It was no doubt partly pride, in having for once succeeded in evading
her grandmother's all-seeing eye, that enabled Mandy Ann to carry, at
a trot, a basket almost as big as herself--to carry it all the way
down the hill to the river, without once stumbling or stopping to take
breath. The basket was not only large, but uneasy, seeming to be
troubled by internal convulsions, which made it tip and lurch in a way
that from time to time threatened to upset Mandy Ann's unstable
equilibrium. But being a young person of character, she kept right on,
ignoring the fact that the stones on the shore were very sharp to her
little bare feet.
At last she reached the sunshiny cove, with shoals of minnows
flickering about its amber shallows, which was the goal of her flight.
Here, tethered to a stake on the bank, lay the high-sided old bateau,
which Mandy Ann had long coveted as a perfectly ideal play-house. Its
high prow lightly aground, its stern afloat, it swung lazily in the
occasional puffs of lazy air. Mandy Ann was only four years old, and
her red cotton skirt just came to her dimpled grimy little knees, but
with that unfailing instinct of her sex she gathered up the skirt and
clutched it securely between her breast and the rim of the basket.
Then she stepped into the water, waded to the edge of the old bateau
and climbed aboard.
The old craft was quite dry inside, and filled with a clean pungent
scent of warm tar. Mandy Ann shook out her red skirt and her yellow
curls, and set down the big covered basket on the bottom of the
bateau. The basket continued to move tempestuously.
"Oh, naughty! naughty!" she exclaimed, shaking her chubby finger at
it. "Jest a minute, jest a teenty minute, an' we'll see!"
Peering over the bow, Mandy Ann satisfied herself that the bateau,
though its bottom grated on the pebbles, was completely surrounded by
water. Then sitting down on the bottom, she assured herself that she
was hidden by the boat's high flaring sides from the sight of all
interfering domestic eyes on shore. She felt sure that even the eyes
of her grandmother, in the little grey cottage back on the green hill,
could not reach her in this unguessed retreat. With a sigh of
unutterable content she made her way back into the extreme stern of
the bateau, lugging the tempestuous basket with her. Sitting down
flat, she took the basket in her lap and loosened the cover, crooning
softly as she did so. Instantly a whiskered, brown snub-nose,
sniffing and twitching with interrogation, appeared at the edge. A
round brown head, with little round ears and fearless bright dark
eyes, immediately popped over the edge. With a squeak of satisfaction
a fat young woodchuck, nearly full-grown, clambered forth and ran up
on Mandy Ann's shoulder. The bateau, under the influence of the sudden
weight in the stern, floated clear of the gravel and swung softly at
the end of its rope.
Observing that the bateau was afloat, Mandy Ann was delighted. She
felt doubly secure, now, from pursuit. Pulling a muddy carrot from
her pocket she held it up to the woodchuck, which was nuzzling
affectionately at her curls. But the smell of the fresh earth reminded
the little animal of something which he loved even better than
Mandy Ann--even better, indeed, than a juicy carrot. He longed to
get away, for a little while, from the loving but sometimes too
assiduous attention with which his little mistress surrounded
him--to get away and burrow to his heart's content in the cool brown
earth, full of grass-roots. Ignoring the carrot, he clambered down in
his soft, loose-jointed fashion, from Mandy Ann's shoulder, and ran
along the gunwale to the bow. When he saw that he could not reach
shore without getting into the water, which he loathed, he grumbled
squeakingly, and kept bobbing his round head up and down, as if he
contemplated making a jump for it.
At these symptoms Mandy Ann, who had been eyeing him, called to him
severely. "Naughty!" she cried. "Come back this very instant, sir!
You'd jes' go an' tell Granny on me! Come right back to your muzzer
this instant!" At the sound of her voice the little animal seemed to
think better of his rashness. The flashing and rippling of the water
daunted him. He returned to Mandy Ann's side and fell to gnawing
philosophically at the carrot which she thrust under his nose.
This care removed, Mandy Ann took an irregular bundle out of the
basket. It was tied up in a blue-and-white handkerchief. Untying it
with extreme care, as if the contents were peculiarly precious, she
displayed a collection of fragments of many-coloured glass and
gay-painted china. Gloating happily over these treasures, which
flashed like jewels in the sun, she began to sort them out and arrange
them with care along the nearest thwart of the bateau. Mandy Ann was
making what the children of the Settlement knew and esteemed as a
"Chaney House." There was keen rivalry among the children as to both
location and furnishing of these admired creations; and to Mandy Ann's
daring imagination it had appeared that a "Chaney House" in the old
bateau would be something surpassing dreams.
For an hour or more Mandy Ann was utterly absorbed in her enchanting
task. So quiet she was over it that every now and then a yellow-bird
or a fly-catcher would alight upon the edge of the bateau to bounce
away again with a startled and indignant twitter. The woodchuck,
having eaten his carrot, curled up in the sun and went to sleep.
Mandy Ann's collection was really a rich assortment of colour. Every
piece in it was a treasure in her eyes. But much as she loved the bits
of painted china, she loved the glass better. There were red bits, and
green of many shades, and blue, yellow, amber, purple and opal. Each
piece, before arranging it in its allotted place on the thwart, she
would lift to her eyes and survey the world through it. Some near
treetops, and the blue sky piled with white fleeces of summer clouds,
were all of the world she could see from her retreat; but viewed
through different bits of glass these took on an infinite variety of
wonder and delight. So engrossed she was, it quite escaped her notice
that the old bateau was less steady in its movements than it had been
when first she boarded it. She did not even observe the fact that
there were no longer any treetops in her fairy-tinted pictures. At
last there sounded under the keel a strange gurgle, and the bateau
gave a swinging lurch which sent half the treasures of the "Chaney
House" clattering upon the bottom or into Mandy Ann's lap. The
woodchuck woke up frightened and scrambled into the shelter of its
mistress's arms.
Much surprised, Mandy Ann knelt upright and looked out over the edge
of the bateau. She was no longer in the little sheltered cove, but far
out on the river. The shores, slipping smoothly and swiftly past,
looked unfamiliar to her. Where she expected to see the scattered
cottages of the Settlement, a huge bank covered with trees, cut off
the view. While she was so engrossed with her coloured glass, a puff
of wind, catching the high sides of the bateau, had caused it to tug
at its tether. The rope, carelessly fastened by some impatient boy,
had slipped its hold; and the bateau had been swept smoothly out into
the hurrying current. Half a mile below, the river rounded a woody
point, and the drifting bateau was hidden from the sight of any one
who might have hurried to recover it.
At the moment, Mandy Ann was not frightened. Her blue eyes danced with
excitement as she tossed back her tousled curls. The river, flowing
swiftly but smoothly, flashed and rippled in the noon sun in a
friendly fashion, and it was most interesting to see how fast the
shores slipped by. There was no suggestion of danger; and probably, at
the back of her little brain, Mandy Ann felt that the beautiful river,
which she had always loved and never been allowed to play with, would
bring her back to her Granny as gently and unexpectedly as it had
carried her away. Meanwhile, she felt only the thrilling and utterly
novel excitement of the situation. As the bateau swung in an
occasional oily eddy she laughed gaily at the motion, and felt as
proud as if she were doing it herself. And the woodchuck, which had
been very nervous at first, feeling that something was wrong, was so
reassured by its mistress's evident satisfaction that it curled up
again on the bottom and hastened to resume its slumber.
In a little while the river curved again, sweeping back to its
original course. Suddenly, in the distance, the bright spire of the
Settlement church came into view, and then the familiar cottages.
Mandy Ann's laughing face grew grave, as she saw how very, very far
away they looked. They took on, also, from the distance, a certain
strangeness which smote her heart. This wonderful adventure of hers
ceased to have any charm for her. She wanted to go back at once. Then
her grandmother's little grey house on the slope came into view. Oh,
how terribly little and queer and far away it looked. And it was
getting farther and farther away every minute. A frightened cry of
"Granny! Granny! Take me home!" broke from her lips. She stood up, and
made her way hurriedly to the other end of the bateau, which, being
upstream, was nearer home. As her weight reached the bow, putting it
deeper into the grip of the current, the bateau slowly swung around
till it headed the other way. Mandy Ann turned and hurried again to
the point nearest home. Whereupon the bateau calmly repeated its
disconcerting manoeuvre. All at once the whole truth of the situation
burst upon Mandy Ann's comprehension. She was lost. She was being
carried away so far that she would never, never get back. She was
being swept out into the terrible wilds that she had heard stories
about. Her knees gave away in her terror. Crouching, a little red
tumbled heap, on the bottom of the bateau, she lifted up her voice in
shrill wailings, which so frightened the woodchuck that he came and
crept under her skirt.
Below the Settlement the river ran for miles through a country of
ever-deepening desolation, without cabin or clearing near its shores,
till it emptied itself into the yet more desolate lake known as "Big
Lonely," a body of forsaken water about ten miles long, surrounded by
swamps and burnt-lands. From the foot of Big Lonely the river raged
away over a mile of thundering ledges, through a chasm known to the
lumbermen as "The Devil's Trough." The fury of this madness having
spent itself between the black walls of the canyon, the river
continued rather sluggishly its long course toward the sea. A few
miles below the Settlement the river began to get hurried and
turbulent, chafing white through rocky rapids. When the bateau plunged
into the first of these, Mandy Ann's wailing and sobbing stopped
abruptly. The clamour of the white waves and the sight of their
lashing wrath fairly stupefied her. She sat up on the middle thwart,
with the shivering woodchuck clutched to her breast, and stared about
with wild eyes. On every side the waves leaped up, black, white, and
amber, jumping at the staggering bateau. But appalling as they looked
to Mandy Ann, they were not particularly dangerous to the sturdy,
high-sided craft which carried her. The old bateau had been built to
navigate just such waters. Nothing could upset it, and on account of
its high, flaring sides, no ordinary rapids could swamp it. It rode
the loud chutes triumphantly, now dipping its lofty nose, now bumping
and reeling, but always making the passage without serious mishap. All
through the rapids Mandy Ann would sit silent, motionless, fascinated
with horror. But in the long, comparatively smooth reaches she would
recover herself enough to cry softly upon the woodchuck's soft brown
fur, till that prudent little animal, exasperated at the damp of her
caresses, wriggled away and crawled into his hated basket.
At last, when the bateau had run a dozen of these noisy "rips," Mandy
Ann grew surfeited with terror, and thought to comfort herself.
Sitting down again upon the bottom of the bateau, she sadly sought to
revive her interest in the "Chaney House." She would finger the
choicest bits of painted porcelain, and tell herself how pretty they
were. She would choose a fragment of scarlet or purple glass, hold it
up to her pathetic, tear-stained face, and try to interest herself in
the coloured landscape that filed by. But it was no use. Even the
amber glass had lost its power to interest her. And at length,
exhausted by her terror and her loneliness, she sank down and fell
asleep.
It was late afternoon when Mandy Ann fell asleep, and her sleep was
the heavy semi-torpor coming after unrelieved grief and fear. It was
unjarred by the pitching of the fiercer rapids which the bateau
presently encountered. The last mile of the river's course before
joining the lake consisted of deep, smooth "dead-water"; but, a strong
wind from the north-west having sprung up toward the end of the day,
the bateau drove on with undiminished speed. On the edge of the
evening, when the sun was just sinking into the naked tops of the
rampikes along the western shore, the bateau swept out upon the
desolate reaches of Big Lonely, and in the clutch of the wind hastened
down mid-lake to seek the roaring chutes and shrieking vortices of the
"Devil's Trough."
* * * * *
Out in the middle of the lake, where the heavy wind had full sweep,
the pitching and thumping of the big waves terrified the poor little
woodchuck almost to madness; but they made no impression on the
wearied child, where she lay sobbing tremulously in her sleep. They
made a great impression, however, on a light birch canoe, which was
creeping up alongshore in the teeth of the wind, urged by two paddles.
The paddlers were a couple of lumbermen, returning from the mouth of
the river. All the spring and early summer they had been away from the
Settlement, working on "the drive" of the winter's logging, and now,
hungry for home, they were fighting their way doggedly against wind
and wave. There was hardly a decent camping-ground on all the
swamp-cursed shores of Big Lonely, except at the very head of the
lake, where the river came in, and this spot the voyagers were
determined to make before dark. They would then have clear poling
ahead of them next day, to get them home to the Settlement in time for
supper.
The man in the bow, a black-bearded, sturdy figure in a red shirt,
paddled with slow, unvarying strokes, dipping his big maple paddle
deep and bending his back to it, paying no heed whatever to the heavy
black waves which lurched at him every other second and threatened
to overwhelm the bow of his frail craft. He had none of the
responsibility. His part was simply to supply power, steady,
unwavering power, to make head against the relentless wind. The man
in the stern, on the other hand, had to think and watch and meet
every assault, as well as thrust the canoe forward into the tumult.
He was a gaunt, long-armed young giant, bareheaded, with shaggy
brown hair blown back from his red-tanned face. His keen grey eyes
noted and measured every capricious lake-wave as it lunged at him,
and his wrist, cunning and powerful, delicately varied each
stroke to meet each instant's need. It was not enough that the canoe
should be kept from broaching-to and swamping or upsetting. He was
anxious that it should not ship water, and wet certain treasures
which they were taking home to the backwoods from the shops of the
little city down by the sea. And while his eyes seemed to be so
engrossingly occupied in the battle with the waves of Big Lonely,
they were all the time refreshing themselves with a vision--the
vision of a grey house on a sunny hill-top, where his mother was
waiting for him, and where a little yellow-haired girl would scream
"_Dad_die, oh, Dad_die_!" when she saw him coming up the road.
The dogged voyagers were within perhaps two miles of the head of the
lake, with the sun gone down behind the desolate rampikes, and strange
tints of violet and rose and amber, beautiful and lonely, touching the
angry turbulence of the waves, when the man in the bow, whose eyes
were free to wander, caught sight of the drifting bateau. It was a
little ahead of them, but farther out in the lake.
"Ain't that old Joe's bateau out yonder, Chris?" he queried, his
trained woodsman's eye recognizing the craft by some minute detail of
build or blemish.
"I reckon it be!" answered Chris, after a moment's scrutiny. "He's let
her git adrift. Water must be raisin' sudden!"
"She'll be a fine quality o' kindlin' wood in another hour, the rate
she's travelling" commented the other with mild interest. But the
young giant in the stern was more concerned. He was sorry that old Joe
should lose his boat.
"Darned old fool, not to tie her!" he growled. "Ef 'twarn't fer this
wind ag'in' us, we could ketch it an' tow it ashore fer him. But we
can't."
"Wouldn't stop fer it ef 't had a bag o' gold into it!" grunted the
other, slogging on his paddle with renewed vigour as he looked forward
to the camp-ground still so far ahead. He was hungry and tired, and
couldn't even take time to fill his pipe in that hurly-burly.
Meanwhile the bateau had swept down swiftly, and passed them at a
distance of not more than a hundred yards. It was with a qualm of
regret that Chris saw it go by, to be ground to splinters in the
yelling madness of the Devil's Trough. After it had passed, riding the
waves bravely like the good old craft that it was, he glanced back
after it in half-humorous regret. As he did so, his eye caught
something that made him look again. A little furry brown creature was
peering over the gunwale at the canoe. The gunwale tipped toward him
at that instant and he saw it distinctly. Yes, it was a woodchuck, and
no mistake. And it seemed to be making mute appeal to him to come and
save it from a dreadful doom. Chris hesitated, looking doubtfully at
his companion's heaving back. It looked an unresponsive back.
Moreover, Chris felt half ashamed of his own compassionate impulse. He
knew that he was considered foolishly softhearted about animals and
children and women, though few men cared to express such an opinion to
him too frankly. He suspected that, in the present case, his companion
would have a right to complain of him. But he could not stand the idea
of letting the little beast--which had so evidently appealed to him
for succour--go down into the horrors of the Devil's Trough. His mind
was made up.
"Mart," he exclaimed, "I'm goin' to turn. There's somethin' aboard
that there old bateau that I want." And he put the head of the canoe
straight up into a big wave.
"The devil there is!" cried the other, taking in his paddle and
looking around in angry protest. "What is it?"
"Paddle, ye loon! Paddle hard!" ordered Chris. "I'll tell ye when we
git her 'round."
Thus commanded, and the man at the stern paddle being supreme in a
canoe, the backwoodsman obeyed with a curse. It was no time to argue,
while getting the canoe around in that sea. But as soon as the canoe
was turned, and scudding with frightened swoops down the waves in
pursuit of the fleeing bateau, he saw, and understood.
"Confound you, Chris McKeen, if 'tain't nothin' but a blankety blank
woodchuck!" he shouted, making as if to back water and try to turn the
canoe again.
Chris's grey eyes hardened. "Look a' here, Mart Babcock," he shouted,
"don't you be up to no foolishness. Ye kin cuss all ye like--but
either paddle as I tell ye or take in yer paddle an' set quiet. _I'm_
runnin' this 'ere canoe."
Babcock took in his paddle, cursing bitterly.
"A woodchuck! A measly woodchuck!" he shouted, with unutterable
contempt expressed in every word. "I know'd ye was a fool, Chris
McKeen, but I didn't know ye was so many kinds of a mush-head of a
fool!"
"Course it's a woodchuck!" agreed Chris, surging on his paddle. "Do ye
think I'd let the leetle critter go down the 'Trough,' jest so's ye
could git your bacon an' tea an hour sooner? I always did like
woodchucks, anyways."
"I'll take it out o' yer hide fer this when we git ashore; you wait!"
stormed Babcock, courageously. He knew it would be some time before
they could get ashore, and so he would have a chance to forget his
threat.
[Illustration: "'It's--Mandy Ann!'"]
"That's all right, Mart!" assented McKeen. "My hide'll be all here
waitin' on ye. But fer now you jest git ready to do ez I tell ye, an'
don't let the canoe bump ez we come up alongside the bateau. It's
goin' to be a mite resky, in this sea, gittin' hold of the leetle
critter. I'm goin' to take it home for Mandy Ann."
As the canoe swept down upon the swooping and staggering bateau,
Babcock put out his paddle in readiness to fend or catch as he might
be directed. A moment later Chris ran the canoe past and brought her
up dexterously under the lee of the high-walled craft. Babcock caught
her with a firm grip, at the same time holding her off with the
paddle, and glanced in, while Chris's eyes were still occupied. His
dark face went white as cotton.
"My God, Chris! Forgive me! I didn't know!" he groaned.
"It's--Mandy Ann!" exclaimed her father, in a hushed voice, climbing
into the bateau and catching the child into his arms.