The Project Gutenberg eBook, Boys of the Old Sea Bed, by Charles Allen McConnell

Boys of the Old Sea Bed

Tales of Nature and Adventure

By
Charles Allen McConnell

Publishing House of the
Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene
KANSAS CITY, MISSOURI
1913

Copyright, 1913
Publishing House of the
Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene

DEDICATION

To the memory of my brother Robert, one of the “Boys of the Old Sea Bed,” who, though passing out into the Great Beyond while yet young, wrote his name high up among those to whom the world accords fame, this little volume of boyhood tales is affectionately dedicated.

The Author.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

These tales are at last put upon paper, after having served the demands of a generation of little folk—now grown tall—for stories of “when papa was a boy.” All the tales are founded upon facts, and many are incidents and experiences reproduced as faithfully as memory paints the pictures.

The red men are gone; the great forest is no more; railroads and cities and farms occupy the bottom of the “Old Sea Bed.” But the same courage and hardihood and clean living which marked the pioneers of near a half century ago is still the hope of America.

Charles Allen McConnell.

Kansas City, Mo., October, 1913.

CHAPTER I
IN THE BED OF AN ANCIENT SEA

Men of science who have made a study of the earth’s surface, say that Lake Erie, from which flows Niagara river northward into Lake Ontario, will, in a certain, or uncertain, number of years, go dry, and what is now a wide though shallow sheet of water become a plain, through which may meander a slowly-flowing river. The reason for this prediction is that Niagara Falls, which have cut their way back from Lewiston through a gorge some seven miles, and are still eating their way through the limestone and the softer underlying shale at the rate of more than two feet a year, will finally accomplish their journey, and the great lake be reached and drained.

A similar event seems really to have occurred in the past history of the earth near the geographical center of the state of Wisconsin. Draw a line through the center of the map of this state, from north to south, and then another from east to west, at a little more than one-third of the way up from the southern boundary, and at the intersection you will have the location of the lower end of what appears to have been an ancient lake, or inland sea.

The eastern boundary, evidently, was a range of hills some forty miles to the east, along whose sides, fifty years ago, were easily recognized traces of successive diminishing shore lines, in rows of water-worn pebbles and shells.

The southern boundary is marked by sandstone bluffs, which bear the fantastic carving of waves. Rising nearly perpendicular from the sands like the front of some gigantic ramparts of a fortress, an hundred or more feet, the upper portions are fashioned into turrets, bastions, and domes, until at a distance it is difficult to believe that one is not looking upon some mighty work of man.

Here and there, many miles apart, huge granite rocks rear their heads hundreds of feet above the plain—islands of the old sea.

Of course caves abound in these water-worn bluffs, and these were found, in the early days of settlement, to be the homes and hiding places of bears, wolves, panthers, and the even more dreaded “Indian-devil,” or northern lynx. Not infrequently they were utilized for temporary human habitation. Indeed, one of these very caves became the last hiding place of Black Hawk, the famous Indian chief, as he sought escape from the white man after the failure of the war he had waged, like his predecessor, Tecumseh, in hope of uniting the various tribes against the crowding, appropriating paleface.

Near the present city of Kilbourn, at what is known as the Delles, the Wisconsin river breaks through the rocky barrier and pours its foaming flood down a narrow gorge that is only exceeded in size, and not at all in wild beauty and grandeur, by the gorge and rapids below Niagara. The falls have worn their way through, but evidently, here was the Niagara of the ancient sea.

The shallower part of the old sea was the eastern portion, where in width of fifty miles or more, in the time of which I write, there stretched a level waste of sand. It was to this floor of the old sea that people from the eastern states flocked by thousands, at the time of the “hop boom,” when it was discovered that this vine could be grown and would bear fairly good crops upon these sands. The ground was easily worked, and while the hop plant required two years to come into bearing, the profit from the dried blossoms was enormous, and the settlers saw great fortunes ahead. Money was borrowed, possessions in many cases mortgaged, fine houses erected, drying kilns built, hop roots planted, and the slender tamarack poles upon which the vines were to climb to the ripening sunlight, were set into the ground. The country was settled. The first immigrants harvested one crop at the bonanza price. Then rumors came of an enormous crop thrown upon the market from the fields of Washington and Oregon, new lands of the Pacific coast. The second season found the market overstocked, and prices tumbled from sixty cents to eight and ten cents per pound, which was less than would pay the expense of picking. Hundreds of the settlers never harvested their first crop. For years afterward one could travel miles across the sand and see nothing but deserted houses with abandoned farms growing up to stunted pines.

Among those who had lost in the hop venture, was the family of John Allen, in which were two boys, Robert and Ed, lads of twelve and ten years. The Allens, coming of the rugged Scotch-Irish stock, had no thought of returning to their old home “back east” defeated, but pushed further westward into the wilderness. Coming to the river in the time of low water, they easily crossed the broad bed of the “Ouis-kon-sin,” or, as the modern spelling has it, the “Wisconsin” river, and pushed on past the sandy plains west of the river over into the western half of the old lake bed. It was among the beautiful hardwood trees that lined the banks of the golden-hued Ne-ce-dah, or Yellow river, that they halted and said, “This shall be home.”

To the city-bred boys the land was one of perpetual wonder, and their sturdy bodies and enquiring minds were actively employed. Of course there was much work to do, fencing and clearing willow shrubs from the land, making hay for the winter use of their stock, but Mr. Allen was wise enough to give the boys a large portion of time for their “education,” as he called their excursions into the forest and along the river.

Coming home from one of these trips, the boys were seen to be in a state of excitement, and almost before they were near enough to be understood they were shouting, “Neighbors, neighbors! Just around the big bend.” It was a happy discovery for the Allens, as the new-found neighbors proved to be a family who had come, several years before, from Ohio, and whose young son, Dauphin, was about the age of the Allen boys. The name of the family was Thompson, the wife, Ruth, being the only daughter of “Old John Brown,” whose soul “goes marching on.”

During the years the Allens were neighbors to this family, they came to learn much of the life and character of that strange man who was hated as no other man by the slaveholders of his time, and, probably, was as little understood by those of the north who apologized for him. To this humble home of their only sister, in the wilderness, there came, as occasional guests, one and another of the sons who remained of the man who threw away his life at Harper’s Ferry, that a people might be aroused to a knowledge of the sin of human slavery. Ruth, they said, was the womanly image of her father. She had an abundance of red hair like his, had his features, and more, was like him in spirit. With all the ardor of youthful hero-worship the Allen boys bestowed homage upon John Brown’s daughter, Ruth Thompson. If she was like her father, he had been patient in trial, sweet of spirit in affliction, tender in love for the unfortunate, and utterly void of any desire of retaliation for injuries received. The hair of the Allen boys is silvering, and Ruth has long ago passed to her rest, yet they do not forget an incident which reveals the Christ-like spirit of the daughter of “Old John Brown”—and perhaps of the father.

It was upon the visit of John Brown, Jr., the son who had charge of the Canadian end of the “underground railway” over which so many of the slaves of the South had found their way to freedom, that Mr. Thompson and “Uncle Sam,” a younger brother, both of whom were in the attack upon the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, and had lost other brothers in that raid, were recalling the time when John, Jr., had been taken by the “bushwhackers,” tied to the tail of a horse and compelled to run at great speed for several miles, or be dragged to death. John, Jr., was a heavy man, and the fearful experience brought on a heart trouble from which he suffered all the rest of his life. The men, as they talked over those days of sorrow and trial, would occasionally utter some stout words against their persecutors, but quickly Ruth would break in, in her gentle voice—“Boys, boys! Speak evil of none. ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.’ It may be those poor men thought they were doing right.”

Never did the Allen boys hear one unkind word from this daughter against the government, the individuals, or the section that had imposed upon her father an ignominious death.

Dauphin Thompson and the Allen boys became great friends and inseparable companions, and in the “education” of the latter the grandson of “Old John Brown” not only joined, but was able to initiate them into many of the mysteries of wood and stream. The Allen boys had new breech-loading shotguns, but Dauphin was the proud possessor of the carbine which his father had carried from Osawatomie to Harper’s Ferry, and which had been fitted for small-shot cartridges.

To the north, from which the Yellow river flowed, lay the vast, unbroken forests of pine; to the west stretched many miles of swamp and low-lying prairie. In the summer these prairies were covered with grass often so high as to completely hide the tallest man walking through. Game abounded. Deer were so unafraid that frequently the boys would find them quietly feeding among the cattle when they went at night to bring home the milch cows. Bears, panthers, and wild cats came at night to call, and left their “cards” in great tracks on the sand along the river front of the new home.

Here, in the bottom of the ancient sea, these boys began lessons which made of two of them stalwart, honored men, and which one of them had the good fortune to supplement, at a later day, in college.

CHAPTER II
CATCHING THE FAWN

The first winter after the Allen family moved to their new home on the Necedah river was unusually severe and long. While in that section of Wisconsin deep snows were not uncommon, this year they had started in about the middle of October, and by Christmas lay piled in great drifts, like small hills, in places, while on the level even the top rail of the “stake-and-rider” fence about the buildings was covered, and over which the boys, Rob and Ed, hauled loads of hay in their sleds. Between the house and stable there was one huge drift, higher than either building, through which the boys cut a tunnel large enough to drive through with their team of steers and bob-sled.

Uncle Sam Thompson, who was wise in the ways of weather, prophesied a spring flood that would sweep away the fences and come up into the houses; and, indeed, such a flood did occur a few years later, but this year the winter held on so late into the spring, and the snows melted away so slowly and gradually, that the feared high water did not come.

The Allen boys were initiated into a new and delightful experience in the latter days of March. Warm days would be followed by freezing nights, which, Uncle Sam declared, were ideal “sap” conditions. Hundreds of great maple trees lined the river, and while they were not of the “rock,” or regular sugar variety, but the “soft” maple, yet the sap held enough of sweet to yield a fair amount of sugar.

To less sturdy youths the trudging through melting snow and wading in icy water would have been accounted anything but a pastime, but the Allen boys and their chum, Dauphin Thompson, worked at the sugar making with zeal and zest. Uncle Sam showed them how to “tap” the trees. First, a hole would be bored into the tree trunk with an inch augur, then a V-shaped notch would be cut through the bark just above it. Into the augur hole would be driven a “spile,” or piece of grooved wood, down which the sap from the V-shaped cut would run. At the foot of the tree, under the spout, would be placed a wooden trough, hollowed out from a block of the light linden, or “basswood.”

To carry the sap home to the big kettles which were kept constantly boiling, reducing the thin sap to syrup, and finally “sugaring off” into the delectable sweet cakes, a yoke of ash was made fitting over the shoulders, with projecting ends. To these ends were attached ropes which were fastened each to a large bucket. These buckets the boys would fill with sap from the trees, and from the farthest point, trudge home a mile through water and melting snow. It was no easy play, and aching backs and limbs severely tested their courage, yet the boys felt amply repaid for it all in the two hundred pounds of cakes of the delicious sweet they thus harvested during the two weeks of the “run.”

By the time the sugar harvest was over, wild ducks had begun to appear, and the lagoons and deep places in the marshes were noisy at night and early morning with their quacking. While most of the wild fowl passed on to their summer home in the lake region of Canada, some of the ducks built their nests and reared their young in the marshes and along the rivers of that section. Among these were the mallards, large, beautiful birds.

The boys had frequently noticed a pair of these ducks at Round Slough in the latter days of their sap gathering, and had planned to hunt for the nest and secure the eggs which they proposed to place for hatching under a hen. Mrs. Thompson had told the boys that she had known the mallards to be domesticated when hatched away from the wild mother, but care had to be taken to keep them confined at migrating-time in the fall, else they would try to follow off their wild cousins as they flew over.

Spring work pressed so heavily that the boys did not get to visit Round Slough until in May, when one bright day came with the coveted vacation. The slough was back from the river perhaps a quarter of a mile. It was several rods in diameter, of great depth, and perfectly round. The banks were high and sloped away from the hole, as well as toward the water. No trees were growing near the edge, but the sides of the rim were covered with “blue-joint” grass already waist high.

The boys approached the slough cautiously. “There they are,” whispered Dauphin. “But see what the old ducks have.” For, sporting in the water, standing on their heads, waving their funny, big feet in the air, and chasing water bugs, were a dozen downy, yellow ducklings.

“Let’s drive them to land and catch them,” said Ed.

So the boys dashed up to the water’s edge and began to throw in sticks and to “shoo.” The father duck flew away, but the mother kept with her babies and paddled to the other side.

“I’ll watch this side and keep up the fuss,” said Rob, “and you boys can run around and catch them in the grass. You see just where they went out.”

“Why, there they are,” called Dauphin, “away over on that side.” And sure enough, there were the mother duck and her babies skirting the bank, in the water again. Time and again the boys chased the little family from the slough, only to lose sight of them entirely “just where they went out.” The boys were separated now on three sides of the slough, when suddenly there was a great splash in the water and a doe came swimming across, making, as the boy thought, straight for Rob. A deer is no mean antagonist, and Rob scrambled out of the way, while the animal went crashing through the bushes.

Over where Dauphin had been there was a great threshing about in the grass, and a boy’s voice shouting, “Help! help! come quick.” Ed and Rob hurried around the slough, and there was Dauphin trying to hold down a young fawn which was making desperate efforts to escape. But for the arrival of the other boys it might have succeeded in tumbling Dauphin into the deep water. The three boys easily handled the little creature, but Rob’s hand bore the imprint of one of its sharp hoofs for many a day.

“I almost stumbled over the old deer,” said Dauphin, “and I never would have discovered this little chap if I hadn’t fallen over him. However did they manage to hide so well and keep so still while we were running all about them?”

The fawn, which was probably two weeks old, was “all legs,” as the Allen boys expressed it. The back of his brown coat was flecked with spots of white, while his under parts were pure white. Tying both his front and hind legs with their handkerchiefs, the boys took turns in carrying their new pet home, where they soon succeeded in teaching it to drink milk. When it was caught it could easily run about under the kitchen table, but it throve and grew so rapidly and became so boisterous in its manifestations of friendship, that, in a few weeks, Mrs. Thompson declared it had outgrown its place of household pet.

The boys built a pen of rails, and cut fresh grass for it every day, and later in the season at the advice of Mr. Thompson, added the twigs of the poplar or aspen to its diet. They would cut down a young tree and stand it in the corner of the pen. When the fawn had nibbled all the tender twigs from the lower limbs he would rise upon his hind legs and walk about the tree on two feet, browsing from the higher branches, just as though that was the natural way for a deer to get about, as indeed it was in a situation of that kind.

As the fall approached the young deer began to lose his spotted coat of brown, and take on a winter suit of grey. Little hard knobs could be felt on his head where the “spikes,” or one-prong horns would appear the following months. Like a rapidly developing boy he began to take on “manish” ways, and to show an intention of “seeing the world.” Although the boys increased the height of his pen to ten rails, even that would not hold him when the desire to roam came too strongly upon him.

On one of these occasions, when the boys had missed him from the pen, they came across him a quarter of a mile away in the meadow, acting in a peculiar manner. Long before they reached him they could hear his angry snorts and could see the hair along the ridge of his back sticking up like quills upon a porcupine. The young deer was dancing around in a circle, face toward the center, now advancing, now springing quickly back, all the time his eyes fixed upon one spot. Just as the boys were drawing near he gave a spring into the air, and, bunching his four feet together, came down like a bolt out of the sky. The stroke was evidently effective, for on the ground was the writhing threshing body of a huge black rattlesnake, the dreaded massasauger, with head severed from the body as cleanly as if cut with a knife. The sharp hoofs had done quick and sure execution.

Unable to keep the deer in confinement as he would grow larger the boys disposed of him for a good sum to a collector for an eastern city park.

CHAPTER III
THE GREAT BLUE HERON

“Dauph,” said Robert Allen one morning in early spring, “I saw a pair of wood ducks over in Cut-off Slough yesterday, and the drake had the handsomest plumage I ever saw on a bird. He would make a fine specimen for your collection.”

Dauphin was a “born naturalist,” as his father called him, which meant that the lad had a sense of the beauty and wonder of nature, and went about with his eyes open. From the furred and feathered dwellers of the wilderness into which the family had moved, when Dauphin was a small child, he had secured and mounted a collection of specimens that would have graced the great college which it was his ambition some day to attend.

“Let’s go over and have a look at him in the morning, Rob,” eagerly responded Dauphin.

Rob agreed, but it was rather late in the afternoon instead of early in the morning, as they had planned, before the boys were ready for their trip.

Cut-off Slough had once been a part of the river. A long bend, a mile around, had, in a time of unusual high water, been cut off by the flood breaking over and wearing a new channel through the narrow neck of land, not more than fifty feet across. The hundred or more acres enclosed in the great bend had now become an island, and the old bed of the river a deep lagoon, or slough, as it was called, making an ideal home for fish and wild fowl. The wearing of the new channel of the river had formed a bar of sand across the mouth of the lagoon, high and dry during the summer, but now, in the spring rise, overflowed, so that the boys waded knee deep in the cold water to gain its banks.

Great trees, oak, maple, linden, birch, and ash, overhung the still water, and the western sun cast dark shadows almost across its surface.

“It’s lucky for us it isn’t July,” said Dauphin, “or we couldn’t stay in this place without face nets; the mosquitoes would eat us alive.”

“Seems to me they are bad enough now,” replied Rob, slapping at a dozen big fellows that had struck his face. “Sh-sh! there is our beauty and his sober wife. Over there by the stump with the white streaks, and the limb sticking up.”

“Too far for these small shot,” whispered Dauphin; “I don’t want to use large shot; spoils the plumage. Let’s crawl closer.”

The two boys crouched down, and on hands and knees slowly crawled through the tall grass and reeds to where a point of land jutting out into the water would give them the advantage they sought. But just as Dauphin was about the fire the shot that would add another valuable specimen to his collection, something occurred that drove all thoughts of ducks from their mind. The “stump” lowered its “limb” that had been sticking straight up, and out from its sides spread two wings, fully eight feet from tip to tip. As the “limb” bent over, the white streaks down the “stump” stood out in regal plumes from the crest of a magnificent bird.

“Oh, Rob,” gasped Dauphin, “it must be the Great Blue Heron. I have never seen one before, but Professor Hodge’s son Clifton, at Carleton, sent me the picture of one, and told me to keep my eyes open for him. He says they are rare now, though they used to be numerous, especially in the northern part of the state, and the college has no specimen of the bird.”

“Let me get him for you,” said Rob. “The heavy shot in my gun will do surer work than your fine shot.” But before Rob could get aim, the great bird began to move about in such a peculiar way that both boys could only stare in wonder. Stepping out upon the sandbar the heron crouched or squatted down, and began to go around and around, backward and forward, in a sort of hop and skip. Then the boys saw coming down the sand from out the shadows the cause of all this strange bowing and scraping by the big bird. A second heron, not bright blue as the first, but clad in more somber garments of bluish-grey, walked solemnly toward her prospective lord and master. Approaching each other, both birds stood perfectly still—as motionless as statues, their long bills pointing straight up, and each balancing upon one foot. They stood this way for a full minute, as if in solemn contemplation, and then both joined in the mysterious gyrations. Approaching each other with wings out-stretched, in the indescribably funny waltz step, they would touch the tips of their bills and bow to the ground two or three times. Then they would separate and go waltzing past each other with the hop and skip, back and forth, around and around, finally to come and touch bills and go to bowing again.

The whole performance was so comical that the boys rolled over in the grass shaking with merriment, and Rob, unable to restrain his hilarity, gave a loud “ha! ha!” At once there was a flap of wings and the female bird went sailing over the tops of the trees. The blue heron, he of the royal plumes, however, after one upward spring, settled down and stood in dignified stolidity, apparently gazing at the sky.

“Shoot! Rob, shoot!” cried Dauphin. “Get him before he can get away.”

“No, no,” said Rob. “Don’t you see he’s fast some way? He’s wound some of that tough grass around one of his legs. Let’s catch him alive. Think of the money we can make taking him around showing him. Or maybe we can sell him to the professor in your college for a big sum. Surely a live bird will bring more than a mere specimen.”

The boys threw down their guns and made a rush in the direction of the great bird. But the ground where the dancing party had been held was more adapted to bird than human feet, and their progress was slow as they sank half way to their knees in the soft earth and water.

“You stay on this side while I’ll go around behind, and we’ll make a grab at him together. We can hold him all right,” said Rob.

“Now,” said Dauphin, “catch him around his wings, and I’ll hold his legs.” And both boys made a rush. The big bird made another unavailing attempt to rise, then, awaiting the attack, drew back the long neck, and with the white plumes standing straight out behind, sent his bill like a sword-thrust straight at Dauphin’s breast. There was a sound of the impact of the blow, a moan from the boy, who sank crumpled up to the ground, and, with another mighty lift of the huge wings the Great Blue Heron was free.

Plunging through the rushes and mud, Rob reached his chum, carried him up the bank, and opened his thick hunting jacket and shirt. The long bill of the bird had evidently broken a rib, but had not penetrated the flesh. In a moment Dauphin opened his eyes. “My! what was it? I can’t breathe. Who would have thought that pesky bird could strike like that?” And, indeed, Dauphin was fortunate to have escaped with the discomfort of a broken rib, that would be “as good as new” in a couple of weeks. The strength and thickness of his buckskin jacket probably saved his life, for less than a fortnight later a young Indian of a nearby camp, struck upon the bare side by the bill of a “sandhill” crane, a much smaller bird than the Great Blue Heron, was pierced to the heart and instantly killed.

“Well,” said Rob, “we didn’t get any specimens, but we did get to attend the heron’s ball.”

“Yes,” replied Dauphin, “but I think the next time I go will be when I am an invited guest.”

CHAPTER IV
THE FOREST FIRE

Those who were boys and girls in the Middle West in the year 1871, will have a vivid remembrance of the great comet that moved across the northern sky during the month of August. It was so large and brilliant, that before the sun had been altogether hidden in the west, the fiery orb of this celestial stranger could be seen glowing and as night came on the long tail would appear spreading out in a fan of light half way across the heavens. Mr. Allen was an educated man, whose favorite study in his school days had been astronomy, and although he had instructed his young sons as to the facts concerning comets, their relation to other heavenly bodies and to the earth, the rumor which had found its way into this Wisconsin wilderness home, that the world was to be destroyed by the “fervent heat” of this flaming visitor, had its effect upon the boys.

To the natural fear of the marvelous and unusual in the sky, was added the alarming conditions of a severe drouth, all over the county. Dauphin had told the boys how a burning wad from his gun had set fire to the dry peat in a marsh to the west, and the “ground” had been burning there in great holes for more than a week. Before the close of July the river had ceased to run, and water was only to be found in the deep holes of its bed. The sky was brassy-looking in the day, and at night the moon had the appearance of blood. Then came weeks when a thick haze hung over all the land, and the sickly, yellow-hued sun could be looked upon with naked eyes. It seemed as if all nature was disturbed, frightened, and awaiting some impending calamity. The wild creatures of the forest, birds and animals, became strangely numerous. Deer were seen about the water holes in the day time, and seemed scarcely frightened when approached. Grey, black, and big, red fox-squirrels swarmed in the trees and on the fences. The little patch of sod corn the boys had planted on the “new breaking” that spring was harvested in the milk by the southward-moving emigrants of the forest.

A timber scout stopped over night at the hospitable home of Mr. Thompson and told how the little, lumber-manufacturing town of Peshtigo, up in the big woods northwest, had been wiped out by fire, scores of the inhabitants perishing before they could reach the river, so sudden was the coming of the storm of flame over the forest. Many others had been suffocated with smoke or overcome by the fierce heat and drowned even after they had reached the water. “The big woods from Lake Superior to Green Bay are burning,” said the traveler.

But what caused the more anxiety to the Allens was the rumor he had heard at Pete-en-well Ferry that Chicago had been destroyed by fire, and nearly all the people burned.

The closing up of a matter of his former business had called Mr. Allen to that city some two weeks previous, and as it was past the time set for his return, the rumor brought by the timberman filled the family with alarm. Letters were rare with dwellers in that forest wilderness, but occasional trips were made to Dexter Crossing, where “tote” teams passing to the camps along the rivers of the far north would leave mail forwarded on to these settlers by the postmasters at the towns below.

Rob being the elder of the boys, proposed to make the trip at once to Dexter Crossing in the chance of a letter having been sent there to them by their father. There was, of course, danger that the great fire of the northeast might sweep down upon them any day, and as Dexter was well within the big woods the fate of one caught out there could be fearfully imagined. But the anxiety of the family as to the safety of Mr. Allen outweighed their caution, and Mrs. Allen gave her consent for Rob to make the trip.

The lad reached the settlement at Dexter Crossing safely, and to his joy found there a letter from his father. A great fire had indeed swept over the very heart of Chicago, destroying almost the entire business portion, and hundreds of lives had been lost. Fortunately Mr. Allen had been in a district not reached by the flames, and while he had been delayed by the catastrophe, would be able to reach home the following week.

Impatient to be back at home with the good news, Rob resolved to start upon the return trip that night, walking ten miles or so, then resting until daybreak. Thoroughly wearied with his long tramp, he slept soundly when he finally lay down upon his bed of pine “needles.” When he awoke it was with a start and sense of discomfort. His watch said it was morning, past six o’clock, although it was still dark. The air was close and heavy and carried a pungent odor that made breathing somewhat difficult. Rob sprang to his feet, and munching his bread and bacon as he went, resumed his journey. Before he had traveled an hour, the tops of the tall pines had begun to moan in a rising wind, and a cloud of smoke was settling down like a pall from the sky. With a clutch of fear at his heart, Rob realized the meaning—the forest fire had reached that section; his hope of safety lay in reaching the more open country about his home before the storm of fire should be upon him.

Breaking into a “long run,” an exercise which the boys had practiced until they were able to keep up the gait for two or three miles, Rob began the race. The smoke grew more dense; tears ran down the boy’s face from smarting eyes. Choking for air, he bound his handkerchief about his mouth and nose, and ran on. Again and again he would stumble and fall over tree-roots rising in the way. Finally he noticed that close to the ground there was a current of cool, pure air, and so, lying flat on his face, he would fill his lungs, then rise and dash forward as far as he could, and fall to the earth to breathe again.

While he lay gasping for breath after a long run, there came to his ears the sound as of a waterfall in the distance. The volume of sound increased until it became a roar, and all at once the pall of darkness broke out into a glare of blinding flame—the tempest of fire was upon him. The very air seemed to be on fire. A great pine would start into a blaze, and an ascending current of air snatching a limb or a burning bunch of cones would hurl it on into the top of another tree an hundred feet away. The first rush was quickly over. The resinous foliage of the green trees was soon licked up by the flames, but the awful destruction would continue for days.

The bed of dry “needles,” fallen leaves of the yearly shedding of the pines, made excellent kindling to light the great trunks of the forest giants, which, catching, would burn until consumed, or until extinguished by a heavy rain. Fortunately the latter usually occurred. Whether or not it be founded in fact, there is a saying widely accepted that every large battle and great fire is followed by a hard rainstorm. Thus it is that the greatest damage in forest fires is to the young timber, the small trees growing close together being left bare and dead, if not consumed at once. Among the big trees there is little underbrush, and while the foliage and small limbs are destroyed, and great holes sometimes burned in the trunks near the ground, the trees recover, and put forth their green again the following spring.

All sense seemed to leave Rob except the one to keep going. No longer could he stand to run more than a few feet in the fierce heat. His hair was singed; the thick soles of his boots were cracked and shriveled up from stepping upon embers and burning limbs. His woolen jacket and trousers were a protection to his body, but when a dead tree, all ablaze, fell with a crash just in front of him, he felt that he could go no further. Almost without volition he crawled off to one side—and for a time lost consciousness. Soon he came to himself and realized that his blistered face and hands were deliciously cool, and that he was breathing easily. He had fortunately crawled into a little “swale,” one of the small, moss-covered depressions that mark the edge of the big forest, as it opens out into the small timber and marshes of the ancient lake. The little basin, filled with moss, was like a great sponge from which not all the moisture had been wrung by the fierce heat of the summer, and it meant life to Rob as he buried his face in it.

Danger to the lad from falling trees and flying firebrands was not over, but he was not far from the open prairie, now a blackened waste, and with heart anxious for the loved ones at home, he pushed on.

The fire had, after all, not been connected with the great fire of the northeast, but was local in extent, covering some ten miles from north to south, and perhaps fifteen from its eastern starting point, to where it was stopped by the deep marshes on the west. The humble home on the Necedah river was unharmed, and great was the rejoicing that night as Rob returned alive, with the letter, although it was many weeks before the lad fully recovered from the experiences of that fearful trip through the burning forest.

CHAPTER V
THE FIRST DEER HUNT

The question of food supply is always an important one where there is a family of growing children, but especially is it so in a wilderness of forest, far from stores and the supplies of towns and cities. The question is not so much one of variety as of quantity, as the vigorous out-of-door life of the pioneer gives an appetite which dainties prepared by a famous chef would not tempt from the generous dish of “pork and beans,” or roast beef and potatoes.

This question became a pressing one to our settlers in the “old lake bottom,” by the Necedah river. The severe summer drouth had cut short the yield of their potato crop upon which high hopes had rested at the spring planting, and a great horde of migrating squirrels had harvested their little field of corn before it had ripened.

Ruffled grouse, or “prairie-chickens,” as they were called, were abundant up to the time of the big fires in August. Indeed, from the first of July the young birds had furnished a supply of meat for the table more delicious than the boys of the family had ever known.

The old sow, which they had succeeded in bringing through the winter, had been turned out into the hardwood timber along the river to care for herself, and Uncle Sam Thompson reported having seen her on Big Bend with a fine litter of pigs, which would thrive upon the “mast,” the nuts of oak and hickory, and furnish good “hams” and “sides” by Christmas.

The fire which had come down out of the big woods during the summer, burning over the low prairies and shallow marches had been followed by a week of heavy rains, and what had been a wide stretch of blackened waste was soon transformed by the springing grass into an emerald garden. While light frosts occasionally nipped the top, through September, the grass grew rapidly and luxuriantly, and Mr. Allen’s few cows and yoke of young oxen were rolling with fat by October.

Families and herds of deer might be seen any day a mile west from the Allen home, though they appeared to be more difficult of approach as the cold season came on. As many as twenty in one herd were counted by the boys at one time. While they had become expert with their guns in securing small game, neither Rob nor Ed had as yet tried their marksmanship upon the larger animals.

There was, at that time, no “closed” season for its protection, but the settlers, as a rule, never killed game wantonly, nor for “sport.” No deer were shot in the summer, especially while the young needed the care of its mother. But when the sharp, frosty nights of October came, the hunter’s appetite was allowed to match the woods-wisdom and cunning of the “antlered lords of the forest.”

The moonlight nights of October is the mating season, and then the hunters know that the deer keep to regular paths or “runs” through the forest. Rough platforms of boughs were built upon the low branches of some tree at the crossing or intersection of two runs, and upon this the hunter will take his seat and watch, while a comrade starts off, and making a wide detour, starts a “drive” in the direction of the ambush. The watcher in the tree must be alert, quick of sight, and sure of aim, for the buck will come bounding toward him with prodigious leaps and be gone again in a flash.

Uncle Sam had promised his nephew Dauphin and the Allen boys a deer hunt on the night of the full moon in October, but Rob Allen was impatient. “You needn’t be in such a hurry,” said Dauphin. “You couldn’t hit a deer the first time, anyway. One always has ‘buck-fever’ the first time.”

“You’ll see,” boasted Rob; “I’ll show you that the laugh will not be on me.”

If Rob had been wise, he would have awaited the time set, and acted under the direction of the experienced hunter, but the taunt of Dauphin spurred him on to prove his prowess. So the next afternoon he slipped off with his gun in the direction of Round Slough. Approaching the water from the west he came to a swale where some long-past tornado from the southwest had laid the aspen trees in great windrows. The breeze from the east brought to Rob the quacking of ducks over in the slough, and as he slowly and as quietly as possible, clambered over the fallen tree trunks, he thought, “Well, I can change the buckshot in my gun to a cartridge of 4’s, and take home a mess of mallards anyway.”

Then, from the further side of the very windrow of tree trunks upon which he was clambering, there sprang high into the air, and in a mighty bound clearing the last barrier of trees, a splendid, eight-pronged buck. For a second Rob stood in open-mouthed wonder, then seizing his gun in one hand he started on a run after the deer, yelling at the top of his voice. There was a flash of the great antlers above the underbrush of the slough, and the deer was gone.

“Well,” said Rob, coming to himself, “I had it, didn’t I! So that is ‘buck fever.’ Why I never once thought of my gun. The boys will have their laugh now.”

Coming out into the open forest, the lad struck into a deer “run” and started for home. He had not gone far when he caught the sound of animals running, coming toward him. Quickly he dodged behind a big pine. In a moment two deer burst into sight, the second one carrying a pair of branching antlers. Rob could feel his heart beating like a trip-hammer, but he drew a bead upon the antlers, and, just as they passed, fired. The buck dropped, rolled over and over, then lay still.

“Hurrah!” shouted Rob. “I have you now;” and, dropping his gun, he ran quickly, drawing his hunting knife. The deer was a four-year-old, and would probably weigh a hundred and fifty pounds. The boy put one foot upon the neck of the fallen animal, when a startling thing occurred. As though the solid earth had risen beneath his feet, Rob felt himself lifted and flung over upon his back on the pine needles as if he had been the merest trifle, and in great leaps and bounds he saw his deer disappearing in the distance.

“Of all things,” gasped the lad, “this beats me. If I caught the ‘buck fever’ the first time, I must now have reached the delirious stage. Who ever heard of a dead deer acting in that way!”

It was now growing dark, and impossible to follow the trail of the deer even had it been seriously wounded, so the lad struck out for home. He had gone perhaps half a mile, and was approaching the open prairie not far from his home, when, in a small swale, to the left of the trail, he heard a snort, then a quick, impatient pawing of a hoof like a challenge. Dropping to his knees he waited, and in a moment discovered the gleam of two eyes shining through the darkness. Carefully raising his gun, he fired. Springing straight up into the air, the animal came down with a thud. This time Rob did not throw down his gun, but made ready with the second barrel in case of need, as he cautiously went up to where his quarry lay. But the charge had gone true, and a fine, fat yearling, a “spike” buck—his first deer—was a prize to the young hunter.

The boy’s heart beat proudly as he shouldered his game and bore it home.

With well assumed modesty Rob accepted the praises of Dauphin and Ed, but being an honest lad he finally confessed to his attack of “buck fever,” and then related the astonishing action of the second deer.

But Uncle Sam explained it. “You ‘creased’ him,” said he. “Your aim was too high, but one of the buckshot grazed the top of his head and stunned him for the time. Probably he was not at all seriously hurt. I saw that trick played many a time when we were crossing the plains to California in an early day. When we were on the llanos of northern and western Texas bands of wild horses would occasionally circle about our wagon train. None of the saddle horses were anything like a match for the wild fellows in speed, but the plainsmen had a way of occasionally capturing one of the band. Where the lay of the ground would permit, a picked man would be detailed to creep toward the herd until within shooting distance. Selecting the horse that pleased his fancy, he would shoot, not to kill or wound the animal, but to just graze the skin along the top of its head. The trick required the highest skill in marksmanship, but many horses were secured in that way, as the force of the bullet would stun the animal for a time and it could be secured with ropes, and finally be broken to service.”

CHAPTER VI
THE INDIAN WAR DANCE

When the Jesuit Fathers, those early French path-finders for civilization in the central region of the American continent, pushed down from Canada over the lakes and by the rivers into the great forest that stretched from the inland sea to the great river, they found a people warlike, indeed, yet hospitable and kindly; reserved and shy, yet open-hearted and unsuspicious; uncivilized according to Old World standards, yet wise in the great secrets of nature; poor as to stores of gold, yet rich in the abundance of all that went to make for their simple necessities, their comfort and their pleasure. So entranced were the Frenchmen with the natural, free, and abundant life of these red men of the forest, and with their noble physical bearing, and untutored courtesy and dignity, that many then and there forever forsook the land and ways of their fathers, and bequeathed the names of France to dusky families, and to streams and lakes and heights.

The Great Sioux Nation, not a people, but a federation of peoples, lay principally to the west—the land of Hiawatha—in what was to become Minnesota, and extended well across the barren plains of Dakota to the Missouri river where possession was disputed by the Blackfeet. The eastern border of the nation rested upon the shores of the two fresh water seas. The central portion of the great forest was the home, principally, of two tribes: to the eastward the Menominees, and to the westward the Winnebagoes. To the south was the land of the Sac and Fox.

From the standpoint of the red man, this land between the Mississippi river and the great lakes could only be equalled by that Happy Hunting Ground on the Isle of the Blest, the home of Manitou, the Great Spirit. Little lakes and running streams, teeming with fish, abounded. Wild fowl and the smaller fur- and game-animals were ever within reach of even the arrows of the unclad children. Blackberries grew in riotous profusion in sandy openings of the forest; while blueberries in the summer and huckleberries in early fall gave a welcome change of diet. Food was plentiful. And as for wild creatures whose taking would test the sagacity and valor of the wisest and bravest, were there not the bear, the panther, and the lynx? While upon the plains west of the great river the neighbors depended upon the bison for winter’s meat, for tent covering and a large portion of their clothing, the great forest afforded the Winnebagoes, for these necessities, the flesh and skins of deer.

It is true that such a bountiful nature bred an improvident disposition, and times of lack and suffering had come to them in the past, but so rare were they, that the tales of such disasters became great epics to be rehearsed and chanted about winter fires.

To this forest had come the welcomed priests and their friendly companions—but that was indeed the beginning of a new order; where one white man puts a foot, there other white men spring up. It would seem strange that from the time of pathfinder Pierre Marquette to the time of pathfinder John C. Fremont, the simple, free, self-sufficient lives of these forest tribes should have been so little disturbed, and yet there was a reason. From the Atlantic coast the white man’s civilization had spread westward, ever westward, opening up farms, building cities—always crowding before it the red man, and appropriating his lands. After the bloody days of the establishing of New England upon the eastern shore, there came, later, Tecumseh, with his vain hope of stemming the tide of invasion. Then still later, in the newer west, Black Hawk, with impassioned words strove to turn the faces of his warriors toward the coming horde. But steadily, surely, the white man pressed forward. As a stream is turned aside by a barrier, to seek some other and easier course, so was this human stream of immigration and occupation for a long time held back by the vast forests of Wisconsin. As yet there was no lack of fertile prairies ready for the plow, and so the tide swept below and on around the home of the Winnebagoes. It crept up into Minnesota, and, still westward, planted its outpost at beautiful little lake Cheteck, the head of the Des Moines river. Here the red men of the plains called a halt. From Cheteck to New Ulm they wrote their fearful warning in blood and fire. The answer of the whites was quick and no less terrible, and so relentless, that many of these plains folk took refuge among their neighbors in the Winnebago forests. For three hundred years the history of the Winnebagoes and Menominees had been one of almost unbroken peace with the whites. While there had been settlements made here and there, so far there had been no serious crowding. There was yet room and food in plenty; and abundance of food predisposes to peace.

But the white dwellers of the cities and on the plains farms increased; always new homes were to be built; the small forests were soon exhausted, and the lumber scout came on to view the great woods of Wisconsin.

In early days when white men desired the skin of otter or beaver possessed by an Indian he might give the red man a bit of copper wire as barter, but he took the skin. So it was when the great forests of pine and oak and ash became desirable to the white man, he did not steal outright the home of the red man; he made some sort of present in return, as he took the land. To the Winnebagoes was allotted, as exchange for their claim to the forests which had sheltered and nourished the generations of their ancestors, a treeless, waterless tract in the far south, in what had been called the “Indian Territory.” To be sure they had had nothing to say as to the trade, and entertained no notion of going to their new “home,” but the white man had appeased his conscience, and the red man would now be considered an intruder in the forest.

When Rob and Ed Allen came with their father’s family to live upon the Necedah river there was a band of perhaps an hundred Winnebagoes making their lodge in Big Bend. The chief, following custom, had taken a “white” name, after that of a man who had befriended him, and was known, not as Jim Miner, but as “Miner Jim.” Miner Jim’s wife was the daughter of a Menominee chief, and was called by the whites “Menominee Mary.” Mary was every inch a red princess. Magnificently proportioned, and of nature imperious, her word held at least equal authority in the tribe with the chief. While it was customary among the Indians for a brave, and especially a chief, to have several wives, Menominee Mary reigned the sole spouse in the tepee of the Winnebago chief. Their eldest child was Ka-li-cha-goo-gah, and, according to Indian custom, which traces descent through mother to son, instead of through father to son, the lad was considered a Menominee.

Between this Indian lad of about their own age, and the Allen boys, and their neighbor, Dauphin Thompson, there sprang up a warm friendship. The white boys and the red one were together upon many a hunting trip, and in the berry season gathered their basswood-bark baskets full of fruit side by side. Buckskin moccasins ornamented with elaborate beadwork designs by Menominee Mary, broad, ash-bowed snow shoes for winter hunting, and a soft, lynx-fur robe attested the love the son of the chief bore his white comrades. And in return his delight was great in the gift of a score of steel traps with which he would gather in a harvest of muskrat pelts from the lodges on Iron Creek marsh during the months of deep snow. Living as members of this band were two young people, a boy nearly grown, whose red, stubby hair, and smiling, freckled face was, as Dauphin declared, a “plain map of Ireland.” The other was a girl apparently twelve or thirteen years of age, with wavy, dark brown hair, and eyes as blue as a summer sky. Whether these young folk were able to speak English, the white boys could not tell. They never answered a question put to them in that tongue, and the older Indians seemed adverse to having them associate with the white lads. Uncle Sam Thompson told the boys the story of the Minnesota massacre and gave, as his suspicion, that some of this band of the Big Bend were really refugees from the Sioux who were in that uprising, and that the two evidently white children were really captives taken at that time.

During the year of which I write the boys had been freely received at the Indian camp, and, what few whites had been permitted to behold, had been allowed to attend their stated occasions of worship, the ceremonial dances. The Fish Dance in the spring, the Green Corn Dance in the summer, the Harvest Dance and the Hunting Moon Dance in the autumn, were of strange interest to these town-bred boys.

“I tell you what I’d like to see,” said Ed Allen, as they were going home from one of these, to them, grotesque performances, “I would like to go to a sure-enough scalp dance, or war dance.”

“You can be thankful, young man,” replied Dauphin, “that you are permitted to see what you have seen without having those other dances added. White men who have been spectators have seldom found either of these performances pleasant, if indeed they had any opportunity to tell about them afterward.”

As the winter season approached, there seemed to come a change in the attitude of the Indians toward their visitors. Kalichigoogah was often silent and moody with his friends, and the older Indians, while never rude, offered little welcome to the whites.

There had been a series of more or less disastrous fires here and there in the great forest, and the lumbermen who were busily gaining title to these lands laid the blame upon the Indians. The representation they made to the government at Washington was that the Indians, if not revengefully guilty, were at least carelessly so, as forest fires would be sure to be kindled from their campfires. Moreover, they declared, the Winnebagoes were trespassers in the forest; the government had allotted them a reservation in the Indian Territory, and they called upon the authorities at Washington to see that these Indians were “returned” to the place where they belonged.

To one acquainted with the manner of Indian life, the charge that forest fires were set from the campfires of the red men, would be ridiculous. Such fires might, and doubtless did, start from the campfires of white hunters and timber scouts, but never from a fire built by an Indian. In the first place, the forest was the very life of the Indian. He understood that any harm to the big woods meant harm to himself. A white man would build his fire by a log or dry stump, and pile on plenty of sticks and limbs. He would have a big fire—and go away leaving it burning careless of consequences. On the contrary, the Indian, who for generations had lived in the possible presence of a keen-eyed enemy, was very cautious about letting a smoke rise above the tree tops to call attention to himself. Consequently his fire was small—just a few little sticks, or pieces of bark brought together, and always the fire extinguished, and generally the very ashes concealed, as the hunter or warrior left his camping place.

Friends among the whites had sent word to the Winnebagoes of the purpose of the Great Father at Washington to take them from the land of their fathers and hold them upon the bleak prairies where there was no forest shade, no cool lakes, no sparkling rivers, but fierce winds, and dust clouds, and marauding Comanches.

The red man is called cruel and treacherous, but to the Winnebagoes the white race, at this time, seemed the incarnation of all that is unjust and hateful. It is small wonder that Miner Jim’s band grew moody, and distant in their attitude toward their former friends.

Spring came in somewhat late. Up until April the river was still floating large cakes of ice. In that latitude the corn-growing season is none too long at best, and the Allen boys would have to make every hour count when the land became dry enough to work.

“Rob,” said Ed, one bright, warm day, “I believe that upper meadow could be plowed now, if we had another yoke of steers to hitch to our 14-inch plow. I’m going over to see if Dauph won’t hitch in with his steers for a few days and work time about.”

It was late in the evening before Ed and Dauphin finished their arrangements for the partnership plowing, and when Ed reached Big Bend, twilight had fallen over the prairie; within the wood it was already dark. The long-drawn cry of a grey timber wolf came sharp and clear to the boy on the frosty spring air. In a moment it was answered by the house dogs of the distant farm. A Great Horned Owl, lingering late before departing for his summer home in the arctic region, boomed a deep-voiced “Hoo-hoo-ah” as it arose like a ghost all in white from a limb above the path. Then there came to the ears of the boy other sounds, so strange and confusing that he was compelled to stop and listen. Evidently the noise was over in Big Bend. The Indian camp! But what was going on? The Indians are not accustomed to much noise making. Could it be that some vicious white man, as had occurred at other places, had brought in the forbidden “fire water” to inflame and debauch the red men for their own evil ends?

For himself, the lad did not think of being afraid. These Indians were his friends. If wicked white men were there, seeking them harm, his father would see that they received merited punishment. It was not yet late; he could easily reach home in time. He would go over to the Indian camp and learn the cause of the commotion.

As he drew near, a lean cur with hair standing like bristles upon its back, made a dash at his heels, but slunk away as it took the familiar scent of one it had learned was a friend. As the lad came within fifty yards of the place he had a view of what was going on. A large space to the east of the camp had been cleared, and around this space, in a circle, were squatted the women and children of the tribe. Small fires, here and there, but partially lit up the camp, and threw weird shadows, now upon the surrounding forest, now upon the cleared ground. All about in the circle were different ones beating upon tom-toms, small drums fashioned by stretching buckskin tightly over ash hoops. They were chanting some song in a high-pitched, monotonous, though not unmusical tone, and in perfect cadence. Ed’s gaze lifted from the musicians to the top of the pole planted in the center of the circle, from which dangled—what was it? Hair! Yes, unmistakably, a number of dried human scalps. A cold hand seemed to grip the spine of the boy, and each individual hair of his head seemed trying to pull itself out by the roots. He sank to the thick bed of pine needles on the ground, thankful that he had been standing in the shadow of a great tree.

It was well that he was hidden, for just then began the strangest ceremony he had ever witnessed, and which few, indeed, of the white race had ever beheld and come away to describe. The Indians sprang into the circle, stark naked save for the narrow loin-cloth, their bodies painted black, with broad red and yellow stripes, their faces “decorated” with hideous lines and patches of color. Those who had been warriors, wore upon their heads the bonnet or headdress ornamented with eagle feathers, each feather marking some great deed, which the voice of the old men of the tribe had decided to be a claim to honor. The younger Indians had each one or two, or possibly three feathers fastened in the thick braids of black hair which hung down their backs. As they sprang into the circle, it could be seen that all carried some kind of weapon. With bodies swaying and gesticulating, they went around and around, one following the other, in perfect time with the beating of the tom-toms and the shrill singing of the women. At first all seemed to be a confusion of gesture, but as the dance proceeded the boy on the ground saw that each Indian was acting out in pantomime a story, and that story was the pursuit, capture, and death of an enemy. Crouching, crawling, springing, running, aiming with gun, striking with tomahawk, scalping with the knife, and leaping away in triumph, all were unmistakably portrayed by the redmen dancing in perfect rhythm about the scalp-decked pole.

“It is a war dance,” gasped the watching lad. “They’re getting ready to go on the war path. I must get home and warn the folks—if I can.”

Slowly he began to crawl backward into the deeper shadows, away from that fearful place. What if the dogs should come upon him and bark, even in sport? What if quick ears should hear the snap of a broken twig? Would they not think him a spy? Would they take him along as a prisoner; or would they build a fire about that pole in the center and tie him there after having added his scalp to their collection?

It seemed that he was hours in crawling backward out of the light of those fires, away from the horrid din, away from the all too suggestive dancing of those hideous, naked figures. All at once he found himself at the river bank. Creeping down, he quietly let himself into the cold water, and clutching grass and root, and overhanging branch, he cautiously, and with painful slowness, made his way down stream. He was numb with the fright of his experience, as well as the chill of the water, and scarcely able to walk, when he reached the opening of the forest, half a mile from the Indian camp. As he was about entering the path leading to his home, he stumbled and nearly fell over someone lying prostrate on the dead leaves.

“It is some watcher. I’m lost,” flashed through the mind of the boy. But a familiar movement of an arm of the stretched-out figure caught his attention. Could it be? it was Kalichigoogah. For some moments the Indian boy would answer no question of his white friend, but finally he burst out in a sob.

“Me no let dance. Me no let fight. Them say no Winnebago, me Menominee.”

The two white families made such preparations as were possible to withstand an attack, but no harm appeared during the night, and a cautious investigation the following day showed the camp deserted; the women and children as well as the war party gone.

Two days later the cause for the strange action of the Indians was learned, when Captain Hunt, in charge of a squad of regular soldiers, appeared at the home of Mr. Thompson. The Indians had been warned that the petition of the lumbermen had been granted by the authorities at Washington, and that they were to be forcibly removed from their forest home to the inhospitable plains of the South. They did not seek war with their brothers, but they would not tamely give up their home. They would take the women and children to the friendly care of the Menominee, and then, if they must, they would die as befitted a brave race.

The soldiers easily caught the trail of the fleeing band, and on the third day after the war dance, the entire band, women, children, and warriors, were surrounded, captured, and taken away to the Indian Territory.

I may say that the stay of these Winnebagoes upon their reservation was not long. One after another, stragglers from the band came back, until before the close of the second season the majority were again living in their beloved forest home.

CHAPTER VII
THE FLOATING BOG

In settling up some business affairs, Mr. Allen had come into possession of a tract of two thousand acres of swamp land lying toward the western side of the bed of the ancient sea. At the time of which I write there were vast tracts of such supposedly valueless land owned by the state, and which could be purchased for ten dollars per “forty,” twenty-five cents per acre. Timber scouts had ranged over it, and selecting the forties upon which there were sand knolls covered with a goodly amount of pine timber, the land would be purchased by their employers, the lumber companies, to be cut over at their convenience.

The low-lying prairies, flooded in the spring season, and the lower marshes covered with water much of the year, were thought to be not worth the twenty-five cents per acre asked by the state. In later years, by a system of drainage, and through scientific farming, much of this land became highly productive and valuable.

In some of the deeper marshes, where there had been an abundance of water for several years, cranberry vines had covered the surface of the moss and yielded astonishing crops of mottled green and red berries. This was the character of much of the land of which Mr. Allen found himself possessed. A granite rock rising with nearly perpendicular sides over three hundred feet above the level surface of the country, gave the name of North Bluff marsh to the locality, as distinguished from the country about a similar bluff some ten miles to the south.

After considerable persuasion on the part of the boys, Mr. Allen had leased this cranberry marsh to Rob and Ed, and their chum Dauphin. The boys already had a good start on the fund they were gathering for a planned year in college, and if they should be successful in getting the berries from the North Bluff to market, it would bring them nearer to the desired goal.

While the cranberry, as it is picked from the vine, is as firm and meaty as a little apple, it bruises easily in handling, and so requires great care in getting to market. The boys had purposed using two-bushel grain sacks for the transportation of the crop, but Mr. Allen wisely persuaded them to make a preliminary trip to Lisbon and secure light ash barrels to take with them to the marsh and so prevent much loss from bruised and damaged berries.

On the twentieth of August the boys had their outfits assembled: two yokes of oxen hitched to two broad-tired wagons, upon which were long racks each containing thirty empty barrels. With these they carried a tent, cooking utensils, supplies of bacon, flour, brown sugar, matches, axes, guns, and ammunition, sacks to carry the berries from the marsh to dry land, and not least in importance, three cranberry rakes. Of these latter Uncle Sam Thompson had made one for each of the boys. A slab of ash was taken and fingers about ten inches long sawn and whittled down smooth in one end. Sides and back were put to this, with a handle on top and back. With these “rakes” the boys would literally scoop up the berries from the vines.

The trip of fifty miles to the marsh was, in itself, a great undertaking. There were no roads; logs and tree roots had to be chopped out of the way, and overhanging limbs cleared from before the stacks of barrels. More serious were the occasional deep bogs encountered, through which the oxen, though accustomed to wallowing in mud, were unable to pull the wagons. Over these the boys were obliged to build a “corduroy,” sometimes for several rods. To one accustomed to a boulevard or even a macadam pike, the corduroy would seem an impossibility as a means of travel, but pioneers are frequently required to accomplish the seemingly impossible. Small trees are felled and cut into lengths suitable to the width of the wagon, and these placed side by side until the way across has been covered. When the marsh is unusually deep and soft, a second layer of smaller logs is placed upon the first. It is not a good road, nor easy to ride over, but it can be crossed, and that is the main thing.

Not alone were the bad roads, or lack of roads, a cause of distress to the boys and their teams; mosquitoes in clouds attacked them day and night. Frequently they were compelled to make “smudges” of fire covered with green grass, so that in the smoke they might be able to eat their meals in some sort of comfort. At night the oxen were likewise protected from the attacks of the pestiferous insects. Much annoyance and no little suffering were caused by a spotted fly, called from its markings, the “deer fly,” which persistently crawled up into their hair and under their clothing, its bite always drawing blood.

The boys averaged not quite five miles a day on the trip, and it was the last day of August before the camping place at the foot of North Bluff was reached.

The first day of their arrival was spent in arranging camp; putting up the tent, digging the shallow well in the sand at the marsh’s edge, and building moss-lined pole-pens in which to store the berries as they should be picked. Cranberry harvest and the arrival of frost are usually too close together to allow any time to be taken away from the one occupation of picking. So the boys would sort over and clean the berries and then barrel them after the frosts had come.

The bog was a wonder to the Allen boys. Around the edge, for perhaps ten rods out into the marsh, were growing tamarack trees, from little switches a dozen feet high that could be easily pulled up by hand, to older ones six inches in diameter, and thirty feet in height. Further out, beyond the line of tamaracks, the bog looked much like a prairie covered with moss, with here and there a sandy mound upon which blackberry vines, huckleberry bushes, and a few scattering pine trees were growing.

When they had walked out into the marsh several rods over shoe-top deep in the moss, Dauphin called out, “Stand still a minute, boys, I want to show you something,” and he began to spring up and down in rhythmic motion. In a few moments, at first slightly, then in increasing motion the trees began to sway and bend, and the surface of the bog, for many rods around, could be seen in regular, wave-like motion, trees and all rising and falling, bending and rolling as if on the bosom of a rolling sea.

“It is like this,” said Dauphin in answer to the boys’ astonished questioning, “this marsh is really a lake over which the moss has grown until it is now completely covered. Here, near the edge where it started in to grow and spread over the water, the old moss falling down each year has been succeeded by the new growing up, and so for ages, until there is now quite a solid covering at the surface, enough even to support the trees, but, as you see, it is only after all a floating cover to a lake. Not all over is the moss so thick as here, and there are places dangerous to try to walk over. One might easily drop through. Then—”

“Don’t, Dauph,” exclaimed Ed; “I don’t want to think of anything so horrible.”

“You had best pick your steps, then,” replied Dauphin; “if you attempt to cross the bog, or you may find something worse than hearing about it.”

“How far is it to the bottom?” asked Rob.

“We can soon see,” replied Dauphin. Cutting down a slender dead tamarack he thrust it down through the moss until it rested upon the solid sand.

“Twelve feet!” exclaimed the boys as the pole was drawn up and measured. Further out from the edge they took a measurement of sixteen feet from the mossy surface to the bottom.

There was a fine crop of cranberries on the vines, and the boys were busy from early morning until late at night with their rakes. The unaccustomed stooping all day was back-breaking work, and it was not at all pleasant to stand in cold water wet to the knees, but the two-bushel sack of berries each boy was able to carry to camp every half day made the labor endurable.

As the best patches near the camp were soon raked over, the boys would take turns searching for new places. On one of these excursions Rob had an adventure which came near to a tragedy for him, but which led to happy termination. In a cove of perhaps an acre, jutting up into one of the pine islands, lying nearly a mile out into the bog, Rob found a patch of beautiful “bell” berries, and over near the edge it appeared as though the vines had been recently disturbed. Closely scanning the land nearby he at length discovered a mound of freshly-pulled moss over which pine boughs had been carelessly strewn, as if in attempt to hide something. His curiosity was of course aroused, and digging away the moss he came upon several sacks filled with berries. Evidently somebody had been there at work. He determined to carry one of the sacks of berries to camp with him, and then get the boys and hunt for the trespassers. Instead of returning in the way he came, Rob struck out straight across the bog, his mind full of excited imaginings about his find. Suddenly he found himself dropping, and like a flash he realized that he had come upon a thin place in the bog, and was falling through to the cold, dark depths of the lake beneath. Instinctively he had thrown himself forward, with arms out-stretched, his hands clutching the moss. This stayed him for a moment, but the heavy sack of berries was upon him, forcing his head and shoulders down into the moss. He could feel himself sinking; the water seemed to be rising about his face. He thought of how the boys would miss him, of their fruitless search, for the moss would soon close over him leaving no mark to show where he had gone down. Then the thought came that he must not die; that he might work backward from under the sack and get free. It was a desperate struggle, and before he succeeded his face was under water, and his strength nearly exhausted for lack of breath. But at last he was free, and throwing his arms up over the sack he raised his head, regained his breath, and rested. Slowly he pulled his body up, and using the sinking sack for a foothold, he threw himself sprawling upon the track over which he had come. He crawled in the moss for several yards before he dared to rise to his feet and resume his journey to the camp.

“I should like to see that lake drained,” said Dauphin, as Rob told of his narrow escape. “Think of the different kinds of animals that have probably left their bones on the sands of that lake bottom in the ages past.”

“Well, I’m glad that your future scientist will not have the pleasure of classifying my bones, anyway,” replied Rob.

Next day the boys found the trespassers to be a band of Winnebago Indians, and they were able to make satisfactory arrangements whereby the Indians stayed and helped them harvest the crop of berries, which the boys finally got safely to market.

CHAPTER VIII
THE WAYSIDE TAVERN

“Uncle Henry,” said Ed, as the boys were enjoying themselves in the pleasant living room of the Thompson home, “what kind of a mound is that in front of Slater’s tavern? It looks like a grave right there in front of the house. I noticed it when I was going to Lisbon after cranberry barrels last fall, and I started to ask Mr. Slater who had been buried there, but one of the teamsters stopping there for dinner with me looked scared, and hushed me up.”

“Ruth can tell you the story; it’s mighty sad,” replied Mr. Thompson.

“Yes, boys, it is indeed a sad story, but its lesson may do you good,” replied Mrs. Thompson.

And this is the story she related.

Among the pioneers of settlement in the great forest wilderness of northern Wisconsin, were Jared Slater, a middle-aged tavernkeeper, from Vermont, and his young wife. Margaret Strong had been left an orphan at an early age, and had gone into domestic service as her only available means of honest support. Of course her education was of the most meager sort, yet she combined a store of good sense, so often miscalled “common,” with a character of sterling worth. Especially did she make known her abhorrence of the traffic in intoxicating liquors, common at that time to all hotels, or “taverns,” of the country. And, indeed, she had good cause to know and feel the evils of strong drink, as her father had gone by this path to the ruin of his own soul and body, and the destruction of his home.

When Margaret was wooed by Jared Slater, she told him that she would never link her life with one who was in any way bound with the chains of the demon alcohol, whether as a user or dispenser to others. Jared went away, but his love for the young woman was true, and again he sought her and proposed that he sell his tavern, and then they would marry and move to the great forests of Wisconsin, where they could begin life anew, unhampered by old surroundings. Margaret finally consented, and they moved west.

Jared spent the first year in clearing up a little field for the plow, and in erecting the necessary farm buildings; and by the time the baby boy came, things about the place were taking on a comfortable, homelike appearance. The little family were not utterly alone in this far-away land, for the “tote-road,” over which supplies from the distant railroad station, for the farther away camps of the north, were hauled, ran past their door, and their home became a stopping place for teamsters and other travelers.

It was not long before Jared’s thrifty, Yankee mind saw the opportunity for gain lying to his hand in opening his place as a regular tavern, and he told his wife of his intention. But Margaret objected.

“Ye know, Jared,” said she, “I don’t mind the work. I’m able for that a-plenty; but ye well know I married ye and came here to get rid of the tavern. I will not have the rum about me.”

“But, Margaret,” replied Jared, “we’ll have no drink in the tavern; just lodging and the eating.”

Thus it was for a time; but the old habits of life were revived by the frequent demands of their guests for liquor, as they would come in from the long, cold drives, and Jared’s cupidity at length got the better of his honesty and his faith with his wife, and he began to keep and dispense liquor again.

At first he endeavored to keep his sin from the knowledge of his wife; but greed bred carelessness and indifference, and before the third year of their wilderness home, Jared had his barroom open as a feature of the roadhouse.

Faithfully Margaret pleaded and earnestly did she warn her husband that “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” but he refused to be moved. “I don’t drink it myself, ye know, an’ if these fools want to part with good money for the stuff, it’s their affair. Some one else will let them have it if I don’t, and I may as well have the money as any one else.”

It was not long before the effects of the stream of damnation that flowed out from Slater’s roadhouse began to show themselves. When John Pollard went home and beat his wife, so that the life of a soon-expected little one was snuffed out, and the mother lingered long at death’s door, it was whispered that the blame lay in Jared Slater’s barroom. And when that winter a tote team arrived at a camp further north with the body of the driver stark and stiff, an empty bottle from Jared’s shelf told the story.

Not only did the tavernkeeper sell his liquid hell to white travelers, but his Indian neighbors, although especially protected by a law of the land, became his customers on the sly, and Jared’s eyes gloated over the piles of rich pelts stored in the back room, that represented to him but a paltry outlay in liquor.

“It’ll come on ye, Jared, it’ll come on ye. I’m afeared for ye. Ye know how the drink sets the red men wild. It’ll come back on ye, as sure as God lives,” solemnly protested Margaret.

It was one of those beautiful days in the late spring, when all nature seemed to be trying to show man a picture of heaven. The soft air was singing in the pine tops, the blackbirds were holding a song chorus nearby, and the open glade was brilliant with spring blossoms. The babe was making happy little noises in the sunshine, as it came through the open door. The shadow seemed for the moment to be lifted from the heart of Margaret, and she sang a hymn as she went about her work. Then suddenly she instinctively turned her eyes toward the door, with a feeling of fear. There stood three Indians silently watching. As they saw the woman notice them, one spoke a single word, “Whisk!” Margaret stood as if turned to stone. The Indian again spoke, “Give whisk quick!”

The woman saw her danger, but never would she handle the accursed stuff. The Indians crowded into the room, and stalking past Margaret, proceeded to help themselves at the bar. Then Margaret turned upon them like a fury. For their own sakes, for her sake and the baby’s, they should not get the fiery liquor. Bravely she struggled; then came the flash of a tomahawk, one shrill scream, and the lifeless form of the young mother lay upon the floor.

The Indians drank their fill; they drank until escape for themselves was impossible, and they lay sprawled upon the floor in drunken stupor.

At near sundown Jared Slater returned to his home. The baby, stained in his mother’s blood, crying upon her lifeless body, the three drunken Indians lying upon the floor, told the whole story. The brain of the man gave way. In the center of the road in front of the house he quickly dug a deep hole, and into that hole dragged the bodies of the three Indians—whether dead or alive, no one knows.

That grave in the middle of the road, and the tragic story connected with it, preached a temperance sermon more effective, perhaps, than could have been spoken by the faithful woman who gave her life in a protest against the fearful traffic.

The boys never forgot the story and its lesson, and it may be that its effect was felt when, in later life one of them put the strength of his manhood into years of successful warfare against the liquor traffic.

Jared Slater lived many years, but he never sold another drop of liquor. His crazed mind seemed to connect both whiskey and Indians with his trouble, and never did he see a bottle or shelf of liquor, but that he made an attempt to destroy it; and when, as occasionally happened, an Indian would be found in the woods mysteriously killed, it would be whispered that Jared Slater had been again taking his revenge.

God’s law is certain: “Be sure your sin will find you out.”

CHAPTER IX
ED’S ADVENTURE ON LAKE CHETECK

“Listen, boys,” said Mr. Allen, one night in November, as he looked up from a letter which a passing tote-teamster had left at the farm. “Here is a letter from my old friend Taylor, out in Minnesota, and he wants me to send him a ‘likely boy’ to work during the winter.”

Mr. Taylor was a miller whose old-fashioned grist mill, run by its large waterwheel, situated where the Des Moines river flows out of Lake Cheteck, its source, was flour-headquarters for the hardy pioneers of a large section of that country.

Sturdy Ed begged so earnestly to be permitted to take the place with their father’s old friend for the winter, that, after much hesitancy, and no little planning, the consent of Mr. and Mrs. Allen was given.

It was a serious journey for a boy at that time. The country, just emerging from the awful paralysis of the civil war, was but entering upon that era of railroad building which was to cover the west with a network of shining steel. As yet there were few railroads in that state which in a short time was to take front rank in grain raising and milling. Saint Paul was scarcely more than a big village, and the now magnificent metropolis at the falls of St. Anthony had not yet emerged from its swaddling clothes.

From the town of New Ulm Ed would have a long, cold ride by stage to the little mill out at the edge of civilization.

The few years’ experience he had had on the new farm in Wisconsin, had hardened his muscles, and, as he was not at all afraid of work, Ed soon found and fitted into his place at the mill. It was a little lonesome so far from home, and the work was somewhat monotonous, but the coming of the farmers with their loads of grain to be made into or exchanged for flour, gave opportunity for some sociability, and their stories of the great Indian uprisings, known to history as the New Ulm Massacre, were of thrilling interest.

As the winter came on it proved to be one of unusual severity, although there was little snow. The canal, or “race” by which the water of the lake was fed to the big millwheel, and from it to be tumbled foaming into the river at the foot of the rapids, usually maintained an even height, winter and summer, so, the supply of power being steady, it was possible for the millers to make preparation late in the evening, and leave the wheels to take care of the grist until early morning.

This winter, however, the ice in the river and race froze to the depth of three feet, and the power of the old mill was diminished to that extent. One night, not far from midnight, in the latter part of January, Ed found himself suddenly awake, sitting up in bed. Something had happened. What could be the matter? Oh, yes, he had been awakened by silence—not a noise, but the stopping of the noise of the mill had disturbed him. The hum of the burrs had ceased, the old wheel was still—the mill had shut down. He groped about and got his clothes, and hastened down-stairs into the wheel pit. Sure enough, there stood the old wheel at rest, for perhaps the first time in many years. In the runway there was a small stream of water falling, but nothing like enough to turn the wheel with the machinery of the mill geared on. Ed threw over the gear lever, and the released wheel slowly began to revolve again. Then he went up-stairs where he found Mr. Taylor, who had also been wakened as the accustomed hum of the stones ceased, and had come over from the house to investigate the cause.

“There has been some stoppage at the intake,” said he. “Either the lake has lowered, and the ice frozen nearly to the bottom of the channel at the mouth of the race, or there has some trash floated in. When you have had your breakfast, take an axe and the hook and go up and see what the trouble is.”

As soon as daylight came Ed was ready for the trip. He buckled on a pair of skates, as the ice was in prime condition, and taking the tools across his shoulder, was soon skimming up the river.

As he came to the canal mouth, he struck with the axe upon the ice, and it gave forth a hollow sound. Evidently the decrease in the flow was not caused by the water freezing to the bottom. There must be some obstruction at the intake.

It was no small work to cut through thirty-six inches of ice and locate the exact spot of the obstruction, but before ten o’clock Ed had discovered it. Some wood choppers, during the summer had been clearing on an island half a mile out into the lake, and small branches thrown into the water had, by the slow-moving current, been carried along finally to the mouth of the canal. One branch lodging and freezing, became the occasion for the stoppage of others, and then the mass had swung around and across the mouth of the canal, almost cutting off its supply.

It was no job for a weakling to cut and hook out those limbs and brush from the icy water, but finally Ed had the satisfaction of seeing the race fill again, and knowing that the old wheel would be at its work of preparing the farmers’ grist once more.

Ed had never explored the little lake, and the stories the settlers had told him of the Indian uprising had made him anxious to visit some of the scenes of that tragedy so near by. From the intake, past the island, he could see, jutting out into the lake, Massacre Point, where was still standing the log house in which thirteen whites had met their death at the hands of the savages. While it would mean the loss of his dinner, the lad thought that as he was so near, he would skate over to that point, which appeared to be not over a mile away, and take a closer look at the tragic place.

As he was passing the island, there appeared at the edge of a clump of low box-elders the largest dog he had ever seen. It was nearly white and not only tall, but long in body, and gaunt. It started as if it would come to the boy, and he whistled to it. However, as it sprang upon the smooth ice, Ed saw it slip and slide, and then, as it regained its footing, slowly make its way back to the island.

Little had been changed about the old log house since that fearful day when the family, with the few neighbors who had gathered with them for protection, had at last succumbed to the rifle and tomahawk of the red foes. A rusty kettle was standing in the fireplace. Rude benches were still around the table where the victims had eaten their last meal. In one corner a cradle, hollowed out of a log, told of a baby’s share in that day of horror.

As Ed turned away full of sad thoughts and questionings, he scarcely noticed his approach to the island upon the return journey. As he rounded the point of timber, there sprang upon the ice not only one big white “dog,” but three, with lolling tongues, making straight for him. Then he realized what these animals were; not dogs, but the big, fierce, dreaded timber wolves. However, Ed was not much frightened. He rather enjoyed the thought of a race with them. There seemed to be only enough danger to add spice to the adventure. On his skates he could outrun them, and he had smooth going all the way home.

But he had not reckoned upon the power of those long, lank bodies, and muscular limbs, nor upon the hunger that drove them to attack a human being in daylight. He had not reached the edge of the lake before he heard teeth snap like the spring of a steel trap, and almost involuntarily he sprang to one side while the wolves slid by upon their haunches, endeavoring to stop. Then, with another dodge, as they turned and again came at the lad on the ice, he passed them and gained a considerable distance toward home. Twice he was able to escape them through this maneuver before they reached the channel of the river.

Here came new tactics on the part of the wolves. Upon the ground they could outrun the boy, and they sprang up the bank, speeding on ahead, and as he came up all made a dash for him, full in the face. In desperation Ed threw at them the heavy ice-hook, which they attempted to dodge, but only two got away uninjured, while the third dragged himself off with a broken leg. “Well, you brutes,” the boy shouted, “I have but two of you to deal with now.”

His respite was not to be a long one, for as he entered a part of the river where the banks widened out into a tiny but deep lakelet, they sprang again from the shore in such a spurt of savage fury that in a few moments Ed could hear the panting breath from those blood-flecked, foamy mouths close upon his heels.

Ed whirled his sharp axe around as he sped forward, and with an almost involuntary cry to God for help, brought it behind him in a mighty swing. A dull thud, as it left his hand, told him that it had struck home, and he knew that another one of the horrid pursuers would not trouble him more. But even as the thought of rejoicing came, Ed felt the steel-trap-like snap of the remaining wolf’s jaws close together in one of his heavy boots—and in that same instant the ice gave away, as the river seemed to rise up from beneath and overwhelm both boy and beast.

In his anxiety to escape the wolves, Ed had not noticed the condition of the ice they were approaching, nor the fact that from the chunks of ice scattered about, some settlers had been to this place earlier in the day for blocks to store away for summer use. The intense cold had quickly skimmed over with thin ice the place from which the great blocks had been taken, but not of strength sufficient to bear the heavy weight of boy and wolf.

Ed had gone clear under—the water had closed over his head—but fortunately, as they went down, the big brute had loosened his hold upon the boy’s leg, and fortunately also, the ice, although not strong enough for support, was thick enough to break the force of the speed with which they were coming, and as he rose to the surface, Ed’s head came up in the place from which the thick ice had been taken away.

The wolf was less fortunate, for the boy never saw it again. In his kicking and struggling to come to the surface, he may have pushed it down under the thick ice. However, I do not think he was sorry then—or since, for that matter.

But, although the wolf was gone, the boy was by no means out of danger. No one who has not been in a like predicament can realize the difficulty of one who has broken through the ice, in getting out without aid. In fact, there are very few cases on record where such happy terminations have ensued. The numbing cold of the water, so quickly paralyzing the vital forces; the weight of the heavy clothing pulling down; the lack of any object by which one can pull himself upon the ice, make the condition of one in such a plight most desperate.

Ed can not remember of being greatly frightened; certainly he did not fall into a panic. If he had, he would have soon gone under. He realized that he must keep cool—I mean in his thoughts; for he was cool enough otherwise—and use every possible means to extricate himself. He was facing downstream, and nearly at the side of the place from which the thick ice had been cut, for the speed at which he had been going had carried him some distance upon the thin ice. Ed knew that if he reached the thick ice on the downstream side, the current would draw his legs under the ice, and he could not hope to get out. He must turn about and make his way up stream to that edge of the hole his body had made as he had broken in. There Ed began with his fists and elbows to break away the thin ice so that he could reach that which was thick and firm. The current of the river and his heavy boots and clothing seemed determined to drag him away and under. Again and again he was forced to pause for breath. But the numbness was creeping over the boy. He dared not stop in his efforts.

At last he reached the firm ice. Oh, for some one to reach a hand now! but he was so far away he could hope for no help from the mill. If the ice was only rough he might get some sort of hold upon it with his bleeding fingers—but it was as smooth as polished glass, and the water, that in his struggles was thrown upon the ice, made it that much more impossible for him to grasp a hold.

Something had to be done, and that at once, or the lad’s body would soon be slowly floating beneath the ice along with that of the wolf—perhaps never to be found; at least not until the spring sun should unlock the icy prison. What would Mr. Taylor think when he should find the axe and the other wolf? What would be the feelings of the folks in the far-away Wisconsin home?

But the lad would not give up; he must try again! He began to spring up and down in the water, throwing himself forward each time he came up. At last, by a supreme effort, he did not slip back into that yawning, watery grave, but found himself balanced over upon the ice.

For some seconds Ed was too much exhausted to pull his legs entirely out of the water, but lay gasping for breath; all in a tremble. He could not rise to his feet, but knowing that even a short inaction now would prove as fatal as if he were still in the water, he rolled over and over, away from the hole, beating his arms upon his body, until at length he was able to sit up, then to rise to his knees, and then stagger to his feet.

Ed will never forget the rest of that trip home. He struck out to skate, clumsily enough at first, and, as the blood began to course to the extremities, it seemed as though a thousand red-hot needles were piercing his flesh. The bitter cold soon caused his outer clothing to encase him like a coat of mail, in which only the most strenuous exertions kept enough pliability to allow him to move at all.

Ed did reach the mill, after a while, and, strange to say, suffered very little ill effect from his adventure. His bruised hands healed quickly, and frozen toes and ears were so usual in that winter climate, as to not be mentioned among casualties.

CHAPTER X
THE PAINT MINE

Occasionally cows seem to be like folks—that is, possessed with the thing which, in despair of classifying, we call “human nature.” A manifestation of this trait appeared several times in the spring, as each patch of tender, green grass seemed to say to the wandering cows, “It is just a little sweeter and juicier in the next swale, further on. Don’t stop here.” And so they would wander, like folks, on and on, never quite satisfied with the present good, but always expecting to reach the goal of desire at the next place ahead.

This wandering propensity was a source of much annoyance and loss of time to the boys in their busy spring work. Often the cows would fail to reach home until away in the night—only then impelled by over-full udders, and a tardy remembrance of the new calves in the barn lot.

But finally there came a night when no din of bawling aroused the boys to a late milking, and morning light revealed but a lot of half-starved calves at the barn.

“This won’t do at all,” said Rob; “we’ve got to go after those cows, even if it means the loss of a precious day.”

The straight trail leading to their usual feeding grounds was easily followed, but there little trails led about in all directions. To the west lay the deep Iron Creek marsh, a vast morass fully a mile wide, supposed to be impassible except in the driest seasons. Really, it was a sluggish, scarcely-moving, shallow river, overgrown with rushes and coarse grass, through which water moved slowly along, down from the great north country.

This had always acted as an effective barrier to the westward-roving of the cattle, and to the north lay the big woods, with their scanty growth of grass. Until late in the afternoon the boys hunted off towards the south, circling around this low-lying island, climbing a tree on that, in hopes of discovering the bunch resting somewhere, hidden away. Disheartened at last, they turned their faces homeward.

Shortly after noon Mrs. Allen heard a great lowing of cows, accompanied with bleating of frantic calves, and going to the north door had seen the cows coming in on a run, the milk trickling in little streams from their udders—full almost to bursting. Indeed it was now great concern those mothers were feeling for their offspring. She wisely let down the bars, and it was not long before the misery of over-fulness was transferred from the cows to the calves.

The return of the cows presented puzzling aspects to the boys, but there was another mystery to be solved, which was not able to be cleared up until later.

“See the cows’ legs!” exclaimed Rob. “They’ve found another berry patch.” Several times during those June days the cattle had returned home with shanks dyed red from crushing the long-stemmed wild strawberries, which grew in great profusion in patches on the higher portions of the marsh.

“Strawberries never stained that high up,” answered Ed, going over to the cattle. “Maybe the mosquitoes have been at them again. See, their udders even are all red, and the calves have rubbed it all over their heads too.” Ed’s supposition was a reasonable one, for not infrequently the insects had appeared in the marshes in such swarms as to drive the cattle in to dark shelter of the stables, even in day time, the poor beasts coming in frantic and all bloody from the attack of these pests. But this time the color was not the stain of strawberries, nor that of blood drawn by insects.

“Come here, look at this, Rob,” called Ed as he held up his hand all red, where he had passed it over the belly of Old Spot. “Some one has painted our cows! This is nothing else than red paint.” A quick examination showed that the entire bunch had received the same treatment—a thick, bright red plaster covered all their legs and the under parts of the body.

Who had done such a thing, and why? The thought of their Indian neighbors flashed into the minds of both boys; they had paint like that with which in some of their ceremonial dances they smeared themselves. Had they held the cows overnight and painted them up this way? If so, what could have been the motive?

Had Mr. Allen been at home he might have ventured a shrewder guess as to the nature of the material with which the cows had been decorated, but he, too, would have lacked the revelation of the secret which came to the boys a little later.

The corn and oats were all in and growing nicely, and the boys had promised that before haying should begin, they would accompany their Indian friend, Kalichigoogah, and his people, blueberrying, over across Iron Creek marsh, to the somewhat higher swales and little sandy islands of the Little Yellow river, where this luscious berry found its natural habitat.

This pilgrimage was an annual custom of the red men. Here, when the low bushes, growing luxuriantly in moist earth, were so heavily laden with great clusters, from a little distance it appeared as if a section of the sky had fallen upon the ground. Then the Indians would come and camp for a couple of weeks, while squaws and papooses—and sometimes the men, when they felt in the mood—would pick and spread the fruit out to dry in the hot sun, to be afterwards stored away in linden bark baskets, for their feasting in the lean months of snow and cold. So much of providence had the Indian learned from the white man.

Accompanying their red friends, the boys set forth one early morning. Their guns were reluctantly left at home, for they would have provision to last them a week to pack one way, and some heavy loads of the half dried berries, they hoped, on the return. The Indians shaped their course not due west, as the boys had supposed they would, to the Iron Creek marsh, but northwest, to where the timber belt came close down to the deep morass. It seemed to the boys a long way around, but it proved to be about the only way across. The rapid, swinging, half-trot soon brought them into a well-worn trail, leading in their desired direction. Whether this was a deer trail, or a path worn deep by generations of Indians passing this way, as was their custom, in single file, the boys could not tell. Probably men and beasts both had a part in the formation of this easily travelled, narrow road.

As they reached the place where the timber came down to the edge of the marsh they saw why the trail had led that way. The marsh was narrow at this point, and nearly across, at some time in the long ago, beavers had constructed a dam, which probably for centuries had resisted the force of flood and current, and held back the waters in a little lake. Along this grass-grown solid embankment the travellers passed dry-shod nearly to the further side of the swamp, where a break had been made, probably started by the hole-boring-crawfish.

Except in the highest stages of the spring flood, all the waters of the big marsh passed through this break. Dark and cold, and waist deep, the strong current was soon passed through, each of our boys, as well as the squaws, bearing upon their shoulders a big-eyed papoose, in addition to their packs of provision. The Indian braves carried their guns—and much dignity.

Above the dam were perhaps an hundred turf houses, resembling miniature Indian lodges, standing in the shallow water. “Beavers?” enquired Rob of his red friend. “Musquash,” replied the Indian boy. “Beaver go. Smell ’um white man—no like.” Whether muskrat or beaver, the boys determined to come that way trapping in the fall.

As they reached the western side of the marsh, a strange sight met their eyes. A long, flat bank—how long they could not tell—lay up against the shore, gleaming in colors of yellow, orange and red. There were tracks where some kind of animals had come down across to drink at the running current.

“Look at that, boys!” shouted Rob. “Did you ever hear such a thing? It’s a regular paint mine. There’s where our cows came, and they plastered themselves so well that the stuff didn’t all wash off when they waded through this water.”

Rob and Ed were for turning aside at once to investigate. “Why, there must be tons and tons of that stuff.” “How far do you suppose it extends toward the north?” “I wonder how deep the bed is.” “What is the stuff, any how?” “There’s enough of it in sight to paint the world.” “If we can get that to market our fortune’s made.” These were some of the eager exclamations of the boys.

However, the Indians seemed to be not in the least excited, but rather were anxious to reach their camping place, and refused to stop, pushing ahead at the steady, rapid pace. The trail led across a wide, sandy ridge covered with Norway pines. Here and there were depressions of from one to two acres in extent, already covered with a luxuriant growth of blue-joint grass, nearly waist high.

Occasionally a deer would bound away from behind a fallen tree. The doe and her fawn were safe from the Indian’s rifle, but the fat, grass-fed buck had best be wary. Once the procession stopped for a moment as a huge lucivee, the Canadian lynx—“Indian devil” as it was called and dreaded by the early white hunters of the far north—dropped down from a pine tree into the trail in front of them. With insolent, yellow eyes the big cat looked them over, and, seeming to conclude that it was not worth his while to dispute the way, moved leisurely off. The Indians, though armed, had a wholesome respect for this animal’s fighting qualities, who seemed to have not only the traditional nine lives of the cat, but a big added store of invincibility on his own account. Any one of them, however, might have tackled the big brute, had they been alone, but all together would let him go in peace, if so he elected, for the sake of the women and little ones with them.

In a space bare of trees or other growth, the boys caught sight of some noble deer antlers, yet attached to bare skulls, and about which were scattered many white bones. Here was the scene of a woods-folk tragedy. The brave antlers on the two bare skulls were inextricably locked together. The picture came to the boys as they trudged on:—

The crisp brightness of an October morning—mating time; the meeting of the two gallant knights of the forest; the quick call of challenge; the fierce stamping of slender hoofs; the rush; the shock of impact, head to head; the great horns locked, prong in prong, the attempt to break away for thrust and stroke with knife-like hoof; the long day of alternate fierce struggle for freedom and panting exhaustion. Then came night—and the wolves, for there were to be no more days, long-drawn-out with suffering, for these brave warriors.

It is the law of the wild that none of the woods-folk shall die of old age, neither shall very many suffer long of wounds, but, when the strength and cunning that nature has given, no longer protects, their flesh shall pass to add to the strength of the stronger.

The days of a week passed rapidly, as the boys gathered berries, which dried quickly on the clean, hot sand. However, they could not rid themselves of the thought of the great “paint mine,” as they called it, and the desire to investigate and learn its real value, possessed them. They already had twice as many berries, Rob said, as the family could eat in a year. But Ed argued that the paint mine could wait a little, while the berries would not. Besides, he had a plan to sell a lot of this dried fruit to the men going up into the big woods, next fall. After talking over the matter, they concluded to go back after the steers and light wagon, as now they knew the trail, and bring more provision, and something in which to pack the dried berries. Also, they would bring a barrel, which they would fill with the paint.

Taking along a few quarts of the half-dried fruit for their mother, the boys started for home about sundown, preferring to make the trip of eight miles by the light of the moon, rather than in the heat of the day, for old Sol had now begun to show his strength in the short northern summer. Of course there would be no chance of an investigation of the paint mine, though Ed would fill a pocket with the pasty, red stuff, to show to mother.

The berries were harvested, a goodly store, and for which they found a ready sale among the north-bound lumbermen, the next fall, at ten cents per pound. Returning, they spent half a day at the red bank, inspecting the paint mine. Where the bank lay clear and free from grass it extended for perhaps an hundred yards up stream, where it seemed to shelve off into the water, and there the grass and rushes were growing up through it. The deposit in the bank was not gritty, but smooth and slippery, like fine clay, apparently free from soil or dirt, and ranged in color from an orange yellow, to a deep brown. In several places where they dug, it was a full foot in depth, though perhaps half of that would be an average depth.

“Just look at it, Ed,” exclaimed Rob. “How many tons of it do you suppose there is? If it wasn’t so far from some railroad, we could make our fortune shipping this.”

“But, Rob,” replied sturdy Ed, “it’s only about four miles straight to the river; and we could easily fill the five barrels that we have, and build a raft and float them down to Necedah. I am sure we could sell it to Mr. Blake; he always keeps the mill buildings painted. And then, perhaps, we could raft another lot down to Kilbourne.”

Mr. Allen had arrived at home when the boys reached there with their specimen barrel, and was greatly interested in their account of the paint mine. “It is a very pure specimen of ocher, boys, and some day, when the railroads push out into this country, will be of commercial value.”

“What is ocher, father?” asked Rob.

“Chemically speaking, son, it is iron peroxide. In plain terms—iron rust.”

“But why is some of it red and some yellow?” questioned Ed.

Father laughed. “That calls for some more hard words, words that tell what, but not so much why or how. That part you will have to puzzle out when you are in college. The red receives its color from the sesquioxide, and the yellow from the hydrous sesquioxide of iron.”

“But where has all that iron rust come from?” asked Rob. “Are there any iron mines about here?”

“No,” replied Mr. Allen, “I have seen no indication of iron in the rock of the bluffs which push up through the surface here. Yet the water of all these marshes seems to be more or less impregnated with iron. And it is that fact which gives to this section its peculiar value in the culture of cranberries. Somewhere at the north—how far, who can say?—this water of the Iron Creek marsh, you may be sure, flows over a bed of iron ore. Who knows but that some day you boys may be the ones to locate that iron mine?”

Mr. Allen believed that boys, in order to become well-developed, strong men, should be allowed a wide range for experiment, thinking that the lessons thus learned would be of more permanent value than those learned in books or from mere advice. So he agreed to the plan the boys had explained, of rafting their five barrels of ochre down the river to Necedah.

Two days were spent in mining and bringing the mineral to the bank of the stream, another day in building the raft, and, as the river was half-bank full with the June rise, but two more days were required to bring them to the big sawmill town at the foot of the great granite bluff.

The boys had many questions to answer, when they had found the good-natured lumberman, but he took the raw “paint” off their hands, and the boys with happy hearts turned their faces homeward with five crisp five-dollar bills in their pockets.

These youngsters were not to be the discoverers of the hidden iron mine away to the north, for many necessary duties pressed in upon them, and they found no time to spare for so uncertain a trip, but when they had grown to manhood, the railroads did indeed come, and even before their coming, the mine was laid open. As the boys were bargaining with Mr. Blake for the sale of their ocher, they noticed in the crowd of interested bystanders “Old John T.”, as everybody called the great man of all that country. “His eyes were like two sharp augers under those heavy eyebrows,” said Rob, “as he asked questions regarding the deposit, the lay of the land, and the direction of the flowing water.”