CHAPTER VIII-A NOVEL BEAR TRAP

"You don't know of anybody hereabouts that wants to hire a good hand, I s'pose?" asked a stranger one August afternoon, as, without unslinging his pack, he set his gun against the log wall beside the door, and leaned upon his axe at the threshold.

By degrees Seth Beeman had enlarged his clearing so far that he already needed stronger hands than Nathan's to help him in the care of the land already in tilth and in the further extension of his betterments, but he scanned the man closely before he answered. Though unprepossessing, low-browed, and surly looking, he was evidently a stout fellow, and accustomed to work. At length a reply was made by asking such questions as were a matter of course in those days, and are not yet quite obsolete in Yankeeland.

The stranger readily said his name was Silas Toombs, that he was from Jersey way, and wished, when he had earned enough, to take up a right of land hereabouts, in a region he had often heard extolled by his father, who had served here in Captain Bergen's company of Rogers's Rangers.

Seth had previously ascertained that no grown-up son of any of his neighbors could be spared to help him, so he finally hired this man, who proved to be efficient and faithful, although not a genial companion, such as an old-time farmer wished to find in his hired help. Ruth treated him with the kindness so natural to her, though she could scarcely conceal her aversion. This, if he understood, he did not seem to notice any more than he did the undisguised dislike of Nathan.

The remainder of the summer and half of the fall pa.s.sed uneventfully, till one day, when Ruth had been called to the bedside of Mrs. Newton, who was ill of the fever so prevalent in new clearings, Nathan and his sister were left in charge of the house, while their father and hired man worked in a distant field.

The children spent half the pleasant forenoon in alternate rounds of housework and out-door play, now sweeping the floor with hemlock brooms, now running out into the hazy October sunshine to play "Indians" with Nathan's bow and arrows and Martha's rag doll. This was stolen and carried into captivity, from which it was rescued by its heroic little mother. Then they threw off their a.s.sumed characters and ran into the house to replenish the smouldering fire, and to find that the sunshine, falling upon the floor through the window, was creeping towards the "noon mark," making it time to begin dinner.

Nathan raised the heavy trap-door to the cellar and descended the ladder, with butcher knife and pewter plate, to get the pork, but had barely got the cover off the barrel when he was recalled to the upper world by a loud cry from his sister:

"Nathan, Nathan, come here quick!"

He scrambled up the ladder and ran to her, where, just outside the door, she was staring intently toward the creek.

"Who be them?" she asked anxiously, as she pointed at two figures just disclosed above the rushes, as they moved swiftly up the narrow channel in an unseen craft.

"I guess they're Injins," said Nathan, after a moment's scrutiny, "and I guess they're a-trappin' mushrat. Let's run over to the bank and see."

So they ran to the crown of the low bank, where they could command a good view of the rushy level of the marsh, and the narrow belt of clear water that wound through it, reflecting the hazy blue of the sky, the tops of the scarlet water maples, the bronze and yellow weeds, and, here and there, the rough dome of a newly built muskrat house. At each of these the two men, now revealed in a birch canoe, halted for a little s.p.a.ce, and then, tying a knot in the nearest tuft of sedge, pa.s.sed on to the next. There was no mistaking the coppery hue of the faces, the straight black hair, though men of another race might wear the dirty, white blanket coats, and as skilfully manage the light craft.

"Yes, they be Injins," said Nathan, "and I wish they'd let my mushrat alone. But I s'pose there's enough for them and me."

Presently the Indians pa.s.sed quite near them, and one, speaking so softly that the children thought his voice could never have sounded the terrible war-whoop, accosted them:

"How do? You Beenum boy?"

"Yes," Nathan answered; and then, obeying the Yankee instinct of inquiry, asked: "Be you gettin' many mushrat?"

"No ketch um plenty," the Indian replied. "Ol' Capenteese ketch um mos'

all moosquas," and Nathan understood that he attributed the scarcity of muskrats to Job, whose fame as a hunter and trapper was known to every Waubanakee who visited this part of the lake.

"Me come back pooty soon," the Indian said, pointing up the creek with his paddle. "Den go house, see um Beenum. Buy um some pig eese. S'pose he sell um lee'l bit?"

Pork

Nathan nodded a doubtful a.s.sent, and then, reminded of dinner-getting by the mention of pork, caught Martha's hand and hurried homeward, while the Indians resumed their way upstream.

When the children entered the open door, they were for a moment dumb with amazement at the confusion that had in so short a time usurped the tidiness whereof they had left the room possessed. The coverlets and blankets of one bed were dragged from their place, two or three chairs were overturned, and the meal barrel was upset and half its contents strewn across the floor.

"What in tunket," cried Nathan, when speech came to his gaping mouth.

"Has that old sow got outen the pen?" Then he saw in the scattered meal some broad tracks that a former adventure had made him familiar with, and he heard a sound of something moving about in the cellar.

"It's a bear," he cried, "and he's down cellar."

As quick as the thought and words, he sprang to the open hatch, and heaved it upright on the hinges, to close it. But just as it hung in midway poise, the bear, alarmed by the noise overhead, gave a startled "whoof," and came scrambling up the ladder. His tawny muzzle was above the floor, when Nathan, with desperate strength, slammed down the hatch, and its edge caught the bear fairly on the neck, pressing his throat against the edge of the hatchway. The trap door had scarcely fallen when the quick-witted boy mounted it and called to his frightened sister to mount beside him, and with their united weight, slight as it was, they kept him from forcing his way upward, till in his frantic struggles he dislodged the ladder and hung by the neck helpless, without foothold.

The children held bravely to their post, hand in hand, while to the gasping moans of the angry brute succeeded cries of anger, that were in turn succeeded by silence and loss of all visible motion but such as was imparted to the head by the huge body still slowly vibrating from the final struggle. When this had quite ceased they ventured off the trap door, and, pale and panting, they stood before the ghastly head as frightful now in death, with grinning, foam-flecked jaws, protruding tongue, and staring, bloodshot eyes, as it had been in living rage.

Nathan caught his sister in his arms and hugged her, shouting:

"We've killed him. We've killed a bear," while she, in the same breath, laughed and cried, till they both bethought themselves of the dinner-getting not yet begun.

"I can't get down cellar," said Nathan, "for I dasn't open that door.

What be we goin' to do?"

A grunt of surprise caught his attention, and, looking up, he saw the two Indians at the door, staring with puzzled faces on the strange scene. Then one, with a hatchet half uplifted, cautiously approached the grim head, which, after an instant's scrutiny, he touched with his hatchet and then with his finger.

"He dead. You boy do dat?" And Nathan told him all the adventure. The Indian gave the boy an approving pat on the head that made Nathan's scalp shiver.

"You big Nad-yal-we-no. Too much good for be Pastoniac. You come 'long me to Yam-as-ka, I make you Waubanakee. Den be good for sometings.

Nawaa," he said to his companion, and the other coming in, the two reached down and laid hold of the bear's forelegs, and when, by their instructions, Nathan lifted the door, they dragged the limp, s.h.a.ggy carca.s.s out upon the floor.

When the full proportions of the huge brute were revealed, the boy's rejoicings broke forth anew, just as his father and the hired man came hurrying in, when he received fresh praise for his deed. The dinner was bounteous, if late, and the Indians, Toksoose and Tahmont, had their full share of it, with a big chunk of pork and as much bear's meat as they cared to take, which was small, since they liked better the daintier meat of the musquash, wherewith their trapping afforded them an ample supply.

When toward nightfall the mother returned, she was told the story by the victors, and with equal delight was it rehea.r.s.ed when Job happened to come, and the unstinted praise of the old hunter was sweetest of all.

Many a day was the tale rehea.r.s.ed for the benefit of new listeners. Even when Nathan was an old man, and looked back on the many adventures of his life, not one stood forth so clearly in the haze of the past as this adventure with the bear, wherein he had borne the chief part.

CHAPTER IX-A FRONTIER TRAGEDY

One autumn day after the leaves had faded and fallen, Nathan was busy husking corn, with less thought upon his task and the growing pile of yellow ears than of a promised partridge hunt on the morrow with his good friend Job. His father was chopping in a new clearing. Silas had been sent with the oxen to take some logs to Lemon Fair Mill. His mother grew uneasy at her spinning, for Seth did not come home to dinner, nor yet when the afternoon was half spent. After many times anxiously looking and listening in the direction of the clearing, and as often saying to herself, "What does keep father so?" she called to Nathan.

"I guess you'd better go and see what henders father so. I can't think what it is. I hope it hain't anything."

"Perhaps he's gone over to Callenders or some o' the neighbors," said Nathan. "I hain't heard a tree fall for ever so long nor his axe a goin'

for a long time."

"Mebby he's cut his foot or something," said Martha, beginning to cry.

"I can't hear nothin' of him for all the air's so holler and everything sounds so plain," said Ruth, listening again. "You'd better go and see what henders him. Mebby he can't git home."

As the boy anxiously hastened to the new clearing, the intense stillness of the woods filled him with undefined dread. His ears ached for some sound, the tapping of a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, the cry of a jay, but most of all, for the sound of axe strokes or his father's voice. Silence pervaded the clearing also.

There, on a stump, was his father's blue frock, one bit of color in the sombre scene. And yes, there was some slight flitting movement near the last tree that had been felled and lay untrimmed just as it had fallen, but it was only a bevy of chickadees peering curiously at something on the ground beneath them, yet voiceless as if their perennial cheerfulness was dumb in the pervading silence. So sick with dread he could scarcely move, the boy forced himself to approach the spot, and look upon that which he felt was awaiting him, his father lying dead beneath the huge, p.r.o.ne tree, that had crushed him in its fall.

The glowing sunset sky and the glistening waters of the lake grew black, the earth reeled. With a piteous groan of "Father! father!" the boy sank down as lifeless, for a s.p.a.ce, as the beloved form that lay beside him in eternal sleep.

He awoke as from a terrible dream to the miserable realization that it was not a dream. Then walking, as still in a dream, not noting how he went nor by any familiar object marking his way, he bore home the woeful tidings.

Simple as were the funeral rites in the primitive communities, they were not lacking in the impressiveness of heartfelt sorrow nor in the homely expressions of sympathy for the bereaved and respect for the dead. So Seth Beeman's neighbors reverently laid him to rest in the soil his own hand had uncovered to the sunlight. They set at his head a rough slate stone, whose rude lettering could be read half a century later, telling his name and age, and the manner of his death.