They were two palefaces standing outside in the dark.
“Mister, can we have some water?”
Visions of young plainsmen flashed through our mind. Weary, thirsty men, leaning on their Hawken rifles, their horses standing with drooping heads beside alkaline-polluted springs.
“Mister, can we have some water?”
Their presence in our neighborhood was known to us. For two nights, we had seen the lights of their fires. Later, when the flames were low, the perfume of wood smoke had drifted to our side of the river and sweetened the air in our room as we slept.
From such sweetened sleep, in fact, they roused us with their banging on our riverside door. Nobody ever came to that door. We got in and out by a side door.
The banging on the wrong door, our sleep-muddled heads, had us reaching for our own Hawken rifle — and the light switch.
No need for alarm. There was no threat in their midnight call. They were only youngsters playing at hunting and fishing, rendezvousing like old-time woodsmen across the river at the Munn Ferry campground.
Scouts, two of them keeping alive the traditions of hunting and fishing. Keeping alive the tradition of wood lore and independence that once distinguished American men as a race apart from all other races.
Apparently, the Northeast Utilities well had gone sour at their campsite. Why the lads had chosen midnight as the hour to come seeking fresh water, we can’t know. We leaned against a wall and watched them as they unscrewed the cover of their bottle. They were quiet, maybe lonely away from home, needing company at that time of night.
We helped them fill their jerry-jug and made small talk while the water gushed from the faucet. Up from 300 feet that water had come — fresh, sweet and cold.
“Sure, boy, you can have some water. We know how it is. We too have been low on water a few times in our travels.”
When they were gone, we got back in bed. Sleep failed us, so we got to thinking.
Up on Monhegan Island, off the coast of Maine near Boothbay Harbor, they like to tell a story about two Indian boys who got separated from their fathers in the course of a hunt. Indians used to canoe from island to island during the spring nesting season, gathering eggs for food.
On one such hunt, two fathers took along their sons, leaving them on the beach to play while they went off egg hunting.
During one of these hunts, high winds came up as the boys played in spring sunshine. A mean sea sent waves beating furiously over the sand, driving the boys from the seashore up into the protection of the pine forest.
Skies lowered. A spring storm set in that blew sleet and cold rain along the coast for nearly a week. The boys’ fathers, who had paddled away to hunt on a nearby island, made for the mainland when they found they couldn’t return to recover their sons in the teeth of the gale.
There was no quick abatement to the gale, no abatement in the fury of the storm. Not for several days did the sun shine again. Later, still, did the seas subside.
When the children, 8 and 9 years old, were recovered, they were in perfect health. Like their fathers, they hunted eggs to eat. Like their fathers, they found cover to shelter them from the blast.
Moreover, no one seemed excited when they were brought back to their village. Boys, 8 and 9, were not expected to go under in the face of a little adversity.