Part 11

“The mast an’ them halyards over the house is to fly signals. W’en we’r’ up er down the beach, er out buzz’n on the lake, Cookie runs up the mess flag w’en it’s dinner time. He uses red with w’ite edges fer chops an’ steaks, an’ the w’ite one with a round yellow splotch in the middle means aigs wot’s been poached. He flys that, an’ a square o’ calico under it, w’en we’r’ goin’ to have corn beef hash an’ aigs on top of it. He runs up a big bunch o’ cotton cords w’en ’e’s made oggrytong speggetties, an’ w’en the flag’s plain brown, it means beans. There’s no knowin’ wot that cookie’s goin’ to do next.”

A cool breeze came up in the evening and we built our usual fire on the beach, more for its subtle cheer than its heat, and talked over reminiscences of the big snow-storm, and things that had happened since.

The old sailors were in a state of opulent bliss. All of their desires were satisfied, except, as Sipes expressed it, “git’n even with two er three fellers I know of,” and happiness reigned in their simple hearts.

Out of the tempests of many seas, their battered ship had come, and was anchored in a haven of tranquillity. The languor that comes with satiety and completion was stealing gently over them. Life presented no riddles, and they were without illusions. So far as their capacity for enjoyment extended, the fair earth and the fulness thereof was theirs. The great blue lake, the floating clouds, the jewelled fire of the sunsets, and the star-decked firmament belonged to them, as much as to anybody else. Title deeds to the sands, vine-clad hills, woods, and to the open fields, where suppliant petals drink the rain, could not add to their sense of possession.

Every comfort was around them that their limitations could require. They were spared the inanities and shallow snobbery of “society,” and the many other ills that come with existence in a sphere of vanity and hypocrisy. The gates of higher knowledge were not opened to them. Art, science, and literature lay in garnered hoards far beyond their ken, but after their lives are closed, who may judge of the futility, or award the laurel?

Into this happy Arcady--this land of the heart’s desire and hope’s fruition--softly prowled the onion-skinner. Like an evil wind upon a flowery lea, he crept out of the north over the wide waters. He landed at the beach with a boat on the still morning of a day that had promised to be bright and fair. Eveless though this garden was, Satan had entered.

Horatius T. Bascom was a man of perhaps forty-five. His closely cropped moustache was slightly gray. Under it was a mouth like a slit in a letter-box. It seemed to have a certain steel-trap quality that savored of acquirement but not disbursement. His eyes had a shrewd, greedy expression, and, when he frowned, small wrinkles formed between them that somehow suggested the lines of the dollar sign--that sordid mark that disfigures great characters and destroys small ones.

He was the type of man who signs his business letters with a rubber stamp facsimile signature, to facilitate legal evasion in the future. Such letters, insulting to the recipient, are also often stamped with a small inscription to the effect that they were “dictated, but not read” by the cautious sender. Altogether his personality was such as to prompt one to protect his watch pocket with one hand and his scarf pin with the other while talking with him.

“Hello, boys!” he called out glibly, as he walked up to our group. “You seem quite cosy around here. Have some cigars.” He produced a handful and passed them around. We all happened to be smoking, and Sipes was the only one who accepted the proffered weed. He put it in his pocket, with the remark that he would “smoke it some other time”--a phrase that the giver always inwardly resents, but the wily old man may have intended it to offend.

We were not particularly enthusiastic over his descent into our little circle.

“You look pretty cosy yerself,” said Sipes; “how much did you git fer that big jool you gouged us out of?”

“I sold it at a loss. It had a small imperfection that I didn’t notice when I bought it. You certainly got the best of that bargain.”

“They wasn’t no imperfection in yer bunch o’ bunk w’en you was buyin’ it.”

We kept rather quiet and let our caller lead the conversation, hoping that the object of his visit would finally unravel from the tangle of his small talk. Coonie sniffed around him a few times, and, with unerring instinct, retreated under the house.

The atmosphere of hostility that enveloped his coming gradually dissipated during the forenoon, and he was invited to join us when Narcissus announced lunch.

“Now what you fellows ought to do,” he declared, “is to go up the river again and drag it more thoroughly. I think you’d find some more pearls there that would put you well on your feet financially. You could buy some land on the bluff and along the shore and have a larger place. This property will all be much more valuable some day. You could have an automobile, and keep more servants. If you had a bigger and better boat you could put a small crew on it and go anywhere in the world you wanted to.”

He outlined methods of using money that dazzled imagination. Like Moses of old, Sipes and Saunders were shown a land of allurement, from what seemed to them a towering height. It could be theirs, if they had the price, and the price was in the lily-margined channel of the Winding River.

Like most of the rest of humanity, the onion-skinner craved “unearned increment,” and he hoped to inveigle his hearers into procuring it for him. The echo of the coin’s ring--a sound that encircles the world--was in the voice of the tempter, and the old mariners listened as to a siren’s song.

“I’ll go with you, if you’d like to have me,” he declared, “and I’ll pay you a good price for your pearls, as I did before.”

“I’ll tell ye wot we’ll do,” said Sipes. “We ain’t busy now, an’ we’ll take the _Crawfish_ up to our ol’ camp. We’ll take Cookie ’long an’ keep things up. You c’n go out with the flatboat an’ fish fer jools. We’ll stick ’round an’ watch you work, if we don’t git too tired, and we’ll give you a fifth o’ wot you git. We’ll sell our jools to somebody else, an’ w’en you sell your share you c’n fix up with us fer our time. If you don’t find nothin’ you won’t have to pay us much anyway, so it’ll be a good thing fer you.”

While the proposition might have excited the onion-skinner’s admiration, from a professional point of view, he failed to see its advantages to him. He suggested that it might be well to think matters over for a few days, and that he “might drop around again the latter part of the week.”

We helped him push his boat into the lake, and he rowed away, leaving a writhing serpent of discontent at Shipmates’ Rest.

“They’s a good deal in wot that feller says,” declared Sipes. “I don’t think nothin’ o’ him, but jest think wot we c’d do if we had two bar’ls o’ cash-money instid o’ one! We c’d branch out an’ buy this whole cusséd shore. We’d stick up signs and nobody’d dast come on it!”

Saunders was virulent and profane in his comment on “fellers that ain’t satisfied with wot they got, w’en they got all they need, er ever oughta have,” but finally admitted that “they’s a lot more things we might do if we c’d find some more o’ them big pearls.”

That evening the old cronies departed into the moonlight for consultation. John and I sought our couches early. Narcissus took his new mouth organ and ukelele, and strolled off up the beach with Coonie. They had evidently returned sometime before midnight, for I heard loud imprecations being bestowed on the pup by Saunders, who had found him chewing up a deck of cards on the floor, when he and Sipes had come in later. Doubtless Coonie had been ennuied and distrait, and had longed for occupation. With all his sins, he was a lovable little dog, and his good nature and affection made him irresistible. He was fully forgiven in the morning.

“Bill an’ me’s talked this thing all over,” announced Sipes at the breakfast table. “This damn onion-skinner’s got sump’n else in ’is head ’sides jools. He wouldn’t want to go up there an’ stick ’round jest to watch us clam-fish’n’. We’ll find out wot’s bit’n’ ’im. We’r’ goin’ to tell ’im to come on with us, an’ we want you to go too. We’ll go up there an’ start the camp an’ do some jool-fish’n’, an’ have a good time, an’ mebbe we’ll git some. That cuss bilked us on that deal last year, an’ you bet we’r’ goin’ to git square somehow. We’r’ goin’ to give ’im the third degree, an’ you jest watch us fondle ’im. All such fellers as him oughta be exported.”

Bascom was received with faultless urbanity when he came again. It was agreed that he should be simply a guest, and that operations should be resumed on the old basis. Sipes assured him that he would be made comfortable.

“You’ll have a fine time up there in them woods. You c’n fish an’ loaf ’round an’ pick posy flowers, an’ us fellers’ll find out wot’s left in the river. Cookie’s goin’ to fix up a lot o’ stuff, an’ we’ll have a fine trip. You go an’ fetch wot you want to take ’long, an’ come early tomorrer.”

The necessary preparations were made. Mike wound the _Crawfish_ into the lake. Bascom had brought some seedy old clothes, a soft gray hat, and some high boots. His baggage was light and he appeared quite well prepared for an outing. He had some interesting maps with him, which he said would enable us to keep posted as to exactly where we were. He brought a pocket compass, some light fishing tackle, a leather gun case, and I noticed, when his coat was off, that the handle of a small revolver protruded from his left hip pocket.

John was to remain in charge of the place.

“Now don’t you take in no bad money, an’ don’t you pay out none o’ no kind w’ile we’r’ gone,” cautioned Sipes, as we climbed into the boat. “You take care o’ yerself, an’ don’t fall in the water.” He bestowed a solemn wink on the old man as the motor began to hum, and we departed, waving farewells to our faithful custodian.

The voyage to the mouth of the river was uneventful. We tied up at the old pier, and Sipes and Narcissus left us for an hour to do some errands in the village. A former experience of Narcissus in that town was disastrous, and the old man thought “somebody’d better be ’long to help Cookie carry things, fer ’e got overloaded ’ere once’t.”

Saunders and I found my small boat and tent where they had been stored during the winter, and got them out to take with us.

“That feller that Sipes is talk’n’ to up there on the hill’s the game warden,” remarked Saunders. “Wot d’ye s’pose ’e wants with ’im?”

We reëmbarked, made our way up through the marsh, and saw our old camping ground in the distance.

Out in the middle of the river we beheld Captain Peppers on the flatboat, which we had left on the bank the year before. He had been dragging the stream, but had stopped work when he heard our motor in the marsh.

“Look at that ol’ pussyfoot up there fish’n fer jools!” exclaimed Sipes. “He looks like a bug float’n on a chip. You c’n see ’is ol’ beak from ’ere! Listen at me josh ’im w’en we git up to ’im. He gives me pains. I’d like to know wot ’e was ever cap’n of. It’s prob’ly one o’ them demijohn titles. They’s slews of ’em. Fellers that drinks a lot gits to be called Colonel an’ Major an’ Cap’n, that ain’t never c’mmanded nothin’ er fit nothin’ but demijohns all their lives, an’ I bet ’e’s one of ’em. The redder their noses gits the higher up their titles goes, an’ some of ’em gits to be gen’rals ’fore they’r laid away, an’ they’s some s’loon jedges over to the county seat that ain’t never been in no court ’cept to be fined fer bein’ drunk. Don’t you start nothin’ ’bout that ol’ motor, Bill, ’cause it won’t do now.”

“Hello, Cap’n!” shouted the old man, as we came up. “Fine day, ain’t it? Cetchin’ any mudturkles?”

The Captain, ill at ease, began poling the flatboat toward the bank.

“I didn’t know you expected to use this outfit again, an’ I thought I’d see if they was any loose pearls layin’ ’round ’ere. Of course now you’re here you c’n go ahead. I don’t want to interfere with you in no way.”

“You won’t,” replied Sipes. “We didn’t know you was clam-fish’n w’en we fust seen you. We thought you’d mosied up ’ere so’s to be near that spring, an’ was jest out cruisin’ on the river fer fun.”

The Captain’s nose was a little redder than when we last saw him, but otherwise he appeared unchanged. He was invited to land and have lunch with us. Saunders introduced him to the onion-skinner, liquid cheer was produced, and an _entente cordiale_ soon prevailed.

The big sail was again rigged as a shelter tent in its old place, and my tent was put where it was before. The Captain kindly helped to get our camp in order. He showed us a few pearls of moderate value, that he had found during the two weeks he had been at work on the river, and they were purchased by Bascom, at what seemed to be a fair price. Late in the afternoon he partook of more liquid cheer, and rowed away down the river in his little boat.

That night we assembled around the fire, but the circle was not as of old. Something was missing and something had been added. The atmosphere was unsympathetic. There is a certain psychology that pervades gatherings, both great and small, that is subtly sensitive to influences that are often indefinable. In this instance the “repellent aura” was obviously the onion-skinner. He exerted himself to be agreeable, but his _bonhomie_ was about as infectious as that of a crocodile trying to be playful. His personality did not harmonize with the little amenities of life, and he was a misfit anywhere but in a financial transaction.

Sipes’s habitual effervescence seemed to have a false note. Saunders and I kept rather quiet, and the melodies that dwelt in the volatile soul of Narcissus were hushed.

The arboreal katydids were abroad in the woods. These insects are exquisitely beautiful in their green gowns. Like many human creatures, they would be fascinating if they kept still, but they stridulate boisterously and persistently. Their scientific name--_Cyrtophyllus perspicillatus_--is only one of the things against them. The insects seldom move after they have established themselves in a tree for the night, and they often stay in one spot from early August, when they usually mature, until the fall frosts silence their penetrating clamor. The green foliage provides a camouflage that renders them practically undiscoverable, except by accident. We hunted for one particular offender with an electric flashlight and murderous intent nearly half of one night, without finding him. We hurled many sticks and clods of earth into the tree, but failed even to disturb his meter.

It is the male katydid that proclaims the troubles of his kind to the forest world. He begins soon after dark, and continues his work until morning. Curiously, the female is silent.

The loud dissonant sounds are produced by friction of the wings, which have hard, drumlike membranes and edges like curved files. He shuffles them with a continuity that is nerve-racking. Often I would suddenly start from sound sleep, with an indistinct apprehension of some impending peril.

One morning, after a haunted and vexatious night in the little tent, I found that the following impressions had crept over white paper during the hours of darkness, and lay beside the burned-out candle. They are the lines of one who suffered and should be read with reverence.

A DIABOLIC CADENCE

_Into the choirs of the trees there has come a rasping, strident, and unholy sound. A fiend in green is mocking the transient year with mad threnody from his eyrie among the boughs._

_In that suspended half consciousness that hovers along the margin of a dream, there seems to echo, out of some vast and awful chasm, a rumbling roar of rocks--from some abysmal smithy of the gods within the hidden caverns of the earth where huge boulders are being fashioned by giant hands, to be hurled up into space, to descend with frightful crash, and extinguish the life upon the globe._

_In the agonized recoil of frenzied fancy from the borders of the dream, the demonic ceaseless sawing, of the arboreal fiend in green, arrests the fleeting phantoms of the brain, and, like a doleful tuneless tolling of a fractured funeral bell--like a barbaric song of sorrow over fallen warriors--the ripping, rasping, resonant notes mingle with the night wind, and drown the harmonious hum of drowsy insects, that kindly nature has sent into the world to lull somnolent fancy into paths of dreams._

_After the gentle prelude of the crickets--and the lullabies of forest folk--like a mad discordant piper, he starts a strain of dismal dole, and files away the seconds from the onward hours. Mercilessly across the tender human nerves, that seem to span the taut bridge of a swaying violin, he sweeps a berosined and excruciating bow._

_Prolonged wailing for a “lost or stolen” love may have disintegrated his vocal chords. His agonized and shattered heart may have sunk into hopeless depths, and all his articulate forces may have been transmitted to his foliated wings, when his belovéd was lured away by some unknown marauder--mayhap of darker green or lovely pink._

_The errant pair may be hidden in a distant glade--or dingly dell--gazing upward through the leaves, wondering “what star should be their home when love becomes immortal,” and listening to him, as he scrapes the melodies out of the night with that infernal, insistent, and slang-infected song:_

“_She’s beat it--she’s beat it--she’s beat it--_ _Come back--come back--come back--_ _You skate--you skate--_ _You’ve swiped--you’ve swiped_ _My mate--my mate--my mate!_”

_Intermittently he seems to muffle the ragged rhyme, and merge into virulent_ vers libre--_imagistic muse and amputated prose--containing sound projectiles, of low trajectory, that winnow the aisles of the forest for an erring spouse who has fled beyond the range of common rhyme_.

_Perhaps it’s all wrong--about this insect having loved--for love is a holy thing, and it may be that it abides not among the things that have wings and stings. It would seem that he who could trill this nerve-destroying song could know no love, or that it was ever in the world._

_It may be that this emerald villain has been outlawed by his kind, and he’s filing, up there in the dark, on some terrible iron thing, that he’s sharpening to annihilate the tribe that banned him. He may be sawing of a branch, and, if so, I hope he’s straddling the part that’ll fall off when he’s through. Maybe he’s got some ex-friend up there, pinioned to the bark, and he’s boring him to death, by telling him the same thing--the same thing--the same thing--o’er and o’er and o’er._

_I wish that some gliding fluffy owl, or other rover of the darkened woods, would only pause a moment, and divest the bough of this green-mantled wretch, and then that some mighty ravenous bird would collect the people we know, who come and scrape on something that’s inside of them--lay a sound barrage before us--fret the air with piffle, and with sorrows all their own--and chant a woeful ceaseless cadence, like the green arboreal fiend, whose sonorous and satanic notes assail us from the bough. Miscreated, malignant, and hellish though they and the fiend may be, they all revel in that rare joy that comes only to him who has found his life work._

_For our sins must we be scourged, else, why are these people?_

_And,_

_Pourquoi--pourquoi--pourquoi--_ _Is this_ _Katydid--Katydid--Katydid?_

After listening patiently to the reading of the production, my unfeeling prosaic friend Sipes remarked, “Gosh, we gotta git that insect ’fore it gits dark ag’in!”

The Ancient called the third day after our arrival, and spent the afternoon with us. Bascom seemed much interested in helping to entertain him, and got out his maps. On one of them was indicated the names of the owners of the different tracts of land, and we were surprised to learn that the old man was the possessor of the woods we were in, practically all of the land around the marsh, and a long strip of frontage on the lake. Captain Peppers was also a large owner of property along the lake.

The veiled motive of Bascom’s trip with us was now apparent. He wanted options for a year on a large part of these holdings, and was willing to pay what he considered a good price. It seemed that on the day we came, he had had some talk with the Captain on the subject, and they were to take the matter up again.

He wanted options only on the tracts with marsh and lake frontage, and argued that if they were improved the rest of the land would be made much more valuable. He had skilfully arranged his stage setting for the object of his trip, and claimed that the idea had just occurred to him while he was taking this little outing. He said that he accidentally happened to have the maps, and had brought them along to familiarize himself with the country he was in.

He made the Ancient a substantial offer for an option on most of his holdings, at a price that the old man did not seem inclined to consider, but he was open to negotiation.

“I been livin’ ’ere most all my life, an’ I’ve ranged ’round this ol’ marsh an’ them sand-hills so much that I wouldn’t know how to act if they wasn’t mine, but if you’ll git yer figgers up whar I c’n see ’em, mebbe we’ll talk about it some more.”

“You see,” said Bascom to Saunders, after the old settler had left, “this land idea is a sort of a side issue with me. I think that perhaps a little money might be made here, but I would have to take some big chances. You and Sipes talk with those fellows a little, and see if you can’t bring them around to business, and I’ll pay you something for it if they sign up. You might have some influence with them. Tell them that I mentioned to you that it was just a gamble with me, and probably there isn’t a chance in a hundred that I will exercise the options at all, and they will be ahead whatever they get out of me now.”

The old shipmates agreed to do what they could and the subject was dropped for the time being.

The accidental exposure of the contents of a long fat wallet that Bascom carried inside his vest revealed the fact that he had a large amount of money with him, much larger than could possibly be required for ordinary use. Evidently he was prepared to close the business with the owners of the land the moment their minds met.

“Holy Mike! Did ye see that wad?” whispered Sipes, who was awed by the magic of the gold certificates. “I’d like to know some way to git that wad,” he remarked later. “I’d play some seven-up with ’im fer some of it, but they’s sump’n ’bout ’im that makes me think it wouldn’t do.”

I realized that the despoiler was at the gates of the Dune Country. The foot of the Philistine was on holy ground. This man with a withered soul was an invader of sanctuary. He would tear the dream temples down that the centuries had builded. With steam shovels and freight cars he would level the undulating hills, and haul away their shining sands to a world of greed, where man does not discriminate. The wild life would flee from steam whistles that shrieked through the forests, and from smoke that defiled the quiet places. Belching chimneys and unsightly signs would befoul and deface the fair domain. With the beauty of the dunes he would feed a Moloch in the sordid town.

The peaceful marsh, and the river with its channel of silver light, would be invaded with dredges. Abbatoirs, tanneries, factories, and blast furnaces might come. The Winding River, with its halo of memories, would flow away with receding years, and a foul stream would carry the stain of desecration and filth out to pollute the crystal depths of the lake.