CHAPTER XXVIII

There are few things more interesting than to observe in a quiet family the effects of an explosion of the unusual. Assuredly, what had happened to the Lyndsays was uncommon. There is family character just as there is national character. Individuality is more or less dominated by it. Among those with whom we are dealing the endless discussions which in some groups of human beings are wasted on a matter of annoyance—a calamity or a grievance—were quite unknown. At need they talked over their troubles or difficulties, and put them aside when decisions were once attained.

Anne was fond of saying, “Talk is a wedge which widens troubles. When you think, you are talking to yourself alone, and are responsible for the consequences; it is hard so to weigh words as to know what weight they will have for others.” And thus it was that even about her most unbearable pain she said nothing, and disliked all discussions which led to no working opinion. Mrs. Lyndsay alone was given to seeking sympathy in her small ailments; but Anne, as she herself once observed, “wore neither her heart nor her liver on her sleeve.” And this was 355the general tone. If talk was needed to settle a thing, there was enough, and no more. Lyndsay liked to say, “And now we will put it aside, my dear.” He had thus ended a talk with his wife, who was disposed to say far more.

To all of them the unpleasant event I have recorded brought a sense of horror. But the primary mood of anger or disgust gave way to some other form of mental or moral activity, which varied with the person. Lyndsay simply and directly occupied himself with the slight evidence he had, and endeavored to reach a conclusion as to the criminal. Anne fell to thinking with interest of the motives of the criminal, and as to what possible temptation could make her desire to do such an act. The mother remained in a state of somewhat lessened emotional disturbance, wanting some one to talk to of it all, but finding none save Rose, who had no power to repress her.

Thus Thursday passed quietly enough at the Cliff Camp. Mr. Lyndsay wisely went a-fishing, and took Rose. It was pitiably true that, for Mrs. Lyndsay, the incident of the day before had renewed the grief which time had begun to heal. She wondered how Archie could go and fish. She even made a mild attempt to keep her daughter at home; but Lyndsay resolutely persisted, and had his way. Left to herself, Margaret devoted the morning to coddling Anne, which resulted, for the latter, in a condition of restrained irritability which was almost too much even for this heroic woman. At last she took refuge in her room.

356Jack spent the day in cleaning his rifle, and Dick in stuffing a kingfisher, while Ned bothered him with questions which not Solomon could have answered. As to Carington, he asked Ellett to go up to the church and make careful measurements of the footsteps, as this, by relieving him of the task, would enable him to get away earlier for his long paddle to Mackenzie.

At dawn, Carington, with his two men, in their canoe, went by the Cliff Camp, where all was peacefully still.

At the little town he made his own arrangements for the building of his cabin in the fall, and cashed a draft for himself and one for Mr. Lyndsay. The seven hundred dollars of Canadian notes he rolled into a tight bundle and put in his breeches-pocket. Then, after a hasty meal and a little rest, he turned back for the journey up the river.

There was some paddling to do until they reached swift water, and here he “spelled” his bowmen, taking a turn at poling, and pushed on. Three miles an hour is very good speed at this business, and thus, as the way was long, it was far into the night before they reached the Cliff Camp. Every one else but Jack was in bed. He had taken his blanket and gun, and settled himself patiently at the foot of the cliff.

“Is that you, Nimrod?” said Carington.

“Yes.”

“You have had a long wait. Is your father up?”

“No.”

“Then I must keep this money until Ellett can give it to him to-morrow. Jump in. It is late.”

357In five minutes the boy was asleep in the bottom of the canoe. Carington began to think over what he should do next day about the tombstone business.

At his own camp-ground it took him some five minutes to restore Jack, for a time, to the world of the wakeful, and Carington himself was glad enough to find his own couch.

Before dawn, Michelle touched him on the shoulder.

“You are pretty hard to wake, Mr. Carington.”

“Am I? What is it? Oh, we are going after bears. Hang the bears!” He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and said to Michelle, “Wake that boy. It will take ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir.”

After Jack’s blanket was pulled away, and he himself rolled on to the tent-floor, he began to wake up.

“Coffee ready and lunch in knapsack, Michelle?”

“All right, sir.”

Carington got up, and, laughing at the guide’s difficulty in reviving Jack, went down to the beach, had a cold—a very cold—dip, and in a few minutes was dressed and ready, while Jack, but half awake, was making a boy’s still briefer toilet.

Meanwhile Carington looked into Ellett’s tent, and, seeing him sound asleep, hesitated a moment as to waking him, in order to give into his charge the money he had drawn. As he was about to speak, Michelle called out:

“Halloa! Canoe’s adrift! Take care, Jack. Paddle her in.”

Carington ran out of the tent, and saw that Jack was again ashore. He had put his gun and other 358traps in the boat, and then, jumping in hastily to arrange them, had caused the canoe to slip off into the current. The slight break thus caused in Carington’s mental processes made him for the time forget his intention. Ten minutes later he remembered it, as they were flying down-stream, and his hand chanced to fall on the bulging packet of notes in his pocket.

“Confound it!” he exclaimed. “I forgot it. It is hardly worth while to go back, Jack. I meant to leave the money I drew with Mr. Ellett. I fancy it is safe enough.” Then he proceeded to secure the pocket with a pin, saying, “We won’t go back. It is late, as it is.”

“I was thinking that,” said Jack, to whom bears were of far more importance than the balance in the national treasury.

“I meant to wake myself earlier, Jack; but I was pretty tired. Usually I can wake when I please.”

“I did think you were up, sir,” said Michelle. “You were a-saying things about roses when I touched you.”

“Was I?”

“Yes. Just, ‘Rose—Rose’—like that.”

“That’s queer,” remarked Jack.

“No. I am rather fond of flowers, more so than most men. By the way, Jack, you are a first-class performer in your sleep. If the wedding-guest had heard your loud bassoon, I don’t know what he would have done.”

“Who was the ‘wedding-guest’?”

“Ask Miss Rose.”

“I shall say you told me to ask.”

359“That is hardly necessary. Read the poem—‘The Ancient Mariner,’ I mean.”

“I don’t care much for poetry stuff.”

“Don’t you? Well, you were pretty musical about 3 A. M.” Then he played a little with the matter of his rosy dream. “I think, Jack, that very often dreams like this of mine seem to be the outcome of some quite trivial event rather than of the larger things of life. A day or two back I was trying to pick a rose, and pricked my finger. I didn’t get the rose, but I—meant to. I suppose that thorn stuck into some pincushion of the mind. Odd, wasn’t it?”

“I dreamed about bears for a week after that beastly circus on the beach.”

“No wonder,” and they laughed. “I don’t think dreams very interesting, Jack; but twice in my life I have chanced to see dreams produce some very strange results. See how the mists are melting away.”

“What was it about—the dreams?”

“One, Jack, I cannot tell you. The other I can. I had a guide in the Wind River country who used to talk in his sleep. Several times when we were alone in the hills he woke me up by the noise he made. I used to whistle to quiet him long enough to give me a chance to fall asleep. It is a good recipe to stop snoring. I tried it on you.”

“Dick can beat me all hollow! But please go on, Mr. Carington.”

“Well, one night he kept at it so long, and talked so plainly, that I gave up in despair and listened. He was unusually excited this time. I heard him 360say, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Then he groaned and rolled over and groaned so that I thought he had a nightmare. At last he sang out, ‘Let me go! I didn’t do it.’ After this I whistled ‘Yankee Doodle,’ and it acted like a charm. Next morning at breakfast I said, ‘Whom were you murdering in the night, and were they really going to hang you, Billy?’ When I said this he looked at me sharply, and I saw he did not like it. He asked what he had said. I thought it best to say as little as possible, and so replied, ‘You might have been killing bears, Billy.’ I saw he did not believe me. All day long that fellow was restless and uneasy. He twice missed an elk, and he was a perfect shot.”

“That was bad,” remarked Jack.

“That wasn’t all. When I woke next morning Bill was gone. I never saw him again, and I had a pretty hard time getting back.”

“Do you think he had killed somebody?”

“Probably. Folks’ consciences seem to get a grip of them in sleep, and to go to sleep themselves in the daytime. It’s a queer enough story.”

As they talked the paddles were busy, the mist melted, and they ran swiftly down-stream a mile or more below the Cliff Camp. Here, at a bend, where the river made a bold curve to the northwest, they ran ashore.

“That will do, Michelle. Be on the lookout about six or seven to put us over. Come, Jack. Give me the knapsack. Do not load yet.” As he spoke they left the shore, and Carington, leading, struck into the woods.

361They walked slowly through a tangled wilderness of trees, dead and alive, set in perplexing undergrowth, Carington explaining his plans to the boy as they tramped along.

“We shall go up the hill to left, over the crest and down on to Loon Lake. It is a mere pond, but the berries are thick on the far side, and, although now there are none, the bears have a habit of going there. We shall read our fortune clear when we get on the shore.”

“By the tracks on the edge?”

“Yes. The deep print of the foot makes little pools; and if the water in these is still muddy, the prints are recent; if not, we shall get no chance.”

“I see.”

“Out in the Rockies we used to stir up the mud in the old prints with a stick so as to fool the other fellows. It is an ancient trick. By the way, Jack, at evening I shall set you on the ox-track to the west of Colkett’s. I saw two porcupines there a day or two back. I will go straight down the mountain to Colkett’s. I shall be but a few minutes at Joe’s. I want to arrange about lumber for my cabin. If you see no game, don’t wait, but take the cross track to Colkett’s. You can’t miss it. It starts back of the big boulder in the clearing on the left, as you face the river.”

“And you will meet me?”

“Yes. Perhaps before you quit the open.”

“I understand.”

“The road doesn’t go all the way to Joe’s, but I shall be on it before you.”

362“Yes.”

“Be very careful how you shoot. Colkett’s is not far, and the river in the other direction none too wide, and rifle-balls travel a long way.”

“Yes, I will be careful.”

“And don’t carry your gun that way. So—that’s better.”

It was full noon and cloudy as they walked noiselessly down the slope to the lonely little pond in the lap of the hills. At last they paused among a mass of boulders.

“Now, keep still. I ordered a man up last evening late to put a black kelt on the beach at the far side, where a brook comes in. I fancied it might fetch Mr. Bear.” So saying, Carington adjusted his glass, and searched with care the curved line of the farther shore.

“Look there! It’s a good half-mile or more.”

The boy took the glass.

“There are some water-weeds in a bunch, and above—oh, a black thing! A bear!”

“Come,” said Carington, “you will want a skin for Miss Rose. Come.”

The boy went after him, and the long walk around the lake began. The way was hard.

“We must go well back up over that hill, and then down the gorge which carries the stream.”

At times the elder person glanced back at the noiseless, tough little fellow. “Tired?” he said, as they broke with care through the alders.

“Awful,” said Jack.

At the foot of the hill, as they left the lake, they came on a bit of old burnt land, and here the way 363was even harder. Myriads of dead pines, spruces, and firs, interlaced in tumbled ruin, made progress difficult. Now it was a giddy walk, twelve feet in air, along a slippery trunk, now a crawl under spiky and splintered stems. Again Carington looked back, and began to understand the value of the qualities of endurance, strength, and grip of purpose, with which the boy pursued his way.

At length, hot, brier-scratched, and weary, they came out on the hilltop. Jack was for immediate march, but Carington said:

“No. Get cool; you could not hit a barn-door now. Lie down a bit. You will want to be fully rested. As for me, I am half dead,” and he dropped on the scant soil. “Fine, isn’t it?”

A great sea of lesser hills was all around them, with here and there a rare sparkle of silver from distant windings of the river.

As for Jack, who lay on the summit, his eyes were eagerly searching the ravine down which they were to go.

“A friend of mine—oh, drop that bear, Jack; he’ll keep—a friend of mine says that to enjoy a view like this one must walk up. He has a notion that somehow the exercise absolutely increases your mental power to get the best out of it.”

Jack was not clear as to this, and he said so.

“I don’t understand it myself. I do not know why it is true, but it is true—for me, at least.”

“Maybe because it’s hard work,” said Jack.

He could not get his idea into proper shape, not having Ned’s facility of expression.

364“Yes,” said Carington. “We like what is difficult to get; but that is not all of it. I suppose, if bears were as easy to get as omnibus horses, neither you nor I would go after bears.”

“I guess that’s so.”

“What do you want to be, Jack, when you grow up?”

“I shall go to West Point.”

“Well, and after? The army is not a career, nowadays.”

“But there is first-rate sport in the West.”

“Yes; but that is for one’s idle hours. Life is a pretty big thing, Master Jack.”

“What do you do, Mr. Carington?”

“I build bridges, lay out railroads, generally scrimmage with nature to make life easier for man. How would you like that?”

“I don’t know.” He had a clever lad’s indisposition to commit himself. “Is it easy?—I mean, to learn. I hate books—school-books, I mean.”

“No; it isn’t easy. But it is work for a man. Go to a school of engineering for three or four years when you are older, and then come and help me to build bridges. All this energy of yours—all this hatred of defeat—this—well, you have the whole outfit, as we say in the Rockies, but it is no good unless you know how to do things. The fellows that know and have no steam, I don’t care about. Now, we want that bear, don’t we?”

“Rather!”

“And first, we know how to get him, and then we want him so tremendously that torn breeches, scratched legs, and the like, make no kind of difference. 365Just patent that combination, and, as my friends down in Carolina say, ‘there you are.’”

The small skeptic returned, “But we aren’t there yet.”

“We will be. The wind is up the gorge. See those ferns, how they sway up-hill. He can get no scent of us.”

“That’s so. I wouldn’t have thought of that.”

“It is intelligence against mere instinct. Are you easily lost in the woods, Jack? I am. I have no resource except incessant observation of landmarks.”

Jack looked up in surprise. “I—lost? No, I never get lost.”

“But is that really so?”

“Yes. I wander off anywhere. It is easy to find your way here; but in Maine it is harder. I was up with father two years ago, at the Parmaccini lakes, and he almost always had to ask me the way.”

“How do you know it?”

“I don’t. I go home.”

“Like a dog?”

“I suppose so. I can’t tell.”

“But do you not unconsciously take note of the sun, and the moss on the north side of the trees, and so guide yourself?”

“No—I may; I am not sure. I only know I can get back, and I go pretty straight. Father says it is instinct.”

“That may be. I have seen guides who could go through a wood without fail, and unerringly take you to camp in the darkest night. They cannot tell how they do it.”

366“I never thought much about it,” said Jack.

“It is worth thinking about. You see most instincts are intelligently aided in man. The thing is to keep your instincts and help them with mind; but I fancy you will lose yours as you cease to use them. What you seem to have is like the instinct which brings the salmon back to his own river, the homing pigeon to its own cote, and the cat you may have tried to lose to its own kitchen, miles across the unknown streets of a great city.”

“Can you explain it?”

“No,” replied Carington. He was interested in the talk. “No, it is incomprehensible. There are organs in the ear which tell us the point from which sounds come, and the eye is a help; but there is over and above all, this instinct of direction, which guides the bird, or, still more wonderfully, the fish, and to some degree, I suppose, the men who have this capacity. I was once lost in a cave in Virginia. After an hour of turning and twisting in long passages, and among forests of stalactites, two hundred feet underground, the guide of a sudden got altogether bewildered and terribly alarmed. A boy who was with us said, ‘I can get out,’ and, by Jove, Jack, he took us back, and in and out, and at last into the open air. He never paused.”

“That was a scrape. I wish I had been with you.”

“Do you? I prefer not to try it again. Are you rested?”

“Yes.”

“Then come.” And they went over the slope, and began to go down the bed of the scantily fed brook. 367In a half-hour they came to a small basin whence the water fell into the pool below. Creeping cautiously, they reached the edge and looked down on the muddy shore. The bear had gone. Then Carington took his glass.

“The tracks go to the left,” he said. “Come, but be careful.”

Slowly and in silence they scrambled down to the edge of the underbrush. Suddenly Carington caught the boy’s arm and drew him back.

“Hush!” he murmured. “Softly. There!” and parting the bushes, he pointed through them. A large bear was slowly moving along the curve of shore, not forty feet away. “Your bear, sir; behind the left shoulder. Steady!”

“No—you, sir!”

“Quick! You will lose him. Steady now! Well done!” he cried aloud, as the boy’s rifle rang out, and the bear fell, rose, and fell again. “No! Don’t run in! Load! Now wait a moment!” And, so saying, he moved along the beach. But poor Bruin was dead.

“Clean shot, Master Jack!”

“By George!” cried the boy. “What fun! I thought—I was awful afraid you meant to shoot him yourself.”

“That is not my way with my friends. I hate selfish sportsmen. When you have killed as many bears as I have, we will toss up for the first shot. He is dead enough.” And Carington nudged the beast in the ribs with his gun-barrel.

Jack inspected his prey with care. “We must get his skin.”

368“Of course. Got a knife?”

“Yes.”

“Then help me.”

It was a long business, and the sun was well down when they were done, and the skin packed in a tight roll on Carington’s back.

“We will hang up the meat and send up for it early to-morrow. It is poor, at best. Come, Jack. I think you are an inch taller. You have killed a bear!”

“Just haven’t I?” said the boy.

“And you are going to be an engineer,” added Carington, laughing.

“I don’t know,” said Jack. “Would Michelle tan the skin for me?”

“Yes. It shall be smoke-tanned and sent down to you. Once smoke-tanned, it is fairly moth-proof, and you will find it does not get stiff after a wetting. The civilized man has never yet learned the art of the tanner.”

“I want it for Aunt Anne.”

“I thought you said it was for Miss Rose?”

“No. That was what you said.”

“Did I?” And they went on in that uncertain light which is more puzzling than darkness, in and out of the water, or, with exclamations and laughter, pitching over rocks and dead trees.

Half-way down the hill Carington stopped. The brook-channel they were following descended to the river in a widening gorge. He intended to follow it, and, after seeing Colkett, meant to rejoin Jack, as he had previously arranged. He now set the boy on a disused lumber-road leading to the clearing, saying, 369at last, “This is my way. You may see the porcupine in the open to the left, but be careful how you shoot. Confound it! How much longer do you think I am going to be your pack-mule? I shall kick. Here, carry your own plunder.” And, laughing, he cast the bearskin on the ground.

Jack’s face lit up. This, of all things, was to be desired.

“I was going to ask you if I might carry it a bit.”

“Were you? Well, be off, and, if you lose yourself, remember that all the slopes lead to the river.”

“Yes. As if any fellow didn’t know that!” said Jack to himself, as he trudged away, very proud, with the bearskin on his back.