Роберт Чамберс - Cardigan

He embraced me in silence, holding me a long time to his breast, yet never a word was said, and never a sound fell on the night air save my desperate gulps to crush back the sob that strained in my throat.

Presently I was conscious that I had left him, and was running fast through the darkness, blind as a bat for the tears, breathless, too, for, as I halted and turned to look back, far away against the dawn I saw our house as a black mass, with a single candle twinkling in the basement. So I knew Sir William still kept his vigil in the library.

The streets of Johnstown were dark, save for the rare lanthorns of the watchmen, but there seemed to be many people abroad, most of them noisy and quarrelsome. To tell the truth, I had never before seen so much swaggering and drunkenness in Johnstown, and I marvelled at it as I hastened on. Once, as I passed a tavern, two men, journeying in opposite directions, hailed each other with a new phrase: "Greeting, friend! God save our country!" At which a drunken soldier from the tavern bawled out: "God save our country—eh? That's the Boston rebels' password! God save the King and damn the country!—you yellow–bellied Whigs!"

A small crowd gathered, but I hastened on; yet behind me I heard oaths and blows and cries of: "Lobster! Tory! Kill the red–coat!" And everywhere along the street windows were raised and men looked out, some shouting: "Rebel!" "Traitor!" or "Bloody–back!" "Tea–sot—toss–pot!" and some called for the watch.

Many people began to rush hither and thither. A little peddler got under my feet and fell sprawling and squealing till I picked him up and set him on his legs. He was a small Hebrew man, Saul Shemuel, who came a–peddling often to our servants; but in his terror he did not know me, and he fled madly into Rideup's Tavern with a soldier after him, vowing he'd have one rebel scalp even though it were a Jewish one.

I had no time to linger, yet behind me I heard a sharp fight begin at Rideup's Tavern, which is another pot–house much frequented by Boston men. Presently as I climbed the hill I heard the drums at the guard–house beating the alarm, and I knew the fray would soon end with the patrol's arrival from their barracks.

But what had come over our staid towns–people and farmers and tenants that they should damn each other for rebels and Tories? It amazed me to see old neighbours shaking their fists out of windows and cursing one another with such extraordinary and unnecessary fury.

Truly, if in our village this question of tuppence worth o' tea drove men mad, what wonder Sir William and Governor Tryon should frown and shake their heads over a pinch o' snuff?

But I was to leave all this trouble behind me now. Already the misty wilderness loomed up in the south, vague as a ghostly vision in the moon's beams. Ah, my woods!—my dear, dear woods! One plunge into that dim, sweet shadow and what cared I for King or rebel or any woman who ever lived?

My first three weeks in the woods were weeks of heaven. Never had I seen the forest so beautiful, never had the soft velvet lights clothed the wilderness with such exquisite mystery. Along the stony beds of lost ravines I passed and saw the frosty bowlders lie like silver mounds in the dawn, glimmering through steaming waters. I passed at eventide when the sunset turned the cliffs to crumbling crags of gold, and I saw massed mountain peaks reflected in pools where the shadows of great fish moved like clouds.

I ate and drank and slept in the dim wood stillness undisturbed; I waked when my guide, the sun, flamed through the forest, and I followed in his lead, resting when he hung circling in the noonday heavens, following again when he resumed the sky–trail towards the west, seeking my couch when he lay down below the world's blue edge to fold him in the blanket of the night.

Twice came the rain, delicately perfumed showers shaking down through a million leaves, leaving frail trails of vapour errant through the trees, and powdered jewels on every leaf.

And I lived well on that swift trail where the gray grouse scuttled through the saplings, and in every mossy streamlet the cold, dusky troutlings fought for the knot of scarlet yarn on my short hand–line. Once I saw bronzed turkeys, all huddled in a brood at twilight, craning and peering from their tree–perch; but let them go, as I had meat to spare. Once, too, at dawn, I heard a bull–moose lipping tree–buds, and lay still in my blanket while the huge beast wandered past, crack! crash! and slop! slop! through the creek, his hide all smeared with clay and a swarm of forest flies whirling over him. Lord, how rank he did smell, but for all that I was glad the wind set not the other way, for it is sometimes the toss of a coin what your bull–moose will do, run or fight at sight; nor is it even doubtful in September, when the moose–cow wallows and bawls across the marshes for her antlered gallant on the ridge.

I saw but one moose, for there are not many in our forests, though they say the Canadas do swarm with them, and also with elks and caribous.

There were few birds to be seen except near rivers: a blue–gray meat–bird here and there whining in the hemlocks, a great owl huddled on a limb, and sometimes a troop of black–cheeked chickadees that came cheerfully to hand for a crumb of corn. Squirrels were everywhere—that is, everywhere except through the pine belts, and there I had to make out with the bitter flesh of those villain partridges which feed on spruce–tips. I'd as soon eat a hawk in winter or dine on slices of fried spruce–gum, for truly there is more nourishment in a moccasin than in these ignoble birds dressed up like toothsome partridges.

I had not met a soul on the trail, nor had I found any fresh signs save once, and that was the print of a white man's moccasin on the edge of a sandy strip near the head–waters of the Ohio, which is called the Alleghany, north of Fort Pitt.

This foot–mark disturbed me, although it was three days old and pointing north. But that signified nothing, for the man who made it had come in a canoe, yet I could find no sign that a canoe had been beached there, nor, indeed, any further marks of moccasins, and I made moderate haste to get under cover, as I am timid about things I cannot account for.

Reason enough, moreover, for if there were no signs except that single imprint, it was clear that the man who left that mark was wading the river because he wished to leave no trail. And who is not suspicious of those who appear to be at pains to conceal their tracks?

There is something terrifying in the sudden apparition of a fellow–creature in the woods. When one has been living alone in the forest solitude, day after day, perhaps even craving company, I know nothing so shocking as the unexpected sight of another man in the wilderness.

Why this is so, why fear, caution, and anger are invariably the primal instincts, I do not fully understand.

Sometimes, lying perdu, I have seen the tasselled ears of a wild–cat flatten at first sight of a stranger cat; I have seen the wolverine snarl hideously as he winded a strange comrade; I have seen the solitary timber–wolf halt, hair on end and every hot fang bared, where a brother wolf had crossed his trail an hour before.

So I; for as I slunk away from that foot–mark in the sand–willows, I found myself priming my rifle and looking behind me with all the horror of a Robinson Crusoe, though I had miles of country to avoid the unknown man withal.

Early that morning, having crossed, as nearly as I could make out, the boundary between our Province of New York and the Province of Pennsylvania, I had approached, somewhat nearer than I meant to, the carrying–place on the Alleghany, which lies directly in the Fort Pitt trail.