The forest is never so wonderful as when spring wrestles with winter for
supremacy. While the earth is yet ice bound, while snows occasionally
fly, spring breathes her warmer breath of approach, and all nature
responds. Sunny knolls, embankments, and cleared spaces become bare,
while shadow spots and sheltered nooks remain white. This perfumes the
icy air with a warmer breath of melting snow. The sap rises in the trees
and bushes, sets buds swelling, and they distil a faint, intangible
odour. Deep layers of dead leaves cover the frozen earth, and the sun
shining on them raises a steamy vapour unlike anything else in nature. A
different scent rises from earth where the sun strikes it. Lichen faces
take on the brightest colours they ever wear, and rough, coarse mosses
emerge in rank growth from their cover of snow and add another perfume
to mellowing air. This combination has breathed a strange intoxication
into the breast of mankind in all ages, and bird and animal life prove
by their actions that it makes the same appeal to them.
Crows caw supremacy from tall trees; flickers, drunk on the wine of
nature, flash their yellow-lined wings and red crowns among trees in a
search for suitable building places; nut-hatches run head foremost down
rough trunks, spying out larvae and early emerging insects; titmice
chatter; the bold, clear whistle of the cardinal sounds never so gaily;
and song sparrows pipe from every wayside shrub and fence post. Coons
and opossums stir in their dens, musk-rat and ground-hog inspect the
weather, while squirrels race along branches and bound from tree to tree
like winged folk.
All of them could have outlined the holdings of the Harvester almost
as well as any surveyor. They understood where the bang of guns and the
snap of traps menaced life. Best of all, they knew where cracked nuts,
handfuls of wheat, oats, and crumbs were scattered on the ground, and
where suet bones dangled from bushes. Here, too, the last sheaf from the
small wheat field at the foot of the hill was stoutly fixed on a high
pole, so that the grain was free to all feathered visitors.
When the Harvester hitched Betsy, loaded his spiles and sap buckets
into the wagon, and started to the woods to gather the offering the wet
maples were pouring down their swelling sides, almost his entire family
came to see him. They knew who fed and passed every day among them, and
so were unafraid.
After the familiarity of a long, cold winter, when it had been easier
to pick up scattered food than to search for it, they became so friendly
with the man, the dog, and the gray horse that they hastily snatched
the food offered at the barn and then followed through the woods. The
Harvester always was particular to wear large pockets, for it was good
company to have living creatures flocking after him, trusting to his
bounty. Ajax, a shimmering wonder of gorgeous feathers, sunned on the
ridge pole of the old log stable, preened, spread his train, and uttered
the peacock cry of defiance, to exercise his voice or to express his
emotions at all times. But at feeding hour he descended to the park and
snatched bites from the biggest turkey cocks and ganders and reigned in
power absolute over ducks, guineas, and chickens. Then he followed to
the barn and tried to frighten crows and jays, and the gentle white
doves under the eaves.
The Harvester walked through deep leaves and snow covering the road that
only a forester could have distinguished. Over his shoulder he carried
a mattock, and in the wagon were his clippers and an ax. Behind him came
Betsy drawing the sap buckets and big evaporating kettles. Through the
wood ranged Belshazzar, the craziest dog in all creation. He always went
wild at sap time. Here was none of the monotony of trapping for skins
around the lake. This marked the first full day in the woods for
the season. He ranged as he pleased and came for a pat or a look of
confidence when he grew lonely, while the Harvester worked.
At camp the man unhitched Betsy and tied her to the wagon and for
several hours distributed buckets. Then he hung the kettles and gathered
wood for the fire. At noon he returned to the cabin for lunch and
brought back a load of empty syrup cans, and barrels in which to collect
the sap. While the buckets filled at the dripping trees, he dug roots in
the sassafras thicket to fill orders and supply the demand of Onabasha
for tea. Several times he stopped to cut an especially fine tree.
“You know I hate to kill you,” he apologized to the first one he felled.
“But it certainly must be legitimate for a man to take enough of his
trees to build a home. And no other house is possible for a creature of
the woods but a cabin, is there? The birds use of the material they find
here; surely I have the right to do the same. Seems as if nothing else
would serve, at least for me. I was born and reared here, I've always
loved you; of course, I can't use anything else for my home.”
He swung the ax and the chips flew as he worked on a straight half-grown
oak. After a time he paused an instant and rested, and as he did so he
looked speculatively at his work.
“I wonder where she is to-day,” he said. “I wonder what she is going to
think of a log cabin in the woods. Maybe she has been reared in the
city and is afraid of a forest. She may not like houses made of logs.
Possibly she won't want to marry a Medicine Man. She may dislike the
man, not to mention his occupation. She may think it coarse and common
to work out of doors with your hands, although I'd have to argue there
is a little brain in the combination. I must figure out all these
things. But there is one on the lady: She should have settled these
points before she became quite so familiar. I have that for a foundation
anyway, so I'll go on cutting wood, and the remainder will be up to her
when I find her. When I find her,” repeated the Harvester slowly. “But I
am not going to locate her very soon monkeying around in these woods. I
should be out where people are, looking for her right now.”
He chopped steadily until the tree crashed over, and then, noticing a
rapidly filling bucket, he struck the ax in the wood and began gathering
sap. When he had made the round, he drove to the camp, filled the
kettles, and lighted the fire. While it started he cut and scraped
sassafras roots, and made clippings of tag alder, spice brush and white
willow into big bundles that were ready to have the bark removed during
the night watch, and then cured in the dry-house.
He went home at evening to feed the poultry and replenish the
ever-burning fire of the engine and to keep the cabin warm enough that
food would not freeze. With an oilcloth and blankets he returned to camp
and throughout the night tended the buckets and boiling sap, and worked
or dozed by the fire between times. Toward the end of boiling, when the
sap was becoming thick, it had to be watched with especial care so it
would not scorch. But when the kettles were freshly filled the Harvester
sat beside them and carefully split tender twigs of willow and slipped
off the bark ready to be spread on the trays.
“You are a good tonic,” he mused as he worked, “and you go into some of
the medicine for rheumatism. If she ever has it we will give her some
of you, and then she will be all right again. Strange that I should be
preparing medicinal bark by the sugar camp fire, but I have to make this
hay, not while the sun shines, but when the bark is loose, while the sap
is rising. Wonder who will use this. Depends largely on where I sell it.
Anyway, I hope it will take the pain out of some poor body. Prices so
low now, not worth gathering unless I can kill time on it while waiting
for something else. Never got over seven cents a pound for the best I
ever sold, and it takes a heap of these little quills to make a pound
when they are dry. That's all of you----about twenty-five cents' worth.
But even that is better than doing nothing while I wait, and some one
has to keep the doctors supplied with salicin and tannin, so, if I do,
other folks needn't bother.”
He arose and poured more sap into the kettles as it boiled away and
replenished the fire. He nibbled a twig when he began on the spice
brush. As he sat on the piled wood, and bent over his work he was
an attractive figure. His face shone with health and was bright with
anticipation. While he split the tender bark and slipped out the wood he
spoke his thoughts slowly:
“The five cents a pound I'll get for you is even less, but I love the
fragrance and taste. You don't peel so easy as the willow, but I like
to prepare you better, because you will make some miserable little sick
child well or you may cool some one's fevered blood. If ever she has a
fever, I hope she will take medicine made from my bark, because it will
be strong and pure. I've half a notion to set some one else gathering
the stuff and tending the plants and spend my time in the little
laboratory compounding different combinations. I don't see what bigger
thing a man can do than to combine pure, clean, unadulterated roots and
barks into medicines that will cool fevers, stop chills, and purify bad
blood. The doctors may be all right, but what are they going to do if we
men behind the prescription cases don't supply them with unadulterated
drugs. Answer me that, Mr. Sapsucker. Doc says I've done mighty well so
far as I have gone. I can't think of a thing on earth I'd rather do, and
there's money no end in it. I could get too rich for comfort in short
order. I wouldn't be too wealthy to live just the way I do for any
consideration. I don't know about her, though. She is lovely, and
handsome women usually want beautiful clothing, and a quantity of things
that cost no end of money. I may need all I can get, for her. One never
can tell.”
He arose to stir the sap and pour more from the barrels to the kettles
before he began on the tag alder he had gathered.
“If it is all the same to you, I'll just keep on chewing spice brush
while I work,” he muttered. “You are entirely too much of an astringent
to suit my taste and you bring a cent less a pound. But you are thicker
and dry heavier, and you grow in any quantity around the lake and on the
marshy places, so I'll make the size of the bundle atone for the price.
If I peel you while I wait on the sap I'm that much ahead. I can spread
you on drying trays in a few seconds and there you are. Howl your head
off, Bel, I don't care what you have found. I wouldn't shoot anything
to-day, unless the cupboard was bare and I was starvation hungry. In
that case I think a man comes first, and I'd kill a squirrel or quail
in season, but blest if I'd butcher a lot or do it often. Vegetables
and bread are better anyway. You peel easier even than the willow. What
jolly whistles father used to make!
“There was about twenty cents' worth of spice, and I'll easy raise it to
a dollar on this. I'll get a hundred gallons of syrup in the coming two
weeks and it will bring one fifty if I boil and strain it carefully and
can guarantee it contains no hickory bark and brown sugar. And it won't!
Straight for me or not at all. Pure is the word at Medicine Woods; syrup
or drugs it's the same thing. Between times I can fell every tree I'll
need for the new cabin, and average a dollar a day besides on spice,
alder, and willow, and twice that for sassafras for the Onabasha
markets; not to mention the quantities I can dry this year. Aside from
spring tea, they seem to use it for everything. I never yet have had
enough. It goes into half the tonics, anodyne, and stimulants; also soap
and candy. I see where I grow rich in spite of myself, and also where my
harvest is going to spoil before I can garner it, if I don't step
lively and double even more than I am now. Where the cabin is to come
in----well it must come if everything else goes.
“The roots can wait and I'll dig them next year and get more and larger
pieces. I won't really lose anything, and if she should come before I
am ready to start to find her, why then I'll have her home prepared.
How long before you begin your house, old fire-fly?” he inquired of a
flaming cardinal tilting on a twig.
He arose to make the round of the sap buckets again, then resumed his
work peeling bark, and so the time passed. In the following ten days he
collected and boiled enough sap to make more syrup than he had expected.
His earliest spring store of medicinal twigs, that were peeled to dry in
quills, were all collected and on the trays; he had digged several wagon
loads of sassafras and felled all the logs of stout, slender oak he
would require for his walls. Choice timber he had been curing for
candlestick material he hauled to the saw-mills to have cut properly,
for the thought of trying his hand at tables and chairs had taken
possession of him. He was sure he could make furniture that would appear
quite as well as the mission pieces he admired on display in the store
windows of the city. To him, chairs and tables made from trees that grew
on land that had belonged for three generations to his ancestors, trees
among which he had grown, played, and worked, trees that were so much
his friends that he carefully explained the situation to them before
using an ax or saw, trees that he had cut, cured, and fashioned into
designs of his own, would make vastly more valuable furnishings in his
home than anything that could be purchased in the city.
As he drove back and forth he watched constantly for her. He was working
so desperately, planning far ahead, doubling and trebling tasks, trying
to do everything his profession demanded in season, and to prepare
timber and make plans for the new cabin, as well as to start a pair
of candlesticks of marvellous design for her, that night was one
long, unbroken sleep of the thoroughly tired man, but day had become a
delightful dream.
He fed the chickens to produce eggs for her. He gathered barks and
sluiced roots on the raft in the lake, for her. He grubbed the spice
thicket before the door and moved it into the woods to make space for a
lawn, for her. His eyes were wide open for every woven case and dangling
cocoon of the big night moths that propagated around him, for her. Every
night when he left the woods from one to a dozen cocoons, that he had
detected with remarkable ease while the trees were bare, were stuck
in his hat band. As he arranged them in a cool, dry place he talked to
them.
“Of course I know you are valuable and there are collectors who would
pay well for you, but I think not. You are the prettiest thing God made
that I ever saw, and those of you that home with me have no price on
your wings. You are much safer here than among the crows and jays of the
woods. I am gathering you to protect you, and to show to her. If I don't
find her by June, you may go scot free. All I want is the best pattern
I can get from some of you for candlestick designs. Of everything in the
whole world a candlestick should be made of wood. It should be carved
by hand, and of all ornamentations on earth the moth that flies to the
night light is the most appropriate. Owls are not so bad. They are of
the night, and they fly to light, too, but they are so old. Nobody I
ever have known used a moth. They missed the best when they neglected
them. I'll make her sticks over an original pattern; I'll twine
nightshade vines, with flowers and berries around them, and put a
trailed luna on one, and what is the next prettiest for the other? I'll
think well before if decide. Maybe she'll come by the time I get to
carving and tell me what she likes. That would beat my taste or guessing
a mile.”
He carefully arranged the twigs bearing cocoons in a big, wire-covered
box to protect them from the depredations of nibbling mice and the
bolder attacks of the saucy ground squirrels that stored nuts in his
loft and took possession of the attic until their scampering sometimes
awoke him in the night.
Every trip he made to the city he stopped at the library to examine
plans of buildings and furniture and to make notes. The oak he had
hauled was being hewed into shape by a neighbour who knew how, and every
wagon that carried a log to the city to be dressed at the mill brought
back timber for side walls, joists, and rafters. Night after night he
sat late poring over his plans for the new rooms, above all for her
chamber. With poised pencil he wavered over where to put the closet and
entrance to her bath. He figured on how wide to make her bed and where
it should stand. He remembered her dressing table in placing windows
and a space for a chest of drawers. In fact there was nothing the active
mind of the Harvester did not busy itself with in those days that might
make a woman a comfortable home. Every thought emanated from impulses
evolved in his life in the woods, and each was executed with mighty
tenderness.
A killdeer sweeping the lake close two o'clock one morning awakened him.
He had planned to close the sugar camp for the season that day, but when
he heard the notes of the loved bird he wondered if that would not be a
good time to stake out the foundations and begin digging. There was yet
ice in the ground, but the hillside was rapidly thawing, and although
the work would be easier later, so eager was the Harvester to have walls
up and a roof over that he decided to commence.
But when morning came and he and Belshazzar breakfasted and fed Betsy
and the stock, he concluded to return to his first plan and close the
camp. All the sap collected that day went into the vinegar barrel. He
loaded the kettles, buckets, and spiles and stopped at the spice thicket
to cut a bale of twigs as he passed. He carried one load to the wagon
and returned for another. Down wind on swift wing came a bird and
entered the bushes. Motionless the Harvester peered at it. A mourning
dove had returned to him through snow, skifting over cold earth. It
settled on a limb and began dressing its plumage. At that instant a
wavering, “Coo coo a'gh coo,” broke in sobbing notes from the deep wood.
Without paying the slightest heed, the dove finished a wing, ruffled
and settled her feathers, and opened her bill in a human-like yawn. The
Harvester smiled. The notes swelled closer in renewed pleading. The cry
was beyond doubt a courting male and this an indifferent female.
Her beady eyes snapped, her head turned coquettishly, a picture of
self-possession, she hid among the dense twigs of the spice thicket.
Around the outside circled the pleading male.
With shining eyes the Harvester watched. These were of the things
that made life in the woods most worth while. More insistent grew the
wavering notes of the lover. More indifferent became the beloved. She
was superb in her poise as she amused herself in hiding. A perfect burst
of confused, sobbing notes broke on the air. Then away in the deep wood
a softly-wavering, half-questioning “Coo-ah!” answered them. Amazement
flashed into the eyes of the Harvester, but his face was not nearly so
expressive as that of the bird. She lifted a bewildered head and grew
rigid in an attitude of tense listening. There was a pause. In quicker
measure and crowding notes the male called again. Instantly the soft
“Coo!” wavered in answer. The surprised little hen bird of the thicket
hopped straight up and settled on her perch again, her dark eyes
indignant as she uttered a short “Coo!” The muscles of the Harvester's
chest were beginning to twitch and quiver. More intense grew the notes
of the pleading male. Softly seductive came the reply. The clapping
of his wings could be heard as he flew in search of the charmer. “A'gh
coo!” cried the deserted female as she tilted off the branch and tore
through the thicket in pursuit, with wings hastened by fright at the
ringing laugh of the Harvester.
“Not so indifferent after all, Bel,” he said to the dog standing in
stiff point beside him. “That was all 'pretend!' But she waited just a
trifle too long. Now she will have to fight it out with a rival. Good
thing if some of the flirtatious women could have seen that. Help them
to learn their own minds sooner.”
He laughed as he heaped the twigs on top of the wagon and started down
the hill chuckling. Belshazzar followed, leading Betsy straight in the
middle of the road by the hitching strap. A few yards ahead the man
stopped suddenly with lifted hand. The dog and horse stood motionless.
A dove flashed across the road and settled in sight on a limb. Almost
simultaneously another perched beside it, and they locked bills in a
long caress, utterly heedless of a plaintive “Coo” in the deep wood.
“Settled!” said the Harvester. “Jupiter! I wish my troubles were that
nearly finished! Wish I knew where she is and how to find my way to her
lips! Wonder if she will come when I call her. What if I should
find her, and she would have everything on earth, other lovers, and
indifference worse than Madam Dove's for me. Talk about bitterness! Well
I'd have the dream left anyway. And there are always two sides. There is
just a possibility that she may be poor and overworked, sick and tired,
and wondering why I don't come. Possibly she had a dream, too, and she
wishes I would hurry. Dear Lord!”
The Harvester began to perspire as he strode down the hill. He scarcely
waited to hang the harness properly. He did not stop to unload the wagon
until night, but went after an ax and a board that he split into pegs.
Then he took a ball of twine, a measuring line, and began laying out his
foundation, when the hard earth would scarcely hold the stakes he drove
into it. When he found he only would waste time in digging he put away
the neatly washed kettles, peeled the spice brush, spread it to dry, and
prepared his dinner. After that he began hauling stone and cement for
his basement floor and foundation walls. Occasionally he helped at
hewing logs when the old man paused to rest. That afternoon the first
robin of the season hailed him in passing.
“Hello!” cried the Harvester. “You don't mean to tell me that you have
beaten the larks! You really have! Well since I see it, I must believe,
but you are early. Come around to the back door if crumbs or wheat will
do or if you can make out on suet and meat bones! We are good and ready
for you. Where is your mate? For any sake, don't tell me you don't know.
One case of that kind at Medicine Woods is enough. Say you came ahead
to see if it is too cold or to select a home and get ready for her. Say
anything on earth except that you love her, and want her until your body
is one quivering ache, and you don't know where she is.”