SINCE early May there had been no rain save a sprinkle now and then.
From Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain, from the St. Lawrence to Sandy
Hook, the earth had been scorching under a hot sun. The heat and dust of
midsummer had dimmed the glory of June.
People those days were thinking less of the timber of the woods and more
of their abundant, cool, and living green. The inns along the edge of
the forest were filling up.
About eleven o'clock of a morning late in June, a young man arrived at
Lost River camp--one Robert Master, whose father owned a camp and some
forty thousand acres not quite a day's tramp to the north. He was a big,
handsome youth of twenty-two, just out of college. Sinth regarded every
new-comer as a natural enemy. She suspected most men of laziness and a
capacity for the oppression of females. She stood in severe silence at
the door of the cook-tent and looked him over as he came. Soon she
went to the stove and began to move the griddles. Silas entered with an
armful of wood.
"If he thinks I'm goin' to wait on him hand an' foot, he's very much
mistaken," said Sinth.
"R-roughlocks!" Silas answered, calmly, as he put a stick on the fire.
Sinth made no reply, but began sullenly rushing to and fro with pots
and pans. Soon her quick knife had taken the jackets off a score of
potatoes. While her hands flew, water leaped on the potatoes, and the
potatoes tumbled into the pot, and the pot jumped into the stove-hole as
the griddle took a slide across the top of the stove. And so with a rush
of feet and a rattle of pots and pans and a sliding of griddles and a
banging of iron doors "Mis' Strong" wore off her temper at hard work.
The Emperor used to smile at this variety of noise and call it
"f-f-female profanity," a phrase not wholly inapt. When the "sport" had
finished his dinner, and she and her brother sat side by side at
the table, she was plain Sinth again, with a look of sickliness and
resignation. She ate freely--but would never confess her appetite--and
so leisurely that Strong often had most of the dishes washed before she
had finished eating.
The young man was eager to begin fishing, and soon after dinner the
Emperor took him over to Catamount Pond. On their way the young man
spoke of the object of his visit.
"Mr. Strong, you know my father?" he half inquired.
"Ay-ah," the Emperor answered.
"He's been a property-holder in this county for five years, every summer
of which I have spent on his land. I feel at home in the woods, and I
cast my first vote at Tifton."
Strong listened thoughtfully.
"I want to do what I can to save the wilderness," young Master went on.
"R-right!" said the Emperor.
"If I were in the Legislature, I believe I could accomplish something.
Anyhow, I am going to make a fight for the vacant seat in the Assembly."
Strong surveyed him from head to foot.
"I wish you would do what you can for me in Pitkin."
"Uh-huh!" Strong answered, in a gentle tone, without opening his
lips. It was a way he had of expressing uncertainty leaning towards
affirmation. He liked the young man; there was, indeed, something
grateful to him in the look and voice of a gentleman.
"You'll never be ashamed of me--I'll see to that," said Master.
Having reached the little pond, Strong gave him his boat, and promised
to return and bring him into camp at six. Here and there trout were
breaking through the smooth plane of water.
The Emperor took a bee-line over the wooded ridge to Robin Lake. There
he spent an hour repairing his bark shanty and gathering balsam boughs
for a bed. Stepping on a layer of spruce poles over which the boughs
were to be spread, in a dark corner of the shanty, his foot went through
and came down upon the nest of one of the most disagreeable creatures in
the wilderness. He sprang away with an oath and fled into the open air.
For a moment he expressed himself in a series of sharp reports, Then,
picking up a long pole, he met the offenders leaving their retreat, and
"mellered" them, as he explained to Sinth that evening.
"T-take that, Amos," he muttered, as he gave one of them another blow.
It should be borne in mind that he called every member of this
malodorous tribe "Amos," because the meanest man he ever knew had borne
that name.
He put his heel in the crotch of a fallen limb and drew his boot. Then
he cautiously cut off the leg of his trousers at the knee, and, poking
cloth and leather into a little hollow, buried them under black earth.
Slowly the "Emperor of the Woods" climbed a ridge on his way to Lost
River camp, one leg bare to the knee. Walking, he thought of Annette.
Lately misfortune had come between them, and now he seemed to be getting
farther from the trail of happiness.
At a point on Balsam Hill he came into the main thoroughfare of the
woodsmen which leads from Bear Mountain to Lost River camp. Where he
could see far down the big trail, under arches of evergreen, he sat on
a stump to rest. His bootless foot, now getting sore, rested on a giant
toadstool.
Thus enthroned, the Emperor looked down at his foot and reconsidered the
relative positions of himself and the Evil One. His faded crown of felt
tilting over one ear, his rough, bearded face wet with perspiration, his
patched trousers truncated over the right knee, below which foot and leg
were uncovered, he was an emperor more distinguished for his appearance
than his lineage.
He took out his old memorandum-book and made this note in it with a stub
of a pencil:
_"June the 27 Strong says one Amos in the bush is worth two in yer
company an a pair of britches."_
The Emperor, although in the main a serious character, enjoyed some
private fun with this worn little book, which he always carried with
him. Therein he did most of his talking, with secret self-applause now
and then, one may fancy. It has thrown some light on the inner life of
the man, and, in a sense, it is one of the figures of our history.