“Good-morning, good-morning, neighbor Elwood, as I have lately been pleased to find you,” exclaimed Gurley, with an air of careless assurance, as he came within speaking distance. “We have come, as you see, to give you a lift at your logging. So show us right into your slash, and let us go at it, at once. We shall find time to talk afterwards.”
Elwood, with some general remark expressive of his obligation to the whole of the company at hand for their voluntary and unexpected kindness, led the way to the burned slash, and went back to meet and salute the rest of the company, as they severally came up. Having performed this ceremony with those having the immediate charge of the oxen, till the whole had passed on to their work, he turned to the rest of the company, whom, though before unnoticed by him, he now found following immediately behind the teams. These consisted of some half-dozen sturdy logmen, with their implements, appointed to pair off with the drivers of the teams, so as to provide two men to each yoke of oxen; the hunter, Phillips, with his brisk wife and buxom daughter, bearing a basket of plates, knives, forks, spoons, and extra frying-pans, to supply any deficiency Mrs. Elwood might find in furnishing her tables or in cooking for so large a company; and lastly, Comical Codman, as he was often called by the settlers, who, though the first to come forward to meet Elwood, was now bringing up the rear.
“A merry morning to you,” exclaimed the hunter, as the logmen turned off to the slash; “a merry morning to you neighbor Elwood. This looks some like business to-day. You were not expecting us a very great sight earlier than this, I conclude,” he added, with a jocular smile.
“Earlier? Why, it is hardly sunrise yet, and I am wholly at a loss to know how men living at such distances could get here at this hour.”
“Well, that is easily explained. They haven’t had to travel so far this morning as you imagine. They came on as far as my place last night, mostly, and such as could be accommodated nestled with me in my house. The rest camped out near by in the bush, which is just as well generally with us woodsmen. But you, having no mistrust of this, as it seems, were taken, I suppose, by surprise at our appearance so early.”
“I should have been, wholly so, but for the coming ahead of this gentleman,” replied Elwood, pointing to Codman; “and then, I was rather at loss to know what he intended by his queer way of announcing you.”
“Very likely. He never does or says any thing like other folks. Jonas,” continued the hunter, turning to the odd genius of whom he was speaking, “you are a good trapper, but I fear you make a bad fore-runner.”
“Well, I am all right now here in the rear, I suppose,” replied the other, with an oddly assumed air of abashment. “A man is generally good for one thing or t’other. If I ain’t a good forerunner, it then follows that I am a good hind-runner.”
“You see he must have his fol-de-rol, Mr. Elwood,” said the hunter. “But, for all that, he is a good fellow enough at the bottom, if you can ever find it: ain’t all that so, Jonas?”
“Sort of so and sort of not so; but a little more not than sorter, they may say, perhaps. And I don’t think, myself, there is much either at the top or bottom to brag on,” rejoined Codman, suddenly darting off to join his companions in the slash; and now whistling a tune, as he went, and now crowing like a cock, in notes and tones each of its kind so wondrous loud and shrill that the whole valley of the lake seemed wakened by the strange music.