The Blazed Trail

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At camp he skinned the deer, cut most of the meat into thin strips
which he salted and placed in the sun to dry, and hung the remainder
in a cool arbor of boughs. The hide he suspended over a pole.

All these things he did hastily, as though he might be in a hurry;
as indeed he was.

At noon he cooked himself a venison steak and some tea. Then with
his hatchet he cut several small pine poles, which he fashioned
roughly in a number of shapes and put aside for the future. The
brains of the deer, saved for the purpose, he boiled with water in
his tin pail, wishing it were larger. With the liquor thus obtained
he intended later to remove the hair and grain from the deer hide.
Toward evening he caught a dozen trout in the pool below the dam.
These he ate for supper.

Next day he spread the buck's hide out on the ground and drenched
it liberally with the product of deer-brains. Later the hide was
soaked in the river, after which, by means of a rough two-handled
spatula, Thorpe was enabled after much labor to scrape away
entirely the hair and grain. He cut from the edge of the hide a
number of long strips of raw-hide, but anointed the body of the
skin liberally with the brain liquor.

"Glad I don't have to do that every day!" he commented, wiping his
brow with the back of his wrist.

As the skin dried he worked and kneaded it to softness. The result
was a fair quality of white buckskin, the first Thorpe had ever
made. If wetted, it would harden dry and stiff. Thorough smoking
in the fumes of punk maple would obviate this, but that detail Thorpe
left until later.

"I don't know whether it's all necessary," he said to himself
doubtfully, "but if you're going to assume a disguise, let it
be a good one."

In the meantime, he had bound together with his rawhide thongs
several of the oddly shaped pine timbers to form a species of
dead-fall trap. It was slow work, for Thorpe's knowledge of such
things was theoretical. He had learned his theory well, however,
and in the end arrived.

All this time he had made no effort to look over the pine, nor did
he intend to begin until he could be sure of doing so in safety.
His object now was to give his knoll the appearances of a trapper's
camp.

Towards the end of the week he received his first visit. Evening
was drawing on, and Thorpe was busily engaged in cooking a panful
of trout, resting the frying pan across the two green spruce logs
between which glowed the coals. Suddenly he became aware of a
presence at his side. How it had reached the spot he could not
imagine, for he had heard no approach. He looked up quickly.

"How do," greeted the newcomer gravely.

The man was an Indian, silent, solemn, with the straight, unwinking
gaze of his race.

"How do," replied Thorpe.

The Indian without further ceremony threw his pack to the ground,
and, squatting on his heels, watched the white man's preparations.
When the meal was cooked, he coolly produced a knife, selected a
clean bit of hemlock bark, and helped himself. Then he lit a pipe,
and gazed keenly about him. The buckskin interested him.

"No good," said he, feeling of its texture.

Thorpe laughed. "Not very," he confessed.

"Good," continued the Indian, touching lightly his own moccasins.

"What you do?" he inquired after a long silence, punctuated by
the puffs of tobacco.

"Hunt; trap; fish," replied Thorpe with equal sententiousness.

"Good," concluded the Indian, after a ruminative pause.

That night he slept on the ground. Next day he made a better
shelter than Thorpe's in less than half the time; and was off
hunting before the sun was an hour high. He was armed with an
old-fashioned smooth-bore muzzle-loader; and Thorpe was astonished,
after he had become better acquainted with his new companion's
methods, to find that he hunted deer with fine bird shot. The
Indian never expected to kill or even mortally wound his game;
but he would follow for miles the blood drops caused by his little
wounds, until the animals in sheer exhaustion allowed him to
approach close enough for a dispatching blow. At two o'clock he
returned with a small buck, tied scientifically together for
toting, with the waste parts cut away, but every ounce of utility
retained.

"I show," said the Indian:--and he did. Thorpe learned the Indian
tan; of what use are the hollow shank bones; how the spinal cord is
the toughest, softest, and most pliable sewing-thread known.

The Indian appeared to intend making the birch-knoll his permanent
headquarters. Thorpe was at first a little suspicious of his new
companion, but the man appeared scrupulously honest, was never
intrusive, and even seemed genuinely desirous of teaching the white
little tricks of the woods brought to their perfection by the Indian
alone. He ended by liking him. The two rarely spoke. They merely
sat near each other, and smoked. One evening the Indian suddenly
remarked:

"You look 'um tree."

"What's that?" cried Thorpe, startled.

"You no hunter, no trapper. You look 'um tree, for make 'um lumber."

The white had not begun as yet his explorations. He did not dare
until the return of the logging crew or the passing of someone in
authority at the up-river camp, for he wished first to establish
in their minds the innocence of his intentions.

"What makes you think that, Charley?" he asked.

"You good man in woods," replied Injin Charley sententiously, "I
tell by way you look at him pine."

Thorpe ruminated.

"Charley," said he, "why are you staying here with me?"

"Big frien'," replied the Indian promptly.

"Why are you my friend? What have I ever done for you?"

"You gottum chief's eye," replied his companion with simplicity.

Thorpe looked at the Indian again. There seemed to be only one
course.

"Yes, I'm a lumberman," he confessed, "and I'm looking for pine.
But, Charley, the men up the river must not know what I'm after."

"They gettum pine," interjected the Indian like a flash.

"Exactly," replied Thorpe, surprised afresh at the other's
perspicacity.

"Good!" ejaculated Injin Charley, and fell silent.

With this, the longest conversation the two had attempted in their
peculiar acquaintance, Thorpe was forced to be content. He was,
however, ill at ease over the incident. It added an element of
uncertainty to an already precarious position.

Three days later he was intensely thankful the conversation had
taken place.

After the noon meal he lay on his blanket under the hemlock shelter,
smoking and lazily watching Injin Charley busy at the side of the
trail. The Indian had terminated a long two days' search by toting
from the forest a number of strips of the outer bark of white birch,
in its green state pliable as cotton, thick as leather, and light as
air. These he had cut into arbitrary patterns known only to himself,
and was now sewing as a long shapeless sort of bag or sac to a slender
beech-wood oval. Later it was to become a birch-bark canoe, and the
beech-wood oval would be the gunwale.

So idly intent was Thorpe on this piece of construction that he did
not notice the approach of two men from the down-stream side. They
were short, alert men, plodding along with the knee-bent persistency
of the woods-walker, dressed in broad hats, flannel shirts, coarse
trousers tucked in high laced "cruisers "; and carrying each a
bulging meal sack looped by a cord across the shoulders and chest.
Both were armed with long slender scaler's rules. The first
intimation Thorpe received of the presence of these two men was
the sound of their voices addressing Injin Charley.

"Hullo Charley," said one of them, "what you doing here? Ain't
seen you since th' Sturgeon district."

"Mak' 'um canoe," replied Charley rather obviously.

"So I see. But what you expect to get in this Godforsaken country?"

"Beaver, muskrat, mink, otter."

"Trapping, eh?" The man gazed keenly at Thorpe's recumbent figure.

"Who's the other fellow?"

Thorpe held his breath; then exhaled it in a long sigh of relief.

"Him white man," Injin Charley was replying, "him hunt too. He
mak' 'um buckskin."

The landlooker arose lazily and sauntered toward the group. It was
part of his plan to be well recognized so that in the future he
might arouse no suspicions.

"Howdy," he drawled, "got any smokin'?"

"How are you," replied one of the scalers, eying him sharply, and
tendering his pouch. Thorpe filled his pipe deliberately, and
returned it with a heavy-lidded glance of thanks. To all appearances
he was one of the lazy, shiftless white hunters of the backwoods.
Seized with an inspiration, he said, "What sort of chances is they
at your camp for a little flour? Me and Charley's about out. I'll
bring you meat; or I'll make you boys moccasins. I got some good
buckskin."

It was the usual proposition.

"Pretty good, I guess. Come up and see," advised the scaler. "The
crew's right behind us."

"I'll send up Charley," drawled Thorpe, "I'm busy now makin' traps,"
he waved his pipe, calling attention to the pine and rawhide dead-
falls.

They chatted a few moments, practically and with an eye to the
strict utility of things about them, as became woodsmen. Then two
wagons creaked lurching by, followed by fifteen or twenty men. The

last of these, evidently the foreman, was joined by the two scalers.

"What's that outfit?" he inquired with the sharpness of suspicion.

"Old Injin Charley--you remember, the old boy that tanned that buck
for you down on Cedar Creek."

"Yes, but the other fellow."

"Oh, a hunter," replied the scaler carelessly.

"Sure?"

The man laughed. "Couldn't be nothin' else," he asserted with
confidence. "Regular old backwoods mossback."

At the same time Injin Charley was setting about the splitting of
a cedar log.

"You see," he remarked, "I big frien'."

Chapter XVIII

In the days that followed, Thorpe cruised about the great woods. It
was slow business, but fascinating. He knew that when he should
embark on his attempt to enlist considerable capital in an "unsight
unseen" investment, he would have to be well supplied with statistics.
True, he was not much of a timber estimator, nor did he know the
methods usually employed, but his experience, observation, and reading
had developed a latent sixth sense by which he could appreciate
quality, difficulties of logging, and such kindred practical matters.

First of all he walked over the country at large, to find where the
best timber lay. This was a matter of tramping; though often on an
elevation he succeeded in climbing a tall tree whence he caught
bird's-eye views of the country at large. He always carried his gun
with him, and was prepared at a moment's notice to seem engaged in
hunting,--either for game or for spots in which later to set his
traps. The expedient was, however, unnecessary.

Next he ascertained the geographical location of the different
clumps and forests, entering the sections, the quarter-sections,
even the separate forties in his note-book; taking in only the
"descriptions" containing the best pine.

Finally he wrote accurate notes concerning the topography of each
and every pine district,--the lay of the land; the hills, ravines,
swamps, and valleys; the distance from the river; the character of
the soil. In short, he accumulated all the information he could by
which the cost of logging might be estimated.

The work went much quicker than he had anticipated, mainly because
he could give his entire attention to it. Injin Charley attended to
the commissary, with a delight in the process that removed it from
the category of work. When it rained, an infrequent occurrence, the
two hung Thorpe's rubber blankets before the opening of the driest
shelter, and waited philosophically for the weather to clear. Injin
Charley had finished the first canoe, and was now leisurely at work
on another. Thorpe had filled his note-book with the class of
statistics just described. He decided now to attempt an estimate
of the timber.

For this he had really too little experience. He knew it, but
determined to do his best. The weak point of his whole scheme
lay in that it was going to be impossible for him to allow the
prospective purchaser a chance of examining the pine. That
difficulty Thorpe hoped to overcome by inspiring personal confidence
in himself. If he failed to do so, he might return with a landlooker
whom the investor trusted, and the two could re-enact the comedy
of this summer. Thorpe hoped, however, to avoid the necessity.
It would be too dangerous. He set about a rough estimate of the
timber.

Injin Charley intended evidently to work up a trade in buckskin
during the coming winter. Although the skins were in poor condition
at this time of the year, he tanned three more, and smoked them. In
the day-time he looked the country over as carefully as did Thorpe.
But he ignored the pines, and paid attention only to the hardwood
and the beds of little creeks. Injin Charley was in reality a
trapper, and he intended to get many fine skins in this promising
district. He worked on his tanning and his canoe-making late in
the afternoon.

One evening just at sunset Thorpe was helping the Indian shape his
craft. The loose sac of birch-bark sewed to the long beech oval was
slung between two tripods. Injin Charley had fashioned a number of
thin, flexible cedar strips of certain arbitrary lengths and widths.
Beginning with the smallest of these, Thorpe and his companion were
catching one end under the beech oval, bending the strip bow-shape
inside the sac, and catching again the other side of the oval. Thus
the spring of the bent cedar, pressing against the inside of the
birch-bark sac, distended it tightly. The cut of the sac and the
length of the cedar strips gave to the canoe its graceful shape.

The two men bent there at their task, the dull glow of evening
falling upon them. Behind them the knoll stood out in picturesque
relief against the darker pine, the little shelters, the fire-places
of green spruce, the blankets, the guns, a deer's carcass suspended
by the feet from a cross pole, the drying buckskin on either side.
The river rushed by with a never-ending roar and turmoil. Through
its shouting one perceived, as through a mist, the still lofty peace
of evening.

A young fellow, hardly more than a boy, exclaimed with keen delight
of the picturesque as his canoe shot around the bend into sight of it.

The canoe was large and powerful, but well filled. An Indian knelt
in the stern; amidships was well laden with duffle of all
descriptions;
then the young fellow sat in the bow. He was a bright-faced, eager-
eyed, curly-haired young fellow, all enthusiasm and fire. His figure
was trim and clean, but rather slender; and his movements were quick
but nervous. When he stepped carefully out on the flat rock to which
his guide brought the canoe with a swirl of the paddle, one initiated
would have seen that his clothes, while strong and serviceable, had
been bought from a sporting catalogue. There was a trimness, a
neatness, about them.

"This is a good place," he said to the guide, "we'll camp here."
Then he turned up the steep bank without looking back.

"Hullo!" he called in a cheerful, unembarrassed fashion to Thorpe
and Charley. "How are you? Care if I camp here? What you making?
By Jove! I never saw a canoe made before. I'm going to watch you.
Keep right at it."

He sat on one of the outcropping boulders and took off his hat.

"Say! you've got a great place here! You here all summer? Hullo!
you've got a deer hanging up. Are there many of 'em around here?
I'd like to kill a deer first rate. I never have. It's sort of
out of season now, isn't it?"

"We only kill the bucks," replied Thorpe.

"I like fishing, too," went on the boy; "are there any here? In
the pool? John," he called to his guide, "bring me my fishing
tackle."

In a few moments he was whipping the pool with long, graceful drops
of the fly. He proved to be adept. Thorpe and Injin Charley stopped
work to watch him. At first the Indian's stolid countenance seemed
a trifle doubtful. After a time it cleared.

"Good! he grunted.

"You do that well," Thorpe remarked. "Is it difficult?"

"It takes practice," replied the boy. "See that riffle?" He whipped
the fly lightly within six inches of a little suction hole; a fish at
once rose and struck.

The others had been little fellows and easily handled. At the end
of fifteen minutes the newcomer landed a fine two-pounder.

"That must be fun," commented Thorpe. "I never happened to get in
with fly-fishing. I'd like to try it sometime."

"Try it now!" urged the boy, enchanted that he could teach a woodsman
anything.

"No," Thorpe declined, "not to-night, to-morrow perhaps."

The other Indian had by now finished the erection of a tent, and
had begun to cook supper over a little sheet-iron camp stove.
Thorpe and Charley could smell ham.

"You've got quite a pantry," remarked Thorpe.

"Won't you eat with me?" proffered the boy hospitably.

But Thorpe declined. He could, however, see canned goods, hard
tack, and condensed milk.

In the course of the evening the boy approached the older man's
camp, and, with a charming diffidence, asked permission to sit
awhile at their fire.

He was full of delight over everything that savored of the woods,
or woodscraft. The most trivial and everyday affairs of the life
interested him. His eager questions, so frankly proffered, aroused
even the taciturn Charley to eloquence. The construction of the
shelter, the cut of a deer's hide, the simple process of "jerking"
venison,--all these awakened his enthusiasm.

"It must be good to live in the woods," he said with a sigh, "to do
all things for yourself. It's so free!"

The men's moccasins interested him. He asked a dozen questions
about them,--how they were cut, whether they did not hurt the feet,
how long they would wear. He seemed surprised to learn that they
are excellent in cold weather.

"I thought ANY leather would wet through in the snow!" he cried.
"I wish I could get a pair somewhere!" he exclaimed. "You don't
know where I could buy any, do you?" he asked of Thorpe.

"I don't know," answered he, "perhaps Charley here will make you
a pair."

"WILL you, Charley?" cried the boy.

"I mak' him," replied the Indian stolidly.

The many-voiced night of the woods descended close about the little
camp fire, and its soft breezes wafted stray sparks here and there
like errant stars. The newcomer, with shining eyes, breathed deep
in satisfaction. He was keenly alive to the romance, the grandeur,
the mystery, the beauty of the littlest things, seeming to derive a
deep and solid contentment from the mere contemplation of the woods
and its ways and creatures.

"I just DO love this!" he cried again and again. "Oh, it's great,
after all that fuss down there!" and he cried it so fervently that
the other men present smiled; but so genuinely that the smile had
in it nothing but kindliness.

"I came out for a month," said he suddenly, "and I guess I'll stay
the rest of it right here. You'll let me go with you sometimes
hunting, won't you?" he appealed to them with the sudden open-
heartedness of a child. "I'd like first rate to kill a deer."

"Sure," said Thorpe, "glad to have you."

"My name is Wallace Carpenter," said the boy with a sudden
unmistakable air of good-breeding.

"Well," laughed Thorpe, "two old woods loafers like us haven't got
much use for names. Charley here is called Geezigut, and mine's
nearly as bad; but I guess plain Charley and Harry will do."

"All right, Harry," replied Wallace.

After the young fellow had crawled into the sleeping bag which his
guide had spread for him over a fragrant layer of hemlock and
balsam, Thorpe and his companion smoked one more pipe. The whip-
poor-wills called back and forth across the river. Down in the
thicket, fine, clear, beautiful, like the silver thread of a dream,
came the notes of the white-throat--the nightingale of the North.
Injin Charley knocked the last ashes from his pipe.

"Him nice boy!" said he.

Chapter XIX

The young fellow stayed three weeks, and was a constant joy to Thorpe.
His enthusiasms were so whole-souled; his delight so perpetual; his
interest so fresh! The most trivial expedients of woods lore seemed
to him wonderful. A dozen times a day he exclaimed in admiration or
surprise over some bit of woodcraft practiced by Thorpe or one of the
Indians.

"Do you mean to say you have lived here six weeks and only brought
in what you could carry on your backs!" he cried.

"Sure," Thorpe replied.

"Harry, you're wonderful! I've got a whole canoe load, and imagined
I was travelling light and roughing it. You beat Robinson Crusoe!
He had a whole ship to draw from."

"My man Friday helps me out," answered Thorpe, laughingly indicating
Injin Charley.

Nearly a week passed before Wallace managed to kill a deer. The
animals were plenty enough; but the young man's volatile and eager
attention stole his patience. And what few running shots offered,
he missed, mainly because of buck fever. Finally, by a lucky chance,
he broke a four-year-old's neck, dropping him in his tracks. The
hunter was delighted. He insisted on doing everything for himself--
cruel hard work it was too--including the toting and skinning. Even
the tanning he had a share in. At first he wanted the hide cured,
"with the hair on." Injin Charley explained that the fur would drop
out. It was the wrong season of the year for pelts.

"Then we'll have buckskin and I'll get a buckskin shirt out of
it," suggested Wallace.

Injin Charley agreed. One day Wallace returned from fishing in
the pool to find that the Indian had cut out the garment, and was
already sewing it together.

"Oh!" he cried, a little disappointed, "I wanted to see it done!"

Injin Charley merely grunted. To make a buckskin shirt requires the
hides of three deer. Charley had supplied the other two, and wished
to keep the young man from finding it out.

Wallace assumed the woods life as a man would assume an unaccustomed
garment. It sat him well, and he learned fast, but he was always
conscious of it. He liked to wear moccasins, and a deer knife; he
liked to cook his own supper, or pluck the fragrant hemlock browse
for his pillow. Always he seemed to be trying to realize and to
savor fully the charm, the picturesqueness, the romance of all that
he was doing and seeing. To Thorpe these things were a part of
everyday life; matters of expedient or necessity. He enjoyed them,
but subconsciously, as one enjoys an environment. Wallace trailed
the cloak of his glories in frank admiration of their splendor.

This double point of view brought the men very close together.
Thorpe liked the boy because he was open-hearted, free from
affectation, assumptive of no superiority,--in short, because he
was direct and sincere, although in a manner totally different from
Thorpe's own directness and sincerity. Wallace, on his part, adored
in Thorpe the free, open-air life, the adventurous quality, the
quiet hidden power, the resourcefulness and self-sufficiency of the
pioneer. He was too young as yet to go behind the picturesque or
romantic; so he never thought to inquire of himself what Thorpe
did there in the wilderness, or indeed if he did anything at all.
He accepted Thorpe for what he thought him to be, rather than for
what he might think him to be. Thus he reposed unbounded confidence
in him.

After a while, observing the absolute ingenuousness of the boy,
Thorpe used to take him from time to time on some of his daily
trips to the pines. Necessarily he explained partially his position
and the need of secrecy. Wallace was immensely excited and important
at learning a secret of such moment, and deeply flattered at being
entrusted with it.

Some may think that here, considering the magnitude of the
interests involved, Thorpe committed an indiscretion. It may be;
but if so, it was practically an inevitable indiscretion. Strong,
reticent characters like Thorpe's prove the need from time to time
of violating their own natures, of running counter to their ordinary
habits of mind and deed. It is a necessary relaxation of the
strenuous, a debauch of the soul. Its analogy in the lower plane
is to be found in the dissipations of men of genius; or still lower
in the orgies of fighters out of training. Sooner or later Thorpe
was sure to emerge for a brief space from that iron-bound silence
of the spirit, of which he himself was the least aware. It was
not so much a hunger for affection, as the desire of a strong man
temporarily to get away from his strength. Wallace Carpenter became
in his case the exception to prove the rule.

Little by little the eager questionings of the youth extracted a
full statement of the situation. He learned of the timber-thieves
up the river, of their present operations; and their probable
plans; of the valuable pine lying still unclaimed; of Thorpe's
stealthy raid into the enemy's country. It looked big to him,
epic!--These were tremendous forces in motion, here was intrigue,
here was direct practical application of the powers he had been
playing with.

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