“I hope it never comes,” spoke Frank, fervently. “It will gain nothing for the tribes, and it will cost many an honest man his life.”
“Big war!” said Running Elk, confidently. “Heap fight. Much kill. Prophet great medicine. Injun fool! Soldiers shoot ’um like wolf.”
However, whatever the prospects for an Indian uprising, the mission of the boys at this time was to locate the old land grant, the position of which was set down upon a chart which Frank carried in the breast of his buckskin hunting shirt. Jack now dwelt rather gravely upon the situation; he felt that it would be well to return to the settlements and give warning as to the presence of Tecumseh and the Prophet among the Creeks, but he couldn’t very well see how it could be done at that time. It was daylight and they were seated beside a fire, kindled upon the banks of a small stream, and eating their breakfast of ash cake and baked woodcock when an idea occurred to the youthful borderer.
“We’re not more than a day and a half’s travel from old Joe Grant’s trapping grounds,” said he, delighted at the thought. “Joe will be going to the settlements for traps, powder and provisions to carry on his winter work. If we can reach him before he starts, he’ll carry the news we have to tell.”
Frank was equally pleased at this plan; and after a rest until noon, for both they and their horses were tired out by the all night ride to escape the Creeks, they mounted once more and headed in the direction of the old trapper’s cabin in the woods.
Old Joe Grant was one of those unique backwoods characters so plentiful in the early days of the fur hunters. He had a line of traps, in season, for miles along the banks of the streams; he hunted bear and hill-cats and deer, and lived in a small log house in the shelter of a huge, uprearing rock, in a region into which man, white or red, seldom ventured. Here with a packhorse and a brace of huge dogs, almost as savage as wolves, he had lived for years, only venturing into the settlements in the spring to sell his furs, and in the early fall to lay in his necessities, as Jack had said, for the winter.
THE TRAPPER WAS SEATED IN THE DOORWAY
At about sundown next day as the three were riding through a depression between two hills, they heard the deep bay of dogs; in another quarter of an hour they sighted the lonely cabin. The trapper was seated in the doorway, his rifle at his side, mending a trap. The two white boys shouted and waved their caps as they approached; the huge hounds which had winded them from afar rushed forward, their red jaws gaping, and growling deep in their mighty chests.
“Down, Bully! Down, Snow!” cried the trapper. At sight of the horsemen he had dropped the trap and seized his rifle; but recognizing Jack he arose, shouted once more to the dogs, and advanced with a broad smile.