Still another memory goes with that first Cattle Show in Maine—the Wild Rose Sweeting.
Afterwards I came to know that delicious apple well; but it was at the Fair that I first made its acquaintance. Willis Murch was peddling them, and made the place resound, not unmusically, with cries of "Wild Rose Sweetings! Straight from the Garden of Eden! The best apple that ever grew! Only a few left!"—and he was actually asking (and getting) four cents apiece for them.
In some astonishment I drew up to him to see what it could be in the way of an apple to command such a price and be in such evident demand. They were truly lovely apples to look at, but noticing that I was still skeptical as to their exceeding merits, Willis kindly gave me one—by way of removing all doubts. Truth to say, those doubts were at once removed.
The Wild Rose Sweeting, indeed, is really worthy of a biography, its history was so romantic, its fate so sad. Let me try to be its humble biographer.
As a rule apple-trees that come up wild, bear fruit that is either sour or else bitter-sweet. All such trees need to be budded, or grafted and cultivated, to be of value to man. It is only once in a million times that a really good apple comes up as natural fruit.
The value to the world of such a choice apple may be enormous. The Baldwin, for example, which first appeared growing wild in a Massachusetts town, could hardly be reckoned to-day as worth less than a hundredmillions of dollars. We can bud, graft, cultivate and do much to improve existent apples; but it is only by chance that we propagate a new one that is really good.
The Wild Rose Sweeting was named by Miss Alice Linderman, a young lady from Philadelphia, who had come to our northern hill country several years previously in the vain hope of recovery from advanced pulmonary disease. She named it from the wild-rose tint on one cheek of the apple.
The tree was discovered by Willis, who kept the secret of it to himself as long as he could, for his own behoof. He was sufficiently generous to give some of the apples to Miss Linderman, but he demanded a cent apiece from others. He even asked four cents apiece after the fame of the apples spread abroad.
The year after he discovered the tree Willis carried a bushel to the county fair, and began peddling them at a cent apiece. Nearly every one who bought an apple came back for more. Willis raised the price to three and four cents. Presently a gentleman who had bought two came back and took the last ten in the basket at a dollar!
This fact shows better than any description could what a really luscious apple it was. There was that in the flavor of it that impelled people to get more.
The Wild Rose Sweeting more nearly resembled the Sweet Harvey than any other apple to which I can liken it. The flavor was like that of the Sweet Harvey thrice refined, perhaps rather more like the August or Pear Sweeting; and it melted on the palate like a spoonful of ice-cream.
It will not seem strange to those who know something of the "apple-belt" of New England that apple-trees, even good ones, should be discovered growing wild in back pastures and secluded openings in the woods.
Oxford County, Maine, abounds in wild apple-trees.By looking about a little, the farmer there can readily pick up enough young trees, growing wild, to set an orchard. They spring up everywhere. For this is one of the world's natural apple regions. North and northeast of the Old Squire's farm rose wooded hills; and extending back among them was a valley, down which ran a brook, abounding in trout-holes at the foot of ledges and large rocks.
At one time the land here was cleared, but being stony and rough it had been used for pasture, and was partly overgrown with bushes. There were thousands of young wild apple-trees here, scrubby and thorny, where cattle had browsed them.
The boys often went fishing in this brook, spring, summer and fall. Far up the valley, at a point where the brook flowed over a ledge, there was a well-known hole. Willis Murch was fishing here one afternoon in the latter part of August, when he saw a red squirrel carrying an apple in its mouth by the stem, and coming out from some thick young hemlocks that grew along the west bank of the brook. He was sitting so still that the squirrel ran close up to him; but when he suddenly thrust out his hand, the animal dropped the apple and scudded away with a shrillchicker.
The apple rolled close to Willis's feet, and he picked it up. Apples were common enough, but this one looked so good that he rubbed it on his sleeve and bit it. Then his eyes opened in surprise, for this was no sour cider-apple, but far and away the best apple he had ever tasted.
"It must grow near here," he said to himself, looking curiously around. "That squirrel didn't bring it far. The stem is fresh, too. He has just gnawed it off the tree."
Thereupon Willis began searching. He crept into the hemlocks on hands and knees. Presently he came upon several other gnawed apples; but even with this clue, he was half an hour finding the tree. There werefour or five huge rocks back from the brook among the thick hemlocks. At last he crawled in past two of these that stood close together, and came upon the apple-tree, in a little sheltered amphitheater. It was at the foot of another large rock, twelve or fifteen feet high. A tiny spring oozed out at the foot of the rock; and here this apple-tree had grown up, unwatched and undiscovered save by the squirrels and birds. The tree was a thrifty one. The trunk had attained a diameter of six inches; and when Willis found it, there were, he says, four or five bushels of those delicious Sweetings, now just beginning to ripen. Willis first ate all he desired, then took off his coat, made a bag of it, and shook down the ripest of the apples to carry home to his family and the neighboring boys and girls.
"Won't they smack their lips!" he said to himself. "Won't they be up here for more!"
But on the way he took second thought, and craft entered his heart. "I won't tell them where it is," he said to himself. "Let them hunt. They never will find it." For the place was a mile and a half or two miles from the nearest farm.
Willis as yet had not thought of selling the apples or making a profit from his discovery; that idea came into his mind later, after he found how fond every one was of them. But that night when asked where this tree grew, Willis laughed and said darkly, "Oh, I know!"
Such secretiveness was deemed piggish, and was resented. Several declared that they could and would find that tree and get every apple on it. Willis laughed and said, "Let me know when you do."
That was the beginning of the long search for "Willis Murch's good tree." First and last, hours, days and, altogether, weeks of time were spent scouring the pastures, fields and clearings. Willis was watched constantly, in the hope of tracking him.
Alfred Batchelder lay in wait for days together on a hill overlooking the Murch farm, expecting to see Willis set out for the tree. At one time Alfred and another boy, named Charles Cross, had thoughts of waylaying Willis, and extorting the secret from him by threats or torture!
Willis steered clear of them, however, and remained close-mouthed. He had grown very crafty, and went to the tree by night only, or sometimes early on Sunday mornings, before other people were astir.
During the August moon of the second season after discovering the tree, he brought home a bushel of the apples on three different occasions by night; and he now began canvassing among the farmers who had orchards, to sell scions, to be delivered in May of the following spring. After eating the apples, not a few signed for them at fifty cents a graft.
It required a fair share of courage on the part of a boy of fifteen to go to the tree by night, for the distance from Willis's home was fully two miles; and at that time bears and lynxes frequented the "great pasture."
Willis afterward told the other boys that a bear came out in the path directly ahead of him one night, as he was hurrying home with a bushel of Wild Rose Sweetings on his shoulder. The creature sniffed, and Willis shouted to frighten it. He was on the point of throwing down his apples, to climb a tree in haste, when the bear shambled away.
Willis seems now to have had great designs of selling scions to orchardists and nurserymen over the whole country. Only a tiny twig, three inches long, is requisite for a scion for grafting into other trees. The Wild Rose Sweeting tree would produce thousands of such scions. Willis, who was a Yankee lad by ancestry, resolved to preserve the secret of the tree at all hazards. He appears to have had dreams of making a fortune from it.
Thus far no one had been able to find the tree, as much from nature's own precaution in hiding it as from Willis's craft. By the middle of September that autumn he had gathered most of the apples, when the same chance which had first led his steps to the tree revealed it to the eyes of his enemies.
For about that time Alfred Batchelder and Charles Cross's brother, Newman, went fishing up the brook, and in due course arrived at the trout-hole where Willis had sat when he saw the squirrel. They crept up to the hole, baited and cast in together.
There were no bites immediately; but as they sat there they heard a red squirrelchirr! up among the thick hemlocks, and presently caught the sound of a low thud on the ground, soon followed by another and another.
"He's gnawing off apples," said Alfred. "There's an apple-tree among those hemlocks."
Then the two cronies glanced at each other, and the same thought occurred to both. "Who knows!" exclaimed Newman. "Who knows but what that may be the tree?"
They stopped fishing and began searching. They could still hear the squirrel in the apple-tree, and the sounds guided them to the little dell among the rocks. There were a few apples remaining on the tree; and they no sooner saw them than they knew that Willis Murch's famous tree was found at last.
They were so greatly pleased that they hurrahed and whooped for joy. Then they secured what apples there were left, ate all they wanted, and filled their pockets with the rest. No more fishing for them that day. They had found the famous tree, and now were intent on thinking how they could most humiliate Willis.
Neither of them knew of his grand scheme to sell scions; but it had long provoked their envy to see him peddling Wild Rose Sweetings at the Fair for fourcents apiece. They would find him now and thrust a pink-cheeked apple under his nose!
But that would not be half satisfaction enough. They wanted to cut him off from his tree forever, to put it out of his power ever to get another apple from it. Nothing less would appease the grudge they bore him.
And what those two malicious youths did was to take their jack-knives and girdle that Wild Rose Sweeting tree close to the ground. They went clear round the tree, cutting away the bark into the sap-wood; and not content with girdling it once, they went round it three times in different places.
That done, they went home in great glee, thrust the apples in Willis's face, and bade him look to his good tree.
"We have found your tree, old Cuffy!" they cried to him. "You never will get any more apples off that tree!"
Beyond doubt Willis was chagrined. He did not know that they had girdled the tree, but he thought it not worth the while to go up there again that fall, since there were no more apples. Yet even if Alfred and Newman had found it, and even if they got the apples next season, he supposed that he would still be able to cut scions from the tree. Late in March, directly after the sap started, he went up there with knife and saw to secure them.
Not till then did he discover that the tree had been cruelly girdled, and that the spring sap had not flowed to the limbs. He cut a bundle of scions, some of which were afterward set as grafts; but none of them lived. The tree was killed. It never bore again. Nor can I learn that sprouts ever came up about the root. It was quite dead when I first visited the place.
Thus perished, untimely, the Wild Rose Sweeting. Ignorance and small malice robbed the world of anapple that might have given delight and benefit to millions of people for centuries to come.
I have sometimes thought that an inscription of the nature of an epitaph should be cut on the great rock at the foot of which the tree stood.
So occupied were our minds with the Fair and its incidents, that not one of us had thought to go or send to the post office during that entire week. We had even passed near it, without thinking to call.
But on Sunday morning the Old Squire suddenly bethought himself of his religious newspaper,The Independent, which he commonly read for an hour after breakfast. He called me aside and, after remarking that he did not make a practice of going, or sending, to the post office on the Sabbath, said that I might make a trip to the Corners and bring home the mail. As the post office was at the residence of the postmaster, letters and papers could be taken from the office on any day or hour of the week.
I went to the Corners, accordingly, and at the door of the post office met Catherine Edwards who had also come there on a similar errand.
She looked very bright and smart that morning and laughed when she saw me.
"Your folks forgot the mail, too," said she. "Father told me to go down across the meadow, so that the Old Squire's folks needn't see me, going to the post office; for you know father stands in great awe of your grandpa's opinions. I shall tell him when I get home that he needn't have been so cautious."
Kate did not hasten away; and I summoned courage to say, "Please wait for me," although it cost me a great effort.
"All right," she replied. "I'll go on slow."
The postmaster had again to look up his glasses and was, I thought, a long while peering at the letters and papers. At length he handed out my package and I hurried away. Kate had not proceeded very far, however, and I soon overtook her. But she was obliged to take the lead in conversation.
"Our school doesn't begin this winter till after Thanksgiving," she remarked. "Have your folks heard who the schoolmaster is going to be?"
We had not.
"Well then, it is a young man, named Samuel Lurvy," said Kate. "He lives at Lurvy's Mills; and they say that his father, who owns the mills, has sent him for three terms to the Academy. Mr. Batchelder is our district school agent, you know; and his wife is a relative of the Lurvys; that's the reason, father says, that he came to hire Sam. Our folks are a little surprised and so are the Wilburs; for this Sam isn't more than nineteen or twenty years old; and mother says that she doesn't believe that he can be a very good scholar, for his parents are very ignorant.
"I was in hopes that they would have a good teacher this winter; for I want to make a start in Algebra," Kate continued. "I suppose you are nicely along in your studies. They must have better schools at Philadelphia than we do, away back here in the country."
It appeared, however, that whatever advantages I might have had in this respect, I was yet not as far advanced in Arithmetic as Kate; nor yet in any other branch. I had barely reached Compound Interest, while Kate had finished her Practical Arithmetic the previous winter.
"I could do all the examples in it when school was done last winter," she said. "I reviewed it once this summer, under Miss Emmons; I think like as not I might trip on some of them now. But I know thatTheodora can do them all. She is a little older than I am; and she is a real good scholar, though I don't think that she is quite so good as Addison. He is different, somehow; he knows lots about everything and can talk real interesting with the teachers, in the classes. I know he is hoping we will have a good teacher, so he can finish up all his common school studies. You tell him that we are going to have Sam Lurvy, and see what he thinks about it.
"But it will be a long time before school begins," Kate continued, "nearly two months. We only have about nineteen weeks of school in a year here."
By this time we had reached the meadow where the bridge spanned the meadow brook.
"Go easy on the bridge and look off the lower end of it," Kate advised. "We may see a big trout."
We did so and saw several trout, swimming away, but not very large ones.
"Well, I guess I shall go up the meadow and across the fields home," remarked Kate. "It is nearer for me; and it is a little nearer for you; but perhaps you would rather go by the road, seeing it is Sunday."
"I had rather go with you up the meadow," I said, but I felt somewhat abashed; and it seemed to me very bold to take such a long walk through meadow, pasture and fields, with a girl, alone, of about my own age, and not a cousin.
We proceeded up the meadow, following the meanderings of the brook, past numerous bush clumps. At length, we drew near a large bend where the brook looked to be both wide and deep. "This is the best trout hole on the meadow," Kate told me in a low tone. "Just wait a moment and keep back out of sight, while I catch a grasshopper." She hunted about in the dry grass, alternately stealing forward on tip-toe, then making a quick dash and pressing her hand suddenly on the grass. "I've got two," she said, coming cautiously forward. "Now creep up still tothat little bunch of basswood bushes, on the edge of the bank. Get down low and crawl and don't jar the ground. I'm going to throw in a grasshopper. Oh dear me, look at the 'molasses' the nasty thing has put on my hand!"
Kate threw the grasshopper into the pool at the bend; and it seemed to me that it had barely touched the water, whenfloprose a fine trout and snatched it.
"Oh, if it wasn't Sunday and we had a hook here to put this other grasshopper on," said Kate eagerly, "wouldn't it be fun to haul that trout out here!
"I caught ten here one day last June," she continued. "Oh, Idolove to fish!—Do you think it is very horrid for girls to fish?" she asked suddenly.
"Girls don't fish as much as boys, but I didn't know there was any harm in it," I said.
"I'm glad you don't think it isn't nice," said Kate. "Tom is always hectoring me about it. I sometimes catch more than he does; and I think that is the reason he wants to plague me."
"But we must go away from here!" Kate exclaimed. "For I don't think it is quite right to want to fish so badly, on Sunday. I think it is as bad to want to catch a fish as to catch one, or almost as bad."
This being our moral condition, we veered off from the brook a little; and Kate pointed out to me a bank of choke-cherry bushes, from which we gathered a few cherries, not very good ones.
"It isn't a good cherry year," said Kate. "Last year was. We got splendid ones off these same bushes, last September."
Kate also pointed out to me some small bird pear trees, growing beside an old hedge fence across the upper end of the meadow, where we climbed over and going through a tract of sparse woodland entered the pasture below the Old Squire's south field.
"Oh, I do love to be out in the woods and pastures on a bright pleasant day like this!" exclaimed Kate,with a long breath of enjoyment. "I wish I could camp out and be out of doors all the fall. That makes me think, has Addison or Dora said anything to you about our making a trip to the 'great woods' this fall, after the apples are picked?"
"I have heard Addison say that he would like to go," said I. "And Theodora said that they had talked of making a camping trip once. But I haven't heard anything about it lately."
"Oh dear, I'm afraid they will all give it up," said Kate. "There is a place away up in the woods where there is a nice chance to camp. Tom was up there once. It is quite a good ways. We should have to camp out over night. Wouldn't that be fun? There's a brook up there full of fish, they say; and there are partridges and lots of game. My folks will let Tom and me go, if Theodora and Ellen and Addison go. Mother thinks Dora is the nicest girl there ever was about here; she holds her up as a pattern for me, regularly. But I happen to know that Dora enjoys having a good time, as much as I do.
"Now you put them up to go," Kate added, as we came to the west field bars, where our ways homeward diverged. "Good-by. I've had a real nice walk."
It was certainly very polite for her to say that; for she had been obliged to do nearly all the talking.
Addison and Theodora were standing out near the bee hives and saw me coming across the field to the house. A great and embarrassing fear fell upon me, as I saw them observing my approach. Even now, Catherine was still in sight, at a distance, crossing Mr. Edwards' field. My two cousins had been waiting about for me to bringThe Portland TranscriptandThe Boston Weekly Journal, which they read very constantly in those days.
"Aha! aha!" exclaimed Addison, significantly. "Seems to me that you have been gone a long time after the mail!"
"And who is that young lady we saw you taking leave of, over at the bars?" put in Theodora.
A very small hole would have sufficed for me to creep into at about that time!
"See how red he is," hectored Addison. "We've found him out. I had no idea he was any such boy as this!"
"Dear me, no," said Theodora, pretending to be vastly scandalized. "Just see how bold he behaves! I never would have thought it of him!" Thus they tormented me, winking confidentially to each other; and an eel being skinned alive for the frying-pan would not have suffered more than I did from their gibes.
For a number of days after the Fair, we found it difficult to settle down to farm work, so greatly had it interrupted the ordinary course of events. When we did get to work again, our first task was to pick the winter apples, the Baldwins and Greenings, and barrel them, for market. Gramp did not allow these apples to be shaken off the trees; they must all be hand-picked, then carefully sorted up and the first layers placed in the barrels in rows around the bottom. Baldwins and Greenings, thus barrelled, will keep sound till the following March; but if care be not used and apples which have fallen from the trees be put in, the barrel of fruit may wholly decay before February.
It was pleasant, but tiresome work, climbing to the top of the great trees, holding on with one hand and picking apples with the other. We were well provided with "horses," ladders and hooks, however, and in four days, picked and put up one hundred and thirty barrels. Lest some farmer's son well versed in this kind of work, be inclined to think my story large, I may explain that there were six of us, including the two Doanes and the Old Squire; and I must also add that the girls helped us at the sorting and barrelling.
The fact was, that we were all working with goodwill; for Addison had taken opportunity to ask the Old Squire and Gram about making that excursion to the "great woods;" and although the latter had not yet consented to allow Theodora and Ellen to go, Gramp had said that we boys might have four days, after the apples were picked. Addison had told me about it, but had said nothing to Halstead, for he had expressly stipulated with the old gentleman, that Halse should not be allowed to accompany us.
Addison's plan to exclude Halse disturbed Theodora, however; she thought it was wrong to treat him in that manner, even if we did not like his ways. Addison, however, declared that we would be sure to have trouble, if Halstead went, he was so headstrong and bad-tempered. We had several very earnest private discussions of the matter. Addison would not yield the point; he would as lief not go, he said, as to go with Halse.
Thomas and Catherine Edwards, and Willis Murch, had been advised of the proposed expedition and asked to go. We should thus make a party of seven, Addison urged, and would have a fine time; for the Edwards young folks and Willis were good-tempered and intelligent, with tastes much like our own. Ned Wilbur had been invited, but declined, having to choose between this trip and a long promised visit to some friends, in another county.
The matter was pending all the time we were gathering apples. Theodora even argued for Halstead with Gramp; but Addison stood in well with the old gentleman; he declared that he wished and needed to take a gun with us, and that he, for one, did not dare go out with Halse, if the latter had a gun; nor did he believe that any of us would be safe, if Halse had the handling of one.
Unfortunately there was only too much truth in this latter argument. Theodora then urged that Halse might be allowed to go and made to promise inadvance not to take up the gun at all while we were gone. Addison retorted that those might trust his promises who wished, but that he would not.
Wealthy, whom grandmother judged too young to go, at length told Halstead of the proposed trip and informed him that he, at least, would have to stay at home with her. Thereupon Halstead began to question me in our room at night about the trip. I told him bluntly that Gramp did not think it prudent for him to go, lest he should make trouble.
"So I've got to stay at home and work!" he exclaimed bitterly.
"Well, you might behave better when you are out, then," I said. "It's your own fault."
"What have I done?" he exclaimed.
"Picked a quarrel with 'Enoch' on Fourth o' July," said I, to refresh his memory.
"I don't care; he stoned me!" Halse exclaimed.
"But you began the fuss," I put in.
"Oh, you say that because Ad does. You and he are about alike!" cried Halse, angrily.
"Then there was town-meeting night," I went on to say. "I think you came home intoxicated that night; I think you had been gambling, too."
"You say that again and I'll thrash you!" exclaimed Halse, now very hot.
"Well, I think so, or I shouldn't say it," I repeated.
In an instant Halse was upon me, as I sat on the side of our bed, and there was an unseemly scuffle. Halse was the larger, and I think that I would have gotten the worst of the squabble, but at this juncture, Addison, hearing the racket, rushed in from his room and pulled us apart.
"Who began this row?" quoth our separator.
"I did, and I'll thrash him!" shouted Halse. "He said I was drunk town-meeting night."
"Well, you were," said Addison. "We all know that."
Halse then tried to throw a boot at Addison who set him down violently in a chair.
"Do you know what I would do with you, if I were in the Old Squire's place?" cried Addison. "I would put you at the Reform School, you little rowdy!"
Up jumped Halse to seize the other boot to throw, but was set down again, this time so hard that the whole room shook. He sat panting a moment, then began to whimper. Theodora came to the door.
"Oh, boys," said she in a low voice, "please don't. Do try not to disturb Gramp to-night; he is very tired and has just gone to bed."
I suppose that we all felt ashamed of ourselves. I did; for I knew that I had been somewhat to blame, to provoke Halstead so far. We fell asleep in anything but a kindly mood toward each other; I had remained awake till Halse was snoring, being a little afraid of him, to tell the truth. Even after he was asleep, he kept starting and muttering, he had become so much excited.
But for this incident I think that Theodora would have won her way, and Halse would have been invited to go; she was very persevering, to carry her point, when she thought a thing was right.
But now we were so embittered that Halstead declared next morning he would not go with us, if we asked him.
"But you will all be sorry for this before you get back!" he blurted out;—words which made me feel uneasy, for they seemed to imply a threat of some sort. I said nothing about it, however, not believing that he really would do anything.
That afternoon we finished picking the apples; and the Old Squire said that the hired men could gather up those on the ground, for home use, subsequently. Since we were going on a trip, he thought that we had better go at once, before the weather turned colder. The fact was, that Ad had succeeded in interestingGramp in the trip. The old gentleman owned a number of lots of wild land, up in the "great woods." There had been stories that there was silver in some of the mountains there; Addison often talked about finding mines; and as he already knew quite a good deal about the different kinds of rocks and ores, the Old Squire thought that he might possibly discover something of value.
That evening we were busy with our preparations for the trip; and I do not remember seeing Halstead at all; Catherine and Tom Edwards came over, and Willis Murch a little later, to ask about taking his gun. Addison thought that one gun would be enough to carry; for we found out, as every camping party does, that our luggage would prove burdensome and must be reduced to the least possible weight. We wanted to take, in addition to four "comforters" and two blankets, only what things we could pack in two common bushel baskets which are convenient to carry, either on one's shoulder, or for two persons where one lends a hand at either ear of the basket. In one basket we packed our tinware, frying-pan, tin dippers, plates, etc., along with four or five loaves of bread, sugar, coffee, salt, pepper, etc., and four dozen eggs. In the other was stowed potatoes, pork, a little bag of coarse corn meal for mush, butter and a score other little articles that are often forgotten at the start and sadly missed later on. Finally on top of each basket was strapped the comforters and blankets.
It being past the middle of October, when frosty nights might be expected, we all wore thick winter clothing and strong boots.
Gram had at last consented to allow Ellen and Theodora to go, although it must be said that such a jaunt was not at all to the dear old lady's taste, and violated many of her traditions of what girls should do.
There were none too many hours passed in sleep by any of us that night, I feel sure; for we did not finishour preparations and packing, till towards midnight; and Addison waked us promptly at five o'clock. When he came to my door to call me, Halse waked up and lay scowling, as I dressed by the light of a candle. "You feel mighty smart, don't ye?" he said at length. I did not blame him much for being out of sorts, and so did not reply.
"I hope it will rain every day you are gone!" he exclaimed. "I hope the 'Cannucks' will rob ye!"
There were rumors concerning parties of Canadian outlaws that were thought to infest the "great woods," or at least to pass through it and rendezvous somewhere in its recesses, on their way to and from Canada. Hence the name of Cannucks.
We had breakfast at six; and then Asa Doane hitched up old Sol and Nancy to the farm wagon on which we loaded our outfit and set off to take up our friends, Thomas and Kate, also Willis Murch. We were to have four days, five, including Sunday (for this was Thursday); Gramp expressly stipulated, however, that we should remain quiet in our camp over the Sabbath.
"Now, boys," said the old gentleman, coming out to see us off, "be prudent and careful, avoid rash encounters with man or beast.
"Addison," he continued in a lower voice, "I shall expect you to see that everything goes right."
Gram's instructions to the girls had been given already and many times repeated. We drove off in high spirits; and the old folks stood looking after us. Happening to cast a glance to the upper windows of the house, I saw Halstead's face, with so black a frown on it, that I experienced a sudden foreboding.
But the beauty of the early autumnal morning, and the exaltation which we all felt at starting out for a holiday, soon dispelled other thoughts.
We had, as I now think, done wrong to exclude Halse; but it was a choice of evils. His disposition was so peculiar, that we should most likely have had trouble, if he had gone with us; and yet in leaving him behind, we were prompting him to some bad act on account of the slight.
Thomas and Kate were waiting for us by theroadside and, after a joyous greeting, climbed into the wagon; we then drove on to take up Willis, whom we found equally on the alert. Each made contributions to the common stock of provisions and outfit.
Half a mile above the Murch farm, the road entered the borders of the "great woods," and immediately became little better than a trail, rather rough and bushy; yet a well-marked track extended for five miles into the forest, as far as Clear Pond from the shores of which pine lumber had been drawn out two years previously. From the pond a less well trodden trail led on over a high ridge of forest land, to the northwest, for three miles, then descended into a heavily timbered valley, to an old log structure known as "the skedaddlers' fort."
From "the skedaddlers' fort," there was still the faint trace of a path through the woods, for two miles further, to the banks of Lurvy's Stream.
Thence the path continued along the bank of this large brook, for four or five miles, then crossed it at a sandy ford, to a large opening in the forest, partly natural meadow and partly cleared, called "the old slave's farm," where there were two deserted log cabins.
Years before, a negro, said to have been a slave who had escaped from one of the Southern States and was fleeing to Canada, settled in the woods here by the stream, thinking perhaps that he had reached Canada already. He cleared land, subsisted somehow, and made for himself a considerable farm upon the naturally open intervale. He lived here alone for many years, seen at times by passing lumbermen, or hunters. Some ludicrous stories are told of the fright which the sight of a jet black man gave inexperienced whites who chanced to stumble upon him suddenly and alone in the woods! There were certain ignorant persons who always considered this poor, lonely outcast as being a near relative of "old Nick."
During the Civil War he disappeared from his "farm" and may have returned to the South, being no longer in fear of bondage. A little cabin of hewn logs had sufficed him for a house and a few yards distant another cabin gave shelter to his poultry and cow. These cabins having stood unoccupied for many years in snow and rain, had bleached themselves into cleanliness, and were not unfit to camp in for a few days. It was here that we had decided to make our headquarters, while exploring the streams and forest adjacent.
We had taken an ax as well as a gun; and by stopping to clear an occasional windfall from the old road and going slowly over the logs, stones and holes, the horses took us up to Clear Pond in about two hours.
The deciduous trees were now nearly bare, save here and there a beech or a deep purple ash. The golden red foliage of the sugar maples and the yellow birches lay rustling under foot.
The woods looked light and open since the leaves had fallen. Only the hemlocks and spruces retained their somber density, with a few firs in the swamps and here and there a lofty pine on the mountain sides. All the summer birds had gone already; but a few red-headed woodpeckers were still tapping decayed tree trunks; and numerous jays made the woodland resound to their varied outcries, first shrill and obstreperous, then plaintive. Far up a hillside of poplar, a horde of crows were clamoring over some corvine scandal, perhaps.
It was a sylvan, but wholly lonely scene, save for the partridges rising, after every few rods, from the path in rapid whirring flight, or standing still for a moment with sharply nodding heads and a quick, short note of alarm, ere taking wing.
Willis, walking ahead with his gun, soon startled us with its near report, adding a fine speckled cock to ourprospective larder; erelong he shot another and still another. These fine birds were very plenty in the borders of the "great woods."
On reaching Clear Pond, we were obliged to say good-by to our team. The wagon could go no further; for here the more recent lumber road terminated, the trail beyond being older and much obstructed by fallen trees.
Then began the real labor of carrying our baskets. Addison and I led off with one basket and the ax; while Tom and Willis followed with the other. The girls came on at leisure, in the rear; they were seeing a great deal that was novel in the woods; and having but light loads, they could enjoy it better than we boys who were carrying the bushel baskets.
Going up the side of the wooded ridge, a pine marten was espied in full chase after a red squirrel, up and down the trunk of a spruce.
"What a specimen he would make to mount!" Addison exclaimed, and dropping his "ear" of our basket, unslung his gun and ran forward to get a shot; but the shy creature vanished in time to save its life, through the thick tops of the adjacent trees. Near the top of the ridge, he fired at a red-tailed hawk which had alighted on the top of a pine stub; the distance was too great, however, and the hawk sailed away placidly.
After crossing the ridge, the path led us through denser, darker woods. A large animal which Willis thought to be a bear, but Addison and Thomas deemed more likely to be a deer, was heard to run away through a copse of cedar, a little in advance of us. We passed some very large swamp elms here and several basswoods fully four feet in diameter.
At length, a few minutes before twelve o'clock, by the old silver watch (which Kate had brought from home to keep time for us during the trip) we came out at the "skedaddlers' fort," where we hadplanned to stop for lunch and make a pot of coffee. This was the first time I had heard of this old structure, thus singularly named. But Willis, Thomas and Kate knew its history; Addison and our girls had also heard accounts of it.
It stood in the midst of a little opening—now overgrown again—made by felling the great bass, hemlock, and spruce trees, of which its log walls were built. In length, it may have been forty feet, by about twenty-five in width. It was substantially roofed with logs and "splits" covered with gravel. There were little ports, six or eight inches square, at intervals in the walls, at a height of six or seven feet from the ground, and one heavy door, or gate, of hewn plank, five or six inches thick. The little brook in the valley flows beneath one corner of the building, ensuring water to those who may have dwelt within.
This log structure, suggestive both of warfare and refugee life, was a great puzzle to a party of city young men who not many years ago penetrated these forest solitudes, on a hunting excursion. They concluded that it was built at a time when defense against the Indians was necessary. A writer for a New York magazine, who seems to have stumbled on this old "block-house," as he calls it, also came to the conclusion that it was a relic of early border warfare.
It is nothing of the sort, however, and instead of being a hundred years old, it is less than fifty. The city visitors did not make proper allowance for the rapidity with which, in a damp, dense forest, everything made of wood becomes moss-grown and decays.
During the Civil War, there was a class of so-called "skedaddlers;" fellows undeserving the name of citizens, who, when the Republic called for their services, ran away to Canada, or, gaining some remote covert in the forest, defied the few officials who could be spared from the front, to enforce law at home. But to the honor of our people it can be truthfully said,that these weak-hearts were comparatively few in number. Such there were, however; and to a party of them the "skedaddlers' fort" owes its existence. It was built at about the time the first "draft" of men was ordered in 1862. There were two or three leading spirits, and altogether a gang of eighteen or twenty men banded together in that vicinity to elude the enrollment. They "skedaddled" one night—that was the time this ugly word originated—and took refuge in the woods with their guns; and not long after, it is supposed, they built this log fortalice in the depths of the wilderness.
In the dubious state of public feeling at that time, the people of the county did not say much, directly, about the skedaddlers. No one, not of the gang, knew who or how many were at the fort. At one time it was rumored that there were a hundred armed men in the woods, probably an exaggeration. Several farmers lost young cattle, which it was supposed were stolen to supply food for the fort. One story was, that a number of cows had been driven into the woods, to furnish a supply of milk. It is hardly probable that these men could have been so ignorant as to think that they would be able to resist the power of the government, if official action were taken against them, although the fact of their building a fort gave color to such a supposition. The wildest boasts were made, indirectly, through sympathizers with them. Ten thousand troops, it was asserted, could not drive them out of the woods! The skedaddlers, it was said, were about to set up a new State there in the wild lands and declare themselves free of the United States! Another threat was that they would get "set off" and join Canada. If a Federal soldier showed his blue coat in those woods (so rumor said), he would suddenly meet a fate so strange that nobody could describe it!
Some months passed, when a boy named SamuelMurch—an older brother of Willis and Ben—who trapped in the woods every fall, discovered the fort one day and reconnoitered it. He had followed a cow's tracks up from the cleared land. Several men were seen by him about the stockade, and there was a large camp-fire burning outside, with kettles hanging from a pole over it.
Every two or three days thereafter, Sam Murch, as he trapped, would go around for a sly peep at the "fort;" and he kept people informed as to appearances there.
It chanced that in October, that fall, a young volunteer, named Adney Deering, came home on a furlough. He had been wounded slightly in the leg, by a fragment of shell.
Adney, who was a bright, handsome young fellow, then in his twentieth year, looked very spruce in his blue uniform. He was brimful of patriotism and gave graphic accounts of battles, with warlike ardor. When he heard of the "skedaddlers" and their fort, he expressed the greatest indignation and contempt for them. At a husking party one evening, several of the young men proposed that Adney should go with them on a deer hunt in the "great woods," before he went back to his regiment. Someone then remarked that, if he went, he had better not wear his uniform, as threats had been made of shooting the first soldier who showed his head in the woods. This aroused Adney's ire. "Let them shoot!" he exclaimed. "I will wear my uniform anywhere I choose to go! I will go all through those woods and walk right up to the door of their 'fort!'"
Several of the older men then advised him not to go near the "fort."
"Pooh!" cried Adney. "I used to know many of those fellows. They are a set of cowards. Ten to one, they wouldn't dare fire at a soldier!"
Others who were present thought they would dare;and Adney became excited. "It is a disgrace," he exclaimed, "that those skulkers are allowed to harbor there!" And he offered to wager that he could take six soldiers and drive them out, without firing a single cartridge.
One or two of his friends laughed at this boast, which so exasperated Adney that he instantly declared that he could drive them out alone. All laughed still more heartily at that. The laughter only stimulated Adney to make good his rather loud boast, if possible; and the result was, that he hit on the following stratagem for routing the "skedaddlers." There was no lack of drums in the neighborhood, for in those days the boys, who were not old enough to volunteer, had fond dreams of going to the War as drummer-boys. Adney went about privately next morning with Sam Murch and induced three or four young fellows to take drums and go with him into the woods that afternoon. Under Sam's lead the little party arrived in the vicinity of the "fort," shortly before nightfall. Adney then stationed one of the boys with his drum at a point to the northeast of the log fortress, at a distance of about half a mile from it, in the thick woods. Another was posted farther around to the north; and still another to the northwest.
Adney's orders to them all were to keep quiet at their posts until they heard him fire a gun. Then all three were to beat the "long roll," then a quickstep; in fact, they were to make all the drum-racket they could, as if a number of companies, or regiments, were advancing on the fort from all quarters, except the south.
Adney himself went down near the fort, just at dusk, and contrived to give the inmates a glimpse of his figure in his army blue—as if he were a spy, reconnoitering the place. He then withdrew, and ten or fifteen minutes later, fired off his gun, when at once from three different points, in the darkening forest,there burst forth the roll of drums, Adney calling out in military accents, "Steady! Close up! Forward! Forward!"
The result showed that the young soldier's estimate of the valor of the skedaddlers was a perfectly correct one. For no sooner did they hear the roll of drums, than, fancying that they were being surrounded by a force of soldiers, they deserted their fort and skedaddled again, out through the woods on the south side. From the stories they afterward told, it is pretty clear that they did some remarkable running that night, and were about as badly frightened as they could be. Six or seven of them kept to the woods and made their way into Canada, where they lived till after the close of the War. One, the "Lieutenant" of the gang, ran home—as his wife told the story—and hid under a pile of old straw in the back yard. Several others were known by their neighbors to be lurking at their homes, keeping in cellars and chambers, during the following week. In short, this well-planned "attack" of Adney's broke up their rendezvous in the "great woods," and the fort was never occupied afterwards. The young soldier, who had approached near enough to witness the stampede, bivouacked his small drum-corps there that night very comfortably, and marched home in triumph next morning. The affair created much merriment and many jokes; and the moral would seem to be, that a fellow who will sneak off when his country calls for his services, is never a person to be feared as a warrior.
It was not a very pleasant place to linger in; and directly after we had taken our luncheon, we resumed our journey along the old trail, having a hard jaunt before us (as Addison well knew) to reach the "old slave's farm" before nightfall. There were a great many windfalls across the trail from the "fort," to the stream; we were an hour at least making the two miles, and the path along the bank was even worse,for freshets had lodged great quantities of drift stuff on the flats, so that, at last, we abandoned the trail altogether and took to the less obstructed woods, a little back from the banks.
The stream is a pretty one, being here not above forty or fifty feet in width, running over a sandy bed, sometimes pebbles, and again bending around in a deep pool where there are trout of good size, or at least were then.
It seemed a very long way to the opening; the girls were becoming tired; and we boys with the baskets had quite enough of it, long before we reached the ford which Addison and Thomas, who had been here before, remembered to be near two very tall pines. Several times we feared that we must have passed it; but finally, at about four o'clock, the great bushy opening on the other side of the stream came in view. Immediately then Addison saw the pines, and taking off our boots and stockings, we all walked across on a sandy bar over which the water ran in a shallow, being nowhere over a foot deep. It was quite cold, however, so that we were glad to replace socks and boots, after crossing.
The old slave's cabins stood about two hundred yards from the brook and, as above described, were situated some twenty yards apart. The land about them had been cleared at one time and put into grass, or corn. But low clumps of hazel-nut bushes were now growing around the cabins. About a year previously a party of deer hunters had camped here for a few days and, thinking the cabins snug and pleasant, had cleared them out nicely and built bunks in them to sleep in. We found the remains of their old couches of fir boughs still in the bunks. Their camp-fire had been made in the open space, midway between the two cabins; and they had constructed a species of stone fireplace for setting their kettles in.
"Here we are!" Addison exclaimed, as we set downour baskets. "What say to this for a camping-place, girls!"
"Oh, this is jolly!" cried Kate. "And won't it be nice, Doad, we girls can have a whole cabin all to ourselves! Now which one can we have?"
"You are privileged to take your choice," replied Addison. "Take the one you like best."
The girls went peeping into each, to examine them well, and were in doubt for some moments. In fact, there was not much to choose betwixt the two.
At length, Kate announced that they would have the one "the old slave" lived in, himself.
"No doubt he spent many a lonesome hour there," said Theodora. "I should like to know his history."
"That's what nobody can find out," said Tom. "But I am glad he lived here and left his hut for us to camp in."
We sat on the grassy sward of the old yard and rested for some minutes, then began our preparations for supper.
"Now we must all fall to with a will," said Addison. "It is a job to get things fixed up nice for night."
"Addison, you be captain and tell us each what to do," suggested Kate. "We will all obey and work like good soldiers;—for we all want some supper, I guess."
"Well, then," said Addison, "what do you want for your supper?"
"Poached eggs on toast!" cried Ellen.
"I think some of those partridges would go well," said Kate.
"Would it take long to fricassee them?" Addison asked.
"Oh, not very long," said Theodora.
"I can dress them off in ten minutes," said Willis, "if you don't insist on their being picked and will let me skin them instead; for I can take their skins off, feathers and all, in just one minute apiece."
"Go ahead," exclaimed Addison; "Tom, get dry wood from that drift-heap down by the brook and build a nice camp-fire; and Kate, you and Doad unpack the baskets and get the coffee-pot, tin kettle and frying-pan ready. While you are doing that, the rest of us can throw out those old yellow boughs from the bunks, then cut new ones and make the bunks all up sweet and fresh for night; and after that we will drag up a lot of wood for our camp-fire, through the evening."
"Shall we not keep a camp-fire burning all night?" Theodora asked.
"Oh, yes! let's not let the fire go out!" cried Ellen. "We're a dreadful ways from home, up here in the great woods! How many miles have we come, Ad?"
"About seventeen miles, all told."
"Yes; do let's have a good roaring fire all night," said Kate.
It quite frightened the girls to think how far they were from home, in the forest, now that the sun began to sink behind the tree tops.
"All right!" laughed Addison. "Gather lots of wood. It will take piles of it to burn all night."
But Theodora made a discovery which gave them a good deal of comfort.
"We've got a door to our cabin!" she called out from inside it. "Quite a good door. See," she said, swinging it. "We can shut our cabin up, just like any house, and fasten it, too. Here's a great button on the door-post. Nothing can get in to hurt us after we shut and button our door. Have you got any door to your cabin?"
Investigation of our cabin disclosed no door. There was abuttonon the door-post; but the door had been removed.
The girls laughed at us. "A fine house you've got!" said Kate. "No door! You will be carried off before morning by a panther."
"Never mind us," replied Addison. "Fasten up your own door, snug and tight."
"When we get ready to go to bed," said Willis, "we willturn our button; I guess that will answer for us.
"But I've got the partridges all dressed," he continued, "and I'm going to cut them up and put them into the tin kettle, to parboil, and then, when they are partly cooked, you can put them into the frying-pan, if you like."
"Can't you thicken up some kind of a flour and butter gravy to go with those partridges, Kate?" said Tom.
"Why, bless you, Thomas, there's no flour!" replied his sister.
"I think I could use Indian meal instead of flour," said Theodora, "though I wouldn't promise it would be as good, since it might taste a little coarse."
"Well, try it, anyway," said Tom; "for I like that kind of a gravy first rate."
"Oh, it just makes me laugh to hear boys talk about cooking," exclaimed Kate. "They do have such droll ideas!"
"Well, I know what I like," said Tom; "and I wouldn't give much for a girl that cannot make a gravy."
"Oh, the nice, agreeable boy! So he should have his gravy on his partridge," teased Kate.
"I've too much regard for the reputation of our family to quarrel with my sister before folks," laughed Thomas. "She's an awful provoking thing, though!"
"Oh, the dear boy!" retorted Kate.
"Somebody give me some cold water to hold in my mouth," groaned Tom. "She must have the last word, anyway."
That was quite a common kind of encounter between Tom and his sister Kate; yet I never saw brother and sister more attached to each other. Only about a yearand a half younger than her brother, Kate was a match for him in about everything and rather more than a match in repartee.
Meantime Theodora was toasting some squares of bread to put in the partridge fricassee, and looking about for a dish to manufacture Tom's butter and meal gravy in.
There was a copse of little firs, standing about a low, wet piece of ground, a few hundred feet away. To these we had recourse for the material to fill the bunks.
Thomas having collected a woodpile of good proportions, proceeded to put on fourteen potatoes to boil, reckoning two for each member of the party; and as the partridges were boiling briskly, fast progressing to the cooked condition, Catherine made coffee. It was agreed, however, that after that evening, we were to take coffee but once per day; and everybody voted to have it in the morning.
Addison now busied himself devising a "table;" and in this matter he was assisted by the labors of the previous party of deer-hunters who had left a large board behind them, to be set on forked stakes, driven into the ground; there were also two rough benches for seats.
It was not till after dusk had fairly settled over the wilderness that our supper was pronounced ready by the many cooks who had taken a hand in its preparation. The camp-fire was replenished, so that a genial glow and plenty of light was diffused about; and then our meal began. We had the three partridges quite well cooked; and Thomas had his dear gravy. There were boiled potatoes and some pork, fried crisp, to suit Willis; also boiled eggs for all and plenty of toasted bread with butter. Kate had also brought a lot of "cookies," which went well with coffee.
Addison sat at one end of the table and dished out the partridges. Theodora presided over the coffee; and Ellen and Kate looked after the toast. The longjaunt had given us fine appetites and we cleared the rude board of the eatables, enjoying it as only a hungry party of campers, who have had their own supper to get and have waited an hour or two for it to cook, can enjoy such a meal.
Dishes had then to be picked up, and water brought and heated; for dishes must needs be washed.
"Oh dear!" sighed Ellen. "I did hope I could get to a place once where there were no dishes to be washed. I always have it to do at home."
"You've got to that place!" exclaimed Thomas. "I'll wash them, if you girls will agree to eat off them next meal and find no fault."
"I'll wipe them if Tom'll wash them!" cried Willis. "'Tis tough for girls always to have to wash dishes."
"I agree to find no fault for one," said Ellen.
"We might do as they are said to do in the lumbering camps," remarked Addison; "that is to eat off the same plates without washing, till we forget what we ate off them last."
"I object to such a plan as that!" cried Theodora. "I would rather wash them all, myself."
Tom and Willis washed the dishes that night, however; and the girls sat back on their bench and smiled and pinched each other, to see the performance.
By the time the dishes question was disposed of and everything had been tidied up and the fire once more attended to, the darkness of an October night had fallen. Everything outside the circle of our firelight was veiled in obscurity. There was no moon and it was a little cloudy, at least, the stars did not seem to show much. Very soon as we sat on our benches in front of the girls' cabin, we began to hear various wild notes from the great somber forest about us.
"What is that kind of plaintive cry that I hear now and then near the stream?" Theodora asked. "It's like the wordseet! I have heard it several timessince dark, once or twice back of the cabins, and now out there by the two pines."
"That? Oh, that is the night note of a little mouse-catching owl," said Addison. "Some term it the saw-whet owl, I believe. There are numbers of these little fellows about at night, in these woods. They catch lots of woods mice and such small birds as chickadees."
"But hark! what was that strange, lonesome, hollow cry?" said Ellen, as an outcry at a distance, came wafted on the still air.
"Oh, that's a raccoon," said Tom. "He's trying to attract the notice of some other 'coon. You'll hear him for fifteen or twenty minutes now, every minute or so."
"They came into our corn-field last year," said Willis. "We heard them every night, calling to each other. I set a trap, but never could get any of them into it."
Willis went on to relate several raccoon stories which his older brothers had told him. "Hullo!" he suddenly interrupted himself. "Hear that? away off up there by the foot of the mountain?"
"I know what that was," said Tom. "That was a screamer."
"What is a 'screamer?'" Theodora asked.
"Oh, it's a kind of wild-cat," replied Thomas. "You tell her, Addison."
"If it is a wild-cat, it is the same as the 'lucivee,' or loup-cervier," replied Addison. "But I have never heard one cry out at night; so I cannot say for certain."
"Oh, I have," said Willis. "They have little tassels on the top of their ears and are about as big as a fair-sized dog. But they never come near a camp; they are so shy that you never can get sight of one, though the lumbermen tell stories of having fights with them. They've got long claws and couldscratch like sin, if they were cornered up anywheres."
"Sometimes they will follow after anybody for a long ways," said Thomas. "Father told me that, when he was a boy, the mill stream at the village got so low one fall that they could not grind wheat or corn there. So grandpa sent him over to Pride's grist mill, in Willowford, with the horse and wagon and a load of corn. There were a lot of grists in ahead of him; and before the miller got around to grind out father's corn, it was dark, and he had to drive home, thirteen miles, in the evening. It was woods nearly all the way then; and after he had gone a mile, or two, and it had come on very dark, so dark he could hardly see his hand before him, he heard a snarling noise behind him. Turning round, he saw two bright spots just behind the wagon. It scared him; he started the horse up, but those spots came right close along after him. Every time he looked around, he would see them, and he could hear the creature's feetpatin the road, too, as it ran after the wagon. He kept the horse trotting along pretty fast and held the butt of his whip all ready to strike, if the creature jumped into the wagon. It didn't jump in, but kept near the hind end of the wagon; and it followed father for as much as two miles, till he met a man with an ox team. He was so taken up watching for those eyes, back there in the dark, that he came near running into the ox team; but the man shouted to him to pull up. He told the man that something had been chasing him; but the eyes had disappeared; and he saw nothing more of them. Father thinks now that it was a 'screamer,' though it might have been a panther. There were lots of panthers in the woods, in those days."
"Are there any now?" asked Theodora, looking a little uncomfortable.
"No," said Addison. "I don't think there are."
"Well, I'm not so sure of that," said Thomas. "There may be one passing through here, once in a while. Did you ever hear the Old Squire tell the story of the panther that he and my grandfather killed, when they were boys?"
"No," said Addison. "The old gentleman never talks much of his early exploits."
Ellen said that she had heard Gram speak of it once.
"Tell the story, Tom," said I.
"Oh, you get the old gentleman to tell it to you, sometime," replied Tom. "I can't tell it good. But 'twas realscareyand interesting. Something about a cow. The panther killed my grandfather's father's cow, I believe. The men were all away. It was in the winter time; and those two boys followed the panther's track away up into the great woods here somewheres and shot it. It's a real interesting story. You get the old gentleman to tell it to you some evening."
"We will," said Theodora. "I'll ask him the first night after we go home."
"My! Did you hear what an awful noisethatwas, just now?" exclaimed Kate.
We had all heard it—a singular yell, not wholly unlike the human voice, yet of ugly, wild intonation. Addison and Thomas exchanged glances.
"Queer what a noise a screech owl will make," the former remarked, after a moment's silence.
"Dear me, was that a screech owl?" said Theodora.
"Oh, I guess so," replied Addison carelessly. "They make an awful outcry sometimes."
Tom did not say anything, but he told me next day that it was a bear which had made that cry, only a little ways from the camp; and that he had winked to Addison not to tell the girls, for they were looking nervously about them, after hearing the "screamer" story.
It was not a cold night, for October; yet as the evening advanced the fire felt very comfortable.
As we sat talking, several striped squirrels came out in sight into the firelight. There were hundreds of these little fellows there in the clearing, gathering the hazel nuts for their winter store. The hazel nuts were very large, nearly the size of those sold as filberts. The squirrels made their winter burrows in the ground about the old stumps. Kate had gathered a pint dipper full of the nuts before dark; and as we sat talking, we cracked them with round stones from the stream. Once we heard a great rushing and running, as of large animals through the bushes, at no great distance away.
"Hear the deer go!" Willis exclaimed.
Tom laughed. "We will pop over some of them to-morrow," said he. But he whispered to me a few minutes later, that he expected two bears were having a squabble over there in the brush. By and by we heard them running again; and this time they passed around to the south of our camping place, and we heard them go, splashing, through the stream and away into the woods on the other side. Willis jumped up and gave a loudso-ho!which resounded far across the darkened wilderness; and then for a time all the wild denizens of the forest seemed to remain quiet, as if listening to this unusual shout.
"Oh, don't, Willis!" cried Ellen. "It seems as if you were telling all these wild creatures where we are!"