“Boston Tilicum” Night was now coming, — twilight, dearest and tenderest of all the beautiful changes of circling day was upon us. But twilight, the period of repose, and night, of restful slumbers, are not welcome to campaigners, unless a camp, with water, fodder, and fuel, the three requisites of a camp, are provided. We saw our day waning without having revealed to us a spot where these three were coincident. Fuel, indeed, there was anywhere without stint, and water might be found without much searching. But in this primeval wood there were no beds of verdant herbage where Klale and his companions might solace themselves for clambering and plunging and leaping all day. Verdancy enough there was under foot, but it was the green velvet of earthy moss. In some dusty, pebbly openings where the river overflows in spring, the horses had had a noon nibble at spears of grass, juiceless, scanty, and unattractive. My trio of hungry horses flagged sadly.
It was darkening fast when we reached an open spot where Loolowcan had hoped to find grass. Arid starvation alone was visible. Even such wiry attempts at verdure as the stagnant blood of this petty desert had been able to force up through its harsh pores were long ago shaved away by drought. The last nibbles had been taken to-day by the sorry steeds of the exploring party.
There was nothing for it but to go on. Whither? To the next crossing of the river, where the horses might make what they could out of water, and entertain themselves with browsing at alder and maple.
We hurried on, for it was now dark. The Boston hooihut suddenly came charging out of the gloaming, and crossed the trail. Misunderstanding the advice of my taciturn and monosyllabic guide, I left the Indian way, and followed the white man’s. Presently it ended, but the trees were blazed where it should pass. Blazes were but faint signals of guidance by twilight. Dimmer grew the woods. Stars were visible overhead, and the black circles of the forest shut off the last gleams of the west. Every obstacle of fallen tree, bramble, and quagmire now loomed large and formidable. And then in the darkness, now fully possessor of the woods, the blazes suddenly disappeared, went out, and ceased, like a deluding will-o’-the-wisp. Here was a crisis. Had the hooihut actually given out here in an invisible blaze, high up a stump? Road that dared so much and did so much, were its energies effete, its purpose broken down? And the pioneers, had they shrunk away from leadership of civilization, and slunk homeward?
However that might be, we were at present lost. Ride thou on, Loolowcan, and see if Somewhere is hereabouts; we cannot make a night of it in Nowhere.
Loolowcan dashed Gubbins at darkness; it opened and closed upon him. For a moment I could hear him crashing through the wood; then there was silence. I was quite alone.
Prying into silence for sight or sound, I discerned a rumble, as if of water over a pebbly path. I fastened Klale and Antipodes, as beacons of return, and, laying bold of the pleasant noise of flowing, went with it. Somewhere was actually in my near neighborhood. Sound guided me to sight. Suddenly behind the fir-trunks I caught the gleam of fire. At the same moment, Loolowcan, cautiously stealing back, encountered me.
“Hin pasaiooks copa pire, nika nanitch-pose wake siks; many blanketeers, by a fire, I behold,” he whispered, “perhaps not friends.”
“Conoway pasaiooks siks copa pasaiooks; all blanketeers friends to blanketeers,” I boldly asseverated without regard to history; “wake quash, — ocook Boston tilicum, mamook hooihut; fear not, — these are Boston folk, road-makers.”
I led the way confidently toward their beaconfire. Friends or not, the pasaiooks were better company than black tree-trunks. The flame, at first but a cloudy glimmer, then a flicker, now gave broad and welcome light. It could not conquer darkness with its bold illumination, for darkness is large and strong; but it showed a path out of it. As we worked our way slowly forward, the great trees closed dimly after us, — giants attending out of their domain intruders very willing to be thus sped into realms of better omen.
Beating through a flagellant thicket, we emerged upon the bank of my rumbling stream. Across it a great camp-fire blazed. A belt of reflected crimson lay upon the clear water. Every ripple and breaker of the hostile element tore at this shadow of light, riving it into rags and streamers, and drowning them away down the dell. Still the shattered girdle was there undestroyed, lashing every coming gush of waves, and smiting the stream as if to open a pathway for us, newcomers forth from the darksome wood.
