A Daughter of the Forest by Evelyn Raymond (best classic novels txt) 📖

he sprang for the next stone. He made it; more easily than he had hoped, and saw that his best chance lay in looking straight ahead to the next landing-point—and the next—never down at the swirling river.

“Landed! Come!”

Pierre was heavier but more practiced than his mate, and in a few seconds the two stood together on the shore, regarding the ruins of their boat and thinking of what they would not have for supper.

All at once Pierre’s eye brightened.

“Say! there’s been a camp here. Not so long ago, either. See that barrel in the brush? There’s an old birch shed yonder. Hurrah!”

They did not linger, though Adrian kept hoping that something from their lost outfit might be tossed outward toward them, even as Pierre had been; but nothing came in sight and he reached the dilapidated shed only a few feet behind the other.

“There’s a bed left still, but not such a soft one. And there’s pork in that barrel. Wonder the hedgehogs haven’t found it.”

But as Pierre thrust his nose into the depths of the cask he understood the reason of its safety.

“Whew! Even a porkypine wouldn’t touch that! Never mind. Reckon our boots’ll need greasing after that ducking, or mine will, and it’ll answer. Anything under the shed?”

“Don’t see anything. Wait. Yes, I do. A canvas bag hung up high. Must have been forgotten when the campers left, for they took everything else, clean sweep. Hurrah! It’s beans!”

“Good. Beans are good fodder for hungry cattle.”

“How can you eat such hard things? Should think they’d been resurrected from the Pyramids.”

“Well, I don’t know ‘Pyramids,’ but I do know beans, and how to cook them. Fall to. Let’s get a fire. I’m nearly frozen.”

“Fire? Can you make one?”

“I can try and—— I’ve got to. When needs must, you know.”

Adrian hastily collected some dry twigs and decaying chips and heaped them in the sunniest place, but for this was promptly reprimanded by the shivering Pierre.

“Don’t you know anything at all? Wood won’t light, nor burn after ’tis lighted, in the sunshine. Stick up something to shade the stuff, whilst——”

He illustrated what he did not further say, by carefully selecting some hard stones and briskly rubbing them together. A faint spark resulted and a thistle-down caught the spark. To the thistle-down he held a dried grass blade and another. By this small beginning they had soon a tiny blaze and very soon a comforting fire.

When they were partially dried and rested, said Pierre:

“Now, fetch on your beans. While they’re cooking, we’ll take account of what is left.”

Adrian brought the bag, refraining from any questions this time. He was wondering and watchful. Pierre’s misadventures were developing unsuspected resources and the spirits of both lads rose again to the normal.

“You’re so fond of splitting birch for pictures, split me some now for a bucket, while I sharpen this knife again. Lucky for me my pocket buttoned, else it would have gone to the bottom of that pool. Got yours?”

“Yes. I didn’t fall in, you know.”

“Then I don’t ask odds of anybody. I’d rather have a good axe, but when I can’t get my rather I take the next best thing.”

Adrian procured the strips of birch, which grows so plentifully to hand in all that woodland, and when Pierre had trimmed it into the desired shape he deftly rolled it and tied it with stout rootlets, and behold! there was a shapely sort of kettle, with a twig for a handle. But of what use it might be the city lad had yet to learn.

Pierre filled the affair with water and put into it a good handful of the beans. Then he fixed a crotched stick over his fire and hung the birch kettle upon it.

“Oh! don’t waste them. I know. I saw Angelique soak them, as they did at camp. I know, now. If we can’t cook them we can make them swell up in water, and starving men can exist on such food till they reach a settlement. Of course we’ll start as soon as you’re all right.”

“We’ll start when we’re ready. That’s after we’ve had something to eat and have made our new canoe. Never struck a spot where there was likelier birches. ’Twon’t be the first one I’ve built or seen built. Say. Seems as if that God that Margot is always saying takes care of folks must have had a hand in this. Doesn’t it?”

“Yes. It does,” answered Adrian, reverently. Surely, Pierre was a changed and better lad.

Then his eyes rested on the wooden dinner-pot, and to his astonishment it was not burning but hung steadily in its place and the water in it was already beginning to simmer. Above the water line the bark shrivelled and scorched slightly, but Pierre looked out for this and with a scoop made from a leaf replenished the water as it steamed away. The beans, too, were swelling and gave every promise of cooking—in due course of time. Meanwhile, the cook rolled himself over and about in the warmth of the fire till his clothes were dry and all the cold had left his body. Also, he had observed Adrian’s surprise with a pardonable pride.

“Lose an Indian in the woods and he’s as rich as a lord. It’s the Indian in me coming out now.”

“It’s an extra sense. Divination, instinct, something better than education.”

“What the master calls ‘woodcraft.’ Yes. Wonder how he is, and all of them. Say. What do you think I thought about when I was whirling round that pool, before I didn’t think of anything?”

“Your sins, I suppose. That’s what I’ve heard comes to a drowning man.”

“Shucks! Saw the mére’s face when she broke that glass! Fact. Though I wasn’t there at the time. And one thing more: saw that ridiculous Xanthippé, looking like she’d never done a thing but warble. Oh! my! How I do wish Margot’d sell her.”

“Shall I help you get birch for the canoe now? I begin to believe you can do even that, you are so clever.”

This praise was sweet to Pierre’s vain ears and had the result which Adrian desired, of diverting the talk from their island friends. In their present situation, hopeful as the other pretended to find it, he felt it best for his own peace of mind not to recall loved and absent faces.

They went to work with a will, and will it was that helped them; else with the poor tools at hand they had never accomplished their undertaking. Indeed, it was a labor of considerable time. Not only was that first meal of boiled beans cooked and eaten, but several more of the same sort followed. To vary these, Pierre baked some, in the same method as he had boiled them, or else in the ashes of their fire. He even fashioned a sort of hook from a coat button and with cedar roots for a line, caught a fish now and then. But they craved the seasoning of salt, and even the dessert of blue-berries which nature provided them could not satisfy this longing, which grew almost intolerable to Adrian’s civilized palate.

“Queer, isn’t it? When I was at that lumber camp I nearly died because all the meat, or nearly all, was so salt. Got so I couldn’t eat anything, hardly. Now, just because I haven’t salt I can’t eat, either.”

“Indians not that way. Indians eat one thing same’s another. Indian just wants to live, don’t care about the rest. Indian never eats too much. I’m all Indian now.”

Adrian opened his eyes to their widest, then threw himself back and laughed till the tears came.

“Pierre, Pierre! Would you had been ‘all Indian’ when you tackled Angelique’s fried chicken! Umm! I can taste it now!”

But at length the new canoe was ready. They had put as few ribs into it as would suffice to hold it in shape and Pierre had carefully sewn it with the roots of the black cedar, which serves the woodsman for so many purposes, where thread or twine is needed. They had made a paddle and a pole as well as they could with their knives, and having nothing to pack except themselves and their small remnant of beans, made their last camp-fire at that spot and lay down to sleep.

But the dreams of both were troubled; and in the night Adrian rose and went to add wood to the fire. It had died down to coals, but his attention was caught by a ring of white light upon the ashes, wholly distinct from the red embers.

“What’s that?”

In a moment he had answered his own question. It was the phosphorescent glow from the inner bark of a half burned log, and further away he saw another portion of the same log making a ghostly radiance on the surrounding ground.

“Oh! I wouldn’t have missed that for anything. Mr. Dutton told me of beautiful sights he had witnessed and of the strange will-o’-the-wisps that abound in the forest. I’ll gather some of the chips.”

He did so, and they made a fairy-like radiance over his palm; but while he was intently studying them, he felt his hand rudely knocked up, so that the bits of wood flew out of it.

“Pierre! Stop that!”

“Don’t you know what that is? A warning—a sign—an omen. Oh! if I had never come upon this trip!”

“You foolish fellow. Just as I thought you were beginning to get sense. Nothing in the world but decayed bark and chemical——”

Pierre stopped his ears.

“I was dreaming of the mére. She came with her apron to her eyes and her clothes in tatters. She was scolding——”

“Perfectly natural.”

“And begging me——”

“Not to eat so many half-baked beans for supper.”

“There’s something wrong at the island. I saw the cabin all dark. I saw Margot’s eyes red with weeping.”

“No doubt Tom has been into fresh mischief and your mother has punished him.”

Pierre ignored these flippant interruptions, but rehearsed his dismal visions till Adrian lost patience and pushed him aside.

“Go. Bring an armful of fresh wood; some that isn’t phosphorescent, if you prefer. That’ll wake you up and drive the megrims out of your mind.”

“’Tis neither of them things. ’Tis a warning. They were all painted with black, and all the Hollow creatures were painted, too. ’Tis a warning. I shall see death before I am——”

Even while he maundered on in this strain he was unconsciously obeying the command to fetch wood, and moved toward a pile left ready. Now, in raking this together, Adrian had, also, swept that spot of ground clean and exposed; and what neither had observed in the twilight was plainly revealed by the glow and shadows cast by the fire.

This was a low, carefully made mound that, in shape and significance, could be confounded with no other sort of mound, wherever met. Both recognized it at once, and even upon Adrian the shock was painful; but its effect upon superstitious Pierre was far greater. With a shriek that startled the silence of the forest he flung himself headlong.

CHAPTER XVI DIVERGING ROADS

“Get up, Pierre. You should be ashamed of yourself!”

It needed a strong and firm grasp to force the terrified lad to his feet and even when he, at last, stood up he shivered like an aspen.

“A grave!”

“Certainly. A grave. But neither yours nor mine. Only that of some poor fellow who has died in the wilderness. I’m sorry I piled the brush upon it, yet glad we discovered it in the end.”

“Gla-a-ad!” gasped the other.

“Yes. Of course. I mean to cover it with fresh sods and plant some of those purple orchids at its head. I’ll cut a cedar headstone, too, and mark it so that