The Tent Dwellers. Albert Bigelow Paine

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ we would be on the borders of the unknown, prepared to conquer the wilderness with an assortment of fishing rods, a supply of mosquito ointment and a pair of twenty-two caliber rifles, these being our only guns.

      It seems hardly necessary to say that we expected to do little shooting. In the first place it was out of season for most things, though this did not matter so much, for Eddie had in some manner armed himself with a commission from the British Museum to procure specimens dead or alive, and this amounted to a permit to kill, and skin, and hence to eat, promiscuously and at will. But I believe as a party, we were averse to promiscuous killing; besides it is well to be rather nice in the matter of special permits. Also, we had come, in the main, for trout and exploration. It was agreed between us that, even if it were possible to hit anything with our guns, we would not kill without skinning, and we wouldn't skin without eating, after which resolution the forest things probably breathed easier, for it was a fairly safe handicap.

      I shall not soon forget that morning drive to Jake's Landing, at the head of Lake Kedgeemakoogee, where we put in our canoes. My trip on the train along the coast, and the drive through farming country, more or less fertile, had given me little conception of this sinister land—rock-strewn and barren, seared by a hundred forest fires. Whatever of green timber still stands is likely to be little more than brush. Above it rise the bare, gaunt skeletons of dead forests, bleached with age, yet blackened by the tongues of flame that burned out the life and wealth of a land which is now little more than waste and desolation—the haunt of the moose, the loon and the porcupine, the natural home of the wild trout.

      It is true, that long ago, heavy timber was cut from these woods, but the wealth thus obtained was as nothing to that which has gone up in conflagrations, started by the careless lumbermen and prospectors and hunters of a later day. Such timber as is left barely pays for the cutting, and old sluices are blocked and old dams falling to decay. No tiller of the soil can exist in these woods, for the ground is heaped and drifted and windrowed with slabs and bowlders, suggesting the wreck of some mighty war of the gods—some titanic missile-flinging combat, with this as the battle ground. Bleak, unsightly, unproductive, mangled and distorted out of all shape and form of loveliness, yet with a fierce, wild fascination in it that amounts almost to beauty—that is the Nova Scotia woods.

      Only the water is not like that. Once on the stream or lake and all is changed. For the shores are green; the river or brook is clear and cold—and tarry black in the deep places; the water leaps and dashes in whirlpools and torrents, and the lakes are fairy lakes, full of green islands—mere ledges, many of them, with two or three curious sentinel pines—and everywhere the same clear, black water, and always the trout, the wonderful, wild, abounding Nova Scotia trout.

      To Jake's Landing was a hard, jolting drive over a bad road, with only a break here and there where there is a house or two, and maybe a sawmill and a post-office, the last sentinels of civilization. It was at Maitland, the most important of these way stations, that we met Loon. Maitland is almost a village, an old settlement, in fact, with a store or two, some pretty houses and a mill. Loon is a dog of the hound variety who makes his home there, and a dear and faithful friend of Eddie's, by the latter's account. Indeed, as we drew near Maitland, after announcing that he would wish to stop at the Maitland stores to procure some new things he had thought of, Eddie became really boastful of an earlier friendship with Loon. He had met Loon on a former visit, during his (Loon's) puppyhood days, and he had recorded the meeting in his diary, wherein Loon had been set down as "a most intelligent and affectionate young dog." He produced the diary now as evidence, and I could see that our guides were impressed by this method of systematic and absolute record which no one dare dispute. He proceeded to tell us all he knew about Loon, and how glad Loon would be to see him again, until we were all jealous that no intelligent and affectionate hound dog was waiting for us at Maitland to sound the joy of welcome and to speed us with his parting bark.

      Then all at once we were at Maitland and before Loon's home, and sure enough there in the front yard, wagging both body and tail, stood Loon. It took but one glance for Eddie to recognize him. Perhaps it took no more than that for Loon to recognize Eddie. I don't know; but what he did was this: He lifted up his voice as one mourning for a lost soul and uttered such a series of wails and lamentations as only a hound dog in the deepest sorrow can make manifest.

      "Wow-ow-oo-ow-wow-oo-oo-o."

      The loon bird sends a fairly unhappy note floating down the wet, chill loneliness of a far, rainy lake, but never can the most forlorn of loons hope to approach his canine namesake of Maitland. Once more he broke out into a burst of long-drawn misery, then suddenly took off under the house as if he had that moment remembered an appointment there, and feared he would be late. But presently he looked out, fearfully enough, and with his eyes fixed straight on Eddie, set up still another of those heart-breaking protests.

      As for Eddie, I could see that he was hurt. He climbed miserably down from the wagon and crept gently toward the sorrowing hound.

      "Nice Loon—nice, good Loon. Don't you remember me?"

      "Wow-ow-oo-ow-wow-oo-oo-o," followed by another disappearance under the house.

      "Come, Loon, come out and see your old friend—that's a good dog!"

      It was no use. Loon's sorrow would not be allayed, and far beyond Maitland we still heard him wailing it down the wind.

      Of course it was but natural that we should discuss the matter with Eddie. He had assured us that dogs never forget, and we pressed him now to confess what extreme cruelty or deceit he had practiced upon Loon in his puppyhood, that the grown hound dog had remembered, and reproached him for to-day. But for the most part Eddie remained silent and seemed depressed. Neither did he again produce his diary, though we urged him to do so, in order that he might once more read to us what he had recorded of Loon. Perhaps something had been overlooked, something that would make Loon's lamentations clear. I think we were all glad when at last there came a gleam through the trees and we were at Jake's Landing, where our boats would first touch the water, where we would break our bread in the wilderness for the first time.

       "Eddie produced his jug of fly mixture and we anointed ourselves for the first time, putting on a pungent fragrance."

      It was not much of a place to camp. There was little shade, a good deal of mud, and the sun was burning hot. There was a remnant of black flies, too, and an advance guard of mosquitoes. Eddie produced his jug of fly mixture and we anointed ourselves for the first time, putting on a pungent fragrance which was to continue a part of us, body and bone, so long as the wilderness remained our shelter. It was greasy and sticky and I could not muster an instant liking for the combined fragrance of camphor, pennyroyal and tar. But Eddie assured me that I would learn to love it, and I was willing to try.

      I was more interested in the loading of the canoes. Del, stout of muscle and figure—not to say fat, at least not over fat—and Charlie, light of weight and heart—sometimes known as Charles the Strong—were packing and fitting our plunder into place, condensing it into a tight and solid compass in the center of our canoes in a way that commanded my respect and even awe. I could see, however, that when our craft was loaded the water line and the gunwale were not so far apart, and I realized that one would want to sit decently still in a craft like that, especially in rough water.

      Meantime, Eddie had coupled up a rod and standing on a projecting log was making a few casts. I assumed that he was merely giving us an exhibition of his skill in throwing a fly, with no expectation of really getting a rise in this open, disturbed place. It was fine, though, to see his deft handling of the rod and I confess I watched him with something of envy. I may confess, too, that my own experience with fly casting had been СКАЧАТЬ