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SILAS STRONG, EMPEROR OF THE WOODS

By Irving Bacheller

New York and London Harper and Brothers Publishers

1906

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TO MY FRIEND THE LATE ARCHER BROWN

in memory of summer days when we wandered far and sat down to rest by
springs and brooks in the doomed empire of Strong and talked of saving
it and of better times and knew not they were impossible.

Some of the people of these pages, when the author endeavored to
regulate their conduct according to well-known rules of literary
construction, declared themselves free and independent. When, urged by
him, they tried to speak and act in the fashion of most novels, they
laughed, and seemed to be ashamed of themselves, and with good reason.

They are slow, stubborn, modest, shy, and used to the open. Not for them
are the narrow stage, the swift action, the fine-wrought chain of artful
incident that characterize a modern romance.

Of late authors have succeeded rather well in turning people into
animals and animals into people. Why not, if one's art can perform
miracles? This book aims not to emulate or amend the work of the
Creator. Its people are just folks of a very old pattern, its animals
rather common and of small attainments. It is in no sense a literary
performance. It pretends to be nothing more than a simple account of
one summer's life, pretty much as it was lived, in a part of the
Adirondacks. It goes on about as things happen there, with a leisurely
pace, like that of the woods lover on a trail who may be halted by
nothing more than a flower or a bird-song. One day follows another in
the old fashion of those places where men go for rest and avarice quits
them with bloody spurs and they forget the calendar and measure time on
the dial of the heavens.

The book has one high ambition. It has tried to tell the sad story of
the wilderness itself--to show, from the woodsman's view-point, the play
of great forces which have been tearing down his home and turning it
into the flesh and bone of cities.

Were it to cause any reader to value what remains of the forest above
its market-price and to do his part in checking the greed of the saws,
it would be worth while--bad as it is.




SILAS STRONG




I

THE song of the saws began long ago at the mouths of the rivers. Slowly
the axes gnawed their way southward, and the ominous, prophetic chant
followed them. Men seemed to goad the rivers to increase their speed.
They caught and held and harnessed them as if they had been horses and
drove them into flumes and leaped them over dams and pulled and hauled
and baffled them until they broke away with the power of madness in
their rush. But, even then, the current of the rivers would not do; the
current of thunderbolts could not have whirled the wheels with speed
enough.

Now steam bursts upon the piston-head with the power of a hundred
horses. The hungry steel races through columns of pine as if they were
soft as butter and its' bass note booms night and day to the heavens.
Hear it now. The burden of that old song is m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e, m-o-r-e!

It is doleful music, God knows, but, mind you, it voices the need of
the growing land. It sings of the doom of the woods. It may be heard all
along the crumbling edge of the wilderness from Maine to Minnesota. Day
by day hammers beat time while the saws continue their epic chorus.

There are towers and spires and domes and high walls where, in our
boyhood, there were only trees far older than the century, and these
rivers that flow north go naked in open fields for half their journey.
Every spring miles of timber come plunging over cataracts and rushing
through rapids and crowding into slow water on its way to the saws.
There a shaft of pine which has been a hundred years getting its girth
is ripped into slices and scattered upon the stack in a minute. A new
river, the rushing, steam-driven river of steel, bears it away to the
growing cities. Silas Strong once wrote in his old memorandum-book these
words: "Strong says to himself seems so the world was goin' to be peeled
an' hollered out an' weighed an' measured an' sold till it's all et up
like an apple."

On the smooth shore of the river below Raquette Falls, and within twenty
rods of his great mill, lived a man of the name of Gordon with two
motherless children. Pity about him! Married a daughter of "Bill" Strong
up in the woods--an excellent woman--made money and wasted it and went
far to the bad. Good fellow, drink, poker, and so on down the hill!
His wife died leaving two children--blue-eyed little people with curly,
flaxen hair--a boy of four a girl of nearly three years. The boy's full
name was John Socksmith Gordon--reduced in familiar parlance to Socky.
The girl was baptized Susan Bradbury Gordon, but was called Sue.

Their Uncle Silas Strong came to the funeral of their mother. He had
travelled more than eighty miles in twenty-four-hours, his boat now
above and now beneath him. He brought his dog and rifle, and wore a
great steel watch-chain and a pair of moccasins w with fringe on the
sides, and a wolf-skin jacket. He carried the children on his shoulders
and tossed them in the air, while his great size and odd attire seemed
to lay hold of their spirits.

As time passed, a halo of romantic splendor gathered about this uncle's
memory. One day Socky heard him referred to as the "Emperor of the
Woods." He was not long finding out that an emperor was a very grand
person who wore gold on his head and shoulders and rode a fine horse
and was always ready for a fight. So their ideal gathered power and
richness, one might say, the longer he lived in their fancy. They loved
their father, but as a hero he had not been a great success. There was
a time when both had entertained some hope for him, but as they saw how
frequently he grew "tired" they gave their devotion more and more to
this beloved memory. Their uncle's home was remote from theirs, and so
his power over them had never been broken by familiarity.

Socky and Sue told their young friends all they had been able to
learn of their Uncle Silas, and, being pressed for more knowledge, had
recourse to invention. Stories which their father had told grew into
wonder-tales of the riches, the strength, the splendor, and the general
destructive power of this great man. Sue, the first day she went
to Sunday-school, when the minister inquired who slew a lion by the
strength of his hands, confidently answered, "Uncle Silas."

There was one girl in the village who had an Uncle Phil with a fine air
of authority and a wonderful watch and chain; there was yet another with
an Uncle Henry, who enjoyed the distinction of having had the small-pox;
there was a boy, also, who had an Uncle Reuben with a wooden leg and a
remarkable history, and a wen beside his nose with a wart on the same.
But these were familiar figures, and while each had merits of no low
degree, their advocates were soon put to shame by the charms of that
mysterious and remote Uncle Silas.

There was a little nook in the lumber-yard where children used to meet
every Saturday for play and free discussion. There, now and then,
some new-comer entered an uncle in the competition. There, always, a
primitive pride of blood asserted itself in the remote descendants,
shall we say, of many an ancient lord and chieftain. One day--Sue was
then five and Socky six years of age--Lizzie Cornell put a cousin on
exhibit in this little theatre of childhood. He was a boy with red hair
and superior invention from out of town. He stood near Lizzie--a deep
and designing miss--and said not a word, until Sue began about her Uncle
Silas.

It was a new tale of that remarkable hunter which her father had related
the night before while she lay waiting for the sandman. She told how her
uncle had seen a panther one day when he was travelling without a gun.
His dog chased the panther and soon drove him up a tree. Now, it seemed,
the only thing in the nature of a weapon the hunter had with him was a
piece of new rope for his canoe. After a moment's reflection the great
man climbed the tree and threw a noose over the panther's neck while his
faithful dog was barking below. Then the cute Uncle Silas made his rope
fast to a limb and shook the tree so that when the panther jumped for
the ground he hung himself.

To most of those who heard the narrative it seemed to be a rather
creditable exploit, showing, as it did, a shrewdness and ready courage
of no mean order on the part of Uncle Silas. Murmurs of glad approval
were hushed, however, by the voice of the red-headed boy.

"Pooh! that's nothing," said he, with contempt. "My Uncle Mose chased
a panther once an' overtook him and ketched him by the tail an' fetched
his head agin a tree, quick as a flash, an' knocked his brains out."

His words ran glibly and showed an off-hand mastery of panthers quite
unequalled. Here was an uncle of marked superiority and promise.

There was a moment of silence in the crowd.

"If ye don't believe it," said the red-headed boy, "I can show ye a vest
my mother made out o' the skin."

That was conclusive. Sue blushed for shame and looked into the face
of Socky. Her mouth drooped a little and her under lip trembled with
anxiety. Doubt, thoughtfulness, and confusion were on the face of
her brother. He scraped the sand with his foot. He felt that he had
sometimes stretched the truth a little, but this--this went beyond his
capacity for invention.

"Don't believe it," he whispered, with half a sneer as he glanced down
at Sue.

Lizzie Cornell began to titter. All eyes were fixed upon the unhappy
pair as if to say, "How about your Uncle Silas now?" The populace,
deserting the standard of the old king, gathered in front of the
red-headed boy and began to inquire into the merits of Uncle Mose.

Socky and Sue hesitated. Curiosity struggled with resentment. Slowly
and thoughtfully they walked away. For a moment neither spoke. Soon a
cheering thought came into the mind of Sue.

"Maybe Uncle Silas has ketched a panther by the tail, too," said she,
hopefully. Socky, his hands in his pockets, looked down with a dazed
expression.

"I'm going to ask father," said he, thoughtfully.

It was now late in the afternoon. They went home and sat in silence on
the veranda, watching for their father. The old Frenchwoman who kept
house for him tried to coax them in, but they would make no words with
her. Long they sat there looking wistfully down the river-bank.

Presently Sue hauled out of her pocket a tiny rag doll which she carried
for casual use. It came handy in moments of loneliness and despair
outside the house. She toyed with its garments, humming in a motherly
fashion. It was nearly dark when they saw their father staggering
homeward according to his habit. They knew not yet the meaning of that
wavering walk.

"There he comes!" said Socky, as they both ran to meet him. "He can't
carry us to-night. He's awful tired."

They thought him "tired." They kissed him and took his hands in theirs,
and led him into the house. Stern and silent he sat down beside them
at the supper-table. The children were also silent and sober-faced from
intuitive sympathy. They could not yet introduce the topic which weighed
upon them.

Socky looked at his father. For the first time he noted that his clothes
were shabby; he knew that a few days before his father had lost his
watch. The boy stole away from the table, and went to his little trunk
and brought the sacred thing which his teacher had given him Christmas
Day--a cheap watch that told time with a noisy and inspiring tick. He
laid it down by his father's plate.

"There," said he, "I'm going to let you wear my watch."

It was one of those deep thrusts which only the hand of innocence can
administer. Richard Gordon took the watch in his hand and sat a moment
looking down. The boy manfully resumed his chair.

"It don't look very well for you to be going around without a watch," he
remarked, taking up his piece of bread and butter.

His father put the watch in his pocket.

"You can let me wear it Sundays," the boy added. "You won't need it
Sundays."

A smile overspread the man's face.

The children, quick to see their opportunity, approached him on either
side. Sue put her arms around the neck of her father and kissed him.

"Tell us a story about Uncle Silas," she pleaded.

"Uncle Silas!" he exclaimed. "We're all going to see him in a few days."

The children were mute with surprise. Sue's little doll dropped from her
hands to the floor. Her face changed color and she turned quickly, with
a loud cry, and drummed on the table so that the dishes rattled. Socky
leaned over the back of a chair and shook his head, and gave his feet a
fling and then recovered his dignity.

"Now don't get excited," remarked their father.

They ran out of the room, and stood laughing and whispering together for
a moment. Then they rushed back.

"When are we going?" the boy inquired.

"In a day or two," said Gordon, who still sat drinking his tea.

Sue ran to tell Aunt Marie, the housekeeper, and Socky sat in his little
rocking-chair for a moment of sober thought.

"Look here, old chap," said Gordon, who was wont to apply the terms of
mature good-fellowship to his little son. Socky came and stood by the
side of his father.

"You an' I have been friends for some time, haven't we?" was the strange
and half-maudlin query which Gordon put to his son.

The boy smiled and came nearer.

"An' I've always treated ye right--ain't I? Answer me."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, folks say you're neglected an' that you don't have decent clothes
an' that you might as well have no father at all. Now, old boy, I'm
going to tell you the truth; I'm broke--failed in business, an' have had
to give up. Understand me; I haven't a cent in the world."

The man sm