CHAPTER IV
VARNEY'S PAINTPOT
"I'm 'plunk' into it! I'm sinking in the swamp mud! I can't--can't getout! Oh--h-help--help!"
Colin's wild cries as he found himself sinking in the oozing,olive-green mud of the vast alder-swamp, struck his comrades with amomentary blind horror.
The half-immersed boy was indeed "plunk" into it; he was submerged tohis waist and slowly sinking inch by inch farther, now fairly gibberingin his frantic terror of being swallowed bodily by one of the manysucking throats of Big Swamp.
He writhed and struggled madly, snatching at the rank grass whose slimyroots came away in his hand--at the bushes--even at the brilliant poisonsumac, already ruddy as a swamp lamp--with the clutch of a drowning man;Leon's remembered words stinging his ears like noisome insects: "Thereare _live_ spots in that swamp where one might go out ofsight--_quick_!"
The hideous slimy life of the spongy bog, half water, half mud!
Leon's sharp-featured face at that moment seemed to be carved out ofpale wood as his snapping eyes took in the swamp, with its groves ofwhispering alders, its margin of scattered birch-trees and swamp cedars,the lamplike sumac burning maliciously--the sinking boyish figure amidthe moist green dreariness!
Now, Starrie Chase was by Nature's gift more quick-witted than hiscompanions, even than the trained boy scout.
"If we try to wade in toward him, we'll sink ourselves!" he cried. "I'lltry to haul him out with that birch-tree."
A leaping, plunging run, sinking to his ankles, and with the long boundof a gray squirrel he alighted upon the supple trunk of a tallwhite-birch sapling that grew within the borders of the swamp!
No squirrel ever climbed more rapidly than did he to its middlebranches.
And the yellow flame in his eyes, now, was not a spark frompersecution's fire.
"HELP! _HELP!_"]
"Hold on, Col! Keep up! The tree'll pull you out. I'll bend it down toyou. When it comes within reach of your arms catch hold of the trunk!Hang on for your life! I'll shin down, and 'twill hoist you up--you'relighter than I am!"
He was bending the tall, supple trunk, with its leafy crown,down--down--as he spoke. It creaked beneath his fifteen-year-old weight.The strained roots groaned in the swampy soil.
"Gee! if the roots should give way _I'll_ land in the soup too," was hispiercing thought; and a shudder ran down his spine as he saw the poolsof olive-green bog-soup beneath him--bottomless pools--in which floatedslimy, stagnant things, leaves and dead insects.
Pools more horrible even than the patch of liquidescent mud in whichColin was sinking!
But Starrie Chase would never have attained to the leadership that washis among the boys of Exmouth if there had been nothing in him but thesavage--the petty, not the primitive savage--that persecuted chipmunksand old women. Now the hero who slept in the shadow of the savage wasaroused and there was "something doing"!
Lying flat upon the pliant sapling he forced it down with his heavingchest, with every ounce of will and weight in his strong body.
The silvery trunk bent to the sinking boy like a white angel.
With a cry he flung his arms upward and grasped it. At the same momentLeon slid down and jumped to a comparatively firm spot of the quagmire.
The flexible young tree rebounded slowly with the weight lighter thanhis pendant from it--like a stone attached to the boom of a derrick.
In a few seconds it was almost upright, with Colin Estey, mud-plasteredto his arm-pits, hanging on like an olive-green bough, his dilated eyesstarting from his head, his face blanched to the gray-white of thefriendly trunk.
"Slide down now, Col, an' jump--I'll stand by to give you a hand!" criedLeon, the daring rescuer.
And in another minute the victim was safe on _terra firma_--out of theslimy throat of Big Swamp.
"Oh! I thought I was going--to sink down--out of sight!" he gaspedbetween lips that did not seem to move, so tightly was the skin of hisface stretched by terror. "That I'd be swallowed by the mud! I wouldhave been--but for Leon!"
"You surely were quick! Quick as a flash!" The two boys who had beenspectators gazed open-mouthed at Starrie Chase as if they saw the herowho for three brief minutes had flashed out into the open.
"Whew! I got such a fright that I'll never forget it; I declare I feelweak still," mumbled Coombsie.
"Pooh! your fright--was nothing to mine," Colin's stiff lips began totremble now with recovering life. "And I'm plastered with mud to myshoulder-blades--wet too! But I don't care, as I'm out of it!" Heglanced nervously toward Big Swamp, and at the clump of restless alderswhich probably still sheltered Raccoon Junior.
"The sun is quite hot here; let's move back up the hill and sit down!"Nixon pointed to the grassy slope behind them where the crows stillflapped their wings around the chestnut-tree with an occasional relieved"Caw!" "We'll roll you over there, Col, and hang you out to dry!"
"Well! suppose we eat our lunch during the process, eh?" suggestedMarcoo. "Goodness! wouldn't it be 'one on us' if a fox had sneaked outof the woods and run off with the lunch-basket? We left it under thechestnut-tree."
They made their way back to that nut-tree, whose hoary trunk was stillswathed with Leon's coat and the scout's Norfolk jacket, knotted roundit to prevent the young coon which had signally outwitted them from"lighting down."
"Whew! I feel as if 'twas low tide inside me. A scare always makes mehungry," remarked Leon, not at all like a hero, but a very prosaic boy."I think eating in the woods is the best part of the business!"
"I say! You'd make a jolly good scout; do you know it?" put forth Nixon.
But the other only hunched his shoulders with the grin of acontortionist as he bit into a ham sandwich, richly flavored with peanutbutter and quince jelly from the shaking which the basket had undergoneon its passage through the woods.
The troop of hungry crows which had pecked unavailingly at the wickercover, had retired to some distance and watched the picnic in croakingenvy.
Colin lay out in the sun, being rolled over at intervals by the scout,to dislodge the caking mud from his clothes, and to knead up his "soggy"spirits.
"Well! if we had carried out our first intention this morning, Nix, ifwe had gone down the river to the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes near its mouth,we might _all_ have stuck high and dry, in the river mud, if the tideforsook us," said Coombsie by and by, as he dispensed a limited amountof cold coffee from a pint bottle. "That's a pleasure in store, wheneverwe can get Captain Andy to take us in his motor-boat. Say! he's great;he was skipper of a Gloucester fishing schooner until a year ago, whenhe lost his vessel in a fog; the main-boom fell on him and broke hisleg; he's lame still. He stays in Exmouth with his daughter most o' thetime now. He was one o' the Gloucester crackerjacks: he saved so manylives at sea that he used to be called the Ocean Patrol!"
"Why, he must be a regular sea-scout," Nixon's eye watered; he had thebump of hero-worship strongly developed.
"Captain Andy's laying for you, Leon," remarked Coombsie, passing roundsome jelly-roll.
"Oh, I guess I know why!" came the nonchalant answer. "It's for tying awooden shingle to a long branch of the apple-tree near old Ma'amBaldwin's house, so that it would keep tapping on her door through thenight. If the wind is in the right direction it works finely--keeps herguessing all the time! I've lain low among the marsh-grass and seen hercome to the door, in the dark, a dozen times, gruntin' like a grizzly!I hate solitary cranks!"
"Captain Andy says that she was never peculiar as she is now, until heryoungest son ran wild and was sent to a reformatory," suggested Marcoogravely.
"I'd cut out that trick, if I were you!" growled the scout.
"Oh! I don't know; there are times when a fellow must paint the townred--or something--or 'he'd bust'! That reminds me, we were going todaub ourselves with red from Varney's Paintpot. If we're to find itto-day, we'd better be moving on pretty soon. It must be after twoo'clock now."
"I haven't got my watch on, but it's quite that, or later,
" the scoutglanced upward at the brilliant afternoon sun.
"Hadn't we better give up all idea of visiting the Paintpot or theBear's Den," Marcoo suggested rather nervously, "and begin trampinghomeward--if we can discover in which direction home lies? I think weought to try and find some outlet from the woods."
"So do I. Col will have a peck of swamp mud to carry round with him. Hisclothes are heavy and damp. If I only had my compass we could steer afairly straight course, for these woods lie to the southeast of thetown; don't they? Anybody got a watch on? I left mine at home." Nixonlooked eagerly at his companions.
"Our boy-scout handbook tells us how to use the watch as a compass bypointing the hour-hand to the sun and reckoning back halfway to noon, atwhich point the south would be."
"My 'timer' is out of commission," regretted Marcoo.
Neither of the other two boys possessed a watch.
"In that case we might trust to the dog to lead us out of the woods.We'd better just tell Blink to go home, and follow him; he'll find hisway out some time; won't you, pup?" Nix stooped to fondle the tan earsof the terrier which had taken to him from the first, having neverharbored the ghost of a suspicion of his being a "flowerpot fellow."
The little dog stretched his jaws in a tired yawn. The pink pads of hispaws were sore from much running, following up rabbit trails, and therest. But the purple lights in his faithful brown eyes said plainly:"Leave it to me, fellows! Instinct can put it all over reason, justnow!"
But Blink's master started an opposition movement. He had been invitedto guide the expedition; he was averse to resigning such leadership tohis terrier; in that case his supposed knowledge of the woods, of whichhe had boasted aforetime to the Exmouth boys, would henceforth beregarded as a "windy joke."
"Follow Blink!" Thus he flouted the idea. "If we do, we won't get out ofthese woods before midnight! He'll dodge round after every live thing hesees, from a weasel to a grasshopper--like a regular will-o'-the-wisp.The sensible thing to do is to search for a logging-road--we're sure tocome to one in time--and follow that on. Or a stream--a stream wouldlead out on to the salt-marshes, to join the river."
"There don't appear to be any streams in these woods; they seem as dryas an attic!" Nixon, the scout, knew that the proposal now adopted bythe majority was all wrong, contrary to the advice derived through hisbook from the great Chief Scout, Grand Master of Woodlore, but he hatedto raise another fuss or make a split in the camp.
So the quartette of boys filed slowly up the slope and back into thewoods, Coombsie carrying the almost empty basket, containing sparseremnants of the feast: "We may be hungry before we arrive home!" heremarked, with involuntary foreboding in his tone.
That foreboding increased as they pressed on. Each one now becamedepressingly sure that he was wandering in the woods "lak wit' eyeshut"; without any knowledge of his bearings, or of how to retrace hissteps to the log shanty flanked by the mountain of sawdust, whence hemight be able to find his way back to the farm-clearing where he hadencountered the musical woodchopper, frightened boy and dead raccoon.
The boy scout was silently reproaching himself for having fallen shortof the prudent standard inculcated by his scout training. Carried awayby the novelty of these strange woods and his equally strangecompanions, he had lowered the foresail of prudence--just tramped alongblindly with the others--taking no note of landmarks, nor leaving anytrace behind him that would serve to guide him back along the course bywhich he had come.
But, then, he had trusted to Leon's leadership; and the latter's boastedknowledge of the woods proved, as Coombsie had suspected, to consist ofbluff as a chief ingredient!
"I wish I had kept my eyes open and noticed things as I came along, orthat I had thought of notching the trees at intervals with mypenknife--blazing a trail--which we could have followed back," lamentedthe scout. "I guess we're only wandering round in a circle now; we'renot hitting a logging-road or trail of any kind. Tck! puppie,"--emittingan inarticulate summons between his tongue and palate,--"let's seewhat's the matter with those forepaws of yours! Blood, is it? Have youscratched them?"
He stooped to examine Blink's slim white forelegs.
"_Gee whiz!_ it isn't blood--it's clay--red clay: we must be on thetrail of Varney's Paintpot, fellows!"
So they were! They presently found it, that red-ochre bed, lying inobscurity among the bushes, scrub oak, dwarf pine and cedar, togetherwith tall ferns, that stood guard over it jealously, in a particularlydense portion of the woods.
Once the clay had been vivid and valuable, with wonderful paintingproperties. Many an Indian had stained his arrow blood-red with it. Manya white man, an early settler, had painted the rude furniture of hishome from that forest paintpot--then a moist tank of Nature's pigment.
Later on it had been used too, as civilization progressed, and wasclaimed by the man whose name it bore.
Now, it was for the most part caked and dried up, its coloring powerweakened; yet there were still moist and vivid spots such as that inwhich Blink, with the dog's unerring instinct for scenting out theunusual, had smeared himself.
And those spots the boys promptly turned into a rouge-pot. They paintedtheir own faces and each other's, until more savage-looking red menthese woods had never seen.
They forbore from delaying to smear their bodies, as Nixon hadsuggested, for one word was now booming in each tired brain like afoghorn through a mist: "Lost! Lost! _Lost!_" And they could not quiteescape from it in this new diversion.
Still they tried to dye hope a fresh rose-color at this forest paintpottoo: to silence with whooping yells and fantastic capers, and inflitting war-dances in and out among the trees, the grim raving of thatword in their ears.
They painted Blink likewise in zebra-like stripes across his back,whereupon he promptly rolled on the ground, blurring his markings,until he was a mottled and grotesque red-and-white object.
"He looks like a clown's dog," said Coombsie. "If any one should meet usin the woods, they'd think we were a troop of painted guys escaped froma circus! We'll create a sensation in the town when we get home--if weever do?" _sotto voce_. "Hadn't we better stop 'training on' now, andtry to get somewhere?"
So, controlling the training-on, capering savage now rampant in each onecorresponding to his painted face, they toiled on again, while theafternoon shadows lengthened in the woods--until they stood transfixed,their war-whoops silenced, before another surprise of the woods on whichthey had tumbled, unprepared.
It was a lengthy gray cairn of stones with a rude wooden marker at thetop bearing the date 1790, and at the foot a modern granite slabinscribed with the words: "Bishop's Grave," and the date of the stone'serection.
"_Bishop's Grave!_" Coombsie ejaculated, while the empty basket droopedheavily from his hand as if "the grasshopper had suddenly become aburden." "I've heard of the grave, but I've never seen it before. Bishopwas lost in these woods about a hundred and twenty-one years ago; hecouldn't find his way out and wandered round till he died. His body wasdiscovered months afterwards and they buried it here."
Awe fell upon the four boys. Their faces were drawn under the smearingof paint. Their eyes gleamed strangely, like sunken islands, from outtheir ruddy setting. The mottled terrier, with that sympatheticperception which dogs have of their masters' moods, pointed one earsharply and drooped the other, like a flag at half-mast, while he staredat the rude cairn.
The scout impulsively lifted his broad-brimmed hat as he was in thehabit of doing if, when marching with his troop, he encountered afuneral.
In the mind of each lad tolled like a slow bell the menacing echo ofToiney's words: "You walkee--walkee--en you haf so tire' en so lonesamyou _go deaded_!"