Hard Times on the French Grant
"IT is, 'Doby, do this,' and, 'Doby, do that,' from morning to night. I've worked and worked and wor-r-rked," groaned Obadiah Holman, "'til both of my heels are stone-bruised and I have a rag on every toe."
The expression of his face showed that he held strong feelings on the subject of child labor and that those feelings were all against it.
Chore-boys did not get together and organize themselves in the olden days. Protests against overtime jobs received so little attention that Doby grumbled: "No use to sputter. S'pose I'll have to keep right on quarryin'."
He had dropped his task to glance about the town of Gallipolis. It was a lean and wizened, yet quaint and romantic settlement of Old World Frenchmen. The log cabins were the same cubes of houses that pioneers were everywhere building. But the town had a different air from bustling Pittsburg or dignified Marietta. He examined one home after another.
In the tiny holes of windows hung beribboned curtains of white. Never before had he seen frilled curtains; never before a curtain in a cabin window where there was neither sash nor glass.
Under the windows were crocuses and daffodils and leaf points of the lilies-of-France showing gaily. Beside each door were sociable little benches inviting the passer-by to stop and chat. Under the eaves hung tambourines ready for a moment's playtime.
Doby wondered over these attempts at refinement of living in a land where as yet the bare living itself was not quite certain. "This is a brave little town," he decided.
Half a dozen years later there was born near here, at Point Pleasant, that Ulysses S. Grant, whose soldierly courage under difficulties, and whose steadfast purpose to make the best of national disaster, should forever remain a watchword for those struggling to win success.
His achievements were brilliant and worldwide. Those of his neighbors were smaller but happily complete; for in a few years more they, too, overcame their handicaps.
Warned by rumors of Indians down the river, Doby's father had tied up his flatboat at this hamlet and had brought his wife and son ashore until the waterway became safe again.
To return the rather meager hospitality of Ol' Pap Soisson, a French bachelor, who had offered them half of his cabin, Mr. Holman was taking some round stones from the wash of the creek and was building for his host a safe cobblestone chimney.
Most of the settlers had chimneys woven like birds' nests, of sticks plastered together with mud, inside and out. When they dried out they became dangerous. A stone one was fire-proof. It could hold the heat, could reflect it into the room, and could cook food better than the plastered one.
In the business of piling up masonry for the chimney Doby was first assistant. Ol' Pap Soisson was a poor second. Doby was an unwilling worker, but the bachelor useless. He was too small, too weak, too old.
As he himself explained to Doby, "It is of a certainty that I have never yet had enough of the food to make a growth or a strength." His bright eyes measured the boy as if to guess how stocky he himself might become if fed aright. "Greed possesses me when I sit at the savorymeals prepared by that so accomplished madam, your mother."
He chuckled comfortably as he recalled the breakfasts, the dinners, and the suppers which she had given him. The thought of them helped him to roll up a big stone. Exhausted, but triumphant, he sat upon it and became sociable.
"Once I lived in Paris. To me, at my trade of wigmaker, comes the man Duer, of the Scioto Company, dealers in land American. I am then of the restlessness of youth. To work at a living is a matter uninteresting. That horror of all horrors—the Reign of Terror—approaches." He glared fiercely and made a gesture of cutting his throat. "To escape its mad mob of hungry-driven guillotinists I seek a land where successful revolutionists like the Americans enjoy liberty restrained." His whole quivering body expressed utter fear resulting from the "freedom" of the French Revolution. "When the Scioto Company's agent offers us land in this saner Republic so prosperous, scores of us small tradesmen give him our savings in exchange for paper titles to New World estates. Gladly we leave that disturbed kingdom. Gladly we come to this." Here the little man danced a few steps of derision, jeered at his own cabin, and snapped his fingers at the landscape.
"Land is a good thing," declared practical Doby. "You got land, didn't you?"
"By the truth, no! Our titles, you understand, are of a badness unbelievable. We are ruined. Swindle is the name of it. Voyaging through discomforts numerous and cuisine scant, by ocean, by forest, by mountain, by stream, in that long ago, we have arrived." He raised his eyebrows in a grimace. "The land is not ours, but that of another. Like lambs we are shorn by that Duer American. We cannot pluck sugar from the trees of maple as is promised us. We cannot light the candles of the barberry-bush as is also promised. To live we must have agriculture. Agriculture is an art. We know it not. For me, I am a wigmaker. That is my art. Behold!" He threw out ten fingers to cover the case. "In ignorance of agriculture we starve; we freeze. Some die. Some wander away."
Doby sat down beside him to express sympathy. Mr. Holman gave his whole attention to the tale.
"Seeing us about to perish, the United States, in pity, gives us this land. It is the French Grant, in that year of the famine which is worse than all other bad times, of the date 1790."
"How many acres?" asked Doby, who every day talked about land values with all sorts of emigrants.
"Of the number of forty thousand."
"Forty thousand acres make a big grant," cried Doby, much relieved by his country's bit of justice toward these men. "A large colony can live well on that much land."
"Ha!" shrugged Ol' Pap Soisson. "With that we take courage. By day we learn the so necessary agriculture. By night we fiddle, step to measure, sing the 'Marseillaise.' On Sunday, to preserve respect to ourselves and to honor the Virgin, we say a mass and make a toilette of fashionable attire."
Doby stared. "Do you mean to tell me that you dressed up in your city wigs and furbelows? In the wilderness?" he demanded.
"Of a certainty, yes! We love the good appearance. We want the laughter and the social life. Arrayed, I promenade the street for pleasure. A wild red heathen with a hatchet comes from behind and scalps me of my holiday wig, my best one!"
"No!" cried Doby. "No!"
"Yes! Yes!" bobbing his head a dozen times, the Frenchman insisted. "Yes! Yes!" He added: "The land is full of game. To pursueit is to live well. But see! for a quarter of a century I run from bear, from deer, from charging buffalo. Never do I pursue. Ever I am the pursued one. Of meat I taste little; of game nothing." He shook his head. "Now—have the young men of our kind learned the pioneering. We old mastered it not."
Doby was shocked. Such robbery and disappointment worried him. He looked to his father to say something cheery to the plucky little man.
Mr. Holman, big and brawny, equal to any demand of frontier life, gazed kindly at Ol' Pap Soisson, who had found its trials almost too much for him. "We will give you a taste of game to-day. Go, Doby, and shoot that gobbler we have been hearing."
"But, pa," protested Doby, "wild turkey isn't good in the spring. Nobody eats it."
"Itwillbe good if your ma cooks it. I know some one who can eat it," and he smiled at the Frenchman.
Ol' Pap Soisson flashed thirty-two white teeth in assent.
Stone-bruised heels were forgotten. Rags were torn from Doby's toes. They did not hurt—much. He slipped on his moccasins, not because his bare feet minded the March rime offrost, but just because all hunters did wear moccasins.
He carried bow and arrows. Pioneer boys were clever with these, for they were easy to pack about. Early guns were heavy.
"Wild turkeys are hard to shoot," he remembered as he trotted along the edge of the wood. "If I can't get that gobbler, I'll bring home something to cook in the new oven. Ol' Pap Soisson deserves a square meal."
His father had pointed out the probable turkey-run. Doby had expected to discover tracks at once, but he had to keep on and on, still in sight of the cabin, until, when at last he did find fresh traces, he must have been all of four miles away. But what are four miles to a hunter? Mere detail!
He hid himself in the heart of a sycamore and waited for game to pass. Sitting astride a limb in a rough old tree is much easier than lugging stone for an oven, especially if it is one of those big outdoor affairs fastened to the chimney.
His father would build a vent to make the draught strong. Then a fire would have to burn for hours in the oven until the stones were scorching. The coals would then be raked out and the turkey—if Doby got it—would be shutin the hot empty oven to let the reflected, heat roast it.
"If I were to tell that bony bachelor about the apple turnovers and rabbit pie, the gingerbread and quail dumplings, the baked beans and mince tarts, the succotash and blackberry short-cake, the whole shoats and cinnamon buns, the halved squash pudding and caraway cookies that ma can bake in such an oven, the poor fellow would lick his chops and fall sick from in-di-ges-tion of the im-ag-i-na-tion!"
From some source Doby had learned that, in the Old World, every plant and animal which is good to eat had been discovered and used by men centuries before people had begun to write down any sort of history. In the New World of the Americas, the natives had long ago found out what was good to eat on their continent, and could show the immigrating white man delicious foods which he had never before tasted—the golden maize, the bison, and the turkey. Doby felt that a personal experience of some of these dainties would make Ol' Pap Soisson joyous. So he kept his eye out for the turkey.
He was hidden where he could not be seen by any man. He fancied that he could not be noticed by any wild creature and that he himself could see everything about him. Deluded hunter! If he had been clever enough to peer more closely into the weeds below him, what trouble he might have saved!
Soon, along the run far to the north, there was a stir. He could not make it out. To the south was other movement.
"Doby, 'tend to business," he cautioned himself.
From the north came a turkey—a gobbler—thegobbler. Thiswasluck. Doby fitted an arrow.
From the south came a boy—a big boy—an Indian. This was not so lucky. Doby slackened his bowstring.
The savage had already seen the turkey. Silent and shadowy, he crept from tree to tree toward the stately bird. His stalk was a model of woodcraft.
What chance had Doby against such skill—against any grown boy? Very little. Against a wild Indian he had none at all.
The dismayed Holman sat so still that he could hear his own ribs creak. This was no longer his game. The hunter Doby was in danger of becoming the hunted Doby. He lost all appetite for turkey.
The wise gobbler—he was neither young nortender—kept a sharp outlook on the shadows, an alert regard for his own giblets. He was watching the Indian quite as closely as the Indian was watching him, and with as much anxiety as Doby was watching them both. Then with a strategic side-step he scuttled into the weeds near the foot of Doby's tree and was off at a tangent.
Instantly the Indian let fly one arrow, then a second one. Both whizzed in the same direction and at the same mark. There followed a great squawk and flutter. A turkey with an arrow through its neck flopped into sight and went scurrying north over the run. The Indian was in hot pursuit.
When the quarry and the chase were out of sight Doby noticed—oh, dull-eyed white man!—what he should have observed at first, that a turkey hen must have been waiting all this time in the weeds for that gobbler to come along.
The Indian's first arrow had pinned the gobbler to the ground. There he still was, lying flat. By accident, the second arrow had struck the hidden hen. Perhaps because the gobbler had fallen out of his sight, perhaps because the flight of the hen deceived and confused him, the Indian had followed the wounded turkey and Doby was left behind with the dead one.
THE BIRD JUMPED AT THE BOY. THE BOY STABBED AT THE BIRD.
THE BIRD JUMPED AT THE BOY. THE BOY STABBED AT THE BIRD.
All this action had been so quick that Doby could do nothing. Now he slung his bow and arrows out of the way, got down, and drew his precious stone knife to cut the gobbler loose. He meant to hasten away south toward home with the prize.
He pulled the arrow from the ground, then out through the bird's thigh and wing.
Ignorant Doby! Foolish boy! Not to know what playing 'possum is!
The gobbler sprang to life. Did he run? Not he! A turkey cock is a fighting cock. He whetted his spurs. His crest rose in menace. His wattles blazed scarlet. He flew at Doby in a fury.
Taken by surprise, the boy covered his face with his hand and began blindly to lunge and to fend with his knife every time the gobbler struck at him. The bird jumped at the boy. The boy stabbed at the bird. The battle grew. The gobbler would not run. Doby could not.
He never knew how long he fought. But he did fight and fight hard. The gobbler fought and fought harder. Doby was knocked down.
After a while, a long while, he opened his eyes and sat up. He feebly gazed around him. He stared at his foe. They had fought to afinish. The boy was almost finished. The gobbler lying beside him was quite finished.
Hours and hours later, Ol' Pap Soisson, keeping an excited lookout, went running to meet Doby. The boy's feet were a mass of blisters. His clothes were a tattered ruin from the spurs of the vanquished. His arms were numb with lugging the fifteen-pound turkey over those four long miles. His hands were swollen. His head was tied up.
The astonishment and delight of the little Frenchman pleased Doby. His compliments, so spattered with exclamation points, were praises most agreeable to the hunter.
What are a few scratches and bumps? What are bruises and cuts? Taken in a good cause, they are nothing. Simply nothing!
Any boy would have agreed with Doby when he said, sincerely, as he at last sat down to watch the first fire crackle in the new oven, "A fellow feels all good and rested when he can quit work and take a little time off for some lively sport which will fill the larder and feed the hungry."