Читать книгу The Black Schooner - Roy J. Snell - Страница 6

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Johnny’s rod and reel netted him two trout that morning, rainbows both of them, the first weighed three pounds and the second, five.

He fished only when he had grown weary of rowing. At noon he dragged his boat up on an inviting bank and, having dressed his smallest fish, cut it in long strips. These he lashed to a broad bit of slab-wood. Having set this slab on end he built a fire before it and ere long was enjoying a feast fit for a king: planked trout.

It was just as he was devouring the last morsel that he heard strange sounds back in the forest. Every now and again something bounded down upon the leaves with a thud that was greater than would be made by a squirrel or any other small creature he knew of.

“Might be a deer,” he told himself in a whisper.

He found himself creeping away from the river and into the timber. From time to time he paused to listen. Twice more he heard the sound, then all was silence. Still he crept on, “for,” he told himself, “the creature, whatever it is, may have lain down to rest, and I might get a sight of him yet.”

His guess was correct; the creature had come to rest. However, it was such a creature as he had not dreamed of.

Having crept forward a full hundred yards without catching another sound, he at last gave up the quest to throw himself flat upon his back. There, half buried in a soft bed of pine needles, staring up at a fallen giant of the forest which at an angle of fifteen degrees lay propped upon its branches above him, he had all but fallen asleep, when of a sudden some object struck with a dull thud upon his chest.

Doubling up with the speed of a new jack-knife, he stared all about him, then up at the tree. A chance glance at his side showed him a green pine cone.

“Huh!” he grunted. “Probably a squirrel dropped it.”

Again he settled back for his after-dinner nap. Again he had all but drifted into dream-land when a ruder shock brought him to a sitting position. This time a cone had landed squarely on his nose. At the same time he was conscious of having heard a strange hissing noise which turned rapidly into a gurgle.

“That,” he told himself, “is a little too much.”

However, he told it to himself in a whisper. As far as outward appearance went, he was quite calm. He settled back on his bed of pine needles as if nothing had happened and apparently closed his eyes.

They were not quite shut. He could see all that went on above him. He was resolved to get even with those squirrels. Just how he was to do it he did not know, but first he must see them.

Imagine his utter astonishment at seeing, three minutes later, a wealth of brown hair, a fine white forehead and a pair of hazel eyes move out from over the edge of the giant’s trunk.

Startled, he gripped his muscles to hold them quiet.

“A girl,” he whispered, yet his lips did not move.

He next saw a very small, very well proportioned hand come out to the right of the face. In it was a pine cone. For a second it poised above him. Then the cone dropped.

That instant he was on his feet.

“Ah-ha! I caught you,” he shouted.

There followed a little muffled scream. The next instant he was looking at only the fallen yellow pine tree.

“Aw! C’m’on down,” he coaxed after a moment’s watching. “C’m’on down, little squirrel, I’ll forgive you.”

After five minutes of coaxing, he saw the child, for she was little more than that, a girl of sixteen and very slightly built, step out among the branches of the fallen tree. She was fairly thirty feet above him. Dressed as she was in a brown waist and brown corduroy knickers, she resembled a brown squirrel among the green branches.

“Truly will you be good to me?” she wavered.

“Truly.”

“Well—”

“Where do you belong, little brown squirrel?”

“My father’s boss at the big mill up yonder.” Her hand pointed up the river. “Sometimes I come down to this valley of giants to think. ’Tain’t the real Valley of Giants, of course. I read about the Valley of Giants in a book but I love to call them that and to come here to think. Not very happy thoughts to-day, though—thoughts about my dad.”

Johnny’s eye swept the forest about him. Truly it was a wonderful sight. From this ridge not a tree had been cut. Yellow pines and fir trees, six and eight feet thick and towering a hundred and fifty feet above him, stood like giant guards of the river which gleamed in the distance.

“They are truly wonderful,” he murmured. “But say, little brown squirrel, how do you go to that mill of your father’s?”

“Do you want to go there?”

“Very much. I never saw one. I was going up the river.”

“Oh, the river? You’d never make it that way. River’s too crooked. There’s a short way through the forest. I—I’ll show you.”

Johnny grinned his delight.

“Oh, will you? That—why—that will be darby!”

Light as a real squirrel, the girl came tripping down the tree-trunk.

Johnny gave her his hand for the final leap to the ground and together they laughed as if they had been friends for a lifetime.

“I’ll have to make sure my boat’s safely aground,” he said with a smile.

“I’ll help you drag it up,” she laughed, and together they raced away through the ferns to the brink of the river.