第53章 CHAPTER X OVER THE MOUNTAINS(4)

Although they soon had a considerable current to fight, they made good headway against it. Harry's practice with the oar was giving his muscles the same quality like steel wire which those of Jarvis and Ike had. So they went on for that day and others and drew near to the hills. The eyes of Jarvis kindled when he saw the first line of dark green slopes massing themselves against the eastern horizon.

"The Bluegrass is mighty fine, an' so is the Pennyroyal," he said, "an' I ain't got nothin' ag'in em. I admit their claims before they make 'em, but my true love, it's the mountains an' my mountain home.

Mebbe some night, Harry, when we tie up to the bank, we'll see a deer comin' down to drink. What do you say to that?"Harry's eyes kindled, too.

"I say that I want the first shot."

Jarvis laughed.

"True sperrit," he said. "Nobody will set up a claim ag'inst you, less it's that lunkhead, Ike, my nephew. Are you willin' to let him have it, Ike?"Ike grinned and nodded.

The Kentucky narrowed and the current grew yet stronger. But changing oftener at the oars they still made good headway. The ranges, dark green on the lower slopes, but blue on the higher ridges beyond them, slowly came nearer. Late in the afternoon they entered the hills, and when night came they had left the lowlands several miles behind.

They tied up to a great beech growing almost at the water's edge, and made their camp on the ground. Harry's deer did not come that night, but it did on the following one. Then Jarvis and he after supper went about a mile up the stream, stalking the best drinking places, and they saw a fine buck come gingerly to the river. Harry was lucky enough to bring him down with the first shot, an achievement that filled him with pride, and Jarvis soon skinned and dressed the animal, adding him to their larder.

"I don't shoot deer, 'cept when I need 'em to eat," said Jarvis, "an' we do need this one. We'll broil strips of him over the coals in the mornin'. Don't your mouth water, Harry?""It does."

The strips proved the next day to be all that Jarvis had promised, and they continued their journey with renewed elasticity, fair weather keeping them company. Deeper and deeper they went into the mountains.

The region had all the aspects of a complete wilderness. Now and then they saw smoke, which Jarvis said was rising from the chimneys of log cabins, and once or twice they saw cabins themselves in sheltered nooks, but nobody hailed them. The news of the war had spread here, of course, but Harry surmised that it had made the mountaineers cautious, suppressing their natural curiosity. He did not object at all to their reticence, as it made traveling easier for him.

They were now rowing along a southerly fork of the Kentucky. Another deer had been killed, falling this time to the rifle of Jarvis, and one night they shot two wild turkeys. Jarvis and his nephew would arrive home full handed in every respect, and his great tenor boomed out joyously over the stream, speeding away in echoes among the lofty peaks and ridges that had now turned from hills into real mountains. They towered far above the stream, and everywhere there were masses of the deepest and densest green. The primeval forest clothed the whole earth, and the war to which Harry was going seemed a faint and far thing.

Traveling now became slow, because they always had a strong current to fight. Harry, at times when the country was not too rough, left the boat and walked along the bank. He could go thus for miles without feeling any weariness. Naturally very strong, he did not realize how much his work at the oar was increasing his power. The thin vital air of the mountains flowed through his lungs, and when Jarvis sang, as he did so often, he felt that he could lift up his feet and march as if to the beat of a drum.

They left the fork of the Kentucky at last and rowed up one of the deep and narrow mountain creeks. Peaks towered all about them, a half mile over their heads, covered from base to crest with unbroken forest.

Sometimes the creek flowed between cliffs, and again it opened out into narrow valleys. In a two days' journey up its course they passed only two cabins.

"In ordinary water we'd have stopped thar," said Jarvis at the second cabin. "I know the man who lives in it an' he's to be trusted. We'd have left the boat an' the things with him, an' we'd have walked the rest of the way, but the creek is so high now that we kin make at least twenty miles more an' tie up at Bill Rudd's place. Thar's no goin' further on the water, 'cause the creek takes a fall of fifteen feet thar, an' this boat is too heavy to be carried around it."They reached Rudd's place about dark. He was a hospitable mountaineer, with a double-roomed log cabin, a wife and two small children. He volunteered gladly to take care of the boat and its belongings, while Jarvis and the boys went on the next day to Jarvis's home about ten miles away.

Rudd and his wife were full of questions. They were eager to hear of the great world which was represented to them by Frankfort, and of the war in the lowlands concerning which they had heard vaguely. Rudd had been to Frankfort once and felt himself a traveler and man of the world.

He and his wife knew Jarvis and Ike well, and they glanced rather curiously at Harry.

"He's goin' across the mountains an' down into Virginia on some business of his own which I ain't inquired into much," said Jarvis.

Harry slept in a house that night for the first time in days, and he did not like it. He awoke once with a feeling as if walls were pressing down upon him, and he could not breathe. He arose, opened the door, and stood by it for a few minutes, while the fresh air poured in.

Jarvis awoke and chuckled.