Prairie. 93
VIII. Tom's Victory. 105
IX. A Surprise. 116
X. "No Whiskey at This Raising!" 126
XI. Old Mrs. Skinflint in Trouble.--Lost in the Woods. 142
XII. Fire and Flood. 158
XIII. The Indian Lodge. 170
XIV. The War-Song. 187
XV. The Massacre at Spirit Lake. 194
XVI. A Beleaguered Cabin. 210
XVII. The Mysterious Fire. 226
XVIII. The Boy in the Tree. 237
XIX. Bub's Broadside. 250
XX. Long Hair. 260
XXI. "Pull the String, Bub." 272
XXII. Tom and the Money-Lender. 285
XXIII. An Enchanting Scene.--The Parting. 295

THE CABIN ON THE PRAIRIE.

CHAPTER I.

THE PIONEER FAMILY.--A SPIRITED CHASE.

"There, the last hill is dug, and I'm glad!" and Tom Jones leaned on
his hoe, lost in thought.

He was a stout lad of sixteen, with frowzy brown hair, crowned by a
brimless straw hat, and his pants looked as if they had been turned
inside out and outside in, upside down and downside up, and darned and
patched and re-darned and patched again, until time, and labor, and
cloth enough, such as it was, had been used to fabricate a number of
pairs of pants. As for boots,--for his lower extremities were not
wholly destitute of protection,--they might have come down to him as
an heir-loom from a pauper of a preceding generation. But what
mattered it to him that his clothes were threadbare, many-hued, and
grotesque? or that his boots let the deep, rich soil in at sides and
toes? Was he not a "squatter sovereign," or the son of one, free in
his habits as the Indian that roamed the prairies of his frontier
home? He had not heard of "the latest fashion," and paid no attention
to the cut of his garments, although, it must be confessed, he
sometimes wished them a trifle more spruce and comfortable. His home,
as I have hinted, was on the prairie. Nevertheless, the family domain
was an