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In much less time than it has taken to record the fact, that little piece of bottom-land was crowded with wolves, deer, and men. The headlong impetuosity of the chase and flight had prevented the scent from acting, and all were huddled together, for a single instant, in a sort of inextricable confusion.
They appeared, marching to beat of drum, with the British flag flying; crossed the corn-field bottom-land and took possession of the village. The cabins and out-buildings swarmed with them. From a window of a cabin near to the fort the white savage shouted a message.
I will pay you well, Nick, if you will start to-morrow, with your rifle and a pocket-compass, off here towards the head-waters of the Susquehannah and Delaware, where the streams run rapidly, and where there are no fevers, and bring me an account of three or four thousand acres of rich bottom-land, in such a way as a surveyor can find it, and I can get a patent for it.
The vale below, like that they had left, opened into a wider bottom-land, the bed of a creek, which they could see shining among the trees that overshadowed the rich alluvion; and into this poured a rivulet that chattered along through the glen at their feet, in which it had its sources.
The land was dry and very poor, with the exception of here and there some small pieces of bottom land, the great bulk of the bottom-land occurring on the north side of the stream. We continued the survey up some twenty miles into the hills above the mill of Dailor and Sheldon.
He must give the bulk of his time to the big commercial crop that he hoped to put into the bottom-land. He had little fear of the river overflowing its banks late enough in the season to interfere with the celery crop. For the seedlings were to be handled in the cold-frames and garden-patch until it was time to set them in the trenches. And that would not be until July.
Of course, the old lady could not expect to put in any crop that would pay her like the celery; for when they footed up their books, the bottom-land had yielded, as Hiram had once prophesied to Mr. Bronson over four hundred dollars the acre, net. Twenty-four hundred dollars income from six acres; and the profit was more than fifty per cent.
The lay of the land had brought them close above the stream, but no one seemed to be at the cabin on the other side, nor was there any sign of a ferry. Groves of trees lay in the narrow folds of the valley, and the water swept black between untenanted shores. Nothing living could be seen along the scant levels of the bottom-land.
You fellers wait here a minute. I want t' find out which way them tracks come in." He loped back, swinging in north of the campground. While he was gone, MacRae and I leaned over in our saddles and scanned closely the grass-carpeted bottom-land. That the hoofs of passing horses had pressed down the rank growth of grass was plain enough, but whether the hoofs of six or a dozen we could only guess.
Down across the creek there were a hundred acres of bottom-land that always laughed a harvest under the skilful management of Danforth Armour. Yet the market for surplus products was distant, so luxury and leisure were out of the question. And yet work wasn't drudgery.
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