Читать книгу Fur Brigade - Hal G. Evarts - Страница 4

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The elder Breckenridge, having disposed of his furs to advantage in St. Louis, returned with the necessary supplies that he had purchased; various cloths, from some of which warm underwear would be fashioned for the entire family, dresses for the female members from others, shirts for the males, the balance to be used for trading purposes; bars of iron of assorted thickness, from which hoes, trade axes and other implements would be forged; tea, coffee, salt, tobacco, a quantity of powder and lead; also sundry trinkets dear to the savage heart. Every settler's cabin on the Missouri was a trading post of sorts.

Summer merged into autumn. The crops were gathered and stored. The first stiff frosts touched the hardwood hills with magic wand, transforming them from uniform green to a riotous blaze of color, brilliant yellows contrasting with purples that shaded into mauve, scarlet competing with blazing orange. Out in the open hills where the grass still showed green, startling pools of crimson revealed the location of sumach thickets, as if nature had spilled the life blood of the waning summer to enhance the last-minute splendor of its passing—the brief glorification of a landscape that all too soon would assume the bleak and barren garb of winter. As spring, once winter has relaxed its grip, is not in itself bountiful but merely blossoms forth in lovely promise of future plenty, so autumn is the season of promise fulfilled—the most bountiful period of all the year as Nature brings all creation to lavish fruition just prior to the lean days that are soon to come.

It was evident to Hunter Breckenridge that the least of Nature's creatures were aware of the portent of present plenty. The Northern migrants winged their way south in whistling flocks. The deer and elk were feasting heartily and putting on tallow against the winter months when feed would be scarce and covered with snow. The bears were gorging on ripened fruit and storing up sufficient fat to nourish them through the long winter sleep of hibernation. Squirrels were busily storing nuts and acorns in the timber and the beavers were sinking their food caches of succulent willow and cottonwood to the floors of the beaver ponds before the day when the ice should "take." Bees feverishly buzzed among the late fall flowers on warm days in their efforts to store up a few additional drops of honey before winter should shut down.

And as with these lesser creatures, so it was with man. Savage and settler alike, each in the measure of his need or foresight, engaged in harvesting the treasures that Nature spread before him. The Breckenridge family thriftily gathered and stored huge quantities of the season's delicacies. Great baskets of wild grapes and elderberries were collected by the youngsters and made into wine by the mother and the elder sister. Luscious pawpaws, larger than the average potato, had been ripened to dull yellow, verging upon black. There were red haws and black, and an occasional tree of wild persimmons, now ripened by the frost. Two score bushels of nuts—black walnuts and hickory nuts in the timber and hazel nuts in the brush thickets of the more open country—were collected and stored for winter use. Currants, gooseberries, raspberries and wild plums were gathered and transformed into jams and jells. Three bee trees, located earlier in the season, were cut and the great store of honey harvested. And throughout these excursions, wherever the younger members roamed in search of such delicacies, Hunt and his father were ever close at hand, either helping with the work or hunting in the adjacent forest.

In mid-autumn the elder Breckenridge dropped off downstream to visit a neighbor named Garrison, intending to help the man to round up and butcher some of his hogs that ranged half-wild in the forest. His intention was to bring back upriver with him a quantity of pork and ten gallons of white corn whisky.

Hunter pursued the routine of his days, felling trees at the far edge of the clearing, parts of which would be used for firewood, some split for rails and the rest piled round the stumps and burned. Then, as the meat supply was running low, he and Tod hunted for two days upriver, bagging five deer, two black bears and several turkeys, bringing the meat by boat down the current of the Missouri and up Breckenridge Creek to the clearing.

The day following his return he set forth to work as usual, felled a big walnut tree and piled it round the stump to be burned when sufficiently dry. Then he sized up the next, a big oak, but on this day he felt a vast disinclination to put forth further effort. Since his visit to the camp where the members of the raft's crew had put ashore on that night some months before, he had gone about his work at times with an air of preoccupation. New and untried impulses were stirring in him. His periods of restlessness and vague longings seemed now of more frequent recurrence. And when restless, it was ever his habit to resort to the river.

He returned to the cabin to find Tod engaged in stretching the two bearskins on the north side of the cabin where the sun would not strike them. His elder sister, over an open fire in the dooryard, was trying out the fat of the bears and rendering it into lard for family use. Hunter tentatively investigated a vat in which a number of deer hides had been put down in wood ashes for the purpose of leaching the hair from them, then absently estimated the weight of a bricklike fortification composed of many large brownish-yellow cakes of the most recently manufactured batch of homemade soap. Then he motioned to Tod.

"We'd better run the throw lines and rebait them now, I reckon."

They repaired to the river, Tod seized a heavy cord that was tied to a sapling on the bank and hauled it in hand over hand. A weighty but sluggish tugging apprised him of the fact that there was prey at the end. He extracted a ten-pound Missouri catfish, rebaited the six hooks that were attached by staging to the main line at intervals, then heaved the sizable rock at the end of the throw line out into the river.

Two canoes, each occupied by three savages, came moving upstream.

"Sauks," Hunter pronounced, frowning.

He knew that it was but a question of time before marauding war parties of these or allied miscreants, on their way to or from raiding expeditions in the Osage country to the southward, would consider the moment opportune to ravage the countryside. Then that sound which every pioneer family had cause to dread above all others, the shrill, gobbling yelps of the war whoop, would sound again on the shores of the Missouri. Columns of smoke would mark the location of burning cabins and one would visit a neighbor's home only to find the members of the household, rigid in death, sprawled in the dooryard. Hunter had viewed such scenes. The savages were loud-voiced and vociferous, their gesticulations expansive and violent. Hunter observed a small keg in each canoe.

"Drunk," he asserted. "They stopped at Garrison's to trade for some corn licker. Likely they'll get stiff drunk and put ashore to sleep it off. Then some Missouri Injun will lift six sets of hair."

The two brothers progressed downstream until they reached the spot where the occupants of the fur raft had camped.

"You go on and run the rest of the throw lines, Tod," Hunter instructed, "I'll loiter round here till you come back and maybe shoot me a passel of squirrels to while away the time."

He hunted no squirrels, however. Instead, he sat on a log and gazed across the dead ashes of the camp fire, endeavoring to conjure up again the vision of the girl as she had sat there across from him with the firelight in her hair.

"Nepanamo—Hair-that-shines," he said. "Injuns have the knack of handing out names that have the correct meaning."

Tod rejoined him and they angled through the forest toward the clearing. On entering it, they saw a cluster of savages before the cabin. The six Sauks had put ashore, probably for no good purpose. Mrs. Breckenridge and the elder daughter, each armed with a rifle, stood in the open doorway, firmly declining to grant the Sauks' insistent demand that they be permitted to enter and partake of food.

The instant that his eyes rested upon the scene, Hunter lifted his voice in a long-drawn hail. The startled savages, thus taken in the rear, whirled to confront the newcomers. The two boys advanced steadily but without haste. Upon nearing the door, Hunter motioned the savages to stand from his path, and so commanding was the gesture that the Sauks instinctively obeyed.

"Inside, Tod," Hunter ordered, and the younger brother replaced his sister, taking his place at his mother's side just far enough within the doorway so the muzzles of their weapons were flush with it. Hunter, his back to the cabin some three feet to one side of the door, faced the Sauks.

"What do you want here?" he demanded in their native tongue.

The spokesman for the Sauks explained that they came in peace. The Sauks had buried the hatchet and were now the sworn brothers of the whites. But what sort of treatment was this, to be refused the hospitality of those whom they viewed as friends and brothers? Was the white man's lodge closed to the Sauks when they were hungry?

"Yes. It is closed to the Sauks," Hunter informed him quietly. "You can not go in."

The spokesman launched into a vindictive tirade. "Who are you to speak of friendship for the Sauks?" he demanded. "Only two short years ago this clearing ran red with the blood of our warriors. Two of these men that you see before you wore their hair short in mourning for relatives who fell before your guns."

"And one year before that we wore our hair short in mourning for the little girl, our baby sister, that Sauk warriors shot down as she played," Hunter replied. "The little one's grave is yonder. When your warriors returned another year, they found men, not women and children, to make war upon, and left seven of their dead behind."

The towering savage, with a scornful glance at the two brothers, demanded to be informed if they considered themselves men.

Hunter shrugged carelessly. "Did I not just say that the Sauks left seven dead behind? Decide for yourself whether we are men or boys. Do children so easily slay your best warriors?"

The Indian was foaming but Hunter's gun was trained upon him. He was similarly menaced by the muzzles of the two guns held by Tod and Mrs. Breckenridge. Behind them were other children, he knew not how many. And the young of these white people fought like devils.

"We grieve for our dead of two summers ago," he said. "Give us presents and we will forget and will tell our people that you are friends of the Sauks. Give us many presents to prove your friendship."

"I will give you nothing. You may tell your people that we have no friendship for the Sauks," Hunter informed him. "We have only hot lead to give to those who slay children and boast that they are warriors. We have plenty of that. If you do not leave, I will give you your share now and your scalp shall hang at my belt."

There was a moment's tense silence as all parties awaited the outcome of this clash of wills, both factions poised at hair-trigger tension to follow the first move of their respective spokesmen.

The tall savage worked himself into an undignified frenzy, delivering a violent harangue, calling upon his tribal gods to witness his oath that some day in the not-distant future he would avenge this insult and wipe it out in blood and fire. The mere fact that his threats were couched in the future tense informed Hunter, who knew Indian nature to the core, that the danger of immediate hostilities had passed. The spokesman was engaging in a frenzy of vituperation and threats of future vengeance to save his face with his followers for his failure to engage in immediate action.

Tod, standing within the doorway and unable to see Hunter, understood but few words of the Sauk tongue. He recognized a few epithets and the threat of tone and manner, interpreting the savage's attitude as of immediate menace to his brother. The Sauk, in the course of his violent gesturing, accidentally discharged his musket. Tod, believing that the shot had been fired at his brother, instantly shot the Indian dead. The Sauk pitched on his face as the heavy charge of buck-shot riddled his chest. Reaching a swift hand behind him, Tod exchanged the discharged piece for a rifle which his elder sister thrust into his outstretched hand. Its muzzle swung in line with the remaining Sauks before they had recovered from their astonishment. Tod was clearly upon the point of duplicating his performance of two seconds past—would have, save for the fact that Hunt's voice, cool and collected, reached his ears from outside the door, apprising him of the fact that his brother was unhurt.

"Take him with you and be getting out of here," Hunter ordered.

The Sauks obeyed, carrying their fallen leader down the creek. Tod joined his brother outside the cabin and they stood looking after the retreating savages.

"Wisht I could have snatched off his scalp," Tod said regretfully.

Hunter nodded. "But one day, if you don't change your shootin' tactics, some red miscreant will have your scalp instead," he predicted.

"Why so?" Tod demanded aggrievedly. "I shot as stiddy as if gunning for a rabbit. The varmint was cold dead before he was halfway to the ground."

"It was only that you shot the wrong Injun, Tod," Hunter explained. "That one had done fired his gun and it was empty. You'd ought to have shot down one whose musket was still loaded. Pap has told you that, and so have I. Just narrow it down some. Supposing you're a-sauntering along and two Injuns spring up in your trail and gobble at you, and one shoots at you and misses. Which of the pair do you shoot?"

"The one that didn't shoot at me," Tod confessed. "The one whose gun is still unfired. But I thought that critter had downed you, Hunt, and I went so black mad that I drapped him without thinking."

"You done all right, Tod," Hunter said. "I ain't a-finding fault, but just reminding you not to do it thataway another time. It's thinking quick and keeping little things like that in mind that enables some folks to retain their hair longer than them that fails to think. Pap was expecting to draw in home to-day, sometime sho't of nightfall. I'll saunter after those Sauks and see where they head to. It wouldn't do for Pap to run foul of them unexpected, the way they're feeling now. You stay here and see to things. Don't let ary young un stray outside the cabin till me or Pap gets home."

He followed the trail of the five marauders. They took to their canoes and headed upriver. After following them for some five miles, Hunter halted, satisfied that they intended to keep going.

The sun was dropping behind the western horizon. Hunter leaned on his long rifle and looked out across the foam-flecked Missouri on whose roily waters the shadows were deepening with approaching night. As always, it sang its siren song to him. There was seductive invitation in the sucking gurgle of the current as it lapped the banks. The many swirling little eddies seemed to him a thousand eyes, winking wisely at him as if wishing to convey the knowledge of the things that they had witnessed at the headwaters of distant creeks, two thousand miles away. The droning undertone of its waters was muttering and deep-chested, its accents guttural, as if in imitation of the speech of the savages who dwelt upon its tributaries. Fancifully, he imagined that these sounds had been absorbed far upstream and carried as the water carried sediment, to be released now as messages for his eager ears. The varying notes that rose above the booming throb of the river's song could be interpreted, he thought. There was the gobble of the war whoop, the wailing of Indian villages mourning for warriors slain in battle, the triumphant clamor of the scalp dance after a successful foray, the rhythmic chant and shuffling feet of ceremonial and war dance; the slow sucking of the pipe passed from hand to hand around the council fires, the rumbling hoofs of a stampeded herd of buffalo or the drumming vibration of thousands of ponies charging across the sagebrush plains. All these things were related to Hunter by the deep-throated song of the river. Its voice as a whole was a symphonic chant, the saga of the great Northwest.

He stood watching the play of the muddy current until night shut down and the prowlers of darkness came on shift. A screech owl gave vent to its quavering falsetto overhead. A great horned owl, as if to silence this runt of the species, hooted gruffly from the forest on the farther shore. Then all notes ceased as a timber wolf threw full volume of its lungs into the tribal call of its clan. From far and near, other big gray hunters gave tongue in answer.

Hunter headed homeward through the darkened forest and he knew that the potent call of the Missouri could not much longer be ignored. Its boiling waters were attuned to the restless blood that surged through his pioneer veins.

"She's done laid her spell on me," he said. "She's got me, I reckon—the river has."