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The Red Moccasins
A STORY
BY MORRISON HEADY
[Illustration]
LOUISVILLE, KY.:
COURIER-JOURNAL JOB PRINTING CO.
1901.
ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS,
IN THE YEAR 1901, BY THE AUTHOR.
THE RED MOCCASINS,
A STORY.
CHAPTER I.
Portrait of Our Hero.
Once, in the spring-green years of the good old times, when our
great-grandfathers were great-grandchildren themselves, there lived in
the land of green Kentucky a sprout of a man, some dozen years old, who
went by the name of Sprigg. And "Sprigg," for aught I know to the
contrary, was his real name; though it has so little the sound of a
name, I sometimes wonder his father and mother should ever have thought
of giving it to him, when any grandmother of common capacity for naming
babies could have suggested a better one. "Jeems," for example, or
"Weeliam." Be this as it may, "Sprigg" was the name to which our hero
always answered, whenever addressed as cousin, or uncle, or friend; and
which, before going the way of all good grandfathers, he left at the end
of his will, where it was thought real enough, not only to make that
instrument good in the eyes of the law, but his heirs highly respectable
in the eyes of the world. We have no choice, then, but to call our hero
"Sprigg," just as everybody else did; though were we allowed to christen
him more to our liking, we should certainly call him Jack. Jack, in our
humble opinion, being the fittingest name in the world for giving
pointedge and moral force to a juvenile novel. Especially would we be
allowed this liberty in the present instance, where the hero, whose
fortune we propose to follow, is described as being of a wild and
run-away turn, and, hence, well fitted to figure as a warning example to
all dissatisfied youngsters, who not content to stay at home and do
their sliding on dry ground, go seeking for ice on a summer day at
imminent risk of getting drowned.
Now green Kentucky, in the days of Sprigg, was _green_ Kentucky, indeed!
Mrs. Daniel Boone and her daughters had not yet distinguished themselves
by being the first white women who ever set foot upon the banks of the
Kentucky River, when Sprigg was already a three-years' child, the joy
and pride of a home in a hewn log house in western Virginia; as merry
and saucy, and every whit as well pleased with himself as were he the
rising hope and promise of one of the "F. F. Vs." The eight or nine
years of pioneer activity which had followed the historical event just
noticed, had made many a wide gap in the forest, yet had not changed the
general aspect of the country so much but that the fields, as viewed by
the eagle who sailed with the clouds, must have appeared no more than as
the prints of man's feet, left impressed in the otherwise universal
verdure. As you may well imagine, so wild and savage a region must still
have been the home of a thousand wild and savage creatures, the like
whereof we never dream of now-a-days, even in our loneliest woodland
rambles. There, too, was the terrible red man, who, though he built not
his wigwam in these wilds, made it his frequent custom of resorting
thither, sometimes to follow the chase, but oftener to war with the
whites, who lived in great terror of him the whole year round.
The Christian name of our hero's father, whom he called "Pap," was
Jervis; the Christian name of his mother, whom he called "Mam," was
Elster, and the surname was Whitney. They dwelt in a roomy cabin, rudely
built of logs and boards, with a clay-topped chimney at each end, and a
porch or shed on each side. Under the front porch Jervis hung his
saddle, fishing tackle, beaver traps and the like. Under the back porch
Elster kept her spinning wheel, crockeryware, garden seed, a big cedar
water bucket, with its crooked-handle gourd, and the like; while in
there, on the earthen floor of the kitchen, stood her huge, unwieldly
loom. The cabin was situated in the midst of a small patch of cultivated
ground, hemmed in on every side by dense and lofty woods, which spread
their waving shadows for miles and miles away to the north and south, to
the east and west, with only here and there, at wide intervals, a
similar clearing, or a natural glade to speck the boundless green.
Now Sprigg, you must know, happened to be an only child--a most uncommon
circumstance in backwoods life--your backwoodsman, like your poor
woodcutter, who makes such a figure in old-time story-books, rarely
stopped short of a baker's dozen, as a replenisher of the earth. Such
being the case, "Pap" and "Mam" must need, of course, do their very
utmost to make their one chub as troublesome as six, in order to
realize, so it would seem, how much kind Providence had done for them;
_i. e._, by overdoing the thing to make him happy; underdoing the thing
to make him good enough to be what they most desired. To exemplify: If
there chanced to be a little bread in the cupboard and a little milk in
the springhouse (these were luxuries then in the Hunter's Paradise), all
of it, though there might be quite enough for two, was sure to find its
way to Sprigg's tin cup and pewter spoon; and Sprigg's pewter plate
always received the tit-bits of venison and bear's meat. The best
feather bed in the house was Sprigg's; so was the warmest place by the
fire, which he would share with nobody, but Pow-wow, the dog--the only
creature, four-footed or two-footed, with whom he could be in contact
for a whole day without coming to hard rubs. If a deer-skin proved,
upon dressing, an uncommonly nice piece of buckskin, fine, fair and
soft, straight, it was cut up and made into moccasins, breeches and
hunting shirt for Sprigg; and should a fat raccoon take a fancy to
quarter himself for the night in "Pap's" trap, its fresh, sleek skin
would be seen in less than a fortnight thence on Sprigg's head, in the
form of a cap, with the ringed tail left on behind, as ornamental there
as a cue, if not more so. In short, there was nothing rare, or choice of
its kind and within the bestowal of the Hunter's Paradise, which did
not, sooner or later, find its way to the hands or feet, to the head or
back, or to the selfish little belly of master Sprigg. But these were
trifling indulgences compared with others, and would, in all likelihood,
have left upon his disposition no other lasting evil effect than to
render him overwatchful of his own ease and comfort. What was far worse,
he was allowed to say, with his saucy young tongue, whatever he should
choose to say; and to do, with his meddling young hands, whatever he
should choose to do; and to go, with his wayward young feet,
whithersoever his foolish young nose should choose to lead him; so that,
by the time he had walked into his twelfth year, a worse spoilt boy, a
vainer boy, a more self-conceited boy, a more self-willed boy than
master Sprigg was not to be found in the land--ransack the Paradise from
Big Bone Lick to the Mammoth Cave.
And yet, to put the question to such parents, as Jervis and
Elster--though with little expectation of receiving an audible
answer--what other result could reasonably have been looked for in a
boy, brought up, like Sprigg, to know no will but his own? This was the
very thing to render it next to impossible for him to know what his own
will really was and how he should use it, not knowing that of his elders
and wisers. This, in turn, was the very thing to keep him but ill at
ease with himself, and iller at ease, if not at downright loggerheads,
with everybody else.
Now, had Jervis and Elster been as wise as we are--you and I--they
would, at the very outset of their son's existence, have laid their own
will down, as the rule, whereby he should order his steps until the
beard on his lip announced him qualified to follow his own nose, without
too great danger of forgetting to allow that organ the help of his eyes
and ears. But as it was, they would have done a wiser and more
benevolent part by their boy had they given him a scalping knife,
without sheath, for a plaything, or a young bear, without a muzzle and
chain, for a pet. The knife might have cut off a few of his fingers, and
the bear might have clawed off some of his flesh, but the mischief done
would have been slight, compared to that of letting him have his will to
play with.
So, it were hardly to be laid to poor Sprigg's charge that he was mad
enough to figure as a warning example to juvenile evildoers; and it
were but Christian in us to draw our sketch of him with a soft nib to
our pen, softening down the lines with words from the law of love, which
is, or ought to be, written on all our hearts. Had he been as wisely
trained as he was affectionately cared for, there is no telling but that
Sprigg, instead of being one of the worst boys in the world, he might
have turned out to be one of the best--nearly as good, it may be, as a
brave little George, the boy, you know, who cut his father's cherry tree
with his little hatchet, and when the matter was inquired into, had the
courage to own that he was the offender, even while fully expecting that
his tender young legs would be made to smart for his adherence to
principle. With so brave a start in life, our hero, when he and the time
were ripe for it, might have figured as the hero of Mew Orleans, instead
of General Jackson, and, qualified by that achievement, have made the
American people just as good a President--kicking the national bank as
unmercifully out of existence as ever Old Hickory did.
But leaving the might-have-been out of the question and taking things as
we find them, Sprigg, by the time he had climbed to the top of his
twelfth year, had more serious faults and more foolish ways than I feel
willing to stop and take a list of, preferring to let them come out
little by little of their own accord, which will seem less like telling
tales away from home. One of his faults, however, the most conspicuous,
though, by no means, the most grievous, I must mention here at the
outset, it being that trait of his character which imparts to our story
its particular color and drift. I allude to his vanity, which displayed
itself in a ridiculous fondness for fine clothes, not to mention that he
was, in every way, a very handsome boy; and the fools, as usual in such
cases, had blabbed this into his ears, until he had grown to be as
strutty and vain as a peacock.
Now, you smile to think that a boy, who lived in a log cabin and ate his
bread and milk with a pewter spoon, and dressed in buckskin breeches and
a coonskin cap, should fancy that he had anything to be vain of. But
take the second thought; or, if you do not feel inclined to make the
effort, I will, by a simple illustration of the point, save you the
trouble. Is not turkey-cock just as proud of his homely feathers as
peacock of his magnificent plumes? And after the battle fought, which
leaves him but the tattered rag of a tail to display to the sun, will
not turkey-cock spread that tattered rag of a tail as self-complacently,
and strut as grandly and gobble as obstreperously as ever? Aye, that
will he! And why? Because his tail--tag-rag or not--is all his own and
nobody else's; though almost anybody else may have one which the sun
would rather shine on. As with turkey-cock, so with an overwhelming
majority of mankind.