Читать книгу The Story That the Keg Told Me, and The Story of the Man Who Didn't Know Much - W. H. H. Murray - Страница 21

"Nature's nobleman."—Thompson.

Well, I will admit that I was surprised, greatly surprised, for I knew that there was not a living being on that lake at sunset—nor had there been for days, or years for that matter: for there is no place in all the world, save cities, where man can go and stay even a night and not leave marks of his presence, and on all this lake shore there was not a trace of any human being. Yet in spite of all this evidence forbidding the supposition, there sat a man, paddle in hand, in a boat, not forty rods from where I stood. I knew that I was well concealed from view, for the shadows in which I stood were as dark as the matted branches of the rich cedars that lined the lake shore and projected outward over the water could make them; and so I kept my station, without moving an inch, and watched.

For a full moment the boat lay on the level water as if it had grown up out of it, and was a part of the lake itself, so steadfastly did it hold its place; and I could well guess what was passing in the mind of him whose form was as motionless as the boat, but whose eyes I knew were searching every inch of the shore line, and whose thoughts were as busy as his eyes. He had evidently come round the point as little expecting the presence of man as I had anticipated his, and some flitting spark, or the gleam of some coal,—or likelier yet the thin filament of blue smoke rising from the smouldering and ash-covered embers,—had caught his eve and brought his boat to a stand as quickly as a reversed paddle could do it. In a moment the boat began to move; so slowly, so easily, so steadily, that the eye could scarcely detect the movement. I laughed silently to myself to see the familiar motion of ambushing a camp from the water side, done so skilfully. For whoever he was, or whatever his errand, the man in that boat knew how to handle a paddle as only a few ever learn the art,—to perfection. His body never moved. The bent posture of it never changed. His head kept its fixed position. The arms worked from the shoulder-sockets, and were lifted with a movement so slow and gradual that the eye which would measure their extension and return must needs be keen of sight, nor lose its observation by a wink. The boat did not start—it simply ceased to stand still; but that fraction of an instant at which it ceased to stand still and began to move no human eye could tell. Slowly, slowly, so slowly that at times I doubted if it did move at all, the boat came floating on. For ten minutes it had been moving, and yet it had barely covered as many rods. Then the motion of the arms died out in the air, and the boat again stood still. But the body of the boatman still kept its fixed position, and the arms still hung suspended in the atmosphere, where they were when the will of the paddler had checked them.

"By Jove!" I said to myself, "that man acts as if he wants to murder some one, or fears some one will murder him: but he understands how to do a job like the one he is at, and I would like to know how long it has taken him to learn that use of the paddle."

A few minutes passed, then the arms began to rise and fall again, and the boat stole slowly into motion. Again ten rods were covered; and again the little boat came to a pause. It was now barely fifty yards away, and the full moon made it an easy matter to study quite closely both the boat and boatman. The boat was of the common build, sharp at either end, low-sided and light. In the bow was a pack-basket, while a hound lay crouched in the middle. A rifle was resting across the paddler's knees. Of his face I could discern little, because the moon was at his back. In a moment he laid the paddle softly across the boat; lifted his rifle as noiselessly from his knees, and rose slowly to his feet. All this had been done as only a skilled boatman and woodman could do it: not a jerk or awkward motion in the process; it was done coolly, deliberately, and without the least suggestion of a sound.

"Few men could have lifted themselves from their seat in a boat like that in the style he has done it," I said to myself, "and few dogs would lie as that dog lies, in a boat manoeuvred as that has been for the past twenty minutes, without stirring nose or foot. I wonder he has not scented me."

That very instant, even as the thought was passing in my mind, my ear caught the sound of the lowest possible whine from the hound; but his body never stirred, and his nose, active as it must have been, never lifted itself a hand's width from its resting place on the bottom of the boat.

"Halloo, the camp there!" said the man in the boat suddenly. "Be ye sleeping or dead, man or ghost, whom I find in this lonely spot to-night?"

"Not dead, or asleep," I answered, speaking from the dense gloom of the overhanging cedar; "but wide awake and watchful as it behooves a man to be, in a place like this, with a man ambushing his camp in the dead of night. Put down your rifle and come into camp if you want to. The sound of a human voice coming out of your throat makes me feel friendly, whoever you are. Come in, and I will stir up the fire and we can see how we like each other's looks."

So saying, I stepped back to where my wood was piled, and proceeded to thrust a dozen pitchy knots and a huge roll of white birch-bark into the embers. The few remaining coals beneath the ashes caught eagerly at the pitch thus thrust against them, and after an instant's sputtering the inflammable material leaped suddenly into a roaring flame. As the blaze shot upward, I rose from my knees, on which I had dropped to give the embers an encouraging puff, and the man, leaning on his paddle-staff, with the hound crouched at his feet, stood before me.

For a moment we stood and looked at each other, as two men might, meeting for the first time, at such an hour, in such a place,—looked each other over thoroughly, from head to foot, and then satisfied, at least on my part, I said:—

"Old man, you are welcome."

"Thank ye; thank ye," replied my visitor. "I shouldn't have dropped in upon ye in this onseemly way, and at sech an onseemly hour, but the line of yer smoke took me onawares like as I turned the p'int yender, for I didn't expect to find a human bein' on these shores, and I half-doubted ef a mortal man was here, till my hound got yer scent in his nose and signalled me that flesh and blood was nigh. And so I ax yer pardin for comin' in on ye as I did, more like a thief than an honest man; but I have memories of this spot that made me think strange things, and fear that all was not right. Young man, what may yer name be?"

"I am called, when at home, Henry Herbert," I said, "but you can split it in the middle if it would fit your mouth better in that way, and take it half at a time, and call me Henry or Herbert as you please; for I know one about as well as I do the other, and answer to either pretty readily; and since you are getting on in years, and are old enough to be my father, with a good liberal margin at that, you had better take the first half of it; and so, if you please, you may call me Henry for short."

"Well, Henry," said the old man, and there came a beaming look of good nature into his eyes as he spoke, with the least twinkle of humor playing in and penetrating the benevolence of it, "I am gittin' pritty well on in years, and ye don't seem much more than a youngster to me, although ye have managed to git a pritty good growth in the time ye have been at it; and perhaps their comin' and goin' has put some things inside my head that boys can't be expected to git, while they have been whitenin' the outside of it; so, mayhaps, it is well enough that I should call ye by yer Christian name, as ef I was yer own father; although I have never had a boy of my own, or a wife or home either, for that matter; onless ye can call, these woods a home; for I have seed sixty years come and go sence I came into them, and the Lord has cared for me in summer's heat and winter's cold through them all,—so well that I haven't had a wish for other company than I have found with the animils and things He has made, or for any other home than He has builded for me by His own hands." And the old man paused a moment, and looked lovingly down at the hound which lay stretched at his feet, with his muzzle resting on his paws, as if, in the dog, I could see one of the companions which had supplied with affection a heart that had missed the love of wife and children.

"Yis," he continued, "the woods have been a home for me for the number of years that measure the life of mortal man, and there be leetle in them I haven't seed, and few be the noises that natur' makes that my ears haven't heerd; and I know all their paths and their ways as well as a man in the settlements knows his door-yard. But that ain't neither here nor there,"—as if he was conscious of having fallen into a musing mood, and would check himself—"that's neither here nor there," he continued, "and I am glad to have run agin ye here to-night, although the seemin' of things was agin me. For I did ambush yer camp as a thief or a half-breed might; but I was taken onawares by yer camp smoke, and startled, as ye would well understand to be reasonable in me, did ye know what I know of this spot, and the strange goin's on that has been here years agone, as I know them; and it seems queer to me to find a livin' bein' to-night where I thought there was only a dead man's grave. But I am glad to have run agin ye, Henry Herbert, for I have heerd of ye many times in the last ten years, as one who loved the woods and the way men live in them, and knowed the proper use of a rifle, and how to handle the paddle as some born to the use of it never larn it; and I have heerd that yer eye was keen and finger sure, as a hunter's should be, and that ye let no buck run off with yer lead, but dropped him dead in his tracks where he stood—which be marciful and decent in a man who handles a rifle. And I have heerd, mor'over, that ye loved to be alone, and to find things out that natur' never tells to a company; and that ye boated up and down through the woods all by yerself, sleepin' where night overtook ye like an honest man, and I knowed that I should some day cross yer trail and jine ye; but I leetle thought to run agin ye here to-night, for I'd no idee that mortal man knowed this lake, save me and him whose body I buried here eleven years gone this fall." And the old man paused, seated himself on the butt of a log, and gazed with a solemn look in his face into the fire.

I did not feel quite like breaking in on his meditations, whatever they might be; and so I stood and looked at him. In a few moments he began:—

"I ax yer pardin ef it be axin' too much of ye, but I've fetched my boat through fifty mile to-day, and it's nigh on twenty hours sence I've tasted food: not but that I could have had enough—for I run agin a buck on Salmon Lake this arternoon jest as the sun was goin' down, that was big enough to keep a Dutch parson in venison for a week, and that sizes him pritty big, as ye know, ef ye ever camped with one of 'em"—and the old man opened his mouth and laughed a peculiar, good-natured laugh, that showed more on the face than it gave forth noise—"but I was in a hurry to git through here and couldn't stop to dry him, and I never settle lead into any cretur I can't use for meat, onless it be a fur-bearin' animil or a wicked panther. So I jest paddled up to him ontil I could flirt some water onto his shoulders, and I landed about two quarts on his back, and the way the cretur jumped sot my eyes swimmin'." And here the old man laughed again in his own peculiar fashion. "But, as I was sayin', I haven't tasted food sence the last day dawn, and feel sort of empty like; and somehow latterly the night mists seem to git into me more'n they used to when I was younger, for age thins the blood, and cools it, too, for that matter; an' ef ye feel like botherin' yerself that much ye may cook me a pot of tea and give me a cold cake, ef one be lyin' round; and ef ye happen to have a bit of buck ye fear won't keep till mornin' I guess I could keep it for ye in a spot where I've put a good deal of the meat in the last sixty year;" and the old man laughed again, in his hearty, noiseless manner, as if greatly pleased at his own homely and innocent wit.

"Old man," said I, "you just sit on that log a few minutes, and I will give you a drink of tea that will warm your blood as if forty years had been taken from your record; and as for cold cakes, I don't keep that article, but here is some batter"—and I uncovered a pan standing a little back from the fire—"that will make cakes so light that you will have to hold them down with your fork; and look at that"—and I swung out of my birch bark cupboard a roll of tenderloin steak twelve or fourteen inches long—"I'll spit that for you so that it will dissolve in your mouth, and go down your throat like honey; and you and I will have a feast that will make us feel as full as a doe in the lily-pads,—for I know whom I have for my guest to-night as well as if you had told me your name, and right glad am I to have the best shot that ever drew bead, and the best boatman that ever feathered paddle, and as honest a man as ever drew breath, in my camp, and there's my hand, and you are welcome to all I have in my pack, and to all I can do for you, John Norton"—and I stretched my hand out to him, who met its palm with his own in a hearty, hunter-like grip.

"Well, well," laughed the old man, as he re-seated himself on the log, while I bestirred myself with preparations for the meal, "I sorter suspicioned that ye knowed who I was, but I didn't know for sartin; for ye carry a mighty steady face, and ye didn't let on with yer eyes what ye was thinkin' about, as most youngsters do; but I take yer welcome in the same way ye give it, and ef old John Norton can do anything to make yer stay in the woods more pleasant-like to ye, or larn ye any trick of beast or bird, or tell ye anything of natur's ways that ye haven't larnt as yit—ye may depend on it, young man, that he will larn it to ye;"—and so saying he relapsed into silence, but watched me steadily as I kept on with my work.

In a few minutes the bark that served for a table was put in front of him, with the plates and cups, the pepper, salt, sugar, and such other luxuries as my pack afforded, and I poured the old man a cup of the best that ever came from Formosa, while I kept on turning the cakes and the steak.

"Well, now, that's the best tea I ever tasted, for sartin," said the old man, as he sipped the stimulating beverage—"it's as smooth as spring water, and goes down a man's throat as easy as an otter goes into a crick. I never tasted drink that the Lord hadn't made, for sixty year of my life, but latterly, 'specially at night, or when over-tired, it does seem to me that a few leaves of tea jediciously steeped as ye have done it, sort of strengthens the water and makes a kind of improvement on the Lord's own work, ef it be right for a mortal to say so; leastwise," he added, as he took a deeper quaff, "this is mighty pleasant warmin' to the ribs, and sort of makes a man feel inhabited-like inside, and not empty as a cabin with nobody in it;" and the look of placid contentment that came to the old man's face was a picture to see.

By this time the meal was ready, and we sat down on either side of the bark table, in the glow of the firelight, to eat.

"Henry," said the old man, as he drew his hunting knife through the tenderloin roll, and marked the ruddy juices that oozed out, and the puff of odorous steam which ascended as the blade clove it, "this meat is cooked hunter-like, and sort of encourages the teeth to git into the centre of it. I have often noted that cookin' was a kind of gift, and couldn't be larnt out of books, no more than holdin' a rifle or featherin' a paddle properly can be larnt in the settlements. The Lord gives one man one set of gifts and another another, and cookin' and huntin' be things of natur', and not of readin', and they don't often go all of them to one man, although in yer case, Henry, the Lord has been very marciful and gracious-like in his treatment of ye,—for I have heerd ye be a great scholar, and love the knowledge that the schools give; and I have many things I want to ax ye of—things I have heerd, but that seem onreasonable to me; but, depend on it, Henry, the best gift the Lord has given ye is yer love of natur' and the things that go with it—a keen eye, a quick finger, a strong back, and a conscience that can meet him in the solitude of these waters and hills and not be afeered; for a wicked man can't bear the presence of the Maker of these solitudes, as I have good reason to know"—and here the old man paused a moment and gazed steadily into the fire. "Yis," he resumed, "it is wonderful that he should have gin ye the love of books and of natur' both, but I dare to say he has his favorites, as I have often noticed mothers have among their childun, and I can see jest how it may be with him; but how he came to give ye the gift of cookin' with all the other ones, is wonderful, and I can't understand it, but—"

A long, loud cry, which beginning with a thin whine and swelling into a terrific yell, arose into the still air, from the other side of the lake, held possession of the atmosphere for a full minute, then died away in successive echoes, leaving the stillness deeper than before the terrible sound disturbed it, broke suddenly in upon the old man's speech. For a full minute he sat motionless, with his fork half-way between the plate and his mouth, and his mouth half-opened to receive it, and not till the last imitation of the frightful scream had died away along the hills that bordered the head of the lake did a muscle of his figure move.

"Yis, I know the varmint, and an ugly one he is, too. I heerd him in the balsam thickets as I come down the inlet, and he trailed me for a full mile, as they will when hungry; but the cretur was too cowardly to show himself in the mash where the moon would tech him, for a panther has a keen nose for the smell of powder, and he scented the muzzle of my rifle and knowed I had a wepon. I hoped he would show himself a minit, or that the swish of the mash grass as he tramped through it would make a line for me, for I thought I knowed his whine, and I said to myself, Ef he gives me half a chance I'll let light into him, and sort of square accounts with the cretur that's been some time standin'; but he is a cowardly chap and—"

Again the terrible scream leaped into the air,—this time wild and savagely fierce at the start, and so harsh that it seemed to tear the silence into shreds in very fury; and the last hoarse aspiration of it was so terrible in its wrathful strength that the trees, water, and air seemed to shrink back and shiver in terror at its injection into the peaceful atmosphere.

"Ay, ay! I know ye now," continued the old man, "and a truer hound than ye murdered for me eleven year agone, come next month, never nosed a track or guarded a hunter's camp. Ye can yell till ye be hoarse, but if the Lord spares this old body, and my eyes don't get dim for another month, I'll look ye up some day and give ye the contents of a grooved barrel that carries a half-ounce bullet, and chambers eighty grains of powder, and ye shall larn the difference between a hunter used to the sights and a poor hound that has nothin' but his teeth and his courage to fight ye with. I guess," continued the old man, as he rose to his feet, "I had better bring up my pack and my rifle, for I noted by the direction the echoes took that the brute yender be trailin' down the lake, and he may cross the outlet at the foot and scout up this side, for his cry shows he be hungry, and he has seen our fire and may think that he can play his capers on us; but he will find the two liveliest morsels he ever tried to put his teeth into, the varmint!" and laughing to himself at his own thought he started for the beach.

"Henry," said he, as he stood leaning over the end of his boat, "come here and we will h'ist this boat into camp. I dare say I am foolish, but somehow I sorter feel that this lake shore isn't quite the spot to leave an honest man's boat on. I can remember when to have did it would have cost a man his boat and scalp, too, onless the Lord marcifully kept his eyes open with dreams."

In a moment the boat was placed where the old man wished it, and setting his back against its side for a support, he unlaced his moccasins, and thrust his smoking feet out toward the fire. Taking a pipe from my pocket, I filled it with a choice brand of tobacco I had in my pouch, and proffered it to him.

"Thank ye, thank ye, Henry," said he, as he made a motion of rejection of the offer with his hand, "I thank ye for the kindness ye mean in yer heart, but ef it be all the same to ye I won't take it. I know it be a comfort to ye, and I am glad to see ye enjoy it, but I have never used the weed; not for the reason that I had a conscience in the matter, but because the Lord gave me a nose like a hound's, and better too, I dare say, for I doubt ef a hound knows the sweetness of things, or can take pleasure from the scent that goes into his nostrils. But he has been more marciful to man—as it was proper he should be—and gin him the power to know good and evil in the air; and smellin' has always been one of my gifts, and I couldn't make ye understand, I dare say, the pleasure I've had in the right exercise of it. For ye know that natur' is no more bright to the eye than it is sweet to the nose; and I've never found a root or shrub or leaf that hadn't its own scent. Even the dry moss on the rocks, dead and juiceless as it seems, has a smell to it; and as for the 'arth, I love to put my nose into the fresh sile, as a city woman loves the nozzle of her smellin'-bottle. Many and many a time when alone here in the woods have I taken my boat and gone up into the inlet when the wild roses was in blossom, or down into some bay where the white lily cups was all open, and sot in my boat and smelt them by the hour, and wondered ef heaven smelt so. Yis, I have been sartinly gifted in my nose, for I've always noted that I smelt things that the men and women I was guidin' didn't, and found things in the air that they never suspicioned of, and I feered that smokin' might take away my gift, and that ef I got the strong smell of tobacco in my nose once I should never scent any other smell that was lesser and finer than it.—So I have never used the weed, bein' sort of naterally afeered of it; but what is medicine for one man may be pisen for another, as I have noted in animils, for the bark that fattens the beaver will kill the rat; and so ye must take no offence at what I've said, but smoke as much as ye feel moved to, and I will scent the edges of the smell as it comes over my side of the fire, and so we'll sort of jine works—as they say in the settlements—ye do the smokin' and I'll do the smellin', and I think I've got the lightest end of the stick at that." And the old man laughed in every line of his time-wrinkled face at the smartness of his saying.