Cedar Creek Part 11

'I guess we han't no masters here, Pat,' was the reply; 'but if you see anywar else to stow the traps, I ain't partic'ler.' And he stolidly continued unloading.

'Come,' said the cheery voice of Sam Holt, 'we will have daylight enough to explore the lot, and select a site for a camp. I think I can discover the tops of cedars over the hardwood trees here. The boxes will take care of themselves, unless a squirrel takes into his head to inspect them. Let's follow the concession line along westward first.'

Callaghan stayed by the luggage, feeling by no means sure of its safety, and saw the rest of the party gradually receding among the trees, with sensations akin to those of a sailor on a desert island. Sitting upon the tool-chest, like an item of property saved from a wreck, Andy looked from the base to the summit of the huge walls of forest that encompa.s.sed him, and along the ca.n.a.l of sky overhead, till his countenance had fallen to zero.

The shipwrecked sensation had gone farther; Mr. Holt saw it lurking in other faces, and forthwith found all advantages possible in the lot. The soil was sure to be the best: he could tell by the timber. Its height proved the depth of earth. When the trees grew shorter, a hidden treasure of limestone flag lay beneath the surface, useful for drains and building. And even the entangled cedar swamp was most desirable, as furnishing the best wood for rail-fences and logs for a house.

But nothing could look more unpromising. Blackish pools of water alternated with a network of ma.s.sive roots all over the soil, underneath broad evergreen branches; trunks of trees leaned in every direction, as if top-heavy. Wilder confusion of thicket could not be conceived. 'The cedars troublesome! I should think so,' groaned their owner.

'This is the worst bit,' acknowledged Sam. 'Now, if we could see it, the lake is down yonder; perhaps if we strike a diagonal across the lot, we may come to some rising ground.' With the pocket compa.s.s for guide they left the blazed line, which they had followed hitherto. After a short distance the bush began to thin, and the forest twilight brightened.

'A beaver meadow!' exclaimed Sam Holt, who was foremost. Green as emerald, the small semicircular patch of gra.s.s lay at the foot of gentle slopes, as if it had once been a lakelet itself. 'Two acres ready cleared, with the finest dairy gra.s.s only waiting to be eaten,' continued encouraging Sam. 'And the clearing on the hill will command the best view in the township; there's the site for your house, Wynn. Altogether you've had rare luck in this lot.'

'But why is that green flat called a _beaver_ meadow?' asked Robert.

'Do you see the creek running alongside? No, you can't for the underbrush; but it's there all the same. Well, they say that long ago beavers dammed up the current in such places as this with clay and brushwood, so that the water spread over all level s.p.a.ces near; and when the Indians and French were at war, the red men cut away the dams and killed the beavers wholesale to spite their enemies. You're to take that just as an _on dit_, recollect.'

'And is all that verdure an appearance or a reality?'

'Something of both. I don't say but you will occasionally find it treacherous footing, needing drainage to be comfortable. See! there's the pond at last.'

They had been climbing out of the denser woods, among a younger growth on the face of the slope; and when they turned, the sheet of water was partially visible over the sunken cedar swamp.

'A pond!' exclaimed Arthur; 'why, it must be three miles across to those limestone cliffs. What pretty islets! Such endless varieties of wood and water!'

'I think we Americans are rather given to the diminutive style of parlance,' quoth Mr. Holt. 'We have some justification in the colossal proportion of all the features of nature around us. What is this pretty lake but a mere pool, compared with our Erie and Superior?'

[Ill.u.s.tration: PREPARING FOR THE FIRST NIGHT IN THE BUSH.]

'It is one of a chain,' remarked Robert, taking from his breast pocket a map of the district, which had his own farm heavily scored in red ink. Often had he contemplated that outline of the _terra incognita_ on which he now trod, and longed for the knowledge he now possessed, which, after its manner, had brought him both good and evil. Like b.a.l.l.s threaded on a cord, a succession of lakes, connected by cascades and portages, or by reaches of river, stretched away to the north-west, sorely marring the uniformity of the chess-board townships.

As they picked their way back along the lot line northward, Mr. Holt stopped suddenly. 'I hear a very singular noise,' he said, 'for which I am wholly at a loss to account, unless there be Indians about in the neighbourhood. Even then it is totally unlike their cries. Listen!'

His sharper senses had detected before theirs a distant wail, proceeding from some distance in front, apparently--weird and wild as it could be, dying away or surging upon the ear as the wind swept it hither or thither. Arthur shrugged his shoulders. 'You have no ghosts in these forests, Holt, I suppose?'

'The country's too new for anything of the sort,' replied he gravely.

'Nor any mocking birds that can be playing us a trick? Or dryads warning us off their territory?'

He had recognised the performance of Andy Callaghan, who, when they turned the corner of the allotment, was discovered seated on the boxes as when they saw him last, and crooning the dismalest melody. But he had, in the meantime, recovered himself sufficiently to gather brushwood, and kindle a fire beside the road; likewise to cook a panful of rashers as the shadows grew longer and the day later.

'But sure I thought ye wor lost entirely; sure I thought ye wor never comin' at all, Masther Robert, avourneen. 'Twas that med me rise the keen. A single livin' thing I didn't lay my eyes on since, barrin' a big frog. I'm afeard thim are like sticks, Masther Arthur, they're so long fryin'.'

'No matter, Andy, they'll do first-rate. I'd only advise you to chop up more. I feel like eating all that myself;' and, trencher on knee, they dined with real backwood appet.i.tes.

A shelter for the night was the next consideration. Mr. Holt const.i.tuted himself architect, and commenced operations by lashing a pole across two trees at about his own height; the others cut sticks and shrubs for roofing. Three young saplings sloped back to the ground as princ.i.p.al rafters, and on these were laid a thatch of brushwood; the open ends of the hut were filled with the same material.

'Now,' said Sam Holt, contemplating the work of his hands with professional pride, 'when we have a big fire built in front, and a lot of hemlock brush to lie on, we shall be pretty comfortable.'

And he instructed his novices further in the art of making their couch luxuriously agreeable, by picking the hemlock fine, and spreading over it a buffalo skin. Sam Holt had evidently become acquainted with 'considerable' bush lore at his University of Toronto.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE YANKEE STOREKEEPER.

Three men stood with their axes amid the primeval forest. Vast trunks rose around them to an alt.i.tude of thirty or even fifty feet without a bough; above, 'a boundless contiguity of shade,' and below, a dense undergrowth of shrubs, which seemed in some places impenetrable jungle.

Three axes against thirty thousand trees. The odds were immensely in the dryads' favour; the pines and hardwoods might have laughed in every leaf at the puny power threatening their immemorial empire, and settled that _vis inertiae_ alone must overcome.

If, as Tennyson has bestowed upon the larkspur ears, the higher vegetation can listen also, the following conversation would that day have been heard from the triad of axe-men beginning their campaign against the forest, and 'bating no jot of heart or hope' in the contest.

'Here's the site for your shanty,' said Mr. Holt, dealing a blow on a fine maple before him, which left a white scar along the bark. 'It has the double advantage of being close to this fine spring creek, and sufficiently near the concession line.'

'And I'm sanguine enough to believe that there will be a view at some future period,' added Robert, 'when we have hewed through some hundred yards of solid timber in front. By the way, Holt, why are all the settlers' locations I have yet seen in the country so dest.i.tute of wood about them? A man seems to think it his duty to extirpate everything that grows higher than a pumpkin; one would imagine it ought to be easy enough to leave clumps of trees in picturesque spots, so as to produce the effect of the ornamental plantations at home. Now I do not mean exclusively the lowest grade of settlers, for of course from them so much taste was not to be expected; but gentlemen farmers and such like.'

'I dare say they contract such an antipathy to wood of every species during their years of clearing, that it is thenceforth regarded as a natural enemy, to be cut down wherever met with. And when you have seen one of our Canadian hurricanes, you will understand why an umbrageous elm or a majestic oak near one's dwellings may not always be a source of pleasurable sensations.'

'Still, I mean to spare that beautiful b.u.t.ternut yonder,' said Robert; 'of all trees in the forest it is prettiest. And I shall try to clear altogether in an artistic manner, with an eye to the principles of landscape gardening. Why, Holt! many an English _parvenu_ planning the grounds of his country seat, and contemplating the dwarf larches and infantine beeches struggling for thirty years to maturity, would give a thousand guineas for some of these lordly oaks and walnuts, just as they stand.'

Sam Holt refrained from expressing his conviction that, after a winter's chopping, Robert would retract his admiration for timber in any shape, and would value more highly a bald-looking stumpy acre prepared for fall wheat, than the most picturesque maple-clump, except so far as the latter boded sugar.

'To leave landscape gardening for after consideration,' said he, with some slight irony, 'let us apply ourselves at present to the shanty. I think, by working hard, we might have walls and roof up before dark.

Twenty by twelve will probably be large enough for the present--eh, Robert?'

Oh yes, certainly; for the house was to be commenced so soon, that the shanty could be regarded only as a temporary shelter. Blessed, labour-lightening sanguineness of youth! that can bound over intermediate steps of toil, and accomplish in a few thoughts the work of months or years.

So Mr. Holt measured the above dimensions on the ground, choosing a spot where the trunks appeared something less ma.s.sive, than elsewhere, and set his auxiliaries to cut down all the trees within the oblong, and for a certain distance round; arranging also that the logs should fall as near as might be to where they were wanted for the walls.

Now, the settler's first-felled tree is to him like a schoolboy's first Latin declension, or a lawyer's first brief--the pledge of ability, the earnest of future performances. Every success braces the nerves of mind, as well as the muscles of body. A victory over the woodland was embodied in that fallen maple. But Andy was so near getting smashed in the coming down of his tree, that Mr. Holt ordered him to lay by the axe, and bring his spade, to dig a hole in a certain spot within the oblong.

'An' its mighty harmless that crathur 'ud be agin the wood,' muttered the Irishman; 'throth, the earth in this counthry is mostly timber. An'

in the name of wondher what does he want wid a hole, barrin' we're to burrow like rabbits?'

But the others were too busy felling or chopping trees into lengths of log to heed Andy's wonderment; and the novices were agreeably surprised to find how dexterous they became in the handling of the axe, after even a few hours' practice. Their spirits rose; for 'nothing succeeds like success,' saith the Frenchman.

'Now I'll give you a lesson in ba.s.swood troughs,' said Mr. Holt. 'This shanty of yours is to be roofed with a double layer of troughs laid hollow to hollow; and we choose ba.s.swood because it is the easiest split and scooped. Shingle is another sort of roofing, and that must be on your house; but troughs are best for the shanty. See here; first split the log fair in the middle; then hollow the flat side with the adze.'

Robert was practising his precepts busily, when he was almost startled by a strange nasal voice beside him.

'Considerable well for a beginner; but I guess you put a powerful deal too much strength in yer strokes yet, stranger.'

The speaker was a tall lank man, with black hair to correspond, and lantern jaws; little cunning eyes, and a few scrubby patches of rusty stubble on chin and cheeks. Robert disliked him at once.

'Why didn't you stop at the "Corner" yesterday? 'Twarn't neighbourly to go on right away like that. But it all come, I reckon, of Britisher pride and impudence.'