Part 6

“Das de feller! Cheokhes steal-um,” yelled Simmo, all excitement, and away he went on the jump. Startled by the thumping behind him, Cheokhes dropped his fish and took to the river, leaving a V-shaped wake trailing behind him as he forged away.

“Keep still, Simmo; let’s watch him,” I cautioned, and we both sat motionless on the bank; but not till the Indian had made sure of a more ample breakfast. His fingers were hooked into the gills of the big trout, his face a study in satisfaction.

The mink circled uneasily a few moments; then he whirled and headed for us, wiggling his pointed nose as he smelled the fish. Simmo was sitting with elbows on knees, the trout hanging down between, when the nervy little beast crossed over my foot, grabbed his prize, and attempted to drag it out of the Indian’s hand.

“By cosh, now, das too cheeky!” said Simmo, and with the tail of the trout he batted Cheokhes over the head. Away he went with a screech and a show of sharp teeth; but in a moment he was back again, and twice attempted to get possession of what he considered his property. Then, as Simmo grew impatient and batted the little thief coming and going, he made off indignantly with an air of, “Well, I know where to find a better one.” Following him up, I took away from him another trout, which he dragged from a pile of drift stuff, and after some search I unearthed two more which he had hidden under a pine stump.

That was all we ever found of our fine catch, and I am still wondering what a creature not much bigger than a rat expected to do with thirty pounds of fresh fish. Indeed, from his unprejudiced viewpoint, what should anybody expect to do with them? They belonged first of all to the river, and then to any light-footed fellow who could appreciate their flavor. But Simmo was wrathy. As we paddled downriver that day, he talked of mink and white men’s children, and read me a little homily on the vice of stealing.

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HEALTH AND A DAY

“Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”--EMERSON.

During the night I had been up to watch Tookhees playing in the moonlight. Tookhees is the wood mouse, a dainty and a pretty creature, who is happily ignorant that he is an important item in nature’s food supply. He and his fellows have a way of amusing themselves, as I judge, by creeping up one slope of my tent and tumbling or sliding down the other; and before they come together for play, if such it be, you will hear them drumming in all directions, signaling and answering by tapping on the ground. The wood mice ran away when Kook’skoos, “the mother of the moon,” began a doleful hooting to her owlets; then through the light, dreamless sleep of the woodsman came the first chirping of awakened birds. My day had begun; expectantly I came forth to enjoy its uncovenanted mercies.

Killooleet the white-throated sparrow was already singing, and though his voice was a bit rusty, as it always is when summer wanes, there was yet gladness in it. You will hear it said that birds sing only in nesting time; but the saying comes of late sleeping. When dawn comes with its rosy invitation to a new day, birds at any season seem to feel the old _Sursum Corda_, and are impelled to some joyous expression. Though the springtime was long past, a score of warblers and thrushes were ringing their matins, and among them one shy wood thrush sent forth a heavenly note, beautiful and solemn, as from a silver flute. Then a jay cried _thief! thief!_ seeming different from other birds in that he called attention to himself, while they were content to herald the morning. From a hollow cedar behind my tent a red squirrel began to snicker; on the lake shore a kingfisher raised his _Jubilate_; as I listened to the medley of awakening life a word of Anne Bradstreet came into my head:

I heard the merry grasshopper then sing, The black-clad cricket bear a second part; They kept one tune and played on the same string, Seeming to glory in their little art.

Most of Anne’s poetry was rather “punk,” to be sure, but here her feeling was excellent; so from primeval woods I sent greeting across the centuries to the Colonial singer who had lived in their shadow, and was first to put our New World nature to melody. Then, to keep proper company with her and all glad creatures, I joined the chorus with “From All That Dwell Below the Skies.” The grand old hymn needs a church organ and ten-thousand voices; but I must sing it softly for two reasons: because some sleepers in camp regarded early rising as a sign of lunacy; and because others might wake up and ask where I was going, or whether they might not go with me. And I did not yet know where I was going. I had picked this day for a “good lonesome,” to go where I listed, and perhaps to grow better acquainted with God and Nature by meeting them in solitude face to face.

As the canoe glided from the landing there was a faint stir in the mist, which hung low over all the lake. Out of the mist came first a thrush song, then a glow of soft color, like mother-of-pearl, finally something dark and solid, which turned into the crown of a mighty pine as I approached. Its stem was hidden under a white veil, as was the island on which it grew; but its topmost branches spread lightly over the sea of cloud, like the wings of a floating raven.

Doubling the point on which the pine stood sentinel, I used my sounding line to locate a channel that wound deeply amid shoals and gravel bars. I had discovered this channel one day when swimming; and it seemed, now that fish had retired to deep water, the likeliest place for a big trout on the entire lake. Under the shroud of mist the water lay dreamy, placid, formless, giving no hint of what it concealed save in one spot on the edge of the outermost shoal. There, as if indeed all things were foreordained, tiny ripples and splashes kept the surface in commotion. It was a school of fresh-water smelts, darting about or leaping into the air to escape the rush of feeding fish below. Suddenly came a plunge, a swirl; a mottled back rolled into sight among the smelts.

“Aha! I knew I’d catch a big one here this morning,” I thought, thus deceiving myself again; for I did not know anything of the kind. I was merely exalting hope above experience, which is the everlasting occupation of all fishermen.

Close beside the shoaling smelts I lowered my killick, and turned overboard from my bucket a dozen minnows that were plainly in need of fresher water. Soon two delicately curving rods were out, one swinging its shining lure close to bottom for fat or lazy fellows, the other holding a lively red-fin near the surface. Then, my part being properly played, I leaned back against an air-cushion in heavenly content. Once more I was fishing, my companions the bird songs and the awakening day.

He who counts time in such a place is no philosopher, and therefore no fisherman. I had waited an hour or a minute, one being short as the other to him who is sure of a bite, when the slender tip of a rod arched sharply, once, twice, and again. A moment’s wait, because fish that refuse a fly are slow about a minnow; then I struck, and was fast to something that seemed charged with electricity. He was netted after a heart-kindling struggle filled by hopes, thrills, anxieties, with one awful sinking moment when the line slacked and I could not feel his tugging. There he was, safe in the canoe, a firm-fleshed, deep-bodied, five-pound trout, his olive back mottled as if by the ripples under which he had lived, his sheeny sides flecked with flaming crimson.

I was feasting my eyes on the trout, the beauty and goodly size of him, and was humming the Doxology, when the other rod rattled on the thwart, and its tip ducked out of sight under water. Another age of thrills, livelier but shorter than the last; then a big whitefish--a rare catch here, and a delicious _bonne bouche_ anywhere--is placed tenderly in his box of moss. He flaunts blue and silver as his colors; they form airy contrast to the deeper hues of the gorgeous trout.

I am admiring the splendid catch as I reel in my lines and turn overboard the remaining minnows. There are more fish under those darting smelts, perhaps much larger fish; but enough is plenty for one morning. I shall come again. The pine, which is still my only visible landmark, begins to hide his crown. The mist is rising, and glowing in the east with a gorgeous promise. “I shall hide these fish in the Indian spring,” I tell myself, “and begin another day before the sun rises.”

The Indian spring is on the mainland, halfway up a hardwood ridge. Out of it flows a run, mossy and ice-cold, a perfect place for storing fish; and the run joins a little brook that goes singing down to the lake. As I follow up this brook, brushing the moist ferns, inhaling the fragrance of balsam and hemlock, there is a swift movement ahead. Here or there I have glimpse of an arched back, and down the bank of the stream comes a mink on the jump, wiggling his pointed nose as he smells my fish. Then I change my mind about storing the catch, since to hide it here is to lose it. Once I left two grilse and a salmon of fifteen pounds in a spring brook, and when I returned I found only mink tracks. How the little beast could get away with that salmon without leaving a trail for me to follow is still a mystery. I think he floated him down the brook, as a beaver handles a heavy log.

The mink darts up to my foot and rests a paw upon it before he begins to suspect something wrong in the motionless figure with two big fish hanging beside it. He goes away unwillingly, still wiggling his nose; and I make my way back to camp, and hang the fish where the cook must see them when he comes to get breakfast for the lazy ones. I shall miss the transient flavor of that whitefish; but I have something better, the lasting taste of catching him. Then I slip away, leaving the campers fast asleep. Their day has not yet begun; mine stretches away in both directions into endless vistas.

Again the canoe glides into the mist, which is swaying now in fantastic shapes, gloriously colored. To watch it is to remember Lanier’s “Sunrise” and “Marshes of Glynn”; but life is all a poem just now, and no one has ever written a line of it. Across the lake we go, and up a stream where great trees bend low over feeding deer. The deer lift their heads to point each a velvety black muzzle at our approach. From the stream we steal into a smaller lake, profoundly still; it seems to be sleeping under its blanket of mist, amid hills of spruce and pine.

It is beautiful here, and lonely enough to satisfy the most fastidious; but to-day the Beyond is calling, and the spirit answers, “I come.” Leaving the canoe overturned in a shady spot, and tapping various pockets to be sure of compass, matches and other things needful, I take gladly to the trail. In my hand is a cased fishing rod, at my belt a good ax, before me a silent wilderness. The wilderness has its road, unfortunately, and so it is not quite unspoiled; but of two things you may be sure: you shall meet no traveler on the road, and find no inn at the end of it.

The way leads eastward at first, following the old lumber road; then, if one looks sharply, one may find the entrance to a blazed trapper’s trail. At the end of that trail, I am told, is a lake of wondrous beauty, over which hangs a tradition of trout. I have not been this way before; the joy of Balboa and of all explorers since time began is in the air.

The big woods are quiet, as if just awake, and fragrant with the breath of morning. A multitude of little birds, having spent a happy summer here, are now flocking with their young in the open places; jays are calling loudly, and hiding things; chipmunks are busily filling their winter bins. Even the red squirrels, most careless of wood folk, seem to have a thought in their empty heads as they hurry about. They no longer gather a winter store, like the chipmunk; but when abundant autumn approaches they hide a few morsels here or there with some dim instinct of lean days to come. One passes me in haste, as if time were suddenly important; he is carrying something in his mouth, and I await his return, lured by a little brook that cries its invitation to all who are thirsty. In my heart is the old fancy, which has dwelt there since childhood, that a brook always sings a happier song when you stop to drink from it. Thus pleasantly to a roundelay I learn a new and surprising thing about squirrels.

Through all forests the squirrels have regular tree-paths; they never run blindly on a journey, but follow definite runways along the branches, which are apparently as well known to them as are lanes or alleys to the city gamin. Knowing this, I wait confidently for Meeko, and presently see him coming along the path by which he disappeared. Beyond the brook his trail leads through a spruce thicket, an unusual course, for squirrels like open going. Examining the thicket, I find that Meeko has recently been clearing this trail by cutting many of the obstructing twigs. No doubt he has found an unexpected food supply, and is using this new runway as a short cut to his cache, where he is storing things in his usual hit-or-miss fashion.

That looks promising from such a scatter-brained creature; so I sit down in the spruce thicket, making myself inconspicuous, to await Meeko’s coming. His trail runs ten feet above my head; as he rushes over it with another mouthful, he bumps into a twig that crosses his course at an awkward angle. The bump throws him off his perfect balance, and instantly he falls to swearing, though his full mouth interferes with what he would like to say. He grows silent as he examines the troublesome twig; then he rushes away as if he had made up what he calls his mind. In a few minutes, having left his mouthful at the cache, he reappears in the same path. He is silent now, and look! he is not running in his wonted breakneck fashion, but following his trail in an exploring kind of way. So he reaches the twig that hindered him, swears at it again, and cuts it with his teeth. Resting his chin between his forepaws, he follows the falling twig, his eyes shining, till it strikes the ground beside me, when he snickers his satisfaction. A motion of my head attracts his attention; he sees me for the first time, and instantly forgets everything else. He leaves his trail to come down where he can see better. In his eye is the question, “Are you alive, or am I mistaken?” When I nod to him again he breaks forth in scolding, asking who I am, demanding my business, ordering me out, all in the same breath.

So the little comedy runs on till I have enough of squirrel jabber, and leave Meeko to his own affairs; but that is the last thing he proposes to do with me. When I turn away from the thicket he rushes over branches above me, reiterating his demand, growing more wrathy as I keep silence. I am wishing I knew his language, which sounds like an imprecatory psalm with a pirate’s variation, as he follows me abusively along the road. Not till he reaches the boundary of his small territory (for squirrels, like other beasts, have limits beyond which they rarely go) does he turn back, leaving other squirrels to deal with me as an intruder. Searching the woods to the left, I soon find a blazed hemlock, and turn gladly from the lumber road into a trapper’s winter trail.

Here, save for an occasional old “blaze” on a tree, for which guiding signal one must look ahead sharply, there is no trace of man or his destruction. All is still, fragrant, beautiful, just as Nature left her handiwork. There is a sudden bumping of feet on soft earth, a flash of orange color, and I catch the waving of white flags as a deer and her fawns bound away. Farther on a brood of partridges barely move aside into the underbrush, where they stop to watch me as I pass. A hare darts out from underfoot, and he, too, is inquisitive; he crouches in the first bit of cover to find out who I am.

Up and down goes the trail, now over hardwood ridges where great sugar maples stand wide apart, now through dim evergreen valleys or cedar swamps where one must feel his way; and at last, from the summit of a ridge, comes a gleam of blue ahead. It is the lake, _eureka_, I have found it, asleep amid its eternal hills! Over it bend the trees, as if they loved it. On every point stands a giant pine, like the king-man of old, lifting head and shoulders above his fellows. From the water’s edge the forest sweeps away grandly to the sky line. A moose and her ungainly calf are feeding on the farther shore. Some animal that I cannot name slips unseen into the cover; a brood of wild ducks stretch their necks, alert and questioning, as I appear in the open.

It is a little lake, and therefore companionable, a perfect place to spend the day and find the hours too short. Searching out a pretty spot where I can see without being seen, I rest at ease, enjoying the quiet beauty of the lake; enjoying also the rare blessing of silence. I have been awake and keenly alive since the birds called me, ages ago; a thousand tongues, voices, messages, have been heard and understood; yet not a solitary word has been spoken, not once has the exquisite peace been disturbed. The _plash_ yonder, behind the rock where I cannot see what made it, is hardly a sound; like everything else one hears, it seems like a fragment of the great stillness. It reminds me, however, that when I return to camp two questions will be asked: the first, Did you find the lake? and the second, Are there any trout in it? It seems a pity, almost a profanation, to disturb such a place by human noises; I would rather be quiet; but I have promised to answer that second question.

In a swampy spot I find some dry cedars near the lake shore. Though dead, they are standing on their own roots; they are therefore weathered, and will float like corks. Soon I have cut enough for a dozen logs, with cross-pieces, and have gathered them at the water’s edge. One should be true Indian now, I suppose, and bind the raft together with bark; but to do that it is necessary to kill or scar a living tree, which is a thing I never do if it can be avoided; so I use some spikes which I have brought in my pocket. The only objection to such civilized implements is that the loud hammering seems horribly out of place. The first time I drive a spike I look around guiltily, as if I had been breaking the law. When the work is done and I push out bravely on my homely craft, I know how the man felt who found himself afloat for the first time on his own invention. It is a good feeling which makes one understand his old ancestors.

Yes, the trout are surely here; but the sun has risen over the hills and the day is bright. A few fingerlings answer as I cast in the shadow of the rocks; they chivvy the feathered lure a moment (for I do not care to catch trout to-day, nor such little fellows at any time), and flash away unharmed to the depths. Farther out from shore, out from under the lee of the hills, the water is ruffled by a light breeze; so I push in that direction, lengthening my cast as I go. The fly lights in the very center of a “catspaw”; there is a gleam of red-gold under it, followed by a terrific rush. Aha! a big one. Though I had intended merely to locate the trout without striking them, no fisherman ever trained himself so fine that he could withhold the snap of his wrist at an unexpected rise like that. Involuntarily I strike; the hook goes solidly home; the reel sets up a shrill yell of exultation as the line flies out.

I shall play this trout to a standstill, then unhook him tenderly without lifting him from the water, and let him go when I see how big he is. Yes, of course; I am not fishing to-day. But as the beautiful fish comes in, fighting every inch of the way, threatening to part my delicate leader as he darts under the raft, something reminds me that man must eat, and that a trout can be well broiled on a split stick, a green fir preferred, to give him an added woodsy flavor. Fortunately there is a pinch of salt in my pocket, put there in hopeful expectancy of the unexpected.

Killing the trout as mercifully as such a thing can be done, I run a string through his red gills, and tie him to my loose-jointed craft. Then, just to see if there are any more like him (and to avoid temptation) I break my hook at the bend, leaving only a harmless bit of steel on the fly. Here comes a cloud-shadow, drifting up the lake. I wait for it, and cast again in the same place. _Yi-yi_, what a fool I was to break that hook! The flashing rise that follows my cast is such as a fisherman dreams of in his sleep.

There must be a spring hereabouts, I think; such trouty vim and dash at this season bespeak living water. The raft drifts over the spot where my fish rose, and I stretch out to become as one of the logs, shading my eyes with my hands to exclude the upper light. There to the left I dimly discern a ring of white sand; in the middle, where the water rolls in ceaseless commotion, boils up a spring as big as my hat. As the raft grows quiet, shadows glide in from all directions to rest on the rim of sand. Shades of Izaak Walton, look at them! My trout weighs two pounds; but I wish I had let him alone and waited for a big one.