FAREWELL TO THE FENCE.
When the first frosts of autumn come the black ash swales are dry, and
there is more life in them than in midsummer. Hickory trees grow in
the swales, and the squirrels are very busy with the ripened nuts. The
ruffed grouse, with broods well grown, find covert in the tops of
fallen trees, or strut along decaying logs. There are certain berries
which grow in the swales, and these have ripened and are sought by many
birds. The leaves are turning slowly to soft colors. There is none of
the blaze and glory of the ridges where the hard maples and beeches
are, but there is a general brownness and dryness and vigor of scene.
It is good. The fence was nearly done, and the money for its building
was almost owned. The rails stretched away in a long line through the
narrow lane hewed through the wood, the tree-tops meeting overhead, and
a new highway was built for the squirrels, who made famous use of the
fence in their many journeys. The woodpeckers patronized it much, and
tested every rail for food, but only in a merely incidental way, for
each woodpecker knew that every rail was green and tough, and sound and
tenantless as yet. There was a general chirp and twitter and pleasant
call, for all the young life of the year was out of nest and hole and
hollow, and now entering upon life in earnest. It was a season for
buoyant work.
The great maul, firm and heavy still, showed an indentation round its
middle, where tens of thousands of impacts against the iron wedges had
worn their way, and even the heads of the wedges themselves were
rounded outward and downward with an iron fringe where particles of the
metal had been forced from place. The huge hook at the end of the log
chain was twisted all awry, though no less firm its grip. The fence,
the implements and all about showed mighty work, something of mind, but
more of muscle.
Most perfect of all tonics is physical, out-door labor, particularly in
the forest, and it is as well for mind as body. It eliminates what may
be morbid, and is healthful for a conscience. Why it is that, under
most natural conditions which may exist, the conscience is not so
nervously acute, is something for the theologians to decide,--they will
decide anything,--but the fact remains. The out-door conscience is
strong, but seldom retrospective.
Grant Harlson swung his maul and delighted in what was about him, and
breathed the crisp October air, scented with the spice bushes he cut to
clear the way, and pondered less and less upon the puzzles of the
Hindoo king. His mood was all robust, and when he visited the town he
was a wonder to Mrs. Rolfston, who was infatuated with the savagery of
his wooing and madly discontent with the certainty that she must lose
him. She made wild propositions, which he laughed at. She would
remove to the city; she would do many things. He said only that the
present was good, and that she was fair to look upon. And from her he
would go to his other sweetheart, the great maul, and be faithful for
six days of the seven. He did not work as late of afternoons now. He
was enjoying life again in the old healthful, boyish way.
He had a friend from town with him, too--a setter, with Titian hair and
big eyes, which slept on the clover beside him, and an afternoon or two
a week he would take dog and gun and go where the ruffed grouse were or
where a flock of wild turkeys had their haunts among the beech trees.
He would announce, with much presumption and assurance, at some
farm-house door, that he would be over for dinner to-morrow, and that
it would be a game dinner, and that he would leave the game with them
on his way back that same evening. There would be chaffings and
expressions of doubt as to reliance upon such promise and "First catch
your rabbit" comment, but they were not earnest words, for his ability
as a mighty hunter was well known.
Craft and patience are required when the wild turkey is to be secured,
for it is wise in its generation, and will carry lead, but it is worth
the trouble, for no pampered gobbler of the farm-yard has meat of its
rich flavor. Beech-nuts and berries make diet for a bird for kings to
eat. And when Harlson brought a couple of noble young turkeys to the
board the banquet was a great one, and the boys pitched quoits that
night no better for it. A good thing is the wild turkey, but even a
better thing, when his numbers and quality are considered, is the
ruffed grouse, the partridge of the North, the pheasant of the South.
How, in the lake region, he dawdles among the low-land thornberry
bushes in autumn, how he knows of many things to eat beside the
thorn-apples, and how plump he gets, and how cunning! How watchful he
is, how knowing of covert, and with what a burst he lifts himself from
his hiding-place and whirls away between the tree-trunks! How quick
the eye and hand to catch him when he rises from the underbrush and is
out of sight in the wood before the untrained sportsman stops him with
what is little more than a snapshot, so instantaneously must all be
done! Yet what a dignified thing is he, and how easy to find by one
who knows his ways and what hold habit has upon his gray-brown majesty.
Should the sudden shot fail, there is the fatal weakness of the bird of
flying, as the bee flies, straight as an arrow goes, and of alighting
high, say about two hundred yards away, and trusting to the trick which
fools all other enemies to fool the man. Following the straight line
of his flight, scanning the tree-tops, will you note at last, upon some
great limb and close to the tree's trunk, an upright thing, slender,
still-hued, silent and motionless. It is so like the wood it well
might miss the tyro. It is not unsportsmanlike, it is in fair chase to
shoot, and then there comes to the ground, with a great thump, the cock
of the northern woods, and you have one of the prizes man gets by
slaying. But this is only in the wood. In the open it is quite
another thing. What a toothsome bird, too, is your ruffed grouse, how
plump and yet gamey to the taste! You must know how to cook him,
though. He must be broiled, split open neatly and well larded with
good butter, for not so juicy even as the quail is the ruffed grouse,
and he must have aid. But, broiled and buttered and seasoned, well,
what a bird he is!
There were woodcock, too, in the lowlands, and Harlson found with them
such buoyant life as we men find in sudden death of those small,
succulent creatures. To stop a woodcock on the wing as it pitches over
the willows is no simple thing, and he who does it handily is, in one
respect, greater than he who ruleth a kingdom. And, at the table--but
why talk of the woodcock? There are other game birds for the eating,
good in their various degrees, but the woodcock is not classed with
them. In him is the flavoring drawn by his long bill from the very
heart of the earth, the very aroma of nature, and all richness. They
ate peacocks' brains in Caesar's time. Later, they found there was
something greater in the ortolan, and in some of the similar smaller
things which fly. But as the ages passed, and palates became
cultivated by heredity, and what made all flavors became known, the
woodcock rose and was given the rank of his great heritage--the most
perfect bird for him who knows of eating; the bird which is to others
what the long-treasured product of some Rhine hillside or Italian
vineyard is to the vintage of the day, what old Roquefort or Stilton is
to curd, what the sweet, dense, musky perfume of the hyacinth is to the
shallow scent of rhododendron. Even the Titian-haired setter
recognized the imperial nature of the woodcock, and was all emotion
about the willow-clumps.
Of course, from one point of view it is absurd, to thus depart from a
simple story upon the killing or the cooking or the flavor of a bird.
But I am telling of Grant Harlson and the woman he later found, and it
seems to me that even such matters as these, the sport he had, and the
facts and fancies he acquired, are part of the story, and have
something to do with defining and making clear the forming knowingness,
and character, and habits and inclinations of the man. Between him who
knows old Tokay and woodcock, and the other man, there is every
distinction. Harlson had learned his woodcock, but the Tokay was yet
to come.
And the fence neared its end. The young man almost regretted it, eager
as he had become to test his strength in the great city. Physically,
it was grand for him. What thews he gained; what bands of muscle
criss-crosses between and below his shoulders! What arms he had and
what full cushions formed upon his chest! That was the maul. How he
ate and drank and slept!
The days shortened, and the hoar frosts in the early morning made the
fence look a thing in silver-work strung through the woods. Where the
oxen had stepped in some soft place were now, at the beginning of the
day, thin flakes of ice. Even in the depth of the clover-mow the
change of temperature was manifest, and Harlson slept with a blanket
close about him. The autumn had come briskly. And the last ash was
felled, the oxen for the last time scrambled through the wood with the
heavy logs, and for the last time ax and maul and wedge did sturdy
service. One day Grant Harlson lifted the last rail into place; then
climbed upon the fence, looked critically along it, and knew his work
in the country was well done. He was absorbed in the material aspect
of it just then. It was a good fence. Fifteen years later he strolled
one afternoon, cigar in mouth, across the wheat-field where the wood
had been, and inspected the fence he had built alone that summer, away
back. The rails had grown gray from the effect of time and storms, and
a rider was missing here and there, but the structure was a sound one
generally, and still equal to all needs. It was a great fence, well
built. He looked at the wasting evidence of the great ax strokes upon
the rail ends, and said, as did Brakespeare, when he visited the castle
of Huguemont and noted where his sword had chipped the stairway stone
in former fight; "It was a gallant fray."
There was the getting of pay--the selling of a Morgan yearling colt
sufficed the owner of the land for that--and the end of one part of one
human being's life was reached. He went to town again and lived there
a week or two. A life not held in bonds, but somehow under all
control. It was curious; he could not understand it; but, even in the
wood, he had out-grown Mrs. Rolfston. He was with her much. There was
no let nor hindrance to their united reckless being, but all was
different from the beginning. He was not selfish with her; he grew
more courteous and thoughtful, yet the woman knew she could not keep
him. There were stormy episodes and tender ones, threats and tears,
and plottings and pleadings, and all to the same unavailing end. Your
woman of thirty of this sort is a Hecla ever in eruption, but becoming
sometimes, like Hecla, in the ages, ice-surrounded. She has her
trials, this woman, but her trials never kill her. The rending of the
earth, earthy, is never fatal. She recovers. With her, good digestion
ever waits on appetite, though an occasional appetite be faulty.
And one day Grant Harlson left the town, his face turned cityward. The
country boy--this later young man of the summer--was no more. To fill
his place among the mass of bipeds who conduct the affairs of the world
so badly and so blunderingly, was but one added to the throng of
strugglers in one of men's great permanent encampments.