Cedar Creek Part 18

'I noticed a bed of them here the other day. Now if you want a proof of the genial influence of the long-continued snow on vegetation, I can tell you that these cranberries--ottakas, the French Canadians call them--go on ripening through the winter under three or four feet of snow, and are much better and juicier than in October, when they are generally harvested. That cedar swamp ought to be full of them.'

'I wonder can they be preserved in any way,' said Robert, crushing in his lips the pleasant bitter-sweet berry. 'Linda is a wonderful hand at preserves, and when she comes'--

The thought seemed to energize him to the needful preparation for that coming: he immediately made a chop at a middle-aged Weymouth pine alongside, and began to cut it down.

'Well, as to preserving the cranberries,' said Mr. Holt, laughing in his slight silent way, 'there's none required; they stay as fresh as when plucked for a long time. But your sister may exercise her abilities on the pailfuls of strawberries, and raspberries, and sand cherries, and wild plums, that fill the woods in summer. As to the cranberry patches, it is a curious fact that various Indian families consider themselves to have a property therein, and migrate to gather them every autumn, squaws and children and all.'

'It appears that my swamp is unclaimed, then,' said Robert, pausing in his blows.

'Not so with your maples,' rejoined the other; 'there's been a sugar camp here last spring, or I'm much mistaken.'

He was looking at some old scars in the trunks of a group of maples, at the back of the Weymouth pine on which Robert was operating.

'Yes, they've been tapped, sure enough; but I don't see the _loupes_--the vats in which they leave the sap to crystallize: if it were a regular Indian "sucrerie," we'd find those. However, I suspect you may be on the look-out for a visit from them in spring--_au temps des sucres_, as the _habitans_ say.'

'And I'm not to a.s.sert my superior rights at all?'

'Well, there's certainly sugar enough for both parties during your natural lives, and the Indians will sheer off when they find the ground occupied; so I'd advise you to say nothing about it. Now, Wynn, let your pine fall on that heap of brushwood; 'twill save a lot of trouble afterwards; if not, you'll have to drag the head thither and chop and pile the branches, which is extra work you'd as soon avoid, I dare say.'

After some judicious blows from the more experienced axe, the pine was good enough to fall just as required.

'Now the trunk must be chopped into lengths of twelve or fourteen feet;'

and Mr. Holt gashed a mark with his axe at such distances, as well as he could guess. When it was done--

'What's the rate of speed of this work?' asked Robert. 'It seems so slow as to be almost hopeless; the only consideration is, that one is doing it all for one's self, and--for those as dear as self,' he could have added, but refrained.

'About an acre in eight or nine days, according to your expertness,' was the reply. Robert did a little ciphering in his mind immediately. Three axes, plus twenty-seven days (minus Sundays), equal to about the chopping of ten acres and a fraction during the month of December. The calculation was somewhat rea.s.suring.

'What curious curves there are in this Canadian axe!' he remarked, as he stood leaning on the handle and looking down. 'It differs essentially from the common woodman's axe at home.'

'And which the English manufacturers persisted in sending us, and could not be induced to make on precisely the model required, until we dispensed with their aid by establishing an edge-tool factory of our own in Galt, on the Grand River.'

'That was a declaration of independence which must have been very sensibly felt in Sheffield,' remarked Robert.

They worked hard till dinner, at which period they found Arthur limping about the shanty.

'I practised those villainous snow-shoes for several hours, till I walked beautifully; but see what I've got by it,' he said: 'a pain across the instep as if the bones would split.'

'Oh, just a touch of _mal de raquette_,' observed Sam Holt, rather unsympathizingly. 'I ought to have warned you not to walk too much in them at first.'

'And is there no cure?' asked Arthur, somewhat sharply.

'Peter Logan would scarify your foot with a gun-flint, that is, if the pain were bad enough. Do you feel as if the bones were broken, and grinding together across the instep?'

But Arthur could not confess to his experiences being so bad as this.

Only a touch of the _mal de raquette_, that was all. Just a-paying for his footing in snow-shoes.

CHAPTER XX.

THE ICE-SLEDGE.

Sam Holt had long fixed the first snow as the limit of his stay. He had built his colossal shoes in order to travel as far as Greenock on them, and there take the stage, which came once a week to that boundary of civilisation and the post.

Two or three days of the intensest frost intervened between the first snow and the Thursday on which the stage left Greenock. Cedar Pond was stricken dead--a solid gleaming sheet of stone from sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e. A hollow smothered gurgle far below was all that remained of the life of the streams; and nightly they shrank deeper, as the tremendous winter in the air forced upon them more ice, and yet more.

Notwithstanding the roaring fires kept up in the shanty chimney, the stinging cold of the night made itself felt through the unfinished walls. For want of boards, the necessary interior wainscoting had never been put up. The sight of the frozen pond suggested to Mr. Holt a plan for easily obtaining them. It was to construct an ice-boat, such as he had seen used by the Indians: to go down to the 'Corner' on skates, lade the ice-boat with planks, and drive it before them back again.

Arthur, who hailed with delight any variety from the continual chopping, entered into the scheme with ardour. Robert would have liked it well enough, but he knew that two persons were quite sufficient for the business; he rather connived at the younger brother's holidays; he must abide by the axe.

One board, about nine feet long, remained from Arthur's attempts at 'slabbing.' This Mr. Holt split again with wedges, so as to reduce it considerably in thickness, and cut away from the breadth till it was only about twenty inches wide. The stoutest rope in the shanty stores was fastened to it fore and aft, and drawn tightly to produce a curve into boat shape, and a couple of cross pieces of timber were nailed to the sides as a sort of bal.u.s.trade and reinforcement to the rope. The ice-sledge was complete; the voyagers tied down their fur caps over their ears, strapped the dreadnought boots tightly, and launched forth.

'Throth, I donno how they do it at all, at all,' said Andy, who had lent his strength to the curving of the sledge, and now shook his head as he viewed them from the sh.o.r.e. 'I'd as soon go to walk on the edges of knives as on them things they call skates; throth, betune the shoes as long as yerself for the snow, an' the shoes wid soles as sharp as a soord for the ice, our own ould brogues aren't much use to us. An' as for calling that boord a boat, I hope they won't thry it on the wather, that's all.'

As if he had discharged his conscience by this protesting soliloquy, Mr.

Callaghan turned on his heel, and tramped after Robert up to the shanty.

Meanwhile, the voyagers had struck out from the natural cove formed by the junction of the creek with the pond, where were clumps of stately reeds, stiffened like steel by the frost. The cedar boughs in the swamp at the edge drooped lower than ever under their burden of snow; the stems looked inky black, from contrast. The ice-boat pushed on beautifully, with hardly any exertion, over the greyish glistening surface of the lake.

'I fancy there's a bit of breeze getting up against us,' said Mr. Holt, in a momentary pause from their rapid progression.

''Twill be in our backs coming home,' suggested Arthur, as an obvious deduction.

'And if we can fix up a sail anyhow, we might press it into our service to propel the sledge,' said Mr. Holt.

'Well, I never did hear of sails on dry land before,' said Arthur, thereby proving his Irish antecedents; of which his quick-witted companion was not slow to remind him.

'But I don't much admire that greyish look off there,' he added, becoming grave, and pointing to a hazy discolouration in the eastern skies. 'I shouldn't be surprised if we had a blow to-night; and our easterly winds in winter always bring snow.'

Uncle Zack was lost in admiration of the spirit which projected and executed this ice-boat voyage. 'Wal, you are a knowin' shave,' was his complimentary observation to Mr. Holt. ''Twar a smart idee, and no mistake. You'll only want to fix runners in front of the ice-sled goin'

back, an' 'twill carry any load as easy as drinkin'. 'Spose you han't got an old pair of skates handy? I've most remarkable good 'uns at the store, that'll cut right slick up to the Cedars in no time if tacked on to the sled. You ain't disposed to buy 'em, are you? Wal, as you be hard fixed, I don't care if I lend 'em for a trifle. Quarter dollar, say.

That's dog-cheap--it's a rael ruination. Take it out in potash or maple sugar next spring--eh? Is it five cents cash you named, Mister Holt?

Easy to see you never kep a backwoods store. Did anybody ever hear of anythin' so onreasonable?'

To which offer he nevertheless acceded after some grumbling; and the runners of the borrowed skates were fastened underneath the sled by Mr.

Holt's own hands and hammer. Next, that gentleman fixed a pole upright in the midst, piling the planks from the sawmill close to it, edgeways on both sides, and bracing it with a stay-rope to stem and stern. At the top ran a horizontal stick to act as yard, and upon this he girt an old blanket lent by Jackey Dubois, the corners of which were caught by cords drawn taut and fastened to the bal.u.s.trade afore-mentioned.

Sam Holt had in his own brain a strong dash of the daring and love of adventure which tingles in the blood of youthful strength. He thoroughly enjoyed this rigging of the ice-boat, because it was strange, and paradoxical, and quite out of everyday ship-building. The breeze, become stronger, was moaning in the tops of the forest as he finished; the greyish haze had thickened into well-defined clouds creeping up the sky, yet hardly near enough to account for one or two flakes that came wandering down.

'Ye'll have a lively run to the Cedars, I guess,' prophesied Zack, as he helped to pack in the last plank. 'An' the quicker the better, for the weather looks kinder dirty. See if them runners ain't vallyable now; and only five cents cash for the loan.' The queer little craft began to push ahead slowly, her sail filling out somewhat, as the wind caught in it at a curve of the sh.o.r.e.

Certainly the runners materially lessened the friction of the load of timber on the ice. The skaters hardly felt the weight more than in propelling the empty sledge. When they got upon the open surface of the pond, they might expect aid from the steady swelling of the sail, now fitful, as gusts swept down, snow-laden, from the tree-covered banks of the stream. They hardly noticed the gradually increasing power of the wind behind them; but the flakes in the air perceptibly thickened, even before they had reached the pond.

'Now make a straight course across for the pine point yonder,' said Sam Holt, as they pa.s.sed in lee shelter for an instant. 'I suspect we might almost embark ourselves, Arthur, for the breeze is right upon it.'

A few minutes of great velocity bore them down on the headland. They stopped for breath, the turned-up prow of their ice-boat resting even in the brush on sh.o.r.e. Then they coasted awhile, until another wide curve of the pond spread in front.