But things on this old planet seemed even enough the next day, when,
after a dozen hours of much needed sleep, the campers’ eyes opened upon
a scene which might have stirred any sluggish blood—and they were not
sluggards.
A fresh breath of frost was in the air to quicken circulation and
hunger. Under a smiling sun an October breeze frolicked through leaves
with tints of fire and gold, humming, while it swiftly skimmed over
their beauties, as if it was reading a wind’s poem of autumn.
Katahdin looked as though it had suddenly taken on the white crown of
age, with age’s stately calm. The weather had grown colder during the
night. Summer—the balmy Indian summer, with its late spells of
sultriness—had taken a weeping departure yesterday. To-day there was no
threatening of rain-storm or slide. The mountain’s principal peaks had
fleecy wraps of snow.
“Ha! Old Katahdin has put on its nightcap,” exclaimed Cyrus, when the
trio issued from their tent in the morning. “Listen, you fellows! This
is the 21st of October. I propose that we start back to our home-camp
to-morrow. It will take us two days to reach Millinokett Lake. Then
we’ll set our faces towards civilization the first week in November, or
thereabouts.”
“Oh, bother it! So soon!” protested Dol.
“Now, Young Rattlebrain,”—Garst took the calm tone of
leadership,—“please consider that this is the first time you’ve camped
out in Maine woods. You might find it fun to be snowed up in camp
during a first fall, and to tramp homewards through a thawing slush.
But your father wouldn’t relish its effects on your British
constitution. And out here—once we’re well into November—there’s no
knowing when the temperature
may drop to zero with mighty short notice. I’ve often turned in at
night, feeling as if I were on ‘India’s coral strands’ and woke up next
morning thinking I had popped off in my sleep to ‘Greenland’s icy
mountains.’ Herb Heal! you know what tricks a thermometer, if we had
one, might play in our camp from this out; talk sense to these
fellows.”
Herb, who had risen an hour before his charges, had already fetched
fresh water, coaxed up the fire, and was busily mixing flapjacks for
breakfast. His ears, however, had caught the drift of the talk.
“Guess Cyrus is right,” he said. “Seeing as it’s the first time you
Britishers have slept off your spring mattresses, I’d say, light out
for the city and steam-heat afore the snow comes. Oh! you needn’t get
your mad up. I ain’t thinking you’d growl at being snowed in. I know
better.
“By the great horn spoon! I b’lieve I’ll go right along to Greenville
with you,” exclaimed the guide a minute later. “I might get a chance to
pick up a bargain of a second-hand rifle there. And I guess you’d be
mighty sick o’ your luck, Dol, if you had to lug them moose-antlers
part o’ the way yerself.
I ain’t stuck on carrying ’em either, if we can get a jumper.”
But there was a third reason, still more powerful than these two, why
he should make a trip to the distant town, which stirred Herb’s mind
while he stirred his cakes. His sturdy sense told him that it would be
well he should put in an appearance when Cyrus made a statement before
the Greenville coroner as to the cause and manner of Chris’s death.
“Now, you boys, we don’t want no fooling this blessed day,” he said,
when breakfast was in order, and the campers were emptying for the
second time their tin mugs of coffee. “There’s sport before us—tearing
good sport. Whatever do you s’pose I come on this morning when I was
cruising over the bog for water? Caribou-tracks! Caribou-tracks, as
sure as there’s a caribou in Maine!
“Who’s for following ’em? We hain’t got much provisions left; and I
guess a chunk of broiled caribou-steak about as big as a horse’s upper
lip would cheer each of us up, and make us feel first-rate. What say,
boys?”
“By all that’s glorious!” ejaculated Cyrus, his eyes striking light.
“Caribou-signs! Of course we’ll follow them. A bit of fresh meat
would be pretty acceptable, and a good view of a herd of caribou would
be still more so—to me, at any rate. That would just about top off our
exploring to a T.”
“We’ve got to be mighty spry, then,” said the woodsman, lurching to his
feet, muscles swelling, and nostrils spreading like a sleuth-hound’s.
“If you want caribou, you’ve got to take ’em while they’re around. Old
hunters have a saying: ‘They’re here to-day, to-morrow nowhere.’ And
that’s about the size of it.”
“Let’s start off this minute!” Dol jerked out the words while he bolted
the last salt shreds of his pork. “Hurry up, you fellows! You’re as
slow as snails. I’d eat the jolliest meal that was ever cooked in three
minutes.”
“No wonder you squirm and shout all night, then, until sane people with
good digestions feel ready to blow your head off,” laughed Cyrus, who
was one of the laggards; but he disposed of the last mouthfuls of his
own meal with little regard for his digestive canal.
In rather less than twenty minutes the four were scanning with wide
eyes certain fresh foot-marks, plainly printed on a patch of soft
oozing clay, midway on the boggy tract.
“Whew! Bless me! Those caribou-tracks?” Cyrus caught his breath with
amazement while he crouched to examine them. “Why, they’re bigger than
any moose-tracks we’ve seen!”
“Isn’t that great?” gasped Dol.
“Well, come to think of it, it is,” answered the guide, in the stealthy
tones of an expectant hunter; “for a full-grown bull-caribou don’t
stand so high as a full-sized moose by two or three feet, and he don’t
weigh more’n half as much. Still, for all that, caribou deer beat every
other animal of the deer tribe, so far’s I know, in the size of their
hoofs, as you’ll see bime-by if luck’s with us! And my stars! how they
scud along on them big hoofs. I’d back ’em in a race against the
smartest of your city chaps that ever spun through Maine on his
new-fangled ‘wheel,’ that he’s so sot on.”
Garst, who was an enthusiastic cyclist, with a gurgle of unbelieving
mirth, prepared to dispute this. There might have ensued a wordy
sparring about caribou versus bicycle, had not the guide been impressed
with the necessity for prompt action at the expense of speech.
“We must quit our talk and get a move on,” he whispered, and led the
forward march across the bog, his eyes every now and again narrowing
into two gleaming slits, as if he were debating within himself, while
he studied the ground or some bush which showed signs of being nibbled
or trampled. Then he would sweep the horizon with long-range vision.
But not a tuft of hair or glancing horn hove in sight.
The marsh was left behind. The hoof-marks were lost in a wide meadowy
sweep of open ground, bounded at a distance by an irregular line of
hills, sparsely covered with spruce-trees.
Towards these Herb headed, leaving Katahdin away back in the rear.
“’Shaw! I’m afeard they’re ‘nowhere’ by this time,” he whispered, when
the hunters reached the rising ground, glancing at Dol, who stepped
lightly beside him.
The boy’s lips parted to breathe out compressed disappointment; but his
answer was lost in a sharp whirr! whirr! and a sudden flutter of wings
above his head. His eyes went aloft towards a bough about eight feet
from the ground. So did Herb’s, and lit with a new, whimsical hope.
“A spruce partridge!” hissed the guide, his voice thrilling even in its
stealthy whisper. “That’s luck—dead sure! The Injuns say, ‘The red eye
never tells a lie;’” and the woodsman pointed out the strip of bare red
skin above the beady eyes of the bird, which cuddled itself on its
branch, and looked down at them unfrighted.
Dol Farrar, who in this region of moose-birds and moose-calls could
believe in anything, felt both his spirits and credulity rise together.
He managed to keep abreast of the trained hunter, as the latter, with
swift, stretching, silent steps climbed the hill. And he heard the
hunter’s sudden cluck of triumph as he reached the top, and looked down
upon the valley at the other side, the inarticulate sound being
followed by one softly rung word,—
“Caribou!”
“Caribou? They look awfully like quiet Alderney cows, except for the
big antlers!” The amazed exclamation stirred the English boy’s tongue,
but he did not make it audible.
Following Herb’s example, he stretched himself flat upon his stomach
under a spruce, and stared over the brow of the hill at a forest
pantomime which was being acted in the valley.
Cautiously slipping from tree to tree, Cyrus and Neal, who had lagged a
few steps behind, joined the leaders, and lay low, eagerly gazing too.
On its farther side the hill was yet more sparsely covered, the
scattered spruces showing gaps between them where the lumberman’s axe
had made havoc. Through these openings, which were as shafts of light
amid the evergreen’s waving play, the hunters saw the sun silver a
brown pool in the valley. A few maples and birches waved their
shrivelling splendors of scarlet and buff at irregular distances from
the water. And in and out among these trees moved in graceful woodland
frolic four or five large animals,—perhaps more,—their doings being
plainly seen by the watchers on the hill.
Their coats, like those of the smaller deer, were of a brown which
seemed to have caught its dye from the autumnal tints surrounding them.
In shape they justified Dol’s criticism; for they certainly were not
unlike cows of the Alderney breed, save for the widely branching horns.
Of the strength of these antlers the hidden spectators got sudden,
startling proof, as the two largest caribou drew off from the rest, and
charged each other in a real or sham fight, the battle-clang of their
meeting horns sounding far away to the hill-top.
“Them two bulls are having a big time of it. Look at ’em now, with the
small one. That’s a stranger in the herd,” hummed Herb into the ear of
the boy next to him, his voice so light and even that it might have
been but the murmur of a falling leaf. “It’s an all-fired pity that
we’re jest too far off for a shot.”
The “stranger,” which the woodsman’s long-range eye had singled out,
was of a smaller size and paler color than the other caribou; and
Herb—who could interpret the forest pantomime far better than he would
have explained the acting of human beings on a stage—told his
companions in whispers and signs that it was in distressed dread of its
company.
The attentions which the rest paid to it seemed at first only friendly
and facetious. The two big bulls, after trying their mettle against
each other for a minute, separated, and moved towards it, prodded it
lightly with their horns, and playfully bit its sides, a sport in which
the other members of the herd joined.
“They’re playing it, like a cat with a mouse; but I guess they’ll
murder it in the long run if it’s sickly or weak. Caribou are the
biggest bullies in these woods—to each other,” whispered Herb.
“By the great horn spoon! they’re doing for it now,” he gasped, a
minute later. “Sho!... if I only had my old Winchester here, I’d soon
stop their lynching. Try it, you, Cyrus! You’re a sure shot, an’ you
can creep within a hundred yards of ’em without being scented. Try it,
man!”
The guide’s flashing eyes and quick signs conveyed half his meaning;
his excited sentences were so low that Garst only caught fag-ends of
them. But they were emphasized unexpectedly by a faint bleating sound
rising from the valley,—the helpless bleat of a buffeted creature.
“We want meat, and I’m going to spring a surprise on those bullies,”
muttered Cyrus, setting his teeth.
Still lying flat, he shot his eyes down the hill-slope, forming a plan
of descent; then he lifted the rifle beside him, and jammed some fresh
cartridges into the magazine.
Ere a dozen long breaths had been drawn, he was stealthily moving
towards the valley, slipping from spruce to spruce—an arrowlike,
unnoticeable figure in his dark gray tweeds.
He was close to the foot of the hill when the three breathless fellows
above saw him raise his rifle, just as the unfortunate little caribou,
after many efforts to escape, had been beaten to its knees.
“He’ll drop one, sure! He’s a crack shot—is Cyrus! There! he’s drawing
bead. Bravo!... he’s floored the biggest!”
Herb’s gusty breath blew the sentences through his nostrils, while the
sudden, explosive bang of the Winchester cut through all other sounds,
and set the air a-quiver.
Twice Cyrus fired.
The largest bull-caribou leaped three feet upward, wheeled about,
staggered to his knees. A third shot stopped his bullying forever.
“Hurrah! I guess you’ve got the leader—the best of the herd. That other
bull was a buster too! You might ha’ dropped him, if you’d been in the
humor!” bellowed the guide, springing to his legs, and letting out his
pent-up wind in a full-blast roar of triumph.
He well knew that Cyrus, “being a queer specimen sportsman,” and the
right sort after all, would be satisfied with the one inevitable deed
of death.
As their leader fell, the caribou raised their heads, stared in
stiffened wonder for a few seconds, offering a steady mark for the
smoking rifle if it had been in the grasp of a butcher. Then, as though
propelled by one shock, they cut for the wood at dazzling speed.
A minute—and they were in the distance as tufts of hair blown before a
storm-wind.
The half-killed weakling sought shelter more slowly in another
direction.
“Well done, Cy!”
“Congratulations, old man!”
“You’ve got a trophy now. You’ll never leave this splendid head behind.
My eye, what antlers!”
Such were the exclamations blown to Garst’s ears by the hot breath of
his English friends, as they reached his side, and stooped with him to
examine the fallen forest beauty.
“No; I guess we can manage to haul the head back to camp, with as much
meat as we need. You’ll have your ‘chunk of caribou-steak as big as a
horse’s upper lip,’ to-night, Herb, and bigger if you want it. I’m
tickled at getting the antlers, especially as I didn’t shoot this
beauty for the sake of them. I’ll hook them on my shoulders when we
start back to Millinokett to-morrow.”
So answered the successful hunter, tingling with some pride in the
skill which, because of his reverence for all life, he generally kept
out of sight.
And he stuck to his purpose about the antlers.
Cheered and invigorated by a sumptuous supper and breakfast of broiled
caribou-steaks, supplemented by Herb’s lightest cakes, and carrying
some of the meat with them as provision for the way, the campers
accomplished their backward tramp to the log camp on Millinokett Lake
in fulness of strength and spirits.
Once or twice during the journey, when the guide was stalking ahead,
and thought himself unnoticed, the city fellows saw him lift his right
hand and look at it for a full minute. Then it swung heavily back to
his side.
“He’s missing his rifle, the partner that never went back on him,” said
Cyrus. “Say, boys! I’ve got an idea!”
“Out with it if it’s worth anything,” grunted Dol. “I never have ideas
these days. Too much doing. I don’t feel as if there was a steady peg
in me to hang one on.”
“Oh! quit your nonsense, Chick, and listen. Herb will wait for us in a
few minutes,” was the Boston man’s impatient rejoinder.
Then followed a low-toned consultation, in the course of which such
talk as this was heard:—
“Our Pater will want to shell out when he hears about Chris.”
“So will mine. He’ll be for sending Herb a cool five hundred or
thousand dollars, right away. And, as likely as not, Herb would feel
flaring mad, and ready to chuck it in his face. He’s not the sort of
fellow to stand being paid by an outsider for a plucky act, done in the
best hour of his life.”
“Oh, I say! wouldn’t it be decenter to manage the thing ourselves,
without letting anybody who doesn’t know him meddle in it?” This
suggestion was in Dol’s voice. “Neal and I could draw our allowances
for three months in advance; the Pater will be willing enough. We’ll be
precious hard up without them, but we’ll rub through somehow. Then you
can chip in an even third, Cy, and we’ll order an A I rifle,—the best
ever invented, from the best company in America,—silver plate, with his
name,—and all the rest of it. I’d swamp my allowance for a year to see
Herb’s face when he gets it.”
“That’s the plan! You do have occasional moments of wisdom, Dol; I’ll
say that much for you,” commented the leader. “Well, Herb has taken a
special sort of liking to you. You may tip him a hint to wait in
Greenville for a few days, and not to go looking for second-hand rifles
till he hears from us. Better not say anything until we’re just
parting. Ten to one, though, you’ll blurt the whole thing out in some
harebrained minute, or give it away in your sleep.”
“Blow me if I do!” answered Dol solemnly.
[Illustration]