The Red Moon (August) follows the Thunder Moon, and in the early part of
its second week Rolf and Van, hauling in the barley and discussing the
fitness of the oats, were startled by a most outrageous clatter among
the hens. Horrid murder evidently was stalking abroad, and, hastening
to the rescue, Rolf heard loud, angry barks; then a savage beast with
a defunct “cackle party” appeared, but dropped the victim to bark and
bound upon the “relief party” with ecstatic expressions of joy, in spite
of Rolf's--“Skookum! you little brute!”
Yes! Quonab was back; that is, he was at the lake shore, and Skookum had
made haste to plunge into the joys and gayeties of this social centre,
without awaiting the formalities of greeting or even of dry-shod
landing.
The next scene was--a big, high post, a long, strong chain and a small,
sad dog.
“Ho, Quonab, you found your people? You had a good time?”
“Ugh,” was the answer, the whole of it, and all the light Rolf got for
many a day on the old man's trip to the North. The prospect of going to
Albany for Van Cortlandt was much more attractive to Quonab than that of
the harvest field, so a compromise was agreed on. Callan's barley was in
the stock; if all three helped Callan for three days, Callan would owe
them for nine, and so it was arranged.
Again “good-bye,” and Rolf, Quonab, and little dog Skookum went sailing
down the Schroon toward the junction, where they left a cache of their
supplies, and down the broadening Hudson toward Albany.
Rolf had been over the road twice; Quonab never before, yet his nose for
water was so good and the sense of rapid and portage was so strong in
the red man, that many times he was the pilot. “This is the way, because
it must be”; “there it is deep because so narrow”; “that rapid is
dangerous, because there is such a well-beaten portage trail”; “that
we can run, because I see it,” or, “because there is no portage trail,”
etc. The eighty miles were covered in three sleeps, and in the mid-moon
days of the Red Moon they landed at the dock in front of Peter Vandam's.
If Quonab had any especial emotions for the occasion, he cloaked
them perfectly under a calm and copper-coloured exterior of absolute
immobility.
Their Albany experiences included a meeting with the governor and an
encounter with a broad and burly river pirate, who, seeing a lone and
peaceable-looking red man, went out of his way to insult him; and when
Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his recently established
relations with the governor's son that saved him from some very sad
results, for there were many loafers about. But burly Vandam appeared in
the nick of time to halt the small mob with the warning: “Don't you know
that's Mr. Van Cortlandt's guide?” With the governor and Vandam to back
him, Quonab soon had the mob on his side, and the dock loafer's own
friends pelted him with mud as he escaped. But not a little credit
is due to Skookum, for at the critical moment he had sprung on the
ruffian's bare and abundant leg with such toothsome effect that the
owner fell promptly backward and the knife thrust missed. It was quickly
over and Quonab replaced his knife, contemptuous of the whole crowd
before, during and after the incident. Not at the time, but days later,
he said of his foe: “He was a talker; he was full of fear.”
With the backwoods only thirty miles away, and the unbroken wilderness
one hundred, it was hard to believe how little Henry van Cortlandt knew
of the woods and its life. He belonged to the ultra-fashionable set, and
it was rather their pose to affect ignorance of the savage world and
its ways. But he had plenty of common-sense to fan back on, and the
inspiring example of Washington, equally at home in the nation's
Parliament, the army intrenchment, the glittering ball room, or the
hunting lodge of the Indian, was a constant reminder that the perfect
man is a harmonious development of mind, morals, and physique.
His training had been somewhat warped by the ultraclassic fashion of
the times, so he persisted in seeing in Quonab a sort of discoloured,
barbaric clansman of Alaric or a camp follower of Xenophon's host,
rather than an actual living, interesting, native American, exemplifying
in the highest degree the sinewy, alert woodman, and the saturated
mystic and pantheist of an age bygone and out of date, combined with
a middle-measure intelligence. And Rolf, tall, blue-eyed with brown,
curling hair, was made to pose as the youthful Achilles, rather than
as a type of America's best young manhood, cleaner, saner, and of far
higher ideals and traditions than ever were ascribed to Achilles by his
most blinded worshippers. It recalled the case of Wordsworth and Southey
living side by side in England; Southey, the famous, must needs seek in
ancient India for material to write his twelve-volume romance that no
one ever looks at; Wordsworth, the unknown, wrote of the things of his
own time, about his own door? and produced immortal verse.
What should we think of Homer, had he sung his impressions of the
ancient Egyptians? or of Thackeray, had he novelized the life of the
Babylonians? It is an ancient blindness, with an ancient wall to bruise
one's head. It is only those who seek ointment of the consecrated clay
that gives back sight, who see the shining way at their feet, who beat
their face against no wall, who safely climb the heights. Henry van
Cortlandt was a man of rare parts, of every advantage, but still he had
been taught steadfastly to live in the past. His eyes were yet to be
opened. The living present was not his--but yet to be.
The young lawyer had been assembling his outfit at Vandam's warehouse,
for, in spite of scoffing friends, he knew that Rolf was coming back to
him.
When Rolf saw the pile of stuff that was gathered for that outfit, he
stared at it aghast, then looked at Vandam, and together they roared.
There was everything for light housekeeping and heavy doctoring, even
chairs, a wash stand, a mirror, a mortar, and a pestle. Six canoes could
scarcely have carried the lot.
“'Tain't so much the young man as his mother,” explained Big Pete; “at
first I tried to make 'em understand, but it was no use; so I says, 'All
right, go ahead, as long as there's room in the warehouse.' I reckon
I'll set on the fence and have some fun seein' Rolf ontangle the
affair.”
“Phew, pheeeww--ph-e-e-e-e-w,” was all Rolf could say in answer. But
at last, “Wall, there's always a way. I sized him up as pretty level
headed. We'll see.”
There was a way and it was easy, for, in a secret session, Rolf, Pete,
and Van Cortlandt together sorted out the things needed. A small tent,
blankets, extra clothes, guns, ammunition, delicate food for three
months, a few medicines and toilet articles--a pretty good load for one
canoe, but a trifle compared with the mountain of stuff piled up on the
floor.
“Now, Mr. van Cortlandt,” said Rolf, “will you explain to your mother
that we are going on with this so as to travel quickly, and will send
back for the rest as we need it?”
A quiet chuckle was now heard from Big Pete. “Good! I wondered how he'd
settle it.”
The governor and his lady saw them off; therefore, there was a crowd.
The mother never before had noted what a frail and dangerous thing a
canoe is. She cautioned her son never to venture out alone, and to be
sure that he rubbed his chest with the pectoral balm she had made from
such and such a famous receipt, the one that saved the life but not
the limb of old Governor Stuyvesant, and come right home if you catch a
cold; and wait at the first camp till the other things come, and (in a
whisper) keep away from that horrid red Indian with the knife, and never
fail to let every one know who you are, and write regularly, and don't
forget to take your calomel Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, alternating
with Peruvian bark Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and squills on
Sunday, except every other week, when he should devote Tuesdays,
Fridays, and Sundays to rhubarb and catnip tea, except in the full
moon, when the catnip was to be replaced with graveyard bergamot and the
squills with opodeldoc in which an iron nail had been left for a week.
So Henry was embraced, Rolf was hand-shaken, Quonab was nodded at,
Skookum was wisely let alone, and the trim canoe swung from the dock.
Amid hearty cheers, farewells, and “God speed ye's” it breasted the
flood for the North.
And on the dock, with kerchief to her eyes, stood the mother, weeping to
think that her boy was going far, far away from his home and friends in
dear, cultured, refined Albany, away, away, to that remote and barbarous
inaccessible region almost to the shore land of Lake Champlain.