THE DUNE COUNTRY

The Dune Country.

THE
DUNE COUNTRY

By
EARL H. REED
AUTHOR OF
“THE VOICES OF THE DUNES”
“ETCHING: A PRACTICAL TREATISE”
WITH SIXTY ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD
TORONTO: S. B. GUNDY, MCMXVI

Copyright, 1916
By JOHN LANE COMPANY
PRESS OF
Eaton & Gettinger
NEW YORK, U.S.A.

To C. C. R.

INTRODUCTION

THE text and illustrations in this book are intended to depict a strange and picturesque country, with some of its interesting wild life, and a few of the unique human characters that inhabit it.

The big ranges of sand dunes that skirt the southern and eastern shores of Lake Michigan, and the strip of sparsely settled broken country back of them, contain a rich fund of material for the artist, poet, and nature lover, as well as for those who would seek out the oddities of human kind in by-paths remote from much travelled highways.

In the following pages are some of the results of numerous sketching trips into this region, covering a series of years. Much material was found that was beyond the reach of the etching needle or the lead pencil, but many things seemed to come particularly within the province of those mediums, and they have both been freely used.

While many interesting volumes could be filled by pencil and pen, this story of the dunes and the “back country” has been condensed as much as seems consistent with the portrayal of their essential characteristics.

We are lured into the wilds by a natural instinct. Contact with nature’s forms and moods is a necessary stimulant to our spiritual and intellectual life. The untrammelled mind may find inspiration and growth in congenial isolation, for in it there are no competitive or antagonistic influences to divert or destroy its fruitage.

Comparatively isolated human types are usually more interesting, for the reason that individual development and natural ruggedness have not been rounded and polished by social attrition.

Social attrition would have ruined “old Sipes,” a part of whose story is in this book, and if it had ever been mentioned to him he probably would have thought that it was something that lived up in the woods that he had never seen.

Fictitious names have, for various reasons, been substituted for some of the characters in the following chapters. One of the old derelicts objected strenuously to the use of his name. “I don’t want to be in no book,” said he. “You can draw all the pitchers o’ me you want to, an’ use ’em, but as fer names, there’s nothin’ doin’.”

“Old Sipes” suggested that if “Doc Looney’s pitcher was put in a book, some o’ them females might see it an’ locate ’im,” but as the “Doc” has now disappeared this danger is probably remote.

E. H. R.

CONTENTS.

THE DUNE COUNTRY

CHAPTER I
THE DUNE COUNTRY

WHILE there are immense stretches of sand dunes in other parts of the world, it is of a particular dune country, to which many journeys have been made, and in which many days have been spent, that this story will be told.

The dunes sweep for many miles along the Lake Michigan coasts. They are post-glacial, and are undergoing slow continual changes, both in form and place,—the loose sand responding lightly to the action of varying winds.

The “fixed dunes” retain general forms, more or less stable, owing to the scraggly and irregular vegetation that has obtained a foothold upon them, but the “wandering dunes” move constantly. The fine sand is wafted in shimmering veils across the smooth expanses, over the ridges to the lee slopes. It swirls in soft clouds from the wind-swept summits, and, in the course of time, whole forests are engulfed. After years of entombment, the dead trunks and branches occasionally reappear in the path of the destroyer, and bend back with gnarled arms in self-defence, seeming to challenge their flinty foe to further conflict.

The general movement is east and southeast, owing to the prevalence of west and northwest winds in this region, which gather force in coming over the waters of the lake. The finer grains, which are washed up on the beach, are carried inland, the coarser particles remaining near the shore. The off-shore winds, being broken by the topography of the country, exercise a less but still noticeable influence. The loose masses retreat perceptibly toward the beach when these winds prevail for any great length of time.

To many this region simply means a distant line of sandy crests, tree-flecked and ragged, against the sky on the horizon—a mysterious and unknown waste, without commercial value, and therefore useless from a utilitarian standpoint.

It is not the land, but the landscape, not the utility, but the romantic and interesting wild life among these yellow ranges that is of value. It is the picturesque and poetic quality that we find in this land of enchantment that appeals to us, and it is because of this love in our lives that we now enter this strange country.

The landscapes among the dunes are not for the realist, not for the cold and discriminating recorder of facts, nor the materialist who would weigh with exact scales or look with scientific eyes. It is a country for the dreamer and the poet, who would cherish its secrets, open enchanted locks, and explore hidden vistas, which the Spirit of the Dunes has kept for those who understand.

The winds have here fashioned wondrous forms with the shuttles of the air and the mutable sands. Shadowy fortresses have been reared and bannered with the pines. Illusive distant towers are tinged by the subtle hues of the afterglows, as the twilights softly blend them into the glooms. In the fading light we may fancy the outlines of frowning castles and weird battlements, with ghostly figures along their heights.

If the desert was of concrete, its mystery and spiritual power would not exist. The deadly silences which nature leaves among her ruins are appalling, unless brightened by her voices of enduring hope. It is then that our spirits revive with her.

There is an unutterable gloom in the hush of the rocky immensities, where, in dim ages past, the waters have slowly worn away the stony barriers of the great canyons among the mountains. The countless centuries seem to hang over them like a pall, when no living green comes forth among the stones to nourish the soul with faith in life to come. We walk in these profound solitudes with an irresistible sense of spiritual depression.

On Nature’s great palette green is the color of hope. We see it in the leaves when the miracle of the spring unfolds them, and on the ocean’s troubled waters when the sun comes from behind the curtains of the sky. Even the tiny mosses cover with their mantles the emblems of despair when decay begins its subtle work on the fallen tree and broken stump.

We find in the dune country whatever we take to it. The repose of the yellow hills, which have been sculptured by the winds and the years, reflects the solemnity of our minds, and eternal hope is sustained by the expectant life that creeps from every fertile crevice.

While the wandering masses are fascinating, it is among the more permanent forms, where nature has laid her restraining hand, that we find the most picturesque material. It is here that the reconstructive processes have begun which impart life to the waste places. At first, among these wastes, one is likely to have a sense of loneliness. The long, undulating lines of ridged sand inspire thoughts of hopeless melancholy. The sparse vegetation, which in its struggle for life pathetically seizes and holds the partially fertile spots among these ever-shifting masses, has the appearance of broken submission. The wildly tangled roots—derelicts of the sands—which have been deserted and left to bleach in the sun by the slow movement of the great hills, emphasize the feeling of isolation. The changing winds may again give them a winding sheet, but as a part of nature’s refuse, they are slowly and steadily being resolved back into her crucible.

“DERELICTS OF THE SANDS”

To the colorist the dunes present ever-changing panoramas of hue and tone. Every cloud that trails its purple, phantom-like shadow across them can call forth the resources of his palette, and he can find inspiration in the high nooks where the pines cling to their perilous anchorage.

The etcher may revel in their wealth of line. The harmonic undulations of the long, serrated crests, with sharp accents of gnarled roots and stunted trees, offer infinite possibilities in composition. To the imaginative enthusiast, seeking poetic forms of line expression, these dwarfed, neglected, crippled, and wasted things become subtle units in artistic arrangement.

As in all landscape, we find much material in these subjects that is entirely useless from an artistic standpoint. The thoughtful translator must be rigidly selective, and his work must go to other minds, to which he appeals, stripped of dross and unencumbered with superfluities. An ugly and ill-arranged mass of light and shade, that may disfigure the foreground, may be eliminated from the composition, but the graceful and slender weed growing near it may be used. A low, dark cloud in the distance may be carried a little farther away, if necessary, or it may be blown entirely away, if another cloud—floating only in the realm of imagination—will furnish the desired note of harmony. Truth need not necessarily be fact, but we must not include in our composition that which is not possible or natural to our subject. Representation of fact is not art, in its pure sense, but effective expression of thought, which fact may inspire, is art—and there is but one art, although there are many mediums.

IN THE WILD PLACES

One must feel the spirit and poetry of the dunes, if he deals with them as an artist who would send their story into the world. The magic of successful artistic translation changes the sense of desolation into an impression of wild, weird beauty and romantic charm. It is the wildness, the mystery, the deep solemnity, and the infinite grandeur of this region which furnish themes of appealing picturesqueness.

Man has changed or destroyed natural scenery wherever he has come into practical contact with it. The fact that these wonderful hills are left to us is simply because he has not yet been able to carry away and use the sand of which they are composed. He has dragged the pines from their storm-scarred tops, and is utilizing their sands for the elevation of city railway tracks. Shrieking, rasping wheels now pass over them, instead of the crow’s shadow, the cry of the tern, or the echo of waves from glistening and untrampled shores.

The turmoil and bustle of the outside world is not heard on the placid stretches of these quiet undulations. Here the weary spirit finds repose among elemental forms which the ravages of civilization have left unspoiled. If we take beautiful minds and beautiful hearts into the dune country, we will find only beauty in it; and if we have not the love of beauty, we walk in darkness.

Filmy veils of white mist gather in the hollows during the still, cool hours of the night, and begin to move like curling smoke wreaths with the first faint breaths of dawn. The early hours of the morning are full of strange enchantment, and dawn on the dunes brings many wonders. When the first gray tones of light appear, the night-prowlers seek seclusion, and the stillness is broken by the crows. A single note is heard from among the boughs of a far-off pine, and in a few moments the air is filled with the noisy conversation of these interesting birds—mingled with the cries of the gulls and terns, which have come in from the lake and are searching for the refuse of the night waves. The beams of a great light burst through the trees—the leaves and the sands are touched with gold—and the awakening of the hills has come.

The twilights bring forth manifold beauties which the bright glare of the day has kept within their hiding-places. The rich purples that have been concealed among secret recesses creep out on

(From the Author’s Etching)

DAWN IN THE HILLS

the open spaces to meet the silvery light of the rising moon, and the colors of the dusk come to weave a web of phantasy over the landscape.

(From the Author’s Etching)

TWILIGHT ON THE DUNES

It is then that the movement of nocturnal life commences and the tragedies of the night begin. A fleeting silhouette of a wing intersects the moon’s disc, and a dark shadowy thing moves swiftly across the sky-line of the trees. An attentive listener will hear many strange and mysterious sounds. The Dune People are coming forth to seek their food from God.

“A FLEETING SILHOUETTE OF A WING
INTERSECTS THE MOON’S DISC”

When the morning comes, if the air is still, we can find the stories on the sand. Its surface is interlaced with thousands of little tracks and trails, leading in all directions. The tracks of the toads, and the hundreds of creeping insects on which they subsist, are all over the open places, crossed and recrossed many times by the footmarks of crows, herons, gulls, sandpipers, and other birds.

The movement of the four-footed life is mostly nocturnal. We find the imprints of the fox, raccoon, mink, muskrat, skunk, white-footed mouse, and other quadrupeds, that have been active during the night. To the practiced eye these trails are readily distinguishable, and often traces are found of a tragedy that has been enacted in the darkness. Some confused marks, and a mussy-looking spot on the sand, record a brief struggle for existence, and perhaps a few mangled remains, with some scattered feathers or bits of fur, are left to tell the tale. A weak life has gone out to support a stronger.

With the exception of the insects, the mice are the most frequent victims. Their hiding-places under tufts of grass, old stumps and decayed wood are ruthlessly sought out and the little families eagerly devoured. The owls glide silently over the wastes, searching the deep shadows for the small, velvet-footed creatures whose helplessness renders them easy prey. They are subject to immutable law and must perish.

Much of the mysterious lure of the dunes is in the magnificent sweep of the great lake along the wild shores. Its restless waters are the complement of the indolent sands. The distant bands of deep blue and green, dappled with dancing white-caps, in the vistas through the openings, impart vivid color accents to the grays and neutral tones of the foregrounds.

No great mind has ever flowered to its fullness that was insensible to the allurements of a large body of water. It may be likened to a human soul. It is now tempestuous, and now placid. Beneath its surface are unknown caverns and unsounded depths into which light never goes. If by chance some piercing ray should ever reach them, wondrous beauty might be revealed.

The waters of the lake are never perfectly still. In calms that seem absolute, a careful eye will find at least a slight undulation.

On quiet days the little waves ripple and lisp along the miles of wet sand, and the delicate streaks of oscillating foam creep away in a feathery and uncertain line, that fades and steals around a distant curve in the shore.

(From the Author’s Etching)

THE SONG OF THE EAST SHORE

After the storms the long ground-swells roll in for days, beating their rhythmic measures, and unfolding their snowy veils before them as they come.

The echoes of the roar of the surf among the distant dunes pervade them with solemn sound. An indefinable spirit of mute resistance and power broods in the inert masses. They seem to be holding back mighty and remote forces that beat upon their barriers.

The color fairies play out on the bosom of the lake in the silver radiance of the moon and stars, and marvelous tones are spread upon it by the sun and clouds. Invisible brushes, charged with celestial pigments, seem to sweep over its great expanse, mingling prismatic hues and changing them fitfully, in wayward fancy, as a master might delight to play with a medium that he had conquered. Fugitive cloud shadows move swiftly over areas of turquoise and amethyst. Fleeting iridescent hues revel with the capricious breezes in loving companionship.

When the storm gods lash the lake with whistling winds, and send their sullen dark array through the skies, and the music of the tempest blends with song of the surges on the shore, the color tones seem to become vocal and to mingle their cadences with the voices of the gale.

We may look from the higher dune tops upon panoramas of surpassing splendor. There are piles on piles of sandy hills, accented with green masses and solitary pines. These highways of the winds and storms, with their glittering crowns and shadowy defiles, sweep into dim perspective. Their noble curves become smaller and smaller, until they are folded away and lost on the horizon’s hazy rim.

(From the Author’s Etching)

HIGHWAYS OF THE WINDS

A sinuous ribbon of sunlit beach winds along the line of the breakers, and meets the point of a misty headland far away.

The blue immensity of the lake glistens, and is flecked with foam. White plumes are tossing and waving along the sky-line. In the foreground little groups of sandpipers are running nimbly along the edges of the incoming waves, racing after them as they retreat, and lightly taking wing when they come too near. There are flocks of stately gulls, balancing themselves with set wings, high in the wind, and a few terns are skimming along the crests. The gray figures of two or three herons are stalking about, with much dignity, near some driftwood that dots the dry sand farther up the shore.

Colors rare and glorious are in the sky. The sun is riding down in a chariot of gold and purple, attended by a retinue of clouds in resplendent robes. The twilight comes, the picture fades, but the spell remains.

Intrepid voyagers from the Old World journeyed along these primitive coasts centuries ago. Their footprints were soon washed away in the surf lines, but the romance of their trails still rests upon the sands that they traversed.

In years of obscure legend, birch-bark canoes were drawn out on the gleaming beach by red men who carried weapons of stone. They hunted and fought among the yellow hills. They saw them basking under summer suns, and swept by the furies of winter storms. From their tops they watched the dying glories of the afterglows in the western skies. They saw the great lake shimmer in still airs, and heard the pounding of remorseless waters in its sterner moods. They who carried the weapons of stone are gone, and time has hidden them in the silence of the past.

Out in the mysterious depths of the lake are pale sandy floors that no eye has ever seen. The mobile particles are shifted and eddied into strange shadowy forms by the inconstant and unknown currents that flow in the gloom. There are white bones and ghostly timbers there which are buried and again uncovered. There are dunes under the waters, as well as on the shores. Slimy mosses creep along their shelving sides and over their pallid tops into profound chasms beyond. Finny life moves among the subaqueous vegetation that thrives in the fertile areas, and out over the smooth wastes, but this is a world concealed. Our pictures are in the air.

When winter lays its mantle of snow upon the country of the dunes the whitened crests loom in softened lines. The contours become spectral in their chaste robes. Along the frosty summits the intricacies of the naked trees and branches, in their winter sleep, are woven delicately against the moody skies, and the hills, far away, draped in their chill raiment, stand in faint relief on the gray horizon. The black companies of the crows wing across the snow-clad heights in desultory flight.

When the bitter blasts come out of the clouds in the north, the light snow scurries over the hoary tops into the shelters of the hollows. Out in the ice fields on the lake grinding masses heave with the angry surges that seek the shore. Crystal fragments, shattered and splintered, shine in the dim light, far out along the margins of the open, turbulent water. Great piles of broken ice have been flung along the beach, heaped into bewildering forms by the billows, and a few gulls skirt the ragged frozen mounds for possible stray bits of food.

The wind and the cold have builded grim ramparts for the sunshine and the April rains to conquer.

(From the Author’s Etching)

“HERALDS OF THE STORM”

CHAPTER II
THE GULLS AND TERNS

THE gulls are a picturesque and interesting feature of dune life. These gray and white birds, while they do not entirely avoid human association, have few of the home-like charms of most of our feathered neighbors.

“Catfish John,” the old fisherman with whom I often talked about the birds and animals in the dune country, had very little use for them. He said that “they flopped ’round a whole lot, an’ seemed to keep a goin’.” He “didn’t never find no eggs, an’ they didn’t seem to set anywheres. They git away with the bait when its left out, an’ they seem mostly to live off’n fish an’ dead things they find on the beach an’ floatin’ round in the lake. They’ll tackle a mouthful big enough to choke a horse if they like the looks of it.”

He thought that “them that roosted out on the net stakes didn’t go to sleep entirely, or they’d slip off in the night.”

The gull has many charms for the ornithologist and the poet. He is valuable to the artist, as an accent in the sky, when he is on the wing, giving a thrill of life to the most desolate landscape.

“THEM THAT ROOSTED OUT ON THE NET STAKES”

He is interesting to the eye when proudly walking along the beach, or sitting silently, with hundreds of others, in solemn conclave on the shore. Old piles and floating objects in the lake have an added interest with his trim figure perched upon them. The perched birds seem magnified and ghostly when one comes suddenly upon them in the fog and they disappear with shrill cries into the mists.

There is no gleam of human interest in the eye of a gull. It is fierce, cold, and utterly wild. The birds we love most are those that nest in the land in which we live. The home is the real bond among living things, and our feathered friends creep easily into our affections when we can hear their love songs and watch their home life.

The transient winged tribes, that come and go—like ships on the sea—and rear their young in other lands, arouse our poetic reflections, challenge our admiration, and excite our love of the beautiful. They delight our eyes but not our hearts.

The graceful forms of the gulls give an ethereal note of exaltation to the spirit of the landscape—a suggestion of the Infinite—as they soar in long curves in the azure blue, or against the dark clouds that roll up in portentous masses from the distant horizon and sweep across the heavens over the great lake. They are the heralds of the storms, and a typical expression of life in the sky.

Their matchless grace on the wing, as they wheel in the teeth of the tempest or glide with set pinions in the currents of the angry winds, makes them a part of nature’s dramas in the heavens—aloof and remote from earthly things—mingling with the unseen forces and mysteries of the Great Unknown.

These rovers of the clouds seem to love no abodes but the stormy skies and foaming waves. Their flights are desultory when the winds are still. When the calms brood over the face of the waters, they congregate on the glassy surface, like little white fleets at anchor, and rest for hours, until hunger again takes them into the air.

They often leave the lake and soar over the dune country on windy days, searching far inland for food, but when night comes they return to the water.

In early August they come down from the Lake Superior country and from the more distant north, where perhaps many of them have spent the summer near the arctic circle. They bring with them their big brown young, from the rocky islands in those remote regions, and to these islands they will return in the spring. The young birds do not don their silver-gray plumage until the second year.

In the autumn the unseen paths in the sky are filled with countless wings on their way to the tropics, but the gulls remain to haunt the bare landscapes and the chill waters of the lake, until the return of the great multitudes of migrant birds in April or May, when they leave for their northern homes.

In the wake of the gulls come the terns—those graceful, gliding little creatures in pearl-gray robes—which skim and hover over the waves, and search them for their daily food.

There is something peculiarly elf-like and wispy in their flight. Agile and keen eyed, with their mosquito-like bills pointed downward, they dart furtively, like water-sprites, along the crests of the billows, seeming to winnow the foam and spray.

With low plaintive cries the scattered flocks follow the surf lines against the wind and the dipping wings can be seen far out over the lake.

They often pause in the air, and drop like plummets, entirely out of sight under water, in pursuit of unsuspecting small fish, to reappear with the wiggling tails of the little victims protruding from their bills. Many thousands of them patrol the shores and waters, but they also are transients, and soon wing their ways to colder or warmer climes.

The nature lover finds manifold charms in the bird life of the dune country. There are many varieties to interest him. While we may endeavor to restrict our consideration to the purely artistic side of the subject, it would be impossible to define a point that would separate the artistic instinct from the love of the live things, and of nature in general, for there is no such point. One merges naturally into the other.

It is not necessary for a lover of nature to have an exact scientific knowledge of all the things he sees in order to derive enjoyment from them, but a trained observer is more sensitive to the poetic influences of nature, has a wider range of vision, a greater capacity for appreciation, and is more deeply responsive to the subtle harmonies than one who is only susceptible to the more obvious aspects.

The love of the Little Things which are concealed from the ordinary eye comes only to one who has sought out their hiding-places, and learned their ways by tender and long association. Their world and ours is fundamentally the same, and to know them is to know ourselves.

We sometimes cannot tell whether the clear, flutelike note from the depths of the ravine comes from the thrush or the oriole, but we know that the little song has carried us just a little nearer to nature’s heart than we were before. If we could see the singer and learn his name, his silvery tones would be still more pure and sweet when he comes again.

The spring songs in the dune country seem to exalt and sanctify the forest aisles, and to weave a spell out over the open spaces. The still sands seem to awaken under the vibrant melodies of the choirs among the trees. These sanctuaries are not for those who would “shower shot into a singing tree,” but for him who comes to listen and to worship.

The voices of the dunes are in many keys. The cries of the gulls and crows—the melodies of the songsters—the wind tones among the trees—the roar of the surf on the shore—the soft rustling of the loose sands, eddying among the beach grasses—the whirr of startled wings in the ravines—the piping of the frogs and little toads in the marshy spots—the chorus of the katydids and locusts—the prolonged notes of the owls at night—and many other sounds, all blend into the greater song of the hills, and become a part of the appeal to our higher emotions, in this land of enchantment and mystery.

CHAPTER III
THE TURTLES

SOMETIMES we find interesting little comedies mapped on the sands.

One morning the July sun had come from behind the clouds, after a heavy rain, and quickly dried the surface, leaving the firm, wet sand underneath. On the dunes, walks are particularly delightful when the moist, packed sand becomes a yellow floor, but it requires much endurance and enthusiasm to trudge through miles of soft sand on a hot day and retain a contemplative mood.

We suddenly came upon some turtle tracks, beginning abruptly out on an open space, indicating that the traveler had probably withdrawn into the privacy and shelter of his mobile castle, and resumed his journey when the sun appeared. All traces of his arrival at the point where the tracks began had been obliterated by the rain.

We were curious to ascertain his objective, and as the trail was in perfect condition, we followed it carefully for several hundred yards, when we found another trail interrupting it obliquely from another direction. Within an area of perhaps twenty feet in diameter the tracks had left a confused network on the smooth sand. Evidently there had been much discussion and consideration before a final decision had been reached. Then the trails started off in the same direction, side by side, varying from a foot to two feet or so apart.

There was much mystery in all this. Our curiosity continued, and about half a mile farther on the smaller trail of the last comer suddenly veered off toward the lake and disappeared in the wet sand of the beach. The original trail finally ended several hundred yards farther on in a clear stream, and there we saw Mr. Hardfinish resting quietly on the shallow bottom, with the cool current flowing over him.

We may have stumbled on a turtle romance. Perhaps a tryst had been kept, and after much argument and persuasion the two had decided to combine their destinies. It may have been incompatibility of temperament, or affection grown cold, which caused the later estrangement. A fickle heart may have throbbed under the shell of the faithless amphibian who had joined the expedition, but whatever the cause of the separation was, the initiator of the journey had been left to finish it alone. His trail showed no wavering at the point of desertion, and evidently the rhythm of his march was not disturbed by it.

There is much food for reflection in this story on the sand. What we call human nature is very largely the nature of all animal life, and community of interest governs all association. When it ceases to exist, the quadruped or biped invariably seeks isolation. Selfishness is soul solitude.

In the case of the turtles the highly civilized divorce courts were not necessary. They simply quit.

The record of the little romance was written upon a frail page, which the next wind or shower obliterated as completely as time effaces most of the stories of human lives.

The turtles are persistent wanderers. Their trails are found all through the dune country, and usually a definite objective seems to be indicated. A trail will begin at the margin of a small pond back of the hills, and follow practically a direct route for a long distance to another pond, often over a mile away. Sometimes high eminences intervene, which are patiently climbed over without material alteration in the course which the mysterious compass under the brown shell has laid before it.

The deserted habitat may have been invaded by unwelcome new arrivals and rendered socially unattractive. Domestic complications may have inspired the pilgrimage, the voyager may have decided that he was unappreciated in the community in which he lived, or he may have been excommunicated for unbelief in established turtle dogmas.

The common variegated pond turtle, which is the variety most often found among the dunes, is a beautiful harmless creature, but his wicked cousin, the snapping turtle, is an ugly customer. He leads a life of debased villainy, and no justification for his existence has yet been discovered. He is a rank outlaw, and the enemy of everything within his radius of destruction. His crimes are legion, and like the sand-burr, he seems to be one of nature’s inadvertencies. The mother ducks, the frog folk, and all the small life in the sloughs dread his sinister bulk and relentless jaws.

He is a voracious brute, and feeds upon all kinds of animal fare. He often attains a weight of about forty pounds, and the rough moss covered shell of a full grown specimen is sometimes fourteen inches long. One of the peculiarities of this repulsive wretch is that he strikes at his victims much in the same manner as a rattlesnake, and with lightning-like rapidity.

Possibly he was sent into the world to assist in enabling us to accentuate our blessings by contrast—as some people we occasionally meet undoubtedly were—and it is best to let him absolutely alone. He is an evil and unclean thing and we will pass him by. Like the skunk, he does not invite companionship, and has no social charms whatever.

It was not he who helped to play the little comedy on the sand.

SOCIALLY UNATTRACTIVE

“STEADILY WINGING THEIR WAY
TO THE CHOSEN SPOT”

CHAPTER IV
THE CROWS

OF all the wild life among the dunes, the crow is the most active and conspicuous. He is ever present in the daytime, and his black form seems to be intimately associated with nearly every mass and contour in the landscape.

The artists and the poets can love him, but the hand of the prosaic and the philistine is against him. His enemies are numberless, and his life is one of constant combat and elusion. The owls seek him at night, and during the day he meets antagonism in many forms. Some ornithologists have tried to find justification for the crow, but the weight of the testimony is against him. He pilfers the eggs and nestlings of the songsters, invades the newly planted cornfields, and apparently abuses every confidence reposed in him.

He has been known to take his family into fields of sprouting potatoes and, when the plants were hardly out of the ground, feed its members on the soft tubers which were used as seed. Even very young chickens and ducks enter into his economies. He is an inveterate mischiefmaker, and by those who fail to see the attractive sides of his character, is looked upon as a general nuisance.

He cannot be considered valuable from a utilitarian point of view, but as a picturesque element he possesses many charms. Notwithstanding the sins laid at his door, this bird is of absorbing interest. His genteel insolence, his ability to cope with the wiles of his persecutors, and his complete self-assurance may well challenge our admiration.

He takes full charge of the dune country before the morning sun appears above the horizon, and maintains his vigils until the evening shadows relieve him from further responsibility. All of the happenings on the sands, and among the pines, are subjected to his careful inspection and noisy comment. His curiosity is intense, and any unusual object or event will attract his excited scrutiny and an agitated assemblage of his friends.

Like many people, he is both wise and foolish to a surprising degree. He is crafty and circumspect in his methods of obtaining food and avoiding most of his enemies, but shows a lack of judgment when his curiosity is aroused.

He will approach quite near to a person sitting still, but will retreat in great trepidation at the slightest movement. An old crow knows the difference between a cane and a gun, but a man carrying a gun can ride a horse much nearer to him than he can go on foot.

In the community life of the crows there is much material for study. Their social organization is cohesive and effective. It is impossible not to believe that they have a limited language. Different cries produce different effects among them. They undoubtedly communicate with each other. The older and wiser crows have qualities of leadership which compel or attract the obedience of the sable hordes that follow them in long processions through the air, to and from the feeding grounds, and to the roosting-places at night.

The cries of the leaders are distinctive, and the entire band will wheel and change the direction of its flight when the loud signal comes from the head of the column. These bands often number several thousand birds.

(From the Author’s Etching)

NEIGHBORHOOD GOSSIP

After spending the day in detached groups, they gather late in the afternoon, and prepare for the flight to the roosting-grounds, which is an affair of the utmost importance and ceremony. A single scout will come ahead, and after slowly and carefully inspecting the area in the forest where the night is usually spent, he returns in the direction from which he came.

In a few minutes several crows come over the same course and apparently verify the conditions. These also return, and a little later, perhaps twenty or thirty more will appear and fly all over the territory under consideration. They go and report to the main body beyond the hills, and soon the horizon becomes black with the oncoming phalanxes, steadily winging their way to the chosen spot.

For a long time the sky above it is filled with their dark forms, circling and hovering over and among the trees. Much uncertainty seems to agitate them, and there is a great deal of noisy confusion before even comparative quiet comes. It requires about half an hour for them to get comfortably settled after their arrival. Sentinels are posted and they maintain a vigilant watch during the night.

I have sat quietly on a log and seen these multitudes settle into the trees around me in the deep woods. Although perfectly motionless, I have sometimes been detected by a watchful sentinel. His quick, loud note of alarm arouses the entire aggregation, and the air is immediately filled with the turmoil of discordant cries and beating wings. Sacred precincts have been invaded, and an enemy is within the gates.

After much anxiety, and shifting of positions, confidence seems to be finally restored, and the black masses on the bending boughs become quiet.

A footfall on the dead leaves, the snapping of a twig, a suspicious movement among the trees, or the hoot of an owl, may alarm the wary watchers and start another uproar that will result in complete desertion of the vicinity of the suspected danger.

When morning comes, various groups visit the beach and strut along the shore, drinking and picking up stray morsels. Dead fish that have been cast in by the waves, and numerous insects crawling on the sand, are eagerly devoured. Usually before sunrise the crows have started out over the country in detached flocks.

Like all the affairs of the crows, courtship is a serious and important matter. The young male stretches his wings, struts dramatically, and performs all kinds of crow feats to attract favorable glances from the coy eyes of a black divinity who sits demurely still and waits. After the manner of female kind, she will remain obdurate as long as supplication continues. She will yield only when it ceases.

(From the Author’s Etching)

“THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE”

Several days are spent in the wooing. It often has its vicissitudes. The proverbial course of true love has its rough spots, for sometimes shiny-coated rivals come which are insistent and boisterous. They refuse to respect a privacy that is much desired, and create unwelcome disturbances.

There are battles in the tree-tops that send many black feathers down before the fickle beauty makes her final decision. She has little love for defeated suitors, and her admiration is the spoil of the victor when trouble comes.

When the love-making is over the happy pair begin the construction of the nest, which is usually composed of broken twigs or small bits of grape vine, and lined with moss or dead grass. It is generally built about thirty feet from the ground among the strong branches in the deep woods. It is jealously guarded, and combats with would-be intruders are numerous and desperate. The sharp bills are effective weapons when the home is at stake, and it is a bold invader who would risk contact with them for the sake of the mottled eggs or the tender young in the nest.

The crow may be a subtle and artful villain, and his evil ways may have brought him into disrepute, but he has picturesque quality. His black form is often an effective accent in composition, and his presence adds character and interest to the waste places.

The black roving flocks impart a peculiar charm to the white winter landscapes. The bleak uplands and the solemn trees in the still bare woods are enlivened by the dark busy forms. They seem undaunted by the cold and but few of them migrate. During the winter storms they find what refuge they can in the seclusion of the hollows in the deep woods, and among the heavy foliage of the pines. They eke out a precarious livelihood, with scanty food and uncertain shelter, until nature becomes more heedful of their wants and again sends the springtime into the world.

This bird has his own peculiar and special ways of living, which are adapted to his own temperament and necessities. He is only a crow, and nature never intended that he should adjust himself to the convenience and desires of other forms of animal life. He is without ethics or conscience, and in this he differs little from the man with a gun.

Some of the most pleasant memories of the dunes are clustered around “Billy,” a pet crow which remained with us one summer through the kindness of a naturalist friend. He was acquired at a tender age, a small boy having abstracted him from a happy home in an old tree in the deep woods.

(From the Author’s Etching)

“BILLY”

His early life was devoted principally to bread and milk, hard boiled eggs, bits of meat, and other food, with which he had to be constantly supplied. A large cage was built for his protection as well as for his confinement, until he could become domesticated and strong enough to take care of himself.

He became clamorous at unreasonable morning hours, and required constant attention during the day. His comical and whimsical ways soon found him a place in our affections, and Billy became a member of the family.

He developed a decided character of his own. When he was old enough to fly he was given his freedom, which he utilized in his own way. He would spend a large part of his time in a nearby ravine, studying the problems of crow life, but his visits to the house were frequent, and his demands insistent when he was hungry.

He would almost invariably discover the departure of any one of us who left the house, flying short distances ahead and waiting until he was overtaken, or proudly riding on our heads or shoulders, if he was not quite sure of the general direction of the expedition.

The berry patch was a great attraction to him, and if we took a basket with us he would help himself to the fruit after it had been picked, much preferring to have the picking done for him.

One of his delights was walking back and forth on the hammock. The loose meshes seemed to fascinate him, and he would spend much time in studying its intricacies and picking at the knots. He soon became distantly acquainted with Gip, our black cocker spaniel. While no particular intimacy developed between them, each seemed to understand that the other was a part of the family. They finally got to the point where they would eat out of the same dish.

Billy was a delightful companion on many sketching trips into the dunes, and it was amusing to watch the perplexities of the wild crows when my close association with one of their own kind was observed. They could not understand the relationship, and it gave rise to much animated discussion. Billy was immediately visited when he flew into a tree top, and carefully looked over. Other crows joined in the consultations and the final verdict was not always favorable, for hostility frequently became evident, and poor Billy was compelled to leave the tree, often with cruel wounds. He was probably regarded as a heretic and a backslider, who had violated all crow traditions—a fit subject for ostracism and seclusion beyond the pale.

He promptly responded to my call when he got into trouble, or thought it might be lunch-time. He would watch with much interest the undoing of the sandwiches, and would wait expectantly on my knee for the coveted tid-bits which constituted his share of the meal.

When preparations were made for the return, Billy’s interest in the day’s proceedings seemed to flag, and he would suddenly disappear, not to be seen again until the next morning, when he would alight on the rail of the back porch and loudly demand his breakfast.

I was never able to ascertain where he spent a great part of his time. His identity was, of course, lost when he was with the other crows unless he happened to get into a storm center near the house, and we only knew him when he was with us.

He had the elemental love of color, which always begins with red, and the vermilion on my palette seemed to exercise a spell over him. After getting his bill into it, he would plume and pick his feathers, and I have spent considerable time with a rag and benzine in trying to make him presentable after he had produced quite good post-impressionistic pictures on the feathers of his breast.

Occasionally he would take my pencils or brushes into the trees while I was at work, and play with them for some time, but would not return anything that he had once secured. I often had difficulty in recovering lost articles, but usually he would accidentally drop them. In such cases there would be a race between us, for he quickly became jealous of their possession.

Billy was, to a certain extent, affectionate, and would often come to be petted, alighting on my outstretched hand and holding his head down toward me. When his head feathers were stroked gently, low, contented sounds indicated the pleasure he took in the attention devoted to him.

Stories of the numerous little tricks and insinuating ways of this interesting bird could occupy many pages, but enough has been told to convey an idea of his character. Perhaps he may have been a rascal at heart, but his ancestry was responsible for his moral shortcomings.

One morning we missed Billy, and we possibly have never seen him since. He may have answered “the call of the wild” and joined the black company that goes over into the back country in the morning and returns to the bluffs at night, or he may have fallen a victim to indiscriminating over-confidence in mankind—a misfortune that is not confined to crows.

He left tender recollections with us. He had an engaging personality, and was a most admirable and lovable crow. Such an epitaph would be due him if he has departed from life, and a more sincere tribute could not be offered him if he still lives.

During the following year I was able to approach quite near to a crow who seemed to show slight signs of recognition. A broken pinion in his left wing, a reminiscence of a vicious battle in the fall, seemed to complete the identification of Billy. He appeared to be making his headquarters in the ravine. Further careful observation and investigation convinced me that if this crow was actually Billy, he had laid three eggs.

The name, however, meant much to us, and by simply changing its spelling to “Billie,” we preserved its pleasant associations.

A HAPPY HOME

It was a contented couple whose nest was in the gnarled branches in the ravine, where the little home was protected from the chill spring winds. In due time small, queer-looking heads appeared above the edge of the nest, with widely opened bills that clamored continuously for the bits of food which the assiduous parents had to supply constantly. The nest required much attention. Marauding red squirrels, owls, hawks, and other enemies had to be kept away from the time the first egg was laid until the fledglings were old enough to fly. Their first attempts resulted in many falls, but they soon became experts, and one morning the entire family was gone.

They probably flew over into the back country, where food was more abundant and where they were subjected to less observation.

The nest was never used again. The twigs, little pieces of wild grapevine, and moss of which it was made, have gradually fallen away during the succeeding years, until but a few fragments remain in the tree crotch. A red lead pencil was found under the tree. Possibly “Billie” may have tucked it in among the twigs as a souvenir of former ties, or its color may have suggested esthetic adornment of a happy home.

“OLD SIPES”

CHAPTER V
OLD SIPES

BEYOND its barren wastes, inland, the dune country merges into the fertile soil and comes into contact with the highly trained selfishness which in this age of iron we call civilization. The steady waves of such a civilization have thrown upon this desolate margin some of its human derelicts—men who have failed in the strife and who have been cast ashore. Their little huts of driftwood are scattered here and there at long distances from each other, among the depressions and behind the big masses of sand along the shore.

Their faces wear a dejected look. They walk with shambling step, and their bearing is that of men who have received heavy blows in their early struggles, which have extinguished the light in their lives. They are, as a rule, morose and taciturn. They have become desocialized, and have sullenly sunk into the hermit lives that harmonize with the dead and tangled roots which the roving sands have left uncovered to bleach and decay in the sun and rain.

They eke out a simple existence with their nets and set-lines in the lake, and by shooting and trapping the small game which still lives in this region. The driftwood supplies them with fuel in winter, and occasional wreckage that is washed ashore sometimes adds conveniences and comparative luxury to their impoverished abodes.

The world has gone on without them, and they are content to exist in solitudes where time is measured by years, rather than by achievement.

Sometimes the bitterness of a broken heart, or the story of thwarted hopes, will come to the surface out of the turbid memories which they carry. When their confidence is inspired by sympathetic association, they will often turn back some of the hidden pages in the stories of their lives, which are almost always of vivid interest.

Feeble flashes will then light up from among the dying embers. The story is not the one of success that the world loves to hear, but it is usually the melodies in the minor keys that touch our hearts. Many of the simple narratives, told under the roof of driftwood, before the rude scrap iron stove, are full of homely philosophy, subtle wit, and tragic interest.

“Old Sipes” was a grotesque character. He was apparently somewhere in the seventies. He had but one eye, his whiskers were scraggly, unequal in distribution, and uncertain as to direction. His old faded hat and short gray coat were quite the worse for wear, and a few patches on his trousers, put on with sail stitches, added a picturesque nautical quality to his attire.

He lived in a small driftwood hut, compactly built, about sixteen feet long, and perhaps ten feet wide. A rude bunk was built into one side of the single room, and another was placed about three feet above it.

He explained this arrangement of the bunks with quite a long story about a friend of his named Bill Saunders. It seems that he and Saunders had once been shipmates. They had been around the world together, and had cruised in many far-off waters. A howling gale and a lee shore had finally put an inglorious end to the old ship and most of the crew, and left Sipes and Bill on an unknown island in the South Pacific.

His stories of the man-eating sharks and other sea monsters which infested these waters, were hair-raising, and his descriptions of the wonderful natives whom they met, indicated that somewhere a race of people exists that the ethnologists have never found—and would be much astounded if they did. His accounts of man-apes and strange reptiles, olive-skinned beauties, and fierce war-like men nearly seven feet tall, would have made a modern marine novelist pale with envy.

No ship had ever sailed that was as stanch as the “Blue Porpoise,” and no winds had ever blown before like those that took away her proud sails and ripped the shrouds from her sides. No fish-poles had ever bent as her masts did when the ropes parted, and no waves had ever soared as high as those that broke in her faithful ribs, and cast the two shipmates high on the sands of that distant island.

After years of waiting for a friendly sail, Bill married into the royal family several times, and became a part of the kingdom. Sipes persistently resisted blandishment for nearly five years, when a small cloud of black smoke on the horizon gradually grew into a tramp steamer. A boat came ashore for fresh water, and our hero gladly became a member of the crew, leaving happy Bill in the land of luxury and promiscuous matrimony. After a long voyage he was put ashore at some gulf port and became a wanderer.

How he got into the sand hills he didn’t exactly know, but his idea was to keep as far as possible away from salt water. He had developed an antipathy for it, and felt that the lake would be quite sufficient for his future needs.

I asked him how he spent his time, and he said, “mostly smokin’ an’ thinkin’ about Bill, an’ them sirenes, an’ their little black an’ tan families, ’way off down there in the South Pacific.”

“THINKIN’ ABOUT BILL AN’ THEM SIRENES”

He hoped that Bill would change his mind and come back to a decent country. Perhaps Bill might find him here, and if he did the extra bunk would come in handy. He said that somehow he didn’t feel so lonesome with the other bunk above him, and, at night, he often thought that maybe Bill was in it.

His idea of what constitutes companionship may appear a little crude to some of us, but after all it is our point of view that makes us happy or unhappy in this world.

I asked him if he thought Bill would be able to find him if he ever tried to, and he replied, “never you mind—you leave that to Bill. He’s a wonder.”

I regretted that he did not tell me all about what happened to Bill after he had left him on the island. This would not have been at all impossible if he had taken up the subject with the same compositional ability that he applied to the rest of his narrative.

His conversational charms were somewhat marred by a slight impediment in his speech, which he said had been acquired in trying to pronounce the names of all the foreign parts he had visited. Now that he had got settled down the impediment was becoming much less troublesome.

His brawny arms and chest were tattooed with fantastic oriental designs—fiery-mouthed dragons, coiling snakes in blue and red, and rising suns—which he said had been “put on by a Chink” when he was ashore for three weeks in Hong Kong. The intricacy and elaborateness of the work indicated that a large part of the three weeks must have been spent with the tattoo expert, for he had absorbed much more of Chinese art in the short time he had been in contact with it than most modern scholars do in a lifetime.

In answer to a delicate allusion to his missing eye, he declared that it had been blown out in a gale somewhere off the coast of Japan. The terrible winds had prevailed for nearly two weeks, and his shipmate, Bill Saunders, had lost all of his clothes during the blow. The eye had gone to leeward and was never recovered. He said it was glass anyway, and he never thought much of it. How the original eye had been lost he did not explain. He wore what he called a “hatch” over the place where the eye ought to be, and said that “as long as there was nothin’ goin’ out,” he “didn’t want nothin’ comin’ in.”

His “live eye,” as he called it, had a wide range of expression. It was shrewd and quizzical at times, occasionally merry, and often sad. It would glitter fiercely when he talked of some of his “aversions,” or told of wrongs he had suffered. In his reminiscent moods it would remain half closed, and there was a certain far-away look that seemed to wander in obscurity. This lone eye was the distinguishing feature of a personality that seemed to dominate the little world around it.

I asked this ancient mariner if he had many visitors. He replied that the artists bothered him some, but outside of that he seldom saw anybody “’cept them I have business with, an’ them two guys that live about three miles apart down the shore, an’ the game warden that comes ’long oncet in a while. If people commence buttin’ in ’ere I’m goin’ to git out, an’ go ’bout forty miles north, where I can’t hear the cars. I ain’t got much to move. The stuff’ll all go in the boat, an’ I’ll just take my ol’ flannel collar an’ the sock I keep it in, an’ skip.”

He seemed to feel that he could properly criticize most of the people he had met, being practically free from frailties himself. Although he was somewhat of a pessimist, there was seldom much heartfelt bitterness in what he said. His mental attitude was usually that of a patronizing and indulgent observer. His satirical comments were generally tempered with unconscious humor. He knew that out beyond the margins of the yellow hills lay a world of sin, for he had been in it, and his friend Bill was in it now. His philosophy did not contemplate the possible redemption of anybody he had ever met in the dunes, with one or two exceptions. He thought that most of them were “headed fer the coals.”

“Happy Cal,” was one of his pet aversions, and from a human standpoint, he considered him a total loss. They had once been friends, but Sipes was now “miffed” and there was rancor in his heart. Cal had “gone off som’eres,” but the wound was unhealed. The trouble originated over the ownership of a bunch of tangled set-lines, which had got loose somewhere out in the lake, and drifted ashore some years ago. It was conceded that neither of them had owned the lines originally, but Cal thought they ought to belong to him as he had seen them first.

Sipes descried the soggy mass and carried it up the beach to his shanty. Cal came after the prize before daylight the next morning, but found that he had been forestalled. Sipes spent two days in getting the tangles out and had stretched the lines out to dry. One night they were mysteriously visited and cut to pieces.

A few days later a piece of board, nailed crosswise to a stake which was driven into the sand, appeared about a mile down the shore, between the two shanties. On it was the crude inscription:—“The Partys that cut them lines is knone.”

While protesting that he was perfectly innocent, Cal looked upon this as a deadly personal affront, and the entente cordiale was forever broken.

After this Sipes bored a small hole in the side of his shanty, through which he could secretly reconnoiter the landscape in Cal’s direction when occasion required. He was satisfied that Cal would be up to something some day that he would catch him at, and thus even the score.

I had noticed a similar hole in the side of Cal’s hut, during a day that I had spent with him two years before.

Since the disappearance of Cal the old man had used the peep hole to enable him to avoid the visits of a certain other individual with whom he had become disgusted. Through it he would study any distant approaching figure on the shore that looked suspicious, with an old brass marine spy glass, that he said “had bin on salt water.” If he was not pleased with his inspection, he would quietly slip out on the opposite side and disappear until the possible visitor had passed, or had called and discovered that Mr. Sipes was not in. He referred to his instrument as a “spotter,” and claimed that it saved him a lot of misery. While more refined methods of accomplishing such an object are often used, none could be more effective.

After learning what the orifice was for, I always felt highly flattered when I found my old friend at home, although I sometimes had rather a curious sensation, in walking up the shore, feeling that far away the single brilliant eye of old Sipes might be twinkling at me through the rickety old spy glass. Astronomers tell of unseen stars in the universe, which are found only with the most powerful telescopes. These orbs, isolated in awful space, may be scrutinizing our sphere with the same curiosity as that behind the little spotter in the dim distance on the beach.

I made a practice of taking a particularly good cigar with me on these expeditions, especially for Sipes, which may have helped to account for his almost invariable presence when I arrived. He would accept it with a deprecating smile and a low bow. If the weather was pleasant he would seat himself outside on the sand, with his back against the side of the shanty, and extend his feet over the crosspiece of a dilapidated saw-buck near the door. He would carefully remove the paper band from the cigar, light it, and tilt it to a high angle. After a few whiffs of the fragrant weed, he once sententiously remarked, “Say, this is the life!—I’d ruther be settin’ right ’ere, smokin’ this ’ere seegar, than to be some famous mutt commandin’ a ship.”

The cigar bands were always scrupulously saved. He hoped eventually to get enough of them to paste around the edges of a picture which was stuck up on his wall opposite the bunks, and was willing to smoke all the cigars that might be necessary to furnish the requisite number of bands for this frame, which he thought would “look fine.” The picture had been taken from the colored supplement of some old sporting journal, and depicted two prominent pugilists in violent action. When he had “cussed out” nearly everybody else, he would take up the case of one of these champions, who had gone into the ring once too often. His ornate vocabulary came into splendid play on these occasions, and the unfortunate “pug” had no professional reputation left when the old man had finished his remarks.

There was an interesting and formidable array of armament in Sipes’s shanty. In one corner stood an old-fashioned muzzle-loading, big bore shotgun, weighing about sixteen pounds, with rusty barrels and one broken hammer. The stock had once been split, but had been carefully repaired and bound with wire. It was a murderous looking weapon.

A heavy rifle of antiquated pattern was suspended from a couple of hooks above the bunks, but the old man explained that this piece of ordnance was “no good,” as he “couldn’t git no catritches that ’ud fit it, an’ it ’ad a busted trigger an’ a bum lock.” He had traded some skins for it years ago, and “the feller that ’ad it didn’t ’ave no catritches neither. I was stung in that trade, but them skins wasn’t worth nothin’ neither. Some day I’ll trade it off to some feller that wants a good rifle.”

On the shelf was a sinister looking firearm, which had once been a smooth-bore army musket. The barrel had been sawed off to within a foot of the breech. This he called his “scatter gun.” It was kept loaded with about six ounces of black powder, and wadded on top of this was a handful of pellets which he had made out of flour dough, mixed with red pepper, and dried in the sun. He explained that, at three rods, such a charge would go just under the skin. “It wouldn’t kill nothin’, but it ’ud be hot stuff.” He was keeping it “fer a certain purpose,” the nature of which he refused to divulge.

The intended destiny of the “hot stuff” was suggested by a story I afterwards heard from “Catfish John.” It seems that an eccentric character occasionally roamed along the beach who was a theological fanatic. He had tried to convert Sipes, and had often left tracts around the shanty when the owner was absent. He was intensely Calvinistic and utterly uncompromising in his beliefs. John did not consider that he was “quite all thar.” This unkempt individual projected his red bushy whiskers and wild eyes through Sipes’ open window one night.

“Do you believe in infant damnation?” he roared.

“Wot?” asked the dumfounded Sipes.

“’Cause if ye don’t yer jest as sure to go to hell as the sun is to rise tomorrer mornin’,” the intruder continued. He then left as suddenly as he had come. “Sipes sailed a pufectly good egg after ’im, but it didn’t stick,” remarked John.

It was Sipes’s custom to take the old shot gun over into the marshes of the back country, and shoot ducks in the fall and spring. His ideas of killing ducks were worthy of the Stone Age, for it was meat that he sought, and not sport. He always “killed ’em settin’,” and would “lay fer ’em ’till fifteen er twenty got in a bunch, an’ then let ’em ’ave both bar’ls.

“I don’t allow nobody but me to shoot that gun. It kicks like it was drivin’ some spiles, an’ so does my scatter gun. When it goes off one end is pretty near as bad as the other. I fetch them ducks home an’ salt down them I can’t use right off, an’ sometimes I git enough to last all winter.”

I suggested that lighter charges might cause less recoil, and do just as much execution.

“Not on yer life,” he replied, “if they ain’t no kick behind they won’t be no kick forrads, an’ the shot won’t go no distance. Now just lemme show you.”

In spite of my protest, he got the gun out, loaded it far beyond its maximum efficiency, and fired it at a passing flock of sandpipers, that were fortunately beyond range. The report was like a thunder clap, and when the echoes died away, and it was evident that the innocent little creatures had escaped unharmed, he explained that he “wasn’t any good at shootin’ ’em flyin’, but them shot made ’em skip all right.”

I had my own suspicions as to what had made the little birds “skip.”

His supplies of ammunition were obtained for him at the general store in the sleepy village by his old friend “Catfish John,” whose reward consisted in portions of the bloody spoil from the marshes.

Sipes’s shanty would have been a most unpleasant place to approach if hostility should develop inside of it. He “didn’t want no monkeyin’ ’round that joint, an’ they wasn’t goin’ to be none.”

It was to the old man’s credit that he let most of the wild life alone that he could not utilize. The crows, gulls, and herons along the beach did not interest him. The songsters and the little shore birds were exempt on account of their size. They required too much ammunition, and it was too much trouble to pick them.

THE DISTURBER IN THE RAVINE

Occasionally a pair of eagles would soar around over the dune country. These he longed to kill, but he could never get near enough to them. The wary birds were inconsiderate, and “wouldn’t never light, ’cept away off.”

A “hoot’n owl” somewhere in the ravine caused him many sleepless nights. Its prolonged and unearthly cries frequently startled him from dreams of his friend Bill off in the South Pacific, and he spent many hours prowling softly around among the trees in the darkness, trying to locate the offender. Probably the owl, in the wisdom of his kind, had kept the silent stealthy figure under observation, and was careful not to do any hooting within shooting distance,—certainly an example to be emulated. He usually resumed his lamentations when Sipes returned to his shanty.

The old man had this owl listed as one of his bitter enemies, and annihilation awaited the wily bird if he ever found it. “One hoot’n owl’s too dam’ many to have ’round,” he declared. “This critter reminds me o’ one night when I was on a ship off the coast o’ South Ameriky.

“I was aloft on one o’ the yard-arms, an’ there was a little roll on the sea. I seen some long white streaks o’ foam comin’, about two points offen the lee bow, an’ there was sumpen that shined in the moonlight mixed up in it. It seemed all yellow, an’ about two hundred feet long, an’ it flopped up an’ down. When it got close, it opened up a mouth pretty near half as big as the ship, an’ let out an awful yell. It sounded like a hoot’n owl, only ten thousand times louder an’ deeper. Then it dove down an’ went under the ship. The sails all shook, an’ my blood was froze, so I couldn’t call out to the feller at the wheel, an’ I dropped off on to the deck.

“I never found out what the cussed thing was. If I’d bin drinkin’ very much I’d ’a’ thought I had the jimmies. The wheel feller said he hadn’t noticed nothin’, but I did all the same, an’ I’ll never fergit it.

“I had some ter’ble experiences off down there in that part o’ the gorgofy. We sailed fer months an’ months, an’ never seen nothin’ but the big waves an’ the sky. There was a lot o’ latitude an’ longitude, an’ me an’ Bill used to offen wonder, when we was roostin’ out on the bowsprit smokin’ at night, what ’ud happen if we butted into one o’ them lines that’s always runnin’ up an’ down an’ sideways on them salt water maps.

“There was ter’ble perils all the time. Sometimes we’d run among icebergs, an waterspouts, an’ cyclones, an’ we wallered in bilin’ seas, an’ the skies was black as yer hat, an’ we got lost on the ocean a couple o’ times, an’ we got smashed up on that island I told ye about. You bet this lake’s plenty wet enough fer me, an’ I’m goin’ to spatter ’round right ’ere, an’ if Bill was only ’ere instid o’ cavortin’ ’round with them South Pacific floozies, I’d be all right.”

Some of Sipes’s many sea yarns sounded suspiciously like stories I had read in early youth, but I generally gave him the benefit of the doubt, as he did not need to be strictly truthful to be entertaining. In one instance he related a thrilling tale in which his experiences were practically identical with those of the hero in a favorite yellow covered treasure of years ago. I rather tactlessly called his attention to that fact. He at once replied, “Now you see how queer some things git ’round in this world. I was that feller.”

After that I considered comment hopeless, and simply listened.

Perhaps this lonely philosopher may have solved one of the problems of existence that have baffled more serious and deeper thinkers. He has perfectly adjusted himself to his environment, and his life is complete and happy within it. Even his many aversions give him more pleasure than pain. His memories afford him abundant and pleasant society, and he is able, psychologically, to import his friend Bill when he needs him. Beyond these things he apparently has no desires. To use his own expression,—“the great an’ pow’rful o’ the earth ’as got nothin’ on me.”

That priceless jewel, contentment, is his, and the kindly fates could do little more for one who wore a crown.

“Happy Cal”

(From the Author’s Etching)
HAPPY CAL’S SHANTY
CHAPTER VI
HAPPY CAL

ONE of the nondescript beach characters bears, or did bear, the somewhat deceptive sobriquet of “Happy Cal.” His little shanty was on the sand about two hundred feet from the lake. The grizzled head, the gnarled rugged hands, the sinewy but slightly bent figure, betokened one who had met tempests on the highways of life. The deep set gray eyes were without luster, although they occasionally twinkled with quiet humor.

The slightly retreating chin, which could be discerned through the white beard when his profile was against the light, offered a key to the frailty of his character. The power of combat was not there. He had yielded to the storms. He said they called him “Happy Cal” because he wasn’t happy at all.

One dreary forenoon, when the black clouds piled up over the lake in the northwest and the big drops began to come, I went to Cal’s shanty and was cordially asked to put my sketching outfit behind an old soap-box back of the door. It is needless to say that he had acquired this soap-box when it was empty. A long cigar and the recollection of a former visit put him at his ease.

The rain increased, and the breakers began to roar on the beach. The wind whistled through the crevices in the side of the shanty, and Cal went out to stuff them with some strips of rotten canvas that he had probably picked up along the shore. It was quite characteristic of Cal to delay this stuffing until stern necessity made it imperative.

He came in dripping wet, and asked if I happened to have a bottle with me. The stove was a metamorphosed hot-water tank. The rusty cylinder had been found somewhere among some junk years before. He had made an opening in the front for the wood, a hole in the bottom provided for the draft and the egress of the ashes, and a stove pipe, that had seen better days, led through a hole in the irregular roof.

A fire was soon singing in the cylinder, and under its genial warmth Happy Cal became reminiscent.

“I’ve had some mighty strange experiences since I’ve bin livin’ ’ere,” he began. “About nine years ago they was a shipwreck out ’ere that raised the devil with all on board an’ with me too. Nobody got drownded, but it would ’ave bin a good thing if some of ’em had.

“It was late in November an’ nobody ’ad any business navigatin’ the lake, ’less they ’ad to, ’cause when it gits to blowin’ out ’ere at that time o’ year, it blows without any trouble at all. A big gale come up in the night an’ the breakers was tearin’ away at a great rate, an’ they swashed ’most up to the shanty. I was settin’ up in the bunk playin’ sollytare, an’ wonderin’ if the shanty was goin’ to git busted up, when I thought I heard voices. I lit my lantern an’ went out to see what was doin’ an’ I saw a light a little ways out an’ heard somebody yellin’.

“There was a big schooner almost on the shore. She was poundin’ up an’ down on the bottom in about five feet o’ water. The big rollers was takin’ ’er up an’ smashin’ ’er down so you could hear it a mile. Pretty soon the light went out an’ after that four o’ the wettest fellers y’ ever seen came pilin’ in with the breakers. I grabbed one of ’em that was bein’ washed back agin’, an’ after that I got another one that seemed to be pretty near dead. The other two got out all right by themselves, but they was pretty shaky. They helped me git the others up to the shanty, an’ they was a sight o’ pity when we got ’em there.

“I put some more wood in the stove an’ gave ’em all some whisky. They was about a pint left in a gallon jug that I got about a week before, with some money I got fer a bunch o’ rabbits. I don’t drink much, but I like to keep sumpen in the shanty in case somebody should git ship-wrecked, an’ it might be me, but I ain’t got none now. I went on the water wagon about an hour ago, an’ I’m afraid I’m goin’ to fall off if I git a chance.

“Them fellers lapped up the booze like it was milk, an’ when they found they wasn’t any more they got mad an’ said I was runnin’ a temperance joint. Then they asked me sarcastic if I had any soft drinks, an’ I told ’em they’d find plenty outside. I fried ’em some fish an’ they et up all the crackers I had. Then one of ’em got my pipe an’ smoked it.