Strange Stories of the Great Valley: The Adventures of a Boy PioneerGrosvenor, Abbie Johnston
General
Strange Stories of the Great Valley: The Adventures of a Boy Pioneer
Grosvenor, Abbie Johnston
Frontier and pioneer life -- Ohio River Valley -- Juvenile fiction
Doby employed his idle hour making a "shrieker." First he cut a willow
whistle. On it he fastened the bladder of the slaughtered pig. Then
he took an immense breath, blew into the whistle, and filled the
bladder with air. When he could blow no longer he jerked it out of his
mouth. The air from the bladder rushed back through the whistle with a
hair-raising squeal.
Doby hopped in glee. But he dared not use it when they started again on
the dangerous War Road. There was always the chance of attracting some
foe.
"When we get inside the next station I'm going to give it one good
blow, Injuns or no Injuns," he declared.
So far had they now come by the road southwest, south, southeast, and
south again, that they were in the heart of Kentucky and approaching
Harrod's station not far distant from Boonesboro.
At Harrod's they had meant to eat hot game and save their full
saddle-bags for the wagon-train. But the sight of an Indian trading
at the post made them pause and go into a consultation with the
storekeeper.
A general store was kept in each of these stations. It dealt in every
article a settler could want. Here a trapper, red or white, who never
had any money could "swap" his furs for powder and coffee with a
storekeeper who never had any money, either. Though powder and coffee
were each a dollar a pound, neither the buyer nor the seller ever saw
that dollar. Trading was the rule.
Doby paid little heed to anything except the Indian, who stood
motionless beside a pile of 'coonskins which he had laid on a tobacco
bale. Any boy would have known that Indian for a warrior. He wore a
plain blanket. There were no feathers and no paint to be seen upon
him, yet he looked the wild fighting-man. He was tall and straight,
haughty of bearing, cruelly beautiful. He ignored the hunters with
royal indifference while he waited for his goods to be packed.
As Doby eyed the savage he thought: "How handsome he is and how
powerful! Perhaps Tecumseh had the same appearance."
Under the boy's admiring stare the Indian stood absolutely and
perfectly still, minute after minute, minute after minute, until Doby
became possessed of an impulse to test that stolidity, to shock that
dignity. So he impishly blew into the pig's-bladder whistle. Its blast
rent the air.
With snake-like quickness the Indian's hand shot out. He grabbed the
whistle and hid it in his blanket. He offered a blue-jay feather in
exchange. Doby felt indignant at this sort of trading and showed that
he did, whereupon the Indian, who certainly had seemed to have neither
paint nor feathers upon him, stuck the first feather and then a second
one in the front of Doby's cap. In so doing he left a streak of paint
on the boy's forehead. It was of the same shape and color as the
feather.
The boy's face flamed with anger, but when the watching Kenton said,
"Make your manners, bub," Doby thrust his hand into the Indian's palm
and said, "How?"
The Indian answered, "How?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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