“We will go to see Capt. Pipe to-morrow, and bargain with him for a canoe, and for some land where the trail and the river meet,” said Ree one warm March night as they sat on the doorstep of their cabin, in the moonlight.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Hatred of Big Buffalo.
The last of the sap had been reduced to sugar and made into a fine solid cake weighing nearly two pounds, the night that the foregoing conversation took place. With this as a present to the chief of the Delawares, Ree and John set out early the following morning for Capt. Pipe’s town on the lake.
It was a beautiful day. The red buds on the trees were bursting into green, in places, and in many sunny spots the spring plants and flowers were shooting forth. All nature seemed to feel the same joy and freedom the young pioneers felt as they journeyed through the valley and over the hills toward their destination. Birds were singing on every hand. Crows were flying here and there and calling lustily to one another from all directions.
Once a young deer bounded toward the boys, then, after standing for a moment, gazing with great, timid, bright eyes, wheeled and was away again, springing over bushes and logs with a showy vigor as though it were out only for a spring frolic. A wild turkey hen, wandering about in search of a place for nesting, scampered softly out of sight as it caught sight of the lads. A big woodchuck, fat and lazy, even after its all-winter nap, circled around a tree, to whose trunk it was clinging, thinking, perhaps, that it was always keeping just out of sight of the human intruders upon its forest home, though it was badly fooled if such were its opinion. A dozen times either boy could have shot it had he been so disposed.
A myriad of ducks flew noisily from a stream near the lake in which they were feeding as John threw a stone among them. He and Ree could have killed a score of the wild fowls had they wished to do so, but they were in no mood for it. They had not set out to hunt, and moreover, the fresh, balmy air and invigorating sunlight, together with the delightful odors of the spring-time, put upon them both a spell—a joy in living which made it seem inhuman to harm any living creature that day.
This sense of gladness, of friendship with every thing the woods contained, did not, however, prevent the boys from laying plans for the capture of certain denizens of the forest’s waters—the fish. They had already noticed that the lake beside which the Delawares lived, also other lakes not far away, and their own river, contained great numbers of the finny tribe, but they had been too busy with other things to try their hands at fishing. The opportunity for this fine sport, however, caused them to deeply regret that they had brought nothing in the line of fishing tackle with them.