Chapter 15: Work and Play

Henry and Ross were gone to the mainland, and Paul, Shif’less Sol, and Jim Hart were left on the island. Shif’less Sol stood at the edge of the hollow, hands on hips, admiring the hut.

“Paul,” he said, “I think that thar house is jest about the finest I ever built.”

“You built!” exclaimed Jim Hart indignantly. “Mighty little you had to do with it, Sol Hyde, but eat in it an’ sleep in it, which two things you are willin’ enough to do any time! It’s me an’ Paul who have reared that gran’ structure.”

“It appeals to my instincts as an eddicated man,” went on Sol, calmly disregarding Jim. “We’ve got up the house without sp’ilin’ the surroundin’s. It jest blends with rock an’ bush, an’ we’ve helped natur’ without tryin’ to improve it.”

“I believe you’ve got the truth of it, Sol,” said Paul. “I’m getting fond of this place. How long do you think we’ll stay here, Sol?”

Shif’less Sol cocked up his weather eye, and a look of surpassing wisdom came over his face.

“When the ground hog come out o’ his hole in the fall an’ saw his shadder, he went right back ag’in,” he replied, “an’ that means a hard winter. Besides, we’re pretty far north, an’ all the hunters say they have lot o’ snow hereabouts. We’re goin’ to have cold an’ snow right along. That’s the opinion o’ me, Solomon Hyde. Jim Hart may say somethin’ else, but he ain’t worth listenin’ to.”

“I said this mornin’ that it wuz goin’ to be a hard winter,” growled Jim Hart. “You heard me sayin’ so, an’ that’s the reason you’re sayin’ so now.”

“Oh, Jim, Jim! Whatever will become o’ you?” exclaimed Shif’less Sol sadly. “An’ I’ve always tried to teach you that the truth wuz the right thing.”

Paul laughed.

“Sol,” he asked, “did you ever see a game of chess?”

“Chess? What’s that? Is it a mark you shoot at?”

“No; you play it on a board with little figures made of wood, if you haven’t got anything else. My father has a set of chessmen, and he plays often with Mr. Pennypacker, our school teacher. He’s played with me, too, and I can show you how to make the things and to play.”

A look of interest came into Sol’s eyes.

“We’ve got lots o’ time,” he said. “S’pose you do it, Paul. I know I kin learn. I ain’t so sure o’ Jim Hart thar.”

Jim was also interested, so much so that he forgot to reply to Shif’less Sol.

“How’ll you do it?” he asked.

Paul’s reply was to begin at once. He cut a big square piece of white fanned deerskin, and upon this he marked the little squares with coal-black. Then the three of them went to work with their sharp hunting knives, carving out the wooden figures. The results were crude, but they had enough shape for identification, and then Paul began to teach the game itself.

Sol and Jim were really men of strong intellect, and they had plenty of patience. Paul was surprised at their progress. They were soon thinking for themselves, and when Paul himself did not want to play, the two would fight it out over the deerskin.

“It’s a slow game, but good,” said Shif’less Sol. “It ‘pears to me that a man to be at the head o’ ‘em all in this would hev to do nothin’ else all his life.”

“That is so,” said Paul.

“Jim, thar ain’t no earthly chance for you,” said Shif’less Sol.

“I guess I’ve got you this time, anyhow,” said Jim, with a deep chuckle of satisfaction. “Jest look at that thar board, Sol Hyde. Ef you ain’t druv into a corner so you can’t move this way nor that, then you can hev the huntin’ shirt right off my back.”

Shif’less Sol examined the deerskin square attentively.

“Blamed ef it ain’t so,” he said in a tone of deep disgust. “It wuz an accident, nuthin’ but an accident, or else I’ve been talkin’ too much.”

“That’s what you’re always doin’, Sol Hyde, talkin’ too much.”

“Then we’ll jest try it over ag’in, an’ I’ll show you what it is to play ag’inst a real smart man.”

They were deep in a fresh game a few moments later, and Paul went outside. He was glad to see them so interested, because he knew that otherwise the curse of dullness might fall upon them.

The air was raw and chill, and, although the snow and ice were gone, the lake and the hills beyond looked singularly cold. But Paul was neither uncomfortable nor unhappy. He was clothed warmly, and he had food in abundance and variety. Trusty comrades, too, surrounded him. Life at present seemed very pleasant.

He strolled up the island toward the trees that contained the Indian bodies, and after a while returned toward the home in the hollow. A warm, mellow light gleamed from its rude window, and Paul’s heart throbbed with something of the feeling that one has only toward “home.”

He opened the door and entered, just in time to hear Shif’less Sol’s cry of triumph:

“Thar, Jim Hart, ef that don’t settle you, I’d like to know what will! Now, who’s doin’ too much talkin’?”

“I can’t see jest how it happened,” said Jim Hart ruefully.

“No, an’ you never will. Them things are too deep fur you. It’s only eddicated men, like me an’ Paul, that kin see to the bottom o’ ‘em.”

“You’re even, as it’s game and game,” said Paul, “so let’s rest now. Henry and Tom ought to be coming pretty soon.”

“An’ they’ll be ez hungry ez a hull pack uv wolves,” said Jim Hart, “so I guess I’d better be cookin’. Here, Sol, give me them strips uv deer meat an’ buffalo.”

“I shorely will,” said Shif’less Sol. “Thar is one thing, ef it is only one, that you kin do well, Jim Hart, an’ it’s cook.”

The two, in the most friendly fashion, went about preparing the supper. They had many kinds of game to choose from, and once Ross had brought a bag of ground corn, perhaps taken by stealth from an Indian village, and now and then Jim made from it a kind of bread. He was to bake some to-night, in honor of the returning two, and soon the place was filled with pleasant odors.

Twilight was deepening, the supper was almost ready, and Paul went forth to see if Henry and Tom were yet in sight. Presently he saw them coming, two black figures against the setting sun, with the body of a deer that they had killed and dressed. He hastened to meet them and give them a helping hand, and together they approached the house.

First they swung the body of the deer from a bough, and then they opened the door. Deep silence reigned within. No friendly voice greeted them. The heads of Jim Hart and Shif’less Sol almost touched over a square of deerskin, at which both were looking intently. With the supper ready, and nothing else to do, they had got out the chessmen, and were playing the rubber. So absorbed were they that they neither heard nor saw.

“Now what under the sun is this?” exclaimed Tom Ross.

“It’s a game I taught ‘em while you and Henry were gone,” explained Paul. “It’s called chess.”

Shif’less Sol and Jim sprang up, but Sol quickly recovered his presence of mind.

“I jest about had him cornered, an’ your comin’ saved him,” he said.

“Cornered!” said Jim Hart. “He ain’t even seed the day when he kin beat me!”

The chessmen were put aside for the time, and five hungry beings ate as only borderers could eat. Then Tom Ross demanded a look at the game. After the look he asked for instruction.

“I saw a set uv them fellers once when I wuz at Fort Pitt,” he said, “but I never thought the time would come when I’d play with ‘em. Push up the fire thar a little, will you, Jim, so I kin see better.”

Paul and Henry looked at each other and smiled. Soon Tom himself, the senior of the party, was absorbed in the new game, and it was a happy thought of Paul’s to introduce it, even with the rude figures which were the best that they could make.

Paul brought up again the next morning the subject of their weather prospects, and Tom and Henry agreed with the others in predicting a great deal of snow and cold.

“All signs show it,” said Henry. “The rabbits are burrowing deeper than usual under the bushes, and I notice that the birds have built their nests uncommonly thick. I don’t understand how they know what’s coming, but they do.”

“Instinct,” said Paul.

“We know that a hound kin follow by smell the track of a man who has passed hours before,” said Shif’less Sol, “when no man in the world kin smell anything at all o’ that track. So it ain’t any more strange that birds an’ beasts kin feel in their bones what’s comin’ when we can’t.”

“Ef you’ll imitate them squirrels an’ rabbits an’ birds an’ things,” said Jim Hart, “an’ lay up lots uv things good to eat fur the winter, it’ll give me pleasure to cook it ez it’s needed.”

“I’ve noticed something besides the forethought of the animals,” added Henry. “The moss on the north side of the trees seems to me to be thicker than usual. I suppose that nature, too, is getting ready for a long, hard winter.”

“When nature and the animals concur,” said Paul, “it is not left to man to doubt; so we’d better be providing the things Jim promises to cook so well.”

They had learned the border habit of acting promptly, and Henry Ross and Sol were to depart the very next morning for the mainland on a hunt for deer, while Long Jim was to keep house. Paul otherwise would have been anxious to go with the hunters, but he had an idea of his own, and when Henry suggested that he accompany them, he replied that he expected to make a contribution of a different kind.

All these plans were made in the evening, and then every member of the five, wrapping himself in his buffalo robe, fell asleep. The fire in Jim Hart’s furnace had been permitted to die down to a bed of coals, and the glow from them barely disclosed the five figures lying, dark and silent, on the floor. They slept, clean in conscience and without fear.

Henry, Shif’less Sol, and Ross were off at dawn, and Paul, using a rude wooden needle that he had shaped with his own pocketknife, and the tendon of a deer as thread, made a large bag of buckskin. Then he threw it triumphantly over his shoulder.

“Now what under the sun, Paul, are you goin’ to do with that?” asked Jim Hart.

“I’m going to add variety to our winter store. Just you wait, Jim Hart, and see.”

Bearing the bag, he left the house and took his way to the north end of the island. He had not been above learning more than one thing from the squirrels, and he had recalled a grove of great hickory trees growing almost to the water’s edge. Now the ground was thickly covered with the nuts which had fallen when the severe frosts and the snow and ice came. There were several varieties, including large ones two inches long, and the fine little ones known to boys throughout the Mississippi Valley as the scaly bark. Paul procured two stones, and, cracking several of them, found them delicious to the taste. Already in his Kentucky home he had become familiar with them all. The hogs of the settlers, running through the forest and fattening upon these nuts and acorns, known collectively as “mast,” acquired a delicious flavor. Boys and grown people loved the nuts, too.