A GENTLE PIONEER
HISTORICAL BOOKS BY AMY E. BLANCHARD.
=A GIRL OF ’76.= A STORY OF THE EARLY PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. Illustrated. 331 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
=A REVOLUTIONARY MAID.= A STORY OF THE MIDDLE PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. Illustrated. 321 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
=A DAUGHTER OF FREEDOM.= A STORY OF THE LATTER PERIOD OF THE WAR FOR
INDEPENDENCE. Illustrated. 312 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
* * * * *
=A HEROINE OF 1812.= A MARYLAND ROMANCE. Illustrated. 335 pages.
Cloth. $1.50.
=A LOYAL LASS.= A STORY OF THE NIAGARA CAMPAIGN OF 1814. Illustrated.
319 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
_IN THE “PIONEER SERIES.”_
=A GENTLE PIONEER.= BEING THE STORY OF THE EARLY DAYS IN THE NEW WEST.
Illustrated. 336 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
=BONNY LESLEY OF THE BORDER.= A STORY. Illustrated. 331 pages. Cloth.
$1.50.
=A FRONTIER KNIGHT.= A STORY OF EARLY TEXAN BORDER-LIFE. Illustrated.
339 pages. Cloth. $1.50.
[Illustration: SHE STOLE HER ARM AROUND HER FATHER’S NECK.]
A GENTLE PIONEER
_BEING THE STORY OF THE EARLY
DAYS IN THE NEW WEST_
BY
AMY E. BLANCHARD
ILLUSTRATED BY
IDA WAUGH
[Illustration]
W. A. WILDE COMPANY
BOSTON AND CHICAGO
_Copyright, 1903_,
BY W. A. WILDE COMPANY.
_All rights reserved._
A GENTLE PIONEER.
Published in July.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. EMIGRANTS 9
II. THE HOUSEWARMING 24
III. A SEARCH 43
IV. THE UNEXPECTED 58
V. POLLY 73
VI. JEANIE’S SECRET 89
VII. THE INTRUDER 105
VIII. ARCHIE’S PLAN 121
IX. WHAT THE FRESHET BROUGHT 139
X. HONEY 155
XI. AT THE END OF THE VISIT 170
XII. MOTHER 187
XIII. PLOTTING 205
XIV. JEANIE’S WEDDING-DAY 223
XV. WHO HAD THE WILL 241
XVI. A SUPPER AT PARKER WILLETT’S 256
XVII. IN ABSENCE 271
XVIII. THE OVERTHROW OF HUMPHREY 287
XIX. DR. FLINT 304
XX. HER HEART’S DESIRE 321
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“She stole her arm around her father’s neck” _Frontispiece_ 2
“Agnes slipped off to a corner where Jeanie found her” 37
“She drew aside the curtain from the little window” 108
“Very sweet did the girlish voices sound” 180
“Parker watched her for a few minutes, not attempting to
help” 263
A GENTLE PIONEER
CHAPTER I
EMIGRANTS
It was a grave little company which sat around the big fireplace of
the Kennedy farm-house one night in March. Outside the wind howled and
blustered, and even though a huge log fire shot its flames in fine
fashion up the wide chimney, there was necessity for sand-bags at the
door, and for heavy homespun curtains at the windows to keep out the
insistent draughts which would make their way through every chink and
cranny. The younger children cuddled close together on the hearth,
their mother from time to time looking up from her work to watch them
thoughtfully; their father, silent and moody, gazed into the snapping
fire, while Agnes herself, old enough to understand better than her
brothers and sisters the cause of the unusual seriousness, paused more
than once in her task of knitting to steal a glance at her parents.
At last Mrs. Kennedy aroused herself. “Come, bairns,” she said, “it is
long past bedtime. Off with you. I’ll hear your prayers and see you
safely tucked in.” Accustomed to prompt obedience, the children arose,
Sandy and Margret, Jock and Jessie. Agnes alone stayed behind at a nod
from her mother.
When the last little lagging foot had ceased to be heard upon the
stair, the girl turned to her father and said, “I am going to sit up
till you and mother go to bed, for this is the last night in a long
time that we shall be together.”
“Yes, in a long time,” he sighed; and then Agnes, contradicting her
own statement, returned: “Oh, no, not a long time; in a very little
while we shall be able to send for them. Won’t it be good, father, to
see them all coming, Sandy and Margret and Jock and Jessie? You will
go for them, and I will get a hot supper ready, and they will all be
so surprised to see how fine a place a log-cabin can be. Think of it,
this time next year we shall all be together again.” She stole her arm
around her father’s neck and laid her cheek against his. “Aren’t you
glad I am going?” she asked with a little laugh.
“I am, my lass, though I misdoubt I am selfish in taking you from your
mother.”
“Sh! There she comes; we must look very cheerful. We were talking about
what fun it will be when you and the children come,” she said brightly,
as her mother entered.
“Yes,” was the reply, “but there’s a weary time between.”
“Oh, no, it will go very quickly, for there will be so much to do.
First our going and then your getting off to Cousin Sarah’s, and all
that.”
“Youth likes change,” returned her mother, with a sigh, “but Agnes,
child, it is not worth while your biding here all night talking of it.
Go to bed, my lass. To-morrow will come soon enough, no matter how
late we sit up, and you have a long journey before you.” She spoke so
gravely that suddenly it came to Agnes that the exciting plan in which
she was so deeply concerned meant more than change and adventure; it
meant hardship and separations from those she loved; it meant long
absence from her mother and the little ones; it meant the parting from
old neighbors and the giving up of the old home where she was born. So
she very soberly made her good nights and went to her chilly upper room
with a serious countenance.
The wind whistling around the corners of the house, shrieking through
the keyholes and sighing about the chimney, sounded particularly
doleful to her that night as she lay snuggled down in the big
feather-bed by the side of her little sister Margret, and she remained
awake for a long time. Life had gone on evenly enough for all the
fifteen years that this had been her home, and the boundaries of the
big farm seemed likely to hedge her in for some years to come, but
within a year her grandfather and grandmother had both died, and her
father, who as the youngest child had always lived at home with the
old folks, now must possess only a share of the farm, and the elder
brothers, already prosperous men, would claim their heritage.
“It was right of father not to be willing to settle down here on a
little bit of a tract and have them all free enough with their advice
but with nothing else,” thought Agnes. “My uncles are a canny, thrifty
set, but they save, and save, and never remember that but for his
care of his parents my father, too, might own his own homestead, and
grandfather forgot, too. Perhaps he thought the others would give the
farm to father,--he ought to have it,--but they are too stingy to
give it and he is too proud to ask it. I am glad my grandmother was
not their mother, for father is far different. Dear father! Oh, yes,
I am glad to go with him. He deserves to have all the comfort he can
get after being treated so hardly by his family. We were always good
comrades, my father and I; for I was the baby all those years before
Sandy came,--three years.” But the reckoning of years soon became lost
in the land of dreams, and the song of the wind in the chimney was
Agnes’s last lullaby in the old home.
It was a bright sunny morning that Agnes and her father took for
starting out upon their journey, the man on foot, and Agnes established
in a sort of basket or creel made of willow and fastened to one side of
the packhorse, balancing the burden of provisions and other necessities
made in a bundle on the other. It was only when she was tired that
Agnes would ride, but she was resolved to start out in this fashion for
the benefit of her brothers and sisters, assembled on the doorstep to
see the start and vastly interested in the whole proceeding. There was
another reason, too, why the girl established herself in her creel, for
the parting between herself and her mother had been too much for them
both, and the tears were raining down the little emigrant’s cheeks as
she quavered out, “Good-by, all.” But the horse had scarcely started
before she begged to stop, and, leaping out, she ran back to where her
mother stood vainly striving to check the sobs which convulsed her.
“Oh, mother, mother!” Agnes flung her arms around her neck and kissed
the dear face again and again. “Don’t forget me, mother. Good-by, once
more.”
“God keep you safe, my lamb,” came the broken words, and Agnes ran back
again to where her father, with bent head and lips compressed, waited
for her. She climbed up into her creel again, and they started off with
no more delay. As far as she could see Agnes watched first the group on
the porch, then the white house, and last of all the familiar outline
of field, hill, and dale. At last these, too, became but dim distance,
and Agnes Kennedy had seen her old home for the last time.
The ride was made in silence for some distance, and then Agnes
remembered that in the last talk early that morning her mother had
said: “You must try and keep a good heart in father, my child, for he
is given to being despondent at times and is easily discouraged. It is
a great cross for him to be parted from his family and to leave the
safe and pleasant ways he has been accustomed to all his life, so try
to cheer him all you can.” Therefore Agnes from her creel called out:
“I’m going to walk awhile, father; there’ll be plenty of times when I
shall have to ride. I might as well walk while I can, and, besides, I
shall be nearer you.”
Her father stopped, and then the two trudged together toward the town
to which they were first going.
“I shall not be surprised,” Agnes remarked, “if we have company when
we are fairly on our way, for I hear there are trains and trains of
wagons besides the packhorse going westward. I’d like a merry company,
wouldn’t you, daddy?”
Her father shook his head. “I misdoubt it, Nancy. I’m no one for new
acquaintances, as ye weel know.”
“Ah, but I am,” returned Agnes, “and that’s for why you are better when
I am along. You don’t draw so dour a face. It’s no worse that we are
doing than your grandfather did, and no so bad, for did he not leave
his country and come across the ocean to this land? But no, it wasn’t
really his own country, Ireland, was it? for before that his father--or
was it his grandfather?--fled from Scotland because he followed a
Protestant king. Grandfather used to tell me about it all and the songs
they sang. ‘Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled’” she trolled out as she
ran along, keeping step with her father’s long strides. “And how far do
we have to go before we come to the Ohio?” she asked after a while.
“Near two hundred miles,” he told her.
“Let me see; we go ten miles to-day, which is nothing of a walk, and we
spend the night in Carlisle, where you get another horse, and we go how
far the next day?”
“Twenty-five or thirty, I think we can count on.”
“And that much every day?”
“If the weather is good.”
“Then in four or five days we shall go a hundred miles, and in a little
over a week, say ten days, we shall get there. I wonder what it looks
like.”
“Not so very different from what you see now--a trifle wilder, mayhap.
But I wouldn’t count on our making it in ten days; when we are crossing
the mountains, it will be sore work, verra rough travelling.”
“Oh!” Agnes was a little disappointed. She thought it might be quite
different and that the trip would be made in short order, delays
not having entered into her calculations. However she resumed the
conversation cheerfully. “Now let us talk about what we are going to do
when we get there.”
“My first step will be to get my land.”
“And then stake it out,” said Agnes, glad to display her knowledge of
the necessary proceedings.
“Yes.”
“And next?”
“Build a log-cabin.”
“You’ll have to cut down the trees first and then have--what do they
call it?--a log-rolling.”
“Yes, that will come first.”
Agnes was silent a moment, then she began again. “Father, I never
thought to ask before, but where are we going to sleep nights after we
leave Carlisle?”
“We’ll make the towns along the way as far as we can, and when we pass
beyond them, we may find a booth or so or maybe a cabin here and there,
put up for the use of travellers like ourselves. When we reach the
river, I may conclude to get a broad, as your grandfather Muirhead did.”
“What is a broad?”
“A broadhorn, they call it, is a flat-boat to be used in shallow water
to carry a family’s belongings.”
Agnes smiled; this was such an adventurous way of going. The boat,
particularly, gave her a feeling of novelty. “I hope you will get a
boat; it would be a diversion to travel that way, and then no one
would have to walk, not even you, Donald.” She patted the horse
affectionately. “Go on, father. Where do we get the boat?”
“That I cannot say exactly. It may be at Fort Pitt or it may be at some
other place. I am going to hunt up your cousin James at Uniontown, and
we’ll see then.”
With this sort of talk and with long periods of silence the day wore
on till, late in the afternoon, they approached Carlisle, and there
the first stop was made. It was quite a familiar journey to this
point, but from there on the way led through a part of the country
unknown to Agnes, and the day’s travels became wilder and wilder as
they approached the mountains. It was then that Agnes understood her
father’s smile when she first insisted upon the twenty-five miles a
day, saying that it could be easily covered, for many a night it was a
very weary girl who crept into whatever shelter was afforded her, and
slept so soundly that not even the cry of an owl or the distant scream
of a wildcat could arouse her.
But at last the mountains were passed, and one day they stopped at a
small village consisting of a few houses and a store. It was on the
line of the emigrant’s road to western Virginia and Ohio, and here
stores were laid in by the pioneer who did not want to transport too
much stuff across the mountains. Here halted more than one emigrant
train, and, as Agnes and her father drew up before the house that with
small pretension was denoted an inn, they saw in the muddy street
several canvas-covered wagons. “Ho, for the Ohio!” Agnes read upon one
of these vehicles. She laughed, and at the same time her eyes met the
merry ones of a girl peeping out from the wagon just ahead. With a
little cry of pleasure Agnes ran forward. “Ah, Jeanie M’Clean, is it
you? Who would have thought it? A year ago you went away and you are
still going.”
“Indeed, I am then,” returned Jeanie. “Father has the fever as well as
many another, and he says we shall have better luck if we be moving on
than if we stayed where we were, so we’re bound for the Ohio this time,
and it’s glad we’ll be to have you join us, if you go that way.”
“We do go that way, and I shall be glad when my father cries, ‘Stop!’
How long do you stay here, and where is your halting-place to be at
last?”
“We stay till to-morrow, and we are going somewhere this side of
Marietta. The oxen are not fast travellers, not half as fast as the
pack-horses, but it is an easy way for us women folks. Aren’t you tired
of your creel?”
“Indeed am I, but it seemed the best way for me to come when there
are but two of us. Mother and the children will follow as soon as we
are well settled. I think father will maybe get a broadhorn, though
maybe not. I hope he will, for it seems to me it would be the most
comfortable way of travelling.”
“So many think; and it is no loss, for they use the boats after in
building their houses. We have our wagon and get along very well. See
how comfortable it is. Climb up and look.”
Agnes did as she was bid, and indeed the monstrous wagon looked quite
like a little room with its feather-beds and stools, its pots, pans,
spinning-wheel, and even the cradle swung from its rounded top. “It is
comfortable,” she acknowledged; “far more so than the creel. I’d like
to travel so, I think, but I must follow my father’s will, of course. I
see him there now, Jeanie, talking to your father.”
“I hope daddy will persuade him to join our train; the more the merrier
and the--safer. Oh, Agnes, shall you fear the Indians?”
“I don’t think so. There is no war at this time and they should not
be hostile, father says. I am more afraid of the wild beasts. Oh, how
lonely it was some nights when we were coming over the mountains and
could hear the wolves howling and the wildcats screaming so near us.
Many a time I wished myself safe at home in my little bed with Margret.
I would like to join your train, Jeanie, for my father is not a great
talker, and there are days when we jog along and I tire more of keeping
my tongue still than I do of keeping my legs going.”
Jeanie laughed. “Here come our fathers. Now we will hear what they have
to say.”
“The inn is full, Agnes,” said Fergus Kennedy, “though I may be able to
get a corner on the floor with some others. But what about you? We will
have to see if some of the good people in the village will take you in.”
“Indeed, then,” spoke up Joseph M’Clean, “she’ll not have to go that
far. We’ve room enough on our beds for one more, and she’ll be welcome
to a place by Jeanie, I’ll warrant.”
“She’ll be that,” Jeanie spoke up, “so you’ll not look further, Agnes.
Will we camp farther on, father?”
“Yes, just a pace beyond, where Archie has taken the cattle.” Agnes
looked to where she could see a couple of pack-horses, two cows, a
yellow dog, and two small pigs, these last being in a creel slung at
the side of one of the horses. Underneath the wagon swung a coop full
of chickens. Joseph M’Clean was well stocked up. When the baby was
safely in its cradle slung overhead, and Mrs. M’Clean and the children
were ensconced in a row on the feather-bed, Agnes found herself
occupying the outside place, a fact for which she was thankful, and not
even the strangeness of the position kept her awake long.
She was awakened bright and early by the general uprising of the family
and by the sound of Archie’s voice calling, “Mother, mother, sun’s up.”
And so the day began. Later on, when Agnes’s father sought her, it was
to say that he had concluded to join Joseph M’Clean and his friends.
“I’ll feel better to be by those I’ve known since childhood than in
the neighborhood of strangers,” he declared, “and Joseph says there’s
land enough for all. I did think of going further away to hunt up that
property of your grandfather Muirhead’s,--it was what your mother
wanted,--but I’ve concluded to settle this side. So we’ll go along
with our friends, and I don’t doubt but you’ll be better satisfied,
Agnes.”
Therefore the rest of the way Agnes, for the most part, kept her
place by Jeanie in the big wagon, or, when tired of sitting still,
the two would get out and keep pace with the slow-going oxen, while
the pack-horses went on ahead. In this manner they covered the whole
distance, camping at night, and starting off betimes in the morning,
the line of white-covered wagons winding along the rough roads slowly
but surely, and each day bringing the little band of emigrants nearer
to their destination, though Agnes found the ten days had lengthened
into weeks before they came to their final stop on the banks of the
Ohio.
This long-looked-for moment arrived, there was much excitement and much
running to and fro. The men stalked about gesticulating and pointing
out the various features of the landscape; the women gathered together
in groups, laughing and talking; the more adventurous children wanted
to form exploring parties at once, while the timid ones clung close
to their mothers, awed by the deep, impenetrable forest in which all
sorts of dangers, real or fancied, lurked. Then one after another the
little cabins were erected of rough, hewn logs, and in a short time
all of them were snuggled down, each in its little hollow, where the
newly chopped stumps indicated a clearing. There was, too, a stockade
and fort not too far distant, for Indians were not to be trusted, even
in times of peace, and the shelter of the stockade would be necessary
when there came a warning.
It was quite summer by the time Agnes and her father took possession of
their home in the wonderful, mysterious forest. A humble little house
it was with its rude chimney plastered with clay, its unglazed windows
with their heavy wooden shutters. Its great fireplace in the one room
was where Agnes would cook the daily meals; the little loft overhead,
reached by a rough ladder, was her bedroom. Skins of wild animals
composed her bed and coverlet, and the daily food would be found close
at hand,--game from the forest, milk from the cow they had bought, and
porridge or mush from meal which they ground themselves.
Jeanie M’Clean, half a mile on one side, and the O’Neills, half a mile
the other, were the nearest neighbors, so that, with her father busy
all day in the woods hunting or clearing his land, it was rather a
lonely life for the girl used to a family of brothers and sisters, and
with a mother to consult with and direct her. Yet it was a very free
life; and the little log-cabin an easy house to keep, consequently
Agnes could almost daily find time to run through the woods for a
chat with Jeanie M’Clean, though it was to good-natured, kind-hearted
Polly O’Neill that she took her troubles. Polly, with just a taste of
the brogue and her cheery face, was a good companion when one felt
doncy. Nothing seemed to bother Polly; and if her four children, the
eldest nothing more than a baby, all clung to her skirts at once, it
did not seem to interfere with her movements. Jimmy O’Neill had set up
his forge there in the wilderness, and as the blacksmith was a very
important figure in the community where men must make many of their own
farming implements, there was generally a company to be seen and news
to be had at Polly’s, and Agnes congratulated herself that she lived so
near.