On Big Lonely

________________________________________________
Title:     On Big Lonely
Author: Charles G. D. Roberts [More Titles by Roberts]

It was no doubt partly pride, in having for once succeeded in evading her grandmother's all-seeing eye, that enabled Mandy Ann to carry, at a trot, a basket almost as big as herself--to carry it all the way down the hill to the river, without once stumbling or stopping to take breath. The basket was not only large, but uneasy, seeming to be troubled by internal convulsions, which made it tip and lurch in a way that from time to time threatened to upset Mandy Ann's unstable equilibrium. But being a young person of character, she kept right on, ignoring the fact that the stones on the shore were very sharp to her little bare feet.

At last she reached the sunshiny cove, with shoals of minnows flickering about its amber shallows, which was the goal of her flight. Here, tethered to a stake on the bank, lay the high-sided old bateau, which Mandy Ann had long coveted as a perfectly ideal play-house. Its high prow lightly aground, its stern afloat, it swung lazily in the occasional puffs of lazy air. Mandy Ann was only four years old, and her red cotton skirt just came to her dimpled grimy little knees, but with that unfailing instinct of her sex she gathered up the skirt and clutched it securely between her breast and the rim of the basket. Then she stepped into the water, waded to the edge of the old bateau and climbed aboard.

The old craft was quite dry inside, and filled with a clean pungent scent of warm tar. Mandy Ann shook out her red skirt and her yellow curls, and set down the big covered basket on the bottom of the bateau. The basket continued to move tempestuously.

"Oh, naughty! naughty!" she exclaimed, shaking her chubby finger at it. "Jest a minute, jest a teenty minute, an' we'll see!"

Peering over the bow, Mandy Ann satisfied herself that the bateau, though its bottom grated on the pebbles, was completely surrounded by water. Then sitting down on the bottom, she assured herself that she was hidden by the boat's high flaring sides from the sight of all interfering domestic eyes on shore. She felt sure that even the eyes of her grandmother, in the little grey cottage back on the green hill, could not reach her in this unguessed retreat. With a sigh of unutterable content she made her way back into the extreme stern of the bateau, lugging the tempestuous basket with her. Sitting down flat, she took the basket in her lap and loosened the cover, crooning softly as she did so. Instantly a whiskered, brown snub-nose, sniffing and twitching with interrogation, appeared at the edge. A round brown head, with little round ears and fearless bright dark eyes, immediately popped over the edge. With a squeak of satisfaction a fat young woodchuck, nearly full-grown, clambered forth and ran up on Mandy Ann's shoulder. The bateau, under the influence of the sudden weight in the stern, floated clear of the gravel and swung softly at the end of its rope.

Observing that the bateau was afloat, Mandy Ann was delighted. She felt doubly secure, now, from pursuit. Pulling a muddy carrot from her pocket she held it up to the woodchuck, which was nuzzling affectionately at her curls. But the smell of the fresh earth reminded the little animal of something which he loved even better than Mandy Ann--even better, indeed, than a juicy carrot. He longed to get away, for a little while, from the loving but sometimes too assiduous attention with which his little mistress surrounded him--to get away and burrow to his heart's content in the cool brown earth, full of grass-roots. Ignoring the carrot, he clambered down in his soft, loose-jointed fashion, from Mandy Ann's shoulder, and ran along the gunwale to the bow. When he saw that he could not reach shore without getting into the water, which he loathed, he grumbled squeakingly, and kept bobbing his round head up and down, as if he contemplated making a jump for it.

At these symptoms Mandy Ann, who had been eyeing him, called to him severely. "Naughty!" she cried. "Come back this very instant, sir! You'd jes' go an' tell Granny on me! Come right back to your muzzer this instant!" At the sound of her voice the little animal seemed to think better of his rashness. The flashing and rippling of the water daunted him. He returned to Mandy Ann's side and fell to gnawing philosophically at the carrot which she thrust under his nose.

This care removed, Mandy Ann took an irregular bundle out of the basket. It was tied up in a blue-and-white handkerchief. Untying it with extreme care, as if the contents were peculiarly precious, she displayed a collection of fragments of many-coloured glass and gay-painted china. Gloating happily over these treasures, which flashed like jewels in the sun, she began to sort them out and arrange them with care along the nearest thwart of the bateau. Mandy Ann was making what the children of the Settlement knew and esteemed as a "Chaney House." There was keen rivalry among the children as to both location and furnishing of these admired creations; and to Mandy Ann's daring imagination it had appeared that a "Chaney House" in the old bateau would be something surpassing dreams.

For an hour or more Mandy Ann was utterly absorbed in her enchanting task. So quiet she was over it that every now and then a yellow-bird or a fly-catcher would alight upon the edge of the bateau to bounce away again with a startled and indignant twitter. The woodchuck, having eaten his carrot, curled up in the sun and went to sleep.

Mandy Ann's collection was really a rich assortment of colour. Every piece in it was a treasure in her eyes. But much as she loved the bits of painted china, she loved the glass better. There were red bits, and green of many shades, and blue, yellow, amber, purple and opal. Each piece, before arranging it in its allotted place on the thwart, she would lift to her eyes and survey the world through it. Some near treetops, and the blue sky piled with white fleeces of summer clouds, were all of the world she could see from her retreat; but viewed through different bits of glass these took on an infinite variety of wonder and delight. So engrossed she was, it quite escaped her notice that the old bateau was less steady in its movements than it had been when first she boarded it. She did not even observe the fact that there were no longer any treetops in her fairy-tinted pictures. At last there sounded under the keel a strange gurgle, and the bateau gave a swinging lurch which sent half the treasures of the "Chaney House" clattering upon the bottom or into Mandy Ann's lap. The woodchuck woke up frightened and scrambled into the shelter of its mistress's arms.

Much surprised, Mandy Ann knelt upright and looked out over the edge of the bateau. She was no longer in the little sheltered cove, but far out on the river. The shores, slipping smoothly and swiftly past, looked unfamiliar to her. Where she expected to see the scattered cottages of the Settlement, a huge bank covered with trees, cut off the view. While she was so engrossed with her coloured glass, a puff of wind, catching the high sides of the bateau, had caused it to tug at its tether. The rope, carelessly fastened by some impatient boy, had slipped its hold; and the bateau had been swept smoothly out into the hurrying current. Half a mile below, the river rounded a woody point, and the drifting bateau was hidden from the sight of any one who might have hurried to recover it.

At the moment, Mandy Ann was not frightened. Her blue eyes danced with excitement as she tossed back her tousled curls. The river, flowing swiftly but smoothly, flashed and rippled in the noon sun in a friendly fashion, and it was most interesting to see how fast the shores slipped by. There was no suggestion of danger; and probably, at the back of her little brain, Mandy Ann felt that the beautiful river, which she had always loved and never been allowed to play with, would bring her back to her Granny as gently and unexpectedly as it had carried her away. Meanwhile, she felt only the thrilling and utterly novel excitement of the situation. As the bateau swung in an occasional oily eddy she laughed gaily at the motion, and felt as proud as if she were doing it herself. And the woodchuck, which had been very nervous at first, feeling that something was wrong, was so reassured by its mistress's evident satisfaction that it curled up again on the bottom and hastened to resume its slumber.

In a little while the river curved again, sweeping back to its original course. Suddenly, in the distance, the bright spire of the Settlement church came into view, and then the familiar cottages. Mandy Ann's laughing face grew grave, as she saw how very, very far away they looked. They took on, also, from the distance, a certain strangeness which smote her heart. This wonderful adventure of hers ceased to have any charm for her. She wanted to go back at once. Then her grandmother's little grey house on the slope came into view. Oh, how terribly little and queer and far away it looked. And it was getting farther and farther away every minute. A frightened cry of "Granny! Granny! Take me home!" broke from her lips. She stood up, and made her way hurriedly to the other end of the bateau, which, being upstream, was nearer home. As her weight reached the bow, putting it deeper into the grip of the current, the bateau slowly swung around till it headed the other way. Mandy Ann turned and hurried again to the point nearest home. Whereupon the bateau calmly repeated its disconcerting manoeuvre. All at once the whole truth of the situation burst upon Mandy Ann's comprehension. She was lost. She was being carried away so far that she would never, never get back. She was being swept out into the terrible wilds that she had heard stories about. Her knees gave away in her terror. Crouching, a little red tumbled heap, on the bottom of the bateau, she lifted up her voice in shrill wailings, which so frightened the woodchuck that he came and crept under her skirt.

Below the Settlement the river ran for miles through a country of ever-deepening desolation, without cabin or clearing near its shores, till it emptied itself into the yet more desolate lake known as "Big Lonely," a body of forsaken water about ten miles long, surrounded by swamps and burnt-lands. From the foot of Big Lonely the river raged away over a mile of thundering ledges, through a chasm known to the lumbermen as "The Devil's Trough." The fury of this madness having spent itself between the black walls of the canyon, the river continued rather sluggishly its long course toward the sea. A few miles below the Settlement the river began to get hurried and turbulent, chafing white through rocky rapids. When the bateau plunged into the first of these, Mandy Ann's wailing and sobbing stopped abruptly. The clamour of the white waves and the sight of their lashing wrath fairly stupefied her. She sat up on the middle thwart, with the shivering woodchuck clutched to her breast, and stared about with wild eyes. On every side the waves leaped up, black, white, and amber, jumping at the staggering bateau. But appalling as they looked to Mandy Ann, they were not particularly dangerous to the sturdy, high-sided craft which carried her. The old bateau had been built to navigate just such waters. Nothing could upset it, and on account of its high, flaring sides, no ordinary rapids could swamp it. It rode the loud chutes triumphantly, now dipping its lofty nose, now bumping and reeling, but always making the passage without serious mishap. All through the rapids Mandy Ann would sit silent, motionless, fascinated with horror. But in the long, comparatively smooth reaches she would recover herself enough to cry softly upon the woodchuck's soft brown fur, till that prudent little animal, exasperated at the damp of her caresses, wriggled away and crawled into his hated basket.

At last, when the bateau had run a dozen of these noisy "rips," Mandy Ann grew surfeited with terror, and thought to comfort herself. Sitting down again upon the bottom of the bateau, she sadly sought to revive her interest in the "Chaney House." She would finger the choicest bits of painted porcelain, and tell herself how pretty they were. She would choose a fragment of scarlet or purple glass, hold it up to her pathetic, tear-stained face, and try to interest herself in the coloured landscape that filed by. But it was no use. Even the amber glass had lost its power to interest her. And at length, exhausted by her terror and her loneliness, she sank down and fell asleep.

It was late afternoon when Mandy Ann fell asleep, and her sleep was the heavy semi-torpor coming after unrelieved grief and fear. It was unjarred by the pitching of the fiercer rapids which the bateau presently encountered. The last mile of the river's course before joining the lake consisted of deep, smooth "dead-water"; but, a strong wind from the north-west having sprung up toward the end of the day, the bateau drove on with undiminished speed. On the edge of the evening, when the sun was just sinking into the naked tops of the rampikes along the western shore, the bateau swept out upon the desolate reaches of Big Lonely, and in the clutch of the wind hastened down mid-lake to seek the roaring chutes and shrieking vortices of the "Devil's Trough."

* * * * *

Out in the middle of the lake, where the heavy wind had full sweep, the pitching and thumping of the big waves terrified the poor little woodchuck almost to madness; but they made no impression on the wearied child, where she lay sobbing tremulously in her sleep. They made a great impression, however, on a light birch canoe, which was creeping up alongshore in the teeth of the wind, urged by two paddles. The paddlers were a couple of lumbermen, returning from the mouth of the river. All the spring and early summer they had been away from the Settlement, working on "the drive" of the winter's logging, and now, hungry for home, they were fighting their way doggedly against wind and wave. There was hardly a decent camping-ground on all the swamp-cursed shores of Big Lonely, except at the very head of the lake, where the river came in, and this spot the voyagers were determined to make before dark. They would then have clear poling ahead of them next day, to get them home to the Settlement in time for supper.

The man in the bow, a black-bearded, sturdy figure in a red shirt, paddled with slow, unvarying strokes, dipping his big maple paddle deep and bending his back to it, paying no heed whatever to the heavy black waves which lurched at him every other second and threatened to overwhelm the bow of his frail craft. He had none of the responsibility. His part was simply to supply power, steady, unwavering power, to make head against the relentless wind. The man in the stern, on the other hand, had to think and watch and meet every assault, as well as thrust the canoe forward into the tumult. He was a gaunt, long-armed young giant, bareheaded, with shaggy brown hair blown back from his red-tanned face. His keen grey eyes noted and measured every capricious lake-wave as it lunged at him, and his wrist, cunning and powerful, delicately varied each stroke to meet each instant's need. It was not enough that the canoe should be kept from broaching-to and swamping or upsetting. He was anxious that it should not ship water, and wet certain treasures which they were taking home to the backwoods from the shops of the little city down by the sea. And while his eyes seemed to be so engrossingly occupied in the battle with the waves of Big Lonely, they were all the time refreshing themselves with a vision--the vision of a grey house on a sunny hill-top, where his mother was waiting for him, and where a little yellow-haired girl would scream "_Dad_die, oh, Dad_die_!" when she saw him coming up the road.

The dogged voyagers were within perhaps two miles of the head of the lake, with the sun gone down behind the desolate rampikes, and strange tints of violet and rose and amber, beautiful and lonely, touching the angry turbulence of the waves, when the man in the bow, whose eyes were free to wander, caught sight of the drifting bateau. It was a little ahead of them, but farther out in the lake.

"Ain't that old Joe's bateau out yonder, Chris?" he queried, his trained woodsman's eye recognizing the craft by some minute detail of build or blemish.

"I reckon it be!" answered Chris, after a moment's scrutiny. "He's let her git adrift. Water must be raisin' sudden!"

"She'll be a fine quality o' kindlin' wood in another hour, the rate she's travelling" commented the other with mild interest. But the young giant in the stern was more concerned. He was sorry that old Joe should lose his boat.

"Darned old fool, not to tie her!" he growled. "Ef 'twarn't fer this wind ag'in' us, we could ketch it an' tow it ashore fer him. But we can't."

"Wouldn't stop fer it ef 't had a bag o' gold into it!" grunted the other, slogging on his paddle with renewed vigour as he looked forward to the camp-ground still so far ahead. He was hungry and tired, and couldn't even take time to fill his pipe in that hurly-burly.

Meanwhile the bateau had swept down swiftly, and passed them at a distance of not more than a hundred yards. It was with a qualm of regret that Chris saw it go by, to be ground to splinters in the yelling madness of the Devil's Trough. After it had passed, riding the waves bravely like the good old craft that it was, he glanced back after it in half-humorous regret. As he did so, his eye caught something that made him look again. A little furry brown creature was peering over the gunwale at the canoe. The gunwale tipped toward him at that instant and he saw it distinctly. Yes, it was a woodchuck, and no mistake. And it seemed to be making mute appeal to him to come and save it from a dreadful doom. Chris hesitated, looking doubtfully at his companion's heaving back. It looked an unresponsive back. Moreover, Chris felt half ashamed of his own compassionate impulse. He knew that he was considered foolishly softhearted about animals and children and women, though few men cared to express such an opinion to him too frankly. He suspected that, in the present case, his companion would have a right to complain of him. But he could not stand the idea of letting the little beast--which had so evidently appealed to him for succour--go down into the horrors of the Devil's Trough. His mind was made up.

"Mart," he exclaimed, "I'm goin' to turn. There's somethin' aboard that there old bateau that I want." And he put the head of the canoe straight up into a big wave.

"The devil there is!" cried the other, taking in his paddle and looking around in angry protest. "What is it?"

"Paddle, ye loon! Paddle hard!" ordered Chris. "I'll tell ye when we git her 'round."

Thus commanded, and the man at the stern paddle being supreme in a canoe, the backwoodsman obeyed with a curse. It was no time to argue, while getting the canoe around in that sea. But as soon as the canoe was turned, and scudding with frightened swoops down the waves in pursuit of the fleeing bateau, he saw, and understood.

"Confound you, Chris McKeen, if 'tain't nothin' but a blankety blank woodchuck!" he shouted, making as if to back water and try to turn the canoe again.

Chris's grey eyes hardened. "Look a' here, Mart Babcock," he shouted, "don't you be up to no foolishness. Ye kin cuss all ye like--but either paddle as I tell ye or take in yer paddle an' set quiet. _I'm_ runnin' this 'ere canoe."

Babcock took in his paddle, cursing bitterly.

"A woodchuck! A measly woodchuck!" he shouted, with unutterable contempt expressed in every word. "I know'd ye was a fool, Chris McKeen, but I didn't know ye was so many kinds of a mush-head of a fool!"

"Course it's a woodchuck!" agreed Chris, surging on his paddle. "Do ye think I'd let the leetle critter go down the 'Trough,' jest so's ye could git your bacon an' tea an hour sooner? I always did like woodchucks, anyways."

"I'll take it out o' yer hide fer this when we git ashore; you wait!" stormed Babcock, courageously. He knew it would be some time before they could get ashore, and so he would have a chance to forget his threat.

"That's all right, Mart!" assented McKeen. "My hide'll be all here waitin' on ye. But fer now you jest git ready to do ez I tell ye, an' don't let the canoe bump ez we come up alongside the bateau. It's goin' to be a mite resky, in this sea, gittin' hold of the leetle critter. I'm goin' to take it home for Mandy Ann."

As the canoe swept down upon the swooping and staggering bateau, Babcock put out his paddle in readiness to fend or catch as he might be directed. A moment later Chris ran the canoe past and brought her up dexterously under the lee of the high-walled craft. Babcock caught her with a firm grip, at the same time holding her off with the paddle, and glanced in, while Chris's eyes were still occupied. His dark face went white as cotton.

"My God, Chris! Forgive me! I didn't know!" he groaned.

"It's--Mandy Ann!" exclaimed her father, in a hushed voice, climbing into the bateau and catching the child into his arms.

[The end]
Charles G. D. Roberts's short story: On Big Lonely

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN