Silas Strong 36

Silas Strong 36

At the edge of the stream he shouted, "All 'board!" The others took

their seats, and the Emperor sat in the stern with his paddle. Socky

faced him so that he could see the compass. He often asked, proudly,

"Which way we goin'?" and Strong would look at the compass and promptly

return the information, "Sou' by east." The river ran shallow for more

than a mile in the direction of their travel. Patrick hauled them slowly

down the edge of the current. Strong steadied and steered with his

paddle as they crept along, bumping over stones and grinding over gravel

until, at a sloping, sandy beach on the farther shore, they mounted the

bank and headed across Huckleberry Plain.

 

Noon-time had passed when they left the hot plain. They threaded a

narrow fringe of tamaracks and entered thick woods again. At a noisy

little stream near by they stopped for dinner. Strong caught some trout

and built a fire and fried them, and made coffee. Sinth spread the

dishes and brought sandwiches and cheese and a big, frosted cake and

a can of preserved berries from the boat-jumper. They sat down to the

reward of honest hunger where the pure, cool air and the sylvan scene

and the sound of flowing water were more than meat to them, if that were

possible.

 

Having eaten, they rose and pressed on with a happy sense of

refreshment. A thought of it was to brighten many a less cheerful hour.

Half a mile from their camping-place they found a smooth trail which led

across level country to the Middle Branch. Socky and Sue were again fast

asleep on the bottom of the boat-jumper long before they reached the

river. When they halted near its bank a broad stream of deep, slow water

lay before them. Strong unhitched the ox and led him along shore until

he came to rapids where, half a mile below, the river took its long,

rocky slope to lower country. There he tethered his ox and returned to

fetch the others. He launched his boat-jumper and got aboard and paddled

carefully down-stream.

 

Having doubled a point, they came in sight of a slim boy who stood by

the water's edge aiming an ancient, long-barrelled gun. His head, which

rested against the breech, seemed, as the Emperor reported, "'bout the

size of a pippin."

 

"E-look out!" Strong shouted, as the boy lowered his gun to regard the

travellers with an __EXPRESSION__ of deep concern.

 

"See any mushrats?" the boy asked, eagerly.

 

"N-no; who're you?"

 

"Jo Henyon."

 

Strong had heard of old Henyon, who was known familiarly as "Mushrat

Bill." For years Bill had haunted the Middle Branch.

 

"Wh-where d' ye live?"

 

"Yender," said the boy, pointing downstream as he ran ahead of them.

 

Presently they came to an old cabin near the water's edge with a small

clearing around it. A woman wearing a short skirt and Shaker bonnet

stood on one leg looking down at them. Children were rushing out of the

cabin door.

 

"My land! where's her other leg?" Sinth mused.

 

The Emperor looked thoughtfully at the strange woman.

 

"F-folks are like cranes over in this c-country," Strong answered.

"Always rest on one leg."

 

He drove his bow on a sloping, sandy beach. The woman hopped into the

cabin door. Her many children hurried to the landing. A man with head

and feet bare followed them. An old undershirt, one suspender, and a

tattered pair of overalls partly covered his body. He walked slowly

towards the shore. He was the famous trapper of the Middle Branch.

 

"F-fur to Rainbow T-Trail?" Strong inquired of him.

 

The latter put his hand to his ear and said, "What?" Strong repeated his

query in a much louder voice.

 

"Fur ain't very thick," the stranger answered.

 

Strong perceived that the man was very deaf and also that he was devoted

to one idea.

 

"B-big fam'ly," he shouted, as he began to push off.

 

The trapper, with his hand to his ear and still looking a bit doubtful,

answered, "Ain't runnin' very big this year."

 

Thereafter the word "mushrats," in the vocabulary of Strong, stood for

unworthy devotion to a single purpose.

 

Down-stream a little the ox took his place again at the bow of the

boat-jumper. They struck off into thick woods reaching far and wide on

the acres of Uncle Sam. A mile or so inland they came to Rainbow Trail,

and thereafter followed it. Timber thieves had been cutting big pines

and spruces and had left a slash on either side of the trail.

 

The travellers dipped down across the edge of a wide valley, and after

climbing again were in the midst of burned ground on the top of a high

ridge. Below them they could see Rainbow Lake and the undulating canopy

of a great, two-storied forest reaching to hazy distances. Mighty towers

of spruce and pine and hemlock rose into the sunlit, upper heavens.

 

It was growing dusk when, below them and well off the trail, they saw a

column of smoke rising. They halted, and Strong stood gazing. The smoke

grew in volume and he made off down the side of the ridge. He came in

sight of the fire and stopped. Some one had fled through thickets of

young spruce and Zeb was pursuing him.

 

Strong looked off in the gloomy forest and shouted a fierce oath at its

invisible enemy.

 

Near him flames were leaping above a fallen top and running in tiny jets

over dry duff like the waste of a fountain. Swiftly Strong cut branches

of green birch and began to lay about him. He stopped the flames and

then dug with his hatchet until he struck sand. He scooped it into his

hat and soon smothered the cinders.

 

His face had a troubled __EXPRESSION__ as he returned to the boat-jumper.

 

"Who you been yellin' at?" Sinth asked.

 

"C-careless cuss," he answered, evasively.

 

Socky wore a look of indignation. He glibly repeated the oath which he

had heard his uncle use.

 

"Hush! The Sundayman'll ketch you," Sinth answered, severely.

 

Strong gave a whistle of surprise.

 

"Uncle Silas ain't 'fraid o' no Sundayman," Socky guessed.

 

"Y-yes I be--could kill me with a s-snap of his finger," Strong

declared.

 

Socky trembled as he thought of that one inhabitant of the earth who was

greater than his Uncle Silas and said no more.

 

"S-see here, boy," said Strong, as he put his fingers under Socky's chin

and raised his head' a little, "I w-won't never swear ag'in if y-you

won't."

 

He held out his great hand and Socky took it.

 

"Y-you agree?"

 

Socky nodded with a serious look, and so it happened that Silas became

the master of his own tongue. He had "boiled over" for the last time--so

he thought. The old habit which had grown out of a thousand trials and

difficulties must give way, and henceforth he would be emperor of his

own spirit.

 

As to the fire and the man who had fled before him, Strong was

perplexed, but kept his own counsel. He knew that the law permitted

lumbermen to enter burned lands on the State preserve and take all

timber which fire had damaged. A fire which might only have scorched the

trunks while it devoured the crowns above them gave a rich harvest

to some lucky lumberman. Having gained access, he stripped the earth,

helping himself to the living as well as the dead trees. _Fire,

therefore, had become a source of profit wherein lay the temptation to

kindle it._

 

Silas Strong knew that his land of refuge was doomed--that the

forerunner of its desolation was even then hiding somewhere in the near,

dusky woods. He thought of the peril after a dry summer. The mould of

the forest would burn like tinder.

 

The dethroned Emperor reached the shore of Rainbow, put up a tent, and

helped to get supper ready. After supper he lay down to rest in

the firelight, and told the children about the great bear and the

panther-bird. Sinth, weary after that long day of travel, had gone to

sleep. After an hour or so Strong rose and looked down at her.

 

"Sh-sh!--don't w-wake her," he warned them. "I'll put ye t' b-bed."

 

He helped them undress.

 

"You'll have to hear our prayers," Socky whispered.

 

Strong nodded. He sat on a box and they knelt between his knees and he

put his hands on their heads and bowed his own.

 

When they had finished he bent lower and dictated this brief kind of

postscript, "An' keep us from all d-danger this n-night."

 

They repeated the words with no suspicion of what lay behind them.

 

Then Socky whispered, "Say something 'bout the Sundayman."

 

"An' keep the Sundayman away," Strong added.

 

They repeated the words, and then, as if his heart were still

unsatisfied, Socky added these, "An' please take care o' my Uncle

Silas."

 

The Emperor lay thinking long after his weary companions had gone to

sleep. He thought of that angry outcry and his heart smote him; he

thought of the danger. Perhaps, after all, they would not dare to

burn the woods now. But Strong resolved to keep awake and be ready for

trouble if it came. By-and-by he lighted a lantern and wrote in his old

memorandum-book as follows:

 

_"Strong use to say prufanity does more harm when ye keep it in than