Met on the Trail
Pam’s face was so long when she came out of the house in response to a summons from Don that he took to rallying her on her evident depression as they drove back to Ripple.
“It looks as if you and Galena had been having a little difference of opinion, and that you had come off second best. Why didn’t you shout for me? It would have given me all the pleasure in life to have squashed her flat.”
“But it would not have mended matters at all,” said Pam with an impatient sigh. “I wanted Galena to be willing to take Reggie Furness back to work there when he is well enough, but she has got such an impossible attitude with regard to a wrongdoer. Because a person has once done the thing which is not square she will never trust that person again. She knows she is not perfect herself, and yet she expects perfection in everyone else.”
“That is the stand most folks take,” he answered with a short laugh. “Self-blindness, I call it, and as a rule the more they shout about the weaknesses of other people the more disposed they are to the same infirmity themselves. But Galena is a good sort at the bottom, and she will very likely turn things over in her mind a bit when she has had a little time. I guess Nathan is more than a little cross with me. He wanted his supper about as much as it is possible for a man to want anything, and I kept him out in the barn, asking him questions about every imaginable thing, from moose-calling to the best and quickest way of plucking chickens. I helped him feed his horses, though, and he said he hated that business worse than anything he had to do all day. He said it made him real bad to see the creatures stuffing their noses into the food and having such a good time, while he felt like sinking into his boots with hunger. Then I reminded him that he would soon have the boy back to get supper ready for his horses, so he cheered up a bit, although he did mention that Galena might have something to say on the subject.”
“Oh, it was good of you to put in a word for Reggie like that. If Nathan feels he wants the boy back so badly, Galena may have to give way.” There was a catch in Pam’s voice, for she was feeling this affair very keenly. Reggie was having to suffer for his vindication of her grandfather, and so it became very much of a personal matter to her.
The colt was spanking along at a fine pace. The trail was very good just at this part, and Don’s high-wheeled cart went bumping and swaying along under the shade of the birches and the hemlocks while the level rays of the setting sun lay in bars of gold across the heavy green foliage. In another ten or fifteen minutes they would be at Ripple, and Don’s golden evening would be over. It was not wonderful that he wanted to make the most of it while it lasted.
“I am a bit jealous of that boy Reggie. You seem to have no time to think of anyone else,” he ventured, greatly daring, and Pam turned to him with a look of astonishment.
“What else could we do but think of him, seeing how ill he has been?” she demanded; then added with a laugh: “Besides, he is not the sort to remain in the background at any time. He has been teaching me all sorts of things about the wild life of the forest, and telling me about racoons and minks and beavers. He told me that there is a beaver meadow about seven miles across the forest from here, and he is going to take me to see it some day when he is stronger.”
“I will drive you over. It is too far for you to walk, and the trail is rough,” said Don. Then, finding his golden minutes fleeting faster than ever, he burst out in impulsive speech: “I have loved you ever since that night you stopped us on the trail to ask the way to Ripple, and there isn’t a thing I would not do to please you, if you would let me.”
Pam looked keenly distressed.
“Oh, please, don’t!” she said, clasping her hands tightly and feeling that she would love to run away.
But Don, having once started, was not to be easily stopped.
“Why shouldn’t I tell you that I care for you more than for anyone else in the world?” he demanded. “I am not so clever as you by a long way, and you always make me feel that I am the very clumsiest animal that ever wore shoe leather; but Mother says that is very good for me, and she told me to-night that she owed a deep debt of gratitude to the little girl at Ripple for smartening up her son. Can’t you care for me at all, Pam?”
Pam went very white. What possessed this infatuated young man to talk to her of love, when for aught she knew there might be shame in front of her far greater than any she had had to bear as yet? It was fairly plain that her grandfather had had no hand in the hurting of Sam Buckle, but it was quite possible he was involved in something else which would not bear the light of day, seeing that he must have fled from his home to avoid meeting the surprise party.
“It is not a time to think of oneself,” she said in a chilly tone, which was all the colder because of the wave of self-pity that suddenly filled her heart. It did seem hard that her life should be clouded by this mystery, and just at the time when things might have been really delightful. “We never know what is going to happen next, or whether Grandfather will come home.”
“That seems to me all the more reason why you should have someone with a right to stand by you,” said Don, whose face was setting into stern lines of determination. “You have Jack here now, it is true, but he is only a boy, and I want the right to stand by you.”
She shook her head. Speech was so difficult just now, and oh! she could have cried because her golden evening was spoiled. But in her way she was as resolute as Don, and she was determined that she would avoid anything that might bring more suffering later on.
“It is very nice of you to want to shelter me,” she said gently. “But I don’t need it. I mean, I am quite able to stand up under things without help. I could not let you care for me—I mean, go on caring for me, when perhaps there is heavy disgrace to come on us in the near future. Of course we know now that Grandfather did not hurt Sam Buckle, but we do not understand why he had to leave his home. We know he did not die in the forest, because Mose Paget knew a man who had seen him and talked to him. This was all easy of understanding while we thought he had gone away because of what happened to his neighbour. Now it is a maddening mystery, and I can’t begin to think of myself or to plan for being happy in my own way. I have to do my very best to keep the farm going so that it shall pay, and so that there may be a little money for Grandfather if he comes home. I came to New Brunswick hoping to make a place for Mother and the younger children, but my work seems to go in the direction of helping Grandfather all I can, even though I have never seen him.”
Pam was talking now for talking’s sake. She wanted to stave off all the things which she instinctively felt Don wanted to say to her. She was stifling back, too, a very real heartache. They had been such friends, such real chums, and it was hard to feel that she must give up what she had had, just because circumstances would not let her give more. But she did not know Don quite as well as she thought she did. He received all she had to say in a very non-committal silence, and then, when the house at Ripple was reached, he said quietly:
“I can wait. You have not said that you did not care for me, or that there was anyone else, and nothing else matters. No, I won’t come in to-night, thank you, it is getting late. I shall come over again and take you out when there is time, and things will be just as they were.”
Would they? Pam greatly doubted it. She would always be self-conscious now when she was with Don; the old comradeship would have disappeared, and she would feel it necessary to stand on guard always.
It was quite early next morning when Galena Gittins drove up to the house in a smart little wagon that she had bought for herself from her own earnings.
“I thought I would just come over and see for myself if that pickle of a boy is getting better,” she explained a little awkwardly. “Nathan was saying last night that if he could not have Reggie back he would have a hired man in the house for this summer, but I tell him we can’t get men these days, and so we have to be thankful to have boys. Nathan ought to have married years ago, then maybe he would not be dependent on outside labour now.”
Sophy laughed quietly as she led Galena across the best sitting-room to the end bedroom where Reggie lay. Rumour said that back in those far-off years when he was a young man, Nathan Gittins had wanted to get married, but gave up the idea because of the strenuous objections of Galena; but then rumour is not much to be trusted, so perhaps Nathan had not been very keen upon matrimony.
Reggie looked up and flushed scarlet when Galena entered the room. But she walked across the floor with her usual brisk tread, saying, in a matter-of-fact tone:
“Getting better, are you? Well, the sooner you are fit for work the better we shall like it. A rotten time we are having at our place, and Nathan is about worn out with all the things he has to do at night when he comes in from the field.”
Reggie stared at her with unbelieving joy in his eyes.
“Do you mean that I am to come back to work the same as if nothing had happened—I mean, the same as if I had not told?” he asked, in a tone that quavered suspiciously.
Galena snorted, and tossed her head with an air of fine scorn.
“I haven’t much patience with two-faced folks myself, but this time, at least, it has turned out all right, since you can clear Wrack Peveril from such a low-down charge as that brought against him. The pity is that you did not do it before, but the wisest of us make mistakes sometimes.”
Reggie murmured an incoherent something, then lay staring at Galena with shining eyes, while she talked to Sophy about the wedding that was to be so very soon. Then Pam came in from the barn, where she had been helping Jack with the morning “chores”, and very soon afterwards Miss Gittins went away, declaring that she could not stay another minute. But when she bade him good-bye she told Reggie that she was going to ask the Doctor how soon he could be moved, as it would be a comfort to have him at their place, even if he could do nothing better than lie on the settle in the kitchen and tell her when the saucepans boiled.
A week later he was gone, and the house dropped back into its condition of normal quiet. Pam and Jack only came into the house to eat and sleep, while Sophy worked industriously at her wedding-gown. She had decided that she would rather make it at Ripple than at her own home, where there were so many interruptions. Every day she approached her task with the reverent awe of a priestess performing a religious ceremony, and Pam had many a quiet chuckle to herself over the happiness Sophy got from work that is mostly left to outsiders.
One baking hot morning in early June the cow was missing. The creature had apparently pushed down a weak portion of the fence and gone for a stroll on her own account. There was in consequence no milk for breakfast. Corn porridge and molasses is not bad fare, but coffee without milk is horrid, so many hard things were said about the cow while they had breakfast. In an ordinary way there would have been the milk of the previous night to fall back upon, but it so chanced that the storekeeper from The Corner had been collecting all the evening milk of the district for the last few weeks, because he had bought a separator and was making butter for his customers.
“I will take the dog and go to find the cow,” said Pam. “I was going to hoe potatoes in the field by the creek, but those weeds will have to get a little bigger before they are hoed up. I don’t believe I am sorry either, for I would much rather tramp about the forest than hoe potatoes to-day. Isn’t the weather just gorgeous? I wish, oh, I wish that the boys and Muriel were here to enjoy it!”
People told her that June was not often as hot as this, and that the weather would probably break in a thunder-storm soon, and then it would get cooler.
“You will have to go, because I can’t.” Jack spoke with his mouth full, for he was bolting his breakfast in a great hurry, having lost time in hunting for the cow. “I promised Nathan that I would be at his place in good time. We are going to start haymaking to-day, and now we shall have to hustle for all we are worth.”
Pam started on her quest directly breakfast was over. It was really stupid of the cow to break bounds in this fashion, because if the creature wandered very far the night’s milk would not be so good, and Pam was rapidly developing the farmer instinct, which is dead against waste of this sort.
She went out through the break in the fence made by the cow, and followed the trail of the animal through the long grass, so far as it showed; when she could no longer see it she had to trust to common sense for direction. The cow was out for change of diet rather than from any desire to run away, so most likely it would wander straight along the nearest trail, which was the narrow one that led out to the old tote road. Pam had not been there for some time, work having called her in other directions. Farmers in that part of the world do not often walk for the sake of taking a stroll in the middle of summer, time being too precious.
The dog paced soberly along at her heels, and she wondered if the creature had any recollection of the happening of last fall, when it had encountered the lynx at the ruined house. Her way this morning led past the ruin, for as she turned into the old tote road she saw far away in the distance something which looked like a cow. The creature was so far away that it was of no use to send the dog in pursuit yet, so she went on, ankle-deep in grass and flowers, while the morning seemed to grow hotter and hotter.
She halted at the door of the ruined house, trying to get courage enough to enter. Apparently the door had not been touched since Mose Paget had tied it up to keep the lynxes from returning to their lair. Pam had a vivid remembrance of the bit of yellow pocket-handkerchief he had used for the purpose, and there it was still tied to the door. The place had a bad name. Luke Dobson told her that he himself had once been scared nearly out of his senses by seeing a grey shape flit along the tote road in front of him one night when he was belated in that part of the forest, and it had disappeared in or near the ruins. Pam had laughed then: it is so easy to laugh when one is hearing of an experience of such a kind second-hand. Now she was shivering at the remembrance, and she did not wonder that even a stolid, unimaginative man like Mr. Dobson had been frightened.
“Oh, but it is all nonsense to be so scared. I will open the door and have a look inside,” she whispered to herself. She was noticing that the shell of the house still appeared sound and good, and she was thinking that the place might be used as a dwelling again if only someone could be found brave enough to live there. She forced her unwilling feet close to the door, laid her hand on the rag with which Mose had fastened the door to the frame, then stood still for a moment to overcome the fierce trembling which had seized her.
A crash sounded overhead, followed by a long, crackling roll of thunder, and at the same moment the dog flung up its head, uttering a most doleful howl. With a sharp cry of fear Pam darted out to the middle of the wide green road, and stood shaking and shivering, for she was dreadfully afraid of thunder. Of choice she would have turned and fled back to Ripple as fast as she could go; but there was the cow. She had found it, and for very shame she could not go back and say that she had run home because she was afraid.
The sun was shining still, and from where she stood she could not see the storm coming up against the wind. The wonder seized her as to whether the crash of thunder had been sent to warn her from trying to enter that haunted ruin. Then she laughed aloud at her own folly in thinking such a thing, and set forward in pursuit of the cow once more. But she did not look back, and she was debating in her mind if there was not a cross-trail that would take her back to Ripple without her having to come back past the ruins.
The cow saw her coming, and moved gently on ahead, as if to prolong the morning’s stroll as far as possible.
“Tiresome thing!” cried Pam, who was shaken by her experience. Then she quickened her pace, for the cow had turned out of the straight wide road into a narrow avenue of mighty beech trees. The sun was certainly clouding over now, and the heat grew every moment more suffocating. She had left the great open space where the black spruce had been lumbered last winter, and had plunged into a dense forest of mighty beech trees. Here and there were dead trees and plentiful windfalls—that is, broken branches stripped off by the tempest in its fury.
Another crash louder than before. A queer sensation of being stunned came to Pam, and she leaned against a tree to recover her breath. How dark it had grown! The cow was out of sight, and the dog crouched at her feet, whimpering as if frightened also. Then came a quick, darting flash, and a cracking, riving noise, followed by a peal of thunder so mighty and overwhelming that Pam shrieked aloud in her terror, yet could not hear her own voice. Such a dead silence followed that her ears fairly ached. A big tree towering above its fellows had been riven from summit to base by lightning, and to her horror and dismay she saw little crackling flames and a thin haze of smoke creeping about its foot.
The forest was on fire—she could smell the burning! Everything she had ever heard or read of forest fires came back to her now, and she turned to flee. She had taken half a dozen flying steps backward to the comparative safety of the old tote road when she remembered what Don had said to her one day, to the effect that there would not be half so many fires in the forest if the people who saw them start were to take the trouble to beat them out.
Could she do it? Would she dare go back to the burning tree? She was running with the wind, and if the fire grew, as sometimes forest fires did grow, then soon the flames would overtake her, and her life would be forfeit. Better face the danger now, and stop it, if stopping was possible.
A moment she halted, then she fled back by the way she had come, just as a loud peal of thunder crashed above her head. The smoke was blinding. It was last year’s dead leaves that were burning, for the beech leaves only fell as the new growth pushed them off, except where they were exposed to the fury of the wind. She had a stick in her hand, and although she was nearly blinded by the smoke, she dashed into the circle of burning leaves and began beating out the fire. At first her efforts seemed only to make things worse; instead of extinguishing the fire she flicked the sparks here and there and started other fires. But she grew wiser as she went on, and did her beating in surer fashion. The smoke was certainly growing less, she was gaining on the fire, and she was ready to shout with triumph, when suddenly, without any warning, a blazing branch fell on the ground in front of her, so close that it was nothing short of marvellous it had not come right on her head. Looking up, she saw that the flames had been creeping up the side of the tree farthest away from where she was working, and, finding a rotten branch as inflammable as tinder, had burst into an active conflagration far above her reach.
Oh, the horror of it! Pam’s courage, shaken by the thunder and the fierce efforts she had made to stop the outbreak, gave way altogether now, and again she fled. The dog had disappeared long ago, she had seen nothing of the cow since the fire began, and she was alone with this great terror. Never in all her life had solitude frightened her so much. The fire on the ground had all been beaten out; but for the blazing branch above her head the danger would be nearly all over by now. There was another crash. Pam gave a sideway leap just in time to avoid another decayed branch that came crashing to the ground, throwing out showers of sparks and starting another fire of dead leaves where it fell. She could now hear the flames crackling above her, and she suddenly realized her own danger, for if a blazing branch fell upon her she must burn to death with no one to help her.
She fled then, not back to the old tote road, for the blazing tree was between her and the trail which led that way, but straight ahead by a trail she did not know. To her nothing mattered just then but to get as far away as possible from the burning tree.
The trail she took was a cross-trail, and five minutes later she emerged on a wider one. Glancing distractedly to right and left, she saw to her intense relief a man coming towards her. He was a stranger. The first glance showed her that. But he looked so much at home on the forest trail that she made up her mind he was of the wilderness places.
“A forest fire has started, can you help?” she shouted as she came nearer to him.
He looked at her and broke into a run. No need to tell a forest-dweller to hurry when a fire has started. It is seconds that count then, and a few of them may make all the difference between ruin and security.
“Where is it?” he shouted, and there was something in his voice that brought instant comfort to Pam, for she instinctively realized that here was a man who could grapple with the situation.
“This way!” She had turned, and was speeding back by the way she had come. She had forgotten the cow, she had lost sight of everything save the need of the moment.
A blast of hot air struck her as she neared the tree. But a moment later she saw to her great joy that the fire was still confined to the one tree that had been struck by lightning. The foliage of the forest was at present so green and tender that it would not readily flame. Scorched and blackened it might be, but it would have to be drier before it would burn easily. The danger lay in the bits of blazing branches that were falling from the stricken tree. There was a large amount of dead wood cumbered up with the living branches, and it was these that were blazing so furiously. The man she had met overtook Pam by the time she came in sight of the tree, and he rapidly summed up the situation, for he plainly understood all about it.
“Beech tree, struck by lightning; dead wood ablaze. Chief danger of spreading lies in the burning fragments that are dropping from the tree. We shall have to beat the fires out as they start. You have a stick; come along!” As he spoke the man sprang forward, and, using the stout walking-stick he carried, started to beat out the flame of a particularly vigorous little fire that had started in a great mass of dried bracken.
What a difference between the wrong way and the right! Pam watched him, fascinated by the way he was doing it, and quite unconscious that a very active blaze had just started within a few paces of her on the other side.
“Look out!” called the man sharply. “You will be on fire yourself in another moment!”
“Oh, oh!” Pam started forward and commenced hitting wildly, raising showers of sparks. Panic had seized her, fire was such a truly horrible thing, and she was almost at the end of her self-control.
“Slower, slower! Don’t be in such a hurry!” called the man, and then he left his own fire and came over to where Pam was trying to beat the fire so that it would go out. “Knock the other stuff down on the top of what is blazing; that smothers it, don’t you see?”
“Be careful!” shrieked Pam, looking up just in time to see that a great fragment of blazing wood was coming straight down on the man; then, because he did not look up and spring away himself, she rushed at him, pushing with so much vigour that, unable to save himself, he was bowled over like a ninepin. Just as he measured his length on the ground, the branch, blazing furiously, struck him on the boot and rolled harmlessly to one side.
“Thank you!” he said, as he picked himself up and again started on smothering the fire. “There is an old proverb among the Mic-macs to the effect that he who fights fire wants eyes all over him. I should have been in a sorry case if you had not come to my help just then.”
“It is horrible—horrible! Shall we ever be able to stop it?” Pam was very near despair, for it seemed to her that for every fire they beat out three more started. Her arms were aching so badly that she could hardly lift her stick. But she stuck to it because the man who was helping her kept shouting to her to come on, and worked with an amazing vigour himself which was tremendously infectious.
He paused a moment to look at the tree that was blazing far above their heads; then he gave a glance at the sky, dashed to one side to beat out a fresh fire, came back to help Pam with the one she was beating out, and said encouragingly:
“We shall do it, I fancy. The rain will begin inside of ten minutes, and if it comes down according to promise, the fire will be out in another ten minutes. We shall be as wet as if we had been wading, but you will have saved quite a big forest fire.”
“I?” cried Pam in astonishment. “Why, I could not keep it back; that was why I ran away. I was running away when I met you on the trail. Didn’t you know?”
“I guessed that was what you were doing, and small blame to you, for you might easily have lost your life, and no one any the wiser. But when there are two, the danger is so much less, because one can help the other, as you did me when you bowled me over.”
“It was dreadful of me, but there was no other way,” said Pam. Then she cried out in dismay, for the rain was suddenly flung upon the forest, coming down with such force and violence that her breath was nearly taken away, and she could only lean against a tree and gasp.
“Our work is done,” said the stranger, who seemed in no way disturbed by the downpour. “And as there is nothing more to do, we might as well be moving. Can you direct me to the house of Mrs. Sam Buckle?”
“I am not sure, but I think so. I don’t think I have been in this part before, but I have a general idea as to where the trail leads, and I think I can guide you,” said Pam, who was wondering more than ever who this stranger could be.
The Stranger’s Errand
“I could not think of letting you guide me anywhere in this downpour,” said the stranger, who had drawn Pam away from the fine tree against which she was leaning, telling her that it was not safe to shelter under a tree, especially a beech tree, until the storm was over. “If you will tell me which way to go I dare say that I can manage, or, if it is very complicated, perhaps you will let me go with you to the nearest shelter. This rain is going to keep on for a few hours, which will be a good thing for the farmers, but it is not worth while to keep more of it off the ground than we can help.”
“If I am right as to where we are, Mrs. Buckle’s house is the nearest place where we can shelter; and if I am not to lean against a tree, we might as well be going forward, for I don’t feel as if I can breathe with all this water dropping on my face.” Pam was gasping and choking as she turned into the trail which she thought led to Mrs. Buckle’s house, and she felt as if it would be a physical impossibility to reach shelter of any sort unless she could get her breath more easily. She thought of the ruined house on the old tote road, but decided that she would rather be out in the rain than forced to shelter there. Then, too, it was no farther to the house of Mrs. Buckle in one direction than it would be to go back to that place of ill repute.
“Keep your head down, then you will be able to breathe easier!” called out the stranger from the rear, and Pam decided that he was a very understanding sort, and well versed in forest lore likewise, so her curiosity grew and grew as she plodded along through the pouring rain, as wet through as if she had been sitting in the creek.
A turn in the trail, and she saw the angle of the little brown house. She had made no mistake, but had brought the stranger straight as the crow flies to the house he was seeking. They emerged from the forest and were crossing the field, when the door was flung open, and to her surprise Pam saw Jack on the threshold, peering at her and her companion as if he failed to recognize her.
“Just a nice little shower, isn’t it?” she called out, trying to make her voice sound as cheerful as possible, although she was feeling pretty bad by this time.
“Pam, is it you? Why, you are nearly drowned! What has happened to bring you out in such a downpour?” demanded Jack, darting out to help her along those last few steps.
“I went out to find the cow,” she explained; then, reaching the door, paused on the threshold, for the house was clean, and she could not bear to enter in such a condition.
At this moment Mrs. Buckle came upon the scene, and, bursting into a torrent of exclamations and questions, dragged Pam indoors to find dry clothes. Then she made Jack take the stranger away to the barn to change into a suit of her late husband’s. She talked all the time at her very fastest rate, and gave Pam no chance at all of explaining how she came to be in such a plight.
The rain stopped almost as suddenly as it began; the clouds were breaking and the sun was coming out when Pam emerged from Mrs. Buckle’s bedroom wearing an old washing frock of her hostess, which was much too short and much too broad for her. It was at this moment that Jack came hurrying in from the barn, crying excitedly:
“I say, Pam, why didn’t you say that it was Sophy’s policeman that you had in tow? My word, isn’t he a fine chap! Won’t she be pleased to see him, too!”
“Is that Mr. Lester?” cried Pam in amazement. “Why, I never dreamed of such a thing! Besides, he wanted to see Mrs. Buckle!”
“I suppose he can want to see whom he pleases,” retorted Jack. Then, as the stranger came along, looking grotesque and floppy clad in the deceased Sam Buckle’s best “blacks”, he was graceless enough to burst into a shout of laughter, in which he was joined by Pam, who simply could not help her merriment.
“It is not fair that you should laugh at me, Miss Walsh, for your own things are not a very good fit,” said George Lester, and then he shook hands with her, telling her that he was glad to see her, but that he had guessed who she was when they were putting out the fire.
“Why did you not tell me?” she said reproachfully. “If you had said who you were we would have struggled on as far as Ripple instead of coming here, for of course Sophy wants to see you.”
“But I had to see Mrs. Buckle, and it is business first, you know.” He spoke in a quick, firm tone, and, looking at him, Pam decided that certainly Sophy had made no mistake, and that here was a man of whom any girl might very reasonably feel proud.
“Jack and I will go across to the barn and wait while you do your business; then we will guide you to Ripple. Sophy is staying there with us, you know.” Pam spoke a little uncertainly, for after all she did not know how much Mr. Lester might know of the movements of his betrothed.
“My business is rather public than private—at least, so far as you and your brother are concerned. You had better stay and hear about it, then we will go to Ripple together. Sophy told me in her last letter that I should find her staying there.” Mr. Lester then turned from Pam to speak to Mrs. Buckle, and Pam sat down on the nearest chair, feeling tremendously curious as to the errand that had brought George Lester to this house before he made any attempt to see Sophy, from whom he had been parted for a year.
Amanda Higgins had gone home for the day to help her mother, so there were only Jack and Pam with Mrs. Buckle when George Lester began to state his errand.
“I think you used to know a man named Mose Paget?” He was looking at Mrs. Buckle as he spoke, and Pam felt a queer contraction of her heart as she told herself that Mose was dead; she was sure of it from the stranger’s manner of speaking.
“Yes, I knew him, but I’m sorry to say he was not very well worth knowing,” answered Mrs. Buckle. “He was downright good to my poor husband when he was dying, but the fellow played me rather a dirty trick afterwards in going off and leaving me in the lurch just at seeding time. I can’t think how I would have got through if it had not been for Miss Walsh and her brother. The way Mose treated that poor little half-brother of his was just shameful, too, so I’m not to say proud of his acquaintance.”
“The man is dead.” George Lester spoke in a quiet tone, but his voice sounded loud in the ears of Pam, who had difficulty in suppressing a sob. She was thinking of all the tragedies that lay behind the wasted days of Mose Paget, and of Galena’s spoiled life, for spoiled it had been to a certain extent.
Mrs. Buckle threw up her hands in surprise.
“Dead, is he? Well, the world isn’t much the poorer anyhow. Not but what he had his good streaks; but there! a man would be bad indeed if there was not some good in him.”
“Did you know that he had a quarrel with your husband?” asked George Lester, who had opened a bulky pocket-book, and was busy sorting papers.
“Why, no, Sam never told me anything about it,” replied Mrs. Buckle.
Pam gave a sudden start as a wonderful possibility flashed upon her mind. She went rather white, too, and there was a sound of surging waters in her ears, so that the voice of George Lester seemed to come to her from a great distance.
“Two nights before I left on furlough,” he was saying, “we had word brought us of a shooting affray at a saloon in the mining town at the bottom of Black Cow Pass. Things are pretty lively down there as a rule, and we have to go fully armed; we have to use our weapons, too, for mostly that man is safest who is first in with the shooting irons. On this night I went down with one other man, and we found that there had been a fight between two of the miners, and the one getting the worst of it had pulled out his revolver, shooting wildly. He did not hit the man with whom he had been fighting, but another man sitting in a far corner got the bullet in his chest. It was easy to see the poor fellow had been badly hit, and one of the boys started to ride for the doctor; fifteen miles he would have to ride, on a bad trail, and the rain coming down at a pour.
“We made the injured man as comfortable as we could, but we could not do much, for it was a hopeless case from the first. I stayed with him, for I knew most of what was best to be done. I took the medical course before I joined the Mounted Police, and that is such a help at times like this. I told the man that if he had anything to say he had better out with it while he had the power to talk. Then he told me his name was Mose Paget, that he came from this part of New Brunswick, and that there was something on his mind that must be told before he died.”
“Ah! I thought it was strange that he should leave here in such a hurry, it was such a trumped-up story!” said Mrs. Buckle. George Lester nodded, then went on with his story, only now he was turning over the papers and sorting out some sheets covered closely with writing.
“The man told me that he owned a strip of ground running by the side of land belonging to Sam Buckle, who had the creek frontage, but only a narrow strip about two hundred yards deep. This bit of land had always been coveted by Mose, who felt that he could develop the land that was his own so much better if he could front the creek. Often and often he had asked Sam Buckle to put a price on it, but he could never get a satisfactory reply.”
“Sam was just like that!” sighed Mrs. Buckle, dropping a tear to her husband’s memory, while she shook her head in disapproval of his unneighbourly ways.
Again George Lester nodded; but he never took his eyes from the papers, and when Mrs. Buckle ceased speaking, he took up the thread of his narrative once more.
“It came to the ears of Mose that Sam Buckle intended planting his strip of frontage with black spruce; the young trees had been already bargained for, and were to be planted before the frost came if the ground could be got ready. This was like a deathknell to the hopes of Mose, and he determined to make one more effort to get Sam to put a price on the land. He had made up his mind that if he could get hold of that piece of ground he would leave off his lazy ways and work hard to retrieve the past. He would have a saw-mill on the creek, and he knew that with the help of his young step-brother he would be able to make his venture pay in very quick time.
“He went in search of Sam Buckle directly he heard the rumour, and meant to have it out with him and to know for certain what he had to expect. When he got near to this house he saw Sam leaving the door and going off across the field in the direction of Ripple, so, without approaching the house, Mose started in pursuit, for he guessed that the other was going to a fence which had been a bone of contention between Sam Buckle and his neighbour for many years past. When he reached the place he found Sam Buckle in a towering rage. It appeared that Sam had been working on putting up the fence on the previous day, and that Wrack Peveril must have come at dawn and chopped it all down, and then gone away in such a hurry that he had left his axe lying on the ground.
“Mose started on his grievance right away, asking Sam if it was neighbourly, kind, or Christian to try to take the bread out of a man’s mouth. Sam answered that he treated his neighbours as his neighbours in their turn treated him; then he pointed to the demolished fence, and to Wrack’s axe lying on the ground, and he said that because of that last outrage from the old man at Ripple he would do as he chose about planting his frontage with black spruce. It was his right to do as he liked with his land, and no one should stop him. Then Mose seemed to go mad, and flying at Sam, the two fought as only madmen will. Of course Sam got the worst of it. Mose was the younger man; he was, too, the man with the grievance, and that lent power to his arms, while his passion gave him double strength. But it was not until Sam dropped apparently dead at his feet that he realized where his strength had led him. Then he was afraid and fled, for the curse of Cain was on him, and he believed that he had killed his fellow-man.”
“Oh, why did he not come for help straight away? We might have saved poor Sam if only help had been there in time. The Doctor said so!” wailed Mrs. Buckle, while Pam cried from sheer sympathy, and Jack sat staring out through the open door, making the most horrible grimaces at the landscape, as if the peaceful scene had in some way offended him.
“A good deal of misery would be averted if only people would own up when they have done wrong,” remarked George Lester. Then he went on again: “It was not until quite late in the evening that Mose chanced to hear that Sam Buckle was still alive. He had been making up his mind to leave the neighbourhood that night, for he felt that he was a murderer, and from thenceforth he must be a wanderer. If Sam was alive, however, then there was hope for him still. But Sam Buckle died, and, as of course you know, he died saying nothing but the last words that had been on his lips before he and Mose fought—it was his right to do what he would with his own. Mose would have run away then, but he realized that, Wrack Peveril having disappeared, it was safest for him to stay where he was, while the old man’s memory bore the blame.”
“If Wrack Peveril did not hurt my husband, what made him go away?” demanded Mrs. Buckle.
“That is what we want to know,” put in Pam, brushing away her tears, and looking at George as if she expected him to explain that mystery also.
“Ah, that is more than I can tell you,” he replied. “But doubtless time, which has cleared this mystery, will clear that one also. Of course I was not here to know anything about it. I had no acquaintance with the old man, but from what Sophy has told me in her letters I should incline to the belief either that he went away because he felt he did not dare stay where he was any longer, or else that something happened to him.”
“But he has been seen,” put in Pam in a jerky tone. She always hated to speak of this, because the circumstance seemed to write the old man down as a wrongdoer straight away. “A man met him at a lumber camp in the back country last winter, but Grandfather did not like being recognized.”
“What man was it?” asked George Lester quickly. It was plain he doubted the evidence, and Pam made haste to state her authority.
“He was a man named O’Brien, who used to work for Mr. Luke Dobson at Hunt’s Crossing, years ago. He told Mose Paget of this meeting with Grandfather, and he spoke of it also to Dr. Grierson, but he said he had told no one else, because he was afraid of putting the police on the track of Grandfather’s whereabouts.”
“If it was that O’Brien—Cassidy O’Brien, his full name was—then we shall never know more about it than we do now, for he, too, is dead,” said George, referring again to the papers in his hand. “Do you remember the night when someone entered the house at Ripple, and took the money from the desk?”
“Why, yes. I thought it was—I mean, I had believed it might be Grandfather come back for his own money, to which, of course, he had a perfect right.” Pam’s tone always became defiant when she spoke of her grandfather’s supposed return. How much she hated having to defend that coming back, no one but herself could know. She realized perfectly that it had been a dastardly thing to lure two unprotected girls from the shelter of a warm house on a night in midwinter, when the wolves were hunting in packs, and that no man worthy the name would have done it. But for the sake of her mother she would not alter her attitude, although it was impossible not to feel a little resentful about it all.
“It was not your grandfather who entered the house that night and forced open the desk where the money was kept, then walked off with all he could find. It was Mose Paget,” said George. Pam started up with a little cry of sheer amazement, for if Mose were the thief, how was it that the money had been found with those poor remains which the melting snows had revealed at the time of sugaring?
“How do you know?” she demanded, her heart beating furiously. Had she been misjudging the poor old man all this time? How good it would be to feel that she could respect him in her own private heart, and not have to continually fight down her secret mistrust of him!
“It is here, in the confession,” replied George, giving a shuffle to the papers he was holding; “but because they are mostly in shorthand, as I took the statement down, and I have not had time to transcribe them, I have told my story instead of writing it. Cassidy O’Brien came back to this part of the world to hunt out Mose Paget, who owed him money. He threatened that if Mose did not pay up he, O’Brien, would make known to the police a bit of the past of Mose that would not bear the light of day. The debt was not a big one, but it was more than Mose could pay. He had heard Mrs. Buckle pressing Miss Walsh to take the money to supply the wants of Wrack Peveril if the old man should come creeping back to his home in want. He had heard Miss Walsh say where she intended putting the money, so that her grandfather would be sure to find it if he came when she was not about. It is the opportunity that makes the thief, and because it was all made so plain for him, Mose determined to get that money from Ripple, and to clear his debt with it.
“He arranged to meet O’Brien at a certain place and to take the money to him. It was fifty dollars he owed the man, but there was not sufficient to pay all; so he kept some of the cash for himself, and gave the rest of the cash and the paper money to O’Brien, who vowed that he would go straight to the police and tell what he knew. Apparently he must have started, for the direction in which his remains were found would seem to point to his having tried to hit the trail to the police head-quarters. Either he sat down and was frozen to death, or else he was chased by wolves, and died that way; this we shall never know.
“Mose was amazed to find that his old enemy made no sign. But when the bones were found in the forest it seemed to him as if fate had been working for him, and henceforth he had nothing to fear. Then Jack Walsh came out from England, and suddenly the blow of which Mose had stood in dread fell from a most unexpected quarter. He was coming into the house to see Mrs. Buckle about some small matter connected with his work, when to his horror he saw Mrs. Buckle with Sam’s watch in her hand. He had taken away Sam’s watch and the money in the man’s pockets after their fight, just to make it look like a case of robbery and violence. Then when he had been so ill in St. John from the after-effect of the mauling he got from the lynx, he had sold the watch to pay the doctor.”
“My word!” cried Mrs. Buckle; “he was a bad lot to rob the man he had knocked about so badly!”
“He had got out of the straight, and when once a man gets on the slant, there is no saying what he will do,” replied George, who then went on to tell them how Mose had worked his way out west, tracking backwards and forwards in the going, in order to hide his trail. But the fugitive had known no rest and no peace, and had faced starvation and hardship, until at last he had come by his death-wound in a fray between two strangers, when the bullet meant for another man found its billet in his breast. It was, indeed, a sad and tragic story.
“There is one thing for which I shall be grateful to my dying day,” said Mrs. Buckle between her sobs, “and that is that I was never tempted to visit what I supposed Wrack Peveril had done to my poor man on his granddaughter. She has always been my dear friend, and though sometimes I’ll admit I felt a bit wicked about it all, I stuck to what my instincts told me, and I’m just more glad about it than I can say.”
“You have been truly good to me, and to Jack too!” murmured Pam. Then, the confession having come to an end, she declared that they must be going, for it was not fair to Sophy to keep Mr. Lester away any longer.
“I will come with you,” said Jack. “When I got to the Gittins’s place this morning, Nathan told me he could not get the machine until to-morrow, so, of course, we could not start haymaking; and as he did not need me, I came over to put in some time at Mrs. Buckle’s hoeing corn. Then the rain came and I bolted indoors for shelter, and that is how I happened to be loafing round, apparently doing nothing, in the middle of the day.”
Pam laughed. It was rich to hear Jack trying to explain that he was more industrious than he looked, for those who knew anything about it at all had no trouble in making up their minds as to his hard work, though he always seemed to think that he might do a bit more if only he were a little more energetic. But it was not Jack or his doings that interested her most just then. She was turning over and over in her mind the problem of her grandfather’s mysterious conduct. Now that the old man’s name was entirely cleared, his conduct in going away was more mysterious than ever. Why did he choose to leave home without any warning on the very day that she had arrived at Ripple? It was not even as if he had not known of her coming. To Pam, in her fit of depression, it looked as if he had gone away because of her. A bitter humiliation this! How she winced in her secret heart to think that perhaps it was her self-will in coming that had driven the old man from his home! It might be that his mind had become a little unhinged from his long years of living alone since her mother left him. Perhaps he had vowed that he would never live in a house again that had a woman in it. But how strange that he should drop everything and go like that!
George Lester was talking to Jack, as they went along the trail, of the solitudes of the far west, but Pam was silent, thinking and thinking of her grandfather, and making herself so acutely miserable over the mystery of his disappearance that she was perilously near the verge of tears.
Then Jack began to speculate on what Sophy would think of her betrothed husband tricked out in the go-to-meeting garments of the late Sam Buckle.
“It looks as if there ought to be some tucks let down in one direction, and some tucking put in in another direction,” said Jack, falling back a few steps to get a better view of what the new-comer looked like from the rear.
“Get in front of me and see how I look from there,” said George. “You don’t surely think I have come over two thousand miles for my wife to give her any chance of seeing a back view of me on the very first day of my arrival, do you? It is the front that matters. A smudge down my nose, or anything of that sort, might be serious; but I can sort of snap my fingers at my clothes, especially as they are big enough. If I couldn’t move without fear of a burst somewhere it would be a different matter, but you can’t deny that they are roomy.”
Jack hopped round to the front of the stranger, and walking backwards began a lively criticism from that point of view.
“Too much ankle, and, though you have a fairly big foot of your own, the late Sam Buckle had a bigger. Then you stick your arms too far through your sleeves; can’t you shrug them up a bit? That is better! Quite an inch of raw wrist has disappeared. I suppose you will do, and your face is the same whatever clothes you wear; but I can’t help being reminded of a man who bought an undertaking business, and the late proprietor’s clothes were thrown in to make the bargain a little better for him.”
“Oh, Jack, you are horrid!” cried Pam, who had to laugh in spite of her low spirits. “Mr. Lester, you do not look like a second-hand undertaker, and Sophy will be so glad to see you that she will not have a thought to spare for your clothes.”
“I hope she will be glad to see me,” said George simply, but there was something in his tone that made Pam say hurriedly, when they came in sight of the house at Ripple:
“There is the house, Mr. Lester, do you go right in and introduce yourself. Jack and I have some work to do in the barn, and we shall be in presently.”
“But——” began Jack, who for all his sharpness lacked the insight of Pam. Her intuition perhaps came from a sympathetic feeling of what she herself would like under the same circumstances.
“But me no buts, only come, as I tell you,” she said with a laugh, catching at his arm and giving it a playful squeeze. “Look, Jack, look, there is the cow, so she came back alone after all! We must milk her straight away. Oh, the silly creature, what a chase she has led us!”
“I guess it was the old dog that brought her home; and see, there lies the creature in the gap in the fence by which the cow broke out of the pasture!”
Jack and Pam turned abruptly away across the grass to where the cow was feeding as quietly as if she had never broken bounds. But George Lester went with a quick step towards the house. His weird garments of sombre black flapped and flopped with every step he took, and, as Jack had said, his arms and legs stuck ever so much too far through them; but nothing could detract from the real dignity of the man or hamper the splendid alertness of his movements.
As he drew near to the house the door flew open, and Sophy appeared on the threshold.
“George! Is it really you? I thought you were not coming until next week.”
“Have I come too soon?” he asked, as he covered the remaining distance in a few long strides.
“You could not do that,” she said, holding out her hands to him; and gathering them into a tight clasp he drew her over the threshold and shut the door.