CHAPTER XVIII.WILLIAM WHITMAN.
James was proceeding leisurely along the street bordering on the river, called Front Street, when, as he approached a log tavern where a great number of teams were standing, his horse was suddenly caught by the bridle, and upon looking up, he was confronted by one of the finest-looking men he thought he had ever met, and who, extending his hand, exclaimed,—
“Is this James Renfew?”
James replied in the affirmative, as he clasped the offered hand of the stranger, and returned his hearty grasp.
“I am William Whitman, and I knew old Frank the instant I set eyes on him. How are you, old playmate?” patting Frank’s neck. “He’s just my age; twenty-five years old last April, the tenth. Frank and I are one year’s children. How smooth he looks; young as a colt. You’ll have a good time here, old fellow, this winter, plenty to eat and nothing to do.”
“Ah! there’s father’s old rifle,” laying his hand on the weapon, that lay across the forward part of the saddle. “Oh! what a good father he was to us, and brought us all up in the right way. I know inreason he is better off, and that we must all die, but the old rifle brings everything back,—all the old days when he used to teach me to shoot under the old chestnut. Father did not know how old that tree was. How long have you lived with my brother?”
“Four years.”
“And you have lived right among them all that time, and was there when my father died?”
“Yes, sir; your father taught me to work with tools, and to shoot, and trap, and could not rest till he brought me and Peter, Bertie and Maria, to pray to God, and then he died.”
“You don’t know how glad I am to see you, and how glad Mary will be to see somebody right from home. I suppose you knew my wife was Bradford Conly’s daughter?”
“Yes, sir; I went to school to Walter two winters; and Edward Conly was the last person except your brother’s folks that I shook hands with.”
William Whitman went for his horse, and they set forth; the road, very good for a few miles, soon became a mere bridle path between spotted trees. Clearings were sparse, and consisted of a few acres, the houses were built of round logs, the roofs covered with splints hollowed like a gouge, two laid hollow side up, and a rider rounded so that the edges of it turned into the hollows of the under ones, was placed on top, like the tiles of a West Indian house.
“I am taking you to a rough place by a rough road, but we shall be comfortable and find something to keep soul and body together when we get there.”
They now came in sight of the Monongahela and to some high bottom land of about six acres, smooth, bare of trees and covered with a thick sward of grass, in which was a young orchard, and in the midst of the orchard stood a house built of logs, the tops and bottom hewn, and the chimney of brick laid in lime mortar, and the bottom logs of the house were underpinned with stone and the stones pointed with lime mortar. The windows were small but glazed and fitted with bullet-proof shutters, and the roof covered with pine shingles nailed. There was also a good frame barn and a corn crib of round logs. Besides this natural meadow, about ten acres had been cleared of forest, part of which had that season been planted with corn and sown with wheat, and about three acres were already green with winter rye, the remainder was in grass. The house stood at a slight elbow in the stream, and thus commanded a view of the river in both directions. Mr. Whitman told James it was about three miles to where the river Youghiogheny came in.
“We are a rough-handed people here, Mr. Renfew, have forgotten what little breeding we ever had, but we can give you a hearty welcome,” said William as they dismounted, and fastening the horses, he led the way to the house.
“Mary,” he said to his wife who met them at the door with a babe in her arms, “this is Jonathan’s boy, James Renfew. I reckon he must think about as much of him as he does of Peter or Bertie. If he didn’t, he never would have let him have Frank to come out into this wilderness.”
“Now, Mr. Renfew, just sit you down and talk with the woman while I see to the horses.”
James told Mrs. Whitman how lately he had parted with her parents and brothers, and as Mr. Whitman just then came in, everything in relation to the old gentleman that he thought would be interesting to them.
Suddenly Mrs. Whitman exclaimed,—
“Husband, what are we thinking about? Mr. Renfew has not had anything to eat and now it is past noon.” Her husband took the child, and she soon had biscuit in the Dutch oven and slices of venison, killed the day before, broiling.
“Take a seat in my wife’s rocking chair, Mr. Renfew,” pointing to a singularly constructed affair in the corner; “you see it took three to make that chair. The Lord found the stuff; I did a little cabinet work, and Mary the ornamental part.”
It was made by fitting a board into two-thirds of a hollow cedar log for a seat, and notching into it for the arms, and slanting the back, to the bottom, were fitted rockers. The wife had made a cushion,covered and stuffed the arms and back, and thus made a most comfortable chair.
The cradle was more remarkable still, being made of an entire hollow sycamore log; this log, after being cut off the right length, was sawed down two feet from the ends, the piece taken out leaving the rest for the top; the ends were filled with basswood bark, pressed flat and fastened with glue, made by boiling the tips of deer’s horns; and rockers were put on.
It was large enough for three babies, as a large log was taken in order to get height sufficient for the top, but the space was filled with a bed and stuffing. Two pewter platters, four earthen mugs, wooden plates, spoons and bowls, all of wood, made the table furniture, and bedsteads were made of rough poles.
On the other hand there was a handsome loom with reeds and harness, all in excellent order, large and little wheels and reels and cards, and good feather beds and bedding.
“I see you are looking at my wife’s cradle,” said William, “it was made for the occasion, but the child is comfortable, and may be President of the United States yet.”
“Did you make that loom? It is very handsome.”
“Yes, I thought as it was a thing we should always need, I would take time and make it well. I could have made a cradle of boards, but we needed theboards for a roof, and nails are a scarce article here. The fact is we brought the things we most needed, and I brought my tools, because I knew I could with them hatch up something to get along with, and when I got time make something better. Now, Mr. Renfew,—”
“Call me James, if you please, I shall feel more at home.”
“Now, James, if you’ll take care of the beasts, I’ll take my rifle and see if I can get a wild turkey, or pigeon, and then we’ll have another chat; for to-morrow we must get ready for the woods.”
“You may think it silly, James, but I’ll go out with you, for I want to see and pet old Frank; nothing brings home so near as seeing him,” said Mary.
“That’s because I always rode him over to her father’s when I was courting her, and she used to ride on his back, on the pillion behind me, to singing school, huskings and all sorts of doings.”
Away he went, humming a merry tune. While Mrs. Whitman was talking to Frank, patting him, pulling locks of sweet hay out of the mow and giving to him, James looked after the retreating form of her husband, who was making the woods ring with his music, and said within himself,—
“What a man!—far from neighbors, with three little children, bullet-proof window shutters, five rifles and a shot-gun hanging over the fireplace, and gay as a lark. He’s just like Bertie for all theworld; it’s just as Mrs. Whitman said, ‘If you like Bertie you’ll like his uncle, for they are just alike.’”
At dusk Mr. Whitman returned with a turkey and three pigeons, and after the evening meal was partaken of and the children in bed, James asked him how he came to think of settling where he was when there was plenty of wild land east of the mountains, and especially as the homes both of himself and wife were there.
“I came up here when I was seventeen years old with uncle Nathan Hendrick trapping, we trapped on this stream and on the Youghiogheny; there were beaver here then,—a few,—a good many otters and foxes, and no end to the coons; we did well and that gave me a taste for trapping.
“When I was eighteen, father gave me my time, a good rifle, and money to buy a good set of traps. I worked two summers on farms, and in the winters came up here and trapped alone. Then I had fallen head over ears in love with that girl who is jogging the cradle, and she wanted to get married and settle down awful”—upon this he received a sound box on the ear from his wife. “You see we wanted to get together, I had taken a great liking to this place, couldn’t get it out of my head, used to dream about it. I hadn’t much money but wanted considerable land, couldn’t bear to be crowded; and this land was dog cheap. About this time I got acquainted witha half-breed Indian, who told me there was good trapping and hunting on the Big Beaver. I went and looked over this land, made up my mind just exactly as to what I could do with it, saw that I could get along faster here than anywhere else, because I could do two things as you may say at once.”
“What two things?”
“I could trap and farm. I made up my mind at once and bought two hundred acres, though it took all the money I had. I went to a blacksmith in Pittsburg who I knew often saw the half-breed, and got him to ask him to trap with me the next winter, and for the smith to write me, and went home. When I got home, father had given the farm to Jonathan to take care of him and mother. I hired with Jonathan at twenty-five dollars a month. I worked till August and had a hundred dollars.”
“Why didn’t you work through the season?”
“Because I had received a letter from the smith saying that the half-breed would trap with me, and I knew I could trust that Indian.
“I gave forty-five dollars of my money to that woman for safe keeping (it was an awful risk, but I did it). I borrowed a mule and a pack-saddle of Mr. Nevins and put on him seventy-five steel traps, powder, lead and blankets, a few tools to make dead-falls (wooden traps) and other fixings, took old Frank, put a saddle and pillion on him and some light things, tied the mule’s bridle to Frank’s tail,put Bertie on the pillion, and started. The Indian had agreed to meet me at Turkey Foot.”
“What is Turkey Foot?”
“Don’t you remember that just after you left Somerset you crossed a creek with high banks?”
“Yes.”
“Not far from that the Yo. (Youghiogheny) splits into three forks. That is the middle one, and the place where they divide is called Turkey Foot, because it looks so much like one.
“You know what that boy is; keen as a brier and smart as steel. Wasn’t he tickled when he found he was going and where he was going; he hugged me, kissed me, and hardly knew which end he stood on.”
“That explains something that has puzzled me. When I got near the crossing I found an Indian path, and Frank was so determined to follow it that I had to strike him several times before he would give it up. I could not imagine what it meant, for I thought I knew he had never been there before.”
“When we reached Turkey Foot the Indian had been there a week, and had laid in a lot of provisions; he had the carcass of a deer hung up and had smoked and dried the best parts of several more, and had killed and dried a lot of wild pigeons.”
“What did Bertie say to the Indian?”
“Made friends with him right off; stuck to him like his shadow, Bert’s tongue running like a mill-clapper and the Indian grunting once in a while, butthe half-breed made him a bow and arrows and a little birch, and he went back with the two horses, about the biggest-feeling boy ever you saw.
“We paddled down the Yo. into this stream, and down this to Pittsburg, got some more traps there, went down the Allegheny twenty-five miles to Big Beaver, and up that about fifteen miles; went to trapping and trapped till the middle of April. The Indian wanted to carry his furs to Canada, so we made another canoe and came to Pittsburg, where I stored my furs.”
“Then I suppose you took the canoe, came to Turkey Foot, and from there home?”
“By no means. I wrote a letter, told ‘em what I had done; that I was well; hoped they were the same; must excuse all mistakes; came here, and went to felling trees, till the fifteenth of May; then I went eight miles to the nearest neighbor, and got him to come with his team, and plough up an acre of the clear land; planted it with potatoes and corn, and sowed a little flax. I then cut all the grass that grew on the bottom land, and in openings in the woods, made a hand-sled, hauled it to the stack and stacked it. Then I went right into a thick place in the woods and built a log camp; it was only fourteen feet by twelve, and just high enough to get into, with a splint roof, a stone fireplace, no chimney, only a hole through the roof, and no floor, but brush laid on the ground. It had but one window, andthat was made in the door; was filled with oiled paper, and had a slide for stormy weather. Then, after making a house for cattle, I went to chopping till the last of August, and then went to hunting and trapping again.”
“Did you go back to the Beaver?”
“No, indeed; had hunting and trapping enough on the spot. I had built no fence because I had no cattle, and the bears, deers, and coons were determined to have my corn. Sometimes when I turned out in the morning, I would find a moose or a deer feeding on my grass, or browsing among the trees I had cut last. In a brook about a mile off there were a few otters, and many minks and foxes. I bought a lot of hens and geese, on purpose to tole the foxes, and went to trapping and shooting in good earnest. I made a log-trap for bears and wolves, and once in a while shot a moose or deer, and trapped otters and foxes. I had so much meat lying round that it toled the foxes and wolves; the wolves soon drove off the deer and moose, and then I shot the wolves on bait. Every wolf I killed I got ten shillings bounty and his skin was worth two dollars; and a bear’s skin from sixteen to twenty. That’s what I meant when I said that here I could do two things at the same time. I had built a house, raised corn, potatoes, flax, and hay enough to carry me through the winter, felled five acres of trees, and earned by trapping and shooting more than I had all the summerbefore, working for my brother, and been at work for myself most of the time. As for the deer, bears, and wolves, I didn’t go after them, and it did not take much time to set the traps, and what was of no less consequence I had got a first-rate birch. There’s nothing like a birch to a wild Indian, or a new settler.”
“Is a birch then so valuable?”
“Next to the Bible and the narrow axe.”
“I don’t suppose you meant to go on to your place till spring?”
“Didn’t. I pulled my flax and spread it to rot, put my pack, rifle and provisions into the birch and started up-stream. I didn’t go to the Forks where I met the half-breed, but into Sewickly Creek, and paddled up it to within a rod of the road, hid the birch in the woods, took my pack and started for home.”
“That was a long hard journey.”
“It was all that. I told this little woman what I had done, made it as bad as I knew how; told her just what a miserable place she would have to live in, and gave her the choice to go back with me or I would go back alone, trap all winter and come for her in the spring, and before another winter build a more comfortable house; and all her folks and most of mine thought that was the best way.
“But she wouldn’t hear a word of it, said if I could stand it, she could; wasn’t a bit afraid, that itwas the best time of the year to go because the roads were better and the streams we would have to ford were low; and that I ought to be on my land early in the spring to sow or plant the ground I had ploughed. So we got married, and then the old folks set in worse than ever for us not to go till spring, and even the neighbors took it up, but I had one on my side and he was worth all the rest.”
“Who was that?”
“Father,” said William, sinking his voice to a whisper.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Whitman, “his opinion was worth more than all the other’s opinions. A few nights before we set out, and when all the young girls, my schoolmates, were pitying me and doing all they could to make me feel worse, the good old man took me into the other room and said: ‘Mary, never you mind those young people, don’t let anything they say jar you a particle. Listen to the old man who has been over every inch of the road you and William are starting on. If you live to my age you’ll look back and say that the days you spent in the brush camp were the happiest days, for they were full of hope; but when you have lived to my age you will have outlived all your hopes but the hope of eternal life, and that is the best of all, because the possession will be more than the expectation while everything else falls short. You have got a good husband, his heart is tender as a child’s, but his mindis as firm as a piece of the nether millstone. He’s a cheery lad, he’ll look on the bright side, keep your heart up and his own too. You are married now and have taken the first step, don’t look back, it didn’t work well with Lot’s wife. I never knew it to work well with anybody, look ahead; a man isn’t half a man and a woman isn’t half a woman who has never had any load to carry. I take it you’ll work in an even yoke; you are both smart, and no doubt feel that you are equal to anything, and perhaps look down on people who have not your strength and resolution, but it is better to look up, and the first night you get into the camp I want William to take the Bible and read and pray, and I want you to ask him to.’ I didn’t have to ask him.”
“Didn’t you wish you had taken your parents’ advice before you got over the mountains, and before you got through that first winter?”
“By no means. We had no table only some pieces of bark set on four stakes, driven into the ground; no bedstead, but put the beds on the brush; we had no room for furniture, because I must have room for my wool and flax wheels, to spin the flax William had raised and the wool I had brought from home.”
“Were you comfortable?”
“I never saw so warm a place as that camp. William covered it all over with brush outside, and the snow drifted over it; we had plenty of bear andwolf skins, and if it had not been for the hole in the roof we should have roasted.”
“How did you get the wagon here,—there was no road?”
“William got a teamster who was going to Pittsburg with four horses and a light load to take the canoe, and it arrived in Pittsburg before we did. We put our things, part of ‘em, in that, and we came in; the next day he got the rest and left the wagon till winter, and then made a sled and hauled it up the river on the ice. The river makes an excellent road in winter for a sled and in summer for the canoe.”
“Yes; and Providence keeps it in repair, and no road tax to work out,” said her husband.
James could not have been placed in a better school to learn how to cut his way through life than with this cheerful, resolute pair in the wilderness.
The next morning they took the birch canoe from the barn; Whitman gummed the seams, and they carried it to the water. Whitman held it, told James to get in, sit down in the middle and keep still; he then got in himself, and standing up, with one stroke of the paddle, sent the light craft flying into the middle of the stream. James was delighted with the movement of the buoyant craft.
William then told him to kneel down and take the paddle while he kept the balance, and to paddle without fear, for he would keep her on her bottom.
“James, you have got to learn to use this birch. Can you swim?”
“Like a fish.”
“Well then, take off part of your clothes and try it; for most likely you’ll upset.”
James crossed the stream, came back and attempted to go up stream; he went up a little way, but in turning to come back, the birch went out from under him, then righted, and was three times her length from him in a moment.
“You can’t get into her, give her a shove to me.” James gave the canoe a little push with one hand, and the light craft spun over the water to William, who held her while James swam ashore.
“What queer things they are! I was in the water before I could wink.”
“Ay, they’ll tip you out, and right themselves without a drop of water in ‘em, and then sit and laugh at you. We must now make up our minds how many traps we can tend. How many traps did you bring?”
“Only twenty-five small ones.”
“I think we ought to tend three hundred. I am going to trap on the same ground that the Indian and I trapped on last year. My traps are there hid under rocks. I shall get a few more. If you’ll take care of the cattle and practise in this birch, I’ll go to Pittsburg and get the traps, and leave ‘em there to take when we go along, and to-morrow we’ll start.”
James, in the course of the day, got used to the birch, and met with no farther mishap.
Whitman got home at dusk, and called him to supper, when he found a young woman of twenty and a stout boy of eighteen by the name of Montgomery. They could neither of them read or write, and were to stay with Mrs. Whitman during the absence of her husband, and she was to teach them to read and write. Jane Montgomery was also to weave a web of cloth for her mother, as they were recent settlers and had as yet no loom. The next day was spent in preparations for departure and in putting all their things into the birch,—cooking utensils, blankets, provisions and other matters, tools to make dead falls, and repair camps, and snow shoes.