The Tent Dwellers Part 13

Chapter Twenty-seven

Perhaps it was the cold weather that brought us a visitor. There was a tree directly over our tent, and in the morning--a sharp sunny morning, with the wind where it should be, in the west--we noticed on going out that a peculiar sort of fruit had grown on this tree over night. On one of the limbs just above the tent was a p.r.i.c.kly looking ball, like a chestnut burr, only black, and about a hundred times as big. It was a baby porcupine, who perhaps had set out to see the world on his own account--a sort of prodigal who had found himself without funds, and helpless, on a cold night. No doubt he climbed up there to look us over, with a view of picking out a good place for himself; possibly with the hope of being invited to breakfast.

Eddie was delighted with our new guest. He declared that he would take him home alive, and feed him and care for him, and live happy ever after. He got a pole and shook our visitor down in a basket, and did a war-dance of joy over his new possession. He was a cute little fellow--the "piggypine" (another of Eddie's absurd names)--with bright little eyes and certain areas of fur, but I didn't fancy him as a pet.

He seemed to me rather too much of a cross between a rat and a pin cushion to be a pleasant companion in the intimate relations of one's household. I suspected that if in a perfectly wild state he had been prompted to seek human companionship and the comforts of civilized life, in a domestic atmosphere he would want to sit at the table and sleep with somebody. I did not believe Eddie's affection would survive these familiarities. I knew how surprised and annoyed he might be some night to roll over suddenly on the piggypine and then have to sit up the rest of the night while a surgeon removed the quills. I said that I did not believe in taming wild creatures, and I think the guides were with me in this opinion. I think so because they recited two instances while we were at breakfast. Del's story was of some pet gulls he once owned. He told it in that serious way which convinced me of its truth. Certain phases of the narrative may have impressed me as being humorous, but it was clear they were not so regarded by Del. His manner was that of one who records history. He said:

"One of the children caught two young gulls once, in the lake, and brought them to the house and said they were going to tame them. I didn't think they would live, but they did. You couldn't have killed them without an ax. They got tame right away, and they were all over the house, under foot and into everything, making all kinds of trouble. But that wasn't the worst--the worst was feeding them. It wasn't so bad when they were little, but they grew to beat anything. Then it began to keep us moving to get enough for them to eat. They lived on fish, mostly, and at first the children thought it fun to feed them. They used to bait a little dip net and catch minnows for the gulls, and the gulls got so they would follow anybody that started out with that dip net, calling and squealing like a pair of pigs. But they were worse than pigs. You can fill up a pig and he will go to sleep, but you never could fill up those gulls. By and by the children got tired of trying to do it and gave me the job. I made a big dip net and kept it set day and night, and every few minutes all day and the last thing before bedtime I'd go down and lift out about a pailful of fish for those gulls, and they'd eat until the fish tails stuck out of their mouths, and I wouldn't more than have my back turned before they'd be standing on the sh.o.r.e of the lake, looking down into that dip net and hollering for more. I got so I couldn't do anything but catch fish for those gulls. It was a busy season, too, and besides the minnows were getting scarce along the lake front, so I had to get up early to get enough to feed them and the rest of the family. I said at last that I was through feeding gulls. I told the children that either they'd have to do it, or that the gulls would have to go to work like the rest of the family and fish for themselves.

But the children wouldn't do it, nor the gulls, either. Then I said I would take those birds down in the woods and leave them somewhere. I did that. I put them into a basket and shut them in tight and took them five miles down the river and let them loose in a good place where there were plenty of fish. They flew off and I went home. When I got to the house they'd been there three hours, looking at the dip net and squalling, and they ate a pail heaping full of fish, and you could have put both gulls into the pail when they got through. I was going on a long trip with a party next morning, and we took the gulls along. We fed them about a bushel of trout and left them seventeen miles down the river, just before night, and drove home in the dark. I didn't think the gulls would find their way back that time, but they did. They were there before daybreak, fresh and hungry as ever. Then I knew it was no use.

The ax was the only thing that would get me out of that mess. The children haven't brought home any wild pets since."

That you see is just unembellished history, and convincing. I regret that I cannot say as much for Charlie's narrative. It is a likely story enough, as such things go, but there are points about it here and there which seem to require confirmation. I am told that it is a story well known and often repeated in Nova Scotia, but even that cannot be accepted as evidence of its entire truth. Being a fish-story it would seem to require something more. This is the tale as Charlie told it.

"Once there was a half-breed Indian," he said, "who had a pet trout named Tommy, which he kept in a barrel. But the trout got pretty big and had to have the water changed a good deal to keep him alive. The Indian was too lazy to do that, and he thought he would teach the trout to live out of water. So he did. He commenced by taking Tommy out of the barrel for a few minutes at a time, pretty often, and then he took him out oftener and kept him out longer, and by and by Tommy got so he could stay out a good while if he was in the wet gra.s.s. Then the Indian found he could leave him in the wet gra.s.s all night, and pretty soon that trout could live in the shade whether the gra.s.s was wet or not. By that time he had got pretty tame, too, and he used to follow the Indian around a good deal, and when the Indian would go out to dig worms for him, Tommy would go along and pick up the worms for himself. The Indian thought everything of that fish, and when Tommy got so he didn't need water at all, but could go anywhere--down the dusty road and stay all day out in the hot sun--you never saw the Indian without his trout. Show people wanted to buy Tommy, but the Indian said he wouldn't sell a fish like that for any money. You'd see him coming to town with Tommy following along in the road behind, just like a dog, only of course it traveled a good deal like a snake, and most as fast.

"Well, it was pretty sad the way that Indian lost his trout, and it was curious, too. He started for town one day with Tommy coming along behind, as usual. There was a bridge in the road and when the Indian came to it he saw there was a plank off, but he went on over it without thinking. By and by he looked around for Tommy and Tommy wasn't there.

He went back a ways and called, but he couldn't see anything of his pet.

Then he came to the bridge and saw the hole, and he thought right away that maybe his trout had got in there. So he went to the hole and looked down, and sure enough, there was Tommy, floating on the water, bottom-side up. He'd tumbled through that hole into the brook and drowned."

I think these stories impressed Eddie a good deal. I know they did me.

Even if Charlie's story was not pure fact in certain minor details, its moral was none the less evident. I saw clearer than ever that it is not proper to take wild creatures from their native element and make pets of them. Something always happens to them sooner or later. We were through breakfast and Eddie went over to look at his porcupine. He had left it in a basket, well covered with a number of things. He came back right away--looking a little blank I thought.

"He's gone!" he said. "The basket's just as I left it, all covered up, but he isn't in it."

We went over to look. Sure enough, our visitor had set out on new adventures. How he had escaped was a mystery. It didn't matter--both he and Eddie were better off.

But that was a day for animal friends. Where we camped for luncheon, Eddie and I took a walk along the river bank and suddenly found ourselves in a perfect menagerie. We were among a regular group of grown porcupines--we counted five of them--and at the same time there were two blue herons in the water, close by. A step away a pair of partridges ran through the brush and stood looking at us from a fallen log, while an old duck and her young came sailing across the river. We were nearing civilization now, but evidently these creatures were not much hara.s.sed.

It was like the Garden of Eden before the Fall. It is true the old duck swam away, calling to her brood, when she saw us; the partridges presently hid in the brush, and the blue herons waded a bit further off.

But the porcupines went on galumphing around us, and none of the collection seemed much disturbed. During the afternoon we came upon two fishermen, college boys, camping, who told us they had seen some young loons in a nest just above, and Eddie was promptly seized with a desire to possess them.

In fact we left so hastily that Del forgot his extra paddle, and did not discover the loss until we were a half-mile or so upstream. Then he said he would leave me in the canoe to fish and would walk back along the sh.o.r.e. An arm of the river made around an island just there, and it looked like a good place. There seemed to be not much current in the water, and I thought I could manage the canoe in such a spot and fish, too, without much trouble.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I never realized before what a crazy thing a canoe can be when you want it to do something out of its regular line of work."]

It was not as easy as it looked. Any one who has tried to handle a canoe from the front end with one hand and fish with the other will tell you so. I couldn't seem to keep out of the brush along the sh.o.r.e, and I couldn't get near some brush in the middle of the river where I believed there were trout. I was right about the trout being there, too. Eddie proved that when he came up with his canoe. He had plenty of business with big fellows right away. But the fact didn't do me any good. Just when I would get near the lucky place and ready to cast, a twitch in the current or a little puff of wind would get hold of the stern of my craft, which rode up out of the water high and light like a sail, and my flies would land in some bushes along the bank, or hang in a treetop, or do some other silly thing which was entertaining enough to Eddie and his guide, apparently, but which did not amuse me. I never realized before what a crazy thing a canoe can be when you want it to do something out of its regular line of work. A canoe is a good sort of a craft in its place, and I would not wish to go into the woods without one, but it is limited in its gifts, very limited. It can't keep its balance with any degree of certainty when you want to stand up and fish, and it has no sort of notion of staying in one place, unless it's hauled out on the bank. If that canoe had been given the versatility of an ordinary flat-bottomed john-boat I could have got along better than I did. I said as much, and disparaged canoes generally. Eddie declared that he had never heard me swear with such talent and unreserve. He encouraged me by holding up each fish as he caught it and by suggesting that I come over there. He knew very well that I couldn't get there in a thousand years.

Whenever I tried to do it that fool of a canoe shot out at a tangent and brought up nowhere. Finally in an effort to reconstruct my rod I dropped a joint of the noibwood overboard, and it went down in about four hundred feet of water. Then I believe I did have a few things to say. I was surprised at my own proficiency. It takes a crucial moment like that to develop real genius. I polished off the situation and I trimmed up the corners. Possibly a touch of sun made me fluent, for it was hot out there, though it was not as hot as a place I told them about, and I dwelt upon its fitness as a permanent abiding place for fishermen in general and for themselves in particular. When I was through and empty I see-sawed over to the bank and waited for Del. I believe I had a feverish hope that they would conclude to take my advice, and that I should never see their canoe and its contents again.

There are always compensations for those who suffer and are meek in spirit. That was the evening I caught the big fish, the fish that Eddie would have given a corner of his immortal soul (if he has a soul, and if it has corners) to have taken. It was just below a big fall--Loon Lake Falls I think they call it--and we were going to camp there. Eddie had taken one side of the pool and I the other and neither of us had caught anything. Eddie was just landing, when something that looked big and important, far down the swift racing current, rose to what I had intended as my last cast. I had the little four-ounce bamboo, but I let the flies go down there--the fly, I mean, for I was casting with one (a big Silver Doctor)--and the King was there, waiting. He took it with a great slop and carried out a long stretch of line. It was a test for the little rod. There had been unkind remarks about the tiny bamboo whip; this was to be justification; a big trout on a long line, in deep, swift water--the combination was perfect. Battle now, ye ruler of the rapids!

Show your timber now, thou slender wisp of silk and cane!

But we have had enough of fishing. I shall not dwell upon the details of that contest. I may say, however, that I have never seen Del more excited than during the minutes--few or many, I do not know how few or how many--that it lasted. Every guide wants his canoe to beat, and it was evident from the first that this was the trout of the expedition. I know that Del believed I would never bring that fish to the canoe, and when those heavy rushes came I was harra.s.sed with doubts myself. Then little by little he yielded. When at last he was over in the slower water--out of the main channel--I began to have faith.

So he came in, slowly, slowly, and as he was drawn nearer to the boat, Del seized the net to be ready for him. But I took the net. I had been browbeaten and humiliated and would make my triumph complete. I brought him to the very side of the boat, and I lifted him in. This time the big fish did not get away. We went to where the others had been watching, and I stepped out and tossed him carelessly on the ground, as if it were but an everyday occurrence. Eddie was crushed. I no longer felt bitterness toward him.

I think I shall not give the weight of that fish. As already stated, no one can tell the truth concerning a big fish the first trial, while more than one attempt does not look well in print, and is apt to confuse the reader. Besides, I don't think Eddie's scales were right, anyway.

Chapter Twenty-eight

_Then breathe a sigh and a long good-by_ _To the wilderness to-day,_ _For back again to the trails of men_ _Follows the waterway._

Chapter Twenty-eight

Through the Eel-wier--a long and fruitful rapid--we entered our old first lake, Kedgeemakoogee, this time from another point. We had made an irregular loop of one hundred and fifty miles or more--a loop that had extended far into the remoter wilderness, and had been marked by what, to me, were hard ventures and vicissitudes, but which, viewed in the concrete, was recorded in my soul as a link of pure happiness. We were not to go home immediately. Kedgeemakoogee is large and there are entering streams, at the mouth of which the sport at this season was good. Besides, the teams that were to come for us would not be due yet for several days, if we had kept proper account of time.

It was above the Eel-weir, at George's Run, that Eddie had his first and only success with dry flies. It was just the place--a slow-moving current between two islands, with many vicious and hungry trout. They would rise to the ordinary fly, two at a cast, and when Eddie put on the dry fly--the artificial miller that sits upright on the water and is an exact imitation of the real article--and let it go floating down, they snapped it up eagerly. It is beautiful fishing--I should really have liked to try it a little. But Eddie had been good to me in so many ways: I hadn't the heart to ask him for one of his precious dry flies.

During our trip across Kedgeemakoogee, Del--inspired perhaps by the fact that we were getting nearer to the walks and wiles of men--gave me some idea of Nova Scotia political economies. He explained the system of government there, the manner of voting and the like. The representation is by districts, of course, similar to our own, and the parties have similar methods of making the vote of these districts count on the right side. In Queens, for instance, where we had been most, if not all, of the time, the voters are very scattering. I had suspected this, for in our one hundred and fifty miles travel we had seen but two natives, and only one of these was believed to have political residence. Del said the district had been gerrymandered a good deal to make the votes count right, and it was plain enough that if this man was the only voter in that much country, and he chasing bears most of the time, they would have to gerrymander around a good deal to keep up with him. Del said that when election time came they would go gunning for that voter over the rocks and through the burnt timber, and would beat up the brush for him as if he were a moose, and valuable. Somehow politics did not seem to belong in this place, but either Del exaggerated, this time, or there is a good deal of it to the individual. I suppose it's well to have it condensed in that way.

We camped that night at Jim Charles's Point, our old first camp, and it was like getting home after long absence. For the time seemed an age since we had left there. It was that. Any new and wonderful experience is long--as long as eternity--whether it be a day or a decade in duration. Next morning, across to the mouth of West River--a place of many fish and a rocky point for our camp, with deep beds of sweet-fern, but no trees. That rocky open was not the best selection for tents.

Eddie and his guide had gone up the river a little way when a sudden shower came up, with heavy darkness and quick wind. Del and I were stowing a few things inside that were likely to get wet, when all at once the tents became balloons that were straining at their guy ropes, and then we were bracing hard and clinging fast to the poles to keep everything from sailing into the sky.

It was a savage little squall. It laid the bushes down and turned the lake white in a jiffy. A good thing n.o.body was out there, under that black sky. Then the wind died and there came a swish of rain--hard rain for a few minutes. After that the sun once more, the fragrance of the fern and the long, sweet afternoon.

Looking at those deep tides of sweet-fern, I had an inspiration. My stretcher had never been over comfortable. I longed to sleep flat. Why not a couch of this aromatic balm? It was dry presently, and spreading the canvas strip smoothly on the ground I covered it with armfuls of the fern, evenly laid. I gathered and heaped it higher until it rose deep and cushiony; then I sank down upon it to perfect bliss.

This was Arcady indeed: a couch as soft and as fragrant as any the G.o.ds might have spread by the brooks of Hymettus in that far time when they stole out of Elysium to find joy in the daughters of men. Such a couch Leda might have had when the swan came floating down to bestow celestial motherhood. I buried my face in the odorous ma.s.s and vowed that never again would I cramp myself in a canvas trough between two sticks, and I never did. I could not get sweet-fern again, but balsam boughs were plentiful, and properly laid in a manner that all guides know, make a couch that is wide and yielding and full of rest.

Up Little River, whose stones like the proverbial worm, turned when we stepped on them and gave Eddie a hard fall; across Frozen Ocean--a place which justified its name, for it was bitterly cold there and we did nothing but keep the fire going and play pedro (to which end I put on most of my clothes and got into my sleeping-bag)--through another stream and a string of ponds, loitering and exploring until the final day.

It was on one reach of a smaller stream that we found the Beaver Dam--the only one I ever saw, or am likely to see, for the race that builds them is nearly done. I had been walking upstream and fishing some small rapids above the others when I saw what appeared to be a large pool of still water just above. I made my way up there. It was in reality a long stillwater, but a pond rather than a pool. It interested me very much. The dam was unlike any I had ever seen. For one thing, I could not understand why a dam should be in that place, for there was no sign of a sluice or other indication of a log industry; besides, this dam was not composed of logs or of stone, or anything of the sort. It was a woven dam--a dam composed of sticks and brush and rushes and vines, some small trees, and dirt--made without much design, it would seem, but so carefully put together and so firmly bound that no piece of it could work loose or be torn away. I was wondering what people could have put together such a curious and effective thing as that, when Del came up, pushing the canoe. He also was interested when he saw it, but he knew what it was. It was a beaver dam, and they were getting mighty scarce. There was a law against killing the little fellows, but their pelts were worth high prices, and the law did not cover traffic in them.

So long as that was the case the beavers would be killed.

I had heard of beaver dams all my life, but somehow I had not thought of their being like this. I had not thought of those little animals being able to construct a piece of engineering that, in a swift place like this, could stand freshet and rot, year after year, and never break away. Del said he had never known one of them to go out. The outlet was in the right place and of the proper size. He showed me some new pieces which the builders had recently put into the work, perhaps because it seemed to be weakening there. He had watched once and had seen some beavers working. They were as intelligent as human beings. They could cut a tree of considerable size, he said, and make it fall in any chosen direction. Then he showed me some pieces of wood from which they had gnawed the sweet bark, and he explained how they cut small trees and sank lengths of them in the water to keep the bark green and fresh for future use. I listened and marveled. I suppose I had read of these things, but they seemed more wonderful when I was face to face with the fact.

The other canoe came up and it was decided to cut a small section out of the dam to let us through. I objected, but was a.s.sured that the beavers were not very busy, just now, and would not mind--in fact might rather enjoy--a repair job, which would take them but a brief time.

"They can do it sometime while I'm making a long carry," Charlie said.

But it was no easy matter to cut through. Charlie and Del worked with the ax, and dragged and pulled with their hands. Finally a narrow breach was made, but it would have been about as easy to unload the canoes and lift them over. Half-way up the long hole we came to the lodge--its top rising above the water. Its entrance, of course, was below the surface, but the guides said there is always a hole at the top, for air. It was a well-built house--better, on the whole, than many humans construct.

"They'll be scrambling around, pretty soon," Charlie said, "when they find the water getting lower in their sitting room. Then they'll send out a repair gang. Poor little fellers! Somebody'll likely get 'em before we come again. I know one chap that got seven last year. It's too bad."

Yes, it is too bad. Here is a wonderful race of creatures--ingenious, harmless--a race from which man doubtless derived his early lessons in constructive engineering. Yet Nova Scotia is encouraging their a.s.sa.s.sination by permitting the traffic in their skins, while she salves her conscience by enacting a law against their open slaughter. Nova Scotia is a worthy province and means well. She protects her moose and, to some extent, her trout. But she ought to do better by the beavers.

They are among her most industrious and worthy citizens. Their homes and their industries should be protected. Also, their skins. It can't be done under the present law. You can't put a price on a man's head and keep him from being shot, even if it is against the law. Some fellow will lay for him sure. He will sneak up and shoot him from behind, just as he would sneak up and shoot a beaver, and he will collect his reward in either case, and the law will wink at him. Maybe it would be no special crime to shoot the man. Most likely he deserved it, but the beaver was doing n.o.body any harm. Long ago he taught men how to build their houses and their dams, and to save up food and water for a dry time. Even if we no longer need him, he deserves our protection and our tender regard.[6]

FOOTNOTES: