Chapter III

Now there is a season for all things; in the fall the black moose grows blacker and sleeker; in the fall the red buck rubs the tattered velvet from every prong; in the spring the mewing catbird whistles dreamily as a spotted thrush; in the spring the snowbird changes its feathers, chameleon like, as the snow drifts or melts; and the dry chirring of the red squirrel grows sweeter.

“Each after its kind,” says the quaint Book, and so the spruce-grouse drums in the long summer days, and the crested wood-duck ruffles its rainbow plumes, and the painted trout hang over the gravel beds in September, and the antlered moose barks at the September moon.

As for Skeene, he sewed porcupine quills in a semicircle over the instep of his moccasins, laced a string of scarlet trout-flies across his slouch hat, and listened to the bull-moose, bellowing out on the moonlit ridge.

At times he sang his Quebec song, at times he sighed. Twice he spared a yearling buck,—he could not tell why. He caught a big red sable, bigger than the coon-cat at the Carry House. It scratched and bit him, but he was very good to it. A lazy beaver, driven from the colony by his industrious relatives, bored a hole in the bank under Skeene’s shanty. Beaver-tail and hindquarters are good, cold boiled, but Skeene let him live in peace and even piled enough poplar saplings at his door to last any lazy beaver a year. And all this time he was sorry he killed Sebato at the wing-dam; he wished he had shot him a year before in the bog-country,—it was a good chance and nobody would have been the wiser.

When the September moon waxed full and the water lapped softly along the lake ledge, Skeene’s heart grew full, and the blood in his neck and cheeks ebbed and surged like moon-tides. So, on the second night, he took his rifle and dragged the canoe to the beach. But his heart failed him and he feared the Carry House, and he went back to his camp and rolled and grunted through a sleepless night. On the third evening he started on foot, but he hesitated when the lamp in the Carry House broke out, a red beam in the night. He stood, wretched, wistful, undecided, fingering his rifle butt, and his heart beat to suffocation. Something near him stirred and moaned among the rocks,—a miserable gluttonous fisher-cat, its head bristling with porcupine quills. And Skeene, sick with self-compassion, trailed the wounded creature to the water’s edge and killed it,—pitying it as he pitied himself. Then, worn out with the fever in his veins, he slept openly where he lay, wondering if he should wake on Red Lake shore or on the shores of a redder lake.

On the fourth night of the full of the moon, he went swiftly across the ridge, unarmed, and the miles of woodland and shore sped away like mist, so eagerly he ran. On that night he heard the moose-cows calling the barking bull, and the whoof! of the dun doe in the sedge. Far on the shore the red beam of the Carry lamp signalled him and his blood flamed the answer in his face. And, as he strode up to the house, he saw a woman on the shore looking out into the night across the spectral lake. It was Lois, servant at South Carry. He had danced with her two years ago at Foxcroft Landing, he had sent her six otter pelts a month before he shot Sebato.

She was the girl he had come for.

Is it possible she expected him? The restlessness of September had drawn her to the lake and something had led him to her.

The moon, a silver lamp, traced a shining trail across the shadowy waters; his canoe grated softly on the shoal, a string of bubbles followed the paddle sweep, the foam whispered secrets to the clustered sedge-grass.

* * * * *

And so, together, they glided away on a trail of silver water to the strange country, drained by strange streams, stirred by strange winds. The red spark of the Carry lamp died out in the night, the little grey stars twinkled over the dead waters, pale sparks from phantom nuptial torches flaring in the north.

At dawn the sky crimsoned the Little Misery. They slept. At sunrise a moose roared a salute to the coming day.

They awoke and kissed each other.