“I hear it,” he cried out.
Josef smiled indulgently; he liked to teach woodcraft to his young m’sieur; also M’sieur Jack was a good scholar; there was no other m’sieur of the club, young or old, to whom he would give the bow of his canoe in going through a difficult rapids; he had done that with M’sieur Jack. Yes, and also M’sieur Jack could tell if a male or female beaver had gnawed the chips around a birch-trunk by the tooth-marks in the wood; Josef had taught him that. And M’sieur Jack was also capable to portage a canoe like a guide, tossing the heavy boat to his shoulders unaided and swinging off down a trail as silently, as swiftly as an Indian; and he could tie up a pacqueton—and make camp in a rain—and skin a moose; these things and others M’sieur Jack could do, and Josef was proud of him. But M’sieur Jack could not see into the woods like Josef and he was not as quick at hearing sounds—of that also Josef was proud. So he smiled and waited for the question sure to come. “What the dickens makes you think he’s a big man—un homme pesant?” asked Jack.
They were moving forward along the trail, Jack leading, and throwing his sentences in an undertone, as instinct teaches one to speak in the woods, over his shoulder to Josef. And for answer Josef flung out his muscular arm, in its faded blue calico sleeve, and pointed ahead. Jack stumbled on a root as he followed the pointing hand, and, recovering, caught sight of a tan-colored sweater far in front, even now barely in range of sight, hung on a tree by the path.
“It is not warm to-day, par exemple; a m’sieur who is not somewhat fat would not feel the walking in this portage—so as to take off that,” Josef reasoned softly, in jerks.
“Did you see that—away back there? Well, I’ll be—” staccatoed the lad, and Josef grinned with pleased vanity. “Josef, you’re a wizard,” the boy went on. “But never mind, my son, you’ll get fooled some time. I’ll bet he didn’t drop the landing-net. I’ll bet it was his leader-box or his cigarette-case. No landing-net. À bas, landing-nets! You’ll see!”
And Jack kicked at a rotten stump and sent it crashing in slow ruin, as if the vitality in him were overflowing through his long legs. So the two, the boy born into a broad life which faced from babyhood the open door of opportunity, and the boy scarcely five years older, born to a narrow existence, walled about with a high, undoored wall of unending labor—these two swung on brotherly, through the peace and morning freshness of the forest, and in the levelling reality of nature were equals.
The river sang. One saw it—out of the corner of the eye as one walked—brown in the pools, white where it tumbled over the rocks; the rocks speckled it with their thousand gray hummocks; grasses grew on them; a kingfisher fled scolding across the water and on down-stream; in the trail—the portage—it was all shimmering misty greens, with white sharp ranks of birch-trees; the wind murmured and blew against one’s face. Through such things the two stalwart lads walked on and were happy. The unconcerned gray stones of the rapids, which had looked exactly the same on the morning when Pharaoh’s daughter had found little Moses in the bulrushes, would look exactly the same, likely, two thousand years from now—for world-making is a long business and the Laurentian hills are the grandfathers of the planet, and stones reel off twenty centuries with small aging—these immemorial nobodies of an obscure little Canadian river had seen nothing pass by in their long, still lives blither or more alive than the two lads, gentleman and peasant, with their “morning faces” and their loping pace of athletes.
Around a turn they halted as by one brain order. Something moving. In Broadway a man in rapid motion is lost in a sea of men in rapid motion; in the woods a man lifts a slow finger and is so conspicuous that the mountains seem to shout a startled “Look!” The man at the edge of Profanity Pool leaned forward and lunged at his flies hanging tangled around his rod; he said “Damn!” The two boys, whom his movement had brought to a standstill, unseen, motionless in the shade of the narrow portage, shook with silent laughter.
With that Jack stepped forward, breaking a twig purposely, and came out on the rocks. The man looked up and saw him, a bright-faced, tall lad, claret and brown as to complexion, clean-limbed and strong as to build. Something in him drew a smile to the man’s face—it was not unlikely to be so.
“Bon jour,” Jack said with a haul at his cap, and stuffing it into his pocket further; and then “Good-morning, sir. Any luck?”