Cedar Creek: From the Shanty to the Settlement. A Tale of Canadian Life

Zack arrived with the ox-sled at the time appointed, and Ged perched on it.

'Just look at the pile of vessels the fellow has brought to carry away his share of the molasses and sugar,' said Arthur, as the clumsy vehicle came lumbering up. ''Twas a great stroke of business to give us all the trouble, and take all the advantage to himself—our trees, our fires, nothing but the use of his oxen as a set-off.'

The advantage was less than Arthur supposed; for maples are not impoverished by drainage of sap, and firewood is so abundant as to be a nuisance. But for Zack's innate love of even the semblance of overreaching, he might have discerned that his gain in this transaction was hardly worth the pains.

'Wal, Robert, you ha' poured off the molasses into the kettles; an' now fur the clarifyin'. I knowed as how ye had nothen' fit—milk, nor calf's blood, nor eggs, nor nothen'—so I brought up the eggs, an' when we're settlin' shares they kin be considered.'

'The old sharper!' muttered Arthur.

'I'm afeerd like they're beat up already,' said Mr. Bunting, picking them gingerly out of his pockets, 'though I made Ged drive a purpose. But that near ox has a trick of stickin' over stumps, an' I had obliged to cut a handspike to him. I declar' if they ain't all whole arter all, 'cept one.' He smashed them into a wooden bowl half full of molasses, and beat them up with a chip, then emptied the contents into the kettles, stirring well. Hung over a slow fire, from a pole resting on two notched posts, the slight simmering sound soon began; and on the top of the heated fluid gathered a scum, which Zack removed. After some repetitions of this skimming, and when the molasses looked bright and clear, Mr. Bunting asked for a bit of fat bacon.

'Which can be considered when we're dividing shares,' said Arthur, handing it to him a few minutes afterwards. A glance was Zack's reply, as he strung the bacon on a cord, and hung it below the rim, within two inches of the boiling surface.

'Indeed,' quoth Robert, looking on at the operation of this expedient for preventing the spilling over of the molasses, 'I wonder some cleaner mode of keeping the boiling within bounds has not been invented.'

'The Scotchman Davidson cools with a run of cold sap, out of a little spout an' a keg; but them notions don't suit me nohow; the bit o' bacon fixes it jest as right. By the way, did you hear that his farm is took? By a Britisher gentleman—I'm told an officer, too; I guess he'll want to back out o' the bush faster than he got in, ef he's like the most of 'em. I know'd some o' the sort, an' they never did a cent's worth o' good, hardly, though they was above bein' spoke to. 'Tain't a location for soft hands an' handsome clothes, I guess; an' I declar ef I don't think I ever saw gentlemen Britishers git along so remarkably smart as yerselves: but ye hain't been above work, that's a fact.'

The Wynns were glad enough of the prospect of a new neighbour of the educated class; for, more than once or twice, the total absence of congenial society in any sense of the word had been felt as a minor privation. Robert foresaw that when with future years came improved means and enlarged leisure, this need would be greater. Zack thought the new settlers ought to try and arrive before spring thaw.

'Yer own logging-bee might be 'bout that time, Robert,' he observed, while he narrowly watched his kettles and their incipient sugar. 'The fallow looks ready for burnin', I guess.'

'Yes, 'tis nearly all chopped and piled; but I'm more anxious to have a raising-bee for my new house. The logging can wait for a couple of months, Davidson tells me.'

'Wal, you'll want considerable of whisky for the teu,' observed Zack briskly; 'all the "Corner" 'll be sure to come, an' raise yer house off the ground right slick at onst. A frame-house, I calc'late?'

'Clapboarded and painted, if I can, Mr. Bunting.'

'Now I don't want ever to hear of no better luck than I had in gittin' that consignment of ile an' white lead t'other day. Jest the very thing fur you, I guess!'

Robert did not seem similarly struck by the coincidence.

'Any one but Zack would have melted away long ago over that roaring fire,' said Arthur some time afterwards, withdrawing from his kettle to fan himself. 'Being a tall bag of bones, I suppose he can't dissolve readily. What's he going to do now, I wonder?'

Mr. Bunting had chipped a thin piece of wood from one of the fire logs, and wrought through it a narrow hole, inch long; this he dipped in the seething molasses, and drew it forth filled with a thin film, which he blew out with his breath into a long bubble of some tenacity.

'Thar! 'tis sugared at last,' said he, jerking aside the chip; 'an' now fur the pans.'

By a remarkable clairvoyance, just at this juncture various younger members of the Bunting family made their appearance in the sugar-bush; and as fast as Uncle Zack poured forth the sweet stuff into the tins and shallow wooden vessels placed to receive it, did half-a-dozen pilfering hands abstract portions to dip in the snow and devour. Zack's remonstrances and threats were of no avail, and whenever he made a dash towards them, they dispersed in all directions 'quick as wink.'

'Ef I ketch you, Ged, you'll know the defference of grabbin' a pound out of this 'ere tin, I guess, you young varmint!'

''Taint so kinder aisy to catch a 'coon, Uncle Zack,' was the lad's rejoinder from the fork of a birch where he had taken refuge, and sucked his stolen goods at ease. Similar raids harassed the long line of cooling tins, and not all the efforts of the sugar-makers at mounting guard could protect them, until the guerilla corps of youngsters became in some degree surfeited, and slid away through the woods as they had come. Meanwhile, the best part of a stone of the manufacture had vanished.

'Them are spry chaps, I reckon,' was the parent's reflection, with some pride in their successful free-booting, though he had opposed its details.

'I would teach them to be honest, Mr. Bunting;' which speech only evoked a laugh.

'Now I guess you're riled 'cos they ran away with yer sugar, jest as ef 'twarn't more mine than yourn.'

This was unpromising as portended the division into shares, wherein Robert was overreached, as he knew he should be; but he comforted himself by the reflection that next year he should be able to do without his odious assistant, and that for this summer he had housekeeping-sugar enough. He utterly refused to enter into any coalition for the making of vinegar or beer. Towards the close of the sap season he tapped a yellow birch, by his Scotch neighbour's advice, drew from it thirty gallons in three days, boiled down that quantity into ten gallons, and set it to ferment in a sunny place, with a little potato yeast as the exciting cause. Of course the result was immensely too much vinegar for any possible household needs, considering that not even a cucumber bed was as yet laid out in the embryo garden.

But now April, 'the moon for breaking the snow-shoes,' in Ojibbeway parlance, was advancing; patches of brown ground began to appear under the hot sunlight, oozy and sloppy until the two-feet depth of frost was gradually exhaled. The dwellers in the shanty had almost forgotten the look of the world in colours, for so many months had it slept in white array. Robert could have kissed the earliest knot of red and blue hepaticas which bloomed at the base of a log-heap. But he looked in vain for that eldest child of an English spring, 'the wee modest crimson-tipped' daisy, or for the meek nestling primrose among the moss. And from the heaven's blue lift no music of larks poured down; no twitter of the chaffinch or whistle of the thrush echoed from the greening woods. Robert thought the blue-bird's voice a poor apology for his native songsters.

He had, indeed, little time for any reflections unconnected with hard work. The cedar swamp was shrinking before his axe, and yielding its fragrant timbers for the future house. From early morning till late at night the three men never ceased labour except for short meals; having, as their object and reward, the comfort of those dear ones who would arrive in July or August at farthest.

The existing shanty was to be retained as kitchen, and a little room could be railed off the end as a place for stores. Four apartments would constitute the new house, one of them to be a sitting room for the mother and Linda. How easy to build and furnish in fancy; how difficult in fact! Yet the raising-bee accomplished a great deal, though the Yankee storekeeper was discomfited to find that Davidson of Daisy Burn had undertaken the guidance of the hive; he sulked somewhat in consequence, and also because the consumption of spirits was not, as he had contemplated, to intoxication. Robert was backed by his sturdy Scottish neighbour in that resolve; and the more sensible of the workers could not but approve.

Four walls and roof were put together by the joint-stock labour of the day. Standing in the vacant doorway, Robert looked over the moonlit view of woods and islanded lake well pleased.

CHAPTER XXVIII

OLD FACES UPON NEW NEIGHBOURS

Now, while Arthur devoted himself chiefly to the interior carpentering, Robert burned and cleared a patch of fallow to be a garden. Their good friend Hiram Holt, among his other useful gifts, had sent with them in the waggon a stock of young apple trees, which had lain all winter half buried in a corner of the hut, to be grubbed up in spring and planted out in rows four rods apart. Beds of potatoes and turnips, set at the edges with pumpkin seeds and squares of Indian corn, filled the garden space in an orderly manner before the end of May; then rail fences sprang up about it, and the first bit of forest was fairly reclaimed.

During breakfast one morning, Andy rushed in, proclaiming that a raft was in sight on the lake, 'one 'most as big as a five-acre field,' he said. This proved rather an imaginative description on Andy's part, like many other of his verbal sketches; for the raft was infantine compared with its congeners of the great lake and the St. Lawrence. A couple of bonds lashed together—that was all; and a bond containeth twenty cribs, and a crib containeth a variable amount of beams, according to lumberers' arithmetical tables. Arthur recognised his acquaintance, the Scotch foreman, pacing the deck; he hailed the unwieldy craft, and shipped himself aboard for a voyage to the 'Corner,' where he had business at the store.

'Wid a horn in front, an' a tail behind, there it goes,' observed Andy, in allusion to the long oars projecting from rowlocks at each end. 'An' now, Masther Robert, what'll become o' that in the rapids below the sawmill? Sure 'twill be batthered in pieces, an' the water so mighty coorse intirely there; enough to make chaneys of any raft.'

''Twill be taken asunder, and the cribs sent down separately over the falls,' replied Mr. Wynn.

Arthur saw the operation by and by, and the hardy raftsmen shooting the rapids in what appeared to him circumstances of exciting peril. While he and all the disengaged dwellers at the 'Corner' were as yet looking on, a waggon came in sight from among the trees, and turned their curiosity into another channel.

Gradually it drew near, stumbling among the stumps and ruts, with all sorts of language applied to the oxen. Arthur thought he had formerly seen that figure marching by the off-wheel. That peculiar gentleman-like and military air, even shouldering a handspike, could not be mistaken.

'I guess as how 'tis the Britisher officer as has took Davidson's betterments,' said 'cute Zack; 'an' thar's womanfolks behind the waggon afoot. Wal, now, but I say I do pity them Britisher ladies a-coming into the bush—them that hain't never in their hull life as much as baked a biscuit. I ha' seen the like o' such in Montreal—delicate critters, that you wouldn't hardly think knowed the use of a fryin'-pan when they see'd it, an' couldn't lift one if they was to git a handful o' dollars. I guess these ain't much betterer nohow.'

It was a homily on the appearance of Edith Armytage and the child Jay picking their steps along after the waggon; while within, on hampers and boxes, stretched heavily, lay their brother, taking things easy by means of sleep. The captain's salute to Arthur was most cordial.

'So, my dear young friend! What most fortunate fate has thrown us together again? A very pleasant freak of destiny, truly. I left you last with an uncomfortable old gentleman, who was particularly obstinate in his opinions about the seignorial system, as I remember. He was right, my young friend, in condemning that system, eh? Perfectly right. I left it in disgust. Incompatible with a British officer's feelings, eh?'

Here his monologue was disturbed by little Jay's running up to Arthur very joyously. 'I told Edith we should meet you. I knew we should. And how is Robert and your funny servant? Ah, I am very glad!'

'Jane, my dear, I have repeatedly told you not to be so boisterous,' put in her father. 'Go back, and walk with your sister Edith.'

The little girl tried to withdraw her hand and obey, though with a wistful look; but Arthur detained it, and went with her the few steps to meet Miss Armytage:

'Edith, are you not glad? They all live at Cedar Creek, quite close to Daisy Burn, and we can see them every day; and he says Daisy Burn is a very nice place'—

'I have had some experience of children,' began Captain Armytage stiffly, 'but one so talkative as Jane I have seldom met. You should correct her, Edith, my dear.' For the man's voice was what he wished to hear. Edith's hand was most gently laid on the dear little sister's arm as a caution; but at this juncture both gentlemen were obliged to press forward and help the oxen out of some critical situations, and Jay could whisper her delight and her anticipations without fear of reprimand for a few minutes at least.

Then, when the waggon brought up in front of Mr. Bunting's store, young Armytage woke up with a mighty yawn and stretch to declare that bush travelling was the greatest bore—would they ever reach the farm? And he thereupon arose to the exertion of kindling his pipe.

'Nonsense, Wynn, can that be you? Glad to see some face I know among these endless trees. They're nearly as sickening to me as waves to a fellow in his first voyage. Hope the farm has been well cleared of them. You know the ground, eh?'

'Not all cleared by any means; but if you had to take the axe in hand as we have'—

'Gentlemen, are you going to liquor?' said Zack in a persuasive tone, marshalling the way into his bar. 'Almeria, tell your ma to bring here some of her best beer to treat these gentlemen—partic'lar friends. Be spry, will you?'

The tawny black-eyed young lady answering to the above high-sounding cognomen returned in a few moments with a jug, whence her father poured forth three horn goblets of dark fluid. Arthur, through superior knowledge not touching his, was highly amused by the grimaces of the others. Indeed, the captain had swallowed a huge gulp of it before he realized fully its strange flavour, and then could but sputter and scour his moustache and lips with his handkerchief. Mr. Bunting looked on with exemplary gravity.

'Thar! I told th' ole woman that spruce beer ain't so good as usual this brewin'.'

'Good! the vilest compound. A fir-tree steeped in a stagnant pool!' exclaimed the irate captain, with considerable warmth of colouring. 'Bring me something, sirrah, to take away the odious taste—anything you like.'

Mr. Bunting obeyed with alacrity. Arthur left father and son over their pipes and glasses, and went outside to join Miss Armytage and Jay, who had declined various overtures to enter the store, and were the cynosure of all eyes in the 'Corner' as they walked to and fro on the stumpless strip of ground in the place—a fair child and a pale girl. Presently forth came the captain.

'Edith, my dear,' he said blandly, 'I may be detained here for half an hour; I find that mine host, Mr. Bunting, has a very exact knowledge of the locality to which we are going. I think you both might be going on with the waggon; your brother will follow in a minute or so when his smoke is finished, he says. Driver, you may go forward; au revoir, Edith.'

He kissed the tips of his fingers to his daughter gallantly, and passed into the bar again with a jaunty air.

'If you will allow me to accompany you,' said Arthur, seeing that she hesitated, 'you will do me a kindness, for I have rather a large pack to carry going home; I can rest it on the waggon; and Daisy Burn is more than half-way to Cedar Creek.'

'Did I not tell you we would find out Arthur and Robert?' said the child Jay, with an ecstatic clasp of her fingers upon young Wynn's. 'You said you were afraid we should have no friends in the woods, but I knew that God would not let us be so forsaken as that.'

And the three walked on into the long vista of the concession line.

CHAPTER XXIX

ONE DAY IN JULY

A summer more glorious than our settlers could have imagined, followed on the steps of the tardy spring. What serene skies—what brilliant sunshine—what tropical wealth of verdure! At every pore the rich earth burst forth into fruit and flower. Two months after the grass had been sunk deep beneath the snow, sheets of strawberries were spread in the woods, an extemporized feast.

One might think that the cottage at Cedar Creek had also bloomed under the fair weather; for when July—hottest of Canadian months—came, the dingy wooden walls had assumed a dazzling white, with a roof so grey that the shingles might have been veritable slates. Resemblance to the lime-washed houses of home was Robert's fancy; which, in Zack Bunting's mind, was a perverted taste, as he recommended a brilliant green groundwork, picked out with yellow, such canary-bird costume being favourite in Yankee villages.

The few feet of garden railed off in front are filled with bushes of the fragrant Canadian wild-rose; yellow violets, lobelias, and tiger-lilies, transplanted thither from the forest glades, appear to flourish. The brothers had resolved that Linda should not miss her flower-beds and their gentle care even in bush-life.

For the rest, the clearing looks wild enough, notwithstanding all civilising endeavours. That mighty wall of trees has not been pushed back far, and the débris of the human assault, lying on the soil in vast wooden lengths, seems ponderous even to discouragement. Robert has been viewing it all through stranger eyes for the last week, since he heard the joyful news that they for whom he has worked have landed at Montreal; he has been putting finishing touches wherever he could, yet how unfinished it is!

To-day Andy alone is in possession; for his young masters have gone to meet the expected waggon as far as Peter Logan's—nay, to Greenock if necessary. He has abundance of occupation for the interval; first, to hill up a patch of Indian corn with the hoe, drawing the earth into little mounds five or six inches high round each stalk; and after that, sundry miscellaneous duties, among which milking the cow stands prominent. She is enjoying herself below in the beaver meadow, while the superior animal, Andy, toils hard among the stumps, and talks to himself, as wont.

'Why, thin, I wondher what th' ould masther 'ull say to our clearin', an' how he'll take to the life, at all, at all; he that niver did a hand's turn yet in the way of business, only 'musin' himself wid papers an' books as any gintleman ought; how he'll stand seein' Masther Robert hoein' and choppin' like a labourin' man? More be token, it's little o' that thim pair down at Daisy Burn does. I b'lieve they 'spect things to grow ov thimselves 'athout any cultivatin'. An' to see that poor young lady hillin' the corn herself—I felt as I'd like to bate both the captin an' his fine idle son—so I would, while I could stand over 'em.'

He executed an aërial flourish with his hoe, and the minute after, found practical occupation for it in chasing two or three great swine who were poking at the fence, as if they longed for the sweet young cornstalks within. Whence the reader may perceive that Mr. Wynn had become proprietor of certain items of live stock, including sundry fowls, which were apt to keep all parties in exhilarating exercise by their aggressions on the garden.

'Musha, but 'tis very hot intirely,' soliloquized Andy, returning from the aggravated stern-chase of the swine, and lifting his grass hat to fan his flushed face. 'The sun don't know how to obsarve a madium at all in this counthry, as our poor ould Irish sun does. We're aither freezin' or fryin' the year round.' Hereupon, as reminded by the last-named experience, he threw down his hoe, and went to settle the smouldering fires in the fallow, where one or two isolated heaps of brush were slowly consuming, while their bluish smoke curled up lazily in the still air. 'It's quare to think of how lonesome I am this minnit,' continued he, as he blackened himself in ministering to the heaps. 'Sorra livin' sowl to spake to nearer than the captin's, barrin' the cow, an' the pigs, an' thim savidges down at the swamp.'

Here he made an infuriate swing backwards of a bush, fortunately in his hand; but it was against no Indian foe; on the contrary, his own shoulders received the blow, and another to make sure; whereby an individual enemy was pasted to the spot where its proboscis had pierced shirt and skin, and half-a-dozen others saved themselves by flight—being the dreaded black flies of Canada.

'Why, thin, ye murtherin' villins, will ye follow me into the smoke itself?' said Andy, whirling his bush in the air to disperse their squadrons. 'I thought ye wor satisfied wid most atin' us last week, an' blindin' the young gintlemin, an' lavin' lumps on their faces as big as hazel nuts. Betune yerselves an' the miss kitties, it's hard for a man to do a sthroke of work, wid huntin' ye. Ay, ye may well moo, ye crathur below in the meadow, that has only horns an' a tail to fight 'em. An' sure, may be 'tain't the cow at all that's roarin', only one of them big frogs that bellows out of the swamp, for all the world as if they was bullocks.'

To settle the question, he walked away down to the beaver meadow, now an expanse of the most delicious level green, and found that the cow had protected herself against all winged adversaries by standing in the creek up to her throat in the cool water, where she chewed the cud tranquilly, and contemplated with an impassive countenance the construction of a canoe at a little distance by two red men and their squaws. Andy paused and looked on likewise.

One woman was stripping a large white birch of its bark with a sharp knife; she scraped away the internal coating as a tanner would scrape leather, and laid the pieces before the other squaw, whose business was to stitch them together with bast. The men meanwhile prepared a sausage-shaped framework of very thin cedar ribs, tying every point of junction with firm knots; for the aforesaid bast is to the Indian what glue and nails are to the civilised workman.

'Throth, only for the birch threes I dunno what they'd do; for out of it's skin they make houses, an' boats, an' pots to bile vittles, an' candles to burn, an' ornaments like what Mr. Robert has above.' A pause, as he watched the bark turned over the ribs, and wedge-shaped pieces cut out to prevent awkward foldings near the gunwale—all carried on in solemn silence. 'Well, there's no manner of doubt but savages are great intirely at houldin' their tongues; sure, may be it's no wondher, an' their langidge the quare sort it is, that they don't want to spake to each other but as little as they can help.'

Here the nearest Indian raised his head, and appeared to listen to a distant sound; a low word or two attracted the attention of the others, who also listened, and exchanged a few sentences, with a glance at Andy, whose curiosity was roused; and he asked, chiefly by signs, what it was all about.

'Oxen—waggon,' was the reply; 'me hear driver. White man no have long ears.'

Andy fled with precipitation to his neglected duties, while the red men laughed their low quiet laugh, knowing that the waggon they heard could not reach Cedar Creek in less than an hour.

But at last it came. At last Linda, pressing eagerly forward upon Robert's arm, had caught a first glimpse of their cottage home, and exclaimed, 'O Bob, how pretty! Why, you told me it was a rough sort of a place; how very pretty!'