A Scout of To-day.

by Isabel Hornibrook.

CHAPTER I

THE GREAT WOODS

"Well! this would be the very day for a long tramp up into the woods.

Tooraloo! I feel just in the humor for that."

Colin Estey stretched his well-developed fourteen-year-old body among the tall feathery gra.s.ses of the broad salt-marsh whereon he lay, kicking his heels in the September sunshine, and gazed longingly off toward the grand expanse of New England woodland that bordered the marshes and, rising into tree-clad hills, stretched away much farther than the eye could reach in apparently illimitable majesty.

Those woods were the most imposing and mysterious feature in Colin's world. They bounded it in a way. Beyond a certain shallow point in them lay the Unknown, the Woodland Wonder, whereof he had heard much, but which he had never explored for himself. And this reminded him unpleasantly that he was barely fourteen, in stature measuring five feet three _and_ three eighths, facts which never obtruded themselves baldly upon his memory when he romped about the salt-marshes, or rowed a boat--or if no boat was forthcoming, paddled a washtub--on the broad tidal river that wound in and out between the marshes.

Yet though the unprobed mystery of the dense woods vexed him with the feeling of being immature and young--woodland distances look vaster at fourteen than at eighteen--it fascinated him, too, more than did any riddle of the salt-marshes or lunar enigma of the ebb and flow of tide in the silvery, brackish river formed by an arm of sea that coursed inland for many a mile to meet a freshwater stream near the town where Colin was born.

Any daring boy above the age of ten could learn pretty nearly all there was to know about that tidal river: of the mammal and fish wherewith it teemed, from the great harbor seal, once the despot of the river, to the tiny brit that frolicked in the eddies; and about the graceful bird-life that soared above its brackish current.

He could bathe, shrieking with excitement, as wild from delight as any young water-bird, in the foam of the rocky bar where fresh stream and salt stream met with a great crowing of waters and laughter of spray.

He could imitate the triple whistle, the shrill "Wheu! Wheu! Wheu!" of the greater yellow-legs so cleverly as to beguile that noisy bird, which is said to warn every other feathered thing within hearing, into forgetting its panic and alighting near him.

He could give the drawn-out, plaintive "Ter-lee-ee!" call of the black-breasted plover, and find the crude nest of the spotted sandpiper nestling beneath a tall clump of candle-gra.s.s.

All these secrets and many more were within easy reach and could be studied in his unwritten Nature Primer whose pages were traced in the flight of each bird and the sp.a.w.n of every fish.

But the Heart of the Woods was a closed book to most fourteen-year-old boys born and brought up in the little tidal town of Exmouth.

Colin had often longed to turn the pages of that book--to penetrate farther into the woods than he had dared to do yet. This longing was fanned by the tales of men who had hunted, trapped or felled trees in them, who could spell out each syllable of the woodlore to be studied in their golden twilight; and who, as they roved and read, could put a finger on many a colored ill.u.s.tration of Nature's methods set against a green background of branches or fluttering underbrush, like the flitting foliage of moving pictures.

To-day the wood-longing possessed Colin so strongly that it actually stung him all over, from his neck to his drumming, purposeless heels.

He glanced up into the brilliant September sky arching the salt-marshes, questioning it as to what might be going on in the woods at this moment under its imperial canopy.

And the blue eye of the sky winked back at him, hinting that it knew of forest secrets to be discovered to-day--of fascinating woodland creatures to be seen for a moment at their whisking gambols.

The sunlight's energy raced through him. The briny ozone of the salt-marshes was a tickling feather in his nostrils, teasing him with a desire to find an outlet for that energy in some new and unprecedented form of activity.

He sprang to his feet, spurning the plumy gra.s.s.

"Gee whiz! I'm not going to lie here any longer, smelling marsh-hay," he cried half articulately, his eye taking in the figures of two hay-makers who were mowing the tall marsh-gra.s.s and letting it lie in fragrant swathes to dry into the salt hay that forms such juicy fodder for cattle. "It's me for the woods to-day! I want to go farther into those old woods than I've ever gone before--far enough to find Varney's Paintpot and the Bear's Den--and the c.o.o.n's hole that Toiney Leduc saw among the alders an' ledges near Big Swamp!"

He halted on the first footstep, whistling blithely to a gray-winged yellow-legs that skimmed above his head. The curly, boyish whistle, ascending in spirals, carried the musical challenge aloft: "I'm glad I'm alive and athirst for adventure; aren't you?"

To which the bird's noisy three-syllabled cry responded like three cheers!

"It's me for the woods to-day!" Colin set off at an easy lope across the marshes. "I'm going to look up Coombsie and Starrie Chase--and Kenjo Red! Us boys won't have much more time for fun before school reopens!"

grammar capsizing in the sudden, boisterous eddy within him.

That eddy of excitement carried him like a feather up an earthy embankment that ascended from the low-lying marshes, over a fence, and out onto the drab highroad which a little farther on blossomed out into houses on either side and became the quiet main street of Exmouth.

Colin turned his face westward toward the home of "Coombsie," otherwise Mark Coombs--also shortened into "Marcoo" by nickname-loving boydom.

He had not gone far when his loping speed slackened abruptly to a contemplative trot. The trot sobered down to a crestfallen walk. The walk dwindled into a halt right in the middle of the sunny road.

"Tooraloo! here comes Coombsie now," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed behind his twitching lips. "And some one with him! Oh, I forgot all about that!" Dismay stole over his face at the thought. "Of course it's the strange boy, Marcoo's cousin, who came from Philadelphia yesterday and is going to stay here for ever so long--six months or so--while his parents travel in Europe.

This spoils our fun. Probably _he_ won't want to start off on a long hike through the woods," rigidly scanning the approaching stranger as a stiffened terrier might size up a dog of a different breed. "His folks are rich, so Marcoo said; I suppose he's been brought up in a city flowerpot--and isn't much of a fellow anyhow!" with a disgruntled grin.

But as the oncoming pair drew within twenty yards of the youthful critic the latter's tense face-muscles relaxed. Rea.s.surance crept into his expression.

"Gee! he looks all right, this city boy. He's not dolled-up much anyway!

And he doesn't look 'Willified' either!" was Colin's complacent comment.

No, the stranger's dress was certainly not patterned after the fashion of the boy-doll which Colin Estey had seen simpering in store-windows.

He wore a khaki shirt stained with service, rough tweed knickerbockers and a soft broad-brimmed hat. He carried his coat; the ends of his blue necktie dangled outside his shirt, one was looped up into a careless knot. His gray eye was rather more than usually alert and bright, his general appearance certainly not suggestive of a flowerpot plant; his step, quick and springy, embodied the saline breeze that skipped over the salt-marshes.

So much Colin took in before criticism was blown out of his mind by a shout from Coombsie.

"Hullo! Col," exclaimed Marcoo. "Say, this is fine! We were just starting off to hunt you up--Nix and I! This is my cousin, Nixon Warren, who popped up here from Philadelphia late last night. Nix, this is my chum, Colin Estey!"

The two boys acknowledged the introduction with gruff shyness.

"Nixon and I settled on going down the river to-day in Captain Andy's power-boat, and Mother put us up a corking good luncheon," Marcoo significantly swung a basket pendant from his right hand. "But we've just been talking to Captain Andy," glancing backward over his shoulder at the receding figure of an elderly man who limped as he walked, "and he says he can't take us to-day. He won't even loan us the Pill."

Coombsie gesticulated with the basket toward the broad tidal river gleaming in the sunshine, on which rode a trim gasolene launch with a little rowboat, so tubby that it was almost round and aptly named the Pill, lying as tender beside it.

"Pshaw! the Pill isn't much of a boat. One might as well put to sea in a s...o...b..x!" Colin chuckled.

"I know! Well, we can't go on the river anyhow, so we've determined to take the basket along and spend the whole day in the woods. Nix is--"

"Great O!" whooped Colin, breaking in. "That's what I've been planning on doing too. I want to go _far_ into the woods to-day,"--his hands doubled and opened excitedly, as if grasping at something hitherto out of reach,--"farther than I've ever been before,--far enough to see Varney's Paintpot and the old Bear's Den--and some of the other wonders that the men tell about!"

"But there aren't any bears in these Ma.s.sachusetts woods now?" It was the strange boy, Nixon Warren, who eagerly spoke.

"Not that we know of!" Coombsie answered. "If one should stray over the border from New Hampshire he manages to lie low. Apparently there's nothing bigger than a deer traveling in our woods to-day--together with foxes in plenty and an occasional c.o.o.n. The last bear seen in this region, Nix, had his den in the cave of a great rock in the thickest part o' the woods. He was such an everlasting nuisance, killing calves and lambs, that a hunter tracked him into the cave and killed him with his knife. Ever since it has been called the Bear's Den. I've never seen it; nor you, Col!"

"No, but Starrie Chase has! I was going to hunt him up too, and Kenjo Red: they're a team if you want to go into the woods; they know more about them than any other boy in Exmouth."

"Kenjo has gone to Salem to-day. And Leon Chase?" Coombsie's expression was doubtful. "I guess Leon makes a bluff of knowing the woods better than he does. He'll scare everything away with his dog and shotgun.

Captain Andy is hunting for him now," with another backward glance to where the ma.s.sive figure of the old sea-captain was melting from view.

"He's threatening to shake Starrie until his heels change places with his head for fixing the Doctor's doorbell last night, wedging a pin into it so that it kept on ringing until the electricity gave out--and for teasing old Ma'am Baldwin again."

"'Mom Baldwin,' who lives in that old baldfaced house 'way over on the salt-marshes!" Colin hooted. "Pshaw! she ought to wash her clothes at the Witch Rock, where Dark Tammy was made to wash hers, over a hundred years ago. I guess Leon knows the way to Varney's Paintpot anyhow," he advanced clinchingly.

"What sort of queer Paintpot is that?" Nixon Warren spoke; his stranger's part in the conversation was limited to putting excited questions.

"It's a red-ochre swamp--a bed of moist red clay--that's hidden somewhere in the woods," Colin explained. "The Indians used it for making paint. So did the farmers, hereabouts, until a few years ago. I believe it's mostly dried up now."