Woman on the American Frontier Part 19

The rain lasted only one hour, and the sun soon made its appearance. This was after six o'clock, as the prisoners judged from the shadows cast over the ruins of the cabin. The shades of evening fell and at last utter darkness; still no one came. No sound was borne to the ears of the women in their earthly dungeon save that of the rus.h.i.+ng waters of the creek and the mournful howling of wolves who, like jackals, were prowling in the track of the tempest. Several of these animals, attracted by the infant's cries, came and put their noses at the door of the pit and finding that it held prey, paced the floor above it all night: but with the first light of morning they scampered away into the woods.

Meanwhile the women resumed their efforts to burrow their way out, taking turns in working all night. By daybreak the pa.s.sage lacked only four feet of the point where an outlet could be had. Ere noon, if their strength held out, they would reach the open air.

But after four hours more of severe toil they met an unexpected obstacle: their progress was blocked by a huge boulder embedded in the soil. Weary with their protracted toil and loss of sleep, and faint from want of food, they desisted from further efforts and sat down upon the damp earth of that dungeon which now promised to be their tomb.

Sinking upon her knees Mrs. Dalton lifted her heart to G.o.d in prayer that he might save her babe, her faithful domestic and herself from the doom which, threatened them. Hardly had she risen from her knees, when, as if a messenger had been sent in answer to her prayer, voices were heard and steps sounded upon the floor above them. The party had come from a neighboring settlement for the express purpose of relieving the sufferers from the recent storm. A few blows with an axe and the prisoners were free.

Recognizing their preservation as a direct answer to prayer, and with deep grat.i.tude both of the women fell on their knees and lifted up their hearts in humble thanksgiving to that G.o.d who had saved them by an act of his providence from an awful death. When all hope was gone His hand was stretched forth, making his strength manifest in the weakness of those hapless women and that helpless babe.

Before the first of October a new cabin had been built for Mrs. D. by her generous neighbors, and the other ravages of the storm had been repaired.

Once more fortune, so often adverse, turned a smiling face upon the household. Two weeks sped away and then the fickle G.o.ddess frowned again upon this much enduring family.

A long continued drought had parched the fields and woods until but a spark was needed to kindle a conflagration. Two parties of hunters on the 16th of October, had rested one noon on opposite sides of Mrs. Dalton's clearing and carelessly dropped sparks from their pipes into the dried herbage. Two hours after their departure, the flames, fanned by a gentle breeze, had formed a junction and encircled the cabin with a wall of fire. A dense canopy of smoke hung over the clearing, and as it lifted, tongues of flame could be seen licking the branches of the tall pines. Showers of sparks fell upon the roof. The atmosphere grew suffocating with the pitchy smoke and it became a choice of deaths, either that of choking or that of burning.

Only one avenue of escape was left open to the family; if they could reach the lake and embark in the canoe which lay moored near the sh.o.r.e they would be safe: a single pa.s.sage conducted to the water, and that was a burning lane lined with trees and bushes which were bursting into fiercer flames every moment as they gazed down it.

Nearer and nearer crept the fire, and hotter and hotter grew the choking air. There was no other choice. McMurray threw water on the gowns of his wife and Mrs. Dalton until they were drenched; then wrapping the baby in a blanket and enveloping their heads in shawls, the whole party abandoned their house to destruction, and ran the gauntlet of the flames. They pa.s.sed the spot of ordeal in safety, reached the canoe and embarking pushed off into the lake. From this point of security they caught glimpses of the element as it crept steadily on its way towards the cabin. Through the rifts in the smoke they saw the fiery tongues licking the lower timbers and darting themselves into the cracks between the logs like some gluttonous monster preparing to gorge himself. The women clasped their hands and looked up. Both were supplicating the Father of All that their home might be spared.

A rescue was coming from an unlooked for source. While Mrs. Dalton's face was upturned to heaven in silent prayer, a large drop splashed upon her brow; another followed--the first glad heralds of a pouring rain which extinguished the fire just as it had begun to feed on that unlucky habitation.

After such an almost unbroken series of disasters and losses, we might well inquire whether the subsequent life of Mrs. Dalton was saddened and darkened by similar experiences.

"Every cloud has a silver lining." The hardest and saddest lives have their hours of softness, their gleams of suns.h.i.+ne. It is a wise and beautiful arrangement in the economy of Divine Providence that the law of physical and moral compensation is always operating to equalize the pains and the pleasures, the hards.h.i.+ps and the comforts, the joys and the sorrows of human life. Before continuous, patient, and conscientious endeavors, the obstacles that fill the pathway of the pioneer through the wilderness are surmounted, the rough places are made smooth, and the last days of the dwellers in the desert and forest become like the latter days of the patriarch, "more blessed than the beginning."

We may truly say of Mrs. Dalton, that her "latter days were more blessed than the beginning." A happy marriage which she entered into the following spring, and a long life of prosperity and peace after her escape from the last great danger, as we have narrated, were the fitting reward of the courage, diligence, and devotion displayed during the two first summers and winters which she pa.s.sed in the northern wilderness.

The wide region, lying between the sources of the Mississippi and the bends of the Missouri in Dakota, and stretching thence far up to the Saskatchewan in the north, has been appropriately styled "the happy hunting ground." The _rendezvous_ to which the mighty nimrods of the northwest return from the chase are huge cabins, built to stand before the howling blasts, and give shelter against the arctic regions of the winter. In these abodes dwell the wives and children of many of those rugged men, and create even there, by their devoted toils and gentle companions.h.i.+p, at least the semblance of a home. Almost whelmed in the snow, and when even the mercury freezes in the bulb of the thermometer, these anxious and loving housewives feed the lamp and keep the fire burning on the hearth. Dressing the skins of the deer, they keep their husbands well shod and clothed. The long winter of eight months pa.s.ses monotonously away; the men, accustomed to a life of excitement, chafe and grow surly under their enforced imprisonment; but the women, by their kind offices and sweet words, act as a constant sedative upon these morose outbreaks. The hunters, it is said, grow softer in their manners as the winter wanes. They are unconscious scholars in the refining school of woman.

Among the diversions which serve to while away the tediousness of those winter nights are included the narration of personal adventures pa.s.sed through by the different hunters in their wild life. Tales of narrow escapes, of Indian fights, of desperate encounters with beasts of the forests; and through the rough texture of these narratives now and then appears a pathetic incident in which woman is the prominent figure.

Sometimes it is a hunter's wife who is the heroine, and again the scene is laid in the home of the settler, where woman faces some dreadful danger for her loved ones, or endures extraordinary suffering faithfully to the end.

Such an incident as the following was preserved in the memory of a hunter, who recently communicated the essential facts to the writer.

Minnesota well deserves the name of the pioneer's paradise. Occupying as it does that high table-land out of which gush into the pure bracing air, the thousand fountains of the Father of waters and of the majestic Red river; studded with lakes that glisten like molten silver in the suns.h.i.+ne; shadowed by primeval forests; now stretching out in prairies which lose themselves in the horizon; now undulating with hills and dales dotted with groves and copses, nature here, like some bounteous and imperial mother, seems to have prepared with lavish hand a royal park within which her roving sons and daughters may find a permanent abode.

The country through which the Red river flows from Otter Tail lake towards Richville, is unsurpa.s.sed for rural beauty. Trending northward it then pa.s.ses along towards Pembina, a border town on our northern boundary, through a plain of vast extent, dotted with groves of oak planted as if by hand. Voyaging down this n.o.ble river in midsummer, between its banks embowered with wild roses we breathe an air loaded with perfume and view a scene of wild but enchanting loveliness. Here summer celebrates her brief but splendid reign, then lingering for a while in the lap of dreamy, balmy autumn, flies at length into southern exile, abdicating her throne to winter, which stalks from the frozen zone and rules the region with undisputed and rigorous sway.

In the month of March, 1863, a party of four hunters set out from Pembina, where they had pa.s.sed the winter, and undertook to reach Shyenne, a small trading post on the west bank of the Red river, in the territory of Dakota.

A partial thaw, followed by a cold snap, had coated the river in many places with ice, and by the alternate aid of skates and snow-shoes, they reached on the third evening after their departure, Red Lake river in Minnesota, some eighty miles distant from Pembina. Clearing away the snow in a copse, they scooped a shallow trench in the frozen soil with their hatchets, and kindling a fire so as to cover the length and breadth of the excavation, they prepared their frugal repast of hunters' fare. Then removing the fire to the foot of the trench and piling logs upon it, they lay down side by side on the warmed soil, and wrapping their blankets around them slept soundly through the still cold night, until the sun's edge showed itself above the rim of the vast plain that stretched to the east. As the hunters rose from their earthy couch and stretched their cramped limbs, casting their eyes. .h.i.ther and thither over the boundless expanse, they descried upon the edge of a copse some quarter of a mile to the south a bright-red object, apparently a living thing, crouched upon the snow as if sunning itself. Rising simultaneously and with awakened curiosity they approached the spot. Before they had taken many steps the object disappeared suddenly. Fixing their eyes steadily on the point of its last appearance, they slowly advanced with c.o.c.ked rifles until they reached a large tree with arching roots, around which were the traces of small _shoeless_ feet. An orifice barely large enough to admit a man showed them beneath the tree a cave. One of the hunters, peering through the aperture, spied within, a girl of ten years crouched in the farthest corner of the recess, covered with a thick red flannel cloak, and s.h.i.+vering with cold and terror. Speaking kind words to the little stranger they succeeded at length in rea.s.suring her. She came out from her hiding-place, and the hunters with rugged kindness wrapped her feet and limbs in their coats and bore her to the fire. The first words she uttered were, "mother! go for mother!" She had gone away to shoot game the night before, the little girl said, and had not returned.

Two of the hunters hastened back and succeeded in tracing the mother's course a mile up the river to a thicket; there, covered thinly with leaves and with her rifle in her stiffened hand, they found the hapless wanderer, but alas! cold in death. Her set and calm features, her pinched and wasted face, her scantily robed form, mutely but eloquently told a tale of fearful suffering borne with unflinching fort.i.tude. Weak and weary, the deadly cold had stolen upon her in the darkness and with its icy grip had stilled for ever the beating of her brave true heart. Excavating a grave in the snow they decently straightened her limbs, and piling logs and brush upon her remains to keep them from the beasts of prey, silently and sorrowfully left the scene.

Who were these lonely wanderers in that wild and wintry waste! The presence of the rifle and of the large high boots which she wore, together with other circ.u.mstances, were evidences which enabled the shrewd hunters to guess a part of their story. It appeared that the family must have consisted originally of three persons, a man and wife, with the child now the sole survivor of the party. Voyaging down the Red river during the preceding summer and autumn; lured onward by the fatal beauty of the region, and deluded by the ease with which their wants could be supplied, they had evidently neglected to provide against the winter, which at length burst upon them all unprepared to encounter its rigors.

The rest of this heart-rending story was gathered from the lips of their little protege. Her father, mother, and herself had started from Otter Tail lake in September, 1862, after the quelling of the Sioux outbreak, and voyaged down the Red river in a canoe, intending to settle in the wild-rice region a few miles southeast of the spot where they then were. Their canoe with most of their household goods had broken from its moorings in November, one night while they were encamped on the sh.o.r.e. The father had gone to bring it back, and being overtaken by a terrible snow-storm, had never returned. [His body was found the following spring.] The mother had managed to procure barely sufficient game during the winter to keep herself and her child alive. The cave, their only shelter, was strewed with the beaks and feathers of birds, and with the teeth and claws of small animals; all the other portions of the game she had shot had been devoured in the extremity to which hunger had reduced them. Her mother, the little girl said, was very weak the last day, and could hardly walk. "I begged to go with her when she took her gun and went out to shoot something for supper, but she told me I must stay at _home_ and keep warm." Home! could that wretched shelter be a home for the hapless mother and her child? Tears were wrung from those rugged sons of the wilderness, and coursed down their iron cheeks when they visited the spot where parental tenderness had striven to s.h.i.+eld the object of its affection from the bitter blast. The snow banked about the roots of the tree and showing the marks of her numbed fingers, the crevices stuffed with moss, the bed of dried leaves and the bedding which she had stripped from her own person to cover her child, were proofs and tokens of the love which would have created comfort in the midst of desolation and given even that miserable nook in winter's dreary domain the semblance of a home. In the heart of that frozen waste, far from human fellows.h.i.+p, with hunger gnawing at her vitals and the frost curdling the genial current in her veins, still burned brightly in that poor lonely heart the pure and deathless flame of maternal love.

CHAPTER XIV.

ENCOUNTERS WITH WILD BEASTS--COURAGE AND DARING

The inhabitants of the frontier from the earliest times have had to face the fiercest and most ravenous wild beasts which prowl in the forests of this continent; and the local histories of the various sections and single settlements on our border-land abound in thrilling accounts of combats between those pests of the forest and individual men and women.

Wolves, like the poor, were always with the frontiersmen. Bears, both black and brown, were familiar visitors. The cougar, American lion, catamount, or "_painter_" (panther), as it is variously styled, was a denizen of every forest from Maine to Georgia, and from the St. Croix River to the Columbia. Wild cats, and even deer, when brought to bay, proved themselves dangerous combatants. Last, but not the least terrible in the catalogue, comes the grizzly bear, the monarch of the rocky waste that lies between the headwaters of the Platte and the Missouri rivers, and the sierras of the Pacific slope.

The stories of _rencontres_ and combats between pioneer women and these savage rangers of the woods, are numerous and thrilling. Sometimes they seem almost improbable, especially to such as have only known Woman as she appears to the dwellers of our eastern cities, and in homes where luxury and ease have softened the s.e.x.

A story like the following, for example, as told by one of our most veracious travelers, may be listened to with at least some degree of incredulity by gentlemen and ladies of the lounge and easy chair. A woman living on the Saskatchewan accompanied her husband on a hunting expedition into the forest. He had been very successful, and having killed one more deer than they could well carry home, he went to the house of a neighboring settler to dispose of it, leaving his wife to take care of the rest until his return. She sat carelessly upon the log with his hunting knife in her hand, when she heard the breaking of branches near her, and turning round, beheld a great bear only a few paces from her.

It was too late to retreat, and, seeing that the animal was very hungry and determined to come to close quarters, she rose, and placed her back against a small tree, holding her knife close to her breast, and in a straight line with the bear.

The s.h.a.ggy monster came on. She remained motionless, her eyes steadily fixed upon her enemy's, and, as his huge arms closed around her, she slowly drove the knife into his heart. The bear uttered a hideous cry, and sank dead at her feet. When her husband returned, he found the courageous woman taking the skin from the carca.s.s of the formidable brute. "How," some of our readers will exclaim, "can a woman possess such iron nerves as to dare and do such a deed as this?" And yet, evidence of masculine courage and daring, displayed by women in this and mult.i.tudes of other cases where confronted by danger in this form, is direct and unimpeachable.

Such stories, however startling and extraordinary, become credible when we remember the circ.u.mstances by which woman is surrounded in pioneer life, and how those circ.u.mstances tend to strengthen the nerves and increase the hardihood of the softer s.e.x. Hunting is there one of the necessary avocations, in which women often become practiced, in order to supply the wants of existence. On our northwestern frontier, especially, female hunters have, from the start, been noted for their courage and skill.

One of the famous huntresses of the northwest, while returning home from the woods with a wild turkey which she had shot, unexpectedly encountered a large moose in her path, which manifested a disposition to attack her. She tried to avoid it, but the animal came towards her rapidly and in a furious manner. Her rifle was unloaded, and she was obliged to take shelter behind a tree, s.h.i.+fting her position from tree to tree as the brute made at her.

At length, as she fled, she picked up a pole, and quickly untying her moccasin strings, she bound her knife to the end of the pole. Then, placing herself in a favorable position, as the moose came up, she stabbed him several times in the neck and breast. At last the animal, exhausted with the loss of blood, fell. She then dispatched it, and cut out its tongue to carry home as a trophy of victory. When they went back to the spot for the carca.s.s, they found the snow trampled down in a wide circle, and copiously sprinkled with blood, which gave the place the appearance of a battle-field. It proved to be a male of extraordinary size.

The gray wolf species, two centuries ago and later, was spread over the Atlantic States from Maine to Georgia, and was in most newly-settled regions a frequent and obnoxious visitor to cattle yards and sheep-folds.

We are told that the first Boston immigrants were obliged to build high and strong fences around their live stock to keep them from the depredations of these marauders.

Less bold than his European kindred, the gray wolf of North America is still an extremely powerful and dangerous animal, as may be proved by recalling the frequent encounters of the early settlers--both men and women--with these prowling pests. When pinched with hunger or driven to extremities, they will attack men or women and fight desperately, either to satiate their appet.i.tes or to save their skins from an a.s.sailant. A great number of stories and incidents concerning collisions between women and these savage brutes are scattered through the local histories of our early times, and ill.u.s.trate the nerve and daring which, as we have shown, were habitual to the women in the border settlements.

About the middle of the last century, a household in the hill country of Georgia was greatly vexed by the frequent incursions of a large animal of this species which prowled about the cow-yard, and carried off calves and sheep, sometimes even venturing up to the door of the cabin. The family consisted of a man and his wife and three daughters, all grown up. Each one of the five had shot ineffectually at the brute, which seemed to bear a charmed life. A strong steel trap was finally set near the calf pen, in a stout enclosure, and in a few days the trappers were delighted to hear a commotion in that quarter which indicated the success of their stratagem.

His wolfs.h.i.+p, sure enough, had been caught by one of his hind legs, and was found to be furiously gnawing at the trap and the chain which held him. The womenkind, rejoicing in the capture of their old enemy, all entered the enclosure and stood watching the struggles of the fierce beast, while the father was loading his gun to dispatch it.

In one of his leaps, the staple that held the chain gave way, and the wolf would have bounded over the fence, and made his escape to the woods, but for the ready courage of the eldest daughter of the family, a large, powerful woman of twenty-five. Seizing the chain, she held it firmly in both her hands; the wolf snapped at her arms, and at last, in his desperation, sprang at her throat with such force that he overthrew her, but still she did not relax her grip of the chain, though the animal, in his struggles, dragged her on the ground across the enclosure. Her father, at this critical moment, returned with his loaded gun and dispatched the brute. The young woman, barring a few bruises and scratches, was entirely uninjured.

The speed and endurance of these animals, when in pursuit of their prey,

"With their long gallop, which can tire The hound's deep hate, the hunter's fire,"

makes them very dangerous a.s.sailants, when ravenous with hunger. We recall, in this connection, the thrilling story of a brave Kentucky girl, who, with her sisters, was pursued by a pack of black wolves.

The pluck and ready wit for which the Kentucky girls have been so celebrated is well ill.u.s.trated by this adventure, which, after threatening consequences of the most tragical nature, had finally a comical _denouement_.

In the year 1798, a family of Virginia emigrants settled in central Kentucky in the midst of a dense forest, where, by the aid of three negro men whom they had brought with them, a s.p.a.cious cabin was soon erected and a large clearing made. The family consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Carter, three daughters, well grown, buxom girls, full of life and fun, and a son, who, though only fourteen years of age, was a fine rider and versed in forest-craft.

The country where they lived was rich and beautiful. One could ride on horseback for miles through groves of huge forest trees, beneath which the turf lay firm and green. Through this open wood a wagon could be driven without difficulty; but locomotion in those days and regions was largely on horseback. There were no roads, except between the larger settlements; unless those pa.s.sage-ways through the woods could be called roads. These were made by cutting down a tree or clearing away the undergrowth here and there, and "blazing" the trees along the pa.s.sage by chopping off a portion of the bark as high as a man could reach with an axe.

At that period Kentucky was a famous hunting-ground! All kinds of game abounded in those magnificent forests and beneath that genial clime. Wild turkeys roosted in immense flocks in the chestnut, beech, and oak trees; pigeons by the million darkened the air; deer could be shot by any hunter by stopping a few moments in the forest where they came to feed.

The fiercer and more ravenous beasts abounded in proportion. Bears, catamounts, and wolves swarmed in the denser parts of the forests, and in the winter the two last named beasts were a great annoyance to the settlers by the boldness with which they invaded the cattle and poultry-yards and pig-pens.

The black wolf of the Western country was and is a very destructive and fierce annual, hunting in large packs, which, after using every stratagem to circ.u.mvent their prey, attacked it with great ferocity.

Like the Indian, they always endeavored to surprise their victims and strike the mortal blow without exposing themselves to danger. They seldom attack a man except when asleep or wounded, or otherwise taken at a disadvantage.