A LITTLE WOODS MINSTREL
NOTHING seemed to escape the trained eyes of the scout-master, as he
walked on through the woods, across open glades, and sometimes crossing
ravines where little brooks gurgled along in a happy care-free fashion,
after the habit of wandering streamlets in general.
One of the first things that came to his attention was the unusual
number of wild bees that seemed to be working in the flowers that dotted
some of these open places. This interested Elmer very much; and as he
stopped to watch them going in and out of the flowers, busily adding to
their stores of sweets or pollen, he was rubbing his chin reflectively
while saying to himself:
"It looks as if there might be a hive or so around this region, away up
in some hollow tree. I'd like mighty well to spend a morning trying to
locate it, and if nothing hinders I'll get one of the boys to help me
track these little chaps to their hiding-place. I've done it before, and
ought to be able to again, if I haven't forgotten the trick that old
woodsman showed me. And I should think Alec, perhaps Rufus in the
bargain, would be pleased to see how the thing is done."
Then as he went on a little further he discovered small tracks, plainly
outlined in the hardening mud alongside one of the streams that trickled
down toward the lower levels.
"Hello! good morning, Mr. Mink!" said Elmer, as he bent over to examine
the tracks which he easily guessed were made by the fur-bearing animal
he had mentioned. "Been out late for a stroll, haven't you? Visiting
around, perhaps, to see how your relatives are getting on; and dodging
in and out of all these holes along the bank. Well, all I can hope is
that no bad trapper covets your sleek coat, and lies in wait for you
next winter with his sharp-edged steel trap."
Next he discovered another track quite different in design.
"Why, how do you do, Brother Fox?" Elmer chattered, amusing himself by
this manner of monologue, just as though the animal might be within
sound of his voice. "You were also abroad during the night, I see, and
carrying home some sort of game in the bargain, for the little foxes in
the den, judging from the scratches alongside your own tracks. Let's see
if I can find out what it was you managed to grab."
He followed the trail fully fifty yards before making any discovery.
Then the observant boy triumphantly snatched something up from the
ground.
"A fine, fat young partridge, I wager, you caught, old lady," he
chuckled, as he twirled the feather between forefinger and thumb, and
then stuck it in the band of his campaign hat. "Well, it was a sorry
night for the poor bird; but those little foxes just had to have
something to devour ever so often. Now, I'd like to find out whether
this was a red fox; one of those dandy blacks like we took out of the
trap when we were up at Uncle Caleb's woods cabin;[A] or a gray rascal.
I'll see if I can settle that part of it and satisfy my curiosity."
It did not take long for a boy of such wide experience as Elmer to find
a clue on which to build his theory. Inside of three minutes he came to
a place where the returning four-footed hunter had to pass through close
quarters, in pushing under some brush. Elmer knew just where to look,
and was speedily laughing as he held up several hairs he had found
caught on a thorn.
"As red as any fox that ever crept up on a sleeping partridge, and
snatched her from her nest in the thicket!" Elmer declared, also placing
the evidence away, for he would want to show it to the tenderfoot squad,
when telling the simple story of the wonderful things he had come
across while just taking a little ramble through the woods.
And so it went on. One thing followed another in endless procession. The
red-headed woodpecker tapping the rotten top of a tree; the bluejay
hunting worms or seeds amidst the dead grass; the chipmunk that switched
around to the other side of a stump and then with sharp eyes watched the
two-legged intruder on its haunts curiously; the harmless garter-snake
that glided from under his foot, though _giving_ him a certain thrill as
he remembered the stories about these deadly rattlers--all these, and
many other things arrested the attention of the boy who long ago had
become possessed of the magical key that unlocks the storehouse of
knowledge in Nature's own kingdom.
And yet Elmer did not forget to always pay attention to the course he
was taking. He placed numerous landmarks down in his memory, so that he
would know them again later on. Now it might be an odd freak in the way
of a bent-over tree, that had the appearance of a drawn bow, with some
unseen giant of the woods standing back of it, drawing the cord taut;
then again a cluster of white birches would be impressed on his mind, to
be readily recognized again in case the necessity arose.
All this time he was heading in a direct line toward that region where
the blue spiral of smoke had been noticed in the still morning air.
Elmer, too, fancied, when an hour had passed, that he must by now be
drawing well along toward the origin of the smoke column.
Possibly he may have questioned whether he was exactly wise in thinking
of invading the precincts of the camp, that might prove to be the home
of the man who possessed the evil reputation.
"But my motives are all right," Elmer told himself, when this arose to
annoy him; "and I mean no harm to Jem or his people, if so be he _has_
any family, which somehow no one ever bothered to tell me, even if they
knew. I guess Jem's been something of a mystery to the people up here.
He seems to have no friends, and it may be nobody ever did penetrate to
his camp. Well, then, I'll be the pioneer in the game. I'm not afraid of
Jem, for all his black looks. I'd just like to get to _know_ him, and
find out if he's as tough as they say."
And accordingly Elmer, instead of taking warning from his fears and
turning back, continued resolutely along the course he had marked out
for himself. He would beard the lion in its den, and try to convince
this same poacher Jem that he had nothing to fear from a party of boys
out on a holiday. Perhaps Elmer may have also had some little scheme in
mind whereby they could do more or less good by utilizing some of those
superabundant stores which George had cleverly advised Rufus to lay in,
under the possibility of their being storm-bound up in the woods, with a
great need for much provisions. A little present of excellent tea might
quite win the heart of Jem's wife, provided he had one; and Elmer had
even known of a case where the fragrant odor of coffee had entirely
disarmed a woods bully, who had been half inclined to clean out the camp
previous to his inhaling that delicious perfume.
Now and then the boy would pause and commence sniffing the air. He knew
that he had been walking directly up the wind for quite a while now, and
hence more than half expected that he might catch the whiff of hard-wood
smoke, telling of the presence of a fire not far distant, and dead
ahead.
It was when Elmer was standing still and looking about him that he
suddenly heard a sound that sent a peculiar thrill through his whole
person. There was nothing so strange about the sound in itself, only the
oddity of hearing it under such peculiar conditions.
"Why, upon my soul, I do believe that's a violin being tuned up!" he
whispered, straining his ears still more while speaking. "Yes, it is,
for I can hear the plain chords now. Perhaps some fiddler who plays at
country barn dances is passing through the woods, and has stopped over
night at Jem's shack. Why, he seems to have a knack for striking
wonderfully fine chords, it seems to me. I'll just push on and see what
it means."
This he accordingly did, and as he began to catch the sound of music
more plainly as he kept advancing, Elmer found his curiosity rising to
fever heat. Now the notes of the weird music came floating to him on the
soft air, more and more distinctly. It seemed to the boy as though the
violin fairly sobbed with the spirit of the one whose fingers trailed
the bow across those taut strings.
"It's wonderful, that's what!" Elmer was telling himself for the tenth
time as he kept on walking, and straining his hearing more and more.
"Why, I've heard some pretty fine players, but never anything like that!
Whoever can it be! I'd wager a heap that the gift of inherited genius is
back of that playing. I can see that he isn't an educated violinist at
all; but the notes are meant to express the language of the soul within.
Oh, I'm glad now I decided to start out; because I wouldn't have missed
this for anything!"
He knew that he was by now close to the spot, for the sounds came very
distinctly. As he continued to advance, Elmer kept watching, wondering
what manner of person he was going to see. Could some professional
violinist have taken a notion to spend his summer up here amidst the
solitudes, communing with Nature, so as to secure new inspiration for
his work? It would not be improbable, though there was that about the
playing to suggest an utter lack of training.
Now only a screen of bushes seemed to intervene. Once he had crept to
the further edge of these and Elmer would be able to see the one who
handled that bow so eloquently.
Three minutes later and he found himself looking eagerly out of his
leafy screen, to receive a fresh shock. Instead of a man with the looks
of a professor, or even a lady performer, he discovered that the party
responsible for those sweet chords and sad strains that pierced his
heart, was only a flaxen-haired boy not over ten years of age!
He sat there with his slender legs coiled up on a stump, and drew the
wonderful notes from his fiddle without any apparent effort, just as
though the music was in him, and had to find an outlet somehow. He was
barefooted, and dressed shabbily. Yet, despite these evidences of
poverty, Elmer could note what seemed to be a distinguished air about
the lad that fairly stunned him. He thought at once of Mark Twain's "The
Prince and the Pauper." Was this a real prince masquerading in dingy
apparel?
He lay there and drank in the wonderful harmony for a full quarter of an
hour, hardly daring to move lest his actions frighten the little chap,
and cause that flood of music to cease. All the while Elmer was trying
to figure out what it could mean. Was this boy Jem Shock's child; and,
if so, how in the wide world could the child have come into such an
amazing musical inheritance? Who was his mother, and had she sprung from
some genius known to the world of melody?
"No matter what the answer is," Elmer told himself, "that child has
genius deeply planted in his soul; and it will be a burning shame if he
never has a chance to be educated along the right channel. I'm bound to
bring this up before some of the good people at home, and see what can
be done. Oh! if only they could hear him as I am doing right now, it
would be easy to collect a sum of money to start him on the road to
becoming the most famous of American violinists. I never heard such
wonderful music in all my life. He mustn't get away from me now."
Elmer said this last because he saw that the boy was apparently about to
cease playing. He had tucked his violin away in a much-soiled bag of
once green baize, and was climbing down from the stump, as though to
depart from the theatre he apparently liked above all other places for
his daily concert.
So Elmer stepped forth and swiftly approached. The boy did not hear his
footsteps at first, for Elmer knew how to tread softly; but presently he
looked around and for a moment the scout leader feared he meant to dart
away.
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote A: See "The Hickory Ridge Boy Scouts Storm-Bound."]