“‘Don’t be skeered, mother.  I’m brave.  I’ll take care o’ you.’

“Solomon came to where I was breaking some dry sticks for the fire and said laughingly, as he wiped a tear from his cheek with the back of his great right hand: 

“‘Did ye ever see sech a gol’ durn cunnin’ leetle cricket in yer born days—­ever?’

“Always thereafter he referred to the boy as the Little Cricket.

“That would have been a sad journey but for my interest in these reactions on this great son of Pan, with whom I traveled.  I think that he has found a thing he has long needed, and I wonder what will come of it.

“When he had discovered, by tracks in the trail, that the Indians who had run away from us were gone South, he had no further fear of being molested.

“‘They’ve gone on to tell what happened on the first o’ the high slants an’ to warn their folks that the Son o’ the Thunder is comin’ with lightnin’ in his hands.  Injuns is like rabbits when the Great Spirit begins to rip ’em up.  They kin’t stan’ it.”

That afternoon Solomon, with a hook and line and grubs, gathered from rotted stumps, caught many trout in a brook crossing the trail and fried them with slices of salt pork.  In the evening they had the best supper of their journey in what he called “The Catamount Tavern.”  It was an old bark lean-to facing an immense boulder on the shore of a pond.  There, one night some years before, he had killed a catamount.  It was in the foot-hills remote from the trail.  In a side of the rock was a small bear den or cavern with an overhanging roof which protected it from the weather.  On a shelf in the cavern was a round block of pine about two feet in diameter and a foot and a half long.  This block was his preserve jar.  A number of two-inch augur holes had been bored in its top and filled with jerked venison and dried berries.  They had been packed with a cotton wick fastened to a small bar of wood at the bottom of each hole.  Then hot deer’s fat had been poured in with the meat and berries until the holes were filled within an inch or so of the top.  When the fat had hardened a thin layer of melted beeswax sealed up the contents of each hole.  Over all wooden plugs had been driven fast.

“They’s good vittles in that ’ere block,” said Solomon. “’Nough, I guess, to keep a man a week.  All he has to do is knock out the plug an’ pull the wick an’ be happy.”

“Going to do any pulling for supper?” Jack queried.

“Nary bit,” said Solomon.  “Too much food in the woods now.  We got to be savin’.  Mebbe you er I er both on us ‘ll be comin’ through here in the winter time skeered o’ Injuns an’ short o’ fodder.  Then we’ll open the pine jar.”

They had fish and tea and milk and that evening as he sat on his blanket before the fire with the little lad in his lap he sang an old rig-a-dig tune and told stories and answered many a query.