Everyday Adventures Part 8

There was a moment's check. It was Honey who recognized the tree by its crooked clutching twigs, and found at its roots a crumpled piece of paper which said: "Go to the nearest tulip tree. Blackbeard the Pirate." It was Trottie who remembered that a tulip tree has square leaves, and it was he who found the message which read: "I am buried under a stone which stands between a spice-bush and a white-ash tree."

They all knew the spice-bush, with its brittle twigs and pungent bark which was made to be nibbled, and under the stone they found a note which said: "Look in the crotch of a dogwood tree. If you will listen you will hear its bark"; which made the Band laugh like anything.

The last message of all read: "I am swinging in a vireo's nest on the branch of a sour-gum tree." That was a puzzle which held the Band hunting like beagles in check for a long time. Corporal Alice-Palace at last spied the bleached little basket-nest at the end of a low limb. Inside was a bit of paper which, when unfolded, seemed to be entirely blank. So were the face of the Band as they looked. It was the Captain again who saved the day.

"I have heard," he whispered, "that sometimes pirates write in lemon-juice, which makes an invisible ink that needs heat to bring it out. Like the Gold-Bug, you know."

It was enough. In less than sixty seconds, sun time, the Band had built a tiny fire after the most approved Indian method, and as soon as it began to crackle, the paper was held as close to the blaze as possible. The Captain had the right idea. As the paper bent under the heat, on its white surface brown tracings appeared, which slowly formed letters and then words, until they could all read: "I am in the hidey-hole of the chimney of the Haunted House. The Treasure."

For a moment the Band stared at each other in silence. They had made a special study of pirates, black, white, yellow, and mixed. Haunted houses, however, were beyond their bailiwick. It spoke well for the iron discipline and high hearts of the company that not one of them faltered. Led by dauntless Sergeant Henny-Penny, they crossed the creek in single file on a tippy tree-trunk. Half hidden in the bushes above, a gaunt stone house stared down at them out of empty window-sockets like a skull. Through the thicket and straight up the slope the Band charged, with such speed that the Captain was hard put to keep up with his gallant officers. They never halted until they stood at the threshold of the House itself. Under the bowed lintel the Band marched, and never halted until they reached the vast fireplace which took in a whole side of the room. The floorings of the House had gone, and nothing but the naked beams remained, save for a patch of warped boards far up against the stone chimney where the attic used to be. It was plainly there that they must look for the hidey-hole.

The Captain showed his followers how in one of the window-ledges the broken ends of the joists made a rude ladder. Up this the Band clambered to the first tier of joists, without any mishap save that the Captain's hat fell off and landed in front of the fireplace.

As they all roosted like chickens on the beams, there sounded a footstep just outside. The Band stood stony still and held their breath. Through the dim doorway came the furtive figure of a man. In one hand he carried a basket, while the other was clinched on a butcher-knife well fitted for dark and desperate deeds. Although the basket seemed to be filled with dandelion greens, no one could tell what dreadful, dripping secret might be concealed underneath. For a minute the stranger looked uneasily around the shadowy room, and when his eye caught sight of the Captain's hat, he started back and peered into every corner, while the Band stood taut and tense just over his unsuspecting head. At last, however, evidently convinced that the hat was ownerless and abandoned, he picked it up and, taking off his own battered, shapeless head-covering, started to try on the Captain's cherished felt. Then it was that the latter acted. Bending noiselessly down until his head was hardly a foot above the unwary wanderer's ear, he shouted in a deep, fierce, growly voice which the Band had never suspected him of having:--

"Drop that hat! Run for your life!"

The stranger obeyed both of these commands to the letter. Throwing away the hat as if it were redhot, he dashed out of the doorway and sprinted down the slope, scattering dandelion greens at every jump, and disappeared in the thicket beyond. Although the Captain laughed and laughed until he nearly fell off his beam, the rest of the Band feared the worst.

"He looked exactly like Black Dog," murmured Honey in a low voice.

"Yes," chimed in Trottie, "kind of slinky and tallowy."

Whereupon, in spite of the Captain's rea.s.suring words, they made haste to find the Treasure, fearing lest at any moment they might hear the shrill and dreadful whistle which sounded on the night when Billy Bones died. Sidling along the beams in the wake of the Captain, they came to what remained of a crumbling staircase. One by one they pa.s.sed up this until they reached the bit of attic flooring which they had seen from below. Sure enough, in one of the soft mica-schist rocks of the chimney, someone had chiseled a deep and delightful hidey-hole.

It was Lieutenant Trottie who, by virtue of his rank, first explored the unknown depths and drew therefrom a heavy, grimy canvas bag. When he undid the draw-string, a rolling ma.s.s of gold and silver nuggets rattled down on the dry boards, while the Band gasped at the sight of so much sudden wealth. A moment later a series of crunching noises showed that the treasure-hunters had discovered that said gold and silver were only thin surface foils, each concealing a luscious heart of sweet chocolate. The Captain met their inquiring glances unmoved.

"It only shows," he explained, "what thoughtful chaps pirates have become. They knew you couldn't use a bag of doubloons nowadays, but that sweet chocolate always comes in handy."

Hidden treasure is not a thing to be investigated scientifically, nor can anything restore a glamour once gone. Perhaps so unconsciously reasoned the Band as they followed the Captain down the steep stairs and the steeper ladder. Through the lilac bushes he led them around to the far side of the House. There the stairway had disappeared, and most of the sagging floor-beams were broken. A limb of a nearby apple tree had thrust its way above the lilac thicket, until it nearly touched the ledge of a window half hidden by the boughs.

Up the apple tree the Captain clambered, followed by the Band, and walking out on the limb, led the way across the window-ledge into a tiny room. For some unknown reason, amid the general wreckage and ruin of the House, this room still stood untouched and with its flooring unbroken. Even the walls, plastered a deep blue, showed scarcely a crack on their surface. Best of all, fronting the open dormer of the window, was a long, deep settee, with curly, carved legs and a bent, comfortable back. Its seat was so wide that the Corporal's legs stuck out straight in front of her when she sat down with the rest of the Band at the end of the line.

Framed in the broken sheathing and bleached stone of the window-opening, there stretched out before them a vista of little valleys and round wooded hills, all feathery green with the new leaves of early spring. The Band felt that they occupied a strong and strategic position. A drop of some twenty feet sheer from the broken flooring behind them to the ground protected them against any rear attack, and the only entrance to their refuge was so shadowed and hidden by rose-red and snow-white apple-blossoms that it would be a cunning and desperate foe indeed who could find or would storm their fastness.

With safety once secured, it was the unanimous feeling of the whole company that luncheon was the next and most pressing engagement for their consideration. An investigation of the commissary showed that the Quartermaster-General had merited promotion and decoration and citation and various other military honors, by reason of the unsurpa.s.sable quality of the rations for which she was responsible.

When these were topped off by the Treasure for dessert, it was felt by the whole Band that this was a Day which thereafter would rank in their memories with Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and press hard upon the heels even of Christmas Day itself.

After a rapturous half-hour undisturbed by any desultory and unnecessary conversation, followed a chapter in the Adventures of Great-great Uncle Jake. Said relative had been a distant collateral connection of the Captain, and had fought through the Revolution, and, in the opinion of the Band, next to General Was.h.i.+ngton, had probably been most nearly responsible for the final success of the patriot arms. It was Uncle Jake who made General Putnam get off his horse into the mud and give the countersign. It was Uncle Jake who shot the Hessian who used to stand on an earthwork and make insulting gestures every morning toward the Continental camp. It was Uncle Jake again who, when he was captured, broke his way out of the Hulks, and swam ash.o.r.e one stormy night. To-day the Captain had bethought himself of a rather unusual experience which Uncle Jake once had while hunting bears.

"It was during a February thaw," he began. "Uncle Jake was coming down Pond Hill, when he stepped into a mushy place back of a patch of bushes, and sank in up to his waist. He felt something soft under his feet and stamped down hard. A second later," continued the Captain impressively, "he wished he hadn't. Something rose right up underneath him, and the next thing poor old Uncle Jake knew, he was astride a big black bear, going down hill like mad--riding bear-back as it were. You see," went on the Captain hurriedly, "Uncle Jake had stepped into a bear-hole and waked up a bear by stamping on his back. He was in a bad fix. He didn't want to stay on and he didn't dare to get off. So what do you suppose he did?"

"Rode him up a tree," hazarded Henny-Penny.

"No," said the Captain. "He stuck on until they got to level ground.

Then Uncle Jake drew his hunting-knife and stabbed the old bear dead right through his neck, and afterwards made an overcoat out of its skin."

The Band felt that they could bear nothing further in the story line after this anecdote, and the Treasure having gone the way of all treasures, the march back was begun. It was the Captain who, on this homeward trip, discovered another treasure. They were pa.s.sing a marshy swale of land, where a little stream trickled through a tangle of trees. From out of the thicket came an unknown bird-call. "Pip, pip, pip," it sounded. As they peered among the bushes, on a low branch the Captain saw six strange birds, all gold and white and black, with thick, white bills. Never had the Band seen him so excited before. He told them that the strangers were none other than a company of the rare evening grosbeaks, which had come down from the far Northwest, which had never before been reported in that county, and which few bird-students ever meet in a whole lifetime, although he had found a flock in New Jersey a few months before. For long the Band stood and watched them. They flew down on the ground and began feeding on cherry-pits, cracking the stones in their great bills. At times they would fly up into a tree and sidle along the limbs like little parrots. The females had mottled black-and-white wings and gray backs and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, while the males had golden b.r.e.a.s.t.s and backs, with wings half velvet-black and half ivory-white.

For a long time they all watched the birds and made notes, until the dimming light warned them that it was time to be on their way. In the twilight the hylas called across the marshes, and from upland meadows scores of meadow-larks cried, "Swee-eet, swee-eet." Westering down the sky sank the crescent new moon, with blazing Jupiter in her train. As the Band climbed Violet Hill and swung into the long lane which ended in home, they heard the last and loveliest bird-song of that whole dear day. Through the gathering darkness came a sweet and dreamy croon, the love-song of the little owl. Even as they listened, the distant door of the house opened and, framed in the lamp-light, waiting for them, was Mother, the best treasure of all.

IX

ORCHID-HUNTING

My path led down the side of the lonely Barrack, as the coffin-shaped hill had been named. There I had been exploring a little mountain stream, which I had fondly and mistakenly hoped might prove to be a trout-brook. The winding wood-road pa.s.sed through dim aisles of whispering pine trees. At a steep place, a bent green stem stretched half across the path, and from it swayed a rose-red flower like a hollow sea-sh.e.l.l carved out of jacinth. For the first time I looked down on the moccasin flower or pink lady-slipper (_Cypripedium acaule_), the largest of our native orchids.

For a long time I hung over the flower. Its discovery was a great moment, one of those that stand out among the thirty-six-odd million of minutes that go to make up a long life. For the first time my eyes were opened to see what a lovely thing a flower could be. In the half-light I knelt on the soft pine-needles and studied long the hollow purple-pink sh.e.l.l, veined with crimson, set between two other tapering petals of greenish-purple, while a sepal of the same color curved overhead. The whole flower swayed between two large curved, grooved leaves.

Leaving the path, I began to hunt for others under the great trees, and at last came upon a whole congregation nodding and swaying in long rows around the vast trunks of white pines which were old trees when this country was born.

From that day I became a hunter of orchids and a haunter of far-away forests and lonely marshlands and unvisited hill-tops and mountain-sides. Wherever the lovely hid-folk dwell, there go I. They are strange flowers, these orchids. When first they were made out of suns.h.i.+ne, mist, and dew, every color was granted them save one. They may wear snow-white, rose-red, pearl and gold, green and white, purple and gold, ivory and rose, yellow, gold and brown, every shade of crimson and pink. Only the blues are denied them.

Since that first great day I have found the moccasin flower in many places--on the top of bare hills and in the black-lands of northern Canada, where, four feet under the peat, the ice never melts even in midsummer. Once I saw it by a sphagnum bog where I was hunting for the almost unknown nest of the Tennessee warbler, amid clouds of black flies and mosquitoes that stung like fire. Again, on the tip-top of Mount Pocono in Pennsylvania, I had just found the long-sought nest of a chestnut-sided warbler. Even as I admired the male bird, with his white cheeks and golden head and chestnut-streaked sides, and the four eggs like flecked pink pearls, my eye caught a sight which brought me to my knees regardless for a moment of nest, eggs, birds, and all.

Among rose-hearted twin-flowers and wild lilies of the valley and snowy dwarf cornels swung three moccasin flowers in a line. The outer ones, like the guard-stars of great Altair, were light in color.

Between them gleamed, like the Eagle Star itself, a flower of deepest rose, an unearthly crystalline color, like a rain-drenched jacinth.

Another time, at the crest of a rattlesnake den, I found two of these pink pearls of the woods swinging above the velvet-black coils of a black timber rattlesnake. I picked my way down the mountain-side, with Beauty in one hand and Death in the other, as I romantically remarked to the unimpressed snake-collector who was waiting for me with an open gunny-sack.

Then there was the day in the depths of the pine-barrens, where stunted, three-leaved pitch pines took the place of the towering, five-leaved white pine of the North. The woods looked like a s.h.i.+mmering pool of changing greens lapping over a white sand-land that had been thrust up from the South into the very heart of the North. I followed a winding wood-path along the high bank of a stream stained brown and steeped sweet with a million cedar-roots. A mountain laurel showed like a beautiful ghost against the dark water--a glory of white, pink-flecked flowers.

Through dripping branches of withewood and star-leaved sweet-gum saplings the path twisted. Suddenly, at the very edge of the bank, out of a ma.s.s of hollow, crimson-streaked leaves filled with clear water, swung two glorious blossoms. Wine-red, aquamarine, pearl-white, and pale gold they gleamed and nodded from slender stems. It was the pitcher-plant, which I had never seen in blossom before.

From the stream the hidden path wound through thicket after thicket, sweet as spring, with the fragrance of the wild magnolia and the spicery of the gray-green bayberry. Its course was marked with white sand, part of the bed of some sea forgotten a hundred thousand years ago. By the side of the path showed the vivid crimson-lake leaves of the wild ipecac, with its strange green flowers; while everywhere, as if set in snow, gleamed the green-and-gold of the Hudsonia, the barrens-heather. The plants looked like tiny cedar trees laden down with thickly set blossoms of pure gold, which the wind spilled in little yellow drifts on the white sand. In the distance, through the trees, were glimpses of meadows, hazy-purple with the blue toad-flax.

Beside the path showed here and there the pale gold of the narrow-leaved sundrops, with deep-orange stamens. Beyond were ma.s.ses of lambskill, with its fatal leaves and crimson blossoms.

On and on the path led, past jade-green pools in which gleamed buds of the yellow pond-lily, like lumps of floating gold. Among them were blossoms of the paler golden-club, which looked like the tongue of a calla lily. At last the path stretched straight toward the flat-topped mound that showed dim and fair through the low trees. The woods became still. Even the Maryland yellow-throat stopped singing, the prairie warbler no longer drawled his lazy notes, and the chewink, black and white and red all over, like the newspaper in the old conundrum, stopped calling his name from the thickets and singing, "Drink your tea!"

I knew that at last I had come upon a fairy hill, such an one wherein the shepherd heard a host of tiny voices singing a melody so haunting sweet that he always after remembered it, and which has since come down to us of to-day as the tune of Robin Adair. Listen as I would, however, there was no sound from the depths of this hill. Perhaps the sun was too high, for the fairy-folk sing best in late twilight or early dawn.

The mound, like all fairy hills, was guarded. The path ran into a tangle of sand-myrtle, with vivid little oval green leaves and feathery white, pink-centred blossoms. Just beyond stood a bush of poison-sumac. Pus.h.i.+ng aside the fierce branches, I went unscathed up the mound. At its very edge was another sentry. From under my feet sounded a deep, fierce hiss, and there across the path stretched the great body of a pine snake fully six feet long, all cream-white and umber-brown. Raising its strange pointed head, with its gold and black eyes, it hissed fearsomely. I had learned, however, that a pine snake's hiss is worse than its bite and, when I poked its rough, mottled body with my foot, it gave up pretending to be a dangerous snake and lazily moved off to some spot where it would not be disturbed by intruding humans.

The pyxies had carpeted the side of the mound thick with their wine-red and green moss, starred with hundreds of flat, five-petaled white blossoms. This celebrated pyxie moss is not a moss at all, but a tiny shrub. Near the summit of the mound the path was lost in a foam of the blue, lilac, and white b.u.t.terfly blossoms of the lupine. Little clouds of fragrance drifted through the air, as the wind swayed rows and rows of the transparent bells of the leucothoe. Beyond the lupine stood a rank of dazzling white turkey-beards, the xerophyllum of the botanists. The inmost circle of the mound was carpeted with dry gray reindeer moss, and before me, in the centre of the circle, drooped on slender stems seven rose-red moccasin flowers.

They have sought him high, they have sought him low, They have sought him over down and lea; They have found him by the milk-white thorn That guards the gates o' Faerie.

'Twas bent beneath and blue above, Their eyes were held that they might not see The kine that grazed beneath the knowes; Oh, they were the Queens o' Faerie.

If only that day my eyes had been loosed like those of True Thomas, I too might have seen the fairy queens in all their regal beauty.

Wherever it be found, the moccasin flower will always hold me by its sheer beauty. Yet to my memory none of them can approach the loveliness of that cloistered colony which I first found in the pine wood so many years ago. Year after year I would visit them. Then came a time when for five years I was not able to travel to their home.

When, at last, I made my pilgrimage to where they grew, there was no cathedral of mighty green arches roofed by a s.h.i.+mmering June sky; there were no aisles of softly singing trees; and there were no rows of sweet faces looking up at me and waiting for my coming; only heaps of sawdust and hideous ma.s.ses of lopped branches showed where a steam sawmill had cut its deadly way. Underneath the fallen dying boughs which had once waved above the world, companioned only by sky and sun and the winds of heaven, I found one last starveling blossom left of all her lovely company. Protected no longer by the sheltering boughs, she was bleached nearly white by the sun, and her stem crept crookedly along the ground underneath the ma.s.s of brush and litter which had once been a carpet of gold. Never since that day have I visited the place where my friends wait for me no more.

It was another orchid which, for eleven years, on the last day of every June, made me travel two hundred miles due north. From an old farmhouse on the edge of the Berks.h.i.+res I would start out in the dawn-dusk on the first day of every July. The night-hawks would still be tw.a.n.ging above me as I followed, before sunrise, a dim silent road over the hills all sweet with the scent of wild-grape and the drugged perfume of chestnut ta.s.sels. At last I would reach a barway sunken in ma.s.ses of sweet-fern and shaded by thickets of alder and witch-hazel.

There a long-forgotten wood-road led to my Land of Heart's Desire.