The frolics of the Indians had now been resumed, and a number of backwoodsmen had come in to have a good time also. Some of these fellows were half-breeds and many wore the dress of their red brethren. They were a wild, lawless crowd and, on the whole, more to be feared than the Indians themselves. Soon the liquor was flowing freely, the Indians were dancing and whooping madly, and the backwoodsmen were shouting themselves hoarse and shooting their firearms into the night air. This orgy kept up until two o’clock in the morning, when it died away gradually, the Indians slinking off into the woods and the backwoodsmen dropping wherever it was convenient in drunken slumber.
Joseph Morris had secured accommodations for himself and Dave at a cabin close to the post, and hither they retired, leaving their horses in care of Sam Barringford, who tethered them to a tree in the woods and went to sleep beside them as innocently and as free from care as a child. When the carousal in the village broke up some of the Indians came toward Barringford, but as soon as they recognized the old hunter they took great pains to leave him undisturbed.
Dave slept but little that night previous to the end of the noise, and he sat for a long while at the cabin window looking at what was going on in the moonlight. He had witnessed such a scene before, when a white man and an Indian had been seriously hurt, and he anticipated similar results now. But this anticipation was not fulfilled, for with all the shooting, leaping, shoving and wrestling nobody was injured, and the most that anybody suffered was the tearing of his clothing. One backwoodsman who had refused to pay for liquor for his friends was ridden on a sharp rail, but this act was carried out more in fun than as a punishment.
When Dave came out in the morning and walked toward the trading-post and around it he felt somewhat astonished at the turn affairs had taken. One backwoodsman had aroused another, and all had stolen off as meekly and quietly as had the red men several hours before. The post was almost deserted in consequence and appeared more lonely than ever.
“It’s a way those fellows have,” said one of the traders to Dave. “They go out into the woods for weeks at a time and you never see hide nor hair of ’em. Then of a sudden the Indians come in and the half-breeds and the rest follow, and they kick up such a shindy as you saw. It seems they have got to break loose—they jest can’t help themselves. And they don’t mean no harm by it neither—at least the most of ’em don’t. That Turtle Foot is an exception, and if he don’t look out he’ll get a knife in his back some day.”
Sam Barringford was bound for the home of Lord Fairfax, but had business at Winchester which would keep him at the post for a day longer, so he had to part with the Morrises when they resumed their journey, much as he would like to have accompanied them, for he was strongly attached to Dave.
“Lord Fairfax is a great hunter, you know,” he explained. “But his style is the English one—behind the hounds. Now he wants to git right out in the woods after big game, and he’s offered me a pistole a day for my services, and I’ve closed with him for a month. It’s not bad pay in these times, and he says he may make it more, if I show him something worth bringing down, and I think I can.” And Joseph Morris agreed that it was a good offer, for a pistole in those days was worth about three dollars and sixty cents.
“Is Lord Fairfax going alone?” asked Dave.
“No, he is going to take Lawrence Washington and several others with him. I am calculating on a fine time, for my lord is a good liver and has the finest horses in this section of the country.”
“I know he has a fine estate,” put in Joseph Morris.