LO, THE POOR INDIAN!
Dave King, editor of the Morris County Press, Morristown, New Jersey, was reared a lariat man in the Wild and Woolly, in the days before civilization, rum and guns had subdued the Cheyennes, the Comanches and the Sioux to extinction or to the more uncongenial fate of enforced good behavior.
In all of Dave’s hair-ruffling experiences—corralling stampeding long-horns, lassoing and riding a bull-buffalo bare-back, hunting, with Rex Beach, the great Kadiak bear in Alaska, whose enormous bulk and Ivan-the-Terrible disposition would by comparison make the grizzly of the Rocky Mountains a gentle companion—his most intimately interesting, close-to-nature adventure was when he was ten years old, and dwelt upon the upper waters of the Arkansas.
Dave’s father, a husky pioneer, accompanied by his ten-year-old son, his brother, “Uncle Joe,” an assortment of dogs, guns and ammunition, embracing a dozen kegs of gunpowder, had gone there to stake a squatter’s claim, hunt buffalo and grow up with the country.
Timber was scarce, so, after the manner of the troglodyte, they burrowed out a room in the side of a hill, which constituted at once cook-room, dining-room and parlor, and also museum of rare weapons, dog-kennel and powder-magazine. The cook-stove was placed in the middle of the room, and the flue was run up through the ground for ventilation and the escape of products of combustion.
One day, Dave’s father and Uncle Joe went on a buffalo hunt, much to the disconsolation of Dave, who wanted to go along. Toward the end of the afternoon following the departure of the hunters, Dave built a roaring fire in the stove to keep himself company, and incidentally to prepare supper for himself and the hunters, who were expected to return before sundown.
His eyes regarded longingly a double-barreled shotgun hung on the wall. He had many times been warned by his father to exercise caution in handling the guns during his absence, but Dave had the dare-devil spirit of his parent, with the added impulses of the small boy, and he took down the shotgun and fondled it lovingly, examining its firing mechanism. Then he proceeded to return it to its hanging, not noticing that he had left one of the hammers cocked. He did not know that the gun was loaded, and he would not have been deterred had he known. In putting up the weapon he accidentally touched the trigger of the cocked hammer and the charge in that barrel exploded, sending shot and burning wads under the sleeping-bunks, just missing one of the kegs of gunpowder.
Dave proceeded with his cooking, but soon he smelled smoke, and looking under the bunks discovered, to his horror, that a fire had started. Under the bunks he went, pawed at the fire with his hands, and smothered it with his hat, until he thought that he had extinguished the last spark. Then he started for a water-hole an eighth of a mile distant, to get a pail of water, accompanied by his favorite dog.