ON MISERY GORE
"I reckon if gab had been sprawl,
He'd have climb' to the very top notch.
As it was, though, he made just one crawl
To a perch in a next-the-ground crotch."
--The Pauper.
The two men "hopped" the broad expanse of Patch Dam heath, springing
from tussock to tussock of the sphagnum moss. In that mighty flat they
seemed as insignificant as frogs, and their progress suggested the
batrachian as they leaped and zigzagged.
Ahead bounced Christopher Straight, the few tins of his scanty
cooking-kit rattling in the meal-bag pack on his back.
At his heels came Dwight Wade, blanket-roll across his shoulders and
calipers and leather-sheathed axe in his hands. Sweat streamed into his
eyes, and, athlete though he was, his leg muscles ached cruelly. The
September sunshine shimmered hotly across the open, and the young man's
head swam.
Old Christopher's keen side glance noted this. With the veteran guide's
tactful courtesy towards tenderfeet, he halted on a mound and made
pretence of lighting his pipe. There was not even a bead of perspiration
on his face, and his crisp, gray beard seemed frosty.
"I'm ashamed of myself," blurted the young man in blunt outburst. His
knees trembled as he steadied himself after his last leap.
"It ain't exactly like strollin' down the shady lane, as the song says,"
replied old Christopher, with gentle satire. He looked away towards the
fringe of distant woods.
"We could have kept on around by the Tomah trail, Mr. Wade, but I reckon
you got as sick as I did of climbin' through old Britt's slash. And
until he operated there last winter it used to be one of the best trails
north of Castonia. I blazed it myself forty years ago."
"And just a little care in felling it would have left it open," cried
the young man, indignantly.
"There was orders from Britt to drop ev'ry top across that trail
that could be dropped there, Mr. Wade. So, unless they come in
flyin'-machines, there's been few fishermen and hunters up the Tomah
trail this season to build fires and cut tent-poles."
"Does the old hog begrudge that much from the acres he stole from the
people of the State?" demanded Wade.
"He'd ruther you'd pick your teeth with your knife-blade than pull even
a sliver out of a blow down," replied Christopher, mildly. He tossed his
brown hand to point his quiet satire, and Wade's eyes swept the vast
expanse of wood, from the nearest ridges to the dim blue of the
tree-spiked horizon.
Christopher put his hand to his forehead and gazed north.
"I can show you your first peek at it, Mr. Wade," he said, after a
moment. "That's old Enchanted--the blue sugar-loaf you see through Pogey
Notch there. Under that sugar-loaf is where we are bound, to Ide's
holdin's."
There was a thrill for the young man in the spectacle--in the blue
mountains swimming above the haze, and in the untried mystery of the
miles of forest that still lay between. Even the word "Enchanted"
vibrated with suggestion.
The zest of wander-lust came upon him later--a zest dulled at first by
two days of perspiring fatigue, uneasy slumbers under the stars,
breathless scrambles through undergrowth and up rocky slopes.
"That's Jerusalem Mountain, layin' a little to the right," went on
Christopher. "That's Britt's principal workin' on the east slope of that
this season. He'll yard along Attean and the other streams, and run his
drive into Jerusalem dead-water--and that's where you and Ide will have
a chore cut out for you." The old man wrinkled his brows a bit, but his
voice was still mild.
The romance oozed from Wade's thrill. The thrill became more like an
angry bristling along his spine. During the days of his preparation for
this trip into the north country, Rodburd Ide--suddenly become his
partner by an astonishing juncture of circumstances--had spent as much
time in setting forth the character of the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt as
he had in instructing his neophyte in the duties of a timber explorer.
As a matter of fact, Ide left it mostly to old Christopher to be mentor
and instructor in the art of "exploring," as search for timber in the
north woods is called. Ide was better posted on the acerbities and
sinuosities of Britt's character than he was on the values of standing
timber and the science of economical "twitch-roads," and, with sage
purpose, he had freely given of this information to his new partner.
"Don't worry about the explorin' part--not with Christopher postin'
you," Ide had cheerfully counselled, when he had shaken hands with them
at the edge of Castonia clearing. "You and he together will find enough
timber to be cut. But you can't get dollars for logs until they're
sorted and boomed--and that part means dividin' white water with Britt
next spring. So, don't spend all your time measuring trees, Wade.
Measure chances!"
Now, with his eyes on the promised field of battle, Wade growled under
his breath.
Britt!
For four days now he had struggled behind old Christopher through
tangled undergrowth of striped maple, witch hobble, and mountain
holly--Mother Nature's pathetic attempt to cover with ragged and stunted
growth the breast that the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had stripped bare.
"He cut her three times," Christopher explained. "First time the virgin
black growth--and as handsome a stand of timber as ye ever put calipers
to; second time, the battens--all under eleven inches through; third
time, even the poles. That's forestry as he practises it! He's robbin'
the squirrels!"
Britt!
Wade had seen rotting tops that would have yielded logs--the refuse of
the first reckless and wasteful cutting. He had passed skidways and
toiled over corduroy in which thousands of feet of good spruce had been
left to decay. The deploring finger of the watchful Christopher pointed
out butts hacked off head high.
"The best timber in the log left standin' there, Mr. Wade. But Pulaski
Britt ain't lettin' his men stop to shovel snow away."
Britt behind him, in the tangled undergrowth! Britt about him, in the
straggle of trees on the hard-wood ridges! Britt ahead of him, where the
black growth shaded the mountains in the blue distance! The same Britt
who had so contemptuously tossed him aside as useless baggage when
Foreman Colin MacLeod had demanded his discharge!
Wade clutched calipers and axe, and went leaping after old Christopher
with new strength in his legs.
But in spite of the vigor that resentment lent him, he was glad when the
guide tossed off his pack beside a brook that trickled under mossy rocks
on the hard-wood slope. It was good to hear the tinkle of water, to feel
the solid ground after the weird wobbling of the sphagnum moss, and to
snuff the smoke of the handful of fire crackling under the tea-pail.
They were munching biscuits and bacon, nursing pannikins of tea between
their knees, when Christopher cocked an ear, darted a glance, and
mumbled a mild oath as savor to his mouthful of biscuit.
"Set to eat a snack within a mile of Misery Gore and one of them crows
will appear to ye. And that's the old he one of them all."
The old man who came shuffling slowly down the path was gaunt with the
leanness of want, and unkempt with the squalor of the hopelessly
pauperized.
"It's one of the Misery Gore squatters, Mr. Wade. All Skeets and
Bushees, and married back and forth and crossways and upside down till
ev'ry man is his own grandmother, if he only knew enough to figger
relationship. All State paupers, and no more sprawl to 'em than there is
to a fresh-water clam."
Old Christopher, with Yankee contempt of the thrifty for the willing
pauper, grumbled on in his scornful explanations after the old man sat
down opposite them. Wade, accustomed to politer usages, winced before
this brutal frankness. He plainly felt worse than the subject, who
looked from one to the other, his blue lips slavering at sight of the
food.
"It ain't no use to set there and drool like a hound pup, Jed," snapped
old Christopher, cutting another slice of bacon. "We're bound in for a
fortnit's explorin' trip, and we ain't got no grub to spare."
The patriarch of Misery Gore drew a greasy bit of brown paper from his
ragged vest, unfolded it, and took out what was apparently a long hair
from his grizzly beard. He pinched the thicker end between his dirty
thumb and forefinger, stroked the whisker upright, and held it before
his gaping mouth. The whisker slowly bent over towards Christopher.
"'Lectric!" announced the experimenter, in thick, stuffy tones, as
though he were talking through a cloth.
Again he gaped his toothless mouth, and the whisker bent towards the
uninviting opening.
"'Lectric!" He grinned at them, rolling his watery eyes from face to
face to seek appreciation. It was evident that he considered the feat
remarkable.
"Full of it! Er huh! Full of it!" He stroked his thin fingers down his
arm and slatted into the air. "Storms, huh? I know. Fair weather, huh? I
know. Things to happen, huh? I know. I can tell."
He hitched nearer, and looked hungrily at the bread and bacon which
Christopher immediately and ruthlessly began to wrap up.
"Them wireless-telegraph folks ought to know about you," grunted the
guide. "Don't pay any attention to the old fool, Mr. Wade. He don't have
to beg of us. Rod Ide furnishes supplies to these critters. Law says
that the assessor of the nearest plantation shall do it, and then Ide
puts in his bill to the State. You needn't worry about their starvin'."
"You'd all see us starve on Misery Gore," wailed the old man. "You'd all
see us starve!" His tone changed suddenly to weak anger. "Ide's an old
hog. No tea, no tobarker."
"Yes, and he ain't been so lib'ral with turkeys, plush furniture, and
champagne as he ought to be," growled Christopher, relishing his irony.
"If there's anything that you really need, Mr.--Mr.--"
"Skeet," snapped the guide.
"--Mr. Skeet, I'll speak to Mr. Ide about it when--"
"Mr. Wade," broke in Christopher, "what's the need of wastin' good
breath on that sculch? They get all they deserve to have. They're too
lazy to breathe unless it come automatic. They let their potatoes rot in
the ground, and complain about starvin'. They won't cut browse to bank
their shacks, and complain about freezin'. The only thing they can do to
the queen's taste is steal, and it's got so in this section that there
ain't a sportin'-camp nor a store wangan that it's safe to leave a thing
in."
He began to stuff tins into the mouth of the meal-sack, glowering at the
ancient pauper.
"They nigh put me out of bus'ness guidin' hereabouts. Stole everything
from my Attean camp that I left there--and it ain't no fun to tugger-lug
grub for sports on your back from Castonia."
When the last knot in the leather thong was twitched close and the
bountiful meal-bag was closed, old Jed abandoned hope and wheedling. He
brandished the whisker at Christopher, his moth-speckled hand quivering.
"Old butcherman!" he screamed. "'Twas my Jed. Off here!" He set the edge
of his palm against his arm.
Christopher's face grew hard under his frosty beard, but his cheeks
flushed when Wade gazed inquiringly at him.
"It's a thief's lookout when there's a spring-gun in a camp," he
muttered. "There was a sign on the door sayin' as much. It ain't my
fault if folks has been too busy stealin' to learn to read. If you ever
hear anything about it up this way, Mr. Wade, you needn't blame me. They
had their warnin' by word o' mouth. I'm sorry it happened, but--"
"What happened?"
"Young Jed Skeet joined the 'It-'ll-git-ye Club' a year ago with a fin
shot off at the elbow."
Christopher swung his pack to his back, thrust his arms through the
straps, and marched away. Wade followed with a new light on some of the
accepted ethics of human combat in the big woods. Old Jed shuffled
behind, a toothless Nemesis gasping maledictions in stuffy tones.
"We'll swing over the ridge and go through Misery Gore settlement, Mr.
Wade," said the old guide, after a time, divining the reason for his
companion's silence. "It may spoil your appetite for supper, but it'll
prob'ly straighten out some of your notions about me and that
spring-gun."
On the opposite slant of the ridge a ledge thrust above the hard-wood
growth, and Christopher led the way out upon this lookout.
"There! Ain't that a pictur' for a Sussex shote to look at, and then
take to the woods ag'in?" he inquired, with scornful disregard for any
civic pride the patriarch of Misery might have taken in his community.
The few miserable habitations of poles, mud, and tarred paper were
scattered around a tumble-down lumber camp, relic of the old days when
"punkin pine" turreted Misery Gore.
"I suppose the man who named it stood here and looked down," suggested
Wade.
"It was named Misery fifty years before this tribe ever came here. I
reckon they heard of it, and it sounded as though it might suit 'em.
They're a tribe by themselves, Mr. Wade. They've been driven off'n a
dozen townships that I know of. Land-owners keep 'em movin'. I reckon
this is their longest stop. This Gore is a surplus left in surveying
Range Nine. Sort of a no man's land. But they hadn't ought to be left
here."
There was so much conviction in the old guide's tone, and the contrast
of utter ruin below was so great, its last touch added by the pathetic
old figure in rags at the foot of the ledge, that the young man's temper
flamed. He had been pondering the spring-gun episode with no very
tolerant spirit.
"For God's sake, Straight, show some man-feeling. Is the selfishness of
the woods down to the point where you begrudge those poor devils that
wallow of stumps and rocks?"
Christopher received this outburst with his usual placidity--the
placidity that only woodsmen have cultivated in its most artistic sense.
"Look, Mr. Wade!" He swept his hand in the circuit that embraced the
panorama of ridges showing the first touches of frost, the hills still
darkling with black growth, the valleys and the shredded forest.
"There she lays before you, ten thousand acres like a tinder-box in this
weather, dry since middle August. You've seen some of the slash. But
you've seen only a little of it. Under those trees as far as eye can see
there's the slash of three cuttin's. Tops propped on their boughs like
wood in a fireplace. Draught like a furnace! It's bad enough now, with
the green leaves still on. It's like to be worse in May before the green
leaves start. And about all those dod-fired Diggers down there know or
care about property interests is that a burn makes blueberries grow, and
blueberries are worth six cents a quart! They have done it in other
places. They're inbred till they've got water for blood and sponges for
brains. When the hankerin' for blueberries catches 'em they'll put the
torch to that undergrowth and refuse, and if the wind helps and the rain
don't stop it they'll set a fire that will run to Pogey Notch like
racin' hosses, roar through there like blazin' tissue-paper in a chimbly
flue, and then where'll your black growth on Enchanted be--the growth
that's goin' to make money for you and Rod Ide? I tell ye, Mr. Wade,
there's more to woods life than roamin' through and cuttin' your gal's
name on the bark. There's more to loggin' than the chip-chop of a sharp
axe or the rick-raw of a double-handled gashin'-fiddle. And when it
comes down to profit, you can't be polite to a porcupine when he's
girdlin' your spruce-trees, nor practice society airs and Christian
charity with damn fools, whether they're dude fishermen tossin'
cigar-stubs or such spontaneously combustin' toadstools as them that
live down yonder eatin' the State's pork and flour. I'm up here with ye
to tell ye something about the woods, Mr. Wade. And it ain't all goin'
to be about calipers, the diffrunce between the Bangor and New Hampshire
scale, and how stumpage ain't profitable under nine inches top
measure--no, s'r, not by a blame sight!"
There was no passion in the old man's remonstrance, but there was an
earnestness that closed the young man's lips against argument. He
followed silently when Christopher led the way down towards the
settlement. Old Jed took up his position at the rear.
The first who accosted them was a slatternly woman, her short skirts
revealing men's long-legged boots. She rapped the bowl of a pipe smartly
in her palm, to show that it was empty, and demanded tobacco. She
scowled, and there was no hint of coaxing in her tones.
When Wade looked at her with an expression of shocked astonishment that
all his resolution could not modify, she sneered at him.
"Oh, you think we don't know northin' here--ain't wuth noticin' 'cause
we live in the woods, hey? Well, we do know something. Here, Ase, tell
this sport the months of the year, and then let's see if he's stingy
enough to keep his plug in his pocket."
Ase, plainly her son, lubberly and man-grown, roared without
bashfulness:
"Jan'warry, Feb'darry, Septober, Ockjuber, Fourth o' July, St. Padrick's
Day, and Cris'mus--gimme a chaw!"
Two or three men lounged out-of-doors--one with his arm significantly
off at the elbow. But there was not even a shadow on his vapid face when
he looked at Christopher, author of his misfortune.
"Ain't ye goin' to give me a piece of your plug, Chris?" he whined.
"Seem's if ye might. You 'n' me's square now--I got your pork and you
got my arm."
"There! Hear that?" growled Straight, in Wade's ear. "Put your
common-sense calipers on this stand of human timber and see what ye make
of it."
Wade, looking from face to face, as the frowsy population of Misery
lounged closer about him, half in indolence, half in the distrustful
shyness that the stupidly ignorant usually assume towards superior
strangers, noted that though the men displayed an almost canine desire
to fawn for favors, the women were sullen. The only exception was a very
old woman who hobbled close and entreated:
"Ain't you got northin' good for Abe, nice young gentleman? Poor Abe!
Hain't got no friend but his old mother." She hooked a hand as blue and
gaunt as a turkey's claw into Wade's belt and held up her spotted face
so close to his that he turned his head in uncontrollable disgust.
"Your hands off the gentleman, Jule," commanded Christopher, brusquely.
"It's old Jule, mate of the old he one that has been chasin' us," he
explained, with more of that blissful disregard for the feelings of his
subjects that had previously shocked the young man. "There's old Jed and
young Jed--old Jule and young Jule. They 'ain't even got gumption enough
here to change names. And that's Abe--the choice specimen that she's
beggin' for. Look at him and wish for a pictur'-machine, Mr. Wade!"
He had thought there could be no worse in human guise than those he had
seen. But this huge, hairy, shaggy, almost naked giant, cowering against
the side of a shack with all the timidity of a child, marked a climax
even to such degeneracy as he had quailed before.
"Mind in him about five years old, and will always stay five years old,"
said the guide, pointing to the wistful, simpering face. "Body speaks
for itself. Look at them muscles! I've seen him ploughin' hitched with
their cow. Clever as a mule. He's the old woman's hoss. Hauls her on a
jumper clear to Castonia settlement."
"An animal!" Wade gasped.
"Not much else. Afraid of the dark, of shadows, and women mostly.
Strange women! Once a woman scared him in Castonia and he ran away like
a hoss, draggin' the jumper. Old Jule hitched him to a post after that."
Cretinism in any form had always shocked Dwight Wade inexpressibly. He
turned away, but the old woman was in his path, begging.
The next moment a tall, lithe girl ran swiftly out of a hut, seized the
whimpering old woman, tossed her over her shoulder as a miller would
up-end a bag of meal, and staggered back into the hut, kicking the frail
door shut with angry heel. Wade got an astonished but a comprehensive
view of this "kidnapper." There was no vacuity in her face. It was
brilliant, with black eyes under a tangle of dark hair disordered but
not unkempt like that of the females he had seen in Misery. Her lips
were very red, and the color flamed on her cheeks above the brown of the
tan. In that compost heap of humanity the girl was a vision, and Wade
turned to old Christopher with unspoken questions on his parted lips.
"Don't know," said the guide, laconically, wagging his head. "No one
knows. She's with 'em. But you and me can see that she ain't one of 'em.
She's always been with 'em as fur back's I know of her--and that was
sixteen years ago, when she was in a holler log on rockers for a
cradle."
"Stolen!" suggested Wade, desperately. The thought had a morsel of
comfort in it. That a girl like that could belong by right of birth in
this tribe, that a girl with--ah, now he realized why his heart had
throbbed at sight of her--that a girl with Elva Barrett's hair and eyes
could be doomed to this existence was a knife-thrust in his
sensibilities.
And the toss of her head and the rebelliousness in the gesture--the
defiance in the upward flash of the sparkling eyes--subdued in Elva
Barrett's case by training--the mnemonics of love, whose suggestions are
so subtle, thrilled him at the sudden apparition of this forest beauty.
Reason angrily rebuked this unbidden comparison. He bit his lips, and
flushed as though his swift thought had wronged his love. Old
Christopher put into blunt woods phrase the pith of the thoughts that
struggled together in Wade's mind. The guide was looking at the closed
door.
"There's lots of folks, Mr. Wade, that don't recognize plain white birch
in some of the things that's polished and set up in city parlors. I've
wondered a good many times what a society cabinet-shop, as ye might say,
would do to that girl."
"They must have stolen her," repeated Wade.
Old Christopher tucked a sliver of plug into his cheek.
"That would sound well in a gypsy fairy-story, but it don't fit the
style of the Skeets and Bushees. They're too lazy to steal anything
that's alive. They want even a shote killed and dressed before they'll
touch it. Near's I can find out, the young one was handed to 'em, and
they was too dadblamed tired to wake up and ask where it came from.
They didn't even have sprawl enough to name her. I did that," he added,
calmly. "Yes," he proceeded, smiling at Wade's astonished glance; "I was
guidin' a sport down the West Branch just before they drove the tribe
out of the Sourdnaheunk country--under old Katahdin, you know! I see her
in that log cradle, and they was callin' her 'it.' So me 'n' the sport
got up a name for her--Kate Arden, for the mountain. 'Tain't a name for
a Maine girl to be ashamed of."
It suddenly occurred to Wade, gazing at the old man, that the quizzical
screwing-up of his eyes was hiding some deeper emotion; for
Christopher's voice had a quaver in it when he said:
"Poor little gaffer! Some one ought to have taken her away from 'em. But
it's hard to get folks interested in even a pretty posy when it grows in
a skunk-cabbage patch."
He looked away, embarrassed that any man should see emotion on his face,
and uttered a prompt exclamation.
Threading their way in single file among the blackened stumps that
bordered the Tomah trail to the north came a half-dozen men.
"That's Bennett Rodliff ahead, and he's the high sheriff of this
county," growled the old man. "There's two deputies and two game-wardens
with him--and old Pulaski Britt bringin' up in the rear. Knowin' them
pretty well, I should say that it spells t-r-u-b-l-e, in jest six
letters. I ain't a great hand to guess, Mr. Wade, but if some one was to
ask me quick, I should say it was the same old checker-game that the
Skeets and Bushees have been playin' for all these years, and that it's
their turn to move."