Bones On Black Spruce Mountain (5 page)

"Maybe so," Seth said, "but we saw fresh beaver cuttings down there."

"That's right, and that means there's heaver around here somewhere. Hey! You know how beavers always build darns in a series, one after another along a stream. How much you want to bet there's another dam above here. And a live pond, with trout in it. Those trout in the brook have to come from somewhere."

"I'm not betting. Let's go!"

The boys gave the dormant pond a wide berth, circled through a flat of hardwoods, found the inlet to the pond, and poked their way upstream. Now there were more and more fresh signs of beaver. Then, ahead of them, there it was, a beaver pond four or five times bigger than the one below. As the boys climbed up over the dam, a startled muskrat plowed his way through the skin of water.

"Look at that!" Daniel exclaimed. "Muskrat. A fresh beaver house. This has got to be the place!"

It was. It didn't matter what the boys put on the end of their lines; everything caught fish, and good-sized ones too, some of them a foot long. Any deer nearby must have gotten an odd eyeful that morning. There were two strange two-footed beasts pacing back and forth across the beaver dam, hooping and hollering, catching trout as fast as they could get their lines into the water. It was the kind of morning all fishermen dream of, but very few ever experience. Every cast, every single one, hooked a trout. No one must have ever fished the pond before. It was a trout fisherman's heaven. When the boys got home, no one would believe them, and they didn't care.

By lunch time each boy had caught dozens of trout, but they kept only two large ones apiece, just enough for lunch; all the rest they unhooked very carefully and returned gently to the water. They could get the trout they needed for supper during the afternoon fishing.

They found a good place for lunch near the edge of the pond and began gathering firewood. Suddenly Daniel called Seth over to a soft, muddy spot near the shore. There, printed neatly in the wet earth, was a hear track. The boys could tell by the sharp, clean lines of the track that it was fresh, probably last night's or even this morning's. The boys were more excited than frightened; in fact, neither had any fear of bears. There was little to be afraid of. If it were a she-bear with cubs and the boys got themselves between the mother and her babies, there could be trouble, but both Seth and Daniel knew that was highly unlikely. Bears were very shy and always gave humans plenty of room. Both boys actually hoped they would see the bear; they had lived around bears all their lives but had never seen one. However, they did decide then and there that when they returned to camp they would put all their food in one of the backpacks and hoist it by a length of baler twine high into a tree above the camp. A bear could wipe out their food supply and destroy the camp in a matter of minutes.

With the fire going, Seth stuck a stick into the damp earth so that it angled over the fire and then hung the tea pail full of water from the end of the stick. As the water heated, the boys ate their peanut butter sandwiches. When it boiled, Daniel dumped in the tea and set the pail aside while Seth began to roast the four trout he had skewered with a peeled green alder branch. The trout cooked quickly and soon were done. When lunch was finished, each boy propped himself up against a tree and stared quietly out across the beaver pond.

No beavers appeared that afternoon, but now and then a muskrat swam across the pond, busily doing something. A bright blue-and-white kingfisher swooped into the top of a drowned and naked spruce tree standing in the middle of the pond. The boys could sec him cock his jauntily crested head to the side so that he could search the water below. Then, without warning, he dropped like a stone into the pond and disappeared completely under the water's surface. Soon he appeared again, and rose in a shower of silver drops above the pond and was gone over the tree tops, a large trout squirming helplessly in his beak.

"Roasting trout on a stick like that reminds me of the first time I ever did it," Daniel said dreamily. "It was five years ago. Dad and I were fishing the brook just above the swamp. It might have been the first thing we ever did together. Anyway, we caught a few and then we came on this little gravel bar in the brook. I was carrying the trout on a stick; we didn't have a creel that day. I remember it just like it was yesterday. I held the trout up and said, 'Boy, these look so good I'd like to eat them right now!' Dad just looked at me and said, 'Okay, wait a minute.' Before I knew what was going on, he had started a fire, and we were eating trout and drinking brook water. I don't know why that sticks in my head so clearly, but I bet when I'm as old as Mr. Bateau I'll still remember it like I do right now. And that place, that pool where we cooked the trout, I've never been there since, but I can see it. I know exactly what it looks like. Man, that was some fun day.”

Both boys fell silent; they were tired. The lean-to  camp was a comfortable place to spend the night, but no wilderness camp, not even a cozy one, offers as good a night’s sleep as a soft bed in a warm house. A short nap was in order.

Chapter 4

The afternoon’s fishing began badly, and for a time the boys feared they wouldn’t get enough fish for supper, but slowly their creels filled.

Seth pulled a writhing foot long trout out of the pond, seized it, and cracked it once across the skull just above the eyes with a small, heavy stick, about six inches long, tat he carried for killing fish. Both boys always killed the fish they meant to keep as soon as they caught them. It was cruel to drop live fish into a creel, where they would suffer an agonizing, slow death by suffocation. Death was involved in fishing just as it was in hunting, and the quicker and more efficient the killing could be the more acceptable that unsavory part of the game became. Seth watched the beautiful, lithe, red and black and yellow and purple and orange-speckled fish shiver its sudden way to death. Then it was still, cold on his palm. A small drop of blood appeared at the edge of the fish's mouth. Seth stared at the dead trout, and as he stared, he was carried back to a warm October afternoon last fall.

It was the first time his parents had allowed him to hunt partridge alone. Seth had hunted with his father many times, but as yet he had never actually killed a bird. Now he was on his own and he wanted more than anything to return home with a grouse or two to prove his skill as a hunter. Seth poked his way along a hardwood ridge watching the trees for feeding birds who might sit tight, as they often did, and let him pass under them, then fly away behind him. He stopped now and then, waited, watched, and listened. All his senses were alive, on edge, in a way they had never been before. He saw things, heard things he would have missed had he not been hunting. His whole body hunted. He was sharp now, acute, the way a wild animal is all the time.

He pushed forward slowly, cautiously. Then, a few yards in front of him, a partridge exploded in II thunder of wings and shot upward into the branches of the trees. The gun exploded too. Instinctively, Seth had snapped the shotgun to his shoulder, pointed, and fired in the smallest fraction of a second.

The bird fell like a wad of dough. Seth ran forward, excited, frightened, amazed. Now he could hear his father saying, "Kill it quick! Grab its head and wring its neck. Don't make it suffer. Do the job and do it fast!"

But this first time he had to see, to watch; he had to know what death was, what it looked like. The bird lay thrashing in the dried leaves. It beat its wings faster, harder than it ever had in life. It opened its mouth slowly as if to say something, but no sound came out. Then behind each eye blood appeared and ran slowly down across the soft feathers of its face. The thrashing subsided to a shiver, the shiver to a tremble. Then the bird was still.

Seth held the warm, limp body in his hand. He started home.

He had proved his skill as a hunter, and over the years of his life he would prove it again and again, but he was not proud, not the way he had imagined he would be. Neither was he ashamed. As he loped down the logging road heading home, suddenly he felt older. In one afternoon he had become a great deal less a boy.

"Seth! Seth!" Daniel shouted.

Seth stood staring at the trout, the partridge, in his hand.

"Seth!"

"Huh?"

“What's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing."

With more than enough trout for supper the boys headed back to camp. About halfway there Daniel saw a familiar-looking plant growing in the stream: watercress. It was odd to find watercress growing so far from any human habitation. It usually grew only where someone planted it. The seeds must have been carried to the mountains from a village or a nearby farm in the droppings of a bird. The boys did not question their good fortune, however; instead, they picked a hearty bunch. They could make themselves a delicious salad to go with the feast they were now heading home to prepare.

It was only the middle of the afternoon, but there was a lot of cooking to be done and they had to get - started. Once back in camp they agreed on the evening's menu—fried trout, baked beans with onions, wilted watercress salad, club bread, and tea—and got to work.

While Seth started a fire, Daniel put about a half pint of shell beans in the two-quart pail and headed for the brook, where he washed and drained them thoroughly a number of times. When they were well cleaned, he added about a quart of water to the pail and returned to the fire. He hung the pail of beans and water from the cooking range cross pole. Soon it began to simmer. Daniel watched it carefully so that the beans would cook steadily, but not so rapidly that they'd stick to the bottom of the pail. As the beans began to dance in the moving water, he peeled and chopped an onion and added it. Later, after the beans began to soften, he'd add some potatoes, along with a few chunks of salt pork. It would take a couple of hours for the beans and potatoes to cook.

Meanwhile Seth had mixed flour, salt, sugar, and water in a pan and was kneading the concoction into a stiff dough. When the dough could be molded into a firm, springy ball, Seth set it aside and went into the woods. He cut and peeled a thick ash branch about four feet long, brought it back to camp, sharpened one end, and stuck it in the ground in front of the fire so that it angled above the coals. Then he molded the dough into a long ribbon about two inches wide and one-half inch thick. When the branch was sizzling hot, he wrapped the dough on a diagonal around and around it. As the dough began to brown over the coals, Seth turned the branch occasionally so that the bread baked evenly all around.

With the two long-cooking dishes for the meal started, the boys could relax and putter. Seth fussed with the fire, moving coals here and there with the tongs, adding a little wood now and then, while Daniel got out the improvised broom, a hemlock branch, and swept the "floor" in front of the camp. Both boys enjoyed hiking and fishing in new territory, but equally enjoyable was this time of hanging around camp, tending the pots, lazing about. There was a dazed, dreamy quality to times like these. The boys didn't talk much that afternoon; they found them-selves slowly mesmerized by the smell of baking bread and beans wafting through the air around them. It was a time to think and dream, to listen to the sounds of the wilderness so different from the sound of their own voices.

When the potatoes and beans and club bread were done, they were set off to the side of the fire, where they would stay warm but not cook. The boys snacked on the warm bread.

"Butter! Butter! My kingdom for some butter!" Daniel exclaimed.

While Seth put the trout to frying, Daniel melted a little bacon grease and poured it over the watercress to wilt and sweeten the sharp, tangy green. They ate, and what a feast it was! Both boys stuffed themselves; even with that there were plenty of leftovers that would be delicious cold the next day.

After they cleaned the dishes and pots, the boys set a pail of tea to boiling and hung the leftovers and the rest of their food in a tree. Even if a bear did smell the food and come by, it would be out of reach, and soon he would go off in a huff.

While the tea steeped the boys got out their map and planned the next day's hike to Eagle Ledge and Black Spruce. If they took a compass bearing of south 90 degrees west from the camp, they would arrive at the top of Eagle Ledge by the shortest route. If they struck off south 5 degrees east from there, they would drop down into the hollow between Eagle Ledge and Black Spruce and end up at the high, back side of the mountain. From there they could descend the western face to look for the cave they had heard about for years. By sticking to the compass bearing, they could walk in a straight line and reduce their travel time. According to the map it was only about a mile from their camp to the top of Eagle Ledge, but it would be hard climbing and would probably take most of the morning.

Both boys now felt the excitement of the adventure before them. The round trip would no doubt take the whole day, and they looked forward to doing some-thing other than fishing.

There was nothing left of the day now. It was time to watch the final darkness fall down around them, while they sipped their tea, smoked their pipes, and let themselves be hypnotized by the evening fire. Then, out of the brook ravine below them came the clear call of a barred owl.

"Watch this," Daniel said.

He turned in the direction of the calling owl, cupped his hands around his mouth, and began making short, high, round noises from deep in his throat, little two-note jumps, four or five of them, followed by a descending, gravelly long note at the end. Daniel waited a long time, then repeated the call. The owl called again and so did Daniel. Another silence. Then the sound of the owl came from somewhere closer. Slowly, little by little, the owl moved up the ravine until, after what seemed like an eternity, the boys saw a dark form glide silently into a tree above the fire. There was no sound, not even the slightest rustle of wings. Seth's mouth dropped open.