CHAPTER XVII.REDEMPTION YEAR.
It was now planting time. James, this year, planted his patch with corn, as he had planted it with potatoes two years, and the boys planted potatoes. The weather proved very dry and so favorable for farm work that the planting and sowing were finished much earlier than usual.
“Now, boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “if you handle yourselves, you can burn your lot over and plant corn before hoeing comes on: and, after harvest, you can knock the sprouts from the stumps and kill the fire-weeds.”
They put in the fire, and got an excellent burn.
They now determined to make a log-rolling and invite the neighbors, far and near, to come with axes and oxen to cut and roll and twitch the unburnt logs into great piles to be set on fire and burned entirely up. The old gentleman was busily at work in the shop, when Maria came running in, and said,—
“Grandpa! George Orcutt is coming up the road, and he looks as though he was coming here.”
“I hope he is; and if he turns up here, you tell him the men-folks are all in the field, except me, and that I am at work in the shop.”
In a few moments George came in, and was receivedvery cordially by the old gentleman. George said his father had broken one of the glasses in his specs, and as he was about the age of Mr. Jonathan, but some older, he might have a pair that he did not use, that he would lend him till he could get another pair. He said that William was coming, but he had an errand at Mr. Wood’s, and told his folks he would do the errand.
“There are glasses enough in the house. I don’t use ‘em; but I have got two pair that were my father’s. Jonathan has got two pair, and Alice has a pair that she don’t use much of any now. I was glad to see that you stopped awhile ago after meeting. I trust you have found the hope you sought then?”
“No, Mr. Whitman, I have not; there’s a thing stands right in the middle of the road, and blocks the whole road up.”
“What is that?”
“You know, I suppose, what happened at school?”
“Have you any hardness against James?”
“No, sir; and I have told the Lord I am sorry, and asked his forgiveness; but that is not satisfactory, and I don’t feel that it is any use for me to go to my Maker till I have forgiveness of James, but I don’t know how to bring it about.”
“I’ll fix it for you; it is only about half an hour to supper time; you’ll stop and take supper with us?”
“I dread to go into the house.”
“Never be afraid to do right, because you will have help. But, before you go in, I want to show you some things James has made.”
The old gentleman showed him a wheelbarrow and crossbow he had made for Bertie, and the wheels and shafts he had made to break the colt in, and told him that James had made himself a nice chest, dovetailed it together, and painted it.
“Come, let us go into the house and find the specs.”
Mrs. Whitman received George in so kindly a manner that it relieved him of much of his embarrassment.
The old gentleman told Maria, when she went to call the men-folks to supper, to tell her father that George Orcutt was in the house and would stop to supper.
“Boys,” said Mr. Whitman, “George Orcutt is in the house; I suppose you can guess what has brought him here. He will feel embarrassed enough, no doubt, and I want you all to shake hands with him as if you meant it, and receive him as though nothing had happened, and as you did when he used to come here.”
“I am sure I will,” said Bertie; and so they all said, and did accordingly; but the grandfather excelled them all, for, as soon as they had shaken hands with George and talked a little, the formersaid, “James, I’ve been showing George your cart, and have told him about your chest. Why won’t you take him upstairs and let him see it?”
They went upstairs together.
“I think we had better sit down to the table,” said Mr. Whitman; “they will feel better to find us eating than they will to find us all sitting here still, and have to look us in the face when they come down.”
Before James and George came down, the boys and their father had eaten their supper and gone out, leaving James and George to eat together.
There were traces of tears on the cheeks of the latter, but he looked happy and as though a great load was lifted from his heart, and felt so much relieved that the boys persuaded him to pass the night with them. In the course of the evening he told Bertie that David Riggs and William Morse, who had also stopped at the meeting on the Sabbath succeeding the one upon which he stopped, felt as he did, and wanted to do likewise, but did not know how to bring it about. The four friends talked the matter over, and it was resolved to invite David and William to the log-rolling and the supper afterwards, and George was commissioned to invite and come with them.
The day was set, the neighbors responded to the summons, the logs were piled and burnt, and great numbers of the smaller stumps torn out by mainforce and flung on the piles. David, William and George were among the first on the ground, David bringing four oxen and George and William a yoke each. Before they parted harmony was restored between them and James and Peter and Bertie.
The boys were very solicitous that their grandfather should go out and look at the burn but he was not able. The good old man had been failing since the approach of hot weather and could only work a little while in the garden in the morning; and at evening and during the greater part of the time dozed in his chair. In the midst of wheat harvest there came a week of extremely sultry weather which affected him very sensibly, and as Mrs. Whitman was passing through the room where the old gentleman sat asleep in his chair, she was alarmed by the extreme paleness of his features, went to the chair and found him unconscious. She summoned her husband and children, who were near by reaping, but when they reached the house he was no more. A well-spent life had ceased without a struggle. His death, though not unexpected, threw a gloom over that happy family that not even the assurance of his preparedness could dissipate, and that yielded only to the soothing hand of time.
James, to whom he had stood in the place of a parent, was so affected that for several weeks he could speak of nothing else. Mr. Whitman nowconducted family prayers as his father had done, and in a few weeks himself and wife, James and the children, united with the church. As the result of the singing school there was formed a new choir, which Peter, Bertie, and James joined, also Emily Conly, Jane Gifford, Sarah Evans, Maria Whitman, and Prudence Orcutt.
When the boys came to harvest their corn they found an opportunity to sell it in the ear to an agent who was buying corn and shelling it at the mill with a machine that was moved by water-power, and shared forty-nine dollars and fifty cents each. James also obtained eighteen dollars and some cents for that raised on the same piece that he had before planted with potatoes.
The season throughout had been dry and held so, the boys therefore took the oxen, pulled out all the roots the oxen could start by means of their help, and with the axe cut down all the stubs that had been broken off and left. There were also a great many logs that were too green to burn and had been piled up around the stumps; these they hauled together and then setting fire to the corn stubble made a clean burn of weeds, sprouts and logs, feeding the fire till the whole was consumed and a good seed bed made for another year.
Edward Conly kept the school in the winter and everything passed off pleasantly. James was now, as one of the choir, brought to the choir meetings,mingled with the girls as he had never done before, and was even induced by Bertie and Edward Conly to speak a piece and take part in a dialogue at a school exhibition.
The boys resolved this spring (as they had cleared their burn so thoroughly) to plough it a few inches deep and sow it with rye. It was hard work for the cattle, and as they stopped to breathe them, Bertie cried out, in his abrupt fashion,—
“Look here, James; by the time this grain comes off, or not long after, your time will be out, your four years.”
After reflecting a moment, James replied,—
“So they will. Can it be that four years are gone already?”
“What are you going to do about the next crop after this? Father promised us three crops; I don’t suppose he thought anything about the time.”
“I’ll give it to you and Peter.”
“We’ll buy it of you,” said Peter.
“You are not going away,” said Bertie. “What is the use to talk about that. This is your home just as much as it is ours; we won’t let you go, will we, Pete?”
“Of course we won’t.”
“Father,” said Bertie, at dinner, “do you know that James’ time is out next fall?”
“Yes.”
“But you said he and we might have three cropsoff that burn. If he goes away he’ll lose his crop.”
“He won’t go away. I’ll hire him and let him have his crop to boot. I suppose he’ll work for me, won’t you, James?”
“Work for you, Mr. Whitman. I’ll gladly work for you a year without wages, and then I shall be altogether in your debt, for coming here has been my salvation, both for soul and body.”
“You are worth more to me than any man I can hire, and I shall hire you, and pay you all you are worth. Whatever I have done for you I have received back, and more, too, in relief from the care and anxiety of looking up help at critical periods, and in having the best of help, and also in feeling that I had a man in whom I could place confidence, whom the children could love, and who would not teach them any bad habits. More especially do I think of how much father loved you, and only a few days before his death he said to me,—
“‘Jonathan, James’ time will be out next year; don’t lose sight of him when I am gone, and be kind to him for my sake.”
So far was Mr. Whitman from forgetting when James’ time was out, that early in the spring he had written to his brother William, telling him about James, and how much they were all attached to him; that under the instruction of his father he had become a good shot with a rifle, had learned a little oftrapping, and to travel on snow-shoes. He then asked him to take him with him a winter trapping, as he was anxious to earn money to buy land.
He received a letter from his brother saying that he would willingly take James, more especially as a Seneca Indian, with whom he had trapped two winters, was dead. That he need bring no traps, except, perhaps, a few small ones, nor lead, nor powder, as these articles could be procured at Pittsburg, nor blankets, for they had enough; and to come on horseback, as he had plenty of hay and grain, for which there was no market, and that he would meet him at Pittsburg the last week in October or the first in November.
Mr. Whitman put the letter in his pocket, and said nothing about it at the time.
When the rye came off they shared twenty dollars each, after returning two bushels to Mr. Whitman.
It was now the twenty-seventh of September, the corn and grain were harvested, and the potatoes nearly dug. It was in the evening, cool enough to render a fire comfortable, and the boys were seated around the hearth, mute, and evidently expectant.
Mr. Whitman went into his bedroom, and returning with a letter in his hand, said,—
“James, you have honorably fulfilled the agreement made with me four years ago, and are now your own man, and to-morrow we will pass receipts. Of course you now want to earn all you can. Iknow that the desire to own a piece of land and call it your own is eating you up. Bertie says you talk about it in your sleep, and I want to put you in the way of getting it.”
He then told James of the letter he had received from his brother, and put it in his hand. When James had read the letter, he said,—
“There is nothing I so much desire as to own a piece of land. Working out by the month on a farm is a very slow way of getting money to buy it with, as in the winter a man can earn but little more than his board, and the winters are long here; in England the plough goes every month in the year. I should like very much to go.”
“Trapping is a poor business to follow, but a very good resort for a young man who wants to obtain something to give him a start. You can go out there, trap till April, and if you are commonly successful can earn more than you could in a whole farming season, and get back in time for farm work, when I will hire you for the rest of the season, and you and the boys can raise another crop on your burnt land.”
There was no time to be lost, as the journey was long, and James began instantly to make his preparations.
“Father,” said Bertie, “the colt is too young for such a journey with a heavy load, it will spoil him. Why don’t you let James take old Frank? He’ll beback by the time we want to plough, and Frank is good for anything.”
“I will, if you and Peter think you can part with Frank.” Mr. Whitman gave his father’s rifle to James, a most excellent piece. He took with him a few otter and beaver traps, pork, bread, and also a camp kettle, as he calculated to kill game, and camp where taverns were not convenient.
“Where are James and Bertie?” said Mr. Whitman, the night before James was to set out.
“They have gone over to Mr. Conly’s,” said Peter.
“James has been over there two evenings this week. I should think if he is going in the morning he would want to be at home this evening.”
“He thinks a great deal of Edward Conly, and I believe Walter is expected home to-night.”
“I guess,” said Maria, “that it’s not Edward nor Walter, but Emily whom he thinks the most of, for he went home from meeting with her last Sunday night, and he never went home with anybody before. I don’t believe but what Bert knows.”
“If he does he won’t blab it all round,” said Peter.
James took with him flint, steel and tinder, fish-hooks and lines, and one blanket, and provender for Frank.
He started off with the good wishes of all the household. Bertie put his arms round old Frank’sneck and told him to remember that he had a character to sustain, and not to stumble on the mountains. The old roadster bent down his head, rubbed his nose on the shoulder of his young friend and seemed to signify, I will.
Uncle Nathan Kendrick, an old trapper, not far from the age of the deceased grandfather, had given James a rough draft of the roads, with the names of the streams, fords, and towns, the localities of the public houses and log taverns, and the distances, and the places where grass and water were to be found, and that were good camping grounds.
In the meanwhile the object of all this solicitude rode on, crossed the Susquehannah at Harris Ferry, and found a good tavern, where he put up. The next morning he started on, fed his horse on grass and provender, buying provender at the farm-houses for the horse and what little he required for himself, as he shot or trapped most of his provision. At night he camped early, and after he left the older settlements behind, he built a brush camp every night and put Frank into it to protect him from the wolves, building his fire in front.
He found no difficulty in regard to living. When he stopped to bait at noon on the banks of the Yellow Breeches Creek, he shot a wild turkey, and had a sumptuous dinner. At Falling Spring he caught muskrats and snared a partridge, and caught fish in the Conococheague Creek; on the top of the NorthMountain he found a log tavern, where he obtained provender and camped; from thence, crossing the Alleghanies, he came to Laurel Hill and Chestnut Ridge. This ridge was covered with a heavy growth of chestnut trees, mixed with oaks, which rendered it a resort for wild turkeys, coons and deer, and in the openings was an abundance of sweet grass for the horse. Here he camped two days to rest the horse after the fatigue of climbing the mountains, and while there he shot a deer and trapped two minks.
James now found himself within about two miles of Pittsburg village, then an assemblage of log houses, having some trade in furs and by flat-boats down the river with New Orleans, Ohio and Kentucky; also some trade by pack-horses with Baltimore and by water carriage by way of the Kiskiminetas Creek and by portage.
Frank had not been in a stable since leaving Harristown. It was near sundown, the wood was too thick for grass to grow, and James resolved to put up at some farm-house and give him a good baiting of hay.
Seeing a log house, the logs of which were hewn on the sides and chinked with lime mortar, a large barn and good breadth of land cleared, he made application and received a cordial welcome from the farmer, a Scotchman. His family consisted of a wife and three children, with all the necessaries oflife in abundance. When the evening meal was over, he called the family together for prayers, and, according to the Scotch custom, read a hymn, and finding that James sang, they all, even to the children, united in praising God.
James had now the opportunity to clean his horse thoroughly from dust and sweat, and feed him bountifully. Aside from his attachment to a good horse, he knew that Mr. Whitman would never have let anybody else have him, and was therefore very anxious to bring him through in good shape, and nothing could exceed the pains he had taken with him on the road, the result being that he was in excellent flesh and spirits, and showed no signs of a hard journey.
James was much disappointed next morning, when he rode into Pittsburg, at the mean appearance of the village, having heard so much of the conflicts around Duquesne. He found most of the houses built of logs, some of round logs, others two-story and the logs hewn, one brick house and a few stone, some good frame houses, and a church built of hewn timber, but plenty of public-houses.