“Any panthers seen lately, Jimmy?”
“I hain’t seed none,” replied Ellis.
“What was it killed the white heifer two weeks ago?”
“Waal,” replied Jimmy reflecting a little, “I cal’late t ‘war a cat.”
“It maught be a b’ar,” said Buck, “I seed one daown to Drake’s clearin’ last week come Sabbath.”
“Sho!” drawled Ellis, returning to his blankets.
“I understand,” said I, “that Ezra Field found a thirty-pound trap missing last week.”
“Whar?” asked Hanson.
“Back of the gum-camp on Swift River,” I replied.
Ellis looked cynical and Hanson laughed, the silent confiding laughter of the honest.
“Ezry was scairt haf tu deth by a Bob-cat, onct, into Swift River Forks,” said Ellis; “he sees things whar there hain’t nawthin’.”
“Do you think,” said I, after a long pull at my pipe, “that panthers ever attack? I mean, when you let their cubs alone.”
“Hain’t never seed no panther,” replied Buck. “You saw Mr. Sutherland when he was brought in three years ago.”
“Yes sir — you and Cy Holman toted him in.”
“Well, you saw the panther we brought in also, didn’t you?”
“Yes sir, — but that was a daid panther,” replied Buck, prosaically.
I laughed and walked toward the piazza.
“All I want to know is whether you fellows have heard that these creatures are bothering honest people who mind their business,” I said over my shoulder; and both the big guides laughed, and answered “No fear o’ that sir!” Half an hour later we were on the trail to the Black Water.
The morning was perfect, the air keen as September breezes on the moors, and the mottled sunlight spotted our broad trail which twisted and curved through the tangled underbrush along the bank of a mountain stream.
Blylock and Ysonde were well ahead, the latter swinging a light steelshod mountain stick; next came Lynda, beautiful and serene, approving the beauty of the forest in pleased little platitudes. I followed close behind, silent, spellbound by the splendour of the forest, charmed by the soft notes of the nesting thrushes and the softer babble of Lynda and the brook.
Broad dewy leaves slapped our faces, filmy floating spiders’ meshes crossed our chins and cheeks and tickled Ysonde’s pretty nose.”
“You may walk ahead,” she said to Blylock, “and break the spiders’ webs for me.”
“With pleasure,” said Blylock, seriously, and I saw him take the lead, his single eyeglass gleaming in the sunshine.
“It is written,” said I, flippantly, “that the first shall be last, and the last shall be first; — I believe that I should take the lead.”
“Please do,” said Ysonde, coolly, “it is your proper place.”
Now Ysonde had never before said anything to me quite as sharp as that, although doubtless I had often invited it.
“Do you want me to go?” I asked inanely.
“If you care to clear the path, I would not object,” said Ysonde.
“For you and Lynda,” said I, feeling that I was speaking regardless of either sound or sense.
“ — And for Mr. Blylock,” added Ysonde, quietly.
“With pleasure,” said I, vaguely wishing my tongue might stop wagging before I said something hopelessly foolish, “I shall clear the way for you — and Mr. Blylock.”
I had said it; even Lynda raised her lovely eyes to me in disapproval. As for Ysonde, her face wore that pained expression that I dreaded to see — I had never seen it before but once — in the glade — and I felt that my proper place was among the wits of a country store. A boor in the kitchen of the Rosebud Inn would have had more instinctive tact — unless he was jealous! — that is the word! — I was jealous — vulgarly jealous of Blylock. Perhaps Ysonde read the shame in my face, perhaps she had divined my thoughts as she did when she chose, but she saw I was miserable, disgusted with myself, and she raised me to her own level with a smile so sweet and chivalrous that I felt there was manhood left in me yet.
“Bobby,” she said, “you promised to show me how to blaze a trail. Have you forgotten?”
I dropped out of the path to the right, she to the left; Lynda passed us to join Blylock who was waiting, the two big guides tramped by, their boots creaking on the trodden leaves. I drew the light hatchet from my belt, removed the leather blade-cover, and started on.
“This is all it is,” I said, and struck a light shaving from the bark of a hemlock, cutting it at the base with the next stroke so that the bit of bark fell, leaving a white scar on the tree trunk.
“Always on both sides,” said I, repeating the stroke on the other side of the tree. “Will you try it, Ysonde?”
She took the hatchet in her small gloved hand, and the chips flew along the trail until I begged her to spare the forest.
“But the trees don’t die!” she exclaimed. “Oh, Bobby, you’re joking; am I overdoing it?”
“A little,” said I, “a blind man could follow this forest boulevard.”
“You are blind,” she said, calmly.
“Blind?” I cried with a start.
“ — To your own interests, Bobby. Aunt Lynda likes you, but she doesn’t like to hear you speak flippantly. If you destroy her trust in you, she will not let us walk together when we please.” We moved on in silence for a while, until Ysonde, tired of blazing, handed me the hatchet.
“Yes,” said I, “I am blind — I cannot lead you — on any trail.”
“Nor I you,” she said simply.
I did not reply, for who but I should know that through the fragrant forest, bathed in sun and dew, the blind led on the blind.
“You have formed a habit,” said Ysonde, “of muttering to yourself. Are you afraid to have me know your thoughts?”
“Yes,” said I, turning, “I am afraid.”
She did not answer, but I saw her colour deepen, and I feared that I had spoken bitterly.
“I was thinking that I had forgotten my flask,” I continued gaily.
“Mr. Blylock has your flask — you were not thinking of that,” said Ysonde.
“Well,” said I, “then tell me of what I was thinking; you know you can read my thoughts — when you take the trouble,” I added prudently.
“Bobby,” said Ysonde, “I would take more trouble for your sake than you dream of.”
I stopped short in the trail and faced her, but she passed me impatiently. I saw her bite her lips as she always did when annoyed.
The chestnut, oak, and dappled beech-woods were giving place to pines and hemlocks as we wheeled from the Gilded Dome trail into the narrower trail that leads over the long divide to the Black Water. Along the rushing stream alder and hazel waved, silver birches gleamed deep-set in tangled depths, and poplars rose along the water’s edge, quivering as the breezes freshened, every glistening leaf a-tremble.
Under foot, brown pine-needles spread a polished matting over the forest mould, for we had entered the pine belt and the long trail had just begun.
The breeze in the pines! it will always make me think of Ysonde. Wild wind-swept harmonies swelling from the windy ridge, the whisper and sigh and rush of water, the grey ledges, the deep sweep of precipices where lonely rivers glimmer, lost in the sea of trees, — these I remember as I think of Ysonde, these and more too, — the dome of green, the fragments of sky between mixed branches, the silence, broken by a single birdnote.
* * * * * *
The trail crossed a sunny glade, mossy and moist, bordered by black birch thickets and carpeted with winter-green. Ysonde leaned upon her steel-shod staff and looked at her own reflection in the placid spring pool, shining among the ferns.
“I am very much tanned,” she said.
“Are you thirsty,” I asked.
“There is a little freckle beside my nose,” observed Ysonde.
“It is becoming,” I said truthfully.
“Yes, I
am thirsty,” said Ysonde, “ — what do you know about freckles?”
I handed her a cup of water; she drank a little, looked over the rim of the cup reflectively, drank a little more, sighed, smiled, and poured what was left of the water upon the moss.
“A libation to the gods,” she explained.
“To which?” I asked.
“Ah, she said; I had not thought of that. Well, then, to — to—”
I looked at her and she tossed the cup to me saying, “I shall not tell you. I am getting into the habit of telling you everything.”
“But — but the gentleman’s name?” I urged. “No, no! Goodness! may I not have a secret, all my own?”
“Very well,” said I, “you pour out libations to a gentleman god and I shall even up matters. Here’s to the lady!”
“Minerva, of course. You are so wise,” suggested Ysonde.
“It’s neither to Minerva nor to the owl,” said I, “it’s to the Lady Aphrodite.”
“Pooh!” said Ysonde, “you are not clever; Hermes might —— —”
“Might what?”
“Be careful, Bobby, your sleeve is getting wet—”
“Might what?”
“Now how should I know,” exclaimed Ysonde, “mercy, I’m not a little Greek maiden!”
I strapped the cup to my belt, tightened the buckle of my rod-case, lighted my pipe, and sat down on a log.
“Well, Master Bobby,” said Ysonde in that bantering voice which she used when perfectly happy.
“Well, Mistress Ysonde,” said I.
“Are you going to lose the others?”
I pointed to the foot of the long slope, where, among the tree trunks, something blue fluttered.
“It’s Lynda’s veil,” said Ysonde, “and there is Mr. Blylock, also; they are sitting down.”
“True,” said I, “let us rest also. We have been hours on the trail. Here is a dry spot on this log.”
Ysonde sat down. Now whenever Ysonde seated herself there was something in the pose of her figure that made me think of courts and kings and coronations. The little ceremony of seating herself ended, I resumed my seat also, feeling it a privilege accorded only to the very great. I told her this and she pretended to agree with me.
“You must be something at court,” she said, “ you cannot be an earl, for earls are blond and slender; you cannot be a count, for counts are dark and dapper; nor a duke, for dukes are big and always red in the face; you might be a baron — no, they are fierce and merciless—”
“So am I.”
“No you’re not. You can’t be a marquis either, for they are plausible and treacherous—”
“Then I’ll be a Master of ‘Ounds,” I insisted, “let the title go by the board.”
She agreed, and I was installed Master of Stag-hounds to her petite Majesty — this position permitting me to sit occasionally in her presence.
“I am thirsty again,” said Ysonde.
I brought her a cup of ice-cold water into which I dropped a dozen wild strawberries. She touched a berry with the tip of her pink tongue, which was bad manners, and I told her so.
“What do you know about Queen’s etiquette?” she said disdainfully, and, finding the berries ripe, she ate three and smiled at me.
A thrush came fearlessly to her very feet and drank from the spring; a mottled wood-toad made futile efforts to clamber up the log into her lap, and two red lizards peeped at her from a cleft in the boulder beside us.
“It’s queer,” said I, watching the scrambling toad, “how you seem to fascinate all wild creatures. Shall I poke the toad away?”
“No, I am not afraid; I am very glad they all come to me.”
“You were possibly a dryad once,” I hazarded. “Possibly. And you?”
“Probably the oak tree that sheltered you.”
“Sheltered me?”
There is something in the note of a very young bird that I have noticed in Ysonde’s voice, but now, as she laughed — oh, such soft, sweet laughter, — it seemed to me as though the bird had grown, and its note trembled with purer, truer melody.
“Sheltered me! I imagine it!” she said, with a wonderful sweetness in her eyes. “Hark! Mr. Blylock is calling!”
She rose with capricious grace as I answered Blylock in a view-halloo which awoke the echoes among the cliffs above us.
When we came up to them Lynda linked her arm in Ysonde’s, and Blylock and I pushed ahead after the plodding guides.
Blylock and I discussed trout-flies and casts and philosophy with an occasional question to the guides, and as we moved I could hear the light laughter of Lynda and the clear voice of Ysonde singing old songs that were made in France when hawk’s-bells tinkled in castle courts and tasselled palfreys pawed the drawbridge.
It was noon when we entered the Scaur Valley, and luncheon was grateful; but before the leading guide entered the spotted trail which swings to the west above the third spur of Crested Hawk, the sun had dropped into the notch between Mount Eternity and the White Lady, and the alpen-glow crimsoned every peak as we threw down our packs and looked out across the Black Water. “Here,” said I, “our journey ends; Princess Ysonde,” — I took her gloved hand,— “be seated, for below you lies the Black Water — yours by right of conquest.”
“I cal’late ‘t ‘l be right cold to-night, Ma’am,” said Buck Hanson.
“Yes,” said Ysonde listlessly.
V.
NIGHT fell over the Black Water before the shelter was raised, but the great camp-fire lighted up the cleared space among the trees, and I saw Ellis staggering in under loads of freshly-stripped bark for our roof. Buck Hanson finished thatching the exposed ends with hemlock and spruce. The partition, a broad sheet of heavy bark, separated the lean-to into two sections, one for Lynda and Ysonde, the other for Blylock, myself, and the guides.
I had roamed about the underbrush, lopping off balsam twigs for our bedding which Blylock brought in and spread over the pine-needle floor.
When Ellis finished roofing the hut with his thick rolls of bark I sent him to the spring below with the camp kettle, and picking up an axe, called to Buck to follow.
“I should very much like, “ said Blylock solemnly, “to chop a tree into sections adequate for the camp fire.”
“Take the axe and my blessing,” said I, “I hate to chop.”
“It’s very good of you,” said Blylock, following Buck into the forest where our firelight glimmered red on rugged trunks towering into the blackness above.
Ysonde came creeping out of her compartment, her eyes and cheeks brilliant in the fire’s glare.
“Lynda is lying down,” she said, “isn’t supper nearly ready? How delicious our bed of balsam smells; what are you doing with your trout rod?”
I knotted the nine-foot leader to the line, slipped on an orange miller for a dropper, tied a big coachman three feet above it, and picked up my landing-net.
“What is home without a dinner?” I asked, “and what is dinner without a trout? Come down to that rock which hangs over the Black Water, and you shall see your future dinner leaping in the moonlight.”
“Bobby the poet,” said Ysonde, steadying herself by my arm in the dark descent to the lake.
“Poet Bobby, there is no moon on the Black Water.”
“Look,” said I, pointing to a pale light in the sky above the White Lady, “the moon will come up over that peak in ten minutes; give me your hand, it’s very dark.”
Clinging closely to my arm, she moved through the undergrowth until we felt the firm flat rock under our feet. The rock ran straight out into the water at right angles from the shore like a pier.
“Be careful — oh, be careful,” she urged, “you almost walked off into the water there where the shadows lie so black.”
“Then hold me,” said I diplomatically, and I felt her warm hands close tightly on my left arm.
The moon peeped over the shoulder of the White Lady as I made my first cast into the darkness ah
ead, and I saw my leader strike the water, now placidly rocking like a lake of molten silver.
“Oh-h!” cried Ysonde, softly, “oh, the wondrous beauty of it all.”
In the silence I heard the thwack of an axe from the woods above and Blylock’s voice quite plainly. The water lapped the edges of the rock below us, catching thin gleams from the shining sheet beyond, and my silk line whistled and whimpered like a keen wind lashing the sea.
Then a wonderful thing occurred. Out of the depths of the burnished water a slim shape shot, showering the black night with spray. Splash! A million little wavelets hurried away into the darkness, crowding, sparkling, dancing in widening circles, while the harsh whirr of the reel rang in my ears, and the silk line melted away like a thread of smoke. The rod staggered in my hand. —
“Ysonde, there are two on now!” I whispered.
“Give me the rod!” she said, excitedly. I handed it to her, and for a moment she felt the splendid strain. Then the fish gave a deep surge to the west, and she gasped and pushed the rod into my hands.
“Living wild things struggling for life,” she sighed. “Oh, hurry, Bobby, — it pains me so!” and she pressed both hands to her breast.
For a second the joy of the battle left me. I had an impulse to fling the rod into the Black Water; but I am a hunter by instinct.
Deeper and deeper surged the fish, and the rod swayed and bent until the tip brushed my knuckles.
“Oh, kill the creatures,” murmured Ysonde, “it is all so fierce and cruel, — I never thought you were like that!”
“I am,” I muttered, checking a savage sweep toward the north,—” quick, Ysonde — pass me my net.”
She did so, and I crawled down to the water’s edge, shortening my line at every step. It was soon over; I washed my hands in the black water, and flung the fish back into the landing-net.
“Now,” said I, tossing rod and net over my shoulder, “we will go to dinner; lean on my shoulder; — how brutal you must think me, Ysonde.”
“Yes,” said Ysonde.
She passed me — perhaps it was the moonlight that whitened her cheeks — and I saw her enter the circle of red firelight as Lynda came forward to meet her.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1064