A Man and a Woman - Stanley Waterloo (children's ebooks free online txt) 📗

in that preposterous covering of canvas, half hid in the forest's edge, was Jean Cor--no, Jean Harlson, belonging to him--all his--away from all the world, just part of him, in this solitude!

He wondered why he had deserved it. He wondered how he had won it. He looked up at the pure sky, with the moon defined so clearly, and all the stars, and was grateful, and reached out his hands and asked the Being of it to tell him, if it might be, how to do something as an offset.

The night passed, and the sun rose clearly over the forest. The chestnut setter roused himself from behind the tent, and came in front of it, and barked joyously at a yellow-hammer which had chosen a great basswood tree with deadened spaces for an early morning experiment toward a breakfast.

There issued from the white tent a man, who looked upward toward all the greenness and all the glory, and was glad.

He looked downward at the sward, and there was the little flower. And the dew had run its course, and had gathered in a jewel at the leaf's tip, and there, fallen in the midst of the disk of yellow, was the product from the skies. There, in the flower's heart, was the perfect gem--a diamond in a setting of fine gold!


CHAPTER XXVI.

ADVENTURES MANIFOLD.

"I've et hearty," said the woman, saucily, as the breakfast, for which the birds furnished the music, was done. And then he initiated her into the brief art of washing tin things in the gravel at the water's edge. Then he informed her that target practice was about to begin, and brought out four guns from their cases.

Two of the pieces were rifles, and of each kind one was a light and dainty piece. He said they would practice with the rifles; that when she became an expert rifle-shot the rest would all be easy, and then upon the boll of a tree at one side of the opening he pinned a red scrap of paper, and shot at it.

With the report half the scrap was torn away, and then he taught her how to hold the piece and how to aim.

She expressed, at last, a desire to shoot, and he gave her the little rifle loaded. She aimed swiftly and desperately, and pressed the trigger, and the echoes had not died away when she let fall the gun upon the grass.

"I'm hurt," she said.

He sprang to her side, pale-faced, as she raised her hand to her shoulder, but he brightened a moment later. He opened the dress at her neck, and turned it down on one side, and there, on the round, white shoulder, was a slight ruddy bruise. He kissed it, and laughed.

"It'll be all right in no time. Now, do as I tell you."

He put a cartridge in the piece again.

"Try it once more," he said; "aim more deliberately and hold the stock of the gun very tightly against your shoulder as you fire."

"But it will hurt me."

"No, it won't. Do as I tell you."

She would have obeyed him had he told her to leap into the lake, and the lake was deep.

She set her lips firmly, held the gun hard against her shoulder, aimed carefully and fired.

The red spot flew from the gray trunk of the oak. She looked up amazed.

"Why, it didn't hurt me a bit!"

"Of course not. There is a law of impact, and you are learning it. The strongest man in the world could not hurt you pushing you against nothing. He could kill you with a blow. With the first shot your gun gave you a blow. In the second it could only push you. Listen to the wisdom of your consort!" She made a mouth at him, and he told her she'd had her "baptism of fire," and soon they sallied into the forest, hunting.

She was very pretty and piquant in her kilted dress and shooting jacket and high boots. It was a formidable army of two.

There were myriads of bees in the openings, and the fall flowers were yielding up the honey to be stored, in the hearts of great trees, and at noon-time they sat down in one of the openings for luncheon.

He had shot only a couple of ruffed grouse, for it was a ramble rather than a real hunt, this first mid-wood excursion of the pair, and she had shot at various things, a grouse or two and squirrels, and missed with regularity, and was piqued over it, but he had noted her increasing courage and confidence and resolution with each successive shot, and knew that he had with him, for the future, a "little sportsman," as he called her.

They built a fire, just for the fun of it, and a grouse was plucked and broiled with much ado, and never was greater feast. And, the meal over, he produced a cigar and--which was not really good form for the woods--lay on the grass and smoked it, looking at her and talking nonsense.

She sat upon a log and delighted in the fragrance and the light, and the droning sounds and bird-cries, and the new world of it to her. All at once, her gaze became fixed upon some object a little distance away. She reached out her hand to him appealingly.

"What is that?"

He rose and looked where she pointed.

Years of decay had made of the trunk of a fallen tree but a long ridge of crumbling, brown chips, and, upon this ridge, where the sun streamed down hotly, lay something coiled in a black mass, and there was a flat, hideous head resting upon it all with beady eyes which seemed, to leer.

Harlson looked at it carelessly.

"Big one, isn't it?" he said.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"What is it, you small ignoramus! It's a blacksnake and a monster. It is one of the dreads of the small life of the wood, and it was one of the dreads of my youth, and its days are numbered."

He reached for his gun, then checked himself.

"Shoot it."

She picked up the little rifle and raised it to her shoulder, as calmly as any Leather-Stocking in the land.

The report came like a whip-crack, and up from the dead log leaped a great writhing mass, which coiled and twisted and thrashed about, and finally lay still.

Harlson walked up and examined what he called the "remains." Half the serpent's ugly head had been torn away by the bullet.

"It was a great shot! 'And the woman shall bruise the serpent's head!'" he quoted. "Egad, you've done it with a vengeance, my huntress! And you are a markswoman among many, and thy price is above rubies! Hooray!"

She informed him, with much dignity, that she never missed such monsters as were blacksnakes, and that her undoubted skill with the rifle was due to the quality of the tutor she had owned, and, at the same time, would he mind moving to some other place to finish his cigar, for the sight of the dead monster was not a pleasant thing?

And so was accomplished the woman's first feat with the gun; but on that same day, before they had returned to camp, she had slain, at a fair distance, a grouse which, when flushed, had sailed away with lofty contempt for but a score of yards, and, alighting upon a limb close beside the body of a tree, had stood awaiting, jauntily and ignorantly, his doom.

She was a proud woman when the bird came plunging to the ground, and of that particular fowl he remarked, subsequently, when they were eating it, that its flavor was a little superior to anything in the way of game he had ever tasted, and he was more than half in earnest.

And the nights were poems and the days were full of life, and the brown cheeks of the woman became browner still, and she was referred to more frequently than even in the ante-wedded days as merely of the tribe of Chippewas.

In one respect, too, she excelled in deserving that same title, for your Chippewa, of either sex, takes to the water like a duck, as becomes a tribe of the lake regions. He took her to the lake and taught her not to fear it, and they frolicked in its waves together, and she learned to swim as well as he, and to dive as smoothly as a loon or otter, and was a water nymph such as the creatures of the wood had never seen. He was very vain of her art acquired so swiftly, though in conversation he gave vast credit to her teacher. And in the catching of the black bass there came eventually to the nine-ounce split bamboo in her little hands as many trophies as to his heavier lancewood. One day, after she had become at home in the water, and had better luck than he, and was lofty in her demeanor, he upset the boat in deep water, and her majesty was compelled to swim about it with him and assist at one end while he was at the other, in righting it. So mean of spirit was he.

All other things, though, were but the veriest trifle compared with the adventure which came at last. He had made her wise in woodcraft, and she could tell at the lake's margin or along the creek's bed the tracks of the 'coon, like the prints of a baby's foot, the mink's twin pads, or the sharp imprint of the hoofs of the deer. One day another track was noted near the camp, a track resembling that of a small man, shoeless, and Harlson informed her that a bear had been about.

She asked if the black bear of Michigan were dangerous, and he said the black bear of Michigan ate only very bad people, or very small ones.

One afternoon they were some distance from the camp. They had been shooting with fair success, and, returning, had seated themselves in idle mood upon one end of a great fallen trunk, upon which they had just crossed the gully, at the bottom of which a little creek tumbled toward the lake. The gleam of a maple's leaves near by, already turning scarlet, had caught her eye; she had expressed a wish for some of the gaudy beauties, and he had climbed the tree and was plucking the leaves for her, when, suddenly, the woods resounded with the fierce barking of the dog in the direction from which they had just come. He called to her to be ready to shoot, that a deer might have been started, when there was a crashing through the bushes and the quarry burst into sight.

Lumbering into the open, turning only to growl at the dog which was yelping wildly in its rear, but keeping wisely out of its reach, was a black bear. The beast did not see the woman opposite him, but rushed at the log and was half way across it when she screamed. Then it paused. Behind was the dog, before the woman; it advanced slowly, growling.

Harlson, in the tree, saw it all, and, as