There are few things more interesting than to observe in a quiet family
the effects of an explosion of the unusual. Assuredly, what had happened
to the Lyndsays was uncommon. There is family character just as there is
national character. Individuality is more or less dominated by it. Among
those with whom we are dealing the endless discussions which in some
groups of human beings are wasted on a matter of annoyance—a calamity or
a grievance—were quite unknown. At need they talked over their troubles
or difficulties, and put them aside when decisions were once attained.
Anne was fond of saying, “Talk is a wedge which widens troubles. When
you think, you are talking to yourself alone, and are responsible for
the consequences; it is hard so to weigh words as to know what weight
they will have for others.” And thus it was that even about her most
unbearable pain she said nothing, and disliked all discussions which led
to no working opinion. Mrs. Lyndsay alone was given to seeking sympathy
in her small ailments; but Anne, as she herself once observed, “wore
neither her heart nor her liver on her sleeve.” And this was the general
tone. If talk was needed to settle a thing, there was enough, and no
more. Lyndsay liked to say, “And now we will put it aside, my dear.” He
had thus ended a talk with his wife, who was disposed to say far more.
To all of them the unpleasant event I have recorded brought a sense of
horror. But the primary mood of anger or disgust gave way to some other
form of mental or moral activity, which varied with the person. Lyndsay
simply and directly occupied himself with the slight evidence he had,
and endeavored to reach a conclusion as to the criminal. Anne fell to
thinking with interest of the motives of the criminal, and as to what
possible temptation could make her desire to do such an act. The mother
remained in a state of somewhat lessened emotional disturbance, wanting
some one to talk to of it all, but finding none save Rose, who had no
power to repress her.
Thus Thursday passed quietly enough at the Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay
wisely went a-fishing, and took Rose. It was pitiably true that, for
Mrs. Lyndsay, the incident of the day before had renewed the grief which
time had begun to heal. She wondered how Archie could go and fish. She
even made a mild attempt to keep her daughter at home; but Lyndsay
resolutely persisted, and had his way. Left to herself, Margaret devoted
the morning to coddling Anne, which resulted, for the latter, in a
condition of restrained irritability which was almost too much even for
this heroic woman. At last she took refuge in her room.
Jack spent the day in cleaning his rifle, and Dick in stuffing a
kingfisher, while Ned bothered him with questions which not Solomon
could have answered. As to Carington, he asked Ellett to go up to the
church and make careful measurements of the footsteps, as this, by
relieving him of the task, would enable him to get away earlier for his
long paddle to Mackenzie.
At dawn, Carington, with his two men, in their canoe, went by the Cliff
Camp, where all was peacefully still.
At the little town he made his own arrangements for the building of his
cabin in the fall, and cashed a draft for himself and one for Mr.
Lyndsay. The seven hundred dollars of Canadian notes he rolled into a
tight bundle and put in his breeches-pocket. Then, after a hasty meal
and a little rest, he turned back for the journey up the river.
There was some paddling to do until they reached swift water, and here
he “spelled” his bowmen, taking a turn at poling, and pushed on. Three
miles an hour is very good speed at this business, and thus, as the way
was long, it was far into the night before they reached the Cliff Camp.
Every one else but Jack was in bed. He had taken his blanket and gun,
and settled himself patiently at the foot of the cliff.
“Is that you, Nimrod?” said Carington.
“Yes.”
“You have had a long wait. Is your father up?”
“No.”
“Then I must keep this money until Ellett can give it to him to-morrow.
Jump in. It is late.”
In five minutes the boy was asleep in the bottom of the canoe. Carington
began to think over what he should do next day about the tombstone
business.
At his own camp-ground it took him some five minutes to restore Jack,
for a time, to the world of the wakeful, and Carington himself was glad
enough to find his own couch.
Before dawn, Michelle touched him on the shoulder.
“You are pretty hard to wake, Mr. Carington.”
“Am I? What is it? Oh, we are going after bears. Hang the bears!” He
rubbed his eyes, sat up, and said to Michelle, “Wake that boy. It will
take ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
After Jack’s blanket was pulled away, and he himself rolled on to the
tent-floor, he began to wake up.
“Coffee ready and lunch in knapsack, Michelle?”
“All right, sir.”
Carington got up, and, laughing at the guide’s difficulty in reviving
Jack, went down to the beach, had a cold—a very cold—dip, and in a few
minutes was dressed and ready, while Jack, but half awake, was making a
boy’s still briefer toilet.
Meanwhile Carington looked into Ellett’s tent, and, seeing him sound
asleep, hesitated a moment as to waking him, in order to give into his
charge the money he had drawn. As he was about to speak, Michelle called
out:
“Halloa! Canoe’s adrift! Take care, Jack. Paddle her in.”
Carington ran out of the tent, and saw that Jack was again ashore. He
had put his gun and other traps in the boat, and then, jumping in
hastily to arrange them, had caused the canoe to slip off into the
current. The slight break thus caused in Carington’s mental processes
made him for the time forget his intention. Ten minutes later he
remembered it, as they were flying down-stream, and his hand chanced to
fall on the bulging packet of notes in his pocket.
“Confound it!” he exclaimed. “I forgot it. It is hardly worth while to
go back, Jack. I meant to leave the money I drew with Mr. Ellett. I
fancy it is safe enough.” Then he proceeded to secure the pocket with a
pin, saying, “We won’t go back. It is late, as it is.”
“I was thinking that,” said Jack, to whom bears were of far more
importance than the balance in the national treasury.
“I meant to wake myself earlier, Jack; but I was pretty tired. Usually I
can wake when I please.”
“I did think you were up, sir,” said Michelle. “You were a-saying things
about roses when I touched you.”
“Was I?”
“Yes. Just, ‘Rose—Rose’—like that.”
“That’s queer,” remarked Jack.
“No. I am rather fond of flowers, more so than most men. By the way,
Jack, you are a first-class performer in your sleep. If the
wedding-guest had heard your loud bassoon, I don’t know what he would
have done.”
“Who was the ‘wedding-guest’?”
“Ask Miss Rose.”
“I shall say you told me to ask.”
“That is hardly necessary. Read the poem—‘The Ancient Mariner,’ I mean.”
“I don’t care much for poetry stuff.”
“Don’t you? Well, you were pretty musical about 3 A. M.” Then he played
a little with the matter of his rosy dream. “I think, Jack, that very
often dreams like this of mine seem to be the outcome of some quite
trivial event rather than of the larger things of life. A day or two
back I was trying to pick a rose, and pricked my finger. I didn’t get
the rose, but I—meant to. I suppose that thorn stuck into some
pincushion of the mind. Odd, wasn’t it?”
“I dreamed about bears for a week after that beastly circus on the
beach.”
“No wonder,” and they laughed. “I don’t think dreams very interesting,
Jack; but twice in my life I have chanced to see dreams produce some
very strange results. See how the mists are melting away.”
“What was it about—the dreams?”
“One, Jack, I cannot tell you. The other I can. I had a guide in the
Wind River country who used to talk in his sleep. Several times when we
were alone in the hills he woke me up by the noise he made. I used to
whistle to quiet him long enough to give me a chance to fall asleep. It
is a good recipe to stop snoring. I tried it on you.”
“Dick can beat me all hollow! But please go on, Mr. Carington.”
“Well, one night he kept at it so long, and talked so plainly, that I
gave up in despair and listened. He was unusually excited this time. I
heard him say, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Then he groaned and rolled over and
groaned so that I thought he had a nightmare. At last he sang out, ‘Let
me go! I didn’t do it.’ After this I whistled ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and it
acted like a charm. Next morning at breakfast I said, ‘Whom were you
murdering in the night, and were they really going to hang you, Billy?’
When I said this he looked at me sharply, and I saw he did not like it.
He asked what he had said. I thought it best to say as little as
possible, and so replied, ‘You might have been killing bears, Billy.’ I
saw he did not believe me. All day long that fellow was restless and
uneasy. He twice missed an elk, and he was a perfect shot.”
“That was bad,” remarked Jack.
“That wasn’t all. When I woke next morning Bill was gone. I never saw
him again, and I had a pretty hard time getting back.”
“Do you think he had killed somebody?”
“Probably. Folks’ consciences seem to get a grip of them in sleep, and
to go to sleep themselves in the daytime. It’s a queer enough story.”
As they talked the paddles were busy, the mist melted, and they ran
swiftly down-stream a mile or more below the Cliff Camp. Here, at a
bend, where the river made a bold curve to the northwest, they ran
ashore.
“That will do, Michelle. Be on the lookout about six or seven to put us
over. Come, Jack. Give me the knapsack. Do not load yet.” As he spoke
they left the shore, and Carington, leading, struck into the woods.
They walked slowly through a tangled wilderness of trees, dead and
alive, set in perplexing undergrowth, Carington explaining his plans to
the boy as they tramped along.
“We shall go up the hill to left, over the crest and down on to Loon
Lake. It is a mere pond, but the berries are thick on the far side, and,
although now there are none, the bears have a habit of going there. We
shall read our fortune clear when we get on the shore.”
“By the tracks on the edge?”
“Yes. The deep print of the foot makes little pools; and if the water in
these is still muddy, the prints are recent; if not, we shall get no
chance.”
“I see.”
“Out in the Rockies we used to stir up the mud in the old prints with a
stick so as to fool the other fellows. It is an ancient trick. By the
way, Jack, at evening I shall set you on the ox-track to the west of
Colkett’s. I saw two porcupines there a day or two back. I will go
straight down the mountain to Colkett’s. I shall be but a few minutes at
Joe’s. I want to arrange about lumber for my cabin. If you see no game,
don’t wait, but take the cross track to Colkett’s. You can’t miss it. It
starts back of the big boulder in the clearing on the left, as you face
the river.”
“And you will meet me?”
“Yes. Perhaps before you quit the open.”
“I understand.”
“The road doesn’t go all the way to Joe’s, but I shall be on it before
you.”
“Yes.”
“Be very careful how you shoot. Colkett’s is not far, and the river in
the other direction none too wide, and rifle-balls travel a long way.”
“Yes, I will be careful.”
“And don’t carry your gun that way. So—that’s better.”
It was full noon and cloudy as they walked noiselessly down the slope to
the lonely little pond in the lap of the hills. At last they paused
among a mass of boulders.
“Now, keep still. I ordered a man up last evening late to put a black
kelt on the beach at the far side, where a brook comes in. I fancied it
might fetch Mr. Bear.” So saying, Carington adjusted his glass, and
searched with care the curved line of the farther shore.
“Look there! It’s a good half-mile or more.”
The boy took the glass.
“There are some water-weeds in a bunch, and above—oh, a black thing! A
bear!”
“Come,” said Carington, “you will want a skin for Miss Rose. Come.”
The boy went after him, and the long walk around the lake began. The way
was hard.
“We must go well back up over that hill, and then down the gorge which
carries the stream.”
At times the elder person glanced back at the noiseless, tough little
fellow. “Tired?” he said, as they broke with care through the alders.
“Awful,” said Jack.
At the foot of the hill, as they left the lake, they came on a bit of
old burnt land, and here the way was even harder. Myriads of dead pines,
spruces, and firs, interlaced in tumbled ruin, made progress difficult.
Now it was a giddy walk, twelve feet in air, along a slippery trunk, now
a crawl under spiky and splintered stems. Again Carington looked back,
and began to understand the value of the qualities of endurance,
strength, and grip of purpose, with which the boy pursued his way.
At length, hot, brier-scratched, and weary, they came out on the
hilltop. Jack was for immediate march, but Carington said:
“No. Get cool; you could not hit a barn-door now. Lie down a bit. You
will want to be fully rested. As for me, I am half dead,” and he dropped
on the scant soil. “Fine, isn’t it?”
A great sea of lesser hills was all around them, with here and there a
rare sparkle of silver from distant windings of the river.
As for Jack, who lay on the summit, his eyes were eagerly searching the
ravine down which they were to go.
“A friend of mine—oh, drop that bear, Jack; he’ll keep—a friend of mine
says that to enjoy a view like this one must walk up. He has a notion
that somehow the exercise absolutely increases your mental power to get
the best out of it.”
Jack was not clear as to this, and he said so.
“I don’t understand it myself. I do not know why it is true, but it is
true—for me, at least.”
“Maybe because it’s hard work,” said Jack.
He could not get his idea into proper shape, not having Ned’s facility
of expression.
“Yes,” said Carington. “We like what is difficult to get; but that is
not all of it. I suppose, if bears were as easy to get as omnibus
horses, neither you nor I would go after bears.”
“I guess that’s so.”
“What do you want to be, Jack, when you grow up?”
“I shall go to West Point.”
“Well, and after? The army is not a career, nowadays.”
“But there is first-rate sport in the West.”
“Yes; but that is for one’s idle hours. Life is a pretty big thing,
Master Jack.”
“What do you do, Mr. Carington?”
“I build bridges, lay out railroads, generally scrimmage with nature to
make life easier for man. How would you like that?”
“I don’t know.” He had a clever lad’s indisposition to commit himself.
“Is it easy?—I mean, to learn. I hate books—school-books, I mean.”
“No; it isn’t easy. But it is work for a man. Go to a school of
engineering for three or four years when you are older, and then come
and help me to build bridges. All this energy of yours—all this hatred
of defeat—this—well, you have the whole outfit, as we say in the
Rockies, but it is no good unless you know how to do things. The fellows
that know and have no steam, I don’t care about. Now, we want that bear,
don’t we?”
“Rather!”
“And first, we know how to get him, and then we want him so tremendously
that torn breeches, scratched legs, and the like, make no kind of
difference. Just patent that combination, and, as my friends down in
Carolina say, ‘there you are.’”
The small skeptic returned, “But we aren’t there yet.”
“We will be. The wind is up the gorge. See those ferns, how they sway
up-hill. He can get no scent of us.”
“That’s so. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”
“It is intelligence against mere instinct. Are you easily lost in the
woods, Jack? I am. I have no resource except incessant observation of
landmarks.”
Jack looked up in surprise. “I—lost? No, I never get lost.”
“But is that really so?”
“Yes. I wander off anywhere. It is easy to find your way here; but in
Maine it is harder. I was up with father two years ago, at the
Parmaccini lakes, and he almost always had to ask me the way.”
“How do you know it?”
“I don’t. I go home.”
“Like a dog?”
“I suppose so. I can’t tell.”
“But do you not unconsciously take note of the sun, and the moss on the
north side of the trees, and so guide yourself?”
“No—I may; I am not sure. I only know I can get back, and I go pretty
straight. Father says it is instinct.”
“That may be. I have seen guides who could go through a wood without
fail, and unerringly take you to camp in the darkest night. They cannot
tell how they do it.”
“I never thought much about it,” said Jack.
“It is worth thinking about. You see most instincts are intelligently
aided in man. The thing is to keep your instincts and help them with
mind; but I fancy you will lose yours as you cease to use them. What you
seem to have is like the instinct which brings the salmon back to his
own river, the homing pigeon to its own cote, and the cat you may have
tried to lose to its own kitchen, miles across the unknown streets of a
great city.”
“Can you explain it?”
“No,” replied Carington. He was interested in the talk. “No, it is
incomprehensible. There are organs in the ear which tell us the point
from which sounds come, and the eye is a help; but there is over and
above all, this instinct of direction, which guides the bird, or, still
more wonderfully, the fish, and to some degree, I suppose, the men who
have this capacity. I was once lost in a cave in Virginia. After an hour
of turning and twisting in long passages, and among forests of
stalactites, two hundred feet underground, the guide of a sudden got
altogether bewildered and terribly alarmed. A boy who was with us said,
‘I can get out,’ and, by Jove, Jack, he took us back, and in and out,
and at last into the open air. He never paused.”
“That was a scrape. I wish I had been with you.”
“Do you? I prefer not to try it again. Are you rested?”
“Yes.”
“Then come.” And they went over the slope, and began to go down the bed
of the scantily fed brook. In a half-hour they came to a small basin
whence the water fell into the pool below. Creeping cautiously, they
reached the edge and looked down on the muddy shore. The bear had gone.
Then Carington took his glass.
“The tracks go to the left,” he said. “Come, but be careful.”
Slowly and in silence they scrambled down to the edge of the underbrush.
Suddenly Carington caught the boy’s arm and drew him back.
“Hush!” he murmured. “Softly. There!” and parting the bushes, he pointed
through them. A large bear was slowly moving along the curve of shore,
not forty feet away. “Your bear, sir; behind the left shoulder. Steady!”
“No—you, sir!”
“Quick! You will lose him. Steady now! Well done!” he cried aloud, as
the boy’s rifle rang out, and the bear fell, rose, and fell again. “No!
Don’t run in! Load! Now wait a moment!” And, so saying, he moved along
the beach. But poor Bruin was dead.
“Clean shot, Master Jack!”
“By George!” cried the boy. “What fun! I thought—I was awful afraid you
meant to shoot him yourself.”
“That is not my way with my friends. I hate selfish sportsmen. When you
have killed as many bears as I have, we will toss up for the first shot.
He is dead enough.” And Carington nudged the beast in the ribs with his
gun-barrel.
Jack inspected his prey with care. “We must get his skin.”
“Of course. Got a knife?”
“Yes.”
“Then help me.”
It was a long business, and the sun was well down when they were done,
and the skin packed in a tight roll on Carington’s back.
“We will hang up the meat and send up for it early to-morrow. It is
poor, at best. Come, Jack. I think you are an inch taller. You have
killed a bear!”
“Just haven’t I?” said the boy.
“And you are going to be an engineer,” added Carington, laughing.
“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Would Michelle tan the skin for me?”
“Yes. It shall be smoke-tanned and sent down to you. Once smoke-tanned,
it is fairly moth-proof, and you will find it does not get stiff after a
wetting. The civilized man has never yet learned the art of the tanner.”
“I want it for Aunt Anne.”
“I thought you said it was for Miss Rose?”
“No. That was what you said.”
“Did I?” And they went on in that uncertain light which is more puzzling
than darkness, in and out of the water, or, with exclamations and
laughter, pitching over rocks and dead trees.
Half-way down the hill Carington stopped. The brook-channel they were
following descended to the river in a widening gorge. He intended to
follow it, and, after seeing Colkett, meant to rejoin Jack, as he had
previously arranged. He now set the boy on a disused lumber-road leading
to the clearing, saying, at last, “This is my way. You may see the
porcupine in the open to the left, but be careful how you shoot.
Confound it! How much longer do you think I am going to be your
pack-mule? I shall kick. Here, carry your own plunder.” And, laughing,
he cast the bearskin on the ground.
Jack’s face lit up. This, of all things, was to be desired.
“I was going to ask you if I might carry it a bit.”
“Were you? Well, be off, and, if you lose yourself, remember that all
the slopes lead to the river.”
“Yes. As if any fellow didn’t know that!” said Jack to himself, as he
trudged away, very proud, with the bearskin on his back.