A Daughter of the Forest
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“I think nothing evil of my pet, believe that! See the beauty now! That’s the difference between harsh words and loving ones. If you’d only treat the ‘beasties’ as well as you do me, Angelique dear, you’d have less cause for scolding. What I think now is – speckled rooster. Right?”
“Aye. Dead as dead; and the feathers still stickin’ to the villain’s jaws. What’s the life of such brutes to that o’ good fowls? Pst! Meroude! Scat! Well, if it’s milk you will, milk you shall!” and, turning angrily about, Snowfoot’s mistress dashed the entire contents of her pail over the annoying cat.
Margot laughed till the tears came. “Why, Angelique! only the other day, in that quaint old ‘Book of Beauty’ uncle has, I read how a Queen of Naples, and some noted Parisian beauties, used baths of milk for their complexions; but poor Meroude’s a hopeless case, I fear.”
Angelique’s countenance took on a grim expression. “Mistress Meroude’s got a day’s job to clean herself, the greedy. It’s not her nose’ll go in the pail another mornin’. No. No, indeed.”
“And it was so full. Yet that’s the same Snowfoot who was to give us no more, because of the broken glass. Angelique, where’s uncle?”
“How should I tell? Am I set to spy the master’s ins and outs?”
“Funny Angelique! You’re not set to do it, but you can usually tell them. And where’s Adrian? I’ve called and called, but nobody answers. I can’t guess where they all are. Even Pierre is out of sight, and he’s mostly to be found at the kitchen door when meal time comes.”
“There, there, child. You can ask more questions than old Angelique can answer. But the breakfast. That’s a good thought. So be. Whisk in and mix the batter cakes for the master’s eatin’. ’Tis he, foolish man, finds they have better savor from Margot’s fingers than mine. Simple one, with all his wisdom.”
“It’s love gives them savor, sweet Angelique! and the desire to see me a proper housewife. I wonder why he cares about that, since you are here to do such things.”
“Ah! The ‘I wonders!’ and the ‘Is its?’ of a maid! They set the head awhirl. The batter cakes, my child. I see the master comin’ down the hill this minute.”
Margot paused long enough to caress Tom, the eagle, who met her on the path, then sped indoors, leaving Reynard to his own devices and Angelique’s not too tender mercies. But she put all her energy into the task assigned her and proudly placed a plate of her uncle’s favorite dainty before him when he took his seat at table. Till then she had not noticed its altered arrangement, and even her guardian’s coveted: “Well done, little housekeeper!” could not banish the sudden fear that assailed her.
“Why, what does it mean? Where is Adrian? Where Pierre? Why are only dishes for three?”
“Pst! my child! Hast been askin’ questions in the sleep? Sure, you have ever since your eyes flew open. Say your grace and eat your meat, and let the master rest.”
“Yes, darling. Angelique is wise. Eat your breakfast as usual, and afterward I will tell you all – that you should know.”
“But, I cannot eat. It chokes me. It seems so awfully still and strange and empty. As I should think it might be, were somebody dead.”
Angelique’s scant patience was exhausted. Not only was her loyal heart tried by her master’s troubles, but she had had added labor to accomplish. During all that summer two strong and, at least one, willing lads had been at hand to do the various chores pertaining to all country homes, however isolated. That morning she had brought in her own supply of fire-wood, filled her buckets from the spring, attended the poultry, fed the oxen, milked Snowfoot, wrestled over the iniquity of Reynard and grieved at the untimely death of the speckled rooster: “When he would have made such a lovely fricasee, yes. Indeed, ’twas a sinful waste!”
Though none of these tasks were new or arduous to her, she had not performed them during the past weeks, save and except the care of her cow. That she had never entrusted to anybody, not even the master; and it was to spare him that she had done some of the things he meant to attend to later. Now she had reached her limit.
“Angelique wants her breakfast, child. She has been long astir. After that the deluge!” quoted Mr. Dutton, with an attempt at lightness which did not agree with his real depression.
Margot made heroic efforts to act as usual but they ended in failure, and as soon as might be her guardian pushed back his chair and she promptly did the same.
“Now I can ask as many questions as I please, can’t I? First, where are they?”
“They have gone across the lake, southward, I suppose. Toward whatever place or town Adrian selects. He will not come back but Pierre will do so, after he has guided the other to some safe point beyond the woods. How soon I do not know, of course.”
“Gone! Without bidding me good-bye? Gone to stay? Oh! uncle, how could he? I know you didn’t like him but I did. He was – ”
Margot dropped her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly. Then ashamed of her unaccustomed tears she ran out of the house and as far from it as she could. But even the blue herons could give her no amusement, though they stalked gravely up the river bank and posed beside her, where she lay prone and disconsolate in Harmony Hollow. Her squirrels saw and wondered, for she had no returning chatter for them, even when they chased one another over her prostrate person and playfully pulled at her long hair.
“He was the only friend I ever had that was not old and wise in sorrow. It was true he seemed to bring a shadow with him and while he was here I sometimes wished he would go, or had never come; yet now that he has – oh! it’s so awfully, awfully lonesome. Nobody to talk with about my dreams and fancies, nobody to talk nonsense, nobody to teach me any more songs – nobody but just old folks and animals! And he went, he went without a word or a single good-bye!”
It was, indeed, Margot’s first grief; and the fact that her late comrade could leave her so coolly, without even mentioning his plan, hurt her very deeply. But, after awhile, resentment at Adrian’s seeming neglect almost banished her loneliness; and, sitting up, she stared at Xanthippé, poised on one leg before her, apparently asleep but really waiting for anything which might turn up in the shape of dainties.
“Oh! you sweet vixen! but you needn’t pose. There’s no artist here now to sketch you, and I don’t care, not very much, if there isn’t. After all my trying to do him good, praising and blaming and petting, if he was impolite enough to go as he did – Well, no matter!”
While this indignation lasted she felt better, but as soon as she came once more in sight of the clearing and of her uncle finishing one of Adrian’s uncompleted tasks, her loneliness returned with double force. It had almost the effect of bodily illness and she had no experience to guide her. With a fresh burst of tears she caught her guardian’s hand and hid her face on his shoulder.
“Oh! it’s so desolate. So empty. Everything’s so changed. Even the Hollow is different and the squirrels seem like strangers. If he had to go, why did he ever, ever come!”
“Why, indeed!”
Mr. Dutton was surprised and frightened by the intensity of her grief. If she could sorrow in this way for a brief friendship, what untold misery might not life have in store for her? There must have been some serious blunder in his training if she were no better fitted than this to face trouble; and for the first time it occurred to him that he should not have kept her from all companions of her own age.
“Margot!”
The sternness of his tone made her look up and calm herself.
“Y-es, uncle.”
“This must stop. Adrian went by my invitation. Because I could no longer permit your association. Between his household and ours is a wrong beyond repair. He cannot help that he is his father’s son, but being such he is an impossible friend for your father’s daughter. I should have sent him away, at my very first suspicion of his identity, but – I want to be just. It has been the effort of my life to learn forgiveness. Until the last I would not allow myself even to believe who he was, but gave him the benefit of the chance that his name might be of another family. When I did know – there was no choice. He had to go.”
Margot watched his face, as he spoke, with a curious feeling that this was not the loved and loving uncle she had always known but a stranger. There were wrinkles and scars she had never noticed, a bitterness that made the voice an unfamiliar one, and a weariness in the droop of the figure leaning upon the hoe which suggested an aged and heart-broken man.
Why, only yesterday, it seemed, Hugh Dutton was the very type of a stalwart woodlander, with the grace of a finished and untiring scholar, making the man unique. Now – If Adrian had done this thing, if his mere presence had so altered her beloved guardian, then let Adrian go! Her arms went around the man’s neck and her kisses showered upon his cheeks, his hands, even his bent white head.
“Uncle, uncle! Don’t look like that! Don’t. He’s gone and shall never come back. Everything’s gone, hasn’t it? Even that irreparable past, of which I’d never heard. Why, if I’d dreamed, do you suppose I’d even ever have spoken to him? No, indeed. Why you, the tip of your smallest finger, the smallest lock of your hair, is worth more than a thousand Adrians! I was sorry he’d treated me so rudely. But now I’m glad, glad, glad. I wouldn’t listen to him now, not if he said good-bye forever and ever. I love you, uncle, best of all the world, and you love me. Let’s be just as we were before any strangers came. Come, let’s go out on the lake.”
He smiled at her extravagance and abruptness. The times when they had gone canoeing together had been their merriest, happiest times. It seemed to her that it needed only some such outing to restore the former conditions of their life.
“Not to-day, dearest.”
“Why not? The potatoes won’t hurt and it’s so lovely.”
“There are other matters, more important than potatoes. I have put them off too long. Now – Margot, do you love me?”
“Why – uncle!”
“Because there is somebody whom you must love even more dearly. Your father.”
“My – father! My father? Of course; though he is dead.”
“No, Margot. He is still alive.”
CHAPTER XII
CARRYING
Pierre’s ill-temper was short-lived, but his curiosity remained. However, when Adrian steadily refused to gratify it his interest returned to himself.
“Say, I’ve a mind to go the whole way.”
“Where?”
“Wherever you’re going. Nothin’ to call me back.”
“Madoc?”
“We might take him along.”
“Not if he’s sick. That would be as cruel to him as troublesome to us. Besides, you need go no further than yonder shore.”
“Them’s the woods you got lost in.”
“I know them better now.”
“Couldn’t find your road to save your life.”
“I think I could. Besides, you will be wanted at the island. I don’t think Mr. Dutton is a well man. With nobody but an old woman and a young girl he’ll need somebody. You’re not much good, still – ”
Pierre laughed. They had about reached the forest and he rested his paddle.
“You hear me. I’m going to where you go. That was the master’s word. I wouldn’t dare not do it. If I did, my mother’d make me sorry. So that’s settled.”
Adrian had doubts as to the truth of this statement of the islander’s commands. He recalled the words: “as far as you desire.” After all, this was not setting a time limit, and it was perfectly natural that anybody should like company through the wilderness. Why, it would be a wild, adventurous journey! the very sort of which he had dreamed before he had tasted the prosaic routine of the lumber-camp. He had his colors and brushes, the birch-bark which served so many forest purposes should be his canvas, they had food, and Pierre, at least, his gun and ammunition – no lad could have protested further.
“All right. It will be a lark after my own heart. We can quit as soon as we’re tired of it; and – look here. Mr. Dutton said you were paid to take me to the nearest town. How far is that? How long to get there?”
“Oh! I don’t know. Donovan’s nighest. Might go in four days – might a week. Canada’s closer, but you don’t want to go north. South, he said.”
“Ye-es. I suppose so. Fact is, I don’t care where I go nor when. I’m in no hurry. As long as the money and food hold out, I’m satisfied.”
“Speakin’ of money. I couldn’t afford to waste my time.”
Adrian laughed at this sudden change of front. It was Pierre who had proposed the long road, but at the mention of money had remembered prudence.
“That’s all right, too. It was of that I was thinking, you greedy fellow. What do guides get, here in the woods?”
Pierre stepped ashore, carefully beached his canoe, and as carefully considered his reply before he made it. How much did this city lad know? Either at camp or on the island had he heard the just rates of such service?
“Well – how much you got?”
“I’m asking a question, not you.”
“About four dollars, likely.”
“Whew! not much. You can get the best of them for two. I’ll give you a dollar a day when we’re resting and one-fifty when we’re traveling.”
Adrian was smiling in the darkness at his own sudden thrift. He had taken a leaf out of his comrade’s own book, and beyond that, he almost loved his precious earnings, so soon as the thought came of parting with them. He instantly resolved to put aside a ten dollar piece to take the “mater,” whenever he should see her. The rest he would use, of course, but not waste. He would paint such pictures up here as would make his old artist friends and the critics open their eyes. The very novelty of the material which should embody them would “take.” Already, in imagination, he saw dozens of fascinating “bits” hung on the line at the old Academy, and felt the marvelous sums they brought swelling his pockets to bursting. He’d be the rage, the hit of the next season; and what pride he’d have in sending newspaper notices of himself to Peace Island! How Margot would open her blue eyes, and Angelique toss her hands, and the master slowly admit that there was genius where he had estimated only talent.
“There’s such a wide, wide difference in the two!” cried Adrian, aloud.
“Hey? What?”
The dreamer came back to reality, and to Pierre, demanding,
“Make it one-seventy-five, and I’ll do it.”
“Well. I will. Now, for to-night. Shall we camp right here or go further into the forest? In the woods I’m always ready for bed, and its later than usual now.”
“Here. I know the very rocks you got under in that storm. They’ll do as good as a tent, and easier.”
Adrian, also, knew that spot and in a few moments both lads were asleep. They had not stopped even to build the fire that was customary in such quarters.
Pierre was awake first, on the next morning, and Adrian slowly rose, stretching his cramped limbs and yawning widely.
“Well, I must say that Angelique’s good mattress beats rocks. You don’t catch me doing that again. I guess I’ll walk down to the water and have a last look at the island.”
“I guess you won’t. You’ll eat your breakfast right now. Then you’ll fix that birch for the carry. If I do the heavy work you’ve got to do the light.”
“Sounds fair enough, but you’re paid and I’m not.”
“It is fair.”
Adrian did not contest the point; the less readily because he saw that the fried chicken Angelique had given them was rapidly diminishing in quantity.
“Think I’ll fall to, myself. My, but I’m hungry! Wish I had a cup of coffee.”
“Can’t waste time now. We’ll have some to-night.”
“Did they give us some?”
“Look in the pack.”
“After breakfast, I’ll oblige you.”
Pierre grinned and helped himself to a wing.
Adrian seized the tin basin which held the fowl and placed it behind himself. “Enough’s as good as a feast. We shall be hungry again. See here. What kind of a bird was this? or birds? all legs and arms, no bodies. Freaks of nature. Eh? How many breast portions have you devoured?”
“Three.”
“Oh! Then, travel or no travel, you get no wage this day. Understand. I’m commander of this expedition. I see to the commissariat. I’ll overhaul the pack, and take account of stock.”
Pierre assisted at the task. Though he had been impatient to get away from that locality, still too dangerously near his mother’s rule, he intended to keep an eye on everything. Paid or not paid, as Adrian fared so would he – only rather better.
“Why, they must have thought we would be in the woods a long time. They were certainly generous.”
They had been, but Pierre considered that they might have been more so.
“This was for both trips. Half is mine.”
“Nonsense. But – there. We’re not going to squabble all the time, like children. And we both know exactly what we have to depend on. We must fish and shoot – ”
“How’ll you do that? The only gun is mine.”
“It’s part of the outfit. Let’s see. A little good tent cloth – not big enough to cover any but good-natured folks – salt pork, beans, sugar, coffee, tea, flour, meal, dishes – Hello! We’re kings, Ricord! Monarchs of Maine.”
“Cut the splints.”
After all, it seemed to be Pierre who did the ordering, but Adrian had sense to see that he was the wiser of the two in woodcraft; even though he himself had made it a study during the last weeks. He seized the axe and attacked a cedar-tree, from which he had soon cut the binding strips he wanted. Then he laid the paddles in the boat, fastening them with rootlets to the three thwarts. He also fastened two broad bands of the pliable splints in such a way that when it was inverted, the weight of the canoe could be borne in part by the forehead and shoulders. He was ready almost as soon as Pierre had retied the pack, which was to be Adrian’s burden.
“All right! I’ll swing her up. This ‘carry’ isn’t a long one and the first thoroughfare is ten miles before we come to dead water. But it’s up-stream that far and we’ll have to warp up some. Part is fair, but more is rips.”
If Pierre thought to confound his mate by his woodland slang he was disappointed. Margot had been a good teacher and Adrian had been eager to learn what he had not already done from the loggers. Pierre had been puzzled by “commissariat” and “expedition” and felt that he had evened matters nicely.
“Oh! I know. A thoroughfare is a river, and a dead water is a lake. And a carrier is – yourself!”
To show his new skill he caught up the canoe and inverted it over his own head. He, also, had been calculating a bit, and realized that the birch was really the lighter burden. So he generously left the pack to his neighbor and started forward bravely.
“All right, like you say. One little bit, then you change. Then, too, maybe I’m not ready.”
With a whistle and spring Pierre hoisted the pack to his shoulders, wound its straps around his body and started off through the forest at a sort of dog-trot pace, pausing neither for swamp nor fallen tree; and Adrian realized that if he were to keep his companion in sight he must travel equally fast.
Alas! this was impossible. The birch which had seemed so light and romantic a “carry” became suddenly the heaviest and most difficult. He caught its ends on tree trunks and righting these blunders he stumbled over the rough way. The thongs that had seemed so smooth cut his forehead and burned into his chest, and putting pride in his pocket, he shouted:
“Pierre! Pierre Ricord! Come back or you’ll get no money!”
It would have been a convincing argument had it been heard, but it was not. Pierre had already gone too far in advance. Yet at that moment a sound was borne on the breeze toward Adrian which effectually banished all thought of fatigue or of ill-treatment. A long-drawn, unmistakable cry that once heard no man with the hunter instinct ever forgets.
“A moose! And Pierre has the gun!”
CHAPTER XIII
A DEAD WATER TRAGEDY
But Pierre, also, had heard that distant “Ugh-u-u-ugh!” and instantly paused. His own anxiety was lest Adrian should not hear and be still. Fortunately, the wind was in their favor and the sensitive nostrils of the moose less apt to scent them. Having listened a moment, he dropped his pack so softly that, heavy as it was, it scarcely made the undergrowth crack. His gun was always loaded and now making it ready for prompt use, he started back toward his companion. The Indian in his nature came to the fore. His step was alert, precise, and light as that of any four-footed forester. When within sight of the other lad, listening and motionless, his eye brightened.
“If he keeps that way, maybe – Ah!”
The moose called again, but further off. This was a disappointment, but they were on good ground for hunting and another chance would come. Meanwhile they would better make all haste to the thoroughfare. There would be the better place, and out in the canoe they’d have a wider range.
“Here, you. Give me the boat. Did you hear it?”
“Did I not? But you had the gun!”
“Wouldn’t have made any difference if you’d had it. Too far off. Let’s get on.”
Adrian lifted the pack and dropped it in disgust. “I can’t carry that load!”
Pierre was also disgusted – by the other’s ignorance and lack of endurance.
“What you don’t know about the woods beats all. Haven’t you seen anybody pack things before? I’ll show you. When there’s big game handy is no time to quarrel. If a pack’s too heavy, halve it. Watch and learn something.”
Pierre could be both swift and dexterous if he chose, and he rapidly unrolled and divided the contents of the cotton tent. Putting part into the blanket he retied the rest in the sheeting, and now neither bundle was a very severe tax.
“Whew! What’s the sense of that? It’s the same weight. How does halving it help?”
Pierre swung the canoe upon his head and directed:
“Catch hold them straps. Carry one a few rods. Drop it. Come back after the other. Carry that a ways beyond the first. Drop it. Get number one. All time lap over, beyond, over, beyond. So.”
With a stick he illustrated on the ground, and wasting no further time nor speech, clasped his gun the tighter under his arm and trotted forward again.
Adrian obeyed instructions, and though it seemed, at first, a waste to go back and forth along the carry as he had been directed, found that, in the end, he had accomplished his task with small fatigue or delay.
“Another bit of woodcraft for my knowledge box. Useful elsewhere, too. Wish I could get through this country as fast as Pierre does. But he’ll have to wait for me, anyway.”
For a time Adrian could easily trace the route of his guide by the bruises the canoe had given the leaves and undergrowth but after awhile the forest grew more open and this trail was lost. Then he stopped to consider. He had no intention of losing himself again.
“We are aiming for the south. Good. All the big branches of these hemlocks point that way – so yonder’s my road. Queer, too, how mossy the tree trunks are on the north sides. I’ve heard that you could drop an Indian anywhere in any forest and he’d travel to either point of the compass he desired with nothing to guide him but his instinct. Wish I were an Indian! Wish, rather, I had my own compass and good outfit that went over in my canoe. Hurrah! There’s a glimmer of water. That’s the thoroughfare. Now a dash for it!”
Adrian was proud of his new skill in finding his own way through a trackless forest, but though he duly reached the stream he could not for a time see anything of Pierre. He did not wish to shout, lest the moose might be near and take fright, but at last he did give a faint halloo and an answer came at once. Then the boat shot out from behind a clump of alders and made down the river toward him.
The current was swift and strong and there was considerable poling to be done before it touched the shore and Pierre stepped out.
“I’ve been looking round. This is as good a place to camp to-night as we’ll find. Leave the things here, and might as well get ready now. Then we can stay out all day and come back when we like.”
“But I thought we were to go on up the thoroughfare. Why stop here at all? Other camping places are easy to find.”
“Are they? My, you can ask questions. Good many things go to making right sort of camp. Dry ground, good water to drink, fire-wood, poles – Oh! shucks! If you don’t know, keep still and learn.”