The Trail Book Mary Austin et al The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trail Book, by Mary Austin et al Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the header without written permission. Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. **Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** **eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** *****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** Title: The Trail Book Author: Mary Austin et al Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9913] [This file was first posted on October 30, 2003] Edition: 10 Language: English Character set encoding: US-ASCII *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE TRAIL BOOK *** E-text prepared by Eric Eldred, Debra Storr, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders THE TRAIL BOOK BY Livros Grátis http://www.livrosgratis.com.br Milhares de livros grátis para download. MARY AUSTIN WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY MILO WINTER 1918 [Illustration: "'Arr-rr-ump!' I said"] TO MARY, MY NIECE IN THE HOPE THAT SHE MAY FIND THROUGH THE TRAILS OF HER OWN COUNTRY THE ROAD TO WONDERLAND CONTENTS I HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL II WHAT THE BUFFALO CHIEF TOLD III HOW THE MASTODON HAPPENED FIRST TO BELONG TO A MAN, AS TOLD BY ARRUMPA IV THE SECOND PART OF THE MASTODON STORY, CONCERNING THE TRAIL TO THE SEA AND THE TALKING STICK OF TAKU-WAKIN V HOW HOWKAWANDA AND FRIEND-AT-THE-BACK FOUND THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO COUNTRY; TOLD BY THE COYOTE VI DORCAS JANE HEARS HOW THE CORN CAME TO THE VALLEY OF THE MISSI-SIPPU; TOLD BY THE CORN WOMAN VII A TELLING OF THE SALT TRAIL, OF TSE-TSE-YOTE AND THE DELIGHT-MAKERS; TOLD BY MOKE-ICHA VIII YOUNG-MAN-WHO-NEVER-TURNS-BACK: A TELLING OF THE TALLEGEWI, BY ONE OF THEM IX HOW THE LENNI-LENAPE CAME FROM SHINAKI AND THE TALLEGEWI FOUGHT THEM: THE SECOND PART OF THE MOUND-BUILDER'S STORY X THE MAKING OF A SHAMAN: A TELLING OF THE IROQUOIS TRAIL, BY THE ONONDAGA XI THE PEARLS OF COFACHIQUE: HOW LUCAS DE AYLLON CAME TO LOOK FOR THEM AND WHAT THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING DID TO HIM; TOLD BY THE PELICAN. XII HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME TO TUSCALOOSA: A TELLING OF THE TRIBUTE ROAD BY THE LADY OF COFACHIQUE. XIII HOW THE IRON SHIRTS CAME LOOKING FOR THE SEVEN CITIES OF CIBOLA; TOLD BY THE ROAD-RUNNER. XIV HOW THE MAN OF TWO HEARTS KEPT THE SECRET OF THE HOLY PLACES; TOLD BY THE CONDOR. XV HOW THE MEDICINE OF THE ARROWS WAS BROKEN AT REPUBLICAN RIVER; TOLD BY THE CHIEF OFFICER OF THE DOG SOLDIERS APPENDIX GLOSSARY ILLUSTRATIONS "'ARR-RR-UMP!' I SAID" THE BUFFALO CHIEF THE MASTODON TAKU AND ARRUMPA THE TRAIL TO THE SEA THE TRAIL TO THE BUFFALO COUNTRY SHOT DOWNWARD TO THE LEDGE WHERE HOWKAWANDA AND YOUNGER BROTHER HUGGED THEMSELVES (in color) THE CORN WOMEN SIGN OF THE SUN AND THE FOUR QUARTERS MOKE-ICHA TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA (in Color) TSE-TSE-YOTE AND MOKE-ICHA THE MOUND-BUILDERS THE IROQUOIS TRAIL THE GOLD-SEEKERS SHE COULD SEE THE THOUGHTS OF A MAN WHILE THEY WERE STILL IN HIS HEART (in Color) THE CACICA FAR-LOOKING MEETS THE IRON SHIRTS THE DESERT THE CONDOR THAT HAS HIS NEST ON EL MORRO THE DOG SOLDIERS LINE ART OF BUFFALO THE TRAIL BOOK I HOW OLIVER AND DORCAS JANE FOUND THE TRAIL From the time that he had first found, himself alone with them, Oliver had felt sure that the animals could come alive again if they wished. That was one blowy afternoon about a week after his father had been made night engineer and nobody had come into the Museum for several hours. Oliver had been sitting for some time in front of the Buffalo case, wondering what might be at the other end of the trail. The cows that stood midway in it had such a _going_ look. He was sure it must lead, past the hummock where the old bull flourished his tail, to one of those places where he had always wished to be. All at once, as the boy sat there thinking about it, the glass case disappeared and the trail shot out like a dark snake over a great stretch of rolling, grass-covered prairie. He could see the tops of the grasses stirring like the hair on the old Buffalo's coat, and the ripple of water on the beaver pool which was just opposite and yet somehow only to be reached after long travel through the Buffalo Country. The wind moved on the grass, on the surface of the water and the young leaves of the alders, and over all the animals came the start and stir of life. And then the slow, shuffling steps of the Museum attendant startled it all into stillness again. The attendant spoke to Oliver as he passed, for even a small boy is worth talking to when you have been all day in a Museum where nothing is new to you and nobody comes. "You want to look out, son," said the attendant, who really liked the boy and hadn't a notion what sort of ideas he was putting into Oliver's head. "If you ain't careful, some of them things will come downstairs some night and go off with ye." And why should MacShea have said that if he hadn't known for certain that the animals _did_ come alive at night? That was the way Oliver put it when he was trying to describe this extraordinary experience to his sister. Dorcas Jane, who was eleven and a half and not at all imaginative, eyed him suspiciously. Oliver had such a way of stating things that were not at all believable, in a way that made them seem the likeliest things in the world. He was even capable of acting for days as if things were so, which you knew from the beginning were only the most delightful of make-believes. Life on this basis was immensely more exciting, but then you never knew whether or not he might be what some of his boy friends called "stringing you," so when Oliver began to hint darkly at his belief that the stuffed animals in the Mammal room of the Museum came alive at night and had larks of their own, Dorcas Jane offered the most noncommittal objection that occurred to her. "They couldn't," she said; "the night watchman wouldn't let them." There were watchmen, she knew, who went the rounds of every floor. But, insisted Oliver, why should they have watchmen at all, if not to prevent people from breaking in and disturbing the animals when they were busy with affairs of their own? He meant to stay up there himself some night and see what it was all about; and as he went on to explain how it would be possible to slip up the great stair while the watchmen were at the far end of the long hall, and of the places one could hide if the watchman came along when he wasn't wanted, he said "we" and "us." For, of course, he meant to take Dorcas Jane with him. Where would be the fun of such an adventure if you had it alone? And besides, Oliver had discovered that it was not at all difficult to scare himself with the things he had merely imagined. There were times when Dorcas Jane's frank disbelief was a great comfort to him. Still, he wasn't the sort of boy to be scared before anything has really happened, so when Dorcas Jane suggested that they didn't know what the animals might do to any one who went among them uninvited, he threw it off stoutly. "Pshaw! They can't do anything to us! They're stuffed, Silly!" And to Dorcas Jane, who was by this time completely under the spell of the adventure, it seemed quite likely that the animals should be stuffed so that they couldn't hurt you, and yet not stuffed so much that they couldn't come alive again. It was all of a week before they could begin. There is a kind of feeling you have to have about an adventure without which the affair doesn't come off properly. Anybody who has been much by himself in the woods has had it; or sometime, when you are all alone in the house, all at once there comes a kind of pricking of your skin and a tightness in your chest, not at all unpleasant, and a kind of feeling that the furniture has its eye on you, or that some one behind your shoulder is about to speak, and immediately after that something happens. Or you feel sure it would have happened if somebody hadn't interrupted. Dorcas Jane _never_ had feelings like that. But about a week after Oliver had proposed to her that they spend a part of the night in the long gallery, he was standing in front of the Buffalo case, wondering what actually did happen when a buffalo caught you.