Camp and Trail: A Story of the Maine Woods, Page 3

  CHAPTER II.

  A SPILL-OUT.

  Indeed, shocks and sensations seemed to ride rampant that night inendless succession; a fact which Neal presently realized, as does everydaring young fellow who visits the Maine wilderness for the first time,whatever be his object.

  Ere turning the canoe towards home, Cyrus drove it a few feet nearer toshore, again warily listening for any further sound of game. Just thenanother wild, whooping scream cleft the night air; and, on lookingtowards the bank, Neal beheld his owlship, who had finished thesquirrel, seated on an aged windfall,[1] one end of which dipped intothe water.

  [Footnote 1: A forest tree which has been blown down.]

  The gray bird on the gray old trunk formed a second thrilling midnightpicture, but at this moment young Farrar was in no mood for studyingeffects. He felt rather unstrung by his recent emotions; and, though hewas by no means an imaginative youth, he actually took it into his headhalf seriously that the whooping, hooting thing was taunting him withmaking a failure of the jacking business. Without pausing to considerwhether the owl would furnish meat for the camp or not, he let fly athim suddenly with his rifle.

  The fate of that ghostly, big-eyed creature will be forever one of thosemysteries which Neal Farrar would like to solve. Whether the heavybullet intended for deer laid him open--which is improbable--or whetherit didn't, nobody had a chance to discover. Being unused to birch-barkcanoes, the sportsman gave a slight lurch aside after he had dischargedhis leaden messenger of death, startled doubtless by the loud,unexpected echoes which reverberated through the forest after his shot.

  "Hold on!" cried Cyrus, trying to avert a ducking by a counter-motion."You'll tip us over!"

  Too late! The birch skiff spun round, rocked crazily for a second ortwo, and keeled over, spilling both its occupants into the black andsilver water of the pond.

  Of course they ducked under, and of course they rose, gurgling andspluttering.

  "You didn't lose the rifle, Neal, did you?" gasped the American directlyhe could speak.

  "Not I! I held on to it like grim death."

  "Good for you! To lose a hundred-and-fifty-dollar gun when we'restarting into the wilds would be maddening."

  Then, just because they were extremely healthy, happy, vigorous fellows,whose lungs had been drinking in pure, exhilarating ozone and fragrantodors of pine-balsam and were thereby expanded, they took a cheerfulview of this duck under, and made the midnight forest echo, echo, andre-echo, with peals and gusts and shouts of laughter, while theystruggled to right their canoe.

  The merry jingles rang on in challenge and answer, repeating from bothsides of the pond, until they reached at last the wooded slopes andmighty bowlders of Old Squaw Mountain, a peak whose "star-crowned head"could be imagined rather than discerned against the horizon, near thedistant shore from which the hunters had started. Here echo ran riot.It seemed to their excited fancies as if the ghost of Old Squaw herself,the disappointed Indian mother who had, according to tradition, lived solong in loneliness upon this mountain, were joining in their mirth withhaggish peals.

  The canoe had turned bottom uppermost. On righting it they found thatthe jack-staff had been dislodged. The jack was floating gayly away overthe ripples; its light, being in an air-tight case, was unquenched.

  "Swim ashore with the rifle, Neal," said Cyrus. "I'll pick up the jack.Did you ever see anything so absurdly comical as it looks, dodging offon its own hook like a big, wandering eye?"

  With his comrade's help young Farrar succeeded in getting the gun acrosshis back, slinging it round him by its leather shoulder-strap; then hestruck out for the bank, having scarcely twenty yards to swim before hereached shallow water.

  Now, for the first time to-night, the moon shone fully out from her veilof cloud, casting a flood of silver radiance, and showing him a scene inwhite and black, still and clear as a steel engraving, of a beauty sounimagined and grand that it seemed a little awful. It gave him asudden respect for the unreclaimed, seldom-trodden region to which hiscraving for adventure had brought him.

  The outline of Old Squaw Mountain could be plainly discerned, a dark,towering shape against the horizon. A few stars glinted like a diamonddiadem above its brow. Down its sides and from the base stretched asable mantle of forest, enwrapping Squaw Pond, of which the moon made amirror.

  "My! I think this would make the fellows in Manchester open their eyes abit," muttered Neal aloud. "Only one feels as if he ought to see someold Indian brave such as Cyrus tells about,--a Touch-the-Cloud, orWhistling Elk, or Spotted Tail, come gliding towards him out of thewoods in his paint and feather toggery. Glad I didn't visit Maine ahundred years ago, though, when there'd have been a chance of such ameeting."

  Still muttering, young Farrar kicked off his high rubber boots, anddragged off his coat. He proceeded to shake and wring the water from hisupper garments, listening intently, and glancing half expectantly intothe pitch-black shadows at the edges of the forest, as if he might hearthe stealthy steps and see the savage form of the superseded red manemerge therefrom.

  "Ugh! I mind the ducking now more than I did a while ago," he murmured."The water wasn't cold. Why, we bathed at the other end of the pond latelast evening! But these wet clothes are precious uncomfortable. I wishwe were nearer to camp. Good Gracious! What's that?"

  He stood stock-still and erect, his flesh shrinking a little, while hisdrenched flannel shirt clung yet more closely and clammily to his skin.

  A distant noise was wafted to his ears through the forest behind. Itbegan like the gentle, mellow lowing of a cow at evening, swelled into aquavering, appealing crescendo cadence, and gradually died away. Almostas the last note ceased another commenced at the same low pitch, withonly the rest of a heart-beat between the two, and surged forth into aplaintive yet tempestuous call, which sank as before. It was followed bya third, terminating in an impatient roar. The weird solo ran throughseveral scales in its performance, rising, wailing, booming, sinking,ever varying in expression. It marked a new era in Neal's experience ofsounds, and left him choking with bewilderment about what sort offorest creature it could be which uttered such a call.

  He began to get out some bungling description when Cyrus joined himshortly afterwards, but the American had had a lively time of it whilerecovering his jack-light and righting the canoe on mid-pond. He was inno mood for explanations.

  "Keep the yarn, whatever it is, till to-morrow, Neal," he said. "Ididn't hear anything special. Perhaps I was too far away. I'm so wet andjaded that I feel as limp as a washed-out rag. Let's get back to camp asfast as we can."