The lure of Piper's Glen

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

"Fine," he said. "I'll manage," with all the conviction in the world and a total lack of ideas.

It was not till that night that the big idea came. He'd always wanted to go North to the logging country—North to the region where his uncle had so often hunted and fished and felt the lure of the big timber. Why not go North and get a job? His parents would be away, he'd have a little money, and all the thoughtfully chosen kit he had inherited from his uncle the year before. The poor man had died possessed of little else but guns of the best makes, equipment of every known manufacture and sort for life in the wilds of every continent. It had been his passion, and he had spared no expense in making his outfit perfect from a sportsman's point of view. Much of the assortment had never been used, but there it was, perfect in every detail.

"I'd better take everything he had of his northern camping stuff," said young Todhunter to himself. "You never know your luck."

His own luck seemed pretty fair, for the first man he interviewed—an old friend of both his father and his uncle—knew the timber country well; had camped and surveyed all over it, and was acquainted with numerous guides, trappers, prospectors, and lumbermen. He, in turn, had a friend who thought young Todhunter might do worse than go to Millbrook.

Millbrook was in the heart of the wilderness, thought of which appealed most to young Jim Todhunter, and there also seemed to be a business opportunity there. A Mr. Hammond carried on a business in timber and supplies at this pioneer outpost, where, according to his uncle's friend, there were moose, caribou, deer, and bear right at the door. No doubt Hammond would welcome as assistant a young American with a little capital, which might eventually be invested in the business, although, of course, salary would be meager to start with.

A rapid interchange of letters took place, and it ended in Hammond's writing to say he'd find a place for a young chap with some capital of his own—Jim's modest hundreds would go quite a way in the timber country. James's uncle's friend didn't know much of Hammond himself, but "splendid fellows, all of them, in those virgin lands: big hearted, big souled," he assured young Todhunter genially, and betook himself to his own affairs.

Thus it was that one September day young James Todhunter found himself being lurched along in the single passenger car of a single track railway, eventually to reach Covered Bridge, the end of iron of that particular system of transportation.

His baggage consisted of the pick of his late uncle's assortment and certainly impressed the station-master at Covered Bridge. Here was a picnic-basket, as large as a cabin-trunk and as full of ingenious complications as a lady's dressing-bag. Here was a collapsible bath and an Arctic sleeping-bag. Rifle and gun each reposed in a large case of hard, yellow leather. Here were boots for every phase of life in the North as imagined and experienced by his uncle, a trunkful of them. Here were fishing-rods in canvas cases—a rod for each of every size and variety of finny gamester, from the tarpoon to the sardine. The other necessities of life—clothing, sheath-knives, cases of razors, field-glasses, a photographic outfit, revolvers, a spirit-lamp, and so on—were contained in three large trunks and two smaller cases, also of leather.

The station-master, who was also the telegraph operator, was a busy young man. He had very little time to devote to Jim even after the engine had been reversed on a turntable and had gone away, pushing cars of sawn lumber and cord-wood before it. He walked around the pyramid of Jim's baggage on the open platform seven times, only to retire each time, without a word, to the little red shack that was evidently his office.

Jim sat on one of his boxes and waited for Mr. Hammond. He smoked cigarettes and surveyed the scene. The September sun shone bright upon the wooded hills, the rapid brown river, the narrow fields and the gray bridge. The foliage of maples and birches among the dark green and purple of the forests was showing patches and dashes of red and yellow. There was a pleasant tang in the air suggestive of wood-smoke and sun-steeped balsam and running water and frost-nipped ferns.