Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods Part 9

"Behold the forest," said Tom Gray later in the afternoon, halting his pony on a rise of ground, and encompa.s.sing a wide range of country with a sweep of his arm.

It was an undulating sea of deep green, almost as limitless as the sky itself, that the Overland Riders gazed upon.

"Them's the Big North Woods," Joe informed them. "We take a log trail just beyond here, and to-night we'll be in the 'Pineys.'"

"And to-morrow I shall be off and at work," announced Tom.

They were soon picking their way along a shady fragrant trail, tall, straight, n.o.ble pines about them seeming to be vieing with each other in their efforts to reach the blue sky. The wind now bore a new fragrance, and the air was heavily pungent with the odor of pine.

"Emma, does your nature cult explain to you why the trees grow so tall and so straight?" asked Tom, riding up beside Miss Dean.

Emma shook her head.

"Because they are fighting the battle of nature--fighting for existence, for their very lives, just as all the world of humans is fighting its battle. A tree must have light and air, or it dies. To get these it must grow up, it must keep up with its compet.i.tors, the trees about it, and forge ahead of them if possible, ever reaching up and up for sunlight and air. Once let it fall behind and it is lost; it is overwhelmed by the st.u.r.dier giants; it pales and pines and seems to lose its ambition.

The tree, knowing it has lost its grip, then seems to grow thin and gaunt, and one day it goes cras.h.i.+ng down, to rot and furnish nourishment for the giants that overwhelmed it. The tree's life, like ours, is a struggle for existence, with the survival of the fittest."

"Were I a tree I think I should prefer to grow alone out in an open field," decided Emma.

"Not if you were a wise tree, you would not," laughed Tom. "Out there you would be the plaything of the winds. Your body would be exposed to the glaring sun, the full blast of every pa.s.sing storm, and the bitter cold of winter, which would, unless you were very hardy, have a tendency to r.e.t.a.r.d your growth and weaken your vigor. Trees, like humans, do not enjoy a lonely life, but when they get together they immediately enter into bitter compet.i.tion. Isn't that quite human?"

"Where are you heading, Mrs. Shafto?" interrupted Grace, as the guide struck off, leaving the trail and entering the dense forest.

"Goin' to find a campin' place while I kin see," she answered. Now and then Joe would halt to examine an old blaze on a tree, occasionally making a new blaze with her short-handled woodsman's axe on the opposite side of the tree so that, upon returning along that trail, the new blaze might be easily seen.

"I fear that I was not born with a woodsman's sense," complained Anne.

"No one is. That is why a woodsman blazes trees," answered Tom. "I do not know whether you people are familiar with 'blazes.' Grace knows something about them."

"The only 'blaze' I know anything about is the blaze I make when I try to start a cook fire," laughed Hippy.

"You will need more knowledge than that if you stray a hundred yards from camp in the Pineries," replied Tom as they rode along. "A blaze is made by a single downward stroke of the axe, the object being to expose a good-sized spot of the whitish sapwood, which, set in the dark framework of the bark, is a staring mark that is certain to attract attention."

"Yes, but suppose the traveler tries to find the trail a year or so later?" questioned the practical Elfreda. "Hasn't it grown up so high that he can't see it?"

"No. A blaze always remains at its original height above the ground, because a tree increases its height and girth only by building on top of the previous growth. There is much of interest that I could tell you along this line, but I will merely describe the various blazes and their meanings, leaving the rest until some other time. It is well to remember that a trail blazed in a forest is likely to have been made either by a hunter, a lumberman, a timber-looker, or a surveyor. A hunter's line is apt to be inconspicuous. So is a timber-looker's, because he is searching for a bonanza and doesn't wish anyone else to discover it. A surveyor's line is always absolutely straight, except where it meets an insurmountable object, when it makes a right-angle turn to avoid the object, then goes straight ahead again.

"All trees that stand directly on the line of a survey have two notches cut on each side of them and are called 'sight trees.' Bushes on or near the line are bent by the woodsman at right angles to it.

"When a blaze line turns abruptly so that a person following it might otherwise overlook it, a long slash is made on that side of the tree which faces the new direction. There are other forms of blazes, such as marking section corners, boundaries and the like, which it is unnecessary for you to know now, but with which it might be wise for you to familiarize yourselves as you go along. This is the end of your first lesson."

"There's the fork of the river that we are goin' to camp on," called Joe, riding down a steep bank, followed by the Overlanders, their ponies slipping and sliding until they had reached the more level ground near the stream.

"We camp here," announced the forest woman. "If ye don't like it, pick out yer own camp. The bear and I stay right here."

Dismounting, Tom strode over to the tree under which Joe had announced her intention of making camp, and, placing a hand on it, gazed up along its length, then at the adjacent trees.

"She's stood here for a hundred years or more, and I reckon no wind will blow her down to-night. All right!" announced Tom.

"Get busy, girls," called Grace.

The Overlanders, dismounting, inhaled deeply of the air, heavily pungent with the odor of the pine, then set to work with a vim to pitch their camp. Tom, in the meantime, climbed the bank to look at a huge pile of logs that lay on a skidway above their camping place.

"Someone got left last spring," he said upon his return to his companions. "Those logs were cut last winter, but the water in the river last spring was evidently too low to float them down, so they must stay where they are until next spring awaiting the freshets. The blocks will then be knocked from under the skidway and those hundreds of thousands of feet of timber will go thundering down into the river. You will observe that they have cut a channel or 'travoy,' as it is called, through which the logs will roll after leaving the skidway, and pa.s.s on to the stream. This 'travoy' is pretty well grown over with second growth, but the logs will roll the growth down, and when they do you would think that all the tremendous forces of nature had been let loose."

By this time the camp was nearly finished, and the tents of the Overlanders looked like tiny doll houses under those giant pines, and in this, the very heart of nature, in the silence and the grandeur of it all, the girls felt a deep sense of something that they could not define, which left them disinclined to laugh or chatter.

Soon after dark the sky became overcast, the pines began dripping moisture, and a gentle breeze was heard murmuring in the tops of the trees.

"Come, little nature child! What are the wild winds in the tree-tops saying?" teased Hippy, breaking an awed silence of several minutes.

"I--I don't rightly know," answered Emma, after listening intently to the whisperings in the pines. "I--I think that the message they are trying to convey to me--to us--is a warning of something to come, something that is near at hand. I wish Madam Gersdorff were here. She could read the warning and tell us what peril it is that is hovering over us."

Nora uttered a shrill peal of laughter.

"Don't," begged Anne.

"You've got a bad attack of the w.i.l.l.i.e.s," groaned Hippy in a tone of disgust that brought a half-hearted laugh from his companions, though, had they been willing to admit it, they too felt something of the depression that was reflected in Emma Dean's face and voice.

Work on the camp finished, the Overland Riders put out the fire and turned in, Henry rolling himself up into a furry ball, Hindenburg snuggling down between Tom and Hippy. Only forest sounds, now faint and far away, marred the solemn impressive stillness of the Big North Woods, a stillness that was destined to be rudely interrupted ere the dawn of another day.

CHAPTER VII

FELLED BY A MYSTERIOUS BLOW

When Grace awakened late in the night the feeling of oppression with which she had gone to sleep still lay heavy upon her. The faint soughing of a breeze in the tree tops, the light thuds of falling pine cones, were the only sounds to be heard outside of the breathing of her companions who were sleeping soundly.

Suddenly her ears caught a distant roar, and a few drops of rain pattered on the tent.

"It is going to storm," murmured Grace. "I hope no dead limbs fall from the trees on our camp." Pulling the blankets over her head to shut out the sounds she tried to go to sleep, but sleep would not come, so Grace uncovered her head and lay listening.

The wind seemed to die down for a while, but it soon sprang up with renewed strength, and was sweeping violently over the tops of the pines, which were creaking and groaning under the strain. A distant crash told of some forest giant that had gone down under the blast; then the rain fell, a deluge of it, which finally beat through the little tents and trickled down over the sleeping Overland girls.

"Are you all right in there?" called Tom from the outside.

"Yes, but we are getting wet. Is it going to last long?" asked Grace.

"Not being able to get a view of the sky, I can't say positively. It seems like only a shower to me."

"Wait a moment. I'll join you."

Grace hurriedly dressed and, throwing on her rubber coat, stepped out.

"I don't just like the way some of these trees are acting," said Tom.

"Perhaps you haven't noticed how the ground is heaving."