They talked on as they passed through Elizabethtown, and clear of the village, some miles farther on, Joe’s eyes feasted upon the first glimpse of the great distant range of mountains that presently loomed up ahead of them—a range he knew every foot of and had loved for years. As they neared Keene Valley, the mountains became majestic; on the left, the black sides of Giant Mountain glistened in the sunlight; beyond, at the extreme end of the long, green, peaceful valley, the peak of Noon Mark peeped above the rifts of morning mist. Now and then a red squirrel skittered across the road. To the left flashed in ripples of light the swirling current of the Ausable River, clear as crystal. The air grew cooler as they dipped down a short hill and skirted an alder swamp, out of which two woodcock whistled up and disappeared in the deeper forest.
“Gee ap!” cried Ed to the sturdy team. They livened into a brisk trot. It was playful going for the mares after drawing logs all winter down lumber roads of sheer ice, where often a fall, a shifted load, or the snapping of a trace-chain meant death to them.
The big woods had weathered another winter of cruel winds and biting cold, deep in millions of tons of snow. Formidable mountain torrents, like John’s Brook, had lain for months frozen and choked under a mass of white domes marking its big boulders; down beneath this coverlet the black water gurgled and swirled. Here and there, during the hard winter, an air-hole disclosed the icy water purling beneath, quarrelling, talking to itself, and where for all these long winter months the trout lay like prisoners in the dark, scarcely moving. Above them the big hemlocks had creaked, groaned, and cried under bitter onslaughts of sleet and wind. Now and then a tree strung tense with the cold gave out a report like a pistol-shot. From the great boulders hung huge yellow icicles, like the stained beards of old men. Tracks were everywhere, a vast labyrinth of telltale goings and comings of the hungry and the wary. The fox cross-tracked the wolverene, circling over the clean snow were noiseless tracks of lean white hares and the straight, mincing tread of partridges. Now and then the solid, nimble track of a panther, prowling while the bears slept soundly in their caves. Here and there tiny tracks, the timid trot of a mouse, his tail making a faint gash in the snow. Spring had come as a relief at last, freeing all things. To-day the woods basked in the kind old summer. The big brook had become again a roaring torrent. Birds sang again; the hermit-thrush, the last to sing at evening. Nocturnal animals went their several ways under the gentle light of the moon, and every early morning brought that pirate, the kingfisher, like a flash of azure down John’s Brook, chattering with devilish glee as he drove the smaller trout in a panic ahead of him, and filled his belly with the one that pleased him, an insolent and arrogant thief, vain of his strong beak and his gay plumage.
To Ed the woods were an open book, and he read them as easily as some do a printed page, though he could scarcely spell, and wrote with difficulty. His shock of hair, seldom combed except for dances, funerals, or weddings, was sandy; his heart was big and his eyes of a clear, penetrating blue. He could see farther than most men in the woods, and could shoot straight under difficulties when many a man would have missed. He was as garrulous as a magpie at times, and silent at others, though his voice, like that of most men living in the wilderness, was low-pitched, a soft, earnest voice. Once a year he dyed his mustache blue-black; that it wore green to one side did not bother him. He had a pet fancy for a stub of a brier pipe, stuffed generally with his “favorite” tobaccos—“Blue Ruin” or “Honey Comb”—and wore gay suspenders and two thick blue-flannel shirts to keep him warm. He had never ridden on the cars. They were the only thing he was afraid of, never having tried them, though they had tempted him more than once to take him as far as the fair at “Ticonderogi.” He had a habit of talking seriously to inanimate things about him. His fire that slowly kindled in a rain, sticks that refused to “lay daown” to kindle, again to the dulled edge of his long-handled, double-bitted axe—a rare occurrence, for he kept it as sharp as a carpenter’s chisel. Often he spoke to the weather.
“Goll ding ye!” he’d say, between his teeth, glancing up at the low-lying clouds. “Ain’t ye got yer satisfy? Ain’t ye got dreened aout yit?”
Joe loved him and he loved Joe. They were close pals. Ed had guided him ever since he was a little shaver of fifteen, taking care of him as if he was his own son—and for all of these precious services he asked nothing, and only accepted their remuneration after long persuasion from Joe and bashful protests—scratching his shock of sandy hair awkwardly and declaring: “By gum! that he wa’n’t worth it—that it was a goll-dummed sight too much in dollars, friend. Ain’t we hed a good time?” He’d argue: “Wall—ain’t that enough?” Ed always “cal’ated” it was. Now and then he managed to send Joe a hind quarter or a saddle of venison; once the skin of a wolverene, a prime pelt killed in December; and twice, when his bear traps yielded over in St. Armand Valley, he sent Joe the skins—ears and all—forfeiting the reward from the State, and never mentioning it, either. Though he was seldom at home, he had a snug cabin with a dirt floor down by the river, four hound dogs, a wife, a melodeon that nobody could play, two strapping daughters, afraid of no man alive, and a suspension lamp.
They were only details in his life. He preferred the deep woods, often travelling in the wilderness for weeks alone, sometimes off with the State Survey, who always got him when they could, since he possessed a bump of location, a sense of direction that was phenomenal; often he was fishing or still-hunting for deer, or following his line of sable traps as far up as Panther Gorge and the summit of Mount Marcy. He could spend a week in the woods with no more than a dozen matches; when one got damp he rubbed it dry in his hair.
The two spent the night in the valley at the old white hotel with the green blinds. Early the next morning they provisioned up at the small store and post-office opposite, smelling of dried herrings, calico, cheese, baby’s shoes, and lumbermen’s new brogans.
Half a dozen habitués who had known Joe for years slid off the counter close to the cheese screen to grip him by the hand in welcome.
“Wall! Wall!” they exclaimed, and that was about all, except they added that, “Ed had been expectin’ ye and that your letter come all right.”