The Heart of the Ancient Wood

Dave, on his part, felt himself deep in the cold flood of disfavour, and solicitously pondered a way of return to the sunshine of his companion’s smile. His half-wild intuition told him at once that Miranda’s anger was connected with his rifle, and he in part understood her aversion to his craft. He hungered to conciliate her; and as he trod noiselessly the scented gloom of the arches, the mottled greens and greys and browns of the trail, he laid his plans with far-considering prudence. It was characteristic of his quietly masterful nature that he not once thought of conciliating by giving up gun and trap and turning to a vocation more humane. No, the ways and means which occupied his thoughts were the ways and means of converting Miranda to his own point of view. He felt, though not philosophic enough to formulate it clearly, that he had all nature behind him to help mould the girl to his will, while she stood not only alone, but with a grave peril of treason in her own heart.

His silence was good policy with Miranda, who was used to silence and loved it. But being a woman, she loved another’s silence even better than her own. “You are a hunter, ain’t you?” she inquired at last, without turning her head.

“Yes, Mirandy.”

“And a trapper, too?”

“Yes, Mirandy; so they call me.”

“And you like to kill the beasts?”

“Well, yes, Mirandy, kind of, least-ways, I like them; and, well, you’ve jest got to kill them, to live yourself. That’s jest what they do, kill each other, so’s they can live themselves. An’ it’s the only kind of life I can live – ’way in the woods, with the shadows, an’ the silence, an’ the trees, an’ the sky, an’ the clean smells, an’ the whispers you can’t never understand.”

Dave shut his mouth with a firm snap at the close of this unwonted outburst. Never to any one before had he so explained his passion for the hunter’s life; and now Miranda, who had turned square about, was looking at him with a curious searching expression. It disconcerted him; and he feared, under those unescapable eyes, that he had talked nonsense. Nevertheless when she spoke there was a less chilling note in her voice, though the words were not encouraging.

“If you like killing the creatures,” she said slowly, “it’s no place for you here. So maybe you hadn’t better come to the clearing.”

“I don’t like killing your beasts, anyways,” he protested eagerly. “An’ ever sence I heard how you an’ the bears an’ the caribou was friends like, I’ve kep’ clear the other side of the divide, an’ never set a trap this side the Quah-Davic valley. As for these critters you take such stock in, Mirandy, I wouldn’t harm a hair of one of ’em, I swear!”

“You hadn’t better! I’d kill you myself,” she rejoined sharply, with a swift, dangerous flame in her strange gaze; “or I’d set Kroof on you,” she added, a gleam of mirth suddenly irradiating her face, and darkening her eyes richly, till Dave was confused by her loveliness. But he kept his wits sufficiently to perceive, as she set her face again up the trail, that he was permitted to go with her.

“Who’s Kroof?” he asked humbly, stepping close to her side and ignoring the fact that the pathway, just there, was but wide enough for one.

“My best friend,” answered Miranda. “You’ll see at the clearing. You’d better look out for Kroof, let me tell you!”

Chapter XII

Young Dave at the Clearing

During the rest of the journey – a matter of an hour’s walking – there was little talk between Miranda and Dave; for the ancient wood has the property that it makes talk seem trivial. With those who journey through the great vistas and clear twilight of the trees, thoughts are apt to interchange by the medium of silence and sympathy, or else to remain uncommunicated. Whatever her misgivings, her resentments and hostilities, Miranda was absorbed in her companion. So deeply was she absorbed that she failed to notice an unwonted emptiness in the shadows about her.

In very truth, the furtive folk had all fled away. The presence of the hunter filled them with instinctive fear; and in their chief defence, their moveless self-effacement, they had no more any confidence while within reach of Miranda’s eyes. The stranger was like herself – and though they trusted her in all else, they knew the compulsion of nature, and feared lest she might betray them to her own kind. Therefore they held prudently aloof, – the hare and the porcupine, the fox and the red cat; the raccoon slipped into his hole in the maple tree, and the wood-mice scurried under the hemlock root, and the woodpecker kept the thickness of a tree between his foraging and Miranda’s eye. Only the careless and inquisitive partridge, sitting on a birch limb just over the trail, curiously awaited their approach; till suddenly an intuition of peril awoke him, and he fled on wild wings away through the diminishing arches. Even the little brown owl in the pine crotch snapped his bill and hissed uneasily as the two passed under his perch. Yet all these signs, that would have been to her in other moods a loud proclamation of change, now passed unnoted. Miranda was receiving a new impression, and the experience engrossed her.

Arrived at the edge of the clearing, Dave was struck by the alteration that had come over it since that day, thirteen years back, when he had aided Kirstie’s flight from the Settlement. It was still bleak, and overbrooded by a vast unroutable stillness, for the swelling of the land lifted it from the forest’s shelter and made it neighbour to the solitary sky. But the open fields were prosperous with blue-flowered flax, pink-and-white buckwheat, the green sombreness of potatoes, and the gallant ranks of corn; while half a dozen sleek cattle dotted the stumpy pasture. The fences were well kept. The cabin and the barn were hedged about with shining thickets of sunflower, florid hollyhocks, and scarlet-runner beans. It gave the young woodman a kind of pang, – this bit of homely sweetness projected, as it were, upon the infinite solitude of the universe. It made him think, somehow, of the smile of a lost child that does not know it is lost.

Presently, to his astonishment, there rose up from behind a blackberry coppice the very biggest bear he had ever seen. The huge animal paused at sight of a stranger, and sat up on her hind quarters to inspect him. Then she dropped again upon all fours, shuffled to Miranda’s side, and affectionately smuggled her nose into the girl’s palm. Dave looked on with smiling admiration. The picture appealed to him. And Miranda, scanning his face with jealous keenness, could detect therein nothing but approval.

“This is Kroof,” said she, graciously.

“Never seen such a fine bear in all my life!” exclaimed the young man, sincerely enough; and with a rash unmindfulness of the reserve which governs the manners of all the furtive folk (except the squirrels), he stretched out his hand to stroke Kroof’s splendid coat.

The presumption was instantly resented. With an indignant squeal Kroof swung aside and struck at the offending hand, missing it by a hair’s breadth, as Dave snatched it back out of peril. A flush of anger darkened his face, but he said nothing. Miranda, however, was annoyed, feeling her hospitality dishonoured. With a harsh rebuke she slapped the bear sharply over the snout, and drew a little away from her.

Kroof was amazed. Not since the episode of the hare had Miranda struck her, and then the baby hand had conveyed no offence. Now it was different: and she felt that the tall stranger was the cause of the difference. Her heart swelled fiercely within her furry sides. She gave Miranda one look of bitter reproach, and shambled off slowly down the green alleys of the potato field.

During some moments of hesitation, Miranda looked from Kroof to Dave, and from Dave to Kroof. Then her heart smote her. With a little sob in her throat, she ran swiftly after the bear, and clung to her neck with murmured words of penitence. But Kroof, paying no attention whatever, kept her way steadily to the woods, dragging Miranda as if she had been a bramble caught on her fur. Not till she had reached the very edge of the forest, at the sunny corner where she had been wont to play with Miranda during the far-off first years of their friendship, did the old bear stop. There she turned, sat up on her haunches, eyed the girl’s face steadily for some seconds, and then licked her gently on the ear. It meant forgiveness, reconciliation; but Kroof was too deeply hurt to go back with Miranda to the cabin. In response to the girl’s persuasions, she but licked her hands assiduously, as if pleading to be not misunderstood, then dropped upon all fours and moved off into the forest, leaving Miranda to gaze after her with tearful eyes.

When she went back to where the young hunter awaited her, Miranda’s friendly interest had vanished, and in a chilly silence – very unlike that which had been eloquent between them a short half hour before – the two walked on up to the cabin. In Kirstie’s welcome Dave found all the warmth he could wish, with never a reproach for his long years of neglect, – for which, therefore, he the more bitterly reproached himself. The best of all protections against the stings of self-reproach is the reproach of others; and of this protection Kirstie ruthlessly deprived him. She asked about all the details of his life as a solitary trapper, congratulated him on his success, appeared sympathetic toward his calling, and refrained from attempting his conversion to vegetarianism. Looking at her noble figure, her face still beautiful in its strength and calm, the young man harked back in his memory to the Settlement’s scandals and decided that Frank Craig had never, of his own will, forsaken a woman so altogether gracious and desirable. He resolved that he would come often to the cabin in the clearing – even if Miranda was unpleasant to him.

Unpleasant she certainly was, all the evening, coldly unconscious of his presence, except, of course, at supper, where civility as well as hospitality obliged her to keep his plate supplied, and not to sour his meal with an obstinate silence. He watched her stealthily while he talked to her mother; and the fact that her wild and subtle beauty, thrilling his blood, made ridiculous the anger in his heart, did not prevent his accomplishing a brave meal of eggs, steaming buttered pancakes with molasses, and sweet cottage cheese with currant jelly. Kirstie would not hear of his going that night, so he stayed, and slept in the bunk which his father had occupied a dozen years before.

In the morning he was diligent to help with the barnyard chores, and won golden comment from Kirstie; but he found Miranda still ice to his admiration. About breakfast time, however, Kroof reappeared, with an air of having quite forgotten the evening’s little unpleasantness. Of Dave she took no notice at all, looking through, beyond, and around him; but with her return Miranda’s manner became a shade less austere. Her self-reproach was mitigated when she saw that her passing interest in the newcomer had not unpardonably wronged her old friend.

Dave was bound for the Settlement, to arrange some business of bounties and pelt sales. In spite of Kirstie’s hospitable arguments, he insisted on setting out as soon as breakfast was over. As he picked up his rifle from the corner beside his bunk, Miranda, as a sign of peace between them, handed him his pouch of bullets. But not so his big powder-flask, on its gay green cord. This she took to the door, and coolly emptied its contents into a clump of burdocks. Then, with an enigmatic smile, she handed back the flask to its owner.

The young hunter was annoyed. Powder was, in his eyes, a sacred thing, and such a wanton waste of it seemed to him little less than criminal.

“That was all the powder I had ’twixt here an’ the Settlement,” he said, in a tone of rebuke.

“So much the better,” said Miranda.

“But I don’t see no sense in wastin’ it that way,” he persisted.

“No knowing what may happen between here and the Settlement,” rejoined the girl, meaningly.

Dave flushed with anger. “Didn’t I pass ye my word I’d not harm a hair of one of your beasts?” he demanded.

“Then what do you want with the powder this side of the Settlement?” she inquired, with tantalizing pertinence.

The young hunter, though steady and clear in his thought, was by no means apt in repartee, and Miranda had him at a cruel disadvantage. Confused by her last question, he blundered badly in his reply. “But – what if a painter should jump onto me, like he was goin’ to yesterday?” he protested.

“I thought you promised you wouldn’t harm a hair of one of them,” suggested Miranda, thoughtful yet triumphant.

“Would you have me let the critter kill me, jest to keep my promise?” he asked, humour beginning to correct his vexation.

“I don’t see why not,” murmured Miranda. “Anyhow, you’ve got to do without the powder. And you needn’t be frightened, Dave,” – this very patronizingly, – “for your father never carries a gun on our trail, and he’s never needed one yet.”

“Well, then,” laughed Dave, “I’ll try an’ keep my hair on, an’ not be clean skeered to death. Good-by, Kirstie! Good-by, Mirandy! I’ll look ’round this way afore long, like as not.”

“Inside of twelve years?” said Kirstie, with a rare smile, which robbed her words of all reproach.

“Likely,” responded Dave, and he swung off with long, active strides down the trail.

Miranda’s eyes followed him with reluctance.

Chapter XIII

Milking-time

Young Dave Titus was not without the rudiments of a knowledge of woman, few as had been his opportunities for acquiring that rarest and most difficult of sciences. He made no second visit to the cabin in the clearing till he had kept Miranda many weeks wondering at his absence. Then, when the stalks were whitey grey, and the pumpkins golden yellow in the corn-field, and the buckwheat patch was crisply brown, and the scarlet of the maples was beginning to fade out along the forest edges, he came drifting back lazily one late afternoon, just as the slow tink-a-tonk of the cow-bells was beginning the mellow proclamation of milking-time and sundown. The tonic chill of autumn in the wilderness open caught his nostrils deliciously as he emerged from the warmer stillness of the woods. The smell, the sound of the cow-bells, – these were homely sweet after the day-long solitude of the trail. But the scene – the grey cabin lifted skyward on the gradual swell of the fields – was loneliness itself. The clearing seemed to Dave a little beautiful lost world, and it gave him an ache at the heart to think of the years that Miranda and Kirstie had dwelt in it alone.

Just beyond the edge of the forest he came upon Kroof, grubbing and munching some wild roots. He spoke to her deferentially, but she swung her huge rump about and firmly ignored him. He was anxious to win the shrewd beast’s favour, or at least her tolerance, both because she had stirred his imagination and because he felt that her good-will would be, in Miranda’s eyes, a most convincing testimonial to his worth. But he wisely refrained from forcing himself upon her notice.

“Go slow, my son, go slow. It’s a she; an’ more’n likely you don’t know jest how to take her,” he muttered to himself, after a fashion acquired in the interminable solitude of his camp. Leaving Kroof to her moroseness, he hastened up to the cabin, in hopes that he would be in time to help Kirstie and Miranda with the milking.

Just before he got to the door he experienced a surprise, so far as he was capable of being surprised at anything which might take place in these unreal surroundings. From behind the cabin came Wapiti the buck, or perhaps a younger Wapiti, on whom the spirit of his sire had descended in double portion. Close after him came two does, sniffing doubtfully at the smell of a stranger on the air. To Wapiti a stranger at the cabin, where such visitants were unheard of, must needs be an enemy, or at least a suspect. He stepped delicately out into the path, stamped his fine hoof in defiance, and lowered his armory of antlers. They were keen and hard, these October antlers, for this was the moon of battle, and he was ready. In rutting season Wapiti was every inch a hero.

Now Dave Titus well knew that this was no bluff of Wapiti’s. He was amused and embarrassed. He could not fight this unexpected foe, for victory or defeat would be equally fatal to his hope of pleasing Miranda. As a consequence, here he was, Dave Titus, the noted hunter, the Nimrod, held up by a rutting buck! Well, the trouble was of Miranda’s making. She’d have to get him out of it. Facing the defiant Wapiti at a distance of five or six paces, he rested the butt of his rifle on his toe and sent a mellow, resonant heigh-lo, heigh-lo! echoing over the still air. The forest edges took it up, answering again and again. Kirstie and Miranda came to the door to see who gave the summons, and they understood the situation at a glance.

“Call off yer dawg, Mirandy,” cried Young Dave, “an’ I’ll come an’ pay ye a visit.”

“He thinks you’re going to hurt us,” explained Kirstie; and Miranda, with a gay laugh, ran to the rescue.

“You mustn’t frighten the good little boy, Wapiti,” she cried, pushing the big deer out of her path and running to Dave’s side. As soon as Wapiti saw Miranda with Dave, he comprehended that the stranger was not a foe. With a flourish of his horns he stepped aside and led his herd off through the barnyard.

Arriving at the door, where Kirstie, gracious, but impassive, awaited him, Dave exclaimed: “She’s saved my life ag’in, Kirstie, that girl o’ yourn. First it’s a painter, an’ now it’s a rutting buck. Wonder what it’ll be next time!”

“A rabbit, like as not, or a squir’l, maybe,” suggested Miranda, unkindly.

“Whatever it be,” persisted Dave, “third time’s luck for me, anyways. If you save my life agin, Mirandy, you’ll hev’ to take care o’ me altogether. I’ll git to kind of depend on ye.”

“Then I reckon, Dave, you’ll get out of your next scrape by yourself,” answered Miranda, with discouraging decision.

“That’s one on you, Dave,” remarked Kirstie, with a strictly neutral air. But behind Miranda’s back she shot him a look which said, “Don’t you mind what she says, she’s all right in her heart!” which, indeed, was far from being the case. Had Dave been so injudicious as to woo openly at this stage of Miranda’s feelings, he would have been dismissed with speedy emphasis.

Dave was in time to help with the milking, – a process which he boyishly enjoyed. The cows, five of them, were by now lowing at the bars. Kirstie brought out three tin pails. “You can help us, if you like, Dave,” she cried, while Miranda looked her doubt of such a clumsy creature’s capacity for the gentle art of milking. “Can you milk?” she asked.

“’Course I can, though I haven’t had much chance, o’ late years, to practise,” said Dave.

“Can you milk without hurting the cow? Are you sure? And can you draw off the strippings clean?” she persisted, manifestly sceptical.

“Try me,” said Dave.

“Let him take old Whitey, Miranda. He’ll get through with her, maybe, while we’re milking the others,” suggested Kirstie.

“Oh, well, any one could milk Whitey,” assented Miranda; and Dave, on his mettle, vowed within himself that he’d have old Whitey milked, and milked dry, and milked to her satisfaction, before either Kirstie or Miranda was through with her first milker. He stroked the cow on the flank, and scratched her belly gently, and established friendly relations with her before starting; and the elastic firmness of his strong hands chanced to suit Whitey’s large teats. The animal eyed him with favour and gave down her milk affluently. As the full streams sounded more and more liquidly in his pail, Dave knew that he had the game in his hands, and took time to glance at his rivals. To his astonishment there was Kroof standing up on her haunches close beside Miranda, her narrow red tongue lolling from her lazily open jaws, while she watched the milky fountains with interest.

While Kirstie’s scarlet kerchiefed head was still pressed upon her milker’s flank, and while Miranda was just beginning to draw off the rich “strippings” into a tin cup, Dave completed his task. His pail – he had milked the strippings in along with the rest – was foaming creamily to the brim. He arose and vaunted himself. “Some day, when I’ve got lots of time,” he drawled, “I’ll l’arn you two how to milk.”

“You needn’t think you’re done already,” retorted Miranda, without looking up. “I’ll get a quart more out of old Whitey, soon as I’m through here.”

But Kirstie came over and looked at the pail. “No, you won’t, Miranda, not this time,” she exclaimed. “Dave’s beaten us, sure. Old Whitey never gave us a fuller pail in her life. Dave, you can milk. You go and milk Michael over there, the black-an’-white one, for me. I’ll leave you and Miranda, if you won’t fall out, to finish up here, while I go and get an extra good supper for you, so’s you’ll come again soon. I know you men keep your hearts in your stomachs, just where we women know how to reach them easy. Where’d we have been if the Lord hadn’t made us cooks!”

Such unwonted pleasantry on the part of her sombre mother proved to Miranda that Dave was much in her graces, and she felt moved to a greater austerity in order that she might keep the balance true. Throughout the rest of the milking, she answered all Dave’s attempts at conversation with briefest yes or no, and presently reduced him to a discouraged silence. During supper, – which consisted of fresh trout fried in corn meal, and golden hot johnny-cake with red molasses, and eggs fried with tomatoes, and sweet curds with clotted cream, all in a perfection to justify Kirstie’s promise, – Miranda relented a little, and talked freely. But Dave had been too much subdued to readily regain his cheer. It was his tongue now that knew but yes and no. Confronted by this result of her unkindness, Miranda’s sympathetic heart softened. Turning in her seat to slip a piece of johnny-cake, drenched in molasses, into the expectant mouth of Kroof who sat up beside her, she spoke to Dave in a tone whose sweetness thrilled him to the finger-tips. The instinct of coquetry, native and not unknown to the furtive folk themselves, was beginning to stir within Miranda’s untaught heart.

“I’m going down to the lake to-night, Dave,” she said, “to set a night line and see if I can catch a togue.1 There’s a full moon, and the lake’ll be worth looking at. Won’t you come along with us?”

“Won’t I, Miranda? Couldn’t think of nothin’ I’d like better!” was the eager response.

“We’ll start soon as ever we get the dishes washed up,” explained the girl. “And you can help us at that – what say, mother?”

“Certainly, Dave can help us,” answered Kirstie, “if you have the nerve to set the likes of him at woman’s work. But I reckon I won’t go with you to-night to the lake. Kroof and Dave’ll be enough to look after you.”

“I’ll look after Dave, more like,” exclaimed Miranda, scornfully, remembering both Wapiti and the panther. “But what’s the matter, mother? Do come. It won’t be the same without you.”

“Seems to me I’m tired to-night, kind of, and I just want to stay at home by the fire and think.”

Miranda sprang up, with concern in her face, and ran round to her mother’s seat.

“Tired, mother!” she cried, scanning her features anxiously. “Who ever heard of people like you and me, who are strong, and live right, being tired? I’m afraid you’re not well, mother; I won’t go one step!”

“Yes, you will, dearie,” answered her mother, and never yet had Miranda rebelled against that firm note in Kirstie’s voice. “I really want to be alone to-night a bit, and think. Dave’s visit has stirred up a lot of old thoughts, and I want to take a look at them. I reckoned they were dead and buried years ago!”

“Are you sure you’re not sick, mother?” went on Miranda, hesitatingly returning to her seat.

“No, child, I’m not sick. But I have felt tired off an’ on the last few days when there was no call to. I do begin to feel that this big solitude of the woods is wearing on me, someway. I’ve stood up under it all these years, Dave, and it’s given me peace and strength when I needed it bad enough, God knows. But someway I reckon it’s too big for me, and will crush me in the long run. I love the clearing, but I don’t just want to end my days here.”