The morning before the captain and his party returned with their sled-loads of bones a more exciting incident occurred, which well illustrates the perils that beset the daily life of the pioneers.
A little after daybreak, while still most of the crew were asleep, another turkey-cock was heard gobbling in the woods a little way back from the creek bank. First Moses, then Lewis, rifle in hand, sat watching behind the plank bulwarks. There was rivalry between them as to which should first catch sight of these wild visitors.
For some time they heard the bird gobbling at intervals of a few minutes; but this particular turkey-cock appeared to be wary and disinclined to show himself.
Then, at length, Moses noted an odd circumstance, and drew suddenly down to cover of the planking.
“Lay up, Lew!” said he. “I believe that’s a redskin!”
Gobbling like a turkey in the woods, to lure the white settlers near enough for a shot, was a common stratagem with the Indians in those days—one that cost more than one pioneer his scalp. Some of the savages were adepts at imitating all the notes of the wild turkey, from the plaintive “yeap-yeap, yop-yop” of the hens, to the noisy, defiant gobble of the big, bronze-breasted, red-wattled turkey-cocks.
The human ear could detect nothing wrong with this call; perhaps the ear of a turkey is keener, for what Moses Ayer had noted was that their own turkeys were not responding as usual to this early caller.
But Lewis believed it was a turkey, so many had come out in sight there. The two boys argued it for some time, and meantime the gobbling continued at intervals, apparently about a gun-shot back from the creek.
Not only Charles Hoyt, but Merrick and Wistar Royce, Marion’s brother, who had now appeared from their bunks, thought that it was probably a turkey. Lewis declared that he would go ashore to shoot it, but Lincoln forbade it, although he, too, believed it to be a bird.
Moses still insisted that it was a skulking Indian trying to pick up a scalp, and the discussion and banter waxed so hot at length that the boy determined, privately, to prove himself in the right.