Whew! A breath of fresh air!
Joe Grimsby had gone to the woods--to the very heart of the Adirondack
wilderness, an old stamping-ground of his--primitive enough in these
days, long before the millionaire and his money had invaded and gilded
the silent places. Even Atwater did not object to Joe’s going--he
had worked hard, and needed a change. Their final set of competition
drawings for the big building of the Lawyers’ Consolidated Trust
Company had been handed in for decision; the remainder of their work,
two cottages on Long Island, were in the hands of the builders, and
the office was taking a well-earned rest. So Joe packed up his things,
boarded the Montreal express one evening early in August, got off at
daylight on the edge of Lake Champlain at Westport, and found his old
friend and guide, Ed Munsey, waiting for him at the small station with
a hired team and buckboard.
Ed’s quick blue eye caught right of Joe as he stepped off the sleeper.
“Wall! Wall!” grinned Ed, with a hearty handshake. “Knowed ye’d come.
Freme Dubois’s boy brought me your letter--let’s see, Thursday, wa’n’t
it? No--come to think of it, it was Friday--’bout noon; I’d been off
straightening the trail over to the big south medders, fer the survey
with Bill Williams. Gosh all whimey! We done some travellin’ in that
thar swamp. Goll, sez I, I knowed ye’d write. Haow goes it, Joe?”
“Fine, Ed. Lord, but I’m glad to get here.”
“That yourn?” remarked Ed, noting an English sole-leather trunk by
itself on the platform, well scarred and labelled, guaranteeing its
travels to Venice, the Tyrol, and beyond.
Joe nodded.
“Reminds me of Hite Pitcomb the time he fell through Hank Jenkins’s
sawpit. Thar wa’n’t a spot on him big’s your hand, that Doc Haines
didn’t stick a plaster on. Let’s see, got yer gripsack?” and glancing
at the big pigskin bag beside Joe, he slung the trunk on his back, Joe
following him to the waiting team.
As Ed tucked the yellow horse-blanket snugly around Joe’s knees and
picked up the lines, his keen blue eyes looked him quizzically over.
“Lookin’ kinder peaked ’round the gills, ain’t ye?” he remarked, as he
clucked to the horses. “Wall, you’ll git over that, soon’s we git to
camp--gee up!”
The team started for Keene Valley at a brisk trot.
“If I’d a-knowed you was a-comin’, I’d er fixed up my old lean-to to
the head of the pond--roof was leakin’ bad last time I come by thar--a
feller’d git kinder moist, as the feller said, if it come on to rain.”
As the springy old buckboard rattled on, the rare mountain air, pungent
with the perfume of balsam and pine, sent a glow to Joe’s cheeks. He
drew a deep, long, delicious breath.
“That’s what I want,” he cried, with his old breezy enthusiasm, “and
plenty of it! Whew! What air, Ed!”
“Help yerself, friend, it’s all free,” returned his companion.
The two talked on--Joe plying his old friend with a score of questions.
“Eph Hammond’s girl got married,” he learned. “Yes, yes--run off with
the drug-store feller down to Alder Brook. Old Man Stimson was dead
at last. Jim Oldfield had cut himself bad with an axe, over to Lily
Pond--but deer were plenty, and the still water at the head of the
Upper Ausable Pond was chock full of trout.”
They talked on as they passed through Elizabethtown, and clear of the
village, some miles farther on, Joe’s eyes feasted upon the first
glimpse of the great distant range of mountains that presently loomed
up ahead of them--a range he knew every foot of and had loved for
years. As they neared Keene Valley, the mountains became majestic; on
the left, the black sides of Giant Mountain glistened in the sunlight;
beyond, at the extreme end of the long, green, peaceful valley, the
peak of Noon Mark peeped above the rifts of morning mist. Now and
then a red squirrel skittered across the road. To the left flashed
in ripples of light the swirling current of the Ausable River, clear
as crystal. The air grew cooler as they dipped down a short hill and
skirted an alder swamp, out of which two woodcock whistled up and
disappeared in the deeper forest.
“Gee ap!” cried Ed to the sturdy team. They livened into a brisk trot.
It was playful going for the mares after drawing logs all winter down
lumber roads of sheer ice, where often a fall, a shifted load, or the
snapping of a trace-chain meant death to them.
The big woods had weathered another winter of cruel winds and biting
cold, deep in millions of tons of snow. Formidable mountain torrents,
like John’s Brook, had lain for months frozen and choked under a mass
of white domes marking its big boulders; down beneath this coverlet
the black water gurgled and swirled. Here and there, during the
hard winter, an air-hole disclosed the icy water purling beneath,
quarrelling, talking to itself, and where for all these long winter
months the trout lay like prisoners in the dark, scarcely moving. Above
them the big hemlocks had creaked, groaned, and cried under bitter
onslaughts of sleet and wind. Now and then a tree strung tense with
the cold gave out a report like a pistol-shot. From the great boulders
hung huge yellow icicles, like the stained beards of old men. Tracks
were everywhere, a vast labyrinth of telltale goings and comings of
the hungry and the wary. The fox cross-tracked the wolverene, circling
over the clean snow were noiseless tracks of lean white hares and the
straight, mincing tread of partridges. Now and then the solid, nimble
track of a panther, prowling while the bears slept soundly in their
caves. Here and there tiny tracks, the timid trot of a mouse, his tail
making a faint gash in the snow. Spring had come as a relief at last,
freeing all things. To-day the woods basked in the kind old summer.
The big brook had become again a roaring torrent. Birds sang again;
the hermit-thrush, the last to sing at evening. Nocturnal animals went
their several ways under the gentle light of the moon, and every early
morning brought that pirate, the kingfisher, like a flash of azure down
John’s Brook, chattering with devilish glee as he drove the smaller
trout in a panic ahead of him, and filled his belly with the one that
pleased him, an insolent and arrogant thief, vain of his strong beak
and his gay plumage.
To Ed the woods were an open book, and he read them as easily as
some do a printed page, though he could scarcely spell, and wrote
with difficulty. His shock of hair, seldom combed except for dances,
funerals, or weddings, was sandy; his heart was big and his eyes of
a clear, penetrating blue. He could see farther than most men in the
woods, and could shoot straight under difficulties when many a man
would have missed. He was as garrulous as a magpie at times, and silent
at others, though his voice, like that of most men living in the
wilderness, was low-pitched, a soft, earnest voice. Once a year he dyed
his mustache blue-black; that it wore green to one side did not bother
him. He had a pet fancy for a stub of a brier pipe, stuffed generally
with his “favorite” tobaccos--“Blue Ruin” or “Honey Comb”--and wore gay
suspenders and two thick blue-flannel shirts to keep him warm. He had
never ridden on the cars. They were the only thing he was afraid of,
never having tried them, though they had tempted him more than once to
take him as far as the fair at “Ticonderogi.” He had a habit of talking
seriously to inanimate things about him. His fire that slowly kindled
in a rain, sticks that refused to “lay daown” to kindle, again to the
dulled edge of his long-handled, double-bitted axe--a rare occurrence,
for he kept it as sharp as a carpenter’s chisel. Often he spoke to the
weather.
“Goll ding ye!” he’d say, between his teeth, glancing up at the
low-lying clouds. “Ain’t ye got yer satisfy? Ain’t ye got dreened aout
yit?”
Joe loved him and he loved Joe. They were close pals. Ed had guided him
ever since he was a little shaver of fifteen, taking care of him as if
he was his own son--and for all of these precious services he asked
nothing, and only accepted their remuneration after long persuasion
from Joe and bashful protests--scratching his shock of sandy hair
awkwardly and declaring: “By gum! that he wa’n’t worth it--that it was
a goll-dummed sight too much in dollars, friend. Ain’t we hed a good
time?” He’d argue: “Wall--ain’t that enough?” Ed always “cal’ated” it
was. Now and then he managed to send Joe a hind quarter or a saddle
of venison; once the skin of a wolverene, a prime pelt killed in
December; and twice, when his bear traps yielded over in St. Armand
Valley, he sent Joe the skins--ears and all--forfeiting the reward
from the State, and never mentioning it, either. Though he was seldom
at home, he had a snug cabin with a dirt floor down by the river, four
hound dogs, a wife, a melodeon that nobody could play, two strapping
daughters, afraid of no man alive, and a suspension lamp.
They were only details in his life. He preferred the deep woods, often
travelling in the wilderness for weeks alone, sometimes off with the
State Survey, who always got him when they could, since he possessed a
bump of location, a sense of direction that was phenomenal; often he
was fishing or still-hunting for deer, or following his line of sable
traps as far up as Panther Gorge and the summit of Mount Marcy. He
could spend a week in the woods with no more than a dozen matches; when
one got damp he rubbed it dry in his hair.
The two spent the night in the valley at the old white hotel with the
green blinds. Early the next morning they provisioned up at the small
store and post-office opposite, smelling of dried herrings, calico,
cheese, baby’s shoes, and lumbermen’s new brogans.
Half a dozen habitués who had known Joe for years slid off the counter
close to the cheese screen to grip him by the hand in welcome.
“Wall! Wall!” they exclaimed, and that was about all, except they added
that, “Ed had been expectin’ ye and that your letter come all right.”
By noon they were en route to camp on the Upper Ausable Pond, by way
of the muddiest lumber road in the world, mud hub-deep, black mud,
covering patches of sunken corduroy, treacherous roots and hidden rocks
that snapped their full share of axles during a season, spilled off
provisions, burst flour-sacks, and brought forth a string of profanity
along its entire contrary length. Ed and Joe trudged on back of the
buckboard. To ride was impossible. Now and then the strong team, guided
to-day by Bill Dubois’s boy, also on foot, strained, plunged on, and
stopped for a panting rest. Moreover, the old road was steep, only
reaching its height of land as it came into a glimmering view through
the trees of the Lower Ausable Pond, that lay below, still and mirrored
between the flanks of the great mountains. To the right rose the
Gothics, and beyond, sheer up above their granite flanks, the high peak
of Mount Marcy.
Once in sight of the Lower Ausable, the air became even rarer. A gentle
breeze that shirred the surface of the long pond, set the silvery
leaves of a clump of poplar-trees shivering and the water slopping
along the rocky shore. Here, too, they said good-by to Bill Dubois’s
boy. By the time they had rowed through the Lower Ausable, made the
carry of a mile and a half between the twin ponds, and reached Ed’s
lean-to at the head of the upper pond, it was nearly dark. Ed’s frail
green boat, loaded down within three inches of the water-line, slipped
up to a small patch of sand that served as a landing before the cleared
spot in front of his primitive camp. Ed sprang out and steadied the
boat for Joe. The next instant he had picked up the heaviest of the
two pack-baskets, slid his strong arms through its broad leather
straps, and with a grunt slowly staggered with it to his feet, over a
hundred pounds dead weight.
“Hold on!” cried Joe. “Let me help!” he insisted, in vain, as Ed
started up the bank. “Pretty heavy, isn’t it? Looks as if it weighed a
ton to me.”
Under the dead weight Ed turned and grinned.
“Wall,” he drawled, “it ain’t no earring.”
He set down the pack-basket with a thump before the lean-to and glanced
about him. Finally, he decided on a group of dry balsams to the left, a
few strokes of his keen axe levelled three. These he cut into lengths,
and hauled before the camp. Then he went in search of a rotten stump,
broke out from its centre a handful of “punk,” gathered a few shreds of
birch bark, arranged his fire, struck one sulphur match on the seat of
his thick, gray-woollen, homespun trousers, and soon had a cheery blaze
crackling and snapping a welcome.
Nothing is worse than a fireless camp. The fire is everything; it is
almost meat and drink.
As it grew darker it made the spot a home. An owl hooted across
the silent pond. Beyond the limit of the firelight lay the hushed
wilderness, stretching afar, and it is safe to say that the only other
campfire to-night for miles was Si Skinner’s, whom Ed “cal’ated was
floatin’ for deer clear over to the Boreas Ponds.”
Out came Ed’s magic “fry-pan.” With the fragrance of the coffee and
the scent of sizzling bacon and beans Joe became ravenous. He could
hardly wait until Ed cried, “Supper!” and added, with a shout that
echoed across the pond: “Daylight on zee swamp, and beans on zee tab’,
git up, you peasonuers!” being an old lumberjack’s shout in calling the
Canuck French element in camp to breakfast.
“We’d er done well to hev took thet little whiffet dorg of Bill
Saunders along,” declared Ed, as they sat smoking in the warm glow of
the fire after supper. “Cunningest little cuss you ever seen to run a
deer. Me and Bill killed four ahead of him last fall. He don’t make no
noise--Bill learned him that; got a voice on him ez weak’s a kitten’s.
Then, thinks I, we won’t hev no trouble gitten a deer jackin’ if it
keeps up ez warm ez this. Flies hev begun to trouble ’em considerable
nights. They’ll be sloshin’ down into the still water soon. Bill come
through here, it wa’n’t more’n a week ago, and seen four--three bucks
and a doe--jest this side of the Gull rock, not forty rod from whar you
shot at the otter two year ago. ’Bout ez neat a shot as I ever see.”
The two lay smoking on their backs on a fresh and springy bed of balsam
boughs, a fragrant mattress skilfully thatched by Ed, their boots off
before the warm blaze, while they talked on of many things--among them
two dances over in New Russia Valley that Ed was sorry Joe had not been
up to go to.
The dance Ed recounted “over to Jedwins’ folks Christmas night” was a
great success. More than a dozen sleighs had brought the crowd. The
Williams boys fiddled; the coonskin coats were piled as high as the
ceiling. They had moved out the stove in the square kitchen of the log
cabin, and had danced until broad daylight.
As Ed continued his narrative, Joe could almost hear the tramping,
swishing feet, for he had gone to many of these dances; hear the
laughter and the rough jokes; could see a score of rosy-cheeked,
healthy girls sitting in the room off the kitchen, and being beckoned
to by their partners to dance; and the jigs they played, swift jigs
to stir the blood--“The Pride of Michigan” and the “Cat in the
Cabbage” scraped out with a will, with a speed and a rhythm that is
characteristic of these backwoods fiddlers; and above the music the
shouts: “Alley mand left! Alley mand right! Dos a dos! First lady in
the centre, and all hands around and swing your own!”
They pounded the floor; often they broke it in places, and in every hip
pocket was a flask.
“Let’s have a song, Ed,” pleaded Joe, kicking up the fire into a shower
of sparks, and returning to the fragrant bed of balsams, and though Ed
tried to beg off, Joe insisted.
Finally Ed cleared his throat and began in a sing-song drone:
“Willy Jones--hez gone an’--’listed.
Willy to--the war hez gone.
He left his little wife, all to hum,
All to hum--to grief and mourn.”
He wiped the green side of his dyed mustache with the back of his hand,
and began the second verse drowsily, quavering on the high notes:
“She dressed herself--in man’s attire,
And went by the name--of Richard Carr,
With her lily-white fingers--all besmirched,
All besmirched--with pitch and tar.”
Here he paused.
“Go on,” coaxed Joe. “How about the part on the parade-ground.
Remember?”
“Hold on--let’s see. Kinder slipped out of my mind--been so long since
I tried to sing it.”
But Joe was again insistent, and after a little thinking Ed resumed:
“One day when she--was exercisin’--
Exercisin’--on the green,
A silver butting--flew off her waistcoat,
And her lily-white throat was seen.”
Again the singer stopped.
“Now, hold on, there’s a fourth verse,” declared Joe eagerly.
“Let’s see--so there is,” confessed Ed sleepily, and after a long pull
at his pipe, resumed slowly:
“When the captin--see this action,
See the deed--that she had done,
He made her gineral--of the army,
Of the army--ninety-one----”
“Thar! thet’s all I kin remember,” he declared.
It was one of those old lumberjack songs that had come from no one knew
where. As far as Joe knew, this favorite backwoods ballad of his had
never been written, like scores of others gleaned out of the lumber
camps.
But it was growing late, and both were drowsy after their long tramp.
The fire had sunk to embers. They stacked it up for the night with
the remaining niggered ends of the dry balsams, and before another
five minutes had elapsed the two were rolled up and snoring in
their blankets. Then all was still, save that at intervals the owl
hooted hoarsely from across the pond, or a muskrat plunged down by
the landing, close to their boat. When they awoke, the warm sun was
streaming in upon them, and the pond, still as a plate of glass, lay
under a blanket of rosy mist. That night Joe had dreamed of Sue.
* * * * *
To Joe the still water at the head of the pond had a strange
fascination, a silent stream, black as onyx, its current bordered by
the deep forest of spruce and pine, with now and then a giant hemlock,
centuries old, lifting its shaggy top above them. So perfectly were the
trees mirrored in the stream that it was often difficult to tell where
the water-line began.
The stream this year was swarming with trout; seldom had its gravelled
spawning beds yielded better fishing. Here, too, the deer came to
drink. At night the winding stream became ghostly and as silent as
death, save now and then the slosh of a leaping trout or the plunge of
a muskrat.
There was something of the unfathomable and the unknown in this weird,
lonely river, buried as it was miles back of civilization.
To-night the slim, green boat moved up it, and turned to the right and
left in its varied bends, hemmed in by the black trees. The boat, like
the two men within it, did not make a sound, and though Ed’s paddle
kept constantly in motion under water, he avoided lifting it clear of
the current. In the absolute stillness even its drip would have been
heard. In the bow where Joe sat in the chill air, with a Winchester
across his knees, glowed with a peculiar ghostly light an old-fashioned
jack-lantern; back of its stub of a candle Ed had nailed a semicircle
of hemlock bark, whose inner slippery peel, white as ivory, served as a
reflector, obliterating from view the boat and its occupants. It was an
ideal night to float for deer--the moon not yet up.
It was past midnight when they stealthily turned to the right up a
stretch of water, swinging along under some alders that shaded in
daylight a patch of shallow water with a clean sand bottom. Suddenly
Ed’s paddle gently backed water. Joe did not know his paddle had
reversed, but he felt an almost imperceptible shake to the green boat,
cautiously lifted his rifle, and, peering ahead of him, saw a grayish
object close up to the alders. Half a stroke of Ed’s paddle, and he saw
more plainly an animal that resembled a sort of phantom horse but was
in reality a small spike-horned buck. He had been drinking, and now
raised his trim head and stood gazing into the lantern’s ghostly light.
Like a flash he started to spring to the bank, but Joe was too quick
for him; down he went with a shot that broke his neck.
“By goll, Joe, you done well,” came Ed’s quiet remark, as together
they lifted the deer in the boat and started for camp. They had barely
reached the Gull rock when the moon rose, flooding the pond with its
soft radiance, changing the chill low-lying mist to a silvery veil.
When they reached camp they turned in and slept late, and it was nearly
noon before Ed had the fat spike-horned buck “dressed out” and hung.
They kept a saddle and a fore quarter with them, and the hind quarters
and the other fore quarter they took down to the lower pond, where they
hung it for safe-keeping close to the shore in a small cavern below
some big boulders known as the Ice Cave. Here nature had provided for
the hunter an excellent refrigerator, inasmuch as it held several tons
of ice all the year round, possibly due to its being entirely screened
from the sun’s rays, and the fact that a cold draft of air whirled
through it constantly.
These were the good old days when rich clubs and improvement companies
had not penetrated the wilderness; macadamed roads, luxurious camps,
electric-lighted hotels, French chefs, automobiles, and golf courses
did not exist. The big woods still held their mysteries and their
hardships; they held natives, too--big-hearted men like Ed Munsey,
simple as children and full of dry humor. It was a vast paradise of
things beautiful and real, and of constant adventure.
Already Joe looked like a different man; you would have scarcely
recognized him as the smiling but rather peaked Joe, who had stepped
off the stuffy sleeper. No fellow could have been more constantly in a
better humor; the girth of his already broad shoulders seemed to have
increased--at least Ed “’lowed” they had--and there was a healthy,
solid ruddiness about him that made Ed’s heart glad. Moreover, though
it was August, they had the upper pond, so far, to themselves. The four
or five other modest open lean-to camps along its shore were still
fireless and deserted, and though a small party of hunters in two
boats a few days later passed through the ponds en route to the Boreas
country, they did not stop.
The weather held fine. Sharp, cold nights, splendid crisp, sunny
mornings, the pond boiling in mist, lazy noons and peaceful twilights,
when Joe cast for trout up the silent, still water. The little camp was
dry and in perfect order. Wasps crawled into the jam-pot whenever they
could get a chance, or droned over the warm ashes of their fire, their
only other visitors being a few friendly chipmunks and a family of
cedar-birds.
Be it said in passing, that if we have been at pains to describe
in detail the exact environment in which Mr. Joseph Grimsby found
himself these days, carefree as a gypsy and as brown and healthy as a
lumberjack, it is because this very spot marked, ten days later, the
turning-point in his life. To receive a telegram in camp generally
means bad news. We instantly think of an imperative order to return at
once to civilization, or worse, the serious illness of those nearest to
us--even death. The telegram addressed to Joe was brought into Keene
Valley by the mail stage at noon, and handed to the postmaster in the
small country store, who, having got hold of Bill Dubois’s boy, sent
him off with it to the upper pond.
It must be said to his credit that Bill Dubois’s boy, whose name was
Henry, and who was called Hi for short, made the trip up to camp at his
best speed. That he only arrived after twilight was no fault of his.
There was his father’s flat-bottomed scow hid in the bushes at the end
of the lower pond, and it leaked badly; besides the pond, unlike its
mate above, had roughened up under a sudden breeze, and he had to pull
with all his long-legged, long-armed, red-eared strength to reach the
carry, at the other end of which the boat he had counted on he found
had been taken by the party going to the Boreas country. There was a
vague and overgrown trail, however, skirting the shore, that he knew
Joe and Ed were camped on, and having hallooed for some minutes in vain
in the hope of their hearing him, he took to the trail, no easy going
in the fast deepening dusk, stumbling over fallen logs. Finally he
began to reach the head of the pond, and presently came out upon the
small clearing before the lean-to.
Not a human being was in sight, and though he hallooed and shouted
again, no one answered him, save a loon about thirty rods from shore,
whose shrill, diabolical laugh seemed to mock him. He searched around,
found the lantern, lighted it, brightened up the smouldering fire, made
himself some tea, discovered a square of raw pork “freshening” in the
dew on a stump, cut off a slice with his jack-knife, slipped it between
two hardtack biscuits and, having eaten it, washed it down with the
rest of the tea. Then he flung himself on the bed of balsam and was
soon snoring, the telegram stuck conspicuously in an axe-cut on the
lean-to’s ridge-pole.
By this time Joe and Ed, who had fished far up the still water, were
making their way back to camp. As their boat came out into the pond
and clear of the Gull rock, Ed was the first to catch sight of their
brightened fire.
“Wall, I swan!” he exclaimed. “I presume likely we got a visitor, Joe.”
“Looks like it, Ed.”
“Some pitiful cuss hez got lost, mebbe,” reasoned Ed, and sunk his oars
deep, lifting the frail craft with every stroke as they made for the
flickering fire.
“Halloo thar!” shouted Ed, but neither the loon’s laugh nor Ed’s halloo
awakened Hi Dubois. He lay on his back, one freckled hand thrown across
his open mouth. Ed shook him into consciousness as Joe caught sight of
the telegram. He tore it open anxiously. He could scarcely believe the
news. His breath came quick, and his eyes gleamed as he read it again
under the lantern.
Sue and the Jacksons arrive Wednesday eighteenth. Have camp and
guides ready Upper Ausable.
ENOCH CRANE.
That night Joe scarcely slept a wink. He was too happy to sleep. Sleep!
And you ask a young man to sleep under the stimulant of as much sheer,
unexpected happiness as that telegram contained? He got up a dozen
times and paced around the fire. Joy had made him too nervous to lie
down. Finally he abandoned the fire and, slipping on his moccasins,
went down to the edge of the pond, where he sat on a log, his eyes
wide open, dreaming. The first vestige of dawn, that peculiar gray
light which is neither night nor day, and which first favors the open
places, crept over the pond, awakening the loon, who laughed at him
and instantly dived. Joe still sat there--trying to realize it all--to
reason out how it had happened. He had thought the old pond enough of a
paradise until now. It was nothing compared with what it would be.
Sue was coming!
He had never met the Jacksons, though Sue had casually mentioned them.
Were they old or young? How many Jacksons were there? The whole thing
seemed incredible. Why had Enoch Crane sent the telegram? Only Atwater
knew where he was.
These thoughts and conjectures passed in a flood through his mind. A
kingfisher, making his earliest morning round of the shore, chattered
by him. He heard Ed yawn, and knew he was awake. Ed was talking now
to the Dubois boy. Presently he heard the sound of his axe, lopping
down some fresh firewood. It brought him to his feet and out of his
revery, waking him up to his responsibility and the practical side
of the situation. Joe knew there was no camp among the four or five
lean-tos on the pond comfortable enough for women. They were like
Ed’s, primitive shelters, roofed with bark and sadly out of repair. A
good weather-tight, open lean-to must be built with a separate one as
dressing-room for the ladies. All this he discussed eagerly with Ed
after breakfast. They rowed Hi Dubois down to the carry, and Joe having
rewarded that faithful messenger, they returned to camp.
Here Joe’s pent-up enthusiasm broke loose.
“By the gods!” he cried. “We’ll build a dandy, Ed!” in which he was
seconded by the trapper, whose blue eyes already twinkled over the
scheme. A week still remained before the Jacksons’ arrival, and they
went to work with a will, clearing a space beside the old lean-to, Ed
chopping and Joe hauling.
By the next night the three log sides of the new camp were notched and
in place, and before another forty-eight hours the roof was on. The
next morning, a few rods behind it, they started a smaller one. This
was to serve as a dressing-tent for the ladies, for in those days,
friends, chaperons, boys and girls, sweethearts, cousins, guides, and
aunts, all shared the same roof and the same open fire at their feet.
Ah! the good old days--they’re gone now.
The millionaire attended to that.
* * * * *
Before noon of the seventeenth the new camp was ready, and “ez neat as
a piny,” as Ed expressed it, its double roof of bark water-tight, its
open front facing the pond, and its bed of balsams deep and long enough
to comfortably sleep ten if need be.
That afternoon, leaving Ed in camp, Joe started alone down to the
valley to meet them on the morrow. Despite all his joyful expectancy,
he had his keen moments of doubt and fear. What were the Jacksons like?
he wondered. Somehow he could not help fearing they would bring with
Sue some impossible girl--some selfish, fastidious niece, perhaps. He
was ready for anything, however, as long as they brought Sue.
He spent that night at the old hotel, and most of the next morning
between the middle of the road and the porch of the store. The faintest
sound of wheels brought him out to the highway.
Suddenly he caught sight of a distant buckboard. It drew nearer.
There was no mistaking it. Joe’s heart beat like a trip-hammer. There
they were! Bill Dubois’s boy was driving; next to him sat a short
gray-haired, middle-aged man in a slouch-hat, shading a genial, round
countenance; behind them a lady wearing a green veil, and beside
her--Sue.
Joe was waving frantically. Jackson waved both arms wildly in the air,
Sue waved her pocket-handkerchief, and Mrs. Jackson, untying her green
veil, waved that.
They had arrived, and there was no niece--only their baggage, roped on
behind.
“Well, here we are!” exclaimed Mr. Richard Jackson, as he jumped from
the front seat and gripped Joe’s hand. There was a smile playing all
over his round, genial face, and a twinkle in his eyes. “We got here,
you see, safe and sound. Whew! What air!”
Joe felt they were friends already.
“Mr. Grimsby,” Sue ventured, turning to Alice Jackson, by way of
presenting him.
“I’m going to call you Joe,” she said frankly, stretching out her
gloved hand to him across Sue’s knees.
The moment he had looked into her brown eyes and heard her speak, he
knew she was “a dear.” It was evident she was some ten years younger
than her husband, a slim, energetic little woman, with a smile that
was merry and sincere. He noticed, too, that her dark hair was just
turning gray. She was charming--that charm that comes from frankness,
intelligence, and refinement.
“I’m going to call you Joe, too,” declared her husband, gripping Joe
heartily by both shoulders, “and don’t you forget that my name’s Dick.”
No one would have taken this jolly man of forty-five for the auditor of
one of the largest systems of railroads in the country, but he was. He,
too, needed a well-earned rest.
Ah, yes--there was another one standing now by the empty buckboard who
called him “Joe”--but her small hand lingered in his the longest.
That very night, with big Jim Turner as extra guide, they reached the
Upper Ausable and camp.
It did not take Ed, Joe, or Jim Turner long to find out that the
Jacksons were used to the woods. They had a camp of their own in
northern Canada, where they had fished and hunted for years, but it
was too far away for this trip. As for Sue, she was gloriously happy.
She went into ecstasies over everything--the beauty of the ponds, the
water, the silence, the snug camp, the table of rough boards, and the
crackling fire.
Never had she seemed so dear to Joe, more attractive than ever, in
her sensible short skirt of greenish-brown homespun, her trim camping
boots, and a very becoming little felt hat, which Joe lost no time
in making gay with three scarlet ibis and a silver doctor from his
fly-book.
That night at supper came another surprise; under Joe’s tin plate lay a
letter, which Sue had slipped there under strict orders from Enoch.
“He will understand, my dear, when he reads it,” he had said to her,
and, furthermore, that she should hide it under his plate their first
night in camp. Even the Jacksons did not know of its existence.
“Hello!” cried Joe, as he seated himself and discovered it. “Mail, eh!
Why, there isn’t any stamp on it. Who of you three dear people brought
this?”
The Jacksons’ innocence was evident at a glance.
Joe looked at Sue and smiled.
“You?” he asked. “Come, confess.” But her eyes already confessed it.
“It’s from Mr. Crane. Hadn’t you better read it? He said it was
important.”
He tore open the envelope and scanned the following. Then for an
instant his eyes opened wide and he half rose. It ran as follows:
MY DEAR FELLOW:
I have the honor to inform you that, at our last meeting of the
Lawyers’ Consolidated Trust Company, the firm of Atwater and
Grimsby have been awarded the plans for our new building. My hearty
congratulations. As ever,
Your old friend,
ENOCH CRANE.
Two weeks passed--two whole weeks of memorable days. No jollier party
had ever come to the pond.
* * * * *
Then came their last evening, when that mysterious magnetic spell
of the dark old still water drew their green boat far up its silent
stretches, Joe at the paddle and Sue lying wrapped in a camp blanket
in the bow. There were long moments when neither spoke to-night--their
last on the old stream together. Sue lay motionless, gazing up at the
great star-strewn heavens above her, framed by the dark spruces.
Despite their millions of stars, it was so dark under the trees that
Joe in the stern could scarcely make out her silhouette. Now and then
her ears caught the drip-drip of his paddle. The silence was intense.
It seemed to Sue almost a sacrilege to break it by words.
What could she say!
To-morrow meant good-by to their paradise.
Two weeks ago they were rich in days--now they counted the hours.
She lay there trying to be brave, to reason, to be grateful for all
those days of comradeship. It had been her first experience in the
woods. She felt as if she dreaded ever seeing the city again, the dingy
old house, the hot, stifling streets, and the lessons. The green boat
moved noiselessly around another bend. Sue closed her eyes.
Joe felt strangely silent, too. Something gripped at his heart, but he
kept on bravely at his paddle. Finally, with a feeling of desperation,
he drove the boat straight into the overhanging alders.
“Sue!”
She heard him call softly to her and opened her eyes.
“Yes, Joe.”
“Hold fast to that branch, please--quick! That’s it--hold tight----”
She did as he bid her, freeing herself quickly from the blanket,
gripping the branch with both hands, for the current ran strong there.
Joe drove his paddle into the swift shallow water, burying it deep
in the sandy bottom. He lashed his paddle with his belt-strap to an
oar-pin, stepped forward, leaned over Sue, made the bow chain fast to a
half-sunken snag, and crept down beside her.
“Sue, are you cold?”
“No,” she murmured; “that is, not--very.”
He wrapped her again snugly in the blanket and sought her small hand
beneath it.
It was like ice.
“Sue, you are frozen.”
“I’m all right,” she declared faintly.
“Sue!”
He felt her hand tighten in his own. He bent over her, his heart
beating.
“Sue--it’s our last night.”
Her lips quivered. The small hand in his own trembled, but she did not
speak.
“Sue, do you realize it all--that to-night you and I must say good-by
to this dear old stream; that it may be years before we shall ever see
it again--live it again--perhaps never?”
“I know,” she breathed, scarce audibly.
“You can never know what it meant to me to get that telegram. To know
that you were coming. That we should be together--day in and day out.
Sue, I’ve tried to be a good playmate--just as you wished--just as I
promised I would.”
“Oh, Joe! It’s been so wonderful; just like some wonderful dream--every
day of it, every hour of it,” she exclaimed softly.
Impulsively he slipped his strong arm beneath her fair little head, and
drew it gently to his shoulder.
“Oh, Joe--don’t--don’t make it any harder!” she pleaded. “I--I can’t
bear it.”
She made an effort to strain away from him, her face, though close to
his own, only barely visible in the dark.
“Sue!” he cried tensely--with a sudden tightening of his arm, “can’t
you see how hard it is for me? That I love you--that I love you with my
whole heart and soul?”
He felt her tremble.
“Can’t you believe me? Can’t you feel what I say is true?”
She felt weak--only half conscious now of his voice.
He was past all reasoning.
“I love you,” he whispered against her smooth young cheek, wet now with
the tears she could no longer keep back.
“Joe, you--you must not--oh, Joe, please----”
“I love you,” he repeated, his lips wet with her tears. “I didn’t think
it square to say so before; but now things are so different--with the
big building ours. Can’t you see----”
She drew a quick, tense breath and a stifled sob escaped her quivering
mouth--that warm, yielding little mouth his lips sought now and gained.
She had no longer the strength to resist.
“Sue,” he pleaded, against her lips; “Sue--will--will you be my wife?”
[Illustration: “Tell me you love me,” he insisted.]
For an instant he released her.
“Will you?” he pleaded.
“Yes,” she whispered in his ear.
“Yes,” she repeated tensely, and her young arm went strong about his
neck.
“Yes, I will be your wife,” she breathed.
“Tell me you love me,” he insisted.
“Ah, Joe--how can you ask!” came her quick reply between two kisses,
seeking his lips of her own free will.
Frail as she was, he felt her strength, felt her young heart beating
against his own, and for a long while he held her close in his arms.
* * * * *
Beneath the green boat the dark stream flowed on, purling, eddying,
chuckling to itself. It is safe to say that never had so strange a
thing happened in that hushed and lonely spot, to which the strong
spruces can to this day bear witness, as well as an old owl (be he
still alive), who saw it all from the hemlock with his big yellow eyes.