Part 15 (1/2)
”When?”
”This summer.”
Helen's eyes lit up with a fire of delight. ”How nice! May I go with you?” she cried.
Thorpe shook his head.
”I'm afraid not, little girl. It's going to be a hard trip a long ways from anywhere. You couldn't stand it.”
”I'm sure I could. Try me.”
”No,” replied Thorpe. ”I know you couldn't. We'll be sleeping on the ground and going on foot through much extremely difficult country.”
”I wish you'd take me somewhere,” pursued Helen. ”I can't get away this summer unless you do. Why don't you camp somewhere nearer home, so I can go?”
Thorpe arose and kissed her tenderly. He was extremely sorry that he could not spend the summer with his sister, but he believed likewise that their future depended to a great extent on this very trip. But he did not say so.
”I can't, little girl; that's all. We've got our way to make.”
She understood that he considered the trip too expensive for them both.
At this moment a paper fluttered from the excelsior. She picked it up. A glance showed her a total of figures that made her gasp.
”Here is your bill,” she said with a strange choke in her voice, and left the room.
”He can spend sixty dollars on his old guns; but he can't afford to let me leave this hateful house,” she complained to the apple tree. ”He can go 'way off camping somewhere to have a good time, but he leaves me sweltering in this miserable little town all summer. I don't care if he IS supporting me. He ought to. He's my brother. Oh, I wish I were a man; I wish I were dead!”
Three days later Thorpe left for the north. He was reluctant to go. When the time came, he attempted to kiss Helen good-by. She caught sight of the rifle in its new leather and canvas case, and on a sudden impulse which she could not explain to herself, she turned away her face and ran into the house. Thorpe, vaguely hurt, a little resentful, as the genuinely misunderstood are apt to be, hesitated a moment, then trudged down the street. Helen too paused at the door, choking back her grief.
”Harry! Harry!” she cried wildly; but it was too late.
Both felt themselves to be in the right. Each realized this fact in the other. Each recognized the impossibility of imposing his own point of view over the other's.
PART II. THE LANDLOOKER
Chapter XVI
In every direction the woods. Not an opening of any kind offered the mind a breathing place under the free sky. Sometimes the pine groves,--vast, solemn, grand, with the patrician aloofness of the truly great; sometimes the hardwood,--bright, mysterious, full of life; sometimes the swamps,--dark, dank, speaking with the voices of the shyer creatures; sometimes the spruce and balsam thickets,--aromatic, enticing. But never the clear, open sky.
And always the woods creatures, in startling abundance and tameness. The solitary man with the packstraps across his forehead and shoulders had never seen so many of them. They withdrew silently before him as he advanced. They accompanied him on either side, watching him with intelligent, bright eyes. They followed him stealthily for a little distance, as though escorting him out of their own particular territory.
Dozens of times a day the traveller glimpsed the flaunting white flags of deer. Often the creatures would take but a few hasty jumps, and then would wheel, the beautiful embodiments of the picture deer, to snort and paw the leaves. Hundreds of birds, of which he did not know the name, stooped to his inspection, whirred away at his approach, or went about their business with hardy indifference under his very eyes. Blase porcupines trundled superbly from his path. Once a mother-partridge simulated a broken wing, fluttering painfully. Early one morning the traveller ran plump on a fat lolling bear, taking his ease from the new sun, and his meal from a panic stricken army of ants. As beseemed two innocent wayfarers they honored each other with a salute of surprise, and went their way. And all about and through, weaving, watching, moving like spirits, were the forest mult.i.tudes which the young man never saw, but which he divined, and of whose movements he sometimes caught for a single instant the faintest patter or rustle. It const.i.tuted the mystery of the forest, that great fascinating, lovable mystery which, once it steals into the heart of a man, has always a hearing and a longing when it makes its voice heard.
The young man's equipment was simple in the extreme. Attached to a heavy leather belt of cartridges hung a two-pound ax and a sheath knife. In his pocket reposed a compa.s.s, an air-tight tin of matches, and a map drawn on oiled paper of a district divided into sections. Some few of the sections were colored, which indicated that they belonged to private parties. All the rest was State or Government land. He carried in his hand a repeating rifle. The pack, if opened, would have been found to contain a woolen and a rubber blanket, fis.h.i.+ng tackle, twenty pounds or so of flour, a package of tea, sugar, a slab of bacon carefully wrapped in oiled cloth, salt, a suit of underwear, and several extra pairs of thick stockings. To the outside of the pack had been strapped a frying pan, a tin pail, and a cup.
For more than a week Thorpe had journeyed through the forest without meeting a human being, or seeing any indications of man, excepting always the old blaze of the government survey. Many years before, officials had run careless lines through the country along the section-boundaries. At this time the blazes were so weather-beaten that Thorpe often found difficulty in deciphering the indications marked on them. These latter stated always the section, the towns.h.i.+p, and the range east or west by number. All Thorpe had to do was to find the same figures on his map. He knew just where he was. By means of his compa.s.s he could lay his course to any point that suited his convenience.
The map he had procured at the United States Land Office in Detroit. He had set out with the scanty equipment just described for the purpose of ”looking” a suitable bunch of pine in the northern peninsula, which, at that time, was practically untouched. Access to its interior could be obtained only on foot or by river. The South Sh.o.r.e Railroad was already engaged in pus.h.i.+ng a way through the virgin forest, but it had as yet penetrated only as far as Seney; and after all, had been projected more with the idea of establis.h.i.+ng a direct route to Duluth and the copper districts than to aid the lumber industry. Marquette, Menominee, and a few smaller places along the coast were lumbering near at home; but they s.h.i.+pped entirely by water. Although the rest of the peninsula also was finely wooded, a general impression obtained among the craft that it would prove too inaccessible for successful operation.
Furthermore, at that period, a great deal of talk was believed as to the inexhaustibility of Michigan pine. Men in a position to know what they were talking about stated dogmatically that the forests of the southern peninsula would be adequate for a great many years to come. Furthermore, the magnificent timber of the Saginaw, Muskegon, and Grand River valleys in the southern peninsula occupied entire attention. No one cared to bother about property at so great a distance from home. As a consequence, few as yet knew even the extent of the resources so far north.