THE Migleys had engaged Strong to take them out of the woods next
day. They were going to the Fourth-of-July celebration at Hillsborough.
Master was going also, be orator of the day. Strong, hearing the talk
of the others, had "got to wishin'," as Sinth put it, and had finally
concluded to go on to Hillsborough and witness the celebration. So
Master had sent for his guide to come and stay at Lost River camp until
the return of Silas.
The Emperor was getting ready to go. Some one had told him that a man
at Hillsborough was buying coons and foxes for the zoological gardens
in New York. He considered whether he had better take his young pet coon
with him. In that hour of expanding generosity when he had broken his
bank, as the saying goes, he had forgotten his new responsibilities.
There were the children, and that necessity which often awoke him at
night and whispered of impending evil--he must leave his old home and
find a new one somewhere in the forest. The little people would need
boots and dresses, and why shouldn't they have a rocking-horse or some
cheering toy of that character? Such reflections began to change--to
amend, as it were--his view of money.
Furthermore, Sinth had no respect for coons. Ever since the Emperor had
captured him, much of her ill-nature had been focussed upon the coon.
"W-woods g-goin'," he mused, as he fed the little creature. "W-we got t'
git t-tame."
"You better take him along," said Sinth, as she came out of the
cook-tent. "Jim Warner got ten dollars for a coon down to Canton las'
summer."
"C-come on, Dick," said the hunter, with some regret in his tone as he
fastened the coon's cage upon his basket.
Strong looped a cord through the wire and the buckles of both
shoulder-braces. Master had taken the river route, and would drive
to Hillsborough from Tupper's. Strong and the Migleys were going out
through Pitkin. The "sports" had been on their way for more than half an
hour. Strong put his arms in the straps and followed them. He turned in
the trail and called back:
"B-better times!" he shouted. It was a cheerful sentiment which he often
expressed in moments of parting with Sinth.
"Don't believe it," Sinth answered.
"You s-see," he insisted, and then he disappeared in the timber.
As the travellers went on, the Migleys exhibited increasing respect
for the law of gravitation. They gave their coats to the Emperor,
who studiously kept as far ahead or behind them as possible to avoid
conversation. He was "tongue weary," and told them so.
Late in the afternoon they came to a new lumber-camp. "The Warren job"
had pushed its front across the old trail. What desolation had fallen
where Strong passed, two weeks before, in the shadow of the primeval
wood! Its green roof lay in scraggled, withering heaps; the under
thickets had been cut away; the ferns lay flat, blackening on the
sunburned soil. An old skeleton of pine lifted its broken arms high
above the scene of desolation, and one could hear its bones creak and
rattle in the breezy heavens.
Great shafts of spruce and pine were being sawed into even lengths and
hauled to a skidway. Busy men looked small as ants in the edge of the
high forest. Some swayed in pairs, "pulling the briar," as woodsmen say
of those who work with a saw.
Strong and the Migleys halted to watch the downfall of a great pine.
Soon the sawyers put their wedge in the slit and smote upon it. The
sheet of steel hissed back and forth. Then a few blows of the axe. The
men gave a shout of warning and drew aside. The great tree began to
creak and tremble. Slowly it bent and groaned; its long arms seemed
to clutch at the air. Then it pitched headlong, its top whistling, its
heavy stem shaking the ground upon which it fell. A voice of thunder
seemed to proclaim its fate. The axemen lopped off its branches, and
soon the long column lay stark, and the growth of two centuries had come
to its end. Strong and his companions stood a moment longer watching the
scene.
"Huh!" the Emperor grunted, with a sorry look as they passed on.
Near sundown they came into the cleared land--the sandy, God-forsaken
barrens of Tifton, robbed of root and branch and soil, of their glory,
and the one crop nature had designed for them. The travellers passed a
deserted cabin on a hot, stony hill. In its door-yard they could see a
plough and an old wagon partly overgrown with weeds. Some one had tried
to live on the spoiled earth and had come to discouragement. Where ten
thousand men could have found healing and refreshment there was
not enough growing to feed a dozen sheep. Here a part of the great
inheritance of man had been forever ruined. Strong spoke of the pity of
it.
"Can't be helped," said the elder Migley. "A man has a right to cut and
sell his timber."
Strong made no question of that, claiming only that the cutting should
be "reg'lated," an expression which he rarely took the trouble to
explain. It stood for a meaning well considered--that the forest
belonged to the people, the timber to the owner of the land; that
the right of the owner should be subject to restraint. He should be
permitted to cut trees of a certain size only. So the forest would be
made permanent, and the owner and the generations to follow him would
get a crop of timber every eight or ten years.
The sun was setting when they came into the little forest hamlet. The
Migleys put up at the Pitkin general store, where one might have rude
hospitality as well as merchandise. There Strong left pack and coon
behind the counter and hastened to the home of Annette. The comely young
woman rose from the supper-table and took both his hands in hers.
"Strong's ahead!" he answered, cheerfully, as she greeted him.
In response to her invitation he sat down to eat. Her father lighted his
pipe and left them. Silas told of the swishers and the big trout and the
children.
"M-me an' Sinth is b-bein' cut over," here-marked, with a smile, as he
thought of the children.
"What do you mean?"
"B-bein' cleared an' p-ploughed an' sowed."
She laughed a little as the Emperor unfolded his pleasantry. He thought
of his improved account in the matter of swearing and of the better
temper of Sinth.
"G-gittin' p-proper," he added.
Annette was amused.
"G-got t' leave Lost R-river," he said, presently.
"Got to leave Lost River!" Annette exclaimed.
"Ay-ah," Strong answered. He looked down for a second, then he added,
sorrowfully, "G-goin' to tear down the w-woods."
"It's an outrage. Couldn't you go to the plains?"
"S-sold an' f-fenced."
"How about the Rag Lake country?"
"B-bein' cut."
Annette shook her head ruefully.
"W-woods got t' g-go," said Strong, leaning forward and resting his
elbows on his knees. .
"What'll you do?"
"G-git tame," Strong answered, as he rose and went to the squirrel cage
and began to play with his old pet. The little animal came to his wire
gateway and stood upon the palm of the Emperor's hand.
"T-trespasser!" he remarked, stroking the squirrel. "Th-they'll have me
in a c-cage, too, purty s-soon."
He put the squirrel away and offered his hand to Annette.
"S-some day," he whispered.
"Some day," she answered, with a sigh.
"Y-you're g-goin' to hear me d-do some t-talkin'," he assured her. The
Lady Ann had often mildly complained of his reticence.
They now stood in front of the little veranda. She was looking up at
him.
"It'll 'mount to s-suthin', t-too," he went on. It seemed as if he were
making an honest effort to correct the idleness of his tongue. He was
looking down at her and groping in his mind for some other cheerful
sentiment. He seemed to make this happy discovery, and added,
"W-won-derful good t-times comin'."
With a full heart she pressed his great hand in both of hers.
"K-keep ahead," said he, cheerfully, and bade her good-night.
With this he left her and was happy, for the taming of Sinth had seemed
to bring that "some day" of his promise into the near future.
At the Pitkin general store his two companions had retired for the
night, and he joined a group of woodsmen who occupied everything in the
place which had a fairly smooth and accessible top on it. They were all
in debt to the storekeeper and seemed to entertain a regard for him not
unmingled with pity. This latter sentiment was, the historian believes,
rather well founded. They called him "Billy," with the inflection of
fondness. Two sat slouching, apologetically, on the counter. One
rested his weight, as tenderly and considerately as might be, on a
cracker-barrel. Another reposed with a look of greater confidence on
the end of a nail-keg. They were guides, two of whom had come out for
provisions; the others, like Strong, were on their way to Hillsborough.
"Here's the old Emp'ror," said one, as Strong entered and returned their
greetings and sat down astride the beam of a plough.
"I'd like to know what he thinks of it," said a guide from the Jordan
Lake country.
Strong looked up at him without a word.
"A millionaire has bought thirty thousand acres alongside o' my camp,"
the guide explained. "He won't let me cross on the old trail. I had to
go six mile out o' my way to git here."
He smote the counter with his fist and coupled the name of the rich man
with vile epithets.
"My father and my grandfather travelled that trail before he was born,"
the angry woodsman declared.
Strong leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and looked at his hands
without speaking. One laughed loudly, another gave out a sympathetic
curse.
"I'll git even with him--you hear me." So the aggrieved party expressed
himself.
"How?" Strong inquired, looking up suddenly.
"I'll git even. I'll send a traveller into that preserve who'll put him
off it." He spoke with a sinister suggestion.
"Huh!" the Emperor grunted. He understood the threat of the other, who
clearly meant to set the woods afire.
"Ain't I right? What d' ye come to, anyway, when ye think it all over?"
The words came hot and fast off the tongue of the com-plainer.
"F-fool," Strong stammered, calmly. There was something in his way of
saying it that made the others laugh.
A faint smile of embarrassment showed in the face of the angry woodsman.
"Me or the millionaire?" he inquired.
"B-both," Strong answered, soberly, as the storm ended in a little gust
of laughter.
Strong had stripped the guide of his anger as deftly as a squirrel could
take the shell off a nut. In the brief silence that followed he thought
of another maxim for his memorandum-book, and soon it was recorded
therein as follows:
_"Man that makes trouble sure to have most of it."_
Presently he who sat on the cracker-barrel remarked, "If them air woods
git afire now, they'll burn the stars out o' heaven."
All eyes turned upon the once violent man.
"Of course, I wouldn't fire the woods," he muttered. He was now cool,
and could see the folly and also the peril which lay in his threat.
"I never said I'd set the woods afire, but the ol' trail has been a
thoroughfare for nigh a hunderd year.-I believe I've got as good a right
to use it as he has."
"Th-think so?" the Emperor inquired.
"Yes, sir."
"Then d-do it," Strong answered, dryly. There was much in those three
words and in the look of the speaker. It said, plainly, that the other
was to do what he thought to be right and never what he knew to be
wrong.
"Lumbermen are more to blame," said another. "Where they've been nobody
wants to go. They cut everything down t' the size o' yer wrist an'
leave the soil covered with tinder-stacks. They think o' nothin' but the
profit. Case o' fire, woods 'round 'em wouldn't hev a ghost of a show."
"Look at the Weaver tract," said he who sat on the nail-keg. "Four
thousand acres o' dead tops--miles on 'em--an' all as dry as gunpowder.
If you was t' touch a match there ye'd have to run fer yer life."
"Go like a scairt deer," said he of the cracker-barrel. "'Fore it
stopped I guess ye'd think the world was afire."
"W-woods g-goin'," said the Emperor, sadly.
He thought of the cold springs at which he had refreshed himself in the
heat of the summer day and which were to perish utterly; he thought
of the brooks and rivers, slowing their pace like one stricken with
infirmity, and, by-and-by, lying dead in the sunlight--lying in a chain
of slimy pools across the great valley of the St. Lawrence; he thought
of green meadows which, soon or late, would probably wither into a
desert.
"What 'll become of us?" said he on the nail-keg.
"Have t' be sawed an' trimmed an' planed an' matched an' go into town."
It was the voice above the cracker-barrel.
"Not me," said the occupant of the nail-keg. "Too many houses an' folks
an' too much noise. Couldn't never stan' it."
"Village is a cur'ous place," said another, who had never been sober
when he saw it. "Steeples an' buildin's an' folks reel 'round in pairs.
Seems so the sidewalk flowed like a river, an' nothin' stan's still long
'nough so ye can see how 't looks."
The speaker was interrupted by the proprietor of the Pitkin general
store, who came downstairs and flung himself on the top of the counter.
"Goin't' the Fourth?" said he of the cracker-barrel.
"Might as well--got t' hev a tooth drawed."
"I've got one that's been growlin' purty spiteful," said the
nail-kegger. "Dunno but I might as well go an' hev it tore out."
"I got t' be snaked, too," said the cracker-barrel man.
"Reg'lar tooth-drawin' down thar to-morrer," said a voice from the
counter.
"Beats all how the teeth git t' rairin' up ev'ry circus an' Fourth o'
July," said the nail-kegger. The laughter which now ensued seemed, as
it were, to shake everybody off his perch. The counter and the
cracker-barrel expressed themselves in a creak of relief, and all went
abovestairs save the Emperor. He cut a few boughs for a pillow, spread
his blanket under the pine-trees, flung an end of it over his great
body, and "let go," as he was wont to say. At any time of day or night
he had only to lie down and "let go," and enjoy absolute forgetfulness.