The young girl had come running to him as we approached the cabin, and it was pretty to see how she clung to him as they walked.
“Junie ain’t er goin’ ter no Home along while ole Grandpa Buck is ’raoun’, is she now? Junie, she knows more ’baout the woods ’n all them dum’ fool scout boys put tergether. Ain’t she a nice little girl—that’s Junie.”
It was a pretty picture; perhaps it was all the prettier because there was a shadow behind it. For old Buck Sanderson was not going to be in his old hunting ground much longer. He was going to another hunting ground—the Happy Hunting Ground, as the Indians called it. And what about little June Sanderson then?
CHAPTER VII—June and December
It was now mid-afternoon and I could not linger at old Buck’s cabin. But I sat upon the doorstep with him for a few minutes while he performed on that cartridge shell instrument of his. I actually saw him lure one of those noisy bluejays almost within reach of his arm, and I think he would have captured it if his granddaughter had not laughed aloud at my astonishment.
By using the shell in conjunction with a pebble he could reproduce the appalling sound of a rattlesnake. No rattlesnakes appeared, however. The girl assured me it was a “sure enough take off.” I don’t know; I have never heard a rattlesnake. I told her that if I ever heard that sound, even in church, I would run, which seemed greatly to amuse her. “’Fraid cat!” she said, and added that there were “heaps and heaps and heaps” of rattlesnakes around there. I told her one small heap would be enough for me. Her innocent amusement at my tenderfoot quality was very pretty to see. And her buoyancy against the background of her old grandfather’s lazy manner and drawling voice was very attractive.
I suspected she was right about the rattlesnakes. I have always associated rattlesnakes with hollows and gullies and impenetrable depths of thicket. Whenever you visit a neighborhood of weird and haunting wildness you will be told (by people who have not put it to the test) that there are rattlesnakes there. The rattlesnake seems to be a sort of symbol of the dark and forbidding spots in nature—gloomy fastnesses, dank caverns on mountainsides, and the like.
Be that as it might, this spot seemed to me the very ideal habitat of those dreadful reptiles. It derived its name not only from them, but from a small gulch which broke the woods and was all but hidden by a maze of interwoven brush which grew in the depth of that horrid place and luxuriantly overflowed its brink. You might step into this gaping trap of nature without knowing it.
Long Buck told me that once a brook had flowed through that overgrown hollow and that a time had been when he and his primitive neighbor Conner had got their water there. What a company they must have made in those old days—Buck and Mink Havers and Conner! What a life they must have led in that remote wilderness!
Buck’s cabin was upon the brink of this gulch and by following its course (which as I said was now indicated by a ridge of overflowing brush) you came to the area of scattered stone which had once been the foundation of Conner’s cabin. Near to that, and somewhat included in the area of overgrowing thicket, was the black hole which had been Conner’s well. It seemed unlikely that rattlesnakes would miss such a place. It was hard for me to believe that not so far distant the encircling White Bar Trail of the Boy Scouts crossed the invisible private trail of these lusty old settlers. Though to be sure the White Bar Trail is no boulevard.