Skeleton Lake: An Episode in Camp

SKELETON LAKE: AN EPISODE IN CAMP

The utter loneliness of our moose-camp on Skeleton

Lake had impressed us from the beginning—in the

Quebec backwoods, five days by trail and canoe

from civilisation—and perhaps the singular name

contributed a little to the sensation of eeriness that

made itself felt in the camp circle when once the

sun was down and the late October mists began

rising from the lake and winding their way in

among the tree trunks.

For, in these regions, all names of lakes and hills

and islands have their origin in some actual event,

taking either the name of a chief participant, such

as Smith’s Ridge, or claiming a place in the map

by perpetuating some special feature of the journey

or the scenery, such as Long Island, Deep Rapids,

or Rainy Lake.

All names thus have their meaning and are

usually pretty recently acquired, while the majority

are self-explanatory and suggest human and pioneer

relations. Skeleton Lake, therefore, was a name full of suggestion, and though none of us knew the

origin or the story of its birth, we all were conscious

of a certain lugubrious atmosphere that haunted its

shores and islands, and but for the evidences of

recent moose tracks in its neighbourhood we

should probably have pitched our tents elsewhere.

For several hundred miles in any direction we

knew of only one other party of whites. They

had journeyed up on the train with us, getting in

at North Bay, and hailing from Boston way. A

common goal and object had served by way of

introduction. But the acquaintance had made

little progress. This noisy, aggressive Yankee did

not suit our fancy much as a possible neighbour,

and it was only a slight intimacy between his chief

guide, Jake the Swede, and one of our men that

kept the thing going at all. They went into camp

on Beaver Creek, fifty miles and more to the west

of us.

But that was six weeks ago, and seemed as many

months, for days and nights pass slowly in these

solitudes and the scale of time changes wonderfully.

Our men always seemed to know by instinct pretty

well “whar them other fellows was movin’,” but in

the interval no one had come across their trails, or

once so much as heard their rifle shots.

Our little camp consisted of the professor, his wife, a splendid shot and keen woods-woman, and

myself. We had a guide apiece, and hunted daily

in pairs from before sunrise till dark.

It was our last evening in the woods, and the

professor was lying in my little wedge tent, discussing

the dangers of hunting alone in couples in

this way. The flap of the tent hung back and let

in fragrant odours of cooking over an open wood

fire; everywhere there were bustle and preparation,

and one canoe already lay packed with moose horns,

her nose pointing southwards.

“If an accident happened to one of them,” he

was saying, “the survivor’s story when he returned

to camp would be entirely unsupported evidence,

wouldn’t it? Because, you see—”

And he went on laying down the law after the

manner of professors, until I became so bored that

my attention began to wander to pictures and

memories of the scenes we were just about to leave:

Garden Lake, with its hundred islands; the rapids

out of Round Pond; the countless vistas of forest,

crimson and gold in the autumn sunshine; and the

starlit nights we had spent watching in cold, cramped

positions for the wary moose on lonely lakes among

the hills. The hum of the professor’s voice in

time grew more soothing. A nod or a grunt was

all the reply he looked for. Fortunately, he loathed interruptions. I think I could almost have gone

to sleep under his very nose; perhaps I did sleep

for a brief interval.

Then it all came about so quickly, and the tragedy

of it was so unexpected and painful, throwing our

peaceful camp into momentary confusion, that now

it all seems to have happened with the uncanny

swiftness of a dream.

First, there was the abrupt ceasing of the droning

voice, and then the running of quick little steps

over the pine needles, and the confusion of men’s

voices; and the next instant the professor’s wife

was at the tent door, hatless, her face white, her

hunting bloomers bagging at the wrong places, a

rifle in her hand, and her words running into one

another anyhow.

“Quick, Harry! It’s Rushton. I was asleep

and it woke me. Something’s happened. You

must deal with it!”

In a second we were outside the tent with our

rifles.

“My God!” I heard the professor exclaim, as if

he had first made the discovery. “It is Rushton!”

I saw the guides helping—dragging—a man out

of a canoe. A brief space of deep silence followed

in which I heard only the waves from the canoe

washing up on the sand; and then, immediately after, came the voice of a man talking with amazing

rapidity and with odd gaps between his words. It

was Rushton telling his story, and the tones of his

voice, now whispering, now almost shouting, mixed

with sobs and solemn oaths and frequent appeals to

the Deity, somehow or other struck the false note

at the very start, and before any of us guessed or

knew anything at all. Something moved secretly

between his words, a shadow veiling the stars,

destroying the peace of our little camp, and touching

us all personally with an undefinable sense of

horror and distrust.

I can see that group to this day, with all the

detail of a good photograph: standing half-way

between the firelight and the darkness, a slight

mist rising from the lake, the frosty stars, and our

men, in silence that was all sympathy, dragging

Rushton across the rocks towards the camp fire.

Their moccasins crunched on the sand and slipped

several times on the stones beneath the weight of

the limp, exhausted body, and I can still see every

inch of the pared cedar branch he had used for a

paddle on that lonely and dreadful journey.

But what struck me most, as it struck us all,

was the limp exhaustion of his body compared to

the strength of his utterance and the tearing rush

of his words. A vigorous driving-power was there at work, forcing out the tale, red-hot and throbbing,

full of discrepancies and the strangest contradictions;

and the nature of this driving-power I first

began to appreciate when they had lifted him into

the circle of firelight and I saw his face, grey

under the tan, terror in the eyes, tears too, hair

and beard awry, and listened to the wild stream

of words pouring forth without ceasing.

I think we all understood then, but it was only

after many years that anyone dared to confess

what he thought.

There was Matt Morris, my guide; Silver Fizz,

whose real name was unknown, and who bore the

title of his favourite drink; and huge Hank

Milligan—all ears and kind intention; and there

was Rushton, pouring out his ready-made tale,

with ever-shifting eyes, turning from face to face,

seeking confirmation of details none had witnessed

but himself—and one other .

Silver Fizz was the first to recover from the

shock of the thing, and to realise, with the natural

sense of chivalry common to most genuine back-woodsmen,

that the man was at a terrible disadvantage.

At any rate, he was the first to start

putting the matter to rights.

“Never mind telling it just now,” he said in a

gruff voice, but with real gentleness; “get a bite t’eat first and then let her go afterwards. Better

have a horn of whisky too. It ain’t all packed

yet, I guess.”

“Couldn’t eat or drink a thing,” cried the other.

“Good Lord, don’t you see, man, I want to talk to

someone first? I want to get it out of me to

someone who can answer—answer. I’ve had

nothing but trees to talk with for three days, and

I can’t carry it alone any longer. Those cursed,

silent trees—I’ve told it ’em a thousand times.

Now, just see here, it was this way. When we

started out from camp—”

He looked fearfully about him, and we realised

it was useless to stop him. The story was bound

to come, and come it did.

Now, the story itself was nothing out of the

way; such tales are told by the dozen round any

camp fire where men who have knocked about in the

woods are in the circle. It was the way he told it

that made our flesh creep. He was near the truth

all along, but he was skimming it, and the skimming

took off the cream that might have saved his soul.

Of course, he smothered it in words—odd words,

too—melodramatic, poetic, out-of-the-way words

that lie just on the edge of frenzy. Of course, too,

he kept asking us each in turn, scanning our faces

with those restless, frightened eyes of his, “What would you have done?” “What else could I do?”

and “Was that my fault?” But that was nothing,

for he was no milk-and-water fellow who dealt in

hints and suggestions; he told his story boldly,

forcing his conclusions upon us as if we had been

so many wax cylinders of a phonograph that would

repeat accurately what had been told us, and these

questions I have mentioned he used to emphasise

any special point that he seemed to think required

such emphasis.

The fact was, however, the picture of what had

actually happened was so vivid still in his own

mind that it reached ours by a process of telepathy

which he could not control or prevent. All through

his true-false words this picture stood forth in

fearful detail against the shadows behind him. He

could not veil, much less obliterate, it. We knew;

and, I always thought, he knew that we knew .

The story itself, as I have said, was sufficiently

ordinary. Jake and himself, in a nine-foot canoe,

had upset in the middle of a lake, and had held

hands across the upturned craft for several hours,

eventually cutting holes in her ribs to stick their

arms through and grasp hands lest the numbness of

the cold water should overcome them. They were

miles from shore, and the wind was drifting them

down upon a little island. But when they got within a few hundred yards of the island, they realised

to their horror that they would after all drift past it.

It was then the quarrel began. Jake was for

leaving the canoe and swimming. Rushton

believed in waiting till they actually had passed

the island and were sheltered from the wind. Then

they could make the island easily by swimming,

canoe and all. But Jake refused to give in, and

after a short struggle—Rushton admitted there

was a struggle—got free from the canoe—and

disappeared without a single cry .

Rushton held on and proved the correctness of

his theory, and finally made the island, canoe and

all, after being in the water over five hours. He

described to us how he crawled up on to the shore,

and fainted at once, with his feet lying half in the

water; how lost and terrified he felt upon regaining

consciousness in the dark; how the canoe had

drifted away and his extraordinary luck in finding

it caught again at the end of the island by a

projecting cedar branch. He told us that the little

axe—another bit of real luck—had caught in the

thwart when the canoe turned over, and how the

little bottle in his pocket holding the emergency

matches was whole and dry. He made a blazing

fire and searched the island from end to end, calling

upon Jake in the darkness, but getting no answer; till, finally, so many half-drowned men seemed to

come crawling out of the water on to the rocks, and

vanish among the shadows when he came up with

them, that he lost his nerve completely and returned

to lie down by the fire till the daylight came.

He then cut a bough to replace the lost paddles,

and after one more useless search for his lost

companion, he got into the canoe, fearing every

moment he would upset again, and crossed over to

the mainland. He knew roughly the position of

our camping place, and after paddling day and

night, and making many weary portages, without

food or covering, he reached us two days later.

This, more or less, was the story, and we,

knowing whereof he spoke, knew that every word

was literally true, and at the same time went to

the building up of a hideous and prodigious lie.

Once the recital was over, he collapsed, and

Silver Fizz, after a general expression of sympathy

from the rest of us, came again to the rescue.

“But now, Mister, you jest got to eat and drink

whether you’ve a mind to, or no.”

And Matt Morris, cook that night, soon had the

fried trout and bacon, and the wheat cakes and

hot coffee passing round a rather silent and

oppressed circle. So we ate round the fire,

ravenously, as we had eaten every night for the past six weeks, but with this difference: that there

was one among us who was more than ravenous—and

he gorged.

In spite of all our devices he somehow kept

himself the centre of observation. When his tin

mug was empty, Morris instantly passed the tea-pail;

when he began to mop up the bacon grease

with the dough on his fork, Hank reached out for

the frying pan; and the can of steaming boiled

potatoes was always by his side. And there was

another difference as well: he was sick, terribly

sick before the meal was over, and this sudden

nausea after food was more eloquent than words of

what the man had passed through on his dreadful,

foodless, ghost-haunted journey of forty miles to

our camp. In the darkness he thought he would

go crazy, he said. There were voices in the trees,

and figures were always lifting themselves out of

the water, or from behind boulders, to look at him

and make awful signs. Jake constantly peered at

him through the underbrush, and everywhere the

shadows were moving, with eyes, footsteps, and

following shapes.

We tried hard to talk of other things, but it was

no use, for he was bursting with the rehearsal of

his story and refused to allow himself the chances

we were so willing and anxious to grant him. After a good night’s rest he might have had more

self-control and better judgment, and would

probably have acted differently. But, as it was,

we found it impossible to help him.

Once the pipes were lit, and the dishes cleared

away, it was useless to pretend any longer. The

sparks from the burning logs zigzagged upwards

into a sky brilliant with stars. It was all wonderfully

still and peaceful, and the forest odours

floated to us on the sharp autumn air. The cedar

fire smelt sweet and we could just hear the gentle

wash of tiny waves along the shore. All was calm,

beautiful, and remote from the world of men and

passion. It was, indeed, a night to touch the soul,

and yet, I think, none of us heeded these things.

A bull-moose might almost have thrust his great

head over our shoulders and have escaped unnoticed.

The death of Jake the Swede, with its sinister

setting, was the real presence that held the centre

of the stage and compelled attention.

“You won’t p’raps care to come along, Mister,” said

Morris, by way of a beginning; “but I guess I’ll go

with one of the boys here and have a hunt for it.”

“Sure,” said Hank. “Jake an’ I done some

biggish trips together in the old days, and I’ll

do that much for’m.”

“It’s deep water, they tell me, round them islands,” added Silver Fizz; “but we’ll find it, sure

pop,—if it’s thar.”

They all spoke of the body as “it.”

There was a minute or two of heavy silence, and

then Rushton again burst out with his story in

almost the identical words he had used before. It

was almost as if he had learned it by heart. He

wholly failed to appreciate the efforts of the others

to let him off.

Silver Fizz rushed in, hoping to stop him, Morris

and Hank closely following his lead.

“I once knew another travellin’ partner of his,”

he began quickly; “used to live down Moosejaw

Rapids way—”

“Is that so?” said Hank.

“Kind o’ useful sort er feller,” chimed in Morris.

All the idea the men had was to stop the tongue

wagging before the discrepancies became so glaring

that we should be forced to take notice of them,

and ask questions. But, just as well try to stop

an angry bull-moose on the run, or prevent Beaver

Creek freezing in mid-winter by throwing in pebbles

near the shore. Out it came! And, though the

discrepancy this time was insignificant, it somehow

brought us all in a second face to face with the

inevitable and dreaded climax.

“And so I tramped all over that little bit of an island, hoping he might somehow have gotten in

without my knowing it, and always thinking I heard that awful last cry of his in the darkness—and

then the night dropped down impenetrably,

like a damn thick blanket out of the sky, and—”

All eyes fell away from his face. Hank poked

up the logs with his boot, and Morris seized an

ember in his bare fingers to light his pipe, although

it was already emitting clouds of smoke. But the

professor caught the ball flying.

“I thought you said he sank without a cry,”

he remarked quietly, looking straight up into

the frightened face opposite, and then riddling

mercilessly the confused explanation that followed.

The cumulative effect of all these forces, hitherto

so rigorously repressed, now made itself felt, and

the circle spontaneously broke up, everybody

moving at once by a common instinct. The

professor’s wife left the party abruptly, with

excuses about an early start next morning. She

first shook hands with Rushton, mumbling something

about his comfort in the night.

The question of his comfort, however, devolved

by force of circumstances upon myself, and he

shared my tent. Just before wrapping up in my

double blankets—for the night was bitterly cold—he

turned and began to explain that he had a habit of talking in his sleep and hoped I would wake

him if he disturbed me by doing so.

Well, he did talk in his sleep—and it disturbed

me very much indeed. The anger and violence of

his words remain with me to this day, and it was

clear in a minute that he was living over again

some portion of the scene upon the lake. I listened,

horror-struck, for a moment or two, and then understood

that I was face to face with one of two alternatives:

I must continue an unwilling eavesdropper, or

I must waken him. The former was impossible for

me, yet I shrank from the latter with the greatest

repugnance; and in my dilemma I saw the only

way out of the difficulty and at once accepted it.

Cold though it was, I crawled stealthily out of

my warm sleeping-bag and left the tent, intending

to keep the old fire alight under the stars and spend

the remaining hours till daylight in the open.

As soon as I was out I noticed at once another

figure moving silently along the shore. It was

Hank Milligan, and it was plain enough what he

was doing: he was examining the holes that had

been cut in the upper ribs of the canoe. He looked

half ashamed when I came up with him, and

mumbled something about not being able to sleep

for the cold. But, there, standing together beside

the over-turned canoe, we both saw that the holes were far too small for a man’s hand and arm and

could not possibly have been cut by two men

hanging on for their lives in deep water. Those

holes had been made afterwards.

Hank said nothing to me and I said nothing to

Hank, and presently he moved off to collect logs

for the fire, which needed replenishing, for it was a

piercingly cold night and there were many degrees

of frost.

Three days later Hank and Silver Fizz followed

with stumbling footsteps the old Indian trail that

leads from Beaver Creek to the southwards. A

hammock was slung between them, and it weighed

heavily. Yet neither of the men complained; and,

indeed, speech between them was almost nothing.

Their thoughts, however, were exceedingly busy,

and the terrible secret of the woods which formed

their burden weighed far more heavily than the

uncouth, shifting mass that lay in the swinging

hammock and tugged so severely at their shoulders.

They had found “it” in four feet of water not

more than a couple of yards from the lee shore of

the island. And in the back of the head was a

long, terrible wound which no man could possibly

have inflicted upon himself.

Printed by MORRISON & GIBB LIMITED, Edinburgh.