On the Border with Andrew Jackson

The haft of the hatchet was still a-quiver from the Prophet’s cast when Jack Davis’ long rifle spoke in reply. Then, with a hiss, an arrow from the bow of Running Elk found its mark; Frank’s piece cracked sharply, and then all three turned and darted away through the trees.

Behind them arose a terrific din; the Creeks, amazed at the unexpected happening, could, for a space, do nothing but yell their surprise and anger. Then they seized their weapons; arrows began to sing their swift flights over the heads of the running boys; a few rifles spoke spitefully; but in the darkness the aim of the Indians was bad.

As swiftly as they could travel, the lads tore through the woods; emerging from this their way was easier and they could make better time. When about a half a mile from the camp of the Creeks, Jack paused and his comrades drew up beside him. After listening a moment, the youthful borderer said:

“They are not after us; we must have given them a scare.”

“Creek not know how many,” said Running Elk. “Him think plenty white man.”

“Well, I’m glad enough for that,” spoke Frank, as he mopped his face with a handkerchief which he wore about his neck. “It would not be any too comfortable with that crowd pounding at our heels.”

They waited for perhaps a half hour for some sounds of pursuit; but as none came, they resumed their course toward the abandoned camp where their horses were tied.

“At daylight the Creeks will be stirring,” said Jack, “and then they’ll find our tracks and learn how few there are of us. So the best thing we can do is to mount and be on our way before they know too much about us.”

“A good idea,” said Frank.

“Creek good trailer,” admitted Running Elk. “Find track, like wolf.”

Accordingly they saddled, untied and mounted their horses; then in Indian file they rode away in the semi-darkness of the coppery sky.

Jack Davis and Frank Lawrence had been friends for almost ten years. Jack’s father was a prosperous farmer with a great tract of land which he had won from the wilderness of Tennessee, and the boy had been brought up at the plow in the planting season, harvesting the crop in the autumn, and in the fall and winter ranging the woods with his rifle, accompanied by friendly Indians, or by some old trapper who had spent his life in the wilds.

But there had been three years in which Jack had gone to school. The school selected for him had been at Richmond and kept by a dapper, kindly old Frenchman who knew much, and had the knack of imparting it. It was here that Jack and Frank first met; they became chums, and during those weeks in which the schoolmaster saw fit to close his establishment at Christmas time, and during the heated term Jack was always carried enthusiastically away to the fine old house on the banks of the James, outside the city.

Frank’s father had then been a man of wealth and social position, but things, as his son had told Jack beside the camp that night, had changed. He had great losses in various ventures. And now this old French grant in the heart of the Creek country, once looked upon lightly enough, was all that stood between the old gentleman and real want.

Frank had realized this with a shock, and at once he set about turning the land to some practical account. First it had to be located, and that meant a journey through the wilderness. With the thought of this journey came one of Jack.

“The very fellow to go with me!” Frank had exclaimed. “He’s as learned in the lore of the woods as the oldest trapper.”

So away rode Frank into Tennessee and put the matter before his friend. Jack leaped at the idea; a venture into the woods appealed to him mightily; and at once he sent word to a Cherokee village, two score miles distant, for the young hunter, Running Elk, companion of many an exploit with the wild denizens of the forest.

They had been out something like two weeks when they met with the adventure related in the preceding chapter; but save for two bears and a panther, which gave Frank a very thrilling moment, they had had few experiences. But the scene at the savage camp-fire, the streaked faces of the Creek council, the words of the Red Warrior and of Tecumseh had been ominous and impressed themselves upon the boys’ minds.

“If the Injuns ever really join together for a war against the whites, they’ll sweep the border like flame for a while,” observed Jack, soberly, as they rode along. “The settlers are far apart, and the soldiers would be a long time getting into action.”

“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.

“Wal, wal!” said he, “this here is a surprise! I wasn’t calculatin’ on no visitors. Howdy, Injun,” to Running Elk. “Light, lads, and have a snack and a shake-down for the night.”

Both Bully and Snow, who was a white dog, had subsided at seeing their master so friendly with the newcomers; they now sniffed inquiringly at the horses’ heels and at the boys themselves when they rode up to the log house and alighted. The lads found a place to picket their horses where there was plenty of grass; then they joined the trapper, who was already gathering dried leaves and twigs to start a fire.

“Got some good fresh pickerel,” stated old Joe, “and some bear meat which was killed only yesterday morning. Hope you got some flour in your pack; bread’s mighty scarce with me just now.”

“We’ve got quite a lot of it,” said Frank, who had been introduced to the old backwoodsman and received a hearty hand-grasp from him.

While the fish and strips of bear meat were cooking at one fire and the bread was baking in the ash of another, the two white boys took a plunge into a deep clear pool which was close at hand, and then ran themselves dry in the last glancing barbs of the sun. Then after they had all four done complete justice to the meal, they drew inside the cabin, where old Joe lighted some home-made candles of bear’s grease; settling back upon the skins of bear, deer and catamount which covered the floor, they fell into a conversation which was one of the most interesting in which Frank Lawrence had ever taken part.

The candles flared yellow, lighting up the rough log walls chinked with clay; from the peak of the roof hung dried roots and herbs gathered by the trapper for medicinal use; heaps of pelts were piled up in one corner; others were stretched upon the walls to dry. Upon the door was the skin of a panther which in life must have been a monster; bears’ claws and teeth, traps, fishing-tackle, hatchets, and axes, and an extra gun also hung upon the wall. There was a huge fireplace at one side, built of stones and dried clay. With a little thrill of content, Frank pictured the cabin as it must be in the winter, with a fire of logs roaring up the chimney’s wide throat; all was snow and cold without, the dreary wilderness stretched away on every hand, but, within, the fire-glow gave off a cheer and comfort missing in a more stately dwelling.

“Wal, what brings you younkers so far down this a-way?” questioned the old man. “Never thought to see anybody this summer.”

Jack informed the trapper as to the nature of their errand in the wilderness; the old man, who had resumed the tinkering at the trap which their arrival had interrupted, listened with many nods of the head.

“Some day them there old French grants will be worth a mighty heap of money,” said he at length when the boy had done. “But, in the first place, they’ll have to be powerful well proven; and then it’ll not be until the Creeks is larned a lesson.”

This naturally brought up the subject of the boys’ journey and as Jack related the adventure with the Creeks, and the words of Tecumseh, the ancient woodsman put the trap aside and gave the matter his undivided attention. After the youngster had related all the details, old Joe began to ask questions; and when Jack had answered these at length, there was a silence. The trapper sat bolt upright, his shoulders resting against the wall, and his heavy white brows bent.

“So them varmint Shawnees have got into the Muscogee country again, have they?” said he. “Well, I’ve been expecting it for some time now; but I didn’t think to hear of it so soon, for all that.”

“As we couldn’t turn back from our hunt just yet,” said Frank, “Jack thought you’d carry the news to the settlements when you went in for your stores.”

“That I will,” replied old Joe, grimly. “I’ll carry it right enough; and I’ll be heading that way in four days’ time. And it won’t be none too pleasant for them to listen to, youngsters; for the Spaniards in Florida and the British on the northern frontier will give the redskins rifles, and ball and powder, and with plenty of them same articles, the varmints’ll be more dangerous than ever.”

“The Spaniards have never been any too friendly on the border,” said Jack, resentfully; “and the Creeks, when it gets too hot for them, will race for Spanish territory.”

“I suppose the outbreak of the war with England will be of great advantage to Tecumseh,” spoke Frank. Congress had only recently declared war against the British because of that nation’s aggression on the sea. “And, if the truth were known, I’ll venture that’s one of his reasons for starting an Indian uprising at this time.”

“Like as not. The Shawnees are a cute lot of redskins,” commented the old trapper. “And Tecumseh and his brother, the medicine man, are the sharpest of them all.”

The boys slept well that night in the trapper’s cabin; and next morning after a good backwoods breakfast, they bid the old man good-bye.

“Take care of yourselves,” said he. “With things as they are, there’s no telling what might happen. Always be on the safe side of anything that turns up, if you can fix it that way. For you are in the enemy’s country, and there are only three of you.”

He shook each of them by the hand.

“If you see my father,” said Jack, “tell him I’m all right and expect to keep that way.”

“I’ll do it, son,” promised old Joe.

“And say that we’ll be back as soon as we can finish up our errand,” said Frank.

The trapper waved his hand to them as they rode away; and the huge dogs barked their good-bye as they disappeared in the green of the forest.