A SONG FROM THE TREE TOPS
Greta Clara Bronson was by nature a musician, an artist, a person of
temperament. The dawn of another day found her in no mood for seeking
adventure. The troubles of others, if indeed there were troubled ones in
these hills, seemed far away.
Having made sure that her companion’s sprained ankle was not a matter of
serious consequence, she found herself ready for a day of rest and
thought; not serious thought, but the dreamy sort that leads one’s mind,
like a drifting cobweb, into unknown lands.
All the long forenoon she lay upon a bed of moss in the sun. At times she
dreamed of her home and mother. This seemed very far away. Would she
return to it all? Surely, “‘When the frost is on the pumpkin,’” she
whispered. Looking up at the sun, she smiled.
For an hour she dreamed of the wreck and of the shady shores of Duncan’s
Bay. “Dizzy,” she whispered, “I wonder where he is?” Before leaving the
wreck, they had set their pet loon free. He seemed quite able to care for
himself. “Probably he’s gone ashore and has laughed his head off at some
crazy loon that looks just like him,” she chuckled.
“But Jeanne?” Greta asked herself. “Is she truly happy with those queer
gypsy people? How strange it seems!”
* * * * * * * *
Yes, Jeanne was happy with “those queer people.” Having, as of old,
forgotten all thought of the morrow, she had in true gypsy fashion thrown
herself with abandon into the joys of each new day.
At Chippewa Harbor there were a few small cabins and many tents. The
visitors showered silver down upon her tambourine when her dance with the
bear was over. “Frank, joyous, kindly people, these Americans,” she
thought. “What a glorious land!”
And yet her keenest joy came when, after climbing a ridge, she came at
last upon a lake three miles long, a mile wide, where there was no one.
“Dark forests, darker water, wild moose, wild birds and the deep,
glorious silence of God,” she whispered to the companion at her side.
“How grand to pitch a tent on these shores and live many long days!”
So the _Ship of Joy_ made its way slowly along the shores of Isle Royale,
and still the dark-eyed Greta sat far up on that ridge dreaming the hours
away.
After a lunch of toast, bacon and black tea, Greta declared her intention
of going out to play for the birds.
Tucking her violin under her arm, she wandered away up the ridge. At the
summit, somewhat to her surprise, she found a hard-beaten trail.
Traveling here with ease, she wandered on and on until with a little
start she found herself recognizing a certain jagged rock formation.
“Must have been here before.” She stopped dead in her tracks. “I have!
Last night!”
Should she turn back? Where were the green eyes?
“Green eyes do not shine in the day!” She laughed a little. “Ghosts,
witches, green eyes, they all vanish at dawn.”
Seating herself on a moss covered rock, she began thrumming the strings
of her violin. Then she sent out some little plaintive snatches of song.
She paused to lean far forward, intent, alert, expectant. Yes, there it
was. A bird had answered.
After listening with all her ears, she imitated his call. Then she
listened again.
“Yes, yes, my little one!” Her heart warmed to the tiny whistler of
Greenstone Ridge. “He’s coming closer.”
Once more she repeated his song. This time there were two replies, one
near and one far away. Soon it seemed the bushes, the trees, the very air
was filled with little gray and brown songsters. Thrilled by this unique
experience, she forgot both time and place as she proceeded to charm her
tiny auditors.
Place was brought back to her with startling force. Some great creature
came thrashing through the brush.
With a low cry, she gripped her precious violin and sprang for the
nearest tree.
Just in time she was, for a bull moose charged full upon the spot where
she had been. Why he charged will remain a mystery. Perhaps he did not
love music. Perhaps he was just mean by nature. Enough that he was here;
and here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, he meant to stay.
Having spent a full ten minutes sharpening his jagged antlers on a dead
cottonwood tree, he marched up to Greta’s fir tree, leaned his full
weight against it, then gave forth a most terrifying roar. Finding the
tree quite solid and alive, he dropped with a grunt on the bed of moss at
the foot of the tree and pretended at least to fall asleep.
“Our next number,” Greta said quite soberly, “will be a cradle song
entitled ‘When father moose goes to sleep.’”
The thing she played, perched there like a nightingale on a limb, was not
that at all, but an exquisite fantasy written after some
all-but-forgotten folk song of the gypsies.
Caught by the charm of it, she played it over and over.
Then, to her vast astonishment, as the notes faded away and she rested
there among the branches, someone took up her song.
“A violin!” she whispered. “The phantom violin! And so close at hand!”
The effect, there in the gathering twilight, was like a touch of magic.
The silence that followed the stranger’s last note was most profound, so
perfect that the flutter of a small bird’s wings might be heard ten yards
away. Charmed by this little touch of the dramatic in life, Greta forgot
that she was perched in a tree, that a monstrous moose lay at the foot of
that tree, and that darkness was falling. Lips parted, ears strained, she
waited for one more note from that magic violin.
It did not come. Instead she heard a pleasing voice say, “What are you
doing up there?”
“Quiet!” she warned. “There is a moose.”
“Oh ho! That’s it!” There came a mellow laugh. “Some bluffing old moose
has you treed. Watch!”
Next instant an ear-splitting shout rent the air.
Came a terrific thumping at the foot of her tree, followed by a sound of
crashing of bushes that rapidly diminished in the distance.
“He’s gone,” the voice said. “Come down!”
A brief scramble, then she found herself looking into a smiling face. The
face was framed by a tangled mass of gray hair; yet the face was young.
It was the face of the picture in that little blank book Florence had
found in the mine.
“Per—Percy O’Hara!” Her lips could scarcely frame the words.
“You—” the man stepped back. “How did you know me?”
“I’ve always known you, at—at least for a very long time. But why are you
here?”
“That,” he smiled, a strange smile, “that, dear child, is a long story.”
“A child,” said Greta, “likes to hear stories.”
“Is it not enough,” he laughed a low laugh, “that I have saved you from a
wild and ferocious beast who, joking aside, would have slept right there
all night? And must I tell you a story besides?”
“Perhaps,” said the girl soberly, “you have more to gain by telling the
story than I have by listening.”
A frown gathered on his brow. She shuddered in fear. Yet again the ready
smile returned.
“Stories,” he said quietly, “must be told in just the right setting. This
is not the time. Another day perhaps. Not now. I—”
He broke short off. His face took on a look of horror. “Wha—what was
that?”
Up from the depths below, where darkness was falling among the black fir
trees, rising like a siren, had come one long, piercing scream.
Then silence and falling darkness settled over them like a shroud.