Camp-fire and Wigwam Part 15

"No; there's no beard there. It's as smooth as the cheeks of my little five-year old Peggy at home. It always struck me as qu'ar that Injins don't have beards, but I s'pose it's because the old fellows, several thousand years ago, began plucking out the hairs that came on the face, and their children have kept it up so long that it has discouraged the industry in them regions. See?"

To a.s.sist Deerfoot to catch the force of his ill.u.s.tration, Burt gave him several digs in the ribs. This familiarity would have been annoying under most circ.u.mstances, but it was manifest from the manner of the warrior that he rather enjoyed the effusiveness of the magnificent fellow.

"Why is my brother in the woods alone?" he asked, when matters calmed down.

"I can't say I'm exactly alone, Deerfoot, for Kit Kellogg and Tom Crumpet ain't fur off, and that meat thar is gettin' cold waiting for them to come and gobble it; if they ain't here in a few minutes you and me will insert our teeth. We've been trappin' all winter down to the south'rd and have got a good pile of peltries; we've got 'em gathered, and loaded, too, and are on our way to St. Louis with 'em; warm weather is comin', and the furs are beginnin' to get poor, so we shall hang our harps on the willers till cold weather begins agin."

"My brothers are coming," said Deerfoot, quietly, referring to two other hunters who at that moment put in an appearance.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE TRAPPERS.

The new arrivals resembled Burt Hawkins in their dress and accoutrements. They wore c.o.o.n-skin caps, hunting dress, leggings, coa.r.s.e shoes, etc., and each carried a long rifle and hunting knife as his weapons. They were rugged, powerful fellows, whose long experience in the wilderness had given them a knowledge of its ways and mysteries, beyond that of ordinary men. They were hardy and active, with the faculties of hearing, seeing and smelling cultivated to a point almost incredible. They contrasted with Hawkins in one respect; both wore their faces smooth. Although far removed from civilization, they kept themselves provided with the means of shaving their cheeks. Perhaps through indifference, their beards were sometimes allowed to grow for weeks, but they made sure they were in presentable shape when they rode into the trading post of St. Louis, with their peltries, and, receiving pay therefor, joined their families in that frontier town.

The three men had been hunters and trappers for many years. Sometimes they pursued their work alone, and sometimes in the company of others.

They trapped princ.i.p.ally for beavers and otters, though they generally bagged a few foxes and other fur-bearing animals. A hundred years ago, there were numerous beaver runs in the central portions of our country, and for a long time many men were employed in gathering their valuable furs, hundred and thousands of which were brought from the mountain streams and solitudes of the West to St. Louis, whence they were sent eastward and distributed.

The trapper's pursuit has always been a severe one, for, aside from the fierce storms, sudden changes, and violent weather, the men as a rule were exposed to the rifles of lurking Indians, who resented the intrusion of any one into their territory. And yet there was an attraction about the solitary life, far beyond the confines of civilization, which took men from their families and buried them in the wilderness, frequently for years at a time. It is not difficult to understand the fascination which kept Daniel Boone wandering for months through the woods and cane-brakes of Kentucky, without a single companion and with the Indians almost continually at his heels.

When Burt Hawkins and his two friends left St. Louis, late in summer or early in the fall, each rode a mule or horse, besides having two pack animals to carry their supplies and peltries. They followed some faintly marked trail, made perhaps by the hoofs of their own animals, and did not reach their destination for several weeks. When they halted, it was among the tributaries of the Missouri, which have their rise in the Ozark range in the present State of Missouri.

The traps and implements which from time to time were taken westward, were not, as a matter of course, brought back, for that would have enc.u.mbered their animals to no purpose. When warm weather approached and the fur bearers began shedding their hair, the traps were gathered and stowed away until needed again in the autumn. Then the skins that had been taken from time to time through the winter, were brought forth and strapped on the backs of the animals, and the journey homeward was begun. There was no trouble for the trappers to "float their sticks,"

as the expression went; for the Northwest Fur Company and other wealthy corporations had their agents in St. Louis and at other points, where they were glad to buy at liberal prices all the peltries within reach.

No trapper was likely to acc.u.mulate wealth by the method named, but it cost him little to live, and frequently during the summer he found some other employment that brought return for his labor.

Hawkins, Kellogg and Crumpet were on their way home, having started a little later than their custom, and they had reached the point referred to on the preceding night, when they halted and went into camp. In the morning, when they began to reload their animals, it was found that a rifle belonging to Kit Kellogg was missing. It had been strapped on the package which one of the mules carried, but had worked loose and fallen unnoticed to the ground. It was too valuable to be abandoned, and Kit and Crumpet started back to hunt for it. They went on foot, leaving the animals cropping some succulent gra.s.s a short distance away.

The quadrupeds underwent a hard time during the winter, when gra.s.s was scanty, so that such halts were appreciated by them. The spot where they were grazing was far enough removed to screen them from the sight of Deerfoot, when he was reconnoitering the camp. While two of the company were hunting for the weapon, the third remained behind, smoking his pipe, and, when the time came, prepared dinner against the return of the other ones. The meat was good, but not so delicate as the beaver tails on which they frequently feasted during the cold season.

It has been said more than once that the Indians along the western bank of the Mississippi were less aggressive than those who so often crimsoned the soil of Kentucky and Ohio with the blood of the pioneers.

Such was the truth, but those who were found on the very outermost fringe of civilization, from far up toward the headwaters of the Yellowstone down to the Gulf, were anything but harmless creatures. As the more warlike tribes in the East were pushed over into that region, they carried their vindictive natures with them, and the reader knows too well the history of the great West to require anything further to be said in that direction.

When Hawkins went to the beaver-runs with his friends in the autumn preceding his meeting with Deerfoot, he had as his companions, besides the two named, a third--Albert Rushton, who, like the others, was a veteran trapper. One snowy day in mid-winter, when the weather was unusually severe, he started on his round of his division of the traps and never came back. His prolonged absence led to a search, and his dead body was found beside one of the demolished traps. The bullet hole through his forehead and the missing scalp that had been torn from his crown, told plainly the manner of his death.

This was a shocking occurrence, but the fate of Rushton was that to which every one of his friends was liable, and they did not sit down and repine over what could not be helped. The saddest thought connected with the matter was that one of the three must break the news to the invalid wife, who lived with her two children in one of the frontier settlements through which they pa.s.sed on the way to St. Louis.

When Deerfoot told Hawkins the others were returning, the trapper turned his head and saw that Kellogg had found the missing rifle. The couple looked sharply at the warrior as they advanced, and evidently were surprised to see him in camp. Kellogg and Crumpet were men in middle life, strong limbed, sinewy and vigilant.

Deerfoot rose from the log whereon he was sitting, and extended his hand to each in turn, as Hawkins p.r.o.nounced his name. Kit Kellogg scrutinized him and shook his hand with considerable warmth. Crumpet did the same, though with less cordiality in his manner. It was plain (and plainer to none than Deerfoot) that he was one of that numerous cla.s.s of frontiersmen who regard the American Indian as an unmitigated nuisance, which, so far as possible, every white man should do his utmost to abate. He had been engaged in more than one desperate encounter with them and his hatred was of the most ferocious nature. It was not to be expected, however, that his detestation would show itself without regard to time and place. Kellogg and Hawkins watched him with some curiosity, as he extended his h.o.r.n.y hand and shook that of the handsome Indian youth.

"You've heard of Deerfoot," added Burt, as he proceeded to divide the enormous piece of meat into quarters; "he is the youngster that helped Colonel Preston and his friends from the Wyandots at the time the block-house was burned."

"How should we hear of it," asked Crumpet with a growl, "when we was on this side of the Mississippi?"

"Wasn't I over in Kentucky about three years ago? I rather think I was, and would have been froze to death with Simon Kenton and a few of the other boys if it hadn't been for this copper-colored rascal--ain't that so, Deerfoot?"

And that the young warrior might not err as to the one who was expected to impart light on the subject, Burt gave him a resounding whack on the shoulder that almost knocked him off the log. The youth was in the act of conveying some of the meat to his mouth when saluted in that fas.h.i.+on, and it came like the shock of an earthquake.

"Why can't you talk with a fellow," asked Kellogg, "without breaking his neck?"

"Whose neck is broke?"

"Why that fellow's is pretty well jarred."

"Well, as long as _he_ don't object I don't see what it is to _you_,"

was the good-natured response of Hawkins, who resumed chewing the juicy meat.

"Some of these days, somebody will give you a whack in return when you ain't expecting it, and it will be a whack too that will cure you of that sort of business. I believe, Deerfoot, that you are a Shawanoe, ain't you?"

"Deerfoot is a Shawanoe," was the answer, his jaws at work on the food just furnished him.

"I've heard tell of you; you're the chap that always uses a bow and arrow instead of a gun?"

The youth answered the query by a nod of the head. As he did so, Tom Crumpet, who sat further away, vigorously working his jaws, uttered a contemptuous grunt. Kit turned his head and looked inquiringly at him.

"Maybe you think he can't use the bow and arrow. I s'pose, Deerfoot, that's the bow you fired the arrow through the window of the block-house that was nigh a hundred yards off, with a letter tied around it, and fired it agin out on the flatboat with another piece of paper twisted around it--isn't that so?"

Despite his loose-jointed sentences, Deerfoot caught his meaning well enough to nod his head in the affirmative.

"Did you see it done?" asked Crumpet, with a grin at Hawkins.

"How could I see it when I wasn't there?"

"I guess no one else was there," growled Tom; "I've noticed whenever that sort of business is going on it's always a good ways off, and the people as sees it are the kind that don't amount to much in the way of telling the truth."

These were irritating words, made more so by the contemptuous manner in which they were spoken. Deerfoot clearly understood their meaning, but he showed no offence because of them. He was not vain of his wonderful skill in woodcraft, and, though he had a fiery temper, which sometimes flashed to the surface, he could not be disturbed by any slurs upon his attainments.

Kit Kellogg was impatient with his companion, but he knew him so well that he did not discuss the matter. Had not the beard of Burt Hawkins hidden his countenance, the others would have perceived the flush which overspread it. He was angered, and said, hotly:

"It might do for some folks to say that other folks didn't tell the truth, but I don't think _you're_ the one to say it."

Crumpet champed his meat in silence, using his hunting knife for fork and knife, and drinking water from the tin cup which he had filled a short distance away, and from which the others, excepting Deerfoot, also drank. Instead of answering the slur of Hawkins, he acted as though he did not fully catch his meaning, and did not care to learn. What he had said, however, rankled in the heart of Burt, who, holding his peace until all were through eating, addressed the surly fellow:

"If you doubt the skill of Deerfoot, I'll make you a wager that he can outshoot you, you using your gun and he his bow and arrow, or you can both use a gun."

"He might do all that," said Kellogg, with a twinkle of the eye, "and it wouldn't prove that Tom was any sort of a marksman."

Crumpet was able to catch the meaning of that remark, and it goaded him almost to the striking point.

CHAPTER XIX.