Leave Her to Heaven Read Free Page B

created wide marshy intervales, which, now that the dams were gone and the water was drained away, were pleasant meadows where the tall grass grew head high to a man. Sometimes the stream clung close to the foot of the mountains on one side, and arching trees on that bank made a shady canopy, and the water, barely deep enough to carry the canoe, glided easily over a bed of fine gravel; while on the other side the intervale might lead the eye pleasantly away, sometimes a scant hundred yards, sometimes half a mile or more, to wooded higher land beyond. Once they saw bobbing white flags ahead where two or three deer, playing some game or other, bounded sportively to and fro in the reedy undergrowth which clad a low gravelled island in the stream itself. They came close to these deer unseen, till the creatures, at last alarmed, turned to blow at them challengingly, and finally took flight, their tails visible for a while as
they made their way in effortless bounds through the shallows and off toward the cover of the woods.
    â€˜A pile of deer up here,’ Leick said. ‘They ain’t bothered much, only poachers come in most every winter and take out a few sled loads.’
    Twice more they had short carries to pass dams built by the lumbermen, and once the stream threaded a cedar bog where blowdowns blocked their way; and sometimes they lifted the canoe over these obstacles, and sometimes Leick, wading knee deep, used his axe to clear the channel.
    Thus the pleasant afternoon droned on, and an hour before sunset they came to a gravelled point where men had camped before, and landed there.
    â€˜Well,’ said Leick contentedly. ‘We’re past the worst of it. Mostly all straight going now.’ He took from where it was coiled around his hat a six-foot leader with a Parmachene Belle at the tip, a Silver Doctor for a dropper. ‘Get us what you figure we can use tonight,’ he directed. ‘I’ll be settling things.’
    A few rods above the point, a little brook made in, and Harland turned that way, supplementing the leader with a bit of twine and a birch shoot. The trout were young and bold and hungry. He brought back half a dozen, not too large for the pan, and cleaned them; and then he took his ease while Leick with the skill of long experience spread their beds, stretched the fly for security against a chance shower, set his fire and so presently had supper ready. Afterward, he washed the dishes, saying little, letting Harland drink the healing silence of the wilderness. Before dusk turned to dark they were ready for the night, a smudge drifting smoke across their beds to keep insects away; and a little after full dark they rolled in their blankets side by side.
    The night was long, and it was all one silence through which at intervals some soft sound came. Once, lying awake, savoring the fragrant darkness rich with the scent of the pine spills which carpeted the ground, Harland heard a train whistle far away in the direction from which they had come. More than once he heard the movement of some wild thing near them; the interrogative
thump of a rabbit, the heavier tread of a deer drawn by the salt smell of their bacon frying, the querulous whining bark of a fox not far away; and once they heard the busy teeth of a porcupine, and Leick rose to drive the creature off, and then all was still again. These sounds and these silences alike entered into Harland, became an enriching part of him. He had known silences enough, in the months just gone; but those were the dead silences of a tomb inhabited by living men. This night was all alive and free. He slept at last, and for the first time in long, he slept dreamlessly.
    â€“ VI –
    At gray dawn Leick rolled out of his blankets; and, still half-asleep, Harland heard the stroke of the axe and smelled the first smoke. He rose to go to the stream side, and strip his pale body and bathe, hurrying afterward into his clothes to protect himself