low voice chipping in with the cracking of the fire. It seems that,
as there was a light drizzle falling, which would wipe out his scent,
he had landed on the shore of the wide-water of the _Rivière aux
Isles_ near where he thought the beasts might come in. And he had
found signs to beat the band—runways cut wide and brown with steady
use, and huge prints of both caribou and moose. But what excited him
particularly was that, according to his statement, there was a big
moose which watered there every day.
“He is there to-day about ten o’clock in the morning. He was there
yesterday. There is also a _grosse piste_ of day before yesterday,”
he exploded at me in mouthfuls of words. “He walks up the pass—I
have seen his steps all along—I have followed. It is necessary that
M’sieur Bob shall go there of a good hour to-morrow morning and wait
till the great one comes up the river. It is a shot easy for M’sieur
Bob from the wide-water to the place where that great one comes. In
that manner M’sieur Bob will kill a large moose—_crais_—but yes.”
“Hold on there a second, Josef,” I halted him. “M’sieur Shackleton’s
got to have the first chance—he’s my guest,” and then I stopped, for
not only was Josef looking black murder, but Shacky threw his boot at
me.
“No, you don’t,” said Shacky. “No more ruined chances and healthy
wild beasts for mine. I won’t go, and that’s all. If you’ve got a
good, harmless spot with one caribou track to amuse me, and you’ll
let me sit and work a crank, I’ll do that fast enough. But as for
throwing away any more meat, I plain won’t.”
“Oh, cut it out, Shacky,” I adjured him. “It was only a cow caribou
anyway, and you’ll be steady as an old soldier next time”—but he
wouldn’t listen to me.
Then I labored with him, and finally after much agony we came to an
agreement. There was a place, Lac Monsieur, a little pond to the
east, which we had every reason to believe would be fine hunting. It
was good country, and might beat out Josef’s place, only we didn’t
know for sure. So I terrorized Shacky into a consent to draw lots,
the winner to have the choice. We drew, and I won the choice. Josef
stood there waiting, his eyes snapping and gleaming and watching
every movement—he could understand enough English to follow, though
he couldn’t speak any. He saw that I had the long stick and he
flashed a glance of unconcealed rapture at me.
“At what hour is it light, Josef?” I asked him.
“One can see enough to go _en canot_—in the boat—at three hours and a
half”—he answered happily. “I will wake M’sieur Bob at that hour, is
it?”
I really hated to disappoint the chap, he was so tickled to death and
so certain I’d get my moose. So I spoke very gently. “I’m sorry,
Josef, but we’re not going _en canot_, you and I. M’sieur Shackleton
and Zoëtique will go to the river, and we’ll go to Lac Monsieur, and
rake out a moose before they do.”
“Oh, come,” burst in Shacky. “This is a crime. I simply can’t”—but I
interrupted.
“Shut up, dear one,” I said politely. “You talk like a teapot in
early June. It’s my choice, and I choose Lac Monsieur.”
Josef bent over with a quick swoop, and picked up the two sticks and
held out the long one. “Pardon, M’sieur Bob. It is this one that
M’sieur drew?”
“Yes,” I said. It came hard to rub it into the fellow and I was just
a little sick myself, I’ll own, to have to throw away that moose on
Shacky’s fireworks. “Yes,” I said.
“And it is for M’sieur to choose?” he asked, blinking.
“Yes,” I agreed again—I let him fight it out his own way.
“Then—_Mon Dieu!_ M’sieur Bob will choose the river. It is certain
that M’sieur will there kill the great moose.”
Well, I had to send him off sulky and raging, and entirely
uncomprehending. He simply couldn’t grasp why, when I had fairly
drawn the choice, I should throw it away on such a thing as Shacky. I
couldn’t put a glimmer of it into him, either.
At gray dawn, out of the underbrush there was a low call of
“M’sieur!” repeated more than once before it got us up. We crawled
shiveringly into our clothes by a smoky fire kicked together from
last night’s logs; we had hot chocolate and not much else out in the
open; and off we went, Shacky and his guide up the lake in a boat,
and Josef and I through the woods that seemed to have a deathly
stillness in them as if all the small wild creatures were sound
asleep that make an underbuzz in the daytime.
A little cold light was leaking, up in the branches, but down where
we walked it was dark—mostly I couldn’t see the _plaques_—blazes
on the trees, _plaques_ are. But you couldn’t fool Josef—he went
straight from one to another as if it was a trodden portage. My!
but he sure was in an ugly temper. Once when he whipped his axe
out of his belt and clipped a branch in our way, I just knew he
wished it was Shacky he was chopping at. The light brightened as we
went, and before we got to Lac Monsieur, I could see the sights of
my rifle. As we came to the lake, the tree-trunks stood black and
sharp against a white wall of mist hanging solid on the water; above
that the mountains showed black again, on the sunrise—only the sun
wasn’t risen. The marsh-grasses were stiff with frost, and when you
stepped the marsh was crisp. We walked to the east side to get a good
watch; we settled ourselves, and the sun came up behind us as we sat
shivering with cold. First it lit the tops of the mountains across,
and then crawled down the trees and lay on the water in a band. The
stiff grasses suddenly stood up white in masses, and then, as the sun
hit them, the frost melted and they turned yellow. I wish I could
tell how pretty it was and describe the feeling it gives you of the
world’s being just made that morning expressly for you to play with.
We watched there till the light shone high and came shooting through
the branches where we sat straddling two logs, and the minute it
touched us it grew so warm we had to shed our sweaters—about seven
o’clock, I think. And about then Josef got restless. He picked twigs,
and he crawled about, and he kept looking at his big silver watch as
if he had a train to catch. Finally, he took out his pipe and began
feeling in his pockets for tobacco—the flies were chewing us by then.
But I couldn’t have that—it’s a crime to smoke on a hunt, because the
caribou have wonderful noses and scent things a long way off if the
wind is to them.
“_C’est bien dangereux_,” I whispered.
Then Josef whispered back that this lake was no good—he didn’t think
we’d see anything.
“What can we do about it?” I asked him. I didn’t agree, yet I trusted
Josef’s judgment more than my own, and he knew it, blame him. He
shrugged his shoulders.
“_Sais pas!_” he said, and then he changed his manner. “If M’sieur
Bob wishes, there is another pond where one might have a chance.”
“What distance?” I asked.
“_Sais pas_,” said Josef. “It might be an hour, it might be more. I
believe well that M’sieur will kill a moose if he should go to that
pond.”
“All right,” I said. “Come on.”
So we crept off through the beaver meadows edging the lake, where
every step comes “galoomph” out of soggy moss. Josef gave me a peach
of a walk that morning. The sun went under and he had the compass,
so I lost directions and we had a lot of bad going—windfalls and
spruce-thickets and marshes—all sorts. We walked forever, it seemed
to me, more than an hour, anyway. But finally we came out, around
nine o’clock, on a little pond like a million others in Canada, which
looked the real thing. There seemed to be quite a big inlet up at the
end where we were. Here’s a map to show how the thing lay:
[Illustration: map]
We watched at the cross-marked spot and from there you could shoot
all over the pond and up the opening which seemed the inlet.
I could judge at a glance that the place was good for game. Opposite
us, two hundred yards across water, lay a bank of mud with lily-pads
and grass, and that bank was trampled like a cow-yard. From where
I stood I could see huge sunken hoof-prints, lapping, and the mud
thrown up on the edges, not caked or dry even—done inside a few
hours. The big roots of the water-lilies had been dragged up—they
look like long pineapples—and partly eaten and left floating—that’s
the stunt of only a caribou or moose. I patted Josef on the
shoulder silently, and his big eyes flashed as if he was satisfied.
We selected a stump with some thin bushes in front, where I was
screened, yet could swing my gun all around the place, and Josef
effaced himself back of me, and we sat there and waited.
Not long. We hadn’t been there over five minutes, and I hadn’t
stopped jumping at the sound of the water on a big stone below, and
the sudden breeze through the trees back of me, and a squirrel who
kept breaking twigs sharply and then scolding me about it—when all at
once there was a thundering, unmistakable crack across the pond, in
the trees close to the shore. My heart gave a pole-vault—I reckon
everybody’s does at that sound—and I heard a breath from Josef:
“_Original._”
Neither of us stirred a finger. It was still as the grave for a
second. There was another great crack, and then a huge rustling and
breaking together, unguarded and continued. My eyes were glued on
the thick screen of alders, and the alders parted, and out from them
stepped the most magnificent brute I ever saw alive—a huge moose with
spreading antlers that seemed ten feet across. As big as a horse he
was, and looked bigger because he stood higher and because of the
antlers. Gee! what a picture that made. He waded grandly into the
water, making a terrific rumpus of splashing, and then, as I sighted
down the barrel, I felt Josef’s finger light on my arm.
“_Il va marcher_—he’s going to walk up the shore. Wait till he turns.”
[Illustration: The alders parted, and out from them stepped the most
magnificent brute I ever saw alive.]
It was plain that he wanted me to have a broadside shot, and, while
it wasn’t flattering, yet I didn’t care to take chances on this moose
myself. I lowered the rifle. The beast put down that gorgeous head
and tore up a lily and tossed it on the water, and then bit off
a piece of the root and munched it. It was hard to wait while his
lordship lunched; I was so afraid I’d lose him I nearly exploded.
But in a minute he turned and began to wade again arrogantly and
deliberately up-stream—it was plain he felt himself cock of the walk
and the monarch of the forest all right. Then Josef’s finger touched
me again, and he grunted—I think he was beyond words. I lifted
the rifle and held on the back of the beast’s head and pulled the
trigger. The stillness sure was smashed to pieces by the roar of that
rifle-shot. I reloaded instantly, but Josef yelled:
“_Vous l’avez_, M’sieur Bob—you’ve got him.”
It was so, you know. Of course it was a fluke, but I hit him in the
back of the head where I’d held, and he dropped like a log. Well,
for about five minutes things were mixed. Josef and I talked to each
other and listened to ourselves, and both of us were mad to get
across that pond to where the big moose lay, still and enormous—but
we hadn’t any boat. We didn’t dare start to walk around it, for fear
the moose might not be quite dead and might get up and make off while
we were in the woods. So we stood and waited, ready to plunk him if
he stirred.
“Where the dickens in Canada are we, anyway?” I burst at Josef in
English—but he understood.
“It is a place not too far from camp, M’sieur Bob,” he answered
quietly. “If but we might have a canoe, _à c’t heure. Mais v’là_”—he
broke off.
And, please the pigs, I lifted my eyes and there _was_ a canoe
paddling down the inlet, and in the canoe sat old Shacky and Zoëtique.
“Where in time did you drop from?” I howled, and then, with my hands
around my mouth: “I’ve killed a moose! I’ve killed a moose! There he
is!”
Not a sound from Shacky or Zoëtique—I couldn’t understand any of it.
Why were they there? Why weren’t they surprised to see us? Why didn’t
they answer? However, they paddled steadily on, and as they got close
I saw that Shacky was looking rather odd.
“What’s up,” I asked. “Can’t you talk English? Aren’t you glad I’ve
killed him?”
“Fine!” answered Shacky with a sort of effort about it that I
couldn’t make out. “Whooping good shot!” he said, and the boat
ran in on the bank and I squatted on the bow to hold her. Shacky
proceeded to get out, but he didn’t look at me, and Zoëtique, who’s
generally all smiles and winning ways, was black as thunder—there
was something abnormal in the situation which I couldn’t get on to.
“Corking good shot,” he went on in a forced sort of way. “The moose
went down like the side wall of a church.”
“How do you know?” I threw at him, for his manner irritated me.
“Know?” Shacky laughed a queer laugh. “Of course I know. Didn’t I see
him?”
“See him?” I repeated. “Where were you? What’s this lake, anyway, and
what are you doing here?”
Shacky looked at me hard enough then. “What in thunder do you mean?”
he asked with an astonished stare.
“Mean? I mean that,” I yapped. “There’s something about this I don’t
grasp. Do you know what this pond is? For I don’t.”
Shacky’s lower jaw actually dropped, the way you read about in
books. He stood and gaped. “What! You don’t—know—where you are?” he
jerked out. “Why, this is the lower still-water of the _Rivière aux
Isles_—just below where you sent me to watch, you know.”
I gave a gulp; he went on:
“We’ve been listening to that moose an hour—he walked in from away up
the mountain—we’ve heard him crack all the way—he was just in sight
around the turn when I heard you shoot and saw him fall. I had my gun
cocked and was waiting till he got a few yards nearer.”
With that Zoëtique could no longer control himself, but burst in
with voluble, broken-hearted indignation. “_C’est b’en malheur!_” he
moaned, gurgling like an angry dove. “M’sieur had well the intention
to shoot straight—he would not have missed this time—M’sieur.
M’sieur had examined and practised the movement of the _carabine_
constantly—he now knows it _comme il faut_. Also I remarked the arm
of M’sieur, it had the steadiness of a rock—I say it as at Mass—it
was, in truth, the moose of M’sieur. He would have gained great
credit—also me his guide. So that it was a hard thing to have that
moose torn from us at the point itself of gaining. _C’est b’en
malheur!_”
Now here’s the rest of the map to show how it was, and how we were
both holding on that moose around a corner from each other. That
beast’s last day had come all right, but I got the first crack at the
trumpet of doom. Here’s the map:
[Illustration: map]
When the business had filtered into my intellect I whirled on Josef.
“You knew where we were? You knew this was M’sieur Shackleton’s
hunting-ground? You brought me here to get that moose?” I flung at
the fellow in nervous French, never stopping for tenses.
Josef shrugged his shoulders just a touch. “_Sass peut_” (_Ça se
peut_) he murmured irresponsibly—which is Canadian for “It may be.”
I could have choked him. To make me play a trick like that on poor
old Shacky! And with that Shacky spoke up like the white man he is.
“I guess we’re both stung, Bob,” and he banged me on the back. “But
it’s a thousand times better you should get it. I’d probably have
missed again. It’s the reward of virtue; you gave me your chance.
Only I did want to redeem myself. I really was steady, and I’d been
fussing with the gun till I knew it by heart. I was going to do it
right or bust—you’ll give me credit for not being two fools, won’t
you, Bob? But it’s the reward of virtue—that’s straight.”
I could nearly have cried. Poor old Shacky! When he was ready and
nerved up, and that glorious moose within gunshot, to have me step in
and snap him off his upper lip when he was almost tasting him.
I was afraid to speak to Josef for a minute, I felt so much like
killing him. I simply hustled those two guides, without another word
about it, into the canoe, and we crossed to where the moose lay,
and the business of skinning the brute and cutting him up, and all
that, took three good hours of hard work. But I was laying it up for
Josef, I can tell you. I’d have dismissed him if it hadn’t been
that at lunch, when the men were off, Shacky took me in hand and
reasoned with me, and made me see, what indeed I knew, that Josef had
acted up to his lights. He couldn’t understand our point of view if
I talked to him a year, so it was no use talking. He had found that
hunting-place and he considered that he had a right to it for me,
and that I should throw it away seemed to him pure childishness. By
his code it was correct to circumvent me for my own good, and he had
plain done it. Anyway I didn’t dismiss him, owing to Shacky, and also
because I’m fond of him.
But I did give him an almighty serious lecture, which did no good
at all. He was bursting with joy and quite ready to face small
inconveniences, so he just shrugged his shoulders and blinked his
light, big eyes when I preached at him, and I don’t believe he
listened to much of it. Zoëtique was sore, too, but Josef let the
storm rage around him and was content.
And all the way down the river and through the lakes, as we went home
in triumph with those huge antlers garnishing the middle of the
boat, I heard old Josef humming to himself as he paddled stern, back
of me:
Chanceux est le chasseur
Et louable, qui est capable
Vaincre le Roi Orignal.
THE SABINE MAIDEN
THE SABINE MAIDEN
My young brother-in-law, Bob Morgan, is two yards long by an
approximate three-quarters wide; his brother, my husband, is as long
and wider; and the two frolic together, amid thunders of furniture,
like kittens. Bob is that joyful-hearted thing, a sophomore at Yale,
and the elder barbarian rises, playing with him, to the same glorious
and irresponsible level. It is lucky that the appointments of our
camp in Canada are of a sort suited to men of the stone age. Short
of knocking down the stovepipe, a real tragedy is difficult, and
after six years of connection with the Morgans no variation of giant
gambols now surprises. So that the “God Pan” photograph, which might
once have seemed against etiquette, did not startle me.
The photograph introduced the episode of this story, so it is fitting
to begin with it. The three of us, Walter, Bob, and I, old comrades
in the woods, had left that centre of civilization, our log camp
on Lac Lumière, for three days in tents early in September. We
hoped for caribou or moose, or both. All day we travelled a lonely
stream, the Rivière à la Poêle, or Frying-pan River, paddling up
sunny, still reaches between rocky shores, or through gold-green
rustling water grass; then, as rocks thickened and the rapids came
crashing in hoarse sweetness, we disembarked into a portage opening
like a door into black forest; we followed the trail up the hurrying
water, seeing through the trees the tumbling foam or the brown,
white-speckled whirlpools; hearing it above the leaves’ whispering.
All day we followed the stream.
We came to a lake, Lac à la Poêle, at three in the afternoon—a lake
which perhaps twelve white people have seen. The guides, with expert
shifting and fitting, wedged six hundred pounds’ weight, alive and
dead, _pacquetons_ and people, into each sixty-pound canoe, and we
floated _au large_ to the liquid dip of four paddles.
Into Lac à la Poêle at the farther end, three miles away, flowed its
largest inlet, where we meant to camp. Its course near the lake was
all rapids; at the head of these rapids we should put up the tents,
leaving the boats at the lake end of the portage; there we should be
far enough away from the big pond not to disturb the hunting. Lac à
la Poêle was game country, and the marshes about it were cut into
trodden runways. Moreover, the falling water would drown the sound of
the chopping; we had been here last year, and studied the ground.
But it was fated to be one of those well-laid plans which “gang
agley,” and nobody to blame but beavers. A beaver seems close to
humanity sometimes, yet a human being gets no satisfaction in being
angry at a wild, shy, black mass to be seen only in sections, as
a glittering head above the water, or as a broad tail descending
thunderingly on the water’s surface. One might as well be angry at
a centaur or a winged horse as at a spirit of the forest such as a
beaver.
We came, about five o’clock, with heavy loads and aching muscles, to
the spot for our camp, and found two large, brand-new beaver dams
built since last year, and the entire shore-line changed. Woods
were flooded ten feet in, running water turned to a pond, everything
spoiled for camping. We could have cried, so we laughed—one
transposes in that way in the woods.
We plodded on, foot-heavy in our high, wet hunting-boots, perspiring
and fly-bitten—but yet with a laugh at the beaver. It is wisdom
in many conditions to be good-tempered, but in the woods it is
necessity—good temper and salt pork you must have in a camp. We
plunged into a few more holes, fell over a few more rocks, and around
a turn we came on our reward—a prettier camping-ground than we had
imagined.
Above the two dams a grove of spruces with a copper floor of needles
reached into the water, and about two sides of it the stream flowed.
A silver birch gleamed through the evergreens, and we could see the
light tops of more on the hillside; there was good fire-wood near
by; late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the tree tops, and slid
in patterns over the pink-brown of the spruce needles; the river
persistently chanted something cheerful about making a joke of rough
places and laughing over the rocks and going on steadily in any
case, and so we set to work.
A dead log knocked out with the blunt of an axe, a few bushes
levelled, and the ground was ready for the tents—mine facing Walter’s
and Bob’s, in the centre of the woodland; that of the guides back a
hundred and fifty feet somewhere, burrowing in the mountain.
Gold sunset leaked wet through black spruces, and drowned itself in
bright spots in the river; the guides chopped long poles for the
tents, short stakes for pegging them out; the tents rose flopping,
grew taut, and stood snowy and trim—our homes.
I got birch bark and sticks for a fire, and soon it crackled between
my house and Walter’s, licking aromatic air with orange tongues.
The guides’ axes rang hollow as another fire—to cook supper—shot up
on the shore; a crotched stick with a swinging kettle hung over it;
Blanc had started the hot water. We fell to at getting balsam for the
beds; we unpacked blankets and belongings, and then we dressed for
dinner. Clean hands and brushed hair change a costume.
In the meantime, somewhere in a crack of affairs, Walter had put
up a rod, and stepping from rock to rock had found a pool where
the trout longed for the fly, and brought back a dozen speckled,
pink-and-silver, scarlet-finned quarter-pounders.
Blanc was chef; his slouch hat back on his shock head, his marvellous
red-striped stockings and pink calico shirt and aggressive suspenders
and other curios of garments showed up on his figure as on a
telegraph pole, where he stood before the fire. He squatted low
and shook the frying-pan over the red coals; he stared at the fish
earnestly as they doubled their tails “_croche_” with freshness; he
watched that the corn-meal in which they were rolled should not burn;
and it was supper-time. We had fish and flapjacks and bacon and fried
potatoes.
Godin, butler, urged these delicacies upon us with soft French speech
and alert glances of interest. Godin differed in several ways from
the butler of commerce.
The twilight gathered brown around the red firelight; the fish jumped
in the darkening river; tents glimmered behind us and promised rest
and deep sleep. We had come far to get these gifts of the gods
and had dropped chains on the road; our freed spirits thought with
kindly pity of the bored people sitting down to banquets in London,
suffering in dinner clothes and candle-light at Newport, trying to
squeeze happiness out of smelly automobiles and cramped steamer
cabins. That three-quarters of them would pity us did not lessen our
sympathy.
Next morning I was slowly aware that the shadows of innumerable
leaves danced noiselessly an abandoned two-step on the white walls
of my tent. With eyes half open I watched the silent, wild play, and
then I was aware of wild play not silent in the house across the
street.