“It’s the sloop from St. Johns,” said Job. “She comes two or three times, whilst the lake’s open, with stores for the garrison to the Fort. It’s an easier trail than the road from Albany. Pretty soon you’ll hear her speak.”
Almost at his words a puff of smoke jetted out from her black side, and, as it drifted across her deck, it was followed by the loud, sullen roar of the cannon. In response a smoke cloud drifted away from the Fort, and a moment later a roar of welcome reinforced the failing echoes. Again and again the sloop and the Fort exchanged salutes, till the new settlers ceased to be startled by such thunder as they had never before heard under a cloudless sky.
“They hain’t nothin’ to do with their powder nowadays, but to fool it away in sech nonsense,” said the Ranger, as the sloop came to anchor in front of the Fort. “Arter all it’s a better use for it than killin’ folks, erless,” he deliberately excepted, “it might be Injins.”
[CHAPTER III—A VISIT TO THE FORT]
The summer brought more settlers to these inviting lands of level, fertile soil, and when the woods were again bright with autumnal hues, their broad expanse of variegated color was blotched with many a square of unsightly new clearing. Job Carpenter looked with disfavor upon such infringement of the hunter’s domain, but it was welcomed by the Beemans. Though Seth’s active out-door employment and the constant companionship of nature made him less lonely than his wife, yet he was of a social nature and glad of human companionship; while Ruth, sometimes lonely in the isolation of her new home, rejoiced in the neighborhood of other women.
Only a mile away were the Newtons, a large and friendly family, and within three miles were four more friendly households, and another at the falls of the turbid Lemon Fair. At this point a saw mill was being built and a grist mill talked of. With that convenience established so close at hand, there would be no more need of the long journey to the mill at Skeenesborough, a voyage that, in the best of weather, required two days to accomplish.
The settlers at first pounded their corn into samp, or finer meal for johnny-cake, by the slow and laborious plumping mill, a huge wooden mortar with a spring pole pestle.
“Oh, mother,” said Nathan, one summer afternoon, as for a while he stopped the regular thump, thump of the plumping mill to wipe his hot face and rest his arms that ached with the weary downpull of the great pestle, “when do you s’pose the folks to the Fair will get the gris’ mill done?”
“Afore long, I hope, for your sake, my boy,” she answered, cheerily, through the window. “Let me spell you awhile and you take a good rest.”
Laying her wool cards aside, she came out and set her strong hands to the pestle, while Nathan ran out to the new road to see what ox-teamster of unfamiliar voice was bawling his vociferous way along its root-entangled and miry course. Presently the boy came back, breathless with the haste of bearing great news.