HAD fished the Rainbow River region for many years, and I had learned from bitter experience that one of the unwritten laws, from Rattling Brook to Timber Line, is that the stranger must take the initiative in recognizing the native and that the number of big kills he makes is in direct proportion to the number of inhabitants he can call by their first name.

For the above reason, and because I am of a gregarious temperament, I go out of my way to renew old acquaintances and enlarge my circle whenever possible.

Dragging my gear and tackle stagewards I heard a good-natured altercation between the stage driver and an individual whom I did not at first recall.

The clean-shaven countenance, the store clothes-bulging at the shoulders and hanging loosely at the hipsdid not serve to throw in my memory clutch, and it was not until he thrust forth a great hairy paw from his new wearing apparel that I recognized Lem Blaisdell, the king of the lumber-jacks, undisputed champion log-runner and jam-breaker, Old Bilkin's trusted counsellor in times of stress and strain.

Had I found that hand and arm lying about loose in the Sahara desert I should have known at once that Lem Blaisdell was somewhere in the immediate vicinity. My memory, however, was not to blame, as Lem was, so to speak, travelling under a disguise, for in addition to a shiny suit-case he carried a sizable jag of red liquor, which seemed to ooze and drip from his perspiring fingers and surround his bulk with an unmistakable aroma.

My mental index pictured him as a shaggy red giant, clad in mackinaws and hob-nailed shoepacs, riding logs down a swollen stream, bellowing orders the while to his crew of satellites who lined the banks.

His new shoes and semi-intoxication could not conceal the agility and grace of his lithe movements nor the accuracy of his marvelous balance as he bounded across the platform to greet me. Quick to catch my sub-conscious look of surprise and reproof, he said:

"Fisherman, don't scold. Just been down to the city on a mite of business. All right to-morrow. Want to take you up to the bogs, Sunday. Got a basketful of lingers there, I'm savin' for you. Mr. Cheney won't let me ride in the stage. Says I might get to crowdin', so I'll come with the freight. I'll get even with him yet. I'll be in a hurry some day and walk home just to spite

him. Eh, Silas? Don't forget to tell Fisherman about Doc Ben's ghost or perhaps you'd rather I'd tell him Sunday." With that parting threat he left us to join some joyous companions at the other end of the platform.

After we had negotiated the by-paths about the Junction and gained the main road to Hypotown, the stagedriver, running true to form, located his tobacco pouch and tucked a generous handful of the succulent alfalfa into his capacious cheek and soliloquized:

"That fellar don't need a stimulant to make him hilarious. A mess of logs tied up in hard knot, a peavie and a chance to break his neck will intoxicate him anytime, but when he gets his logs boomed in the mill pond every spring these parts gets onto his nerves and he has to go to the city to burn up his winter's wages. We don't pay no more attention to his antics than we do to a kid rollin' a hoop, but I see him get in wrong one time with Doc Ben.

"That was the day the band-saw busted in the Red Mill and a chunk flew and cut the head offen Lige Shattuck's grandson, that was jest comin'

Seeing my look of horror at this off-hand recital of what must have been a terrible tragedy he modified his statement.

"Of course it didn't cut it right off, still there was a lot of us of the opinion that young Shattuck would have been a lot healthier if he'd been about a foot and a half shorter.

"There was considerable left around the gills, but this was one of the biggest jobs Doc Ben's ever been in, and that's goin' some.

"Then, Lem blows in on the stage with enough hooch aboard to make him sassy and begins to boss the job.

"Now, Doc was just about as busy as a summer boarder settin' on an ant hill with a wrap of pizen ivy round her neck, pokin' a hornet's nest with a fish pole, and he had a license to be cranky.

"The first time Lem crossed him Doc warned him, the second time he cussed him, and the last time he ketched him with a trip and a twitch and throwed him clear through the window of the bull-pen whar he was operatin"."

"Yes, Lem sure was loaded. In fact, he might have come for it twice and had a good jag each time. In fact, he had more'n he could carry and was down draggin' it part of the time.

"However, when he lit outside among us fellars that

1

was watchin' Doc through the window, he'd the sash round his neck, and after we'd mussed up the yard with him for most half an hour, he was sober, he was, and goes over to the window to apologize.

"Ain't it strange what liquor will do to a man? If one of his jacks would bring a pint of split onto the job, Lem'd break him in two and throw the pieces away, but when he gets lit up himself he sure acts like a drummer for a foolish factory carryin' a full line of samples. "Oh, yes, about Doc Ben's ghost.

"Well, it ain't hardly worth the tellin', but as some one is bound to give it to you and it hain't lost nothin' since it occurred, I might as well give you the right of it.

"I guess I told you that Doc Ben is married to our Mandy, but I don't get to know him a mite better than before he come into the family. If that fellar went half the places he planned to go and done half the things he lets on, he'd have Gulliver lookin' like a bed-fast invalid, he would. All through April he spends gettin' ready for the trout season and all through October his office is so full of ordinance, sleepin' bags and outing togs that you'd think he was goin' into the trenches at sundown, but the most fishin' or huntin' he ever does is to yank a trout or two from under a bridge or to pot a buddin' partridge when he's out makin' his calls. I reasons with him once about it. 'What's the sense of goin' to all this expense and trouble gettin' ready? You never go and you lose a lot of motion.' 'Well, Sile,' he says, "The gettin' ready is all fun, and no chain of unfavorable circumstances can cheat me outen the enjoyment I gets out of it. Do you know Isaac Walton? Well, some day when I can spare him, I'm goin' to let you take him home with you and then you'll understand that the fish isn't all there is to fishin'.' Queer critter. Sometimes I think he ain't quite straight in his head about some things.

"Well, last fall Doc begun, as usual, to get ready for deer-huntin' and darned if he don't join me and Chank Button an hour afore we started for the Beaver Meadow for deer. I didn't believe then he'd go, but when he strapped his duffle-bag onto the tote-sled and after we'd got 13 miles away from anywheres, I says to the constubble: 'Chank, if nothin' turns up in the next hour, I'll believe Doc's goin' huntin'.' We bedded down near the Beaver Dam, and after breakfast we started in three different directions after warnin' Doc to get back to camp get back to camp not later than four, no matter how hot a trail he struck, and if he's lost to shoot three shots every ten minutes until

we answer.

remark had spoiled about two pound apiece of that venison more than the food commission allows during war time. Long about dusk, Chank laid down his pipe and says: 'Sile, Doc Ben ain't got back. You don't suppose he's lost?'

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time.

'Chank,' I answer, 'you'd orter know Doc by this time. He'll turn up all right. If that bird'd fall into the Red Mill Pond, he'd clim' out brushin' the dandruff offen his collar with a whisk broom.'

"Jest the same I was some worried, but being petered, I tethered out the old mare, got onto the lee side of the fire, rolled up in my blankets and I swan when I come outen my ether, I was blinkin' at the sun comin' up over Old Baldy. After breakfast, we picked up Doc's trail, and, I snunny, it didn't seem so he left the tote road at all. We found where he'd eat his lunch and where he bedded down, and about every eight miles we'd find a dead fire and a heap of red squirrel remnants. Finally, Chank begun to comb out his whiskers with his fingers and he says: 'Sile, if Doc Ben ever gets outen these woods alive, he'll clum a tree and chatter every time he sees a bird dog.'

"About sundown the third night out we lost Doc's trail. We'd got in between the Humps of the Camel, and got all balled up. You've never been in there? Well, as I says to the drummer that slept late and had to leave the Junction House without his breakfast, 'You hain't missed much.' No, don't never try that place unless you got an airyplane. I've heard the ground's more on end out in Arizony, but I'm believin' what I see. The scripture tells us that the Lord took a whole week to make this planet, but I think late Saturday night he must have had a few odd chunks left and thrun 'em in here, every which way, and didn't have time to smooth 'em down.

"We was twenty-three miles from Hypotown and about thirteen from Timber Line, jes about the place where the sun and moon pass each other changin' shifts, when Chank says: 'Sile, it must be somewheres between here and the forks that the fool Frenchman took that skiddin' job from the old man.'

"You see this Medos Bedore come over here from Canada and, instead of workin' peaceable like the rest of the gang, begins takin' contracts. He's what you city fellars calls a specialist. He's plum ignorant about everything else but he sure is an artist at strippin' spruce offen these hills and gettin' 'em down to the river bank. Why, if I worked a winter on them places where a catamount wouldn't dast to risk his neck, I'd be so lopsided that I'd never get both feet on the ground again at one and the same time. We've laughed a good deal about him

"Before noon me and Chank had meat and by four we had them deer drained and trimmed, and I might also

down to the store, but Bilkins says that half on us will be workin' for Bedore inside of five years, and the Old Man is a good guesser, he is. Bedore went back to Canada a year ago and brung back a wife with him that can't speak a word of English; and what does that critter do but persuade Medos to take her with him to this Godforsaken hole, and they're livin' in a shanty where they have to put the cookstove out into the front yard every time she sets the table. Medos knows it's no place for a woman in her condition, but what are you goin' to do with a female when she's bound and determined to have her own way.

"We camped right up under the Painted Rocks for shelter, as there was a drizzlin' rain fallin', and Chank seemed to be possessed to tell about every murder and sudden death that had taken place about here in the past hundred years. I hadn't any more'n got into my blankets when a big bat flew in my face, a horned owl, somewheres up the trail, was asking the same old mournful, fool question, and there was other noises and rustlings that I didn't quite understand.

"I knowed it want no kind of use goin' back without Doc as Mandy wouldn't never speak to me again if I come away without him, dead or alive. I must have voiced my sentiments, as Chank started up scared like. He was over at the fire, helpin' himself to what was left of the steak and potatoes.

"I thought I heard someone say, "Dead or Alive"," he says. 'Wa'n't it about here the Syrian peddler was last seen five years ago? and right down there, at the Rainbow Fork Crossin', was where the corpse of that Cheney fellar, that got killed last spring, got away from the boys that were a fetchin' of it into camp, and it was two days an' most eight miles down the River afore they got him again?'

"'Chank', I says, most ready to screech: 'Don't forget, every time you stop to blat, you loses a bite. But there's no danger of that venison spoilin' this weather, and you don't need to hurt yourself eatin' of it up to save it.'

"Chank sopped up the crumbs with what venison juice he had left in his tin cup, inhaled it, and bit off a hunk of plug tobacco.

"Yes, sir, if Chank Button ever gets cut in two, both pieces will roll toward the feed-bag when the whistle blows.

"Even at cheerful gatherin's, he always looks on the blind side of things, so I don't need to tell you that this here night in the rain he wa'n't no comedian. He looked at me like a good dog that has been man-handled. 'Sile,'

he says, 'in mournin' for them that's took, it's our duty to care for them that's left, and in the mornin' after breakfast, as you say, we'll find him dead or alive.'

"'Dead or alive,' came back in what I supposed was the echo from the cliffs, but Chank jumped outen his blankets and hollered, 'What's that?' pointin' to the granite wall.

“‘Lay down and go to sleep,' I says.

"Then he yells in a scared voice: 'Somethin' tells me I'm goin' to sleep to home to-night,' and with that he beats it down the tote-road.

"I thought first he was havin' a fit from an overdose of deer meat, but when I looks up to the cliff, I decided to foller him, for there, not twenty feet up on the side of the precipice, was a white flutterin' thing, trailin' along with Doc Ben's face lookin' out from the centre of it, repeatin': 'Dead or alive. Dead or alive.'

"Now, I don't want you to get the idea I was scared. I knowed right off, it was one of Doc's old gags, but I was afeered that if Chank, kept up the pace he started with that he'd run right past Hypotown inside of an hour, or mebbe get lost or somethin.'

"Jes then, there was the Godoffelest howlin' an' hollerin' broke loose, and although I wa'n't one of them fools that believes about the pack of were wolves that was seen up there, I was jes considerable surprised, especially when this yelpin' an' yellin' seemed to come out of every cave an' crevice of them rocks and focus themselves right on our trail.

"I won't say we broke any records, as the goin' was rough and we was smooth shod, but if there'd been any speed laws up Tall Timber way, we sure would have had to pay a fine.

"Finally, when the leader of that pack was a slaverin' right onto our heels, I yelled, 'Jump, Chank,' and he leapt eight foot in the air and caught an overhangin' branch of a big spruce. He was so slow gettin' up, that I ketched him round the waist, clumb him and then helped him up to a seat aside me. We was none too spry at that, as the leader snaffles onto Chank and takes away a considerable portion of his wardrobe afore he breaks loose.

if you took away the noise and runnin' gear from that canine, you wouldn't have no dog.

"Well, pretty soon Bedore comes along, and kicks off the hound, and spills us the answer. It seems as if his woman was took afore her time, and Medos wants to go down to Rainbow to telephone for Doc, but no, she's too sick and won't consent for him to leave her alone. She grows worse durin' the day and long about night they thinks it's all up with her. When we, mountain fellars, gets to the end of our tether, we gives up, but not them Canada Frenchmen. That's the time they begin to pray for help, and it must do 'em a lot of good, it's such a popular pastime with 'em. Delphine kep' on gettin' worse, and the sicker she got, the more they prayed. They been over their repertoire several times, when who appeared at the door but Doc Ben.

"To this day, you can't make Delphine and Medos believe Doc was lost. They're so dumb superstitious, they think he was sent in answer to their prayer.

"Now, Bedore is one of these here linguists that can speak three languages-French, English and Vermont— at one and the same time with more or less fluency. Chank listens to him open-mouthed, sensing a word here and there, until he sees Doc Ben comin' down the road, brushin' the flour offen his face, then he says: 'Medos, did Doc Ben get anythin?'-meanin' game, of course.

"'Get anything?' hollers Bedore. 'You jus' come on ma shanty an' I show it. Shure, he get two. Bote of it twin. Mosly boys.''

EDMOND MELVILLE, M. D.

St. Petersburg, Fla.