Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  In her left hand she swung a fine pair of snowshoe rabbits — victims of her traps. Steel looked at them in grim amusement.

  “Jeanne,” he said casually as they approached the hut, “did anybody ever tell you that it is against the law to trap wild game?”

  She laughed and squeezed his arm in appreciation of the joke.

  “Do you suppose, if a game protector knew it, he’d put me in prison?” she asked, still laughing.

  “What would you have to say to a game protector?”

  “I? Why, I’d say that Raoul and I had to eat something. Or else how are we to live?”

  “That is reason enough,” admitted Steel, gravely.

  When they reached the hut he aided her to draw, pluck, and skin the game and prepare the fish.

  The stew simmered; she seasoned it and stirred and poked it with a pointed pine stick, moving swiftly and happily about her duties.

  Once he heard her singing under her breath the gay refrain of a Canadian song, as she set out the tin dishes and cups on the home-made table.

  Raoul came in with a pair of winter weasel pelts.

  “I saw a doe,” he said excitedly, “but she went off through the burnt lands and I couldn’t get near her. Your rifle would have fetched her.”

  The grim smile came back to Steel’s lips. Here was every form of lawbreaking — a deer not only out of season, but a doe at that!

  “Take my rifle after dinner,” he said, shamelessly. “She’ll keep out of buckshot range.”

  Jeanne scraped the fried potatoes into each tin plate; lifted the stewpan and picked from it with her pointed stick the bits of flesh and fowl, and distributed them with impartial accuracy.

  “Now!” she exclaimed happily, seating herself on Steel’s bench and close to him.

  Steel was audience; the children chattered incessantly, each joyous tongue unleashed and wagging like mad after the long months of silence.

  Wonderful adventures by flood and field had been Raoul’s portion — a bear with two full-grown cubs had found him weaponless, to his never ending fury and despair; once, setting lines for wild ducks (and Steel shuddered slightly), he had fallen into a hole on the Black Vlaie and had almost drowned in the depthless slit; once he had seen a great pickerel asleep in the shallows, and had tried to shoot it (more shudders from Steel), but when he pulled the huge, stunned fish out of water the creature had come to life, bitten him with its wolfs jaws, and in one mighty and convulsive spasm had floundered back into the channel.

  Wonderful and innumerable were the adventures of Raoul; more modest and less picturesque the tales that Jeanne had to tell; and Steel, intent and deeply moved, listened as the midday meal progressed, until Jeanne rose with a happy sigh of satisfaction and prepared to do the dishes.

  That night a candle was lighted in Steel’s honour. They possessed only five. When it was half consumed Steel rose, took Raoul’s hand, and, shaking it very gravely, said good-night. Then he walked over to Jeanne; she laid her slender, cold-scarred hand in his; and he bent over it gravely and touched it with his lips.

  Long after he had shut the kitchen door and had spread his blanket on the heap of balsam tips — long after the candle had been extinguished and Raoul was asleep in his blanket — the girl lay awake in her bunk, still steeped in the magic of the long day’s memories — a day which already seemed too delightful to be true.

  At sunrise Steel opened the kitchen door and walked out. Raoul was chopping kindlings on the doorstep; Jeanne sat on the edge of her bunk, twisting up her splendid hair, a kettle of soapy water on the floor at her feet.

  “I’m going,” said Steel quietly.

  For a moment she did not seem to comprehend; then her prettily flushed face grew blank and colourless.

  “I’ll be gone three days,” he said; “then I am coming back for your birthday — if you want me.”

  The girl had risen, looking at him out of great, grey eyes that seemed frightened.

  “Will you come back?” she asked.

  “Yes, if you want me.”

  “I do want you.”

  “I’ll come — after three days.”

  He went outside and stood talking to Raoul until Jeanne called them to a breakfast of coffee, biscuits, and fried perch. It was the last cupful of flour, but she did not say so.

  Steel remained silent; the children’s eyes scarcely left him, but they said very little. And when the quiet meal was ended and he was ready to depart they came to him with a new shyness, offering their hands without a word.

  All that day the girl brooded by the range, performing her duties listlessly; the boy made the rounds of his traps and came back at evening empty handed.

  Snow fell that night; and the next day it was snowing; and on the next. Then, as usual, the bitter winds came, and the children took to their bunks for warmth, and talked together in the bitter darkness in lieu of supper.

  “He said he would come back on the third day,” began Raoul. “This is the third day.”

  “He said he’d come back to us after three days. I think he will come tomorrow,” said Jeanne.

  “Tomorrow is Christmas.”

  “It is my birthday, too. He said he would come back for my birthday.”

  “Maybe he has forgotten us,” said the boy.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “He was kind to us.”

  “He has other things to think of. Perhaps he has forgotten all about us.”

  The girl said no more; after a while the boy slept. But his sister lay thinking, shivering, fighting back the black fear that her brother’s sombre words had stirred within her breast.

  They both were still asleep when Steel came in all over snow. Raoul did not wake; Jeanne sat up in her bunk, peering at him through her burnished shock of hair. And:

  “Oh-h!” she breathed, holding out both thin, bare arms. And Steel slipped out of his snowy jacket and went to the bunk, taking her to his breast.

  For a while he could not speak; her cold face lay close against his cheek, her arms clung to his neck.

  “Have you missed me?” he contrived to say.

  She said nothing, but for the first time in many months her cheeks glistened with tears.

  “Jeanne,” he said, “I want to tell you about myself.... A word or two.... I am a very lonely man.... Many years ago my wife and baby died.... He would have been as tall as your brother had he lived.... I worked in a bank.... And I was not very well — needing air and sun — as your mother needed it.... So I went into the forest service. And have continued.... I have a little house in Albany; and I am not poor — except in children.... I want you and Raoul.”

  After a moment she loosened her arms around his neck and laid them on his shoulders.

  “Is Papa dead?” she asked.

  “Yes, dear.”

  “I knew it.”

  “Who told you, Jeanne?”

  “Nobody. But I knew it three days ago — after you left. And I said so to Raoul.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I don’t know how I knew it,” she said vaguely. “Somebody seemed to say it to me in my sleep. Tell me.”

  So he told her of a very happy and peaceful passing which Jules Vallé never knew — lied quietly and deliberately to spare her.... She wept on her pillow, listening: but Raoul sat up in his blanket, dryeyed, biting steadily at his under lip.

  “Such an end to life is beautiful,” said Steel. “There is no reason to weep when a tired man falls into the most peaceful and happy sleep that God can send us.”

  “Is there a horse outside?” exclaimed the girl, drying her tear-brilliant eyes in amazement.

  “Two,” said Steel. “Raoul, come out and help me unpack them.”

  “Did you lead two horses into Hell’s Ashes?” asked the hoy, astounded.

  “Come out and see,” replied Steel gaily.

  It took the boy only a few seconds to pull on his dilapidated clothes and hasten out. But a
lready the packs lay unrolled on the snow and Steel, loaded with bright and wonderful heaps of things, was already coming in the door.

  “For me!” whispered Jeanne, staring at the gay and brilliant winter garments which he tumbled at her feet.

  “Look in the boxes, too,” said Steel. “And at home there is more — in fact, everything a young girl should have for her comfort and her pleasure.... Raoul, that clothing is yours — it will do for our journey. And of course when you are in Albany and going to school, there will be everything a boy needs.” He turned to the girl, whose flushed, enraptured face startled him with its beauty.

  “A happy birthday, Jeanne!” — and, to them both: “A happy Christmas!... Your presents are waiting for you at home: very wonderful things, Raoul — a rifle — 30-30 — skates, books, a hockey stick — Oh, I forget them all; and in Jeanne’s little room there is a new dressing table with all kinds of wonderful silver articles; and there is a clothespress with pretty gowns in it, and a fur coat and muff and hat — Jeanne! You mustn’t cry, dear.... We are going home tomorrow — you and Raoul and I.... And you and I — Jeanne — little Jeanne—”

  THE FIRE-BIRD

  AFTER the Fire Warden at Lynxville had held a conference with Burling over the long-distance wire, he came back to the waggon where Rittenfeldt and Kemper sat waiting.

  “As I was telling you gentlemen,” continued the Fire Warden, “the forest fires in this county are largely incendiary. There’s no doubt about that! But, as I said before, what can I do? As soon as there is an alarm given, I am obliged to call in as fire fighters the very ruffians who set the woods afire; and I am forced by law to pay ’em two dollars a day! That’s why they set the fires, G-d damn ‘em! I know it: the Commissioner knows it; but what are we to do? I can’t catch ’em in the act. I haven’t any men to patrol the forests. And when the woods are afire I’ve got to call out people to fight the flames — haven’t I? — or the whole North Woods would go up in smoke and ashes. Now, I ask you, gentlemen, what am I to do?”

  “I can’t see what more you can do,” admitted Kemper. “It’s up to the State to establish a forest constabulary — a body of trained foresters for patrol duty. And if that isn’t done, and done pretty soon, I can see the end of the North Woods.”

  The Fire Warden, standing there in his shirtsleeves, rubbed a stubbly chin with his scarred thumb, reflectively:

  “I’ll admit,” he said, “that now and then a fire is started by careless hunters or by fishermen, or fool berry pickers. But the proportion is small. It’s the miserable half-starved creatures who try to keep soul and body together in these woods who set fire to the woods so they can earn the only money they ever see from one year to the next!”

  “Lazy pigs,” grunted Rittenfeldt, “mit a leedle industry they grow for themselves vat farmers grow; und so iss it they have to eat sufficient.”

  The Fire Warden shook his head:

  “The soil is no good,” he said. “Once the thin, vegetable layer on the surface has been exhausted there remains only sand. This is no farming country: it’s only good for tree growing. Hemlock, pine, oak, maple, elm — that’s all this region can grow. And when the woods are burnt or cut down, fire or sun shrivel the thin surface mold, leaving only the glacial desert underneath.... It’s a bad business, gentlemen. The woods are going, the waters shrinking; drouth, hurricane, erosion, and flood follow.... This land was God’s own once.... Have you ever seen that part of it they call Hell’s Ashes?”

  “I’ve heard of it,” said Kemper.... “Well, then, to go back to business, you think that if we set out our hundred thousand three-year seedlings, we’ll have our labour for our pains?”

  The Warden said, slowly:

  “I tell you that another fire is about due in the Lynx Peak country. I’ve been Fire Warden too long not to know about when to expect such deviltry. There’s been no fire there this season. There will be. Some dirty scut of a half-starved skunk will set the woods afire, as sure as I’m standing here telling you.... And his name might begin with a B at that!”

  “Who?” inquired Kemper drily.

  “Oh, hell! There’s Bram Chace, for example.”

  “He’s still in jail.”

  “Also,” drawled the Fire Warden, “there’s Jim Billet.”

  “Is Game Protector Kane there?”

  “What good is one man for all those miles of wilderness?”

  “The Commissioner has sent deputies there, I understand,” insisted Kemper.

  “So he was telling me over the phone just now,” remarked the Fire Warden blandly.

  “You don’t think it will do much good?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “But Wildrick’s gang has been run out. Who is this fellow Billet?”

  “Oh, just one of the forest vermin. They’re all tarred with the same brush, more or less. What do you expect from minds stunted by solitude and bodies stunted by starvation? They’re animals — they’re lower than animals — only a little more cunning; otherwise they couldn’t shoot and trap them. No, Mr. Kemper, there’s only one thing to be done: patrol the forests with foresters organized as constabulary. Nothing else is going to save the woods and waters and the game. And when all these go, then the State’s very lifeblood is tainted with a decay that means the beginning of the end of empire.”

  “Dot iss true,” nodded Rittenfeldt. “It has in Spain alretty happened.”

  “Mr. Kemper,” said the Fire Warden, “you are a trained forester and an educated man in pay of the State. You are a physician and surgeon in general practice, employed to diagnose the cases of sick lands — lands ruined by pulp-cutters, by fire, by flood — deforested tracts of every description. And to reforest these wretched and ruined regions with timber suitable is your job.

  “Now, you know that fire is the worst evil to deal with because it destroys the very life-supporting principles of the soil itself. Why don’t you go back, to Albany and start a campaign for a proper forest service? What is the use of setting out millions of seedlings that may go up in flame within a week of their planting? Why not begin right by properly safeguarding your vast nurseries?”

  Kemper said:

  “It does not lie with me.... You are right.... But it does not lie with me to play the politics of the game, any more than it lies with you. I’m ordered to set out trees; and I’ve got to set them out even if they burn up tomorrow.”

  Said Rittenfeldt:

  “It iss to the fool people of the State up! If they their forests vish to have destroyed, so vill their forests be destroyed! As for me, I am by dot State paid a report upon the injurious coleoptera of the forests to make. I, therefore, my report expect to make.

  Kemper, if you are retty, I dot off horse mit my whip shall hit.”

  “One moment!” — and to the Fire Warden: “The Lynx Peak region is just slashings, isn’t it?”

  “Yes; not burnt.”

  “Birch?”

  “Plenty.”

  “I thought so. It ought to support white pine. I’ll look it over.” And he waved his hand in adieu and gathered up the reins.

  The June day was magnificent — a stainless blue overhead, and all the world clothed in tenderest green and blossoms. Rills trickled from depths still frost-bound, hidden in the hills; streams ran full, glancing in the sun; and the slim trout scattered as the waggon splashed through shallow fords, crunching over pebbles and sandy reaches.

  Rittenfeldt calmly discussed large sandwiches made of cheese, and, at judicious intervals, balanced a bottle of beer on his lips very skillfully. Kemper’drove with one hand, leaning forward over his knees, chewing, reflectively, the com bread in his paper parcel.

  “I could cheerfully shoot any man who burns over any of my reforested territory,” he remarked.

  “Ach, wass!” grunted Rittenfeldt. “It iss vilde piggs ve haff to deal mit. A salt cartridge is goot.”

  “I shot a fellow full of salt last March,” nodded Kemper. “We had set out twenty thousand N
orway spruce on the flats south of Stony River — State land. And — would you believe it? — this squatter had half of them plowed under before I caught him. And that night he fired the second growth where I was camping. So I let him have it. God! How he squealed!”

  “Schwein!” grunted Rittenfeldt, beginning another sandwich.

  The road had now become sandy; the well cared for horses walked. Kemper had lighted his cob pipe, leaning lazily forward, his keen, dark eyes glancing right and left ceaselessly, studying the landscape. Patches of woods, miles of birch, willow runs, and acres of briers and bushes spread away east and west. Northward, low, humpy mountains hunched up like the rounded backs of gigantic raccoons.

  “It iss to me an unknown country,” yawned Rittenfeldt. “For collecting it shall for me great interest possess.”

  “The region is peculiar in its fauna, I believe. For example, it is the extreme northern range of the scarlet tanager — called locally the ‘fire-bird.’”

  “So?”

  “Yes; it’s found around Lynx Peak; nowhere else except as far south as Albany. Did you ever seen one, Hugo?”

  “Nein.”

  “It’s a beautiful bird about the size of an oriole. Its body is a flaming scarlet; its wings jet black. And when you see one flying across the dark pines it surely does look like a flash of living flame.”

  Rittenfeldt nodded, fished in his capacious pockets, drew out a folding butterfly net, and began to screw it together in case of emergencies. He was a wise German, for in a few moments a great, burnished longicorne came sailing across the waggon, and he captured it. The beetle promptly bit him, but he merely grunted and continued to examine it between fat thumb and forefinger, where, held as within a vise, the kicking creature creaked and twisted and bit at the empty air.

  “There’s only one house between us and Lynx Peak, I believe,” observed Kemper. “We might get some milk there.”

  A few moments later they came in sight of the house — an unpainted, flimsy, weather-beaten structure close to the road — the solitary habitation in all that desolate waste. And yet, lonely and poverty-stricken as it was, Kemper noticed a lilac bush in bloom by the door and a pot of geraniums on the window ledge. Also a cat sat upon the doorsill, polishing her countenance with one paw.