The Watchers of the Trails Part 14

In the lumber camp, far back upon the lonely headquarters of the Quah-Davic, there was the stir of something unusual afoot. It was Christmas Eve, and every kerosene lamp, lantern, and candle that the camp could boast, was blazing. The little square windows gleamed softly through the dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night, the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot mola.s.ses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp, was wearing itself to a dull red glow; and the air that rushed out with the light from the open door was heavy with the smell of wet woollens, wet larrigans, and wet leather. Many of the men were wearing nothing on their feet but their heavy, home-knit socks of country yarn; but in these they did not hesitate to come out upon the dry snow, rather than trouble themselves to resume their ma.s.sive foot-gear.

Before the door, in the spread of the light, stood a pair of st.u.r.dy, rough-coated gray horses, hitched to a strong box sled, or "pung." The bottom of the pung was covered thick with straw, and over the broad, low seat were blankets, with one heavy bearskin robe. Into the s.p.a.ce behind the seat a gaunt, big-shouldered man was stowing a haunch of frozen moose-meat. A lanky, tow-haired boy of fifteen was tucking himself up carefully among the blankets on the left-hand side of the seat. The horses stood patient, but with drooping heads, aggrieved at being taken from the stable at this unwonted hour. In the pale-blue, kindly, woods-wise eyes of both the man and the boy shone the light of happy antic.i.p.ation. They seemed too occupied and excited to make much response to the good-natured banter of their comrades, but grinned contentedly as they hastened their preparations for departure. The man was Steve Williams, best axe-man and stream-driver in the camp; the boy, young Steve, his eldest son, who was serving as "cookee," or a.s.sistant to the camp cook. The two were setting out on a long night drive through the forest to spend Christmas with their family, on the edge of the lonely little settlement of Brine's Brook.

When all was ready, the big-shouldered woodsman slipped into the seat beside his son, pulled the blankets and the bearskin all about him, and picked up the reins from the square dashboard. A sharp _tchk_ started the horses, and, amid a chorus of shouts,--good nights and Merry Christmases, and well-worn rustic pleasantries,--the loaded pung slid forward from the light into the great, ghost-white gloom beyond.

The sled-bells jangled; the steel runners crunched and sang frostily; and the cheerful camp, the only centre of human life within a radius of more than twenty miles, sank back behind the voyagers. There was the sound of a door slamming, and the bright streak across the snow was blotted out. The travellers were alone on the trail, with the solemn ranks of trees and the icy-pointed stars.

They were well prepared, these two happy Christmas adventurers, to face the rigours of the December night. Under their heavy blanket-coats were many thicknesses of homespun flannel. Inside their high-laced, capacious "shoe-packs" were several pairs of yarn socks.

Their hands were covered by double-knit home-made mittens. Their heads were protected by wadded caps of muskrat fur, with flaps that pulled down well over the ears. The cold, which iced their eyelashes, turned the tips of their up-turned coat-collars and the edges of their m.u.f.flers to board, and made the old trees snap startlingly, had no terrors at all for their hardy frames. Once well under way, and the camp quite out of sight, they fell to chatting happily of the surprise they would give the home folks, who did not expect them home for Christmas. They calculated, if they had "anyways good luck," to get home to the little isolated backwoods farmhouse between four and five in the morning, about when grandfather would be getting up by candle-light to start the kitchen fire for mother, and then go out and fodder the cattle. They'd be home in time to wake the three younger children (young Steve was the eldest of a family of four), and to add certain little carven products of the woodsman's whittling--ingenious wooden toys, and tiny elaborate boxes, filled with choicest globules of spruce gum--to the few poor Christmas gifts which the resourceful and busy little mother had managed to get together against the festival. As they talked these things over, slowly and with frugal speech, after the fashion of their cla.s.s, suddenly was borne in upon them a sense of the loneliness of the home folks' Christmas if they should fail to come. Under the spell of this feeling, a kind of inverted homesickness, their talk died into silence. They sat thinking, and listening to the hoa.r.s.e jangle of their bells.

In such a night as this, few of the wild kindreds were astir in the forest. The bears, racc.o.o.ns, woodchucks, and chipmunks were snugly "holed up," and sleeping away the great white cold. The deer and moose were in their well-trodden "yards," for the snow was deep. The travellers knew that there were plenty of wood-mice astir,--that if there had been light enough they would have seen their delicate trails wandering everywhere among the trees. But the jangling of the sled-bells was enough to keep all shy beasts at a distance. Only the porcupine was quite undaunted by the strange sounds. One came out into the middle of the road, and stood there seemingly to dispute pa.s.sage.

The boy, in whom primal instincts were still dominant, was for getting out and killing the insolent little bristler. But the father turned the team aside, and gracefully yielded the road, saying:

"Let him be, son! The woods is hisn as much as ourn. An' I respect him, fer he ain't skeered of nothin' that goes on legs!"

An hour later, when the boy was getting very drowsy from watching the ceaseless procession of dark fir-trees, his father nudged him, and whispered, "Look!" The boy, wide awake on the instant, peered into the gloom, and presently his trained young eyes made out a shadowy, slouching form, that flitted without a sound from tree to tree.

"Lucivee?" he asked, breathless with interest, laying his mittened hand on his little rifle under the blankets.

"Yes, lucivee! lynx!" answered the father.

"Let me take a shot at him," said the boy, removing the mitten from his right hand, and bringing out his weapon.

"Oh, what's the good o' killin' the beast Christmas times!" protested the father, gently. And the boy laid down the gun.

"What does he think he's follerin' us fer?" he inquired, a moment later.

"The moose-meat, maybe!" replied the man. "He smells it likely, an'

thinks we're goin' to give it to him for a Christmas present!"

At this suggestion the boy laughed out loud. His clear young voice rang through the frosty shadows; and the lynx, surprised and offended, shrank back, and slunk away in another direction.

"Bloodthirsty varmints, them lucivees!" said the boy, who wanted a lynx-skin as a trophy. "Ain't it better to shoot 'em whenever one gits the chance?"

"Well," said the father, dubiously, "maybe so! But there's better times fer killin' than Christmas times!"

A little farther ahead, the road to Brine's Brook turned off. Here the going was very heavy. The road was little travelled, and in places almost choked up by drifts. Most of the time the horses had to walk; and sometimes the man and boy had to get out and tramp a path ahead of the discouraged team.

"At this rate, dad, we ain't a-goin' to git home in time fer breakfast!" exclaimed the boy, despondently. To which the man replied, "Don't you fret, son! It'll be better goin' when we git over the rise.

You git into the pung now an' take the reins, an' let me do the trampin'."

The boy, who was tired out, obeyed gladly. He gathered up the reins,--and in two minutes was sound asleep. The man smiled, tucked the blankets snugly around the sleeping form, and trudged on tirelessly for a couple of hours, the horses floundering at his heels. Then the drifts ceased. The man kicked the snow from his trousers and shoe-packs, and climbed into the pung again. "We'll make it in time fer breakfast yet!" he murmured to himself, confidently, as the horses once more broke into a trot.

They were traversing now a high table-land, rather spa.r.s.ely wooded, and dotted here and there with towering rampikes. Suddenly from far behind came a long, wavering cry, high-pitched and peculiarly daunting. The horses, though they had probably never heard such a sound before, started apprehensively, and quickened their pace. The man reined them in firmly; but as he did so he frowned.

"I've hearn say the wolves was comin' back to these here parts," he muttered, "now that the deer's gittin' so plenty agin! But I didn't more'n half-believe it afore!"

Presently the grim sound came again. Then the man once more awoke the boy.

"Here's somethin' to interest you, lad," said he, as the latter put a mittened fist to sleepy eyes. "Hark to that there noise! Did you ever hear the like?"

The boy listened, paled slightly, and was instantly wide awake.

"Why, that's like what I've read about!" he exclaimed. "It must be wolves!"

"Nary a doubt of it!" a.s.sented his father, again reining the uneasy horses down to a steady gait. "They've followed the deer back, and now, seems like their a-follerin' us!"

The boy looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, carelessly:

"Oh, well, I reckon there's deer a-plenty for 'em, an' they're not likely to come too nigh us, lookin' fer trouble. I reckon they ain't much like them Roosian wolves we read about, eh, dad?"

"I reckon," agreed the father. At the same time, it was with a certain satisfaction that he set his foot on his trusty axe, amid the straw in the bottom of the pung.

As the high, quavering voices drew nearer, the horses grew more and more alarmed; but the man soothed them with his voice, and sternly held them in, husbanding their strength lest there should be more heavy going farther ahead. At length, some three hundred yards behind them, they caught a glimpse of their pursuers, four swiftly running shapes.

"Only four!" cried the boy, scornfully, as he patted his little rifle. "I thought there was always more'n that in a pack!"

"You needn't grumble," said the man, with a grin. "It's gittin' home fer breakfast we're after, not fightin' wolves, son!"

The road was so much better now that the man gave the horses their head a little, and the pung flew over the singing snow. But in a few minutes the four wolves, though keeping a distance of a couple of hundred yards, were running abreast of them. The animals were evidently unacquainted with horses or men, and shy about a close investigation. The sled-bells, too, were to them a very suspicious phenomenon. Deer, a.s.suredly, were safer hunting; but they would, at least, keep this strange, new kind of quarry in sight for awhile, to see what might turn up.

For the next half-hour there was no change in the situation. From time to time, where the woods thickened, the wolves would draw nearer to the pung; and the boy, with shining eyes, would lift his rifle. But presently they would sheer off again; and the boy grew more and more scornful. Then came the winter dawn, a creeping, bitter gray, and for a few minutes the forest was an unreal place, full of ghosts, and cold with a cold to pierce the soul. Then, a growing, spreading, pervading glory of pink and lilac and transparent gold. As the light streamed through the trees, the wolves got a clearer view of their quarry; and perceiving in it a something distinctly dangerous, they dropped the chase and faded back into the thickets. The man looked at the boy's disappointed face, and said, smilingly:

"I reckon they was extry-ordinary civil, seein' us home that way through the woods!"

A few moments later the woods were left behind, and the travellers came out among the snowy stump-fields. There below them, half-way down the hill, was home, bathed in the sparkling sun. Smoke was pouring cheerfully from the chimney; and there in the yard was grandfather, bringing in a pail of milk from the barn.

"Mother'll have breakfast jest about ready!" cried the man, his rough face tender and aglow.

"But I wisht I could've brought her a nice wolf-skin for Christmas!"

exclaimed the boy, sighing softly as he laid down the little rifle.

THE END.