The Forest Runners: A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky by Altsheler (books for 20 year olds .TXT) 📗

around ripping into the air with his long claws. The man and the boy not able to reach the door, hopped about like jumping jacks, and the cold air poured down upon them from the huge hole in their damaged roof. The bear suddenly ran into Jim Hart's furnace and uttered a roar of pain. He stopped for a moment to lick his singed flank, and Shif'less Sol, seizing the opportunity, leaped for his rifle. He grasped it, and the next instant the cabin roared with the rifle shot. The great bear uttered a whining cry, plucked once or twice at his breast, and then stretched himself out in front of Jim Hart's furnace, quite dead. Paul stopped dancing to and fro, and uttered a gasp of relief.

"You got that rifle just in time, Sol," he said.

"We shorely did need a gun," Shif'less Sol said. "I guess nobody ever had a more sudden or unwelcome visitor than you an' me did, Paul. But I believe that thar b'ar wuz ez bad skeered ez we wuz."

"And just look at our house," said Paul ruefully. "Half the roof smashed in, our furs and our food supplies thrown in every direction, and a big bear stretched out in front of our fire."

They heard the patter of swift footsteps outside, and the three fishing at the lake, who had heard the shot, came in, running.

"It's nothin', boys," said Shif'less Sol carelessly. "A gentleman livin' in these parts, but a stranger to us, came into our house uninvited. He wouldn't go away when we axed him to, most earnest, so we've jest put him to sleep."

Ross pushed the bear with his foot.

"He's fat yet," he said, "an' he ought to be in winter quarters right now. Somethin' must have driv him out uv his hole an' have sent him wanderin' across the lake on the ice an' snow. That's what anybody gits fur not stayin' whar he belongs."

"An' ef Jim Hart had stayed whar he belongs—that is, right here in this house, cookin'—he'd have got that b'ar on his back, an' not me," said Shif'less Sol, rubbing the bruised place.

"That's once I wuz luckier than you wuz, Sol Hyde," said Jim Hart, chuckling.

"We've got a lot of fresh bear steak," said Henry Ware, "but we'll have to clean up all this mess, and rebuild our house, just as soon as we can."

They set to work at once. All, through forest life, had become skillful in such tasks, and it did not take them long to rethatch the roof. But they made it stronger than ever with cross-poles. Ingenious Sol cut up the bear hide, and made of it stout leggings for them all, which would serve in the place of boots for wading in the deep snow.

Then the camp returned to its wonted calm. But a few days later, Shif'less Sol, who had been unusually grave, called Paul aside and asked him to walk with him up the path to the hickory trees. When they arrived there, far out of hearing of the others, Shif'less Sol said:

"Do you know what day this is, Paul?"

"Why, no, Sol," replied Paul. "What does it matter?"

"It matters a heap," said Shif'less Sol, not departing one whit from his grave manner. "I know what day it is. I've kept count. See here!"

He pointed to a hickory tree. Clear and smooth was gash after gash, cut in the bark, one above another, by Sol with his stout knife.

"Every one o' them is a day," said Shif'less Sol, "an' to-day is the 24th of December. Now, what is to-morrow, Paul Cotter?"

"The 25th of December—Christmas Day."

"An' oughtn't we to hev Christmas, too, even ef we are up here in the wild woods, all by ourselves? Don't this look like Christmas?"

Paul looked around at the glittering and magnificent expanse of white wilderness. There was snow, snow everywhere. The trees were robed in it, unstained. It was a world of peace and beauty, and it did look like Christmas. They were preparing for it at Wareville at this very moment—the settlers were a religious people, and from the first they celebrated the great religious festival.

"Yes, Sol," he replied, "it does look like Christmas, and we ought to celebrate it, too."

"I'm glad you think ez I do," said Sol, in a tone of relief. "I wanted to hear what you thought o' it, Paul, afore I broached it to the other boys. We've got a lot to be glad about. We're all here, sound an' well, an' though we've been through a power o' dangers, we ain't sufferin' now."

"That's so," said Paul.

"Then we'll tell the boys right now."

They walked back to the cabin, and Shif'less Sol announced the date to the others, who agreed at once that Christmas should be celebrated by them there on their little island in the wilderness. All were touched in a way by the solemnity of the event, and they began to feel how strong was the tie that united them.

"We must have a big Christmas dinner," said Jim Hart, "an' I'll cook it."

"An' I'll help you," said Shif'less Sol.

"And I," added Paul.

That evening they sat around the fire, talking in the mellow glow; but their talk was not of the Indians, nor of the chase, nor of themselves, but of those behind at Wareville. Paul shut his eyes and looked dreamily into the fire. He could see the people at the settlement getting ready for the great festival, preparing little gifts, and the children crawling reluctantly into their homemade trundle, or box beds. He felt at that moment a deep kindness toward all things.

They covered up the ashes after a while, and then, in the darkness, every one in his turn laid out some little gift for the others—a clasp knife, a powderhorn, a prized deerskin, or something else that counted among his possessions. But no one was to look until the morning, and soon all fell asleep.

They were up the next day at the first sight of dawn, and compared their gifts with great rejoicings. Shif'less Sol had presented to Jim Hart a splendid clasp knife, a valuable possession in the wilderness, as a token of his great friendship and exceeding high regard, and Jim was like a child in his delight. In fact, there was something of the child, or rather of the child's simplicity, in all of them.

The Christmas dinner was a signal triumph in Jim Hart's life. Capably assisted by Paul and Shif'less Sol, he labored on it most of the day, and at last they sat down to a magnificent wilderness table of buffalo hump, venison, squirrel, rabbit, fish, wild turkey, and other kinds of game, flanked by bread baked of the Indian meal, and finished off with the nuts Paul had gathered. Forest and lake had yielded bounteously, and they ate long and happily.

"Why anybody wants to live back thar in the East in the towns is more'n I can understand," said Shif'less Sol. "You've got room to breathe here, an' the fat game is runnin' roun' in the woods, jest beggin' you to stick a knife in its back an' eat it."

Paul laughed.

"How about the danger from the Indians, Sol?" asked Paul.

"You don't expect to have a perfect world here below, do you, Paul?" replied Shif'less Sol. "Thar ain't never nothin' without a thorn in it, but our thorn is about ez little a one ez you could think of. The Injuns give us a kind o' excitin' variety, an' don't we always get away from 'em?"

No more work was done that day, and in the evening they went to sleep earlier than usual, and slept very soundly. A moon of pure silver came out, and bathed all the vast wilderness in its light. A huge, yellow panther, lean and fierce with hunger, wandered in the snow across the frozen lake, and put foot upon the island. There the pleasant odor of food came to his nostrils, and he lifted up his ears. As the pleasant odor came again his tawny eyes became more ferocious, and the lips curled back from the rows of cruel, white teeth. He drew his long, lithe body over the snow, and came to one of the paths. He might have turned back because the path was strong with the odor of a strange and perhaps powerful creature; but he was a very hungry, a very large, and a very bold panther, and he went on.

The path led straight to the cabin, and the panther trod it on noiseless pads, his eyes glowing, and hunger attacking him all the more fiercely because, mingled with the strange, new odor now came many odors that he knew, and all pleasant—odor of buffalo and deer and others—and he was very, very hungry.

He went down the path to the door of the cabin, and halted a moment there. A red gleam, a glow from the bed of coals, came through a chink beside the door, and it filled his heart with terror. He shivered, and fear drew a low growl from him.

One of the five sleepers inside stirred and sat up. He listened and heard a heavy breathing at the door. Then he arose, took a brand from the fire, stepped noiselessly to the door, and, opening it, rushed out, waving the burning brand in front of him. The panther, stricken with frightful panic, fled down the path, and then over the lake into the woods on the mainland. Henry Ware, laughing silently, returned to the cabin and lay down to sleep again beside his comrades, who had slept on, undisturbed.

CHAPTER XVII

FOOTPRINTS IN THE SNOW

The singular existence of the five in the little hollow in the haunted island endured much longer. The great cold had come early, and it held the earth fast in its grasp. The ice grew thicker on the lake beneath the snow, and winds that would freeze one to the marrow swept over its surface. Fortunately, there was plenty of fallen wood on the island, and they never allowed the fire in Hart's furnace to go out. They never built it up high, but a bed of coals was always smoldering there, sending out grateful light and heat.

Henry and Ross scouted at intervals, but only as a matter of habit rather than necessary precaution. They knew that the danger of an attack at such a time had decreased to the vanishing point. Now Paul became for a while the central figure of what he called their little colony. His mental resources were in great demand, and for the sake of his comrades he drew willingly upon his stores of learning. In the evening, when they were all sitting before the coals, and could just see one another's faces in the faint light, Paul would tell what he had read about other times and other lands. He knew the outlines of ancient history, and the victories of Hannibal, Alexander, and Cæsar suffered nothing at his hands, though Alexander, as before, was condemned by Shif'less Sol and Ross. Paul, moreover, had both the dramatic and poetic sense, and he made these far-away heroes, of whom Jim Hart had never heard before, actually live in the little cabin.

"It 'pears to me," said Shif'less Sol reflectively, "that that feller Hannibal wuz jest about the finest fighter o' them all. Ef, ez you say, Paul, he had to hire all kinds o' strangers an' barbarians, too, like the red Injuns out thar in the woods, an' lead sech a mixed lot up ag'in the Romans, who were no slouches in a fracas, an' whip 'em over an' over ag'in, on thar own groun', too, then I call him about the smartest o' all them old fellers. But he shore had the luck ag'in' him, an' I admire the man who kin stan' up an' fight the odds."

"He has my sympathy," said Paul.

"What did them old-time fellers eat?" asked Jim Hart.

"Mostly vegetables and grain," replied Paul.

"No wonder they're dead," said Jim Hart solemnly. "I can't fight an' I can't march good on anything but buffalo steak an' venison an' things uv that kind. I has to have meat."

Then Jim rose gravely, and looked at what he called his kitchen.

"'Nough to last three or four weeks," he said. "We'll shorely get fat an' lazy layin' roun' here an' doin' nothin' but eatin' an' sleepin' an' listenin' to Paul's tales."

"You ought to appreciate your chance, Jim Hart," said Shif'less Sol. "Ef me an' Paul wuz to work on you about a hundred years, maybe we might make you into a sort o' imitation o' a eddicated man. But I reckon we'd have to work all the time."

"You an eddicated man!" said Jim Hart indignantly. "Why, readin' a book is harder work to you than choppin' wood,