CHAPTER VII.
A FOREST GUIDE-POST.
At the foot of that crag Dol stood still, while a great shiver creptfrom his neck up the back of his head, stirring his hair. He peered inevery direction; but there was no sign of a camp, nothing to show thatany human foot before his had disturbed the solitude of thismountain-side, and no further marks on the ground, save one impressionon a bed of earth at his feet where some animal had lately lain.
The disappointment was stupefying.
At last a fog of terror settled down upon him,--a fog which blotted outevery sight and sound, blotted out even his own thoughts, all exceptone, which, like a danger-signal in a mist, kept booming through hisbrain: "Lost! Lost!"
By and by he was sitting on the piled-up stones and dirt of the slide;but he had no remembrance of getting to this resting-place, for he wasstill befogged.
Something snorted close to his right ear,--loud snort, which banishedstupor, and set his pulses jumping. It was a deer, a beautiful doe in acoat of reddish-drab, matching the autumnal tints of the forest,wherever maples, birches, and cedars mingled with the evergreens. Shehad bounded upon him suddenly from behind a dead spruce and a mound ofearth.
It was long since the game on this part of the mountain had beendisturbed. Madam Doe had in all probability never seen a man before,therefore her behavior was not peculiar. A shock of surprise thrilledthrough her graceful body as she vented that snort, when she caughtsight of the new-fangled gray animal who had intruded upon her world,and who sat spell-bound, gazing at her with hopeless eyes, in whichgradually a light broke.
But she did not fear him,--this creature in gray. She stood stock-still,and stared at him, so near that he could see her wink her starry eyes,with the white rings round them. She stamped one hoof, kicked an insectfrom her ear with another, snorted again, wheeled around, and at lastbroke away for the thick shelter of the trees, lightly and swiftly as abreeze which skims from one thicket to another.
Seeing his mother go for the woods, her spotted fawn, which had beenfrolicking among the branches of the fallen spruce-tree, skipped fromit, passed Dol with a bound which carried him a few feet, anddisappeared like a whiff too.
Here was a rouser, indeed, which no boy, unless he was in a far-gonestate of suffering, could withstand. Dol Farrar forgot his terriblepredicament. The fog had cleared away from his senses, leaving him freeto think and act once more.
"Well, I never!" he ejaculated, springing to his feet in amazement."Wasn't she a beauty? And wasn't she a snorter? I didn't think a deercould make such a row as that. And to stand still and stare at me! Iwonder whether she took me for some new-fashioned sort of animal or agray old stump."
It was a few minutes before he again thought of his plight, and then hewas not overcome. He stood perfectly still, trying to review theposition coolly, and to get a tight grip of his feelings, so that terrormight not again master him.
"I'm in a worse scrape than I ever dreamt of," he muttered, puckeringhis forehead to do some tall thinking. "And I must do something to getout of it. But what? That's the question.
"I wonder if I loaded this 'ole fuzzee,'"--the lad was making a valianteffort to cheer himself by being jocular,--"and blazed away with it fora while like mad, whether there is any human being around who would hearme. Some fellow might be hunting or trapping in this part of the forest,or farther up the mountain. But what a blockhead I am! Why on earthdidn't I do that before I started on this wretched trail?"
But alas! as this was Dol Farrar's first adventure in American woods, ithad not occurred to him to do the right thing at the right time. Had hefired a round of signal shots when first he lost the line of spottedtrees, he would probably have been heard at his camp, and would havebeen spared the worst scare he ever had in his life. The negligence wasscarcely his fault, however; for Cyrus Garst, who had never beforeundertaken the responsibility of entertaining a pair of inexperiencedboys in woodland quarters, had not, at this early stage of the trip,arranged with his comrades to fire a certain number of shots to signify"Help wanted!" if one of them should stray, or otherwise get intotrouble. The idea now cropped up in Dol's perplexed mind, through aconfused recollection of tales about forest misadventures which Uncle Ebhad told him by the cheery camp-fire.
So he loaded the old shot-gun. It belched forth fire and smoke intospace. And the thunder of his shot went rolling off in a reverberatingdin among the mountain echoes, until a hundred tongues repeated hisappeal for help. Again he loaded rapidly and fired. And yet again, withnervous, eager fingers. So on, till he had let off half a dozen shots inquick succession.
Then he waited, listening as if every pulse in his body had suddenlybecome an ear.
But when the last growling echo had died away, not a sound broke thealmost absolute silence on the mountain-side. Evidently not a human soulwas near enough to hear or understand his signals of distress.
In these bitter minutes some sensations ran through Dol Farrar which hehad never known before; and, as he afterwards expressed it, "they wereenough to cover any fellow with goose-flesh."
He felt that he had reached the dreariest point of the unknown, and wasa lonely, drifting atom in this immense solitude of forest and rock.
Never in his life before or afterwards did he come so near to PointDespair as when he stumbled down the mountain, spurning that treacheroustrail, and going wherever his jaded feet found travelling tolerablyeasy. He had picked up the shot-gun; but the black ducks, the primarycause of his misadventure, he clean forgot, leaving them lying amid thechaos at the foot of the crag, to have their bones picked by some luckyraccoon or fox.
Wandering along in a zigzag way, he by and by reached the base of themountain at a point where there was a break in the forest. A patch ofdreary-looking swamp was before him, covered with clumps ofalder-bushes--a true Slough of Despond.
Dol Farrar knew none of the miseries of plunging through an alder-swamp,but he luckily recalled in time a warning from Cyrus that a slightwetting would render his moccasins useless. While he halted undecidedlyon its brink, he pulled out his watch; one glance at this, and anotherat the sky, which now lay open like a scroll above him, gave him asickening shock. He had started from camp at noon; now it was after fiveo'clock. Little more than another hour, and not twilight, but theblackness of a total eclipse, would reign in the forest.
The blood rushed to his head, and his mouth grew feverish at thethought. As he licked his cracking lips, he caught a faint, tinkling,rumbling sound of falling water somewhere to the right. Of a sudden hissufferings of mind and body were merged into one burning desire todrink, and he turned eagerly in that direction.
At the edge of the woods he found a little fairy, foamy waterfall, whichhad tumbled down from the mountain to be lost in the dismal swamp. ButDol felt that it had accomplished its mission when he unfastened the tindrinking-mug which hung from his belt, and drank--drank--drank! Hestraightened himself again, feeling that some of the bubbling life ofthe mountain torrent had passed into him. His eyes lit on a toweringpine-tree just beyond it. And then--
Well! if that sky-piercing pine had suddenly changed at a jump into agray post, bearing the inscription, "One mile to Boston," Dol Farrarcould not have been more astonished and relieved than when he saw forthe first time a rude forest guide-post.
To the dark, knotted trunk was fastened a piece of light, delicate bark,stripped from a white-birch tree. On this was scrawled in big letters,by some instrument evidently not intended for penmanship:--
"FOLLOW THE BLAZED TRAIL AND YOU ARE SAFE."
"Another blazed trail! Hurrah!" shouted Dol. "Won't I follow it? I neverwill follow any other again if I live to be a hundred, and come to thesewoods every year till I die!"
The height of his relief could only be measured by the depth of his pastmisery, which would truly have been enough to set a weaker boy crazy.With watering eyes and panting breaths that came near to being sobs ofgladness, he started upon the new trail. It led him off into the forestsurrounding the sw
amp.
The pine that had been chosen for guide-post was the first in the lineof spotted trees. The others followed it closely, with intervals ofeight or ten yards between them; and as the notches in their trunks werefreshly cut, Dol followed the track without any difficulty for twentyminutes. He had a suspicion that he was nearing the end of it; though hewas still in forest gloom, with light coming in meagre, ever-lesseningstreaks through the pine-tufts above. Then he started more violentlythan when the deer snorted near his ear.
Suddenly and shrilly the blast of a horn rang through the darkeningwoodland aisles, followed, after a pause of a minute or two, by a secondand louder blast.
Then a well-pitched, far-reaching voice sang out:--"Come to supper,boys! Come to supper!"
"Good gracious!" said Dol, conscious on the instant that he was ashollow as a drum. "There are enough surprises in these forests to raisethe hair on a fellow's head half a dozen times a day!"
A matter of forty yards more, and a burst of light swam before his eyes.He had reached the end of the blazed trail.
Camp and Trail: A Story of the Maine Woods Page 8