A SPECIMEN TRAPPER.
THE boys, warned by their recent narrow escape, sat on the bank in
gloomy silence and watched the Sam Kendall as she was slowly consumed
before their eyes. They noticed that her forecastle was deserted now,
and Bob shuddered when he asked himself how many of those he had seen
there a short half hour before had found a watery grave. Presently the
hog-chain braces parted with a loud crash, and the flames blazed up
brightly for a moment as the stern of the vessel floated off with the
current. In a few minutes it disappeared around the bend.
“That’s the last of the Sam Kendall,” said George, sadly, “and, although
I know that she was an unseaworthy old tub, I couldn’t feel worse if I
were compelled to stand by and see my own home burned up. Indeed she was
my home—the only one I had.”
“Why, I thought you had a home in Texas, and that you are going back
there,” said Bob.
“I am going back to Texas, but I am not going home. I wouldn’t be
welcome. There are two persons who would be glad if I should never show
my face there again.”
“Who are they?” asked Bob.
“That man who wanted you to save him and let me go down is one of them,
and his son, my cousin Ned, is the other. You see, my father died about
four years ago, leaving all his property in trust to Uncle John, whom he
appointed my guardian, and who was to take care of it until I became of
age. Then he was to turn it over to me, less a certain sum which was to
be paid to him for his services. If anything happened to me, the
property was all to go to my cousin, Ned.”
“Well?” said Bob, who now began to exhibit some interest in the
narrative.
“Well, they want that property and have tried hard to get it. Uncle John
tried to-night. You saw that a good many of the passengers were aroused
from their sleep by the confusion that was created when I fell
overboard, didn’t you? Uncle John was not one of them.”
“What was the reason?”
“I will tell you what happened, and you can draw your own conclusions.
While I was sitting on the boiler-deck railing watching that steamer, I
heard a stealthy footstep behind me, and before I could turn around to
see who was coming, I felt a pair of hands on my back, and got a push
that sent me overboard.”
“Do you mean to say that your uncle pushed you over?” demanded Bob,
greatly amazed.
“That is just what I mean. You wondered that he would let me go so far
from home! He would furnish me with money enough to take me to Europe,
if I asked him for it, and be glad to let me go. You see the more I
travel around the more danger I am in.”
“Well, you have one consolation,” said Bob, after thinking a moment.
“You’ve got money, and can have all the nice things you want.”
When Bob said “nice things,” he meant breech-loading shot-guns,
sail-boats, jointed fish-poles, and handsome saddle-horses.
“But I would change places to-night with any bootblack in St. Louis who
has a home and a kind father and mother,” said George, earnestly. “What
surprises me is that not one boy in ten appreciates his blessings.”
“That’s so,” thought Bob. “You don’t, for one. You have money and don’t
care for it. If I had it I shouldn’t be here now.”
“There’s Tony Richardson, for example,” continued George. “I used to run
on one of his father’s boats, and became well acquainted with him. I
envied him, and often thought he must be the happiest boy in the world;
but he was the most discontented. He wanted to go to sea, but his father
wouldn’t let him; and the next I heard of Tony was that he had stolen
fifty dollars and run away. But he didn’t stay long, I tell you. The
next trip but one that I made down the river, I saw somebody on the
levee in New Orleans whom I thought I recognised; and when I went up
closer to him I found that it was Tony Richardson. But he didn’t look
much like the spruce young fellow who used to come into the pilot-house
when we were running up to the coal fleet, and ask me to let him steer
for me. He looked worse than any tramp I ever saw. He felt so ashamed of
himself that at first he denied that he was Tony Richardson; but I very
soon gave him to understand that he couldn’t fool me, and then he told
me the story of his adventures. He had shipped at New Orleans on a
coasting vessel bound to Rio, but before he had been twenty-four hours
out of port one of the crew stole the money he had left, the mate gave
him a black eye because he didn’t obey some order he did not understand,
and by the time Tony reached Havana he had had quite enough of the sea.
He deserted as soon as his vessel touched the shore, and hunted up a
steamer that was about to start for the States. He tried to ship on her,
but she didn’t want any more hands, so Tony stowed himself away in the
hold, and never came out until the vessel was three or four hours out at
sea. Of course the captain couldn’t turn back to put him ashore, so he
had to bring him on. When I found him Tony was looking for a chance to
ship as deck hand in order to work his way back to St. Louis. He is at
home now, and the last time I saw him he told me that he had made up his
mind to stay there.”
“But what makes you think that your uncle wants to get rid of you?”
asked Bob, who did not care to hear any more about runaways and their
experience. He knew more about the matter already than George could have
told him if he had talked until daylight.
“I know it because he has shown it so plainly. Everybody in our
neighborhood knows what he is trying to do, and I have been warned more
than once. I shouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t had somebody besides
Uncle John to look out for me. Mr. Gilbert, our nearest neighbor, used
to be one of father’s herdsmen. He has exercised a fatherly care over me
for years; and when I told him that I was going to leave home to become
a pilot, he declared that it was the best thing I could do. I would be
safer anywhere in the world, he said, than I was there in Texas.”
“Then I should think you would be afraid to go back,” said Bob, who now
wished that George had not taken so great a liking to him. If he was in
danger of his life, as his conversation seemed to imply, Bob did not
want to go with him any nearer to Texas than he was at that moment. He
did not long for a life of adventure as he did a few days before.
“I am going back because Mr. Gilbert advises it,” replied George. “I am
going to have a new guardian appointed in Uncle John’s place. He is
selling off everything he can lay his hands on, and the first I know
I’ll not have a single head of stock left.”
This was but one of the many topics of conversation which engrossed the
attention of the two boys during the half hour that they stood there on
the bank, beating their hands and stamping their feet to keep them warm,
and even this was not carried on as connectedly as we have written it.
They would talk awhile about the steamer (all they could see of her now
was a bed of coals, which marked the spot where her bow was still hard
aground), and speculate concerning the fate of her passengers and crew.
Then they wished that Bob had a coat, and that they had some matches, so
that they could start a fire; wondered how far away, and in what
direction, the nearest house lay from them, and asked each other how
long it would be before a boat would come along and pick them up, and,
when she came, whether she would carry them up or down the river. Then
there would be long intervals of silence, during which their very ideas
seemed to freeze up, so that they could not talk at all. George had a
good deal to say about himself, hoping that he might induce Bob to give
him some scraps of his own history; but in this he was disappointed. Bob
preferred to listen.
The story of the young pilot’s life, as Bob heard it that night, made
him open his eyes. We should be glad to report it here, but it is too
long. We may take it up again at some future time, together with the
history of the adventures and exploits of that other runaway, Tony
Richardson. Our business, just at present, is to see what became of Bob
in the end, and how much he increased his happiness by running away from
home; and what we have told of George’s story is simply to explain what
happened afterward.
“This will never do,” exclaimed George, at length. “I can’t stand this
any longer. I am getting so cold I can hardly talk plainly.”
“Where shall we go?” asked Bob. “There may not be a house within ten
miles of us.”
“I don’t care where we go so long as we keep moving. Let’s take a last
look at the Sam Kendall and start out. I hope all the passengers and
crew escaped with their lives.”
“So do I, but it is hardly probable. I could have saved every man, woman
and child on that forecastle if I could only have made them listen to
reason. You and I could have made half a dozen trips with the yawl
between the vessel and the shore before she broke in two. Hark! Wasn’t
that the bark of a dog?”
The two boys listened a moment, and presently the sound that had
attracted Bob’s attention was repeated. It was so faint and far off that
they could scarcely hear it, but it put new life into them.
“It is a dog, sure enough,” said George, “and where there is a dog there
must be a house somewhere about. Let’s see if we can find him.”
With a farewell glance at the glowing bed of coals that pointed out the
wreck of the steamer, the boys crawled to the top of the bank and turned
their faces in the direction from which the barking of the dog sounded.
They had undertaken a task of considerable difficulty, as they found
before they had gone many yards, for the woods were so thick and dark
that even Bob, who could find his way in the night almost as well as he
could in the daytime, was often at fault. The distant watch-dog was
accommodating enough to give a yelp or two for their guidance every few
minutes, but they did not seem to be drawing any nearer to him, and
finally the animal, as if dissatisfied with the slow progress they were
making, became silent.
Bob led the way for a mile or more through darkness so intense that he
could not see the nearest trees, and when at length he and his companion
became so weary and disheartened that they talked strongly of giving it
up as a hopeless task, and sitting down and waiting until daylight came,
they worked their way out of a dense thicket through which they had been
stumbling for the last ten minutes, and found themselves in a smooth,
well-beaten path. They made more rapid headway after this, and when they
had gone a few rods farther, Bob announced that he could see a faint
light shining through the bushes. It looked to him, he said, as though
it was shining through cracks between logs; and if that was the case
there must be a house close at hand. Believing that they had stumbled
upon the home of the watch-dog, and that he might not like it if he and
George approached his master’s dwelling without giving some notice of
their presence, Bob halted in the path and shouted out the warning so
familiar to every one who has travelled through the rural districts of
the South—
“Hallo, the house! Don’t let your dogs bite!”
It was well that Bob was thoughtful enough to take this precaution, for
he had scarcely finished his hail when such a chorus of hoarse yelps and
growls arose out of the darkness that the boys’ hair fairly stood on
end. At the same instant a loud rustling among the leaves and bushes
told them that they had aroused, not one dog, but a dozen, and that they
were coming. They had nothing with which to defend themselves, and it
would have been of no use to run, even if they could have seen which way
to go. In a moment more they would have been surrounded by the fierce
animals; but just then a door was jerked open, a flood of light streamed
out into the darkness, and a bare-headed and bare-footed man appeared
with a club in his hand.
“Begone, ye brutes!” he shouted, throwing his club into the midst of the
pack, which scattered right and left, and concealed themselves in the
bushes. “Come on, strangers, whoever ye be, they won’t pester ye. Some
more of the Kendall’s passengers, I reckon, aint ye?” he added, when the
boys came up. “I reckoned so, ’kase one on ye haint got no coat on.”
“Yes, we were on the Kendall when she was burned. Have you seen any of
the passengers or crew?” asked George, hoping that, if he had, Mr. Black
and Mr. Scanlan might be among the number.
“Yes, I picked up one, an’ I might have saved more if I had only had a
boat. I used to be a right peart swimmer in my young days, but the
rheumatiz an’ ager pester me so bad that I can’t go into the water no
more. Howsomever, when I stood thar on the bank an’ heard somebody a
callin’, I jest jumped in and jerked him out.”
“I am glad you were able to do that much,” said Bob, when the old man
paused, as if to give the boys an opportunity to say something in praise
of the deed he had performed.
“I shan’t be able to walk ag’in fur a month, I know,” continued the man.
“He’s in the house now, takin’ a wink of sleep, an’ restin’ while his
clothes is dryin’.”
“What sort of a looking man is he?” asked George.
“O, he’s a chunky, good-lookin’, gray-whiskered an’ gray-headed——”
“That’s enough,” said George, with a deep sigh of regret. “It isn’t
either of my friends, for they are not gray-headed. May we go in and sit
by your fire?”
“Yer as welcome as the flowers in May. Sorry I haint got a bed to offer
ye, but that fellar’s got the only one I own.”
“We are greatly obliged to you, but we don’t want a bed. We only want to
stay long enough to get dry and warm, and then we’ll strike out. I am
anxious to find my partners. How far is White River Landing from here by
the road—if there is one?”
“A matter of ten miles, an’ ye can’t miss the way.”
The boys followed the old man into the cabin, and Bob, who was in
advance of George, looked about to find the passenger who had been
rescued by their host. He was lying on the floor, in the darkest corner
of the room, wrapped up in a tattered blanket, and his clothes were
drying in front of the fire. A couple of stakes had been driven into the
dirt-floor, and the garments were hung upon them. As Bob looked at the
man, he was sure that he saw him turn his face to the wall and draw the
blanket over his head. He merely noticed the act, but thought nothing of
it.
The building in which the boys now found themselves was a log cabin,
built in the most primitive style. There was a roaring fire on the
hearth, which threw out so bright a light that everything in the
interior could be plainly seen. The cabin looked as poverty-stricken as
the owner, and he looked worse than Godfrey Evans. It was destitute of
every comfort; the only things in the shape of furniture that the boys
could see being a rifle, resting on a couple of pegs over the door, an
axe leaning in one corner, and a battered coffee-pot, frying-pan, and a
few tin dishes, which were piled promiscuously in one another. The sight
of the coffee-pot suggested something to Bob. “George,” said he, “don’t
you think a cup of hot coffee would be very refreshing?”
“’Taint to be had in this yere ranche, stranger,” said the old man,
quickly. “Ye see I aint had no luck yet. It’s just a trifle too ’arly in
the season.”
“Luck!” repeated George.
“Yes. I kalkerlate to have a right smart chance o’ trappin’ here on the
sunk lands jest as soon as cold weather sets in in ’arnest.”
As the old man said this he went out to bring in another stick of wood
for the fire, and George turned and looked at Bob without speaking. “O,
I know what you are thinking about,” said the latter. “You want to know
how I would like to live like this.”
“That’s just it,” replied George. “How would you? This man is a fair
specimen of a professional trapper. You can see that he is ragged and
dirty, and that he has nothing to wear on his head or his feet. He talks
about cold weather setting in in earnest! What will he do then? If he
doesn’t starve he’ll freeze. I’ll warrant he’s hungry now,” added
George; and to prove it he said to the man when he came in, “If you
can’t give us a cup of coffee can you dish us up something to eat?
Anything, no matter what it is.”
“Sorry I can’t do it, stranger,” was the reply. “I eat the last of my
bacon a week ago.”
“What in the world does he live on, then?” asked Bob, when the old man
had gone out after another stick of wood.
George pointed silently toward the corner in which the pots and pans
were stowed. Bob looked and saw there about half a peck of corn in the
ear. Parched corn was all the old man had to eat now that his bacon was
gone. What his dogs lived on was a mystery. Bob took another look around
the cheerless hovel, thought of the comfortable home he had so
recklessly left, and asked himself if this was the wild, free and
glorious life that he had wasted so many hours in dreaming about.
As there were no chairs in the cabin the boys were obliged to hold their
clothes in front of the fire in order to dry them. While they were thus
engaged they talked over their plans, and made up their minds just what
they would do—or rather George laid the plans and Bob agreed to them.
They conversed in low tones, so as not to disturb the sleeping
passenger, and kept their eyes directed toward his corner more than half
the time, hoping that he would turn over, and give them a view of his
face, for they wanted to see who he was; but he did not move more than
two or three times while they were in the cabin, although Bob was sure
that he once detected him in the act of turning his head slightly as if
to hear what they were saying. If George had seen it his suspicions
might have been aroused.
After Bob had wrung the water out of his clothes, he did not neglect to
overhaul the contents of his money-belt. He had examined them while he
and George were changing their wet clothing in the latter’s stateroom on
board the steamer, and then they were found to be all right, the
precautions he had taken having proved amply sufficient to protect the
bills from injury. Of course some of them were wet, but they were not
defaced. He had then, in accordance with George’s advice, put all the
bills into his belt; and after wrapping the oiled silk around them he
had further protected them by inclosing them in a roll of thick brown
paper. This made rather a bulky package to go into his belt, but the
bills were effectually protected, as he found when he examined them by
the light of the trapper’s fire.
“It is lucky that you are so wealthy, Bob,” said the young pilot, after
they had satisfied themselves that the money was not injured, “for if we
were strapped I don’t know what we should do. Mr. Black pays me
twenty-five dollars a month for steering for him, but even if we should
find him, which I don’t much expect to do, I couldn’t get any money from
him, for he will have to go to St. Louis before he can collect any
himself. I could get all we need by writing to my friends in Texas, but
it would take two weeks at least to get an answer from them, and where
would we find food and shelter in the meantime?”
“We might be fortunate enough to run across your uncle somewhere,” said
Bob. “He’ll be picked up by the first boat that goes up or down the
river, if he held fast to that oar and did as I told him.”
“I certainly hope he has been picked up long before this time,” replied
George. “But he wouldn’t give me any money.”
“Why, I thought you said he would give you enough to take you to
Europe!”
“So he would; but he wouldn’t give me a red cent to take me home. He
doesn’t want me there. I’ll go, all the same, if you will stand by me.”
“I will,” replied Bob, promptly.
At the end of an hour the boys were thoroughly dried and warmed. By this
time the day began to dawn and they make ready to start for White River
Landing. After they had received particular directions from the trapper
in regard to the road they were to follow, they presented him with a
five-dollar bill, which Bob, at George’s suggestion, had kept out of his
money-belt for this purpose, and without waiting to hear his expressions
of gratitude, bade him good-by and left the cabin.
No sooner had the sound of their footsteps died away than the rescued
passenger threw aside the blanket that enveloped him, and sat up on his
hard couch. “Say, you,” he exclaimed, roughly addressing the old man,
who stood in front of the fire turning the greenback over and over in
his hands as if to satisfy himself that it was genuine, “are my clothes
dry yet?”
“I reckon they be,” replied the host, feeling of the garments, one after
the other. “I’ve ’tended to ’em purty clost.”
“Then hand them to me and go out on the bank and hail the first boat
that goes down the river. So George is going to take that fellow to
Texas and make a brother of him, is he?” continued the passenger, as the
old man hurried from the cabin to obey his order. “I think not. If
either of them gets there after what I have heard, it will be my own
fault.”
Just then the whistle of a steamer echoed through the woods, and a few
minutes afterward the old man burst into the cabin exclaiming: “I’ve
stopped her. She’s the Silver Moon, an’ hove in sight just as I reached
the bank. She’s roundin’ to, now.”
The passenger hurried on his clothes, and without stopping to thank the
old man for the services he had rendered him, rushed out of the cabin.
Reaching the bank just as the Silver Moon’s gang-plank was being shoved
out, he boarded the vessel, which came about and resumed her journey
toward New Orleans.
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