“What did Bertie say to the Indian?”
“Made friends with him right off; stuck to him like his shadow, Bert’s tongue running like a mill-clapper and the Indian grunting once in a while, but the half-breed made him a bow and arrows and a little birch, and he went back with the two horses, about the biggest-feeling boy ever you saw.
“We paddled down the Yo. into this stream, and down this to Pittsburg, got some more traps there, went down the Allegheny twenty-five miles to Big Beaver, and up that about fifteen miles; went to trapping and trapped till the middle of April. The Indian wanted to carry his furs to Canada, so we made another canoe and came to Pittsburg, where I stored my furs.”
“Then I suppose you took the canoe, came to Turkey Foot, and from there home?”
“By no means. I wrote a letter, told ‘em what I had done; that I was well; hoped they were the same; must excuse all mistakes; came here, and went to felling trees, till the fifteenth of May; then I went eight miles to the nearest neighbor, and got him to come with his team, and plough up an acre of the clear land; planted it with potatoes and corn, and sowed a little flax. I then cut all the grass that grew on the bottom land, and in openings in the woods, made a hand-sled, hauled it to the stack and stacked it. Then I went right into a thick place in the woods and built a log camp; it was only fourteen feet by twelve, and just high enough to get into, with a splint roof, a stone fireplace, no chimney, only a hole through the roof, and no floor, but brush laid on the ground. It had but one window, and that was made in the door; was filled with oiled paper, and had a slide for stormy weather. Then, after making a house for cattle, I went to chopping till the last of August, and then went to hunting and trapping again.”
“Did you go back to the Beaver?”
“No, indeed; had hunting and trapping enough on the spot. I had built no fence because I had no cattle, and the bears, deers, and coons were determined to have my corn. Sometimes when I turned out in the morning, I would find a moose or a deer feeding on my grass, or browsing among the trees I had cut last. In a brook about a mile off there were a few otters, and many minks and foxes. I bought a lot of hens and geese, on purpose to tole the foxes, and went to trapping and shooting in good earnest. I made a log-trap for bears and wolves, and once in a while shot a moose or deer, and trapped otters and foxes. I had so much meat lying round that it toled the foxes and wolves; the wolves soon drove off the deer and moose, and then I shot the wolves on bait. Every wolf I killed I got ten shillings bounty and his skin was worth two dollars; and a bear’s skin from sixteen to twenty. That’s what I meant when I said that here I could do two things at the same time. I had built a house, raised corn, potatoes, flax, and hay enough to carry me through the winter, felled five acres of trees, and earned by trapping and shooting more than I had all the summer before, working for my brother, and been at work for myself most of the time. As for the deer, bears, and wolves, I didn’t go after them, and it did not take much time to set the traps, and what was of no less consequence I had got a first-rate birch. There’s nothing like a birch to a wild Indian, or a new settler.”
“Is a birch then so valuable?”
“Next to the Bible and the narrow axe.”
“I don’t suppose you meant to go on to your place till spring?”