each side fur the lacin' pins. Then at the top of
that pint (A, Cut 1) ye fasten a short lash-rope.

[Illustration: CUT I.--PATTERN FOR A SIMPLE 10-FOOT TEEPEE]

[Illustration: CUT II.--THE COMPLETE TEEPEE COVER--UNORNAMENTED]

"Le's see, now. I reckon thar's about ten poles for a ten-foot lodge,
with two more for the smoke-flaps. Now, when ye set her up ye tie
three poles together--so--an' set 'em up first, then lean the other
poles around, except one, an' lash them by carrying the rope around a
few times. Now tie the top o' the cover to the top o' the last pole by
the short lash-rope, hist the pole into place--that hists the cover,
too, ye see--an' ye swing it round with the smoke-poles an' fasten the
two edges together with the wooden pins. The two long poles put in the
smoke-flap pockets works the vent to suit the wind."

[Illustration: 1st set up tripod]

In his conversation Caleb had ignored Sam and talked to Yan, but
the son of his father was not so easily abashed. He foresaw several
practical difficulties and did not hesitate to ask for light.

"What keeps it from blowin' down?" he asked.

"Wall," said Caleb, still addressing Yan, "the long rope that binds
the poles is carried down under, and fastened tight to a stake that
serves for anchor, 'sides the edge of the cover is pegged to the
ground all around."

"How do you make the smoke draw?" was his next.

[Illustration: 2nd set up and bind other six poles]

"Ye swing the flaps by changing the poles till they is quartering down
the wind. That draws best."

"How do you close the door?"

"Wall, some jest lets the edges sag together, but the best teepees has
a door made of the same stuff as the cover put tight on a saplin'
frame an' swung from a lacin' pin."

[Illustration: 3rd set up tenth pole with teepee cover fastened to it
by lash rope]

[Illustration: SIOUX TEEPEE]

This seemed to cover the ground, so carefully folding the dirty paper
with the plan, Yan put it in his pocket, said "Thank you" and went
off. To the "Good-day" of the boys Caleb made no reply, but turned as
they left and asked, "Whar ye camped?"

"On the knoll by the creek in Raften's swamp."

"H-m, maybe I'll come an' see ye."

"All right," Sam called out; "follow the blazed trail from the brush
fence."

"Why, Sam," said Yan, as soon as they were out of hearing, "there
isn't any blazed trail; why did you say that?"

"Oh, I thought it sounded well," was the calm answer, "an' it's easy
to have the blazes there as soon as we want to, an' a blame sight
sooner than he's likely to use them."




VI

The Making of the Teepee


Raften sniffed in amusement when he heard that the boys had really
gone to Caleb and got what they wanted. Nothing pleased him more than
to find his son a successful schemer.

"Old Caleb wasn't so dead sure about the teepee, as near as I sized
him up," observed Sam.

"I guess we've got enough to go ahead on," said Yan, "an' tain't a
hanging matter if we do make a mistake."

The cover was spread out again flat and smooth on the barn floor, and
stones and a few nails put in the sides to hold it.

The first thing that struck them was that it was a rough and tattered
old rag.

And Sam remarked: "I see now why Da said we could have it. I reckon
we'll have to patch it before we cut out the teepee."

"No," said Yan, assuming control, as he was apt to do in matters
pertaining to the woods; "we better draw our plans first so as not to
patch any part that's going to be cut off afterward."

"Great head! But I'm afraid them patches won't be awful ornamental."

"They're all right," was the reply. "Indians' teepees are often
patched where bullets and arrows have gone through."

"Well, I'm glad I wa'n't living inside during them hostilities," and
Sam exposed a dozen or more holes.

"Oh, get off there and give me that cord."

"Look out," said Sam; "that's my festered knee. It's near as bad
to-day as it was when we called on the witch."

Yan was measuring. "Let's see. We can cut off all those rags and still
make a twelve-foot teepee. Twelve foot high--that will be twenty-four
feet across the bottom of the stuff. Fine! That's just the thing. Now
I'll mark her off."

"Hold on, there," protested his friend; "you can't do that with chalk.
Caleb said the Injuns used a burnt stick. You hain't got no right to
use chalk. 'You might as well hire a carpenter.'"

"Oh, you go on. You hunt for a burnt stick, and if you don't find one
bring me the shears instead."

Thus, with many consultations of Caleb's draft, the cutting-out
was done--really a very simple matter. Then the patching was to be
considered.

Pack-thread, needles and _very l-o-n-g_ stitches were used, but
the work went slowly on. All the spare time of one day was given to
patching. Sam, of course, kept up a patter of characteristic remarks
to the piece he was sewing. Yan sewed in serious silence. At first
Sam's were put on better, but Yan learned fast and at length did by
far the better sewing.

[Illustration: Decoration of Black Bull's Teepee: (Two Examples of
Doors)]

[Illustration: THUNDER BULL'S TEEPEE]


  Notes on Making Teepee:

  The slimmer the poles are at the top where they cross the smaller
  the opening in the canvas and the less danger of rain coming in.

  In regions where there is much rain it is well to cut the projecting
  poles very short and put over them a "storm cap," "bull boat" or
  "shield" made of canvas on a rod bent in a three-foot circle. This
  device was used by the Mandans over the smoke-hole of their lodges
  during the heavy rains.

That night the boys were showing their handiwork to the hired hands.
Si Lee, a middle-aged man with a vast waistband, after looking on
with ill-concealed but good-natured scorn, said:

"Why didn't ye put the patches inside?"

"Didn't think of it," was Yan's answer.

"Coz we're goin' to live inside, an' need the room," said Sam.

"Why did ye make ten stitches in going round that hole; ye could just
as easy have done it in four," and Si sniffed as he pointed to great,
ungainly stitches an inch long. "I call that waste labour."

"Now see here," blurted Sam, "if you don't like our work let's see you
do it better. There's lots to do yet."

"Where?"

"Oh, ask Yan. He's bossin' the job. Old Caleb wouldn't let me in. It
just broke my heart. I sobbed all the way home, didn't I, Yan?

"There's the smoke-flaps to stitch on and hem, and the pocket at
the top of the flaps--and--I--suppose," Yan added, as a feeler,
"it--would--be--better--if--hemmed--all--around."

"Now, I tell ye what I'll do. If you boys'll go to the 'Corner'
to-night and get my boots that the cobbler's fixing, I'll sew on the
smoke-flaps."

"I'll take that offer," said Yan; "and say, Si, it doesn't really
matter which is the outside. You can turn the cover so the patches
will be in."

The boys got the money to pay for the boots, and after supper they set
out on foot for the "Corner," two miles away.

"He's a queer duck," and Sam jerked his thumb back to show that he
meant Si Lee; "sounds like a Chinese laundry. I guess that's the only
thing he isn't. He can do any mortal thing but get on in life. He's
been a soldier an' a undertaker an' a cook He plays a fiddle he made
himself; it's a rotten bad one, but it's away ahead of his playing. He
stuffs birds--that Owl in the parlour is his doin'; he tempers razors,
kin doctor a horse or fix up a watch, an' he does it in about the same
way, too; bleeds a horse no matter what ails it, an' takes another
wheel out o' the watch every times he cleans it. He took Larry de
Neuville's old clock apart to clean once--said he knew all about
it--an' when he put it together again he had wheels enough left over
for a new clock.

"He's too smart an' not smart enough. There ain't anything on earth
he can't do a little, an' there ain't a blessed thing that he can do
right up first-class, but thank goodness sewing canvas is his long
suit. You see he was a sailor for three years--longest time he ever
kept a job, fur which he really ain't to blame, since it was a whaler
on a three-years' cruise."




VII

The Calm Evening


It was a calm June evening, the time of the second daily outburst of
bird song, the day's aftermath. The singers seemed to be in unusual
numbers as well. Nearly every good perch had some little bird that
seemed near bursting with joy and yet trying to avert that dire
catastrophe.

As the boys went down the road by the outer fence of their own orchard
a Hawk came sailing over, silencing as he came the singing within a
given radius. Many of the singers hid, but a Meadow Lark that had been
whistling on a stake in the open was now vainly seeking shelter in the
broad field. The Hawk was speeding his way. The Lark dodged and put on
all power to reach the orchard, but the Hawk was after him now--was
gaining--in another moment would have clutched the terrified
musician, but out of the Apple trees there dashed a small
black-and-white bird--the Kingbird. With a loud harsh twitter--his
war-cry--repeated again and again, with his little gray head-feathers
raised to show the blood-and-flame-coloured undercrest--his war
colours--he darted straight at the great robber.

"Clicker-a-clicker," he fairly screamed, and made for the huge Hawk,
ten times his size.

"Clicker-a-clicker!" he shrieked, like a cateran shouting the
"slogan," and down like a black-and-white dart--to strike the Hawk
fairly between the shoulders just as the Meadow Lark dropped in
despair to the bare ground and hid its head from the approaching
stroke of death.

"Clicker-a-clicker"--and the Hawk wheeled in sudden consternation.
"Clicker-a-clicker"--and the dauntless little warrior dropped between
his wings, stabbing and tearing.

The Hawk bucked like a mustang, the Kingbird was thrown, but sprung on
agile pinions above again.

"Clicker-a-clicker," and he struck as before. Large brown feathers
were floating away on the breeze now. The Meadow Lark was forgotten.
The Hawk thought only of escape.

"Clicker-a-clicker," the slogan still was heard. The Hawk was putting
on all speed to get away, but the Kingbird was riding him most of the
time. Several brown feathers floated down, the Hawk dwindled in the
distance to a Sparrow and the Kingbird to a fly dancing on his back.
The Hawk made a final plunge into a thicket, and the king came home
again, uttering the shrill war-cry once or twice, probably to let the
queen know that he was coming back, for she flew to a high branch of
the Apple tree where she could greet the returning hero. He came with
an occasional "clicker-a-clicker"--then, when near her, he sprung
fifty feet in the air and dashed down, screaming his slogan without
interruption, darting zigzag with the most surprising evolutions and
turns--this way, that way, sideways and downward, dealing the
deadliest blows right and left at an imaginary foe, then soared, and
did it all over again two or three times, just to show how far he was
from being tired, and how much better he could have done it had it
been necessary. Then with a final swoop and a volley of "clickers" he
dashed into the bush to receive the congratulations of the one for
whom it all was meant and the only spectator for whose opinion he
cared in the least.

[Illustration: "Clicker-a-clicker!' he shrieked ... and down like a
dart."]

"Now, ain't that great," said Sam, with evident sincerity and
pleasure. His voice startled Yan and brought him back. He had been
wholly lost in silent admiring wonder of the dauntless little
Kingbird.

A Vesper Sparrow ran along the road before them, flitting a few
feet ahead each time they overtook it and showing the white outer
tail-feathers as it flew.

"A little Graybird," remarked Sam.

"No, that isn't a Graybird; that's a Vesper Sparrow," exclaimed Yan,
in surprise, for he knew he was right.

"Well, _I_ dunno," said Sam, yielding the point.

"I thought you said you knew every bird that flies and all about it"
replied his companion, for the memory of this first day was strong
with him yet.

Sam snorted: "I didn't know you then. I was just loadin' you up so
you'd think I was a wonderful feller, an' you did, too--for awhile."

A Red-headed Woodpecker, carrying a yellow butterfly, flew on a fence
stake ahead of them and peeped around as they drew near. The setting
sun on his bright plumage, the lilac stake and the yellow butterfly,
completed a most gorgeous bit of colour and gave Yan a thrill of joy.
A Meadow Lark on a farther stake, a Bluebird on another, and a Vesper
Bird on a stone, each added his appeal to eye and ear, till Sam
exclaimed:

"Oh, ain't that awful nice?" and Yan was dumb with a sort of saddened
joy.

Birds hate the wind, and this was one of those birdy days that come
only with a dead calm.

They passed a barn with two hundred pairs of Swallows flying and
twittering around, a cut bank of the road had a colony of 1,000 Sand
Martins, a stream had its rattling Kingfishers, and a marsh was the
playground of a multitude of Red-winged Blackbirds.

Yan was lifted up with the joy of the naturalist at seeing so many
beautiful living things. Sam felt it, too; he grew very silent, and
the last half-mile to the "Corner" was passed without a word. The
boots were got. Sam swung them around his neck and the boys set out
for home. The sun was gone, but not the birds, and the spell of the
evening was on them still. A Song Sparrow by the brook and a Robin
high in the Elm were yet pouring out their liquid notes in the
gloaming.

"I wish I could be always here," said Yan, but he started a little
when he remembered how unwilling he had been to come.

There was a long silence as they lingered on the darkening road. Each
was thinking hard.

A loud, startling but soft "Ohoo--O-hoo--O-hoooooo," like the coo of a
giant dove, now sounded about their heads in a tree. They stopped and
Sam whispered, "Owl; big Hoot Owl." Yan's heart leaped with pleasure.
He had read all his life of Owls, and even had seen them alive in
cages, but this was the first time he had ever heard the famous
hooting of the real live wild Owl, and it was a delicious experience.

The night was quite dark now, but there were plenty of sounds that
told of life. A Whippoorwill was chanting in the woods, a hundred
Toads and Frogs creaked and trilled, a strange rolling, laughing cry
on a marshy pond puzzled them both, then a Song Sparrow in the black
night of a dense thicket poured forth its sweet little sunshine song
with all the vigour and joy of its best daytime doing.

They listened attentively for a repetition of the serenade, when a
high-pitched but not loud "_Wa--wa--wa--wa--wa--wa--wa--wa_!"
reached their ears from a grove of heavy timbers.

"Hear that?" exclaimed Sam.

Again it came, a quavering squall, apparently much nearer. It was a
rather shrill sound, quite unbirdy, and Sam whispered:

"Coon--that's the whicker of a Coon. We can come down here some time
when corn's 'in roastin'' an' have a Coon hunt."

"Oh, Sam, wouldn't that be glorious!" said Yan. "How I wish it was
now. I never saw a Coon hunt or any kind of a hunt. Do we have to wait
till 'roasting-ear' time?"

"Oh, yes; it's easier to find them then. You say to your Coons, 'Me
an' me dogs will meet you to-night at the nearest roastin'-ear patch,'
an' sure nuff _they'll_ keep the appointment."

"But they're around now, for we just heard one, _and there's
another_."

A long faint "_Lil--lil--lil--lil--lil--li-looo!_" now sounded
from the trees. It was like the other, but much softer and sweeter.

"There's where you fool yerself," replied Sam, "an' there's where many
a hunter is fooled. That last one's the call of a Screech Owl. You see
it's softer and whistlier than the Coon whicker."

They heard it again and again from the trees. It was a sweet musical
sound, and Yan remembered how squally the Coon call was in comparison,
and yet many hunters never learn the difference.

As they came near the tree whence the Owl called at intervals, a gray
blot went over their heads, shutting out a handful of stars for a
moment as it passed over them, but making no noise. "There he goes,"
whispered Sam. "That's the Screech Owl. Not much of a screech, was
it?" Not long afterward Yan came across a line of Lowell's which says,
"The song of the Screech Owl is the sweetest sound in nature," and
appreciated the absurdity of the name.

"I want to go on a Coon hunt," continued Yan, and the sentence was
just tinged with the deep-laid doggedness that was usually lost in his
courteous manner.

"That settles it," answered the other, for he was learning what that
tone meant. "We'll surely go when you talk that way, for, of coorse,
it _kin_ be done. You see, I know more about animals than birds,"
he continued. "I'm just as likely to be a dentist as a hunter so far
as serious business is concerned, but I'd sure love to be a hunter for
awhile, an' I made Da promise to go with me some time. Maybe we kin
get a Deer by going back ten miles to the Long Swamp. I only wish Da
and Old Caleb hadn't fought, 'cause Caleb sure knows the woods, an'
that old Hound of his has treed more Coons than ye could shake a stick
at in a month o' Sundays."

"Well, if that's the only Coon dog around, I'm going to get him.
You'll see," was the reply.

"I believe you will," answered Sam, in a tone of mixed admiration and
amusement.

It was ten o'clock when they got home, and every one was in bed but
Mr. Raften. The boys turned in at once, but next morning, on going
to the barn, they found that Si had not only sewed on and hemmed the
smoke-flaps, but had resewn the worst of the patches and hemmed the
whole bottom of the teepee cover with a small rope in the hem, so that
they were ready now for the pins and poles.

The cover was taken at once to the camp ground. Yan carried the axe.
When they came to the brush fence over the creek at the edge of the
swamp, he said:

"Sam, I want to blaze that trail for old Caleb. How do you do it?"

"Spot the trees with the axe every few yards."

"This way?" and Yan cut a tree in three places, so as to show three
white spots or blazes.

"No; that's a trapper's blaze for a trap or a 'special blaze', but
a 'road blaze' is one on the front of the tree and one on the
back--so--then ye can run the trail both ways, an' you put them
thicker if it's to be followed at night."




VIII

The Sacred Fire


"Ten strong poles and two long thin ones," said Yan, reading off. These
were soon cut and brought to the camp ground.

"Tie them together the same height as the teepee cover----"

"Tie them? With what?"

"'Rawhide rope,' he said, but he also said 'Make the cover of skins.'
I'm afraid we shall have to use common rope for the present," and Yan
looked a little ashamed of the admission.

"I reckoned so," drawled Sam, "and so I put a coil of quarter-inch in
the cover, but I didn't dare to tell you that up at the barn."

The tripod was firmly lashed with the rope and set up. Nine poles were
duly leaned around in a twelve-foot circle, for a teepee twelve feet
high usually has a twelve-foot base. A final lashing of the ropes held
these, and the last pole was then put up opposite to the door, with
the teepee cover tied to it at the point between the flaps. The ends
of the two smoke-poles carried the cover round. Then the lacing-pins
were needed. Yan tried to make them of Hickory shoots, but the large,
soft pith came just where the point was needed. So Sam said, "You
can't beat White Oak for pins." He cut a block of White Oak, split it
down the middle, then split half of it in the middle again, and so on
till it was small enough to trim and finish with his knife. Meanwhile
Yan took the axe to split another, but found that it ran off to one
side instead of going straight down the grain.

"No good," was Sam's comment. "You must keep _halving_ each time
or it will run out toward the thin pieces. You want to split shingles
all winter to larn that."

Ten pins were made eight inches long and a quarter of an inch thick.
They were used just like dressmakers' stickpins, only the holes had to
be made first, and, of course, they looked better for being regular.
Thus the cover was laced on. The lack of ground-pegs was then seen.

"You make ten Oak pins a foot long and an inch square, Sam. I've a
notion how to fix them." Then Yan cut ten pieces of the rope, each two
feet long, and made a hole about every three feet around the base of
the cover above the rope in the outer seam. He passed one end of each
short rope through this and knotted it to the other end. Thus he had
ten peg-loops, and the teepee was fastened down and looked like a
glorious success.

Now came the grand ceremony of all, the lighting of the first fire.
The boys felt it to be a supreme and almost a religious moment. It is
curious to note that they felt very much as savages do under the same
circumstances--that the setting up of the new teepee and lighting its
first fire is an act of deep significance, and to be done only with
proper regard for its future good luck.

"Better go slow and sure about that fire. It'd be awfully unlucky to
have it fizzle for the first time."

"That's so," replied Yan, with the same sort of superstitious dread.
"Say, Sam, if we could really light it with rubbing-sticks, wouldn't
it be great?"

"Hallo!"

The boys turned, and there was Caleb close to them. He came over and
nodded. "Got yer teepee, I see? Not bad, but what did ye face her to
the west fur?"

"Fronting the creek," explained Yan.

"I forgot to tell ye," said Caleb, "an Injun teepee always fronts the
east; first, that gives the morning sun inside; next, the most wind is
from the west, so the smoke is bound to draw."

"And what if the wind is right due east?" asked Sam, "which it surely
will be when it rains?"

"And when the wind's east," continued Caleb, addressing no one in
particular, and not as though in answer to a question, "ye lap the
flaps across each other tight in front, so," and he crossed his hands
over his chest. "That leaves the east side high and shuts out the
rain; if it don't draw then, ye raise the bottom of the cover under
the door just a little--that always fetches her. An' when you change
her round don't put her in under them trees. Trees is dangerous; in a
storm they draw lightning, an' branches fall from them, an' after rain
they keep on dripping for an hour. Ye need all the sun ye kin get on a
teepee.

"Did you ever see Indians bring fire out of two sticks by rubbing, Mr.
Clark?"

"Oh, yes. Most of the Injuns now carry matches, but in the early days
I seen it done often enough."

"Does it take long? Is it hard?"

"Not so long, and it's easy enough, when ye know how."

"My! I'd rather bring fire out of two sticks than have a ten dollar
bill," said Yan, with enthusiasm that meant much, for one dollar was
his high-water mark of affluence, and this he had reached but once in
his life.

"Oh, I dunno'; that depends," was Sam's more guarded response.

"Can _you_ do it?" asked Yan.

"Wall, yes, if I kin get the right stuff. Ye see, it ain't every wood
that will do it. It's got to be jest right. The Plains Injuns use
Cottonwood root, an' the Mountain Injuns use Sage-brush root. I've
seen the Canadian Injuns use Basswood, Cedar and dry White Pine,
but the Chippewas mostly use Balsam Fir. The easiest way is with a
bow-drill. Have ye any buckskin?"

"No."

"Or a strip o' soft leather?"

"I've got a leather shoe-lace," said Yan.

"Rather slim; but we'll double it an' make it do. A cord will answer,
but it frays out so soon." Caleb took the lace and the axe, then said,
"Find me a stone 'bout the size of an egg, with a little hole into
it--like a socket hole--'bout a quarter inch deep."

The boys went to the creek to seek a stone and Caleb went into the
woods.

They heard him chopping, and presently he came back with a flat piece
of very dry Balsam Fir, a fifteen-inch pin of the same, a stick about
three feet long, slightly bent, some dry Pine punk and some dry Cedar.

The pin was three-quarters of an inch thick and was roughly
eight-sided, "so the lace would grip." It was pointed at both ends. He
fastened the lace to the bent stick like a bow-string, but loosely, so
that when it had one turn around the pin it was quite tight. The flat
piece of Balsam he trimmed down to about half an inch thick. In the
edge of this he now cut a notch one-quarter inch wide and half an inch
deep, then on the top of this fire-board or block, just beyond the
notch, he made with the point of his knife a little pit.

He next scraped and shredded a lot of dry Cedar wood like lint. Then
making a hole half an inch deep in the ground, he laid in that a flat
piece of Pine punk, and across this he set the fire-board. The point
of the pin or drill was put in the pit of the fire-board, which he
held down with one foot; the lace was given one turn on the pin, and
its top went into the hole of the stone the boys brought. The stone
was held firmly in Caleb's left hand.

"Sometimes," he remarked, "when ye can't find a stone, a Pine knot
will do--ye kin make the socket-hole with a knife-point."

Now holding the bow in his right hand, he began to draw it back and
forth with long, steady strokes, causing the pin to whirl round in the
socket. Within a few seconds a brown powder began to run out of the
notch of the fire-board onto the punk. The pit increased in size and
blackened, the powder darkened, and a slight smoke arose from the pit.
Caleb increased the pressure of his left hand a little, and sawed
faster with the right. The smoke steadily increased and the black
powder began to fill the notch. The smoke was rolling in little clouds
from under the pin, and it even seemed to come from the heap of
powder. As soon as he saw that, Caleb dropped the bow and gently
fanned the powder heap. It still smoked. He removed the fire-board,
and lifting the punk, showed the interior of the powder to be one
glowing coal. On this he laid the Cedar tinder and over that a second
piece of punk. Then raising it, he waved it in the air and blew gently
for awhile. It smouldered and then burst into a flame. The other
material was handy, and in a very short time they had a blazing fire
in the middle of the new teepee.

[Illustration: THE RUBBING-STICKS FOR FIRE-MAKING]

All three were pictures of childish delight. The old man's face fairly
beamed with triumph. Had he failed in his experiment he would have
gone off hating those boys, but having made a brilliant success he was
ready to love every one concerned, though they had been nothing more
than interested spectators of his exploit.

[Illustration: RUBBING-STICKS--FOR FIRE-MAKING (See Description Below)]

Two tools and two sticks are needed. The tools are bow and
drill-socket; the sticks are drill and fire-board.

1. The simplest kind of bow--a bent stick with a stout leather thong
fastened at each end. The stick must not spring. It is about 27 inches
long and 5/8 inch thick.

2. A more elaborate bow with a hole at each end for the thong. At the
handle end it goes through a disc of wood. This is to tighten the
thong by pressure of the hand against the disc while using.

3. Simplest kind of drill-socket--a pine or hemlock knot with a
shallow hole or pit in it. _3a_ is under view of same. It is
about 4-1/2 inches long.

4. A more elaborate drill-socket--a pebble cemented with gum in a
wooden holder. _4a_ is under view of same.

5. A very elaborate drill-socket; it is made of tulip wood, carved to
represent the Thunderbird. It has eyes of green felspar cemented in
with resin. On the under side (_5a_) is seen, in the middle, a
soapstone socket let into the wood and fastened with pine gum, and
on the head a hole kept filled with grease, to grease the top of the
drill before use.

6. The drill, 12 to 18 inches long and about 3/4 of an inch thick; it
is roughly 8-sided so the thong will not slip, pointed at each end.
The best wood for the drill is old, dry, brash, but not punky balsam
fir or cotton-wood roots; but basswood, white cedar, red cedar,
tamarack, and sometimes even white pine, will do.

7. Fire-board or block, about 3/4 of an inch thick and any length
handy; _a_ is notch with pit just below shows the pit after once
using and in good trim for a second time; _c_ shows the pit bored
through and useless; the notch is 1/2 inch wide and 3/4 inch deep.

8. Shows the way of using the sticks. The block (_a_) is held
down with one foot, the end of the drill in the pit, the drill-socket
(_c_) is held on top in left hand, one end of the bow (_d_)
is held in the right hand the bow is drawn back and forth.

9. Is a little wooden fire-pan, not essential but convenient; its thin
edge is put under the notch to catch the powder that falls.




IX

The Bows and Arrows


"I don't think much of your artillery," said Yan one day as they were
shooting in the orchard with Sam's "Western outfit." "It's about like
the first one I made when I was young."

"Well, grandpa, let's see your up-to-date make?"

"It'd be about five times as strong, for one thing."

"You couldn't pull it."

"Not the way you hold the arrow! But last winter I got a book about
archery from the library and learned something worth while. You pinch
the arrow that way and you can draw six or eight pounds, maybe, but
you hook your fingers in the string--so--and you can draw five times
as much, and that's the right way to shoot."

"Feels mighty clumsy," said Sam, trying it.

"Of course it does at first, and you have to have a deep notch in the
arrow or you can't do it at all."

"You don't seem to manage any better than I do."

"First time I ever had a chance to try since I read about it. But I
want to make a first-class bow and a lot of arrows. It's not much good
going with _one_."

[Illustration: The Archer's Grip]


"Well, go ahead an' make an outfit if you know how. What's the best
wood? Did the book tell you that?"

"The best wood is Spanish Yew."

"Don't know it."

"An' the next is Oregon Yew."

"Nope."

"Then Lancewood and Osage Orange."

'Try again."

"Well, Red Cedar, Apple tree, Hickory and Elm seem to be the only ones
that grow around here."

"Hain't seen any _Red_ Cedar, but the rest is easy."

"It has to be thoroughly seasoned winter-cut wood, and cut so as to
have heart on one side and sap wood on the other."

"How's that?" and Sam pointed to a lot of half-round Hickory sticks
on the rafters of the log house. "Those have been there a couple of
years."

A good one of five feet long was selected and split and hewn with the
axe till the boys had the two bow staves, five and one-half feet long
and two inches square, with the line of the heart and sap wood down
the middle of each.

Guided by his memory of that precious book and some English long bows
that he had seen in a shop in town, Yan superintended the manufacture.
Sam was apt with tools, and in time they finished two bows, five feet
long and drawing possibly twenty-five pounds each. In the middle they
were one and one-half inches wide and an inch thick (see page 183).
This size they kept for nine inches each way, making an eighteen-inch
middle part that did not bend, but their two limbs were shaved down
and scraped with glass till they bent evenly and were well within the
boys' strength.

The string was the next difficulty. All the ordinary string they could
get around the house proved too weak, never lasting more than two
or three shots, till Si Lee, seeing their trouble, sent them to the
cobbler's for a hank of unbleached linen thread and some shoemaker's
wax. Of this thread he reeled enough for a strong cord tight around
two pegs seven feet apart, then cutting it loose at one end he divided
it equally in three parts, and, after slight waxing, he loosely
plaited them together. At Yan's suggestion he then spliced a loop at
one end, and with a fine waxed thread lashed six inches of the middle
where the arrow fitted, as well as the splice of the loop. This last
enabled them to unstring the bow when not in use (see page 183).
"There," said he, "you won't break that." The finishing touch was
thinly coating the bows with some varnish found among the paint
supplies.

"Makes my old bow look purty sick," remarked Sam, as he held up the
really fine new weapon in contrast with the wretched little hoop that
had embodied his early ideas. "Now what do you know about arrers,
mister?" as he tried his old arrow in the new bow.

"I know that that's no good," was the reply; "an' I can tell you that
it's a deal harder to make an arrow than a bow--that is, a good one."

"That's encouraging, considering the trouble we've had already."

"'Tisn't meant to be, but we ought to have a dozen arrows each."

"How do the Injuns make them?"

"Mostly they get straight sticks of the Arrow-wood; but I haven't seen
any Arrow-wood here, and they're not so awfully straight. You see, an
arrow must be straight or it'll fly crooked. 'Straight as an arrow'
means the thing itself. We can do better than the Indians 'cause we
have better tools. We can split them out of the solid wood."

"What wood? Some bloomin' foreign kind that no White-man never saw nor
heard of before?"

"No sir-ree. There ain't anything better 'n White Pine for target and
Ash or Hickory for hunting arrows. Which are we making?"

"I'm a hunter. Give me huntin' arrows every time. What's needed next?"

"Seasoned Ash twenty-five inches long, split to three-eighths of an
inch thick, hot glue, and turkey-wing feathers."

"I'll get the feathers and let you do the rest," said Sam, producing
a bundle of turkey-wings, laid away as stove-dusters, and then belied
his own statement by getting a block of Ash and splitting it up,
halving it each time till he had a pile of two dozen straight sticks
about three-quarters of an inch thick.

Yan took one and began with his knife to whittle it down to proper
size and shape, but Sam said, "I can do better than that," then took
the lot to the workbench and set to work with a smoothing plane. Yan
looked worried and finally said:

"Injuns didn't have planes."

"Nor jack-knives neither," was the retort.

That was true, and yet somehow Yan's ideal that he hankered after
was the pre-Columbian Indian, the one who had no White-man's help or
tools.

"It seems to me it'd be more Injun to make these with just what we get
in the woods. The Injuns didn't have jack-knives, but they had sharp
flints in the old days."

"Yan, you go ahead with a sharp stone. You'll find lots on the road if
you take off your shoes and walk barefoot--awful sharp; an' I'll go
ahead with the smoothing plane an' see who wins."

Yan was not satisfied, but he contented himself with promising that he
would some day make some arrows of Arrow-wood shoots and now he
would finish at least one with his knife. He did so, but Sam, in the
meantime, made six much better ones with the smoothing plane.

"What about heads?" said he.

"I've been thinking," was the reply. "Of course the Indians used stone
heads fastened on with sinew, but we haven't got the stuff to do that.
Bought heads of iron with a ferrule for the end of the arrow are best,
but we can't get them. Bone heads and horn heads will do. I made some
fine ones once filing bones into the shape, but they were awfully
brittle; and I made some more of big nails cut off and set in with a
lashing of fine wire around the end to stop the wood splitting. Some
Indian arrows have no point but the stick sharpened after it's
scorched to harden it."

[Illustration: SIX SAMPLE ARROWS, SHOWING DIFFERENT FEATHERS]

"That sounds easy enough for me," said Sam; "let's make some of them
that way."

So the arrows were made, six each with nail points filed sharp and
lashed with broom wire. These were called "War arrows," and six each
with fire-hardened wood points for hunting arrows.

"Now for the feathering," and Yan showed Sam how to split the midrib
of a turkey feather and separate the vane.

"Le's see, you want twice twenty-four--that's forty-eight feathers."

"No," said Yan, "that's a poor feathering, two on each. We want three
on each arrow--seventy-two strips in all, and mind you, we want all
three that are on one arrow from the same side of the bird."

"I know. I'll bet it's bad luck to mix sides; arrows doesn't know
which way to turn."

At this moment Si Lee came in. "How are ye gettin' on with the bows?"

"Waitin' for arrows now."

"How do ye put on the feathers?"

    DESCRIPTION OF SIX SAMPLE ARROWS SHOWING DIFFERENT FEATHERS

    _A_ is a far-flying steel-pointed bobtail, very good in wind.
    _B_ is another very good arrow, with a horn point. This went
    even better than _A_ if there were no wind. _C_ is an
    Omaha war and deer arrow. Both heads and feathers are lashed on
    with sinew. The long tufts of down left on the feathers are to
    help in finding it again, as they are snow-white and wave in the
    breeze. The grooves on the shaft are to make the victim bleed more
    freely and be more easily tracked. _D_ is another Omaha
    arrow with a peculiar owner's mark of lines carved in the middle,
    _E_ is a bone-headed bird shaft made by the Indians of the
    Mackenzie River. _F_ is a war arrow made by Geronimo, the
    famous Apache chief. Its shaft is three joints of a straight cane.
    The tip is of hard wood, and on that is a fine quartz point; all
    being lashed together with sinew.

"White-men glue them on, and Injuns lash them on," replied Yan,
quoting from memory from "that book."

"Which is best?"

"Glued on flies better, but lashed on stands the weather better."

"Why not both?"

"Have no sinew."

"Let me show ye a trick. Where's yer glue an' linen thread?"

These were brought, whereupon Si added: "'Pears to me ye oughter put
the feathers on last. Better cut the notch first."

"That's so; we nearly forgot."

"_You_ nearly forgot, you mean. Don't drag _me_ in the mud,"
said Sam, with owlish dignity. A small saw cut, cleaned up and widened
with a penknife, proved the best; a notch one-fourth inch deep was
quickly made in each arrow, and Si set about _both_ glueing
_and_ lashing on the feathers, but using wax-end instead of
sinew.

Yan had marked the place for each feather so that none would strike
the bow in passing (see Cut page 183). He first glued them on,
then made a lashing for half an inch on the projecting ends of the
feather-rib, and another behind, carrying this second lashing back to
the beginning of the notch to guard against the wood splitting. When
he had trimmed all loose ends and rolled the waxed thread well on the
bench with a flat stick, the threads seemed to disappear and leave
simply a smooth black ring.


  THE ARCHERY OUTFIT (Not all on scale)

  I. The five-foot bow as finished, with sections at the points shown.

  II. The bow "braced" or strung.

  III. The bow unstrung, showing the loop slipped down.

  IV. The loop that is used on the upper end of the bow.

  V. The timber hitch always used on the lower end or notch of the bow.

  VI. A turkey feather with split midrib, all ready to lash on.

  VII. End view of arrow, showing notch and arrangement of three
  feathers.

  VIII. Part of arrow, showing feathering and lashing.

  IX. Sanger hunting arrow with wooden point; 25 inches long.

  X. Sanger war arrow with nail point and extra long feathers; it also
  is 25 inches long.

  XI. Quiver with Indian design; 20 inches long.

  XII. The "bracer" or arm guard of heavy leather for left arm, with two
  laces to tie it on. It is six inches long.

       *       *       *       *       *

Thus the arrows were made and set away for the glue to dry.

Next day Yan painted Sam's red and blue, his own red and white, to
distinguish them as well as guard them from the damp. There was now
one more thing, and that was a quiver.

"Do the Injuns have them?" asked Sam, with a keen eye to orthodoxy
when it promised to cut short the hard work.

"Well, I should say so; couldn't live without them."

"All right; hurry up. I'm spoiling for a hunt. What are they made of?"

"Oh, 'most anything."

"Haven't got it."

"You're too fast. But some use Birch bark, some use the skin of an
animal, and some use canvas now when other stuff is scarce."

"That's us. You mind the stuff left off the teepee?"

"Do till we get better." So each made a sort of canvas bag shorter
than the arrows. Yan painted an Indian device on each, and they were
ready.

"Now bring on your Bears," said the older boy, and feeling a sense of
complete armament, they went out.

"See who can hit that tree." Both fired together and missed, but Sam's
arrow struck another tree and split open.

"Guess we'd better get a soft target," he remarked. Then after
discussion they got a large old corn sack full of hay, painted on it
some rings around a bull's eye (a Buffalo's eye, Sam called it) and
set it up at twenty yards.

They were woefully disappointed at first in their shooting. It did
seem a very easy mark, and it was disappointing to have the arrows fly
some feet away to the left.

"Le's get in the barn and shoot at that," suggested Sam.

"We might hit it if we shut the door tight," was the optimistic reply.
As well as needing practice, the boys had to learn several little
rules about Archery. But Yan had some pencil notes from "that book"
and some more in his brain that with much practice gradually taught
him: To stand with his heel centres in line with the target; his right
elbow in line with the arrow; his left hand fixed till the arrow
struck; his right thumb always on the same place on his cheek when he
fired, and the bow plumb.

They soon found that they needed guards for the left arm where the bow
strings struck, and these they made out of the leg of an old boot (see
Cut page 183), and an old glove to protect the fingers of the right
hand when they practised very much. After they learned to obey the
rules without thinking about them, the boys improved quickly and soon
they were able to put all the arrows into the hay sack at twenty
yards, increasing the distance later till they could make fair
shooting at forty yards.

They were not a little surprised to find how much individuality the
arrows had, although meant to be exactly alike.

Sam had one that continued to warp until it was much bent, and the
result was some of the most surprising curves in its flight. This he
called the "Boomerang." Another, with a very small feather, travelled
farther than any of the rest. This was the "Far-killer." His best
arrow, one that he called "Sure-death," was a long-feathered Turkey
shaft with a light head. It was very reliable on a calm day, but
apt to swerve in the wind. Yet another, with a small feather, was
correspondingly reliable on a windy day. This was "Wind-splitter."

The one Yan whittled with the knife was called the "Whittler," and
sometimes the "Joker." It was a perpetual mystery, they never knew
just what it would do next. His particular pet was one with a hollow
around the point, which made a whistling sound when it flew, and was
sometimes called the "Whistler" and sometimes the "Jabberwock,"
"which whiffled through the tulgy wood and burbled as it came."

[Illustration: CORRECT FORM IN SHOOTING The diagram at bottom is to
show the centres of heels in line with target.]




X

The Dam


One hot day early in July they were enjoying themselves in the shallow
bathing-hole of the creek, when Sam observed: "It's getting low. It
goes dry every summer."

This was not pleasing to foresee, and Yan said, "Why can't we make a
dam?"

"A little too much like work."

"Oh, pshaw! That'd be fun and we'd have a swimming-place for all
summer, then. Come on; let's start now."

"Never heard of Injuns doing so much work."

"Well, we'll play Beaver while we do it. Come on, now; here's for
a starter," and Yan carried a big stone to what seemed to him the
narrowest place. Then he brought more, and worked with enthusiasm till
he had a line of stones right across the creek bed.

Sam still sat naked on the bank, his knees to his chin and his arms
around them. The war-paint was running down his chest in blue and red
streaks.

"Come on, here, you lazy freak, and work," cried Yan, and flung a
handful of mud to emphasize the invite.

"My festered knee's broke out again," was the reply.

At length Yan said, "I'm not going to do it all alone," and
straightened up his back.

"Look a-here," was the answer. "I've been thinking. The cattle water
here. The creek runs dry in summer, then the cattle has to go to the
barnyard and drink at the trough--has to be pumped for, and hang round
for hours after hoping some one will give them some oats, instead of
hustling back to the woods to get fat. Now, two big logs across there
would be more'n half the work. I guess we'll ask Da to lend us the
team to put them logs across to make a drinking-pond for the cattle.
Them cattle is awful on my mind. Didn't sleep all night thinking o'
them. I just hate like pizen to see them walking all the way to the
barn in hot weather for a drink--'tain't right." So Sam waited for a
proper chance to "tackle" his father. It did not come that day, but at
breakfast next morning Raften looked straight at Yan across the table,
and evidently thinking hard about something, said:

"Yahn, this yer room is twenty foot by fifteen, how much ilecloth
three foot wide will it call fur?"

"Thirty-three and one-third yards," Yan said at once.

Raften was staggered. Yan's manner was convincing, but to do all that
in his head was the miracle. Various rude tests were applied and the
general opinion prevailed that Yan was right.

The farmer's face beamed with admiration for the first time. "Luk at
that," he said to the table, "luk at that fur eddication. When'll you
be able to do the like?" he said to Sam.

"Never," returned his son, with slow promptness. "Dentists don't have
to figger on ilecloth."

"Say, Yan," said Sam aside, "guess _you_ better tackle Da about
the dam. Kind o' sot up about ye this mornin'; your eddication has
softened him some, an' it'll last till about noon, I jedge. Strike
while the iron is hot."

So after breakfast Yan commenced:

"Mr. Raften, the creek's running dry. We want to make a pond for the
cattle to drink, but we can't make a dam without two big logs across.
Will you let us have the team a few minutes to place the logs?"

"It ain't fur a swimmin'-pond, is it, ye mean?" said Raften, with a
twinkle in his eye.

"It would do for that as well," and Yan blushed.

"Sounds to me like Sam talking through Yan's face," added Raften,
shrewdly taking in the situation. "I'll see fur meself."

Arrived at the camp, he asked: "Now, whayer's yer dam to be? Thar?
That's no good. It's narrer but it'd be runnin' round both ends afore
ye had any water to speak of. Thayer's a better place, a bit wider,
but givin' a good pond. Whayer's yer logs? Thayer? What--my seasoning
timber? Ye can't hev that. That's the sill fur the new barrn; nor
that--it's seasonin' fur gate posts. Thayer's two ye kin hev. I'll
send the team, but don't let me ketch ye stealin' any o' my seasonin'
timber or the fur'll fly."

With true Raften promptness the heavy team came, the two great logs
were duly dragged across and left as Yan requested (four feet apart
for the top of the dam).

The boys now drove in a row of stakes against each log on the inner
side, to form a crib, and were beginning to fill in the space with mud
and stones. They were digging and filling it up level as they went.
Clay was scarce and the work went slowly; the water, of course, rising
as the wall arose, added to the difficulty. But presently Yan said:

"Hold on. New scheme. Let's open her and dig a deep trench on one
side so all the water will go by, then leave a clay wall to it" [the
trench] "and dig a deep hole on the other side of it. That will give
us plenty of stuff for the dam and help to deepen the pond."

Thus they worked. In a week the crib was full of packed clay and
stone. Then came the grand finish--the closing of this sluiceway
through the dam. It was not easy with the full head of water running,
but they worked like beavers and finally got it stopped.

That night there was a heavy shower. Next day when they came near they
heard a dull roar in the woods. They stopped and listened in doubt,
then Yan exclaimed gleefully: "The dam! That's the water running over
the dam."

They both set off with a yell and ran their fastest. As soon as they
came near they saw a great sheet of smooth water where the stony creek
bottom had been and a steady current over the low place left as an
overflow in the middle of the dam.

What a thrill of pleasure that was!

"Last in's a dirty sucker."

"Look out for my bad knee," was the response.

The rest of the race was a mixture of stripping and sprinting and the
boys splashed in together.

Five feet deep in the deep hole, a hundred yards long, and all their
own doing.

"Now, wasn't it worth it?" asked Yan, who had had much difficulty in
keeping Sam steadily at play that looked so very much like work.

"Wonder how that got here? I thought I left that in the teepee?" and
Sam pointed to a log that he used for a seat in the teepee, but now it
was lodged in the overflow.

Yan was a good swimmer, and as they played and splashed, Sam said:
"Now I know who you are. You can't hide it from me no longer. I
suspicioned it when you were working on the dam. You're that tarnal
Redskin they call 'Little Beaver.'"

"I've been watching you," retorted Yan, "and it seems to me I've run up
against that copper-coloured scallawag--'Young-Man-Afraid-of-a-Shovel.'"

[Illustration: The dam was a great success]

"No, you don't," said Sam. "Nor I ain't
'_Bald-Eagle-Settin'-on-a-Rock-with-his-Tail-Hangin'-over-the-Edge,'_
nuther. In fact, I don't keer to be recognized just now. Ain't it a
relief to think the cattle don't have to take that walk any more?"

Sam was evidently trying to turn the subject, but Yan would not be
balked. "I heard Si call you 'Woodpecker' the other day."

"Yep. I got that at school. When I was a kid to hum I heerd Ma talk
about me be-a-u-tiful _golden_ hair, but when I got big enough
to go to school I learned that it was only _red_, an' they called
me the 'Red-headed Woodpecker.' I tried to lick them, but lots of them
could lick me an' rubbed it in wuss. When I seen fightin' didn't
work, I let on to like it, but it was too late then. Mostly it's just
'Woodpecker' for short. I don't know as it ever lost me any sleep."

Half an hour later, as they sat by the fire that Yan made with
rubbing-sticks, he said, "Say, Woodpecker, I want to tell you a
story." Sam grimaced, pulled his ears forward, and made ostentatious
preparations to listen.

"There was once an Indian squaw taken prisoner by some other tribe way
up north. They marched her 500 miles away, but one night she escaped
and set out, not on the home trail, for she knew they would follow
that way and kill her, but to one side. She didn't know the country
and got lost. She had no weapons but a knife, and no food but berries.
Well, she travelled fast for several days till a rainstorm came, then
she felt safe, for she knew her enemies could not trail her now. But
winter was near and she could not get home before it came. So she set
to work right where she was.

"She made a wigwam of Birch bark and a fire with rubbing-sticks, using
the lace of her moccasin for a bow-string. She made snares of the
inner bark of the Willow and of Spruce roots, and deadfalls, too, for
Rabbits. She was starving sometimes, at first, but she ate the buds
and inner bark of Birch trees till she found a place where there were
lots of Rabbits. And when she caught some she used every scrap of
them. She made a fishing-line of the sinews, and a hook of the bones
and teeth lashed together with sinew and Spruce gum.

"She made a cloak of Rabbit skins, sewed with needles of Rabbit bone
and thread of Rabbit sinew, and a lot of dishes of Birch bark sewed
with Spruce roots.

"She put in the whole winter there alone, and when the spring came she
was found by Samuel Hearne, the great traveller. Her precious knife
was worn down, but she was fat and happy and ready to set out for her
own people."

"Well, I say that's mighty inter-est-in'," said Sam--he had listened
attentively--"an' I'd like nothin' better than to try it myself if I
had a gun an' there was lots of game."

"Pooh, who wouldn't?"

"Mighty few--an' there's mighty few who _could_."
"I could."

"What, make everything with just a knife? I'd like to see you make
a teepee," then adding earnestly, "Sam, we've been kind o' playing
Injuns; now let's do it properly. Let's make everything out of what we
find in the woods."

"Guess we'll have to visit the Sanger Witch again. She knows all about
plants."

"We'll be the Sanger Indians. We can both be Chiefs," said Yan, not
wishing to propose himself as Chief or caring to accept Sam as his
superior. "I'm Little Beaver. Now what are you?"

"Bloody-Thundercloud-in-the-Afternoon."

"No, try again. Make it something you can draw, so you can make your
totem, and make it short."

"What's the smartest animal there is?"

"I--I--suppose the Wolverine."

"What! Smarter'n a Fox?"

"The books say so."

"Kin he lick a Beaver?"

"Well, I should say so."

"Well, that's me."

"No, you don't. I'm not going around with a fellow that licks me. It
don't fit you as well as 'Woodpecker,' anyhow. I always get _you_
when I want a nice tree spoiled or pecked into holes," retorted Yan,
magnanimously ignoring the personal reason for the name.

"Tain t as bad as _beavering_," answered Sam

"Beavering" was a word with a history. Axes and timber were the
biggest things in the lives of the Sangerites. Skill with the axe was
the highest accomplishment. The old settlers used to make everything
in the house out of wood, and with the axe for the only tool. It was
even said that some of them used to "edge her up a bit" and shave with
her on Sundays. When a father was setting his son up in life he gave
him simply a good axe. The axe was the grand essential of life and
work, and was supposed to be a whole outfit. Skill with the axe was
general. Every man and boy was more or less expert, and did not know
how expert he was till a real "greeny" came among them. There is a
right way to cut for each kind of grain, and a certain proper way of
felling a tree to throw it in any given direction with the minimum of
labour. All these things are second nature to the Sangerite. A Beaver
is credited with a haphazard way of gnawing round and round a tree
till somehow it tumbles, and when a chopper deviates in the least from
the correct form, the exact right cut in the exact right place, he is
said to be "beavering"; therefore, while "working like a Beaver" is
high praise, "beavering" a tree is a term of unmeasured reproach, and
Sam's final gibe had point and force that none but a Sangerite could
possibly have appreciated.




XI

Yan and the Witch


  The Sanger Witch hated the Shanty-man's axe
  And wildfire, too, they tell,
  But the hate that she had for the Sporting man
  Was wuss nor her hate of Hell!

  --Cracked Jimmie's Ballad of Sanger.


Yan took his earliest opportunity to revisit the Sanger Witch.

"Better leave me out," advised Sam, when he heard of it. "She'd never
look at you if I went. You look too blame healthy."

So Yan went alone, and he was glad of it. Fond as he was of Sam, his
voluble tongue and ready wit left Yan more or less in the shade, made
him look sober and dull, and what was worse, continually turned the
conversation just as it was approaching some subject that was of
deepest interest to him.

As he was leaving, Sam called out, "Say, Yan, if you want to stay
there to dinner it'll be all right--we'll know why you hain't turned
up." Then he stuck his tongue in his cheek, closed one eye and went to
the barn with his usual expression of inscrutable melancholy.

Yan carried his note-book--he used it more and more, also his
sketching materials. On the road he gathered a handful of flowers and
herbs. His reception by the old woman was very different this time.

"Come in, come in, God bless ye, an' hoo air ye, an' how is yer father
an' mother--come in an' set down, an' how is that spalpeen, Sam
Raften?"

"Sam's all right now," said Yan with a blush.

"All right! Av coorse he's all right. I knowed I'd fix him all right,
an' he knowed it, an' his Ma knowed it when she let him come. Did she
say onything about it?"

"No, Granny, not a word."

"The dhirty hussy! Saved the boy's life in sphite of their robbin' me
an' she ain't human enough to say 'thank ye'--the dhirty hussy!
May God forgive her as I do," said the old woman with evident and
implacable enmity.

"Fwhat hev ye got thayer? Hivin be praised, they can't kill them all
off. They kin cut down the trees, but the flowers comes ivery year, me
little beauties--me little beauties!" Yan spread them out. She picked
up an Arum and went on. "Now, that's Sorry-plant, only some calls it
Injun Turnip, an' I hear the childer call it Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Don't
ye never put the root o' that near yer tongue. It'll sure burn ye like
fire. First thing whin they gits howld av a greeny the bhise throis to
make him boite that same. Shure he niver does it twicet. The Injuns
b'ile the pizen out o' the root an' ates it; shure it's better'n
starvin'."

Golden Seal (_Hydrastis canadensis_), the plant she had used for
Sam's knee, was duly recognized and praised, its wonderful golden
root, "the best goold iver came out av the ground," was described with
its impression of the seal of the Wise King.

"Thim's Mandrakes, an' they're moighty late, an' ye shure got
_thim_ in the woods. Some calls it May Apples, an' more calls it
Kingroot. The Injuns use it fur their bowels, an' it has cured many a
horse of pole evil that I seen meself.

"An' Blue Cohosh, only I call that Spazzum-root. Thayer ain't nothin'
like it fur spazzums--took like tay; only fur that the Injun women
wouldn't live in all their thrubles, but that's something that don't
consarn ye. Luk now, how the laves is all spread out like wan wid
spazzums. Glory be to the Saints and the Blessed Virgin, everything is
done fur us on airth an' plain marked, if we'd only take the thruble
to luk.

"Now luk at thot," said she, clawing over the bundle and picking out a
yellow Cypripedium, "that's Moccasin-plant wid the Injuns, but mercy
on 'em fur bloind, miserable haythens. They don't know nothin' an'
don't want to larn it. That's Umbil, or Sterrick-root. It's powerful
good fur sterricks. Luk at it! See the face av a woman in sterricks
wid her hayer flyin' an' her jaw a-droppin'. I moind the toime Larry's
little gurrl didn't want to go to her 'place' an' hed sterricks. They
jest sent fur me an' I brung along a Sterrick-root. First, I sez, sez
I, 'Get me some b'ilin' wather,' an' I made tay an' give it to her
b'ilin' hot. As share as Oi'm a livin' corpse, the very first spoonful
fetched her all right. Oh, but it's God's own gift, an' it's be His
blessin' we know how to use it. An' it don't do to just go an' dig it
when ye want it. It has to be grubbed when the flower ain't thayer. Ye
see, the strength ain't in both places to oncet. It's ayther in the
flower or in the root, so when the flower is thayer the root's no more
good than an ould straw. Ye hes to Hunt fur it in spring or in fall,
just when the divil himself wouldn't know whayer to find it.

"An' fwhat hev ye thayer? Good land! if it ain't Skunk's Cabbage! Ye
sure come up by the Bend. That's the on'y place whayer that grows."

"Yes," replied Yan; "that's just where I got it. But hold on, Granny,
I want to sketch all those and note down their names and what you say
about them."

"Shure, you'd hev a big book when I wuz through," said the old woman
with pride, as she lit her pipe, striking the match on what would have
been the leg of her pants had she been a man.

"An' shure ye don't need to write down what they're good fur, fur the
good Lord done that Himself long ago. Luk here, now. That's Cohosh,
fur spazzums, an' luks like it; that's Moccasin, fur Highsterricks,
an' luks like it; wall, thar's Skunk-root fur both, an' don't it luk
like the two o' thim thigither?"

Yan feebly agreed, but had much difficulty in seeing what the plant
had in common with the others.

"An' luk here! Thayer ye got Lowbelier, that some calls Injun
tobaccer. Ye found this by the crick, an' it's a little airly--ahead
o' toime. That's the shtuff to make ye throw up when ye want to. Luk,
ain't that lafe the livin' shape of a shtummick?

"Thayer's the Highbelier; it's a high hairb, an' it's moighty foine
fur the bowels when ye drink the dry root.

"Spicewood" [Spicebush, _Lindera benzoin_], "or Fayverbush, them
twigs is great fur tay--that cures shakes and fayver. Shure an' it
shakes ivery toime the wind blows.

"That's Clayvers," she said, picking up a Galium. "Now fwhat wud ye
think that wuz fur to cure?"

"I don't know. What is it?"

"Luk now, an' see how it's wrote in it plain as prent--yes, an' a
sight plainer, fur I can read them an' I can't read a wurrud in a
book. Now fwhat is that loike?" said she, holding up the double
seed-pod.

"A brain and spinal column," said Yan.

"Och, choild, I hev better eyes than ye. Shure them's two kidneys, an'
that's fwhat Clayver tay will cure better'n all the docthers in the
wurruld, an' ye hev to know just how. Ye see, kidney thruble is
a koind o' fayver; it's hatin', so ye make yer Clayver tay in
_cold_ wather; if ye make it o' warrum wather it just makes ye
wuss an' acts loike didly pizen. Thayer's Sweatplant, or Boneset"
[_Eupatorium perfoliatum_], "that's the thing to sweat ye. Wanst
Oi sane

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