The Homeward Trail
n the lumber camp, far back upon the lonely headquarters of the Quah-Davic, there was the stir of something unusual afoot. It was Christmas Eve, and every kerosene lamp, lantern, and candle that the camp could boast, was blazing. The little square windows gleamed softly through the dust and cobwebs of unwashen years. For all the cold that snapped and bit through the stillness of the forest night, the door of the camp was thrown wide open, and from it a long sheet of light spread out across the trodden and chip-littered snow. Around the doorway crowded the rough-shirted woodsmen, loafing and smoking after their prodigious dinner of boiled pork, boiled beans, and steaming-hot molasses cake. The big box-stove behind them, which heated the camp, was wearing itself to a dull red glow; and the air that rushed out with the light from the open door was heavy with the smell of wet woollens, wet larrigans, and wet leather. Many of the men were wearing nothing on their feet but their heavy, home-knit socks of country yarn; but in these they did not hesitate to come out upon the dry snow, rather than trouble themselves to resume their massive foot-gear.
Before the door, in the spread of the light, stood a pair of sturdy, rough-coated gray horses, hitched to a strong box sled, or "pung." The bottom of the pung was covered thick with straw, and over the broad, low seat were blankets, with one heavy bearskin robe. Into the space behind the seat a gaunt, big-shouldered man was stowing a haunch of frozen moose-meat. A lanky, tow-haired boy of fifteen was tucking himself up carefully among the blankets on the left-hand side of the seat. The horses stood patient, but with drooping heads, aggrieved at being taken from the stable at this unwonted hour. In the pale-blue, kindly, woods-wise eyes of both the man and the boy shone the light of happy anticipation. They seemed too occupied and excited to make much response to the good-natured banter of their comrades, but grinned contentedly as they hastened their preparations for departure. The man was Steve Williams, best axe-man and stream-driver in the camp; the boy, young Steve, his eldest son, who was serving as "cookee," or assistant to the camp cook. The two were setting out on a long night drive through the forest to spend Christmas with their family, on the edge of the lonely little settlement of Brine's Brook.
When all was ready, the big-shouldered woodsman slipped into the seat beside his son, pulled the blankets and the bearskin all about him, and picked up the reins from the square dashboard. A sharp tchk started the horses, and, amid a chorus of shouts,—good nights and Merry Christmases, and well-worn rustic pleasantries,—the loaded pung slid forward from the light into the great, ghost-white gloom beyond. The sled-bells jangled; the steel runners crunched and sang frostily; and the cheerful camp, the only centre of human life within a radius of more than twenty miles, sank back behind the voyagers. There was the sound of a door slamming, and the bright streak across the snow was blotted out. The travellers were alone on the trail, with the solemn ranks of trees and the icy-pointed stars.
They were well prepared, these two happy Christmas adventurers, to face the rigours of the December night. Under their heavy blanket-coats were many thicknesses of homespun flannel. Inside their high-laced, capacious "shoe-packs" were several pairs of yarn socks. Their hands were covered by double-knit home-made mittens. Their heads were protected by wadded caps of muskrat fur, with flaps that pulled down well over the ears. The cold, which iced their eyelashes, turned the tips of their up-turned coat-collars and the edges of their mufflers to board, and made the old trees snap startlingly, had no terrors at all for their hardy frames. Once well under way, and the camp quite out of sight, they fell to chatting happily of the surprise they would give the home folks, who did not expect them home for Christmas. They calculated, if they had "anyways good luck," to get home to the little isolated backwoods farmhouse between four and five in the morning, about when grandfather would be getting up by candle-light to start the kitchen fire for mother, and then go out and fodder the cattle. They'd be home in time to wake the three younger children (young Steve was the eldest of a family of four), and to add certain little carven products of the woodsman's whittling—ingenious wooden toys, and tiny elaborate boxes, filled with choicest globules of spruce gum—to the few poor Christmas gifts which the resourceful and busy little mother had managed to get together against the festival. As they talked these things over, slowly and with frugal speech, after the fashion of their class, suddenly was borne in upon them a sense of the loneliness of the home folks' Christmas if they should fail to come. Under the spell of this feeling, a kind of inverted homesickness, their talk died into silence. They sat thinking, and listening to the hoarse jangle of their bells.
In such a night as this, few of the wild kindreds were astir in the forest. The bears, raccoons, woodchucks, and chipmunks were snugly "holed up," and sleeping away the great white cold. The deer and moose were in their well-trodden "yards," for the snow was deep. The travellers knew that there were plenty of wood-mice astir,—that if there had been light enough they would have seen their delicate trails wandering everywhere among the trees. But the jangling of the sled-bells was enough to keep all shy beasts at a distance. Only the porcupine was quite undaunted by the strange sounds. One came out into the middle of the road, and stood there seemingly to dispute passage. The boy, in whom primal instincts were still dominant, was for getting out and killing the insolent little bristler. But the father turned the team aside, and gracefully yielded the road, saying:
"Let him be, son! The woods is hisn as much as ourn. An' I respect him, fer he ain't skeered of nothin' that goes on legs!"
An hour later, when the boy was getting very drowsy from watching the ceaseless procession of dark fir-trees, his father nudged him, and whispered, "Look!" The boy, wide awake on the instant, peered into the gloom, and presently his trained young eyes made out a shadowy, slouching form, that flitted without a sound from tree to tree.