78 
February, 1918 
FOREST AND STREAM 
i 
Clarence’s nice, new, shiny compass 
spoiled poor Dave’s whole evening. 
Clarence will now prove that Dave 
doesn’t know beans about direction. 
Dave’s sure cure for a compass crank 
is to take him out and lose him. 
BOXING THE COMPASS IN THE BIG WOODS 
“NEWT” NEWKIRK REFLECTS UPON HIS OWN AND OTHERS’ EXPERIENCES IN THE 
WILD AND WOOLY FOREST WHEN THE BLUE END INSISTED ON POINTING SOUTH 
O LD Dave, trapper, hunter, fisherman, 
able-bodied guide and wise beyond 
belief in the ways of the woods, was 
just finishing up the supper things. He 
gave a swipe or two across the camp table 
with a wet dish-cloth, then drawing back 
with it in his right hand, took careful aim 
at a nail behind the stove and let go. The 
clammy cloth missed the nail by six inches, 
clung to the logs a second, than dropped 
with a squash to the floor where it re¬ 
mained. 
“Huh,” says Dave as he joined me be¬ 
fore the fire, “I kin shoot straighter with 
a thirty-thirty. Newt, lemme take your 
tobacker pouch a minnit—this meader-hay 
I’m smokin’ tastes jest like skunk-cabbage.” 
After Dave had got his old ripe briar 
gurgling until there was only one cylinder 
missing, our talk somehow or other turned 
on the value of a compass in the woods 
“If there’s anythin’,” begins old Dave, 
“gives me a worse pain than inflammatory 
roomytiz it’s some of these tenderfeet who 
comes up here into the tall timber with 
bright and shiny new compasses. I got a 
compass and a good one, but I don’t never 
carry it. Bein’ as I was borned in this neck 
o’ woods and have lived here man and boy 
for nigh on to fifty years, I don’t need it. 
'I lie pint I make is that when a city sport 
hires me to guide him and blows into my 
camp carryin’ his rifle in one hand and his 
compass in t’other, I alius know him and 
me ain’t gonna hitch. I alius know he’s 
gonna pull that compass on me and dispoot 
my word about direction sooner or later—it 
never fails. 
“Last fall there was a feller drifted in 
here from Noo York by the name o’ Sey¬ 
mour—Clarence Seymour, and engages me 
to steer him around thru the woods for a 
cupple of weeks. From what he said I 
guess he was a big feller in the stock mar¬ 
ket at home, but here in the tall and uncut 
Clarence and me was just the same size. 
He said he wanted all my time to teach him 
what I know’d about the woods, so I en¬ 
gaged Bob Miller, an old lumber camp 
cook from the settlement to come in and 
take charge of the grub end. First night 
in camp Mister Seymour showed me his 
nice, new compass and I begin to smell 
trouble. He said it was full-jewel’d and 
explain’d how we’d use it in case we got 
By NEWTON NEWKIRK 
lost. When I look’d around at Bob he was 
grinnin’—Bob knows what I think o’ com¬ 
pass cranks. 
“Next mornin’ Clarence and me started 
out for Big Bogan, five mile north, where 
I thort p’raps I could connect him with a 
bull moose. The sky was overcast and the 
air frosty, but the ground was bare. We 
worked soft all around that bogan, but 
there was no fresh moose sign. It was 
then about feed time so we set down on 
a log and tackled our lunch. After we’d 
finished that and lit our pipes, Mister Sey¬ 
mour says, ‘David, my good man, which 
direction is north, if I may ask?’ 
“ ‘Right there,’ says I, pointin’ straight 
ahead of me, which was due EAST! 
‘Thank you, David,’ says Clarence, puffin’ 
away at his briar. ‘You’re jest as welcome 
as the flowers in M^ay, Mister Seymour,’ 
says I. I know’d what his next move 
would be jest as well as if I hadn’t seen 
him make it out o’ the corney of my eye— 
I’ve been up agin a turrible big passel of 
these compass nuts and they all work 
alike. After a minnit when he thort I 
wasn’t lookin’ Clarence reached into his 
pocket and snuk out his compass on me. 
He held it down beside him, out o’ sight 
and jiggled it. After the needle had had 
time to come to rest he says, ‘Excoose me, 
David, my good man, but which direction 
did you say was north?’ ‘Jest the same as 
it was the first time,’ says I pointin’ due 
EAST agin. 
( 6 A H-HA!’ cfows Clarence like a 
rooster, stickin’ his bootiful 
compass right under my nose; 
‘This compass don’t seem to agree with 
you, my good man! Instid of pointin’ 
north, you pointed east. My compass is 
right, of course. David, you should always 
carry a compass—some of these days you’ll 
get lost. S’pose your life depended on 
goin’ north and you went east! You ought 
to be more keerful, my good man.’ ‘Lemme 
have a look at that compass,’ says I ap¬ 
pearin’ to be interested. I held it stiddy 
and the needle, of course, pointed due 
north. ‘How much did you pay for this 
compass, Mister Seymour?’ says I. ‘Eight- 
fifty,’ says Clarence; ‘it’s the best compass 
made at any price.’ ‘That’s too durned 
bad,’ says I with a look of sorrer handin’ 
the compass back to him. ‘What’s too 
durned bad?’ says Clarence. ‘Why,’ says 
I, ‘it ain’t a square deal to charge a feller 
eight and a haff bucks for a compass what 
wont pint north.’ 
“ ‘Dave,’ says Clarence bristlin’ up, ‘do 
you mean to set there and tell me that 
straight in front of us is north?’ ‘I cer- 
tingly do,’ says I, ‘and the sooner you 
throw away that bum compass the sooner 
you wont get lost in the woods.’ We 
argued with each other for nearly a hour, 
but I still held out that east was north. 
Clarence done everythin’ but call me a liar 
—and I’d ruther he had than call me ‘my 
good man.’ After this happen’d Clarence 
didn’t take much stock in what I thort 
about the pints o’ the compass. We had 
several dispoots that afternoon about which 
direction camp was and if I hadn’t had my 
way we’d never got there. Clarence carried 
his compass in his hand most of the time. 
((\ T EXT cupple o’ days Clarence and 
me rambled ’round over consid¬ 
erable territory. He kep’ on con¬ 
sultin’ his compass and arguin’ about direc¬ 
tion until blamed if he didn’t get my goat, 
horns, hide and hoofs. When he got so 
swel’d up that he thort he know’d twice 
as much as I did and begin to hint that he 
could take me out and lose me right where 
I’d been brung up, I felt somepin’ had to 
be done. 
“Now there ain’t only one cure for a 
feller like that, the remedy bein’ to take 
him out into the thick stuff and wind him 
up until he’s so gorramm’d befuddled he 
don’t know whether north is under his feet 
or up a tree. That night in my blankets 
I laid my plans. Next mornin’ when Bob 
put up our lunch, I told him we’d be gone 
all day and he needn’t expect us back until 
after dark. Then Clarence and me started. 
“For five mile southeast we poked along 
at a easy jog and then we plung’d into Big 
Injun Swamp. That swamp covers more’n 
a thousand acres and is flatter’n a pancake. 
After we’d twisted and circled and wal- 
ler’d around in that swamp for a cupple of 
hours I led Clarence out of it not morn’n 
haff a mile from where we went in. 
When we got into the open he stopped 
and look’d ’round, then he yank’d out that 
durned compass, jiggled it and says, ‘Oh, I 
