Part 9 (1/2)

”That's the deceivingest bird I ever saw,” panted Sandy, out of breath with running, and looking shamefacedly at the corn that he had spilled in his haste to catch his prey. ”Why, it acted just as if its right wing was broken, and then it flew off as sound as a nut, for all I could see.”

When the ploughmen met them, on the next turn of the team, Uncle Aleck said, ”Did you catch the lapwing, you silly boy? That fellow fooled you nicely.”

”Lapwing?” said Sandy, puzzled. ”What's a lapwing?” But the ploughmen were already out of earshot.

”Oh, I know now,” said Oscar. ”I've read of the lapwing; it is a bird so devoted to its young, or its nest, that when it fancies either in danger, it a.s.sumes all the distress of a wounded thing, and, fluttering along the ground, draws the sportsman away from the locality.”

”Right out of a book, Oscar!” cried Sandy. ”And here's its nest, as sure as I'm alive!” So saying, the lad stooped, and, parting the gra.s.s with his hands, disclosed a pretty nest sunk in the ground, holding five finely speckled eggs. The bird, so lately playing the cripple, cried and circled around the heads of the boys as they peered into the home of the lapwing.

”Well, here's an actual settler that we must disturb, Sandy,” said Oscar; ”for the plough will smash right through this nest on the very next turn. Suppose we take it up and put it somewhere else, out of harm's way?”

”I'm willing,” a.s.sented Sandy; and the two boys, carefully extracting the nest from its place, carried it well over into the ploughed ground, where under the lee of a thick turf it was left in safety.

But, as might have been expected, the parent lapwing never went near that nest again. The fright had been too great.

”What in the world are you two boys up to now?” shouted Uncle Aleck from the other side of the ploughing. ”Do you call that dropping corn?

Hurry and catch up with the team; you are 'way behind.”

”Great Scott!” cried Sandy; ”I had clean forgotten the corn-dropping.

A nice pair of farmers we are, Oscar!” and the lad, with might and main, began to close rapidly the long gap between him and the steadily moving ox-team.

”Leg-weary work, isn't it, Sandy?” said his father, when they stopped at noon to take the luncheon they had brought out into the field with them.

”Yes, and I'm terribly hungry,” returned the boy, biting into a huge piece of cold corn-bread. ”I shouldn't eat this if I were at home, and I shouldn't eat it now if I weren't as hungry as a bear. Say, daddy, you cannot think how tired my leg is with the punching of that dibble into the sod; seems as if I couldn't hold out till sundown; but I suppose I shall. First, I punch a hole by jamming down the dibble with my foot, and then I kick the hole again with the same foot, after I have dropped in the grains of corn. These two motions are dreadfully tiresome.”

”Yes,” said his uncle, with a short laugh, ”and while I was watching you and Oscar, this forenoon, I couldn't help thinking that you did not yet know how to make your muscles bear an equal strain. Suppose you try changing legs?”

”Changing legs?” exclaimed both boys at once. ”Why, how could we exchange legs?”

”I know what Uncle Aleck means. I saw you always used the right leg to jam down the dibble with, and then you kicked the hole full with the right heel. No wonder your right legs are tired. Change hands and legs, once in a while, and use the dibble on the left side of you,”

said Charlie, whose driving had tired him quite as thoroughly.

”Isn't Charlie too awfully knowing for anything, Oscar?” said Sandy, with some sarcasm. Nevertheless, the lad got up, tried the dibble with his left hand, and saying, ”Thanks, Charlie,” dropped down upon the fragrant sod and was speedily asleep, for a generous nooning was allowed the industrious lads.

CHAPTER XI

AN INDIAN TRAIL.

The next day was Sunday, and, true to their New England training, the settlers refrained from labor on the day of rest. Mr. Bryant took his pocket Bible and wandered off into the wild waste of lands somewhere.

The others lounged about the cabin, indoors and out, a trifle sore and stiff from the effects of work so much harder than that to which they had been accustomed, and glad of an opportunity to rest their limbs.

The younger of the boy settlers complained that they had worn their legs out with punching holes in the sod while planting corn. The soles of their feet were sore with the pressure needed to jam the dibble through the tough turf. In the afternoon, they all wandered off through the sweet and silent wilderness of rolling prairie into the woods in which they proposed to lay off another claim for pre-emption.

At a short distance above their present home, cutting sharply through the sod, and crossing the Republican Fork a mile or so above their own ford, was an old Indian trail, which the boys had before noticed but could not understand. As Charlie and Oscar, pressing on ahead of their elders, came upon the old trail, they loitered about until the rest of the party came up, and then they asked what could have cut that narrow track in the turf, so deep and so narrow.

”That's an Injun trail,” said Younkins, who, with an uncomfortably new suit of Sunday clothes and a smooth-shaven face, had come over to visit his new neighbors. ”Didn't you ever see an Injun trail before?”

he asked, noting the look of eager curiosity on the faces of the boys.

They a.s.sured him that they never had, and he continued: ”This yere trail has been here for years and years, long and long before any white folks came into the country. Up north and east of yer, on the head-waters of the Big Blue, the Cheyennes used to live,”--Younkins p.r.o.nounced it Shyans,--”and as soon as the gra.s.s began to start in the spring, so as to give feed to their ponies and to the buffalo, they would come down this yere way for game. They crossed the Fork just above yere-like, and then they struck down to the head-waters of the Smoky Hill and so off to the westwards. Big game was plenty in those days, and now the Injuns off to the north of yere come down in just the same way--hunting for game.”

The boys got down on their knees and scanned the trail with new interest. It was not more than nine or ten inches across, and was so worn down that it made a narrow trench, as it were, in the deep sod, its lower surface being as smooth as a rolled wagon-track. Over this well-worn track, for ages past, the hurrying feet of wild tribes had pa.s.sed so many times that even the wiry gra.s.s-roots had been killed down.