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 23

"I am out of humanity's reach;

I must finish my journey alone,

Never hear the sweet music of speech—

I start at the sound of my own."—Cowper.

So we sat on either side of the fire, filled with that contentment which pervades the mind when the body has eaten its fill of hearty food, and the process of digestion is going forward under the conditions of perfect health and agreeable surroundings. For several minutes we sat in silence, too physically happy on my part to think; and the Old Trapper seemed to have undergone a change of mood, for the play of humor had left his features, and his countenance had settled into a solemn repose.

"I was thinkin'," he said at length—"I was thinkin' of things that happened here long years agone, when I fust come through this lake. I can tell ye, Henry, strange doin's have been done here, and my thoughts have been on the back trail for several days now, and I had a feelin' come to me that I oughter visit this lake, and sorter see how things looked; for there's a grave over there on the p'int, that I made with my own hands, and I buried the body of a man in it that had no mourner at his funeral, onless me and the hound, there, might be counted as sech. And I thought I would come through here and see ef the grave wanted mendin', although I dare say it lies quiet enough, and ondistarbed, for I built it up in good shape, and sodded it over as the man gave me word to do;—not that he ordered it, but because I knowed it was his wish, for he said the day he died: 'I wish when I am gone my grave might be sodded as they sod them down on the coast where I was born.' And I said to him, 'Don't worry on that score, for I will make it as ye tell me, so far as me and the hound can do it;' and then he told me how he wanted it done, and I will say he talked rational-like from the way he looked at it, and I did it jest as he told me, as the hound there would bear witness ef he could speak; and somehow latterly I got the feelin' into me that I oughter come through here, and sort of see to it, and that's the reason that I am here, although sence meetin' ye I have wondered ef I warnt brought here to meet the livin' and not the dead; for the Lord don't always tell what he starts us on a journey for, or what we are to find at the other end of it, for the tarmination of things be marcifully hidden from the beginning and the two eends of a trail never look alike."

While the Old Trapper had been thus moralizing, he had risen to his feet, and turning round with his back to the fire he stretched a hand out toward the lake, saying:—

"It is not often, Henry, that ye see so bright a moon as that, even here in the woods where the air be as pure as the Lord can make it; and it calls up memories. It is eleven year this very night that me and the hound slept here, and a solemn night it was, too, for the man had died at sunset, and his body lay right there where the moon whitens the 'arth by that dead root.—God of heaven, Henry, what is that?"

The old man's startled ejaculation brought me to my feet as if the panther were on me, and glancing at the spot he had indicated by his looks and gesture, as the exclamation tore out of his mouth, I beheld only the scattered portions of the Keg. Not knowing what to make of the old man's excited action, I said:—

"That? that is only a keg I picked up in the lake this evening."

For a full minute the Old Trapper stood gazing steadfastly at it, and then he stepped to the spot where the remnants of the keg lay, and picking up a stave he contemplated it a minute or two in grave and solemn silence, and then returning to the fire he reseated himself on the log, and still holding the piece of wood in his hand, said:—

"The ways of the Lord be mysterious, and His orderin's past findin' out; and some of His creturs be born for good and some for evil, and how He ontangles the strands in the end is beyend our knowin'. But perhaps in the long run He brings the wrong to the right, and so makes the evil in the world to praise Him. Ah me! ah me! what a load the man carried while off the trail, like a blind moose walkin' in a circle; but before he tired I reckon he struck the blazed line that led him to the Great Clearin'. Leastwise, it looked so." And the old man paused, gazing fixedly at the bit of the keg that he held in his hand. In a moment he resumed: "I have a mind, Henry, to tell ye the story of the man who owned that keg once, as far as I know it, and onless ye feel sleepy-like I will tell ye what happened here years agone, and what I know of the man whose body lies buried there on yender p'int—for a strange tale it is, and a true one, and the teachin's of it be solemn."

I was thoroughly awake by this time, and urged the old man to proceed. After a moment's silence he began:—

"Well, it's now eleven year agone that I was drawin' a trail through the woods from east to west, and I did a good deal of my boatin' in the night, for the moon was full, and I always had a sort of hankerin' for the night work ever sence I slept on the boughs; for natur' looks one way in the daytime, and another way in the night-time, and no one knows how sweet she can be to the nose, and how pleasant to the ears, and how han'some to the eyes, onless he has seed her face, and heerd her voices, and smelt her sweet smells, in the night season. I've always noted that those who knowed natur' only by daylight knowed only half her ways, and less than half, too, for that matter. For in the evenin' she gits familiar and confidential-like with one, and talks to him of herself and her ways as she never does in the daytime. For natur' has a great many secrets, and she's timid as a young faan, and ye've got to creep into thickets, and lay yer boat up under the banks of streams, and lie down in the mash grass when all be dark and still, if ye want to hear her whisper to ye of her innermost feelin's. The Lord only knows how many times I have ambushed her in her hidin' places as a Huron would a camp, and caught her at her pranks. Ah, Henry, ye have no idee how many things I have larnt of her in the night-time, or how frisky and solemn, both, natur' can be betwixt the settin' and risin' of the sun.

Well, as I was sayin', I'd been over to the east boundaries of the woods, nigh on to the Horricon waters, where I did a good deal of my early scoutin', to sorter see how the brooks and wood-ways looked agin, but it was a sorry time I had of it, for the settlers had pushed in, and their mills was on every stream, and their painted housen stood under the very trees where I used to cook my venison with no sights or sounds around save those that natur' herself made. And ye can well believe, Henry, that I was glad to git away from what I went to see and be back here where my ears couldn't hear the sound of axes and the fallin' of trees—yis, I was mighty glad to git back where things was quiet and peaceful-like, and the cruelties and divilments of men that have no respect for things the Lord has made hadn't come to distarb the habits of natur'.

Well, as I was sayin', it was eleven year agone, and in this very month, and well on in the night, that I came down the inlet yender into this lake. And the moon was nigh on to her full, and everythin' looked solemn and white jest as they do to us now, and the Lord knows I leetle thought to meet mortal man in these solitudes when I run agin what I am to tell ye of.

I was paddlin' down this side of the lake, keepin' well under the shore, list'nin' and thinkin', and happy in my heart as a rat in the water, when I heerd the strangest sounds I ever heerd come out of bird or beast. It was a kind of murmurin' noise that run out into the stillness an' sorter capered round a minit, an' then run back where it started from. Ye better believe, Henry, I sot and listened as a man listens scoutin' alone in the night-time in these woods, when he gits a sound in his ears that he can't make out. Yis, I sot and listened ontil I was nothin' but ears, and the very stillness beat on the narves of my head as I have heerd the roll of the waves on the lakes beat on the beach. But for the life of me I couldn't make it sound nateral, nor tell what animil it belonged to, and it took the conceit out o' me to larn that there was a cretur in the woods whose mouth didn't tell me its name and habits.

Arter a while I got the true direction of it, for a sound goes as straight from its startin' to the ear as a bee from a wind-fall or burnt clearin' goes to its hole in the beech, and I said to myself as I lifted my rifle to my knee, that I would ambush the cretur and find out what mouth had a language in it that old John Norton couldn't tell the meanin' of. So I laid my boat up in the direction of the sound as ef my life depended on the proper use of the paddle. I hadn't gone more than ten rods afore the noise stopped, but I'd fixed it in the line of a dead Norway, and I knowed I could put my boat inside of fifty feet of where the cretur lay. I never acted more sarcumspectly nor fetched an ambushment more easy and sartin, and in a shorter time than it takes me to tell ye I had my boat under the p'int of that bank there within ten feet of the shrubs, with my finger on the trigger of a rifle that goes easy in an onsartin ambushment. There I sot a full minit knowin' I was inside of fifty feet of the cretur, with my eyes and ears as open as they should be in such sarcumstances. Then I heerd a kind of crawlin' sound as ef the brute or reptile was trailin' himself along the sand; and I knowed ef the wiggle of a bush would give me the line I could open a hole through him. It might have been ten feet that the cretur crawled, and then he stopped, but I had fixed him well in mind and felt sartin I could drive the lead where it ought to go. I had got the breech of my rifle to my face, and my cheek was settlin' to the stock, when the cretur opened his mouth, and by the Lord of Marcy, Henry, I diskivered I had ambushed no animil at all, but a mortal man!"

Long before the Old Trapper had got to this point of his narrative I had become profoundly interested in his recital. For he told the story as men born to the woods tell their tales of personal adventure—with a natural eloquence of tone, feature, and gesture which only those have whose experiences have been narrow but intense, and who speak from the simple earnestness of untutored and therefore unfettered power. His narrative had been told from the beginning in two languages; one verbal and the other pantomimic, and he had carried me along with his story as it advanced as much by that which addressed the eye as by that which entered the ear. He had gathered warmth and energy of expression as he had gone on, until I found myself moving in sympathy with the visible action of his features, body, and hands; and when he reached the climax of his discovery I shared to the full in the excitement of his pantomimic action, and doubt if the shock of surprise which he had experienced eleven years before in his boat under the bank, off the point which lay in the moonlight full in view, was much greater at the startling discovery he had made, than was mine. So we sat looking full at each other across the camp-fire, our faces tense with mutual excitement, as if we were actual sharers in the astonishing discovery.

"Yis, Henry, a man was there, a man on that p'int where I expected to find only an animil; and his words, as they come out of his mouth into the still air of the night, strong and clear as a man in the rapids calling for help, was words of prayer. I've been, Henry, in many ambushments in the seventy years I've lived, and I've been in peril from inimies behind and afore; and more than once have I met the rage of man and beast and been brought face to face with death onexpectedly; but never sence my eyes knowed the sights, or my life depended on the proper use of my faculties, was I ever so taken onawares or onbalanced as I was under the bushes there on yender p'int eleven year agone, when I heerd the voice of that man I had mistook for an animil break out in prayer. It was of the Lord's own marcy, Henry, that I was not a murderer of my kind, for my finger was on the trigger, as I told ye, and my eye was getting onto as trusty a barrel as man ever hefted, when He opened the cretur's mouth with the sound of His own name. For a minit the blood stopped in my heart, and my hair moved in my scalp; and then I shook like a man with the chills, ontil I drew from the guard of my rifle a finger that had never quivered afore, for fear I should explode the piece and disturb the man in his worship.

I sot and heerd the man from beginnin' to eend, and I larned, under the bushes that night, how hard-put a mortal may be by reason of his sin. For the man prayed for help as one calls to a comrade when his boat has gone down under him in the rapids, and he knows he must have help or die. I've been a prayin' man, Henry, as one should be who lives here in the woods where the Sperit of the Lord is everywhere and in all things; but I never prayed as that man prayed, and it larned me that what is prayin' to one man isn't prayin' to another, for the natur' of our wants settle the natur' of our prayin', and the habits of our life makes the trail to His marcy level or steep. And this man was climbin' a steep trail, and his soul was strugglin' on a hard carry, I tell ye; and the words of his cry come out of his mouth like the words of one who is lost onless somebody saves him. It's dreadful for a man to live in sech a way that he has to pray in that fashion; for we ought to live, Henry, so that it is cheerful-like to meet the Lord, and pleasant to hold convarse with him.

So I sot in my boat ontil he was done, and then I hugged myself close in under the bushes, for I heerd him coming down toward the shore, and I knowed he must pass nigh where I lay in the ambushment. And he did,—ay, so nigh that I could have teched him with my paddle, and he had something heavy in his arms, for he staggered as he went by, as ef put to it for strength. In a minit I heerd him shove a boat out of the bushes onto the water, and gettin' in, he pushed off onto the lake. He led straight off into the centre of it, and I trailed him in his wake, for the moon had got back of the mountain here to the right, and I was detarmined to see what his queer goin's-on meant. Well, when he had come nigh to the middle of the lake he laid his paddle down, and lifted somethin' into the air, and turned it up endwise and poured what was in it out. I larnt, afterwards, what it was he lifted into the air, and what it was he poured out of it, for he told me with his own lips, and under sech sarcumstances, and at a time, when mortals be apt to tell the truth; for he told me on his death-day, when he lay dyin', and I never knowed a man, white or redskin, that didn't talk straight as an honest trapper countin' his pelts, when he had come to the last blaze on the trail, and his feet stood on the edge of the Great Clearin'."