Jack laughed and looked at Josef, who laughed also and shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t know exactly,” the boy said. “We’re just ‘loungin’ ’round and sufferin’,’ like Brer Fox. I rather think we’ll ramble up-stream and take the new trail the guardian cut last winter to Lac Creux. I’ve never been there. And then come back and put up our tent on your lake for the night, if you don’t mind, sir. It’s down there now, with the canoe, at the mouth of this little river,” and he stamped a boot caressingly into the brown water, as one pats an animal in speaking of it.
“Put up with me over-night,” suggested the m’sieur. “I’ve plenty of room; it would be a great pleasure. Then you needn’t bother with your tent or your kit.”
The clear eyes met the man’s with frank, pleased surprise; Jack never got used to the astonishing goodness of people in wanting him about. “Why, we’ll do that with bells on, if you’d really like us, sir,” he agreed heartily.
Ten minutes later the two lads were swinging again through the shifting mystery of the portage, following the narrowing river farther and farther up-stream, while the large m’sieur and Adelard, now in a pleasanter humor, progressed down-stream to the lake and the camp.
About six o’clock that evening the large m’sieur, whose name, incidentally, was Bradlee, spread a gray camp blanket on the pine-needles in front of his immense walled tent, and stretched it with care to the foot of a peculiarly luxurious stump—a stump of the right shape and angle and consistency to make a good back for a man to loll against. There is a large difference in the comfort of stumps. Mr. Bradlee sighed an unbroken sigh of satisfaction as he felt his weight settle rightly into curves of stump and of pine-needles and knew that his confidence in both had not betrayed him. It was the only manner of Morris-chair he had about, and it seemed of importance. He had been tramping all the afternoon, and he was tired and wanted luxury; he found it on the gray blanket, with his back against the spruce stump. Luxury, it is said, is a matter of contrast; this man’s scale of such things possibly began at a different point in New York; here in Canada, after a day’s heavy labor in portage and canoe, after coming back grimy and sweating and black-fly-bitten and footsore—after those things, a plunge in the lake and dry flannel clothes and a gray blanket and a stump realized luxury. So he sighed contentedly and shifted his leg to feel how comfortably the muscles ached in repose, as he drew his crowning happiness out of his pocket, that long brown happiness called a cigar. Yet he was conscious as he lit it, and pulled the first delicious puff, that he was still unsatisfied.
“I wish that cub would come,” Bradlee murmured half-aloud.
Behold, around the corner of the spruce point which guarded the bay, dark on the silvery water, a canoe shot forward, swift, silent. Bradlee with one long pull took his cigar from his mouth and held it as he watched. It was a picture to remember—the blue sky with pink and copper cotton-batting clouds; below that the band of dark woods, sunlight gone from them, crowding to the lake; below that the gray shimmer of water and the dark bulk of the canoe, and the double paddle flash of the stroke of the two powerful lads under which the canoe leaped toward him out of the hills. The indescribable intoxication of the Canadian mountain air was about him, immense, pervading; he heard the beat of the paddles and the long swish of the water after each bound of the canoe; now Jack missed a stroke and shot his paddle high in the air in salute, but did not break the infinite quiet with a spoken word.
“Most boys would have howled their heads off at sight; this one respects the sanctuaries,” thought the man.
With that the springing boat was close and he got up and stood at the water’s edge and the bow crushed, with a soothing sound which canoe people know, up the wet sand. Jack arose, stretched his legs, and stepped out, tall and dirty and happy; bare-headed, bare-armed, the gray flannel shirt décolleté around his strong neck, his face streaked with mother earth, and with blood of murdered black flies, but bright with that peace which shines from faces which nature has smoothed for a while.
“Glad to see you, young man; hope you have an appetite,” spoke Bradlee cordially, and felt the place all at once illumined by a buoyant presence.