"I can't look over, I get dizzy!" Tim said to Bill. "Look at the river.
It surely looks a mile below."
"Lie down," Bill told him. "Then you can't tumble off."
The boys amused themselves by dropping stones over the cliff and
counting the seconds till they struck amongst the trees below. Tim
claimed he could throw a stone into the river.
"Ah! you can't do it, Tim," Bill objected. "The river is a quarter of a
mile away as the crow flies."
"I'll pick a good sailer-rock," Tim persisted, "and you'll see."
But although Tim did his best, his rock seemed to come sailing back to
the sloping bluff.
"Guess you are right," admitted Tim, a little crestfallen; "the rivet is
pretty far away."
Tatanka stood gazing in silence over the sublime panorama. The river
appeared to come like a broad glassy channel out of the blue hazy
distance in the north. Just below the point it was half a mile wide and
Tatanka could easily distinguish the deep dark channel from the light
brown sandbars near shore.
Like a wonderful picture the valley spread out below the hunters. Dark
groves of elms stood out clearly from long stretches of cottonwood in
light gray. The swelling and bursting buds of the bottom maples showed
great dashes of a dark ruddy red, while vast stretches of gray and brown
marshes were dotted with brighter patches of orange willow and of bright
red killikinnick.
"My people once lived here," said Tatanka, at last. "They loved this
land. It is rich and beautiful, and at that time many red deer and elk
and black bear lived in these woods. The big game is gone now. The white
settlers have too many guns and too many dogs. They drive the deer away.
"It is good that Manitou gave wings to the ducks and the geese, so the
white hunters can not kill them all.
"Our people will never come back to this land. Our trails will grow over
with weeds, and the graves of our fathers will be forgotten. Our people
must learn to plow the field and raise cattle and horses like white
men!"
The old trapper also was carried back to his boyhood as he stood gazing
over the river, the bayous, and islands, and to the hills two miles away
on the Wisconsin side.
"I used to think," he said to his friend, "that the Wabash and the
Illinois were great rivers, but they are just little crawling creeks
compared with the Mississippi, and they can show no great woods and
grand hills and cliffs like the Mississippi. If these woods were mine, I
would build my house on this point and every morning I would see the sun
rise over the hills yonder. In the winter I would watch the snow-storms
rush down the valley; and in the sultry summer nights I would watch the
lightning play between the hills, over the river and among the
tree-tops, and hear the thunder roll and echo from bluff to bluff."
"Are you not afraid of thunder and lightning?" asked Tatanka. "My people
are afraid of it and will not travel in a storm."
"I used to be afraid, when I was a boy," Barker continued, "but since
that time I have lived so much alone in the forest and on the rivers
that I no longer fear a thunderstorm; but I never make my camp near tall
trees."
White people who go down the Mississippi in boats do see some fine
scenery, but the real grandeur of Mississippi River scenery is revealed
only from good vantage-points on the crest of the bluffs. For those
sufficiently strong and Venturesome to climb to those points, nature
spreads out her grandest panoramas found in the inhabited part of the
globe.
Many Americans have made long trips to see the beauties of the Rhine and
the Danube; the far grander beauty of the Mississippi is to our own
people still an unexplored country. There are awaiting those who would
go and see a thousand Inspiration Points on the upper Mississippi and
ten thousand miles of semi-tropical wilderness, cane-brake, forest,
lakes, and bayous on the lower river and its southern tributaries. Most
Americans know the Mississippi only as a crooked black line on the map.
When Barker and Tatanka had finished drinking in the landscape, as they
called it, the trapper told the lads that they might run about as they
pleased till four o'clock.
"At that time," he added, "the hunting will begin."
"What are we going--?" Bill started, but he checked himself just in
time, to the great delight of Barker and Tatanka.
"Come on, Tim," he sang out, "Let's take a hike to the prairie. I'll be
sent home, if I hang around here all day."
"Don't chase any geese or cranes, boys," Barker called after them. "If
you see any on the fields, don't disturb them."
The boys discovered that from the place, where they started, the open
prairie was only about half a mile away. As they carefully skirted along
the edge of the timber, they saw several large flocks of geese and
cranes feeding on open fields of young winter-wheat. On one field they
could distinguish a boy who had evidently been told to drive the cranes
off the wheat-field. He was a small boy and was having a sorry time of
it. He had no gun, but tried to scare them away with a stick.
"I bet his mother wouldn't let him take a gun," remarked Tim.
"May be his people are too poor to buy a gun," suggested Bill. "Settlers
in a new country don't have much money and they need all kinds of things
for a new farm."
The boy walked from one end of the field to the other. When he arrived
at the east end, the cranes flew to the west end, but the boy could not
make them leave the field.
The longer the boy tried to drive them away, the bolder they became.
"I'll bet they know the boy hasn't a gun," Tim exclaimed.
Now a very big crane defied the boy altogether. He walked boldly toward
the boy, spreading his wings and uttering a loud croak.
"Look, look," exclaimed Tim, "he's going to bite the boy. Let's run and
help him."
"No, we mustn't," argued Bill. "Mr. Barker said we shouldn't scare the
cranes. If that kid runs away from a crane, he deserves to be bitten."
"I would run," Tim acknowledged, "if I had no gun."
The boy was now actually running away with the crane after him, but
falling over a furrow and seeing that he could not run away from the
fighting crane, he picked up his stick and went hard at his pursuer. At
this unexpected attack, the crane ran away, napped his wings and arose
to join the flock at the other end of the field.
The boy started for home, looking back from time to time as if afraid
that the big bird might be after him again.
"I wouldn't herd cranes," said Tim, "if they didn't give me a gun."
The boys returned to camp in good time and about four o'clock the
hunting actually began, for the big Canada geese began to fly over the
timber to their resting place on a long sandspit below Inspiration
Point.
"One rule," Mr. Barker called, "about this hunt. Don't fire at any bird
that is too far off. We don't want to leave any wounded birds in the
woods. Tim, you come with me. I'll tell you when to fire."
The hunters walked back half a dozen rods, so they would not drop any
birds below the cliff, and placed themselves about fifty yards apart on
a line parallel to the crest of the bluff.
Half a dozen geese soon came flying just above the tops of the old oaks.
"Aim at the last one," Barker told Tim. "Take it from behind!"
Tim brought down a large fat goose.
"Good work!" exclaimed the trapper. "Your shot went right in between the
feathers. If you had fired at the bird from in front, the shot might
have glanced off the heavy coat of feathers. 'Always aim at a single
bird,' is also a good rule in wing-shooting. If you just fire wildly at
the whole flock, you are likely to miss them all."
Barker at once took up Tim's goose, saying, "That will just furnish us a
good supper with some bacon and corn bread."
After the goose had been picked and drawn, he put a slender green pole
through it, which he laid on two forked sticks close to a hot fire. When
one side was partly cooked, he turned the other side to the fire. In
this way he prepared a savory meal of wild goose roasted on the spit.
When it grew too dark to shoot, the hunters came in with six geese. Bill
had had the bad luck of merely winging a bird, so that he was compelled
to follow his game for nearly an hour. A wild goose is so protectively
colored that among dead leaves and brush it can make itself almost as
invisible as a sparrow.
When Bill finally captured his bird, it was almost dark and he had
forgotten to watch the direction to camp; he was lost.
He fired two shots in quick succession.
"There is Big Boy," Tatanka laughed. "He is lost, Tim; shoot twice, so
he can find home. He is hungry."
Two shots fired close together means, "I'm lost," to hunters and
woodsmen.
Of course Bill was not far from camp and he came home in time for
supper.
"Bill," his younger brother teased him, "the next time you run after a
goose, hang a cowbell on your neck, so we can tell where you go."
Barker and the Indian had built a lean-to and a warm camp-fire with
back-logs of green oaks. For the fire itself they had cut a big pile of
green white-birch.
"Look here, boys," Barker told them after supper, "we sleep between the
log-fire and the lean-to. Any man that wakes up puts a few logs on the
fire. In that way I think we'll keep warm."
They sat late around the camp-fire and when, at last, they were ready to
roll in, Tatanka walked out to the point, below which river and valley
spread out in a strange light.
"Look, my friend," he called. "The whole sky is burning. It is growing
daylight. The world is burning up."
As they stepped away from the fire, they all saw the strange appearance
of the sky. It was indeed growing daylight, although it was still before
midnight.
Great streamers and bundles of whitish and reddish light were shooting
up from all points on the horizon toward the zenith. Some streamers
flickered, swayed and died out, but others took their places and for
half an hour it was light enough to read. The river, the bottom forest,
even the Wisconsin bluffs could be plainly seen. The men could even see
their canoe amongst the willows below.
"The world is coming to an end," Tatanka muttered, overcome by his
superstitious fears.
"No, it isn't," Barker explained to him. "We are seeing a grand display
of northern lights, the greatest I have ever seen, although I have seen
them many, many times. This is something many city people never see,
because they are always cooped up in houses."
In an hour it was dark again, and the tired hunters rolled up in their
blankets before the fire.
"Make a night-cap out of your handkerchiefs," Barker advised the boys.
"The night is going to be chilly and your heads and ears will get cold
if they are not covered."
Early in the morning they started for the field, where the boy had
herded the cranes. The birds were there again, and it was not hard to
get within range, although they were much more wary of the hunters than
they had been of the small boy with his stick. When the great birds
arose, all four fired and each man brought down his bird.
As Bill ran to pick up his game, the trapper called to him, "Look out,
Bill; he isn't dead!"
But Bill was too eager to take warning. The bird suddenly straightened
out his long neck and shot his sharp beak right into Bill's face.
The young hunter staggered and cried out with pain and surprise. The
crane had cut a deep gash in Bill's cheek and the blood ran freely down
his face.
At first his three friends laughed at him, but when they saw how badly
Bill was wounded, Tatanka quickly chewed a handful of choke-cherry twigs
and put them on the wound to stop the bleeding.
Thus ended the crane-hunt near Inspiration Point.