A FAMINE.
The river having gone down until no water remained on the sandy bank,
Tom reported the fact and added,
"Now let's move back again to the root-fortress. It's a safer place than
this, by a good deal, if it isn't quite so big or quite so comfortable."
"No, we mustn't go back yet," said Judie, who had visited the fortress
before Tom had, "because the sand in there is as wet as can be, and I
can't let my big sick brother lie on it."
"There, Tom," said Sam, "my doctor forbids my return yet awhile, and a
sick man always must obey the doctor you know. Besides, Judie is right.
It won't do for any of us to lie on wet sand; we must wait till it
dries; but that won't be very long if the river continues to go down."
Accordingly they spent one more night in the drift cavern. Early the
next morning Judie went to the fortress, and returning said, playing
doctor.
"Now, then, Mr. Hardwicke, the floor of your lower house is quite dry,
and I think it will be safe to move back again. Will you have your
breakfast first, or will you wait until you get back home again before
eating anything?"
"Oh, let's wait, by all means, and eat breakfast in the dear old
root-fortress," said Tom, and as Sam made no objection, it was so
arranged.
By nine o'clock the moss carpet was laid in the root-fortress and the
little party was back in its old quarters again. The vacant corner which
had been Joe's, reminded them sadly of his disappearance. Poor fellow!
they had learned to love him almost as a brother, and they could not
think of him now without tears. When three people sit down with a silent
grief, their conversation is very apt to be lively, or, if they cannot
quite accomplish that, they are sure to talk only of indifferent
matters, and so it was in the present case. Judie was the first to break
the silence which had fallen upon all.
"Tom," she said playfully, "I'm afraid you're not a good provider. Here
we are, hungry as wolves, and you haven't brought us a mite of anything
to eat. You've moved everything but the provisions, and you've forgotten
them entirely."
Master Tom admitted the grievousness of his fault and returned at once
to the drift cavern after the forgotten provision pack. The bread, as
they all knew, was long ago exhausted, but plenty of meat remained, and
this Tom presently brought. When he opened the pack a disagreeable odor
spread itself at once over the little room.
"Phew! what's that?" said Tom, and putting his nose to the meat, he
looked up in blank consternation, saying:
"The meat is spoiled, Sam! What on earth shall we do?"
The case was an alarming one certainly. They were hungry, and Sam, whose
returning health had brought with it a ravenous appetite, was
particularly so. He needed wholesome, nourishing food now more than
anything else, as he knew.
"Well," he said, after thinking the matter over, "it can't be helped.
There's nothing for it but to fall back on sweet potatoes till I get
strong enough to go hunting. You must go to the potato field Tom, and
bring some."
There had been but one field of corn in the neighborhood at first, and
the various parties of Indians who had camped in its vicinity had long
ago carried away the last ear of corn from that, as the boys knew very
well. The river was altogether too high now for mussels to be got, and
so the sweet potatoes in a field half a mile away, were their only
resource.
Tom set out at once in quest of them, carefully looking out for lurking
savages. He was gone more than an hour, and just as Sam was growing
really uneasy on his account, he returned, _empty handed_!
"There isn't a potato in the field," he said as he sat down in utter
dejection. "The Indians have dug every one of them."
This announcement was indeed an alarming one to the whole party. They
were without an ounce of food of any sort within their utmost reach, and
it was plain that they must starve, unless they could hit upon some new
device, by which to get a supply.
"I must go hunting, sick or well," said Sam rising; but he had no sooner
got upon his feet, than he felt the utter impossibility of doing
anything of the kind.
"It's of no use," he said sadly. "I can't make my legs carry me, Tom,
and so we must depend upon you. Go into the woods there by the creek,
and sit down or stand still till you see something in the way of game,
and then take good aim before you shoot, for we mustn't waste any of our
powder."
With this he shook the horn to ascertain how much remained in it, and
was horrified to find it empty! Tom remembered that the last time he had
loaded the gun he had used the last grain of powder in the horn.
"Well, then," said Sam, "we have only one charge of powder between us
and starvation, and it won't do to waste that, Tom. You can shoot pretty
well when you have time enough to take good aim, and I suppose, if you
make up your mind beforehand that you won't shoot till you know you can
kill what you shoot at, it is safe enough. At any rate we must risk it.
Remember, however, that you mustn't run the risk of wasting this load
in your anxiety to kill the first thing you see to shoot at. There is
plenty of game in the woods, so if you can't get a sure shot at one
thing, wait for another. Get a sure shot anyhow, if it takes you all
day. It must be something big enough to last us awhile, too. You mustn't
shoot at anything less than a turkey or a 'possum, and you mustn't shoot
at all till you get _very_ close, because if you miss, we will starve.
Better take all day to-day and all day to-morrow than to miss when you
fire."
And after many instructions and cautionings, Tom sallied forth in search
of game. Going into the woods for a considerable distance, he sat down
on a log in the thick undergrowth and waited patiently for the
appearance of some animal which could be eaten. Hour after hour passed,
and Tom fell asleep. How long he slept he did not know, but waking
suddenly he saw a flock of wild turkeys within a few yards of him.
Raising his gun and taking a very deliberate aim he pulled the trigger.
No explosion followed, but the clicking of the hammer was enough to put
the game to flight.
Poor Tom was disheartened, but it would not do to give up, and so he
carefully picked the edge of his flint with his knife and walked further
into the woods.
He had not walked very far, with cautious steps, when he heard a
rustling in the bushes just ahead of him. At first he thought it must be
an Indian, and drawing back he waited for further developments. A grunt
soon enlightened him as to the character of the game, and creeping
through the bushes he found himself close to a fat young hog, one of the
many running wild in those woods and thickets. That was something worth
having. Levelling his gun again, he again pulled the trigger, but
without effect, and opening the pan he discovered that during the rain,
while in the drift cavern, the "priming," as the powder in the pan is
called, had been reduced to a paste by water. To fire the gun was out of
the question, and so clubbing it, Tom ran at the hog and dealt him a
blow on the head, hoping in that way to secure the game which he could
not shoot. The blow fell upon the nose of the animal, however, and while
it brought a squeal of pain from him, it produced no beneficial result.
The hog ran rapidly away, and Tom was left with nothing better than a
broken gun to carry back to the fortress.
Arriving there about three o'clock in the afternoon he told the doleful
story of his failure, and sitting down burst into tears.
"Come, come!" said Sam. "This will never do, old fellow. It's bad enough
as it is without crying about it. We'll come all right if you'll only
keep your courage up, and give me a chance to think. I'm getting better
every day now, and if we can only hold out a few days longer, I'll be on
my feet again, and then we'll go straight to Fort Glass. Just as soon as
I can walk at all, we'll start, meantime we must get something to eat,
and to do that I must think. Let me see. The gun is of no use now, but
there are other ways of getting game besides shooting it. We must set
some traps. This spoiled meat will do for bait. Get me a good piece of
poplar wood, Tom, or cypress, or some other sort, that I can whittle
easily, and I'll make some figure-four triggers. Then I'll tell you how
to make dead-falls, and you must set as many of them as you can to make
sure of getting something to eat by to-morrow morning."
Tom brought the wood and Sam soon whittled out several sets of triggers.
"Now do you know how to set a trap with these triggers, Tom?" he asked.
"Yes, I've set many a partridge trap with figure fours."
"Very well then. Now you must set dead-falls in the same way. That is,
instead of a trap you must set a log. You see I've made the triggers big
and strong, and you must put them under one end of as heavy a log as you
can lift. Then you must lay other logs on top to make it as heavy as
possible, and bait it with a piece of the spoilt meat. If anything
undertakes to eat the meat to-night, the dead-fall will break its neck
or back, sure. Here are six sets of triggers and you must set six
dead-falls. We can go hungry till to-morrow, can't we, little woman?"
chucking Judie under the chin.
"We can try, anyhow," answered the little woman as cheerfully as she
could, though she was by no means confident that she could do anything
of the sort. She was already faint and almost sick, and whether she
could live till morning or not was an undetermined question in her
mind. To tell the truth, Sam himself felt but little confidence in his
device. The spoiled meat, he knew, would attract only the larger
animals, and such dead-falls as Tom could set were by no means certain
to kill these in their fall. It was the very best thing he could do,
however, and he must trust to it in the absence of any better reliance.
He concealed his anxiety therefore, and after receiving Tom's report of
his operations in dead-fall setting, he drew Judie to his side and told
her a fairy story, as night fell. All went to sleep at last, and when
morning came Sam aroused Tom very early and sent him to examine the
traps. The boy was gone for an hour or more, when he returned with
downcast countenance. Two of the traps had been thrown, but there was no
game under them, while the four others remained undisturbed.
Here was a bad out-look certainly, and they had not tasted food now for
more than thirty hours!