Chapter XVIII - To Lonelier Wilds

Before daybreak next morning Herb Heal was astir. Apparently even a short night's sleep had driven from him all disturbing memories. He whistled and hummed softly, like the strong, hopeful fellow he was, controlling his notes so that they should not awaken his companions, while he hauled out and overlooked the canvas for a tent, to see if it was sound. Next he surveyed the camp-stores, and put up a supply of flour, pork, and coffee in a canvas bag, enough for four persons to subsist upon with economy during an excursion of six or seven days. For he knew that his employers would follow his suggestion, and be eager to start for the woods near Katahdin soon after they got their eyes open.

He had been doing his work with a candle held in his brown fingers; but as dawn-light began to enter the cabin, he quenched its dingy, yellow flicker, opened the camp-door, and surveyed the morning sky.

"It'll be a good day to start out, I guess," he muttered. "Let's see, what time is it?"

The stars had not yet paled, and Herb forthwith fell to studying them; for they were his jewelled time-piece, by which he could tell the hour so long as they shone. Watch he had none.

While he gazed aloft at the glinting specks, he unconsciously began to croon, in a powerful bass voice, with deep gutturals, some words which certainly weren't woodsman's English.

"What on earth is that outlandish thing you're singing, Herb?" roared Neal Farrar from the bunk, awakened by the sounds. "Give us that stave again—do!"

The guide started. He had scarcely been aware of what he was humming, and his laugh was a trifle disconcerted.

"So you're waking up, are ye?" he said. "Tain't time to be stirring yet; I ought to be kicked for making such a row."

"But what's that you were singing?" reiterated Neal. "The words weren't English, and they had a fine sort of roll."

"They're Injun," was the answer. "I guess 'twas all the talking I done last night that brung 'em into my head. I picked 'em up from that fellow I was telling you about. He'd start crooning 'em whenever he looked at the stars to find out the hour."

"Are they about the stars?"

"I guess so. A city man, who had studied the redskins' language a lot, told me they meant:—

Then Herb chanted the two lines again in the original tongue.

"There was quite a lot more," he said; "but I can't remember it. I learned some queer jargon from Chris, and how to make most of the signs belonging to the Indian sign-talk. The fellow had more of his mother than his father in him. I guess I'd better give over jabbering, and cook our breakfast."

It was evident that Herb did not want to dwell upon his reminiscences. And Neal had tact enough to swallow his burning curiosity about all things Indian. He asked no more questions, but rolled off the fir-boughs, and dressed himself.

Cyrus and Dol sprang up too. All three were soon busy helping forward preparations for the start. They packed their knapsacks with a few necessaries; and after a hearty breakfast had been eaten,—their last meal off moose-steaks for a while, as Herb informed them he "could not carry any fresh meat along,"—the guide's voice was heard shouting:—

"Ready, are ye, boys? Got all yer traps? Here, Cyrus, jest strap this pack-basket on my shoulders. Now we're off!"

The pack contained the tent, the camp-kettle, and frying-pan, together with the aforementioned provisions, a good axe, etc. It was an uncomfortable load, even for a woodsman's shoulders. But Herb strode ahead with it jauntily. And many times during that first day's tramp of a dozen miles, his comrades—as they trudged through rugged places after him, spots where it was hard to keep one's perpendicular, and feet sometimes showed a sudden inclination to start for the sky—threw envious glances at his tall figure, "straight as an Indian arrow," his powerful limbs, and unerring step. Even the horny, capable hands came in for a share of the admiration.

"I guess anything that got into your grip, Herb, would find it hard to get out again without your will," said Cyrus, studying the knotted fists which held the straps of the pack-basket.

"Mebbe so," answered the guide frankly. "I've a sort of a trick of holding on to things once I've got 'em. P'raps that was why I didn't let go of Chris in that big blizzard 'till I landed him at camp. But I hope"—here Herb's shoulders shook with heaving laughter, and the cooking utensils in his pack jingled an accompaniment—"I hope I ain't like a miserly fellow we had in our lumber-camp. He was awful pious about some things, and awful mean about others. So the boys said, 'he kept the Sabbath and everything else he could lay his hands upon.' He used to get riled at it.

"Not that I've a word to say against keeping Sunday," went on Herb, in a different key. "Tell you what, out here a fellow thinks a heap of his day o' rest, when his legs can stop tramping, and his mind get a chance to do some tall thinking. Now, boys, we've covered twelve good miles since we left Millinokett Lake, and you needn't go any farther to-day unless you've a mind to. We can make camp right here, near that stream. It will be nice, cold drinking-water, for it has meandered down from Katahdin."

He pointed to a brook a little way ahead, shimmering in the rays of the afternoon sun, of which they caught stray peeps through the gaps in an intervening wall of pines and hemlocks. A few minutes brought them to its brink. Tired and parched from their journey, each one stooped, and quenched his thirst with a delicious, ice-cold draught.

"Was there ever a soda-fountain made that could give a drink to equal that?" said Cyrus, smacking his lips with content. "But listen to the noise this stream makes, boys. I guess if I were to lie beside it for an hour, I'd think, as the Greenlanders do, that I could hear the spirits of the world talking through it."

"That's a mighty queer notion," answered Herb; "and I never knew as other folks had got hold of it. But, sure's you live! I've thought the same thing myself lots o' times, when I've slept by a forest stream. Who'll lend a helping hand in cutting down boughs for our fire and bed? I want to be pretty quick about making camp. Then we'll be able to try some moose-calling after supper."

At this moment a peculiar gulping noise in Neal's throat drew the eyes of his companions upon him. His were bright and strained, peering at the opposite bank.

"Look! What is it?" he gasped, his low voice rattling with excitement.

"A cow-moose, by thunder!" said Herb. "A cow-moose and a calf with her! Here's luck for ye, boys!"

One moment sooner, simultaneously with Neal's gulp of astonishment, there had emerged from the thick woods on the other bank a brown, wild-looking, hornless creature, in size and shape resembling a big mule, followed by a half-grown reproduction of herself.

Her shaggy mane flew erect, her nostrils quivered like those of a race-horse, her eyes were starting with mingled panic and defiance.

A snort, sudden and loud as the report of a shot-gun, made the four jump. Neal, who was standing on a slippery stone by the brink, lost his balance and staggered forward into the water, kicking up jets of shining spray. The snort was followed by a grunt, plaintive, distracted, which sounded oddly familiar, seeing that it had been so well imitated on Herb's horn.

And with that grunt, the moose wheeled about and fled, making the air swish as she cut through it, followed by her young, her mane waving like a pennon.

"Well, if that ain't bang-up luck, I'd like to know what is," said the guide, as he watched the departure. "I never s'posed you'd get a chance to see a cow-moose; she's shyer'n shy. Say! don't you boys think that I've done her grunt pretty well sometimes?"

"That you have," was the general response. " We couldn't tell any difference between your noise and the real thing."

"But she wasn't a patch on the bull-moose in appearance," lamented Dol.

"No more she was, boy. Most female forest creatures ain't so good-looking as the males! And that's queer when you think of it, for the girls have the pull over us where beauty is concerned. We ain't in it with 'em, so to speak."

There was a big gale of laughter over Herb Real's gallant admiration for the other sex, and the sigh which accompanied his expression of it. He joined in the mirth himself, though he walked off to make camp, muttering:—

"Sho! You city fellows think that because I'm a woodsman I never heard of love-making in my life."

"Perhaps there is a little girl at some settlement waiting for a home to be fixed up out of guide's fees," retorted Cyrus.

And the three shouted again for no earthly reason, save that the stimulus of forest air and good circulation was driving the blood with fine pressure through their veins, and life seemed such a glorious, unfolding possession—full of a wonderful possible—that they must hold a sort of jubilee.

Herb, who perhaps in his lonely hours in the woods did cherish some vision such as Cyrus suggested, was so infected with their spirit, that, as he swung his axe with a giant's stroke against a hemlock branch, he joined in with an explosive:—

"Hurrup! Hur-r-r-rup!"

This startled the trio like the bursting of a bomb, and trebled their excitement; for their guide, when abroad, had usually the cautious, well-controlled manner of the still-hunter, who never knows what chances may be lurking round him which he would ruin by an outcry.

"Quit laughing, boys," he said, recovering prudence directly he had let out his yell. "Quit laughing, I say, or we may call moose here till crack o' doom without getting an answer. I guess they're all off to the four winds a'ready, scared by our fooling." 9gX53HRZErcXgaeNPVP+nIn9t4dbeJZ+y/5eVZc5H7E+BaWWjhSeVs5jly+Iao+B