CHAPTER XXI.
ON KATAHDIN.
"See there, boys, I told you so," said Herb, as the party reached theever-to-be-remembered clump of hemlocks, the beginning of the trailwhich they were ready to follow up like sleuth-hounds. "There's plentyof hair; I guess I singed him in two places."
He pointed to some shaggy clotted locks on the grass at his feet, andthen to a small maroon-colored stain beside them.
"Is that blood?" asked Neal.
"Blood, sure enough, though there ain't much of it. But I'll tell youwhat! I'd as soon there wasn't any. I wish it had been light enough lastnight for me to act barber, and only cut some hair from that moose,instead of wounding him. It might have answered the purpose as well, andsent him walking."
"I don't believe it would have done anything of the kind," exclaimedDol. "He was far too red-hot an old customer to bolt because a bulletshaved him."
"Well, I don't set up to be soft-hearted like Cyrus here; and I'm readyenough to bag my meat when I want it," said the woodsman. "But sure'syou live, boys, I never wounded a free game creature yet, and seed itget away to pull a hurt limb and a cruel pain with it through the woods,that I could feel chipper afterwards. It's only your delicate cityfellows who come out here for a shot once a year, who can chuckle overthe pools of blood a wounded moose leaves behind him. Sho! it's notmanly."
A start was now made on the trail, Herb leading, and showing suchwonderful skill as a trailer that the English boys began to believe hislong residence in the woods had developed in him supernatural senses.
"That moose was shot through the right fore-leg," he whispered, as thetrackers reached the edge of the forest.
"How do you know?" gasped the Farrars.
The woodsman answered by kneeling, bending his face close to the ground,and drawing his brown finger successively round three prints on a softpatch of earth, which the unpractised eyes could scarcely discern.
"There's no mark of the right fore-hoof," he whispered again presently;"nothing but _that_," pointing to another dark red blotch, which theboys would have mistaken for maroon-tinted moss.
A breathless, wordless, toiling hour followed. Through the dense woods,which sloped steadily upward, clothing Katahdin's highlands, Herb Healtravelled on, now and again halting when the trail, because of freshlyfallen pine-needles or leaves, became quite invisible. Again he wouldcrouch close to the ground, make a circle with his finger round the lastvisible print, and work out from that, trying various directions, untilhe knew that he was again on the track which the limping moose hadtravelled before him.
His comrades followed in single file, carrying their rifles in front oftheir bodies instead of on their shoulders, so that there might be nodanger of a sudden clang or rattle from the barrels striking the trees.Following the example of their guide, each one carefully avoidedstepping on crackling twigs or dry branches, or rustling against bushesor boughs. The latter they would take gingerly in their hands as theyapproached them, bend them out of the way, and gently release them asthey passed. Heroically they forebore to growl when their legs werescraped by jagged bowlders or prickly shrubs, giving thanks inwardly tothe manufacturers of their stout tweeds that their clothes heldtogether, instead of hanging on them like streamers on a rag-bush.
It was a good, practical lesson in moose-trailing; but, save for theknowledge gained by the three who had never stalked a moose before, itwas a failure.
The air beneath the dense foliage grew depressing--suffocating. Each onelonged breathlessly for the minute when he should emerge from this heavytimber-growth, even to do more rugged climbing. Distant rumbles wereheard. Herb's prophecy was being fulfilled. Pamolah was grumbling at thetrailers, and sending out his Thunder Sons to bid them back.
But it was too late for retreat. If they gave up their purpose, turnedand fled to camp, the storm, which was surely coming, would catch themunder the interlacing trees, a danger which the guide was especiallyanxious to avoid. He pressed on with quickened steps, stooping no moreto make circles round the moose's prints. Old Pamolah's threateningsgrew increasingly sullen. At last the desired break in the woods wasreached; the trackers found themselves on the open side of Katahdin,surrounded by a tangled growth of alders and white birches struggling upbetween granite rocks; then the mountain artillery broke forth withterrifying clatter.
A loud, long thunder-roll was echoed from crag, slide, forest, spur, andbasin. The "home of storms" was a fort of noise.
"Ha! there'll be a big cannonading this time, I guess. Pamolah is goingto let fly at us with big shot, little shot, fire and water--all theforces the old scoundrel has," said Herb Heal, at last breaking thesilence which had been kept on the trail, and looking aloft towards thefive peaks guarding that mysterious basin, from which heavy, luridclouds drifted down.
At the same time a blustering, mighty wind-gust half swept the fourclimbers from their feet. A great flash of globe lightning cut the airlike a dazzling fire-ball.
"We'll have to quit our trailing, and scoot for shelter, I'm thinking!"exclaimed Cyrus.
"Good land, I should say so!" agreed the guide. "The bull-moose likesthunder. He's away in some thick hole in the forest now, recoveringhimself. We couldn't have come up with him anyhow, boys, for themblood-spots had stopped. I guess his leg wasn't smashed; and he'll soonbe as big a bully as ever. Follow me now, quick! Mind yer steps, though!Them bushes are awful catchy!"
Undazzled by the lightning's frequent flare, unstaggered by thedown-rushing wind, as if the mountain thunders were only the roll of anorgan about his ears, Herb Heal sprang onward and upward, tugging hiscomrades one by one up many a precipitous ledge, and pulling them totheir feet again when the tripping bushes brought their noses to theground and their heels into the air.
"Hitch on to me, Dol!" he cried, suddenly turning on that youngster, whowas trying to get his second breath. "Tie on to me tight. I'll tow youup! I wish we could ha' reached that old log camp, boys. 'Twould be astunning shelter, for it has a wall of rock to the back. But it's higherup, and off to the right. There! I see the den I'm aiming for."
A few energetic bounds brought Herb, with Dol in tow, to a platform ofrock, which rose above a bed of blueberry bushes. It narrowed into asort of cave, roofed by an overhanging bowlder.
"We'll be snug enough under this rock!" he exclaimed, pointing to thecanopy. "Creep in, boys. We'll have tubs of rain, and a pelting of hail.The rumpus is only beginning."
So it was. The storm had been creeping from its cradle. Now it sweptdown with an awful whirl and commingling of elements.
The boys, peering out from their rocky nest, saw a magnificent panoramabeneath them. The regiments of the air were at war. Lightning chainsencircled the heavens, lighting up the forests below. Winds charged downthe mountain-side, sweeping stones and bushes before them. Hail-bulletsrattled in volleys. Thunder-artillery boomed until the very rocks seemed'to shake.
"It's fine!" exclaimed Cyrus. "It's super-fine!"
Then a curtain of thick rain partly hid the warfare, the lightning stillrioting through it like a beacon of battle.
"The stones up above will have to be pretty firmly fixed to keep theirplaces," said Herb. "Boys, I hope there ain't a-going to be slides onthe mountain after this."
"Slides?" echoed Dol questioningly.
"Landslides, kid. Say! if you want to be scared until your bones feellimp, you've got to hear a great big block of granite come ploughingdown from the top 'o the mountain, bringing earth and bushes along withit, and smashing even the rocks to splinters as it pounds along."
"I guess that's a sensation we'd rather be spared," said Cyrus gravely.
And under the quieting spell of the airy warfare there was silence for awhile.
"Do you think it's lightening up, Herb?" asked Neal, after the storm hadraged for three-quarters of an hour.
"I guess it is. The rain is stopping too. But we'll have an awful slushytime of it getting back to camp. To plough through them soaked forestsbelow would be enough to give you
city fellows a shaking ague."
"Couldn't we climb on to your old log camp?" suggested Garst. "If wehave the luck to find the old shanty holding together, we can light afire there after things dry out a bit, and eat our snack. Then weneedn't be in a hurry to get down. We'll risk it, anyhow."
"I reckon that's about the only thing to be done," assented the guide.
And in twenty minutes' time the four were again straining up Katahdin,clutching slippery rocks, sinking in sodden earth, shivering as theywere besprinkled by every bush and dwarfed tree, and dreadfully hamperedwith their rifles.
"Never mind, boys; we'll get there! Clinch yer teeth, and don't squirm!Once we're past this tangle, the bit of climbing that's left will be aseasy as rolling off a log!"
So shouted Herb cheerfully, as he tore a way with hand and foot throughthe stunted growth of alders and birch, which, beaten down by the winds,was now an almost impassable, sopping tangle.
"Keep in my tracks!" he bellowed again. "Gracious! but this sort o' workis as slow as molasses crawling up-hill in winter."
But ten minutes later, when the dripping jungle was behind, he droppedhis jesting tone.
He came to a full stop, catching his breath with a big gulp.
"Boys," he cried, "it's standing yet! I see it--the old home-camp! Thereit is above us on that bit of a platform, with the big rock behind it.And I've kep' saying to myself for the last quarter of an hour that wewouldn't find it--that we'd find nary a thing but mildewed logs!"
A wealth of memories was in the woodsman's eyes as he gazed up at thetimber nest, the log camp which his own hands had put up, standing on anarrow plateau, and built against a protecting wall of rock that rose injagged might to a height of thirty or forty feet.
An earth bank or ridge, covered with hardy mosses and mountain creepers,sloped gently up to the sheltered platform. To climb this was, indeed,"as easy as rolling off a log."
"We used to have a good beaten path here, but I guess it's all growedover," said Herb in a thick voice, as if certain cords in his throatwere swelling. "Many's the time I've blessed the sight of that oldhome-camp, boys, after a hard week's trapping. Hundert's o' night's I'veslept snug inside them log walls when blasts was a-sweeping andbellowing around, like as if they'd rip the mountain open, and tear itsvery rocks out."
While the guide spoke he was leaping up the ridge. A few minutes, and hestood, a towering figure, on the platform above, waving his battered hatin salute to the old camp.
"I guess some traveller has been sheltering here lately!" he cried toNeal Farrar, as the latter overtook him. "There's a litter around,"pointing to dry sticks and withered bushes strewn upon thecamping-ground. "And the door's standing open. I wonder who found theold shanty?"
Neal remembered, hours afterwards, that at the moment he felt an oddawakening stir in him, a stir which, shooting from head to foot, seemedto warn him that he was nearing a sensation, the biggest sensation ofthis wilderness trip.
He heard the voices of Cyrus and Dol hallooing behind; but they soundedaway back and indistinct, for his ears were bent towards the desertedcamp, listening with breathless expectation for something, he didn'tknow what.
One minute the vague suspense lasted, while he followed Herb towards thehut. Then heaven and earth and his own heart seemed to stand still.
Through the wide-open door of the shanty came random, crooning snatchesof sound. Was the guttural voice which made them human? The English boyscarcely knew. But as the noise swelled, like the moaning of a dry windamong trees, he began, as it were, to disentangle it. Words shapedthemselves, Indian words which he had heard before on the guide'stongue.
"_N'loan pes-saus, mok glint ont-aven, Glint ont-aven, nosh morgun_."
These lines from the "Star Song," the song which Herb had learned fromhis traitor chum, floated out to him upon Katahdin's breeze. They struckyoung Farrar's ears in staggering tones, like a knell, the sadness ofwhich he could not at the moment understand. But he had a vagueimpression that the mysterious singer in the deserted camp attached nomeaning to what he chanted.
"Look out, I say! I don't want to come a cropper here."
It was Dol's young voice which rang out shrilly among the mountainechoes. Side by side with Cyrus, the boy had just gained the top of theridge when the guide suddenly backed upon him, Herb's greatshoulder-blade knocking him in the face, so that he had to plant hisfeet firmly to avoid spinning back.
But Herb had heard that guttural crooning. Just now he could hearnothing else.
Twice he made a heaving effort to speak, and the voice cracked in histhroat.
Then, as he sprang for the camp-door, four words stumbled from hislips:--
"By thunder! it's Chris."