CHAPTER XXIV.
"KEEPING THINGS EVEN."
"Now, you musn't be moping, boys, because of this day's work that youtook a hand in, and that wasn't in your play-bill when you come to thesewoods. We'll have to try and even things up to-morrow with some bigsport. You look kind o' wilted."
So said Herb when the tired party were half-way back to camp, doing thedescent of the mountain in a silence clouded by the scene which they hadbeen through.
The woodsman seemed troubled with a rasping in his throat. He cleared ittwice and spat before he could open a passage for a decently cheerfulvoice in which to suggest a rise of spirits. But Herb was too faithfula guide to bear the thought that his employers' trip should end in anygloom because the one painful chapter in his own life had closedforever. Moreover, although more than once, as he fought his way througha jungle or jumped a windfall, something nipped his heart, pinching himup inside, and making his eyes leak, he felt that the thing had endedwell for him--and for Chris.
Herb, in his simple faith, scarcely doubted that the old chum, whom hehad forgiven, had reached a Home-Camp where his broken will and stuntedlife might be repaired, and grow as they had poor chance to grow here.
"Say, boys!" he burst forth, a few minutes after his protest against"moping," and when the band were within sight of the spring whence theyhad started, an age back, as it seemed, on the trail of the moose. "Say,boys! I've been all these years raging at Chris. Seems to me now as ifhe was a poor sort of overgrowed baby, and not so bad a thief as thechump who gave him that whiskey, and stole his senses. It's a thunderingbig pity that man hadn't the burying of him to-day.
"He was always the under dog,--was Chris," he went on slowly, as if hewas seeking from his own heart an excuse for those unforeseen impulseswhich had worked it and his body during the past five hours. "Whites andInjuns jumped on him. They said he was criss-cross all through, same ashis eyes. But he warn't. Never seed a half-breed that had less gall andmore grit, except when the hanker for whiskey would creep up in him, andboss him. He could no more stand agen it, and the things it made him do,than a jack-rabbit."
"Another reason why we Americans ought to feel our responsibilitytowards every man in whose veins runs Indian blood, a thousand timesmore hotly than we do!" burst out Cyrus. "It maddens a fellow to thinkthat we made them the under dogs, and as much by giving them a 'boss,'as you say, in fire-water, as by anything else."
"I kind o' think that way myself sometimes," said Herb.
And there was silence until the guide cried:--
"Here's our camp, boys. I'll bet you're glad to see it. I must get thekettle, and cruise off for water. 'Tain't likely I'll trust one of youfellers after last night. But you can hustle round and build thecamp-fire while I'm gone."
Herb had a shrewd motive in this. He knew that there is nothing whichwill cure the blues in a camper, if he is touched by that affliction,rare in forest life, like the building of his fire, watching the littleflames creep from the dull, dead wood, to roar and soar aloft ingold-red pennons of good cheer.
The result proved his wisdom. When he returned in a very short time fromthat ever-to-be-famous spring, with his brimming kettle, he found aglorious fire, and three tired but cheerful fellows watching it, itsreflection playing like a jack-o'-lantern in each pair of eyes.
"Now I'll have supper ready in a jiffy," he said. "I guess you boys feellike eating one another. Jerusha! we never touched our snack--nary acrumb of it."
In the strange happenings and chaotic feelings of the day, hunger,together with the bread and pork for satisfying it which Herb hadcarried up the mountain, were forgotten until now.
"Never mind! We'll make up for it. Only hurry up!" pleaded Dol. "We'relike bears, we're so hungry."
"Like bears! You're a sight more like calves with their mouths open,waiting for something to swallow," answered Herb, his eyes flashingimpudence, while, with an energy apparently no less brisk than when hestarted out in the morning, he rushed his preparations for supper.
"Say I'm like a Sukey, and I'll go for you!" roared Dol, a gurglinglaugh breaking from him, the first which had been heard since the fourstruggled through that tangle on Katahdin to a sight of the old camp.
Once or twice during supper the mirth, which had been frozen in eachcamper's breast by a sight of the drifted wreck of a human life, warmedagain spasmodically. Herb did his manly best to fan its flame, thoughhis heart was still pinched by a feeling of double loss.
Later in the evening, when the party were huddling close to thecamp-fire, he lifted his right hand and looked at it blankly.
"My!" he gasped, "but it will feel awful queer and empty without OldBlazes. That rifle was a reg'lar corker, boys. I was saving up for threeyears to buy it. An' it never went back on me. Times when I've gone faroff hunting, and had nary a chance to speak to a human for weeks, I'dget to talking to it like as if 'twas a living thing. When I wasn'tafeard of scaring game, I'd fire a round to make it answer back anddrive away lonesomeness. Folks might ha' thought I was loony, only therewas none to see. Well, it's smashed to chips now, 'long with the oldcamp."
"What awfully selfish jackasses we were, to skip off with our ownrifles, and never think of yours, or that you couldn't save it, carryingthat poor fellow! I feel like kicking myself," said Cyrus, sharpvexation in his voice. "But that slide business sprang on us so quickly.The sudden rumbling, rattling, and pounding jumbled a fellow's wits. Iscarcely understood what was up, even when we were scooting for ourlives."
"I felt a bit white-livered myself, I tell ye; and I'm more hardened toslides than you are," was the woodsman's answer.
The confession, taken in the light of his conduct, made him doubly ahero to his city friends.
They thought of him staggering along the mountain, blinded, bewildered,pelted by clay, with that dragging burden in his arms, a heart tossed bydanger's keenest realization in his breast. And they were silent beforethe high courage which can recognize fear, yet refuse to it the mastery.
Neal, whose secret musings were generally crossed by a military thread,seeing that he had chosen the career of a cavalry-soldier, and hopedsoon to enter Sandhurst College, stared into the heart of the camp-fire,glowering at fate, because she had not ordained that Herb should servethe queen with him, and wear upon his resolute heart--as it mightreasonably be expected he would--the Victoria Cross.
Young Farrar's feeling was so strong that it swept his lips at last.
"Blow it all! Herb," he cried. "It's a tearing pity that you can't comeinto the English Lancers with me. I don't suppose I'll ever be a V.C.,but you would sooner or later as sure as gun's iron."
"A 'V.C.!' What's that?" asked Herb.
"A Vigorous Christian, to be sure!" put in Cyrus, who was progressiveand peaceful, teasingly.
But the English boy, full of the dignity of the subject to him, summonedhis best eloquence to describe to the American backwoodsman that littlecross of iron, Victoria's guerdon, which entitles its possessor towrite those two notable letters after his name, and which onlyhero-hearts may wear.
But a vision of himself, stripped of "sweater" and moccasins, in cavalryrig, becrossed and beribboned, serving under another flag than the Starsand Stripes, was too much for Herb's gravity and for the grim regretswhich wrung him to-night.
"Oh, sugar!" he gasped; and his laughter was like a rocket shooting upfrom his mighty throat, and exploding in a hundred sparkles ofmerriment.
He laughed long. He laughed insistently. His comrades were won to joinin.
When the fun had subsided, Garst said:--
"Herb Heal, old man, there's something in you to-night which reminds meof a line I'm rather stuck on."
"Let's have it!" cried Herb.
And Cyrus quoted:--
"As for this here earth, It takes lots of laffin' to keep things even!"
"Now you've hit it! The man that wrote that had a pile o' sense. Come,boys, it's been an awful full day. Let's turn in!"
As he spoke, Herb began to
replenish the fire, and make things snug inthe camp for the night.
But shortly after, when he threw himself on the spuce-boughs near them,the boys heard him murmur, deep in his throat, as if he took strengthfrom the words:--
"It takes lots of laffin' to keep things even!"