George Eggleston - What Happened at Quasi - The Story of a Carolina Cruise

“How do you know that?” interrupted Tom.

“I smelt them.”

“But how? I don’t understand.”

“It oughtn’t to be difficult for even you, Tom, to make out that if I smelt the tracks, I employed my nose for that purpose. I usually smell things in just that way.”

“Oh, pshaw, you know what I mean. I didn’t imagine any creature but a well-trained hound could discover a scent in a deer’s track.”

“Obviously your imagination is in need of a reinforcement of facts then. I’ll furnish them. In the middle of a deer’s foot there is a little spot that bears an odor sweeter than that of attar of roses and quite as pronounced. For that reason many young ladies, and some who are not so young perhaps, like to keep a deer’s foot among their daintiest lingerie. Now, when a deer puts his foot down it spreads sufficiently to bring that perfumed spot in contact with the earth and the track is delicately perfumed. When the odor is pronounced it indicates that the track is newly made.

“Now that I have fully answered your intruded, if not intrusive question, Tom, perhaps I may be permitted to finish the sentence you interrupted.”

“Certainly, go on. Really, Cal, I didn’t mean – ”

“I know you didn’t. I was saying that there is no need of haste in going after that deer, because the tracks were made this morning, and the marshy thicket toward which the deer was making his way is sufficiently rich in succulent grasses and juicy young cane to occupy his mind for the entire day, and several days. A little later we’ll cut off his retreat on the land side of the point, and if we don’t get him the fault will be with our inexpertness with our guns.”

“That’s all right, Cal,” broke in Larry, “and I’m glad you’ve marked down the deer; but just now I must be off to plan our defense. You’ve taken so long to tell us about your first discovery that I can’t wait to hear about the second.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” replied Cal. “It will save you a lot of trouble, and I can tell it in about half a dozen words.”

“Go ahead and tell it, then.”

“It is simply that I have solved the whole problem of defense.”

“How? Tell us about it!”

“Why, just above our camp – up the creek a few hundred yards, there’s a big gum tree, with an easily accessible crotch, comfortable to sit in, from which the one playing sentinel can see everything we want to see. He can look clear across this point and half a mile or more up the creek, and by turning his head he can see the camp itself and the Hunkydory and even the soiled spots on your coats. All we’ve got to do is to keep a sentinel in that gum tree, and nobody can approach our camp unseen, whether he comes by land or by water. Come on and I’ll show you.”

The whole company followed Cal, and after a minute inspection found the lookout to be quite as satisfactory as he had represented it to be. But Tom, who had made up his mind to acquire Cal’s habit of observation, noticed some things about the place that aroused his curiosity. He said nothing about them at the time, but resolved to read the riddle of their meaning if he could. To that end he asked to be the first to serve as sentinel.

“All right,” said Larry. “You can stay here till we’re ready to go after that deer. Then I’ll take your place.”

“But why?”

“Oh, so that you may have your share in the deer hunt.”

“You needn’t either of you bother about that,” said Cal. “Our camp can be seen all the way to the cane brake where the deer is browsing, and also from one of the points at which a man must stand with his gun when we drive the deer. So we shan’t need any other sentinel and we’ll all go. With all of us together over there we’ll be ready to repel any attack on ourselves, and if anybody invades the camp we’ll swoop down upon him and exterminate him.”

There was a good deal to be done at the camp before going after the deer. The turkeys were to be picked and dressed and one of them to be roasted. Some fishing was to be done and it was necessary to put up some sort of bush shelter for use in case of rain. So, leaving Tom as sentinel, the other boys went back to the anchorage, and Tom began his scrutiny of the things he had observed.

As a last injunction Larry said: “You can come in to dinner, Tom, when I whistle through my fingers. If there’s nobody in sight then, we can risk the dinner hour without a sentry.”

The things that had attracted Tom’s attention were so trifling in themselves that only a person alertly observing would have noticed them at all. Yet Tom thought they might have significance, and he was bent upon finding out what that significance was.

First of all, he had observed that a little blind trail seemed to lead westward from the tree, and in no other direction, as if it had been made by someone who visited the tree and then returned by the way he had come, going no farther in any direction. The trail was so blind that Tom could not be sure it was a trail at all. If so, it had been traversed very infrequently, and at rather long intervals. If it had been the only suggestive thing seen, the boy would probably not have given it a thought. But he observed also that the bark of the gum tree was a trifle scarred at two points, suggesting that some one with heavy boots on had recently climbed it.

As soon as the other boys had gone back to camp, Tom set to work to make a closer inspection of his surroundings. He climbed the tree to the crotch and looked about him. There was nothing there, but from that height he could trace the little trail through the bushes for perhaps fifty or a hundred yards. He satisfied himself in that way that it was really a trail, made by the passage of some living thing, man or beast, through the dense undergrowth.

“I’ll follow that trail after a while,” he resolved, “but I’ll say nothing about it now. I might be laughed at for my pains. Not that I mind that, of course. We fellows are well used to being laughed at among ourselves. But when I say anything about this, I want to have something to tell that is worth telling. After all, it may be only the path of a deer or of one of the queer little wild horses – tackeys, they call them – that live in the swamps. Or a wild hog may have made it. I don’t know, and I’m not going to talk about the thing till I can talk to some purpose.”

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