The Adventures of a Modest Man

The two young men caught sight of one another at the same instant; alert, mistrustful, each stared at the other in questioning silence while the first instinct of unpleasant surprise lasted.

"How are you?" said the man, cautiously.

"Good-morning," replied Ellis. "When the wind turned I scented your fire down the stream. Thought I'd see what was burning."

"Are you up here fishing?" inquired he of the tweeds.

"Yes; came here by canoe to the forks below. I am out for a week by myself. The Caranay water is my old-time trail… Looks like a storm, doesn't it?"

"Anything doing with the trout?"

"Not much; two in the falls pool that come an ounce short of the pound. I should be glad to divide – if you are shy on trout."

Again they regarded one another carefully.

"My name," said the man by the fire, "is Jones – but that can't be helped now. So if you'll overlook such matters I'll be glad of a trout if you can spare one."

"My name is Ellis; help yourself."

The man by the fire glanced at the burnt flapjack, scraped it free from the pan, tossed it into the bushes, and straightened to his full height.

"Come into camp, Mr. Ellis," he said, politely. The freemasonry of caste operates very quickly in the wilderness; Ellis slid down the boulder on the re-enforced seat of his knickerbockers, landing, with hob-nailed shoes foremost, almost at the edge of the fire. Then he laid his rod aside, slipped the pack to the ground, unslung his creel, and, fishing out a handkerchief, mopped his sunburnt countenance.

"Anything else you're short of, Mr. Jones?" he asked, pleasantly. "I'm just in from the settlements, and I can let you have a pinch of almost anything."

"Have you plenty of salt?" inquired Jones, wistfully.

"Plenty; isn't there anything else? Bacon? Sugar?"

"Matches?"

Ellis looked at him keenly; good woodsmen don't run short of matches; good woodsmen don't build such fires.

"Certainly," he said. "Did you have an accident?"

"No – that is, several boxes got wet, and I've been obliged to sit around this confounded fire for fear it might go out – didn't dare fish very far from it."

He looked gloomily around, rubbed his forehead as though trying to recollect something, and finally sat down on a log.

"Fact is," he said, "I don't know very much about the woods. Do you? Everything's gone wrong; I tore my canoe in the Ledge Rapids yesterday. I'm in a fix."

Ellis laughed; and his laugh was so pleasant, so entirely without offence, that young Jones laughed, too, for a while, then checked himself to adjust his eyeglasses, which his mirth had displaced.

"Can you cook?" he asked, so seriously that Ellis only nodded, still laughing.

"Then, for Heaven's love, would you, when you cook your own breakfast over that fire, cook enough for two?"

"Why, man, I believe you're hungry," said Ellis, sharply.

"Hungry? Well, I don't know whether you would call it exactly hunger, because I have eaten several things which I cooked. I ought not to be hungry; I tried to toss a flapjack, but it got stuck to the pan. Fact is, I'm a rotten cook, and I guess it's simply that I'm half starved for a decent meal."

"Why, see here," said Ellis, rising to his feet, "I can fix up something pretty quick if you like."

"I do like. Yonder is my cornmeal, coffee, some damp sugar, flour, and what's left of the pork. You see I left it in a corner of the lean-to, and while I was asleep a porcupine got busy with it; then I hung it on a tree, and some more porcupines invited their relatives, and they all climbed up and nearly finished it. Did you suppose that a porcupine could climb a tree?"

"I've heard so," said Ellis, gravely, busy with the stores which he was unrolling from his own blanket. The guilelessness of this stray brother appalled him. Here was a babe in the woods. A new sort of babe, too, for, in the experience of Ellis, the incompetent woodsman is ever the loudest-mouthed, the tyro, the most conceited. But this forest-squatting innocent not only knew nothing of the elements of woodcraft, but had called a stranger's attention to his ignorance with a simplicity that silenced mirth, forestalled contempt, and aroused a curious respect for the unfortunate.

"He is no liar, anyway," thought Ellis, placing a back-log, mending the fire, emptying the coffee pot, and settling the kettle to boil. And while he went about culinary matters with a method born of habit, Jones watched him, aided when he saw a chance; and they chatted on most animatedly together as the preparations for breakfast advanced.

"The very first day I arrived in the woods," said Jones, "I fell into the stream and got most of my matches wet. I've had a devil of a time since."

"It's a good idea to keep reserve matches in a water-tight glass bottle," observed Ellis, carelessly, and without appearing to instruct anybody about anything.

"I'll remember that. What is a good way to keep pork from porcupines?"

Ellis mentioned several popular methods, stirred the batter, shoved a hot plate nearer the ashes, and presently began the manufacture of flapjacks.

"Don't you toss 'em?" inquired Jones, watching the process intently.

"Oh, they can be tossed – like this! But it is easier for me to turn them with a knife – like this. I have an idea that they toss flapjacks less often in the woods than they do in fiction."

"I gathered my idea from a book," said Jones, bitterly; "it told how to build a fire without matches. Some day I shall destroy the author."

Presently Jones remarked in a low, intense voice: "Oh, the fragrance of that coffee and bacon!" which was all he said, but its significance was pathetically unmistakable.

"Pitch in, man," urged Ellis, looking back over his shoulder. "I'll be with you in a second." But when his tower of browned and smoking flapjacks was ready, and he came over to the log, he found that his host, being his host, had waited. That settled his convictions concerning Jones; and that was doubtless why, inside of half an hour, he found himself calling him Jones and not Mr. Jones, and Jones calling him Ellis. They were a pair of well knit, clean-limbed young men, throat and face burnt deeply by wind and sun. Jones did not have much hair; Ellis's was thick and short, and wavy at the temples. They were agreeable to look at.

"Have another batch of flapjacks?" inquired Ellis, persuasively.

Jones groaned with satisfaction at the prospect, and applied himself to a crisp trout garnished with bacon.

"I've tried and tried," he said, "but I cannot catch any trout. When I found that I could not I was horrified, Ellis, because, you see, I had supposed that the forest and stream were going to furnish me with subsistence. Nature hasn't done a thing to me since I've tried to shake hands with her."

"I wonder," said Ellis, "why you came into the woods alone?"

Jones coyly pounced upon another flapjack, folded it neatly and inserted one end of it into his mouth. This he chewed reflectively; and when it had vanished according to Fletcher, he said:

"If I tell you why I came here I'll begin to get angry. This breakfast is too heavenly to spoil. Pass the bacon and help yourself."

Ellis, however, had already satisfied his hunger. He set the kettle on the coals again, dumped into it cup and plate and fork, wiped his sheath-knife carefully, and, curling up at the foot of a hemlock, lighted his pipe, returning the flaming branch to the back-log.

Jones munched on; smile after smile spread placidly over his youthful face, dislodging his eyeglasses every time. He resumed them, and ate flapjacks.

"The first time my canoe upset," he said, "I lost my book of artificial flies. I brought a box of angle-worms with me, too, but they fell into the stream the second time I upset. So I have been trying to snare one of those big trout under the ledge below – "

Ellis's horrified glance cut him short; he shrugged his shoulders.

"My friend, I know it's dead low-down, but it was a matter of pure hunger with me. At all events, it's just as well that I caught nothing; I couldn't have cooked it if I had."