Burned Bridges | Page 2

was purely utilitarian. They cultivated no land, and the meadow during the brief season supplied them with a profusion of delicate flowers a southern garden could scarcely excel. Aside from a few trees felled about each home site, their common effort had cleared away the willows and birch which bordered the creek bank, so that an open landing was afforded the canoes.
There was but one exception to the monotonous similitude of these several habitations. A few paces back from the stream and standing boldly in the open rose a log house double the size of any other there. It contained at least four rooms. Its windows were of ample size, the doors neatly carpentered. A wide porch ran on three sides. It bore about itself an air of homely comfort, heightened by muslin at the windows, a fringe of poppies and forget-me-nots blooming in an orderly row before it, and a sturdy vine laden with morning-glories twining up each supporting column of the porch roof.
Between the house and the woods an acre square was enclosed by a tall picket fence. Within the fence, which was designed as a barricade against foraging deer, there grew a variety of vegetables. The produce of that garden had grown famous far beyond Lone Moose village. But the spirit and customs and traditions of the gardener's neighbors were all against any attempt to duplicate it. They were hunters and trappers and fishermen. The woods and waters supplied their every need.
Upon a blistering day in July, a little past noon, a man stepped out on the porch, and drawing into the shadiest part a great, rude homemade chair upholstered with moosehide, sat down. He had a green-bound book in his hand. While he stuffed a clay pipe full of tobacco he laid the volume across his knees. Every movement was as deliberate as the flow of the deep stream near by. When he had stoked up his pipe he leaned back and opened the book. The smoke from his pipe kept off what few mosquitoes were abroad in the scorching heat of midday.
A casual glance would at once have differentiated him from a native, held him guiltless of any trace of native blood. His age might have been anywhere between forty and fifty. His hair, now plentifully shot with gray, had been a light, wavy brown. His eyes were a clear gray, and his features were the antithesis of his high-cheekboned neighbors. Only the weather-beaten hue of his skin, and the scores of fine seams radiating from his eyes told of many seasons squinting against hot sunlight and harsh winds.
Whatever his vocation and manner of living may have been he was now deeply absorbed in the volume he held. A small child appeared on the porch, a youngster of three or thereabouts, with swarthy skin, very dark eyes, and inky-black hair. He went on all fours across Sam Carr's extended feet several times. Carr remained oblivious, or at least undisturbed, until the child stood up, laid hold of his knee and shook it with playful persistence. Then Carr looked over his book, spoke to the boy casually, shaking his head as he did so. The boy persisted after the juvenile habit. Carr raised his voice. An Indian woman, not yet of middle age but already inclining to the stoutness which overtakes women of her race early in life, appeared in the doorway. She spoke sharply to the boy in the deep, throaty language of her people. The boy, with a last impish grin, gave the man's leg a final shake and scuttled indoors. Carr impassively resumed his reading.
An hour or so later he lifted his eyes from the printed page at a distant boom of thunder. The advanced edge of a black cloudbank rolling swiftly up from the east was already dimming the brassy glare of the sun. He watched the swift oncoming of the storm. With astonishing rapidity the dark mass resolved itself into a gray, obscuring streak of rain riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Carr laid down his book and refilled his pipe while he gazed on this common phenomenon of the dog-days. It swept up and passed over the village of Lone Moose as a sprinkling wagon passes over a city street. The downpour was accompanied by crashing detonations that sent the village dogs howling to cover. With the same uncanny swiftness of gathering so it passed, leaving behind a pleasant coolness in the air, clean smells of the washed earth arising. The sun blazed out again. A million rain-pearls hung glistening on the blades of grass in the meadow before Sam Carr's house.
With the passing of the thunder shower, before Carr left off his contemplation of the freshened beauty of meadow and woods, a man and a woman emerged from the