CHAPTER XV.

SOMETHING TO PUT IN THE CHEST.

That night as Mr. Whitman, accompanied by Peter and Bertie, reached the door-step, they were met by George Wood who said their mare had broken her leg, and they were going to kill her, that she had a colt four days old, and his father would sell it for a dollar.

“Father,” shouted Bertie, “won’t you let James have it, and keep it for him till it is grown up? You know Peter and I have each of us a yoke of steers, and James ought to have something. Will you, father?”

“James has no dollar to pay for a colt.”

“I’ll lend it to him, and he can pay me when he sells his potatoes.”

“But how do you know he wants a colt? Perhaps he had rather have the dollar.”

“Oh! I know he does, of course he does; you know how much he thinks of a horse, father, there’s nothing he loves like a horse. He’s got no father nor mother, nor brother nor sister, and it will be something for him to love just like a brother. He’s out to the barn, I’ll ask him, and if he says he wants him will you let him keep him?”

“He won’t say so, if he wants him ever so much, but you have a sort of freemasonry by which you reach each other’s thoughts, and if you think he would like very much to have him and pay a dollar for him, you may get him.”

It is to be presumed that James wanted the colt; for when work was done, Peter, Bertie and Maria all got into the wagon that was half filled with straw, and in the edge of the evening brought home the colt.

James watched his opportunity, and taking Mrs. Whitman aside, said,—

“I don’t think Mr. Whitman ought to keep this colt for me, it is doing too much for such as me. It takes a good deal to keep a horse.”

“That don’t amount to anything, James; we’ve hay enough, and pasture enough; there’s no market here for hay and we want to eat it up on the place, and we never shall miss what that little creature eats.”

“But by-and-by he will eat as much as the other horses.”

“Then you can sell him or let us use him, it will be handy to have a spare horse to use when the others are at work, and to go to market or to mill with.”

“I am afraid Mr. Whitman will think I asked for him, and can never be satisfied. I was out to the barn, when Bertie came running, and asked me if I should like such a little thing to make a pet of, and I said ‘I am sure I should,’ and away he went; he didn’t tell me he had asked his father to keep it for me, and the next thing I knew they came with the colt, and said it was mine and that their father would keep it for me.”

“Husband wanted you to have it, he knew just what Bertie would do when he went to the barn; you have never had any home, and we want you to feel that this is your home. Husband wants you to have this little colt because he thinks it will make you happy, and by-and-by it will be worth considerable to you, and you can see it grow, and we shall never feel the difference.”

“It will make me happy, for I do love horses, I think they are nearer to us than other creatures, and I shall love this little fellow like a brother, but I want you to tell Peter and Bertie not to ask their father for any more things for me. I am afraid Mr. Whitman will think I put ‘em up to ask.”

“Why, James, he loves to give you things. They did not ask him to send you to school, nor to give you boards to make your chest, nor to let you have that piece of ground to plant, it came out of his own head and heart; he is just the best man that ever was in this world, and the children take after him, and he takes after his father. Grandfather is getting a little childish sometimes now, but he is the best old gentleman that ever was, and a real treasure.”

It was so dark when the boys got the colt home, that they could not have a fair view of him, but the next morning the children were all at the barn by sunrise, and their mother with them, to give him his breakfast.

“Isn’t he a beauty?” said Bertie. “Mr. Wood says, when he comes to his color he’ll be a chestnut, same as Frank, mother. He’s a real good breed, Mr. Wood and I traced it out; he’s half-brother to Frank and perhaps he’ll be just like Frank.”

The mother had been injured four days, and the Wood boys had taught the colt to drink milk by putting a finger in his mouth and his mouth in the milk.

“Mother,” said Peter, “Mr. Wood has brought up a great many colts by hand, and he said that they ought to be fed a little at a time and often, to do right well. James nor we can’t come from the field to feed him, Maria can’t do it because she’s at school all day. What shall we do?”

“I’ll feed him twice in the forenoon and twice in the afternoon, a little at a time and often is the way, and then you and James can feed him morning, noon and night.”

After a few days’ feeding with her fingers, Mrs. Whitman nailed a teat made of rags and leather to the bottom of the trough, and the colt would suck that. All she had to do then was to pour the milk into the trough.

No one could have witnessed without emotion the wealth of affection lavished upon that colt by James. Much as he loved the children there was always a little feeling of restraint, and a little distance pervading their intercourse on his part. Bertie and Maria would put their arms around his neck and hug him, but he never returned their caresses.

Not so, however, in regard to the colt, the only pet he ever had, the only live thing that had ever called out the childhood feelings and sympathies of his nature so long dormant, and which they now fastened upon and clung to in their entire strength and freshness.

In the morning, before the rest were stirring, he would fondle and talk to it by the half hour. As the little creature grew stronger and playful, and could lick meal and eat potatoes and bread, James would put bread in his waistcoat pocket and lie down on the barn floor, sometimes he would put there maple sugar, then the colt, smelling the delicacies, would root them out with his nose, and as he became earnest get down on his knees and lick the lining of the pocket, and turn it out to get the sugar.

Just back of the house was a piece of grass ground extremely fertile, with a great willow in the centre of it. An acre of this was fenced and reserved for a pasture in which to turn the horses to bait when work pressed, and it was important to have them near at hand. In this pasture James put the colt when he was old enough to feed, and there he would frisk and caper and roll and try to act out the horse, and when tired lie under the great willow, stretched out at full length as though he was dead or sound asleep. Whenever James came in sight he would cry for him, and when the other horses came in from work there would be a vocal concert vigorously sustained on both sides.

“Poor little thing,” said Bert, “he’s lonesome, why don’t you turn him into the pasture with the other horses? He wants somebody to talk with him that can understand his language. I would, James.”

“I’m afraid to, he won’t know any better than to run right up to them, and they will bite or kick him; perhaps they’ll all take after him, get him into a ring and pen him in the corner of the fence and kill him.”

“Put one of ‘em in his place, and let us see what they will do.”

They turned old Frank in, the colt ran right up and began to smell of him. Frank smelt of the colt, seemed glad to meet, and did not offer to bite or kick him. Frank was just from work, hungry and wanted to feed, but the colt wouldn’t let him, kept thrusting his nose in Frank’s face and bothering him, when the old horse gave him a nip, taking the larger portion of the colt’s neck into his great mouth. The little creature screamed with pain and ran off, but soon came back and began feeding close by, just as Frank did, the latter taking no further notice of him.

“They’ll do well enough,” said Mr. Whitman, who was looking on. “Frank won’t hurt him, he was only teaching him manners, you can leave ‘em together.”

They eventually became great friends, and after they had fed to the full would stand in the corner of the fence or under the willows, the colt nestled under Frank’s breast, and the latter with his head over the colt’s back.

The colt would follow James like a dog; and sometimes when Frank would take a notion not to be caught James would call the colt to him and start for the barn, and the old horse would follow them right into the stable.

Mr. Whitman had an offer for wheat at a high price, and kept Mr. Conly and hired another man (as he had two barn floors) to help thresh, threshing being then all done with the flail, or else the grain was trampled out by cattle. The evenings were now getting to be quite long. James therefore began to study, and Mr. Conly assisted him and heard him recite. This was a golden opportunity for James, and he made the most of it. While devoting every leisure moment to study, James was not unmindful of his crop, there was not a weed to be seen among his potatoes, and I should not dare to say how many times the fingers of James and Bertie and Maria had been thrust into the hills on a voyage of discovery, and their conclusions, as reported by Maria to her mother, were most satisfactory. The soil indeed was full of great cracks, caused by the growth and crowding of the potatoes.

When Mr. Whitman found that Mr. Conly was disposed to assist James, and that James fully appreciated the privilege, he so arranged his work as to afford him every possible opportunity, and the boys were ever ready to take an additional burden upon themselves for the same purpose. One evening Arthur Nevins came in to see the boys, and said he had been to the mill that day and saw a notice posted up that Calvin Barker was buying potatoes for a starch mill, and would pay cash and a fair price for first-rate potatoes sound and sorted, no cut ones. Potatoes were cheap, there was not much of a market for them, and the traders would pay but part cash and the rest in goods.

“Now is your chance, James,” said the grandfather, “you want the money and don’t want goods.”

They brought only seventeen cents per bushel, but there were one hundred and sixteen bushels and a half, and after returning a bushel and one half to Mr. Whitman to replace the seed received of him, and paying Bertie for the colt, James had eighteen dollars and fifty cents left. In addition to this were several bushels of small and cut potatoes that he put in the cellar to give the colt.

Barker paid James in silver, and after reaching home he piled the coins up on the table and gazed at them with a sort of stupid wonder. Never before had he at one time possessed more than two shillings, seldom that,—more frequently a few pennies for holding a horse, opening a gate, or doing some errand for the men in the glass-house, and he counted them over and over.

James now knew the value of a dollar in theory, how many cents there were in a dollar, and how many mills in a cent; and yet he had little more conception of its practical value than a red Indian, for he had not received any wages nor bought anything above the value of a penny loaf or a bit of cheese. At length, looking up wistfully in the face of Mr. Whitman, he asked,—

“How much would all these dollars buy?”

“According to what you might buy. They would buy a good deal of some articles and not much of others; they would buy about twenty-four bushels of wheat and thirty of corn, but they would not buy a great deal of coffee, or indigo, or broadcloth, or silk.”

“I’d buy a gun and lots of powder and shot,” said Bertie.

“Would it buy any land, Mr. Whitman?”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“That would depend upon circumstances. In the western part of Ohio, of wild land, one hundred and eighty acres—more than half as much as I have got here.”

“O my! how much is an acre? I know what the arithmetic says, one hundred and sixty square poles. But how big a piece is it?”

“That little pasture where the colt is measures about an acre. One of those dollars would buy ten pieces of land as big as that pasture out there; but you must recollect it is wild land, all woods, no house, no road: you have to cut the trees down before you can grow anything on it.”

“I know grandfather has told me ‘twas just so once where this house stands. But would it buy any land here?”

“Yes, it will buy an acre, buy two, perhaps three of some land; of most land it would not buy one.”

“It would buy a yoke of little steers, and quite a lot of sheep.”

“But why don’t you buy a gun? You love to shoot,” said Bertie.

“I mean to save my money to buy land.”

“That’s right, James,” said grandfather, “then you will have something under your feet that will last as long as you will, and longer, too. Not that I would say that it don’t pay a man who can shoot to buy a gun; but every thing in its place.”

James had now something to put in his chest, and went up stairs to deposit the money there. When he came back Mr. Conly explained to him the source of values, and told him that land became valuable by being settled, made accessible by roads, productive of crops and cattle, and by mills being built to grind the grain and manufacture the timber.

“When I go trading, James, I’ll take you with me, and then you will learn the prices of things, and after a while I’ll send you to trade as I often do Peter and Bertie,” said Mr. Whitman.

Mr. Whitman now said to James and his sons,—

“I think I shall turn out about two acres of the field to pasture, and take in as much more of woodland. I can get the land cleared and fenced with logs by giving the first crop; but if you three boys wish to take the job, I’ll give you the crop for three years; but you must keep the sprouts down and the fire-weed and pigeon-weed, and you may keep the ground you now have the use of two years more.”

They all said they would do it.

“That,” said Peter, “will be to become backwoodsmen, and do just what grandfather did, and we’ll make a chopping bee.”

“No, we won’t; we’ll do it ourselves. If we are to be beholden to the neighbors, I won’t have anything to do with it. I should be ashamed if we three could not do what your grandfather when he was young would have done alone, and not thought it a hard task either,” said James.

“So I say,” replied Bertie, “do it ourselves.”

“But how shall we find out how to do it quickest, and to the best advantage?” said James.

“Father will show us,” said Peter.

“Here sits a venerable gentleman,” said Bertie, making a magnificent gesture in the direction of his grandparent, “who can show us better than father.”

Bertie was prone to be grandiloquent at times, and he had just been reading Patrick Henry’s celebrated speech, and committing it to memory. He then asked his grandfather what time of the year was the best to do it.

“The best time to do it is in June, because then the stumps will bleed freely and be less likely to sprout, and the leaves will draw the sap out of the bodies of the trees and dry them, so that they will burn better, and the leaves will dry and help to burn them; but you can’t do it then, because it will be right in hoeing time; you will have to do it after harvest, and let it lie over till the next summer.”

“Then,” said James, “we shall not get any crop, not even the second year.”

“You will get a crop into the ground the second year, and harvest it the third, though you may get a crop the second year, but in the meantime you will keep the ground you have now and be getting something from that. If it should prove a dry summer you could burn it in June of the second year, and sow it with spring rye or barley, and if you get a good burn, an extra burn, you might venture to put in corn, for a crop comes along master fast on a burn, the hot ashes start it right along.”

“I don’t think,” said James, “we had better try to burn it till after wheat harvest, as we shall have the other pieces, and it would interfere so seriously with Mr. Whitman’s work, that if he was willing I shouldn’t be.”

The old gentleman now told James there was another way in which he might earn something for himself; he might shoot the coons that would be getting into the corn in the moonlight nights, and when there was no moon he might tree them with the dog, and shoot them by torchlight, and the hatters at the village would buy the skins. There was a pond in the pasture where there were plenty of muskrats.

“How do you get the muskrats?”

“This time of year set traps in the edge of the water for them; in the winter they make houses among the flags at the edge of the pond and go to sleep like flies, then you can catch ‘em in their houses. You can now shoot very well with a rifle, and if it was not for going to school you might in the winter get a wolf or a bear; a wolf’s pelt would bring two dollars, but a good bearskin would bring twenty, more than all the potatoes you worked so hard to raise. But no doubt you might trap a fox or two, and their skins bring a good price.”

“But where should I get a trap?”

“Come along with me.”

The old gentleman took James into the chamber over the workshop and opened a chest, in which were traps of all sizes and adapted to catch different animals, from a mink to a wolf or bears; there were but two of the latter but great numbers of the others, all clean and oiled, and in excellent order. He then opened a closet in which were chains to fasten the traps to prevent the animals from taking them away, and clogs, and broad chisels on long handles. The latter, the old gentleman told him, were ice chisels to cut ice around the beaver lodges in the winter.

“When I was younger, I used to leave Jonathan and the other boys to take care at home in the winter, and I and old Vincent Maddox used to take a hoss each, and traps, and rifles, and go over the Ohio river and trap and hunt sometimes till planting time, and sometimes I took one of my own boys. It’s a kind of pleasure to me to clean up the old traps, and repair ‘em, and look ‘em over, brings back old times, though I never expect to use ‘em much more ‘cept perhaps to take a fox or an otter.”

“Did Mr. Whitman use to go with you?”

“No, Jonathan never took much to such things. He’s all for farming, but my William, who’s settled in the wilderness on the Monongahela, was full of it from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot. He’s a chip of the old block. But Jonathan is right, farming pays the best now; but in those days if you raised anything there was no market for what you could not eat, and trapping and hunting, and killing Indians for the bounty on their scalps were all the ways to get a dollar.”

Peter and Bertie liked well enough to watch for and kill coons in the corn or on the trees for a few hours in pleasant moonlight nights, but did not possess that innate hunter’s spirit that reconciled them patiently to bear hunger, cold and watching to circumvent their game; but James did, and his former life of poverty, hunger and outdoor exposure with but scanty clothing had rendered him almost insensible to cold and wet, and he embraced every opportunity that was offered him to shoot or trap. Besides coons and muskrats, he shot, on the bait afforded by a dead sheep, two silver-gray foxes, and caught one cross fox and two silver-grays in traps that the old gentleman told him how to set. His greatest exploit and one that elicited the praises of grandfather, was in the latter part of winter, trapping an otter, that brought him twelve dollars.

The elder Whitman instructed him in the right methods of stretching and curing the skins, and sent them to Philadelphia to a fur dealer with whom he had dealt a great many years, and James received for what he took alone, and half of those he obtained in company with Peter and Bertie, sixty-eight dollars.