The Hunters of the Ozark.

by Edward S. Ellis.

CHAPTER I.

AN ESTRAY.

One day in the autumn Terence Clark came to the house of Frederick Linden and urged him to join in a hunt for a cow that had been missing since the night before. The latter got the consent of his mother and the two lads started on a search that proved to be the most eventful one they had ever known.

A few words in the way of explanation must be given at this point. The date of the events I have set out to tell was toward the close of the last century, and the scene the south-western part of the present State of Missouri, but which was then a part of the vast territory known as Louisiana. Though the town of St. Louis had been settled a good many years before, there were only a few pioneers scattered through the almost limitless region that stretched in every direction from the Mississippi. Here and there the hunters and trappers were often absent from their homes for months at a time, during which they suffered much exposure and hardship. They slept for weeks in the open woods, or when the severity of the weather would not allow this, they found refuge in caves or hollow trees. Then, when enough skins had been gathered to load their pack-horses they started on the long tramps to the French trading post on the Mississippi. They followed faintly marked paths or trails that converged from a score or hundred different points until they reached the Father of Waters, where the peltries were soon sold and the proceeds, too often, squandered within the succeeding few hours.

At the date of which I am speaking, a small settlement known as Greville stood in the south-western section of the large State of Missouri, as it is now known. The first cabins were put up only a few years before, and the settlers, including men, women and children, numbered about two hundred. Near the center of the straggling settlement stood a rude but strong blockhouse to be used for refuge in the event of an attack by Indians. As yet this emergency had not arisen, for the red men in that section were far less warlike and hostile than those in Ohio and Kentucky.

The father of Fred Linden was one of the hunters and trappers who made regular visits to the wild section near the Ozark Mountains for the purpose of gathering furs. He never had less than two companions, and sometimes the number was half a dozen. As you are well aware, the furs of all animals are in the finest condition in wintry weather, since nature does her best to guard their bodies from the effects of cold.

Thus it came about that the party of hunters, of whom I shall have more to say further on, left Greville in the autumn of the year, and as a rule were not seen again until spring. Since they entered a fine, fur-bearing country, these trips generally paid well. One convenience was that the hunters were not obliged to go to St. Louis to sell them.

An agent of the great fur company that made its headquarters at that post, came regularly to Greville with his pack-horses and gave the same price for the peltries that he would have given had they been brought to the factory, hundreds of miles away. He was glad to do this, for the furs that George Linden and his brother hunters brought in were not surpa.s.sed in glossiness and fineness by any of the thousands gathered from the four points of the compa.s.s.

Among the daring little band that made these regular visits to the Ozark region was an Irishman named Michael Clark, who had had considerable experience in gathering furs along the Mississippi. It was at his suggestion that Greville was founded, and one-half of their periodical journeys thus cut off. On the year following, Clark was shot and killed by a prowling Indian. Since his wife had been dead a long time, the only child, Terence, was thus left an orphan. The lad was a bright, good-natured fellow, liked by every one, and he made his home with the family of one of the other hunters named Rufus MacClaskey. The boy was fifteen years old on the very day that he walked over to the cabin of Fred Linden and asked him to help him hunt for the missing cow.

The family of George Linden, while he was away, consisted of his wife, his daughter Edith, fourteen, and his son Fred, sixteen years old. All were ruddy cheeked, strong and vigorous, and among the best to do of the thirty-odd families that made up the population of Greville.

"Has the cow ever been lost before?" asked Fred, as he and the Irish lad swung along beside each other, neither thinking it worth while to burden himself with a rifle.

"Niver that I knows of, and I would know the same if she had been lost; we're onaisy about the cow, for you see that if this kaaps on and she doesn't come back I'll have to live on something else than bread and milk and praties."

"Our cow came back just at sunset last night."

"And so did them all, exciptin' our own, which makes me more onwillin'

to accipt any excuse she may have to give."

"Let me see, Terry; Brindle wore a bell round her neck, didn't she?"

"That she did, and she seemed quite proud of the same."

"Did you make hunt for her last night?"

"I hunted as long as I could see to hunt; she wasn't missed, that is till after they got home. Whin I found that I didn't find her I started to find her; but I hadn't time to hunt very long whin it got dark and I had to give it up."

"And didn't you hear any thing of the bell?"

"Do ye think that if I heard the bell I wouldn't have found the cow? Why was the bell put round her neck if it wasn't to guide friends? I listened many a time after it got dark, but niver a tinkle did I hear."

"That is queer," said Fred half to himself; "for, when no wind is blowing and it is calm, you can hear that bell a long ways; father has caught the sound in the woods, when the Brindle was all of a mile off. I wonder whether she could have lost the bell."

"I've thought of that, and said to meself that it might be also that she had become lost herself in trying to find it."

Fred laughed.

"She hardly knows enough for _that_; and, if she found the bell she wouldn't know what to do with it; but if that leathern string around her neck had broken, it may be that she is close by. A cow after losing one milking is apt to feel so uncomfortable that she hurries home to be relieved; but what's the use of talking?" added Fred, throwing up his head and stepping off at a more lively pace; "we've started out to find her and that's all we have to do."

Perhaps a dozen acres had been cleared around the little town of Greville. This had been planted with corn, potatoes and grain, though scores of unsightly stumps were left and interfered with the cultivation of the soil. Beyond this clearing or open s.p.a.ce extended the immense forests which at one time covered almost the entire face of our country.

On the south side of the town and distant a furlong wound a creek, which after many shiftings and turnings found its way into the Mississippi and so at last into the Gulf of Mexico. The course of this stream was so winding that it extended on two sides of the town and ran in a westerly direction, exactly the opposite of that it finally had to take in order to reach its outlet.

As a rule, it was about twenty feet wide with a depth of from one or two to six feet. It was subject to tremendous overflows which sometimes tripled its volume and increased its width to that of a river. At such times a series of enormous rocks through which the creek at "low tide"

lazily wound its way, lashed the turbid current into a fury somewhat like that seen in the "whirlpool" below Niagara. Could you have stood on the sh.o.r.e and looked at the furiously struggling waters, you would have been sure that even if a man were headed up in a barrel, he could not have lived to pa.s.s through the hundred yards of rapids, though there was reason to believe that more than one Indian had shot them in his canoe.

Terry Clark told his friend that his search of the night before and of the morning following had been to the north and west of the settlement, so that it was hardly worth while to continue the hunt in that direction. The cows sometimes stood in the water, where so much switching of their tails was not needed to keep away the flies, and, though there was quite a growth of succulent gra.s.s on the clearing, the animals often crossed the creek and browsed through the woods and undergrowth on the other side.

The boys were inclined to think that the brindle had taken that course during the afternoon and had actually gone astray,--something which a quadruped is less likely to do than a biped, though the former will sometimes make the blunder. There was nothing unreasonable in the theory that the bell had fallen from her neck and that the owner therefore might be not far away.

At intervals, Terry shouted "_Bos! bos! bos!_" the Latin call which the cow sometimes recognized, though she generally paid no attention to it.

It was the same now, possibly due to the fact that she did not hear the call.

Reaching the edge of the stream, the boys began walking along the bank toward the left and scrutinizing the spongy earth close to the water.

If the missing animal had crossed the creek she could not have failed to leave distinct footprints.

CHAPTER II.

THE TINKLE OF A BELL.

The examination of the sh.o.r.e of the creek had lasted but a few minutes, when Terry Clark, pointing to the moist earth at their feet, called out in some excitement:

"Do ye mind that now?"

There, sure enough, were the footprints of a cow that had entered the stream from the same side on which the boys stood. The impressions could be seen for some distance in the clear water, which in the middle of the stream was no more than a yard deep, and they were plainly observed where the animal had emerged on the other side.

"I don't suppose there is any difference in the tracks of cows, but I guess, Terry, that we are safe in making up our minds we are on the trail of Brindle."

"I'm thinking the same," replied the other, who was not only looking across the creek, but into the woods beyond, as though he expected to catch sight of the cow herself; "though it may be the one that crossed there isn't the one that we're after."

Fred Linden was asking himself whether there was not some way in which they could reach the other side without going to the trouble of removing their shoes and leggins, and hunting a shallow portion, or allowing their garments to become saturated. He exclaimed: "Why didn't I think of it? There's our canoe!"

A number of these frail craft were owned in Greville, and Fred had a fine one himself, which was only a short distance off. Three minutes later the two reached it.

The barken structure was moored by means of a long rope to a tree a considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the paddle carried the two to the opposite bank of the stream.

"I wonder whether there is any danger of a rise," remarked Fred, as he carried the rope to a tree twenty feet distant and made it fast to a limb; "there was a good deal of thunder and lightning last night off to the east."

"But the creek doesn't come from that way," said the surprised Terry; "so what is the odds, as me father said he used to ask when the Injins was on all sides of him, and a panther in the tree he wanted to climb, and he found himself standing on the head of a rattlesnake."

"The creek winds through every point of the compa.s.s, so it doesn't make much difference, as you say, where it rains, since it is sure to make a rise; the only question is whether the rain was enough to affect the creek so that it will trouble us."

"If it was goin' to do that, wouldn't it have done so before this?" was the natural question of his companion.