Читать книгу Summerfield or, Life on a Farm - Day Kellogg Lee - Страница 11

Fabens was pleased with his neighbors, and warmly reciprocated the interest they took in him. There was old Moses Waldron, the first settler, an out-and-out backwoodsman; smart with an axe, sure with a gun, free with a bowl of metheglin, open in hospitality, and an enemy only to owls, and blackbirds, wolves, thieves, tories and the British. He chased the tories and redcoats in his dreams, and talked to himself while walking alone awake. The owls annoyed him sorely. Not because they killed his pretty chickens, but because there was so little of them beside their feathers, and their eyes were so monstrous white and large, and they had such a ghostly halloo. Whenever he caught an owl's hollow voice in ominous boomings from the woods, he stopped and cursed him, and cried, "Ah hoo, hoo, ah hoo-ah; ah hoo, you pesky torment! if I had you by the neck, I'd wring it for you, I'll warrant you I would, ah-hoo-ah!"

Aunt Polly Waldron was a match for her husband; and while she was an actual woman in chaste and single heart, in motherly loves, in the tenderest sympathies and most unselfish feelings, she was a large, square-shouldered and hard-handed woman; she could split oven-wood, hunt bees, skin deer, and hoe corn; and she loved to tell "how she shot a tory in the Revolution, who came while Moses was away in the wars, and fired their barn, and took her best feather-bed out door and ripped it, and scattered the feathers to the sky: how the tory whooped and keeled as she dropped him, and how three other tories and an Indian legged it like Jehu away."

Uncle Walter Mowry was younger by ten years than Mr. Waldron, and his wife Huldah was five years younger than he, and they were specimens of thrifty and noble, but uncultivated nature, such as we love to find in the backwoods, and such as furnish materials for the richest and finest city life. Uncle Walter was of a medium stature, a well-moulded face, and fair skin, and he was hardy as a bear and athletic as a panther. There was never a farmer who kept cleaner fields, or handsomer stake-and-rider fence than he; or had earlier corn, or a larger woodpile; yet he did love a hunt more dearly than a venison pie; he caught fish from pools where others received not a nibble; and he enjoyed a leisure day, and a feast, and a fine story.

Aunt Huldah was a little swarthy woman, weighing only ninety pounds at forty years of age; but she was free and generous, and all who had her heart and its overflowing love, had all, and there was nothing left of her. She had the whitest linens, the clearest maple sugar, and the smoothest and cleanest white maple floor in all the settlement; and she loved scrubbing and scouring as well as Uncle Walter loved hunting. A stranger would have thought her a real firer of a scold; but she was never in a passion; and Uncle Walter used to say, he found her the best, if anything, when seeming to scold the hardest, and she had that way of expressing her interest in him, and making her work go on more briskly.

There were Thomas Teezle and his wife, who were valued acquisitions to the settlement. Thomas was stocky and muscular, frank, fearless and free-hearted; and he kept a keen and ringing broad axe, and could hew a beam or a sleeper as straight as a bee-line.

There were Jacob Flaxman and his wife Phoebe, and they were cousins; and both had yellow hair and freckled faces; both weighed in one notch; both sang in one song; both craved a fine farm and happy home, and were prospered in their craving.

There was Abram Colwell, who gloried in never having cyphered beyond the rule of three, or read any book but his almanac through; but who was upright as an oak; shrewd as a black fox; hearty as a beaver, and jocund as a jay.

And there was Bela Wilson, a farmer, a chairmaker, a shoemaker, carpenter and blacksmith, all in one, as Uncle Walter declared; and while he was close and exacting in a bargain, and stinted in his gifts, he had many streaks of kindness, and added usefulness, honor, interest and life to the settlement.

And among these people Fabens found pleasure and good fortune. The summer that followed the date of his letter, was warm and fruitful, and he went forth clearing and planting with a forward heart; and when September came, he looked back on his labors with pride, and felt a sense of comfort and content, for the beginning he had made of a home. By dint of extreme diligence he made a larger clearing in the spring than he had hoped, and succeeded in planting it all to corn; and now in the autumn, he had a wide field, bearing the promise of a bountiful harvest.

But he had not expected increase without tax, nor joy without annoyance. His corn-hills supported a liberal yield of well-filled, glistening ears; but foreign feeders that had not planted, nor hoed, came in for a share of his abundance.

The bears invaded his cornfield, trampled down the stalks, devoured much, and carried away more than he felt like sparing. He consulted his neighbors, and found that others were annoyed in the same way, and all they could do, was to guard their fields as well as they could, and hunt down and slay some of the ravening forest prowlers.

"We told you, Fabens, you'd have to come to that at last," said Colwell. "Wild beasts are thick as spatter around here; and you must down with some of 'em. It's no use to talk baby; you must kill the critters, or they'll eat you out of house and home."

"But they have a right to live, and I haven't a heart to kill 'em," said Fabens.

"It does look kindy cruel to drag down a handsome buck and cut his glossy throat; and see a harmless fawn spout blood, and strangle and die; and I used to shut my eyes when I bit a pigeon's neck,[1] and took little quails' heads off; but now I can do't without winkin'; and as for them infarnal bears, I'd ruther kill 'em than to eat. And you'll have to kill 'em, if you want any corn."

"But I hate to see them hunted, and wounded, and killed, they suffer so much."

"Suffer?—Suffer to be killed!—Bears suffer to be killed? By hokey, they don't indeed! Not they, they're used to it as eels are to bein' skinned. And haint you heern of the bear-hunt we're goin' to have to-night?"

"No, I have not."

"Wal, make ready with your birch candle and your axe; and come over and get my old queen's-arm musket, and go with us. I tell you what, it's no small fun to hunt bears. We'll have a smart time, and finish off at Waldrons's with a supper of bear's meat washed down with metheglin. Come, none of your chicken feelins in this country. You must kill and quarter the wolves and bears."

"I suppose I must. They are carrying away all my corn. In whose field do you meet?"

"In yourn, Fabens, if you'll jine us. Come, we'll give your little patch a sweepin."

"Well, I'll be with you. They cannot suffer much if shot through the head or heart; and I may as well begin a hunter's life killing bears and wolves; but the deer I'll never trouble."

Arrangements were made for the bear hunt, and a bear hunt they had; and all declared they were glad Fabens was along, for it gave him something not to be found on the Hudson. Torches were prepared, guns and axes were ready, dogs and men assembled at an early hour, and Fabens, Colwell, and Wilson were sent on a scout into the field to listen for the ravagers, and give the signal of attack. The full, bright moon beamed down from the sky, and every movement had to be stealthy and low to avoid alarm; and as Fabens crept into the field, and hid himself in the hollow of a stump, and listened, his very heart frightened him, for it beat so loudly, he waited in fear that it would alarm the bears, or betray him into their clutches. Beat, beat, went his heart; tang, tang, went the insects; hoot, hoot, went the owls; and on, and on rode the moon. Again his flint was examined; again his tinder-box felt for, and his torch fixed for lighting when it might be needed in the woods; and his eager ear opened wider and wider to catch a rustling noise.

At last the corn rustled, and footfalls sounded faintly in his ear, and

Colwell crept up and whispered, "The bears are in! don't you hear 'em?

They're movin' this way. There! hear 'em rattle the corn!—There,

there again, hear 'em snuffle and chank!"

"I hear something," said Fabens.

"That's 'um! Old Bruin has come with his wife and children. We'll give 'em a belly full. Stay here, Fabens, and I'll sly away, and start up the company. Hear that! and that!—they're snorters! Slink down into the stump; and if our comin' scares 'em, jump out and keep track a little. Don't be scart. We'll be along in a jiffy, and nab the varmints."

Colwell crept away, and exchanged a word with Wilson, and then stole off to rally the company. But Fabens began to shudder in his sentry-box. He had grown to be quite a backwoodsman; he had taken the strength and courage of the wild forest life; he was usually calm and self-possessed; but here was a new venture entirely, and while beat, beat, went his heart in rising alarm, the loud and louder rattle of the corn informed him of the closer coming of the animals. Now he hears them tear off an ear! Now they craunch it, and crowd snuffling along through the corn-hills! Now they cough, and his wildest fears are up; and now they breathe in hearing, and move as if for the place of his concealment, strip down a stalk, and rend off an ear, as he thinks, where Colwell just lay!

What shall he do? If he stirs, they may grasp him. If he remains, they will surely scent him out, and take him. O, terrible moment! Where in the world are the company, that they do not run to his relief? His hair stands on end, lifting his hat so high, the bears must see him now!—Shall he rise and shoot? He would be likely to miss, he is so awkward with a gun. Why did he consent to lie there? Why don't they come, as they said they would?—There! there! a step nearer, and the grate of their teeth sets him shivering! Now, now he must die!—Must he not? or what other sound is that more distant? Footsteps—a whisper, and—they come, they come! and away jump the bears, and away with dogs, axes, guns, and torches after them go the men of the hunt!

"Now, Fabens, up and away; the fun's afoot, the fun's afoot!" cried

Colwell.

"Yes; but such fun!" faltered Fabens.

"Come on, come on! Mr. Bruin and his cubs shall have a good visit at their home!" cried Wilson.

"Nothing could be more in the nick of time!" cried Uncle Walter.

"We git 'em now!" said the Indians.

"Seek 'em, Bose! seek 'em, Spanker! seek 'em Nig! seek 'em, Watch!" shouted Flaxman; and with flaring lights, and clatter, and howl, and laugh, and halloo, away they pursued the bounding game. Now they take the woods. Now the bears rush down the hill, cross the stream, run in the gully, and race away; and dogs and men follow close and closer on their track. Now they worry up a difficult bank, and scuttle and wheeze away, away. But the dogs gain upon them; the torches alarm them; the ground is not safe, and they climb the trees, as the hunters all wish, and seek concealment in the shadow of closely covering leaves.

"Up a tree, be you, Mr. Bruin, eh?" cried Colwell.

"What can you do now?" asked Fabens.

"Down with the tree!" shouted Flaxman.

"No, let me see if I can't fetch the fellow with my old gun," cried Uncle Walter. "I reckon I can reach him. I've picked bears out of taller trees than that."

"What's there?" shouted Flaxman. "There's two on 'em treed. See the dogs tear away at the foot of yon maple! Let's slash down the trees, and give the dogs a little more fun. Old Spank's ready to jump out of his skin, he's so fairse. And see Nig on his hind legs, and Watch jump up and nip the bark from the tree. Down with them, and give the dogs a little more fun."

"No, no; I'll see first if I can't tickle 'em with quicker fun," said Uncle Walter; and all agreed that he should give a try. So the torches were held away, that they might not blind him; and clear eyes searched to spy them by a few broken beams of the moon.

"You'll have to cut the trees, or give 'em up," shouted Flaxman.

"It's dark as Egypt up in them thick leaves," said Colwell. "Skin your keenest eye, Uncle Walt, and then I guess you won't spy your game."

"Hold, boys! hold on, hold on!" cried Uncle Walter. "I spy one! Here, Colwell! you see that big limb, don't you? run a sharp look up that, and tell us what that black bunch is, eh?"

"'S a bear, 's a bear, give him gowdy!" cried Colwell; and Uncle Walter laid his best eye on his old queen's-arm, and fired. Rustle, rustle, went the leaves; a limb snapped; a growl exploded; a rattling wheeze ran shuddering on the still air; a shower of bark, scratched front the tree, clattered down on the leaves; and then a groan—then thrash—bound came a bear against the earth; and a torch at his nose gave Uncle Walter to cry, "Dead—he's dead's a nit! Now, Miss Moon, hang your lantern in t'other tree, and I'll bring down Bruin's wife to sleep by his side, I will."

"No, you've had fun enough for one night, Uncle Walt, and now let

Fabens try," said Colwell.

The gun was re-loaded, and soon the moonlight through the leaves betrayed the other bear; and after a little hesitation, Fabens took aim and fired. But his hand shook, and his shot was lost in the air; and Uncle Walter fired, and snap—crash—bound—came the other bear. The dogs rushed upon her, and flew back in full shriek. Then Fabens showed courage, and made up to her, before knowing the danger, and the wounded bear uttered a horrible growl, and gave him chase!

Terror was up in a moment, and leaped from heart to heart. Away bounded Fabens, and closely on his heels bounded the grim and open-mouthed bear. Over a rock he leaped, round a tree he ran, and the bear bounded after. Then came dogs and men, and were repulsed with shrieks and ejaculations. Then they renewed the attack; and as old Spanker caught her by the leg, and she turned upon the dog in fury, Colwell put a ball through her head, and the fearful chase was over.

"A narrow squeak for you, Fabens," said Wilson, "a very narrow squeak."

"Too narrow, I declare," said Uncle Walter. "I cannot stand that, I must set down. I thought Matthew was a gonner, and the fright takes the tuck out o' my old knees."

"I never was so scart afore," said Flaxman; and, "You'll not call me fool, if I sit down too," said Fabens, with white lips. "I am not used to this as you are. It is too rough, too rough for a new settler;" and down he threw himself by Uncle Walter; while the others, declaring two were enough for that night, gathered up the guns and axes, and, when the bears were dressed and hung up on trees, the company left the woods, declaring they would have a grand feast, and pay Fabens for his fright, if he would meet them at Mr. Waldron's the next evening.

Recovering a little from his fainting terror, Fabens joined their conversation, as they returned to their homes; and long before his eyes found the first wink of sleep, his mind wandered in perilous adventures, and in pleasant and unpleasant thoughts of the wild forest life. He would attend the supper at Mr. Waldron's; he would try to contribute his share of talk and enjoyment; but on another bear-hunt he resolved never to go.

[1] A barbarous way of killing pigeons caught in a net.