The Young Trailers: A Story of Early Kentucky by Joseph A. Altsheler (big ebook reader txt) 📖

geological decay or some kindred cause, it has become crisscrossed with holes like a great honeycomb."

"I'm pretty sure about the caves," said Ross, "but what I want to know is about this peter dirt."

"We'll find it and plenty of it," replied the master confidently. "That sample was full of niter, and when we leach it in our tubs we shall have the genuine saltpeter, explosive dust, if you choose to call it, that is the solution of gunpowder."

"Which we can't do without," said Henry.

They passed out of the Barrens, and entered a region of high, rough hills, and narrow little valleys. Hills and valleys alike were densely clothed with forest.

Hart pointed to several, large holes in the sides of the hills, always at or near the base and said they were the mouths of caves.

"But the big one, in which I got the peter dirt is farther on," he said.

They came to the place he had in mind, just as the twilight was falling, a hole, a full man's height at the bottom of a narrow valley, but leading directly into the side of the circling hill that inclosed the bowl-like depression. Henry and Paul looked curiously at the black mouth and they felt some tremors at the knowledge that they were to go in there, and to remain inside the earth for a long time, shut from the light of day. It was the dark and not the fear of anything visible, that frightened them.

But they made no attempt to enter that evening, although night would be the same as day in the cave. Instead they provided for a camp, as the horses and a sufficient guard would have to remain outside. The valley itself was an admirable place, since it contained pasturage for the horses, while at the far end was a little stream of water, flowing out of the hill and trickling away through a cleft into another and slightly lower valley.

After tethering the horses, they built a fire near the cave mouth and sat down to cook, eat, rest and talk.

"Ain't there danger from bad air in there?" asked Ross. "I've heard tell that sometimes in the ground air will blow all up, when fire is touched to it, just like a bar'l o' gunpowder."

"The air felt just as fresh an' nice as daylight when I went in," said Hart, "an' if it comes to that it will be better than it is out here because it's allus even an' cool."

"It is so," said the master meditatively. "All the caves discovered so far in Kentucky have fresh pure air. I do not undertake to account for it."

That night they cut long torches of resinous wood, and early the next morning all except two, who were left to guard the horses, entered the cave, led by Hart, who was a fearless man with an inquiring mind. Everyone carried a torch, burning with little smoke, and after they had passed the cave mouth, which was slightly damp, they came to a perfectly dry passage, all the time breathing a delightfully cool and fresh air, full of vigor and stimulus.

Paul and Henry looked back. They had come so far now that the light of day from the cave mouth could not reach them, and behind them was only thick impervious blackness. Before them, where the light of the torches died was the same black wall, and they themselves were only a little island of light. But they could see that the cave ran on before them, as if it were a subterranean, vaulted gallery, hewed out of the stone by hands of many Titans! Henry held up his torch, and from the roof twenty feet above his head the stone flashed back multicolored and glittering lights. Paul's eyes followed Henry's and the gleaming roof appealed to his sensitive mind.

"Why, it's all a great underground palace!" he exclaimed, "and we are the princes who are living in it!"

Hart heard Paul's enthusiastic words and he smiled.

"Come here, Paul," he said, "I want to show you something."

Paul came at once and Hart swung the light of his torch into a dark cryptlike opening from the gallery.

"I see some dim shapes lying on the floor in there, but I can't tell exactly what they are," said Paul.

"Come into this place itself."

Paul stepped into the crypt, and Hart with the tip of his moccasined toe gently moved one of the recumbent forms. Paul could not repress a little cry as he jumped back. He was looking at the dark, withered face of an Indian, that seemed to him a thousand years old.

"An' the others are Indians, too," said Hart. "An' they needn't trouble us. God knows how long they've been a-layin' here where their friends brought 'em for burial. See the bows an' arrows beside 'em. They ain't like any that the Indians use now."

"And the dry cave air has preserved them, for maybe two or three hundred years," said the schoolmaster. "No, their dress and equipment do not look like those of any Indians whom I have seen."

"Let's leave them just as they are," said Paul.

"Of course," said Ross, "it would be bad luck to move 'em."

They went on farther into the cave, and found that it increased in grandeur and beauty. The walls glittered with the light of the torches, the ceiling rose higher, and became a great vaulted dome. From the roof hung fantastic stalactites and from the floor stalagmites equally fantastic shot up to meet them. Slow water fell drop by drop from the point of the stalactite upon the point of the stalagmite.

"That has been going on for ages," said the schoolmaster, "and the same drop of water that leaves some of its substance to form the stalactite, hanging from the roof, goes to form the stalagmite jutting up from the floor. Come, Paul, here's a seat for you. You must rest a bit."

They beheld a rock formation almost like a chair, and, Paul sitting down in it, found it quite comfortable. But they paused only a moment, and then passed on, devoting their attention now to the cave dust, which was growing thicker under their feet. The master scooped up handfuls of it and regarded it attentively by the close light of his torch.

"It's the genuine peter dust!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Why, we can make powder here as long as we care to do so."

"You are sure of it, master?" asked Ross anxiously.

"Sure of it!" replied Mr. Pennypacker. "Why, I know it. If we stayed here long enough we could make a thousand barrels of gunpowder, good enough to kill any elk or buffalo or Indian that ever lived."

Ross breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had had his doubts to the last, and none knew better than he how much depended on the correctness of the schoolmaster's assertion.

"There seems to be acres of the dust about here," said Ross, "an' I guess we'd better begin the makin' of our powder at once."

They went no farther for the present, but carried the dust in, sack after sack, to the mouth of the cave. Then they leached it, pouring water on it in improvised tubs, and dissolving the niter. This solution they boiled down and the residuum was saltpeter or gunpowder, without which no settlement in Kentucky could exist.

The little valley now became a scene of great activity. The fires were always burning and sack after sack of gunpowder was laid safely away in a dry place. Henry and Paul worked hard with the others, but they never passed the crypt containing the mummies, without a little shudder. In some of the intervals of rest they explored portions of the cave, although they were very cautious. It was well that they were so as one day Henry stopped abruptly with a little gasp of terror. Not five feet before him appeared the mouth of a great perpendicular well. It was perfectly round, about ten feet across, and when Henry and Paul held their torches over the edge, they could see no bottom. Henry shouted, throwing his voice as far forward as possible, but only a dull, distant echo came back.

"We'll call that the Bottomless Pit," he said.

"Bottomless or not, it's a good thing to keep out of," said Paul. "It gives me the shudders, Henry, and I don't think I'll do much more exploring in this cave."

In fact, the gunpowder-making did not give them much more chance, and they were content with what they had already seen. The cave had many wonders, but the sunshine outside was glorious and the vast mass of green forest was very restful to the eye. There was hunting to be done, too, and in this Henry bore a good part, he and Ross supplying the fresh meat for their table.

A fine river flowed not two miles away and Paul installed himself as chief fisherman, bringing them any number of splendid large fish, very savory to the taste. Ross and Sol roamed far among the woods, but they reported absolutely no Indian sign.

"I don't believe any of the warriors from either north or south have been in these parts for years," said Ross.

"Luckily for us," added Mr. Pennypacker, "I don't want another such retreat as that we had from the salt springs."

Ross's words came true. The powder-making was finished in peace, and the journey home was made under the same conditions. At Wareville there was a shout of joy and exultation at their arrival. They felt that they could hold their village now against any attack, and Mr. Pennypacker was a great man, justly honored among his people. He had shown them how to make powder, which was almost as necessary to them as the air they breathed, and moreover they knew where they could always get materials needed for making more of it.

Truly learning was a great thing to have, and they respected it.

CHAPTER XI THE FOREST SPELL

When the adventurers returned the rifle and ax were laid aside at Wareville, for the moment, because the supreme test was coming. The soil was now to respond to its trial, or to fail. This was the vital question to Wareville. The game, in the years to come, must disappear, the forest would be cut down, but the qualities of the earth would remain; if it produced well, it would form the basis of a nation, if not, it would be better to let all the work of the last year go and seek another home elsewhere.

But the settlers had little doubt. All their lives had been spent close to the soil, and they were not to be deceived, when they came over the mountains in search of a land richer than any that they had tilled before. They had seen its blackness, and, plowing down with the spade, they had tested its depth. They knew that for ages and ages leaf and bough, falling upon it, had decayed there and increased its fertility, and so they awaited the test with confidence.

The green young shoots of the wheat, sown before the winter, were the first to appear, and everyone in Wareville old enough to know the importance of such a manifestation went forth to examine them. Mr. Ware, Mr. Upton and Mr. Pennypacker held solemn conclave, and the final verdict was given by the schoolmaster, as became a man who might not be so strenuous in practice as the others, but who nevertheless was more nearly a master of theory.

"The stalks are at least a third heavier than those in Maryland or Virginia at the same age," he said, "and we can fairly infer from it that the grain will show the same proportion of increase. I take a third as a most conservative estimate; it is really nearer a half. Wareville can, with reason, count upon twenty-five bushels of wheat to the acre, and it is likely to go higher."

It was then no undue sense of elation that Wareville felt, and it was shared by Henry and Paul, and even young Lucy Upton.

"It will be a rich country some day when I'm an old, old woman," she said to Henry.

"It's a rich country now," replied he proudly, "and it will be a long, long time before you are an old woman."

They began now to plow the ground cleared the autumn before—"new ground" they called it—for the spring planting of maize. This, often termed "Indian corn" but more generally known by the simple name corn, was to be their chief crop, and the labor of preparation, in which Henry had his full share, was not light. Their plows were rude, made by themselves, and finished with a single iron point, and the ground, which had supported the forest so lately, was full of roots and stumps. So the passage of the plow