The House of Cariboo, and Other Tales from Arcadia

by A. Paul Gardiner

Early Summer had come again, the schools were closing, and with the returning of friends who had been at colleges in distant cities a flood of sweet recollections of years not so long past came to Lucy.

“It was down the winding Salmon,” she mused to herself. “Oh, how well I remember, Edmond at the oars and I in the stern of the boat, trailing my fingers in the water and thinking of the future—yes, that same future which has brought me so much unhappiness already. But it was of my own bringing. Pique and disappointment, they, too, played their share in my short drama. That love which was the cause of urging me on into the bonds that restrained me from turning back again to the object of my only true affection is the same love which now is fanned into a new life as often as the incidents arise which bring back the memories of the past. On the morrow I will indulge my longing. It will be the anniversary of that day when cruel fate changed love into foolish resentment, so that we drifted apart, Edmond from me. With Caleb, our old family servant, my confidant, my trusted friend, I will follow the winding Salmon to the same point of land, and there, resting within the basswood grove, as we did on that day, I will look to find again the tree upon which we carved our initials as we sat beneath its shade.”

The sun shone bright upon this day in June, and as Caleb rounded the point of land which lay in the shoals by the marshes he looked backward over the shoulder nearest shore, carefully selecting a landing. Lucy the while watched intently a boat pushing out from a bay farther up the shore. A swiftly gliding boat it was, long and set low in the water. Graceful lines swept from the bow, and, touching the waves at the oar-locks, rose again to gently curve into the rudder posts at the stern. Two men were occupants of the boat, which Caleb assured Lucy was new in those waters. The man at the oars bent to his work, and in response to his long, swinging strokes the boat quickly disappeared from sight, passing through a line of thin rushes and making for an island across the Schneil Channel.

Lucy appeared strangely affected. Caleb had now beached his skiff in a sheltered cove, and was waiting, after having called to his mistress the second time to step ashore. The man lounging in the boat of the strangers, and guiding at the stem the craft as it stole swiftly away from shore, Lucy followed, held by a strange fascination, till he was lost to view.

Upon Tyno’s Point there was a small tavern run for the accommodation of people fishing and hunting thereabouts, and a few cottages were set back from the shore fronting out upon the expanse of water looking toward the north bank of the Archipelago. Caleb went to exchange gossip with the fishermen standing about the shore, while Lucy strolled alone toward the basswood grove.

Still and quiet was everything in Nature. The bright beams of the noonday sun fell in quivering rays across the sight. Out upon the river not a ripple disturbed its glassy surface. From up the Schneil Channel came the chattering noises of a water hen, and the piping of snipes, who called from the rush beds farther up the river. Overhead in the trees a pair of golden robins sang as they builded their nest far out on an overhanging limb. The bumblebees hurried past on their way to the blossoming clover patch, and the distant call of a loon came from over the waters. Lucy stood beneath the high branching trees, and in the distance, toward the village of Darrington, she saw the weather-vane of the church steeple glistening in the sun.

“It must be near here,” she thought. “Yes, it was at a tree-trunk like the one in yonder clump,” and thither she went, trailing her leghorn hat by the ribbon strings through the tall grasses. Sweet was the picture of grace and beauty left alone with her thoughts of love. “Yes, it was here. Yes, yes, this is the tree, for there are the marks, the initials we cut.”

Suddenly she paused in her delight, for she had made another discovery. Some one had been before her. Around the foot of the very tree, and leading away from it toward the river bank, the grass had been recently trampled. Still in her surprise, curiosity led her to follow the path through the grass to the shore. There she saw the fresh imprints upon the sand. Immediately she recognized the small bay, whose extending bank had partially concealed the strangers as they rowed away earlier in the day.

A wistful, excited look had come over the childlike face of Lucy. One hand pressed her heaving bosom, while with the other she clung for support to a bending alder tree. Thoughts were in her mind that she dared not entertain—an apprehension that she had but just missed seeing the lover of her childhood, who possibly had returned like a spirit from heaven to renew the anniversary of a time long past, but ever fresh in memory. It was then as she stood, her frail figure swayed to and fro by the flood of passionate recollections, that coming from behind her sounded the voice of Caleb, her protector.

“We will row away by the Schneil Channel, Lucy,” he said, “and, going by the rush banks, touch at the Caristitee Island. The old chief of the tribe of the St. Regis will be glad at our coming, and once more he will say to us that he is the friend of the palefaces.”