CHAPTER XIX.TRAPPING.
They proceeded down the Monongahela to the Alleghany; down the Alleghany to the mouth of the Big Beaver, and up that about thirty miles till they came to a fork. Taking the easterly fork, they proceeded about three miles till they reached another fork. Here they found a temporary camp, which they repaired and passed the night in, collected the traps Whitman had concealed the year before, and set them as they went up the stream, till in the course of five miles they came to another temporary camp in very good repair. They went on five miles more, and found another camp that needed slight repairs. Having repaired this, they went on five miles more, and found a camp with a bark roof, stone chimney and fireplace. The roof and chimney needed some repairing. They passed the night here and found more traps, which they set, and replaced some that were worn out with new ones. They now returned, and as they went found in the traps two beavers, four minks and one otter. This put them in good spirits. They paddled rapidly down to the Fork, and ascended the other streams and began to set the new traps, as this wasthe ground the half-breed had trapped. In the course of five miles they came to a temporary camp and repaired it, setting traps as they went. Here they found stretchers for skins. At the distance of five miles they came to a permanent log camp with a stone fireplace, chimney, and a lug pole in the chimney to hang a kettle on. There was a window with oiled paper in it, bark shelves, backwoods stools, and a table made of cedar-splints. There were also bark dishes and wooden spoons and plates. This was the main or home camp. Here they unloaded the birch and deposited all their provisions. They made a hemlock broom, cleaned out the camp, collected small hemlock and cedar brush for beds, heated water and washed and scalded every thing that had need of washing; and cooked the tail of a beaver and roasted a fish they caught in the stream for supper.
The next morning they proceeded up stream five miles, setting traps until they reached another temporary camp, which needed much repairing, and did not reach the home camp till dark. After supper they sat some time chatting and arranging their plans for the winter.
“I can’t help thinking of the Indian; there in the corner are his arrows and bow. If I could use them as well as he, we should get more deer meat this winter,” said William.
“A rifle is better than a bow.”
“True, but we cannot fire a rifle till the stream is frozen. The beaver is a very timid creature, and while they are running about the bank the less noise we make the better, but the bow is a silent weapon, and in an Indian’s hand effective.”
Such was the divergency of the creeks that when each was at the upper end of his line of traps they were ten miles apart, but every other night they met at the home camp where they did most of their cooking; the other camps were for shelter and to skin their game in and stretch and keep the skins.
Every Sunday they met at the home camp, and indulged in a pot of pork and beans, and sassafras tea and Johnny-cake, baked on a flat stone, with a slice of pork. When they had made their plans and partaken of the supper William threw himself upon the brush, wrapped the blanket around him, and was asleep in a moment.
But in respect to James the situation was too novel to permit of sleep. He went out and seated himself upon the birch, that was turned upon the bank. It was a night of stars but moonless. He was nearly three hundred miles from home, sixty from any village, and half that from any habitation; no baying of dogs, rumbling of wheels, nor any of the sounds of civilized life fell upon his ear as he reflected and listened to the moaning of the stream as it swept past, and the sounds new and inexplicable to him that came up on the night wind from theforest. A strange feeling of loneliness came over him. He felt his own nothingness as never before; the mighty forest seemed closing around and about to crush him; and commending himself to God he also wrapped himself in his blanket, and lay watching the flickering firelight till sleep and fatigue overpowered him.
Here they remained and trapped till the middle of April, and then made up their furs. Mr. Whitman took them to Philadelphia. They divided five hundred dollars between them, and James reached home the sixth of May.
The Whitmans were seated at the dinner-table. During the forenoon they had been preparing the ground to plant corn, they had been working four horses, putting James’ colt in with Dick, in the absence of his mate.
“Father,” said Peter, “hadn’t we better plough that piece of burnt land, and not wait for James?”
Mr. Whitman was about to reply, but his voice was drowned in a loud neigh that penetrated every cranny of the dwelling, and took precedence of all other sounds, and was instantly followed by a most vigorous response from the four horses in the barn, in which the tones of Dick were the most prominent.
“It’s Frank’s voice, Frank and James!” shouted Bertie, running to the door, followed more leisurely by all the rest.
Great was the joy and fervent the greetings, andnot less warm the welcome bestowed upon old Frank, who, after a whole winter’s rest, had renewed his age.
“Take him to the stable, Bertie,” said his father, “or Dick will tear the stall down, he wants to see his mate.”
James was soon seated at the table, when Mr. Whitman said,—
“Do you like that part of the state better than this, James.”
“No, sir, it is too near the Indians.”
“But hasn’t General Wayne settled them?”
“Yes, sir, for a few years, perhaps; but there are a great many of them in the country beyond the Ohio, and they will always be ready to take up the hatchet, and certainly won’t lack provocation. Then there’s no market but by flat boats two thousand miles down the river to New Orleans, or by pack-horses and wagons over the mountains. If you raise crops you can’t sell ‘em; a good cow is worth but five dollars, a horse ten; wheat thirty cents a bushel and won’t bear transporting over the mountains,—nothing will but whiskey. Four bushels of grain is a load for a horse over the mountains, but he will carry twenty-four made into whiskey.”
“By-and-by it will be different.”
“They hope and expect it will, but it may be a long time. Why should anybody go where he can get land for nothing, and that is good for nothingto him after he has got it, as he can’t sell anything from it? It is about as broad as it is long. I have no doubt there is land this side of the mountains, and wild land too, about as cheap, and where crops can be got to market.”
As no one of the family thought of questioning James as to his route, naturally supposing that he came back by the same road over which he went, he did not tell them that he turned off at the foot of the north mountain, proceeded up along the west bank of the Susquehannah, crossed it at Northumberland, and travelled for two days inspecting the country, looking over the farms and clearings, inquiring the price of land improved and wild, the price of cattle, grain, and opportunities for market, and also in relation to the state of roads, and distances from markets and the means of conveyance.
“Boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “you may take the harnesses off the horses, we’ll have a half holiday to talk with James, and it would be too bad to put old Frank into the team the first day he came home.”
It was a matter of necessity that James should (after conversing with Mr. Whitman, and telling him all the news in regard to his brother’s family) go directly to Mr. Conly’s, carry letters, and tell him and his wife everything in relation to their daughter, her husband and the grandchildren, interesting for them to know. It was, however, not accomplished that afternoon or even in the evening, of which itconsumed a large portion, but required so many evenings that at length it began to attract attention.
“James goes to the Conlys a great deal. Do you think he has any particular reason?” said Mr. Whitman to his wife.
“I don’t know. Mr. Conly’s was the first place he ever went to; he and Edward are great friends; always have been. The master, you know, worked here all one summer and has always tried to help James from the start. I think it would be strange if he didn’t go there a good deal, especially as he goes nowhere else.”
“I know all that, but I am of the same mind still.”
“Bertie knows; I mean to ask him.”
Mrs. Whitman interrogated Bertie, but though generally so communicative, he was all at once very reticent.
“Bertie, your father and myself are the best friends James has in the world, and your father is able to help James if he is so minded. If there is anything in this, you know and ought to tell us, for it will go no farther.”
“Well, mother, if you must know, he’s dying for Emily, and she’s dying for him.”
“Then why don’t he tell her so? There’s not a better girl in the country, nor more capable.”
“Because he imagines a host of things. He thinks because she and her folks know all about hiscoming out of a workhouse, and she knows what he was when he first came here, and how he was picked upon and scouted at school, they must kind of look down upon him; that though they might pity him, treat him as a friend and try to help him along, it would be another thing if he wanted to come into the family, and even if they didn’t care they might think other people would, and throw it up at them that she was going with aredemptioner.
“That’s all the merest nonsense, and his imagination. I go there with him, and after a little while get up to go; then up he’ll jump and go with me, though they ask and urge him to stop. He’ll go home from meeting with her, and sometimes I go with them on purpose, and she’ll ask us to go in, I’ll say I must go, and give him a punch in the ribs to go in, but no, off he comes with me. I know by what Ed. says the old folks would like it, and I tell him he can’t expect her to break the ice, and would not want her to. I wish I could shut them up together, I’d starve them to it as they do a jury.”
“If they like each other, and it suits all round,—I know it would suit William and his wife; he wrote a long letter to your father, and sent it by James, in which he said everything good about James that he could say, and has made him promise to trap with him next winter,—and if there is nothing in the way but James’ diffidence, it will take care of itself. There never was a man yet who liked awoman and didn’t find some way to let her know it.”
“Yes, mother, she may know; I expect she knows it now, but how shall she know it enough?”
“There will be some way provided.”
James and the boys concluded to sow their land with wheat and grass seed, as this was their last year, Mr. Whitman finding the grass seed. Matters went on in their regular course till the beginning of wheat harvest, when Mrs. Conly sent for Mrs. Whitman to come over there and spend the afternoon, and for Mr. Whitman to come to tea.
“I have had a letter from Mary,” said Mrs. Conly, “and she is just crazy for me to let Emily come on with James Renfew this fall, when he goes to trap, and come back with him in the spring, she does so long to see some of us: and she can’t come on account of the baby, and it’s such a good chance. I thought I never could let Emily go over the mountains. I don’t see how I can; and I want to talk it over with you.”
After weighing the matter all round, these sage counsellors concluded that Mary Whitman ought in reason to be gratified; she was away there in the woods; and it was natural that she should want to see her sister, or some of her folks; and she was so lonely when William was away trapping. There could be no danger from Indians, since General Wayne had chastised them so severely.
“I have not said a word to Emily yet. It may be that she will be afraid to venture so far, for she never was from home a night in all her life.”
“I think she’ll go,” said Mrs. Whitman; “she thinks so much of her sister, and these young folks are venturesome.”
When the matter was broached to Emily, “though she was at first,” as her mother said, “struck all up in a heap,” yet she consented,on her sister’s account, to venture.
When Mrs. Whitman, after going home, broached the matter to James, she feared, as the good woman told her husband, he would faint away; for he turned as many colors as a gobbler-turkey when a red cloth is held before him.
As for Bertie he was in raptures.
“Could anything be more nice, mother? How happened it to come just now?”
“Nothing could be more natural, Bertie; Mary Whitman has been teasing her mother ever since she was married, to let Emily come out there, and when she found James was coming again to trap, she was just furious, and there was no doing anything with her.
“You must go over there with James to-night, for Mrs. Conly will want to know about it and encourage him, for I am afraid he will appear so diffident that Mrs. Conly, and perhaps Emily too, will think hedon’t want her to go with him, though I know better than that.”
“If he does, mother, I’ll pull every spear of hair out of his head. Oh, I wish it was me instead of him, I’d make my best bow, so, mother (suiting the action to the word), and I’d say that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to enjoy the company of Miss Conly, and that I considered it a privilege to be the instrument of cheering Mrs. Whitman in her loneliness.”
“Ay, you are very brave, but if it was your own case, you might, perhaps, be as bad as James.”
“I don’t believe that, mother, but I mean to come home early and leave James there if I can.”
Bertie, however, came home before eight o’clock and with him James, who went directly to his bedroom. The moment the door closed after James, Bertie exclaimed,—
“It’s all fixed, mother.”
“What’s fixed?”
“About her going with him. I told him what to say; he didn’t say half what I told him, nor the way I told him, but it came to about the same thing.”
“If he had he would have appeared ridiculous.”
“Why, mother?”
“Because your manner of expressing yourself would have appeared as much out of the way from his lips as would your head on his shoulders.”
“I mean to tell him that the journey is his chance, and if he don’t improve it he’ll never have another, and never ought to.”
“You had a great deal better tell him that Emily never would have consented to go with him, and her parents would never have let her go, if both she and they had not reposed the utmost confidence in him, neither would Mary Whitman have made the request; and that will encourage him to overcome his bashfulness.”
“Mother, how much better you can plan than I can.”
“She has had a good deal of experience in managing men,” said Mr. Whitman, who had been a silent, but by no means indifferent listener.
“Husband, do you want me to box your ears?”