In a very few minutes, under those skilful hands that never made a
movement too much or a movement too little, the silk tent stood taut and
cozy, the beds of balsam boughs ready laid, and a brisk cooking fire
burned with the minimum of smoke. While the young Scotchman cleaned the
fish they had caught trolling behind the canoe, Défago "guessed" he
would "jest as soon" take a turn through the Bush for indications of
moose. "_May_ come across a trunk where they bin and rubbed horns," he
said, as he moved off, "or feedin' on the last of the maple leaves"--and
he was gone. His small figure melted away like a shadow in the dusk, while Simpson
noted with a kind of admiration how easily the forest absorbed him into
herself. A few steps, it seemed, and he was no longer visible. Yet there was little underbrush hereabouts; the trees stood somewhat
apart, well spaced; and in the clearings grew silver birch and maple,
spearlike and slender, against the immense stems of spruce and hemlock. But for occasional prostrate monsters, and the boulders of grey rock
that thrust uncouth shoulders here and there out of the ground, it might
well have been a bit of park in the Old Country. Almost, one might have
seen in it the hand of man. A little to the right, however, began the
great burnt section, miles in extent, proclaiming its real
character--_brulé_, as it is called, where the fires of the previous
year had raged for weeks, and the blackened stumps now rose gaunt and
ugly, bereft of branches, like gigantic match heads stuck into the
ground, savage and desolate beyond words. The perfume of charcoal and
rain-soaked ashes still hung faintly about it. The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the
fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the
only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that
vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the
woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might
stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. In front,
through doorways pillared by huge straight stems, lay the stretch of
Fifty Island Water, a crescent-shaped lake some fifteen miles from tip
to tip, and perhaps five miles across where they were camped. A sky of
rose and saffron, more clear than any atmosphere Simpson had ever
known, still dropped its pale streaming fires across the waves, where
the islands--a hundred, surely, rather than fifty--floated like the
fairy barques of some enchanted fleet. Fringed with pines, whose crests
fingered most delicately the sky, they almost seemed to move upwards as
the light faded--about to weigh anchor and navigate the pathways of the
heavens instead of the currents of their native and desolate lake. And strips of colored cloud, like flaunting pennons, signaled their
departure to the stars.... The beauty of the scene was strangely uplifting. Simpson smoked the fish
and burnt his fingers into the bargain in his efforts to enjoy it and at
the same time tend the frying pan and the fire. Yet, ever at the back of
his thoughts, lay that other aspect of the wilderness: the indifference
to human life, the merciless spirit of desolation which took no note of
man. The sense of his utter loneliness, now that even Défago had gone,
came close as he looked about him and listened for the sound of his
companion's returning footsteps. There was pleasure in the sensation, yet with it a perfectly
comprehensible alarm. And instinctively the thought stirred in him:
"What should I--_could_ I, do--if anything happened and he did not come
back--?" They enjoyed their well-earned supper, eating untold quantities of fish,
and drinking unmilked tea strong enough to kill men who had not covered
thirty miles of hard "going," eating little on the way. And when it was
over, they smoked and told stories round the blazing fire, laughing,
stretching weary limbs, and discussing plans for the morrow. Défago was
in excellent spirits, though disappointed at having no signs of moose to
report. But it was dark and he had not gone far. The _brulé_, too, was
bad. His clothes and hands were smeared with charcoal. Simpson, watching
him, realized with renewed vividness their position--alone together in
the wilderness. "Défago," he said presently, "these woods, you know, are a bit too big
to feel quite at home in--to feel comfortable in, I mean!... Eh?" He
merely gave expression to the mood of the moment; he was hardly prepared
for the earnestness, the solemnity even, with which the guide took him
up. "You've hit it right, Simpson, boss," he replied, fixing his searching
brown eyes on his face, "and that's the truth, sure. There's no end to
'em--no end at all." Then he added in a lowered tone as if to himself,
"There's lots found out _that_, and gone plumb to pieces!" But the man's gravity of manner was not quite to the other's liking; it
was a little too suggestive for this scenery and setting; he was sorry
he had broached the subject. He remembered suddenly how his uncle had
told him that men were sometimes stricken with a strange fever of the
wilderness, when the seduction of the uninhabited wastes caught them so
fiercely that they went forth, half fascinated, half deluded, to their
death. And he had a shrewd idea that his companion held something in
sympathy with that queer type. He led the conversation on to other
topics, on to Hank and the doctor, for instance, and the natural rivalry
as to who should get the first sight of moose. "If they went doo west," observed Défago carelessly, "there's sixty
miles between us now--with ole Punk at halfway house eatin' himself full
to bustin' with fish and coffee." They laughed together over the
picture. But the casual mention of those sixty miles again made Simpson
realize the prodigious scale of this land where they hunted; sixty miles
was a mere step; two hundred little more than a step. Stories of lost
hunters rose persistently before his memory. The passion and mystery of
homeless and wandering men, seduced by the beauty of great forests,
swept his soul in a way too vivid to be quite pleasant. He wondered
vaguely whether it was the mood of his companion that invited the
unwelcome suggestion with such persistence. "Sing us a song, Défago, if you're not too tired," he asked; "one of
those old _voyageur_ songs you sang the other night." He handed his
tobacco pouch to the guide and then filled his own pipe, while the
Canadian, nothing loth, sent his light voice across the lake in one of
those plaintive, almost melancholy chanties with which lumbermen and
trappers lessen the burden of their labor. There was an appealing and
romantic flavor about it, something that recalled the atmosphere of the
old pioneer days when Indians and wilderness were leagued together,
battles frequent, and the Old Country farther off than it is today.