It was a glorious camp: the rock retained the heat received from the fire; they had plenty of venison, and now rested, and laid plans for the future. That night, at twelve o’clock, began a most furious snow storm; but little did they heed it in their snug camp, with plenty to eat, and a rousing fire. The snow drifting over the camp made it all the warmer.
The storm continued two days, clearing off with a high wind, and they remained in camp three days.
Just afternoon on the following Saturday, Uncle Isaac informed them that they were in the vicinity of the river, upon a feeder of which they expected to find the beavers. Joe told them there was an old logging camp near by: they found the walls of the old camp (which was built of very large logs) as good as ever; but the roof had fallen in. The deacon’s seat, as it is called (made of a plank hewed from a stick of timber, and which is always placed beside the fire in logging camps), being well preserved with grease and smoke, still remained. It was but a light labor for so many skilful hands to repair the roof, scrape out part of the snow, and cover the remainder with brush.
After supper, during which Joe had been uncommonly silent, he sat upon the deacon’s seat, his arms folded upon his breast, and looking intently into the fire.
This was so contrary to his usual custom (as he was always the life of the camp-fire, with his merry laugh), that they all gazed upon him with astonishment, and Uncle Isaac was just about to ask if he was sick, when he broke the silence by saying, “This camp seems very natural to me; but it calls up many different feelings: every inch of this ground is familiar to me, though I haven’t been on it, till I came here summer before last with the surveyors, for ten years. I was just turned of seventeen, a great, strapping boy, like John here, when Richard Clay, who was foreman of the scout that was going into the woods, persuaded my father to let me go with them. Father was very loath to consent; he said I was too young for such work; that I was a great, overgrown boy, and, though large and smart, had not got my strength, and it might strain and hurt me for life; that he had known many such instances. But Richard hung on, saying he would see that I did not overdo. The gang was made up of our neighbors, and young men, with all of whom I was acquainted, and I was crazy to go. Dick offered me high wages; father was poor, and wanted the money; I coaxed mother, and got her on my side; finally we prevailed, and wrung it out of father, and I went. Well, as you may suppose, taking care of me didn’t amount to a great deal. Dick wanted to get all the logs cut he could, and I wanted no favors, and it was just who could do the most; but I was naturally tough, though I had grown fast; for we were very poor when I was a boy, and I had lived hard; my bones were made of Indian corn, which I shall always think is the best stuff to make bones of.”
“That’s so,” said Uncle Isaac, by way of parenthesis.
Without heeding the interruption, Joe went on. “Well, as I was saying, we were poor: father was clearing up his farm; I had a natural turn to an axe, and had been used to falling and chopping ever since I was fifteen years old, and, boy as I was, could hold play with most men. Uncle Isaac, you knew Sam Apthorp?”
“O, yes, very well; and a fine young man he was.”
“Well,” continued Joe, “the Apthorps were our neighbors. John Apthorp, Sam’s father, began his clearing at the same time with mine; they cut their first tree the same day. Sam was several years older than I, and a powerful, smart fellow. He took a great liking to me, and taught me about hunting, trapping, and many other things, for he was a master hunter; and as for me, I almost worshipped him: it was for the sake of being with him that made me so anxious to go. Sam and I, Dick Clay, and another by the name of Rogers, came up here in August to build a camp, cut hay, and look out the timber. O, what a happy time that was to me, though it was the worst and hardest work I ever did before or since! It was all new to me, and wild. That swale below where we shot the deer hadn’t any bushes on it then, for it was all covered with grass as high as your shoulder; there is a brook runs through it, and the beaver had dammed and flowed it, killing all the trees, I suppose, a thousand years before; and then the Indians, or somebody else, had broken the dam, killed the beaver, let the water out, and the grass had come in; you can see the old dam there yet. Well, we came up to cut this hay: it was hot—scorching hot—not a breath of wind; for it was all surrounded with woods except a little gap, where the brook ran into the river, and that was filled with alders, and sich like. The black flies and mosquitos were awful: the only way we could live was to grease ourselves; but that only lasted a little while, for the hot sun, and the heat of our bodies sweating, would soon take it off, and then they would come worse than ever. We came up in a bateau, cut the hay, and stacked it up for our oxen the next winter. O, how natural everything here looks! There is not a log I helped cut and roll up but has a memory belonging to it. This seat we are sitting on Sam and I hewed out; we cut the sapling within three feet of the door, and there are our names, which he cut on it one Sabbath morning; right in that corner we slept side by side for two long winters; many a rousing meal we’ve eat, and many a merry evening we’ve spent around the fire; many’s the deer we’ve shot and the beavers we’ve trapped together here. Poor Sam! He had found a bear’s den, and we’d made a plan for all hands to leave off work early in the afternoon, and go and take them. All the evening before we were sitting round the fire, I on that seat and Sam in that corner, stretched out on the brush, with his boots off, and his feet to the fire. We were all laughing and talking, telling how we would get them, and what we would do with them; and Sam said he would carry a cub home, learn it to dance, and go to Boston with it, as he had read about their doing in the old country, and make his everlasting fortune out of it. Sam Chesley, our old cook, was rubbing his hands, and telling, in high life, what steaks he’d fry, and how he would cook it; and we agreed to cast lots for the skin, on expectation, before we had got the bears, or even seen them. We little thought, in our happiness, what was in store for us. The next day, about ten o’clock, Sam and I fell a large pine; it had more top than such pines commonly have; it came down between two big hemlocks, breaking their branches, and clearing the way as it went. A large limb, that we didn’t see, lodged in the thick top of the hemlock; and as Sam went under it, to cut off the top log, the second blow he struck, down came the limb, as swift and silent as the lightning, and struck him on the head and shoulders, crushing him dead to the ground! He never spoke or moved; when I got to him he was dead. It was only a week before we were to break camp, and go home. Sam and I had often, during the last month, talked of the good times we would have when we got home,—and then to bury him, without a prayer or sermon, in the wilderness! We had nothing to make a coffin, and so we took two barrels that we had emptied of pork, and put his head and shoulders in one, and the lower part of his body in the other, and then fastened them together, and buried him in his clothes, beneath that great blazed pine that stands on the bank. It was the first real sorrow I ever had. I had never seen or thought anything of death before, and this almost broke me down. I was through here, as I told you, visited the grave, and saw the camp, though I didn’t go into it; but it didn’t make me feel as it does to sit here on this very bench where I have sat with him, and see his name cut on it, and the very place where we used to sleep—” And hiding his face in his hand, he burst into tears. There was not a dry eye in the group.
“We didn’t stay but a week after this,” continued Joe; “we couldn’t work with any heart, any of us; we never molested the bears, and were glad to get away from the spot; nothing went right; we lamed one of the oxen, one man cut himself real bad, and we had sad news to carry home; for they never heard a word till we came in the spring.”