A CHANCE ACQUAINTANCE
Well, then, the way that Ellis and Jones met each other--and several
other things--was this. It chanced to be in the northern forests, I
believe--both were fishing, neither knew the other nor was even aware of
their mutual proximity.
Then the wind changed abruptly, blowing now from the south; and with the
change of wind Ellis fancied that he smelled green wood burning. A few
minutes later he was sure of it; he stood knee-deep in the stream
sniffing uneasily, then he lifted his trout-rod, reeled in his line, and
waded silently shoreward, his keen nose twitching.
Ah! There it was--that misty bluish bloom belting a clump of hemlocks.
And the acrid odor grew, impregnating the filtered forest air. He
listened, restless eyes searching. The noise of the stream filled his
ears; he tightened the straps of his pack, shortened his trout rod,
leaving line and cast on, and crawled up the ravine, shoulder-deep in
fragrant undergrowth, until the dull clash of flashing spray and the
tumult of the falls were almost lost in the leafy depths behind.
Ranker, stronger, came the pungent odor of smoke; halting to listen he
heard the hissing whisper of green wood afire; then, crawling up over an
enormous boulder, he saw, just beyond and below, a man in tweeds,
squatting on his haunches, and attempting to toss a flapjack over a
badly constructed camp-fire.
The two young men caught sight of one another at the same instant;
alert, mistrustful, each stared at the other in questioning silence
while the first instinct of unpleasant surprise lasted.
"How are you?" said the man, cautiously.
"Good-morning," replied Ellis. "When the wind turned I scented your fire
down the stream. Thought I'd see what was burning."
"Are you up here fishing?" inquired he of the tweeds.
"Yes; came here by canoe to the forks below. I am out for a week by
myself. The Caranay water is my old-time trail.... Looks like a storm,
doesn't it?"
"Anything doing with the trout?"
"Not much; two in the falls pool that come an ounce short of the pound.
I should be glad to divide--if you are shy on trout."
Again they regarded one another carefully.
"My name," said the man by the fire, "is Jones--but that can't be helped
now. So if you'll overlook such matters I'll be glad of a trout if you
can spare one."
"My name is Ellis; help yourself."
The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from
the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.
"Come into camp, Mr. Ellis," he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste
operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on
the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed
shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod
aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing
out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.
"Anything else you're short of, Mr. Jones?" he asked, pleasantly. "I'm
just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost
anything."
"Have you plenty of salt?" inquired Jones, wistfully.
"Plenty; isn't there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?"
"Matches?"
Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don't run short of matches;
good woodsmen don't build such fires.
"Certainly," he said. "Did you have an accident?"
"No--that is, several boxes got wet, and I've been obliged to sit around
this confounded fire for fear it might go out--didn't dare fish very far
from it."
He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to
recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.
"Fact is," he said, "I don't know very much about the woods. Do you?
Everything's gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday.
I'm in a fix."
Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without
offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked
himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.
"Can you cook?" he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still
laughing.
"Then, for Heaven's love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast
over that fire, cook enough for two?"
"Why, man, I believe you're hungry," said Ellis, sharply.
"Hungry? Well, I don't know whether you would call it exactly hunger,
because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be
hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact
is, I'm a rotten cook, and I guess it's simply that I'm half starved for
a decent meal."
"Why, see here," said Ellis, rising to his feet, "I can fix up something
pretty quick if you like."
"I _do_ like. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and
what's left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to,
and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a
tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all
climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine
could climb a tree?"
"I've heard so," said Ellis, gravely, busy with the stores which he was
unrolling from his own blanket. The guilelessness of this stray brother
appalled him. Here was a babe in the woods. A new sort of babe, too,
for, in the experience of Ellis, the incompetent woodsman is ever the
loudest-mouthed, the tyro, the most conceited. But this forest-squatting
innocent not only knew nothing of the elements of woodcraft, but had
called a stranger's attention to his ignorance with a simplicity that
silenced mirth, forestalled contempt, and aroused a curious respect for
the unfortunate.
"He is no liar, anyway," thought Ellis, placing a back-log, mending the
fire, emptying the coffee pot, and settling the kettle to boil. And
while he went about culinary matters with a method born of habit, Jones
watched him, aided when he saw a chance; and they chatted on most
animatedly together as the preparations for breakfast advanced.
"The very first day I arrived in the woods," said Jones, "I fell into
the stream and got most of my matches wet. I've had a devil of a time
since."
"It's a good idea to keep reserve matches in a water-tight glass
bottle," observed Ellis, carelessly, and without appearing to instruct
anybody about anything.
"I'll remember that. What is a good way to keep pork from porcupines?"
Ellis mentioned several popular methods, stirred the batter, shoved a
hot plate nearer the ashes, and presently began the manufacture of
flapjacks.
"Don't you toss 'em?" inquired Jones, watching the process intently.
"Oh, they can be tossed--like this! But it is easier for me to turn them
with a knife--like this. I have an idea that they toss flapjacks less
often in the woods than they do in fiction."
"I gathered my idea from a book," said Jones, bitterly; "it told how to
build a fire without matches. Some day I shall destroy the author."
Presently Jones remarked in a low, intense voice: "Oh, the fragrance of
that coffee and bacon!" which was all he said, but its significance was
pathetically unmistakable.
"Pitch in, man," urged Ellis, looking back over his shoulder. "I'll be
with you in a second." But when his tower of browned and smoking
flapjacks was ready, and he came over to the log, he found that his
host, being his host, had waited. That settled his convictions
concerning Jones; and that was doubtless why, inside of half an hour, he
found himself calling him Jones and not Mr. Jones, and Jones calling him
Ellis. They were a pair of well knit, clean-limbed young men, throat and
face burnt deeply by wind and sun. Jones did not have much hair; Ellis's
was thick and short, and wavy at the temples. They were agreeable to
look at.
"Have another batch of flapjacks?" inquired Ellis, persuasively.
Jones groaned with satisfaction at the prospect, and applied himself to
a crisp trout garnished with bacon.
"I've tried and tried," he said, "but I cannot catch any trout. When I
found that I could not I was horrified, Ellis, because, you see, I had
supposed that the forest and stream were going to furnish me with
subsistence. Nature hasn't done a thing to me since I've tried to shake
hands with her."
"I wonder," said Ellis, "why you came into the woods alone?"
Jones coyly pounced upon another flapjack, folded it neatly and inserted
one end of it into his mouth. This he chewed reflectively; and when it
had vanished according to Fletcher, he said:
"If I tell you why I came here I'll begin to get angry. This breakfast
is too heavenly to spoil. Pass the bacon and help yourself."
Ellis, however, had already satisfied his hunger. He set the kettle on
the coals again, dumped into it cup and plate and fork, wiped his
sheath-knife carefully, and, curling up at the foot of a hemlock,
lighted his pipe, returning the flaming branch to the back-log.
Jones munched on; smile after smile spread placidly over his youthful
face, dislodging his eyeglasses every time. He resumed them, and ate
flapjacks.
"The first time my canoe upset," he said, "I lost my book of artificial
flies. I brought a box of angle-worms with me, too, but they fell into
the stream the second time I upset. So I have been trying to snare one
of those big trout under the ledge below----"
Ellis's horrified glance cut him short; he shrugged his shoulders.
"My friend, I know it's dead low-down, but it was a matter of pure
hunger with me. At all events, it's just as well that I caught nothing;
I couldn't have cooked it if I had."
He sighed at the last flapjack, decided he did not require it, and
settling down with his back against the log blissfully lighted his pipe.
For ten minutes they smoked without speaking, dreamily gazing at the
blue sky through the trees. Friendly little forest birds came around,
dropping from twig to branch; two chipmunks crept into the case of eggs
to fill their pouched chops with the oats that the eggs were packed in.
The young men watched them lazily.
"The simpler life is the true existence," commented Ellis, drawing a
long, deep breath.
"What the devil is the simpler life?" demanded Jones, with so much
energy that the chipmunks raced away in mad abandon, and the flock of
black-capped birds scattered to neigbouring branches, remarking in
unison, "_Chick-a-dee-dee-dee_."
"Why, you're leading the simpler life now," said Ellis, laughing, "are
you not?"
"Am I? No, I'm not. I'm not leading a simple life; I'm leading a
pace-killing, nerve-racking, complex one. I tell you, Ellis, that it has
taken just one week in the woods to reveal to me the complexity of
simplicity!"
"Oh, you don't like the life?"
"I like it all right, but it's too complex. Listen to me. You asked me
why anybody ever let me escape into the woods. I'll tell you.... You're
a New Yorker, are you not?"
Ellis nodded.
"All right. First look on this picture: I live in the Sixties, near
enough to the Park to see it. It's green, and I like it. Besides, there
are geraniums and other posies in my back yard, and I can see them when
the laundress isn't too busy with the clothes-line. So much for the
_mise en scène_; me in a twenty-by-one-hundred house, perfectly
contented; Park a stone's toss west, back yard a few feet north. My
habits? Simple enough to draw tears from a lambkin! I breakfast at
nine--an egg, fruit, coffee and--I hate to admit it--the _Sun_. At
eleven I go down-town to see if there's anything doing. There never is,
so I smoke one cigar with my partner and then we lunch together. I then
walk uptown--_walk_, mind you. At the club I look at the ticker, or out
of the window. Later I play cowboy or billiards for an hour. I take one
cocktail--_one_, if you please. I converse." He waved his pipe; Ellis
nodded solemnly.
"Then," continued Jones, "what do I do?"
"I don't know," replied Ellis.
"I'll tell you. I call a cab--one taxi, or one hansom, as the state of
the weather may suggest--I drive through the Park, pleasantly aware of
the verdure, the squirrels, and the babies; I arrive at my home; I mount
to the library and there I select from my limited collection some
accursed book I've always heard of but have never read--not fiction, but
something stupefying and worth while. This I read for exactly one hour.
I then need a drink. I then dress; and if I'm dining out, out I go--if
not, I dine at home. Twice a week I attend the theatre, but I neutralise
that by doing penance at the opera every Monday during the season....
There, Ellis, is the story of a simple life! Look on _that_ picture. Now
look on _this_: Me in the backwoods, fly-bitten, smoke-choked, a
half-charred flapjack in my fist, a porcupine-gnawed rind of pork on a
stick, attempting to broil the same at a fire, the smoke of which blinds
me. Me, again, belly down, peering hungrily over the bank of a stream,
attempting to snatch a trout with a bare hook, my glasses slipping off
repeatedly, the spectre of starvation scourging on me. Me, once more,
frantic with indigestion and mosquitoes, lurking under a blanket, the
root of a tree bruising my backbone; me in the morning, done up, shaving
in icy water and cutting my chin; me, half shaved, searching for a scrap
of nourishment, gauntly prowling among cold and greasy fry-pans! Ellis!
_Which_ is the simpler life, in Heaven's name?"
Ellis's laughter was the laughter of a woodsman, full, infectious, but
almost noiseless. The birds came back and teetered on adjacent twigs,
cheeping in friendly unison; a chipmunk, chops distended, popped up from
the case of eggs like a striped jack-in-a-box, not at all afraid of a
man who laughed that way.
"_How_ did you ever come into the woods?" he asked at length.
"Lunatic friends and fool books persuaded me I was missing something. I
read all about how to tell a woodcock from a peacock; how to dig holes
in the ground and raise little pea vines, and how to make two blades of
grass grow where the laundress had set a devastating shoe. Then I tired
of it. But friends urged me on, and one idiot said that I looked like
the victim of a rare disease and gave me a shotgun--whether to shoot
myself or the dicky birds I'm not perfectly certain yet. Besides, as I
have a perfect hatred of taking life, I had no temptation to shoot
guides in Maine or niggers in South Carolina, where the quail come from.
Still, I was awake to the new idea. I read more books on bats and
woodchucks; I smelled every flower I saw; I tried to keep up," he said,
earnestly; "by Heaven, I did my best! And now, look at me! Nature hands
me the frozen mitt!"
Ellis could only laugh, cradling his knees in his clasped and sun-tanned
hands.
"I am fond of Nature; I admire the geraniums in my backyard," continued
Jones, excitedly. "I like a simple life, too; but I don't wish to pursue
a live thing and eat it for my dinner. The idea is perfectly obnoxious
to me. I like flowers on a table or in the Park, but I don't want to
know their names, or the names of the creatures that buzz and crawl over
them, or the names of the birds that feed on the buzzy things! I don't;
I know I don't, and I won't! Nature has strung me; I shall knock Nature
hereafter. This is all for mine. I'll lock up and leave the key of the
fields to the next Come-on lured into the good green goods by that most
accomplished steerer, Mrs. Nature. I've got my gilt brick, Ellis--I'm
going home to buy a card to hang over my desk; and on it will be the
wisest words ever written:
"'Who's Loony Now?'"
"But, my dear fellow----"
"No, you don't. You're an accomplice of this Nature dame; I can tell by
the way you cook and catch trout and keep your matches in bottles. One
large and brilliant brick is enough for one New York man. The asphalt
for mine--and a Turkish bath."
After a grinning silence, Ellis arose, stretched, tapped his pipe
against a tree trunk, and sauntered over to where his rod lay. "Come on;
I'll guarantee you a trout in the first reach," he said, affably,
slipping ferrule into socket, disentangling the cast and setting the
line free.
So they strolled off toward the long amber reach which lay a few yards
below the camp, Jones explaining that he didn't wish to take life from
anything except a mosquito.
"We've got to eat; we'd better stock up while we can, because it's going
to rain," observed Ellis.
"Going to rain? How do you know?"
"I smell it. Besides, look there--yonder above the mountains. Do you see
the sky behind the Golden Dome?"
[Illustration]