SNAGGED AND SUNK;
OR,
ADVENTURES OF A CANVAS CANOE.
CHAPTER I.
IN WHICH I BEGIN MY STORY
"Beneath a hemlock grim and dark,
Where shrub and vine are intertwining.
Our shanty stands, well roofed with bark.
On which the cheerful blaze is shining.
The smoke ascends in spiral wreath;
With upward curve the sparks are trending;
The coffee kettle sings beneath
Where sparks and smoke with leaves are blending."
JOE WAYRING'S voice rang out loud and clear, and the words of his song were repeated by the echoes from a dozen different points among the hills by which the camp was surrounded on every side. Joe was putting the finishing touches to the roof of bark shanty; Roy Sheldon, with the aid of a double-bladed camp ax, was cutting a supply of hard wood to cook the trout he had just cleaned; and Arthur Hastings was sitting close by picking browse for the beds. The scene of their camp was a spring-hole, located deep in the forest twelve miles from Indian Lake. Although it was a noted place for trout, it was seldom visited by the guests of the hotels for the simple reason that they did not know that there was such a spring-hole in existence, and the guides were much too sharp to tell them of it.
Hotel guides, as a class, are not fond of work, and neither will they take a guest very far beyond the sound of their employer's dinner horn. The landlords hire them by the month and the guides get just so much money, no matter whether their services are called into requisition or not. If business is dull and the guests few in number, the guides loaf around the hotel in idleness, and of course the less they do the less they are inclined to do. If they are sent out with a guest, they take him over grounds that have been hunted and fished until there is neither fur, fin, nor feather left, cling closely to the water-ways, avoiding even the shortest "carries," their sole object being to earn their wages with the least possible exertion. They don't care whether the guest catches any fish or not. But our three friends, Joe Wayring, Roy Sheldon, and Arthur Hastings, were not dependent upon the hotel guides for sport during their summer outings. Being perfectly familiar with the country for miles around Indian Lake, they went wherever their fancy led them, and with no fear of getting lost.
"And on the stream a light canoe
Floats like a freshly fallen feather—
A fairy thing that will not do
For broader seas and stormy weather.
Her sides no thicker than the shell
Of Ole Bull's Cremona fiddle;
The man who rides her will do well
To part his scalp-lock in the middle,"
sang Joe, backing off and looking approvingly at his work. "There, fellows, that roof is tight, and now it can rain as soon as it pleases. With two acres of trout right in front of the door, and a camp located so far from the lake that we are not likely to be disturbed by any interlopers—what more could three boys who want to be lazy ask for?"
"There's one thing I would like to ask for," replied Roy, "and that is the assurance that Tom Bigden and his cousins will go back to Mount Airy without trying to come any tricks on us. I wonder what brought them up here any way?"
"Why, they came after their rods, of course," answered Arthur. "You know I sent them a despatch stating that their rods were in Mr. Hanson's possession, and that they could get them by refunding the money that Hanson had paid Jake Coyle for them."
"But they have been loafing around the lake for a whole week, doing nothing but holding stolen interviews with Matt Coyle and his boys," said Roy. "I tell you I don't like the way those worthies put their heads together. I believe they are in ca-hoots. If they are not, how does it come that Tom and his cousins can see Matt as often as they want to, while the guides and landlords, who are so very anxious to have him arrested, can not find him or obtain any satisfactory news of him?"
"That's the very reason they can't find him—because they want to have him arrested, and Matt knows it," observed Joe. "But why Tom doesn't reveal Matt's hiding-place to the constable is more than I can understand. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Matt has some sort of a hold on those boys, and that they are afraid to go against him!"
"I have thought of it," replied Arthur. "I have never been able to get it out of my head that Tom acted suspiciously on the day your canvas canoe was stolen. He played his part pretty well, but I believed then, and I believe now, that he knew that canoe was gone before he came back to the beach."
"I know Tom didn't show much enthusiasm when we started after that bear, and that he did not go very far from the pond," assented Joe. "It is possible that he saw Matt steal my canoe, and that he made no effort to stop him; but I think you are mistaken when you say that they are in ca-hoots. I don't believe they have any thing in common. Tom is much too high-toned for that. I know that he has been seen in Matt's company a time or two, but I am of the opinion that they met by accident and not by appointment."
"But Tom knew the officers were looking for Matt, and what was the reason he didn't tell them that he had seen him?" demanded Arthur.
"He probably would if he hadn't thought that we were the ones that wanted him arrested," replied Joe. "Tom and his cousins do not like us, and Matt Coyle might steal us poor, and they would never lift a hand or say a word to prevent it. But we are safe from them now. Even if they knew where to find us, Matt and his boys are much too lazy to walk twelve miles through the thick woods just to get into a fight with us."
Perhaps they were, and perhaps they were not. Time will show.
If you have read the first volume of the "Forest and Stream Series," you will recollect that the story it contained was told by "Old Durability," Joe Wayring's Fly-rod. In concluding his interesting narrative, Fly-rod said that he would step aside and give place to his "accommodating friend," the Canvas Canoe, who, in the second volume of the series, would describe some of the incidents that came under his notice while he was a prisoner in the hands of the Indian Lake vagabonds. Matt Coyle and his two worthless boys, Jake and Sam. I am the Canvas Canoe, at your service, and I am now ready to redeem that promise.
You will remember that the last duty I performed for my master, Joe Wayring, was to take him and Fly-rod up to the "little perch hole," leaving Arthur Hastings and Roy Sheldon in the pond to angle for black bass. Joe preferred to fish for perch, because he was afraid to trust his light tackle in a struggle with so gamey a foe as a bass; but, as luck would have it, he struck one the very first cast he made, and got into a fight that was enough to make any angler's nerves thrill with excitement.
The battle lasted half an hour; and when it was over and the fish safely landed, Joe discovered that it was growing dark. While he was putting Ply-rod away in his case I happened to look up the creek, and what should I see there but the most disreputable locking scow I ever laid my eyes on ? I had never seen him before, but I knew the crew he carried, for I had had considerable experience with them. They were the squatter and his boys, who, as you know, had sworn vengeance against Joe Wayring and his friends, because Joe's father would not permit them to live on his land.
Matt and his young allies discovered Joe before the latter saw them, and made an effort to steal alongside and capture him before he knew that there was any danger near; but one of the impatient boys carelessly allowed his paddle to rub against the side of the scow, and the sound alarmed Joe, who at once took to the water and struck out for shore, leaving me to my fate. But I never blamed Joe for that, because I knew he could not have done any thing else. He had paid out a good deal of rope in order to place himself in the best position for casting, and he could not haul it in and raise the anchor before his enemies would be upon him.
"So that's your game, is it?" shouted the squatter, when he saw Joe pulling for the shore with long lusty strokes. "Wal, it suits us I reekon. Never mind the boat, Jakey. She's fast anchored and will stay there till we want her. Take after the 'ristocrat whose dad won't let honest folks live onto his land less'n they've got a pocketful of money to pay him for it. Jest let me get a good whack at him with my paddle, an' he'll stop, I bet you."
Now we know that Matt didn't tell the truth when he said that Joe Wayring's father would not let any one live on his land except those who had money to pay for the privilege. Mr. Wayring was one of the most liberal citizens in Mount Airy. Nearly all the men who were employed as guides and boatmen by the summer visitors lived in neat little cottages that he had built on purpose for them, and for which he never charged them a cent of rent; and when Matt Coyle and his family came into the lake with a punt load of goods, and took possession of one of his lots, and proceeded to erect a shanty upon it without asking his permission, Mr. Wayring did not utter one word of protest. It is true that he was not very favorably impressed with the appearance of the new-comers, but he thought he would give them an opportunity to show what they were before he ordered them off his grounds. If they proved to be honest, hard-working people they might stay and welcome, and he would treat them as well as he treated the other inhabitants of "Stumptown."
But it turned out that Matt Coyle was neither honest nor hard-working. He had once been a hanger-on about the hotels at Indian Lake. He called himself an independent guide (neither of the hotels would have any thing to do with him), but, truth to tell, he did not do much guiding. He gained a precarious subsistence by hunting, trapping, fishing, and stealing. It was easier to steal a living than it was to earn it by hunting and trapping, and Matt's depredations finally became so numerous and daring that the guides hunted him down as they would a bear or a wolf that had preyed upon their sheep-folds, and when they caught him ordered him out of the country. To make sure of his going they destroyed every article of his property that they could get their hands on, thus forcing him, as one of the guides remarked, to go off somewhere and steal a new outfit.
Where Matt and his enterprising family went after that no one knew. They disappeared, and for a few weeks were neither seen nor heard of; but in due time they rowed their punt into Mirror Lake, as I have recorded, and Matt and his boys at once sought employment as guides and boatmen. But here again they were doomed to disappointment. The managers of the different hotels saw at a glance that they were not proper persons to be trusted on the lake with a boatload of women and children, and told them very decidedly that their services were not needed. The truth was they drank more whisky than water, and guides of that sort were not wanted in Mount Airy.
Matt and his boys next tried fishing as a means of earning a livelihood; but no one could have made his salt at that, because the guests sojourning at the hotels and boarding houses, with the assistance of the regular guides, kept all the tables abundantly supplied. This second failure made the squatters angry, and they concluded that affairs about Mount Airy were not properly managed, and they would "run the town" to suit themselves. But they could not do that either, for they were promptly arrested and thrust into the calaboose.
After they had been put in there twice, the trustees concluded that they were of no use in Mount Airy, and that they had better go somewhere else. Accordingly Matt received a notice to pull down his shanty and clear out. The officer who was intrusted with the writ had considerable trouble in serving it, but he had more in compelling the squatter to vacate the lot of which he. had taken unauthorized possession. Matt and his boys showed fight, while the old woman, who, to quote from Prank Noble, "proved to be the best man in the party," threw hot water about in the most reckless fashion. After a spirited battle the representatives of law and order came off victoriously, and Matt and his belongings were tumbled unceremoniously into the punt and shoved out into the lake. This made them almost frantic; and before they pulled away they uttered the most direful threats against those who had been instrumental in driving them out of Mount Airy "because they were poor and didn't have no good clothes to wear," and they even went so far as to threaten to burn Mr. Wayring's house. But you will remember that it was Tom Bigden, a boy who hated Joe for just nothing at all, who put that idea into Matt's head.
Being once more adrift in the world, the squatter made the best of his way to Sherwin's pond to carry out certain other plans that had been suggested to him by that same Tom Bigden, who never could be easy unless he was getting himself or somebody else into trouble. Between the lake and the pond there were twelve miles of rapids. Having run them scores of times under the skillful guidance of my master, I may be supposed to be tolerably familiar with them, and to this day I can not understand how Matt ever succeeded in getting his clumsy old punt to the bottom of them in safety. He must have had a hard time of it, for the bow of his craft was so badly battered by the rocks that it was a mystery how he ever took it across the pond and up the creek to the place where he made his temporary camp. With his usual caution he concealed his shanty in a grove of evergreens, and waited as patiently as he could for something to "turn up." Tom Bigden had assured him that he could make plenty of money by simply keeping his eyes open, but Matt did not find it so.
"I don't b'lieve that 'ristocrat knew what he was talkin' about when he said that some of them sailboats up there in the lake would be sure to break loose, an' that I could make money by ketchin' 'em as they come through the rapids, an' givin' 'em up to their owners," said the squatter one day, when his supply of corn meal and potatoes began to show signs of giving out. "There ain't nary one of 'em broke loose yet, an' if any one of them p'inters an' hound dogs that we've heared givin' tongue in the woods ever lost their bearin's I don' know it, fur they never come nigh me."
"He said that if the things he was talkin' about didn't happen of theirselves, he'd make 'em happen," suggested Jake.
"What do you reckon he meant by that?"
"Why, it was a hint to you to go up to the lake some dark night, an' turn the boats loose," replied Jake. "Then they'd come down, an' we could ketch 'em an' hold fast to 'em till we was offered a reward fur givin' 'em up. But, pap, since I've seed them rapids, I don't b'lieve that no livin' boat could ever come through 'em without smashin' herself all to pieces, less'n there was somebody aboard of her to keep her off' n the rocks."
"No more do I," answered Matt, "an' I shan't bother with 'em, nuther. I ain't forgot that they've got a calaboose up there to Mount Airy, an' that they'd jest as soon shove a feller into it as not. But something has got to be done, or else we'll go hungry for want of grub to eat."
So saying, Matt shouldered his rifle, and set out to hunt up his dinner, and on the same day Joe Wayring and his two chums, accompanied by Tom Bigden, and his cousins, Ralph and Loren Farnsworth, ran the rapids into Sherwin's Pond, to fish for bass. They caught a fine string, as every one did who went there, and were talking about going ashore to cook their breakfast, when they discovered a half-grown bear on the shore of the pond. Of course they made haste to start in pursuit of him—all except Tom Bigden. The latter told himself that the bear did jiot belong to him, that it was no concern of his whether he were killed or not, and sat down on a log and fought musquitoes while waiting for Joe and the rest to tire themselves out in the chase and come back.
Now Matt Coyle had his eye on that bear, and wanted to shoot him too, for, as I have said, his larder was nearly empty. He was ready to do something desperate when he saw Joe and his companions paddle ashore and frighten the game, but presently it occurred to him that he might profit by it. He knew that the boys would never have come so far from home without bringing a substantial lunch with them, and as they had left their canoes unguarded on the beach, what was there to hinder him from sneaking up through the bushes and stealing that lunch? Turn about was fair play. And, while he was about it, what was there to prevent him from taking his pick of the canoes? Then he would have something to work with. He could go up to Indian Lake and make another effort to establish himself there as independent guide; and, if he failed to accomplish his object, he could paddle about in his canoe, rob every unguarded camp he could find, and make the sportsmen who came there for recreation so sick of those woods that they would never visit them again. In that way he could ruin the hotels as well as the guides who were so hostile to him. It was a glorious plan. Matt told himself, and while he was turning it over in his mind he suddenly found himself face to face with Tom Bigden.
You know the conversation that passed between these two worthies, and remember how artfully Tom went to work to increase the unreasonable enmity which Matt Coyle cherished against Joe Wayring. After taking leave of Tom, the squatter plundered all the canoes that were drawn up beside me on the beach, first making sure of the baskets and bundles that contained the lunches, gave them all into my keeping, and shoved out into the pond with me. If I had possessed the power wouldn't I have turned him overboard in short order? Matt was so clumsy and awkward that I was in hopes he would capsize me and spill himself out; but, although he could not make me ride on an even keel, he managed to keep me right side up, and, much to my disgust, I carried him safely across the pond and up the creek to his shanty.
As the squatter was impatient to begin the business of guiding so that he could make some money before the season was over, and anxious to get beyond reach of the officers of the law who would soon be on his track, he lost no time in breaking camp and setting out for Indian Lake. Before he went he burned his shanty and punt, so that the Mount Airy sportsmen could not find shelter in the one or use the other in fishing in the pond. He spent half an hour in trying to take me to pieces, so that he could carry me in his hand as if I were a valise, and finally giving it up as a task beyond his powers, he raised me to his shoulder and fell in behind his wife and boys, who led the way toward Indian Lake.
During the short time I remained in Matt Coyle's possession I fared well enough, for I was too valuable an article to be maltreated; but I despised the company I was obliged to keep and the work I was expected to do. Matt's first care was to lay in a supply of provisions for the use of his family; and as he had no money at his command and no immediate prospect of earning any, of course he expected to steal every thing he wanted. This was not a difficult task, for long experience had made him and his boys expert in the line of foraging. Nearly all the guides cultivated little patches of ground and raised a few pigs and chickens, and when their duties called them away from home there was no one left to guard their property except their wives and children. The latter could not stand watch day and night, and consequently it was no trouble at all for Matt and his hopeful sons to rob a hen-roost or a smokehouse as often as they felt like it. But, as it happened, the very first foraging expedition he sent out, after he made his new camp about two miles from Indian Lake, resulted most disastrously for Matt Coyle. He ordered Jake and me to forage on Mr. Swan, the genial, big-hearted guide of whom you may have heard something in "The Story of a Fly-rod;" or, rather, Jake was to do the stealing, and I was to bring back the plunder he secured.
The young scapegrace had no difficulty in getting hold of a side of bacon and filling a bag with potatoes, which he dug from the soil with his hands, but there his good fortune ended. While he was making his way up the creek toward home, he was discovered by Joe Wayring and his two friends, Roy and Arthur, who were going to Indian Lake for their usual summer's outing. Of course they at once made a determined effort to recapture me, and Jake in his mad struggle to escape ran me upon a snag and sunk me, thus putting it out of his father's power to go into the business of independent guiding. The fights that grew out of "that night's work were numerous and desperate, and Matt declared that he would "even up" with the boys if he had to wait ten years for a chance to do it.
It was the work of but a few moments for my master, with the aid of his friends, to bring me back to the surface of the water where I belonged. He took me home with him when his outing was over, and there I lived during the winter in comparative quiet, while Joe and his chums were made the victims of so many petty annoyances that it was a wonder to me how they kept their temper as well as they did. Matt Coyle and his boys could not do any thing to trouble them, because they were afraid to show themselves about the village; but Tom Bigden and his cousins were alert and active. They bothered Joe in every conceivable way. They made a lifelong enemy of Mars by sending him home through the streets with a tin can tied to his tail; they shot at Roy Sheldon's tame pigeons as often as the birds ventured within range of their long bows; they overturned Joe's sailboat after he had hauled it out on the beach and housed it for the winter; and one night I heard them talk seriously of setting fire to the boathouse. Loren and Ralph Farnsworth, however, were not willing to go as far as that, knowing, as they did, that arson was a State's prison offense, but they agreed to Tom's proposition to break into the boathouse and carry off "that old canvas canoe that Joe seemed to think so much of," because they could do as much mischief of that sort as they pleased, and no blame would be attached to them. It would all be laid at Matt Coyle's door.
If I had been able to speak to him I would have told Tom that he was mistaken when he said this, for Joe Wayring knew well enough whom he had to thank for every thing that happened to him that winter. Tom and his allies forgot that their foot-prints in the snow and the marks of their skates on the ice were, as Roy expressed it, "a dead give away."
Joe, however, did not say or do any thing to show that he suspected Tom, for he was a boy who liked to live in peace with every body; but when he came down to the boathouse the next morning and found that some one had been tampering with the fastenings of the door, he took me on his shoulder and carried me to his room, where I remained until the winter was passed and the boating season opened.
In the meantime I made the acquaintance of Fly-rod, who has told you a portion of my history, and who was as green a specimen as I ever met; but what else could you expect of a fellow who had never seen any thing of the world or caught a fish! A few Saturdays spent at the spring-holes and along the banks of the trout streams proved him to be a strong, reliable rod, and by the time the summer vacation came Joe had learned to put a good deal of confidence in him. One of the most noteworthy exploits Fly-rod ever performed was capturing that big bass at the perch-hole. That was on the day that Matt Coyle and his boys came down the creek in their scow and made a captive of me and chased my master through the woods; and this brings me back to my story.