CHAPTER XVWar Tactics
Paisley paddled slowly across the creek, drew his skiff into the willow bushes, and picking up his rifle, walked along the edge of the creek until he reached the bay. It slept gray and cold beneath the moon, and all about its tranquil waters a ragged tree-frame stood spiral-like and shadowy—a disheveled cloud in an open blotch of sky. Paisley gazed across the bay, his face fixed and his whole attitude one of protest.
“They want to take this away from us,” he mused,”—all this. And the d—— villains want to stealheraway from all this. Well, let them try.”
He turned, lifting his head to catch the low night-calls that floated from the far-away corridors of the deep wood. The forest was breathing its nocturnal song—a hushed chant, interspersed with the notes of the wild things that roamed and fed and voiced their gladness after the manner of their kind. The shrill bark of a fox sounded from nether swales, and away beyond a lynx wailed sadly like a lost child. A little way into the thicket a brood of partridges huddled, peeping with plaintive voices.
“I guess they can’t understand very well what all this means to us.”
Paisley turned and strode on through the scanty wood-fringe along the Eau shore until he came to an open spot of nearly two acres. A dim light twinkled from the window of a log-house, and a couple of dogs came forward with fierce yappings which changed to whines of welcome as they recognized the visitor. The door of the house flew open, and a woman, whose frame filled the doorway completely, sent a scolding command out to the dogs.
“David and Goliath,” she commanded, “come in here t’ once er I’ll break your no-account backs with this poker.”
“Night, Mrs. Declute,” called Paisley. “Ander in?”
“Ander,” rasped the woman, “be you hum? ’Cause if you be, Bill Paisley wants t’ know it.”
The huge form was nudged aside and Declute’s grinning face peered out into the night.
“Come right on in, Bill,” invited the lord and master. An ironwood pole leaned against the house, and on it hung a splendid specimen of buck newly killed. On the floor of the house lay a smaller deer already skinned, and now being dissected by the trapper. Three children of various sizes sat about the carcass, each munching a piece of corncake from a chubby fist.
“How’s the babies, marm?” asked Paisley, carefully stepping through and over the wide-eyed little Declutes and sitting down on a stool near the fireplace. “Ander, two deer in an afternoon ain’t such bad luck, eh?”
“I hit another,” cried Ander, “bigger’n th’ one outside. Shot about an inch too high, though. But I trailed him down an’ I’ll get him in th’ mornin’. Might have killed a doe, too. Had a good chance, but I didn’t take it.”
“Zaccheus has got a tetch of p’isin-ivy,” said the woman. “That’s what makes him squirm so uneasy like. I’m treatin’ it with sassafras ’ile an’ potash. How’ve you been yourself, Bill?”
“Feedin’ and sleepin’ like a babe, thankee,” replied Paisley. “What I dropped round for was to find out just what you folks think of the way them town-fellers are actin’. Did Hallibut or Watson make you any offer for your timber?”
“Wall, yes, they did,” answered Ander slowly. “Offered me three hundred dollars for the big stuff on my place only a day or two ago. Said that you and McTavish and Peeler and most of the others had taken an offer they made you for yours, and I said t’ the feller, ‘If th’ other chaps see it that way I guess I’ll see it that way, too.’ I’m to take my deed t’ Bridgetown when I tote these furs over next Saturday, an’ they’re goin’ to give me another deed and the money.”
“Who did you see?” asked Paisley.
“That storekeeper Smythe. He says, says he, ‘The money’ll be ready fer you when you come, an’,’ says he, ‘don’t tell any o’ your neebors, ’cause we’re payin’ you more’n we are them, an’ they won’t like it.’ ”
“I don’t take t’ this way they have of wantin’ Ander t’ keep dark,” said the woman. “I ain’t takin’ kind like t’ lettin’ the timber go anyway. We don’t really need that money. Ander he makes enough outin trappin’ and shootin’ fer our wants, and if they come in here what are they goin’ t’ do t’ our property? That’s what I want to know.”
Paisley bit off a piece of tobacco and shrugged his shoulders.
“Ander,” he asked, watching the trapper roll up the green hide, “how much did you make in furs and deer-meat last fall and winter?”
“He made four hundred and three dollars,” answered the wife proudly.
“Well, then, let me tell you somethin’.” Paisley tapped the stalk of his rifle impressively with his knuckles. “Just as soon as you take Smythe’s money your trappin’ days and all other days are over here, for all time. They’ll have you just where they’ve been tryin’ to get the rest of us. Once they get hold of your deed you can whistle. This land is worth thousands more’n they offer you, and they know it. What has Hallibut’s mill done for the ma’sh-trappin’? I guess you know. They’ll drive the furs off and they’ll drive you’n me off, and they want to do just that, too.”
Declute arose from the floor.
“If I thort that——” he commenced; but his wife broke in:
“If you thort! Just as if you could thunk, you thick-head you. Didn’t I tell you that I suspicioned them fellers, and don’t Bill Paisley here know? Don’t he allars know? Shet right up, Ander, an’ don’t you try an’ think. You had no right to act without seein’ Bill here an’ Big Mac, anyway.”
“But I wasn’t goin’ to, Rachel,” drawled Declute. “I war goin’ over to Big Mac’s this very night, lookin’ in on Bill on the way over. Don’t you get too danged crusty, wife.”
The ponderous woman waved a hand toward the progeny on the floor.
“You, David an’ Moses an’ Zaccheus,” she commanded, “scramble out o’ th’ road instantly, I’m wantin’ to get over t’ th’ cubboard.”
There was a hurried scramble out of the way, and the mother rolled across the room and secured a paper from an inner recess of the home-built cupboard.
“Bill Paisley,” she said, passing the paper over to the visitor, “you be goin’ to keep this here deed for me an’ Ander—ain’t I right, Ander?” she nodded, the corner of her mouth drawn down warningly.
“If you say so, ma—in course,” consented Ander.
“Good idea,” grinned Paisley, folding the paper and placing it in his pocket. “Now, Ander, after you’ve finished cuttin’ up that carcass, suppose you come along with me and we’ll look in on the rest of the Bushwhackers and see if we can’t get their deeds, too.”
Declute glanced at his spouse. She nodded, and with much alacrity the little man arose.
“Don’t know as I’ll be much of a help to you, Bill,” he laughed, “but I’ll go along anyway.”
It was midnight when Paisley opened the door of the McTavish home and with a voiceless laugh waved the bundle of deeds above his head. The candle was burning dimly; the fire in the wide fireplace was almost dead. Boy sat before it alone, looking thoughtfully into its depths. Paisley crossed over to him and placed the deeds in his hand.
“They can’t get the timber without the deeds,” he chuckled, “and to get the deeds I guess they’ll have to get us, eh?”
Boy caught his friend’s hand and pressed it. He tried to speak, and, noting his feelings, Paisley drew forth his pipe and filled it as he gave, in an undertone, an account of his great night’s work.
“I guess all the Bushwhackers’ll have reason to thank you, Bill,” said Boy. “I ain’t sure that they all feel like I do about holdin’ this,” he swept his arm about him and a glow came into his eyes. “It’s been a lot to me—a lot. Nobody can guess what it would mean to me to see this woods crippled. Somehow I haven’t been just myself since they started it over there. I can’t sleep like I used to. I know it’s foolish, but that saw gets buzzin’ in my dreams and I’m fightin’, fightin’ all night long forthis, Bill, this woods and all it holds. I was thinkin’ that I’d come over and see you, when you stepped in. Bill, we don’t ever say much, us Bushwhackers; but to-night I couldn’t help but be glad me and you have always been what we have to each other. Some things come over me lately that grip tight hold of me and hold me without hurtin’, and I seem to like the feelin’, too. It’s like frost that kills without hurtin’. If I wasn’t strong I’d think I was gettin’ sick.”
There came from the inner room a voice mumbling in troubled sleep. Boy lifted his head and smiled.
“It was your name she called, Boy,” whispered Paisley wonderingly.
“Ma says she often calls out that way,” said Boy. “Sometimes it’s my name and sometimes it’s dad’s. Gloss dreams a lot, I guess.”
Paisley noted the smile that drifted across his friend’s face, and he nodded his head up and down slowly.
“Guess I’ll be hittin’ the back trail,” he said rising, “and you best go to bed, Boy. I’ll come over to-morrow as we arranged and help you set your traps in the runs. It’s goin’ to freeze right soon, and trappin’ is on from now. Declute got a couple of deer this afternoon, so we’ll just take a whack at ’em ourselves toward night to-morrow.”
“You’d better stay and sleep with me, Bill,” said Boy. “Somehow I’d like to have you, and we could make an early start in the mornin’.”
“Oh, I’ll hoof it along back, I guess,” laughed Paisley.
He was wondering whether he ought to tell Boy what he had learned concerning Watson and Simpson. He glanced at Boy and his lips closed tight.
“He’d kill ’em both,” he thought, “—I’ll watch them fellers myself.”
With his hands on the latch of the door he glanced back. Boy was seated before the dead fire, his chin on his hand and the bundle of deeds pressed against his cheek. Paisley leaned his rifle against the wall and unstrapped his powder-horn. Then he came back and put his hands on Boy’s shoulders.
“I’d best stay, I guess,” he grinned, “and show you how a real Bushwhacker should sleep. It strikes me, Boy, that you’re lookin’ some lonesome and need company. Glad Ander Declute’s goin’ to have a loggin’-bee. It’ll stir us all up.”
He sat down on a stool and started to unlace his moccasins, whistling an old tune beneath his breath. Boy arose and, walking to the window, gazed out across his kingdom. An owl was hooting from a distant thicket. Down in the deep shadow a fox called, and from the sheep-corral came the soft bleating of a late lamb. The chickens in the coop stirred and voiced their uneasiness. Outside on a well-worn spot a dog stretched himself, arose and sniffed the breeze, then assumed his former position.
Boy turned to the long cupboard near the hearth.
“Seems I can’t be myself these days,” he said. “I forgot that you might be hungry after your tramp about to-night. Set up, Bill, and have a bit of turkey.”
He placed the carcass of a cold fowl on the table, and from the milk-house outside fetched bread and butter. Paisley drew his stool up to the table.
“Ain’t you eatin’?” he asked.
“Not hungry,” answered Boy. “Seems I ain’t like anythin’ I used to be any more. All day long I’ve been thinkin’ about a lot of no-count things that happened years ago. Little things I’ve done and seen here in the bush. How I tramped with Davie ’cross the ridges and down through the wild blackberry patches. Why, Bill, it seems, some nights, when I’m lyin’ awake, that I can see everythin’ just as plain as I saw it then. Last night I was listenin’ to the rushes sweepin’ against my skiff. My oar was poked in a bog and my boat-painter was tied to it. I was trollin’ with a live minnie, and the creek was a clear bottle-green. The pond-lily roots lay there six feet below me, and the bass swam in and out—you know how they did before the mill was up, Bill?”
Paisley nodded and looked back over his shoulder. His mouth was full of turkey and bread.
“And as they’ll do again,” he asserted in muffled tones of conviction.
“I was gettin’ strikes and playin’ bass,” smiled Boy; “playin’ and landin’ ’em and enjoyin’ it all. Davie was there, and Gloss was there. We all talked and laughed together. It was real, I tell you, Bill. It wasn’t a dream, ’cause my eyes was wide open. That sort of thing scares me. I don’t understand it.”
Paisley put his hand on Boy’s knee.
“I know what’s doin’ it all,” he said. “I know just what’s doin’ it all. You’re worryin’. That’s what you’re doin’. You shouldn’t, ’cause Hallibut and his gang ain’t goin’ to get this bush, not by a danged sight. You’re thinkin’ that you won’t fish no more like you used to; that you and Davie won’t tramp together no more in your own little world. But you will. You’ll always own it, Boy. You take old Bill’s word for it, you ain’t got nothin’ to worry yourself sick about.”
“Somehow I feel sort of helpless,” sighed Boy. “Maybe I’m a coward, ’cause I feel like hidin’; only the fight in me makes me keep to the open. You’ve seen a young partridge when you walked upon him unexpected-like. The little beggar just grabs a leaf and turns over on his back, holdin’ the leaf over him. You and me know where he is, because we see that leaf movin’ after a time; but nobody who ain’t a Bushwhacker could find him, Bill.”
“And like him, you naturally want to lay low, eh, Boy?”
“Yes, as though I want to cover up; not because I’m scared, but ’cause it seems the natural thing to do. Then I get over that feelin’, and the next thing I know I’m carryin’ my rifle at full cock and keepin’ a lookout. I don’t know how this is goin’ to end, Bill, I sure don’t.”
Paisley stood up.
“Boy,” he said earnestly, “you’d best be careful what you do. Don’t you fire first. I ain’t advisin’ you to leave your rifle on the rack, but you know that us Bushwhackers don’t shoot to scare. Ammunition’s too scarce for that. If you was to kill one of Hallibut’s gang now, it would make things bad for us all.”
“The traps ain’t set and the rats have left their houses,” said Boy drearily. “All along the creek are dead runs, and there’s no use trappin’ there. The ducks have left our shores and they’ve gone to the Point grounds. There’s nothin’ here, Bill, but the clash and buzz and whistle of that mill. The turkeys don’t come on the ridges like they used to; the deer stay back in the swamplands; and all through this woods them sounds are chasin’ the fur and game farther back. And now he is goin’ to send his schooner in here. Think of it, Bill. He’s goin’ to sail across the bay and up Lee Creek for his lumber. Old Noah was here this mornin’ and he told me. He’s goin’ to work for Hallibut, too, and I can’t understand that.”
“What’s the old Injun goin’ to do!” grinned Paisley. “He can’t work—he’s too old.”
“He’s goin’ to watch the boat. It looks as if Hallibut’s afraid we’ll burn her. I don’t know why he should think that, but Noah says it’s better for him to be on the boat than anybody else. And he’s right. He didn’t tell me much—you know what a silent old feller he is. But I know he’s been over to see Hallibut. Noah isn’t against us: he thinks too much of Gloss for that, but there’s somethin’ he knows that we don’t know. I see him watchin’ Gloss a lot. I’d give a good deal to know just what’s in his mind, Bill.”
“Why, there’s nothin’ in his mind. Hallibut said, ‘Old Injun, do you want a job standin’ watch on my boat when I send her down among the Bushwhackers!’ and Noah he says, ‘Much good.’ Noah knows that he can watch Hallibut that way better than we can watch him. Of course, I don’t mean to say Noah would be traitor to any man he worked for—we both know he wouldn’t. But he’s there to watch things for us as well as Hallibut, Boy.”
“Colonel Hallibut’s comin’ for more than his own,” said Boy gloomily.
Paisley stretched his long arms.
“Well,” he laughed, “I’ve picked posies when bees have been workin’ among ’em. They didn’t molest me any—not then. Once, though, I dusted a little chap with flour and trailed him down to his tree. I was hungry for honey and wanted to hog it. When I started to cut down that bee-tree I found Mr. Bee, who was quite a good feller among the posies, somethin’ of a hell-terror when it come to protectin’ his own. It learned me a lesson. Now, when I hanker for honey, I get a piece of maple-sugar and eat that. We can’t stop Hallibut from comin’ up Lee Creek, but we can stop him from hoggin’ our homesteads out of us; so we won’t worry no more. Come on to bed, Boy. Mornin’ will come right soon, and we’ve a lot of traps to set.”
Boy picked up the candle and led the way to the loft.
“My, but it’s a grand place to stretch yourself out and enjoy rest, this,” said Paisley, stooping low to keep from bumping his head on the roof. “You should sleep like a baby up here, Boy. You sure should.”
“I used to,” said Boy. “Maybe I’ll be able to again. It’s restful all right, Bill, to lie here and listen to the rain patterin’ on the roof. And in the summer the leaves play little tunes on the thatches. Once Joe chased a wild-cat across the open and he treed up here. I tried to scare him away, but every time I struck the roof on the inside he would spit and snarl out there on the outside. I had to get up and shoot him at last.”
“Sure,” said Bill dreamily.
He had stretched himself out on the willow bed, and already healthy sleep was wooing him and leading him from the late day into strange by-paths of dreams which he never remembered.
CHAPTER XVIPreparing for the Loggin’
Next morning at break of day Paisley and Boy, laden with rat-traps, struck out toward the creek. Big McTavish accompanied them as far as the stable and gave them a parting send-off.
“If I had the chores done I’d go along and show you fellers how a real trapper sets a trap,” he said banteringly, “but I hear old Buck and Bright askin’ for their breakfast, so I can’t go. I want that pair of oxen to be the best at Declute’s loggin’. They have a reputation to keep up.”
“Don’t think you can drive oxen any better than you can set rat-traps,” returned Paisley. “Jim Peeler says his oxen can out-haul Buck and Bright any day.”
“And Declute says he never caught a single rat in the traps you set for him,” scoffed Boy.
“Get along with you, you scamps,” laughed the big man.
He passed into the stable and, slapping the hungry and expectant oxen lovingly, spoke to them as was his habit.
“Buck, you moon-eyed old beggar, I want you to pull to-morrow like you never pulled before. You heard what Bill said about Peeler’s oxen? Well, Peeler can’t out-pull us. I guess not.” He reached across the stall and patted Bright’s broad shoulder.
“As for you,” he said, “course you’ll do your best. If you don’t, Brighty, I won’t feed you any corn for a whole day.”
He filled the mangers with fragrant fodder and passed outside. The glorious morning was shooting up above the fringe of Point Aux Pins. From the pine woods a billion dull-red arrows of light were glancing, and, striking the bosom of Rond Eau, darting upward again toward a sullen arch of cloud where they clung and mingling with it painted a glorious border of orange and crimson. A rooster, high on a stack of cornstalks, flapped his wings and proclaimed his gladness. Down in the second-growth beeches a brood of feeding quail were whistling, and out above the creek a blue king-fisher stood poised, then dived, a streak of turquoise on the air, for the fish his bright eyes had sighted.
McTavish looked about him, smiling and whispering to himself. At the dog-kennel he paused and accosted the setter.
“So you’re tied up, eh? Wanted to follow the boys, did you, Joe? Well, we’ll let you free now to go where you please.”
He unsnapped the dog’s chain and Joe sprang up and left a wet caress on the man’s cheek. Then with a low whine of welcome he bounded away.
“Get down, Joe, you good-for-nothin’ dog, get down,” commanded a voice, and McTavish turned to see Mrs. Ross and Mary Ann coming up the path.
“Good-mornin’, good-mornin’,” he shouted. “Well, well now, but you two are early visitors. Isn’t it a grand mornin’? Come up to the house—the little ma’ll be glad to see you both.”
“How is she to-day?” Mrs. Ross, rather out of breath from fighting off Joe, set her basket down on the grass and leaned against a tree.
“I can’t say as she’s any stronger, widder.”
“Verily, ‘all flesh is as grass,’ ” sighed the good woman, shaking her head dolefully.
The man glanced up quizzically.
“Ma is quoting scripture,” explained Mary Ann. “She says we all should work according to some text in the Bible.”
“That godly man, Mr. Smythe, has taught me much, Daniel,” proclaimed the widow, stooping for her basket, “not sayin’ but what I was disbelievin’ that flesh was anythin’ like grass till Mr. Smythe pointed out them very words in Lukeronomy, 8th verse. My, but it’s wonderful things the good Book teaches us.”
McTavish looked at Mary Ann. The girl was smiling and her black eyes were dancing with more than the zest of life. He took the basket from the woman’s hand and they passed up the path toward the house.
“I can’t just understand what’s wrong with ma,” said McTavish. “She don’t seem to suffer any, just grows weaker day by day. She’s too weak to be carried a long distance to see a doctor, and it’s too far here for a doctor to come. I wish I knowed what to do.”
Mary Ann laid her hand on his arm.
“Why not get old Betsy to come and see her?” she suggested.
“Mary Ann!” The widow stood still on the path and eyed her daughter sternly. “Are we cannibals of the disenlightened ages to allow superstitious rubbage to mold our ways? What does the good Book say about witchcraft but that it’s ’red in the cup and stingeth like a snake in the grass’?”
“You’re thinkin’ of the verse as cautions man against strong drink, widder,” corrected McTavish kindly: “ ‘look not upon the wine when it is red.’ Do you know,” he went on slowly, “I’ve been thinkin’ as maybe Betsy can cure people. We know she cured some of our people right here in Bushwhackers’ Place.”
“Yes,” nodded the woman, “she did, and it do seem strange that witchcraft could do anythin’ as is real good, don’t it?”
Gloss met the visitors at the door and clapped her hands with delight.
“Oh,” she cried, “we were all wishin’ you would both come over this mornin’. What d’ye suppose we are doin’, Mary Ann?”
“That’s easy to tell,” returned the widow, sniffing the appetizing atmosphere. “If them ain’t cookies you are bakin’ I don’t know cookies or bakin’. Dear heart, if there ain’t the sweet little woman herself!”
She crossed the room and bent over the willow couch.
“And so you got up early, too, deary,” she said, taking the thin hand lying on the coverlet in hers, and patting it caressingly. “Goin’ to help with the bakin’, eh?”
“My, if you’d only heard her bossin’ Granny and me around you’d think she was takin’ a hand all right,” cried Gloss, “and she’s that wasteful, Mrs. Ross; bound to use twice as many eggs as are needed, and she won’t let us use pork-fryin’s for short’nin’. We got to use pure lard, think of that!”
“They are contrary,” charged the invalid, her eyes resting tenderly on the tall girl who, with sleeves tucked up above the elbows, was cutting disks of dough with a can-top, “but I make them obey, Mrs. Ross—don’t I, Granny?”
“Aye, Mary, that you do,” smiled the old lady, placing a basket of newly gathered eggs on the table, “but we’ll na stand it fra lang, for in a wee bit you’ll be up an’ aroon an’ doin’ the cookin’ yoursel’. An’ then we’ll do the bossin’, won’t we, Bonnie?”
“We will,” cried Gloss, “we’ll make her do all the bakin’, Granny.”
McTavish entered, carrying a big golden pumpkin in either hand.
“Declute says he wants these punkin’-pies made accordin’ to ma’s orders,” he grinned. “Boy and me raised these punkins just so’s we could have a feed on ma’s pies, and Declute has been bangin’ around our cornfield all fall hintin’ mighty broad that we send him a pie when ma makes ’em. I guess three or four won’t come amiss at the bee, eh, Mary Ann?”
He piled the pumpkins in the girl’s lap and pinched her red cheek.
“Somehow I wish there was goin’ to be a weddin’ as well as a loggin’,” he teased. “Haven’t had a chance to play ‘Old Zip Coon’ weddin’ march since Peeler’s big Jake married French Joe’s little Marie a year ago. The old fiddle’ll begin to think this big bush place is gettin’ behind the times.”
“Mr. Simpson don’t take to fiddle-music,” observed Mrs. Ross with a sigh.
Gloss glanced quickly at Mary Ann, and the eyes of the bush-girls met in a look of mutual understanding.
“Bill Paisley loves fiddle-music,” cried Gloss, dropping the long pan of brown fragrant cookies on the table and reaching for the old violin. She placed it in McTavish’s hands and, catching up Mary Ann from her chair, wound her long arms about the girl.
“Play,” she commanded, and Big McTavish, sitting on a corner of the table, struck up the old tune of “Turkey in the Straw.”
In and out, up and down the room the girls flashed, every movement one of grace. The warm blood showed in their cheeks, the wild life in their eyes. Not many could gallop to the quick music of that old tune, but Gloss and Mary Ann had learned how.
Granny McTavish, in her corner, peeled the potatoes with quick, uncertain slashes, her head moving up and down to the inspiring strains of the fiddle. Widow Ross arose, clapping her hands in time with the music, her matronly face agleam with something akin to youth, her foot stamping the floor in regular thumps twice to each measure. As the music waxed faster Granny McTavish arose and with trembling hands removed her glasses. Big Mac, his face hugging the old fiddle, smiled as he noted the action, and nodding to widow Ross he changed abruptly to an old Scottish air. The sick woman had struggled up on the couch and tears of laughter were streaming down her face.
“Dance a Scotch four for me,” she begged, and Granny and widow Ross faced the two girls on the wide floor.
Oh, such a dance as that was! The young girls could dance, and no mistake. But they could teach the older ones nothing when it came to executing that old Scotch dance. In and out they darted, faster and faster, their feet moving in perfect time to the exhilarating bars of the music until Big McTavish, unable to contain his joy longer, leaned back on the table and laughed until the very rafters shook and threatened to bring smoked hams and dried venison strips down upon the heads of the merrymakers. Then Granny, her wrinkled face working, slipped back to her pan of potatoes and widow Ross sank into a chair and reached for her basket.
“Sakes alive, dearest,” she panted, “I’m too fleshy to stand it any more.”
“Oh, it has made me feel so much better,” declared the sick woman. “I do love the fiddle, and it does seem so good to think that dear Granny has not forgotten the olden days.”
“When the little ma is well, which please God ’ll soon be,” said McTavish, “we’ll have a real old-fashioned dance here, with all the old boys and girls and all the young boys and girls right here together. And then, ladies, ma and me’ll show you how the minuet should be danced. We’ll have French Joe over to play. He’s a good fiddler, is Joe, almost as good as anybody I know.”
He hung the instrument up on its nail and, passing on to the couch, sank on his knee before it.
“Ma,” he said softly, stroking the heavy brown hair away from the little woman’s forehead, “there’s only one real shadder in all this big bright bush-world of ours, and God ain’t goin’ to let that rest there long. I’ve watched shadders long enough to know that they don’t last. When this one passes there’ll be happy times. You maybe can guess how much I miss you up and around, ma, so won’t you try and get better for my sake, and all our sakes?”
She caught the rough, strong hand in hers and held it against her face.
“Mac,” she whispered, “I’ll try even harder than I have been doing.”
He patted her cheek and made to rise, but she held him.
“And Mac,” she said, a catch in her voice, “you mus’n’t worry about me, or about anything, and you must show Boy that it is useless to worry about losing this bushland. Nobody can steal it, Mac, believe me; I know.”
“O’ course you know, ma.” He arose and hastily left the house.
Widow Ross, in white apron and bare arms, was dissecting one of the golden pumpkins on a block of wood outside.
“Ander’ll likely have a fine day for his loggin’ to-morrow,” she remarked as McTavish passed.
“There’ll be quite a crowd there, I bet,” returned the man. “I’ve sort of led ’em all to expect a good feed of custard, widder.”
“Oh, you go along, you blarney,” cried Mrs. Ross. But she cut into the pumpkin with renewed vigor and started to sing:
“Oh, we’ll cross the river of Jordan,Happy, happy, happy, happy,Cross the river of Jordan,Happy in the Lord.”
“Oh, we’ll cross the river of Jordan,Happy, happy, happy, happy,Cross the river of Jordan,Happy in the Lord.”
“Oh, we’ll cross the river of Jordan,Happy, happy, happy, happy,Cross the river of Jordan,Happy in the Lord.”
“Oh, we’ll cross the river of Jordan,
Happy, happy, happy, happy,
Cross the river of Jordan,
Happy in the Lord.”
McTavish listened in wonderment, then with a chuckle made to pass on. The woman bade him stay a moment.
“I’m not just sure I done right in dancin’ in that Scotch four,” she faltered. “Mr. Smythe seems to think dancin’ wrong, same’s smokin’ and such.”
“Humph, well now, it seems as Smythe’s been preachin’ quite a lot to you, widder. See him often?”
“Pretty often,” answered the widow slowly. “He’s been over to my place some three or four times during the last few days. He’s a very nice man, and a good livin’ one.”
McTavish scratched his head and frowned.
“Humph,” he nodded, “quite so, widder.”
“Mr. Smythe is great at ‘leadin’ people to the light,’ as he puts it,” smiled the woman, wiping the pumpkin seeds off her hands against the side of the pan. “He’s converted me to true Christianity. He learnt me that hymn, ‘Cross the River of Jordan,’ that I’ve just sung.”
“Well, well,” grinned Big Mac.
“And I’ve give up smokin’, too,” confessed the widow. “It’s been awful hard to do it, but Mr. Smythe says it’s wrong for people, specially women, to smoke. I haven’t had a smoke for several days, Daniel.”
“God bless us,” murmured McTavish, “is that so?”
He picked up a sliver and broke it into small bits.
“You get quite a lot of comfort out of tobaccer, I suppose?”
“No one knows how much,” she sighed.
“Well, missus, maybe I’m wrong,” declared McTavish, “but I tell you what I think. I don’t believe I’d care to give up anythin’ I had, and was sure of, for a chance of gettin’ what a man like Smythe gave me his word I’d get in exchange.”
He laughed, and strode away across the cornfield. Widow Ross followed him with staring eyes.
“I wonder just what he means,” she muttered. “My, but I wish I could have a little smoke right now.”
CHAPTER XVIIThe Loggin’-Bee
Logging-bees were not uncommon events among the Bushwhackers. But usually logging-bees were held after the winter snows had fallen, when with oxen and sleds the men moved the great logs to where they were wanted.
But, as Mrs. Declute explained it, this was “a sorter unusual loggin’;” it was “more of a raisin’ than a loggin’,”—all of which was quite true. Mrs. Declute had set her mind upon having a new cow-stable erected, one that would be tight and warm, “with no chinks to let in death to the poor dumb critters.” Ander, at first adverse to the idea, had reluctantly given in to having a bee, and bee it was to be.
Thursday morning dawned clear and bright, and with it came all the Bushwhackers, big and little, in Bushwhackers’ Place.
Buck and Bright, the champion ox-team, bedecked with a new yoke of white elm in honor of the occasion, were driven forth to the contest by their proud master, who cracked his whip in time to the rattle of the long chains, and commanded, “gee there, Buck; haw, Bright,” in a voice that Mrs. Ross declared could be heard “quite plain on the Point.” Peeler with his span of oxen was already on the ground, and by the time he and Big McTavish had got through chaffing each other on the respective deficiencies of each other’s team, three more span with their owners had arrived on the scene.
An hour later all throughout the nearby wood could be heard the “k-whack” of axes, and every now and again a great tree would fall with a swish and a crash that seemed to jar the earth.
While the young men chopped down and trimmed the trees, the older ones laid out the foundation of the new building. So thoroughly was this done that Declute avowed in the hearing of his good wife, who naturally was close at hand to admonish and advise the architects, that he wouldn’t be surprised but that he’d desert the house and live in the new cow-stable himself. Whereupon that good woman flashed a look of scorn upon him and jeeringly remarked: “A cow-stable is too good for a man what allars smells o’ rat-musk an’ can’t take a skunk outin a trap without scentin’ up th’ whole neighborhood.” The little man hid his discomfiture by suggesting that the men who claimed their oxen could haul two tons of green timber “at a wallop” come along and prove it. Laughing, the men sought their patient cattle and proceeded with a chorus of “gees” and “haws” to haul the trimmed tree-trunks up to the clearing.
It was a great trial of strength and patience and endurance on the part of both team and driver, the hauling of those heavy logs across rough ground to the wide square marked off in the clearing. The young men left off trimming trees to watch the oxen pull. There was much excitement while the rival teams pitted their muscle against one another. The spans were very evenly matched, and it is likely the friendly contest would have ended in a draw had not a circumstance arisen to put McTavish’s Buck and Bright away to the fore.
A great basswood log had nosed itself deep into a bank of moss, where, held securely by root-tendrils, it refused to budge to the repeated tugs of Peeler’s red oxen. Two other teams tried to break it out without success, and then Big McTavish, smiling broadly, declared that he would show them what a real span of oxen could do when they wanted to. Sure enough, Buck and Bright after tremendous exertion did break the log out, and lowering their broad, burly heads, and snorting and puffing, haul the timber up to the clearing. Peeler declared that McTavish had been “feedin’ up for this tug-o’-war for a month,” and Big Mac contended that he had “been starvin’ the poor oxen for weeks just so’s they wouldn’t beat the other spans too bad.”
Oh, they were a happy crowd, these young boys and old boys; happy in the hauling up, the mortising of the timber, and the laying “true” of the first logs for the building. They one and all forgot, for the time being, that new apprehension which had crept among them and stayed, and worked them up to disquietude. The bush-world was theirs still, and it was a very beautiful world with its autumn scents and sounds and colors.
High above, through the tree-tops, was the yellow-gold of the sky; on the tree-tops the old-gold of late fall; on the forest aisles an amber-gold commingled with the green moss that glowed through the yellow leaf-carpet.
By noon the mortised logs had been gathered into a great pile, ready to be thrown up into a roomy building, and the men went in to dinner. Dinner was usually a hurried meal, supper being the main “feedin’ event,” as Paisley termed it.
There were twenty-three men at the logging: Jim Peeler and his two sons, almost men grown; Big McTavish with his “body guard,” as the six Indians present from Point Aux Pins were called; Alex Lapier, a French trapper from Indian Creek, and his two swarthy sons; Injun Noah; four men from Bridgetown; Boy McTavish; and the Broadcrook family. The Broadcrooks were not popular. In fact, they were not liked any too well by their honest bush-neighbors. They bore evil reputations, and they were a sullen, ill-conditioned lot. But on account of their size, and from the fact that peace amounted to something, they were always invited to an affair of this kind. Broadcrook, senior, was a tall, lean, white-haired old man, with hawk-like eyes and hatchet face. He was surly and quarrelsome, and he never attempted to do anything much save scoff at the efforts of others. Three of his strapping sons were present with him, and the old man leeringly assured Declute that Amos, the fourth and worst of the gang, would be “along in time fer supper.”
“It’s to be hoped he won’t strain hisself none gittin’ here,” returned that gentleman; “howsomever, he’ll be welcome.”
The captains having chosen their men, the word was given, and the boys attacked the pile of logs with cant-hooks and hand-spikes. “He-o-heave!” roared the captains, and in an incredibly short space of time the cow-stable began to grow and take on the shape of a building. By three o’clock in the afternoon the four sides of the building were nearly laid, and now began the finish for first laurels. The side that was first able to lay its upper plates and rafters would win the day. Men ran nimbly along the slippery logs shouting orders and handing long, slender pipe-poles below.
“Now, lads, up with her, all together.—He-o-heave!” rang the cry, and the boys responded with a will. It was a close race, and excitement ran high.
All the ladies of Bushwhackers’ Place had gathered outside to witness the finish. Mrs. Declute had her hands full admonishing the little Declutes to keep from under the great plates that were being raised. Mrs. Ross and several other women kept clapping their hands and cheering the workers on.
Gloss McTavish and Mary Ann Ross stood some distance apart from the older women, and more than one of those sweating, striving workers threw a glance in the direction of the two girls.
“Our side is goin’ to win, after all,” laughed Gloss, clapping her hands. “Oh, look, Mary Ann, do look at Boy running along that slippery plate. It makes me shudder.”
“And look at Bill Paisley liftin’ that heavy log,” returned her friend. “My, but hemustbe strong, Gloss!”
“You young ladies are taking a personal interest in the raising, I see.”
Simpson, the teacher, had come up in time to hear the remarks of the girls, and his face, in spite of the smile it wore, showed anything but pleasure.
“I let my pupils go at three o’clock,” explained the man. “I wanted to see what a Bushwhackers’ bee was like.”
“Better look more and talk less, then,” counseled Mary Ann, turning her back on him. She moved slowly away, and Simpson spoke in low tones to Gloss.
“Did you think I would come?”
His voice was not quite steady and he swayed slightly as he spoke. A look of abhorrence swept across the girl’s face and her big gray eyes were ominous as she answered:
“I wasn’t givin’ any thought to you at all, Mr. Simpson.”
“But you will,” he almost threatened; “you must, Gloss. Do you suppose I would come here among these—these people, if it weren’t just to catch a glimpse of you?”
“Please go away,” she pleaded.
“No, I’m going to stay by you.”
“ThenIwill go.”
She turned toward the house and he turned and walked beside her.
“You can’t help my seeing you, you can’t help my loving you, you can’t help my winning you,” he whispered fiercely.
She paused and faced him.
“You will make me hate you,” she said quietly; “please go away.”
They were in the shadow of the milk-house and the building hid them from the others.
“I ask you to marry me, will you?”
“No.”
He caught his breath.
“I come of good family. I will take you to a big city. I will give you a fine home,” he urged.
The girl recoiled from him. He reached out for her, but she sprang aside, and bracing her feet, she struck out with all her young strength. She was no weak lady, reared in an artificial atmosphere. She was a woman of the Wild, strong and supple and courageous. It never occurred to her to call out. She obeyed the law she knew: she struck out.
Simpson caught the full force of her blow on his face and, already unsteady from the effects of drink, he staggered back and would have fallen had not the building supported him. He struggled up, sobered materially by surprise and pain.
She stood before him tall and straight, her eyes blazing, her face set like marble, her fine nostrils dilated.
From across the clearing came the cheering voices of the winners of the day.
Once in the low-lying bushlands Simpson had seen a doe brought to bay by a timber-wolf. He remembered the picture now.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“What else could I do?” she answered.
She pulled down a branch of a maple and leaned her head against it. The rough bark caressed her hot cheek and the sweet sappy aroma entered her soul and soothed it.
“Why did you not call out or scream like other girls would have done?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with compassion almost.
His eyes fell.
“I understand,” he murmured.
From the newly raised structure came renewed cheering.
“If they knew—if Boy knew——” she commenced, then checked herself.
He started, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead.
“That would mean hanging for him,” he laughed uneasily.
“That’s why I didn’t call out like other girls would have done,” she returned quietly.
His hands clenched and the blood mounted to his cheeks.
“Then I count for nothing,” he said bitterly.
“I can’t understand why you will take risks,” she said, ignoring his last utterance. “The folks of the woods have learned a lot from the wild things here. Nothin’ in all this wide woods ever goes where it’s dangerous to go, if they know it. You had better go back to the clearin’, teacher. I don’t want to see you hurt. I don’t seem to want anythin’ hurt. You had better go back to the clearin’.”
“Boy McTavish advised me to do that in those very words,” he sneered. “But listen, I’m neither a fool nor a coward. I have made up my mind to have you, Gloss, and have you I will—remember that.”
He turned away into the timber.
Gloss entered the house and lit the candles. Twilight had swept down, a twilight fresh with wood-scented dews and fragrant with smoke of the clearing-fires. On the floor beside the fireplace sprawled the form of Daft Davie. He was fast asleep, and Pepper, the ’coon, lay coiled up close beside him. One of the lad’s arms encircled the pet and the little animal’s pointed nose was hidden among the long golden curls. Gloss bent and stroked those curls softly and something warm and wet splashed down and awoke the Nature child.
He scrambled up, his great eyes blinking at the light; then, bending, the boy raised Pepper and placed him in Gloss’s arms.
She sat down on a stool before the fire and gathered the little bush-children close to her. The raccoon sniffed her red cheeks and nosed her soft throat caressingly, and Davie, clinging to her hands, poured forth the story of his day’s adventures. The girl listened, now and then smiling, understanding, as she did so well, those little pictures that the daft child was painting for her. She saw the gray tangle of marsh with the great dead elm lying across it; saw the ragged home of the mink and the tall elm where his enemy, the bald-headed eagle, sat poised and watchful.
When, at last, happy voices were heard coming down the path, she arose with all the old-time gladness astir in her heart. No new and strange shadow could linger for long where the joy-songs of many glad days could be brought to life by memory. And hugging the tiny daft boy close to her she whispered:
“What could I do without you, Davie?”
“Well, I do declare,” cried Mrs. Declute, as she came panting in, “if here she ain’t, right here, and that blessed boy Davie with her, too. Give my life if it don’t beat all, Mrs. Ross.”
“Bless her,” exclaimed the widow, “and to think that we’ve been wonderin’ where she had slipped off to. I’ll just swing the kettle on, Mrs. Declute, so’s we needn’t keep them hungry men waitin’. My, but I do expect they’ll enjoy that custard.”
“Leave us alone for that,” laughed Peeler, who had entered and was drying his face on the long towel hanging behind the door.
Declute came forward, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed in red flannel shirt and buckskins.
“Here’s Amos Broadcrook,” grinned the master of the house, “an’ he declares he’s fearful hungry.”
“You’re right welcome, Amos,” cried Mrs. Declute, pushing her progeny into a neat pile in one corner of the room, “but I’m sorry to see you’ve been drinkin’ again.”
“Goin’ to quit now,” pledged Broadcrook, seating himself on a stool.
His head was small and bullet-shaped, his neck thick, and his hair a light-red. His heavy face was coarse and made further unbeautiful from the fact that he had but one eye, having had the other knocked out by an arrow in early youth while playing buffalo-hunt with his brothers. Having spoken, he relapsed into sullen silence, and glowered about him occasionally, venturing no remark and making no move until supper was announced. Then he sprang up and was one of the first to seat himself at the long table in the inner room.
Watching him, Mrs. Ross sighed and shook her head so forcefully that the tea she was pouring from the great tin pot missed the cup and splashed down on the upturned nose of Goliath, thereby changing that agreeable canine into a yelping bunch of legs and fur that speedily made its way out through the open door.
“Poor thing,” sympathized Mrs. Ross.
“Pshaw, he ain’t hurt any. It serves him right. He’s allars snoopin’ ’round where he ain’t wanted, anyway,” cried Mrs. Declute, placing a dripping roast of venison on a big platter.
“I ain’t talkin’ about the dog. I mean Amos Broadcrook,” said the widow. “Ain’t it too bad he drinks so hard and is so shiftless?”
“I’ll tell you somethin’ that is no secret,” whispered the hostess. “Thar ain’t no Broadcrook alive that’s wuth anythin’, an’ if thar’s any of ’em dead as is, then only old Nick hisself knows it.”
Mrs. Peeler, a little, small-faced woman with mild eyes, looked up from her potato-mashing with a start.
“My, my,” she sighed, “are they that bad, Mrs. Declute?”
That lady nodded grimly.
“While they be eatin’ in my hum I will say no more than what I have concernin’ them,” she affirmed, “as that wouldn’t be hospitable o’ me. But after they’ve et an’ gone——” she compressed her lips and frowned severely, “then I’ll tell you more about them outlaws.”
“Dear me,” sighed Mrs. Peeler again. Then she glanced around. “Where is Mary Ann and Gloss gone?” she asked.
“Oh, they slipped over t’ Mac’s to see how the little mother was restin’,” answered Mrs. Ross. “The poor woman took a bad turn last night, you know. They’ll be comin’ back soon. Libby, dear, just help me dish out this custard, will you? They are callin’ for it in there, don’t you hear ’em?”
“I hear your Tom’s voice,” laughed Mrs. Peeler.
“And your boy, Ed. Do you know what that boy said to me when I was in givin’ a second helpin’ of tea just now? He said, ‘Missus Ross,’ says he, ‘I haven’t et anythin’ worth while as yet, ’cause I’ve been waitin’ for that custard.’ The sly rascal!”
Mrs. Peeler’s blue eyes danced with pride.
“Ed is awful lively,” she smiled. “There’s no keepin’ him quiet.”
“Mr. Simpson says he’s a smart boy,” said Mrs. Ross; “says he takes to book larnin’ like a squirrel t’ a nut.”
“Oh, and how do you like the teacher, widder?”
“I like him first-rate.”
“And Mary Ann?”
Mrs. Ross glanced about her. Then she bent over and whispered in the other woman’s ear.
“No!” exclaimed that little lady; “you don’t say so!”
“Judgin’ from appearances, it looks that way, dear,” smiled the widow. “But not a word to anyone else, Libby. I haven’t told a single soul but you.”
“It don’t seem to me that Mary Ann would take to a man like him,” said Mrs. Peeler. “He don’t seem to fit her somehow. I always thought and hoped that Bill Paisley would meet her favor, widder.”
Mrs. Ross opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again on second thought.
“My, I must get in with th’ custard,” she cried, and hurried away.
Gloss and Mary Ann entered the kitchen with Daft Davie between them.
“Oh, you’ve come back, my dears, have you!” smiled Mrs. Peeler. “I’m glad you got back so soon. How’s she now, Glossie?”
“Awful bad,” answered Gloss. “I’m goin’ right back, and will you tell uncle to come soon? Don’t say anythin’ to Boy, but just whisper to uncle to come as soon’s he can. She misses him so much. Now, I must go. You explain to ’em all how it is, Mrs. Peeler, will you?”
“You’re not goin’ back alone,” protested Mary Ann. “Just wait, we’ll send——”
Gloss put her hand on her friend’s arm.
“I don’t want anyone to know just how bad she is—not to-night. It would only spoil the evenin’s fun for them, and I’m not scared—why, I have little Davie.”
She put her arm about the boy’s shoulders. “You don’t know what company Davie is, and it’s scarcely dark yet. No, I don’t want anybody else. Good-night.”
She slipped out, her arm still around the daft boy, and the two passed down the path that stretched like a thread of silver in the moonlight. The lad talked to her in his strange language and she let him go on without paying much attention to him, for her heart was heavy with a great fear. They reached the creek path where the gray rushes stood and the deep creek slept beneath the moon. The lad laughed and swept his arms about, as the shrill wing-whistles of a migrating flock of pin-tails sang out and died away high above them. They turned up the path, and a whip-poor-will woke up and uttered his plaintive call from a nearby copse. Davie imitated the call, and then all about them the night-birds awoke and made the world alive with sound.
Further on the lad hooted like an owl and from the swales the feathered prowlers of the night answered him. He clapped his hands in glee, and Gloss’s arm tightened about him.
“Oh, Davie,” she whispered, “you are just like the birds—glad and free. Are you just what God intended us all to be, I wonder? Are you, Davie?”
He stroked her hand, and Pepper climbed from his shoulder over to hers.
“Do you know we are goin’ to lose her—do you?” said the girl chokingly. “Yes, you both know.”
When they reached the fork in the path Gloss put the little animal in the boy’s arms. Then she bent and kissed him.
“Davie must run along to Granny, now,” she said, “and he can come over to see Boy to-morrow.”
Davie put his hands to his lips and gave a low call, then bent his head to listen. From a far-off swale there came the answering cry of a lynx, and the boy with a happy laugh flung his arms in the air and darted away through the grove. Gloss, standing with the moonlight laving her face, sweet to-night with a new pathos, prayed:
“Oh, God, who looks after Davie, look after the little ma. Don’t take her from us, God.” Then, leaning her face against the rough bark of a beech tree, she sobbed:
“Mother, let her stay with us a little longer—just a little longer.”