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He never made threats nor showed himself in the open but, somewhere, he was out there in the darkness; and sooner or later he would strike. The days dragged on slowly, with cold, March winds and sandstorms boiling in over Shadow Mountain; and then driving rain followed by bright, sunny weather and struggling flowers in the swales.
Straight ahead lay the towering, invisible rock, a quarter of a mile away. He descended the ridge slope, swung tirelessly across the swales and mounds in the little valley, and then bent his back to the climb up the steep incline to Quill's Window. Picking his way through a fringe of trees, he came to the tortuous path that led to the crest of the great rock.
As he watched its flight he hated it, as though it had done him some terrible wrong. Then he returned and shouldered his pack. As the day wore along he came into valleys or swales where game was more plentiful. A band of caribou passed by, twenty and odd animals, tantalizingly within rifle range. He felt a wild desire to run after them, a certitude that he could run them down.
He gave a peculiar smile, the meaning of which I did not comprehend at the time, as he replied, "By all means. You will probably find Captain Swales on board at all events his first mate; and you may offer your valuable services to them. When they have done with you, you may come back here. By keeping along the quays to the right, you cannot miss the ship if you ask for her."
There are still black ash swales and dry beech ridges, but they are not as massive as further south. There are still the haunting deer and the black bear and the ruffed grouse, the "partridge" in the idiom of the country, the "pheasant" of the South and Southwest.
I saw the last goose pass on to the north, and watched the green grass creeping up the sunny slopes. I answered the splendid challenge of the loitering crane, and studied the ground sparrow building her grassy nest. The prairie hens began to seek seclusion in the swales, and the pocket gopher, busily mining the sod, threw up his purple-brown mounds of cool fresh earth.
On this, immediately Captain Swales cast off his boat, his example being followed by the others; and without attempting to take any of the people out of the ship, he pulled on board the stranger. There was little time to lose; for scarcely had they got alongside than down came the gale upon us. In the condition our ship was, the only course was to run before the wind; so we once again kept away.
Scattering wildly over hill and plain, through gulches, swales, and canyons, the mad troop entered on the unknown field, racing as if for their lives. Gettysburg, Napoleon, and Dave had watched for an hour the human hedge below the "Laughing Water" claim. They, too, had been up since daylight, intent upon seeing the fun. They had eaten their breakfast at half-past four.
Past hedges he rode, where cricket drummers beat the long roll for the muster of winter days; past gates letting into fields, clamped and chained to their posts as if jealous of the plenty which they guarded; past farmsteads set in dark forests of orchard trees and tall windbreaks of tapering poplar, where never a light gleamed from a pane, where sons and daughters, worn husbandmen and weary wives, lay soothed in honest slumber; past barn-yards, where cattle sighed as they lay in the moonshine champing upon their cuds; down into swales, where the air was damp and cold, like a wet hand on the face; up to hill-crests, over which the perfumes of autumn were blowing the spices of goldenrod and ragweed, the elusive scent of hedge orange, the sweet of curing fodder in the shock; past peace and contentment, and the ripe reward of men's summer toil.
It was finally arranged that he was to pay Captain Elihu Swales the sum of fifteen pounds; in consideration of which, in addition to any service I could be of, I was to mess at his table, and to learn what I could of a seaman's duty, till the ship returned to Liverpool.
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