BRUIN AT A MAPLE-SUGAR PARTY.
ONE evening near the first of April, three years ago this spring, I was making my way the best I could down from the west branch of the Penobscot River towards the plantation of Nikertou. (Up in Maine they call an unincorporated town a plantation. Down south the word has a different meaning.) How and why I came to be in that wild section, at the hour of twilight, may need a word in explanation.
A month previously I had been sent up to the “Head of Chesuncook” from Bangor, by the lumbering firm of which my uncle was a member, to pay off one of their “gangs,” which made the “head” of that lake a sort of depot and place of rendezvous.
Both going up and coming back as far as the foot of Lake Pemadumcook, I had had with me, as guide and armed protector, an old hunter named Hughy Clives. But on getting down to the foot of this lake, and within six or eight miles of Nikertou, old Hughy had been seized with a sudden desire to leave me and to go to Millinocket Lake in quest of otters; and so giving me my “course” for Nikertou, he had bidden me “good luck,” and again started northward.
It was a warm, spring-like afternoon, though the snow in that region still lay to the depth of three or four feet; but on my snow-shoes I didn’t mind the depth; the main thing was to keep out of the brush and the dense hemlock and cedar thickets.
It was about two o’clock when I left the river; and I had expected to get down to the little “settlement” by sunset. But the sun went below the distant spruce-clad ridges, and dusk fell, with as yet no signs of a “clearing.” Had I lost my way? My little pocket-compass said I was all right—if Hughy had given me a correct course; and I had all confidence in the old man too. Still, as the twilight deepened around me, with the unbroken forest stretching drearily ahead, I began to feel rather uneasy; especially as (since parting with Hughy and his rifle) I had no weapon save a jack-knife and a little pocket-pistol I had brought along with me from Bangor—not very effective arms in case a catamount should take it into his head to drop down upon me from a tree-top, or a big black bear to step out from behind one of those low hemlocks, or even a cross old “lucivee” to rush out from some of those thick cedar clumps. For thoughts of these things had begun to pop into my mind. I was but seventeen then, and hadn’t quite outgrown my fear of the dark. And thus plodding timorously onward, thinking on many things injurious to a boy’s courage, I had begun to think I should have to make a night of it there, somewhere, when the red gleam of a fire, from the crest of the ridge before me, suddenly burst out on the darkness, banishing all my fears. For a fire, whether in a hunter’s camp or a farm-house window, is good evidence of man’s presence, with food and shelter—the two great wants of the belated.
Hurrying on, I made my way up the slope. The fire seemed to be in the open air, among trees—a woodman’s camp probably; and, knowing that these men are sometimes a little ticklish about having strangers come too suddenly into their night camps, I halted, while yet at some distance, for a good look ahead.
There seemed to be several large kettles, slung with chains from a “lug-pole” supported by strong crotched stakes at each end—a circumstance which struck me as a little odd at a hunting-fire. No one was in sight, though a sort of half shelter of hemlock might contain the campers. Whatever they were, it would be well to hail them. So, calling in my breath, I gave a loud “hullo.”