CHAPTER XXXI

A Mating Time

Spring held the world of the Bushwhackers in her soft arms. She awoke the sleeping things with her warm breath. Her light shone on land and marsh and sky. The great trees shivered and stretched their long arms wakefully. The dry rushes along the creek quivered and sang in low whispers, as the blue waters laved their drowsy roots. When the sun flashed out at intervals the quiet waters of the flats would break, here and there, and the flashing body of a pike would leap upward with a mighty flop and, tumbling back, would twist and dart from rush-clump to rush-clump, her mate, a long, mottled fish, following slowly, one length behind, his blue-green dorsal-fin standing up above the water like a tiny sail. Of the wood and marsh mating time, the strong, swift fish claimed first right. They sought the quiet waters even when the ice still crashed and ground, onward and outward. Up against the cold current a school of them would move steadily, parting and mingling again, a fragment detaching itself here where the rat-run offered a haven, a fragment detaching itself there where the quiet water of the flats rested beneath the white, smoky fog. This was the pike’s spawning season, their play-time and love-time. In the early morning sunbeams they would dart and leap and play until the shallow waters of the rushland were white with foam, and there, after the manner of their kind, they would mate and drift and move out into the deeper waters again in twos and threes and fives, and seek the harbored spawning-beds among the rushes further inland.

Next came the wee brown song-thrush, tumbling, an animated fragment, from a fleeing snow-cloud, dropping from the sky and alighting with a low chirp of joy on the bare twig of a baby tree of the woodland. Its sweet, shrill little song, simple and glad, would travel into the quiet places of the wood. “Gray-bird” it was called, and last to leave in dreary fall, first to come back in springtime, it was Daft Davie’s choice of all the birds he loved so well.

He stood beside the margin of the creek this morning, his face aglow with the gladness of the spring. He looked across the swollen waters and waved his arms toward the low-lying V-shaped water-fowl that swerved and twisted and called in honking voices. It was Davie’s time of rejoicing. His wild things were coming back to him. Ere long the black duck would sweep above the marshland tinged with shooting green, and, trailed by his mate, find his old nesting-ground. The boy’s soul craved what it knew and understood. He was glad with the gladness of the wild, free thing of wood and marsh. The gray-bird sang to him a little song which he understood full well, and the wind, soft and balmy, sighed him a promise that he knew would be redeemed. It was the first day of _his_ coming back, for he, too, had been away from his own just as the wee bird had been. He turned from the creek and, followed by his pet raccoon, sped upward across the hardwood ridge until he came to a lower one of tall maple trees. Down across the soft, springy moss that breathed him an essence he went. Davie’s joy-season had been born again.

Soon the green shoots would peep above the water and the rush-clumps would rustle lullabys to tiny wide-mouthed fledgelings that gapped and stretched in soft nests in the swinging reeds. The blackbirds would swoop back again soon; and the marsh-birds that nested in the low swales. In his basswood canoe Davie would explore anew the old haunts and watch the tiny wood-duck dive and hide and peer with beedy eyes from behind the tangled weeds. He loved the baby wild things with a love too great to be understandable. Across the blue Eau, Point Aux Pins was taking on a deeper tinge of green. Davie would go there and seek out the nests of the timid grouse. He knew exactly where to find these nests and the joy of watching the little baby grouse hide from him. He loved to play hide-and-seek with them; to watch them scamper and dart and vanish. They did not hide from Davie because they feared him, but because it is the nature of all young things to play at hide-and-seek.

Down across the ridge the sugar-camp fire sent up a spiral of white through the trees. In the early morning Boy McTavish stood before the boiling sap, dipping from a large kettle into a smaller one. Big McTavish, coming in with a barrel of newly gathered sap on a stone-boat, stopped his oxen and laid his hand on Davie’s bare head.

“How’s Pepper?” he asked, smiling as he watched the raccoon roll and sprawl upon the ground.

“Goad,” answered Davie simply in his own language.

McTavish laughed and proceeded to empty the barrel on the stone-boat into the one alongside the kettles. This done he went over and sat down beside Boy on the log.

“Never saw such sugar weather in all my life before,” he declared. “It’s a good thing old Noah understands sugar-makin’. Don’t know what we’d do without him, us havin’ to keep the pot a-boilin’ night and day this way.”

“Did the Colonel leave this mornin’?” asked Boy, his eyes fixed on a bit of blue sky in the open.

“No, but I guess maybe he will this afternoon though,” replied the father. “He says that if he don’t go to-day Dick’ll likely come huntin’ him same’s he did before.”

“Dad,” said Boy, “don’t it all seem so queer? Think of Gloss bein’ the Colonel’s niece, and think what that means to her. She can be educated and all that now. The Colonel says he is goin’ to make her one of the first ladies in the land. Says he’s goin’ to take her back to England with him.”

Boy’s voice was husky and a film dimmed the spot of blue in the skies.

“Don’t he think a lot of Gloss, though!” agreed the father in emphatic tones of satisfaction. “D’ye notice how he watches her, Boy? He says it’s just like havin’ his little sister back with him again. Seems so odd to hear him take on the way he does, and I guess he’s a big man in more than size, Boy. You heard him say as he wouldn’t take her away from us, didn’t you?”

Boy nodded.

“Yes,” he said with a sigh, “and that was big of him; but it would be mighty selfish on our part, dad, if we tried to keep Gloss here now when all he owns is hers, as he says. I guess it’s best that she goes along with him. Maybe we can get a chance to see her once in a while. I don’t think the Colonel will ever forget that Gloss sort of belongs to us Bushwhackers, d’you?”

“Well, no,” mused McTavish, “I don’t think he will. He asked me to explain just what he intended to do for her, and I couldn’t do it. Wanted me to tell Gloss that she was to have an education and was to live in a big, beautiful house in England. I said, ‘No, Colonel, it’s your place to tell her yourself. I’d like break down on the job.’ And so he’s goin’ to tell her this mornin’, Boy.”

Davie came over and put his raccoon on Boy’s knee. The animal rubbed its sharp nose against Boy’s cheek, and he softly stroked its thick fur.

“I guess me’n you is built for the bush, Pepper,” he said. “We understand, me’n you and Davie, what it means to belong to just one place.”

Down on the clear air a girl’s voice came ringing.

“Boy,” it called, “oh, Boy!”

Boy sprang erect.

“It’s Gloss and the Colonel, dad,” he cried. “He’s told her and she’s just so happy she wants us to know.”

“Hello, Gloss,” he called back, “just in time for a sugar-off. I was gettin’ one ready for Davie.”

The Colonel was puffing and wiping his brow on his handkerchief.

“Gracious,” he cried, “our Gloss is a tartar on the walk. She has me about winded.”

He drew Boy aside and spoke to him in a low tone.

“I can’t understand the darling,” he confessed. “She thinks a whole lot of me already, Boy—I can see that. But she actually turned white when I told her what we all thought would be good news to her. Says she, ‘Does Boy know?’ And I said, ‘Why, dear, of course he knows, and he’s tickled to death.’”

Boy bit his lips.

“Of course,” he agreed; “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

“Yes, do,” cried the Colonel. “She seems to think what you say is about right.”

Boy tried to laugh, but the attempt was a failure. He passed over to where Gloss stood with Davie’s hand in hers.

“There’s some adder-tongues just peepin’ up in the valley, Gloss,” he said. “Would you like to see ’em?”

She passed down the path beside him, and when the thicket of hazel hid them from the others she put her hand on his arm.

“Tell me, Boy,” she said wistfully, “why am I to go away from you all?”

She looked at him with wide eyes and waved her hand outward. “—And all this?” she added with a sob.

“Why, Gloss,” began Boy, then stood unable to go on, his whole being revolting at the very thought of what he must say. “You see,” he managed to say at last, “you’re the Colonel’s niece. You come of different stock from us, Gloss. He has any amount of money and we all want you to go with him and be educated like a lady. Oh, we’ll miss you, girl—but there, that’s all there is to it. We want you to go. It’ll be best for you.”

She caught her breath.

“Of course, if you want me to go,” she said, “why—why, Boy, I’ll go.”

“That’s a good girl,” smiled Boy bravely. “Now for the flowers.”

“I think I would rather go back,” she whispered. “I—I don’t want the flowers.”

They walked back slowly and in silence. McTavish and Injun Noah were piling fresh wood beneath the kettles.

“I guess we’ll all go up to the house,” said the big man. “Noah’ll watch the boilin’ for an hour or so.”

They went back along the mossy, springy bush-path, drinking in the breath of wild flowers, drinking in the songs of wild mating birds.

“I’ll come after her again in two weeks,” spoke Hallibut softly, when Boy, as they walked side by side up the path, told him that Gloss had consented to go with him. “God bless her; she has made a new man of me. You don’t know what she has done for me. I’ve been so lonely for years and years—and now it’s just like having little Phoebe back with me again. Oh, but God is good!”

They were a happy enough gathering at dinner. The Colonel told some of his amusing stories and Paisley recited his little experience in hunting bee-trees. Boy spoke little, but seemed to enjoy listening to the others. After dinner they all went out again into the sunshine. Widow Ross was there, and she and Mrs. McTavish had their heads together, and Paisley, who had drawn a little apart with Mary Ann, said he knew they were plotting a custard or something equally delicious. Ander Declute was there also; Ander and his large wife and all the little Declutes with the big Biblical names. Peeler, too, with his family, and in fact all of Bushwhackers’ Place seemed to be congregated to celebrate the good tidings that McTavish’s Gloss had come into a “fortun’.”

After dinner was over Colonel Hallibut, beaming and smiling, shook hands all round.

“What I’ve missed by not knowing you good people long ago,” he exclaimed, “I’m going to make up for from this time on. As soon as I get our Gloss comfortably settled in a young ladies’ college in the old land I’m coming back here. I love all this wild place just as you all love it. I know you will let the little girl and me share it with you at times.”

“We’ll all be glad to have you,” shouted the Bushwhackers.

Gloss was standing with one hand on the old ash-leach and now she lifted her face and looked at the Colonel.

“Uncle,” she said softly. The big man turned, then came over and stood beside her.

“Dear little Gloss,” he said, patting the hand that grasped his. She raised her head and looked across at Boy. Then she held out her other hand. He came over, his heart beating wildly, the blood pounding his temples. He took the hand and stroked it with a caress belonging to childhood.

Colonel Hallibut’s brows puckered, then he smiled.

“Well, I’ll be——” He checked himself, and glanced from one to the other of the young people. “Suppose we understand one another,” he said. “Gloss,” he asked, “do you—do you love Boy here?”

“Yes,” she answered simply.

“And you love all this big, beautiful Wild, too?”

“So much!” she said.

“And you don’t want to leave it, dear?”

“No.”

The Colonel’s mouth twitched and the girl patted his cheek with her hand.

“You love it, too,” she smiled. “Why not all stay here together?—surely there is enough for all.”

“Hurrah,” seconded the Bushwhackers.

The Colonel chuckled and put an arm about each of the two young lovers.

“That’s a splendid idea,” he nodded, “—a splendid idea. Good people, I’ll take you at your word. I’ll come and we’ll live here together. I can’t say that I want to leave this place since I’ve been initiated into the Brotherhood of the Untamed.”

* * * * *

Twilight had scratched its purple tally-mark in the fringed west, and the ducks were sweeping in from south in long lines, when Boy and Gloss paused before a spot beside the path.

“That’s poor Joe’s grave,” said Boy. “Seems I miss him an awful lot since the birds are comin’ back and the world’s alive again.”

“Poor old Joe,” sighed Gloss. “He won’t lie and watch and sleep by the old ash-leach no more, Boy.”

He drew her close to him.

“Let’s don’t talk of Joe to-night, girl,” he said. “Let it be you and me and the Wild.”

And so they passed up the path and the streak of crimson faded to orange in the low sky, and from orange to gray-drab. In the lone tree beside the path a little gray-bird sang its song.

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. The author's use of the term ‘Wall’ versus ‘Wal’ has been maintained.

Inconsistencies in punctuation have been maintained.

[The end of _Love of the Wild_, by Archie P. McKishnie.]