THE days are still warm, but autumn is surely here. The wasps are dying
everywhere and lie in heaps on all the window-sills; the great water
spiders have disappeared, and all day long the yellow leaves drift down
silently, steadily, in the forests. Wreaths of vapor hang over the
trees, and every wind brings the pungent fall odor of distant forest
fires. The hillsides are a blaze of color, with basswoods a beautiful
butter-yellow, oaks, russet and maroon and sugar maples, a flame of
scarlet against the dark-green velvet of the cedars and hemlocks. Each
birch stands forth, a slender Danæ, white feet in a drift of gold. The
woods here on the island are thinning rapidly. All sorts of hidden dells
and boulders are coming to light. Soon the whole island will lie open to
the sight, and then there will no longer be anything mysterious about it.
Dried heads of goldenrod, life everlasting, and a few closed gentians are
all that are left of the flowers; but the red and orange garlands of the
bittersweet wave from every bush, the juniper berries are purple, and the
sumacs are a wonder of great garnet velvet cones.
From a walk round the trails I bring in an assortment of seeds: beggar’s
ticks, stick-seeds, Spanish needles, pitchforks—“the tramps of the
vegetable world,” Burroughs calls them. They cover my skirt, they cling
to my woolen leggings, they perch on the brim of my hat. Little
pocket-shaped cases, pods with hooks, seeds shaped like tiny twin
turtles, and furry balls like miniature chestnut burrs. As I pick and
brush and tear them off I wish I knew what plants had fathered every one
of them.
At the approach of cold weather the small animals and the few birds that
are left draw nearer to the house. Grouse are in all the paths, flying
up everywhere. They rise with a thrashing, pounding noise and soar away
over the bushes, to settle again only a little further on. Last evening,
at twilight, two of them came on the porch, the little cock ruffling it
bravely, wings dragging, fantail spread, ruff standing valiantly erect.
A hen followed sedately at his heels. They are very pretty, about the
size of bantam chickens. How I hope that I shall be here to see their
young in the spring!
This afternoon a red squirrel came round the corner of the house and sat
down, absentmindedly, beside me on a bench. When he looked up and saw
what he had done he gave a shriek and a bound and fled chattering off
toward the sundial. But he will come back and will probably be darting
into the house when he thinks my back is turned, for there is nothing
half so impudent or so mischievous as the red squirrel. I am told that
they do not “den in” as the chipmunks do.
The rabbits do their best to help me get rid of my stores. There are
hundreds of them about. They sit under the bushes, peering out; they
appear and disappear between the dry stalks of the brakes. At evening
they come close to the house, and catch bits of bread and potatoes thrown
to them, then sit in the paths munching contentedly. They are not
rabbits, correctly speaking, but Canadian hares, with long brown fur,
bulging black eyes, furry ears, fringed with black, and very long hind
legs. One of them comes so close and seems so fearless that it should
not be difficult to tame him. I have named him Peter. These hares turn
snow-white in winter, I am told. Even now their coats are showing white
where the winter coat is growing.
In the dusk the porcupines come pushing through the fallen leaves,
snuffling and grunting. Away in the woods the bobcats scream and snarl.
The natives accuse the bobcat of a pretty trick of lying flattened out on
a limb, waiting for his prey to pass underneath, then he drops on its
back to tear with tooth and talon. They warn me not to walk in the woods
after dark, for fear of this Canada lynx.
But my natural histories say that, while the lynx sometimes follows the
hunter for long distances, he does it only because he is curious, and
that there is no authentic record of the bobcat’s ever having attacked a
man. So I shall continue to take my walks abroad, without fear that a
fierce tree cat will drop on me. But late in the night, when I am waked
by that eerie sound, that begins with a low meow, like the cry of the
house cat, and goes on louder and louder, to end in a horrid screech,
full of a malevolent violence, I cover my head and am glad that I am safe
indoors. I know that the lynx has come forth from his lair in a hollow
tree and is hunting my poor rabbits.
There is no telephone line to the island; sometimes I am stormbound for a
week, but in some underground way, the news of the neighborhood reaches
me sooner or later. Therefore, when I came out of doors the other
morning, I was instantly aware of a sense of impending disaster, that
hung over all the landscape. There was no cheerful popping of guns in
the fields, no hoarse voice bawled to the cattle. At Blake’s the cause
of the silence was explained. All the men round Many Islands had been
summoned to the County Court at Frontenac, to be tried for the illegal
netting and export of fish out of season. A knot of angry men had
gathered on the shore, discussing the summons; anxious women hovered in
the background; speculation was rife as to the identity of the informer.
It could have been none of our men, for the obvious reason that all were
in the same boat. Black Jack Beaulac, Yankee Jim, Little Jack, Long Joe,
William Foret, all had received the same summons. It must have been an
inspector from Glen Avon.
“Did we not all remember a strange, white boat in the lake? That was,
without doubt, the fish warden come to spy out for nets.”
I know very little about the legality of nets versus hooks, or the open
and closed seasons for fishing, but even to my ignorance there seemed
grave doubts about the line of defense to be offered, and I was conscious
that, being an alien and a “sport” (vernacular for sportsman, that is,
summer visitor), the matter was not being freely discussed in my
presence.
Next morning, while it was yet dark, Foret’s motor boat was heard,
chugging solemnly round the shore, gathering up the victims to take them
to court. All day the women went softly, each wondering what was
happening to her man, and devising means for scraping up the money for
fines, if fines it had to be. Henry Blake went off to town to the trial,
and the day passed gray and lowering.
At red sunset the boat turned in at the narrows, but before she hove in
sight the very beat of her engine signaled victory. She came swinging
down the lake, her crew upright, alert, the flag of Canada flew in the
wind, her propeller kicked the water joyously. As she made the round of
the lake, to Blake’s, to Beaulac’s, to Drapeau’s, to the Mines, it needed
none to tell us that all was well.
Foret touched at the island last to give news of the fight. The case had
been dismissed for lack of evidence. There had been no conviction, no
fines.
“How did it happen that there were no witnesses?” I asked.
Foret took out his pouch and stuffed his pipe carefully before he
answered.
“There was eight or nine fellers there from Blue Bay,” he said. “They
looked like they’d come to testify, but, after we had talked to them a
bit, it seemed like they hadn’t nothing at all to say.”
“What had you told them?” I persisted.
“Well, we told them that if any man felt like he’d any information to
give, concerning netting fer fish, he’d best make his plans to leave the
lake afore twelve o’clock to-night. We meant it too; they knowed that.
Black Jack give them some very plain talk, Black Jack did. I guess,”
with a grin, “I guess that I was about the politest man there.”
“I was fined once,” William went on, reminiscently, “twenty-five dollars
it was too, an’ it just about cleaned me out. They put me on oath, you
see, an’ of course, when a man’s on his oath he can’t lie. But the next
time I went to town I seen a lawyer, an’ he told me they hadn’t no right
to ask me that question. A man ain’t called on to testify against
himself. So now, when the judge asks me: ‘Did you, or did you not, net
fer fish?’ I says, ‘That’s fer you to prove. Bring on your witnesses.’
Howsoever,” he went on, “as long as all this has come up, I guess we’d as
well eat mudcats fer a spell.”
So mudcats it was, until the herring began to run.
Foret has kept me supplied with fish this fall, explaining carefully that
he will sell me pickerel, herring, and catfish but not bass. Bass, being
a game fish, may not be caught for the market. I have paid for the
pickerel by the pound and the bass have been gifts, for, as William
justly remarks: “What are a few bass, now and then, in a friendly way?”
Foret is long, lean, powerful, with thin, keen face, steady, dark eyes,
and the long, silent tread of the woodsman. Sometimes he works in the
Mica Mines; sometimes he farms a bit, or fells trees. More often he
hunts and fishes, but always he is a delightful companion, because of his
unconquerable optimism and fervent interest in all that concerns a matter
in hand. He never admits a difficulty, no obstacle ever daunts him, and
no one has ever heard him say an unkind thing about any living creature.
When William goes off to a dance, Jean Foret is wild with anxiety. When
he drinks a bit too much and the other men throw him into a hayfield or a
barn, to sleep it off, she ranges the county in a despairing search.
When he sobers and comes home, subdued and bearing gifts, who is so
contrite as he?
“Never again will I go to a dance. There’s nothing to it at all,” he
assures you. “A man’s better off to home.”
But once in so often William takes his fling—only he is never ugly or
quarrelsome when he drinks. Even when his mind has lost control, he is
quiet and peaceable, they say.
The Forets live on the mainland, three miles off, along the shore.
William is building their house by degrees. This season he went as far
as the inner wall, frame, studding, windows, chimney, and floor. There
is also an outer casing of builder’s paper tacked on with small disks of
tin. The whole edifice stands on stilts, about five feet off the ground,
giving fine harbor for the hounds, and a pig or two beneath. The first
time I called to see them William made a great show of driving these
animals forth.
“The boards is so thin,” he apologized, “that it seems like I can smell
them dogs up through the floor.”
When I remember that one thickness of board and a few sheets of paper are
all that stand between the Forets and the winter blasts, I shudder. Not
so the Forets. They are apparently quite undismayed and look forward to
the approach of winter without misgiving.
The house is divided into two rooms, each about ten feet square. There
are lace curtains at the tiny windows, bright pictures, mostly colored
calendars, a gay rag carpet, and over all the comfort of an exquisite
neatness, for Mrs. Foret is the cleanest housekeeper imaginable—Jennie
Foret, with her snapping, black eyes, her dark hair upreared in a
militant pompadour, her trim, alert figure, and quick, light movements.
Where did she acquire her love of order and her dainty, cleanly ways, I
wonder?
It is a friendly place. Chickens, ducks, geese, cats, dogs, horses and
cows roll, run, squawk, and squeal all over the hillside. In the cove
before the house live-boxes are moored, motor boat and skiffs lie at
anchor. There are nets and skins drying on the fences. Two bunches of
ribbon-grass do duty for a formal garden, standing sentinel on either
side of the path that winds to the door. The house looks away across the
“drowned lands” where the wicked roots and snags of the submerged forest
stand in the water, threatening navigation. The channel to the landing
is winding and treacherous. But, once at the door, no guest is ever
turned away. Wandering miner, tramp, bewildered emigrant, each is sure
of a meal, a bed, and something to set him on his way.