Oldalképek
PDF
ePub

A CITY BOY AMONG THE INDIANS

This story is taken from a book called The Magic Forest. Jimmy Ferris, the boy in the story, is about nine years old, is the son of wealthy parents, has been carefully protected from all harm, and even been coddled until he thought his own comfort and safety were the most important things in the world. Yet he had often dreamed of adventure, and listened eagerly to stories of Indians and the deep forests. At the time the story opens, his parents are taking him to California for the benefit of his health, and are traveling by the Canadian Pacific Railroad through the mountains and forests of the great Northwest.

Now Jimmy had one habit which he himself had never been allowed to know: he sometimes walked in his sleep. So it happened that he arose in his sleep one night, left his berth in the Pullman car and stepped off the train while it was making a short stop at a little station in the deep woods of Canada. No one saw him, and the train pulled on without him. When he awoke in the early morning light, he was dazed to find himself alone, lost, and shivering in his night clothes. It was the month of May, but there was still snow on the ground. Cold and wet and hungry, he wandered on through the bushes and over the rocks, thinking that he must somehow have been transported into some magic forest. By and by he came to a river, and here his next adventure begins.

I

Above the little stone beach on which he stood, the river boiled and tumbled and whirled

down a slope strewn with big and little boulders. The water was broken into foam, slid in a smooth green apron, twisted in savage eddies. The pool before him was filled with white froth. And Jimmy was a very lonesome little boy in a5 great, strange place.

Suddenly at the extremity of the view something sprang into sight and came shooting down the hurried waters. It stopped abruptly, worked jerkingly sideways, to slant with terrific impetus 10 across the smooth apron. Jimmy's bewildered eyes made out a canoe, a birch-bark canoe of bright yellow with up-curved bows, of the sort he had seen pictures of in his father's Parkman. It contained two men. As the canoe leaped 15 nearer and nearer, the men came more plainly into view. Their bold, copper-colored faces were set in rigid lines of attention, their beady black eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the difficulties of the descent, their sinewy brown hands wielded 20 long paddles whose blades were colored vermilion. Both wore their hair long about the of their necks and over their ears, and

napes

bound it in place by bands about their foreheads. Even before the boy had seen these things, the craft had reached a spot where the current divided about a great boulder to tumble over a sunken 5 ledge in a cataract. The men at the same time rose to their knees and thrust at their paddles in one tremendous effort. The canoe quivered, jumped sideways, shot forward just to clear the boulder, and rushed on the cataract.

10 "Ae! hi, hi, hi-yáh!" shrieked the men in wild delight.

The craft leaped directly out in the air. A smother of spray arose; and then the canoe floated peacefully in the eddy of the pool.

15 Another canoe appeared, another, then two, all rushing down the current, all taking the leap. The air was full of shoutings, of laughter. Some set to work at once bailing water, others looked eagerly up-stream to watch their successors shoot 20 the rapids. Almost in a moment, as it seemed, the empty place was alive.

And the little boy, shivering in the shadow of the wood, shivered still more with mingled terror

and delight; for now he saw that these were Indians, the wild Indians of the woods, of a hundred years ago, whose wigwams had given place to the New York he knew, about whom his father. had read to him in Cooper, come back from the 5 strange and wonderful past to traverse the Magic Forest. He was frightened, and yet he was glad. They were Indians, and yet they looked kind. He did not know whether to flee or whether to reveal himself and ask for aid.

The trouble of deciding was saved him, however. The keen eyes of the savages did not long overlook him. Instantly he was surrounded by a curious group, eager to know the meaning of his

appearance.

The strange, handsome men in moccasins talked to one another in beautiful singing syllables; then an old man knelt before him.

You get los'?" he asked laboriously.

10

15

Jimmy only stared. You see he really did not 20 know himself.

"Where you liv'?"

"New York,” replied Jimmy.

"New Yo'k," they repeated to one another, puzzled. They thought they knew the place, for far up on the shores of the Hudson Bay is a furtrading post called York Factory. But how did 5 this child come to be here?

10

"You go dere now?" inquired the old Indian after a moment. He spoke swiftly to his com

panions.

"You wan' go to York?" he asked.

"Yes! Yes!" cried Jimmy.

"A' right,” replied the Indian.

"Is it far?" asked Jimmy.

"Ver' far."

In the meantime a little fire had been built, over 15 which already a tin pail was bubbling. After a moment the Indian gave Jimmy a tin cup.

"Drink him," said he.

It was tea, coal-black, red-hot, without sugar and cream. Jimmy had never been allowed to 20 drink tea at home, but he gulped this down, almost scalding his throat in the process, and at once felt better. While thus engaged, other Indians came through the woods, bearing heavy packs by means

« ElőzőTovább »