Part 41 (1/2)

”One day when the woman sat by the fire crying, the little lad touched her brow with his hand and said:

”'Don't be skeered, mother. I'm brave. I'll take care o' you.'

”Solomon came to where I was breaking some dry sticks for the fire and said laughingly, as he wiped a tear from his cheek with the back of his great right hand:

”'Did ye ever see sech a gol' durn cunnin' leetle cricket in yer born days--ever?'

”Always thereafter he referred to the boy as the Little Cricket.

”That would have been a sad journey but for my interest in these reactions on this great son of Pan, with whom I traveled. I think that he has found a thing he has long needed, and I wonder what will come of it.

”When he had discovered, by tracks in the trail, that the Indians who had run away from us were gone South, he had no further fear of being molested.

”'They've gone on to tell what happened on the first o' the high slants an' to warn their folks that the Son o' the Thunder is comin' with lightnin' in his hands. Injuns is like rabbits when the Great Spirit begins to rip 'em up. They kin't stan' it.”

That afternoon Solomon, with a hook and line and grubs, gathered from rotted stumps, caught many trout in a brook crossing the trail and fried them with slices of salt pork. In the evening they had the best supper of their journey in what he called ”The Catamount Tavern.” It was an old bark lean-to facing an immense boulder on the sh.o.r.e of a pond. There, one night some years before, he had killed a catamount.

It was in the foot-hills remote from the trail. In a side of the rock was a small bear den or cavern with an overhanging roof which protected it from the weather. On a shelf in the cavern was a round block of pine about two feet in diameter and a foot and a half long. This block was his preserve jar. A number of two-inch augur holes had been bored in its top and filled with jerked venison and dried berries. They had been packed with a cotton wick fastened to a small bar of wood at the bottom of each hole. Then hot deer's fat had been poured in with the meat and berries until the holes were filled within an inch or so of the top. When the fat had hardened a thin layer of melted beeswax sealed up the contents of each hole. Over all wooden plugs had been driven fast.

”They's good vittles in that 'ere block,” said Solomon. ”'Nough, I guess, to keep a man a week. All he has to do is knock out the plug an' pull the wick an' be happy.”

”Going to do any pulling for supper?” Jack queried.

”Nary bit,” said Solomon. ”Too much food in the woods now. We got to be savin'. Mebbe you er I er both on us 'll be comin' through here in the winter time skeered o' Injuns an' short o' fodder. Then we'll open the pine jar.”

They had fish and tea and milk and that evening as he sat on his blanket before the fire with the little lad in his lap he sang an old rig-a-dig tune and told stories and answered many a query.

Jack wrote in one of his letters that as they fared along, down toward the sown lands of the upper Mohawk, Solomon began to develop talents of which none of his friends had entertained the least suspicion.

”He has had a hard life full of fight and peril like most of us who were born in this New World,” the young man wrote. ”He reminds me of some of the Old Testament heroes, and is not this land we have traversed like the plains of Mamre? What a gentle creature he might have been if he had had a chance! How long, I wonder, must we be slayers of men? As long, I take it, as there are savages against whom we must defend ourselves.”

The next morning they met a company of one of the regiments of General Herkimer who had gone in pursuit of Red Snout and his followers.

Learning what had happened to that evil band and its leader the soldiers faced about and escorted Solomon and his party to Oriskany.

CHAPTER XX

THE FIRST FOURTH OF JULY

Mrs. Scott and her child lived in the family of General Herkimer for a month or so. Settlers remote from towns and villages had abandoned their farms. The Indians had gone into the great north bush perhaps to meet the British army which was said to be coming down from Canada in appalling numbers. Hostilities in the neighborhood of The Long House had ceased. The great Indian highway and its villages were deserted save by young children and a few ancient red men and squaws, too old for travel. Late in June, Jack and Solomon were ordered to report to General Schuyler at Albany.

”We're gettin' shoveled eroun' plenty,” Solomon declared. ”We'll take the womern an' the boy with us an' paddle down the Mohawk to Albany.

They kind o' fell from Heaven into our hands an' we got to look a'ter 'em faithful. Fust ye know ol' Herk 'll be movin' er swallered hull by the British an' the Injuns, like Jonah was by the whale, then what 'ud become o' her an' the Leetle Cricket? We got to look a'ter 'em.”

”I think my mother will be glad to give them a home,” said Jack. ”She really needs some help in the house these days.”

2

The Scotts' buildings had been burned by the Indians and their boats destroyed save one large canoe which had happened to be on the south sh.o.r.e of the river out of their reach. In this Jack and Solomon and ”Mis' Scott” and the Little Cricket set out with loaded packs in the moon of the new leaf, to use a phrase of the Mohawks, for the city of the Great River. They had a carry at the Wolf Riff and some shorter ones but in the main it was a smooth and delightful journey, between wooded sh.o.r.es, down the long winding lane of the Mohawk. Without fear of the Indians they were able to shoot deer and wild fowl and build a fire on almost any part of the sh.o.r.e. Mrs. Scott insisted on her right to do the cooking. Jack kept a diary of the trip, some pages of which the historian has read. From them we learn: