CHAPTER II--THE NEW HOME
The light of a cloudless March morning pervaded the circumscribedlandscape when the inmates of the cabin were astir again. Not manymoments later, a sudden booming report broke the stillness and rolled insullen echoes back and forth from mountains and forested shores.
"The sunrise gun to Fort Ti," Job said, in reply to the questioning lookof his guests. "They hain't no other use for their powder now."
A fainter report, and its fainter answering echoes, boomed through thebreathless air.
"An' that's Crown P'int Fort, ten mile furder down the lake. They helpto keep us from getting lonesome up here in the woods." And, indeed,there was a comfortable assurance of human neighborhood and helpfulstrength in these mighty voices that shook the primeval forest withtheir dull thunder.
"I don't sca'cely ever go nigh the forts," Job continued. "I don't likethem reg'lars an' their toppin' ways."
After fortifying themselves with a breakfast, in no wise differing fromtheir last meal, the travellers set forth on the last stage of theirjourney, Job volunteering to accompany them upon it, and see themestablished in their new home. They had not gone far on their way downthe narrow channel of the creek when it brought them to the broad,snow-clad expanse of the lake, lying white and motionless between itsrugged shores, bristling with the forest, save where, on their left, wasa stretch of cleared ground, in the midst of which stood, like a grimsentinel, grown venerable with long years of steadfast watch, the graybattlements of Fort Ticonderoga.
Here and there could be seen red-coated soldiers, bright dots of colorin the colorless winter landscape, and, above them, lazily flaunting inthe light breeze, shone the red cross of England. The old ranger gavethe flag the tribute of a military salute, while his heart swelled withpride at sight of the banner for which he had fought, and which he hadfollowed almost to where it now waved, in the humiliation ofAbercrombie's defeat, and here had seen it planted in Amherst'striumphant advance.
In Seth Beeman's breast it stirred no such thrill. It had no suchassociations with deeds in which he had borne a part, and to him, as tomany another of his people, it was becoming a symbol of oppressionrather than an object of pride. To Nathan's boyish eyes it was a mostbeautiful thing, without meaning, but of beauty. His heart beat quick asthe rattling drums and the shrill notes of the fife summoned thegarrison to parade.
The oxen went at a brisker pace on the unobstructed surface of the lake,and the travellers soon came to a little creek not far up which was theclearing that Seth Beeman had made during the previous summer. In themidst of it stood the little log house that was henceforth to be theirhome, the shed for the cattle, and a stack of wild hay, inconspicuousamong log heaps almost as large as they, looking anything but homelikewith the smokeless chimney and pathless approach. Nor, when entered, wasthe bare interior much more cheerful.
A fire, presently blazing on the hearth, soon enlivened it. The floorwas neatly swept with a broom fashioned of hemlock twigs by Job's readyhands. The little stock of furniture was brought in. The pewtertableware was ranged on the rough corner shelves. Ruth added here andthere such housewifely touches as only a woman can give. The change,wrought in so brief a space, seemed a magical transformation. What twohours ago was but a barren crib of rough, clay-chinked logs, was now afurnished living-room, cozy with rude, homelike comfort.
Then the place was hanselled with its first regularly prepared dinner,the first meal beneath its roof at which a woman had presided. Job,loath to leave the most humanized habitation that he had seen formonths, set forth for his own lonely cabin. Except the unneighborlyinmates of the Fort, these were his nearest neighbors, and to them, forhis old comrade's sake, he felt a closer friendship than had warmed hisheart for many a year.
Though it was March, winter lacked many days of being spent in thislatitude, and, during their continuance, Seth was busy with his axe,widening the clearing with slow, persistent inroads upon the surroundingforest, and piling the huge log heaps for next spring's burning. Nathangave a willing and helpful hand to the piling of the brush, and tookpractical lessons in that accomplishment so necessary to thepioneer--the woodsman's craft. Within doors his mother, with littleMartha for her companion, plied cards and spinning-wheel, with thefrugal store of wool and flax brought from the old home. So their busyhands kept loneliness at bay, even amid the dreariness of the wintrywilderness.
At last the south wind blew with a tempered breath. Hitherto unseenstumps appeared above the settling snow, the gray haze of woods purpledwith a tinge of spring, and the caw of returning crows pleased theirears, tired of the winter's silence.
Seth tapped the huge old maples with a gouge, and the sap, dripping fromspouts of sumac wood, was caught in rough-hewn troughs. From these itwas carried in buckets on a neck-yoke to the boiling place, anopen-fronted shanty. Before it the big potash kettle was hung on a treetrunk, so balanced on a stump that it could be swung over or off thefire at will. Sugaring brought pleasure as well as hard labor to Nathan.There were quiet hours spent in the shanty with his father, with littleto do but mend the fire and watch the boiling sap walloping andfrothing, half hidden beneath the clouds of steam that filled the woodswith sweet odor.
Sometimes Job joined them and told of his lonely scouts in the Rangerservice, and of bush fights with Indians and their French allies, and ofencounters with wild beasts, tales made more impressive in theirrelation by the loneliness of the campfire, with the circle of wildlights and shadows leaping around it in the edge of the surroundingdarkness, out of which came, perhaps from far away, the howl of a wolfor the nearer hoot of the great horned owl.
Sometimes Martha spent part of a day in camp with her brother, helpingin womanly ways that girls so early acquired in the training of thosetimes, when every one of the household must learn helpfulness andself-reliance. But the little sister enjoyed most the evenings when thesyrup was taken to the house and sugared off. The children surfeitedthemselves with sugar "waxed" on snow, and their parents, and Job, if hechanced to be there, shared of this most delicious of the few backwoodsluxuries, and the five made a jolly family party.
One morning, when the surface of the coarse-grained old snow was coveredwith one of the light later falls, known as "sugar snow," as Seth andhis son were on their way to the sugar place, the latter called hisfather's attention to a large track bearing some resemblance to theimprint of a naked human foot, and tending with some meandering in thesame direction that they were going.
"Why," said Seth, at the first glance, "it's a bear, an' if he's been tothe camp, I'm afraid he's done mischief, for they're meddlesomecreatur's. But there wa'n't much left there for him to hurt," he added,after taking a brief mental inventory of the camp's contents.
"I can't think of nothing but the hunk of pork we had to keep the bigkittle from b'ilin' over," said Nathan, "and a little mite of syrup thatwe left in the little kittle 'cause there was more'n we could carry homein the pails."
"He's welcome to that if he's left the pork; we hain't no pork to feedbears."
Now, as they drew near the camp, they heard a strange commotion in itsneighborhood; a medley of smothered angry growls, impatient whines,unwieldy floundering, and a dull thud and clank of iron, the excitedsqualling of a party of jays, and the chattering jeers of a redsquirrel. Running forward in cautious haste, they presently discoveredthe cause of this odd confusion of noises to be a large black bear.
His head was concealed in the pot-bellied syrup kettle, held fast inthat position by the bail, that, in his eagerness to lick out the lastdrop of stolen sweet, had slipped behind his ears. His frantic effortsto get rid of his self-imposed muzzle were so funny that, after theirfirst moment of bewilderment, the two spectators could but shout withlaughter.
Now upreared, the blindfolded bear would strike wildly at the kettlewith his forepaws; then, falling on his back, claw it furiously with hishinder ones; then, regaining his feet, rush headlong till brought to asudden stand by an unseen tree trunk. Recovering from the shock,
hewould remain motionless for a moment, as if devising some new means ofrelief, but would presently resume the same round of unavailing devices,with the constant accompaniment of smothered expressions of rage andterror.
But there was little time for laughter when a precious kettle and a fatbear might at any moment be lost by the fracture of one and the escapeof the other. Seth had no weapon but his axe, but with this he essayedprompt attack, the happy opportunity for which was at once offered. Inone of his blind, unguided rushes, the bear charged directly toward thecamp, till his iron-clad head struck with a resounding clang against thegreat boiling kettle. As he reeled backward from the shock, half stunnedby it, and bewildered by the unaccustomed sound that still rang in hisears, Seth was beside him with axe uplifted.
Only an instant he deliberated where and how to strike; at the skull hedared not with the axe-head, for fear of breaking the kettle, and hedisliked to strike with the blade further back for fear of disfiguringthe skin. But this was the preferable stroke, and in the next instantthe axe-blade fell with a downright blow, so strong and well aimed thatit severed the spinal column just forward of the shoulders. The greatbrute went down, paralyzed beyond all motion, to fall in a helpless heapand yield up his life with a few feeble gasps.
"Oh, father," cried Nathan, the first to break the sudden silence, witha voice tremulous in exultation, "to think we've got a bear. Won'tmother and Marthy be proud? and won't Job think we're real hunters?"
Waiting but a moment to stroke the glossy fur and lift a huge inert paw,but such a little while ago so terrible, he sped home to bring hismother and sister to see the unexpected prize, while the jays renewedtheir querulous outcry, and the squirrel vociferously scoffed the fallendespoiler of his stolen nuts.
The flesh made a welcome addition to the settler's scanty store of meat,the fat furnished a medium for frying the hitherto impossible doughnut,and Job promised to bring them a handsome price for the skin, when heshould sell it with his own peltry to the fur traders. But the praise hebestowed upon Seth's coolness in the strange encounter was sweeter toNathan than all else.
As the days went on the advance of spring became more rapid and moreapparent. Already the clearing was free from snow, and even in theshadow of the forest the tops of the cradle knolls showed the brown matsof last year's leaves above the surface, that was no longer a purewhite, but littered with the winter downfall of twigs, moss, and bits ofbark, and everywhere it was gray with innumerable swarming mites of snowfleas. Great flocks of wild geese harrowed the sky. Ducks went whistlingin swift flight just above the tree tops, or settled in the puddlesbeginning to form along the border of the marsh. Here muskrats weregetting first sight of the sun after months of twilight spent beneaththe ice.
In the earliest April days of open water, when the blackbirds, on everybordering elm and water maple, were filling the air with a jangle ofharsh and liquid notes, and the frogs, among the drift of floatingweeds, were purring an unremitting croak, Job took Nathan out on themarshes, and instructed him in the art of shooting the great pickerelnow come to spawn in the warm shallows.
"Never shoot at 'em," said he, when a shot from his smooth-bore hadturned an enormous fellow's white belly to the sun, and he quicklylifted the fish into the canoe; "if you do, you won't hit 'em. Alwaysshoot under, a mite or more, accordin' to the depth o' water."
Powder and lead were too precious to waste much of them on fish, so theold hunter made his pupil a hornbeam bow and arrows with spiked heads.With these weapons the boy soon became so skilled that he kept the tablewell supplied with this agreeable variation of its frugal fare.
Song-birds came in fewer numbers in those days of wide wildernesses thannow, but there were bluebirds and song sparrows enough to enliven theclearing with sweet songs, and little Martha found squirrel cupsblooming in the warmest corners of the field. As the days grew longerand warmer they grew busier, for Seth was diligently getting his cropsin among the black stumps.
Job, having foreseen his friend's need of some sort of water craft whenthe lake should open, had fashioned for him a log canoe from the trunkof a great pine, and modelled it as gracefully as his own birch, thoughit was many times a heavier, as it was a steadier, craft.
One pleasant afternoon in early May, when the lake was quite clear ofice, Seth and his son, with Job as their instructor in the art of canoenavigation, made a trip in the new boat. They paddled down the creek,now a broad bit of water from the spring overflow. When they came to thelake, rippled with a brisk northern breeze, they found their visit welltimed, for a rare and pretty sight was before them, so rare and prettythat Job paddled back with all speed for the mother and daughter thatthey, too, might see it.
A mile below the mouth of the creek a large vessel was coming, under allsail, with the British flag flying bravely above the white cloud ofcanvas. They could hear the inspiring strains of martial music, and,when the noble vessel swept past not half a mile away, they could seethe gayly dressed officers and the blue-jacketed sailors swarming on herdeck.
"It's the sloop from St. Johns," said Job. "She comes two or threetimes, whilst the lake's open, with stores for the garrison to the Fort.It's an easier trail than the road from Albany. Pretty soon you'll hearher speak."
Almost at his words a puff of smoke jetted out from her black side, and,as it drifted across her deck, it was followed by the loud, sullen roarof the cannon. In response a smoke cloud drifted away from the Fort, anda moment later a roar of welcome reinforced the failing echoes. Againand again the sloop and the Fort exchanged salutes, till the newsettlers ceased to be startled by such thunder as they had never beforeheard under a cloudless sky.
"They hain't nothin' to do with their powder nowadays, but to fool itaway in sech nonsense," said the Ranger, as the sloop came to anchor infront of the Fort. "Arter all it's a better use for it than killin'folks, erless," he deliberately excepted, "it might be Injins."