Snagged and Sunk; Or, The Adventures of a Canvas Canoe

“Beneath a hemlock grim and dark, Where shrub and vine are intertwining, Our shanty stands, well roofed with bark, On which the cheerful blaze is shining. The smoke ascends in spiral wreath; With upward curve the sparks are trending; The coffee kettle sings beneath Where sparks and smoke with leaves are blending.”

Joe Wayring’s voice rang out loud and clear, and the words of his song were repeated by the echoes from a dozen different points among the hills by which the camp was surrounded on every side. Joe was putting the finishing touches to the roof of a bark shanty; Roy Sheldon, with the aid of a double-bladed camp ax, was cutting a supply of hard wood to cook the trout he had just cleaned; and Arthur Hastings was sitting close by picking browse for the beds. The scene of their camp was a spring-hole, located deep in the forest twelve miles from Indian Lake. Although it was a noted place for trout, it was seldom visited by the guests of the hotels for the simple reason that they did not know that there was such a spring-hole in existence, and the guides were much too sharp to tell them of it.

Hotel guides, as a class, are not fond of work, and neither will they take a guest very far beyond the sound of their employer’s dinner horn. The landlords hire them by the month and the guides get just so much money, no matter whether their services are called into requisition or not. If business is dull and the guests few in number, the guides loaf around the hotel in idleness, and of course the less they do the less they are inclined to do. If they are sent out with a guest, they take him over grounds that have been hunted and fished until there is neither fur, fin, nor feather left, cling closely to the water-ways, avoiding even the shortest “carries,” their sole object being to earn their wages with the least possible exertion. They don’t care whether the guest catches any fish or not. But our three friends, Joe Wayring, Roy Sheldon, and Arthur Hastings, were not dependent upon the hotel guides for sport during their summer outings. Being perfectly familiar with the country for miles around Indian Lake, they went wherever their fancy led them, and with no fear of getting lost.

“And on the stream a light canoe Floats like a freshly fallen feather— A fairy thing that will not do For broader seas and stormy weather. Her sides no thicker than the shell Of Ole Bull’s Cremona fiddle; The man who rides her will do well To part his scalp-lock in the middle,”

sang Joe, backing off and looking approvingly at his work. “There, fellows, that roof is tight, and now it can rain as soon as it pleases. With two acres of trout right in front of the door, and a camp located so far from the lake that we are not likely to be disturbed by any interlopers—what more could three boys who want to be lazy ask for?”

“There’s one thing I would like to ask for,” replied Roy, “and that is the assurance that Tom Bigden and his cousins will go back to Mount Airy without trying to come any tricks on us. I wonder what brought them up here any way?”

“Why, they came after their rods, of course,” answered Arthur. “You know I sent them a despatch stating that their rods were in Mr. Hanson’s possession, and that they could get them by refunding the money that Hanson had paid Jake Coyle for them.”

“But they have been loafing around the lake for a whole week, doing nothing but holding stolen interviews with Matt Coyle and his boys,” said Roy. “I tell you I don’t like the way those worthies put their heads together. I believe they are in ca-hoots. If they are not, how does it come that Tom and his cousins can see Matt as often as they want to, while the guides and landlords, who are so very anxious to have him arrested, can not find him or obtain any satisfactory news of him?”

“That’s the very reason they can’t find him—because they want to have him arrested, and Matt knows it,” observed Joe. “But why Tom doesn’t reveal Matt’s hiding-place to the constable is more than I can understand. Did it ever occur to you that perhaps Matt has some sort of a hold on those boys, and that they are afraid to go against him?”

“I have thought of it,” replied Arthur. “I have never been able to get it out of my head that Tom acted suspiciously on the day your canvas canoe was stolen. He played his part pretty well, but I believed then, and I believe now, that he knew that canoe was gone before he came back to the beach.”

“I know Tom didn’t show much enthusiasm when we started after that bear, and that he did not go very far from the pond,” assented Joe. “It is possible that he saw Matt steal my canoe, and that he made no effort to stop him; but I think you are mistaken when you say that they are in ca-hoots. I don’t believe they have any thing in common. Tom is much too high-toned for that. I know that he has been seen in Matt’s company a time or two, but I am of the opinion that they met by accident and not by appointment.”

“But Tom knew the officers were looking for Matt, and what was the reason he didn’t tell them that he had seen him?” demanded Arthur.

“He probably would if he hadn’t thought that we were the ones that wanted him arrested,” replied Joe. “Tom and his cousins do not like us, and Matt Coyle might steal us poor, and they would never lift a hand or say a word to prevent it. But we are safe from them now. Even if they knew where to find us, Matt and his boys are much too lazy to walk twelve miles through the thick woods just to get into a fight with us.”

Perhaps they were, and perhaps they were not. Time will show.

If you have read the first volume of the “Forest and Stream Series,” you will recollect that the story it contained was told by “Old Durability,” Joe Wayring’s Fly-rod. In concluding his interesting narrative, Fly-rod said that he would step aside and give place to his “accommodating friend,” the Canvas Canoe, who, in the second volume of the series, would describe some of the incidents that came under his notice while he was a prisoner in the bands of the Indian Lake vagabonds, Matt Coyle and his two worthless boys, Jake and Sam. I am the Canvas Canoe, at your service, and I am now ready to redeem that promise.

You will remember that the last duty I performed for my master, Joe Wayring, was to take him and Fly-rod up to the “little perch hole,” leaving Arthur Hastings and Roy Sheldon in the pond to angle for black bass. Joe preferred to fish for perch, because he was afraid to trust his light tackle in a struggle with so gamey a foe as a bass; but, as luck would have it, he struck one the very first cast he made, and got into a fight that was enough to make any angler’s nerves thrill with excitement.

The battle lasted half an hour; and when it was over and the fish safely landed, Joe discovered that it was growing dark. While he was putting Fly-rod away in his case I happened to look up the creek, and what should I see there but the most disreputable looking scow I ever laid my eyes on? I had never seen him before, but I knew the crew he carried, for I had had considerable experience with them. They were the squatter and his boys, who, as you know, had sworn vengeance against Joe Wayring and his friends, because Joe’s father would not permit them to live on his land.

Matt and his young allies discovered Joe before the latter saw them, and made an effort to steal alongside and capture him before he knew that there was any danger near; but one of the impatient boys carelessly allowed his paddle to rub against the side of the scow, and the sound alarmed Joe, who at once took to the water and struck out for shore, leaving me to my fate. But I never blamed Joe for that, because I knew he could not have done any thing else. He had paid out a good deal of rope in order to place himself in the best position for casting, and he could not haul it in and raise the anchor before his enemies would be upon him.

“So that’s your game, is it?” shouted the squatter, when he saw Joe pulling for the shore with long lusty strokes. “Wal, it suits us I reckon. Never mind the boat, Jakey. She’s fast anchored and will stay there till we want her. Take after the ’ristocrat whose dad won’t let honest folks live onto his land less’n they’ve got a pocketful of money to pay him for it. Jest let me get a good whack at him with my paddle, an’ he’ll stop, I bet you.”

Now we know that Matt didn’t tell the truth when he said that Joe Wayring’s father would not let any one live on his land except those who had money to pay for the privilege. Mr. Wayring was one of the most liberal citizens in Mount Airy. Nearly all the men who were employed as guides and boatmen by the summer visitors lived in neat little cottages that he had built on purpose for them, and for which he never charged them a cent of rent; and when Matt Coyle and his family came into the lake with a punt load of goods, and took possession of one of his lots, and proceeded to erect a shanty upon it without asking his permission, Mr. Wayring did not utter one word of protest. It is true that he was not very favorably impressed with the appearance of the new-comers, but he thought he would give them an opportunity to show what they were before he ordered them off his grounds. If they proved to be honest, hard-working people they might stay and welcome, and he would treat them as well as he treated the other inhabitants of “Stumptown.”

But it turned out that Matt Coyle was neither honest nor hard-working. He had once been a hanger-on about the hotels at Indian Lake. He called himself an independent guide (neither of the hotels would have any thing to do with him), but, truth to tell, he did not do much guiding. He gained a precarious subsistence by hunting, trapping, fishing, and stealing. It was easier to steal a living than it was to earn it by hunting and trapping, and Matt’s depredations finally became so numerous and daring that the guides hunted him down as they would a bear or a wolf that had preyed upon their sheep-folds, and when they caught him ordered him out of the country. To make sure of his going they destroyed every article of his property that they could get their hands on, thus forcing him, as one of the guides remarked, to go off somewhere and steal a new outfit.

Where Matt and his enterprising family went after that no one knew. They disappeared, and for a few weeks were neither seen nor heard of; but in due time they rowed their punt into Mirror Lake, as I have recorded, and Matt and his boys at once sought employment as guides and boatmen. But here again they were doomed to disappointment. The managers of the different hotels saw at a glance that they were not proper persons to be trusted on the lake with a boatload of women and children, and told them very decidedly that their services were not needed. The truth was they drank more whisky than water, and guides of that sort were not wanted in Mount Airy.

Matt and his boys next tried fishing as a means of earning a livelihood; but no one could have made his salt at that, because the guests sojourning at the hotels and boarding houses, with the assistance of the regular guides, kept all the tables abundantly supplied. This second failure made the squatters angry, and they concluded that affairs about Mount Airy were not properly managed, and they would “run the town” to suit themselves. But they could not do that either, for they were promptly arrested and thrust into the calaboose.