Moreover, the camping-ground was deserted. Neither Uncle Eb nor Tiger could be seen, though Dol’s eyes sought for them wistfully. But something caught his attention. It was a ray of light filtering through the pine boughs and glinting on the trigger of an old-fashioned muzzle-loading shot-gun, which leaned against a corner of the hut. An ancient, glistening powder-horn and a coon-skin ammunition pouch hung above it.
Dol lifted the antiquated weapon, withdrew to a short distance, and examined it closely. He knew it belonged to the guide, but was rarely used by him since he had purchased the 44-calibre Winchester rifle, with which he could do uncommon feats in shooting.
The shot-gun interested the boy mightily. There was a facsimile of it, swathed in green baize, stowed away somewhere in his father’s house in Manchester. The first time he had ever used fire-arms was on a memorable day when his fingers pulled its trigger in his father’s garden under Neal’s direction, and a lean starling fell before his shot. After that he had often taken out a fowling-piece of a newer style, and had done pretty well with it too.
As he handled the shot-gun, which the guide had bought away back in the year ’55, musing about it under the pines, the thought suddenly tumbled out of a corner of his brain that at present there was a brilliant opportunity for him to use the gun and all the shooting skill he possessed for the benefit of his comrades and himself.
There was no meat in the camp for dinner or supper save the pork on which they had feasted since they arrived there, and that was fast giving out. Cyrus, in addition to his knapsack, had hauled over from Greenville, where articles of camp fare could be procured in abundance, a goodly supply of tea, coffee, condensed milk, flour, salt, sugar, etc., in a stout canvas bag, Neal at intervals helping him with the burden. For the rest he had trusted to Nature’s larder, and such food as he might purchase from his guides, desiring to go into the woods as “light” as possible.
Uncle Eb had baked bread for his guests after a fashion of his own on the camp frying-pan, setting the pan on some glowing coals a foot or so from the fire; he had fried unlimited flapjacks, and had cheerfully placed what stores he had at their disposal. His three luxuries were novelties to the English lads, being pork, maple sugar,—drawn from the beautiful maple-trees near his camp,—and a small wooden keg of sticky, dark molasses. The sugar was the only one which Dol found palatable; and he knew that the Bostonian, Cyrus, shared his feeling. To tell the truth, the juvenile Adolphus was not fastidious, but he was suddenly seized with an ambitious desire to vary the diet of the camp.
“Uncle Eb said that I could use this ‘ole fuzzee,’ as he called it, whenever I liked,” he muttered, looking wistfully at the shot-gun; “and I’ve a big mind to give those lazy fellows in there a surprise. They spent the night out jacking, and didn’t get any meat because Cyrus let Neal do the shooting, and he bungled it. It’s my turn next to go after deer, but I’m not going to wait for that.”
Here his steel-gray eyes fell on the moccasins which he had not yet put on, and struck fire instantly. His ambition was doubled. For if there is one thing more than another which in the forest will stir the pluck of a novice, and make him feel like an old woodsman, it is the sight of his Indian footwear. Dol put his on, admired their light, comfortable feeling, their soft buckskin, and rashly decided that he could dispense with the loose inner soles which Cyrus had fitted into them to protect his feet.
Then, being very much of a stranger to American woods, he communed with himself after this fashion,—
“Cyrus says that different tribes of Indians wear differently made moccasins, and one redskin, if he sees the tracks of another in soft mud or snow, can tell what tribe he belongs to by his footmarks. That’s funny! I suppose if any old brave was knocking about and saw my tracks in a boggy spot, he’d think it was a Kickapoo who had passed that way—not Dol Farrar of Manchester, England. These are of the shape worn by the Kickapoo tribe—so Cy says.