Far Past the Frontier

by James A. Braden

“Ree, you are a perfect fright,” said John with a laugh, one day. “If people from home were to see you now, they would say you would be lucky to find a scare-crow which would trade places with you. And your hair—why, it almost reaches your shoulders!”

Ree smiled but did not at once reply. Then, looking up, he said: “Old boy, we are going back to Connecticut some day, but the time is a long way off. If we go with whole skins and with money in our pockets, it will be an easy matter to get into good clothes and to get our hair cut. What you want to do, is to watch out that some Indian barber does not cut that long hair of yours, rather closer than you like.”

It was so seldom that Ree joked, and he spoke now in so droll a way, that Tom Fish laughed boisterously. It had been long since the boys had heard him so merry; for, though he never mentioned that subject, the remembrance of the scalp Big Buffalo had carried, seemed always on his spirits, bearing him down to a melancholy, unnatural mood.

They did not understand it then; they did not know.

When the time came to raise the cabin—that is, to fit the logs in place one upon another, after they had been dragged and rolled to the summit of the mound, to be in readiness, Tom’s help was found most valuable, and both Ree and John appreciated his work. But notwithstanding, they would have been better pleased had he not remained with them. He had shown so much ill-feeling toward the Indians who had come about from time to time, that there was reason to believe he would commit some rash act which would make trouble for all.

They could not tell Tom they did not trust him. They could not tell him to go. Ree’s repeated cautions that they must avoid getting into difficulty with the redskins, were the only hints that could be given.

Capt. Pipe himself and a large number of his braves visited the camp when the cabin was nearly finished, to make the settlement for the land the boys had engaged to buy. The young pioneers had twice sent word to him by Indians who were passing, that they wished to make their payment and enter into a final agreement, and he had at last sent messengers to say that he would visit them on a certain day. On the day before Capt. Pipe’s expected visit Ree and John went hunting to secure an abundance of meat for a feast for their guests. It was the first day they had spent away from the hard work on their cabin, except for Sundays when they bathed and gave their clothes needed attention, and no two boys ever enjoyed a holiday more. There was some snow—not enough to make walking difficult, but really an advantage to the young hunters, for it showed them the numerous tracks of the game they sought.

To this day, men, who have heard the stories handed down from generation to generation, of the hunters’ paradise in what is now the Northern part of Ohio, in the years before 1800, delight to tell of the abundance of choicest game found in the valley of the Cuyahoga and about the small lakes in its vicinity, and Ree and John were in that very locality years before the white man’s axe had opened up the country to general settlement, driving the deer, the bear and wolves and all kindred animals away.

Little wonder is it that these hardy pioneer boys were constantly reminding themselves that they must pass by many fine opportunities for a good shot, because of the necessity of saving their powder and bullets for actual use; there must be no shooting except when there was a good chance of securing game of some value.

Little wonder is it, that, even under these circumstances, Ree, by the middle of the afternoon, had secured a deer and three turkeys besides a big rabbit which he caught in his hands as it sprang from its burrow beneath a fallen tree-top. And John had also shot a deer and had killed their first bear—a half-grown cub which, late in finding quarters for its long winter’s sleep, rose on its hind legs, growling savagely, as the boys came suddenly upon it, in passing around a great boulder in the river valley.