Part 7

Into Lac à la Poêle at the farther end, three miles away, flowed its largest inlet, where we meant to camp. Its course near the lake was all rapids; at the head of these rapids we should put up the tents, leaving the boats at the lake end of the portage; there we should be far enough away from the big pond not to disturb the hunting. Lac à la Poêle was game country, and the marshes about it were cut into trodden runways. Moreover, the falling water would drown the sound of the chopping; we had been here last year, and studied the ground.

But it was fated to be one of those well-laid plans which “gang agley,” and nobody to blame but beavers. A beaver seems close to humanity sometimes, yet a human being gets no satisfaction in being angry at a wild, shy, black mass to be seen only in sections, as a glittering head above the water, or as a broad tail descending thunderingly on the water’s surface. One might as well be angry at a centaur or a winged horse as at a spirit of the forest such as a beaver.

We came, about five o’clock, with heavy loads and aching muscles, to the spot for our camp, and found two large, brand-new beaver dams built since last year, and the entire shore-line changed. Woods were flooded ten feet in, running water turned to a pond, everything spoiled for camping. We could have cried, so we laughed—one transposes in that way in the woods.

We plodded on, foot-heavy in our high, wet hunting-boots, perspiring and fly-bitten—but yet with a laugh at the beaver. It is wisdom in many conditions to be good-tempered, but in the woods it is necessity—good temper and salt pork you must have in a camp. We plunged into a few more holes, fell over a few more rocks, and around a turn we came on our reward—a prettier camping-ground than we had imagined.

Above the two dams a grove of spruces with a copper floor of needles reached into the water, and about two sides of it the stream flowed. A silver birch gleamed through the evergreens, and we could see the light tops of more on the hillside; there was good fire-wood near by; late-afternoon sunlight slanted through the tree tops, and slid in patterns over the pink-brown of the spruce needles; the river persistently chanted something cheerful about making a joke of rough places and laughing over the rocks and going on steadily in any case, and so we set to work.

A dead log knocked out with the blunt of an axe, a few bushes levelled, and the ground was ready for the tents—mine facing Walter’s and Bob’s, in the centre of the woodland; that of the guides back a hundred and fifty feet somewhere, burrowing in the mountain.

Gold sunset leaked wet through black spruces, and drowned itself in bright spots in the river; the guides chopped long poles for the tents, short stakes for pegging them out; the tents rose flopping, grew taut, and stood snowy and trim—our homes.

I got birch bark and sticks for a fire, and soon it crackled between my house and Walter’s, licking aromatic air with orange tongues. The guides’ axes rang hollow as another fire—to cook supper—shot up on the shore; a crotched stick with a swinging kettle hung over it; Blanc had started the hot water. We fell to at getting balsam for the beds; we unpacked blankets and belongings, and then we dressed for dinner. Clean hands and brushed hair change a costume.

In the meantime, somewhere in a crack of affairs, Walter had put up a rod, and stepping from rock to rock had found a pool where the trout longed for the fly, and brought back a dozen speckled, pink-and-silver, scarlet-finned quarter-pounders.

Blanc was chef; his slouch hat back on his shock head, his marvellous red-striped stockings and pink calico shirt and aggressive suspenders and other curios of garments showed up on his figure as on a telegraph pole, where he stood before the fire. He squatted low and shook the frying-pan over the red coals; he stared at the fish earnestly as they doubled their tails “_croche_” with freshness; he watched that the corn-meal in which they were rolled should not burn; and it was supper-time. We had fish and flapjacks and bacon and fried potatoes.

Godin, butler, urged these delicacies upon us with soft French speech and alert glances of interest. Godin differed in several ways from the butler of commerce.

The twilight gathered brown around the red firelight; the fish jumped in the darkening river; tents glimmered behind us and promised rest and deep sleep. We had come far to get these gifts of the gods and had dropped chains on the road; our freed spirits thought with kindly pity of the bored people sitting down to banquets in London, suffering in dinner clothes and candle-light at Newport, trying to squeeze happiness out of smelly automobiles and cramped steamer cabins. That three-quarters of them would pity us did not lessen our sympathy.

Next morning I was slowly aware that the shadows of innumerable leaves danced noiselessly an abandoned two-step on the white walls of my tent. With eyes half open I watched the silent, wild play, and then I was aware of wild play not silent in the house across the street.

Bob, with squeals of ecstasy and peals of big laughter, was waking Walter. By slow groans and quick, impassioned remonstrances I knew that he was waking him with water, applied carefully with a sponge and recklessly out of a cup. I heard it splash in a fat cupful against the canvas, and by Walter’s howl I knew the canvas had not got it all. I shivered, for the morning was sharp—better Walter than I for that baptism. In a minute more they were fraternizing against me.

Wake, wake, freshman, wake, Wake while our song strikes the sky,

Bob thundered out of tune. Walter wandered into the concert with a recitative strangely like an air, but yet not. My tent flap was fastened; noise was all they could do.

“Good morning,” I was saluted. “Are you ready for breakfast?”

I answered: “Are you?”

“Practically. Bob and I are going to swim. Will you join us?”

I refused, and they went off complaining of bushes in a way which suggested lack of shoes, and I heard their voices down the stream and around the turn. As I dozed again Walter was pulling at my tent flap.

“Margaret! Open this—I want my camera.”

Walter was in a blue woolly gown, with his glasses on, and the faithful cap from which he is seldom parted was on his head.

“Are you going to swim in a cap? What are you going to photograph?” I demanded.

“Three films left,” he murmured, and pushed up his glasses and scrutinized me. “Where’s the tripod? What? I’m going to take Bob as a—as a Greek deity.” He grinned. “There—I’ve got it all,” and he started out of the tent.

As I said, my sense of decorum has wasted by association with the Morgans. I simply answered: “If you’re going to do the God Pan you’d better take him playing on his pipe,” and Walter stopped.

“That’s true.” He came back and dived into his tent.

Bob had yesterday, on the journey, hollowed an instrument from a bit of wood which gave out flute-like murmurings in keeping with the forest. Walter with this woodland pipe and camera and tripod melted into the bush.

By that time I was all awake, and after a plunge in a pool up-stream, a quarter of an hour made me ready for events. Events came. From the guides’ quarters rose sounds of crackling fire and rattling dishes and high French voices, busy and interested—breakfast would soon be ready. Meanwhile from down the river floated at intervals laughter and howls—Bob and Walter were playing. But time was passing and without remonstrances they would not be ready for breakfast; by now they must have finished their swim—I might reconnoitre.

As I jumped from stone to stone down the bank the voices grew louder. I stepped along. A log lay overturned and I came to the upper beaver dam, a pile of earth and sticks four feet high. Thirty feet below lay the second, and from over the top of it sounded a thanksgiving hymn.

Oh, gee! I’m glad I’m free! No wedding bells for me!

Bob sang enthusiastically, as if just escaped, and out of the middle of the dam ripped suddenly a big peeled birch branch. With it went a mass of mud and sticks and the river wallowed through the gap.

“Holy Ike!” shouted Bob, invisible below. “It’s no trick at all. Easy as pullin’ teeth. The beggars’ll have to sit up nights to sew that together.”

Out sprang another great armful of white sticks and black dirt and the loosened pool flowed with a swirl. The boy had crawled out on the dam—or swam out—and was pulling to pieces the work of the patient beavers. I called in distress.

“Bob—Bob! Why _are_ you doing that? Don’t! It’s cruel!” And then I caught sight of Walter watching through his spectacles, barefooted, robed in blue, the cap on his nose. “Walter, stop him!” I pleaded. “Don’t let him. It’s useless and it’s brutal. Those poor little beavers worked hard to make that wonderful dam and I think it’s a sin—”

From behind the wonderful dam came incisive tones.

“Take another think. They’ve ruined the river. I’m going to teach ’em manners.” And then, as if hit by a thought, Bob squealed at me: “For cat’s sake, Margaret, go back—this is no place for you, my good woman—I’m coming out.”

And Walter added: “You’d better go—he’s not completely clothed.”

“Well, breakfast’s ready,” I said, and I turned, and fell splashing behind the upper dam, and as I sat there and mourned that the river had got into my boot I heard Walter’s accents, speaking to Bob.

“That’s enough for scientific research. Now get your clothes on, cub,” he said, and with that rose a shriek.

“Oh, gosh! My clothes! Walter—save ’em! Down on the beach—Oh, Holy Ike! The water’s covered ’em—they’re gone!”

There was a dramatic silence. Splashing and crackling of underbrush, and for a minute nothing more. Then came an outcry, a mixture of suffering and laughter. Accustomed as they were to the pandemonium of “M’sieur” and “M’sieur Bob,” it brought the guides—the two light figures raced down the bank past me as I sat. I did not go. I guessed what had happened, and I doubted my welcome.

Bob had taken his clothes with him to dress after his bath—all of his clothes—everything he owned nearer than Lac Lumière. He had rolled them into a wad, on a bit of pebbly beach convenient to dress on, below the dam. Then he had gone up above and opened the sluice-gate. If he had wanted to lose them he could not have planned better. The first rush of freed water must have taken them away, and by the time he remembered them they were gone forever.

I scrambled back to camp and awaited developments. The first was Blanc, who came leaping, catlike, to the tent of “M’sieur.” He threw me one glance and slipped in and emerged in the same breath, with a blanket. I understood—as with our savage ancestors the first point was protection from the elements—from black flies and mosquitoes worse than elements.

A few minutes later a sad little procession filed up the rocks, and I stood inside my tent and tried to keep a right expression of countenance and attitude of mind. Godin came first, ruling his spirit to seriousness, yet with blue eyes gleaming; then Walter, silent but rolling in his gait and with a watery look in his glance; and then came Bob, slim and tall, and wearing a gray blanket with a dignity which was like a poke in the ribs.

I said: “Oh, Bob, I’m so sorry.” I said it without a smile, and then I went quickly into the tent.

Walter came, in a minute.

“I’ve got him put away,” he began, and then we both tried not to make loud noises. When he lifted his face, tears were on it and at his first word he sobbed.

“Margaret, you mustn’t let him hear you laugh,” he gasped. “He’s dignified. I wish he wouldn’t be. When I laughed down there, he was raging. If he’d only—”

“Walter,” cut in a cold, clear young voice. Bob knew well enough how his family were engaged.

“Yes, Bob, I’m coming,” Walter called back hurriedly. “Now, Margaret, about this question of clothes. Let’s see what we can raise.”

I looked at him with concern, for we both knew what we could raise, and that it was nothing. It was all I could do to remember, and not to mention, that I begged them both to bring a change of clothes, and they would not. But we got him, at the end, clothed—as it might be. He wore a coat of Blanc’s which had been his own three years back—it had suffered under the first régime, but Blanc had ground its face since then. It was short in the sleeves and popped open when buttoned; but it was necessary to keep it buttoned. It had burst on the shoulder blades. There was no extra shirt in the party, so this coat must be worn V-necked. I felt a yearning for a black velvet ribbon to tie around Bob’s neck. Walter contributed some offerings, not of surface value, and Bob had his own sneakers and socks—short socks, because the drowned trousers had been long ones.

“Holy Ike!” wailed Bob, from his blanket, in a voice with a squeal in the middle. “What I want is a pair of clothes!”

I trembled a little. “Cub,” I said, as considerately as I knew how, “I’m sorry—it’s the only thing there is—I’m afraid you’ll have to wear my extra skirt.”

Bob whirled. “Me!” he barked. “Not so’s you’d notice it!”

Then we reasoned. It was short—yes—but yet. Of course he was eight inches taller than I—yes, eight inches was a good bit off a skirt—but yet. Oh, yes, it would fasten around the waist—with safety pins. Socks—bare legs—yes, it was too bad—black flies, yes—but yet. The point was, what else could you do about it? Which finally settled things.

When it was on, and anchored around his vague waist-line, he gazed downward like a young pine-tree outraged in its finest feelings. He missed the bony neck, he got a poor view of the strain across his chest; but he saw the gray corduroy swathing his knees—just his knees—and, below, a waste of fly-bitten legs and a little Lord Fauntleroy finish of gray socks and white sneakers. Before that vision his young dignity went in a landslide. Laughter and yelps rose in succession.

“Don’t, cub! You’ll ruin the hunting! Shut up, you long-legged devil! Stop raising Cain! Stop it!” Walter exhorted him.

Bob, with his arms around a tree and his legs prancing in time, thundered on.

We led between us to breakfast a raw-boned and short-haired lady of six feet, wreathed in a shamefaced grin, and wreathed in desperately little else. When the “Messieurs” so presented themselves it seemed likely during the first shock that there would be no breakfast, for our respectful guides were incapacitated.

We could not get used to him all day. All day, as we caught a glimpse of a short skirt skipping high in air, or vaulting logs with unladylike ease, we were seized with new spasms of mirth. But that night the cub lived down his costume. At four he went off with a body-guard of Blanc, prancing down the portage to Lac à la Poêle, the gray corduroy skirt glinting in and out of the forest. At seven there was talking heard from that direction—reckless talking and crackling of branches.

“What in thunder?” Walter inquired of space. “That can’t be Bob—he’d never be such a lunatic. He’ll scare everything in five miles. It sounds like Bob’s voice. What does it mean?”

“If we’d heard a shot I’d think he’d killed something,” I ventured.

“Too early—and we would have heard a shot, anyway.”

With that Bob broke through the woods. “Hear me fire?” he burst forth.

“No—what at? Where? When?” Questions hit him in groups.

“Only a muskrat. Nice easy shot, and I’ve never killed one—I thought I’d try it.”

“What do you mean, Bob?” Walter asked sternly. “You did _not_ fire at small game in caribou season, in a hunting country?”

With that Bob exploded. “Wake up, Walter, and hear the birdies sing. I’ve got a moose, a peach, twelve hundred pounds, Blanc says. You’re a nice lot of Rip Van Winkles not to hear a shot within two miles. I potted him the first thing, almost at the landing, beaned him with one shot; he dropped like a log.”

Whether he wore skirts or wings mattered little to the cub now. Life was a trumpet peal, and he gambolled about the wilderness with his gray curtain flying, callous to criticism. It took most of the next day to _arranger_ the moose _comme il faut_, as the guides delicately put it, for the shot had finished a mighty life.

“We’ll have to sit up nights and eat,” Bob considered, regarding the huge _pacquetons_ of meat done up in a hide, and then his eyes fell on the head and antlers.

It was a fine head and the _panaches_ were forty points.

“Hully gee!” the cub gurgled, and caracoled on all fours, with that mixture of child into the man which sometimes makes an eighteen-year-old boy startling. “Won’t the fellows be stunned when they lay their eyes on that? Won’t that look delicious on the wall of my house in the ‘Hutch’ next winter! I wish those boys were here to help eat.”

And his long legs, still as in early youth the most emotional features of his physique, described ellipses.

“Bob,” Walter remonstrated, “wait till you get your natural clothing before you jump so much. Your legs gleam not wisely but too well.”

And Bob chuckled, but calmed down.

“I guess that’s good dope,” he acknowledged—“dope” being Yaleish for “advice”—and then he went on: “Ginger!” he brought out explosively. “I’m glad those fellows aren’t due for a while yet, till I shed my ball gown. Just picture to yourself if they’d been on this trip.” His head went back and his big laugh rang up through the trees, ending in a projection of a bark and a bleat as if he could not get it all out. Bob’s laugh ranked with his legs as a safety valve for his spirits, and both worked overtime. “Think if those fellows had seen me this way—Buck and Donnie and Hal Harriman—why, I’d never have heard the last of it.”

Three of the cub’s classmates, coming to visit us in camp, were due now in two days.

Walter stared at him fixedly, and Bob’s wide eyes became attentive. He looked alarmed.

“You’re not going to give me away to the fellows, are you?”

Walter pulled his cap over his eyes, stuck his hands in his pockets, and regarded his young brother.

“I can’t say. I’d be glad to say, but I don’t feel that I can.”

“Look here, Walter,” begged Bob, “if you could curb yourself enough not to tell the fellows—maybe it’s asking too much, but Holy Ike, won’t they guy me! It’ll be a crime! It doesn’t seem as if I could have you do that form of torture.”

Walter grinned. “You look out, you young cuss. Be very gentle and thoughtful to your brother, or it’ll be worse for you. I owe you several. You’re doomed anyway, I think, but you’re doomed worse if you’re not careful.”

The next day, with heavy luggage of tents and _pacquetons_ and game we made a slow way down the Poêle River toward the home camp. It was necessary, with so much _butin_, that the men should triple the portages. Walter, Bob, and I waited at the lower end of one for the last charge to be brought over. Around us lay the impedimenta of a hunting trip, mail-bags which were our trunks, tents, heavy bundles wrapped about with rope, and above the heap, towering darkly, low in the forest, where it had been carried with stateliness, was the sombre magnificence of Bob’s moose’s horns. A still-water stretched a shining band below us between walls of forest; in front was a pool, foam-flecked from the white rapids above.

The boy picked up a rod.

“There ought to be trout in that hole even if it is sunny. If I were a trout I’d—”

He sprang, murmuring a sentence, to a rock. Then to a farther one. In the middle of the river he stood in sharp sunshine, and cast into shadows under the bank. Where the brown hackle touched a ripple, there was a break; his hand lifted instantaneously, and a splashing bit of color followed the glint of the leader—a fish was on. I watched, held with the never-failing fascination of the game, as the lad played cleverly the lively half-pounder in the narrow pool, keeping him away from rocks, away from shore, giving him no slack and no pull, for he was lightly hooked.

As I watched I heard a click, as of a camera, and I turned quickly, and with that, before I had time to investigate, I turned back in astonishment. Floating up the stretch of still-water sounded the most unexpected noise on earth—human voices. As I looked, around the bend below paddled two canoes, loaded heavily with men. I stared, dazed. Who were they? What did they want on our particular planet? There were seven, four guides and three messieurs.

At this point there was a bang on the rocks close by and I was blown sideways by a whirlwind. A flash of bare legs and gray corduroy accompanied the phenomenon. Bob had dropped the rod in midstream and left the trout to play himself and had taken to the woods; the forest crashed as his flying feet fled up the portage.

I gathered myself. The canoes were within two hundred yards now, and Walter stood by me glaring a welcome; for it annoys him to be reminded in the woods that the earth is not his private star. Who were these interlopers? A deep, fresh voice called out:

“Good morning, Mrs. Morgan.”

And I knew. It was, of course, Bob’s friends, the boys not expected for two days, Buck and Donnie and Hal Harriman. Buck I had known before; a magnificent youngster of six feet two, he towered between desiccated-looking guides in the middle of the first canoe and sent questions to me in trumpet tones.

“Where’s Bob, Mrs. Morgan? Do you mind our getting here sooner? Isn’t Bob up yet? This forest is a perfect peach. Are we upsetting things, coming ahead? Do you mind? Where’s that beggar Bob?”

The huge young brute was out on the rocks and mangling my hand with a friendly grip, while he introduced the two others, clean-cut, bright-faced lads like himself. Walter had got back his hospitality, and we both talked steadily to give time for the refugee to make arrangements; we wondered what arrangements he might make. It seemed to me a case of exposure or suicide, but the cub would have to decide which. And meantime, of course, the burning question was Bob’s whereabouts.

“The men at the camp told us you were here; our guides knew the way, so we thought we’d come on and meet you,” the boys explained. “But they said Bob was along, too. Isn’t he?”

By then we had told them four times that we were delighted to have them sooner, and had said all that the subject would bear about canoes and paddling. The moment had arrived when Bob had to be mentioned.

“Yes; he’s along,” Walter acknowledged carelessly. “He killed a moose last night, you know.”

The inference was that no gentleman receives company the first day after killing a moose. The boys looked mystified, but were full of polite interest.

“He stayed back then? He didn’t come down with you?” Buck questioned.

I watched Walter, for this was a crisis. He simply had to decide now where Bob was: whether a few rods back or still in camp on Lac à la Poêle; and whichever way he decided Bob was likely to plan otherwise. It was a crucial moment. And with that, out of the forest dashed the long figure of Blanc, his trousers suspended up under his arms, his belt six inches lower, the red stripes of his wool socks giving a flippant expression to his earnest personality. Blanc was not clever, and he looked anxious as he came into the midst of us.

“M’sieur,” he opened fire; “it is from M’sieur Bob.”

“_Oui_, you may tell me what he said,” Walter allowed. I saw him bite his lip as if the strain was great. The three lads listened.