Novel 1968 - Down The Long Hills (v5.0) Page 9

  This time he heard no sound and after listening a little longer he crept around to the side of the clump of aspen behind which they had found shelter. Out across the valley he saw a faint red glow. Without doubt it was a campfire; it might be a mile off, or even more. He was well above the valley, and he could see such a light from some distance away.

  Suddenly his scalp prickled. There was a slight movement close behind him. He stood for an instant, frozen in fear, and then he knew what he had to do. He must jump straight ahead and try to scramble through the brush.

  At that instant something prickly and wet touched him on the neck. He seemed to jump inside his skin, barely stifling an outcry, and at the same moment there came realization.

  It was Big Red. He had found them.

  Hardy put an arm around Big Red’s lowered neck and hugged him close, and then he started to cry, struggling all the while to fight back the tears. It was not the manly thing to do, but he couldn’t help it.

  He knew at once what they must do. They must leave now, before snow covered the ground, they must leave before there were any tracks to find. If they did this, they might leave Cal and Jud behind them for good, and that big Indian too, if he was still back there.

  Hardy led the horse back to Betty Sue and shook her awake. Hoisting her to the saddle—for Red still wore Cal’s saddle—Hardy put the sack of food up and then climbed up himself. There were rocks enough here for him to stand on, but with the saddle a rock was no longer necessary.

  It was completely dark, but he had only to follow along the slope, keeping the mountain on his right side, and when they reached the southern end of the Wind River chain, to go south and around the tip and then head west.

  Big Red needed no guiding. Seemingly happy to find them again, he started off along the mountain at a fast, space-eating walk. Hardy hunched his thin shoulders against the cold and hung the reins on the pommel. With an arm on either side of Betty Sue, he clung to the saddle-forks.

  After a while he even dozed a little, and the big horse walked steadily on into the night.

  Chapter 10

  BY THE TIME day broke, the snow was falling steadily, and Hardy was blue with cold. He turned Big Red toward a row of trees that seemed to indicate nearby water, and when they came to a stream he followed along it, seeking shelter of any kind at all.

  It was sheer luck that he glimpsed the half-open door of the dugout.

  The door was hidden behind a huge, leaning cottonwood; when the tree leafed out, it would be invisible. It was a crudely made door of split cottonwood, and was hung on leather hinges.

  All about the place, and along the bank of the small stream, the only tracks were those of animals and birds. Warily, Hardy rode up and, hanging to the stirrup strap, slid to the ground.

  Pulling the door open a little wider, he peered in. It was a deserted but snug little place. In one wall was a fireplace, utilizing a natural hole, enlarged with a pick or an axe, for a chimney. A double bunk had been built along the right-hand wall, and nearby was a block of wood that had evidently done its turn as a chair or table. The top of it was polished, apparently from much sitting.

  Packrats had been around—at least Hardy supposed that was what they were—and the place was dusty and seemed long-abandoned.

  He helped Betty Sue down, and rubbed her cold little hands between his own, making them both warmer. Then he took his knife and went out to look around.

  Farther along the bank he found an overhang where the unknown occupant—perhaps a miner or trapper— had stabled his horse. The place was sheltered from wind and snow, and it was also well concealed by willows and cottonwoods. He picketed the stallion there, the rope permitting the horse to move from the stream to the overhang.

  Then Hardy went back to the dugout and, gathering sticks from the packrats’ nest, he kindled a fire. There was wood enough outside, some of it from fallen trees, some of it driftwood brought downstream and cast up against rocks or brush on the bank.

  When Hardy had a good fire going, he began to poke about. He found a frying pan, an old iron kettle, an old pick, with the handle almost gnawed away by porcupines or some other wild creatures for the salty taste left by sweaty hands.

  Somebody had spent a good deal of time working on the place. “Looks to me,” he said to Betty Sue, “as if somebody holed up here quite a spell. He surely knew how to do for himself,” he added. This here is a kind of natural cave which he made bigger by knocking off chunks of rock here and there. Even that chimney was a natural hole in the rocks.”

  He took the kettle and the frying pan to the stream and washed both of them with wood ashes, which took the place of soap, and scoured them with sand. After he rinsed them they looked pretty good, and would do for heating water and frying bacon.

  He went back to the dugout, where the fire was making it warm, and held his cold hands out to the blaze. As they warmed up they prickled as if little needles were sticking in them. When they were really warm again he got out the bacon and sliced several slices into the pan, then put some water on in the kettle to boil. Several times he made quick dashes out into the cold to get armfuls of wood to put beside the fireplace so they would have a good supply. He found that he could shut the door, and there was a bar for it, but he felt almost guilty about being so warm inside when he had to leave Big Red outside.

  The dugout was shaped like a triangle with one point lopped off, and the door was where the point would have been. The room was no more than eight feet deep, but the firelight scarcely reached the gloom of the opposite wall. The fireplace side of the wall was very rough, and some of the projections of rock had been used as small shelves.

  When Hardy had fried the bacon the water was boiling, and he dropped the coffee into it. After they had eaten the bacon and a piece of pilot bread apiece, he dropped a little cold water into the kettle to settle the grounds, and they took turns drinking from the kettle, Hardy holding the kettle with a piece of old sacking so as not to burn his hands.

  Rummaging about in the back of the dugout, he found that at the head of the bunk there was a tight wooden door in the wall. He opened it and, holding a brand from the fire, studied the small interior. On the floor lay a tightly wrapped pack of furs, much gnawed, and on sticks thrust into the wall there hung a pair of old jeans, worn and patched, a couple of folded blankets, very dusty and motheaten, and a huge old buffalo coat. This, although difficult of access by animals, for it touched the wall nowhere, was somewhat chewed around the collar.

  Taking the coat outside—and it was so heavy that moving it was a struggle—he threw it over a bush after knocking off the snow, and proceeded to beat dust from it with a stick. Extra large as it was, it would do to sleep under, and it would cover them both while riding.

  The blankets were of little use, or so he thought at first. But after beating dust from them in the gathering twilight, he suddenly had an idea. With his knife, he cut pieces from one of them that would make a sort of cape for Betty Sue and one for himself.

  The other blanket, which was in somewhat better shape, he took outside, and by working a strip of rawhide he found in the dugout through the many holes, he had a blanket that would at least partly cover Big Red.

  Now, for the first time in days they were really warm. A cold wind came in under the door from time to time, but otherwise it was pleasant and almost cheerful.

  “Hardy, when will we get to For’ Brid’er?” Betty Sue asked.

  “Soon.”

  “Will mama be there?”

  “She might be. I hope so.”

  She was silent a moment. “I like this place. It’s warm.”

  “I like it, too.” He remembered the falling snow. “Maybe we’ll stay here until the storm is over,” he added.

  He had not considered it until that moment, but he knew right away that it was the thing to do. They had food enough for two or three days of resting and waiting for the snow to stop, and a little less for the rest of the trip.

  Outside th
e snow continued to fall steadily. The world had turned white, with the snow covering the trees, bending down the heavily laden branches, and wiping out any trail they had left. When they had finished eating, Hardy put on his blanket-cape and went out to carry in wood for the fires. He found driftwood, and many dry branches broken from deadfalls. He took some of it inside, and stacked the rest near the door.

  Though he was terribly tired and his feet were dragging, he forced himself to keep going. After all, he was only seven, and there was so much for him to do, but he remembered that pa had often told him that the way to succeed in life was just to keep trying…and to keep faith. He knew what that meant, even though he could not have put it in words.

  From time to time he stopped in the overhang shelter to talk to Big Red, and to pat him. The snow made it light outside and he worked long after night had come, until at last he was too tired to do any more. Then he dragged himself back to the dugout and closed and barred the door behind him.

  The fire kept the place warm. Though a little cold air came in under the door, he knew they would need that much ventilation, and when they sat on the bunk, their feet dangling, they were warm and snug, and were not hungry.

  “You wait,” Hardy said to Betty Sue, “pa will come. If he isn’t hunting us now, he’s waiting for us at Bridger. I know my pa, and if we don’t come soon, I know he’ll be looking for us.”

  But even as he spoke he knew that, even if the wagon train had been moving steadily westward, it probably could not have been at Bridger yet, though it might have been getting close. He had no reason to believe pa knew anything had happened to it, or to Hardy and Betty Sue. But he would not be long in finding out.

  Pa was like that. He never took anything for granted, and he always set out to learn all he could. You could bet that by the time he had reached Bridger he had heard all anybody knew about conditions along the Overland Trail; he might even imagine what could happen to the children.

  “A man lives by what he knows,” he used to tell Hardy. “Try to get all the facts, and study them, and you can usually make out. When I was a boy, apprenticed to a millwright, he could make me check every measurement, study every piece of lumber we used. If he taught me anything, it was to learn all I could about whatever I was doing.”

  Back there in Wisconsin, when other folks shunned the Indians pa was always out there talking to them. Those Indians, he used to tell Hardy, had lived in that country a long time before the white man came, and they knew a lot worth learning. Pa went to the woods with them and, when Hardy was old enough, he took him along.

  It was a time of warring for the Indians. A lot of folks had the idea that the Indians lived together in peace until the white man came, but times of peace were rare among them. The Sioux and the Chippewas were always fighting and raiding back and forth. Many a time Hardy himself had seen painted Indians slipping through the woods headed north or south on the warpath.

  “One time,” he told Betty Sue, “pa and me had been to Fort Snelling. Pa, he had business there with Major Greenleaf Dearborn—some kind of building work. I can just recall it, but I do remember seeing the Dragoons on parade, the flags and everything. It’s about the earliest thing I do remember.

  “Only on the way back, pa and me ran into a war party of Winnebagos. There must have been twenty or thirty of them, and we hid under a river bank, with them right close above us. We could hear them talking. They had seen our tracks and, come daylight, they would try to round us up for our scalps and for pa’s rifle gun.”

  “What did you do?” Betty Sue asked.

  “I only remember what pa told me, and not much else. I recall hiding under that bank, though, and pa with his hand over my mouth, and then I recall how pa put me in one of their canoes and he took his hand-axe and cut holes in the bottom of all the other canoes. He got off in the one canoe, and they shot at us. I remember their guns going off, and pa putting down his paddle to shoot.”

  Hardy stared into the fire, thinking back to how he had gone with pa when pa worked in the lumber woods on Rum River, and how pa had helped change over a mill from a flutter mill to an overshot mill.

  The two of them had spent a lot of time walking through the woods from place to place. The only way pa could make any cash money was to work at his trade, and he was good at it.

  The officers at Fort Snelling and Fort Atkinson wanted to fix up their quarters, and they were allowed to do it if they stood the expense themselves, and pa had done much of the work. The trouble was, it meant neglecting the farm, and pa didn’t like to do that.

  Hardy had liked it when they traveled. The woods were dark and deep, and there was a mixture of evergreen trees and those that dropped their leaves in the fall of the year. There was a great variety—sugar maple and elm, oak, butternut, white and black ash, wild plum, birch, hackberry, and cedar; Hardy knew them all. Farther north there were the pines and spruce. There were nuts and berries too—the beaked hazelnut like the ones he’d found back yonder, and blueberries, wild currants, and crab apples.

  Many a time they lived off the country, gathering herbs, picking nuts or berries, and shooting game. A knowing man could live well in the forest, and it had taken pa no time at all to learn what the Indians knew. He took to the wild country like a man born to it, and to tracking as if he’d lived with it all his life. A good deal of it rubbed off on Hardy. He watched and he listened and he helped. For a boy full of questions, it was a grand way to live.

  Pa read to him, too, but mostly Hardy learned from the book of the forest and the book of men. The latter learning came to him from listening to pa talk with other men about farming and hunting, or about their work, and from hearing pa’s comments on places and people.

  They hadn’t much to read, although there was some exchanging of books. Pa had come west with a Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, Scottish Chiefs, and Ivanhoe. When Mr. Andy finally joined up with them, he had Thaddeus of Warsaw, by Porter, and Castle Rackrent, by Maria Edgeworth. At night, by the fire, pa read to him from the books and started teaching him his letters.

  One time when they had gone to Fort Snelling to work on some building there, Major Dearborn had loaned pa a copy of Marmion and a new book, published only a few years before, Carlyle’s History of the French Revolution. The two books lasted the winter through, and Marmion they read three times, from beginning to end.

  Often they would be on the road, usually walking for four or five days at a stretch, and Hardy and his pa being together they talked man talk.

  “About all a man can leave his boy,” pa had said, “is the little he’s learned, and maybe what he thinks in his mind and feels in his heart. What use you make of it is up to you.

  “When we go around towns and are among more people, as we will when you’re older, you’ll find there’s other laws besides those you’ve set for yourself, but still you’ll find that the best laws are those you make for yourself to follow—and a man should be strict with himself. Nevertheless, you will want to obey the laws of the towns. Folks couldn’t live together unless they had respect for one another, and for the rights of other men. When you get right down to it, all law is based on respect for each other’s rights.

  “Now, you look at it, you’ll see it takes us nearly all our time just to make a living. We hunt and we build and we mow, and we cut wood against the cold of winter, and try to salt some meat and gather some vegetables to store in the cellar.

  “When folks live together in a town they have more time, time to sit and talk, to listen to music playing, or to dance. But men can’t do that unless they divide the work, and in a town everybody shares. One man builds, another does the smithing, one teaches, one preaches, and another runs a store. When a man can settle down to do what he does best, he’s happier, and his work is better. I guess that’s where civilization began, with people getting together in a town, sharing the work, and having a chance to talk together.

  “You’re young, so when you sit in company, you sit quiet and listen. They sa
y little pitchers have big ears, and they should have. That’s the way to learn. You’ll hear a lot of foolishness, but you’ll hear wisdom, too, and you must learn not to despise any man. Even a fool can teach you not to be foolish, and there’s no telling where you’ll hear the thing that will help you to do a job easier, or the thing that may save your life.”

  When pa talked like that, Hardy just kept quiet and listened.

  He remembered the time Mrs. Andy spoke to pa about him. “That’s a serious-minded boy you’ve got there,” she had said, doubtfully. “Don’t he ever get a chance to play?”

  Pa had been irritated. “He gets plenty of chance. He’s a thoughtful boy, and I’m glad of it. We’ve had a hard time here, and he’s been company for me as well as a help. And there ain’t a lazy bone in his body.”

  No use for pa to be upset; sure, he had time enough to play. There wasn’t a tree within a mile he hadn’t climbed or tried to climb, and he had played Indian-fighter all over the country. Only it was more fun trying to track wild game in the forest, or trying to figure out what birds and animals had been doing, by giving study to their tracks.

  When pa did carpenter work on the officers’ quarters at Snelling or Atkinson, Hardy had gone along. Then he had played with the youngsters at the forts; but it was more fun when he and pa were traveling through the forest, rustling their own grub. He just wished pa was here now, sitting by the fire with them.

  But they were warm, sheltered, and safe for the time being. Before the snow had gotten too thick he had fixed in his mind the locations of the dead trees, and other places where he could find wood for fuel. He got up now, slipped his blanket-cape over his head, and said to Betty Sue, “I’m going to see to Red before we go to sleep.” He dug into his pack and took a piece of the pilot bread, and then ducked outside.

  It was snowing hard, and commencing to blow. But it was no problem to get to the stable, as he called it, for all he had to do was edge along the rock wall until it curved into the overhang.