In spite of the rains the waters of the Shelburne were too low at this
point to descend in the canoes. The pools were pretty small affairs and
the rapids long, shallow and very ragged. It is good sport to run rapids
in a canoe when there is plenty of swift water and a fair percentage of
danger. But these were dangerous only to the canoes, which in many
places would not even float, loaded as we were. It became evident that
the guides would have to wade and drag, with here and there a carry, to
get the boats down to deeper water--provided always there _was_ deeper
water, which we did not doubt.
Eddie and I set out ahead, and having had our morning's fishing, kept
pretty well to the bank where the walking was fairly good. We felt
pleasant and comfortable and paid not much attention to the stream,
except where a tempting pool invited a cast or two, usually with prompt
returns, though we kept only a few, smaller fish.
We found the banks more attractive. Men had seldom disturbed the life
there, and birds sang an arm's length away, or regarded us quietly,
without distrust. Here and there a hermit thrush--the sweetest and
shyest of birds--himself unseen, charmed us with his mellow syllables.
Somehow, in the far, unfretted removal of it all, we felt at peace with
every living thing, and when a partridge suddenly dropped down on a limb
not three yards away, neither of us offered to shoot, though we had our
rifles and Eddie his B. M. license to kill and skin and hence to eat,
and though fish were at a discount and game not overplentiful.
And then we were rewarded by a curious and beautiful exhibition. For the
partridge was a mother bird, and just at our feet there was a peeping
and a scampering of little brown balls that disappeared like magic among
the leaves--her fussy, furry brood.
I don't think she mistrusted our intent--at least, not much. But she
wanted to make sure. She was not fully satisfied to have us remain just
there, with her babies hiding not two yards away. She dropped on the
ground herself, directly in front of us--so close that one might almost
touch her--and letting one of her wings fall loosely, looked back at us
over her shoulder as if to say, "You see, it is broken. If you wish, you
can catch me, easily."
So we let her fool us--at least, we let her believe we were
deceived--and made as if to stoop for her, and followed each time when
she ran a few steps farther ahead, until little by little she had led us
away from her family. Then when she was sure that we really did not want
her or her chickens, but cared only to be amused, she ran quickly a
little way farther and disappeared, and we saw her no more. Within a
minute or two from that time she was probably back with her little
folks, and they were debating as to whether we were bird or beast, and
why we carried that curious combination of smells.
It was such incidents as this that led us on. The morning was gone,
presently, and we had no means of knowing how far we had come. It seemed
to us but a short way. We forgot the windings of the stream, some of
which we had eluded by cut-offs, and how many hard places there would be
for Del and Charlie to get over with the canoes. As a matter of fact we
rather expected them to overtake us at any time, and as the pools became
deeper and longer and the rapids somewhat more navigable we feared to
leave the stream on the chance of being passed. It was about one o'clock
when we reached a really beautiful stretch of water, wide and deep, and
navigable for an indefinite distance. Here we stopped to get fish for
luncheon, and to wait for the boats, which we anticipated at any moment.
It was a wonderful place to fish. One could wade out and get long casts
up and down, and the trout rose to almost any fly. Eddie caught a white
perch at last and I two yellow ones, not very plentiful in these waters
and most desirable from the food point of view. The place seemed really
inexhaustible. I think there were few trout larger than fourteen inches
in length, but of these there were a great many, and a good supply of
the speckled beauty size. When we had enough of these for any possible
luncheon demand, and were fairly weary of casting and reeling in, we
suddenly realized that we were hungry; also that it was well into the
afternoon and that there were no canoes in sight. Furthermore, in the
enthusiasm of the sport we had both of us more than once stepped beyond
the gunwales of our waders and had our boots full of water, besides
being otherwise wet. Once, in fact, I had slipped off a log on all
fours, in a rather deep place. It began to be necessary that we should
have a camp and be fed. Still we waited hopefully, expecting every
moment to see the canoes push around the bend.
Eventually we were seized with misgivings. Could the guides have met
with shipwreck in some desperate place and disabled one or both of the
canoes, perhaps losing our stores? The thought was depressing. Was it
possible that they had really passed us during some period when we had
left the water, and were now far ahead? We could not believe it. Could
it be that the river had divided at some unseen point and that we had
followed one fork and they another? It did not seem probable. Perhaps,
after all, we had come farther than we believed, and they had been
delayed by the difficulties of navigation.
But when another hour passed and they did not appear or answer to our
calls, the reason for their delay did not matter. We were wet, cold and
hungry. Food and fire were the necessary articles. We had not a scrap of
food except our uncooked fish, and it would be no easy matter, without
ax or hatchet, to get a fire started in those rain-soaked woods. Also,
we had no salt, but that was secondary.
Eddie said he would try to build a fire if I would clean some fish, but
this proved pretty lonesome work for both of us. We decided to both
build and then both clean the fish. We dug down under the leaves for dry
twigs, but they were not plentiful. Then we split open some dead spruce
branches and got a few resinous slivers from the heart of them, a good
many in fact, and we patiently gathered bits of reasonably dry bark and
branches from under the sheltered side of logs and rocks and leaning
trees.
We meant to construct our fire very carefully and we did. We scooped a
little hollow in the ground for draught, and laid in some of the drier
pieces of bark, upon which to pile our spruce slivers. Upon these in
turn we laid very carefully what seemed to be our driest selections of
twigs, increasing the size with each layer, until we laid on limbs of
goodly bulk and had a very respectable looking heap of fuel, ready for
lighting on the windward side.
Our mistake was that we did not light it sooner. The weight of our
larger fuel had pressed hard upon our little heap of spruce slivers and
flattened it, when it should have remained loose and quickly
inflammable, with the larger fuel lying handy, to be added at the
proper moment. As it was, the tiny blaze had a habit of going out just
about the time when it ought to have been starting some bigger material.
When we did get a sickly flame going up through the little damp mess of
stuff, there was a good deal more smoke than fire and we were able to
keep the blaze alive only by energetic encouragement in the form of
blowing.
First Eddie would get down on his hands, with his chin against the
ground and blow until he was apoplectic and blind with smoke, and then I
would take my turn. I never saw two full-grown men so anxious over a
little measly fire in my life. We almost forgot that we were perishing
with cold and hunger ourselves in our anxiety to keep the spark of life
in that fire.
We saved the puny thing, finally, and it waxed strong. Then we put in a
good deal of time feeding and nursing our charge and making it warm and
comfortable before we considered ourselves. And how did the ungrateful
thing repay us? By filling our eyes with smoke and chasing us from side
to side, pursuing us even behind trees to blind and torture us with its
acrid smarting vapors. In fact, the perversity of campfire smoke remains
one of the unexplained mysteries. I have seen a fire properly built
between two tents--with good draught and the whole wide sky to hold the
smoke--suddenly send a column of suffocating vapor directly into the
door of the tent, where there was no draught, no room, no demand at all
for smoke. I have had it track me into the remotest corner of my
sleeping-bag and have found it waiting for me when I came up for a
breath of air. I have had it come clear around the tent to strangle me
when I had taken refuge on the back side. I have had it follow me
through the bushes, up a tree, over a cliff----
As I was saying, we got the fire going. After that the rest was easy. It
was simply a matter of cleaning a few trout, sticking them on sticks and
fighting the smoke fiend with one hand while we burnt and blackened the
trout a little with the other, and ate them, _sans_ salt, _sans_ fork,
_sans_ knife, _sans_ everything. Not that they were not good. I have
never eaten any better raw, unsalted trout anywhere, not even at
Delmonico's.
[Illustration: "It's all in a day's camping, of course."]
The matter of getting dry and warm was different. It is not the
pleasantest thing in the world, even by a very respectable fire such as
we had now achieved, to take off all of one's things without the
protection of a tent, especially when the woods are damp and trickly and
there is a still small breath of chill wind blowing, and to have to hop
and skip, on one foot and then on the other, to keep the circulation
going while your things are on a limb in the smoke, getting scalded and
fumigated, and black edged here and there where the flame has singed up
high. It's all in a day's camping, of course, and altogether worth
while, but when the shades of night are closing in and one is still
doing a spectral dance about a dying fire, in a wet wood, on a stomach
full of raw trout, then the camping day seems pretty long and there is
pressing need of other diversion.
It was well toward night when we decided that our clothes were scorched
enough for comfortable wear, and a late hour it was, for the June days
in the north woods are long. We had at no time lost sight of the river,
and we began to realize the positive necessity of locating our guides
and canoes. We had given up trying to understand the delay. We decided
to follow back up the river until we found them, or until we reached
some other branch which they might have chosen. It was just as we were
about to begin this discouraging undertaking that far up the bend we
heard a call, then another. We answered, both together, and in the reply
we recognized the tones of Charles the Strong.
Presently they came in sight--each dragging a canoe over the last riffle
just above the long hole. A moment later we had hurried back to meet two
of the weariest, wettest, most bedraggled mortals that ever poled and
dragged and carried canoe. All day they had been pulling and lifting;
loading, unloading and carrying those canoes and bags and baskets over
the Shelburne riffles, where not even the lightest craft could float.
How long had been the distance they did not know, but the miles had
been sore, tedious miles, and they had eaten nothing more than a
biscuit, expecting at every bend to find us waiting.
It was proper that we should make camp now at the first inviting place.
We offered to stop right there, where our fire was already going, but it
was decided that the ground was a poor selection, being rather low. We
piled into the canoes and shot down the long hole, while the light of
evening was fading from the sky. Several hundred yards below, the water
widened and the bank sloped higher. It seemed an attractive spot and we
already knew the fishing in these waters. But as a final test Eddie made
a cast as we rounded, tossing his flies into an inviting swirl just
below a huge bowlder. For some reason we had put on three flies, and
when he finally got his mess of fish into the net, there were three
trout--all good ones--one on each fly.
We decided to camp there, for good luck, and to stay until we were fully
repaired for travel. No camp was ever more warmly welcomed, or ever will
be more fondly remembered by us all.