Rolf In The Woods

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Ordinarily, an ox driver walks on the hew (nigh or left) side,
near the head of his team, shouting "gee" (right), "haw" (left),
"get up," "steady," or "whoa" (stop), accompanying the order with
a waving of the whip. Foolish drivers lash the oxen on the haw
side when they wish them to gee -- and vice versa; but it is
notorious that all good drivers do little lashing. Spare the lash
or spoil your team. So it was not long before Rolf could guide
them from the top of the load, as they travelled from shook to
shook in the field. This voice of command saved his life, or at
least his limb, one morning, for he made a misstep that tumbled
him down between the oxen and the wagon. At once the team
started, but his ringing "Whoa!" brought them to a dead stop, and
saved him; whereas, had it been Van's "Whoa!" it would have set
them off at a run, for every shout from him meant a whip lick to
follow.

Thus Rolf won the respect, if not the love, of the huge beasts;
more and more they were his charge, and when, on that sad
morning, in the last of the barley, Van came in, "Ach, vot shall
I do! Vot shall I do! Dot Buck ox be nigh dead."

Alas! there he lay on the ground, his head sometimes raised,
sometimes stretched out flat, while the huge creature uttered
short moans at times.

Only four years before, Rolf had seen that same thing at Redding.
The rolling eye, the working of the belly muscles, the straining
and moaning. "It's colic; have you any ginger?"

"No, I hat only dot soft soap."

What soft soap had to do with ginger was not clear, and Rolf
wondered if it had some rare occult medical power that had
escaped his mother.

"Do you know where there's any slippery elm?"

"Yah."

"Then bring a big boiling of the bark, while I get some
peppermint."

The elm bark was boiled till it made a kettleful of brown slime.
The peppermint was dried above the stove till it could be
powdered, and mixed with the slippery slush. Some sulphur and
some soda were discovered and stirred in, on general principles,
and they hastened to the huge, helpless creature in the field.

Poor Buck seemed worse than ever. He was flat on his side, with
his spine humped up, moaning and straining at intervals. But now
relief was in sight -- so thought the men. With a tin dipper they
tried to pour some relief into the open mouth of the sufferer,
who had so little appreciation that he simply taxed his remaining
strength to blow it out in their faces. Several attempts ended
the same way. Then the brute, in what looked like temper, swung
his muzzle and dashed the whole dipper away. Next they tried the
usual method, mixing it with a bran mash, considered a delicacy
in the bovine world, but Buck again took notice, under pressure
only, to dash it away and waste it all.

It occurred to them they might force it down his throat if they
could raise his head. So they used a hand lever and a prop to
elevate the muzzle, and were about to try another inpour, when
Buck leaped to his feet, and behaving like one who has been
shamming, made at full gallop for the stable, nor stopped till
safely in his stall, where at once he dropped in all the evident
agony of a new spasm.

It is a common thing for oxen to sham sick, but this was the real
thing, and it seemed they were going to lose the ox, which meant
also lose a large part of the harvest.

In the stable, now, they had a better chance; they tied him, then
raised his head with a lever till his snout was high above his
shoulders. Now it seemed easy to pour the medicine down that
long, sloping passage. But his mouth was tightly closed, any that
entered his nostrils was blown afar, and the suffering beast
strained at the rope till he seemed likely to strangle.

Both men and ox were worn out with the struggle; the brute was no
better, but rather worse.

"Wall," said Rolf, "I've seen a good many ornery steers, but
that's the orneriest I ever did handle, an' I reckon we'll lose
him if he don't get that poison into him pretty soon."

Oxen never were studied as much as horses, for they were
considered a temporary shift, and every farmer looked forward to
replacing them with the latter. Oxen were enormously strong, and
they could flourish without grain when the grass was good; they
never lost their head in a swamp hole, and ploughed steadily
among all kinds of roots and stumps; but they were exasperatingly
slow and eternally tricky. Bright, being the trickier of the
two, was made the nigh ox, to be more under control. Ordinarily
Rolf could manage Buck easily, but the present situation seemed
hopeless. In his memory he harked back to Redding days, and he
recalled old Eli Gooch, the ox expert, and wondered what he would
have done. Then, as he sat, he caught sight of the sick ox
reaching out its head and deftly licking up a few drops of bran
mash that had fallen from his yoke fellow's portion. A smile
spread over Rolf's face. "Just like you; you think nothing's good
except it's stolen. All right; we'll see." He mixed a big dose of
medicine, with bran, as before. Then he tied Bright's head so
that he could not reach the ground, and set the bucket of mash
half way between the two oxen. "Here ye are, Bright," he said, as
a matter of form, and walked out of the stable; but, from a
crack, he watched. Buck saw a chance to steal Bright's bran; he
looked around; Oh, joy! his driver was away. He reached out
cautiously; sniffed; his long tongue shot forth for a first
taste, when Rolf gave a shout and ran in. "Hi, you old robber!
Let that alone; that's for Bright."

The sick ox was very much in his own stall now, and stayed there
for some time after Rolf went to resume his place at the
peephole. But encouraged by a few minutes of silence, he again
reached out, and hastily gulped down a mouthful of the mixture
before Rolf shouted and rushed in armed with a switch to punish
the thief. Poor Bright, by his efforts to reach the tempting
mash, was unwittingly playing the game, for this was proof
positive of its desirableness.

After giving Buck a few cuts with the switch, Rolf retired, as
before. Again the sick ox waited for silence, and reaching out
with greedy haste, he gulped down the rest and emptied the
bucket; seeing which, Rolf ran in and gave the rogue a final
trouncing for the sake of consistency.

Any one who knows what slippery elm, peppermint, soda, sulphur,
colic, and ox do when thoroughly interincorporated will not be
surprised to learn that in the morning the stable needed special
treatment, and of all the mixture the ox was the only ingredient
left on the active list. He was all right again, very thirsty,
and not quite up to his usual standard, but, as Van said, after a
careful look, "Ah, tell you vot, dot you vas a veil ox again, an'
I t'ink I know not vot if you all tricky vas like Bright."
Rolf and Skookum at Albany

The Red Moon (August) follows the Thunder Moon, and in the early
part of its second week Rolf and Van, hauling in the barley and
discussing the fitness of the oats, were startled by a most
outrageous clatter among the hens. Horrid murder evidently was
stalking abroad, and, hastening to the rescue, Rolf heard loud,
angry barks; then a savage beast with a defunct "cackle party"
appeared, but dropped the victim to bark and bound upon the
"relief party" with ecstatic expressions of joy, in spite of
Rolf's -- "Skookum! you little brute!"

Yes! Quonab was back; that is, he was at the lake shore, and
Skookum had made haste to plunge into the joys and gayeties of
this social centre, without awaiting the formalities of greeting
or even of dry-shod landing.

The next scene was -- a big, high post, a long, strong chain and
a small, sad dog.

"Ho, Quonab, you found your people? You had a good time?"

"Ugh," was the answer, the whole of it, and all the light Rolf
got for many a day on the old man's trip to the North. The
prospect of going to Albany for Van Cortlandt was much more
attractive to Quonab than that of the harvest field, so a
compromise was agreed on. Callan's barley was in the stock; if
all three helped Callan for three days, Callan would owe them for
nine, and so it was arranged.

Again "good-bye," and Rolf, Quonab, and little dog Skookum went
sailing down the Schroon toward the junction, where they left a
cache of their supplies, and down the broadening Hudson toward
Albany.

Rolf had been over the road twice; Quonab never before, yet his
nose for water was so good and the sense of rapid and portage was
so strong in the red man, that many times he was the pilot. "This
is the way, because it must be"; "there it is deep because so
narrow"; "that rapid is dangerous, because there is such a
well-beaten portage trail"; "that we can run, because I see it,"
or, "because there is no portage trail," etc. The eighty miles
were covered in three sleeps, and in the mid-moon days of the Red
Moon they landed at the dock in front of Peter Vandam's. If
Quonab had any especial emotions for the occasion, he cloaked
them perfectly under a calm and copper-coloured exterior of
absolute immobility.

Their Albany experiences included a meeting with the governor and
an encounter with a broad and burly river pirate, who, seeing a
lone and peaceable-looking red man, went out of his way to insult
him; and when Quonab's knife flashed out at last, it was only his
recently established relations with the governor's son that saved
him from some very sad results, for there were many loafers
about. But burly Vandam appeared in the nick of time to halt the
small mob with the warning: "Don't you know that's Mr. Van
Cortlandt's guide?" With the governor and Vandam to back him,
Quonab soon had the mob on his side, and the dock loafer's own
friends pelted him with mud as he escaped. But not a little
credit is due to Skookum, for at the critical moment he had
sprung on the ruffian's bare and abundant leg with such toothsome
effect that the owner fell promptly backward and the knife thrust
missed. It was quickly over and Quonab replaced his knife,
contemptuous of the whole crowd before, during and after the
incident. Not at the time, but days later, he said of his foe:
"He was a talker; he was full of fear."

With the backwoods only thirty miles away, and the unbroken
wilderness one hundred, it was hard to believe how little Henry
van Cortlandt knew of the woods and its life. He belonged to the
ultra-fashionable set, and it was rather their pose to affect
ignorance of the savage world and its ways. But he had plenty of
common-sense to fan back on, and the inspiring example of
Washington, equally at home in the nation's Parliament, the army
intrenchment, the glittering ball room, or the hunting lodge of
the Indian, was a constant reminder that the perfect man is a
harmonious development of mind, morals, and physique.

His training had been somewhat warped by the ultraclassic fashion
of the times, so he persisted in seeing in Quonab a sort of
discoloured, barbaric clansman of Alaric or a camp follower of
Xenophon's host, rather than an actual living, interesting,
native American, exemplifying in the highest degree the sinewy,
alert woodman, and the saturated mystic and pantheist of an age
bygone and out of date, combined with a middle-measure
intelligence. And Rolf, tall, blue-eyed with brown, curling
hair, was made to pose as the youthful Achilles, rather than as a
type of America's best young manhood, cleaner, saner, and of far
higher ideals and traditions than ever were ascribed to Achilles
by his most blinded worshippers. It recalled the case of
Wordsworth and Southey living side by side in England; Southey,
the famous, must needs seek in ancient India for material to
write his twelve-volume romance that no one ever looks at;
Wordsworth, the unknown, wrote of the things of his own time,
about his own door? and produced immortal verse.

What should we think of Homer, had he sung his impressions of the
ancient Egyptians? or of Thackeray, had he novelized the life of
the Babylonians? It is an ancient blindness, with an ancient wall
to bruise one's head. It is only those who seek ointment of the
consecrated clay that gives back sight, who see the shining way
at their feet, who beat their face against no wall, who safely
climb the heights. Henry van Cortlandt was a man of rare parts,
of every advantage, but still he had been taught steadfastly to
live in the past. His eyes were yet to be opened. The living
present was not his -- but yet to be.

The young lawyer had been assembling his outfit at Vandam's
warehouse, for, in spite of scoffing friends, he knew that Rolf
was coming back to him.

When Rolf saw the pile of stuff that was gathered for that
outfit, he stared at it aghast, then looked at Vandam, and
together they roared. There was everything for light housekeeping
and heavy doctoring, even chairs, a wash stand, a mirror, a
mortar, and a pestle. Six canoes could scarcely have carried the
lot.

"'Tain't so much the young man as his mother," explained Big
Pete; "at first I tried to make 'em understand, but it was no
use; so I says, 'All right, go ahead, as long as there's room in
the warehouse.' I reckon I'll set on the fence and have some fun
seein' Rolf ontangle the affair."

"Phew, pheeeww -- ph-e-e-e-e-w," was all Rolf could say in
answer. But at last, "Wall, there's always a way. I sized him up
as pretty level headed. We'll see."

There was a way and it was easy, for, in a secret session, Rolf,
Pete, and Van Cortlandt together sorted out the things needed. A
small tent, blankets, extra clothes, guns, ammunition, delicate
food for three months, a few medicines and toilet articles -- a
pretty good load for one canoe, but a trifle compared with the
mountain of stuff piled up on the floor.

"Now, Mr. van Cortlandt," said Rolf, "will you explain to your
mother that we are going on with this so as to travel quickly,
and will send back for the rest as we need it?"

A quiet chuckle was now heard from Big Pete. "Good! I wondered
how he'd settle it."

The governor and his lady saw them off; therefore, there was a
crowd. The mother never before had noted what a frail and
dangerous thing a canoe is. She cautioned her son never to
venture out alone, and to be sure that he rubbed his chest with
the pectoral balm she had made from such and such a famous
receipt, the one that saved the life but not the limb of old
Governor Stuyvesant, and come right home if you catch a cold; and
wait at the first camp till the other things come, and (in a
whisper) keep away from that horrid red Indian with the knife,
and never fail to let every one know who you are, and write
regularly, and don't forget to take your calomel Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday, alternating with Peruvian bark Tuesday,
Thursday, and Saturday, and squills on Sunday, except every other
week, when he should devote Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays to
rhubarb and catnip tea, except in the full moon, when the catnip
was to be replaced with graveyard bergamot and the squills with
opodeldoc in which an iron nail had been left for a week.

So Henry was embraced, Rolf was hand-shaken, Quonab was nodded
at, Skookum was wisely let alone, and the trim canoe swung from
the dock. Amid hearty cheers, farewells, and "God speed ye's" it
breasted the flood for the North.

And on the dock, with kerchief to her eyes, stood the mother,
weeping to think that her boy was going far, far away from his
home and friends in dear, cultured, refined Albany, away, away,
to that remote and barbarous inaccessible region almost to the
shore land of Lake Champlain.

Back to Indian Lake

Young Van Cortlandt, six feet two in his socks and thirty- four
inches around the chest, was, as Rolf long afterward said, "awful
good raw material, but awful raw." Two years out of college,
half of which had been spent at the law, had done little but
launch him as a physical weakling and a social star. But his
mental make-up was more than good; it was of large promise. He
lacked neither courage nor sense, and the course he now followed
was surely the best for man-making.

Rolf never realized how much a farmer-woodman-
canoeman-hunter-camper had to know, until now he met a man who
did not know anything, nor dreamed how many wrong ways there were
of doing a job, till he saw his new companion try it.

There is no single simple thing that is a more complete measure
of one's woodcraft than the lighting of a fire. There are a dozen
good ways and a thousand wrong ones. A man who can light thirty
fires on thirty successive days with thirty matches or thirty
sparks from flint and steel is a graduated woodman, for the feat
presupposes experience of many years and the skill that belongs
to a winner.

When Quonab and Rolf came back from taking each a load over the
first little portage, they found Van Cortlandt getting ready for
a fire with a great, solid pile of small logs, most of them wet
and green. He knew how to use flint and steel, because that was
the established household way of the times. Since childhood had
he lighted the candle at home by this primitive means. When his
pile of soggy logs was ready, he struck his flint, caught a spark
on the tinder that is always kept on hand, blew it to a flame,
thrust in between two of the wet logs, waited for all to blaze
up, and wondered why the tiny blaze went out at once, no matter
how often he tried.

When the others came back, Van Cortlandt remarked: "It doesn't
seem to burn." The Indian turned away in silent contempt. Rolf
had hard work to keep the forms of respect, until the thought
came: "I suppose I looked just as big a fool in his world at
Albany."

"See," said he, "green wood and wet wood won't do, but yonder is
some birch bark and there's a pine root." He took his axe and cut
a few sticks from the root, then used his knife to make a
sliver-fuzz of each; one piece, so resinous that it would not
whittle, he smashed with the back of the axe into a lot of
matchwood. With a handful of finely shredded birch bark he was
now quite ready. A crack of the flint a blowing of the spark
caught on the tinder from the box, a little flame that at once
was magnified by the birch bark, and in a minute the pine
splinters made a sputtering fire. Quonab did not even pay Van
Cortlandt the compliment of using one of his logs. He cut a
growing poplar, built a fireplace of the green logs around the
blaze that Rolf had made, and the meal was ready in a few
minutes.

Van Cortlandt was not a fool; merely it was all new to him. But
his attention was directed to fire-making now, and long before
they reached their cabin he had learned this, the first of the
woodman's arts -- he could lay and light a fire. And when, weeks
later, he not only made the flint fire, but learned in emergency
to make the rubbing stick spark, his cup of joy was full. He felt
he was learning.

Determined to be in everything, now he paddled all day; at first
with vigour, then mechanically, at last feebly and painfully.
Late in the afternoon they made the first long portage; it was a
quarter mile. Rolf took a hundred pounds, Quonab half as much
more, Van Cortlandt tottered slowly behind with his pill-kit and
his paddle. That night, on his ample mattress, he slept the sleep
of utter exhaustion. Next day he did little and said nothing. It
came on to rain; he raised a huge umbrella and crouched under it
till the storm was over. But the third day he began to show signs
of new life, and before they reached the Schroon's mouth, on the
fifth day, his young frame was already responding to the elixir
of the hills.

It was very clear that they could not take half of the stuff that
they had cached at the Schroon's mouth, so that a new adjustment
was needed and still a cache to await another trip.

That night as they sat by their sixth camp fire, Van Cortlandt
pondered over the recent days, and they seemed many since he had
left home. He felt much older and stronger. He felt not only less
strange, but positively intimate with the life, the river, the
canoe, and his comrades; and, pleased with his winnings, he laid
his hand on Skookum, slumbering near, only to arouse in response
a savage growl, as that important animal arose and moved to the
other side of the fire. Never did small dog give tall man a more
deliberate snub. "You can't do that with Skookum; you must wait
till he's ready," said Rolf.

The journey up the Hudson with its "mean" waters and its
"carries" was much as before. Then they came to the eagle's nest
and the easy waters of Jesup's River, and without important
incident they landed at the cabin. The feeling of "home again"
spread over the camp and every one was gay.
Van Cortlandt's Drugs

AIN'T ye feelin' all right?" said Rolf, one bright, calomel
morning, as he saw Van Cortlandt pre- paring his daily physic.

"Why, yes; I'm feeling fine; I'm better every day," was the
jovial reply.

"Course I don't know, but my mother used to say: 'Med'cine's the
stuff makes a sick man well, an' a well man sick."'

"My mother and your mother would have fought at sight, as you may
judge. B-u-t," he added with reflective slowness, and a merry
twinkle in his eye, "if things were to be judged by their
product, I am afraid your mother would win easily," and he laid
his long, thin, scrawny hand beside the broad, strong hand of the
growing youth.

"Old Sylvanne wasn't far astray when he said: 'There aren't any
sick, 'cept them as thinks they are,"' said Rolf. "I suppose I
ought to begin to taper off," was the reply. But the tapering
was very sudden. Before a week went by, it seemed desirable to
go back for the stuff left in cache on the Schroon, where, of
course, it was subject to several risks. There seemed no object
in taking Van Cortlandt back, but they could not well leave him
alone. He went. He had kept time with fair regularity --
calomel, rhubarb; calomel, rhubarb; calomel, rhubarb, squills --
but Rolf's remarks had sunk into his intelligence, as a red-hot
shot will sink through shingles, letting in light and creating
revolution.

This was a rhubarb morning. He drank his potion, then, carefully
stoppering the bottle, he placed it with its companions in a box
and stowed that near the middle of the canoe. "I'll be glad
when it's finished," he said reflectively; "I don't believe I
need it now. I wish sometimes I could run short of it all."

That was what Rolf had been hoping for. Without such a remark,
he would not have dared do as he did. He threw the tent cover
over the canoe amidships, causing the unstable craft to cant:
"That won't do," he remarked, and took out several articles,
including the medicine chest, put them ashore under the bushes,
and, when he replaced them, contrived that the medicine should be
forgotten.

Next morning Van Cortlandt, rising to prepare his calomel, got a
shock to find it not.

"It strikes me," says Rolf, "the last time I saw that, it was on
the bank when we trimmed the canoe." Yes, there could be no doubt
of it. Van must live his life in utter druglessness for a time.
It gave him somewhat of a scare, much like that a young swimmer
gets when he finds he has drifted awav from his floats; and, like
that same beginner, it braced him to help himself. So Van found
that he could swim without corks.

They made a rapid journey down, and in a week they were back with
the load.

There was the potion chest where they had left it. Van Cortlandt
picked it up with a sheepish smile, and they sat down for evening
meal. Presently Rolf said: "I mind once I seen three little
hawks in a nest together. The mother was teaching them to fly.
Two of them started off all right, and pretty soon were scooting
among the treetops. The other was scared. He says: 'No, mother,
I never did fly, and I'm scared I'd get killed if I tried.' At
last the mother got mad and shoved him over. As soon as he felt
he was gone, he spread out his wings to save himself. The wings
were all right enough, and long before he struck the ground, he
was flying."

Rolf Learns Something from Van

A man can't handle his own case, any more than a delirious doctor
kin give himself the right physic. --Saying of Si Sylvanne.

However superior Rolf might feel in the canoe or the woods, there
was one place where Van Cortlandt took the lead, and that was in
the long talks they had by the campfire or in Van's own shanty
which Quonab rarely entered.

The most interesting subjects treated in these were ancient
Greece and modern Albany. Van Cortlandt was a good Greek scholar,
and, finding an intelligent listener, he told the stirring tales
of royal Ilion, Athens, and Pergamos, with the loving enthusiasm
of one whom the teachers found it easy to instruct in classic
lore. And when he recited or intoned the rolling Greek heroics of
the siege of Troy, Rolf listened with an interest that was
strange, considering that he knew not a word of it. But he said,
"It sounded like real talk, and the tramp of men that were all
astir with something big a-doing."

Albany and politics, too, were vital strains, and life at the
Government House, with the struggling rings and cabals, social
and political. These were extraordinarily funny and whimsical to
Rolf. No doubt because Van Cortlandt presented them that way. And
he more than once wondered how rational humans could waste their
time in such tomfoolery and childish things as all
conventionalities seemed to be. Van Cortlandt smiled at his
remarks, but made no answer for long.

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