The Backwoodsmen

Much surprised, Mandy Ann knelt upright and looked out over the edge of the bateau. She was no longer in the little sheltered cove, but far out on the river. The shores, slipping smoothly and swiftly past, looked unfamiliar to her. Where she expected to see the scattered cottages of the Settlement, a huge bank covered with trees, cut off the view. While she was so engrossed with her coloured glass, a puff of wind, catching the high sides of the bateau, had caused it to tug at its tether. The rope, carelessly fastened by some impatient boy, had slipped its hold; and the bateau had been swept smoothly out into the hurrying current. Half a mile below, the river rounded a woody point, and the drifting bateau was hidden from the sight of any one who might have hurried to recover it.

At the moment, Mandy Ann was not frightened. Her blue eyes danced with excitement as she tossed back her tousled curls. The river, flowing swiftly but smoothly, flashed and rippled in the noon sun in a friendly fashion, and it was most interesting to see how fast the shores slipped by. There was no suggestion of danger; and probably, at the back of her little brain, Mandy Ann felt that the beautiful river, which she had always loved and never been allowed to play with, would bring her back to her Granny as gently and unexpectedly as it had carried her away. Meanwhile, she felt only the thrilling and utterly novel excitement of the situation. As the bateau swung in an occasional oily eddy she laughed gaily at the motion, and felt as proud as if she were doing it herself. And the woodchuck, which had been very nervous at first, feeling that something was wrong, was so reassured by its mistress’s evident satisfaction that it curled up again on the bottom and hastened to resume its slumber.

In a little while the river curved again, sweeping back to its original course. Suddenly, in the distance, the bright spire of the Settlement church came into view, and then the familiar cottages. Mandy Ann’s laughing face grew grave, as she saw how very, very far away they looked. They took on, also, from the distance, a certain strangeness which smote her heart. This wonderful adventure of hers ceased to have any charm for her. She wanted to go back at once. Then her grandmother’s little grey house on the slope came into view. Oh, how terribly little and queer and far away it looked. And it was getting farther and farther away every minute. A frightened cry of “Granny! Granny! Take me home!” broke from her lips. She stood up, and made her way hurriedly to the other end of the bateau, which, being upstream, was nearer home. As her weight reached the bow, putting it deeper into the grip of the current, the bateau slowly swung around till it headed the other way. Mandy Ann turned and hurried again to the point nearest home. Whereupon the bateau calmly repeated its disconcerting manœuvre. All at once the whole truth of the situation burst upon Mandy Ann’s comprehension. She was lost. She was being carried away so far that she would never, never get back. She was being swept out into the terrible wilds that she had heard stories about. Her knees gave away in her terror. Crouching, a little red tumbled heap, on the bottom of the bateau, she lifted up her voice in shrill wailings, which so frightened the woodchuck that he came and crept under her skirt.

Below the Settlement the river ran for miles through a country of ever-deepening desolation, without cabin or clearing near its shores, till it emptied itself into the yet more desolate lake known as “Big Lonely,” a body of forsaken water about ten miles long, surrounded by swamps and burnt-lands. From the foot of Big Lonely the river raged away over a mile of thundering ledges, through a chasm known to the lumbermen as “The Devil’s Trough.” The fury of this madness having spent itself between the black walls of the canyon, the river continued rather sluggishly its long course toward the sea. A few miles below the Settlement the river began to get hurried and turbulent, chafing white through rocky rapids. When the bateau plunged into the first of these, Mandy Ann’s wailing and sobbing stopped abruptly. The clamour of the white waves and the sight of their lashing wrath fairly stupefied her. She sat up on the middle thwart, with the shivering woodchuck clutched to her breast, and stared about with wild eyes. On every side the waves leaped up, black, white, and amber, jumping at the staggering bateau. But appalling as they looked to Mandy Ann, they were not particularly dangerous to the sturdy, high-sided craft which carried her. The old bateau had been built to navigate just such waters. Nothing could upset it, and on account of its high, flaring sides, no ordinary rapids could swamp it. It rode the loud chutes triumphantly, now dipping its lofty nose, now bumping and reeling, but always making the passage without serious mishap. All through the rapids Mandy Ann would sit silent, motionless, fascinated with horror. But in the long, comparatively smooth reaches she would recover herself enough to cry softly upon the woodchuck’s soft brown fur, till that prudent little animal, exasperated at the damp of her caresses, wriggled away and crawled into his hated basket.

At last, when the bateau had run a dozen of these noisy “rips,” Mandy Ann grew surfeited with terror, and thought to comfort herself. Sitting down again upon the bottom of the bateau, she sadly sought to revive her interest in the “Chaney House.” She would finger the choicest bits of painted porcelain, and tell herself how pretty they were. She would choose a fragment of scarlet or purple glass, hold it up to her pathetic, tear-stained face, and try to interest herself in the coloured landscape that filed by. But it was no use. Even the amber glass had lost its power to interest her. And at length, exhausted by her terror and her loneliness, she sank down and fell asleep.

It was late afternoon when Mandy Ann fell asleep, and her sleep was the heavy semi-torpor coming after unrelieved grief and fear. It was unjarred by the pitching of the fiercer rapids which the bateau presently encountered. The last mile of the river’s course before joining the lake consisted of deep, smooth “dead-water”; but, a strong wind from the north-west having sprung up toward the end of the day, the bateau drove on with undiminished speed. On the edge of the evening, when the sun was just sinking into the naked tops of the rampikes along the western shore, the bateau swept out upon the desolate reaches of Big Lonely, and in the clutch of the wind hastened down mid-lake to seek the roaring chutes and shrieking vortices of the “Devil’s Trough.”

Out in the middle of the lake, where the heavy wind had full sweep, the pitching and thumping of the big waves terrified the poor little woodchuck almost to madness; but they made no impression on the wearied child, where she lay sobbing tremulously in her sleep. They made a great impression, however, on a light birch canoe, which was creeping up alongshore in the teeth of the wind, urged by two paddles. The paddlers were a couple of lumbermen, returning from the mouth of the river. All the spring and early summer they had been away from the Settlement, working on “the drive” of the winter’s logging, and now, hungry for home, they were fighting their way doggedly against wind and wave. There was hardly a decent camping-ground on all the swamp-cursed shores of Big Lonely, except at the very head of the lake, where the river came in, and this spot the voyagers were determined to make before dark. They would then have clear poling ahead of them next day, to get them home to the Settlement in time for supper.

The man in the bow, a black-bearded, sturdy figure in a red shirt, paddled with slow, unvarying strokes, dipping his big maple paddle deep and bending his back to it, paying no heed whatever to the heavy black waves which lurched at him every other second and threatened to overwhelm the bow of his frail craft. He had none of the responsibility. His part was simply to supply power, steady, unwavering power, to make head against the relentless wind. The man in the stern, on the other hand, had to think and watch and meet every assault, as well as thrust the canoe forward into the tumult. He was a gaunt, long-armed young giant, bareheaded, with shaggy brown hair blown back from his red-tanned face. His keen grey eyes noted and measured every capricious lake-wave as it lunged at him, and his wrist, cunning and powerful, delicately varied each stroke to meet each instant’s need. It was not enough that the canoe should be kept from broaching-to and swamping or upsetting. He was anxious that it should not ship water, and wet certain treasures which they were taking home to the backwoods from the shops of the little city down by the sea. And while his eyes seemed to be so engrossingly occupied in the battle with the waves of Big Lonely, they were all the time refreshing themselves with a vision–the vision of a grey house on a sunny hill-top, where his mother was waiting for him, and where a little yellow-haired girl would scream “Daddie, oh, Daddie!” when she saw him coming up the road.

The dogged voyagers were within perhaps two miles of the head of the lake, with the sun gone down behind the desolate rampikes, and strange tints of violet and rose and amber, beautiful and lonely, touching the angry turbulence of the waves, when the man in the bow, whose eyes were free to wander, caught sight of the drifting bateau. It was a little ahead of them, but farther out in the lake.

“Ain’t that old Joe’s bateau out yonder, Chris?” he queried, his trained woodsman’s eye recognizing the craft by some minute detail of build or blemish.

“I reckon it be!” answered Chris, after a moment’s scrutiny. “He’s let her git adrift. Water must be raisin’ sudden!”

“She’ll be a fine quality o’ kindlin’ wood in another hour, the rate she’s travelling” commented the other with mild interest. But the young giant in the stern was more concerned. He was sorry that old Joe should lose his boat.

“Darned old fool, not to tie her!” he growled. “Ef ’twarn’t fer this wind ag’in’ us, we could ketch it an’ tow it ashore fer him. But we can’t.”

“Wouldn’t stop fer it ef ’t had a bag o’ gold into it!” grunted the other, slogging on his paddle with renewed vigour as he looked forward to the camp-ground still so far ahead. He was hungry and tired, and couldn’t even take time to fill his pipe in that hurly-burly.

Meanwhile the bateau had swept down swiftly, and passed them at a distance of not more than a hundred yards. It was with a qualm of regret that Chris saw it go by, to be ground to splinters in the yelling madness of the Devil’s Trough. After it had passed, riding the waves bravely like the good old craft that it was, he glanced back after it in half-humorous regret. As he did so, his eye caught something that made him look again. A little furry brown creature was peering over the gunwale at the canoe. The gunwale tipped toward him at that instant and he saw it distinctly. Yes, it was a woodchuck, and no mistake. And it seemed to be making mute appeal to him to come and save it from a dreadful doom. Chris hesitated, looking doubtfully at his companion’s heaving back. It looked an unresponsive back. Moreover, Chris felt half ashamed of his own compassionate impulse. He knew that he was considered foolishly softhearted about animals and children and women, though few men cared to express such an opinion to him too frankly. He suspected that, in the present case, his companion would have a right to complain of him. But he could not stand the idea of letting the little beast–which had so evidently appealed to him for succour–go down into the horrors of the Devil’s Trough. His mind was made up.

“Mart,” he exclaimed, “I’m goin’ to turn. There’s somethin’ aboard that there old bateau that I want.” And he put the head of the canoe straight up into a big wave.

“The devil there is!” cried the other, taking in his paddle and looking around in angry protest. “What is it?”

“Paddle, ye loon! Paddle hard!” ordered Chris. “I’ll tell ye when we git her ’round.”

Thus commanded, and the man at the stern paddle being supreme in a canoe, the backwoodsman obeyed with a curse. It was no time to argue, while getting the canoe around in that sea. But as soon as the canoe was turned, and scudding with frightened swoops down the waves in pursuit of the fleeing bateau, he saw, and understood.

“Confound you, Chris McKeen, if ’tain’t nothin’ but a blankety blank woodchuck!” he shouted, making as if to back water and try to turn the canoe again.

Chris’s grey eyes hardened. “Look a’ here, Mart Babcock,” he shouted, “don’t you be up to no foolishness. Ye kin cuss all ye like–but either paddle as I tell ye or take in yer paddle an’ set quiet. I’m runnin’ this ’ere canoe.”

Babcock took in his paddle, cursing bitterly.

“A woodchuck! A measly woodchuck!” he shouted, with unutterable contempt expressed in every word. “I know’d ye was a fool, Chris McKeen, but I didn’t know ye was so many kinds of a mush-head of a fool!”

“Course it’s a woodchuck!” agreed Chris, surging on his paddle. “Do ye think I’d let the leetle critter go down the ‘Trough,’ jest so’s ye could git your bacon an’ tea an hour sooner? I always did like woodchucks, anyways.”

“I’ll take it out o’ yer hide fer this when we git ashore; you wait!” stormed Babcock, courageously. He knew it would be some time before they could get ashore, and so he would have a chance to forget his threat.

“That’s all right, Mart!” assented McKeen. “My hide’ll be all here waitin’ on ye. But fer now you jest git ready to do ez I tell ye, an’ don’t let the canoe bump ez we come up alongside the bateau. It’s goin’ to be a mite resky, in this sea, gittin’ hold of the leetle critter. I’m goin’ to take it home for Mandy Ann.”

As the canoe swept down upon the swooping and staggering bateau, Babcock put out his paddle in readiness to fend or catch as he might be directed. A moment later Chris ran the canoe past and brought her up dexterously under the lee of the high-walled craft. Babcock caught her with a firm grip, at the same time holding her off with the paddle, and glanced in, while Chris’s eyes were still occupied. His dark face went white as cotton.

“My God, Chris! Forgive me! I didn’t know!” he groaned.

“It’s–Mandy Ann!” exclaimed her father, in a hushed voice, climbing into the bateau and catching the child into his arms.

From Buck to Bear and Back

The sunny, weather-beaten, comfortable little house, with its grey sheds and low grey barn half enclosing its bright, untidy farmyard, stood on the top of the open hill, where every sweet forest wind could blow over it night and day.

Fields of oats, buckwheat, and potatoes came up all about it over the slopes of the hill; and its only garden was a spacious patch of cabbages and “garden sass” three or four hundred yards down toward the edge of the forest, where a pocket of rich black loam had specially invited an experiment in horticulture.

Like most backwoods farmers, Sam Coxen had been wont to look with large scorn on such petty interests as gardening; but a county show down at the Settlement had converted him, and now his cabbage patch was the chief object of his solicitude. He had proud dreams of prizes to be won at the next show–now not three weeks ahead.

It was his habit, whenever he harnessed up the team for a drive into the Settlement, to turn his head the last thing before leaving and cast a long, gratified look down over the cabbage patch, its cool, clear green standing out sharply against the yellow-brown of the surrounding fields. On this particular morning he did not turn for that look till he had jumped into the wagon and gathered up the reins. Then, as he gazed, a wave of indignation passed over his good-natured face.

There, in the middle of the precious cabbages, biting with a sort of dainty eagerness at first one and then another, and wantonly tearing open the crisp heads with impatient strokes of his knife-edged fore hoofs, was a tall wide-antlered buck.

Sam Coxen dropped the reins, sprang from the wagon, and rushed to the bars which led from the yard to the back field; and the horses–for the sake of his dignity he always drove the pair when he went into the Settlement–fell to cropping the short, fine grass that grew behind the well. In spite of having grown up in the backwoods, Sam was lacking in backwoods lore. He was no hunter, and he cared as little as he knew, about the wild kindreds of the forest. He had a vague, general idea that all deer were “skeery critters”; and if any one had told him that the buck, in mating season, was not unlikely to develop a fine militant spirit, he would have laughed with scorn.

Climbing upon the bars, he yelled furiously at the marauder, expecting to see him vanish like a red streak. But the buck merely raised his beautiful head and stared in mild surprise at the strange, noisy figure on the fence. Then he coolly slashed open another plump cabbage, and nibbled at the firm white heart.

Very angry, Coxen yelled again with all the power of healthy lungs, and waved his arms wildly over his head. But the vaunted authority of the human voice seemed in some inexplicable way to miss a connexion with the buck’s consciousness. The waving of those angry arms, however, made an impression upon him. He appeared to take it as a challenge, for he shook his beautiful antlers and stamped his forefeet defiantly–and shattered yet another precious cabbage.

Wrath struggled with astonishment in Sam Coxen’s primitive soul. Then he concluded that what he wanted was not only vengeance, but a supply of deer’s meat to compensate for the lost cabbages.

Rushing into the house, he snatched down his old muzzle-loader from the pegs where it hung on the kitchen wall. After the backwoods fashion, the gun was kept loaded with a general utility charge of buckshot and slugs, such as might come handy in case a bear should try to steal the pig. Being no sportsman, Coxen did not even take the trouble to change the old percussion-cap, which had been on the tube for six months. It was enough for him that the weapon was loaded.

Down the other slope of the hill, where the buck could not see him, Coxen hurried at a run, and gained the cover of the thick woods. Then, still running, he skirted the fields till the cabbage patch came once more in sight, with the marauder still enjoying himself in the midst of it.

At this point the long-dormant instinct of the hunter began to awake in Sam Coxen. Everything that he had ever heard about stalking big game flashed into his mind, and he wanted to apply it all at once. He noted the direction of the wind, and was delighted to find that it came to his nostrils straight from the cabbage patch.

He went stealthily, lifting and setting down his heavy-booted feet with a softness of which he had never guessed himself capable. He began to forget his indignation and think only of the prospect of bagging the game–so easily do the primeval instincts spring to life in a man’s brain. Presently, when within about a hundred yards of the place where he hoped to get a fair shot, Coxen redoubled his caution. He went crouching, keeping behind the densest cover. Then, growing still more crafty, he got down and began to advance on all fours.

Now it chanced that Sam Coxen’s eyes were not the only ones which had found interest in the red buck’s proceedings. A large black bear, wandering just within the shelter of the forest, had spied the buck in the open, and being curious, after the fashion of his kind, had sat down in a thicket to watch the demolition of the cabbages.

He had no serious thought of hunting the big buck, knowing that he would be hard to catch and troublesome if caught. But he was in that investigating, pugnacious, meddlesome mood which is apt to seize an old male bear in the autumn.

When the bear caught sight of Sam Coxen’s crawling, stealthy figure, not two paces from his hiding-place, his first impulse was to vanish, to melt away like a big, portentous shadow into the silent deeps of the wood. His next, due to the season, was to rush upon the man and smite him.

Then he realized that he himself was not the object of the man’s stealthy approach. He saw that what the hunter was intent upon was that buck out in the field. Thereupon he sank back on his great black haunches to watch the course of events. Little did Sam Coxen guess of those cunning red eyes that followed him as he crawled by.

At the point where the cover came nearest to the cabbage patch, Coxen found himself still out of range. Cocking his gun, he strode some twenty paces into the open, paused, and took a long, deliberate aim.

Catching sight of him the moment he emerged, the buck stood for some moments eyeing him with sheer curiosity. Was this a harmless passer-by, or a would-be trespasser on his new domain of cabbages? On second glance, he decided that it looked like the noisy figure which had waved defiance from the top of the fence. Realizing this, a red gleam came into the buck’s eye. He wheeled, stamped, and shook his antlers in challenge.

At this moment, having got a good aim, Coxen pulled the trigger. The cap refused to explode. Angrily he lowered the gun, removed the cap and examined it. It looked all right, and there was plenty of priming in the tube. He turned the cap round, and again took careful aim.

Now these actions seemed to the buck nothing less than a plain invitation to mortal combat. He was in just the mood to accept such an invitation. In two bounds he cleared the cabbages and came mincingly down to the fray.

This unexpected turn of affairs so flustered the inexperienced hunter that he altogether forgot to cock his gun. Twice he pulled desperately on the trigger, but with no result. Then, smitten with a sense of impotence, he hurled the gun at the enemy and fled.

Over the fence he went almost at a bound, and darted for the nearest tree that looked easy to climb. As his ill luck would have it, this tree stood just on the edge of the thicket wherein the much-interested bear was keeping watch.

A wild animal knows when a man is running away, and rarely loses a chance to show its appreciation of the fact. As Sam Coxen sprang for the lowest branch and swung himself up, the bear lumbered out from his thicket and reared himself menacingly against the trunk.

The buck, who had just cleared the fence, stopped short. It was clearly his turn now to play the part of spectator.

When Coxen looked down and saw his new foe his heart swelled with a sense of injury. Were the creatures of the wilderness allied against him? He was no coward, but he began to feel distinctly worried. The thought that flashed across his mind was: “What’ll happen to the team if I don’t get back to unharness them?” But meanwhile he was climbing higher and higher, and looking out for a way of escape.

About halfway up the tree a long branch thrust itself forth till it fairly overhung a thick young spruce. Out along this branch Coxen worked his way carefully. By the time the bear had climbed to one end of the branch, Coxen had reached the other. Here he paused, dreading to let himself drop.

The bear came on cautiously; and the great branch bent low under his weight, till Coxen was not more than a couple of feet from the top of the young fir. Then, nervously letting go, he dropped, caught the thick branches in his desperate clutch, and clung secure.

The big branch, thus suddenly freed of Coxen’s substantial weight, sprang back with such violence that the bear almost lost his hold. Growling angrily, he scrambled back to the main trunk, down which he began to lower himself, tail foremost.

From the business-like alacrity of the bear’s movements, Coxen realized that his respite was to be only temporary. He was not more than twelve feet from the ground, and could easily have made his escape while the bear was descending the other tree. But there below was the buck, keeping an eye of alert interest on both bear and man. Coxen had no mind to face those keen antlers and trampling hoofs. He preferred to stay where he was and hope for some unexpected intervention of fate. Like most backwoodsmen, he had a dry sense of the ridiculous, and the gravity of his situation could not quite blind him to the humour of it.

While Coxen was running over in his mind every conceivable scheme for getting out of his dilemma, the last thing he would have thought of actually happened. The buck lost interest in the man, and turned all his attention to the bear, which was just now about seven or eight feet from the ground, hugging the great trunk and letting himself down carefully, like a small boy afraid of tearing his trousers.