Chapter 16

I remember how hopefully we started that morning with Elizabeth
Brower and Hope waving their handkerchiefs on the porch and
David near them whittling. They had told us what to do and what
not to do over and over again. I sat with Gerald on blankets that
were spread over a thick mat of hay. The morning air was sweet
with the odour of new hay and the music of the bobolink. Uncle
Eb and Tip Taylor sang merrily as we rode over the hills.

When we entered the shade of the big forest Uncle Eb got out his
rifle and loaded it. He sat a long time whispering and looking
eagerly for game to right and left. He was still a boy. One could
see evidences of age only in his white hair and beard and wrinkled
brow. He retained the little tufts in front of his ears, and lately had
grown a silver crescent of thin and silky hair that circled his throat
under a bare chin. Young as I was I had no keener relish for a
holiday than he. At noon we halted beside a brook and unhitched
our horses. Then we caught some fish, built a fire and cooked
them, and brewed our tea. At sunset we halted at Tuley Pond,
looking along its reedy margin, under purple tamaracks, for deer.
There was a great silence, here in the deep of the woods, and Tip
Taylor's axe, while he peeled the bark for our camp, seemed to fill
the wilderness with echoes. It was after dark when the shanty was
covered and we lay on its fragrant mow of balsam and hemlock.
The great logs that we had rolled in front of our shanty were set
afire and shortly supper was cooking.

Gerald had stood the journey well. Uncle Eb and he stayed in
while Tip and I got our jack ready and went off in quest of a
dugout He said Bill Ellsworth had one hid in a thicket on the south
side of Tuley. We found it after an hour's tramp near by. It needed
a little repairing but we soon made it water worthy, and then took
our seats, he in the stern, with the paddle, and I in the bow with the
gun. Slowly and silently we clove a way through the star-sown
shadows. It was like the hushed and mystic movement of a dream.
We seemed to be above the deep of heaven, the stars below us.
The shadow of the forest in the still water looked like the wall of
some mighty castle with towers and battlements and myriads of
windows lighted for a fete. Once the groan of a nighthawk fell out
of the upper air with a sound like that of a stone striking in water. I
thought little of the deer Tip was after. His only aim in life was the
one he got with a gun barrel. I had forgotten all but the beauty of
the scene. Suddenly Tip roused me by laying his hand to the
gunwale and gently shaking the dugout. In the dark distance, ahead
of us, I could hear the faint tinkle of dripping water. Then I knew a
deer was feeding not