Tom had been right when first he told me of the spot. Surely there is
not in the wide world a better site for a camp. Harrison McClintick had
chosen well. Embosomed in the dense forest, on the shore of a small
lake, was Leatherstocking Camp. There was no clearing; the beautiful
rubble-stone lodge with its heavy, low, overhanging roof, was closely
hemmed in by trees.
This main building was of a fine solid structure. Tom said the wagon
trail had been open all the way in when the lodge was built. It must
have cost much money to cart the materials to the spot. The lodge was
oblong in shape and at one end was a massive chimney, a rugged marvel of
masonry. The whole interior was one spacious living room. But a rustic
stair led up to a balcony just under the heavy polished rafters and
three small apartments opened onto this.
The furnishings of the former owner seemed all intact. Over the railing
of the balcony hung a large bearskin. The walls were of exquisite
masonry, the same as outside, and were decorated with the skins of
smaller animals. Over the mammoth fireplace, which filled one end of the
lodge, was a magnificent moose head with spreading antlers, on one of
which (as if it had been tossed there) was a rather gay looking cap,
albeit faded and dusty. I could not help wondering if it had belonged to
Roland McClintick.
On either side of the fireplace hung guns and pistols and spring traps,
and on the high, heavy mantel shelf several wooden decoy ducks sat
comfortably in retirement. One of these was painted brown and it was
easy to fancy its general resemblance to a human head when seen at a
distance in the haze of early morning. I thought it bespoke a fine
sentiment in the tough old warrior of commerce that he had taken nothing
from his camp, but just the one thing--a sorrowful memory.
The lodge was much the worse for the irreverent usage of Tom and his
strenuous crew. They cooked and ate and slept there, and in the
evenings, and on rainy days, they played cards there.
They had felled trees enough to build seven cabins, and five of them
were completed; they had a real woodland atmosphere about them, a
pioneer look, which was lacking in the sumptuous lodge. A landing place
of logs had been built at the lake and several rowboats floated ready
for use. Tom told me they had carted the planking for these all the way
from Keeseville in, or on, his Ford.
“And that’s old Hogback,” he told us, as he and Brent and I strolled out
after supper while the others lingered in the lodge. “Wait till you see
it in the daylight. You can climb up it if you want to. Some mountain,
huh?”
“I don’t want to,” Brent said.
“See the hermit,” laughed Tom.
“I thought you’d have something like that,” Brent said. “It’s getting so
there are no mountains left without hermits; they’re pushing in
everywhere. They’re going to cause a lot of congestion if it keeps up.”
“Well, I don’t know about the hermit,” Tom laughed, “but I can promise
you there are bears and wildcats up there.”
“Well then we won’t need to go up to find out,” Brent said. “As long as
you’re sure.”
“Yes, and rattlesnakes too,” Tom said. “I found the tracks of a pretty
big lynx one day. Well, you can see we’ve been working. Guess we better
go in and talk to the bunch, hey?”
We went into the lodge where four of the young men were already playing
cards at the carved library table which I suppose must always have been
used as a dining table. The other fellow, the one they called Rivers,
was starting a fire in the big chimney-place. It was a cozy, pleasant
scene.
I knew Tim Daggett, of course, and he greeted me cordially. Tot Burke,
also of my home town, I knew slightly. Piker Pete, the fire-lookout near
Temple Camp, was hardly more than a boy. He returned to his aerial perch
in the Catskills after I had been at camp a day or two. Paul Scheffler
was a smiling, tow-headed young German who had worked as a farmhand near
Ausable Forks; I never knew how Tom got hold of him. There is always a
kind of drift toward Tom; odd characters find him somehow. Heinie, as we
called Paul, had been in the German army and I believe he had also
followed the sea. His home was in his hat.
Charlie Rivers had lately drifted into camp seeking work. He was a
bronzed, taciturn man with an inscrutable look. He worked hard and said
little. He was well versed in woods lore. His eyes had a quiet keenness
about them and seemed always fixed on the distance. When accosted he
would pause, listening patiently, with his gaze afar. I never got the
impression that he could not look at me, but rather that what I said was
not of enough importance to warrant such acknowledgment of my presence.
I liked and respected him.
The tired workers did not remain late at their card game and Tom and
Brent and I were left alone in the lodge where we sat late before the
cheerful blaze. The men slept in another building, only less pretentious
than this main structure; there were half a dozen rooms in it, and a
large room for provisions. Besides these completely furnished apartments
there were, I think, as many as twenty army cots piled in the storage
part; they looked to me as if they had never been used.
I understood that the leather king had planned to carry electricity into
his wilderness retreat, but Brent and I were glad that he had not done
so. When the men adjourned to their own quarters that first night, they
carried three railroad lanterns which had lighted their game. Somehow
that silent little procession emphasized the solemnity and remoteness of
our camp, as it made its way among the trees to the other building. The
new cabins loomed momentarily in the dim passing lights. Then we could
see only a faint gleam in a distant window to tell that the men had
reached their lodging. We paused in the doorway a few moments listening
to a dismal wailing somewhere in the lower reaches of the mountain which
cast its gloomy shadow over our camp.
“That’s a cat,” said Brent. “There must be a back fence somewhere around
here.”
“It’s a lynx,” Tom said. “We hear it most every night; seems to come
from over on that second slope. Charlie Rivers says it’s a jaguar, but I
don’t think so. He’s thinking of the Canadian lynx; he used to hang out
up there in the Canadian Rockies.”
“I say it’s a Canadian lynx,” I said.
Tom laughed at me. “What do you know about it?”
“Maybe it’s the hermit having his singing lesson,” Brent suggested.
“I kind of have a feeling that if Charlie Rivers says a thing it must be
so,” I observed. “I sort of feel that he always knows what he’s talking
about. I say a jaguar.”
“Well,” laughed Tom, “we’ll have to find out if he stays up there till
the hunting season opens.”
“Whatever he is, he’ll have to come to Bridgeboro if he wants to meet
me,” Brent said. “I shall withdraw before the hunting season. I think
too much of my head.”
We put a log on the fire and sat before it, talking late into the night.
We discussed the violent end of Mr. McClintick, the progress of the work
at camp, the probable time of opening which seemed likely not to be
before the following spring. The tragic accident which had occurred on
Weir Lake near by seemed not to weigh heavily on Tom’s mind; he was too
full of plans. Brent sprawled in a big chair, one lanky leg over an arm,
the other resting on a box. He always reminded me of an octopus when he
sat at ease for he seemed to project in every direction.
“Do you suppose that’s young McGinty’s cap up there on the moose horns?”
he queried idly. “McClintick,” I corrected him.
“When was it--last summer?” Brent asked.
“It was a year ago last fall--in the hunting season,” Tom said. “The
place here was closed up after that till Mr. Temple took it over last
fall.”
“I thought you told me some game wardens were here when your friends,
the surveyors, passed through,” I said.
“Sure they were,” Tom said. “But of course, the buildings were locked
up. Mr. McClintick’s broker gave the keys to Mr. Temple. Why, what’s the
idea?”
“You mean me?” Brent queried in his funny, lazy way. “I haven’t any
ideas. It’s mighty nice and quiet here, that’s sure. Must be kind of
slow in the winter--especially on rainy Sundays.” His idle gaze wandered
about the room which lay in shadow save where the fire blazed. Wriggling
silhouettes of the flames played upon the wall in the dim background,
giving it a changing uncanny light. Brent gazed about in a kind of half
interested, leisurely inspection. “Pretty heavy rafters, huh?” he
queried. “What are they--ash?”
“Oak,” said Tom.
“Used to be a picture over there, didn’t there?” Brent drawled. “You can
see a kind of square where the smoke didn’t get.”
“You don’t miss much, do you, Brent?” I laughed.
“I have an inquiring mind,” said he in his funny way.
“Well, so you won’t lose any sleep over it,” Tom laughed, “a painting of
Mr. McClintick hung there.” I am always amused at the contrast between
Tom’s briskness and Brent’s drawling half interest in everything. “When
we got word that he had been murdered we took it down and laid it away
in one of the rooms up there,” he added, indicating the balcony.
“I didn’t think you and your little circle were that sentimental,” Brent
drawled. “Maybe I should say susceptible. What was it--a picture of the
old geezer?”
“The old gentleman, yes,” said Tom. “We eat right here, you know, and
there he was staring down at us all the time. We didn’t just like a
murdered man to be staring down at us. Heinie said, ‘It remembers me of
a ghost aready.’”
Brent lost interest and fell to gazing about again. Our talk drifted
into other channels. Even in the lodge we could hear the distant moaning
that we had heard before. The fire blazed away and crackled
companionably. Even Brent had to drag himself together and withdraw a
little from its increasing warmth. As he did so, he stooped to inspect
what seemed to me to be but an imperfection in the cement hearth. His
scrutiny seemed quite casual; there was always a kind of ludicrous
snoopiness about him which I think he sometimes practised to amuse and
sometimes to annoy Tom. To this day I remember saying to him, “Well,
what is it--a lynx or a jaguar?”
“It’s a human footprint,” he said.
“I doubt it,” said Tom.
“Somebody must have stepped in the cement before it was dry,” Brent
observed. “His foot went over the edge.”
“What’s that in the middle?” I asked him, rather amused. For I was only
half convinced, and the matter was of no consequence anyway. “Looks like
a scar,” Brent said, feeling of it.
“And departing leave behind us,
Footprints in the dry cement
as Longfellow says.”
“The sands of time,” I said.
“Dry cement is better,” Brent countered.
“_Listen!_” said Tom, not in the least interested. “Listen to that, now.
That’s a lynx all right. Hear it?”
In an interval between the boisterous cracklings of our blazing log a
long wail, spent by the distance, could be heard far off. The wind was
rising, making a strong draught in the chimney and rustling the trees
outside. A flickering shadow on the dim masonry behind me danced up and
disappeared with such suddenness that I was startled as if by some
ghostly presence. As I returned my gaze to the merry fire a shadow
crossed one of the windows. Startled, I fixed my gaze there, for the
moving thing, whatever it was, had not the erratic, jumping quality of
the shadows cast by the fire.
“Did you see that?” I asked, my voice instinctively falling to a
whisper.
Tom had evidently seen it. Without saying a word he arose, went to the
cupboard beside the chimney, took down a lantern and lighted it.
“Maybe it was only a reflection of the blaze at that,” I said.
“Do I have to get up?” Brent asked.
[Illustration: This outline is a crude reproduction of the markings that
Brent noticed in the cement of the hearth. Of course it does not show
the depressions. If you will imagine the large area as a depression, and
the five smaller enclosures as depressions, with all of the outlines
less distinct, you will have an idea of the imprint as we saw it.]
Lantern in hand, Tom went to the door, and as he opened it a gust of
wind rushed in, blowing a lot of papers from the open cupboard, and
banging the cupboard door furiously back and forth. Through the window
we could see the light of the lantern moving about outside. Suddenly I
was moved to join Tom and together we went over to the other building
and quietly opened the door. The men were all in their beds asleep. Only
Rivers stirred and spoke to us; I would have picked him for one of those
men who are not to be surprised even in sleep.
“I thought some one was around,” Tom said.
“Hear that animal?” Rivers asked.
“Yep; well, good-night, Charlie,” said Tom.