THE FOX-SKIN COAT.
BY ROSE TERRY COOKE.
"It's a dark night, Jenny," said Dr. Putnam to his wife, as he tied on a pair of coarse socks over his boots.
"Dark and cold too, David," said Mrs. Putnam.
"Don't fret, little woman. I've been out in many a worse. I only spoke of it because I doubted whether or no I should take the lantern; but I think I will, since it won't be lighter before I come back."
"Sam!" called Mrs. Putnam, and a curly dark head was thrust in at the door, "fetch father the lantern; light it first."
The Putnam children were trained to prompt obedience. Sam was almost sixteen, but he made neither delay nor objection. When he brought in the old-fashioned tin lantern you saw that he was a tall boy, with an earnest, pleasant face. He followed his father out of the door, hung the lantern by the side of the wagon seat, and tucked in the worn and ragged buffalo-robe as carefully as possible. His father nodded and smiled as he drove off. Sam stopped a moment to inspect the weather: the air was bitter enough, and not a star to be seen.
"Father'll have an awful cold ride," he said, as he re-entered the house; "the wind's northeast, right in his face, and everything is frozen up hard and fast."
"Poor father! he has a hard time winters," sighed Mrs. Putnam.
And indeed he did. A country doctor's life is hard enough; day and night he must drive, in all weather and all seasons; nor does there come to him a time of rest and vacation, for people are always ill somewhere. Dr. Putnam had even a harder time than many others, for the district where he lived was among the hills and forests of upper New Hampshire, where roads were rough, winters bitter, inhabitants few, and doctors scarce. But he had a wife and three children to support, and he could not help himself. Besides, he was a hardy, brave, kindly man, and no night was too stormy, no road too long, if sickness called him. He had always been well till the year before, when an attack of pleurisy took hold of him sharply, and warned him that flesh and blood can not endure more than a given amount of exposure.
All this went through Sam's curly head as he mended the fire in the stove, brought in wood, and then went over to the next neighbor's after Mary Ann, his sister, two years younger than he, who had gone out to take tea. Teddy, the baby of the family, was asleep long ago. Mrs. Putnam still sat by the fire knitting when the children came back, rosy, cold, and laughing.
"Oh, mother, it's awfully cold," said the girl. "I'm so sorry father's gone 'way out to Accomac!"
"Mother," said Sam, "Joe Allen says when he was down to Haverhill last year he saw a man driving stage who had a big coat on all made of fox-skins: wouldn't that be perfectly splendid for father?"
"Yes, indeed, Sam. My father had one; he gave it to Uncle John when he got command of that whaler I've told you about, the Emmeline."
"I wish he hadn't," said Sam. "It's down at the bottom of the sea now; and if you'd had it, just think how warm father might have been!"
"No 'ifs,' Sam; you know we don't allow that little word here."
Sam laughed, and went after his old tin pail of butternuts, and the hammer and stone; but while he cracked them he was thinking very hard indeed, and inside his curly head a plan blossomed which in due time fruited. The little village of Ponds, on whose edge Dr. Putnam's homestead and small farm stood, was nestled in the very heart of the New Hampshire hills. Five miles off a railway ran from the mountains to the sea-board, and there was a station nominally belonging to the town of Sabatis, which lay at least a mile and a half beyond. Ponds, however, was so shut in by the hills that nobody would have suspected a railway near it, except when the south wind brought a shriek of the whistle now and then. North of it lay higher hills, and real mountains miles away, while long stretches of wild forest harbored bears, foxes, even now and then a wild-cat, sometimes a deer, and plenty of smaller game.
Sam had been learning to shoot this summer that was just past, and had become a fair shot. More than one partridge had helped out the meals at home, and many a rabbit pie, for he was skillful also at snaring; but he had never tried his hand at larger game. Now, he thought, if only he could kill foxes enough, his father might have a coat. It is true, he had no hound, and he really did not like to go alone fox-hunting; for although he was no coward, the hills were full of precipices, and the woods of windfalls, where, if his gun should accidentally go off and injure him, or his foot slip on a dangerous edge, he might lie till death came without possible help; and his father had taught him long ago the difference between courage and recklessness—taught him that no man has a right to throw away his life or carelessly risk it. Sam had the best sort of courage, that which is considerate and calm.
But when he had thought over the matter till he fell asleep, and woke up still busy with it, the dawn seemed to have brought counsel: he remembered old Peter Dupont, a Canadian coal-burner, who lived in a shanty half way up Pine Hill, had a pair of fine hounds, and was said to be one of the best hunters about the village. Sam knew him very well; he had gone up to the shanty many a time with medicine from his father when Pete lay sick with a fever, and he had carried gruel and custard and beef tea from his mother as the old man grew better. It was from him Sam had learned all his tricks of woodcraft, and he remembered now how many fox-skins he had seen nailed against the outside of the little shed—skins that Pete sold at Sabatis when he was out of a coal job, and thereby provided himself with many a bag of meal and kit of salt pork.
But Sam must get his mother's consent before he could go hunting with Peter, and it took much coaxing, and many representations of how much his father would enjoy such a coat, to induce her to set aside her fears, and say yes to his repeated prayers. It was harder for her, because both she and Sam did not wish to have the Doctor know anything about it till the success came—if ever it did.
"But, Sam dear," said Mrs. Putnam, "have you ever thought how you shall get it made? Even if you get the skins, it will take a good deal of money to pay for lining and making and all."
Sam's face fell. "I never thought of that, mammy dear; but I am sure there'll be some way. You know what father's always saying—'God helps those that help themselves'; and I'll help myself as hard as I can, and you'll see if there doesn't come a way."
Mrs. Putnam stroked the curly head fondly; she would not say a word to disturb that honest, child-like faith. Perhaps it taught her a lesson, for she was naturally a doubting, grieving woman.
And, to be sure, the very next day the way Sam looked for was opened. A man drove over from Sabatis with an Irish girl who wanted the Doctor to pull a tooth out, for Dr. Pomeroy had gone to New York to see his dying father, and there was no one nearer than Dr. Putnam at the Ponds. But he had gone to the minister's to see a croupy child, so the girl sat down by the fire to wait. As she looked about, her eye fell on a long soft garland of the coral ground-pine which Sam had brought in the day before.
"Sure an' isn't that splindid!" she exclaimed.
"Did you never see any before?" asked Mrs. Putnam.
"'Deed an' I did. I seen it to Bostin—heaps av it; they brings it in from the counthry before Christmas-time, in big wreaths an' strings, an' sells it be the yarrd surely, twinty-five cints for a yarrd, an' it tied no bigger 'n me arrm, to hang up in churches an' houses. An' scarrce it is, too, for there's so many wants it."
A thought flashed across Mrs. Putnam's mind: it was the last day of October now; bitter as the cold was, there would probably be yet many thaws and days of sunshine before winter came, and the hills about them were fairly carpeted with these beautiful trailing evergreens. She gave her idea to Sam in a private interview, and he was greatly pleased with it; then they took Mary Ann into their counsels, and the matter worked so nicely among the three that by the time Sam had killed his first fox there were set away in the cellar two large rough board boxes filled with wreaths, crosses, and coiled lengths of garland beautifully tied by Mrs. Putnam, who had a natural taste for such things. Some were all of the soft coral pine, rich and velvety; some of the lighter ground-pine, darkened with clusters of the white-veined pipsissewa at even distances; and some wreaths were made of glittering kalmia leaves alone, others of all the sorts mixed together, while one or two crosses of tree-pine were set with snow-white bosses of the wild amaranth—"life-everlasting"—a store of which Mary Ann had picked when it first budded, intending to use it for home decorations. These boxes were sent by an obliging neighbor to the Sabatis station, and from there as freight to a cousin of Mrs. Putnam's mother, who kept a variety store in Boston, as specimens, the arrangement having been previously made with him that he should exhibit and dispose of these, and receive orders for others.
It was very lucky for Sam's projects that his father was a doctor, and absent from home three-quarters of the time.
Sam's first fox was a triumph; it repaid him well for a cold and anxious day's work; and as he helped Peter nail the handsome skin against the shed it seemed to him an easy task that lay before him, but he did not find it so. The evergreen business was far more successful: the beautiful and graceful decorations found a rapid market; orders flowed in; Mrs. Putnam and Mary Ann got up early and sat up late to fill them; Sam drew the boards from the saw-mill, sawed them into lengths himself, and nailed the slight boxes together; but this was all he could do on frosty days, though whenever it thawed he worked bravely at gathering the greens and plucking the kalmia boughs; but the foxes were his own peculiar work: he must divide the glory and the gift of the coat with mother and Mary Ann, but after all it was he who would shoot the foxes.
Yet the foxes did not care to be shot by him; his patience and his strength almost gave out as week after week the cunning animals eluded his search and evaded his fire. It was the last week in December before he shot another, and that happy day two fell before him. It was not easy work at all. The long tramps through snow and rain, the treacherous windfalls, the cold winds and freezing mists, were not pleasant accompaniments; but they did not daunt him.
In the mean time the golden returns of their labor had come to mother and Mary Ann. Twenty-five dollars had been sent by Cousin Jakeway, and were carefully hidden away in a cracked tea-pot under the paper of nutmegs.
In January, Sam shot two more; but the first week in February, as he was standing on a high and icy rock watching for a big gray fox to leave her den, into which the hounds had tracked her by another entrance, where Pete was stationed, in a moment of careless excitement he leaned too far, slipped, and lay helpless at the foot of the rock, with his left leg doubled under him, just as the old fox darted out, actually brushing his cap as he lay senseless. Peter heard no report of the gun, and hastening to see why Sam had not fired, found that his leg was broken, and he badly bruised all over. Luckily it was not far to the shanty, and Pete, by aid of a long light hand-sled he used to fetch wood on, contrived to get the boy on his own bed, and restored to consciousness, before he went for the Doctor.
But Sam could not be moved. And as he lay there day after day his father wondered why he did not mend faster: he was low and feverish, could not sleep, and evidently fretted. Dr. Putnam thought he was homesick.
"He don't get well, Pete," he said to the old man, shaking his head. "I think he is fretting for home."
A sudden gleam lit the old fellow's dark eye, but he said nothing till the Doctor was gone; then he went in to Sam. "Ho! ho! I ketch you, mine boy! The Docteur he say you fret. I tink an' tink why; then I have idea. Oh, you one big fool, mine boy! You tink, 'I get not mine fader skins for coat.' Ho! ho! you tink old Pete forget dat leetle boy fetch tings so much time to him long ago? Pollidge, pill, sweet-stuff, tisane, soups? No, Pete remember. Dem fox-skin I shoot is for Sam, just so many as he want; all, if coat want all. Now you get well, sar, pretty quick, eh?"
Sam turned his face into the pillow and cried. Forgive him—he was weak; but he got well rapidly now, and when the next November came mother and Mary Ann and Sam made a solemn presentation of the long handsome fox-skin coat to Dr. Putnam. The Doctor looked at it with astonishment and genuine pleasure. It meant more to him than any of them knew, for he had already had one secretly endured pleuritic twinge. Then he put it on, and turning round and round, surveyed himself, and looked up with a smile.
"I can't be cold in this," he said, with a sort of thrill in his voice; "but there's something about it more warming than the fox-skins."
["ALICE" AND THE WOLVES.]
Nearly fifteen years ago, when the far West was much more wild and unsettled than it is now, a little party of seventeen men were travelling through the almost unknown Territory of Arizona. They were the remnant of a government exploring party that had originally numbered fifty members; but some had been killed by the Indians, and others had turned back at Santa Fe, dreading to face the unknown dangers of the approaching winter amid the mountains of Arizona.
In this party was one boy—a smooth-faced, brown-haired lad, barely sixteen years of age, who had left his home in New England fired with the ambition of seeing life on the plains, and who had joined the explorers in Kansas. Although effeminate-looking, he was a stout-hearted fellow, as merry as the day was long, and a universal favorite with the other members of the party. His appearance was in such contrast to that of the bearded men in whose company he was that it seemed to them almost girlish, and he had—partly on this account, and partly because one of the party declared that the boy looked enough like his sweetheart, Alice Mason, of St. Joe, to be her twin brother—been from the outset called "Alice," to which nickname he had at first made strong objections, but to which he now answered as readily as to his own, which was Charlie Adams.
The little party were now nearly two months out from Santa Fe, the month was November, and the weather in the mountains to which they had penetrated—the Sierra Madre—was growing very cold. At night, when the camp was quiet, great gaunt mountain wolves would come down into the valleys, and sneak about as close as they dared, in hopes of finding something to eat; or they would go off to a little distance, and, sitting on their haunches, point their long noses high in the air, and give vent to the most dismal and blood-chilling howls. These sounds would be taken up by the coyotes, which were always hanging about near camp, and which would join in with a chorus of quick barks, ending in a prolonged wail, and these sounds would be echoed and re-echoed from the hills and mountains until the night would be full of the most horrible yells and howlings imaginable.
One very cold evening camp was pitched beside a beautiful spring known as Agua Fria, or cold water, that bubbled up from the bottom of a narrow valley filled with great Norway pines, and hemmed in by tall mountains. Although there was no snow on the ground in the valley, it had already reached more than half way down the mountain-sides, and the wild animals that lived up them had been driven down, so that in the valleys wolves were more plentiful than usual, and they began to howl around the little camp almost before the tents were up. "Alice" had often wished, as he lay at night shivering under his thin blankets, and listening to the howlings of the wolves, that he had two or three of their thick warm skins to roll himself up in; but there had been too much work to do for the men to devote any time to wolf-hunting, and "Alice" had not been allowed to go out alone after them. This evening, however, the wolves were so much more noisy than usual that the attention of the men, who sat smoking their pipes about the roaring camp fire, was attracted to them, and "Alice" thought it a good time to put in his plea for some wolf-skins. His friend, old George Waite, a giant of a man, who acted as carpenter and blacksmith to the party, listened patiently to him, and told him that if he could get some arsenic from the doctor he thought they could manage to get hold of some wolf-skins before long. The doctor had in his chest a quantity of arsenic that he used for preserving the skins of rare birds and beasts, of which he was making a collection, and he willingly gave a small package of it to "Alice," though with many cautions as to its use.
Taking the heart and lungs and some other portions of a deer that had been killed that afternoon, old George rubbed over them the arsenic that "Alice" brought him, until half a dozen pieces of meat were thus prepared. Then he made a torch of a long sliver of pine, the end of which he split, and into the opening thrust a quantity of birch bark. This torch flared up with a brilliant blaze as he lighted it at one of the fires and handed it to "Alice." Old George then gathered up the pieces of prepared meat, and he and "Alice" scattered them along the banks of the stream about a quarter of a mile from camp. Having thus set their trap, they retraced their steps somewhat hurriedly, as their torch had burned itself out, and already stealthy footfalls could be heard on the dry leaves very unpleasantly near to them.
At the first break of day "Alice" had turned out, and waking old George, the two started off to gather up their wolves. They were surprised, on nearing the place where they had left the poisoned meat, to hear the sound of voices and see smoke curling above the bushes.
"Step lightly," said old George; "let's see if the wolves have gone into camp, and are cooking the meat we so kindly left them."
The two crept cautiously forward, until they could peer through the bushes into the open space where they had left the meat the night before; and "Alice" started and almost uttered an exclamation as he saw, not an encampment of wolves, but of Indians, within a hundred feet of where they were crouched. He and old George could hardly believe their eyes, for Indians rarely travel after night-fall, and there had certainly been none there the evening before.
"ALICE" SPRANG FROM HIS CONCEALMENT.
But there they were—a dozen men crouching over two very small fires that they nearly hid with their blankets, and two squaws preparing breakfast. "They are Navajoes," said old George, who had lived long in the Indian country, "and they are at peace with the whites now; but I don't think it would be very safe for us to go unarmed into their camp."
Hardly had old George said this in a whisper to his companion, when, with an exclamation of dismay, "Alice," who had been watching the movements of the two squaws, sprang from his concealment, and rushing up to one of them who was just lifting a large piece of meat to her mouth, dashed it from her hand with a quick blow.
Old George followed after him, and was beside him in an instant.
The women screamed, and in another moment had scuttled away into the bushes, leaving the two men surrounded by a group of angry Indians, who had gained their feet and their weapons at the first alarm.
"It was the poisoned meat, George," gasped "Alice," "and she was just going to eat it."
As both old George and the Indians could talk Mexican, an explanation was soon made and understood. Their opportune appearance probably saved the lives of all the Indians, and averted the war that would have certainly followed had this band of Navajoes been destroyed.
[KITTY WON'T PLAY.]
Kitty, dear Kitty, I want you to play,
For I'm awfully lonesome when sister's away;
They've sent her to school, and I really would cry
If I were not ashamed when my dollies are by.
You are not as good fun as you once were, you know,
Poor Kitty; you're growing too lazy and slow;
But spring for my ball; let us have a good race;
You'd like it, I'm sure, I can tell by your face.
And here is a bit of such nice sugar-cake,
So sweet, Kitty—try it; 'twon't make your teeth ache.
No? Well, then, I'll eat it, and you shall have meat
If you'll scamper and frisk on your four pretty feet.