Far Past the Frontier

by Braden, James A

  Ree Kingdom thought of this and lay perfectly still, feigning insensibility but keenly wondering what disposition would be made of him, and resolved to fight to the last breath if his pretense of unconsciousness were discovered. Then the giant’s grip about his throat grew tighter, and he felt that a terrible struggle and perhaps death were just at hand. Between his almost closed eyelids he saw the man’s big frame bending silently over him and thus moments which seemed like hours passed.

  The slow-thinking fugitive could not at once decide what he should do. He was hoping Ree would spring to his feet and run. Then, pretending to try to catch him, he would escape among the darker shadows before the boy could see in which direction he had gone. He was not deceived by the pretense of unconsciousness, as Ree thought, and really hoped to be saved the necessity of killing the lad or of knocking him senseless, to a certainty, lest such a blow might produce death. He shuddered as he remembered that his hands were probably already stained with blood.

  If Ellis had but known it, flight was far from Kingdom’s thoughts. He was steadfast in his every purpose, to a fault, and having set out to capture Big Pete, the idea of running away just as he was face to face with the giant fellow, did not so much as occur to him, though he well knew his peril.

  “Scoot!” With sudden fury Ellis dragged Ree to his feet and violently pushed him as he spoke, expecting to see the boy dash away.

  Ree could not prevent a grim smile from crossing his lips as he turned quickly toward the giant again, realizing that the fellow had intended to frighten him. Each moment, however, he looked for a deadly conflict to begin, and as he stood in quiet defiance, trying to determine what the fugitive’s next move would be, and momentarily expecting a struggle, there was in the background of his thoughts a vision of an unmarked, flower-strewn grave in a quiet church-yard. Strongly intertwined with it was memory of his past life. But hark!

  “Clockety-clack-clockety-clack!” It was the sound of horses’ hoofs close by. The constable had discovered them at last. Big Pete heard the hoof-beats and knew he had paused too long.

  “Death to ye!” he cried with an oath, and lodged a hammer-like blow on Kingdom’s head, sending the lad staggering, while he swiftly took to his heels.

  Dazed, but still conscious, Ree sprang after him, shouting “Come on!” to the party of horsemen now but a few rods distant, “Ellis has just this minute run into the woods!”

  For an hour the men searched for the fugitive, but in vain. He had disappeared completely and in the deep darkness pervading the thickly-grown brush and trees of the forest he eluded his pursuers with ease.

  In disappointment the chase was abandoned and attention given to capturing the escaped horses. This was at last accomplished, and as the early moon was waning, the constable and his volunteers turned homeward. One source of satisfaction was theirs—they had, at least, recovered the stolen team and wagon, though the latter would need many repairs before again being fit for service.

  Ree briefly told of his adventure as the party rode along. John Jerome could not withhold his words of regret that his horse had been too slow for the race, nor could he quite understand how the stolen team had been able to outstrip the others.

  “I’ll tell you how that was,” said the constable’s brother. “The nags Big Pete had was really runnin’ away. I guess you know how much faster a dog will run when he has a rattle tied to his tail, than when he’s jest runnin’ for the fun on it! Wall, this here’s a parallel case.”

  Although it was nearly midnight, a small crowd of curious ones was found still lingering about Mr. Rice’s store, anxious to learn all that had been done. Ree Kingdom received a large share of the praise for the return of the stolen horses. Captain Bowen was delighted over his behavior and would not listen to one word about the lost pistol.

  “I’ll drive over that way an’ pick it up along the road somewheres in the mornin’,” he said. “An’ to-morrow night I want you to come an’ try some o’ the new cider. You come too, son,” he added, turning to John.

  The boys thanked him heartily, for well they might esteem it a great favor and an honor to receive this invitation from the warlike old veteran. Again they inquired for the latest news of Jim Huson, and learning that he was likely to recover, set out for their homes.

  “I have a presentiment that we shall see Big Pete again,” said Ree thoughtfully.

  “Are you afraid of him?” John quietly asked.

  “No, I am not afraid of him, yet I would rather we should never meet again. But I think he will go west and though it is a big country, we might find him there. By the way, John, Capt. Bowen is just the man to give us advice about our expedition. Meet me about sundown at the old place. We will have a lot to talk about as we are on the way to make our call.”

  A few minutes later the boys separated. John going to the overcrowded little house of his parents; Ree to the Henry Catesby farm, which was the only home he had known since childhood. As he crept into bed in his attic room, and stretched his full length restfully on the straw-filled tick, again there came to him a vision of an unmarked grave in the quiet burying-ground, bringing an influence of sadness to all his thoughts.

  “Oh, mother, my memory of you is the dearest thing in life,” he softly whispered to himself, and his mind turned fondly to his childhood. Faintly he remembered his father. More vividly he recalled the coming of a neighbor with the news of his father’s death—killed by Gen. Howe’s troops as they advanced on Philadelphia, after succeeding in defeating the American soldiers at Wilmington, because Gen. Washington was misled by false information.

  Poor Ree! How well did he remember his mother’s grief, though he was too young to understand—too care-free to grieve long or deeply himself. Many times he had heard the story in after days, how his father and two companions were fired upon as they were hurrying forward to give notice of the enemy’s coming; and one of the three being wounded, his father would not leave him, though in trying to save him, his own life was sacrificed. It was the third man, who escaped, who spread the news of the bravery and death of the elder Return Kingdom.

  Ree did not know how long a time had elapsed, but it seemed a very little while after this sad story reached his mother that she removed with him to a newer part of Connecticut, where she earned a living for them both by weaving and spinning. A happy year or two slipped by and then—ah, well, he remembered the dreary day when some neighbors had taken him to see her whom he loved so well, buried beneath the elm trees, and he knew he was left alone.

  Memory of the bitter tears he shed came freshly to the boy as he recalled it all—how, in but a few days, he was “bound out” to Henry Catesby with the promise that he should have a home and want for nothing.

  Had he been in want? Oh, he had been supplied with food and clothing and a roof over his head. Could he ask more? Yes, a thousand times, yes! He wanted friends, companionship, love. He remembered no one who had cared for him in those early days, except—Mary Catesby, his hard master’s little daughter. And she was still but a child when she was told to have no association with the “bound boy;” learning of which, he had steeled his proud young heart and had spoken to her only when necessary.

  So with work, day in and day out, save for a few winter weeks in school, the years had passed, until he made the acquaintance of John Jerome, the son of a distant neighbor. Too poverty-distressed to be proud, he had known little happiness except a sort of sad pleasure he found in visiting the church-yard, where in summer he placed great bunches of wild flowers on the mound to him most sacred.

  For two years he and John had been intimate friends. The latter being sometimes employed by Mr. Catesby, gave the boys additional opportunities of being with one another. Late at night after a long, hard day in the harvest fields, they had gone swimming together. They had borrowed a gun, and John’s money bought the ammunition they used in learning to shoot, to practice which they had risen before sunrise; for at Old Sol’s first peep the day’s work must be begun. M
any a time they had labored all day, then tramped the woods all night, hunting ’coons, coming home in time only to catch a wink of sleep before jumping into their clothes and away to work again.

  Sometimes in winter when, by reason of John helping him with his work, Ree was able to secure a half-day off, the boys had sought other game, and shared the profits arising from their hunting and trapping. What with the knowledge they thus picked up themselves, and the instruction given them by Peter Piper and others, there were no two boys in Connecticut better versed in woodcraft.

  Ree thought of all these things as he lay awake looking out through his window at the stars in the western sky. And as his thoughts ran on, he reflected on the death of Mr. Catesby a short eight months ago, and the great change it had brought into his life. From the moment Mrs. Catesby had called him to go for the doctor when her husband was taken ill, she had depended on him in nearly everything. It was he who took charge of all the farm work of the spring and summer, and the neighbors had said the Catesby place never produced better crops. With scarcely a pause except on Sundays, he had toiled early and late to accomplish this. Only within the past few weeks when the rush of the harvest was over, had he allowed himself any time for recreation. Yet it had been a happy summer, he thought. Mrs. Catesby, appreciative of his splendid services, had been all kindness; Mary Catesby had been agreeable as his own sister might have been. Both had forgotten, or at least no longer observed, the bar of social inequality which Mr. Catesby had set up against the “bound boy.”

  Then in August had come Mrs. Catesby’s decision to remove to the city that her daughter might have educational advantages. It was with genuine regret that Ree had learned her plans. He would never have admitted even to himself that he had, in a certain boyish, vague way, dreamed of a dim, distant time when he and Mary might be more than friends; but maybe some such thought had been in his mind at some time. Strange it would be had nothing of the kind occurred to him.

  Thus as he lay awake still pondering on the past, the present and the future, in the depths of Ree’s heart of hearts there may have been a wish that he should become a successful man, wealthy perhaps, well-to-do certainly; but in any event, looked up to and respected.

  But, oh!—What obstacles confronted him! How could he ever be more than a rough, uneducated “bound boy” that he was! The subject was not a pleasant one, but he gave it most serious thought, and determined for the hundredth time, that, come what might, he would make the most of his opportunities and ever be able to hold up his head in any company.

  So his reflections passed to the future. He was to receive $100 for his summer’s work. He also had some money which he had secured in odd sums from time to time, safely put away in the chest beneath his bed.

  John Jerome had a hoard of savings, too. How should they best invest their joint capital for their proposed journey to the western wilderness, where, they planned, they would make homes and secure farms for themselves amid savages and wild beasts! They must be obtaining this and other information at once. They would have learned much that very evening had not the man to whom they were going in quest of advice, been assaulted by Big Pete Ellis. And what of that burly giant, by the way?

  “But this will never do. I must be getting to sleep,” Ree said to himself.

  Going to sleep just when one wishes, however, is not always easy. Ree found it the very opposite. Tired as he was, his mind went over the adventure of the night, and in a round-about way to his future home in the wilderness, again, before his eyes closed. At last dreams came to him, and in one of them he saw Big Pete waving a white handkerchief as a flag of truce. He could not make out for whom the sign of peace was meant; for a war party of Indians seemed to be hot on the giant’s trail, and it was in the opposite direction that Pete waved the handkerchief.

  Ree recalled the dream when pulling on his boots in the morning, and pondered over the possibility of its having some significance.

  Many times during that day the young man had occasion to remember the incidents of the night preceding. Everyone he met, it seemed, had heard of his adventure with Big Pete and they all congratulated him. More than one, too, warned him against the giant Ellis, saying the fellow would surely seek revenge.

  Ree gave but little heed to this talk. Big Pete had had the chance to kill him, or at least to attempt it, and had not done so, evidently wishing to avoid blood-shed. But Peter Piper came along during the afternoon with a story which he had heard in the adjacent village, that gave the boy some uneasiness. Big Pete had sent word by a farmer he had seen at daybreak, that he would return to his old haunts and that not a man would dare to touch him; that he would not be driven off, though he had killed both Jim Huson and Marvel Rice, and that those who had interfered with him would suffer for it.

  “He’s a braggart,” said Ree contemptuously.

  “Jes’ what he says, he will do. He’s bad, bad, bad,” said Peter Piper in his simple, earnest way.

  So Ree came to look upon the matter with much seriousness. Somehow it occurred to him that the giant might seek revenge by burning the barn or poisoning the horses, or some such cowardly thing—he knew not what. For himself he was not afraid, and it is not strange that in the wildest flights of his lively fancy he did not for a moment imagine under what startling circumstances he was destined to next behold the fugitive criminal.

  * * *

  CHAPTER III.

  The Beginning of a Perilous Journey.

  “Hitch yer cheers up t’ the blaze; it’s a cool night fer September,” said Captain Bowen, drawing his own splint-bottom chair toward the great fire-place of his homely but thoroughly comfortable home, and slowly sipping new cider, just old enough to sparkle, from the bright pewter mug containing it.

  “An’ help yerselves to some more cider, naow dew; I like a man to feel at home,” he went on as Return Kingdom and John Jerome gave heed to his kindly bidding.

  “Naow as I was a sayin’,” Captain Bowen continued, “I r’ally kent advise yeu youngsters t’ undertake these plans yer minds air set on. The Injuns hev hated us whites worse than ever sence the British turned their back to ’em after the war was over, an’ comin’ so soon after their hevin’ helped the pestiferous Redcoats so much—they fit fer ’em tooth an’ toe-nail as the sayin’ is, ye know—as I was sayin’ it rankles in their in’ards. General Washington—peace to him—he’s did all he kin toward pacifyin’ ’em, an’ it ain’t no wonder they call him the ‘Great Father’; but so many other men hev cheated ’em, an’ so many settlers air crowdin’ into their huntin’ graounds thet they air jist ready to lift the hair of any white man they catch sight on, a’most. Ye air takin’ long chances, boys, I do tell ye.”

  “We want to hear both sides of the matter,” Ree answered, and Captain Bowen resumed, saying in his own slow, homely but kindly way, that it was into the very thick of the savages that the boys were planning to go. He reminded them of the barbarous cruelties the Indians had practiced as allies of the King’s troops in the war, and told them briefly the story of the battle Col. Crawford had fought with the savages in the Ohio country, ending with the burning of Col. Crawford at the stake.

  He cautioned his young friends further of the hazardous nature of the journey through an unsettled country, a long part of the way lying over the Allegheny mountains. He told them of the cutthroats they would be likely to encounter—rough men, who, for adventure’s sake, had gone into the war, and had never been satisfied to settle down to lives of peace and respectability after the close of the Revolution. As he paused at last, there was quiet for a minute or two. Then Return Kingdom said:

  “We have thought of these things, Captain, and maybe we are head-strong, but we are bent on going. There is little future for a young man here. I will soon have no home, and John can well be spared from his. All we can do, if we do not emigrate and secure homes of our own, is to hire out as farm hands, and, as you know, labor is not greatly in demand. And as we have said, we expect to go among the Indians pa
rtly as traders. The land we shall settle upon, we expect to buy from them.

  “Traders who have behaved themselves have not had much trouble, and we hope to make peace with every tribe we fall in with. The truth is, Captain, we really have more fear of finding ourselves in the woods with a lot of stuff we do not need, taking up the room in our cart and adding to our load, while that which we should have will not be within reach, than we have of trouble with the Indians.”

  “People say it will be only a few years until all the country about the Ohio river will be settled,” put in John Jerome.

  “Y-a-as, land agents say that,” smiled Captain Bowen, “but I ain’t so sure on it. Folks kin still find plenty of hardships right here in Connecticut ‘thout pokin’ off t’ the Ohio Valley or the northwest kentry. But I tell you what, youngsters,” he exclaimed with sudden enthusiasm, “I wish I was ten years younger, I’d go with ye, bless me if I wouldn’t! They do bring tales of a marvelous kentry from the valley where my ol’ friend General Putnam an’ his colony settled!”

  From that moment Ree and John had smooth sailing so far as getting advice and information from Captain Bowen was concerned. Then and there, however, the Captain had to tell them all he knew about the colony of brave men who had founded Marietta on the Ohio river, nearly three years earlier. “An’ they do tell that game is thick there as fleas on a homeless, yaller dog,” he said.

  Though he knew that his wish that he might accompany the boys could never be gratified, Captain Bowen entered into the spirit of their plans and hopes with whole-souled ardor. He took great delight in telling the boys of his own youth and his adventures. He seemed to grow young again in their presence. Many times, too, he told them of sixteen-year-old Jervis Cutler, who, as a member of General Putnam’s party, was the first to leap ashore and the first to cut down a tree in the new country whose settlement their enterprise had started.