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A long time he sat hearing it. He began to feel ashamed of his folly and awakened to the inspiration of a new purpose. He rose and looked about him.
When you enter a house you begin to feel the heart of its owner. Something in the walls and furnishings, something in the air—is it a vibration which dead things have gathered from the living?—bids you welcome or warns you to depart. It is the true voice of the master. As Gordon came into the wilderness he felt like one returning to his father's house. In this great castle the heart of its Master seemed to speak to him with a tenderness fatherly and unmistakable.
A subtle force like that we find in houses built with hands now bade him welcome. "Lie down and rest, my son," it seemed to say. "Let not your heart be troubled. Here in your Father's house are forgiveness and plenty."
He put away the thought of death. He covered the sleeping boy and girl, pushed his canoe forward upon the sand, and lying back comfortably soon fell asleep.
He awoke refreshed at sunrise. The great, green fountain of life, in the midst of which he had rested, now seemed to fill his heart with its uplifting joy and energy and persistence.
He built a fire under the trees and broiled the meat and made toast and coffee. He lifted the children in his arms and kissed them with unusual tenderness.
"To-day we'll see Uncle Silas," Gordon assured them.
"My Uncle Silas!" said the boy, fondly.
"He's mine, too," Sue declared.
"He's both of our'n," Socky allowed, as they began to eat their breakfast.
SILAS STRONG, or "Panther Sile," as the hunters called him, spent every winter in the little forest hamlet of Pitkin and every summer in the woods.
Lawrence County was the world, and game, wood, and huckleberries the fulness thereof; all beyond was like the reaches of space unexplored and mysterious. God was only a word—one may almost say—and mostly part of a compound adjective; hell was Ogdensburg, to which he had once journeyed; and the devil was Colonel Jedson. This latter opinion, it should be said, grew out of an hour in which the Colonel had bullied him in the witness-chair, and not to any lasting resemblance.
As to Ogdensburg itself, the hunter had based his judgment upon evidence which, to say the least, was inconclusive. When Sile and the city first met, they regarded each other with extreme curiosity. A famous hunter, as he moved along the street with rifle, pack, and panther-skin, Sile was trying to see everything, and everything seemed to be trying to see Sile. The city was amused while the watchful eye of Silas grew weary and his bosom filled with distrust. One tipsy man offered him a jack-knife as a compliment to the length of his nose, and before he could escape a new acquaintance had wrongfully borrowed his watch. His conclusions regarding the city were now fully formed. He broke with it suddenly, and struck out across country and tramped sixty miles without a rest. Ever after the thought of Ogdensburg revived memories of confusion, headache, and irreparable loss. So, it is said, when he heard the minister describing hell one Sunday at the little school-house in Pitkin, he had no doubt either of its existence or its location.
All this, however, relates to antecedent years of our history—years which may not be wholly neglected if one is to understand what follows them.
After the death of his sister—the late Mrs. Gordon—Strong began to read his Bible and to cut his trails of thought further and further towards his final destination. A deeper reverence and a more correct notion of the devil rewarded his labor.
It must be added that his meditations led him to one remarkable conclusion—namely, that all women were angels. His parents had left him nothing save a maiden sister named Cynthia, and characterized by some as "a reg'lar human panther."
"Wherever Sile is they's panthers," said a guide once, in the little store at Pitkin.
"Don't make no dif'er'nce whuther he's t' home er in the woods," said another, solemnly.
That was when God owned the wilderness and kept there a goodly number of his big cats, four of which had fallen before the rifle of Strong.
Cynthia, in his view, had a special sanctity, but there was another woman whom he regarded with great tenderness—a cheery-faced maiden lady of his own age and of the name of Annette.
To Silas she was always Lady Ann. He gave her this title without any thought or knowledge of foreign customs. "Miss Roice" would have been too formal, and "Ann" or "Annette" would have been too familiar. "Lady Ann" seemed to have the proper ring of respect, familiarity, and distinction. In his view a "lady" was a creature as near perfection as anything could be in this world.
When a girl of eighteen she had taught in the log school-house. Since the death of her mother the care of the little home had fallen upon her. She was a well-fed, cheerful, and comely creature with a genius for housekeeping.
June had come, and Silas was getting ready to go into camp. There was no longer any peace for him in the clearing. The odor of the forest and the sight of the new leaves gave him no rest. Had he not heard in his dreams the splash of leaping trout, and deer playing in the lily-pads? In the midst of his preparations, although a silent man, the tumult of joy in his breast came pouring out in the whistled refrain of "Yankee Doodle." It was a general and not a special sense of satisfaction which caused him to shake with laughter now and then as he made his way along the rough road. Sometimes he rubbed his long nose thoughtfully.
A nature-loving publisher, who often visited his camp, had printed some cards for him. They bore these modest words:
He was able in either capacity, but his great gift lay in tongue control—in his management of silence. He was what they called in that country "a one-word man." The phrase indicated that he was wont to express himself with all possible brevity. He never used more than one word if that could be made to satisfy the demands of politeness and perspicacity. Even though provocation might lift his feeling to high degrees of intensity, and well beyond the pale of Christian sentiment, he was never profuse.
His oaths would often hiss and hang fire a little, but they were in the end as brief and emphatic as the crack of a rifle. This trait of brevity was due, in some degree, to the fact that he stammered slightly, especially in moments of excitement, but more to his life in the silence of the deep woods.
Silas Strong had filled his great pack at the store and was nearing his winter home—a rude log-house in the little forest hamlet. He let the basket down from his broad back to the doorstep. His sister Cynthia, small, slim, sternfaced, black-eyed, heart and fancy free, stood looking down at him.
"Wal, what now?" she demanded, in a voice not unlike that of a pea-hen.
"T'-t'-morrer," he stammered, in a loud and cheerful tone.
"What time to-morrer?"
"D-daylight."
"I knew it," she snapped, sinking into a chair, the broom in her hands, and a woful look upon her. "You've got t' hankerin'."
Silas said nothing, but entered the house and took a drink of water. Cynthia snapped:
"If I wanted t' marry Net Roice I'd marry 'er an' not be dilly-dallyin' all my life."
Cynthia was now fifty years of age, and regarded with a stern eye every act of man which bore any suggestion of dilly-dallying.
"Ain't g-good'nough," he stammered, calmly.
"You're fool 'nough," she declared, with a twang of ill-nature.
"S-supper, Mis' Strong," said he, stirring the fire.
Whenever his sister indulged in language of unusual loudness and severity he was wont to address her in a gentle tone as "Mis' Strong"—the only kind of retaliation to which he resorted. He shortened the "Miss" a little, so that his words might almost be recorded as "Mi' Strong." In those rare and cheerful moments when her mood was more in harmony with his own he called her "Sinth" for short. In his letters, which were few, he had addressed her as "deer sinth." She was, therefore, a compound person, consisting of a severe and dissenting character called "Mis' Strong," and a woman of few words and a look of sickliness and resignation who answered to the pseudonyme of "Sinth."
Born and brought up in the forest, there was much in Silas and Cynthia that suggested the wild growth of the woodland. Their sister—the late Mrs. Gordon—had beauty and a head for books. She had gone to town and worked for her board and spent a year in the academy. Silas and Cynthia, on the other hand, were without beauty or learning or refinement, nor had they much understanding of the laws of earth or heaven, save what nature had taught them; but the devotion of this man to that querulous little wild-cat of a sister was remarkable. She was to him a sacred heritage. For love of her he had carried with him these ten years a burden, as it were, of suppressed and yearning affection. Silas Strong alone might even have been "good enough," in his own estimation, but he accepted "Mis' Strong" as a kind of flaw in his own character.
Every June he went to his camp at Lost River, taking Sinth to cook for him, and returning in the early winter. Next day, at sunrise, they were to start for the woods.
To-day he helped to get supper, and, having wiped the dishes, put on his best suit, his fine boots, his new felt hat, and walked a mile to the little farm of Uncle Ben Roice. He carried with him a gray squirrel in a cage, and, as he walked, sang in a low voice:
"All for the love of a charmin' creature,
All for the love of a lady fair."
It was like any one of a thousand visits he had made there. Annette met him at the door.
"Why, of all things!" said she. "What have you here?"
"C'ris'mus p-present, Lady Ann," said he.
It should be said that with Silas a gift was a "Christmas present" every day in the year—the cheerful spirit of that time being always with him.
He proudly put the cage in her hands.
"Much obliged to you, Sile," said she, laughing.
"S-Strong's ahead!" he stammered, cheerfully.
This indicated that in his fight with the powers of evil Strong felt as if he had at least temporary advantage. When, perhaps, after a moment of anger it seemed that the Evil One had got the upper hold on him, he was wont to exclaim, "Satan's ahead!" But the historian is glad to say that those occasions were, in the main, rare and painful.
"Strong will never give in," said Annette, with laughter.
Strong's affection was expressed only in signs and tokens. Of the former there were his careful preparation for each visit, and many sighs and blushes, and now and then a tender glance of the eye. Of tokens there had been many—a tame fox, ten mink-skins, a fawn, a young thrush, a pancake-turner carved out of wood, and other important trifles. For twenty years he had been coming, but never a word of love had passed between them.
Silas sat in a strong wooden chair. Under the sky he never thought of his six feet and two inches of bone and muscle; now it seemed to fill his consciousness and the little room in which he sat. To-day and generally he leaned against the wall, a knee in his hands as if to keep himself in proper restraint.
"Did you just come to bring me that squirrel?" Annette inquired.
"No," he answered.
"What then?"
"Squirrel come t' b-bring me."
"Silas Strong!" she exclaimed, playfully, amazed by his frankness.
He put his big hand over his face and enjoyed half a minute of silent laughter.
"Silas Strong!" she repeated.
"Present,"'said he, as if answering the call of the roll, and sobering as he uncovered his face.
In conversation Silas had a way of partly closing one eye while the other opened wide beneath a lifted brow. The one word of the Emperor was inadequate. He was, indeed, present, but he was extremely happy also, a condition which should have been freely acknowledged. It must be said, however, that his features made up in some degree for the idleness of his tongue. He brushed them with a downward movement, of his hand, as if to remove all traces of levity and prepare them for their part in serious conversation.
"All w-well?" he inquired, soberly.
"Eat our allowance," said she, sitting near him. "How's Miss Strong?"
"S-supple!" he answered. Then he ran his fingers through his blond hair and soberly exclaimed, "Weasels!"
This remark indicated that weasels had been killing the poultry and applying stimulation to the tongue of Miss Strong. Silas had sent her fowls away to market the day before.
"Too bad!" was the remark of Lady Ann.
"Fisht?" By this word Silas meant to inquire if she had been fishing.
"Yesterday. Over at the falls—caught ten," said she, getting busy with her knitting. "B-big?"
"Three that long," she answered, measuring with her thread.
He gave a loud whistle of surprise, thought a moment, and exclaimed, "M-mountaneyous!" He used this word when contemplating in imagination news of a large and important character.
"How have you been?"
"Stout," he answered, drawing in his breath.
Annette rose and seemed to go in search of something. The kindly gray eyes of Silas Strong followed her. A smile lighted up his face. It was a very plain face, but there was yet something fine about it, something which invited confidence and respect. The Lady Ann entered her own room, and soon returned.
"Shut yer eyes," said she.
"What f-for?"
"Chris'mas present."
Silas obeyed, and she thrust three pairs of socks into his coat-pocket. With a smile he drew them out. Then a partly smothered laugh burst from his lips, and he held his hand before his face and shook with good feeling.
"S-socks!" he exclaimed.
"There are two parts of a man which always ought to be kep' warm—his heart an' his feet," said she.
Silas whacked his knee with his palm and laughed heartily, his wide eye aglow with merriment. His expression quickly turned serious.
"B-bears plenty!" he exclaimed, as he felt of the socks and looked them over. This remark indicated that a season of unusual happiness and prosperity had arrived.
Worked in white yarn at the top of each leg were the words, "Remember me."
"T-till d-death," he whispered.
"With me on your mind an' them on your feet you ought to be happy," said Annette.
"An' w-warm," he answered, soberly.
Presently she read aloud to him from theSt. Lawrence Republican.
"S-some day," said Silas, when at last he had risen to go.
"Some day," she repeated, with a smile.
The only sort of engagement between them lay in the two words "some day." They served as an avowal of love and intention. Amplified, as it were, by look and tone as well as by the pressure of the hand-clasp, they were understood of both.
To-day as Annette returned the assurance she playfully patted his cheek, a rare token of her approval.
Silas left her at the door and made his way down the dark road. He began to give himself some highly pleasing assurances.
"S-some day—tall t-talkin'," he stammered, in a whisper, and then he began to laugh silently.
"Patted my cheek!" he whispered. Then he laughed again.
At the store he had filled his pack with flour, ham, butter, and like provisions for Lost River camp. At Annette's he had filled his heart with renewed hope and happiness and was now prepared for the summer. While he walked along he fell to speculating as to whether Annette could live under the same roof with Cynthia. A hundred times he had considered whether he could ask her, and as usual he concluded, "Ca-can't."
The hunter had an old memorandum-book which was a kind of storehouse for thought, hope, and reflection. Therein he seemed always to regard himself objectively and spoke of Strong as if he were quite another person. Before going to bed that evening he made these entries:
"June the 23. Strong is all mellered up.
"Snags."
With him the word "meller" meant to soften, and sometimes, even, to conquer with the club.
The word "snags" undoubtedly bore reference to the difficulties that beset his way.
SILAS and his sister ate their breakfast by candle-light and were off on the trail before sunrise, a small, yellow dog of the name of Zeb following. Zeb was a bear-dog with a cross-eye and a serious countenance. He was, in the main, a brave but a prudent animal. One day he attacked a bear, which had been stunned by a bullet, and before he could dodge the bear struck him knocking an eye out. Strong had put it back, and since that day his dog had borne a cross-eye.
Zeb had a sense of dignity highly becoming in a creature of his attainments. This morning, however, he scampered up and down the trail, whining with great joy and leaping to lick the hand of his master. "Sinth" walked spryly, a little curt in her manner, but passive and resigned. Silas carried a heavy pack, a coon in a big cage, and led a fox. When he came to soft places he set the cage down and tethered the fox, and, taking Sinth in his arms, carried her as one would carry a baby. Having gained better footing, he would let Sinth down upon a log or a mossy rock to rest and return for his treasures. After two or three hours of travel the complaining "Mis' Strong" would appear.
"Seems so ye take pleasure wearin' me out on these here trails," she would say. "Why don't ye walk a little faster?"
"W-whoa!" he would answer, cheerfully. "Roughlocks!"
The roughlock, it should be explained, was a form of brake used by log-haulers to check their bobs on a steep hill. In the conversation of Silas it was a cautionary signal meaning hold up and proceed carefully.
"You don't care if you do kill me—gallopin' through the woods here jes' like a houn' after a fox. I won't walk another step—not another step."
"Rur-roughlocks!" he commanded himself, as he tied the fox and set the coon down.
"Won't ride either," she would declare, with emphasis.
"W-wings on, Mis' Strong?" Silas had been known to ask, in a tone of great gentleness.
She would be apt to answer, "If I had wings, I'd see the last o' you."
Then a little time of rest and silence, after which the big, gentle hunter would shoulder his pack and lift in his arms the slender and complaining Miss Strong and carry her up the long grade of Bear Mountain. Then he would make her comfortable and return for his pets.
That day, having gone back for the fox and the coon, he concluded to try the experiment of putting them together. Before then he had given the matter a good deal of thought, for if the two were in a single package, as it were, the problem of transportation would be greatly simplified. He could fasten the coon cage on the top of his pack, and so avoid doubling the trail. He led the fox and carried the coon to the point where Sinth awaited him. Then he removed the chain from the fox's collar, carefully opened the cage, and thrust him in. The swift effort of both animals to find quarter nearly overturned the cage. Spits and growls of warning followed one another in quick succession. Then each animal braced himself against an end of the cage, indulging, as it would seem, in continuous complaint and recrimination.
"Y-you behave!" said Silas, wamingly, as he put the cage on top of his basket and fastened a stout cord from bars to buckles.
"They 'll fight!" Sinth exclaimed.
"Let 'em f-fight," said Silas, who had sat down before his pack and adjusted the shoulder-straps.
The growling increased as he rose carefully to his feet, and with a swift movement coon and fox exchanged positions. Sinth descended the long hill afoot, and Silas went on cautiously, a low, continuous murmur of hostile sound rising in the air behind him. Each animal seemed to think it necessary to remind the other with every breath he took that he was prepared to defend himself. Their enmity was, it would appear, deep and racial.
At Cedar Swamp, in the flat below, the big hunter took Sinth in his arms. Then the sound of menace and complaint rose before and behind him. Slowly he proceeded, his feet sinking deep in the wet moss. Stepping on hummocks in a dead creek, he slipped and fell. The little animals were flung about like shot in a bottle. Each seemed to hold the other responsible for his discomfiture. They came together in deadly conflict. The sounds in the cage resembled an explosion of fire-crackers under a pan. Sinth lifted her voice in a loud outcry of distress and accusation. Without a word the hunter scrambled to his feet, renewed his hold upon the complaining Sinth, and set out for dry land. Luckily the mud was not above his boot-tops. The cage creaked and hurtled. The animals rolled from side to side in their noisy encounter. The indignant Sinth struggled to get free with loud, hysteric cries. Strong ran beneath his burden. He gained the dry trail, and set his sister upon the ground. He flung off the shoulder-straps, and with a stick separated the animals. He opened the cage and seized the fox by the nape of the neck, and, before he could haul him forth, got a nip on the back of his hand. He lifted the spitting fox and fastened the chain upon his collar. Then Silas put his hands on his hips and blew like a frightened deer.
"Hell's b-bein' raised," he muttered, as if taking counsel with himself against Satan. "C-careful!" He was in a mood between amusement and anger, but was dangerously near the latter.
A little profanity, felt but not expressed, warmed his spirit, so that he kicked the coon's cage and tumbled it bottom side up. In a moment he recovered self-control, righted the cage, and whispered, "S-Satan's ahead!"
The wound upon his hand was bleeding, but he seemed not to mind it.
Having done his best for the comfort of his sister, he brushed the mud from his boots and trousers, filled his pipe, and sat meditating in a cloud of tobacco-smoke. Presently he rose and shouldered his pack and untied the fox and lifted the coon cage.
"I'll walk if it kills me!" Sinth exclaimed, rising with a sigh of utter recklessness.
"'T-'tain't fur," said Strong, as they renewed their journey.
It was past mid-day when they got to camp, and Sinth lay down to rest while he fried some ham and boiled the potatoes and made tea and flapjacks by an open fire.
When he sat on his heels and held his pan over the fire, the long woodsman used to shut up, as one might say, somewhat in the fashion of a jack-knife. He was wont to call it "settin' on his hunches." His great left hand served for a movable screen to protect his face from the heat. As the odor and sound of the frying rose about him, his features took on a look of-great benevolence. It was a good part of the meal to hear him announce, "Di-dinner," in a tender and cheerful tone. As he spoke it the word was one of great capacity for suggestion. When the sound of it rose and lingered on its final r, that day they arrived at Lost River camp, Sinth awoke and came out-of-doors.
"Strong's g-gainin'!" he exclaimed, cheerfully, meaning thereby to indicate that he hoped soon to overtake his enemy.
The table of bark, fastened to spruce poles, each end lying in a crotch, had been covered with a mat of ferns and with clean, white dishes. Silas began to convey the food from fire to table. To his delight he observed that "Mis' Strong" had gone into retirement. The face of his sister now wore its better look of sickliness and resignation.
"Opeydildock?" he inquired, tenderly, pouring from a flask into a cup.
"No, sir," she answered, curtly, her tone adding a rebuke to her negative answer.
"Le's s-set," said he, soberly.
They sat and ate their dinner, after which Silas went back on the trail to cut and bring wood for the camp-fire. When his job was finished, the rooms were put to rights, the stove was hot and clean, and an excellent supper waiting.
Strong's camp consisted of three little log cabins and a large cook-tent. The end of each cabin was a rude fireplace built of flat rocks enclosed by upright logs which, lined with sheet-iron, towered above the roof for a chimney. Each floor an odd mosaic of wooden blocks, each wall sheathed with redolent strips of cedar, each rude divan bottomed with deer-skin and covered with balsam pillows, each bedstead of peeled spruce neatly cut and joined—the whole represented years of labor. Every winter Silas had come through the woods on a big sled with "new improvements" for camp. Now there were spring-beds and ticks filled with husks in the cabins, a stove and all needed accessories in the cook-tent.
Ever since he could carry a gun Silas had set his traps and hunted along the valley of Lost River, ranging over the wild country miles from either shore. Twenty thousand acres of the wilderness, round about, had belonged to Smith & Gordon, who gave him permission to build his camp. When he built, timber and land had little value. Under the great, green roof from Bear Mountain to Four Ponds, from the Raquette to the Oswegatchie, one might have enjoyed the free hospitality of God.
From a time he could not remember, this great domain had been the home of Silas Strong. He loved it, and a sense of proprietorship had grown within him. Therein he had need only of matches, a blanket, and a rifle. One might have led him blindfolded, in the darkest night, to any part of it and soon he would have got his bearings. In many places the very soles of his feet would have told him where he stood.
Long ago its owners had given him charge of this great tract. He had forbidden the hounding of deer and all kinds of greedy slaughter, and had made campers careful with fire. Soon he came to be called "The Emperor of the Woods," and every hunter respected his laws.
Slowly steam-power broke through the hills and approached the ramparts of the Emperor. This power was like one of the many hands of the republic gathering for its need. It started wheels and shafts and bore day and night upon them. Now the song of doom sounded in far corridors of the great sylvan home of Silas Strong.
It was only a short walk to where the dead hills lay sprinkled over with ashes, their rock bones bleaching in the sun beneath columns of charred timber. The spruce and pine had gone with the ever-flowing stream, and their dead tops had been left to dry and burn with unquenchable fury at the touch of fire, and to destroy everything, root and branch, and the earth out of which it grew.
It concerned him much to note, everywhere, signs of a change in proprietorship. In Strong's youth one felt, from end to end of the forest, this invitation of its ancient owner, "Come all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Now one saw much of this legend in the forest ways, "All persons are forbidden trespassing on this property under penalty of the law." Proprietorship had, seemingly, passed from God to man. The land was worth now thirty dollars an acre. Silas had established his camp when the boundaries were indefinite and the old banners of welcome on every trail, and he felt the change.
IT was near sunset of the second day after the arrival of Sinth and Silas. They sat together in front of the cook-tent. Silas leaned forward smoking a pipe. His great, brawny arms, bare to the elbow, rested on his knees. His faded felt hat was tilted back. He was looking down at the long stretch of still water, fringed with lily-pads, and reflecting the colors of either shore.
"You'ain't got a cent to yer name," said Sinth, who was knitting. She gave the yam a pull, and, as she did so, glanced up at her brother.
"B-better times!" said he, rubbing his hands.
"Better times!" she sneered. "I'd like to know how you can make money an' charge a dollar a day for board."
Sportsmen visiting there paid for their board, and they with whom Silas went gave him three dollars a day for his labor.
The truth was that prosperity and Miss Strong were things irreconcilable. The representatives of prosperity who came to Lost River camp were often routed by the eye of resentment and the unruly tongue. Strong knew all this, but she was not the less sacred on that account. This year he had planned to bring a cow to camp and raise the price of board.
"You s-see," Strong insisted.
"Huh!" Sinth went on; "we'll mos' kill ourselves, an' nex' spring we won't have nothin' but a lot o' mink-skins."
Miss Strong, as if this reflection had quite overcome her, gathered up her knitting and hastened into the cook-tent, where for a moment she seemed to be venting her spite on the flat-irons and the tea-kettle. Strong sat alone, smoking thoughtfully. Soon he heard footsteps on the trail. A stranger, approaching, bade him good-evening.
"From the Migley Lumber Company," the stranger began, as he gave a card to Strong. "We have bought the Smith & Gordon tract. I have come to bring this letter and have a talk with you."
Strong read the letter carefully. Then he rose and put his hands in his pockets, and, with a sly wink at the stranger, walked slowly down the trail. He wished to go where Sinth would not be able to hear them. Some twenty rods away both sat down upon a log. The letter was, in effect, an order of eviction.
"I got t' g-go?" the Emperor inquired.
"That's about the size of it," said the stranger.
"Can't," Strong answered.
"Well, there's no hurry," said the other. "We shall be cutting here in the fall. I won't disturb you this year."
Silas rose and stood erect before the lumberman.
"Cut everyth-thing?" he inquired, his hand sweeping outward in a gesture of peculiar eloquence.
"Everything from Round Ridge to Carter's Plain," said the other.
Strong deliberately took off his jacket and laid it on a stump. He flung his hat upon the ground. Evidently something unusual was about to happen. Then, forthwith, he broke the silence of more than forty years and opened his heart to the stranger. He could not control himself; his tongue almost forgot its infirmity; his words came faster and easier as he went on.
"N-no, no," he said, "it can't be. Ye 'ain't no r-right t' do it, fer ye can't never put the w-woods back agin. My God, sir, I've w-wan-dered over these hills an' flats ever since I was a little b-boy. There ain't a critter on 'em that d-don't know me. Seems so they was all my b-brothers. I've seen men come in here nigh dead an' go back w-well. They's m-med'cine here t' cure all the sickness in a hunderd cities; they's f-fur 'nough here t' c-cover their naked—they's f-food'nough t' feed their hungry—an' they's w-wood 'nough t' keep 'em w-warm. God planted these w-woods an' stocked 'em, an' nobody's ever d-done a day's work here 'cept me. Now you come along an' say you've bought 'em an' are g-goin 't' shove us out. I c-can't understand it. God m-made the sky an' l-lifted up the trees t' sweep the dust out of it an' pump water into the clouds an' g-give out the breath o' the g-ground. Y-you 'ain't no right t' git together down there in Albany an' make laws ag'in' the will o' God. Ye r-rob the world when ye take the tree-tops out o' the sky. Ye might as well take the clouds out of it. God has gi'n us g-good air an' the woods an' the w-wild cattle, an' it's free—an' you—you're g-goin 't' turn ev'rybody out o' here an' seize the g-gift an' trade it fer d-dollars—you d—-little bullcook!"
A "bullcook," it should be explained, was the chore-boy in a lumber-camp.
Strong sat down and took out an old red handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
He was thinking of the springs and brooks and rivers, of the cool shade, of the odors of the woodland, of the life-giving air, of the desolation that was to come.
"It's business," said the stranger, as if that word must put an end to all argument.
A sound broke the silence like that of distant thunder.
"Hear th-that," Strong went on. "It's the logs g-goin' over Rainbow Falls. They've been stole off the state l-lands. Th-that's business, too. Business is king o' this c-country. He t-takes everything he can l-lay his hands on. He'd t-try t' 'grab heaven if he could g-git over the f-fence an' b-back agin."
"I am not here to discuss that," said the stranger, rising to go.
"Had s-supper?" Silas asked.
"I've a lunch in the canoe, thank you. The moon is up, an' I'm going to push on to Copper Falls. Migley will be waiting for me. We shall camp there for a day or two at Cedar Spring. Good-night."
"Good-night."
It was growing dark. Strong's outbreak had wearied him. He groaned and shook his head and stood a moment thinking. In the distance he could hear the hoot of an owl and the bull bass of frogs booming over the still water.
"G-gone!" he exclaimed, presently. Soon he added, in a mournful tone, "W-wouldn't d-dast tell Mis' Strong."
He started slowly towards the camp.
"I'll l-lie to her," he whispered, as he went along.
Before going to bed he made this note in his memorandum-book:
"June the 26 More snags Strong says trubel is like small-pox thing to do is kepe it from spreadin."
SINCE early May there had been no rain save a sprinkle now and then. From Lake Ontario to Lake Champlain, from the St. Lawrence to Sandy Hook, the earth had been scorching under a hot sun. The heat and dust of midsummer had dimmed the glory of June.
People those days were thinking less of the timber of the woods and more of their abundant, cool, and living green. The inns along the edge of the forest were filling up.
About eleven o'clock of a morning late in June, a young man arrived at Lost River camp—one Robert Master, whose father owned a camp and some forty thousand acres not quite a day's tramp to the north. He was a big, handsome youth of twenty-two, just out of college. Sinth regarded every new-comer as a natural enemy. She suspected most men of laziness and a capacity for the oppression of females. She stood in severe silence at the door of the cook-tent and looked him over as he came. Soon she went to the stove and began to move the griddles. Silas entered with an armful of wood.
"If he thinks I'm goin' to wait on him hand an' foot, he's very much mistaken," said Sinth.
"R-roughlocks!" Silas answered, calmly, as he put a stick on the fire.
Sinth made no reply, but began sullenly rushing to and fro with pots and pans. Soon her quick knife had taken the jackets off a score of potatoes. While her hands flew, water leaped on the potatoes, and the potatoes tumbled into the pot, and the pot jumped into the stove-hole as the griddle took a slide across the top of the stove. And so with a rush of feet and a rattle of pots and pans and a sliding of griddles and a banging of iron doors "Mis' Strong" wore off her temper at hard work.
The Emperor used to smile at this variety of noise and call it "f-f-female profanity," a phrase not wholly inapt. When the "sport" had finished his dinner, and she and her brother sat side by side at the table, she was plain Sinth again, with a look of sickliness and resignation. She ate freely—but would never confess her appetite—and so leisurely that Strong often had most of the dishes washed before she had finished eating.
The young man was eager to begin fishing, and soon after dinner the Emperor took him over to Catamount Pond. On their way the young man spoke of the object of his visit.
"Mr. Strong, you know my father?" he half inquired.
"Ay-ah," the Emperor answered.
"He's been a property-holder in this county for five years, every summer of which I have spent on his land. I feel at home in the woods, and I cast my first vote at Tifton."
Strong listened thoughtfully.
"I want to do what I can to save the wilderness," young Master went on.
"R-right!" said the Emperor.
"If I were in the Legislature, I believe I could accomplish something. Anyhow, I am going to make a fight for the vacant seat in the Assembly."
Strong surveyed him from head to foot.
"I wish you would do what you can for me in Pitkin."
"Uh-huh!" Strong answered, in a gentle tone, without opening his lips. It was a way he had of expressing uncertainty leaning towards affirmation. He liked the young man; there was, indeed, something grateful to him in the look and voice of a gentleman.
"You'll never be ashamed of me—I'll see to that," said Master.
Having reached the little pond, Strong gave him his boat, and promised to return and bring him into camp at six. Here and there trout were breaking through the smooth plane of water.
The Emperor took a bee-line over the wooded ridge to Robin Lake. There he spent an hour repairing his bark shanty and gathering balsam boughs for a bed. Stepping on a layer of spruce poles over which the boughs were to be spread, in a dark corner of the shanty, his foot went through and came down upon the nest of one of the most disagreeable creatures in the wilderness. He sprang away with an oath and fled into the open air. For a moment he expressed himself in a series of sharp reports, Then, picking up a long pole, he met the offenders leaving their retreat, and "mellered" them, as he explained to Sinth that evening.
"T-take that, Amos," he muttered, as he gave one of them another blow.
It should be borne in mind that he called every member of this malodorous tribe "Amos," because the meanest man he ever knew had borne that name.
He put his heel in the crotch of a fallen limb and drew his boot. Then he cautiously cut off the leg of his trousers at the knee, and, poking cloth and leather into a little hollow, buried them under black earth.
Slowly the "Emperor of the Woods" climbed a ridge on his way to Lost River camp, one leg bare to the knee. Walking, he thought of Annette. Lately misfortune had come between them, and now he seemed to be getting farther from the trail of happiness.
At a point on Balsam Hill he came into the main thoroughfare of the woodsmen which leads from Bear Mountain to Lost River camp. Where he could see far down the big trail, under arches of evergreen, he sat on a stump to rest. His bootless foot, now getting sore, rested on a giant toadstool.
Thus enthroned, the Emperor looked down at his foot and reconsidered the relative positions of himself and the Evil One. His faded crown of felt tilting over one ear, his rough, bearded face wet with perspiration, his patched trousers truncated over the right knee, below which foot and leg were uncovered, he was an emperor more distinguished for his appearance than his lineage.
He took out his old memorandum-book and made this note in it with a stub of a pencil:
"June the 27 Strong says one Amos in the bush is worth two in yer company an a pair of britches."
The Emperor, although in the main a serious character, enjoyed some private fun with this worn little book, which he always carried with him. Therein he did most of his talking, with secret self-applause now and then, one may fancy. It has thrown some light on the inner life of the man, and, in a sense, it is one of the figures of our history.