A Wagon-train Besieged by Fire and Wolves
"SMOKE!" cried Obadiah Holman. "Smoke!" The men of the wagon-train drew together anxiously. They, too, had smelled smoke. But no one of them had wanted to say so.
Now they all agreed, "Yes, Doby," and nodded. Their eyes were on the horizon.
It was near the end of a hot day in July and quite time to go into camp for the night.
The marsh-grass bottoms of a network of creeks had so withered in a long "dry spell," that their green plants had become like tinder. The emigrants were afraid to stop or to make supper fires in such a dangerous spot.
One spark might set the whole wide bottom ablaze.
No wonder then that they moved along as rapidly as they could and gazed at one anotherin quick alarm at the coming of an acrid current of air.
While they debated what to do the breeze increased. Smoke-clouds tumbled in the northwest. A droning like the hum of distant bees came to their ears.
"Doby, help the men to start fires to the south of us in the path of the wind," cried his father, as part of the folks of the train ran forward to light the grass. The only defense they could muster was their plan to fight fire with fire.
It flamed up. The wicked little tongues noisily licked the ground brown and bare as the now strong wind blew the flames away from the wagons.
Other men were violently busy trying to hurry on to this barren ground the oxen who pulled the wagons, and the horses and cows which followed them.
The ashes were hot to their feet, stifling to their nostrils. The utmost urging was necessary to force them over the burned acres.
Women and children ran along, screaming with fear and constantly stopping to beat one another's garments where the embers had ignited them.
The wagons and their utensils rattled andbanged. Cattle lowed. Horses neighed. Men struggled to keep up a semblance of order and to control the animals.
"Whenever there is a panic I must try to keep sensible," thought Doby as he helped steadily at the teams where he was most needed.
From the north they could now see the awful wall of red and black rushing after them as they fled.
In the bedlam of the burned district, between the two great blazing waves, they hung to their animals, covering them and their own bodies with woolen blankets and skirts and coats. They endured with fortitude what they could not remedy.
Doby sat on the yoke between his oxen, for his moccasined feet could not bear the smoldering ground. He tried to quiet the beasts as he listened to the cries of birds above him and the plaints of small, scurrying creatures of the thickets. Deer and wild pigs galloped past without noticing the wagon-train, so wildly were they driven by fear of the coming fire.
The emigrants had managed to get many rods into their charred oasis. In the midst of their suspense the fire which was coming toward them met the district that had already burned, and died down suddenly for lack of fuel. Theblaze running from them had leaped into a triangle between two flowing creeks and quenched itself.
The woods on the bluffs had not caught. The danger had passed as quickly as it had come. In the sooty, half-strangled train no serious harm was done.
After a scrambled supper where they stood, most of the emigrants sank to exhausted sleep under doubled sentries. But wakeful Doby sat on a tail-gate and viewed the smoking, blackened landscape with misery in his heart.
He shut his eyes and tried to dream of his future home in Vincennes, to cheer himself with pictures of his favorite heroes. There was the gallant Spaniard, Francis Vigo, in doublet and high boots, in plumed hat and sword, with his following of half-wild "voyageurs" and traders at his heels. There was Father Gibault, the French Jesuit, in black cassock and cap, rallying his willing parishioners to their country's defense. Best of all, there was George Rogers Clark, the frontiersman, in buckskin, whose trained army of fighting patriots inspired both of the other leaders to the conquest of Vincennes and the saving of the Northwest Territory to the Union of States.
These pictures of his imagination would notstay with him. There was too much smoke in his eyes and too many blisters on his feet, so he gave himself up to woe and sighed aloud. He did not know that the sons of the early settlers must always be a bold and fearless lot. Such facts about himself had never reached him.
His conscience—that little candle of his soul—was burning low. He tried to resolve to forget his troubles and to show a cheerful face to the wagon-train, but his better thoughts ended in another groan.
The dismal sound was echoed from the wagon-wheels beneath him. He could not believe his ears, for this was not an echoing place. He was silenced by surprise, but the echo continued. It crept toward the tail-gate—a sobbing breath—and a clumsy little animal fell at his feet.
"Oh!" cried Doby. "Oh, you poor puppy! Where did you come from?"
He picked up the mangled and bony brute. At first it fought him off as though whatever perils had brought it to this wretched plight had made it afraid of both foes and friends.
On the instant Doby forgot his own grievances. He snuggled the wanderer against his wampus and crawled into the wagon with him, eager to apply first aid to the case.
He rubbed the cinders out of its hair. Hewashed the sores and greased the cuts. With his handy knife he shaped bandages and tied up the wounds. He gave it milk. It moaned with pain and feebly snapped at the fingers which tended it. But, after a while, warm and dry and fed, it cowered in a shawl on his lap and whimpered itself to sleep.
"May I have it for mine?" was the world-old demand of the boy to his parents.
"I think you will be obliged to keep it for a time," answered his father, full of pity for the tiny stray. His mother smiled and set out another cup of milk.
"I would like to know where it came from," mused the boy. "It must have been lost in the fire."
His father and mother looked at each other, but did not speak. Why should they suggest to him that some other wagon-train might have been overtaken by the fire and this little creature be one of the victims of a terrible disaster?
It kept him busy. Although it could not have been more than six weeks old, its unlucky adventures had already rather spoiled its disposition. In return for kindness it often gave bites and snarls.
"It doesn't love back the way I thought apup would do," said Doby next day, sucking some ugly nips on his thumb as they trailed along. "When it gets old enough to stand solid on its legs, I guess it will be about the fiercest dog of its size in the State."
With this pet to care for and to teach, in addition to his chores for the wagon, Doby could bustle about with some appearance of forgetting their precarious life.
For until the drought should be broken and the sky drop rain to renew the springs and cool the bottoms, each hour became more fraught with danger from the wild.
From the black edges of the moonless nights green eyes glared at the fires of the emigrants. Panthers wailed from the bluff in long shrieks, like frightened children—a sound that chilled the blood of every one in the train.
Wolves howled in the daytime—there is no sound more menacing—and dread hung over the travelers.
So the queer little puppy, who took itself so seriously in spite of the ridiculous look of its wabbly legs and mangled ears, was a source of interest and diversion to the whole company.
When it heard a wolf howl it quickly got to its feet, raised what bristles it had, and answered shrilly, pacing back and forth under thecanvas top of the wagon where the boy kept it fastened.
"It wants to get out and fight 'em," cried Doby, proudly. "It wants to eat 'em up. See how eager it looks!"
On the second night of its stay in their wagon-bed it won their gratitude. By its yelping and its scratching at the canvas it sounded the alarm, "Wolf at the door!"
Even after Mr. Holman had caught up his rifle to drive at the wolf, which was by that time quite out of range, the adopted puppy rushed about the wagon-floor in an ecstasy of usefulness and slept no more that night.
Through the depressing, unfriendly land which the flames had desolated, women and children huddled timidly in the wagons, men doubly armed walked close to their domestic animals for fear of a stampede, scouts forged ahead and sentries brought up the rear. Dust, heat, distant puffs of smoke, dried-out or muddy watercourses, all told of a region suffering in an untoward season and of beasts uncomfortable and dangerous.
Their train was followed, not by a pack as they sometimes feared it might be, but by one of those lone gray timber wolves, whose age or ferocity—or something—finds satisfaction innothing but the silent stalk and the solitary kill.
At last things came to such a pass, at last the lone wolf—it was a gaunt she-wolf—lurked so near, that panic seized the hearts of the emigrants. For no rifle could hit her. Like the horrid werewolf, in whom some of the superstitious travelers still believed, no bullet touched her, so uncanny was her cleverness in getting beyond range after every depredation.
"I'm glad that pa put ma in another wagon, for the wolf picks our stuff every time, probably because we are the last in the train," worried Doby, who was frankly afraid of the gleaming eyes which had twice slipped past the sentries in the darkness and appeared below him during his turn at watching at the tiny round window in the middle of the back of the wagon-top. He was not ashamed to swing his lighted pine-knot torch vigorously most of the time. "Those teeth looked as sharp as knives."
To the excited puppy he promised, "When you are a little bigger I'll let you out to do battle." But the frantic puppy did not want to wait to grow bigger. It was ready at once. Its new master was full of applause for its vigilance.
On the third night an awful moment came.The ready sentries patrolling near, and his father at the oxen's head, seemed far, far away when Doby turned from a moment's soothing of his growling pet to find himself face to face with the blazing eyes in a great, slavering head thrust through the little round window.
He shrieked and called as he beat at the hideous, threatening thing with his burning pine knot.
Men came running to help him. But in the half-light of flickering torches no one dared to fire into the group who had been surprised into a hand-to-hand fight with the wolf. From that medley of human screams and bestial growls, the flash of knives, the thump of clubbing guns, she escaped as strangely as she had done before.
The puppy, licking at Doby's bitten hand, begged ferociously to be allowed to get out and get at her.
His father gave his animals to the care of another and took the boy's watch at the wagon's end in the last of the train. Doby, who could not sleep on account of his pet's restlessness, sat beside his father through the long hours of that fearsome night.
In the darkest time, just before the dawn, when deep sleep had finally settled upon the train, the puppy leaped up and slipped itsleash and called in sharp glad barks. Without, under the doubly guarded wagon, the she-wolf crooned. The puppy capered with joy. Softly the coaxing whine was repeated. The puppy answered in baby staccato.
And then they knew! Even Doby knew! Knew whence the puppy came, why it was so fierce, and why the lone wolf stalked the train!
A dozen rifles cracked, but the "unerring" pioneer marksmen could not hit that sly wolf in the darkness. She was out of range again.
The father and son looked at each other in consternation.
There was only one thing to do. Poor Doby did it.
He spoke a word to the guards. Then with his heart-strings quite torn apart he took the beloved and unloving wolf whelp from the wagon, set it upon the ground, and watched it lope away into the waiting dark.
Because a wolf never returns to an uncovered trap, the siege was raised.
When affairs are at their worst a brave spirit struggles hardest. So daylight found Doby cheerfully holding a court of speculating emigrants, who were bent on discussing their late guest, the wolf whelp.
His bandaged hand held his busy knife andhe carved on a wide, thick strap of leather as he said: "Oh, never mind about the puppy! I don't care—much. There are other dogs. As soon as a friend of mine, who always keeps his word, gets back to his farm at Urbana, he is going to send me a foxhound by the next wagon-train to our new home at Vincennes." And he showed them the leather collar. Near the fastening he had cutOHIO*KENTUCKY*INDIANA. On one side were the wordsSIMON KENTON. On the opposite side it said,OBEDIAH HOLMAN. Between the two was the comforting legend,THEIR DOG.