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Crawling carefully along the limb, he worked his way to the trunk, and then the descent to the ground was accomplished without trouble. Without bothering to put on his shoepacks, he sped away from the house. Finally he reached the road, and here he slipped the heavy shoepacks on, and in a few moments had rejoined his companions where they were nervously waiting under the big elm.
"Let the reader," says a historian, in speaking of the manners and dress of those noble pioneers, "imagine an assemblage of people, without a store, tailor, or mantuamaker within an hundred miles; and an assemblage of horses, without a blacksmith or saddler within an equal distance. The gentlemen dressed in shoepacks, moccasins, leather breeches, leggins, linsey hunting-shirts, and all home-made.
The operation of currying was performed by a drawing-knife with its edge turned, after the manner of a currying-knife. The blocking for the leather was made of soot and hogs' lard. "Almost every family contained its own tailors and shoemakers. Those who could not make shoes, could make shoepacks. These, like moccasins, were made of a single piece on the top of the foot.
If a girl was well off, and had been careful and industrious, she might herself bring a dowry, of a cow and a calf, a brood mare, a bed well stocked with blankets, and a chest containing her clothes the latter not very elaborate, for a woman's dress consisted of a hat or poke bonnet, a "bed gown," perhaps a jacket, and a linsey petticoat, while her feet were thrust into coarse shoepacks or moccasins.
So they made two boxes and buried them on the hill, side by side. In death, as in life, they bunked together. Their shoepacks they left at the foot of their graves, as I had found them, and the pipe they smoked in common, to show that they were chums. There was no priest and no time to fetch one.
"What is this you are preparing?" he said, pointing his bold nose to them. Oh, the eyes were like a dreamer's: he was a child to appearances. Then they went speaking to him of the stringed instrument they had heard humming on the ledge, speaking another language than his own. "This is a wife to be defended," said Shoepack Sam, padding there with his yellow shoepacks bringing another drink.
What tragedy had happened here in the deep woods a year before? Even while the question was shaping itself in my mind, it was answered by another discovery. Slung on the fence at the foot of one grave was a pair of spiked shoes; at the foot of the other the dead man's shoepacks with sand and mud in them. Two river-drivers, then; drowned in the rapids probably.
I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly Ann, water the nags." Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet.
I wish the devils had every one of your fat sculps. Polly Ann, water the nags." Hans replied to this sally with great vigor, lapsing into Dutch. Polly Ann led the scrawny ponies to the trough, but her eyes snapped with merriment as she listened. She was a wonderfully comely lass, despite her loose cotton gown and poke-bonnet and the shoepacks on her feet.
There lounged some fifty men, the pick of Baudette's crew, big and broad shouldered, in light colored woollen jackets, shoepacks and blazing shirts. Each toyed with an ax handle that swung lightly between strong, brown fingers. They were a loose-jointed lot, active as cats, and moved with the superlative ease of the skilled woodsman. Clark's jaw thrust out and he glanced grimly at his visitor.
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