In the Drowned Lands

This is it?" Cargill asked. He hefted the antique firearm in his soft city hands and looked incredulously at the lawyer. "You hauled me all the way up here to the sticks-a whole day away from New York-just to tell me that I've inherited a... a fowling piece?" "You are his only heir," the attorney said patiently for the tenth or twelfth time. "Your uncle was an eccentric man, set in his ways. As I explained in my letter, his will required your presence, in person, at the reading if you were to inherit.Otherwise his estate would go to various charities. Besides, it's not just the shotgun, Mr. Cargill. There's also the land, the house and all of its contents." "Yeah, right," Cargill said. "For what it's worth. Tell me, Counselor, what is it worth?" "Well," the lawyer said, clearing his throat, "to tell you the truth, Mr. Cargill, not a whole lot at present. We're too far from the interstate and the mountains for this property to interest any big-time developers. Mingo Mills, the nearest town of any size, is losing population. So's the whole region, as you must have noticed during our drive up here. There's no industry to speak of, and even the farms are failing. I doubt you could find a ready buyer for the place in this current economy in less than a year's time, but if you were to hold onto the place for a while, who knows? At least the taxes aren't ruinous." Cargill looked down at the shotgun. A bespoke pre-Civil War caplock, the lawyer had said, 14 gauge, made by W.W. Greener of London. Actually, it was rather a handsome piece, Cargill thought. Long, slim barrels the glossy black of rich coffee, sinuous gooseneck hammers of case-hardened iron as bright as buffed nickel, the rose & scroll engraving on the sideplates elegant and finely cut, a diamond of ancient ivory embedded at the tip of its rosewood forearm and two others of somewhat larger size on either side of the oil-finished, tiger-maple stock. It had been years-decades-since he'd last held a shotgun, much less fired one. On a sudden whim he threw the gun to his shoulder. It came up light and smoothly balanced, a perfect fit, the ivory bead at the end of the tapering 30-inch barrels locked firmly on the amber eye of a woodcock mounted in frozen flight at one dim corner of the study... Francis Edmond Cargill, an accountant, lived and worked in Manhattan. A widower now for some 20 years, ailing, dead at heart and childless, to boot, he had little left to him but his profession, and that was dwindling away year by year as his clients passed on. Soon he would join them, of that he was sure. Ho hum. One day recently he'd received a letter from an upstate attorney advising him that he'd been named sole beneficiary in the will of a bachelor uncle who he hadn't seen or talked to in nearly half a century. Indeed, he'd supposed that Col. Elijah Cargill was long since dead, if he'd thought of him at all. The lawyer, whose name was J.G. Braithwaite, had asked him to come upstate for the reading of the will. "The inheritance is substantial," he'd written. "I'm afraid I can't tell you just now what the legacy comprises. I suppose your uncle wished it to be a surprise. A codicil to his will, written shortly before his death, specifies that you must be present in the old man's house when it's read." It was early autumn but still hot and humid in midtown, and Cargill was only too grateful for a chance to get out of the city for a day or two. That Friday morning he packed an overnight bag and caught the 10:15 train from Grand Central to Beacon, where Braithwaite, a dry, soft-spoken, rather elderly fellow, picked him up in an equally ancient Plymouth station wagon. They crossed the Hudson River, then headed southwest on country roads into the foothills of the Catskill range. It was a pretty drive through rolling, sparsely settled farm country with only a few small villages marking the way. They drove past marshes, alder brakes, abandoned barns and farmhouses, old orchards, stands of aspen and pine and mixed hardwoods, then along a lonely two-lane blacktop road that eventually petered out into gravel. "We're on the edge of what used to be called the Drowned Lands," Braithwaite said. "It was a huge, level tract of wild country, kind of a floodplain of the Walkill River-all brakes and thickets interspersed with bog meadow and grassland, with here and there a stand of open timber. Most of it's drained and cut over now, but your uncle kept his piece pretty much as it was in the old days. Are you a bird hunter, Mr. Cargill?" "Used to be," Cargill said. "When I was a boy, I sometimes shot with my uncle. But I drifted away from it when he moved up here, and later I went to work in the city. Can't say that I miss it, though." "Back in the 19th Century this was splendid woodcock country," Braithwaite continued. "In 1839 an Englishman named Henry William Herbert used to shoot here with a friend of his from the town of Warwick-a huge fellow named Mr. Ward, who weighed 300 pounds and shot a single-barreled Westley Richards. Even with those handicaps they often killed close to a hundred woodcock a day between them. A year or so later Herbert and another friend, probably shooting a double gun, bagged 125 on one day and another 70 the following morning, not including 40 or 50 birds their retrievers couldn't find." "Game hogs," Cargill said. He winced and stretched his legs. Arthritis takes it toll. "Sheer waste. What could they do with that many birds?" "Sold them on the New York market, no doubt. It was legal back then." "More's the pity," Cargill said. "No wonder there's nothing left." Braithwaite merely grunted. It was late afternoon when they turned off the main road onto a rutted driveway winding through deep woods. A startled deer leaped ahead of them down the track, then broke into the forest, its white tail flagging. Farther on they flushed a ruffed grouse that had been dusting at the side of the road. They passed ponds etched with the rings of rising fish-on one of which Cargill thought he saw a family of wood ducks-before coming to a stop before a small, slate-roofed field-stone cottage. "Your uncle always referred to the house as his 'shooting box,'" the lawyer said. "An English country gentleman's term, I guess." Two great, feathery white pines, their upper branches sighing in a cooling breeze, flanked the north side at either end. "Grandmother and Grandfather trees, your uncle called them," Braithwaite explained, "planted ages ago to break the wind from the storms that sweep down now and again from the Catskills." From somewhere behind the house came the anxious barking of dogs. "The kennel's back there," Braithwaite said. "I've been feeding and watering the dogs every day since your uncle's death." He cleared his throat. "Only two of them," he added quickly. "I hadn't really the heart to put them down." The lawyer unlocked the door and ushered Cargill inside. "The Colonel didn't hold much with electricity," Braithwaite apologized, lighting a coach lamp mounted in a pewter sconce on one wall of the entry hall. "I misdoubt there's three light bulbs in the whole place." English sporting prints lined the hallway along with the large, spread fans of numerous ruffed grouse. "Your uncle was certainly a keen wingshot," Braithwaite said. "Even at the end, well into his 90s, the folks hereabouts would see him afield in all kinds of weather with his dogs and his gun." Braithwaite led the way over lustrous, random-width pine floorboards through a cavernous living room sparsely scattered with throw rugs and a few pieces of overstuffed furniture upholstered in dark, well-oiled leather. The mounted heads of two big-antlered deer and a single black bear gazed solemnly down from the walls, their glass eyes glinting in the dusky green light from a leaded window. Again Braithwaite stopped, this time to light a pair of ornate kerosene lamps that stood on curly maple end tables beside an easy chair. A huge fieldstone fireplace dominated one end of the room. From it blew a whiff of cold ashes. "In here, please," Braithwaite said, ushering Cargill into a book-lined study. "Your uncle called this his game room. If you could wait here a moment, I have to call my office." Cargill studied the bookshelves. Mostly sporting volumes from the 19th Century by authors he'd never heard of. British Rural Sports by someone who called himself "Stonehenge," Dinks on the Dog, Maupassant's Contes de la Bécasse, Frank Forester's The Field Sports of America in two volumes, and another by the same author entitled The Warwick Woodlands. Ho hum, he thought. The rear window of the game room looked westward into the backyard-to a handsome fieldstone barn with a cupola; a long, wire-enclosed shed, which he took to be the kennel; some other smaller outbuildings; and behind them, visible through the beginnings of the woods, what appeared to be a large pond or lake. Beyond it was nothing but flat, endless woodland broken here and there by expanses of bog meadow and dense stands of alder. Not a house or another barn could he see, clear to the horizon. He turned back as Braithwaite entered the room. "Let's get on with it," the lawyer said, suddenly all business. "The reading of the will." He pulled a sheet of foolscap from his briefcase and began: "I, Elijah Worthington Cargill, late Colonel, US Army, being of sound mind... " It was as Braithwaite had suggested earlier-the land, the house and all of the possessions within it, et cetera. Including the dogs and the Greener... After Braithwaite left, promising to re- turn on Monday morning to drive Cargill back to the station at Beacon, Cargill poured himself a glass of sherry from a decanter he found in the game room and began to scout his new pied-a-terre. His stiff legs needed stretching. The house certainly appeared to be in sound shape-no leaks, no water stains on the beamed ceilings, no sagging floorboards or crumbling walls-though with nothing by the way of modern conveniences. The kitchen was dominated by a huge, old-fashioned icebox-cooled literally by ice, great sawdust-flecked, opaque blocks of it installed beneath the shelves; but it was well stocked, no doubt by Braithwaite, with fresh eggs, butter, milk, a pound of coffee, assorted vegetables and fruit, as well as some steaks and chops for Cargill's weekend meals. The sink faucet had to be charged by a hand pump, but the water was cold and sweet. The cupboards contained some fine blue-and-white china and a pebbled stoneware coffeepot. The stove, Cargill saw, was wood-fired, but there was plenty of kindling and split-hardwood chunks in a bin that stood beside it. He figured he could manage. A kitchen table of solid oak stood on curved, hard-carved legs beside the west-facing window. On it stood another of the seemingly ubiquitous kerosene lamps. Was there no electric light in this house? Cargill circulated through the rooms, pausing to contemplate the bedroom with its brass four-poster and a tall armoire still filled with his uncle's clothing. Nowhere could he find a light switch, nowhere a single bulb. Nor a telephone. How could Braithwaite have called his office? Perhaps he'd had a cellular phone in his briefcase. Cargill went back out to the front door and peered down the driveway. He could swear he'd seen utility poles and power lines on the drive in. He must have imagined them. There were none, no power at all coming into the house from any direction. Well, it was a long way from the highway; no doubt the Colonel, a great believer in personal economies, had chosen not to foot the bill for installing poles and cables. He was a parsimonious old coot, Cargill recalled. His sherry glass was empty, and he went back to the game room to replenish it. Beside the decanter stood a humidor he hadn't noticed before. From it he took a long, thick, green cigar, not at all dry when he lit it, and as fragrant as any Havana he'd smoked when his wife would still allow him that pleasure. Puffing away grandly, he swung through the kitchen, found an ice pick-God, it had been a long time since he'd used one-and chipped off a few shards of ice to add to his drink. He sat at the kitchen table and thought back on what he could remember of his uncle. Cargill had found him to be a mysterious and romantic figure the few times he'd met the man during his boyhood. Uncle Eli-tall, slim, with dark, flashing eyes and a ready if somewhat cynical laugh-was his father's younger brother, the black sheep of the sober, God-fearing and industrious Cargill family. As a boy, he'd run off to find his fortune in Mexico but had ended up in the Mexican cavalry instead, fighting Pancho Villa. When America entered the Great War, he'd enlisted as a common soldier; by Armistice Day he'd risen to the rank of captain. Between the wars he'd served in some hush-hush capacity as a military intelligence officer, traveling frequently to Africa, the Middle East, the South Seas, Asia and Latin America. On his rare visits to the family home in Oyster Bay, he told fascinating tales of Chinese bandits and big-game hunts in the Sudan, of diving for pearl shell in the far Paumotus or crossing the Empty Quarter of Arabia on camelback, of frozen toes in the heights of the sunny Andes and (sotto voce, over cigars and brandy after the ladies had left the room) of the smooth-bellied charms of those legendary Moroccan "dancing girls" called ouled naals. During World War II he'd returned to the infantry, commanding first a battalion, then a regiment, in North Africa, Italy and finally France. He'd been badly wounded in the Hartgen Forest but never spoke of it. After the war, Cargill had seen him only once. He was a changed man. They'd shared a duck blind one sleet-slashed morning on Long Island Sound. A bleak, bang-up day, the sky close, cold and writhing as low as a snake's belly, ducks everywhere-bluebills they were, Cargill remembered, greater scaup, ripping suddenly out of the murk to cup unheeding into the decoy spread. From all around them came the banging of other guns, unseen in the fog. Cargill had shot well, with the hot blood of youth, the big Browning's jolt lighting a fire in his heart, dropping doubles on nearly every toll, once a triple, the ducks splashing dead, loose-feathered, wings all asprawl in the black racing chop, one, two, three and his uncle's fierce Chessie-yes, Rommel was his name-launching like a torpedo from the blind to fetch them back. But the Colonel had shot only once, killing a high single that was barely visible through the cloud scud; the bird tumbled end for end, like the footage Cargill had seen of flak-torn kamikazes over Okinawa, and splashed down close to the blind. It lay on its back, its broad black feet flailing weakly at the sky. "He's waving good-bye to life," the Colonel said. Cargill had looked over at him, amazed at this sign of sentiment in the heretofore laughing warrior. "Too much death, too many people," Uncle Eli continued. There were tears in his eyes. "I'm leaving the army, Frankie. Leaving the whole damned 20th Century. It's time to call retreat." Rommel had laid his huge head on the Colonel's leg and groaned in sympathy. As if reading Cargill's memories, the dogs in the kennel renewed their own whining. He walked out behind the house. There were two of them, as the lawyer had said, bitch and dog, but of a breed that Cargill had never seen before. They looked like outsized springer spaniels, but solid white in color, heavier boned and bodied, shorter in the legs, with longer ears, rougher coats and broader noses than any spaniel of Cargill's acquaintance. Their heads were huge, almost primitive looking, though their big, dark eyes were friendly, pleading for his company. He noticed that their water dishes were empty and, without thinking, unlatched the kennel door to refill them. Immediately, the spaniels bulled it open and lumbered off in the direction of the pond. Cargill hurried after them. But instead of drinking, the dogs aimed their big-bore muzzles earthward and began snuffling through the alder brakes that surrounded the water. Suddenly, the bitch let loose a deep, plangent note. She froze in her tracks, looking back anxiously over her shoulder as Cargill rushed up. When he was 20 feet away, she pounced-and a woodcock whistled skyward in wild corkscrewing flight followed an instant later by a second bird. Simultaneously, the male spaniel made game, sounding off musically as his short tail buzzed with excitement, and as Cargill turned toward him, the big dog flushed yet another brace, no, a trio of woodcock. When no shots followed the flushes, both dogs gazed at him sadly, almost reproachfully, he thought. But they came in readily when he called them to heel. They both wore broad leather collars, on which Cargill noticed brass tags with the dogs' names elegantly engraved. The dog was called Sancho, the bitch Pansy. "Good dogs," Cargill told them. "Tomorrow I promise I'll bring the gun." They grinned up at him, whining and nodding their heavy heads in eager approval. They knew the word "gun" sure enough. Living in the city, Cargill had denied himself the pleasures of dog ownership for far too long, he realized. His wife, a fastidious if not indeed a fanatical housekeeper, had claimed to be allergic to them, and he'd never pressed the issue. Now he realized what he'd been missing. Rather than locking the spaniels back into their kennel, he brought them into the house, where over the next hour they proved themselves thoroughly housebroken. In the living room Pansy curled herself upon a throw rug at the foot of the easy chair while Sancho sprawled with a contented groan on the cool slates in front of the fireplace. Cargill poured himself another drink and pulled Dinks on the Dog from the library shelf. Seating himself comfortably in the leather chair, he flipped pages until he found what he sought. Pansy and Sancho were clumber spaniels, no doubt about it, the largest representatives of their sporting family and also the slowest. Often called "the retired gentleman's shooting dog," the clumber was of French origin, having come to England in the mid-18th Century as a gift from the Duq de Noailles to the Duke of Newcastle, whose manorial estate in Nottinghamshire was called Clumber House. The breed's period of greatest popularity in Britain was between about 1850 and the beginning of WWI. The Victorian Golden Age. The clumber was the perfect dog for a retired military officer or civil servant on a pension, well behaved in the house yet keen afield. A clumber could be taken to the small coverts and truck-garden plots on the outskirts of London. While the elderly retiree sat dreaming of past glories on his shooting stick, his dog would nose about slowly among the bracken and turnip tops, seeking foot scent and throwing tongue whenever it made game, then retrieving whatever its master managed to shoot. Sounds like the dog for me, Cargill thought, flexing his stiff knees. We'll see tomorrow. "Hey, guys," he called to the dozing clumbers, "what say let's grill us a steak or two for supper?" He realized that he was slightly buzzed. Well, country air, unaccustomed cigar smoke, a few glasses of vino... It rained that night, a steady, gentle susurration that stirred him from the murk of sleep into the cool dark blue of its shadows. But when he awoke refreshed the following morning, Cargill couldn't find his clothes. He'd folded them neatly on the chair beside the armoire before retiring. Perhaps the dogs had dragged them away during the night. Soft-heartedly, perhaps foolishly, he'd allowed the clumbers to sleep on the floor at the foot of his bed. Well, he'd no doubt find the clothing somewhere around the house. In any case he'd brought no leisurewear with him in his small bag. He opened the armoire to see what his uncle might provide in the way of a shooting kit. In a few minutes he was clad in a fine, long-collared chambray shirt, fustian knee breeks, leather leggings, rough cowhide ankle boots, a long paisley-patterned waistcoat and a russet-hued shooting jacket of stout corduroy. On his head he clapped a low-crowned felt hat and studied himself in the full-length mirror mounted inside the armoire's door. Quite elegant, he decided. The perfect picture of a Victorian country gentleman about to embark on a day afield. The dogs agreed, yipping their approval as they danced clumsily at his feet. Oddly enough his legs felt just fine today-no aches, no stiffness. Usually it took him a half-hour to work out the kinks on arising. Now, still standing before the mirror, he executed a quick buck-and-wing in the mode of Fred Astaire, doffing his hat at the conclusion and bowing sardonically to his dim, rust-colored image. After breaking his fast with a slab of crusty country bread accompanied by a thick slice of sharp, crumbly cheese-to hell with cholesterol nightmares-Cargill took his coffee to the game room, where he examined the Greener more closely. On the desk he found a full powder flask and a shot pouch, both mounted with cut-off spouts that measured the appropriate charges for loading the gun. Strange he hadn't noticed them yesterday. But then again everything had been so new, in its old-fashioned way. In the roomy pockets of his jacket he found a nipple wrench, a box of shot wads and an oval capping device with a spring-loaded gate. He charged the Greener, tamping down three drams of fine-grained blackpowder with the brass-capped ramrod, then inserting a wad, a one-ounce charge of small birdshot, and another wad to hold it all in place, feeling somehow that he had done this before, though he couldn't recall ever having fired a muzzleloader at any time in his misspent youth. He did not cap the platinum-lined vents that angled down into the barrels, however. He would wait for that until he was outside. At sight of the gun, and especially when Cargill began charging it, the spaniels had flopped down on the floor of the game room, whining in barely suppressed excitement. "All right, my friends, let's get going," Cargill said. He slung the empty game bag over his shoulder without thinking where it had come from. The dogs lurched to their feet and led the way out of the house. A crisp morning, heavy frost on the green grass that still lay in shadow, a crust of ice on the black mire beside the pond. The swamp maples blazed crimson, the aspens gold, all muted by the purple of the alders. Mist rose from the pond and from the springs that laced the woodland. Music chimed somewhere, and he noticed that the small pewter bells on the collars of the dogs tinkled a marching rhythm. Odd, indeed, Cargill suddenly realized. He could swear those bells hadn't been there the day before. Nor during the night. He certainly would have heard them when the dogs rolled over in their sleep... But he had no time to ponder the problem. They were making game down in the alders again. Ticking the hammers to half-cock, Cargill snapped a pair of copper priming caps over the Greener's vents and, with the gun at a high port arms, hurried after the dogs. At his approach, Sancho flushed a brace of woodcock. Cargill found the Greener floating to his shoulder, his thumb drew the hammers to full cock, the heavy barrels swung up through the rise, then the touch of the slender, taut triggers-through billows of white smoke he saw the birds fall. Instantly his hands found flask and pouch, as if of their own volition, the ramrod was out, and as the dogs lay flat on their bellies, he began reloading. Then three more woodcock, startled by the shots, flip-flapped belatedly up out of the alders and flashed away, deeper into the covert. "Good Sancho," he heard himself saying. Then, with a casting motion of his free hand, "Fetch dead, boy!" And the dog hied into the brake, returning quickly with two 'cock, one after the other-warm, soft and russet-feathered, their long bills lolling, a bead of blood bright at the tip of one of them, their huge, dark eyes still wet and almost luminous. As he brought them in, two more woodcock flushed. Then another. Cargill laughed and watched them go. He raised the dead birds to his face, inhaling their hot, musky essence. The dogs gazed up at him in approval. "Hunt on, my worthies," he said, and he was laughing as he hadn't in 50 years. "Hunt 'em up! Hunt 'em all up!" Ahead of them lay the unspoiled morning, crisp and cool and bright with the fire and steel of eternal autumn, punctuated only by brief white clouds of burnt powder, the slow cough of his smooth, steady barrels. Francis Cargill knew now that he would hunt all day, forever. The powder flask would never need refilling, the shot pouch would never go slack, nor would the birds ever cease to fly. It would rain only at night, of course. In his mind, as the mists blew clear, he could see the endless covert opening before him-the tight-laced woodcock brakes, the spongy snipe bogs, the sharp-thorned partridge lies, the grass-topped hills where he and his steadfast companions would pause to drink the cool breeze. Somewhere along the way, he was certain now, they would meet the Colonel. Together, dogs and men, they would push on into a world of blurred wings and broken rainbows. Forever and ever, amen. Excerpted from Dancers in the Sunset Sky, by Robert F. Jones. Copyright 1996 by Robert F. Jones. Reprinted by permission of The Lyons Press, www.lyonspress.com. Editor's Note: "In the Drowned Lands" will be among 15 of Robert F. Jones's finest stories appearing in the upcoming book A Roaring in the Blood: Remembering Robert F. Jones. Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx, the book also will feature 17 tribute essays by authors such as Thomas McIntyre, Terry McDonell, Geoffrey Norman and John Holt. Scheduled for release this summer, the hardcover trade edition will sell for $40 and the leather-bound deluxe edition (signed and numbered by Jones's widow, Louise) will sell for $75. To order, call 800-849-1004 or visit www.sportingclassics.net. Robert F. Jones was a staff writer for Time and Sports Illustrated and the author of such books as The Hunter in My Heart, Upland Passage and African Twilight. He was a Contributing Editor for Shooting Sportsman, in which he wrote The Dawn Patrol column. He passed away in 2002.