The Jimmyjohns, and other stories

by Abby Morton Diaz

“No,—yes; that is, he came at last. He had not come, though, at the time of their finding his sled. Mr. Moore found the sled, or rather Mr. Moore’s dog found it, as they were riding along. Those two men had a good reason for staying away; though such a reason can hardly be called good. Coming home from Dermott’s Crossing, Mr. Bowen was taken sick. They knew of a house a mile or two out of the way, and went to it. There was nobody there. The family had left on account of the Indians; but Mr. Moore found some means of getting in.

“Just as soon as Mr. Bowen was able to be bound to his horse, and carried, they set out for home, but had to travel at a very slow pace. When they had almost reached home, Mr. Moore’s dog, in racing through the woods, stopped at a clump of bushes; and there he sniffed and scratched and yelped, and made a great ado. Then Mr. Bowen’s dog did the same. Mr. Moore hitched the horses, and went to see, and found Philip’s sled among the bushes, with a bag of meal on it, and a shoulder of bacon. Mr. Bowen being then weary and faint, and much travel-bruised, Mr. Moore put the bag of meal and the bacon on the horse, then covered the sled with boughs, and laid Mr. Bowen on top of them, and drew him along. It was supposed that the barking of those dogs frightened away the Indians.

“Philip himself left the sled under those bushes. That day he went to the Point, he had to wait for corn to be ground, which made him late in starting for home. He heard a good many reports concerning the Indians, and thought, that, instead of keeping in his own tracks, it would be safer to take a roundabout course back; and, by doing this, he lost his way, and wandered in the woods till almost twelve o’clock at night, when he came out upon a cleared place, where there were several log-huts. The people in one of these let him come in and sleep on the floor, and they gave him a good meal of meat and potatoes. He set out again between four and five in the morning, guided by a row of stars that those people pointed out to him.

“A little after daybreak, being then about a quarter of a mile from home, in a hilly place, he thought he would leave his sled, the load was so hard to draw, and run ahead and tell the folks about the Indians. So he pushed it under some bushes; and then, to mark the spot, he took one of his shoe-strings, and tied one of his mittens high up on the limb of a tree.”

“One of his leather shoe-strings!” cried some of those who knew the whole story.

“Yes, my dears,” said the old lady, looking pleased again, “one of his leather shoe-strings; and then he ran toward home. Just as he came to the brook he heard some strange sounds, and climbed up into a hemlock-tree which overhung the brook, to hide out of sight, and to look about. He lay along a branch listening, and presently saw Nathaniel, with the work-bag around his neck, hurrying toward the brook, leading little Polly, and was just going to call out, when he caught sight of three Indians, standing behind some trees on the other side, watching the two children. Little Polly was afraid to step on the ice. She cried; and at last Nathaniel made her sit down and take hold of a stick, and he pulled her across by it. Philip moved a little to see better, and by doing this lost sight of them a moment; and, when he looked again, they were both gone. He heard a crackling in the bushes, and caught sight of little Polly’s blanket flying through the woods, and knew then that those Indians had carried off Nathaniel and little Polly; and, without stopping to consider, he jumped down and followed on, thinking, as he afterward said, to find out where they went, and tell his father. Philip was a plucky fellow, as you will find presently. His pluck brought him into danger, though; and, if it had not been for an Indian woman of the name of Acushnin, he might have lost his life in a very cruel way. This woman, Acushnin, lived in a white family when a child. She had a son about the age of Philip. It was perhaps on account of both these reasons that she felt inclined to save him. But I must not get so far ahead of my story.

“Philip, by one way or another, kept on the trail of those Indians the whole day. Once it was by finding the stick that little Polly dropped; once it was by seeing a shred of her blanket; another time it was by coming across a butcher-knife the Indians had stolen from some house: and he had wit enough to break a limb or gash a tree now and then, so as to find his way back; also to take the bearings of the hills. When the Indians halted to rest, he had a chance to rest too.

“At last they stopped for the night in a sheltered valley where there were two or three wigwams. He watched them go into one of these, and then he could not think what to do next. The night was setting in bitter cold. The shoe he took the string from had come off in his running; and that foot was nearly frozen, and would have been quite if he had not tied some moss to the bottom of it with his pocket-handkerchief. The hand that had no mitten was frozen. He had eaten nothing but a few boxberry-plums and boxberry-leaves. It was too late to think of finding his way home that night. He lay down on the snow; and, as the Indians lifted the mats to pass in and out, he could see fires burning, and smell meats cooking. Then he began to feel sleepy, and, after that, knew nothing more till he woke inside of a wigwam, and found two Indian women rubbing him with snow. They afterwards gave him plenty to eat. He did not see Nathaniel and little Polly: they were in another wigwam. There were two Indians squatting on the floor, one of them quite old. Pretty soon another came in; and Philip knew he was one of those that carried off the children, because he had Florinda’s work-bag hanging around his neck. He thought, no doubt, from seeing it on Nathaniel’s neck, that there was the place to wear it. Philip suffered dreadful pain in his foot and hand, but shut his mouth tight, for fear he might groan. He said afterward, when questioned about this part of his story, that he was not going to let them hear a white boy groan.

“It was probably from seeing him so courageous that they decided to offer him to their chief’s wife for adoption. It was a custom among them, when a chief’s wife lost a male child by death, to offer her another, usually a captive taken in war, for adoption. If, after seeing the child offered in this way, she refused to adopt him, he was not suffered to live.

“Now, one of those two squaws in the wigwam, the older one, was the Acushnin I spoke of just now; and she felt inclined to save Philip from being carried to Sogonuck, which was where the chief lived: so next morning before light, when the Indians all went off hunting, she sent the other squaw out on some errand, and then told Philip in broken English what was going to be done with him, and that it would be done in two days; and told him in a very earnest manner, partly by signs, that he must run away that very morning. She bound up his foot; she gave him a moccasin to wear on it; she gave him a bag of pounded corn and a few strips of meat. Philip had found out that the Indians supposed him to be a captive escaped from another party; and he thought it would be better not to mention Nathaniel and little Polly, but to get home as quick as he could, and tell people where they were.