Chapter IV: Part 4

The genial clerk, Hendricks, for many years probably the most popular man in Indiana, began, "If it please your Honor, I shall read the information." And then went on to do so, rolling off big words in a sonorous voice, declaring that "'the aforesaid Jerry Cobbler, in the State of Indiana, on the twenty-fifth day of June, 1816, at the town of Corydon, did then and there take and carry away a certain stone knife, said stone knife being then and there the personal goods of one Obadiah Holman, with the felonious intent then and there to deprive the said Obadiah Holman thereof, against the peace and dignity of the State of Indiana.'"

"Guilty or not guilty?"

"Not guilty."

Thereupon the witnesses were sworn to testify to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

All eyes turned on Doby. He was seized by bashfulness and by the bailiff. Between the two he went through his examination with small credit to himself. He was glad to get back to his seat. He listened to the other witnesses, then to the counsel for the defense, and then to the prosecutor again. It was hard for him to follow the arraignment and the defendant's plea.

"I can see the tracks of a badger better than I can the steps of the law. What's the use of all this talk?" he thought. "Everybody knows that Jerry stole the stuff even if he did say 'Not guilty.' They ought to take it from him, hand it to the owners, give him a lickin' and get back home to supper."

The written law of a State requires that a trial by judge shall go through a certain legal form; the unwritten law of the people of a State demands that a trial shall be dramatic and entertaining. Only thus can the people's power and the force of their justice be shown to them as upon a stage. So this trial had followed the usual course.

The clerk had read the information. The prosecutor had made his accusation. Counsel for defense stood with the prisoner. Witnesses had testified against and for him. Upon the evidence, the judge decided the case in accordance with the law in the matter.

The verdict was against the cobbler's son. He was the thief beyond doubt and he was pronounced "Guilty!"

Then came the sentence.

"You must pay a fine of twelve and one-half cents," decided the judge.

"'Ain't got 'n' money," answered the prisoner.

"Perhaps your friends can pay it for you," suggested his attorney.

"'Ain't got 'n' friends," said the prisoner, with perfect truth.

"The cobbler has friends," murmured the crowd.

Alas! Most of the cobbler's friends were as poor as himself. Those who were well-to-do did not like to part with real money for so undeserving a cause. In those days when most debts were paid by produce and business was done by barter, twelve and a half cents was no small sum. No one offered to pay the fine.

Then Judge Jennings said, "According to the law, if you cannot pay the fine, you must go to jail."

Whereupon the guilty one drawled, "'Ain't got 'n' jail." This also was true.

The one building in town which had a few times been officially dubbed a jail, was now, in the stress of the emergency of a crowded convention time, turned into a temporary boardinghouse. In other words, the jail was full of statesmen!

There was no room in it for Jerry.

The crowd stirred. Some showed pride in this state of affairs; some were plainly disgusted; others amused. Doby didn't know what to think.

Then said the judge to Jerry, "I may release you on your own cognizance."

"'Ain't got 'n' cone-ans," objected the stupid Jerry.

The judge explained: "That means the sentence is suspended. You may be a free man as long as you do not steal any more."

Then the judge gave to his audience a short lecture on honest citizenship and loyalty to the new State. It was so simple that Doby understood its every word, and so earnest that it brought the ready tears to his eyes as he stood close beside the judge, looking up at him.

The court adjourned. Day was closing. Victims of the robberies hastened to prove their properties. They must get back to the wagons by milking-time.

The trial was over. Every one was satisfied--except Doby.

"Don't cry," said his father, impatiently this time, to the boy behind him on the homeward-bound horse.

"I want my knife!" wailed Doby.

His father pulled up short. "We have taken up hours of valuable time! We have stopped the making of a State to get it for you! What more do you want?"

"I--want--my--knife!"

"Hav'n't you got your knife?"

"No!"

"Who has it?" demanded his father.

"_He_ has," stuttered Doby. "_He_ has. He will come past this cross-trail in a few minutes. He said he was going home this way. Can't we wait and ask him for it?"

"Who?" cried his father. "Ask whom?"

"Him," gulped Doby. "Him. I don't want anybody to arrest him. I love him."

Bewildered, Mr. Holman stared. "What do you mean?"

Doby swallowed hard. He began again: "The clerk picked up my knife and sharpened a goose-quill into a pen-point. Then he gave the knife to the judge. The judge cut a pen for himself. Then he put the knife in his pocket while he was talking to the clerk. My knife is--in--the judge's--pocket--this--minute!"

Mr. Holman protested: "But, Doby, you went to the judge and asked him for it. I saw you do that."

"Yes, I told him to please give me what he had in his pocket. And he put his hand in his pocket to get it for me as he was telling me not to feel so sorry about the trial. He said I must not cry about it. Then he pulled his handkerchief instead of my knife from his pocket, and he wiped my eyes and he gave me the handkerchief, and he patted me on the head and went away--" Here poor Doby broke down completely and used the Jennings linen freely.

Mr. Holman was greatly amused to find that the absent-minded judge had given the boy the handkerchief which was needed in place of the knife which was wanted.

How heartily the people's idol--the adored Jonathan Jennings--the great man of the convention--would laugh at his own mistake! How quickly he would "trade back" the knife for the handkerchief, and how happily Doby's tears over the loss of his property would be changed to smiles over its recovery!

The chuckling father and the weeping son reined up beside the trail.

Mr. Holman said to Doby: "I can see the judge coming now. We will stop him. You must speak to him yourself. It will please his sense of justice to have you demand reparation because you feel sure of his kindness. When he gives you the knife he will give you his affection with it. He will be your friend for life."

X

THE SPELLING-MATCH

_The Carving of a Great Name_

"I WONDER who that other boy is," and Obadiah Holman stared at a slim little fellow, dark and serious-looking, who was having hard work to keep step with his long-legged father.

A group of men and boys were trudging through the big woods in Spencer County, Indiana.

Several movers from Kentucky had fallen in with the wagon-train of emigrants to which the Holman boy's father belonged, and together the men of both companies were looking over a section of land.

"Out of breath, Doby?" asked Mr. Holman.

Doby _was_ out of breath, so he nodded.

His father suggested: "You boys had better sit down on a log and wait 'til we go to the crown of the hill and back. It is more than a mile and the walking is rough."

Most of the home-seekers were pleased with this place. It offered them the finest of soil. The hardwood trees were splendid. The springs were pure. Every tumbling brook suggested water-power to turn their mills. There were few dangerous beasts and no unfriendly Indians.

Wild fruits and berries and nuts, something delicious to eat for almost every month in the year, were growing on the hillsides. Game was plentiful. The climate was mild. The soil was fertile and very deep.

The father of the little boy said: "The titles to the lands in this State are made out by honest officials. That is a very important matter."

All the men wagged their heads over the misfortunes of settlers who were careless about securing the proper officers to record their farms. Hundreds of early homes were lost through legal mistakes.

"If a settler once takes up his land and pays for it, Indiana protects his right to the homestead he has earned," Mr. Holman agreed. But he made this strong objection to the site. "I'm not over-fond of chopping down whole forests of stout oaks, nor of burning them. I'd rather get a section where Nature has done some of the clearing."

The father of the little boy, who was also dark and serious-looking, considered the spot an ideal one. He said: "I do not mind the work of felling trees. My wife loves the woods. She would be safe and happy here. I want to get her away from the Indian war-paths and the panther region. I could build a half-face cabin here and bring my family this fall. We could be comfortable all winter in a snug camp. By spring I'd have a clearing made."

"Land can be bought for about two dollars and a half an acre; one third down, one third next year, and the last third the next," Mr. Holman told him.

He answered, "Another fine thing about this State is the provision for school land in every township." He smiled. "I like that plan. Schools bring the better class of folks. They make a neighborhood intelligent. Until a schoolhouse can be built in this township, lessons are being taught in one of the cabins, I've heard. We are invited to a spelling-match there to-night. Everybody is," and he looked whimsically at his small son and smiled.

The little boy returned the smile with a sudden lightening of his serious childish face, and watched his father with happy eyes as the tall figure strode away with the other men.

Then the two boys on the log edged nearer and nearer to each other. Doby was thinking of the stranger: "He is tall, but I don't believe he is more than eight years old. I'd just as soon play with a nice small chap if there are no big fellows around." So he grinned cheerfully at his companion.

Shyly the little boy moved closer yet.

"It will be easy to like him," Doby decided. "He is so friendly."

Doby could not think of anything to say. He pulled out his stone knife and fell to carving his initials on the beech log.

The little boy gazed at Doby's queer knife. (Boys always noticed that knife. It was the owner's letter of introduction to all chance acquaintances.) Then he opened his own shabby pocket-knife and neatly cut the date--1816--below the bold O H.

Then Doby promptly cut all the figures 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-0 below the date.

The little boy valiantly accepted the challenge and started to make the whole alphabet in capitals. This was a big task, but he slashed away at it and finally the letters stood in proper order. He had not missed one. He glowed with interest in his work.

"Just like he had a lighted candle inside of him," thought Doby, full of admiration for the youthful student. "I'll have to take the dare." So he followed, rather laboriously, with the curlicued small letters. This took a long time. They, too, were correct. Upon this, both boys broke into satisfied laughter and began to talk.

"Do you know how to spell?" asked Doby.

"Every word in my book," answered the little boy, "beginning at the front or beginning at the back, I can spell 'em all." Then he added, honestly: "I can't always remember the order the big words come in. Page twelve is the hard page. My mother drills me on that page every day."

Now they _were_ friends! Doby knew in a flash how the little boy lived and how he thought. He exclaimed, "That is the way _my_ mother does!" And the two boys, one from New England, one from Kentucky, because their mothers were alike, could look into each other's heart with perfect understanding.

Doby said: "The last page in my speller is the hard one. Every day ma teaches me those words and every night I forget 'em."

The little boy pursed his mouth and shook his head as one who had also gone through this troublesome forgetting. "I can read Æsop's fables," he said.

"I have a New England primer," began Doby, painstakingly quoting from its title-page:

"The
New England Primer
Improved
For the more easy attaining the true
Reading of English
To which is added,
The Assembly of Divines,
and Mr. Cotton's
Catechism
Boston: Printed and Sold by
S. Adams, in Queen-street. 1762.

Have you got one?"

The little boy shook his head.

"You ought to have," was Doby's dogmatic decision, "because for ever so many years it has been _the_ most important lesson-book for schools and families. A million boys have studied it and another million grown folks have bought it, and there have been another million besides those."

The little boy was much impressed by these large numbers which Doby knew were true.

"It says:

"Thy life to mend
This Book attend;

and

An idle Fool
Is whipt at school;

and

My Book and Heart
Shall never part.

"If I had a fresh-cut pine slab, I could show you how some of it is printed. A slab is a nice slate to scratch verses on--"

The little boy interrupted with this discovery of his own: "Our big wooden shovel is thick. I write on it with a burnt stick. When it is all covered with words, I whittle the writing off in thin shavings. Then I write on the clean wood again."

"That's a bright idea," praised Doby. "I'll try it some time." He carved on the beech:

Zaccheus he
did climb the Tree,
his Lord to see.

The little boy examined it, doubtfully. "Is that poetry?" he asked.

"Yes, indeed," affirmed Doby, pointing out the rhymes. "And that bunch of wavy lines at the bottom are the sycamore-tree that he climbed--in the Bible story, you know."

The little boy _did_ know the Bible story. He showed plainly that he was a friend and acquaintance of the famous Zaccheus. But his eyes traveled from Doby's copy of the primer's illustration to a living sycamore down by the brook and the doubt in them deepened.

Doby hastened to explain: "That's what they call art. I have noticed that poetry and art are sometimes different from the way we might expect them to be. We can't always understand them."

Oh, boys of long ago!

Oh, queer old rhymes and drawings!

If Doby could have rolled over giggling on the log and tried to sing Riley's song of the "Raggedy Man and 'Lisabuth Ann," or if the little Kentuckian could have stuck up his hair in pretended fright, made his eyes round and scary, and begun to recite,

An' gobble'uns'll git you
Ef you
Don't
Watch
Out--

how easily they might have understood such poetry and what fun they might have had!

Or if they could have seen the art of Adams, or Stark, or Steele, or Bundy, whose canvases hold sycamores with mottled bark glistening in the sunshine, broad leaves rustling in the breeze, white roots wading in the creek, the very buttons a-dance with joy, they would have wanted, as every boy does nowadays, to straightway try to climb them!

"Spelling--well--spelling has to be exactly right or it won't do at all," announced Doby, returning to a safe subject.

At this the little boy brightened. He could understand spelling.

As the men returned and the group began to separate, the little boy said to Doby, "I hav'n't any candle to bring to help light the cabin for the spelling-match to-night."

"Come anyway," urged Doby. "Ma and pa and I are going. We hav'n't any candles to take. Plenty of other people will bring them."

But strangely enough, not one of those who gathered at the friendly settler's cabin after chore-time had remembered to bring the promised candles.

The settler's wife was the schoolma'am. Besides teaching lessons to other people's boys and girls, and mothering her own eight children, and helping her husband, she was a gardener, a florist, a beekeeper, and a chicken-fancier. She was a spinner, a weaver, a seamstress, a milliner, a tanner, a laundress, a dairy-maid, a cook, and a general "handy man."

In attending to the demands of these various trades she had temporarily left out candle-making. She had trusted to her neighbors to help, and they had failed her.

The first ordinance for the rule of the Northwest Territory had said that, "religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to a good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

The laws of the new State of Indiana said the same thing. When a county was surveyed by the government's orders, it was divided into townships, each containing six square miles, or "sections," numbered from one up to thirty-six. Lot 16 in each township was reserved for school purposes.

Until the near-by settlers could build a schoolhouse on this land, the children of that neighborhood had to be taught in their own homes, or the homes of some one of them. If money couldn't be raised to pay a teacher, the pioneer youngsters had to memorize their letters, had to learn to spell and to read the story of Noah and his ark, from fathers, mothers, and circuit-riding preachers.

The hearth of the settler's cabin became the altar where parents struggled to keep alive the flame of desire for better things, until the schoolhouse could be built. To them the little log temple on Lot 16 meant the hope of progress.

Such women as this teacher-mother were not to be dismayed by a small failure like the absence of candles to light her way.

How could she "give out" words with nothing but moonlight to show her the printed page?

Doby was watching her. He was fond of sociability, and any party, 'specially a spelling-party, is better if it can be seen.

Was there any way in which a boy could help her?

He grasped his new friend, the little boy from Kentucky. He whispered excitedly to him. The little boy, timid at first, soon entered into Doby's plan. Together they sidled up to her and secretly got her ear.

She was interested and pleased. She praised their scheme. "Bright as a button," she considered it.

In the settler's dooryard, with the full July moon shining down upon them, the guests formed two opposing lines of a dozen or so of people on each "side," and made ready for the spelling-match.

'Twas "light as day" they all declared; an idle hour for a bit of fun after a hard day's work.

In the deep shadow of the door-jamb, where no one could see him, stood the little boy from Kentucky. When it was time to begin he shut his eyes and, forgetting everything else, he looked into the book of his trained memory.

Beginning at top of the left-hand column on page one, he pronounced aloud, in a firm childish treble, all the words, one after another, in that column.

The two lines, or "sides," of guests, as they had been "chosen up" by their leaders, "took turns," one person at a time, in spelling the words as the little boy gave them out.

The schoolma'am acted as judge. She decided, "C'rect," if the speller got his word right. "Next," she called, if the wrong letters were used.

Beginning at the second column, the little boy pronounced its words in the same way; then he took the third column; then the fourth. The ones who missed the words he gave were "spelled down" and had to take their seats. Slowly the stools and stumps in the yard filled with faulty scholars.

The little boy's thoughts turned the leaf with as much certainty as though he held a printed book in his hand. He began again on page two at the upper left-hand column and went down it; began on column two and finished that; began on column three--how easy it was!

How often and often and often had he and his mother gone over and over these same old words, laughing because he could spell them with the book upside down or with the book shut!

Wouldn't she be happy when he told her how useful a thing her teachings had proved to be! Her love and her pride inspired him to do his best. And wasn't he glad that his father was sitting on the door-step, ready to encourage him if he got scared!

He kept on pronouncing. Page three went blithely for him and so did page four. Then came five--six--seven; word after word column after column.

The boy stood to it bravely, but the spellers were giving out. Three went down on "phthis-icky" and four on "Ticdouloureux."

Those who remained sharpened their wits and went at the words as though they were splitting rails.

Page after page they conquered. But "asafoetida" was too much for them. Even the schoolma'am wanted two _f's_ in it. She found it hard to give one of them up at the command of a little boy. But he was positive on the subject of one _f_ and the crowd stood with him through perfect faith in his ultimatum. She took her seat. At this the match was over. Every one was spelled down.

The sole survivor was the little boy from Kentucky, who stole away with Doby. He did not stay for the praise the spellers wanted to give him.

Doby thought, "I s'pose he will be all puffed up about himself."

But it was a humble little boy who confessed to Doby: "When I got to page twelve, I couldn't remember--just could _not_ remember what comes after 'potentialities' and 'incomprehensibility' except 'asafoetida.' If they had spelled that word--that 'asafoetida'--I could not have told them the next word. _I did not know what it was._"

Doby was appalled, as well he might be, by this narrow escape. What if they had failed? That their plan had ended fortunately moved him to say, earnestly: "I like you. I am going to give you my New England primer to remember me by. It's got pictures in it. I don't need it any more. I'll put my name on the back cover, then you can always see who gave it to you. The schoolma'am loaned me this lead on purpose so we can do good printing." And he set down primly the letters, OBADIAH HOLMAN.

"Now," he continued, passing over the lead, "you can have your name in the front to show that it is your book."

Smiling happily at the giver and the gift, the little boy from Kentucky, who was soon to become a Hoosier, carefully wrote his name. Doby, straining his eyes in the moonlight, looked over his shoulder and read the words, ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

XI

A PIONEER PUPPY

_A Wagon-train Besieged by Fire and Wolves_

"SMOKE!" cried Obadiah Holman. "Smoke!" The men of the wagon-train drew together anxiously. They, too, had smelled smoke. But no one of them had wanted to say so.

Now they all agreed, "Yes, Doby," and nodded. Their eyes were on the horizon.

It was near the end of a hot day in July and quite time to go into camp for the night.

The marsh-grass bottoms of a network of creeks had so withered in a long "dry spell," that their green plants had become like tinder. The emigrants were afraid to stop or to make supper fires in such a dangerous spot.

One spark might set the whole wide bottom ablaze.

No wonder then that they moved along as rapidly as they could and gazed at one another in quick alarm at the coming of an acrid current of air.

While they debated what to do the breeze increased. Smoke-clouds tumbled in the northwest. A droning like the hum of distant bees came to their ears.

"Doby, help the men to start fires to the south of us in the path of the wind," cried his father, as part of the folks of the train ran forward to light the grass. The only defense they could muster was their plan to fight fire with fire.

It flamed up. The wicked little tongues noisily licked the ground brown and bare as the now strong wind blew the flames away from the wagons.

Other men were violently busy trying to hurry on to this barren ground the oxen who pulled the wagons, and the horses and cows which followed them.

The ashes were hot to their feet, stifling to their nostrils. The utmost urging was necessary to force them over the burned acres.

Women and children ran along, screaming with fear and constantly stopping to beat one another's garments where the embers had ignited them.

The wagons and their utensils rattled and banged. Cattle lowed. Horses neighed. Men struggled to keep up a semblance of order and to control the animals.

"Whenever there is a panic I must try to keep sensible," thought Doby as he helped steadily at the teams where he was most needed.

From the north they could now see the awful wall of red and black rushing after them as they fled.

In the bedlam of the burned district, between the two great blazing waves, they hung to their animals, covering them and their own bodies with woolen blankets and skirts and coats. They endured with fortitude what they could not remedy.

Doby sat on the yoke between his oxen, for his moccasined feet could not bear the smoldering ground. He tried to quiet the beasts as he listened to the cries of birds above him and the plaints of small, scurrying creatures of the thickets. Deer and wild pigs galloped past without noticing the wagon-train, so wildly were they driven by fear of the coming fire.

The emigrants had managed to get many rods into their charred oasis. In the midst of their suspense the fire which was coming toward them met the district that had already burned, and died down suddenly for lack of fuel. The blaze running from them had leaped into a triangle between two flowing creeks and quenched itself.

The woods on the bluffs had not caught. The danger had passed as quickly as it had come. In the sooty, half-strangled train no serious harm was done.

After a scrambled supper where they stood, most of the emigrants sank to exhausted sleep under doubled sentries. But wakeful Doby sat on a tail-gate and viewed the smoking, blackened landscape with misery in his heart.

He shut his eyes and tried to dream of his future home in Vincennes, to cheer himself with pictures of his favorite heroes. There was the gallant Spaniard, Francis Vigo, in doublet and high boots, in plumed hat and sword, with his following of half-wild "voyageurs" and traders at his heels. There was Father Gibault, the French Jesuit, in black cassock and cap, rallying his willing parishioners to their country's defense. Best of all, there was George Rogers Clark, the frontiersman, in buckskin, whose trained army of fighting patriots inspired both of the other leaders to the conquest of Vincennes and the saving of the Northwest Territory to the Union of States.

These pictures of his imagination would not stay with him. There was too much smoke in his eyes and too many blisters on his feet, so he gave himself up to woe and sighed aloud. He did not know that the sons of the early settlers must always be a bold and fearless lot. Such facts about himself had never reached him.

His conscience--that little candle of his soul--was burning low. He tried to resolve to forget his troubles and to show a cheerful face to the wagon-train, but his better thoughts ended in another groan.

The dismal sound was echoed from the wagon-wheels beneath him. He could not believe his ears, for this was not an echoing place. He was silenced by surprise, but the echo continued. It crept toward the tail-gate--a sobbing breath--and a clumsy little animal fell at his feet.

"Oh!" cried Doby. "Oh, you poor puppy! Where did you come from?"

He picked up the mangled and bony brute. At first it fought him off as though whatever perils had brought it to this wretched plight had made it afraid of both foes and friends.

On the instant Doby forgot his own grievances. He snuggled the wanderer against his wampus and crawled into the wagon with him, eager to apply first aid to the case.

He rubbed the cinders out of its hair. He washed the sores and greased the cuts. With his handy knife he shaped bandages and tied up the wounds. He gave it milk. It moaned with pain and feebly snapped at the fingers which tended it. But, after a while, warm and dry and fed, it cowered in a shawl on his lap and whimpered itself to sleep.

"May I have it for mine?" was the world-old demand of the boy to his parents.

"I think you will be obliged to keep it for a time," answered his father, full of pity for the tiny stray. His mother smiled and set out another cup of milk.

"I would like to know where it came from," mused the boy. "It must have been lost in the fire."

His father and mother looked at each other, but did not speak. Why should they suggest to him that some other wagon-train might have been overtaken by the fire and this little creature be one of the victims of a terrible disaster?

It kept him busy. Although it could not have been more than six weeks old, its unlucky adventures had already rather spoiled its disposition. In return for kindness it often gave bites and snarls.

"It doesn't love back the way I thought a pup would do," said Doby next day, sucking some ugly nips on his thumb as they trailed along. "When it gets old enough to stand solid on its legs, I guess it will be about the fiercest dog of its size in the State."

With this pet to care for and to teach, in addition to his chores for the wagon, Doby could bustle about with some appearance of forgetting their precarious life.

For until the drought should be broken and the sky drop rain to renew the springs and cool the bottoms, each hour became more fraught with danger from the wild.

From the black edges of the moonless nights green eyes glared at the fires of the emigrants. Panthers wailed from the bluff in long shrieks, like frightened children--a sound that chilled the blood of every one in the train.

Wolves howled in the daytime--there is no sound more menacing--and dread hung over the travelers.

So the queer little puppy, who took itself so seriously in spite of the ridiculous look of its wabbly legs and mangled ears, was a source of interest and diversion to the whole company.

When it heard a wolf howl it quickly got to its feet, raised what bristles it had, and answered shrilly, pacing back and forth under the canvas top of the wagon where the boy kept it fastened.

"It wants to get out and fight 'em," cried Doby, proudly. "It wants to eat 'em up. See how eager it looks!"

On the second night of its stay in their wagon-bed it won their gratitude. By its yelping and its scratching at the canvas it sounded the alarm, "Wolf at the door!"

Even after Mr. Holman had caught up his rifle to drive at the wolf, which was by that time quite out of range, the adopted puppy rushed about the wagon-floor in an ecstasy of usefulness and slept no more that night.

Through the depressing, unfriendly land which the flames had desolated, women and children huddled timidly in the wagons, men doubly armed walked close to their domestic animals for fear of a stampede, scouts forged ahead and sentries brought up the rear. Dust, heat, distant puffs of smoke, dried-out or muddy watercourses, all told of a region suffering in an untoward season and of beasts uncomfortable and dangerous.

Their train was followed, not by a pack as they sometimes feared it might be, but by one of those lone gray timber wolves, whose age or ferocity--or something--finds satisfaction in nothing but the silent stalk and the solitary kill.

At last things came to such a pass, at last the lone wolf--it was a gaunt she-wolf--lurked so near, that panic seized the hearts of the emigrants. For no rifle could hit her. Like the horrid werewolf, in whom some of the superstitious travelers still believed, no bullet touched her, so uncanny was her cleverness in getting beyond range after every depredation.

"I'm glad that pa put ma in another wagon, for the wolf picks our stuff every time, probably because we are the last in the train," worried Doby, who was frankly afraid of the gleaming eyes which had twice slipped past the sentries in the darkness and appeared below him during his turn at watching at the tiny round window in the middle of the back of the wagon-top. He was not ashamed to swing his lighted pine-knot torch vigorously most of the time. "Those teeth looked as sharp as knives."

To the excited puppy he promised, "When you are a little bigger I'll let you out to do battle." But the frantic puppy did not want to wait to grow bigger. It was ready at once. Its new master was full of applause for its vigilance.

On the third night an awful moment came. The ready sentries patrolling near, and his father at the oxen's head, seemed far, far away when Doby turned from a moment's soothing of his growling pet to find himself face to face with the blazing eyes in a great, slavering head thrust through the little round window.

He shrieked and called as he beat at the hideous, threatening thing with his burning pine knot.

Men came running to help him. But in the half-light of flickering torches no one dared to fire into the group who had been surprised into a hand-to-hand fight with the wolf. From that medley of human screams and bestial growls, the flash of knives, the thump of clubbing guns, she escaped as strangely as she had done before.

The puppy, licking at Doby's bitten hand, begged ferociously to be allowed to get out and get at her.

His father gave his animals to the care of another and took the boy's watch at the wagon's end in the last of the train. Doby, who could not sleep on account of his pet's restlessness, sat beside his father through the long hours of that fearsome night.

In the darkest time, just before the dawn, when deep sleep had finally settled upon the train, the puppy leaped up and slipped its leash and called in sharp glad barks. Without, under the doubly guarded wagon, the she-wolf crooned. The puppy capered with joy. Softly the coaxing whine was repeated. The puppy answered in baby staccato.

And then they knew! Even Doby knew! Knew whence the puppy came, why it was so fierce, and why the lone wolf stalked the train!

A dozen rifles cracked, but the "unerring" pioneer marksmen could not hit that sly wolf in the darkness. She was out of range again.

The father and son looked at each other in consternation.

There was only one thing to do. Poor Doby did it.

He spoke a word to the guards. Then with his heart-strings quite torn apart he took the beloved and unloving wolf whelp from the wagon, set it upon the ground, and watched it lope away into the waiting dark.

Because a wolf never returns to an uncovered trap, the siege was raised.

When affairs are at their worst a brave spirit struggles hardest. So daylight found Doby cheerfully holding a court of speculating emigrants, who were bent on discussing their late guest, the wolf whelp.

His bandaged hand held his busy knife and he carved on a wide, thick strap of leather as he said: "Oh, never mind about the puppy! I don't care--much. There are other dogs. As soon as a friend of mine, who always keeps his word, gets back to his farm at Urbana, he is going to send me a foxhound by the next wagon-train to our new home at Vincennes." And he showed them the leather collar. Near the fastening he had cut OHIO * KENTUCKY * INDIANA. On one side were the words SIMON KENTON. On the opposite side it said, OBEDIAH HOLMAN. Between the two was the comforting legend, THEIR DOG.

XII

ONE PERCUSSION CAP

_The "Pennsylvania Dutch" Colony on the Wabash_

SLEEPY Obadiah Holman shivered and pulled the covers over his head, for gusts of wind were fanning his cheek.

"Sniff, snuff," said the wind. "Grunt--g-r-o-w-l!"

The boy jumped from his bed to the middle of the cabin's puncheon floor. Wide awake now, he listened. What was that sound?

A bear was smelling at his pillow through a crack between the logs of the wall.

Slowly his feet grew cold. Slowly his scalp began to itch.

Only that morning, Father George Rapp, the chief man of the town of Harmony, had said to his boy guest, "Better mix up wet clay with grass, Doby, and chink the hole by your bed, or some wild creature will come along and nip your nose while you are asleep."

At the moment of Father Rapp's command, Doby had been busy. Everybody in Harmony always was busy. The industry of the settlement was epidemic. Even growing boys caught it.

The Harmonists worked early and late. Their clean, blue, homespun-covered figures moved sedately through their gardens, fields and dairies, through their cocoonery and silk-factory, through their brickyard and woolen and oil mills. They toiled without hurry and without useless motions to the time of their own singing or to the music of their little German band.

Even the dogs climbed into the treadmills to do a daily task of turning the smaller machines.

Nothing was bought which they could possibly make themselves. All their surplus goods were sold to outside settlers. Thus, by never taking anything out of their treasury and by always putting something into it, they became so very rich that in 1825, ten years from the time they founded their settlement, Robert Dale Owen, a social experimenter, was glad to buy the town because it seemed to offer such a promise of prosperity to the communistic colony which he himself wanted to establish there.

After a few hours with the strong-willed Father Rapp, who kept the colony going so successfully, Doby had found himself as busy as the other Harmonists. As soon as it was suggested to him, he went to work driving half a dozen pegs into the wall between the logs, and on them laying a board which he had helped split from an oak-tree. He had been obliged to pick up his shavings and his scraps. No carpenter's litter was allowed to mar the perfect neatness and order of the spotless town.

In trying to live up to this high standard of tidiness, Doby had forgotten to daub the fresh clay over the place where his pounding had jarred the chinking out.

He had been proud of his work, for that board on its pegs formed his bed. It was such a comfortable bed with its homespun tick filled with leaves and its patchwork quilt on top.

Now on this very first night he was driven from it by a bear.

"But I'm not scared," said Doby to himself. "I just know I can't be scared. It's nothing but a she bear taking a walk."

While the bear strolled round the cabin and came back to try another sniff, strolled round the other way and came back for yet more sniffs, Doby stood in his linsey-woolsey bed-gown, wondering why he felt so chilly on an August night, and saying over and over in his mind: "I'm trusted to take care of myself. I'm trusted to look after this place. What ought I to do now?"

Doby and his father had been given the cabin to use while they were staying in this Posey County Eden, fifty miles up from the mouth of the Wabash.

As change was the only unchanging thing in Doby's moving life, he was not surprised to find himself alone at night in an outlying cabin of this quaint "Pennsylvania Dutch" colony, while his father, who had brought an important message from Vincennes to George Rapp and Frederick Rapp, his son, was still closeted in the house of those great men.

It had seemed easier in the bright sunset to say to his father, "I'll take care of this place while you are with the Rapps," than it did now all by himself in the dim cabin with that big brute pacing near.

He tried to think, "She can't get me."

Indeed she couldn't. The cabin was as stout as stout could be. The door was four inches thick. Its inside bar was of double strength. The windows were tiny. The wide chimney-top was withed across; nothing could drop down it.

"She can't get the stock."

Cows and oxen were secured in a log barn as snug as the cabin. Pigs were in a lean-to quite as strong. Chickens roosted in tall saplings no bear could climb.

Oh, the men who usually stayed in this cabin knew how to look after stock in the safest way! No one person owned the stock. Each man and woman in the community owned an equal share in every house and in every beast and every tool in the whole property. But no person owned any one thing, not even the clothes he wore. It was all a partnership affair.

"As long as I stay here I must act like one of the community family and do my share. I wonder if they have any partnership rules about bears? What harm can she do?

"She might trample the garden. She might steal the corn."

Another chill shook the small visitor.

"She has sneaked round the bear-traps. She has chosen the farthest-away field." He began to hope, "P'r'aps she won't go in the corn."

There were sounds outside which told him that she was doing the very thing he feared.

Doby silently crept up the ladder to the loft. He peered from its gable window.

The bear was walking along in the moonlight, standing up straight on her hind legs like a person in a fur overcoat.

Over the rail fence, which almost touched the corner of the cabin, she climbed exactly as his mother might have done.

She went down one corn row and up the next, pulling open the husks with her forepaws and examining each ear of the green corn. If it were well filled out and milky, she picked it and piled it, one ear after another, on her arm as his mother might have held firewood. When she had a dozen she walked to the fence and started to climb out of the field. She was not forty feet from Doby.

"Good," he thought. "Now she is going home."

In getting over the fence, she dropped an ear of corn. This provoked her and she threw the whole armload on to the ground. Then she turned back for more.

She could not have noticed Doby nor have suspected any harm, for she selected as much more corn. In the ear it is not easy to carry and she had the same luck with the second batch. As an ear slid out, she spitefully threw the rest away and turned into the field again.

"Oh, the wicked, wasteful thing!" raged Doby. "If she does that many times there won't be half a crop left in this garden."

He slipped down the ladder and stared at a gun hanging on forked sticks over the door. It was a queer gun; the latest-style rifle with cap and ball, which was destined to replace the ordinary flintlock then used by most frontiersmen.

Traders on the river had explained the mechanism of this kind of gun to every passing emigrant. Doby thought: "I can remember every thing I've heard about that newfangled cap gun. Now is my chance to try it."

It was loaded. Every pioneer kept firearms ready for instant use.

Without a sound, Doby moved the table, put a stool on top of it and mounted to the rack.

He could not lift the gun from its place. It was a huge weapon. Even his fifteen-year-old shoulders and his stocky legs were not equal to the task of getting it down. He began to sweat as he glanced round the room. "What shall I do?"

His eyes caught a dark blotch of clothes hanging on the wall. "There are my best breeches. I know I look big in them. I reckon if I had them on I could handle the gun."

In desperate haste he tore off his bed-gown. He girded himself in the manlier garments. He made a final trial--a supreme test of his muscle--and--b-o-o-s-t-e-d the rifle over the hooks!

Remembering to keep the barrel pointed from him and to guard the trigger, he toiled at white heat and dragged the thing up the ladder, "'Cause there may be trouble, and if there _is_ trouble a high spot is the place for me."

He took a peep. The thief had already thrown away another armload, at the same place in the fence, almost under the window. She was in the field.

When she came back again she would be very close to him. He knew he could hit her. He meant to swing the rifle to his shoulder and to take careful aim. He braced his feet. He made the start. But he could not--he could _not_--positively _could not_ raise that gun to his shoulder. It was more than five feet long and weighed a dozen pounds.

But nothing could stop him now. "I'll have to set it on a rest."

He pulled an old spinning-wheel close to the window. The bar held the gun at an angle, sloping downward. The distaff kept the butt from slipping. He sighted along the barrel's shining steel, training it on the length of fence where the bear was sure to come.

There was a queer thumping under his galluses. "I can't point it at her. But--if--she--gets--in--range--"

He held his eye on the sight and waited. He waited and waited and waited and waited. He grew numb with crouching and goose-fleshed with suspense.

"Suppose she went out the other way! Suppose she climbed some other part of the fence. Suppose--

"Ha! Here she is."

Doby pulled the trigger. The gun roared. The bear roared.

Flames sparkled round him. The gun's recoil kicked him end over end. Banged and battered, and rubbing his shoulder, he lay and blinked. If the safe end of the gun had done this to him, what might not its full cannon force have done to the bear?

He was quite prepared for the scene which was before him as he crawled shakily to the window and ventured a look below. The bear lay stretched out on a huddle of rails and corn.

"Of course she's dead." Doby breathed deep. "I know she must be. But--I guess I'll stay up here 'til pa comes. It won't be long before the folks who heard that gun will get here in a flock." He took another peep and another breath. "That is a big bear. Her pelt is almost prime now in the last of August." He got out his knife and examined its edge. A knife must be in perfect trim to skin a bear.

Then an entirely new suspicion dismayed the boy.

"The pelt of a community bear can't belong to any one person. Nearly a thousand people will each have a small share in it. Father George Rapp, the church and state, will direct Frederick Rapp, the business manager, to sell the pelt. Then we will all have an equal interest in the money after it is in the bank."

In the midst of its successes, the Rapp colony finally failed, as did Owen's socialistic colony after it. Both dwindled away after the strong leaders were gone. Both were forsaken, as all others like them have been, and always for much the same reason as Doby gave, when all by himself in the darkness the honest human nature in his soul said to the listening walls in a burst of indignation: "_I_ am the person who killed the bear. _I_ am the one who ought to have the pelt to do with as I please. _I want my own things!_ Be sensible and sell the fur for money? Put the money in the bank? Own one and nine one hundred and seventy-eighth part of the proceeds? No! I'd like to have the pelt to sit on and to look at and to tell hunters about!"

Still another disagreeable thought came to him. It was so appalling that it turned him pale. "If we came here to live, my stone knife would be everybody's knife. I would have to bring my new dog here to be everybody's dog."

He took another peep at the bear. Then he gazed at the ideal town, perfect in its beauty of flower-hung artistic houses, perfect in its thrifty business arrangement, perfect in the justice of its laws.

He thought of happy-go-lucky old Vincennes, struggling to maintain herself under all sorts of faults and difficulties, of that promised foxhound who was already waiting for him, of the house that his father and mother had planned, and he tightened his galluses, jerked on his shoes, donned his cap, like a knight buckling on his armor, as he proclaimed aloud: "I shall let the town keep the pelt, because it is the polite thing to do. But I am glad that pa chose the other town to live in. I'm going to take my knife and get back home to old Vincennes!"

And so it happened, on account of this decision of the boy's and the more practical investigations of his father, that the stone knife found itself established on the farm which the Holmans bought near the old capital of the Northwest Territory.

There the flint entered upon an age of wood.

Out of the forest on the banks of the Wabash came the farm--by clearing.

Out of the forest rose a house and barn of logs.

Out of the forest were made the tools for the farm and the furniture for the house.

From the trees about them all the pioneers who settled in the Ohio Valley took most of their necessities and many of their luxuries.

The ax, the cross-cut saw, and the draw-knife cut the material for the heavy building. The father's Barlow knife and the son's stone one fashioned all the finer work upon it.

When the big fireplace was finished, Doby could sit in the glow of the back log with his foxhound at his knee in the long autumn evenings, and set his knife to the interesting task of making the utensils which the household needed. After that came the joy of whittling animal-traps, fiddles, darts, drums, bows and arrows, snow-shoes, sleds--anything--everything--the happiest boy in the world could want!

XIII

THE VOYAGEUR

_The French Who Followed the Explorers_

THERE was a glint of sun on metal. It came through the branches of the willows at the edge of the homestead clearing. A bit of red cloth wavered beside it.

Again the metal shone with a twinkling flash, again the scarlet patch nodded in the light. Beneath the willows the prow of a canoe pushed silently from the Wabash River into the mouth of a little creek that wandered through the farm.

Obadiah Holman crouched motionless like a rabbit when he caught that flash. At the canoe's movement forward he bounded toward home, as a frightened rabbit leaps from danger.

"Indians!" he signaled to his father. "Indians!"

The father, who was unhitching his horses, hastily got them into the log barn. With the flintlock on his arm as it had been all through the fall plowing in this natural open glade of his section of land, he, too, leaped for the cabin, which was already being barricaded by the boy and his mother.

Through peepholes the family watched.

Soon a solitary figure appeared.

"That can't be an Indian," breathed the mother; "but it may be some kind of an Indian decoy."

"We will hold our aim on him and keep under cover," the father decided.