Читать книгу The Associate Hermits - Stockton Frank Richard - Страница 3

It was in the afternoon of Monday, the 11th of June, when Mr. and Mrs. Archibald, accompanied by Miss Margery Dearborn, arrived at Sadler’s, and with feelings of relief alighted from the cramped stage-coach which had brought them eight miles from the railroad station.

“Can this be Sadler’s?” said Mr. Archibald, in a tone of surprise.

“Of course it must be,” said his wife, “since they brought us here.”

“It certainly is the place,” said Margery, “for there is the name over that door.”

“How do you feel about it?” said Mr. Archibald to his wife.

“I feel very well about it,” said she. “Why shouldn’t I?”

“How do you feel about it?” he asked of the younger lady.

“Well,” she answered, “I don’t exactly understand it. I had visions of forests and wilds and tumbling mountain streams and a general air of primevalism, and I am surprised to see this fine hotel with piazzas, and croquet-grounds, and tennis-courts, and gravelled walks, and babies in their carriages, and elderly ladies carrying sun-shades.”

“But it seems to me that there is a forest behind it,” said Mr. Archibald.

“Yes,” replied Margery, a little dolefully, “it has that to back it up.”

“Don’t let us stand here at the bottom of the steps talking,” said Mrs. Archibald. “I must say I am very agreeably surprised.”

In the wide hall which ran through the middle of the hotel, and not far from the clerk’s desk, there sat a large, handsome man, a little past middle age, who, in a hearty voice, greeted the visitors as they entered, but without rising from his chair. This was Peter Sadler, the owner of the hotel, the legal owner of a great deal of the neighboring country, and the actual ruler of more of said country than could be easily marked out upon a map or stated in surveyors’ terms.

In fact, Peter Sadler, was king of that portion of the vast district of mountain and forest which could be reached in a day’s journey in any direction. If he had wished to extend his domain to points at a greater distance than this he would have done so, but so far he was satisfied with the rights he had asserted. He ruled supreme in that region because he had lived longer in the vicinity than any other white man, because he had a powerful will which did not brook opposition, and because there was no one to oppose him.

On the arable land which lay outside of the forest, and which really belonged to him, there were the houses of the men who farmed his fields, and on the outskirts of the woods were scattered here and there the cabins of the hunters and guides he employed, and these men knew no law but his will. Of course the laws of the State covered the district, but such promulgation and enforcement of these as he might consider necessary were generally left to Peter Sadler, and as to his own laws, he was always there to see that these were observed.

His guests submitted themselves to his will, or they left his hotel very soon. To people of discernment and judgment it was not difficult to submit to the will of this full-bearded, broad-chested man, who knew so much better than they did what they ought to do if they wanted to get all the good out of Sadler’s which they were capable of assimilating.

This man, who sat all day in a big rolling-chair, and who knew everything that was going on in the hotel, the farm, and the forest about him, had been a hunter and a guide in his youth, an Indian-fighter in later years, and when he had been wounded in both legs, so that it was impossible for him ever to walk again, he came back to the scenes of his youth and established an inn for sportsmen – a poor little house at first, which grew and grew and grew, until it was the large, well-kept hotel so widely known by his name.

After dinner, at which meal they were waited upon by women, and not by men in evening-dress as Margery had begun to fear, Mr. Archibald sought Peter Sadler and made known to him the surprise of his party at finding themselves in this fine hotel.

“What did you expect?” asked Peter, eying him from head to foot.

“From what we had heard,” replied the other, “we supposed we should find some sort of a preparatory camping-ground in the woods, from which we could go out and have a camp of our own.”

“That’s just what you have found,” said Sadler. “In this house you prepare to camp, if you need preparation. If any man, woman, or child comes here and wants to go out to camp, and I see that they are sickly or weak or in any way not fit to live in the woods, I don’t let them go one step until they are fit for it. The air and the food and the water they get here will make them fit, if anything will do it, and if these three things don’t set them up they simply have to go back where they came from. They can’t go into camp from this house. But if they fancy this hotel – and there isn’t any reason why anybody shouldn’t fancy it – they can stay here as long as they like, and I’ll take care of them. Now, sir, if you want to go into camp, the first thing for you to do is to bring your family here and let me take a look at them. I’ve seen them, of course, but I haven’t made up my mind yet whether they are the right sort for camp life. As for you, I think you will do. There isn’t much of you, but you look tough.”

Mr. Archibald laughed. “That’s good rough talk,” he said, “and smacks more of camp life than anything I have noticed here. I will go and bring my wife and Miss Dearborn.”

“There is another reason why I want to see them,” said the bluff Peter. “As you are bent on camping, you’ll like to choose a camp, and when anything of that kind is on hand I want to talk to the whole party. I don’t care to settle the business with one of them, and then have him come back and say that what has been agreed upon don’t suit the others. I want a full meeting or no session.”

When Mr. Archibald returned with his wife and Margery, he found Peter Sadler had rolled his chair up to a large circular table at the back of the hall, on which was spread a map of the forest. He greeted the ladies in a loud voice and with a cheery smile.

“And so you want to go camping, do you?” said he. “Sit down and let us talk it over. I think the young lady is all right. She looks spry enough, and I expect she could eat pine-cones like a squirrel if she was hungry and had nothing else. As for you, madam, you don’t appear as if anything in particular was the matter with you, and I should think you could stand a Number Three camp well enough, and be all the better for a week or two of it.”

“What is a Number Three camp?” asked Margery, before the astonished Mrs. Archibald could speak.

“Well,” said Sadler, “it is a camp with a good deal of comfort in it. Our Number One camps are pretty rough. They are for hunters and scientific people. We give them game enough in season, and some bare places where they can make fires and stretch a bit of canvas. That is all they want, to have a truly good time. That is the best camp of all, I think. Number Two camps are generally for fishermen. They always want a chance for pretty good living when they are out in the woods. They stay in camp in the evenings, and like to sit around and have a good time. Number Threes are the best camps we put families into, so you see, madam, I’m rating you pretty high. There’s always a log-cabin in these camps, with cots and straw mattresses and plenty of traps for cooking. And, more than that, there is a chance for people who don’t tramp or fish to do things, such as walking or boating, according to circumstances. There’s one of our camps has a croquet-ground.”

“Oh, we don’t want that!” cried Margery, “it would simply ruin every illusion that is left to me.”

“Glad to hear that,” said Peter. “If you want to play croquet, stay at the hotel; that’s what I say. Now, then, here are the camps, and there’s plenty of them to choose from. You’ve come in a good time, for the season isn’t fairly begun yet. Next month every camp will be full, with the hotel crowded with people waiting for their turns.”

“What we want,” said Margery, rising and looking over the map, “is the wildest Number Three you have.”

“Oh, ho!” said Peter. “Not so fast, miss; perhaps we’ll wait and see what this lady has to say first. If I’m not mistaken, madam, I think you’re inclined the other way, and I don’t put people into camps that they will be wanting to leave after the first rainy day. Now let me show you what I’ve got. Here is one, four hours’ walk, horses for women, with a rocky stream through the middle of it.”

“That is grand!” cried Margery. “Is it really in the woods?”

“Now let me do the talking,” said Peter. “They are all in the woods; we don’t make camps in pasture-fields. Even the Number Sevens, where the meals are sent to the campers from the hotel, and they have bath-tubs, are in the woods. Now here is another one, about three miles west from the one I just showed you, but the same distance from here. This, you see, is on the shore of a lake, with fishing, boating, and bathing, if you can stand cold water.”

“Glorious!” cried Margery. “That is exactly what we want. A lake will be simply heavenly!”

“Everything seems to suit you, miss,” said Peter, “just as soon as you hear of it. But suppose we consider more of them before you choose. Some two miles north of here, in the thickest of the forest, in a clearing that I made, there is a small camp that strikes the fancy of some people. There is a little stream there and it has fish in it too, and it runs through one corner of the log-cabin, so there are seven or eight feet of the stream inside the house, and on rainy days you can sit there and fish; and some people like to go to sleep with the running water gurgling close to them where they can hear it when they are in bed. Then there’s an owl to this camp. The men heard him there when they were making the clearing, and he’s never left the spot. Some people who were out there said they never felt as much away from the world as they did listening to that little stream gurgling and that owl hooting.”

“I believe,” exclaimed Margery, “that in a place like that I could write poetry!”

“It would give me the rheumatism and the blues,” said Mrs. Archibald, upon which Peter Sadler exclaimed,

“That settles that. Now then, here is another.”

Several other camps were considered, but it was the general conclusion that the one by the lake was the most desirable. It had a good cabin with three rooms, with plenty of open space, near by, for the tents of the guides; there was a boat which belonged to the camp, and in every way it seemed so suitable that Mr. Archibald secured it. He thought the price was rather high, but as it included guides, provisions, fishing-tackle, and in fact everything needed, he considered that although it might cost as much as lodgings in a city hotel, they would get more good out of it.

“Has this camp any name?” asked the enthusiastic Margery, in the course of the conference.

“That’s about your twenty-seventh question, miss,” said Peter, “but it’s one I can answer. Yes, it’s got a name. It’s called Camp Rob.”

“Oh!” ejaculated Margery, in a disappointed tone. “What a name!”

“Yes,” said Peter, “it isn’t much of a name. The first people who went out there named it that, and it stuck to it, and it’s all it’s got. Camps are like horses – we’ve got to tell them apart, and so we give them names, and that’s Camp Rob.”