I flattened myself out on the horse's back. The branch grazed my head and carried away my cap but left me otherwise unharmed.
Twice again, Darius tried the same stunt. Each time, I avoided disaster by a hairbreadth. Then he ran down a slope, beyond which I glimpsed water through the trees.
We burst out of the woods on the swampy shore of one of the lakes. As Darius plunged into the water, I recognized Porcupine Bay, on Upper Lake.
"You idiot, you'll get us mired!" I shouted.
Darius careened on, up to his knees in water. The toes of my boots threw up little bow waves.
He scrambled out on a shallower place. I saw yellow, sandy bottom an inch or two below the surface—and then, suddenly, his legs sank in again. He had blundered into the quicksand.
The next thing I knew, Darius was in up to his belly. My feet were dragging in the quicksand. Darius snorted and plunged, but his struggles only got him in deeper. The quicksand rose halfway up his barrel, almost to the tops of my boots.
"Serves you right, you son of a mule!" I told him.
I remember that, while a man cannot walk on quicksand, he can in effect swim in it. The trick is to keep yourself spread out.
I gathered my legs up until I got my right foot on the saddle. Then I heaved myself erect, standing on the saddle, and threw myself backwards, away from the horse. I came down with a splash on my back on the thin film of water over the sand. Not trying to raise myself, I went through the motions of swimming a backstroke, digging my elbows into the yielding quicksand.
After a few strokes, I found myself on firmer ground. I reached up, caught a branch of an overhanging hemlock, and hauled myself out of the muck. Darius was still struggling and sinking. He snorted and rolled his eyes.
"Yah!" I yelled. "See what you got yourself into, Henri?"
He made a strange noise—not exactly a whinny; more like whine, if you can imagine a horse's making such a sound.
"Oh, you'd like me to haul you out, eh?"
He whinnied.
"Serve you right if I left you to sink," I said. Again the piteous whine.
I heard a faint halloo from the woods and shouted back. Presently Seymour Green, Jim, Denise, and one of the other summer people appeared on horses, pushing through the undergrowth. Denise said:
"My God, darling, have you been swimming in the swamp? You are mud all over, from the head to the foot."
"Exactly," I said, and told my tale.
Green said: "How d'you reckon we can get that horse out, Mr. Newbury? I'd sure hate to lose him."
"Somebody ride back to the village and fetch me a hundred feet of half-inch rope from Tate's Hardware store," I said. "If you hurry, maybe you can get back before Darius goes under."
Jim galloped away. The others dismounted, tied their nags, and squatted on the bank. Denise tried to dab the mud off me, but the task was hopeless.
Out in the quicksand, Darius till gave an occasional heave. He seemed, however, to have become either exhausted by his struggles or resigned to his fate. His head, neck, and saddle were still above the surface.
I asked Green: "Seymour, how old is that horse?"
Green thought. "Eight and a half or nine year, I guess. Why?"
"Ever know a French-Canadian lumberjack named Henri Michod?"
"I don't—ayup, there was a guy by that name, I think. He was working somewheres else for a few years, and then after the war he came back. Worked as a guide in the hunting season."
"What became of him?"
"Dead. One of them tenderfoot hunters mistook him for a deer, for all his red shirt and cap, and shot him."
"When was that?"
Green scratched his head. "Let me see—forty-six? Forty-seven? About nine year ago, anyways. Why do you want to know, Mr. Newbury?"
"Oh, just a crazy idea. Here comes Jim, with the rope. Now, I'm going out into the swamp. You fellows hold on to my shirt tail, so I can't sink in."
I tied a bowline on a bight in the end of the rope and felt my way out through the shallows towards the horse. The water squilched in my boots. When I felt the bottom begin to give beneath my foot, I stopped advancing. While I am no lariat artist, I got the loop over the horn of the saddle on the third cast.
"Do we haul him in, now?" said Jim.
"Not yet."
I carried the rope back to shore, looped it around the trunk of the hemlock, and went back into the water. I threw another loop around the saddle horn. My purpose was to get a mechanical advantage, as you do with a compound pulley.
Then, with five people on the free end of the rope, foot by foot we hauled Darius shoreward. In another ten minutes, he stood in the shallows with drooping head, shivering, with mud and water running off him.
"All right, Henri," I said to him, "will you behave yourself now?"
Green and Jim stared at me. They stared even harder when Darius took a shambling step forward, stuck out a tongue the size of one of my boots, and sloshed it against my face.
"By God, I never seen that before?" said Green.
I sputtered, wiping my face with a paper handkerchief that Denise handed me. The incident proved, as far as I was concerned, that Darius was either possessed by the spirit of Henri Michod or was a reincarnation of Henri Michod. No mere horse ever had the intelligence to know when somebody had saved its life or to demonstrate its gratitude afterwards.
Darius was a perfect gentleman, as horses go, on the way back. When we got in the car, however, he broke loose from Green's men and bounded up to us, whinnying.
"Hey!" I said. "He wants to adopt us! If—blub—"
Darius had stuck his muzzle in the window of the car and licked my face again. I pushed his nose out and cranked up the glass. Green's men came running up to collar their horse. I started the car, backed, turned, and headed for Lake Algonquin.
"He is coming after!" cried Denise. "Could we maybe buy him?"
A glance in the rear-view mirror showed Darius, still saddled, galloping in our wake, with his empty stirrups flopping. I stepped on the gas and left him behind.
"No," I said. "We don't have a place to keep him, and it would be too expensive to board him at a stable. Don't forget that we have three children to put through college some day.
"Besides, you know how people are. They can ooze gratitude today. Then, tomorrow, they say: 'But what have you done for me lately?' and turn against you. I'm sure it would work out the same way with Darius."
"But," she said, "Darius is just a horse!"
"Oh, yeah? Maybe so, but I for one don't intend to find out!"
United Imp
There is nothing like a brush with the unknown to knock the self-conceit out of one.
I had just been promoted to vice-president of the Harrison Trust Company and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. Looking back, I suspect that my promotion owed less to my financial expertise than to the fact that, in my late thirties, my hair had turned prematurely gray. This gave me the sober, reliable look that people approve in their bankers. So, when the then vice-president retired, Esau Drexel moved me into that slot.
At first, Denise fussed about my hair, saying she did not want to seem married to an old man just yet. I tried some dye but found it more trouble than it was worth; you have to repeat the treatment every week or two. So I put on my stubborn face and refused to dye any more. Denise complained of my hair for years; but, when I got promoted, the salary reconciled her. She takes the realistic French view of money.