Part 14 (1/2)

With a bound he replaced the coal.

The Boy knocked it off and pounced on him.

The fight was brief. They had scarcely touched the ground before the Boy was on top pounding with both his little, clinched fists.

”Stop it--you're killin' me!” the under one screamed.

”Will you let him alone?” the Boy hissed.

”You're killin' me, I tell ye!” the tow-head yelled in terror. ”Stop it I say--would you kill a feller just for a doggoned old cooter?”

”Will you let him alone?”

”Yes, if ye won't kill me.”

The Boy slowly rose. The tow-head leaped to his feet and with a look of terror started on a run.

”You needn't run, I won't hit ye again!” the Boy cried.

But the legs only moved faster. Never since he was born did the Boy see a pair of legs get over the ground like that. He sat down and laughed and then hurried on to join Sarah.

He didn't tell his sister what had happened. His mother mustn't know that he had been in a fight. But when he felt the touch of her hand on his forehead that night as he rose from her knee he couldn't bear the thought of deceiving her again and so he confessed.

”It wasn't wrong, was it, to fight for a thing like that?” he asked wistfully.

”No,” came the answer. ”He needed a thras.h.i.+ng--the little scoundrel, and I'm glad you did it.”

XI

The school flickered out in five weeks and the following summer another lasted for six weeks.

And then they moved to the land Tom had staked off in the heart of the great forest fifteen miles from the northern banks of the Ohio. He would still be in sight of the soil of Kentucky.

The Boy's heart beat with new wonder as they slowly floated across the broad surface of the river. He could conceive of no greater one.

”There _is_ a bigger one!” his father said. ”The Mississippi is the daddy of 'em all--the Ohio's lost when it rolls into her banks--stretchin' for a thousand miles an' more from the mountains in the north way down to the Gulf of Mexico at New Orleans.”

”And it's all ours?” he asked in wonder.

”Yes, and plenty more big ones that pour into hit from the West.”

The Boy saw again the impa.s.sioned face of the orator telling the glories of his country, and his heart swelled with pride.

They left the river and plunged into the trackless forest. No roads had yet scarred its virgin soil. Only the blazed trail for the first ten miles--the trail Tom had marked with his own hatchet--and then the magnificent woods without a mark. Five miles further they penetrated, cutting down the brush and trees to make way for the wagon.

They stopped at last on a beautiful densely wooded hill near a stream of limpid water. A rough camp was quickly built Indian fas.h.i.+on and covered with bear skins.

The next day the father put into the Boy's hand the new axe he had bought for him.

”You're not quite eight years old, Boy,” he said, encouragingly, ”but you're big as a twelve-year-old an' you're s.p.u.n.ky. Do you think you can swing an axe that's a man's size?”