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Yet I persisted with another question: "How do you know we haven't passed them already?" "Me know," he grinned. "All right; you smoke." He was a funny cuss, but I let it go at that. Biscuits, bacon and coffee might properly be called the Woodsmen's Ambrosia, but it is not a feast over which man is inclined to loiter, and Smilax was soon re-wrapping the pack.
But a baby's sorrow, happily, is shorter than its remembrance; and Rosy-Lilly soon learned to repeat her phrase: "Poor Daddy had to go 'way-'way-off," without the quivering lip and wistful look which made the big woodsmen's hearts tighten so painfully beneath their homespun shirts. Conroy's Camp was a spacious, oblong cabin of "chinked" logs, with a big stove in the middle.
The tapestry was quickly pushed aside, and the ruddy face of Sir Edward Stanley insinuated itself between, the fringes and the screen, but it was not the face of a contented man, for it wore a disappointed look. "Bring him in," commanded the baron. "Nay, I have not caught him yet," he ruefully replied. "Come and help us, he has hidden himself amid the woodsmen's huts."
Nevertheless, it came about that, without a word said by any one, from the hour of Rosy-Lilly's arrival in camp, all the indecent "chanteys" were dropped, as if into oblivion, from the woodsmen's repertoire. During the songs, the smoking, and the lazy fun, Rosy-Lilly would slip from one big woodsman to another, an inconspicuous little figure in the smoke-gloomed light of the two oil-lamps.
Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes, or the crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first camp, Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted, "Hello, the camp!" A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron. "Hello, Sandy!" "Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!" "Ready for company?"
The man mouthed his quid, spat copiously, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and pointed. "Up at his shanty," he made answer, and grinned at Bryce knowingly. Up through the camp's single short street, flanked on each side with the woodsmen's shanties, Bryce went. Dogs barked at him, for he was a stranger in his own camp; children, playing in the dust, gazed upon him owlishly.
The low chirping of the wood-birds, the tiny barkings of the out-starting squirrels, the hurrying footsteps of the night-prowling animals, on their way to their coverts, on the land; and the leaping up of fish, the flapping of the wings of ducks, and the far-heard, trumpet-toned cry of the great northern diver, on the water, those unfailing concomitants of approaching day, in the watered wilderness, early aroused the next morning our little band of soundly-sleeping hunters from their woodsmen's feather beds, the soft, elastic boughs of the health-giving hemlock, and put them on the stir in building their fire, and making preparations for their breakfast.
For a couple of hours the Boy busied himself joyously, observing the work of these cunning woodsmen's teeth, noting the trails by which the remoter cuttings had been dragged down to the water, and studying the excavations on the canal.
"Let us build a true woodsmen's camp fire," I said; "and over it I shall broil for your delectation succulent slices of crisp bacon." Almost immediately a cheery fire was burning on the shore of the lake. From the stock of supplies I brought forth a strip of bacon, finding it much greasier than I had anticipated; I may say I had never before handled this product in its raw state.
Sometimes they heard the dry click-clock of the woodsmen's axes or the crash of falling trees deep in the wood. When they reached the first camp Ridgeley pulled up the steaming horses at the door and shouted, "Hello, the camp!" A tall old man with a long red beard came out. He held one bare red arm above his eyes. He wore an apron. "Hello, Sandy!" "Hello, Mr. Ridgeley!" "Ready for company?"
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