Chapter XXIX: The Old Elm

The next morning something happened, trivial in itself, but destined to have a bearing on the course of this chronicle. The campers used up the last of their coffee for breakfast. After the usual playful expedient of trying to squeeze more out of the tin can, they found that even their supply for that particular breakfast was insufficient. A camp without coffee (whatever you may hear to the contrary notwithstanding) is as sad a thing as a camp without a camp fire.

“I don’t see but what we’ll have to bust into civilization,” said Brent. “I wonder if we look like a couple of Rip Van Winkles. Where do you suppose is the nearest grocery store?”

“Sandyfield? Scout Headquarters?”

“Let’s hike to Sloatsburg,” said Brent, “and that will give me a chance to buy a sweater. I’d like to explore the country southwest of here anyway. Let’s see if we can find a way out to the south and come back along the Sloatsburg road.”

“Suits me,” said Tom, always ready for anything in the way of exploratory hiking.

They struck into the trailless section south of Breakneck Mountain and pushed along in a westerly direction till they bumped into a trail running north and south. This brought them into the Tuxedo-Mt. Ivy Trail which they followed to the easterly end of Half Way Mountain. A leisurely exploration of this long mountain brought them out at Pine Meadow Brook. And so they passed out of the reservation to Sloatsburg by an unfrequented route.

They had an odd feeling, so Tom told me, that their sojourn in the dense forest would in some way advertise itself to the denizens of the outer world. And I think that he was a little disappointed that their backwoods career in the remote home of Long Buck Sanderson did not in some way give them a certain celebrity and prestige in the village. But the village did not know them for romantic treasure hunters. It sold them coffee and a sweater and a few post cards (one of which I received) and did not treat them as interesting pioneers and adventurers.

They returned along the Sloatsburg road and so came to Burnt Sawmill Bridge where the work on the new dam was going forward. The new lake would shortly spread over the country between this and the western reaches of Brundige Mountain with two long, watery arms embracing the mountain to the north and south.

The vicinity of the new dam was a perfect riot of mud and cement and rocks and disordered road. A dubious détour had been provided, which went down into a very wallow of muck where great trucks were emptying their loads of crushed stone and blocking even this temporary way.

“Worse than when we drove in, hey?” said Tom.

“Guess we won’t try to drive out this way,” Brent commented; “unless we get an airplane. They stamp out lakes these days like cookies, don’t they? You can’t depend on geography any more at all--build a dam and start a lake. They’ll be selling mountains and valleys in the five and ten next. Nature’s getting to be a regular quantity production proposition, like Fords.”

There were men wallowing knee-deep in mud, drilling rocks for blasting, sifting stone, and so forth. There were a couple of tents in the chaotic neighborhood and an old hut seemed to have been converted into a camp. There was something attractive about the whole confused scene as there always is about any kind of camp life. Several of the men, a fine, intelligent type, Tom thought, were guiding an apprehensive and fearful motorist through the worst part of the détour and explaining to him how he could accomplish the impossible and pass around a mammoth truck whose swinging body hung on end. They nodded in a friendly way at the returning campers, who paused to watch them.

“Lawton around?” Tom asked.

“Lawton?” one of the workers queried, and shook his head.

“The forest fellow,” said Tom. “He’s around here a good deal, isn’t he?”

“Never heard of him,” said the young man; then raising his voice he called to another worker, “Know any one named Lawton?”

The man consulted shook his head.

“Who’s boss around here, anyway?” Tom called.

“I am,” the man answered. “Why, was he supposed to be working here?”

“Well, I should hope,” said Tom. Then he glanced curiously at Brent.

“You can search me,” Brent said.

“That’s funny,” Tom commented. “Well, come ahead.”

Their hike back took them along the road by which they had originally entered the reservation and down through the woods which the gallant Ford had penetrated. The aggressive little car looked lonely and neglected under its tattered and soiled old covering. It seemed to be more buried than ever in foliage.

“See if there’s a can of soup left in the car,” said Tom. “I feel just like having a dish of soup to-night. Wonder if Lawton likes soup? Guess those government workers eat about anything, hey?”

Under the canvas was that odor which always emanates from an automobile in an enclosure, an odor as sure and invariable as the odor of beasts in captivity; a combination of oil, gas, metal, damp upholstery.

“Smells familiar, hey?” Tom said, poking his head in. “Here’s tomato and split pea. Which do you suppose he’d prefer?”

“Bring them both,” said Brent.

It was nearing twilight and they plodded on wearily through the solemn woods, Tom leading the way.

“We look like a nice domestic couple coming home on a Saturday night,” said Brent. “Why didn’t you remind me to buy an egg-beater? If this sweater doesn’t match my good socks I’m going to exchange it. There goes our friend the night worker”--as he called the owl. “Do you know I’m tired?”

“Same here,” said Tom. “We’ll feel like a little three-handed pinochle game after we have a good feed. I’d miss Lawty if he didn’t show up. I suppose they’re likely to shoot him off to the Great Lakes or somewhere soon. Look out you don’t throw that butt on the ground. Boy, but we need rain.”

“The leaves underfoot make as much noise as static, don’t they?” Brent said.

They approached the Gulch at the lower end where Conner’s ruin was. The place looked desolate enough in the waning light, the dead trees, of which there were a number, standing like outcast things amid the living foliage, their soulless look emphasized by the deepening shadows. Their bare, crooked branches, black and brittle, seemed the very symbol of death. Tom wondered if little June Sanderson had been timid in the haunted twilights of this uncanny place. What a scene for a little girl to witness in the bedtime hour!

“I wonder who Conner was and what he looked like,” Tom mused as they approached the Gulch.

Scarcely had he said the words when there was a sound in the distance and they paused amid the thick brush through which they were plowing. Conner’s was possibly two hundred feet distant, and looking in that direction they saw a figure descending the trunk of the old elm which shaded the well.

“There he is, busy as usual,” Tom said, with pleasure in his voice.

He was about to call when Brent, sensing his intention, grasped his arm and said, “Shh--keep still--_look_. What’s that he has under his arm?”

A last freakish ray of sunlight had caught the moving figure; he passed through it as he descended. But in those few seconds he was in a kind of spotlight. It seemed as if the good sun, already withdrawn from the desolate scene, were pointing a long finger at the distant form, to direct the gaze of the campers upon it. Just a kind of friendly act of the great orb toward the sojourners in that lonely Gulch whom it had seen there every day.

“Don’t call,” said Brent.