CHAPTER XVIIIOld Betsy
Daft Davie lived with an aged grandmother in a small hut close to the edge of the bay. She was a very old woman. Her features were rugged and piercing; and she hated everything in the world, except, indeed, it were Davie, and on him she lavished very little love. It was thought among the Bushwhackers that she sometimes beat the daft child. Nobody knew for certain. The old woman gave little attention to his going or his coming. The death of her daughter and only child had crippled her reason. There was a path worn between the hut and the knoll beneath the walnut. Old Betsy’s life was linked to a tragedy just as her home was linked to an old, old grave by the path that was kept trodden both winter and summer.
The people feared Betsy, and respected her. It was said that she was versed in witchcraft and was in league with the devil. The Bushwhackers brought her meat and roots and such other necessities as she required, but she never thanked them. Perhaps they were doing it all for the child. In their rough way they pitied the boy; some of them even showed him a sort of animal affection. Old Betsy spoke to no one, unless it was to curse them, and she went abroad only when the sun was hidden, to gather the herbs she brewed into nauseous evil-smelling decoctions. Twice, only, in nine years, had she visited the homes of those who were kind to her.
Once Peeler lay yellow and swollen, dying from the bite of a snake. Betsy had hobbled into the house, her iron-gray hair hanging about her shoulders, wet with the falling rain. Without so much as a word she had forced a black liquid between the trapper’s set teeth and had gone before Bill Paisley or Big McTavish, who were with the dying man, could recover from their surprise. Peeler got well, and the Bushwhackers whispered among themselves in superstitious awe. They laid the miracle to old Betsy’s witchcraft. One other time a child lay ill with a high fever. Old Betsy visited the home of the child and all night long sat beside the little sufferer. The child grew well and strong. “Witchcraft,” whispered the Bushwhackers.
If Betsy was aware that she was looked upon as being in league with the Evil One, she gave no sign: it bothered her none whatever. She stayed within the dark confines of her hut, smoked Canada-Green tobacco in a clay pipe, and blasphemed to her heart’s content.
To Daft Davie she paid not the slightest attention. But often when the child lay sleeping she would bend over him, holding the feeble rush-light close to his face to scan it with knotted brows working, as she poured maledictions upon the cause of the ushering into this world of a crippled soul that had never quite learned rest. If she thought the power the child exercised over the birds and animals of the wood strange, she gave no evidence of it. She had become inured to having the squirrels and birds frisk and flutter about in the open spot before her door, playing fantastic games with the wee yellow-haired child, who rolled about upon the greensward and gibbered to them.
Once in the dusk, along the path to the grave, old Betsy found a ruffed grouse lying drunk and helpless. He had eaten too freely of the purple poke-berry. She picked the bird up and carried him to her hut, and there held him until he slept off his intoxication. He fought frantically to get away until Davie came in and, taking the grouse from her, talked to it in his own way, and it settled on his shoulder and hid its head beneath his long curls. From that time the old woman realised that the daft child was also one of the wild things of the wood.
The powdery white-frost lay like a blanket upon the unprotected glades of the wood and the yellow-drab leaves were being shaken and wafted earthward in the first swaying gust of morning wind, when Boy McTavish emerged from the timber and stood gazing toward the lone hut against the tangle of brown sumach. The setter shook himself and looked up into his master’s face.
“Joe,” said the boy in a whisper, “you stay here. I’m goin’ up, witch or no witch. It’s got to be done.”
The dog squatted down among the frost-blackened ferns, and Boy slowly crossed the open and knocked at the door. It opened quickly, and there stood the gaunt, bent woman, her gray hair falling down about her shoulders, her black eyes blazing with a fury.
“Betsy,” said Boy chokingly, “ma’s awful sick. We think she won’t live till noon. I just thought I’d tell you.”
He turned away as the door slammed with a bang, and with a sigh plunged into the hard timber. He walked quickly across two ridges, then, turning, followed a third down to the edge of the creek. There he halted.
“I can’t just make up my mind to do anythin’, Joe,” he said, bending and patting the dog. “I ought to build a turkey-trap or two, ’cause it’s the beech-nut season now, and the turkeys’ll be here in a day or so. But it does seem as though I ought to be home with her.”
He shouldered his rifle and moved slowly along. Where the ridge met the margin of the creek Boy paused again and glanced about him with narrowed eyes.
“Hah, this is a good place for a trap, Joe,” he said. “We’ll build one or two anyway. Then we’ll get back.”
He stood his rifle up against a tree and unbuckled his belt. Then he stopped and gazed at the dog blankly.
“Well, now, if we didn’t forget the ax,” he exclaimed. “Can’t build a turkey-trap without an ax, pup.”
“Here, I’ll lend you mine, Boy.”
Bill Paisley, a gun on his shoulder and a wild gobbler hanging from one hand, threw his ax down on the moss and grunted:
“Hickory, but I’m some tired. Had quite a job of it, I can tell you. Built four traps myself this mornin’. Better get yours all up to-day, Boy, ’cause the turkeys are takin’ to the hardwood fast. Seen eight big flock this mornin’. Only got one crack, though, ’cause I wanted to get my traps up. Why, what’s the matter, Boy, you look sort of used up?”
Boy looked away.
“You know the mornin’ after the bee, Bill, how when we got back home we found that ma had been took bad; and you know what we’ve been kind of expectin’ since?” he said catchingly. “Well, we think it’ll happen right soon.”
Paisley dropped his gun and tackled a dead tree with the ax.
“I made my logs about ten foot long,” he said; “reckon you’d best make yours same length.”
“Ten by six ought to be about right,” answered Boy.
Paisley chopped the tree through and paced off ten feet. He raised his ax, then let it gently down again.
“Boy,” he said, “it’s a hard thing. How soon?”
“We reckon sometime to-day.”
Paisley spit on his hands and resumed work.
“I’m goin’ to put up four pens for you, and what you better do is get back home. Don’t say anythin’ to me or I’ll knock your head off. Now, you strike the back trail and when I get the traps up I’ll be with you. Here, take this turkey.”
Boy picked up the turkey, then stood awkwardly brushing his face with his doeskin sleeve.
“Bill, I’m much obliged.”
Paisley snorted.
“I’m goin’ to put your mark on these pens—two narrow notches an’ one wide one, ain’t it?”
Boy nodded.
“Well, get along then and don’t stand there botherin’ me. I’m goin’ to build one up in—but never mind now. I’ll come back with you and show you. Get along.”
For an hour and a half after Boy had gone Paisley worked fast and furious. Building a turkey-trap was no easy job for one man, for a turkey-trap was practically a diminutive log-house with a narrow ground-door and a well-built roof of tough, heavy timbers, strong enough to hold a horse from within or a turkey-loving brown bear from without. When pen number one was finished, Paisley stood back and grinned commendingly.
“Purty good trap, that,” he said, speaking aloud, as was the habit of most Bushwhackers. “Don’t it beat all how foolish a turkey is, now! Just think of ’em follerin’ up a trail of beech-nuts or chaff and enterin’ that little log-house with their heads down and findin’ they’re inside, not seein’ the door they went in by at all.”
He laughed quietly and felt for his pipe.
“Just as soon as they find they’re trapped, up goes their heads and they never see nothin’ but the roof after that. The scareder a turkey is, the higher up goes its head. I’ll bet my winter’s tobaccer that this trap is good for five at least.”
He sat down on a log and lit his pipe.
“Well, well,” he sighed, “what’ll Boy and Big Mac do without that little mother? What’ll they do?”
He pulled viciously at his short pipe and then sprang up and gripped his ax again. Then he stood still, looking away through the woods with unseeing eyes.
“That’s it,” he said huskily. “What’llshedo?—that’s it.”
He tramped slowly onward and found another slope on a narrow ridge.
“I’ll build the other three; close in here,” he told himself, and started to work.
It was past noon before the traps were finished. Then Paisley, wiping his streaming brow with his hand, tramped slowly across toward McTavish’s. Above him was the old-gold of late autumn. Around him rang the cheerful voices of jay, high-holder, and cock-of-the-woods. Here and there a yellow splash of sunshine fell through the trees and painted golden patches upon the dead leaves. But Paisley saw or heard none of this. He kept repeating in his mind the question:
“What’ll she do?—what’ll little Gloss do?”
As Paisley was about to leave the timber for the path along the creek his acute ear caught the sound of a paddle dipping the water lightly, and peering-through the trees he saw two men in a skiff strike the near shore and glance stealthily about them.
Paisley’s eyes narrowed and his heavy jaw set.
“Teacher’s spendin’ his Saturday hollerday, I suppose,” he muttered. “Well, I’m waitin’ here to see just what he’s goin’ to do, and learn who that big man is with him.”
The men in the skiff stood up and, stepping ashore, pulled the boat up after them.
Bill Paisley’s muscles began to bunch beneath his deerskin jacket. It was with the greatest difficulty that he restrained himself from launching forth and giving the visitors a lesson. But he held himself in check, feeling that he might learn something of far more benefit to his friends and himself than this gratification of desire would prove.
The men were speaking in hushed accents, but the bushman’s ear caught every word. As he listened his big hands clenched and his blue eyes darkened.
“It won’t do to go up too close, I tell you, Watson,” Simpson was saying. “They’ve got a dog that would like to tear me to pieces; and as for that Boy, I’d rather face a nest of rattlesnakes any time than him.”
“Bah!” jeered the other; “scared, eh? You’ve got a lot of yellow in you, Simpson.”
“You needn’t talk,” said the school-teacher reddening. “It was worse than mere cowardice that got you into this pickle I’m trying to get you out of. And see here, I don’t want any more of your gibes or I’ll let you go to thunder and get out of the thing the best way you can.”
“Oh, say, now,” said the other with a forced laugh, “this won’t do, my boy. We mus’n’t quarrel, you and I. Remember, the Colonel is to give you your price if we can grab her to-night. We’ll have the horses across in Twin Elm swale yonder, and get her away before these idiots surmise anything.”
Simpson shuddered.
“See here, Watson,” he said, “I guess you understand I’m not doing this for money; all I want is the girl. If we pull this thing off to-night, I’m away and she goes with me.”
Watson laughed discomfitingly.
“Well, I don’t blame you for not wanting to stay here. It’s not very healthy for you. All we want you to do before you go is to help us get hold of the girl, and of course it’s understood she’s yours.”
The two turned up the path, and Paisley lay low and let them pass. Then he plunged into the wood. As the plotters warily turned the bend in the path they came unexpectedly upon Paisley, aimlessly sauntering in the opposite direction.
“You gents got a pass?” he asked, laying his rifle on the ground.
“No, sir,” replied Watson, “and what’s more, we don’t need one.”
“Oh, you don’t eh?—well, then, you had better both get.”
He pointed across the creek and Watson’s purple face flushed a deeper shade.
“Look here,” he commanded, “we’re your friends. We want to do you Bushwhackers a favor. Is this any way to treat us, sir?”
“We’re not needin’ friends,” returned Paisley. “Now, you chaps get while you’re able to walk.”
“We’ll go when we’re ready, not before,” growled the agent, putting himself on the defensive.
Paisley’s long right arm shot forward and Watson’s burly form executed a half somersault on the moss. Simpson sprang in, but Paisley’s hand gripped him by the windpipe.
“So you must learn your lesson, too, eh?” he said grimly, and sent the teacher to earth with a straight left from the shoulder.
Watson struggled erect with a groan.
“You’ve broken my arm,” he moaned. “You’ll pay for this. Nobody can assault Thomas W. O. Watson with impunity, sir. When Colonel Hallibut has you Bushwhackers cornered you will need me, and what if I should remember this—this assault, then?”
“We’re not afraid of Colonel Hallibut,” said Paisley quietly. “If Hallibut corners us we’ll be willin’ to stay in the corner. I say, when he corners us we’ll be willin’—understand? Now, you fellers better be gettin’ across to your own territory, ’cause I feel my muscle swellin’ again.”
Simpson struggled painfully from the ground and, followed by the bruised Watson, lost no time in obeying the order. Paisley watched them until the rushes on the farther, shore hid them from sight, then he picked up his rifle and walked on.
“The fools!” he muttered, “they don’t know that I’m on to their game. The fools! to think they could ever steal Gloss away like that. I’ve seen that Watson feller’s face before somewhere, but I can’t just say where. I reckon he won’t ever forget old Bill Paisley, though. No, I mus’n’t say nothin’ to Boy; not yet. Guess he’s most too hot-headed to meet them devils at their own game.”
As he rounded the bend in the path there came the shuffle of a footstep to his ear, and the bent form of an old woman passed him. Her hair was flying in the breeze, her pitted face worked, and her black orbs gleamed.
“Old Betsy, as sure as I’m born!” exclaimed Paisley. “It’s the first time I ever seen her out durin’ daylight. She sure come from Mac’s way, too. Wonder what’s up. Guess I’ll go and see.”
Half an hour later he entered McTavish’s door. Boy was seated by the table, and he leaped up when Bill entered.
“She’s better, a lot better, Bill,” he cried in answer to the big man’s look. “Old Betsy was here, Bill, and she gave ma something to drink, and——”
His voice faltered, and he turned toward Gloss, who had come from the bedroom.
“You tell Bill all about it,” he said, and walked out.
Paisley looked at the girl and mentally formed the same words that Boy had spoken not so long ago:
“She ain’t a girl no more; she’s a woman now.”
Gloss was dressed in a homespun skirt and a jacket of raw deerskin, but it was the wild beauty of her face with its glorious coloring and great fawn-like eyes that Paisley saw. Remembering what he had so lately heard, a great anger swept through the man. The girl noticed his working face, and she came over to him.
“Bill,” she said, “I’ve known you ever since I can remember, and I never saw your eyes look like they do now. Are you sick, Bill?”
“Glossie,” said Paisley, “I want to tell you somethin’. You’re not to go outside this here house until I say you can. You know old Bill, and he knows somethin’ you don’t know. You promise me right now that you won’t go out, Glossie.”
The girl looked at him quickly, then slowly removed her cap.
“Bill,” said she, “I sure will do whatever you say, and ask no questions. I know you so well, Bill—and I won’t go out until you say. I—I—am some scared——”
She caught her breath and clinched her slender hands, her color rising.
“Girl,” said Bill slowly, “you ain’t got nothin’ to be scared over; but don’t you forget you’ve promised me. Now, Glossie, tell me about the ma.”
“Why, Bill,” cried the girl, “it was all so unexpected. Auntie was awful sick. We all thought she was—was——”
“I know; Boy told me.”
“And this mornin’, just when I was clearin’ the breakfast dishes, who should walk in but old Betsy. She didn’t look at me, but went right on in where Granny and auntie were. Granny says she kept mutterin’, and she heard her say somethin’ about Boy findin’ Daft Davie one time when he was lost and bringin’ him home. And all the time she was pourin’ some stuff from a bottle into a cup. Granny says it was the spell she was sayin’. Anyway, she made auntie take some of the stuff, and, Bill, she has been asleep and restin’ fine ever since.”
Paisley got up from his chair and took the girl’s face between his hands.
“Glossie,” he said, patting her cheeks, “your auntie is goin’ to get well. I ain’t carin’ a darn whether it is witchcraft or no witchcraft. Guess I better go outside and hunt up Boy and Mac, ’cause I’m goin’ to holler some soon. Now, don’t you forget your promise, Gloss.”
Paisley stepped out into the lengthening shadows of the late afternoon. Down in the far end of the potato-patch he saw Big McTavish and Boy working. Beside them stood Daft Davie, his inseparable companion, the coon, in his arms. As he watched them he saw the big man bend and pat the child’s yellow hair, then point toward the house. But Davie shook his head and pointed eastward.
“He’s tellin’ Mac in his way what maybe I ought to tell him in mine,” thought Paisley. “But I won’t; anyway, not yet a while.”
CHAPTER XIXOf the Tribe of Broadcrook
Mr. Smythe stood with, his back to the fireplace, his long arms behind his back, with sharp elbows almost touching, and claw-like hands clasped together. The evenings were getting chill. Already the first snows had come. The trees were bare and creaked in the wind, and the skies were lead-colored and cold. In the early dusk the two-dozen gray shacks of Bridgetown looked grayer and lonelier than ever. Mr. Smythe glanced at the long clock near the door and then out of the smoky window, his pointed nose fairly sniffing the wind and his big ears fairly pointed forward in a listening attitude. The long figure of a man, half reclining on a pile of furs at the end of the counter, stirred, and the substance of a quid of black tobacco hissed into the hickory coals, passing perilously close to the clasped hands of Bridgetown’s general merchant. Mr. Smythe smiled with his thin lips and looked murder with his little weak eyes. Then he coughed.
“If you wish to make Bushwhackers’ Place to-night,” he said, addressing his tardy visitor, “you’d better be starting out on your way.”
No response from the man on the furs, except another hiss in the coals.
“Looks as though we’d have a big snowstorm,” suggested Smythe.
“Snow or rain, light’in’ or pitch dark, who’s carin’?” retorted the other.
“It’s not a nice sort of trip you have before you, that’s all.”
“It’s me as has to take it, I guess, and I’m not goin’ to move an inch till you give me an extra pound of powder and enough lead for a hundred bullets. You hear me?”
“I have paid you all your furs are worth; you know I have.”
“Aye, and made me pay ten times too much for what I got here durin’ the summer. Come now, Smythe, wrap up the powder and give me the package of lead-leaf, and I’ll be makin’ tracks.”
Broadcrook arose and slouched forward. He was dressed in a heavy shirt of red wool and homespun trousers of gray. One ponderous hand held a long rifle and a coat of wolf-skin was slung across a muscular arm. Smythe eyed him speculatively.
“Broadcrook,” he said suavely, “you shall have it. I wouldn’t do it for anybody else.”
Broadcrook scratched his short-cropped head perplexedly. Acuteness was not one of his characteristics. He laid Smythe’s eagerness to oblige him to fear, and Broadcrook was not so many generations removed from the Cave Dwellers that he could not understand how this might well be. By nature he was a bully, one of a large family of bullies, whose forefathers had been bullies. Accordingly he stretched his person about four inches higher and expectorated on a pair of beaded moccasins hanging from the counter.
“Make it two pound o’ powder an’ two sheafs o’ lead,” he demanded.
Smythe, who had taken the powder-can from the shelf, put it back in its place. Then he leaned over the counter and gazed at the Bushwhacker through the twilight gloom.
“I guess I’ve changed my mind. I won’t give you an ounce of either,” he said. “And I’m going to charge you up with those moccasins. You’ve spoiled them. You can’t bluff me, Broadcrook—you, nor any of your six-foot brothers, nor your old sinner of a father. You’re all a bad lot. Now, you get out of my store.”
Broadcrook’s six-foot-two went down to five-foot-ten at a jump, and his jaw dropped as though he had been struck.
“I didn’t mean to sp’ile nothin’,” he grumbled. “I’m willin’ to take what you agreed to give.”
Smythe deliberately lit a couple of candles, one of which he took over and placed in the window. Then he came from around the counter and stood in his former attitude, his nose pointing forward and his ears cocked for an expected sound. After a while he turned toward the trapper.
“Broadcrook,” he said, “I’ve been pretty decent with you and your family, and all the thanks I ever got for it was in being dumped out of my skiff last fall by one of your murderous tribe. It wasn’t his fault that I wasn’t drowned.”
Broadcrook seated himself on a keg.
“That war Hank,” he nodded. “Me an’ Hank hasn’t spoke for nigh eight year.”
“Humph, you don’t say! Well, Hank, as you call him, wants to keep out of my way. I’ve got a good Christian spirit, Broadcrook, but a nasty disposition at times. The next time Hank tries to mix in with me it’s going to be right here.”
“Thar’s not much size to you to be callin’ my draw the way you’ve been doin’,” murmured Broadcrook. “I reckoned as you’d a gun—one o’ them pistol kind—in your fist when you was tellin’ it to me a time ago. I reckon I was right, too.”
“Dear friend,” smirked Smythe, “this is a wild country, and it behooves us all to protect our fragile and oft too-erring bodies from coming into violent contact with some more solid substance; but I held no gun, no pistol in my hand when I told you about yourself and relatives just now. The fact is, I fear firearms; I hate guns. I never fired off a gun in my life. Nevertheless, I will not say that I was wholly unprepared, should you have shown a tendency to repudiate my statements. I’ll show you what I mean. Sambo!” he called softly, “open the door, please.”
The door of the inner room opened, and there stood Sam, the darkey, with a cocked rifle in his hands.
“My faithful servitor and aide-de-camp, Mr. Broadcrook,” bowed Smythe.
“Did you have me covered a while ago?” asked Broadcrook sheepishly, addressing the negro.
“This here,” nodded Sambo, tapping the brass sight of the gun, “was sure right on a line wif dat bone button on your shirt.”
“I guess I’ll be goin’,” said Broadcrook hurriedly.
“Wait a minute,” advised Smythe. “Now, Broadcrook, I’m willing to play very decent by you providing you will answer me a few questions and answer them truthfully. All sin is contamination in my eyes; but lying,” Mr. Smythe raised his long hands piously, “—I do detest a liar.”
“Do you mean as you’ll gimme th’ powder an’ th’ lead, providin’ I answer you them questions?” asked Broadcrook eagerly.
“Yes, I will do that,” replied Smythe. “What I am anxious to secure is some information of the people among whom you live. Number of families in that lawless section, and all about the bunch. One or two I know already. I know your family some—that Hank fellow and the one you call Abe. Any more? What’s your first name—Joseph, ain’t it?”
“Not much, it ain’t. It’s Amos. Then I’ve got three more brothers. Tom, meanest skunk in the woods, Tom is. Hank he’s not much better’n Tom. And Alex, who claims as he’ll do fer me some day.”
“Nice loving sort of family, eh, Sambo?” sneered Smythe. “How about the old man, the father?”
“Dad’s all right in some ways, but I ain’t got no sort o’ use for him either,” answered Broadcrook. “Fact is, none of us has much use for the others. We ain’t built that way. Hank shot my eye out with a bow an’ arrer when we was kids and playin’ bear hunt, and we treed Alex and cut the tree down and broke both his legs once. Jest in fun, o’ course; but he’s had it in for us ever since, jest for that.”
“And what did you do to Tom? Surely he has not escaped unscathed, has he?”
“Wall, hardly. Tom he got drowned once by bein’ pushed off a log inter the creek. If that fool of a Declute hadn’t o’ happened along Tom would o’ stayed drowned, too.”
“Know a man by the name of McTavish down there, I suppose?”
“Sure, I know him, and I know that boy o’ his, too. I hate him, and he keeps out of my way, ’cause he’s scared of me.”
“Liar,” breathed Smythe.
He stood gazing into the fire for some time. At last he turned and fixed his eyes on Broadcrook’s face.
“Never heard tell of an Indian down in that place by the name of Noah Sturgeon, did you?” he asked.
“Sure, I know him,” answered the other.
“Know him?” Mr. Smythe’s words were like a pistol shot. “Knewhim, you mean,” he cried, leaning forward.
“I say Iknowshim, and I guess I understand what I’m talkin’ about.”
“But the Noah Sturgeon I mean can’t be alive now. He was an old man twenty years ago. Must be a son of his you know, Amos.”
“Son nothin’. I tells you, mister, it’s old Noah hisself as I knows. O’ course he’s old—must be nigh a hundred. But he’s spry yet. Often comes over to Big McTavish’s, he does. Lives on the P’int ’cross the bay.”
Smythe drew forward a stool and sat down with his chin in his hands. He was disturbed in his meditations by Broadcrook’s standing up.
“Guess I’d better be trampin’,” said that gentleman.
“Wait a moment,” said Smythe, “I’m going to give you two pounds of good powder and a couple of sheafs of lead. If you will come back here, say, next Saturday, I’ll give you more—much more. But you must do something for me, will you?”
“Name it, and I’ll do it,” promised the delighted trapper.
Smythe glanced fearfully toward the door, and, tiptoeing across to it, shut Sambo in the other room, then bending he whispered something in Broadcrook’s ear. Whatever it was it seemed to astound and not altogether displease the burly fellow. His red face screwed itself up in a horrible grimace and he guffawed loudly.
“Course, if y’ gimme the three hundred, I’ll send old Noah somewheres,” he wheezed.
“Broadcrook,” said Smythe sternly, “don’t mistake my meaning. I know there is danger of accident to the aged and frail, and that life’s ruddy current flows but sluggishly in the veins of old men; but, my dear Broadcrook, no violence—no violence, remember. However, when I am sure, without a doubt, that Noah has departed—ahem!—to some remote country for good, why, the money is yours. You see he won’t let the other Indians sell me their furs, but makes them carry them to St. Thomas.”
Broadcrook chuckled and poked Mr. Smythe in the short ribs so forcefully and playfully that the storekeeper’s light eyes filled with tears and his breath came and went in gasps.
“Oh, but you’re a cracker,” cried the Bushwhacker, “a reg’lar right-down smart ’un. No wonder widder Ross o’ Totherside thinks you the best man as ever lived.”
Mr. Smythe raised his eyebrows, not sure whether to receive this remark as a compliment or otherwise. Being a keen businessman, however, he allowed it to go on the credit side of his conceit account, and proved that he appreciated the other’s cunning of conception by reaching a black bottle across the counter.
Amos laid his rifle down, and with a leer proceeded to take a long pull at the bottle, after which he corked it and put it in his pocket.
Mr. Smythe watched him speculatively. He was quite willing that Broadcrook should have the bottle, under the circumstances.
“I hates all them Bushwhackers, I do,” grated Broadcrook. “I be one of ’em myself, but I hates ’em jest the same. I hates Big McTavish, ’cause he threatened to break my back one time for mistakin’ some of his traps for mine. I hates Declute ’cause he gets the biggest bucks every season. And I hates Paisley ’cause he hangs around that Boy McTavish so much. They be allars together, and they’re a hard pair to handle, I can tell you, specially Paisley.”
“Do you know Colonel Hallibut?” asked Smythe. He was looking out of the dingy window again, and his ears were cocked.
“Yes, I know him, an’ I’m goin’ to get even with him, too. He let his dogs tree me on the P’int last fall. They kept me there all night. Some day I’ll show him that Amos Broadcrook kin remember.”
Smythe turned quickly.
“His schooner is going to be in the bay very soon,” he said softly, “and if that schooner should happen to burn,” he suggested, speaking as though to himself, “it would make Hallibut sure of one thing—that the Bushwhackers had fired the boat to get even with him for spoiling their trapping on Lee Creek.”
Amos was tipsy, but not so tipsy that he could not catch a hidden meaning in the words. He turned on Smythe.
“Now,” he snarled, “if you want the boat burned and you want me to do it, how much’ll you pay forthatjob? Quick, answer up.”
Mr. Smythe raised his thin hands.
“My dear Broadcrook,” he smiled, “you talk like a crazy man. Colonel Hallibut is a friend of mine; a fast friend. I advised him not to send his schooner into Lee Creek. He laughed at me and offered to wager me three hundred dollars that no harm could possibly come to his boat. In a moment of indiscretion I took his wager.”
Mr. Smythe rubbed his hands softly together and raised his eyes ceilingward.
“I know I did wrong,” he went on; “I know a Christian man should not bet. But I wished Colonel Hallibut to know that I was greatly concerned in the welfare of him and his.”
He sighed, and glanced at Amos.
“I would not touch money won in a wager; no, sir. And to prove it to you, Amos, my friend, I will pay you over the money, providing my prophecy be fulfilled,—which, let us hope, it may not,” he added devoutly.
Broadcrook lurched, and fixed his good eye on Smythe’s pensive face, then, after another drink from the bottle, he picked up his rifle and made for the door. With his hand on the latch he turned.
“You’ll be expectin’ news, then?”
“Exactly,” smiled the storekeeper.
“And you’ll be on the lookout for smoke?”
“I’ll not be surprised to see smoke,” returned Smythe.
Broadcrook passed outside, and when his uncertain steps had died in the night Smythe leaned against a pile of furs and laughed voicelessly.
A little later his pricked-up ears caught the sound he was expecting. He tongued his lips and rubbed his hands delightedly. The door opened and Watson pounded in. A light cloak of snow covered him from head to foot.
“Who was that man I just met?” were his first words.
“That, my dear Watson, is the very man we’ve been looking for,” smiled Smythe.
“For heaven’s sake, drop that hypocritical manner of yours and be yourself,” growled Watson, throwing off his wraps and sinking into a chair. “You sicken me, Smythe; absolutely sicken me.”
Watson readjusted the bandage across his eye and stirred in his seat with a groan. Smythe came forward with a bottle and a glass.
“Take that stuff away,” cried Watson. “Look here, Smythe, we’re up against a piece of work that requires cool heads. No more whiskey for me. If I hadn’t been half drunk the other day, you can gamble we wouldn’t have made a mess of things and got half killed by that big Bushwhacker the way we did. And to think,” he groaned, “that all the while you were sitting by the fire with widow Ross eating nuts, roasting your shins, and talking religion. You’ve a good deal to answer for. Between the din of Hallibut’s mill and the widow’s psalm-singing, the noise down there is awful. Well, I’ve found out this much from the people on Totherside. Jake, the engineer, tells me that the Bushwhackers are getting bitter towards Hallibut. The fools think he wants to drive them off their property. He tells me, also, that the Colonel intends sending his schooner around in the Eau for his lumber. I guess we’re left all way round.”
Smythe set the bottle on the counter and nodded.
“Yes,” he said dryly.
“Yes,” mimicked the other with an oath. “Is that all you have to say about it, then? What am I to tell Hallibut, supposing he demands his money back?”
“My dear Watson,” smirked Smythe, “don’t worry about it. I have—hem! something to say.”
“Well, what is it? Does it amount to anything? Don’t shake your harpy head off. What is it?”
“Not much, my dear Watson; not much. Simply this: Hallibut’s schooner might burn, old Injun Noah might go away to the States, and while the Bushwhackers and Hallibut engage in a fight, somebody else might get possession of the timber. Don’t you see that they will be so frightened of his taking their deeds from them by force that they will be glad to place those papers in our hands for safe-keeping?”
“I hope so, Smythe, I hope so,” said the other man; “but something tells me we’ll get what’s coming to us yet.”
“Dear Watson, you are weary and fanciful,” smiled Smythe. “Religion would make your conscience more easy. It must be a terrible thing to have a conscience such as yours, my friend.”
Smythe meant that, every word of it.
Watson looked at him, then reached for the bottle.
“I’ve changed my mind,” he laughed. “I don’t want to drink, but I have to in order to forget—not my sins, but the sight of your hypocritical face.”
“Remember there is business to talk over after supper,” warned Smythe, “and there is our report to Colonel Hallibut to frame up, which I, as the surviving party, must reluctantly present in person.”
He reached over with a claw and gripped the bottle.
“After we have arranged a certain campaign of action,” he smirked, “you may get as drunk as you please. Until then, my dear Watson, you must stay on the anxious seat.”
And leaving the agent huddled before the fireplace he passed into the other room to awaken the sleeping Sambo.
CHAPTER XXMr. Smythe Visits the Colonel
Next morning, before daybreak, Mr. Smythe started for St. Thomas. He reached the settlement just as Colonel Hallibut, with brows puckered into a scowl, came riding slowly up the brown path through the scattered timber of the broken land. The Colonel had faced the north winds from the lake and the veins in his face lay blue beneath his cheeks like tiny frozen water-runs. As he turned to the right of the path toward his home Smythe’s white horse rounded a distant copse. The rider was humming a hymn and his head was bent piously on his breast. The Colonel reined up and waited for him, quite aware that Smythe’s hawk-like eyes had caught sight of him fully as soon as he had caught sight of Smythe.
“Humph,” mused Hallibut, “what’s in the wind now, I wonder? Nothing good brings that man here this day.”
“Well, Smythe,” he called, “it’s easy to see that you couldn’t hire the old mare this morning, otherwise you’d have walked over. What’s up?”
“Why, bless my soul!” exclaimed the dealer, sitting erect in his saddle with a start, “if it isn’t the dear Colonel himself. Good-morning, sir,” he smiled, lifting his old coon-skin cap.
Hallibut grinned broadly.
“Where’s Watson?” he asked.
Smythe rolled his light eyes sorrowfully.
“He patiently awaits his reward, sir. He has been down trying to whack some sense into those ungodly Bushwhackers, Colonel, and now lies at the point of death in my house.”
“Dick,” cried Hallibut, “take these horses, and see that Smythe’s mare gets all the oats she can eat. Lord knows, she looks as though she could stand a good feed.”
He took Smythe by the narrow shoulders and pushed him into the house.
“You look rather done up,” he said, “sit up to the table and I’ll have Rachel get you up a snack. Will you have a drink of anything?”
“I have a slight cold that might be remedied by a touch of brandy,” returned Smythe. “This is the first time I have had the honor of being in your pleasant and magnificent home, my dear Colonel.”
He held the glass his host handed him to his nose and glanced about the room furtively.
“There’s nothing here for you to look frightened about,” laughed the Colonel. “Hang it all, Smythe, can’t you ever look pleasant? Your eyes have a cast like a nesting grebe’s. What’s the matter?”
Smythe gave a little shiver and drank his brandy at a gulp. The Colonel, watching him speculatively, shoved the bottle across the table with: “Help yourself when you want more.”
“Thanks,” replied his visitor, stretching out his long blue hands toward the glowing fire.
Hallibut lit a pipe and smoked silently. At last he turned impatiently toward Smythe.
“Well, what’s it all about?” he inquired.
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of grievous and disappointing news to you, sir,” sighed Smythe. “Esau refuses to sell his birthright.”
“What the——” commenced the Colonel, and Smythe started as though he expected something stronger than an expletive.
“I mean, sir, the lawless Bushwhackers refuse to sell their timber,” he explained quickly. “They nearly killed Mr. Watson the other night for merely venturing on their property. In fact, a man assaulted him and Simpson, the school-teacher, so brutally, that it is only a matter of days, sir, before Watson receives the final summons, I fear.”
Mr. Smythe glanced at his listener and fortified his pious soul against the abuse he expected to hear poured out upon the Bushwhackers by taking another drink. To his surprise and no small disappointment the Colonel smoked on without a word.
A snaky gleam stole into the dealer’s little eyes and he sat huddled up, waiting for the big man to say something. The Colonel turned slowly and leaned across the arm of his chair toward his visitor.
“What was Watson doing on Bushwhackers’ Place at night? And what was that school-teacher doing with him? And how does it come about that one man is able to brutally assault two good-sized men like those two, eh?” he asked, his bushy brows meeting in a scowl.
“They were simply following the directions laid out by yourself, sir,” explained Smythe, inclining his head. “The Bushwhacker struck them from behind with a heavy club. He was not alone, sir. Four other men, including that Hercules of a Big McTavish, helped him, I understand.”
“Watson says that, does he?”
“He does, and a man by the name of Broadcrook, who was an eye-witness to the attempted murder, tells the same story, sir.”
“Don’t seem at all reasonable to me that those Bushwhackers would half do anything, even a murder, if they set about it,” mused the Colonel. “You say Watson was over trying to get them to come to terms about the timber, and they clubbed him over the head?”
“Precisely, both him and Mr. Simpson.”
“It’s almost too bad they didn’t finish them,” said Hallibut. “Something tells me that Watson has given us only his side of this story. Guess I’d better get the other side from the Bushwhackers.”
Smythe raised his skeleton hands.
“My dear Colonel, it’s as much as your life’s worth to set foot on their property,” he warned. “They swear they’ll shoot you on sight, sir.”
“What?” Colonel Hallibut sprang up and strode across to where Smythe sat cowering. “Who told you that?” he shouted.
“Why—why——” commenced Smythe, then he wriggled upright and tongued his dry lips. “—Broadcrook told me for one,” he finished.
Hallibut paced to and fro across the wide room. The veins in his neck were throbbing, and Smythe could see his fingers twitching. Finally, the big man stopped directly in front of his visitor.
“If you heard that,” he said quietly, “and you’ve come over here to warn me, it’s mighty good of you, Smythe. I’m sorry if I can’t only just about half believe you—but that’s your fault. I can’t help knowing you’re a liar, Smythe, any more than you can help being one. Still, I’m inclined to believe that those Bushwhackers would put me away if they got the chance. They’ve got a law of their own, I know, and I also know that they don’t like me any too well. I don’t know why; I never did them any harm. I wanted that timber, of course, and would have paid them well for it. I’ve learned, though, that they all have enough natural poetry in their souls to make them sentimental fanatics as far as their bushland is concerned, and I’d made up my mind to let them and their timber go to thunder. Now, after what they’ve lately said, I guess I’ll show them a thing or two.”
“But you won’t take your life in your hands by going among those murderous men, sir?” asked Smythe fearfully.
“Well, now, I’m not saying justwhatI’ll do. One thing is sure, I’m too much of an Englishman to be scared out by a Bushwhacker, and I do like a mix-up, I’ll confess. Besides, Smythe, it won’t do to let them think I’m scared. My life would always be in jeopardy if they thought that.”
“If you’ll only be patient, sir, we’ll get that timber for you yet,” promised Smythe.
“No,” returned Hallibut, “I’ve given up the idea of ever securing the timber. Come to think of it, I was a hog to ever want to put my finger in their pie. I like those wild devils a lot better since I’ve found they have the sand to stand up for their own. If your village of Bridgetown had some of the Bushwhacker manhood you’d have a city there some day, Smythe.”
“God forbid,” breathed Mr. Smythe devoutly.
“And where did you say Watson was now?” asked the Colonel abruptly.
“He is now at my poor abode,” answered Mr. Smythe plaintively. “He is in pretty bad shape. They must have beaten him unmercifully. He begged that I give you this note, sir.”
Mr. Smythe drew from his pocket a square piece of paper and handed it to the Colonel. The big man placed his glasses on his nose and read the note aloud.