“Hist! Keep quiet. There’s a bear about the camp. Perhaps we can get a shot.”
We tiptoed after them. They had their rifles and I my revolver. The fading light glimmered faintly across the lake and over the open, swampy margin. We peered eagerly through the gloaming; but, strain eye and ear as we might, we scanned the landscape in vain. Bruin wisely concluded not to do battle at such great odds against him. A few shots, that provoked hollow, lonesome echoes from the wilderness, we fired in the direction in which the bear had last been heard.
We turned to look at our surroundings. On the verge of the woods, a few hundred yards from where the path terminated at the lake, was a very small log cabin, with one window, breast high, and a low door. This was to be our quarters for the night. Our friends, quickly starting a brisk fire at the front, sat down for a few minutes’ chat before they began their dark, and, to less practiced persons, uncertain journey home. We took occasion to glean all the information we could regarding our proposed route. Great were our astonishment and dismay at their replies.
“Well,” remarked one, “when I hear’n that you fellows were going down the Rock and Cedar rivers, I just said right out loud to myself, ‘They can’t do it.’ Do you know how far you will get to-morrow if you begin work early in the morning and work all day just as hard as you can? You won’t go no farther than six miles below—to where the Cedar River comes in. There ain’t enough water, and it’s rough and rocky all the way. When you get down to Cedar River there be some still water; but it is all filled up with logs. There isn’t no paths, and the woods be too thick for you to carry your things around any of the bad places. You will have to drag your boat over the rocks a smart bit of the way, and you stand a mighty good chance of getting it smashed.”
“Would you advise us to take our outfit back to the road and wait for some team to take us to North River?” we inquired. “The water is deep enough there, is it not?”
“I wouldn’t say what I think you ought to do ’cept as you ask it. We ain’t trying to frighten ye; but I don’t think any of the boys livin’ up this way, unless they had a blamed good reason, would think to try what you said you wanted to do. It’s too late to get back through the woods to-night. I would stay right here on this pile of balsam boughs in your shanty till morning, then carry your things back to the road, and wait until an empty wagon comes your way. But we’ve got to get home, so good-night!”
Maynard and I built up the fire with green wood to make smoke and drive off the insect pests, universal in these dense woods; and each crawling into his sleeping bag, made by sewing several blankets together, slept until long after sunrise.
I stepped over to a little brook that dashed by our camp to take my morning’s wash. A large flat stone was lying in the middle of the stream. On this I stood, and while making a liberal lather, discovered on another rock only three feet away a big green bullfrog, staring at me with a fixed, immovable, owl-like gaze. After several efforts, which did not seem to alarm him in the least, I finally succeeded in landing some soapsuds in his eyes. This made him relax sufficiently to wink violently two or three times, but not enough to change his posture or the glassy gleam of his optics. With no better effect I again anointed him, but the third time I gave him such a nasty dose that he deliberately waddled down to the water, put his head under, and removed the objectionable foreign substance. Then he ambled back to his old roost, composedly resuming his position in a way which seemed to say, “Keep it up if you want to; it don’t hurt me any.” I laughed till I was tired, and left this genuine humorist of nature in undisturbed possession.
After breakfast we very leisurely carried our canoe and equipment back to the road. We reposed under the trees, waiting for “something to turn up,” but as hour after hour slipped by, we found it very monotonous. We had almost reconciled ourselves to staying where we were for the night, when with joy we saw a wagon coming our way.