An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser [261]
The guide, a thinnish, tall and wizened type, with a long, narrow head and small, keen, bright blue eyes laughed a yokelish laugh as he studied the group. “Not thinkin’ of tryin’ your luck to-day?”
“No, just inquiring for my dad. He’s coming up here next week, maybe. I want to see about accommodations.”
“Well, they ain’t what they are down to Racquette, of course, but then the fish down there ain’t what they are up here, either.” He visited all with a sly and wry and knowing smile.
Clyde had never seen the type before. He was interested by all the anomalies and contrarities of this lonesome world as contrasted with cities he had known almost exclusively, as well as the decidedly exotic and material life and equipment with which, at the Cranstons’ and elsewhere, he was then surrounded. The strange and comparatively deserted nature of this region as contrasted with the brisk and vigorous life of Lycurgus, less than a hundred miles to the south.
“The country up here kills me,” commented Stuart Finchley at this point. “It’s so near the Chain and yet it’s so different, scarcely any one living up here at all, it seems.”
“Well, except for the camps in summer and the fellows that come up to hunt moose and deer in the fall, there ain’t much of anybody or anything around here after September first,” commented the guide. “I’ve been guidin’ and trappin’ for nigh onto seventeen years now around here and ‘cept for more and more people around some of the lakes below here—the Chain principally in summer—I ain’t seen much change. You need to know this country purty well if yer goin’t strike out anywhere away from the main roads, though o’ course about five miles to the west o’ here is the railroad. Gun Lodge is the station. We bring ‘em by bus from there in the summer. And from the south end down there is a sorta road leadin’ down to Greys Lake and Three Mile Bay. You musta come along a part of it, since it’s the only road up into this country as yet. They’re talkin’ of cuttin’ one through to Long Lake sometime, but so far it’s mostly talk. But from most of these other lakes around here, there’s no road at all, not that an automobile could make. Just trails and there’s not even a decent camp on some o’ ‘em. You have to bring your own outfit. But Ellis and me was over to Gun Lake last summer—that’s thirty miles west o’ here and we had to walk every inch of the way and carry our packs. But, oh, say, the fishin’ and moose and deer come right down to the shore in places to drink. See ‘em as plain as that stump across the lake.”
And Clyde remembered that, along with the others, he had carried away the impression that for solitude and charm—or at least mystery—this region could scarcely be matched. And to think it was all so comparatively near Lycurgus—not more than a hundred miles by road; not more than seventy by rail, as he eventually came to know.
But now once more in Lycurgus and back in his room after just explaining to Roberta, as he had, he once more encountered on his writing desk, the identical paper containing the item concerning the tragedy at Pass Lake. And in spite of himself, his eye once more followed nervously and yet unwaveringly to the last word all the suggestive and provocative details. The uncomplicated and apparently easy way in which the lost couple had first arrived at the boathouse; the commonplace and entirely unsuspicious way in which they had hired a boat and set forth for a row; the manner in which they had disappeared to the north end; and then the upturned boat, the floating oars and hats near the shore. He stood reading in the still strong evening light. Outside the windows were the dark boughs of the fir tree of which he had thought the preceding day and which now suggested all those firs and pines about the shores of Big Bittern.
But, good God! What was he thinking of anyhow? He, Clyde Griffiths! The nephew of Samuel Griffiths! What was