SOMETHING TO PUT IN THE CHEST.
That night as Mr. Whitman, accompanied by Peter and Bertie, reached the
door-step, they were met by George Wood who said their mare had broken
her leg, and they were going to kill her, that she had a colt four days
old, and his father would sell it for a dollar.
“Father,” shouted Bertie, “won’t you let James have it, and keep it for
him till it is grown up? You know Peter and I have each of us a yoke of
steers, and James ought to have something. Will you, father?”
“James has no dollar to pay for a colt.”
“I’ll lend it to him, and he can pay me when he sells his potatoes.”
“But how do you know he wants a colt? Perhaps he had rather have the
dollar.”
“Oh! I know he does, of course he does; you know how much he thinks of a
horse, father, there’s nothing he loves like a horse. He’s got no father
nor mother, nor brother nor sister, and it will be something for him to
love just like a brother. He’s out to the barn, I’ll ask him, and if he
says he wants him will you let him keep him?”
“He won’t say so, if he wants him ever so much, but you have a sort of
freemasonry by which you reach each other’s thoughts, and if you think
he would like very much to have him and pay a dollar for him, you may
get him.”
It is to be presumed that James wanted the colt; for when work was done,
Peter, Bertie and Maria all got into the wagon that was half filled with
straw, and in the edge of the evening brought home the colt.
James watched his opportunity, and taking Mrs. Whitman aside, said,—
“I don’t think Mr. Whitman ought to keep this colt for me, it is doing
too much for such as me. It takes a good deal to keep a horse.”
“That don’t amount to anything, James; we’ve hay enough, and pasture
enough; there’s no market here for hay and we want to eat it up on the
place, and we never shall miss what that little creature eats.”
“But by-and-by he will eat as much as the other horses.”
“Then you can sell him or let us use him, it will be handy to have a
spare horse to use when the others are at work, and to go to market or
to mill with.”
“I am afraid Mr. Whitman will think I asked for him, and can never be
satisfied. I was out to the barn, when Bertie came running, and asked me
if I should like such a little thing to make a pet of, and I said ‘I am
sure I should,’ and away he went; he didn’t tell me he had asked his
father to keep it for me, and the next thing I knew they came with the
colt, and said it was mine and that their father would keep it for me.”
“Husband wanted you to have it, he knew just what Bertie would do when
he went to the barn; you have never had any home, and we want you to
feel that this is your home. Husband wants you to have this little colt
because he thinks it will make you happy, and by-and-by it will be worth
considerable to you, and you can see it grow, and we shall never feel
the difference.”
“It will make me happy, for I do love horses, I think they are nearer to
us than other creatures, and I shall love this little fellow like a
brother, but I want you to tell Peter and Bertie not to ask their father
for any more things for me. I am afraid Mr. Whitman will think I put ‘em
up to ask.”
“Why, James, he loves to give you things. They did not ask him to send
you to school, nor to give you boards to make your chest, nor to let you
have that piece of ground to plant, it came out of his own head and
heart; he is just the best man that ever was in this world, and the
children take after him, and he takes after his father. Grandfather is
getting a little childish sometimes now, but he is the best old
gentleman that ever was, and a real treasure.”
It was so dark when the boys got the colt home, that they could not have
a fair view of him, but the next morning the children were all at the
barn by sunrise, and their mother with them, to give him his breakfast.
“Isn’t he a beauty?” said Bertie. “Mr. Wood says, when he comes to his
color he’ll be a chestnut, same as Frank, mother. He’s a real good
breed, Mr. Wood and I traced it out; he’s half-brother to Frank and
perhaps he’ll be just like Frank.”
The mother had been injured four days, and the Wood boys had taught the
colt to drink milk by putting a finger in his mouth and his mouth in the
milk.
“Mother,” said Peter, “Mr. Wood has brought up a great many colts by
hand, and he said that they ought to be fed a little at a time and
often, to do right well. James nor we can’t come from the field to feed
him, Maria can’t do it because she’s at school all day. What shall we
do?”
“I’ll feed him twice in the forenoon and twice in the afternoon, a
little at a time and often is the way, and then you and James can feed
him morning, noon and night.”
After a few days’ feeding with her fingers, Mrs. Whitman nailed a teat
made of rags and leather to the bottom of the trough, and the colt would
suck that. All she had to do then was to pour the milk into the trough.
No one could have witnessed without emotion the wealth of affection
lavished upon that colt by James. Much as he loved the children there
was always a little feeling of restraint, and a little distance
pervading their intercourse on his part. Bertie and Maria would put
their arms around his neck and hug him, but he never returned their
caresses.
Not so, however, in regard to the colt, the only pet he ever had, the
only live thing that had ever called out the childhood feelings and
sympathies of his nature so long dormant, and which they now fastened
upon and clung to in their entire strength and freshness.
In the morning, before the rest were stirring, he would fondle and talk
to it by the half hour. As the little creature grew stronger and
playful, and could lick meal and eat potatoes and bread, James would put
bread in his waistcoat pocket and lie down on the barn floor, sometimes
he would put there maple sugar, then the colt, smelling the delicacies,
would root them out with his nose, and as he became earnest get down on
his knees and lick the lining of the pocket, and turn it out to get the
sugar.
Just back of the house was a piece of grass ground extremely fertile,
with a great willow in the centre of it. An acre of this was fenced and
reserved for a pasture in which to turn the horses to bait when work
pressed, and it was important to have them near at hand. In this pasture
James put the colt when he was old enough to feed, and there he would
frisk and caper and roll and try to act out the horse, and when tired
lie under the great willow, stretched out at full length as though he
was dead or sound asleep. Whenever James came in sight he would cry for
him, and when the other horses came in from work there would be a vocal
concert vigorously sustained on both sides.
“Poor little thing,” said Bert, “he’s lonesome, why don’t you turn him
into the pasture with the other horses? He wants somebody to talk with
him that can understand his language. I would, James.”
“I’m afraid to, he won’t know any better than to run right up to them,
and they will bite or kick him; perhaps they’ll all take after him, get
him into a ring and pen him in the corner of the fence and kill him.”
“Put one of ‘em in his place, and let us see what they will do.”
They turned old Frank in, the colt ran right up and began to smell of
him. Frank smelt of the colt, seemed glad to meet, and did not offer to
bite or kick him. Frank was just from work, hungry and wanted to feed,
but the colt wouldn’t let him, kept thrusting his nose in Frank’s face
and bothering him, when the old horse gave him a nip, taking the larger
portion of the colt’s neck into his great mouth. The little creature
screamed with pain and ran off, but soon came back and began feeding
close by, just as Frank did, the latter taking no further notice of him.
“They’ll do well enough,” said Mr. Whitman, who was looking on. “Frank
won’t hurt him, he was only teaching him manners, you can leave ‘em
together.”
They eventually became great friends, and after they had fed to the full
would stand in the corner of the fence or under the willows, the colt
nestled under Frank’s breast, and the latter with his head over the
colt’s back.
The colt would follow James like a dog; and sometimes when Frank would
take a notion not to be caught James would call the colt to him and
start for the barn, and the old horse would follow them right into the
stable.
Mr. Whitman had an offer for wheat at a high price, and kept Mr. Conly
and hired another man (as he had two barn floors) to help thresh,
threshing being then all done with the flail, or else the grain was
trampled out by cattle. The evenings were now getting to be quite long.
James therefore began to study, and Mr. Conly assisted him and heard him
recite. This was a golden opportunity for James, and he made the most of
it. While devoting every leisure moment to study, James was not
unmindful of his crop, there was not a weed to be seen among his
potatoes, and I should not dare to say how many times the fingers of
James and Bertie and Maria had been thrust into the hills on a voyage of
discovery, and their conclusions, as reported by Maria to her mother,
were most satisfactory. The soil indeed was full of great cracks, caused
by the growth and crowding of the potatoes.
When Mr. Whitman found that Mr. Conly was disposed to assist James, and
that James fully appreciated the privilege, he so arranged his work as
to afford him every possible opportunity, and the boys were ever ready
to take an additional burden upon themselves for the same purpose. One
evening Arthur Nevins came in to see the boys, and said he had been to
the mill that day and saw a notice posted up that Calvin Barker was
buying potatoes for a starch mill, and would pay cash and a fair price
for first-rate potatoes sound and sorted, no cut ones. Potatoes were
cheap, there was not much of a market for them, and the traders would
pay but part cash and the rest in goods.
“Now is your chance, James,” said the grandfather, “you want the money
and don’t want goods.”
They brought only seventeen cents per bushel, but there were one hundred
and sixteen bushels and a half, and after returning a bushel and one
half to Mr. Whitman to replace the seed received of him, and paying
Bertie for the colt, James had eighteen dollars and fifty cents left. In
addition to this were several bushels of small and cut potatoes that he
put in the cellar to give the colt.
Barker paid James in silver, and after reaching home he piled the coins
up on the table and gazed at them with a sort of stupid wonder. Never
before had he at one time possessed more than two shillings, seldom
that,—more frequently a few pennies for holding a horse, opening a gate,
or doing some errand for the men in the glass-house, and he counted them
over and over.
James now knew the value of a dollar in theory, how many cents there
were in a dollar, and how many mills in a cent; and yet he had little
more conception of its practical value than a red Indian, for he had not
received any wages nor bought anything above the value of a penny loaf
or a bit of cheese. At length, looking up wistfully in the face of Mr.
Whitman, he asked,—
“How much would all these dollars buy?”
“According to what you might buy. They would buy a good deal of some
articles and not much of others; they would buy about twenty-four
bushels of wheat and thirty of corn, but they would not buy a great deal
of coffee, or indigo, or broadcloth, or silk.”
“I’d buy a gun and lots of powder and shot,” said Bertie.
“Would it buy any land, Mr. Whitman?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“That would depend upon circumstances. In the western part of Ohio, of
wild land, one hundred and eighty acres—more than half as much as I have
got here.”
“O my! how much is an acre? I know what the arithmetic says, one hundred
and sixty square poles. But how big a piece is it?”
“That little pasture where the colt is measures about an acre. One of
those dollars would buy ten pieces of land as big as that pasture out
there; but you must recollect it is wild land, all woods, no house, no
road: you have to cut the trees down before you can grow anything on
it.”
“I know grandfather has told me ‘twas just so once where this house
stands. But would it buy any land here?”
“Yes, it will buy an acre, buy two, perhaps three of some land; of most
land it would not buy one.”
“It would buy a yoke of little steers, and quite a lot of sheep.”
“But why don’t you buy a gun? You love to shoot,” said Bertie.
“I mean to save my money to buy land.”
“That’s right, James,” said grandfather, “then you will have something
under your feet that will last as long as you will, and longer, too. Not
that I would say that it don’t pay a man who can shoot to buy a gun; but
every thing in its place.”
James had now something to put in his chest, and went up stairs to
deposit the money there. When he came back Mr. Conly explained to him
the source of values, and told him that land became valuable by being
settled, made accessible by roads, productive of crops and cattle, and
by mills being built to grind the grain and manufacture the timber.
“When I go trading, James, I’ll take you with me, and then you will
learn the prices of things, and after a while I’ll send you to trade as
I often do Peter and Bertie,” said Mr. Whitman.
Mr. Whitman now said to James and his sons,—
“I think I shall turn out about two acres of the field to pasture, and
take in as much more of woodland. I can get the land cleared and fenced
with logs by giving the first crop; but if you three boys wish to take
the job, I’ll give you the crop for three years; but you must keep the
sprouts down and the fire-weed and pigeon-weed, and you may keep the
ground you now have the use of two years more.”
They all said they would do it.
“That,” said Peter, “will be to become backwoodsmen, and do just what
grandfather did, and we’ll make a chopping bee.”
“No, we won’t; we’ll do it ourselves. If we are to be beholden to the
neighbors, I won’t have anything to do with it. I should be ashamed if
we three could not do what your grandfather when he was young would have
done alone, and not thought it a hard task either,” said James.
“So I say,” replied Bertie, “do it ourselves.”
“But how shall we find out how to do it quickest, and to the best
advantage?” said James.
“Father will show us,” said Peter.
“Here sits a venerable gentleman,” said Bertie, making a magnificent
gesture in the direction of his grandparent, “who can show us better
than father.”
Bertie was prone to be grandiloquent at times, and he had just been
reading Patrick Henry’s celebrated speech, and committing it to memory.
He then asked his grandfather what time of the year was the best to do
it.
“The best time to do it is in June, because then the stumps will bleed
freely and be less likely to sprout, and the leaves will draw the sap
out of the bodies of the trees and dry them, so that they will burn
better, and the leaves will dry and help to burn them; but you can’t do
it then, because it will be right in hoeing time; you will have to do it
after harvest, and let it lie over till the next summer.”
“Then,” said James, “we shall not get any crop, not even the second
year.”
“You will get a crop into the ground the second year, and harvest it the
third, though you may get a crop the second year, but in the meantime
you will keep the ground you have now and be getting something from
that. If it should prove a dry summer you could burn it in June of the
second year, and sow it with spring rye or barley, and if you get a good
burn, an extra burn, you might venture to put in corn, for a crop comes
along master fast on a burn, the hot ashes start it right along.”
“I don’t think,” said James, “we had better try to burn it till after
wheat harvest, as we shall have the other pieces, and it would interfere
so seriously with Mr. Whitman’s work, that if he was willing I shouldn’t
be.”
The old gentleman now told James there was another way in which he might
earn something for himself; he might shoot the coons that would be
getting into the corn in the moonlight nights, and when there was no
moon he might tree them with the dog, and shoot them by torchlight, and
the hatters at the village would buy the skins. There was a pond in the
pasture where there were plenty of muskrats.
“How do you get the muskrats?”
“This time of year set traps in the edge of the water for them; in the
winter they make houses among the flags at the edge of the pond and go
to sleep like flies, then you can catch ‘em in their houses. You can now
shoot very well with a rifle, and if it was not for going to school you
might in the winter get a wolf or a bear; a wolf’s pelt would bring two
dollars, but a good bearskin would bring twenty, more than all the
potatoes you worked so hard to raise. But no doubt you might trap a fox
or two, and their skins bring a good price.”
“But where should I get a trap?”
“Come along with me.”
The old gentleman took James into the chamber over the workshop and
opened a chest, in which were traps of all sizes and adapted to catch
different animals, from a mink to a wolf or bears; there were but two of
the latter but great numbers of the others, all clean and oiled, and in
excellent order. He then opened a closet in which were chains to fasten
the traps to prevent the animals from taking them away, and clogs, and
broad chisels on long handles. The latter, the old gentleman told him,
were ice chisels to cut ice around the beaver lodges in the winter.
“When I was younger, I used to leave Jonathan and the other boys to take
care at home in the winter, and I and old Vincent Maddox used to take a
hoss each, and traps, and rifles, and go over the Ohio river and trap
and hunt sometimes till planting time, and sometimes I took one of my
own boys. It’s a kind of pleasure to me to clean up the old traps, and
repair ‘em, and look ‘em over, brings back old times, though I never
expect to use ‘em much more ‘cept perhaps to take a fox or an otter.”
“Did Mr. Whitman use to go with you?”
“No, Jonathan never took much to such things. He’s all for farming, but
my William, who’s settled in the wilderness on the Monongahela, was full
of it from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. He’s a chip of
the old block. But Jonathan is right, farming pays the best now; but in
those days if you raised anything there was no market for what you could
not eat, and trapping and hunting, and killing Indians for the bounty on
their scalps were all the ways to get a dollar.”
Peter and Bertie liked well enough to watch for and kill coons in the
corn or on the trees for a few hours in pleasant moonlight nights, but
did not possess that innate hunter’s spirit that reconciled them
patiently to bear hunger, cold and watching to circumvent their game;
but James did, and his former life of poverty, hunger and outdoor
exposure with but scanty clothing had rendered him almost insensible to
cold and wet, and he embraced every opportunity that was offered him to
shoot or trap. Besides coons and muskrats, he shot, on the bait afforded
by a dead sheep, two silver-gray foxes, and caught one cross fox and two
silver-grays in traps that the old gentleman told him how to set. His
greatest exploit and one that elicited the praises of grandfather, was
in the latter part of winter, trapping an otter, that brought him twelve
dollars.
The elder Whitman instructed him in the right methods of stretching and
curing the skins, and sent them to Philadelphia to a fur dealer with
whom he had dealt a great many years, and James received for what he
took alone, and half of those he obtained in company with Peter and
Bertie, sixty-eight dollars.