hat the Son o' the Thunder is comin' with
lightnin' in his hands. Injuns is like rabbits when the Great Spirit
begins to rip 'em up. They kin't stan' it."

That afternoon Solomon, with a hook and line and grubs, gathered from
rotted stumps, caught many trout in a brook crossing the trail and
fried them with slices of salt pork. In the evening they had the best
supper of their journey in what he called "The Catamount Tavern." It
was an old bark lean-to facing an immense boulder on the shore of a
pond. There, one night some years before, he had killed a catamount.
It was in the foot-hills remote from the trail. In a side of the rock
was a small bear den or cavern with an overhanging roof which protected
it from the weather. On a shelf in the cavern was a round block of
pine about two feet in diameter and a foot and a half long. This block
was his preserve jar. A number of two-inch augur holes had been bored
in its top and filled with jerked venison and dried berries. They had
been packed with a cotton wick fastened to a small bar of wood at the
bottom of each hole. Then hot deer's fat had been poured in with the
meat and berries until the holes were filled within an inch or so of
the top. When the fat had hardened a thin layer of melted beeswax
sealed up the contents of each hole. Over all wooden plugs had been
driven fast.

"They's good vittles in that 'ere block," said Solomon. "'Nough, I
guess, to keep a man a week. All he has to do is knock out the plug
an' pull the wick an' be happy."

"Going to do any pulling for supper?" Jack queried.

"Nary bit," said Solomon. "Too much food in the woods now. We got to
be savin'. Mebbe you er I er both on us 'll be comin' through here in
the winter time skeered o' Injuns an' short o' fodder. Then we'll open
the pine jar."

They had fish and tea and milk and that evening as he sat on his
blanket before the fire with the little lad in his lap he sang an old
rig-a-dig tune and told stories and answered many a query.

Jack wrote in one of his letters that as they fared along, down toward
the sown lands of the upper Mohawk, Solomon began to develop talents of
which none of his friends had entertained the least suspicion.

"He has had a hard life full of fight and peril like most of us who
were born in this New World," the young man wrote. "He reminds me of
some of the Old Testament heroes, and is not this land we have
traversed like the plains of Mamre? Wha