The Cabin in the Clearing
Though a spur of black, uncompromising spruce woods gave it near shelter
on the north, the harshly naked clearing fell away from it on the other
three sides, and left the cabin bleak. Not a shrub nor a sapling broke
the bareness of the massive log walls, whence the peeling bark hung in
strips that fluttered desolately to every wind. Only a few tall and
ragged weeds, pale green, and with sparse, whitish grey seed-heads,
straggled against the foundation logs. The rough deal door sagged on its
hinges, half open. The door-sill gaped with a wide crack, rotted along
the edges; and along the crack grew a little fringe of grass, ruthlessly
crushed down by old Dave’s gaudy bundle. The two small windows still
held fragments of glass in their sashes,—glass thick with spiders’ webs,
and captive dust, and the _débris_ of withered insects. The wide-eaved
roof, well built of split cedar-slabs, with a double overlay of bark,
seemed to have turned a brave front to the assault of the seasons, and
showed few casualties. Some thirty paces to one side stood another
cabin, lower and more roughly built, whose roof had partly fallen in.
This had been the barn,—this, with a battered lean-to of poles and
interwoven spruce boughs against its southerly wall. The barn was set
down at haphazard, in no calculated or contenting relation to the main
building, but just as the lay of the hillocks had made it simplest to
find a level for the foundations. All about it grew a tall, coarse
grass, now grey and drily rustling, the brood of seeds which in past
years had sifted through the chinks from the hay stored in the loft. The
space between the two buildings, and for many square yards about the
cabin door, was strewn thick with decaying chips, through which the dock
and plantain leaves, hardy strangers from the Settlement, pushed up
their broad, obtuse intrusion. Over toward the barn lay the bleached
skeleton of a bob-sled, the rusted iron shoe partly twisted from one
runner; and in the centre of the space, where the chips gathered
thickest and the plantains had gained least ground, lay a split
chopping-log, whose scars bore witness to the vigour of a vanished axe.
The old lumberman fetched a deep breath, depressed by the immeasurable
desolation. His eye wandered over the weedy fields, long fallow, and the
rugged stump lots aflame here and there with patches of golden-rod and
crimson fire-weed. To him these misplaced flares of colour seemed only
to make the loneliness more forlorn, perhaps by their association with
homelier and kindlier scenes. He leaned on his axe, and pointed
indefinitely with his thumb.
“Squat here! an’ farm yon!” said he, with contemplative disapproval.
“I’d see myself furder first! But Kirstie Craig’s got grit for ten men!”
Then he pushed the door open, lifting it to ease the hinge, and stepped
peeringly inside. As he did so, a barn-swallow flickered out through a
broken pane.
The cabin contained two rooms, one much smaller than the other. The
ceiling of the smaller room was formed by a loft at the level of the
eaves, open toward the main room, which had no ceiling but the roof of
slabs and bark. Here, running up through the east gable, was a chimney
of rough stone, arched at the base to contain a roomy hearth, with
swinging crane and rusted andirons. A settle of plank was fixed along
the wall under the window. Down the middle of the room, its flank toward
the hearth, ran a narrow table of two planks, supported by unsmoothed
stakes driven into the floor. In the corner farthest from the chimney,
over against the partition, was a shallow sleeping bunk, a mere oblong
box partly filled with dry red pickings of spruce and hemlock. The floor
was littered with dead leaves and with ashes wind-drifted from the
hearth.
Old Dave went over and glanced into the bunk. He found the spruce
pickings scratched up toward one end, and arranged as they would be for
no human occupant.
“Critters been sleepin’ here!” he muttered. Then laying down his bundle,
he turned his attention to the hearth, and soon the old chimney tasted
once more, after its long solitude, the cheer of the familiar heat.
It was now close upon sundown, and the lumberman was hungry. He untied
the grimy, many-coloured quilt. Kroof, the she-bear, had been right in
her surmise as to that bundle. It did contain pork,—a small, well-salted
chunk of it; and presently the red-and-white-streaked slices were
sputtering crisply in the pan, while the walls and roof saturated
themselves once more in old-remembered savours.
By the time the woodman had made his meal of fried pork and bread, and
had smoked out his little pipe of blackened clay, a lonely twilight had
settled about the cabin in the clearing. He went to the door and looked
out. A white mist, rising along the forest edges, seemed to cut him off
from all the world of men; and a few large stars, at vast intervals,
came out solemnly upon the round of sky. He shut the door, dropped the
wooden latch into its slot, and threw a dry sliver upon the hearth to
give him light for turning in. He was sparing of the firewood,
remembering that Kirstie, when she came, would need it all. Then he took
his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the ashes, wiped the stump on his
sleeve, and put it in his pocket; took off his heavy boots, rolled
himself in the coloured quilt, and tumbled comfortably into the bunk,
untroubled by any thought of its previous tenants. No sooner was he
still than the mice came out and began scampering across the loft. He
felt the sound homely and companionable, and so fell asleep. As he slept
the deep undreaming sleep of the wholesomely tired, the meagre fire
burned low, sank into pulsating coals, and faded into blackness.
It was, perhaps, an hour later that Old Dave sat up, suddenly wide
awake. He had no idea why he did it. He had heard no noise. He was
certainly not afraid. There was no tremor in his seasoned nerves.
Nevertheless, he was all at once absolutely awake, every sense alert. He
felt almost as if there were some unkindred presence in the cabin. His
first impulse was to spring from the bunk, and investigate. But,
doubtless because he had spent so great a portion of his life in the
forest, and because he had all that day been subtly played upon by its
influences, another instinct triumphed. He followed the immemorial
fashion of the folk of the wood, and just kept still, waiting to learn
by watching.
He saw the two dim squares of the windows, and once imagined that one of
them was for an instant shadowed. At this he smiled grimly there in the
dark, well knowing that among all the forest-folk there was not one, not
even the panther himself, so imprudent as to climb through a small
window into a shut-up place, all reeking with the fresh and ominous
scent of man.
Still he listened, in that movelessness which the haunted neighbourhood
had taught him. The scurrying of the mice had ceased. There was no wind,
and the darkness seemed all ears. The door, presently, gave a slow,
gentle creaking, as if some heavy body pushed softly against it, trying
the latch. The woodsman noiselessly reached out, and felt the handle of
his axe, leaning by the head of the bunk. But the latch held, and the
menacing furtive pressure was not repeated. Then, upon the very middle
of the roof, began a scratching, a light rattling of claws, and
footfalls went padding delicately over the bark. This puzzled the
woodsman, who wondered how the owner of those clawed and velveted feet
could have reached the roof without some noise of climbing. The soft
tread, with an occasional scratch and snap, moved up and down the roof
several times; and once, during a pause, a deep breath, ending with a
sharp sniffing sound, was heard through the thin roof. Then came a
muffled thud upon the chips, as of the drop of a heavy animal.
The spell was broken, and Old Dave rose from the bunk.
“It’s jumped down off the roof! wildcat, mebbe, or lynx. No painters
’round, ’tain’t likely; though’t did sound heavy fur a cat!” said he to
himself, as he strode to the door, axe in hand.
Fearlessly he threw the door open, and looked out upon the glimmering
night. The forest chill was in the air, the very breath and spirit of
solitude. The mists gathered thickly a stone’s throw from the cabin. He
saw nothing that moved. He heard no stir. With a shrug of the shoulders
he turned, latched the door again with just a trifle more exactness of
precaution than before, lounged back to his bunk, and slept heedlessly
till high dawn. A long finger of light, coldly rosy, came in through a
broken pane to rouse him up.
When he went outside, the mists yet clung white and chill about the
clearing, and all the weed tops were beaded with thick dew. He noted
that the chips were disturbed somewhat, but could find no definite
track. Then, following a grassy path that led, through a young growth of
alder, to the spring, he found signs. Down to the spring, and beyond,
into the woods, a trail was drawn that spoke plain language to his
wood-wise scrutiny. The grass was bent, the dew brushed off, by a body
of some bulk and going close to the ground.
“Painter!” he muttered, knitting his brows, and casting a wary glance
about him. “Reckon Kirstie’d better bring a gun along!”
All that day Dave Titus worked about the cabin and the barn. He mended
the roof, patched the windows, rehung the door, filled the bunk—and the
two similar ones in the smaller room—with aromatic fresh green spruce
tips, and worked a miracle of rejuvenation upon the barn. He also
cleaned out the spring, and chopped a handy pile of firewood. An old
sheep-pen behind the barn he left in its ruins, saying to himself:—
“What with the b’ars, an’ the painters, Kirstie ain’t goin’ to want to
mess with sheep, I reckon. She’ll have lots to do to look after her
critters!”
By “critters” he meant the cow and the yoke of steers which were Kirstie
Craig’s property in the Settlement, and which, as he knew, she was to
bring with her to her exile in the ancient wood.
That night, being now quite at home in the lonely cabin, and assured as
to the stability of the door, Dave Titus slept dreamlessly from dark to
dawn in the pleasant fragrance of his bunk. From dark to dawn the mice
scurried in the loft, the bats flickered about the eaves, the unknown
furry bulks leaned on the door or padded softly up and down the roof,
but troubled not his rest. Then the wild folk began to take account of
the fact that the sovereignty of the clearing had been resumed by man,
and word of the new order went secretly about the forest. When, next
morning, Dave Titus made careful survey of the clearing’s skirts,
calculating what brush and poles would be needed for Kirstie’s fencing,
making rough guesses at the acreage, and noting with approval the
richness of the good brown soil, he thought himself alone. But he was
not alone. Speculative eyes, large and small, fierce and timorous, from
all the edges of the ancient wood kept watch on him.