The sluggish stream wriggles through part of the old government tract once ceded to “Ossawotamie.” John Brown of anti-slavery memory. Formerly, green tamaracks lined the lowlands to either side of the inlet’s banks. The raising of the dams which, years ago, signed the murder-warrant for so many thousand splendid trees, have left the tamaracks here—as elsewhere along the watercourses,—a waste of feathery gray skeletons.
A bite of Autumn was in the air. From bush and from waterside grasses, the dying summer flashed its scarlet-and-gold warning of winter’s dread approach.
The inlet wound southward in a bewildering series of turns and twists; perhaps a hundred such abrupt turnings to the mile. There was hardly scope for three successive oar-strokes between the twists. Fast rowing was out of the question. A long stroke or two, for momentum; then the quick backing of an oar and a plunge of the stern paddle; and, unless the bow caught in the jutting huckleberry bushes of the bank, one turn was safely passed and another was at hand.
The gray stone mountains, with their clumps of evergreens shot with the red and yellow of maple or birch, rose against the sky on one side of the marsh. On the other, the deep forest ran down to the fringe of tamarack ghosts; a rare white birch standing out here and there, like a sheeted giant, amid the dusk of the hemlocks. Above blazed the white sun. The long grasses hummed with insect life. A mink darted to cover from beneath the bow of the guide boat. In the black loam of the bank burrowed a sleek gray water rat. Far to the northeast, a solitary, everlasting landmark for all the region, crouched old Blue Mountain, like some benevolent, haze-shrouded mastodon.
“I can’t remember,” observed Desirée, “when we weren’t squeezing past one turn and running into another. And I can’t imagine any time when we won’t still be doing it. It’s like one of those weird maze-places at Atlantic City where you go through a door only to find yourself staring at three others. The man who went for a walk and met himself coming back would have found himself facing whole family groups of selves if he’d come up this inlet. There’s where the Eighth Lake Carry begins. Over there to the left; where that tumble-down wooden dock is. We aren’t anywhere near Brown’s Tract Pond yet. Just hear Jack yodel! He’s as excited over this picnic as a school boy. He’s rowing like mad and—”
“Guess somebody must a been feedin’ him meat,” suggested Caleb unkindly; glancing back over his shoulders at the leading boat whose oarsman’s enthusiasm had driven its bow into the mudbank at one sharp turn. “Say, he’ awful much in love with you, Dey. Are you goin’ to end up by marryin’ him?”
“No,” said Desirée, shortly.
Ten minutes later the boats had been dragged over the last impasse and the pond was reached;—a circular blot of water amid the surrounding hills; a high island rising in its centre.
A halloo from Jack brought an answering call from the distant guide. Slipping along the shore where the yellow sand ran out for yards under its shallow covering of blue water, the two boats came to rest off the site chosen for the camp. The two tents were already pitched, and a fire crackled merrily. The guide was busy frying eggs and strips of bacon in huge black pans. Potatoes bubbled in one pot above the fire; while from another came the aroma of coffee.
“Heaven may be as beautiful as this grove,” sighed Desirée in ecstasy, “but I’m perfectly sure it will never smell so deliciously appetizing. I’m starved. Is that drinking-water, Steve?” she asked, pointing to a pail with a dipper beside it.