Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  “I wouldn’t trust one,” said George.

  The news quickly reached the county jail, where Sheriff Charles Piper was overseeing a visitation. Geoffrey, the son of the jailer, Seth Patterson, arrived out of breath and bursting to tell what he had heard in town.

  “Should we go look for her?” wondered Seth.

  The sheriff thought a moment. “If Colonel Cobb’s man shows up, we’ll take some men out in the heat of the day when she’s apt to be lying in. I suppose word has gotten all over town,” he said to the boy.

  “George Turner says that bears are more reasonable than rhinoceroses,” said Geoffrey.

  “Rhinoceroses?” gasped Mrs. Patterson.

  The news was received with more excitement at the Wiscasset House. Many of the hotel’s patrons were at breakfast when someone rushed in to announce that Maude had been sighted. Alfred Lofton rose from his table with a grim look in his eye and asked if the big-game hunter was up. A servant was directed to make inquiries in this line and returned minutes later to say that Mister Walton had not yet made an appearance.

  Lofton was irritated but undaunted and he proceeded to organize a hunt so that they would be ready when Mister Walton deigned to rise. Lofton himself retreated to his rooms, and when he returned to the parlor, fully rigged with knee breeches, wool stockings, tweed jacket, and deer-stalker, he was gratified by a hearty round of applause.

  But the big-game hunter was still not in attendance, and Lofton, spurred by the approval of his friends, demanded that the man be roused; easy enough to demand, of course, though it smacked a bit of belling the cat. Nobody quite wanted to be the one to rouse a big-game hunter.

  A young man who odd-jobbed about the hotel was hired for the duty, after some discussion concerning a fee. While the fellow clambered up the stairs with Mister Walton’s room number and many bits of advice following him, a small crowd of men gathered in the front hall.

  There is a rare moment between sleep and the waking state that all too often escapes humanity. Generally, this state follows a good night’s rest and almost always precedes a day in which the sleeper is liberated from social obligation. It is that territory of consciousness in which the individual is still deep enough in the arms of Morpheus to be blissfully unaware (or at least undisturbed) by his corporeal self, and just awake enough to appreciate this freedom.

  Mister Tobias Walton was possessed of such a moment that morning. His bed was exceptionally comfortable, the breeze through the open window almost warm, and the blankets pulled over his shoulders were of a perfect weight and insulative value. The science of man could not devise a situation of greater comfort.

  But a simple knock on the door might drive it away.

  It says something of the depth of Mister Walton’s paradisiacal state that it took several knocks (and, in the end, great thumps upon his door) to rouse him. It says something of his good nature that he did not throw a shoe at the first head that afterward peered into his room.

  “Good morning, mister,” came a deep voice, resonant with missing r’s.

  “Yes, good morning,” said Mister Walton, blinking with his unspectacled eyes at the blurred figure that entered his room. With a grunt, he swung himself into a sitting position and his feet to the floor. “Have I slept past the check-out time?” he wondered aloud.

  “Wouldn’t have the slightest,” came the reply.

  Mister Walton’s hand hovered over the nightstand by his bed and eventually he came in contact with his eyeglasses. Once he had these perched upon his nose, he blinked again at the man who had disturbed his sleep.

  The stranger (for Mister Walton had never seen the man in his life) had draped himself in the large chair opposite Mister Walton’s bed. It was difficult to say just how tall he was, but he looked extremely long with his feet stretched some distance in front of him. He had accomplished as horizontal a position as was possible in that piece of furniture, and his hands were folded behind his neck, his elbows akimbo, completing the picture of complacent ease.

  Mister Walton guessed the fellow to be something above twenty years of age. He had brown hair of a medium shade, and his eyes were darkly set in a pleasant, if not handsome, face. His nose was a tad too wide and his chin, which had not been shaved this morning, was a mite too square. If not for the obvious interest which he showed in Mister Walton’s pajamas (made of silk with a pattern of red Chinese dragons), the stranger’s relaxed demeanor would have given the impression that he was going to sleep.

  During the course of several awkward moments, Mister Walton waited for the young man to declare his motive for rousing him. The young man, however, looked perfectly content to contemplate Mister Walton’s ornate nightclothes, and gave no hint as to the nature of his visit.

  “Can I help you?” asked Mister Walton.

  “Well, I’ve been sent to get you,” said the man.

  “Really!”

  “Oh, yes. They are waiting for you down in the dining room.”

  “How extraordinary!”

  “They are concerned over your rising late.”

  The pronoun they was not descriptive enough for Mister Walton, and he asked the fellow to define the term.

  “They are the other guests, aren’t they,” he said.

  “Other guests?” returned Mister Walton.

  “And Mr. Alfred Lofton, pacing the floor.”

  “Alfred Lofton,” said Mister Walton to himself.

  “Spoke to you last night, he says.”

  “The gentleman in the parlor?”

  The man in the chair shrugged elaborately.

  “And you say they are waiting for me?”

  “Absolutely no doubt about it.”

  “Well, I shall certainly get dressed and see what this is about.”

  “I knew a Walton once,” called the young man when the older man had shuffled into the small dressing chamber annexed to his room. “He couldn’t pronounce his w’s and for three years I thought his name was Alton.”

  Mister Walton chuckled as he filled his washstand and washed his face and hands. “My family name,” he said over the sound of splashing, “was actually Walnut two generations ago.”

  “Someone dodging the law, eh?”

  “Gambling debts, actually. It was my grandfather.”

  “Try not to gamble myself,” said the fellow in the chair.

  “Very wise. My grandfather was nearly ruined.”

  “Did the change in his name save him, then?” wondered the young man.

  Mister Walton appeared in the doorway, half of his face lathered with shaving soap. “It was a hole in his boot that saved him, actually.”

  “I’ve never had much use for a hole in my boot,” said the fellow, “but perhaps I’ve been hasty.” He contemplated one of his soles with interest.

  “It has just dawned upon me,” said Mister Walton, “that you have the advantage of me, sir.”

  “Sundry,” said the young man.

  “Yes, well, I am sure you have many advantages,” agreed Mister Walton good-naturedly. “But I was speaking of your name.”

  “That is my name,” said the fellow, rising to his feet. “Sundry Moss.”

  It took a moment for Mister Walton to realize what the young man was saying, and another moment to be sure that his leg wasn’t being pulled. “Sundry,” he said, trying the name on his own tongue. “It’s quite likable really. Sundry.” He stepped forward and extended his hand. “I am Tobias Walton, though you seem to know that already.”

  “I am pleased to have your acquaintance,” said Sundry, shaking his hand. “You’ve missed a spot there.”

  Mister Walton retreated to the washroom to reapply his razor and in a few minutes he was dressed and ready to meet those who, for their own mysterious reasons, waited below.

  “Did you get those fancy nightclothes hereabouts?” asked Sundry as he closed the door behind them.

  24 Oddly Hunting Maude

  MISTER WALTON WASN’T SURE HOW HE CAME TO BE INCLUDED IN THE h
unting party; but as it turned out, Alfred Lofton and his colleagues were laboring under the conviction that he was eager to join them in their chase of the escaped bear. He had, on the contrary, wished for nothing more than a late sleep, a leisurely breakfast, and a quiet tour of Fort Edgecomb. And yet the men of the hunting party were so impatient to make their pursuit, while so selfless in waiting for him, that he had not the heart to disabuse them of the notion.

  Lofton, decked out in his hunting gear, was waiting in the foyer when Mister Walton and Sundry Moss came down the stairs; and several other anxious faces appeared from the main sitting room as soon as it was announced that the late sleeper was roused.

  “I had imagined,” said Lofton, testily, “that you would be an early riser.”

  “I am sorry,” said Mister Walton. He couldn’t imagine why Mr. Lofton had imagined him to be any sort of riser at all, but was too polite to say so.

  “We have been waiting for several hours now.”

  “She has been sighted,” said one of the men.

  “She?”

  “Maude, Mister Walton,” said Lofton, and when the perplexed expression did not leave the bespectacled man’s face, he added: “The bear, sir.”

  “The bear!” said Mister Walton.

  “And we are off!”

  “Well . . .”

  “I took the liberty of having a breakfast packed for you,” said Lofton, and he placed a small tin box in Mister Walton’s hands. “Mr. Moss!” and here the word mister had the sound of a ship’s captain addressing his subordinate.

  “Yes, Mr. Lofton,” said Sundry, without the slightest hint of the subordinate in his voice.

  “The guns are ready? The way is chosen? The front runners are beating the bushes?”

  “I think we are all set,” said Sundry.

  “Come, Mister Walton,” said Lofton. “Let us bag this beast.”

  A baker’s dozen of them congregated on the back lawn of the inn, glorying in the brilliant sunshine and the smell of salt from the river. They could not have looked less like a group of men preparing to track down a bear. There was a singular lack of physical prowess about them that would have suggested, to the unenlightened eye, nothing more strenuous than a grueling round of croquet. Even Lofton, who was tall and thin, gave an air that suggested his unfamiliarity with the rugged arts of outdoorsmanship.

  But their wives and sisters and aunts came out to see them off as heroically as if they were Myrmidons off to hunt the wild boar.

  Standing to one side of this assemblage, Sundry Moss alone—in his youth and India rubber boots—looked the part. Mister Walton, whose portly figure yet retained a certain degree of robust vigor, was perhaps second in the appearance of readiness: a standing that was greatly enhanced when the party’s single weapon—a 32.40 Winchester—was put into his free hand.

  Sundry eyed the rifle with speculative interest. “You didn’t bring anything of your own?” he asked Mister Walton.

  “Seeing that you arrived unequipped,” explained Lofton, “I took it upon myself to secure a weapon for you.”

  “That’s very kind,” said Mister Walton, mystified beyond further response.

  “Are you planning to get intimate with that creature?” wondered Sundry.

  Mister Walton looked doubtfully at the rifle. He was not ignorant of sporting matters and realized that one would have to be close and extremely accurate to bring down a bear with something less than a 30.30. His response, which would have indicated that he had planned nothing at all in this regard, might have ended the misunderstanding concerning his identity then and there, but he was interrupted again by Lofton’s impatience.

  “Come, my friends!” declared the self-imposed master of the hunt. “It is time we were apace of the game!” He brandished a riding crop, which appeared incongruous with his hunting togs, and led the way up Federal Street in the direction of the place where Maude was last seen.

  The men, unarmed save for Mister Walton, did their best to look brave and sporting, throwing back their shoulders and waving to their womenfolk with resolute smiles. The wives and sisters and aunts were effusive in their goodbyes, and one older woman, weeping, insisted upon pressing her handkerchief into her husband’s vest pocket for a token.

  Sundry relieved Mister Walton of the rifle as they set out. “I’ll hold this for you,” suggested the young man, “so you can eat your breakfast.”

  Peering into the tin that had been given him, Mister Walton felt conspicuous as they marched up the street, but he and Sundry lagged behind the rest of the company and he was able to pick at his breakfast—consisting of a sandwich of cheese and sausage and an apple—in relative peace.

  The men ahead of them were a noisy lot, considering their mission; they talked in loud voices and bantered amongst themselves like school-boys. Sundry theorized that a quieter approach might be in order if they were at all interested in catching their quarry—laying a certain emphasis on the word if—but the rest of the party (besides Mister Walton, who was eating his breakfast) must not have heard him, for their general volume following this observation actually rose.

  Some paces beyond the county jailhouse, two of the party—Mr. Swelter and Mr. Blick—began to argue the finer points of bear hunting, their opinions unbiased by any practical experience in the matter. The gist of the disagreement was difficult to ascertain, but it was violent enough to bring the party to a brief halt, whereupon Lofton berated Swelter and Blick for their dissension. “United we stand, gentlemen! Divided we fail!”

  This statement engendered its own round of debate, which brought them to the crest of the hill where Federal Street ends and the road north from Wiscasset begins. “Now, Mr. Moss,” said Lofton, raising his voice above the hubbub. “Where was this creature last seen?”

  “She was crossing the field, and disappeared in those trees by the riverbank.” Stretching before them, on either side of the road, were rolling hills of field and farmland. To the right the land lowered itself gently to the Sheep-scott River, where a small grove of pines and a single oak cast their shade. “Mr. Jones saw her, coming into town. Mr. Jones was coming into town,” he added. “We’re not sure where the bear was going.”

  Mister Walton found this last qualification amusing, but Alfred Lofton frowned purposefully. “It is as we suspected. She is unafraid of human proximity, and is dangerously close to the loved ones we have left behind. We need a plan,” he announced.

  All eyes leveled on Mister Walton; and he realized that, for some inexplicable reason, this plan was expected to originate with him. Raised eyebrows surrounded him. Sundry also watched, his face expressing a more general curiosity.

  “Yes, a plan,” said Mister Walton.

  “We’re not a very stealthy gathering,” said Sundry.

  “Hmm?” said Mister Walton. “No, no. Well, I guess not.”

  “Perhaps we can use that to our advantage.”

  “I think we’ll wait for Mister Walton to speak up,” sniffed Lofton.

  “I know just what Sundry is saying,” said Mister Walton, which was not entirely the case. “Very good, Sundry. What do you think?”

  “We should make a line, perhaps, along the road,” said the young fellow. “And spreading out to the farm on the next hill, the man furthest from here will begin to walk toward the river. When he’s a ways off, the next man will do the same. Then the next, and so on. That way, we can be as noisy as we like and drive the bear toward those of us with the rifle.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Lofton. He shook Mister Walton’s hand.

  “Excellent,” said Blick. Swelter was already hieing down the road, shouting excitedly to a passing horseman.

  It took several explanations before they all understood the concept, but soon the company was strung out along the road and down the opposite slope of the hill (with Lofton himself at the near end of the line), waiting for Mister Walton and Sundry to take their position.

  Mister Walton was by nature a brisk walker but Sundry kept pace
with him, his own gait long and gangling, as they moved toward the group of trees overlooking the water. They could hear the liquid trill of a veery from a nearby bush, and three crows launched themselves from a tree by the riverbank, chortling the news of the men’s approach.

  When they reached the trees, the trunk of a large oak afforded Mister Walton’s shoulder a welcome place of rest, and its crown of leaves a canopy against the brilliant sun. He looked over the lovely surface of the Sheepscott River and sensed the tug of the outgoing tide.

  “Perhaps you will want to man the gun now,” suggested Sundry, and he passed the rifle to Mister Walton.

  Mister Walton hefted the gun uncertainly. He had handled firearms since he was a child, but never in such odd circumstances. He glanced in Sundry’s direction and found the young man observing him with a quizzical expression. “That was a very good plan you had, by the way,” said Mister Walton.

  “It only meant that you and I didn’t have to do so much walking as the rest of them,” explained Sundry. “It’s going to be a warm day.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” said Mister Walton. The drive had begun; the man at the further end of the line proceeded to cross the field, taking two or three steps before tripping. The diagonal row of drivers took shape, the shadows of clouds lazily tumbling by them in the waning breeze. The news had been that Maude had disappeared near the shore, and as each of the men approached the bank of the river, their progress slowed almost to a complete halt. What had begun as a rather clod hopping, stumbling line eventually metamorphosed into a queue of gracefully tiptoeing men mincing their way forward.

  It was pleasant to be out of doors—to be within reach of the river’s salty tang, glorying in the sunny day while standing in the shade of a friendly tree. Mister Walton breathed deeply and caught, in one draft, the scent of salt and pine and grass and wild strawberries.