Part 13

In the matter of wing-shooting, however--that is to say, shooting when we were on the wing and any legitimate quarry came in view--my recollection is that we ranked about alike. Neither of us by any chance ever hit anything at all, and I have an impression that our misses were about equally wide. Eddie may make a different claim. He may claim that he fired oftener and with less visible result than I. Possibly he did fire oftener, for he had a repeating rifle and I only a single shot, but so far as the result is concerned, if he states that his bullets flew wider of the mark, such a claim is the result of pure envy, perhaps malice. Why, I recall one instance of a muskrat whose skin Eddie was particularly desirous of sending to those museum folks in London--all properly mounted, with their names (Eddie's and the muskrat's) on a neat silver plate, so that it could stand there and do honor to us for a long time--until the moths had eaten up everything but the plate, perhaps, and Eddie struck the water within two or three feet of it (the muskrat, of course) as much as a dozen times, while such shots as I let go didn't hit anything but the woods or the sky and are, I suppose, still buried somewhere in the quiet bosom of nature. I am glad to unload that sentence. It was getting top-heavy, with a muskrat and moths and a silver plate in it. I could shoot some holes in it with a little practice, but inasmuch as we didn't get the muskrat, I will let it stand as a stuffed specimen.

I am also glad about the muskrat. Had he perished, our pledge would have compelled us to eat him, and although one of Eddie's text-books told a good deal about their food value and seven different ways of cooking them, I was averse to experimenting even with one way. I have never really cared for muskrats since as a lad I caught twenty of them one night in a trammel net. Up to that hour the odor of musk had never been especially offensive to me, but twenty muskrats in a net can compound a good deal of perfumery. We had to bury the net, and even then I never cared much about it afterwards. The sight of it stirred my imagination, and I was glad when it was ripped away from us by a swift current one dark night, it being unlawful to set a trammel net in that river, and therefore sinful, by daylight.

It was on Sand Lake that Eddie gave the first positive demonstration of his skill as a marksman. Here, he actually made a killing. True, it was not a wing shot, but it was a performance worthy of record. A chill wet wind blew in upon us as we left the river, and a mist such as we had experienced on Irving Lake, with occasional drifts of rain, shut us in. At first it was hard to be certain that we were really on a lake, for the sheet of water was long and narrow, and it might be only a widening of the river. But presently we came to an island, and this we accepted as identification. It was the customary island, larger than some, but with the bushes below, the sentinel pines, and here and there a gaunt old snag--bleached and dead and lifting its arms to the sky. On one of these dead ones we made out, through the mist, a strange dark bunch about the size of a barn door and of rather irregular formation. Gradually nearing, we discovered the bunch to be owls--great horned owls--a family of them, grouped on the old tree's limbs in solid formation, oblivious to the rain, to the world, to any thought of approaching danger.

Now, the great horned owl is legitimate quarry. The case against him is that he is a bird of prey--a destroyer of smaller birds and an enemy of hen roosts. Of course if one wanted to go deeply into the ethics of the matter, one might say that the smaller birds and the chickens are destroyers, too, of bugs and grasshoppers and things, and that a life is a life, whether it be a bird or a bumble-bee, or even a fish-worm. But it's hard to get to the end of such speculations as that. Besides, the owl was present, and we wanted his skin. Eddie crept close in with his canoe, and drew a careful bead on the center of the barn door. There was an angry little spit of powder in the wet, a wavering movement of the dark, mist-draped bunch, a slow heaving of ghostly pinions and four silent, feathered phantoms drifted away into the white gloom. But there was one that did not follow. In vain the dark wings heaved and fell. Then there came a tottering movement, a leap forward, and half-fluttering, half-plunging, the heavy body came swishing to the ground.

Yet unused to the battle as he was, for he was of the younger brood, he died game. When we reached him he was sitting upright, glaring out of his great yellow eyes, his talons poised for defense. Even with Eddie's bottle of new skin in reserve, it was not considered safe to approach too near. We photographed him as best we could, and then a shot at close range closed his brief career.

I examined the owl with considerable interest. In the first place I had never seen one of this noble species before, and this was a beautiful specimen. Also, his flesh, being that of a young bird, did not appeal to warrant the expression tough as a boiled owl, which the others remembered almost in a chorus when I referred to our agreement concerning the food test of such game as we brought down. I don't think any of us wanted to eat that owl. I know I didn't, but I had weakened once--on the porcupine, it may be remembered--and the death of that porcupine rested heavily upon me, especially when I remembered how he had whined and grieved in the moment of dying. I think I had a notion that eating the owl would in some measure atone for the porcupine. I said, with such firmness as I could command, and all day I repeated at intervals, that we would eat the owl.

We camped rather early that afternoon, for it was not pleasant traveling in the chill mist, and the prospect of the campfire and a snug tent was an ever-present temptation. I had suggested, also, that we ought to go ashore in time to cook the owl for supper. It might take time to cook him.

We did not especially need the owl. We had saved a number of choice small trout and we were still able to swallow them when prepared in a really palatable form. Eddie, it is true, had condemned trout at breakfast, and declared he would have no more of them, but this may have been because there were flapjacks. He showed no disposition to condemn them now. When I mentioned the nice, tender owl meat which we were to have, he really looked longingly at the trout and spoke of them as juicy little fellows, such as he had always liked. I agreed that they would be good for the first course, and that a bird for supper would make out a sumptuous meal. I have never known Eddie to be so kind to me as he was about this time. He offered me some leaders and flies and even presented me with a silver-mounted briar-root pipe, brought all the way from London. I took the things, but I did not soften my heart. I was born in New England and have a conscience. I cannot be bribed like that.

I told the guides that it would be better to begin supper right away, in order that we might not get too hungry before the owl was done. I thought them slow in their preparations for the meal. It was curious, too, for I had promised them they should have a piece of the bird. Del was generous. He said he would give his to Charles. That he never really cared much for birds, anyhow. Why, once, he said, he shot a partridge and gave it away, and he was hungry, too. He gave it to a boy that happened along just then, and when another partridge flew up he didn't even offer to shoot it. We didn't take much stock in that story until it dawned upon us that he had shot the bird out of season, and the boy had happened along just in time to be incriminated by accepting it as a present. It was better to have him as a partner than a witness.

As for Charles, he affected to be really eager for owl meat. He said that all his life he had looked forward to this time. Still, he was slow, I thought. He seemed about as eager for supper as a boy is to carry in the evening wood. He said that one of the canoes leaked a little and ought to be pitched right away. I said it was altogether too damp for such work and that the canoe would wait till morning. Then he wanted to look up a spring, though there were two or three in plain sight, within twenty yards of the camp. I suspected at last that he was not really anxious to cook the owl and was trying to postpone the matter until it was too late for him (the owl) to get properly done before bedtime. Then I became firm. I said that a forest agreement was sacred. That we were pledged to the owl before we shot him, and that we would keep our promise to the dead, even to the picking of his bones.

Wood was gathered then, and the fire blazed. The owl's breast--fat and fine it looked--was in the broiler, and on the fire. There it cooked--and cooked. Then it cooked some more and sent up an appetizing smell. Now and then, I said I thought the time for it had come, but there was a burden of opinion that more cooking would benefit the owl. Meantime, we had eaten a pan or two of trout and a few other things--the bird of course being later in the bill of fare. At most dinners I have attended, this course is contemplated with joy. It did not seem to be on this occasion. Eddie agreed with Del that he had never cared much for bird, anyway, and urged me to take his share. I refused to deprive him of it. Then he said he didn't feel well, and thought he really ought not to eat anything more. I said grimly that possibly this was true, but that he would eat the owl.

It was served then, fairly divided and distributed, as food is when men are on short rations. I took the first taste--I was always venturesome--a little one. Then, immediately, I wished I had accepted Eddie's piece. But meantime he had tasted, too--a miserly taste--and then I couldn't have got the rest of it for money.

For there was never anything so good as that breast of young owl. It was tender, it was juicy, it was as delicately flavored as a partridge, almost. Certainly it was a dainty morsel to us who had of late dealt so largely in fish diet. Had we known where the rest of that brood of owls had flown to we should have started after them, then and there.

Extract from my diary that night: "Eddie has been taken with a slight cramp, and it has occurred to him that the owl meat, though appetizing, may be poisonous. He is searching his medicine bag for remedies. His disaster is merely punishment for the quantity of other food he ate beforehand, in his futile effort to escape the owl."

Chapter Nineteen

Then scan your map, and search your plans, And ponder the hunter's guess-- While the silver track of the brook leads back Into the wilderness.

Chapter Nineteen

We looked for moose again on Sand Lake, but found only signs. On the whole, I thought this more satisfactory. One does not have to go galloping up and down among the bushes and rocks to get a glimpse of signs, but may examine them leisurely and discuss the number, character and probable age of these records, preserving meanwhile a measure of repose, not to say dignity.

Below Sand Lake a brook was said to enter. Descending from the upper interior country, it would lead us back into regions more remote than any heretofore traveled. So far as I could learn, neither of our guides had ever met any one who even claimed in know this region, always excepting the imaginative Indian previously mentioned. Somewhere in these uncharted wilds this Indian person had taken trout "the size of one's leg."

Regardless of the dimensions of this story, it had a fascination for us. We wished to see those trout, even if they had been overrated. We had been hurrying, at least in spirit, to reach the little water gateway that opened to a deeper unknown where lay a chain of lakes, vaguely set down on our map as the Tobeatic waters. At some time in the past the region had been lumbered, but most of the men who cut the timber were probably dead now, leaving only a little drift of hearsay testimony behind.

It was not easy to find the entrance to the hidden land. The foliage was heavy and close along the swampy shore, and from such an ambush a still small current might flow unnoticed, especially in the mist that hung about us. More than once we were deceived by some fancied ripple or the configuration of the shore. Del at length announced that just ahead was a growth of a kind of maple likely to indicate a brook entrance. The shore really divided there and a sandy waterway led back somewhere into a mystery of vines and trees.

We halted near the mouth of the little stream for lunch and consultation. It was not a desirable place to camp. The ground was low and oozy and full of large-leaved greenhousy-looking plants. The recent rains had not improved the character of the place. There was poison ivy there, too, and a delegation of mosquitoes. We might just as well have gone up the brook a hundred yards or so, to higher and healthier ground, but this would not have been in accord with Eddie's ideas of exploration. Explorers, he said, always stopped at the mouth of rivers to debate, and to consult maps and feed themselves in preparation for unknown hardships to come. So we stopped and sat around in the mud, and looked at some marks on a paper--made by the imaginative Indian, I think--and speculated as to whether it would be possible to push and drag the canoes up the brook, or whether everything would have to go overland.

Personally, the prospect of either did not fill me with enthusiasm. The size of the brook did not promise much in the way of important waters above or fish even the size of one's arm. However, Tobeatic exploration was down on the cards. Our trip thus far had furnished only a hint of such mystery and sport as was supposed to lie concealed somewhere beyond the green, from which only this little brooklet crept out to whisper the secret. Besides, I had learned to keep still when Eddie had set his heart on a thing. I left the others poring over the hieroglyphic map, and waded out into the clean water of the brook. As I looked back at Del and Charlie, squatting there amid the rank weeds, under the dark, dripping boughs, with Eddie looking over their shoulders and pointing at the crumpled paper, spread before them, they formed a picturesque group--such a one as Livingstone or Stanley and their followers might have made in the African jungles. When I told Eddie of this he grew visibly prouder and gave me two new leaders and some special tobacco.

We proceeded up the stream, Eddie and I ahead, the guides pushing the loaded canoes behind. It was the brook of our forefathers--such a stream as might flow through the valley meadows of New England, with trout of about the New England size, and plentiful. Lively fellows, from seven to nine inches in length, rose two and three at almost every cast. We put on small flies and light leaders and forgot there were such things as big trout in Nova Scotia. It was joyous, old-fashioned fishing--a real treat for a change.

We had not much idea how far we were to climb this water stairway, and as the climb became steeper, and the water more swift, the guides pushed and puffed and we gave them a lift over the hard places--that is, Eddie did. I was too tired to do anything but fish.

As a rule, the water was shallow, but there were deep holes. I found one of them presently, by mistake. It was my habit to find holes that way--places deeper than my waders, though the latter came to my shoulders. It seemed necessary that several times daily I should get my boots full of water. When I couldn't do it in any other way I would fall over something and let the river run into them for a while. I called to Eddie from where I was wallowing around, trying to get up, with my usual ballast.

"Don't get in here!" I said.

He was helping the boys over a hard place just then, tugging and sweating, but he paused long enough to be rude and discourteous.