Captain Sam | Page 6

supposed, into a hole, driving them with some little force through a tangled net work of
small roots. What he really did do, however, was to drive them through a net work of
small roots, between two great ones, into the outer air, at the very spot from which he had
taken them. When he quitted his hold of them, leaving them, as he supposed, buried in
the centre of a great drift pile, they lay in fact by Sam's coat and hat, right where they had
lain when Sam went to sleep.
Sam had silently observed him as he entered the drift pile, and running quickly to the
entrance he seized a stick of timber and drew it toward him with all his force. Sam
Hardwicke had an excellent habit of remembering not only things that were certainly
useful to know, but things also which might be useful. When Jake entered the drift pile,
Sam remembered that during his own stay there a year before, he had carefully examined
the great log which formed the archway of the entrance, and that it was kept in its place
only by this single stick of timber acting as a wedge. Pulling this out, therefore, he let the
farther end of the great tree trunk fall, and completely blocked the passage way.
CHAPTER III.
REVENGE OF A DIFFERENT SORT.

No matter where one begins to tell a story there is always something back of the
beginning that must be told for the sake of making the matter clear. Whatever you tell,
something else must have happened before it and something else before that and
something else before that, so that there is really no end to the beginnings that might be
made. The only way I can think of by which a whole story could be told would be to
begin back at Adam and Eve and work on down to the present time; and even then the
story would not be finished and nobody but a prophet ever could finish it.
The only way to tell a story then is to plunge into it somewhere as I did two chapters back,
follow it until we get hold of it, and then go back and explain how it came about before
going on with it. I must tell you just now who these boys were, where they were and how
they came to be there. All this must be told sometime and whenever it is told somebody
or something must wait somewhere, and I really think Jake Elliott may as well wait there
in the drift-pile as not. He deserves nothing better.
During the summer of the year 1813, while the United States and great Britain were at
war, a general Indian war came on which raged with especial violence in middle and
southern Alabama. The Indians fought desperately, but General Jackson managed to
conquer them thoroughly. He was empowered by the government to make a treaty with
them and he insisted that they should make a treaty which they could not help keeping.
He made them give up a large part of their land, and so arranged the boundaries as to
make the Indians powerless for further harm.
The Indians hesitated a long time before they would sign the treaty, but it was Jackson's
way to finish whatever he undertook, and not leave it to be done over again. As the
people of the border used to say, he "left no gaps in the fences behind him," and so he
insisted upon the treaty and the Indians at last signed it. Meantime, however, a great
many of the Indians, and among them several of their most savage chiefs had escaped to
Florida, which was then Spanish territory.
Jackson remained at his camp in southern Alabama through the summer of 1814 bringing
the Indians to terms. During the summer it became evident that the British were preparing
an expedition against Mobile and New Orleans, and Jackson was placed in command of
the whole southwest, with instructions to defend that part of the country. This was all
very well, and very wise, too, for there was no man in the country who was fitter than he
for the kind of work he was thus called on to do; but there was one very serious obstacle
in his way. He had his commission; he had full authority to conduct the campaign; he had
everything in fact except an army, and it does not require a very shrewd person to guess
that an army is a rather important part of a general's outfit for defending a large territory.
He called for volunteers and accepted any kind that came. He even published a special
address to the free negroes within the threatened district and asked them to