“Now, James, if you’ll take care of the beasts, I’ll take my rifle and see if I can get a wild turkey, or pigeon, and then we’ll have another chat; for to-morrow we must get ready for the woods.”
“You may think it silly, James, but I’ll go out with you, for I want to see and pet old Frank; nothing brings home so near as seeing him,” said Mary.
“That’s because I always rode him over to her father’s when I was courting her, and she used to ride on his back, on the pillion behind me, to singing school, huskings and all sorts of doings.”
Away he went, humming a merry tune. While Mrs. Whitman was talking to Frank, patting him, pulling locks of sweet hay out of the mow and giving to him, James looked after the retreating form of her husband, who was making the woods ring with his music, and said within himself,—
“What a man!—far from neighbors, with three little children, bullet-proof window shutters, five rifles and a shot-gun hanging over the fireplace, and gay as a lark. He’s just like Bertie for all the world; it’s just as Mrs. Whitman said, ‘If you like Bertie you’ll like his uncle, for they are just alike.’”
At dusk Mr. Whitman returned with a turkey and three pigeons, and after the evening meal was partaken of and the children in bed, James asked him how he came to think of settling where he was when there was plenty of wild land east of the mountains, and especially as the homes both of himself and wife were there.
“I came up here when I was seventeen years old with uncle Nathan Hendrick trapping, we trapped on this stream and on the Youghiogheny; there were beaver here then,—a few,—a good many otters and foxes, and no end to the coons; we did well and that gave me a taste for trapping.
“When I was eighteen, father gave me my time, a good rifle, and money to buy a good set of traps. I worked two summers on farms, and in the winters came up here and trapped alone. Then I had fallen head over ears in love with that girl who is jogging the cradle, and she wanted to get married and settle down awful”—upon this he received a sound box on the ear from his wife. “You see we wanted to get together, I had taken a great liking to this place, couldn’t get it out of my head, used to dream about it. I hadn’t much money but wanted considerable land, couldn’t bear to be crowded; and this land was dog cheap. About this time I got acquainted with a half-breed Indian, who told me there was good trapping and hunting on the Big Beaver. I went and looked over this land, made up my mind just exactly as to what I could do with it, saw that I could get along faster here than anywhere else, because I could do two things as you may say at once.”
“What two things?”
“I could trap and farm. I made up my mind at once and bought two hundred acres, though it took all the money I had. I went to a blacksmith in Pittsburg who I knew often saw the half-breed, and got him to ask him to trap with me the next winter, and for the smith to write me, and went home. When I got home, father had given the farm to Jonathan to take care of him and mother. I hired with Jonathan at twenty-five dollars a month. I worked till August and had a hundred dollars.”