Chapter XIII
Milking-time
Young Dave Titus was not without the rudiments of a knowledge of woman, few as had been his opportunities for acquiring that rarest and most difficult of sciences. He made no second visit to the cabin in the clearing till he had kept Miranda many weeks wondering at his absence. Then, when the stalks were whitey grey, and the pumpkins golden yellow in the corn-field, and the buckwheat patch was crisply brown, and the scarlet of the maples was beginning to fade out along the forest edges, he came drifting back lazily one late afternoon, just as the slow tink-a-tonk of the cow-bells was beginning the mellow proclamation of milking-time and sundown. The tonic chill of autumn in the wilderness open caught his nostrils deliciously as he emerged from the warmer stillness of the woods. The smell, the sound of the cow-bells, – these were homely sweet after the day-long solitude of the trail. But the scene – the grey cabin lifted skyward on the gradual swell of the fields – was loneliness itself. The clearing seemed to Dave a little beautiful lost world, and it gave him an ache at the heart to think of the years that Miranda and Kirstie had dwelt in it alone.
Just beyond the edge of the forest he came upon Kroof, grubbing and munching some wild roots. He spoke to her deferentially, but she swung her huge rump about and firmly ignored him. He was anxious to win the shrewd beast’s favour, or at least her tolerance, both because she had stirred his imagination and because he felt that her good-will would be, in Miranda’s eyes, a most convincing testimonial to his worth. But he wisely refrained from forcing himself upon her notice.
“Go slow, my son, go slow. It’s a she; an’ more’n likely you don’t know jest how to take her,” he muttered to himself, after a fashion acquired in the interminable solitude of his camp. Leaving Kroof to her moroseness, he hastened up to the cabin, in hopes that he would be in time to help Kirstie and Miranda with the milking.
Just before he got to the door he experienced a surprise, so far as he was capable of being surprised at anything which might take place in these unreal surroundings. From behind the cabin came Wapiti the buck, or perhaps a younger Wapiti, on whom the spirit of his sire had descended in double portion. Close after him came two does, sniffing doubtfully at the smell of a stranger on the air. To Wapiti a stranger at the cabin, where such visitants were unheard of, must needs be an enemy, or at least a suspect. He stepped delicately out into the path, stamped his fine hoof in defiance, and lowered his armory of antlers. They were keen and hard, these October antlers, for this was the moon of battle, and he was ready. In rutting season Wapiti was every inch a hero.
Now Dave Titus well knew that this was no bluff of Wapiti’s. He was amused and embarrassed. He could not fight this unexpected foe, for victory or defeat would be equally fatal to his hope of pleasing Miranda. As a consequence, here he was, Dave Titus, the noted hunter, the Nimrod, held up by a rutting buck! Well, the trouble was of Miranda’s making. She’d have to get him out of it. Facing the defiant Wapiti at a distance of five or six paces, he rested the butt of his rifle on his toe and sent a mellow, resonant heigh-lo, heigh-lo! echoing over the still air. The forest edges took it up, answering again and again. Kirstie and Miranda came to the door to see who gave the summons, and they understood the situation at a glance.
“Call off yer dawg, Mirandy,” cried Young Dave, “an’ I’ll come an’ pay ye a visit.”
“He thinks you’re going to hurt us,” explained Kirstie; and Miranda, with a gay laugh, ran to the rescue.
“You mustn’t frighten the good little boy, Wapiti,” she cried, pushing the big deer out of her path and running to Dave’s side. As soon as Wapiti saw Miranda with Dave, he comprehended that the stranger was not a foe. With a flourish of his horns he stepped aside and led his herd off through the barnyard.
Arriving at the door, where Kirstie, gracious, but impassive, awaited him, Dave exclaimed: “She’s saved my life ag’in, Kirstie, that girl o’ yourn. First it’s a painter, an’ now it’s a rutting buck. Wonder what it’ll be next time!”
“A rabbit, like as not, or a squir’l, maybe,” suggested Miranda, unkindly.
“Whatever it be,” persisted Dave, “third time’s luck for me, anyways. If you save my life agin, Mirandy, you’ll hev’ to take care o’ me altogether. I’ll git to kind of depend on ye.”
“Then I reckon, Dave, you’ll get out of your next scrape by yourself,” answered Miranda, with discouraging decision.
“That’s one on you, Dave,” remarked Kirstie, with a strictly neutral air. But behind Miranda’s back she shot him a look which said, “Don’t you mind what she says, she’s all right in her heart!” which, indeed, was far from being the case. Had Dave been so injudicious as to woo openly at this stage of Miranda’s feelings, he would have been dismissed with speedy emphasis.
Dave was in time to help with the milking, – a process which he boyishly enjoyed. The cows, five of them, were by now lowing at the bars. Kirstie brought out three tin pails. “You can help us, if you like, Dave,” she cried, while Miranda looked her doubt of such a clumsy creature’s capacity for the gentle art of milking. “Can you milk?” she asked.
“’Course I can, though I haven’t had much chance, o’ late years, to practise,” said Dave.
“Can you milk without hurting the cow? Are you sure? And can you draw off the strippings clean?” she persisted, manifestly sceptical.
“Try me,” said Dave.
“Let him take old Whitey, Miranda. He’ll get through with her, maybe, while we’re milking the others,” suggested Kirstie.
“Oh, well, any one could milk Whitey,” assented Miranda; and Dave, on his mettle, vowed within himself that he’d have old Whitey milked, and milked dry, and milked to her satisfaction, before either Kirstie or Miranda was through with her first milker. He stroked the cow on the flank, and scratched her belly gently, and established friendly relations with her before starting; and the elastic firmness of his strong hands chanced to suit Whitey’s large teats. The animal eyed him with favour and gave down her milk affluently. As the full streams sounded more and more liquidly in his pail, Dave knew that he had the game in his hands, and took time to glance at his rivals. To his astonishment there was Kroof standing up on her haunches close beside Miranda, her narrow red tongue lolling from her lazily open jaws, while she watched the milky fountains with interest.
While Kirstie’s scarlet kerchiefed head was still pressed upon her milker’s flank, and while Miranda was just beginning to draw off the rich “strippings” into a tin cup, Dave completed his task. His pail – he had milked the strippings in along with the rest – was foaming creamily to the brim. He arose and vaunted himself. “Some day, when I’ve got lots of time,” he drawled, “I’ll l’arn you two how to milk.”
“You needn’t think you’re done already,” retorted Miranda, without looking up. “I’ll get a quart more out of old Whitey, soon as I’m through here.”
But Kirstie came over and looked at the pail. “No, you won’t, Miranda, not this time,” she exclaimed. “Dave’s beaten us, sure. Old Whitey never gave us a fuller pail in her life. Dave, you can milk. You go and milk Michael over there, the black-an’-white one, for me. I’ll leave you and Miranda, if you won’t fall out, to finish up here, while I go and get an extra good supper for you, so’s you’ll come again soon. I know you men keep your hearts in your stomachs, just where we women know how to reach them easy. Where’d we have been if the Lord hadn’t made us cooks!”
Such unwonted pleasantry on the part of her sombre mother proved to Miranda that Dave was much in her graces, and she felt moved to a greater austerity in order that she might keep the balance true. Throughout the rest of the milking, she answered all Dave’s attempts at conversation with briefest yes or no, and presently reduced him to a discouraged silence. During supper, – which consisted of fresh trout fried in corn meal, and golden hot johnny-cake with red molasses, and eggs fried with tomatoes, and sweet curds with clotted cream, all in a perfection to justify Kirstie’s promise, – Miranda relented a little, and talked freely. But Dave had been too much subdued to readily regain his cheer. It was his tongue now that knew but yes and no. Confronted by this result of her unkindness, Miranda’s sympathetic heart softened. Turning in her seat to slip a piece of johnny-cake, drenched in molasses, into the expectant mouth of Kroof who sat up beside her, she spoke to Dave in a tone whose sweetness thrilled him to the finger-tips. The instinct of coquetry, native and not unknown to the furtive folk themselves, was beginning to stir within Miranda’s untaught heart.
“I’m going down to the lake to-night, Dave,” she said, “to set a night line and see if I can catch a togue.1 There’s a full moon, and the lake’ll be worth looking at. Won’t you come along with us?”
“Won’t I, Miranda? Couldn’t think of nothin’ I’d like better!” was the eager response.
“We’ll start soon as ever we get the dishes washed up,” explained the girl. “And you can help us at that – what say, mother?”
“Certainly, Dave can help us,” answered Kirstie, “if you have the nerve to set the likes of him at woman’s work. But I reckon I won’t go with you to-night to the lake. Kroof and Dave’ll be enough to look after you.”
“I’ll look after Dave, more like,” exclaimed Miranda, scornfully, remembering both Wapiti and the panther. “But what’s the matter, mother? Do come. It won’t be the same without you.”
“Seems to me I’m tired to-night, kind of, and I just want to stay at home by the fire and think.”
Miranda sprang up, with concern in her face, and ran round to her mother’s seat.
“Tired, mother!” she cried, scanning her features anxiously. “Who ever heard of people like you and me, who are strong, and live right, being tired? I’m afraid you’re not well, mother; I won’t go one step!”
“Yes, you will, dearie,” answered her mother, and never yet had Miranda rebelled against that firm note in Kirstie’s voice. “I really want to be alone to-night a bit, and think. Dave’s visit has stirred up a lot of old thoughts, and I want to take a look at them. I reckoned they were dead and buried years ago!”
“Are you sure you’re not sick, mother?” went on Miranda, hesitatingly returning to her seat.
“No, child, I’m not sick. But I have felt tired off an’ on the last few days when there was no call to. I do begin to feel that this big solitude of the woods is wearing on me, someway. I’ve stood up under it all these years, Dave, and it’s given me peace and strength when I needed it bad enough, God knows. But someway I reckon it’s too big for me, and will crush me in the long run. I love the clearing, but I don’t just want to end my days here.”
“Mother,” cried Miranda, springing up again, “I never heard you talk so before in my life! Leave the clearing! Leave the woods! I couldn’t live, I just couldn’t, anywheres else at all!”
“There’s other places, Miranda,” murmured Dave. But Kirstie continued the argument.
“It’s a sight different with you, child,” she said thoughtfully. “You’ve grown up here. The woods and the sky have made you. They’re in your blood. You live and breathe them. You were a queer baby – more a fairy or a wild thing than a human youngster – before ever you came to the clearing; and all the wild things seem to think you’re one of themselves; and you see what other folks can’t see – what the folks of the woods themselves can’t see. Oh, yes! it’s a sight different with you, Miranda. Your father used to watch you and say you’d grow up to be a faun woman or wood goddess, or else the fairies would carry you off. This place is all right for you. And I used to think I was that big and strong of spirit that I could stand up to it all the rest of my life. But I begin to think it’s too big for me. I don’t want to die here, Miranda!”
Miranda stared at her, greatly troubled.
“You won’t die till I’m old enough to die too, mother,” she cried, “for I just couldn’t live without you one day. But,” she added passionately, “I know I should die, quick, right off, if I had to go away from the clearing! I know I would!”
She spoke with the fiercer positiveness, because, just as she was speaking, there came over her a doubt of her own words. In a flash she saw herself growing old here in the vast solitude, she and Kirstie together, and no one else anywhere to be seen. The figure so cruelly conspicuous in its absence bore a strange, dim likeness to Young Dave. She did not ask herself if it were possible that she could one day wish to desert the clearing, and the stillnesses, and all the folk of the ancient wood, but somewhere at the back of her heart she felt that it might even be so, and her heart contracted poignantly. She ran and flung both arms about Kroof’s neck, and wiped a stealthy tear on the shaggy coat.
Dave, with a quickening intuition born of his dread lest the trip to the lake should fall through, saw that the conversation was treading dangerous ground. He discreetly changed the subject to johnny-cake.
Chapter XIV
Moonlight and Moose-call
When Miranda was ready to start, the moon was up, low and large, shining broadly into the cabin window. Miranda brought forward a small, tin-covered kettle, containing some little fish for bait.
“Where’s your line an’ hooks?” asked Dave.
“I keep them in a hollow tree by the lake,” said Miranda. “But don’t you go to take that thing along, or you don’t go with me!” she added sharply, as the young man picked up his rifle.
He set it down again with alacrity.
“But at night, Mirandy!” he protested. “Air ye sure it’s safe?”
“Don’t come if you’re afraid!” she answered witheringly, stepping out into the white light and the coldly pungent air.
Dave was at her side in a moment, ignoring a taunt which could touch him least among men. At Miranda’s other side was the great lumbering form of Kroof, with the girl’s hand resting lovingly on her neck.
“We’ll not be long, mother,” called Miranda to Kirstie, in the doorway.
But before they had gone twenty paces, Kroof stopped short, and sat down to deliberate. She regarded it as her own peculiar office to protect Miranda (who needed no protection) on these nocturnal expeditions to which the girl was given in some moods. Was the obnoxious stranger to usurp her office and her privilege? Well, she would not share with him. She would stay where she was needed.
“Come along, Kroof!” urged Miranda, with a little tug at her fur. But the jealous bear was obstinate. She wheeled and made for the cabin door.
Miranda was irritated.
“Let her stay, then!” she exclaimed, setting her face to the forest, and smiling in more gracious fashion upon Young Dave. Kroof was certainly very provoking.
“That’s all right!” said Dave, more pleased than he dare show. “She’ll be company for yer mother till we git back.”
“Kroof seems to think she owns me!” mused Miranda. “I love her better than any one else in the world except mother; but I mustn’t spoil her when she gets cross about nothing. She oughtn’t to be so jealous when I’m nice to you, Dave! I’m very angry at her for being so silly. She ought to know you’re nothing to me alongside of her; now, oughtn’t she?”
“Of course,” assented Dave, with such cheerfulness as he could assume. Then he set himself craftily to win Miranda’s approval by a minute account of the characteristics – mental, moral, and physical – of a tame bear named Pete, belonging to one of the lumbermen at the Settlement. The subject was sagaciously chosen, and had the effect of making Miranda feel measurably less remote from the world of men. It suggested to her a kind of possible understanding between the world of men and the world of the ancient wood.
As they left the moonlit open, the long white fingers of the phantom light reached after them, down the dissolving arches. Then the last groping ray was left behind, and they walked in the soft dark. Dave found it an exquisite but imperative necessity to keep close at Miranda’s elbow, touching her very skirt indeed, for even his trained woodland eyes could at first distinguish nothing. Miranda, however, with her miraculous vision, moved swiftly, unhesitatingly, as if in broad day and a plain way.
Soon, however, Dave’s eyes adapted themselves, and he could discern vague differences, denser masses, semi-translucencies in the enfolding depth of blackness. For there was a light, of a kind, carried down by countless reflections and refractions from the lit, wet surfaces of the topmost leaves. Moreover, clean-blooded and fine-nerved as he was from his years of living under nature’s ceaseless purgation, his other senses came to the aid of his baffled sight. He seemed to feel, rather than see, the massive bulk of the pine and birch trunks as his face approached them to the nearness of an arm’s length. He felt, too, an added hardness and a swelling under the moss, wherever the network of roots came close to the parent trunk. His nostrils discerned the pine, the spruce, the hemlock, the balsam poplar, the aromatic moose-wood, as he passed them; and long before he came to it he knew the tamarack swamp was near. Only his ears could not aid him. Except for Miranda’s footsteps, feather-soft upon the moss, and his own heavier but skilfully muffled tread, there was no sound in the forest but an indeterminate whisper, so thin that it might have been the speech of the leaves conferring, or the sap climbing through the smaller branches. Neither he nor Miranda uttered a word. The stillness was such that a voice would have profaned it. Finding it difficult to keep up without stumbling and making a rough noise, Dave frankly resigned himself to the girl’s superior craft.
“You’ve got to be eyes fer me here, you wonderful Mirandy, er I can’t keep up with ye!” he whispered at her ear. The light warmth of his breath upon her neck made her tingle in a way that bewildered her; but she found it pleasant. When he took hold of her arm, very gently, to steady himself, rather to his surprise he was permitted. He was wise enough, however, not to attach too much importance to the favour. He pondered the fact that to Miranda, who was not a Settlement girl, it meant altogether nothing.
Presently, just ahead of them, they saw a pair of palely-glowing eyes, about two feet from the ground. Miranda squeezed the hand inside her arm, as a sign that Dave was not to regret his rifle. As a matter of fact, he was not disposed to regret anything at that moment.
“Lou’-cerfie!” he whispered at her ear, meaning the lynx, or loup-cervier of the camps.
“No, panther!” murmured Miranda, indifferently, going straight forward. At this startling word, Dave could not, under the circumstances, refrain from a certain misgiving. A panther is not good to meet in the dark. But the palely-glowing eyes sank mysteriously toward the ground and retreated as Miranda advanced; and in a few seconds they went floating off to one side and disappeared.
“How on earth do ye do it, Mirandy?” whispered Dave, rather awestruck.
“They know me,” replied the girl; which seemed to her, but not to Dave, an all-sufficient answer.
There was no more said. The magic of the dark held them both breathless. They were strung to a strange, electric pitch of sympathy and expectation. Dave’s fingers, where they rested on the girl’s arm, tingled curiously, deliciously. Once, close beside them, there was a sharp rattle of claws going up the bark of a fir tree, and then two little points of light, close together, gleamed down upon them from overhead. Both Miranda and Dave knew it was a raccoon, and said nothing. Farther on they came suddenly upon a spectrally luminous figure just in their path. It was nearly the height of a man. The ghostly light waxed and waned before their eyes. A timorous imagination might have been pardoned for calling it a spirit sent to warn them back from their venture. But they knew it was only a rotting birch stump turned phosphorescent. As they passed, Dave broke off a piece and crumbled it, and for some minutes the bluish light clung to his fingers, like a perfume.
At last they heard an owl hoot solemnly in the distance. “Tw’oh-hoo-hoo-hoo-ooo,” it went, a cold and melancholy sound.
“We’re near the lake,” whispered Miranda. “I know Wah-hoo; he lives in an old tree close to the water. We’re almost there.” Then glimpses of light came, broken and thin, from the far-off moon-silvered surface. Then a breath of chill, though there was no wind. And then they came out upon the open shore.
Miranda, with a decisive gesture, removed her arm from Dave’s grasp, and side by side the two followed the long sweep of sandy beach curving off to the right.
“See that point yonder,” said Miranda, “with the lop-sided tree standing alone on it? I’ve got my line and hooks hidden in that tree.”
“How do ye set a night line without a boat?” queried Dave.
“Got one, of course!” answered the girl. “Your father made me a dugout, last summer a year ago, and I keep it drawn up behind the point.”
The moon was high now, sailing in icy splendour of solitude over the immensity of the ancient wood. The lake was a windless mirror. The beach was very smooth and white, etched along its landward edges with the shadows of the trees. At one spot a cluster of three willows grew very near the water’s brink, spreading a transparent and mysterious shadow. Just as Dave and Miranda came to this little oasis in the shining sand, across the water came the long, sonorous call of a bull moose. It was a deep note, melodious and far carrying, and seemed in some way the very spoken thought of the vastness.
“That’s what I call music!” said Dave.
But before Miranda could respond, a thunderous bellow roared in answer from the blackness of the woods close by; there was a heavy crashing in the underbrush, and the towering front of another bull appeared at the edge of the sands, looking for his challenger. Catching sight of Dave and Miranda, he charged down upon them at once.
“Get up a tree, quick!” cried Dave, slipping his long knife from its sheath and stepping in front of the girl.
“Don’t you meddle and there’ll be no trouble!” said Miranda, sharply. “You stand behind that tree!” and seizing him by the arm she attempted to push him out of sight. But for a second he stupidly resisted.
“Fool!” she flamed out at him. “What do you suppose I’ve done all these years without you?”
The anger in her eyes pierced his senses and brought wisdom. He realized that somehow she was master of the situation, and he reluctantly stepped behind the big willow trunk. It was just in the nick of time, for the furious animal was almost upon them. At this moment a breath of air from the water carried Miranda’s scent to the beast’s nostrils, and he checked himself in doubt. At once Miranda gave a soft whistle and stepped out into the clear flood of moonlight. The moose recognized her, stood still, raised his gigantic antlers to their full height, and stretched toward her his long, flexible snout, sniffing amicably. Then, step by step, he approached, while she waited with her small hand held out to him, palm upward; and Dave looked on in wonder from behind his tree, still doubtful, his fingers gripping his knife-hilt.
At this moment the first call sounded again across the lake. The moose forgot Miranda. He wheeled nimbly, lowered his head toward the great challenge, bellowed his answer, and charged along the shore to mortal combat. As he disappeared around a jutting spur of pines, a tall cow moose emerged from the shades and trotted after him.
Miranda turned to Dave with an air of triumph, her anger forgotten.
“I swan, Mirandy!” exclaimed the young hunter, “the girl as can manage a bull moose in callin’ season is the Queen of the Forest, sure. I take off my cap to yer majesty!”
“Put it on again, Dave,” said she, not half displeased, “and we’ll go set the night lines.”
Behind the point, hidden in a thicket of mixed huckleberry and ironwood, they found the wooden canoe, or dugout, in good condition. Dave ran it down into the water, and Miranda tossed in a roll of stout cod-line, with four large hooks depending from it, at four-foot intervals, by drop strings a foot and a half in length. The hooks she proceeded to bait from the tin kettle.
“Why don’t ye have more hooks on sech a len’th of line?” inquired Dave.
“Don’t want to catch more togue than we can eat,” explained Miranda. “It’s no fun catching them this way, and they’re not much good salted.”
There was but one paddle, and this Dave captured. “You sit in the bow, Mirandy, an’ see to the lines, an’ I’ll paddle ye out,” said he.
But Miranda would have none of it. “Look here, Dave,” she exclaimed, “I’m doing this, and you’re just a visitor. I declare, I’m almost sorry I brought you along. You just sit where you’re put, and do as I tell you, or you won’t come with me again.”
The young man squatted himself meekly on his knees, a little forward of amidship, but not far enough for his superior weight to put the canoe down by the bow. Then Miranda stepped in delicately, seated herself on a thwart at the stern, and dipped her paddle with precise and masterful stroke. The canoe shot noiselessly out of the shadow and into the unrippled sheen. Just off the point, about twenty yards from shore, lay a light wooden float at anchor. Beside this Miranda brought her canoe to a standstill, backing water silently with firm flexures of her wrist. To a rusty staple in the float she fastened one end of the line.
“Deep water off this here point, I reckon,” commented Dave.
“Of course,” answered Miranda. “The togue only lie in deep water.”
Dave was permitted to make comments, but to take no more active part in the proceedings. As he was a man of deeds and dreams rather than of speech, this was not the rôle he coveted, and he held his tongue; while Miranda, deftly paying out the line with one hand, with the other cleverly wielded the paddle so that the canoe slipped toward shore. She was too much absorbed in the operation to vouchsafe any explanation to Dave, but he saw that she intended making fast the other end of the line to a stake which jutted up close to the water’s edge.
Miranda now slipped the line under her foot to hold it, and, taking both hands to her paddle, was about to make a landing, when suddenly there was a violent tug at one of the hooks. The line was torn from under her light foot, and at once dragged overboard. Dave saw what had happened; but he was wise enough not to say, even by look or tone, “I told you so!” Instead, he turned and pointed to the float, which was now acting very erratically, darting from side to side, and at times plunging quite under water. The glassy mirror of the lake was shattered to bits.
“You’ve got him a’ready, Mirandy,” he cried in triumph; and his palpable elation quite covered Miranda’s chagrin. Two or three strong strokes of her paddle brought the canoe back to the float, and Dave had his reward.
“Catch hold of the float, Dave,” she commanded, “and pull him aboard, while I hold the canoe.”
With a great splashing and turmoil he hauled up a large togue, of twelve pounds or thereabouts, and landed it flopping in the bottom of the dugout. A stroke in the back of the neck from Miranda’s knife, sharp but humane, put a term to its struggles.
While Dave gazed admiringly at the glittering spoil, Miranda began untying the line from the float.
“What air ye doin’ now, Mirandy?” he inquired, as she proceeded to strip the bait from the remaining hooks, and throw the pieces overboard.
“We won’t want any more togue for a week,” she explained. “This is such a fine, big one.” And she headed the canoe for the landing-place, under the shadow of the point.