Cedar Creek Part 14

The exclamation was from Robert, following a much louder exclamation from Andy in advance. 'He has met with some wild animal,' concluded Mr.

Holt. He was certainly cutting the strangest capers, and flouris.h.i.+ng his hand as if the fingers were burned, howling the while between rage and terror.

'You disgustin' little varmint! you dirty vagabone, to stick all thim things in me hand, an' me only goin' to lay a hold on ye gentle-like, to see what sort of an outlandish baste ye was! Look, Masther Robert, what he did to me with a slap of his tail!'

Callaghan's fingers radiated handsomely with porcupine's quills, some inches long, stuck in pretty strongly and deeply; and the animal himself, quite ready for further offensive warfare, crouched in the fork of a small maple, just out of reach.

'Ah, then, come down here, you unnatural baste, an' may be I won't strip off your purty feathers,' exclaimed Andy with unction.

'Cut down the tree,' suggested Arthur. But the porcupine, being more _au fait_ with the ways of the woods than these new-comers, got away among the branches into a thicket too dense for pursuit.

'They're as sharp as soords,' soliloquized the sufferer, as he picked out the quills from his hand and wrist in rather gingerly fas.h.i.+on, and stanched the blood that followed. 'Masther Robert, avourneen, is he a four-footed baste or a fowl? for he has some of the signs of both on him. Wisha, good luck to the poor ould counthry, where all our animals is dacent and respectable, since St. Patrick gev the huntin' to all the varmint.'

'A thras.h.i.+ng from a porcupine's tail would be no joke,' observed Arthur.

'I've known dogs killed by it,' said Mr. Holt. 'The quills work into all parts of their bodies, and the barbed points make extraction very difficult.'

'I believe the Indians use these in some sort of embroidery.' Robert held in his hand a bunch of the quills such as had wounded Andy's fingers. 'I've seen penholders of them, when I little thought I should handle the unsophisticated originals out here.'

Before this time he had learned how enervating were reminiscences of home; he resolutely put away the remembrance from him now, and walked on to chop the blaze on the next tree. Breast-high the mark was cut, and at one blaze another could always be discerned ahead.

'I've a regard for the beeches and elms,' quoth he, as he hacked at a hickory stem. 'They are home trees; but the shrubs have chiefly foreign faces, so I can chop them down without compunction.'

'All such sentimental distinctions will evaporate when you get into the spirit of your work,' said his friend Sam. 'Your underbrus.h.i.+ng rule does not spare anything less than six inches in diameter; all must be cut close to the ground, and piled in heaps for the burning.'

'A tolerable job to clear such a thicket as this! What a network of roots must interlace every foot of soil!'

'Rather, I should say. But the first crop will amply repay your pains, even though your wheat and Indian corn struggle into existence through stumps and interlacing roots. Then there's the potash--thirty dollars a barrel for second quality: less than two and a half acres of hardwood timber will produce a barrel.'

'I don't quite understand.'

'Next summer, after your logging bee, you'll know what I mean. This creek is as if 'twas made on purpose for an ashery.'

'By the way, here's my site for a town plot;' as they came to a fine natural cascade over a granite barrier, after which plunge the stream hurried down the slope towards the beaver meadow. 'Water power for half a dozen mills going to waste there, Holt.'

'Let's give it a name!' sang out Arthur--'this our city of magnificent intentions.'

'I hope you won't call it Dublin on the Liffey,' said Mr. Holt. 'How I hate those imported names--sinking our nationality in a ludicrous parody on English topography--such as London on the Thames, Windsor, Whitby, Woodstock; while the language that furnished "Toronto," "Quebec,"

"Ottawa," lies still unexplored as a mine of musical nomenclature.'

'In default of an Indian name,' said Robert, 'let us call our future settlement after the existing fact--CEDAR CREEK.'

'And posterity can alter it, if it chooses,' rejoined Arthur. 'All right. Now I'll cut down this birch where the post-office is to stand hereafter;' and a few st.u.r.dy blows of his axe prostrated the young tree.

'When I'm writing to Linda, I shall date from Cedar Creek, which will give her an exalted idea of our location: at the same time she will be convinced it is situated on the seash.o.r.e, if I forget to say that in Canada every stream is a "creek."'

'Our people have an absurd partiality for what they imagine "handsome names,"' said Mr. Holt. 'Not satisfied with giving their children the most far-fetched they can discover,--for instance, we have a maid Armenia, at Maple Grove, and I could not resist designating her brother as Ararat, by way of localizing their relations.h.i.+p,--but also the young settlements of the country have often the most bombastic names. In the backwoods, one time, I found a party of honest settlers in a tavern over an old romance, searching for some sufficiently high-sounding t.i.tle to confer on their cl.u.s.ter of cabins.'

'I was amused to find that Zack Bunting's eldest son is called Nimrod, familiarized to "Nim,"' said Robert. 'I never saw a more remarkable likeness to a parent, in body and mind, than that youth exhibits; every tuft of ragged beard and every twinkle of the knowing little eyes are to match.'

Nearing the shanty they heard a sound as of one making merry, and espied in the window the glow of a glorious fire. Within, Peter Logan was making himself at home, cooking his dinner, while he trilled a Yankee ditty at the top of his powerful voice.

No manner of apology for having opened their cellar, and made free with their barrel of pork, did he seem to think necessary; but when his meal was finished, he inquired abruptly why they hadn't built their chimney of 'cats'? 'For I reckon this stick chimney will blaze up some night,'

added he.

Robert hearkened at that startling intimation.

'Mine is of cats,' said Mr. Logan. 'Cats is clay,' he continued sententiously, 'kinder like straw an' clay mixed up. I guess I'll stay an' help you to fix one to-morrow, if you've a mind to.'

With rugged but real kindness, he took a day from his hunting excursion for the purpose. The framework of the new chimney was of four upright poles, set in one corner of the shanty, and laced across by rungs of wood, round which the clay was well kneaded, and plastered inside. An opening three feet high was left for the fireplace in front. Peter promised that by and by the clay would burn hard and red, like tilework.

'I wonder you have not built yourself a handsome house, before now,'

said Mr. Wynn, 'instead of that handsome barn. Why you live in a shanty, while your corn is in a frame building, puzzles me.'

'Ay,' a.s.sented the settler, 'but the frame barn is paving the way for the frame house, I calculate: Benny'll have both; and for the present I'd sooner have my crops comfortable than myself;' a persuasion which Robert afterwards found to be rooted in common sense, for the Canadian climate permits not of stacks or ricks wintering in the open air.

After his usual unmannerly fas.h.i.+on, Mr. Logan bade no farewell, but shouldered his gun at some hour prior to daybreak, and knapsack on back, left the sleeping camp by the light of a young moon.

CHAPTER XVI.

LOST IN THE WOODS.

One day it happened that about noon, while Arthur was 'brus.h.i.+ng' at a short distance from the shanty, he noticed a pack of grouse among the underwood within shot. Dropping his axe, he ran home for the gun, which stood loaded in one corner.

It was not altogether the sportsman's organ of destructiveness (for he had never forgotten little Jay's lesson on that head), but probably a growing dislike to the constant diet of pork, that urged him to an unrelenting pursuit. Cautiously he crept through the thickets, having wafted an unavailing sigh for the pointer he had left at Dunore, his companion over many a fallow and stubble field, who would greatly have simplified this business. Unconsciously he crossed the blazed side-line of the lot into the dense cover beyond, tantalized by glimpses of game, which never came near enough for good aim. 'I must regularly stalk them,' thought Arthur.

Noiselessly creeping on, he was suddenly brought to by an unexpected sight. The head and horns of a n.o.ble buck were for a moment visible through the thicket. Arthur's heart throbbed in his ears as he stood perfectly motionless. Grouse were utterly forgotten in the vision of venison. With every sense concentrated in his eyes, he watched the brush which screened the browsing deer. By a slight crackling of twigs presently, he was made aware that the animal was moving forward; he crept in the same direction. The leaves had been damped by a shower two hours before, and the cloudy day permitted them to retain moisture, or their crispness might have betrayed his tread.

Ha! a dried stick on which he inadvertently set his foot snapped across.

The splendid shy eyes of the deer looked round in alarm as he bounded away. A shot rang through the forest after him, waking such a clamour of jays and crows and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, that Arthur was quite provoked with them, they seemed exulting over his failure. Pus.h.i.+ng aside the dried timber which had caused this mischance, he pressed on the track of the deer impetuously. He could not believe that his shot had missed altogether, though the white tail had been erected so defiantly; which 'showing of the white feather,' as the Canadian sportsman calls it, is a sign that the animal is unwounded.

But four feet had much the advantage of two in the chase. One other glimpse of the flying deer, as he came out on the brow of a ridge, was all that Arthur was favoured with. Some partridge got up, and this time he was more successful; he picked up a bird, and turned homewards.

Homewards! After walking a hundred yards or so he paused. Had he indeed gone back on his own track? for he had never seen this clump of pines before. He could not have pa.s.sed it previously without notice of its sombre shade and ma.s.sive boles. He would return a little distance, and look for the path his pa.s.sage must have made in brus.h.i.+ng through the thickets.

Brought to a stand again. This time by a small creek gurgling deeply beneath matted shrubs. He had gone wrong--must have diverged from his old course. More carefully than before, he retraced his way to the pine-clump, guided by the unmistakeable black plumage of the tree-tops.

There he stood to think what he should do.

The sky was quite obscured: it had been so all the morning. No guidance was to be hoped for from the position of the sun. He had heard something of the moss on the trees growing chiefly at the north side; but on examination these pines seemed equally mossed everywhere. What nonsense!

surely he must be close to his own path. He would walk in every direction till he crossed the track.

Boldly striking out again, and looking closely for footmarks on the soft ground, he went along some distance; here and there turned out of his straight course by a thicket too dense for penetration, till before him rose pine-tops again. Could it be? The same pines he had left!

He covered his eyes in bewilderment. Having stood on the spot for several minutes previously, he could not be mistaken. Yet he thought he could have been sure that he was proceeding in a direction diametrically opposite for the last quarter of an hour, while he must have been going round in a circle. Now, indeed, he felt that he was lost in the woods.

Poor Arthur's mind was a sort of blank for some minutes. All the trees seemed alike--his memory seemed obliterated. What horrid bewilderment had possession of his faculties? Shutting him in, as by the walls of a living tomb, the great frowning forest stood on all sides. A mariner on a plank in mid-ocean could not have felt more hopeless and helpless.