The Edward S. Ellis Megapack

by Edward S. Ellis

  The father of Fred Linden was one of the hunters and trappers who made regular visits to the wild section near the Ozark Mountains for the purpose of gathering furs. He never had less than two companions, and sometimes the number was half a dozen. As you are well aware, the furs of all animals are in the finest condition in wintry weather, since nature does her best to guard their bodies from the effects of cold. Thus it came about that the party of hunters, of whom I shall have more to say further on, left Greville in the autumn of the year, and as a rule were not seen again until spring. Since they entered a fine, fur-bearing country, these trips generally paid well. One convenience was that the hunters were not obliged to go to St. Louis to sell them. An agent of the great fur company that made its headquarters at that post, came regularly to Greville with his pack-horses and gave the same price for the peltries that he would have given had they been brought to the factory, hundreds of miles away. He was glad to do this, for the furs that George Linden and his brother hunters brought in were not surpassed in glossiness and fineness by any of the thousands gathered from the four points of the compass.

  Among the daring little band that made these regular visits to the Ozark region was an Irishman named Michael Clark, who had had considerable experience in gathering furs along the Mississippi. It was at his suggestion that Greville was founded, and one-half of their periodical journeys thus cut off. On the year following, Clark was shot and killed by a prowling Indian. Since his wife had been dead a long time, the only child, Terence, was thus left an orphan. The lad was a bright, good-natured fellow, liked by every one, and he made his home with the family of one of the other hunters named Rufus MacClaskey. The boy was fifteen years old on the very day that he walked over to the cabin of Fred Linden and asked him to help him hunt for the missing cow.

  The family of George Linden, while he was away, consisted of his wife, his daughter Edith, fourteen, and his son Fred, sixteen years old. All were ruddy cheeked, strong and vigorous, and among the best to do of the thirty-odd families that made up the population of Greville.

  “Has the cow ever been lost before?” asked Fred, as he and the Irish lad swung along beside each other, neither thinking it worth while to burden himself with a rifle.

  “Niver that I knows of, and I would know the same if she had been lost; we’re onaisy about the cow, for you see that if this kaaps on and she doesn’t come back I’ll have to live on something else than bread and milk and praties.”

  “Our cow came back just at sunset last night.”

  “And so did them all, exciptin’ our own, which makes me more onwillin’ to accipt any excuse she may have to give.”

  “Let me see, Terry; Brindle wore a bell round her neck, didn’t she?”

  “That she did, and she seemed quite proud of the same.”

  “Did you make hunt for her last night?”

  “I hunted as long as I could see to hunt; she wasn’t missed, that is till after they got home. Whin I found that I didn’t find her I started to find her; but I hadn’t time to hunt very long whin it got dark and I had to give it up.”

  “And didn’t you hear any thing of the bell?”

  “Do ye think that if I heard the bell I wouldn’t have found the cow? Why was the bell put round her neck if it wasn’t to guide friends? I listened many a time after it got dark, but niver a tinkle did I hear.”

  “That is queer,” said Fred half to himself; “for, when no wind is blowing and it is calm, you can hear that bell a long ways; father has caught the sound in the woods, when the Brindle was all of a mile off. I wonder whether she could have lost the bell.”

  “I’ve thought of that, and said to meself that it might be also that she had become lost herself in trying to find it.”

  Fred laughed.

  “She hardly knows enough for that; and, if she found the bell she wouldn’t know what to do with it; but if that leathern string around her neck had broken, it may be that she is close by. A cow after losing one milking is apt to feel so uncomfortable that she hurries home to be relieved; but what’s the use of talking?” added Fred, throwing up his head and stepping off at a more lively pace; “we’ve started out to find her and that’s all we have to do.”

  Perhaps a dozen acres had been cleared around the little town of Greville. This had been planted with corn, potatoes and grain, though scores of unsightly stumps were left and interfered with the cultivation of the soil. Beyond this clearing or open space extended the immense forests which at one time covered almost the entire face of our country. On the south side of the town and distant a furlong wound a creek, which after many shiftings and turnings found its way into the Mississippi and so at last into the Gulf of Mexico. The course of this stream was so winding that it extended on two sides of the town and ran in a westerly direction, exactly the opposite of that it finally had to take in order to reach its outlet.

  As a rule, it was about twenty feet wide with a depth of from one or two to six feet. It was subject to tremendous overflows which sometimes tripled its volume and increased its width to that of a river. At such times a series of enormous rocks through which the creek at “low tide” lazily wound its way, lashed the turbid current into a fury somewhat like that seen in the “whirlpool” below Niagara. Could you have stood on the shore and looked at the furiously struggling waters, you would have been sure that even if a man were headed up in a barrel, he could not have lived to pass through the hundred yards of rapids, though there was reason to believe that more than one Indian had shot them in his canoe.

  Terry Clark told his friend that his search of the night before and of the morning following had been to the north and west of the settlement, so that it was hardly worth while to continue the hunt in that direction. The cows sometimes stood in the water, where so much switching of their tails was not needed to keep away the flies, and, though there was quite a growth of succulent grass on the clearing, the animals often crossed the creek and browsed through the woods and undergrowth on the other side.

  The boys were inclined to think that the brindle had taken that course during the afternoon and had actually gone astray,—something which a quadruped is less likely to do than a biped, though the former will sometimes make the blunder. There was nothing unreasonable in the theory that the bell had fallen from her neck and that the owner therefore might be not far away.

  At intervals, Terry shouted “Bos! bos! bos!” the Latin call which the cow sometimes recognized, though she generally paid no attention to it. It was the same now, possibly due to the fact that she did not hear the call.

  Reaching the edge of the stream, the boys began walking along the bank toward the left and scrutinizing the spongy earth close to the water. If the missing animal had crossed the creek she could not have failed to leave distinct footprints.

  CHAPTER II

  THE TINKLE OF A BELL

  The examination of the shore of the creek had lasted but a few minutes, when Terry Clark, pointing to the moist earth at their feet, called out in some excitement:

  “Do ye mind that now?”

  There, sure enough, were the footprints of a cow that had entered the stream from the same side on which the boys stood. The impressions could be seen for some distance in the clear water, which in the middle of the stream was no more than a yard deep, and they were plainly observed where the animal had emerged on the other side.

  “I don’t suppose there is any difference in the tracks of cows, but I guess, Terry, that we are safe in making up our minds we are on the trail of Brindle.”

  “I’m thinking the same,” replied the other, who was not only looking across the creek, but into the woods beyond, as though he expected to catch sight of the cow herself; “though it may be the one that crossed there isn’t the one that we’re after.”

  Fred Linden was asking himself whether there was not some way in which they could reach the other side without going to the trouble of removing their shoes and leggins, and hunting a shallow portion, or allowing their
garments to become saturated. He exclaimed: “Why didn’t I think of it? There’s our canoe!”

  A number of these frail craft were owned in Greville, and Fred had a fine one himself, which was only a short distance off. Three minutes later the two reached it.

  The barken structure was moored by means of a long rope to a tree a considerable distance from the water, so that in case of one of those sudden rises that sometimes took place, it would not be carried away by the freshet. The boat was quickly launched, and a few strokes of the paddle carried the two to the opposite bank of the stream.

  “I wonder whether there is any danger of a rise,” remarked Fred, as he carried the rope to a tree twenty feet distant and made it fast to a limb; “there was a good deal of thunder and lightning last night off to the east.”

  “But the creek doesn’t come from that way,” said the surprised Terry; “so what is the odds, as me father said he used to ask when the Injins was on all sides of him, and a panther in the tree he wanted to climb, and he found himself standing on the head of a rattlesnake.”

  “The creek winds through every point of the compass, so it doesn’t make much difference, as you say, where it rains, since it is sure to make a rise; the only question is whether the rain was enough to affect the creek so that it will trouble us.”

  “If it was goin’ to do that, wouldn’t it have done so before this?” was the natural question of his companion.

  “That depends on how far away the rain was.”

  The boys were not idle while talking. The canoe was soon made fast, and then they resumed their hunt for the estray. They were not skillful enough in woodcraft to trace the animal through the forest by the means that an Indian would have used, but they were hopeful that by taking a general direction they would soon find her. If she still had the bell tied around her neck, there was no reason why they should not be successful.

  But while walking forward, Fred Linden asked a question of himself that he did not repeat aloud.

  “Has she been stolen?”

  This query was naturally followed by others. It certainly was unreasonable to think that a cow would leave her companions and deliberately wander off, at the time she was milked twice daily. She would speedily suffer such distress that she would come bellowing homeward for relief. If she really was an estray, she had missed two milkings—that of the previous night and the morning that succeeded.

  It was certain, therefore, that if she was stolen, the thief had attended to her milking. But who could the thief be? That was the important question that Fred confessed himself unable to answer.

  There had been occasional instances of white men who had stolen horses from the frontier settlements, but the lad could recall nothing of the kind that had taken place in that neighborhood; all of which might be the case without affecting the present loss, since it was evident that there must be a first theft of that nature.

  But, somehow or other, Fred could not help suspecting that the red men had to do with the disappearance of the animal. I have intimated in another place that Greville had never been harmed by the Indians, who were scattered here and there through the country, for there was no comparison between them and the fierce Shawanoes, Wyandottes, Pottawatomies and other tribes, whose deeds gave to Kentucky its impressive title of the Dark and Bloody Ground; but among the different bands of red men who roamed through the great wilderness west of the Mississippi, were those who were capable of as atrocious cruelties as were ever committed by the fierce warriors further east.

  What more likely, therefore, than that a party of these had stolen the cow and driven her away?

  There were many facts that were in favor of and against the theory; the chief one against it was that if a party of Indians had driven off one cow, they would have taken more. Then, too, the soft earth that had revealed the hoof tracks ought to have shown the imprint of moccasins.

  You will see, therefore, that Fred could speculate for hours on the question without satisfying himself. He was sorry that he and Terry had not brought their guns with them, and was half inclined to go back. It was not yet noon, and they had plenty of time in which to do so.

  “Terry,” said Fred, turning suddenly about and addressing his friend, who was walking behind him, “we made a mistake in not bringing our guns.”

  The Irish lad was about to answer when he raised his hand in a warning way and said:

  “Hist!”

  Both stood as motionless as the tree trunks about them, all their faculties centered in the one of hearing.

  There was the low, deep roar which is always heard in a vast wood, made by the soft wind stealing among the multitudinous branches, and which is like the voice of silence itself. They were so far from the creek that its soft ripple failed to reach them.

  “I don’t hear any thing,” said Fred at the end of a full minute.

  “Nor do I,” said Terry.

  “Why then did you ask me to listen?”

  “I was thinkin’ be that token that we might hear something.”

  “What made you think so?”

  “The tinkle of a bell.”

  “What!” exclaimed the amazed Fred, “are you sure?”

  “That I am; just as I was about to speak, I caught the faint sound—just as we’ve both heard hundreds of times.”

  “From what point did it seem to come?”

  His friend pointed due south.

  “Strange it is that ye didn’t catch the same.”

  “So I think; it may be, Terry, that you are mistaken, and you wanted to hear the bell so much that the sound was in your fancy.”

  The lad, however, would not admit this. He was sure there had been no mistake. Fred was about to argue further when all doubt was set at rest by the sound of a cow-bell that came faintly but clearly through the forest.

  “You are right,” said Fred, his face brightening up; “we are on the track of old Brindle sure enough. It’s mighty strange though how she came to wander so far from home.”

  “She got lost I s’pose,” replied Terry, repeating the theory that had been hit upon some time before.

  “It may be, but it is the first instance I ever heard of, where an animal lost its way so easily.”

  The boys were in too high spirits, however, to try to explain that which puzzled them. The cow was a valuable creature, being the only one that belonged to the family with whom Terence lived, and who therefore could ill afford her loss.

  The friends had pushed perhaps a couple hundred yards further when Terry called to Fred that he was not following the right course.

  “Ye’re bearing too much to the lift; so much so indaad that if ye kaap on ye’ll find yersilf lift.”

  “Why, I was about to turn a little more in that direction,” replied the astonished Fred; “you are altogether wrong.”

  But the other sturdily insisted that he was right, and he was so positive that he stopped short, and refused to go another step in the direction that his friend was following. The latter was just as certain that Terry was amiss, and it looked as if they had come to a deadlock.

  “There’s only one way to settle it,” said Fred, “and that is for each of us to follow the route he thinks right. The cow can’t be far off and we shall soon find out who is wrong. The first one that finds Brindle shall call to the other, and he’ll own up what a stupid blunder he has made.”

  “Ye are speakin’ me own sentiments,” replied Terry, who kept looking about him and listening as if he expected every moment that the cow herself would solve the question. Fred Linden read the meaning of his action, and he, too, wondered why it was that when both had plainly caught the tinkle of the telltale bell, they should hear it no more. Strange that when it had spoken so clearly it should become silent, but such was the fact.

  Little did either suspect the cause.

  CHAPTER III

  An Aboriginal Plot

  The boys tried the plan of Fred Linden; he swerved slightly to the left, while Terry Clark made a sharp angle
to the right. They never thought of getting beyond hearing of each other, and, but for the plentiful undergrowth they would have kept in sight. They had taken but a few steps when Fred looked around and found that he was alone. He could hear his young friend pushing his way among the trees, and once or twice he caught snatches of a tune that he was whistling—that being a favorite pastime of the lad when by himself.

  “It’s curious how he could make such a blunder,” thought Fred, with a smile to himself; “he will go tramping around the woods only to find that he was nowhere in the neighborhood of the cow. Ah, the storm is not yet over.”

  He was looking to the eastward, where the sky, as he caught a glimpse of it among the treetops and branches, was as black as if overcast with one huge thunder cloud.

  “It was there it raged so violently last night, and the rain is falling in torrents again. We shall find the creek a river when we go back.”

  The sturdy youth pressed on fully two hundred yards more, when the old suspicion came back to him. There was something wrong. When he could not explain some things he was satisfied that it was because there was an element of evil in those things—something that boded ill to both him and his friend.

  “I have traveled far enough since hearing that bell to pass a long ways beyond it,” he said, compressing his lips and shaking his head; “and if that was Brindle that rang it the first time, she would have done it the second time.”

  Twice before Fred fancied he heard something moving among the undergrowth a short distance in advance, and a little to one side. The noise was now so distinct that he could no longer deceive himself; there was some specific cause for it.

  “I guess Terry has worked over this way, finding what a mistake he has made—no! by gracious! it isn’t Terry!”

  Fred started in alarm, confident that it was an Indian that was moving through the wood. It will be admitted that there was cause for his fear, if such should prove to be the case, for he was without any firearms with which to defend himself; but while he stood meditating whether he should turn and take to his heels, he caught enough of a glimpse of the object to make out that it was a quadruped instead of a biped.