Robert Chambers - Out of the Dark - Tales of Terror by Robert W. Chambers

‘It’s like those splendid stretches of pools and rapids which one finds on every trout river and in which one never finds a fish,’ suggested Pierpont.

‘Exactly – and Heaven alone knows why,’ said Barris; ‘I suppose this country is shunned by human beings for the same mysterious reasons.’

‘The shooting is the better for it,’ I observed.

‘The shooting is good,’ said Barris, ‘have you noticed the snipe on the meadow by the lake? Why it’s brown with them! That’s a wonderful meadow.’

‘It’s a natural one,’ said Pierpont, ‘no human being ever cleared that land.’

‘Then it’s supernatural,’ said Barris; ‘Pierpont, do you want to come with me?’

Pierpont’s handsome face flushed as he answered slowly, ‘It’s awfully good of you – if I may.’

‘Bosh,’ said I, piqued because he had asked Pierpont, ‘what use is little Willy without his man?’

‘True,’ said Barris gravely, ‘you can’t take Howlett you know.’

Pierpont muttered something which ended in ‘d—n’.

‘Then,’ said I, ‘there will be but one gun on the Sweet Fern Covert this afternoon. Very well, I wish you joy of your cold supper and cold bed. Take your nightgown, Willy, and don’t sleep on the damp ground.’

‘Let Pierpont alone,’ retorted Barris, ‘you shall go next time, Roy.’

‘Oh, all right – you mean when there’s shooting going on?’

‘And I?’ demanded Pierpont grieved.

‘You too, my son; stop quarrelling! Will you ask Howlett to pack our kits – lightly mind you – no bottles – they clink.’

‘My flask doesn’t,’ said Pierpont, and went off to get ready for a night’s stalking of dangerous men.

‘It is strange,’ said I, ‘that nobody ever settles in this region. How many people live in Cardinal Springs, Barris?’

‘Twenty counting the telegraph operator and not counting the lumbermen; they are always changing and shifting. I have six men among them.’

‘Where have you no men? In the Four Hundred?’

‘I have men there also – chums of Billy’s only he doesn’t know it. David tells me that there was a strong flight of woodcock last night. You ought to pick up some this afternoon.’

Then we chatted about alder-cover and swamp until Pierpont came out of the house and it was time to part.

‘Au revoir,’ said Barris, buckling on his kit, ‘come along, Pierpont, and don’t walk in the damp grass.’

‘If you are not back by tomorrow noon,’ said I, ‘I will take Howlett and David and hunt you up. You say your course is due north?’

‘Due north,’ replied Barris, consulting his compass.

‘There is a trail for two miles and a spotted lead for two more,’ said Pierpont.

‘Which we won’t use for various reasons,’ added Barris pleasantly; ‘don’t worry, Roy, and keep your confounded expedition out of the way; there’s no danger.’

He knew, of course, what he was talking about and I held my peace.

When the tip end of Pierpont’s shooting coat had disappeared in the Long Covert, I found myself standing alone with Howlett. He bore my gaze for a moment and then politely lowered his eyes.

‘Howlett,’ said I, ‘take these shells and implements to the gun room, and drop nothing. Did Voyou come to any harm in the briers this morning?’

‘No ’arm, Mr Cardenhe, sir,’ said Howlett.

‘Then be careful not to drop anything else,’ said I, and walked away leaving him decorously puzzled. For he had dropped no cartridges. Poor Howlett!

About four o’clock that afternoon I met David and the dogs at the spinney which leads into Sweet Fern Covert. The three setters, Voyou, Gamin, and Mioche were in fine feather – David had killed a woodcock and a brace of grouse over them that morning – and they were thrashing about the spinney at short range when I came up, gun under arm and pipe lighted.

‘What’s the prospect, David,’ I asked, trying to keep my feet in the tangle of wagging, whining dogs; ‘hello, what’s amiss with Mioche?’

‘A brier in his foot sir; I drew it and stopped the wound but I guess the gravel’s got in. If you have no objection, sir, I might take him back with me.’

‘It’s safer,’ I said; ‘take Gamin too, I only want one dog this afternoon. What is the situation?’

‘Fair sir; the grouse lie within a quarter of a mile of the oak second growth. The woodcock are mostly on the alders. I saw any number of snipe in the meadows. There’s something else in by the lake – I can’t just tell what, but the woodduck set up a clatter when I was in the thicket and they come dashing through the wood as if a dozen foxes was snappin’ at their tail feathers.’

‘Probably a fox,’ I said; ‘leash those dogs – they must learn to stand it. I’ll be back by dinner time.’

‘There is one more thing sir,’ said David, lingering with his gun under his arm.

‘Well,’ said I.

‘I saw a man in the woods by the Oak Covert – at least I think I did.’

‘A lumberman?’

‘I think not sir – at least – do they have Chinamen among them?’

‘Chinese? No. You didn’t see a Chinaman in the woods here?’

‘I – I think I did sir – I can’t say positively. He was gone when I ran into the covert.’

‘Did the dogs notice it?’

‘I can’t say – exactly. They acted queer like. Gamin here lay down and whined – it may have been colic – and Mioche whimpered – perhaps it was the brier.’

‘And Voyou?’

‘Voyou, he was most remarkable sir, and the hair on his back stood up. I did see a groundhog makin’ for a tree near by.’

‘Then no wonder Voyou bristled. David, your Chinaman was a stump or tussock. Take the dogs now.’

‘I guess it was sir; good afternoon sir,’ said David, and walked away with the Gordons leaving me alone with Voyou in the spinney.

I looked at the dog and he looked at me.

‘Voyou!’

The dog sat down and danced with his fore feet, his beautiful brown eyes sparkling.

‘You’re a fraud,’ I said; ‘which shall it be, the alders or the upland? Upland? Good! – now for the grouse – heel, my friend, and show your miraculous self-restraint.’

Voyou wheeled into my tracks and followed closely, nobly refusing to notice the impudent chipmunks and the thousand and one alluring and important smells which an ordinary dog would have lost no time in investigating.

The brown and yellow autumn woods were crisp with drifting heaps of leaves and twigs that crackled under foot as we turned from the spinney into the forest. Every silent little stream, hurrying toward the lake, was gay with painted leaves afloat, scarlet maple or yellow oak. Spots of sunlight fell upon the pools, searching the brown depths, illuminating the gravel bottom where shoals of minnows swam to and fro, and to and fro again, busy with the purpose of their little lives. The crickets were chirping in the long brittle grass on the edge of the woods, but we left them far behind in the silence of the deeper forest.

‘Now!’ said I to Voyou.

The dog sprang to the front, circled once, zigzagged through the ferns around us and, all in a moment, stiffened stock still, rigid as sculptured bronze. I stepped forward, raising my gun, two paces, three paces, ten perhaps, before a great cock grouse blundered up from the brake and burst through the thicket fringe toward the deeper growth. There was a flash and puff from my gun, a crash of echoes among the low wooded cliffs, and through the faint veil of smoke something dark dropped from mid-air amid a cloud of feathers, brown as the brown leaves under foot.

‘Fetch!’

Up from the ground sprang Voyou, and in a moment he came galloping back, neck arched, tail stiff but waving, holding tenderly in his pink mouth a mass of mottled bronzed feathers. Very gravely he laid the bird at my feet and crouched beside it, his silky ears across his paws, his muzzle on the ground.