Cincinnati's Early Days
"THIS rise of land is a hill. Why do they call it a 'knob,' I wonder? While I am in Cincinnati I want to act as much like city folks as I can, so I'll try to remember to say 'knob' whenever I mean hill," and Obadiah Holman sat down on the knob and looked at the city.
His far-sighted blue eyes were trained for the open, not for roofs and walls, so they passed over brick and stone architecture, well worth noting in this new land of log and plank buildings, to watch a bit of greensward near the edge of the knob where some form of animal life was stirring.
He was instantly ready for lively observation. "I believe that's a dog. Two dogs! They must be having a race. The yellow pup is the faster." Leaping up, Doby puthis fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, hoping to change the direction of the run. He would like to see two dogs at play, even if they were strange dogs.
They did not hear him. They were far away and they disappeared from his sight in a flash.
He sat down again. He was disappointed. Their passing had given him a singularly deserted feeling. "I wish they had come up here to be company for me. A whole cityful," thought Doby, remembering the three thousand inhabitants of Cincinnati, "is such a crowd of people that a boy emigrant doesn't know any person and he feels left out of everything and—anyway—no boy can have a really good time without a dog."
Doby had another reason for being forlorn. He had been rejected by a group of men whom he wanted to join on an expedition into Kentucky. No one likes to be snubbed. He was trying to forget the uncomfortable experience by visiting all the points of interest in the city and then by climbing to the top of the knob where he could get a high and impersonal glimpse of things.
Opposite him was the mouth of the Licking River as it flowed north into the Ohio. Half adozen miles east was the Little Miami. A score or so to the west was the Big Miami.
All low grounds about these river mouths were flooded in spring by what the astonished emigrants called "amazing high freshets," and the towns which the promoters began on them had to be abandoned by "the respectable public" whom their advertisements had drawn there.
But the knob was above the reach of backwater and higher than any rising ague fog.
Three wise men thought it the best place for a city. One, Denman, who was rich, paid two hundred and fifty dollars for the eight hundred acres on the knob. Another, Colonel Patterson, who was influential, had an army post for protection built here. And the third, Filson, who was clever, surveyed the lands and made most valuable maps of the regions round about. The irate Indians scalped Filson for his pains, but the other two waxed prosperous with the growth of their city.
Doby had seen some of Filson's drawings of the surrounding trails. Particularly was he entranced by the map of Kentucky. "Every time I look at that dotted line of the great Clark War Road stretching alongside the Kentucky River away into the wilderness, I want to go down it." His thoughts kept coming back tohis grievance like a cat to an empty house. "There is no good reason why a boy shouldn't travel that road any more than there is an excuse for a boy not having a dog." He felt dreadfully sorry for himself. "Perhaps if I had a dog—a fine tracking-hound or a fierce watch-dog—the scouts might need the dog and take me along with it. But I haven't one thing that they want and I can't go."
Up the road of Doby's desire, while it was yet a trail, had come the Indians to the broad plateau of the knob. Long before Filson's time these savages had seen the value of such a lookout. They made it a stopping-place because it could so well be guarded against surprise. Their signal-fires upon it could be seen by all surrounding tribes. Even a smoke message could warn three valleys.
"'Twas such a safe place," thought Doby, whimsically, "that the Miamis had to fight all the time to keep it from other Indians who also wanted to be secure upon it. Constant battles here have given it the name of the 'Miami slaughter-house.'"
George Rogers Clark, the Virginian, a Revolutionary hero, who came across Kentucky hot on the track of the Miamis, used the savage trail to such quick and victorious service against theBritish, making it part of his route to his renowned conquest of the Northwest, that it had taken his name. He built a sturdy little blockhouse for a fort and supply station on the knob in 1780 as a half-way station between his Kentucky outposts and the forts on the Wabash and the Great Lakes. And there it still stood, like one of Clark's chunky soldiers who was said to sink deeper into the ground every time the enemy charged him and who had no intention of giving up, no matter how many times he was licked.
Cincinnati was founded by Revolutionary soldiers who were paid for their services by grants of land in this neighborhood. Two companies of regular troops in Fort Washington guarded them as they returned to the plow and used their trusty swords to make their little pigs into famous Queen City sausages.
Doby munched on a sweet, lumpy souvenir of his visit to the sugar-factory as he gazed at the glass factory, the furniture-factory, the cotton and hemp spinning and weaving mills, the flour-mills, the tanneries, all the big city buildings where the newly invented steam-engine was beginning to make for the pioneers all the things that they had been obliged to do for themselves by hand.
"Ma will be glad to hear of the machine that can make cloth as fast as I wear it out," and the boy examined the inside of his much-used knife-pocket at a patch which needed a patch itself, although it was already a patch upon another patch.
But all this machinery made his head tired. So did the smoke and the smells and the confusion of streets.
Some rural path—preferably in Kentucky—was the only thing he could think of that would rest him and entertain him when he had no person to talk to and no pet to play with.
So he sat upon the knob and kicked his heels to cool his restless feet. His eyes turned from the city's buildings to its fringe of green. They wandered again to the spot where he had seen the most satisfactory thing of the whole day—those passing dogs.
There was a bunch of tawny leaves blowing along the hillside. He stared at it idly. No, it was not leaves, that patch of uncertain color. It was something living, something leaping.
How uncertainly it moved! How wabbly it was! Doby sat up sharply and peered. He stood up and leaned forward. He shut his eyes for a better long-distance focus and squinted.
"It is the yellow dog again. Dog? No! Fox? It can't be a fox! It surely is a fox." Behind the fox a dog was running. A long chase had tired them both. Their pace was dragging.
"It is the same dog, I do believe, and the same fox that I saw before. What a big circle they must be running!"
All alert now, Doby measured their speed. If he ran forward in quick time at right angles to it, their course would pass quite close to him. Away he flew.
He was thinking, "That fox is exhausted. It can hardly get along. The hunt has been an all-day one. The dog—ah, the poor brave doggie!—is worse off than the fox. He will never catch it. What a fine dog! What a game dog, not to give up when he is outrun! He is my kind of a dog. I'll help him."
Doby rushed down the hill to head off the fox. At most times it would have been a silly and a useless thing to do. But now the spent fox was not equal to any of its sly dodges.
It saw the man creature—that cruel enemy of all wild life—and for one second it paused. On the instant the persistent dog also saw the man creature—that kind friend of all tame brutes—and, reinforced by his presence, leaped with a last bit of strength for the quarry.
Doby was in at the death. He cut the brush. It was a splendid trophy. Then he gave his whole attention to the dog, who had fallen over on one side and lay prone.
"Poor doggie, he looks as though he were going to die!" quavered Doby. "Poor doggie! Come, doggie! I'll carry you to our flatboat and tend you."
So over the hillside and down the terraces and through the unheeding city streets he lugged the limp dog to the landing at the water's edge and into the flatboat and on to a cushion.
"That dog seems to have a little of every kind of breed, so we will call him a foxhound, for short," was Mr. Holman's comment, as Doby bent anxiously over his find with water and milk and bread and meat. "But if you want to do so, you may keep him for your own," he promised, as he always did on every one of those numerous occasions when Doby adopted some hapless stray and wistfully begged to be allowed to take care of it and train it.
Thus, by chance, Doby had within an hour acquired a dog at a time when he fancied that he needed it most.
What a good thing a reliable dog would be to a party of scouts, if the boy who had him couldgo along to make him do his doggie best! These were Doby's reflections as he watched the fagged one, bit by bit, grow strong and lively.
He proved to be a grateful brute and an affectionate one. He answered Doby's endearments most ardently. But, alas! as he recovered he grew restless. He wanted to be off again.
Now around this dog's neck was a band of leather, the only kind of collar that pioneer puppies knew. Mr. Holman had glanced at this collar. He knew what it meant, but he did not say a word about it. Doby also knew what it meant, but he did not speak of it, either. He sat and stared at it by the hour together.
The collar had been made and fastened on the dog by some other boy. The dog was some other boy's dog. He was a pet dog. If he was set free he might return to some far-away home—to that other boy.
At this moment he was looking at Doby with adoring eyes, as that uncomfortable boy thought, "If I keep him a long time, keep him shut up and well fed, he will finally like me best and be my pet, for I saved his life." The dog wagged a hearty assent to this; and to all Doby's claims to loyalty he pounded his tail thankfully on the resounding floor of the flatboat.
"The scouts would listen to me and take mealong, almost surely take me along, if I could show them a good tracking-hound," he argued. "It is my one chance to get in with them." He was more miserable now with the dog than he had ever been without it—well—because he kept thinking.
The dog licked Doby's hands and reached for his face with a moist and loving tongue. "I believe they would take me if he went, too." The dog begged for a joyous tussle. He was the greatest fun to play with.
"You want to stay with me, don't you?" Doby asked of the completely restored and lively hound, flushed and happy as they paused in a romp. But the dog was already beginning to pace back and forth inside the barricaded boat. He whined at every crack. He brought pleading sniffs to Doby's feet.
The boy stood and thought. He must decide what to do about another man's property. The more he thought, the deeper he frowned. His face was a tangled hard knot of lines when, after a long inner struggle, he finally got out his knife to cut a strip of bark from a slippery-elm tree, stopping frequently to sigh over the hard task he had given himself.
On the plain white inner side of the bark his stone knife carved plainly,THE FOX TAIL IS ONHOLMAN'S FLATBOAT IN CINCINNATI HE IS A FINE DOG WE HELPED HIM OBADIAH HOLMAN. Carefully rolling and tying it, he fastened it inside the dog's collar as messages were sometimes sent.
He carried the dog ashore and released him. He was sure that all his hopes for going with the scouts vanished with the dog.
A strange feeling of being grown up came over him. "After this when I ought to do a thing, I'll just go ahead and do it, and not hesitate so long about the deed I know is right."
Acting on this decision, he was silent and showed no childish regrets, when the scouts, gathering on the dock the next afternoon, made ready for their start. They never noticed him. Their thoughts were on Simon Kenton, who was to direct them. He was the pioneer's ideal. He had once saved the life of Daniel Boone, that most famous of all the patriotic Kentucky rangers, and had become his fast friend in consequence.
Kenton's services as an Indian-fighter had given him a name that filled the Middle West. He was brave beyond belief. The number of times that he had been captured and the great difficulties of his escapes never prevented him from offering his help wherever his woodcraftcould lead soldiers to victory through savage-infested country.
Half a dozen times and more he had run the gauntlet. Three times he is said to have been tied to the stake for torture and burning. During several periods of captivity he was most brutally treated. Yet in every important battle with the redskins in his own State and out of it he was one of the directing powers. Between-times he was a matchless spy and a fearless ranger. Even now, although he was past middle age, he had a splendid body, a tireless mind, and a dauntless courage.
"If any one can rescue the besieged wagon-train from the Indians, this is the scout who will do it," said Mr. Holman. And they all rose respectfully as the gray-eyed giant came among them.
They knew him to be fond of animals and kind to pets, so there was no surprise that a dog should be hanging on his heels. The wonder was that this should chance to be Doby's dog—the so-called foxhound. In noisy recognition the happy pup leaped upon the boy, licked his face, knocked him over backward, and tried to eat him up.
"Oh, you bad bow-bow," laughed Doby, returning the embrace.
"Wow-wow," answered the hound, rolling over on his back in an ecstasy of delight at the meeting.
Simon Kenton's speech was as old-fashioned as his big brave heart. He asked the boy, "Be ye Obadiah Holman?"
Doby nodded with something like a bow. "Well, then, I'm huntin' for ye. I want a boy to go with us into Kentucky. Git ready to start instanter." On Kenton's arm was hanging a small suit of fringed buckskin. "Put these duds on. They'll fit well enough. When I found the note in the collar I reckoned on ye bein' young," and the tall scout smiled down on the boy. "I fetched a leetle rifle for ye."
The other men objected in chorus: "He's nothing but a boy. He can't go. We can't take a boy and we can't take a dog."
"Don't want to take the dog; never do take the dog," was the easy answer.
"The boy is too small," was the second chorus.
The bright gray eyes ran over Doby from his eager face to his moccasined toes. Then Simon Kenton said "He is big enough for me. I can use him on this ventur'. I've taken chances afore on folks that befriended my dog. Nary chance did I ever lose."
Without more ado he took command of the expedition. He showed each man his duty. Then he said to Doby: "I'll trust ye. Climb into yer new suit, son, and scoot along. Show us yer ready for business. I reckon ye'll never be anybody's small boy again. When ye made up yer mind to give a man the things that belonged to him—the minute ye wrote that note—w'y, just that minute ye growed into a first-class scout!"