Silas Strong 22
Some wore flannel shirts and the livery of a woodsman's toil; some,
unduly urged, no doubt, by a wife or sister, had ventured forth in more
conventional attire. They sat, as if posing for a photograph, galled,
hot, gloomy, suspicious, self-suppressed, silent, their necks hooped in
linen, their bodies resisting the tight embrace of new attire. In the
crowd were a number to whom the reaping of the ruined hills, on either
side of the train, had brought wealth and an air of proprietorship. Most
of the crowd were in high spirits. The sounds of loud talk and laughter
and the rankling smoke of cheap cigars filled the air above them. A lank
youth under a dark, broad-brimmed hat, tilted backward, so as neither
to conceal nor disarrange a rare embellishment of curls upon his brow,
entered the car with another like him. His hair had the ginger-brown,
ringletudinous look of spaniel fur. He began to whistle loudly and, as
it would seem, prelusively. In a moment he was in full song on a ballad
of the cheap theatres, with sentiment like his hair--frank, bold, oily,
and outreaching.
As the train stopped at Hillsborough, Strong rose and put on his pack
and left with the crowd, coon in hand. The sidewalks were crowded, and
Strong took the centre of the street. There, at least, was comparative
seclusion.
Silas had not travelled a block when, all unexpectedly, he became
a centre of attraction. A group of whining dogs gathered about him,
peering wistfully at the coon. They were shortly reinforced by a number
of small boys, which grew with astonishing rapidity. Cries of curiosity
and derision rose around him. Sportsmen who had visited his camp and who
recognized him shouted their greeting to the "Emperor of the Woods." A
"swisher" of some prominence in the little school of sportsmanship at
Lost River came and dispersed the boys. The Emperor kicked at a dog
and ran a little way in pursuit of him. He came back and set down the
coon-cage and shook hands with his pupil. Immediately a dog, approaching
from behind, sprang at the cage and tipped it over, and leaped upon
it and began to claw. Strong seized and flung the dog away, and as he
righted the cage its door came open and the coon escaped. Dodging his
enemy, the little animal sought refuge in a thicket of people. Being
pursued by dogs, and accustomed also to avoid peril by climbing, he
straightway climbed, not a tree, but a tall sapling of a youth, from
which the others broke away in a panic. They were opposite a little
park, and the youth, not daring to lay hold of the animal, fled among
the trees, pursued by Strong and two dogs and a throng of brave spirits
who shouted information as to what he had best do.
For half a moment the frightened coon clung on a shoulder, his tail in
the air, growling at the dogs. The latter leaped up at him, and he began
to feel for more altitude. The youth, who had some knowledge of the
nature of coons, ran to the nearest tree. Quickly the coon sprang upon
it and scrambled far out of reach. He ran up the smooth shaft of elm
and settled on a swaying bough some forty feet above ground. A crowd of
people were now looking up at him.
"Coon in a cage is worth two in a tree," a man shouted.
Strong sat down beneath the tree and lighted his pipe and "thought out"
another bit of wisdom for his memorandum-book. It was:
_"Coon on yer shoulder worth less'n what he is anywhere."_He sat in
meditation--as if, indeed, he were resting in the wilderness. A cannon,
not a hundred feet away, shook the windows of Hillsborough with a
loud explosion for every star on the flag. A perpetual fusillade of
fire-crackers seemed to suggest the stripes. Accustomed to woodland
silences, the Emperor's feeling was, in a measure, like that of his
coon. The "morning salute" ended presently, and then he uttered an
exclamation which indicated clearly that he had been losing ground in
his late struggle with Satan.
One of the guides with whom he had sat in the store at Pitkin came near.
"Had yer tooth drawed?" was the question he put to the Emperor.
Strong was now looking at the empty cage. "Had my coon d-drawed," he
answered.
"Where is he?"
"Up-s-stairs." Strong pointed in the direction of the coon's refuge.
Silas was now the centre of an admiring company. His former pupil had
brought the president of the corporation of Hillsborough to meet him.
The official invited Strong to participate in the games. The Emperor was
willing to do anything to oblige, and walked with his new acquaintance
to the public square.
A trial at lifting and carrying was the first number on the programme.
The contestants leaned, with hands behind them, while others on a raised
platform began to heap bags of oats upon their backs and shoulders.
Loaded to the limit of their strength, they carried the burden as far as
they were able and flung it down. One after another tried, and the last
carried nine bags a distance of seven feet and was rewarded with many
cheers.
It was Strong's turn now. He bent his broad back, and the loaders began
to burden him. At ten they stopped, but Strong called for more. Three
others were heaped upon him, and slowly he began to move away. One could
see only his legs beneath his burden, which towered far above him. Ten
feet beyond the farthest mark he bore the bags and let them down. The
people began cheering, and many came to shake his hand and feel the
sinews in his arms and shoulders. Of the trial at scale-lifting a
woodsman who stood near gave this illuminating description, "When they
all got through, Strong put on two hundred more an' raised his neck
an' lifted, an' the bar come up like a trout after a fly." Silas Strong
stood, his coat off, his trousers tucked in his boots, looking soberly
at the people who cheered him. One eye was wide open, the other partly
closed. There were wrinkles above his wide eye, and his faded felt hat,
tilted backward and to one side, left his face uncovered. He had a new
and grateful sense of being "ahead," but seemed to wonder if so much
brute strength were altogether creditable.
Master was to address the people, and Strong was invited to sit behind
the speaker's table with the select of the county. He accompanied
the president of the corporation to the platform in the park, his
pack-basket on his arm. More than a thousand men and women had gathered
in front of them when the chairman introduced the young orator.
The speech delighted Silas Strong, and he summed it up in his old
memorandum-book as follows:
_"folks cant be no better than the air they brethe "roots of a plant are
in the ground but the roots of a man are in his lungs_
_"whair the woods ar plenty the air is strong an folks are stout an
supple like our forefathers when they licked the British them days they
got a powrful crop of folks sometimes fifteen in a famly the powr of the
woods was in em. now folks live under a sky eight feet above their
heads an take their air secont handed an drink at the bar instead of the
spring an eat more than what they earn an travel on wheels an think so
much of their own helth they aint got no time to think of their countrys
when a man's mind is on his stummick it cant be any where else brains
warnt made to digest vittles with old fashioned ways is best which
Strong says is so also that a man had not oughto eat any more than what
he's earnt by hard labor."_
After the address Strong went home to dinner with Congressman Wilbert,
the leading citizen of Hillsborough. That little town still retained
the democratic spirit of old times. There one had only to be clean and
honest to be respectable, and the mighty often sat at meat with the
lowly. Strong declined the invitation at first, on the plea that he had
fried cakes in his pack-basket, and yielded only after some urging.
The statesman's wife received the hunter cordially and presented him to
her daughter. The girl led Strong aside and began to entertain him. He
had lost his easy, catlike stride, his unconscious control of bone and
muscle. He looked and felt as if he were carrying himself on his own
back. He seemed to be balancing his head carefully, for fear it
would fall off, and had treated his hands like detached sundries in
a camp-outfit by stuffing them into the side pockets of his coat.
Gradually he limbered in his chair and settled down. His confidence
grew, and soon he "horsed" one knee upon the other and flung his hands
around it as if to bind an invisible burden resting on his lap. He
carried this objective treatment of his own, person to such an extreme
that he seemed even to be measuring his breath and to find little
opportunity for cerebration. When the young lady addressed him he often
answered with the old formulas of "I tnum!" or "T-y-ty!" They eased the
responsibility of his tongue, and, without seriously committing him,
expressed a fair degree of interest and surprise.
At the table Strong behaved himself with the utmost conservatism. They
treated him very tenderly, and he found relief in the fact that his
embarrassment seemed not to be observed. He thought it the part of
politeness to refuse nearly everything that was offered and to eat in a
gingerly fashion.
The Congressman had often heard of Silas and gave him many compliments,
and finally asked what, in his opinion, should be done to protect the
forest. Briefly Strong gave his views, and the other seemed to agree
with him.
"I'll do what I can for the woods and for you, too," said the statesman.
"You ought to be a warden with a good salary."
These kindly assurances flattered the "Emperor of the Woods."
Insidiously the great world power was making its most potent appeal to
him.
"I may ask you for a favor now and then," said Wilbert. "I'd be glad if
you'd do what you could to help Migley. He needs the vote of your town."
Strong knew not what to say. "M-mind's m-made up," he stammered, after
a little pause. When his mind was "made up" he had nothing further to do
but obey its will. The other did not quite comprehend his meaning.
Strong in his embarrassment had put too much tabasco sauce on his meat.
He blew, according to his custom in moments of distress, and took a
drink of water. He looked thoughtfully at the small cylinder of glass.
He tried to read its label.
"Small b-bore," he remarked, presently.
"Sh-shoots w-well," he added, after a moment of reflection.
Strong had begun to think of his coon, now clinging in a tree-top.
Suddenly he had become too proud to try to sell him, but he could not
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