The Oxbow Wizard

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

“That was a day’s work, and I’m darn glad it’s through with!” he exclaimed, leaning back in his chair and closing his eyes.

Andy Mace didn’t say a word.

Young Dan sat up and looked all around. He saw the glow of the fire in the rusty stove, red embers on the hearth, and the lighted lantern at the little window, hooked to a nail in the frame. The room was poorly illuminated. Most of it, including Andy Mace’s bunk, was in deep shadow.

“He’s taking a nap,” reflected Young Dan. “I guess his knee hurts him more’n he lets on, and maybe it kept him awake last night.”

He hunched forward and untied the frozen thongs of his snowshoes very quietly, fearful of disturbing the sleeper. Stealthily he put a few sticks of wood in the stove and a log on the red embers in the chimney. Next, he pussy-footed over to the window and unhooked the lantern and set it down on the table near the stove. He felt bone-tired and sleepy, but his spirit was untouched by fatigue. Recalling Andy’s statement concerning supper, he decided to cook something good—something elaborate, like buckwheat pancakes or bacon—and boil a big pot of coffee, without waking the sluggard. He would even go so far as to tuck into the grub before arousing the sleeper by clattering a spoon against the coffee-pot. It would be a good joke on the old boy.

Owing to the changed position of the lantern, Andy Mace’s bunk was now free from shadow. Young Dan glanced at it and instantly forgot the contemplated joke. The bunk was empty!

Young Dan felt a sharp sense of unreality, as daunting as it was new to him—but in a moment the chill of that gave way before a surge of anxiety. He searched through the camp in a minute, all his weariness forgotten. Andy Mace was nowhere indoors; his snowshoes were gone, too; but his rifle leaned in its usual corner, in its old canvas case. Young Dan began to dress for the open with both hands and both feet. His coat, cap, mittens and snowshoes all seemed to fall into position and attach themselves at once. He took up the lantern and his rifle and went out, pulling the door shut behind him.

Young Dan found his partner’s tracks in fifteen seconds. They did not lead along any one of the four lines of traps. They told him, as plain as print, that the old man’s right leg was still as stiff as a ramrod. Why Andy had gone into the woods at such an hour, lame or limber, was more than he could even begin to imagine. He reckoned the time of Andy’s departure from the camp by the condition of the fire in the stove at the time of his return. He put it at something between an hour and a half and two hours.

He followed the trail in feverish haste for a hundred yards or so, then halted and shouted his partner’s name at the top of his voice. A faint shout came back to him. He yelled again and continued his advance, holding the lantern high and struggling in the snow-choked underbrush like a swimmer in heavy surf. He reflected that Andy had certainly taken a bee-line for wherever he was bound, regardless of natural obstacles. In his care to keep the lantern from contact with the snow he stumbled heavily several times and at last fell flat. The thick, hot glass of the lantern cracked like a pistol-shot and fell apart as it plunged into the snow, and the flame sizzled to extinction.

Young Dan arose to his knees slowly and in silence, with his rifle in one hand and the ring of the chimneyless lantern in the other. In silence he struggled to his feet and reset his right snowshoe. What’s the use of talking when you know that the words required by your emotions don’t exist? Still in silence, he cleared his eyes and neck of snow. Then, to his great relief, he saw a yellow glow of fire-light far away beyond the tangled screens of the forest. He went straight for the light with as much noise and almost as much speed as a bull moose in a hurry. He bored ahead, shielding his face with the cased rifle and battered lantern, and letting his feet look after themselves. He frequently snarled his snowshoes in the brush and took a header, but he was never down for more than five seconds at a time.