“If Momsey or Papa Sherwood knew about this they'd be awfully sorry for me,” thought Nan, still sitting on the trunk. “Such a looking place! Nothing to see but snow and trees,” for the village of Pine Camp was quite surrounded by the forest and all the visitor could see from the windows of her first-floor bedroom were stumps and trees, with deep snow everywhere.
There was a glowing wood stove in the room and a big, chintz-covered box beside it, full of “chunks.” It was warm in the room, the atmosphere being permeated with the sweet tang of wood smoke.
Nan dried her eyes. There really was not any use in crying. Momsey and Papa Sherwood could not know how bad she felt, and she really was not selfish enough to wish them to know.
“Now, Nanny Sherwood!” she scolded herself, “there's not a particle of use of your sniveling. It won't 'get you anywhere,' as Mrs. Joyce says. You'll only make your eyes red, and the folks will see that you're not happy here, and they will be hurt.
“Mustn't make other folks feel bad just because I feel bad myself,” Nan decided. “Come on! Pluck up your courage!
“I know what I'll do,” she added, literally shaking herself as she jumped off the trunk. “I'll unpack. I'll cover up everything ugly that I can with something pretty from Tillbury.”
Hurried as she had been her departure from the cottage on Amity Street, Nan had packed in her trunk many of those little possessions, dear to her childish heart, that had graced her bedroom. These appeared from the trunk even before she hung away her clothes in the unplastered closet where the cold wind searched through the cracks from out-of-doors. Into that closet, away back in the corner, went a long pasteboard box, tied carefully with strong cord. Nan patted it gently with her hand before she left the box, whispering:
“You dear! I wouldn't have left you behind for anything! I won't let them know you are here; but sometimes, when I'm sure nobody will interrupt, you shall come out.”
She spread a fringed towel over the barren top of the dresser. It would not cover it all, of course; but it made an island in a sea of emptiness.
And on the island she quickly set forth the plain little toilet-set her mother had given her on her last birthday, the manicure set that was a present from Papa Sherwood, and the several other knickknacks that would help to make the big dresser look as though “there was somebody at home,” as she whispered to herself.
She draped a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time prized by the babies of her aunt's family, for the ring at the top was dented by little teeth.
Nothing, however, could take the curse of ugliness off the staring gray walls of the room, or from the horrible turkey-red and white canton-flannel quilt that bedecked the bed. Nan longed to spill the contents of her ink bottle over that hideous coverlet, but did not dare.
The effort to make the big east room look less like a barn made Nan feel better in her mind. It was still dreary, it must be confessed. There were a dozen things she wished she could do to improve it. There were nothing but paper shades at the windows. Even a simple scrim curtain——-
And, in thinking of this, Nan raised her eyes to one window to see a face pressed close against the glass, and two rolling, crablike eyes glaring in at her.
“Mercy!” ejaculated Nan Sherwood. “What is the matter with that child's eyes? They'll drop out of her head!”
She ran to the window, evidently startling the peeper quite as much as she had been startled herself. The girl, who was about Nan's own age, fell back from the pane, stumbled in the big, men's boots she wore, and ungracefully sprawled in the snow upon her back. She could not get away before Nan had the window open.
The sash was held up by a notched stick. Nan put her head and shoulders out into the frosty air and stared down at the prostrate girl, who stared up at her in return.
“What do you want?” Nan asked.
“Nothin',” replied the stranger.
“What were you peeping in for?”
“To see you,” was the more frank reply.
“What for?” asked Nan.
“Ain't you the new gal?”
“I've newly come here, yes,” admitted Nan.
“Well!”
“But I'm not such a sight, am I?” laughed the girl from Tillbury. “But you are, lying there in the snow. You'll get your death of cold. Get up.”
The other did so. Beside the men's boots, which were patched and old, she wore a woollen skirt, a blouse, and a shawl over her head and shoulders. She shook the snow from her garments much as a dog frees himself from water after coming out of a pond.
“It's too cold to talk with this window open. You're a neighbor, aren't you?”
The girl nodded.
“Then come in,” urged Nan. “I'm sure my aunt will let you.”
The girl shook her head in a decided negative to this proposal. “Don't want Marm Sherwood to see me,” she said.
“Why not?”
“She told me not to come over after you come 'ithout I put on my new dress and washed my hands and face.”
“Well!” exclaimed Nan, looking at her more closely. “You seem to have a clean face, at least.”
“Yes. But that dress she 'gin me, my brother Bob took and put on Old Beagle for to dress him up funny. And Beagle heard a noise he thought was a fox barking and he started for the tamarack swamp, lickety-split. I expect there ain't enough of that gingham left to tie around a sore thumb.”
Nan listened to this in both amusement and surprise. The girl was a new specimen to her.
“Come in, anyway,” she urged. “I can't keep the window open.”
“I'll climb in, then,” declared the other suddenly, and, suiting the action to the word, she swarmed over the sill; but she left one huge boot in the snow, and Nan, laughing delightedly, ran for the poker to fish for it, and drew it in and shut down the window.
The strange girl was warming her hands at the fire. Nan pushed a chair toward her and took one herself, but not the complaining spring rocking chair.
“Now tell me all about yourself,” the girl demanded.
“I'm Nan Sherwood, and I've come here to Pine Camp to stay while my father and mother have gone to Scotland.”
“I've heard about Scotland,” declared the girl with the very prominent eyes.
“Have you?”
“Yes. Gran'ther Llewellen sings that song. You know:
“'Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning! Where, where? Where, where? Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Pour on water! Pour on water! Fire's out! Fire's out!'”
Nan laughed. “I've heard that, too,” she said. “But it was another Scotland.” Then: “So your name is Llewellen?”
“Marg'ret Llewellen.”
“I've heard your grandfather is sick,” said Nan, remembering Tom's report of the health of the community when he had met her and her uncle at Hobart Forks.
“Yes. He's got the tic-del-rew,” declared Margaret, rather unfeelingly. “Aunt Matildy says he's allus creakin' round like a rusty gate-hinge.”
“Why! That doesn't sound very nice,” objected Nan. “Don't you love your grandfather?”
“Not much,” said this perfectly frank young savage. “He's so awfully wizzled.”
“'Wizzled'?” repeated Nan, puzzled.
“Yes. His face is all wizzled up like a dried apple.”
“But you love your aunt Matilda?” gasped Nan.
“Well, she's wizzled some,” confessed Margaret. Then she said: “I don't like faces like hern and Marm Sherwood's. I like your face. It's smooth.”
Nan had noticed that this half-wild girl was of beautifully fair complexion herself, and aside from her pop eyes was quite petty. But she was a queer little thing.
“You've been to Chicago, ain't you?” asked Margaret suddenly.
“We came through Chicago on our way up here from my home. We stayed one night there,” Nan replied.
“It's bigger'n Pine Camp, ain't it?”
“My goodness, yes!”
“Bigger'n the Forks?” queried Margaret doubtfully.
“Why, it is much, much bigger,” said Nan, hopeless of making one so densely ignorant understand anything of the proportions of the metropolis of the lakes.
“That's what I told Bob,” Margaret said. “He don't believe it. Bob's my brother, but there never was such a dunce since Adam.”
Nan had to laugh. The strange girl amused her. But Margaret said something, too, that deeply interested the visitor at Pine Camp before she ended her call, making her exit as she had her entrance, by the window.
“I reckon you never seen this house of your uncle's before, did you?” queried Margaret at one point in the conversation.
“Oh, no. I never visited them before.”
“Didn't you uster visit 'em when they lived at Pale Lick?”
“No. I don't remember that they ever lived anywhere else beside here.”
“Yes, they did. I heard Gran'ther tell about it. But mebbe 'twas before you an' me was born. It was Pale Lick, I'm sure. That's where they lost their two other boys.”
“What two other boys?” asked Nan, amazed.
“Didn't you ever hear tell you had two other cousins?”
“No,” said Nan.
“Well, you did,” said Margaret importantly. “And when Pale Lick burned up, them boys was burned up, too.”
“Oh!” gasped Nan, horrified.
“Lots of folks was burned. Injun Pete come near being burned up. He ain't been right, I reckon, since. And I reckon that's where Marm Sherwood got that scar on the side of her neck.”
Nan wondered.
Nan said nothing just then about her queer little visitor. Aunt Kate asked her when she came out of the east room and crossed the chill desert of the parlor to the general sitting room:
“Did you have a nice sleep, Nannie?”
“Goodness, Auntie!” laughed Nan. “I got over taking a nap in the daytime a good while ago, I guess. But you come and see what I have done. I haven't been idle.”
Aunt Kate went and peeped into the east chamber. “Good mercy, child! It doesn't look like the same room, with all the pretty didos,” she said. “And that's your pretty mamma in the picture on the mantel? My! Your papa looks peaked, doesn't he? Maybe that sea voyage they are taking will do 'em both good.”
Nan had to admit that beside her uncle and cousins her father did look “peaked.” Robust health and brawn seemed to be the two essentials in the opinion of the people of Pine Camp. Nan was plump and rosy herself and so escaped criticism.
Her uncle and aunt, and the two big boys as well, were as kind to her as they knew how to be. Nan could not escape some of the depression of homesickness during the first day or two of her visit to the woods settlement; but the family did everything possible to help her occupy her mind.
The long evenings were rather amusing, although the family knew little about any game save checkers, “fox and geese,” and “hickory, dickory, dock.” Nan played draughts with her uncle and fox and geese and the other kindergarten game with her big cousins. To see Tom, with his eyes screwed up tight and the pencil poised in his blunt, frost-cracked fingers over the slate, while he recited in a base sing-song:
“Hick'ry, dick'ry, dockThe mouse ran up the clock,The clock struck one,An' down he comeHick'ry, dick'ry, dock,”
was side-splitting. Nan laughed till she cried. Poor, simple Tom did know just what amused his little cousin so.
Rafe was by no means so slow, or so simple. Nan caught him cheating more than once at fox and geese. Rafe was a little sly, and he was continually making fun of his slow brother, and baiting him. Uncle Henry warned him:
“Now, Rafe, you're too big for your Marm or me to shingle your pants; but Tom's likely to lick you some day for your cutting up and I sha'n't blame him. Just because he's slow to wrath, don't you get it in your head that he's afraid, or that he can't settle your hash in five minutes.”
Nan was greatly disturbed to hear so many references to fistic encounters and fighting of all sorts. These men of the woods seemed to be possessed of wild and unruly passions. What she heard the boys say caused her to believe that most of the spare time of the men in the lumber camps was spent in personal encounters.
“No, no, deary. They aren't so bad as they sound,” Aunt Kate told her, comfortably. “Lots of nice men work in the camps all their lives and never fight. Look at your Uncle Henry.”
But Nan remembered the “mess of words” (as he called it) that Uncle Henry had had with Gedney Raffer on the railroad station platform at the Forks, and she was afraid that even her aunt did not look with the same horror on a quarrel that Nan herself did.
The girl from Tillbury had a chance to see just what a lumber camp was like, and what the crew were like, on the fourth day after her arrival at her Uncle Henry's house. The weather was then pronounced settled, and word came for the two young men, Tom and Rafe, to report at Blackton's camp the next morning, prepared to go to work. Tom drove a team which was then at the lumber camp, being cared for by the cook and foreman; Rafe was a chopper, for he had that sleight with an ax which, more than mere muscle, makes the mighty woodsman.
“Their dad'll drive 'em over to Blackton's early, and you can go, too,” said Aunt Kate. “That is, if you don't mind getting up right promptly in the morning?”
“Oh, I don't mind that,” Nan declared. “I'm used to getting up early.”
But she thought differently when Uncle Henry's heavy hand rapped on the door of the east chamber so early the next morning that it seemed to Nan Sherwood that she had only been in bed long enough to close her eyes.
“Goodness, Uncle!” she muttered, when she found out what it meant. “What time is it?”
“Three o'clock. Time enough for you to dress and eat a snack before we start,” replied her uncle.
“Well!” said Nan to herself. “I thought the house was afire.”
Uncle Henry heard her through the door and whispered, shrilly: “Sh! Don't let your aunt hear you say anything like that, child.”
“Like what?” queried Nan, in wonder.
“About fire. Remember!” added Uncle Henry, rather sternly, Nan thought, as he went back to the kitchen.
Then Nan remembered what the strange little girl, Margaret Llewellen, had said about the fire at Pale Lick that had burned her uncle's former home. Nan had not felt like asking her uncle or aunt, or the boys, either, about it. The latter had probably been too young to remember much about the tragedy.
Although Nan had seen Margaret on several fleeting occasions since her first interview with the woods girl, there had been no opportunity of talking privately with her. And Margaret would only come to the window. She was afraid to tell “Marm Sherwood” how she had lost the new dress that had been given to her.
It was now as black outside Nan's window as it could be. She lit her oil lamp and dressed swiftly, running at last through the cold parlor and sitting room into the kitchen, where the fire in the range was burning briskly and the coffee pot was on. Tom and Rafe were there comfortably getting into thick woolen socks and big lumbermen's boots.
There was a heaping pan of Aunt Kate's doughnuts on the table, flanked with the thick china coffee cups and deep saucers. Her uncle and the boys always poured their coffee into the saucers and blew on it to take the first heat off, then gulped it in great draughts.
Nan followed suit this morning, as far as cooling the coffee in the saucer went. There was haste. Uncle Henry had been up some time, and now he came stamping into the house, saying that the ponies were hitched in and were standing in readiness upon the barn floor, attached to the pung.
“We've twenty-five miles to ride, you see, Nannie,” he said. “The boys have to be at Blackton's so's to get to work at seven.”
They filled the thermos bottle that had so puzzled Tom, and then sallied forth. The ponies were just as eager as they had been the day Nan had come over from the Forks. She was really half afraid of them.
It was so dark that she could scarcely see the half-cleared road before them as the ponies dashed away from Pine Camp. The sky was completely overcast, but Uncle Henry declared it would break at sunrise.
Where the track had been well packed by former sleighs, the ponies' hoofs rang as though on iron. The bits of snow that were flung off by their hoofs were like pieces of ice. The bells on the harness jingled a very pretty tune, Nan thought. She did not mind the biting cold, indeed, only her face was exposed. Uncle Henry had suggested a veil; but she wanted to see what she could.
For the first few miles it remained very dark, however. Had it not been for the snow they could not have seen objects beside the road at all. There was a lantern in the back of the pung and that flung a stream of yellow light behind them; but Uncle Henry would not have the radiance of it shot forward.
“A light just blinds you,” he said. “I'd rather trust to the roans' sense.”
The ponies galloped for a long way, it seemed to Nan; then they came to a hill so steep that they were glad to drop to a walk. Their bodies steamed in a great cloud as they tugged the sleigh up the slope. Dark woods shut the road in on either hand. Nan's eyes had got used to the faint light so that she could see this at least.
Suddenly she heard a mournful, long-drawn howl, seemingly at a great distance.
“Must be a farm somewhere near,” she said to Rafe, who sat beside her on the back seat.
“Nope. No farms around here, Nan,” he returned.
“But I hear a dog howl,” she told him.
Rafe listened, too. Then he turned to her with a grin on his sharp face that she did not see. “Oh, no, you don't,” he chuckled. “That's no dog.”
Again the howl was repeated, and it sounded much nearer. Nan realized, too, that it was a more savage sound than she had ever heard emitted by a dog.
“What is it?” she asked, speaking in a low voice to Rafe.
“Wolves!” responded her cousin maliciously. “But you mustn't mind a little thing like that. You don't have wolves down round where you live, I s'pose?”
Nan knew that he was attempting to plague her, so she said: “Not for pets, at least, Rafe. These sound awfully savage.”
“They are,” returned her cousin calmly.
The wolf cry came nearer and nearer. The ponies had started on a trot again at the top of the hill, and her uncle and Tom did not seem to notice the ugly cry. Nan looked back, and was sure that some great animal scrambled out of the woods and gave chase to them.
“Isn't there some danger?” she asked Rafe again.
“Not for us,” he said. “Of course, if the whole pack gathers and catches us, then we have to do something.”
“What do you do?” demanded Nan quickly.
“Why, the last time we were chased by wolves, we happened to have a ham and a side of bacon along. So we chucked out first the one, and then the other, and so pacified the brutes till we got near town.”
“Oh!” cried Nan, half believing, half in doubt.
She looked back again. There, into the flickering light of the lantern, a gaunt, huge creature leaped. Nan could see his head and shoulders now and then as he plunged on after the sleigh, and a wickeder looking beast, she hoped never to see.
“Oh!” she gasped again, and grabbed at Rafe's arm.
“Don't you be afraid,” drawled that young rascal. “I reckon he hasn't many of his jolly companions with him. If he had, of course, we'd have to throw you out to pacify him. That's the rule—youngest and prettiest goes first——-”
“Like the ham, I s'pose?” sniffed Nan, in some anger, and just then Tom reached over the back of the front seat and seized his brother by the shoulder with a grip that made Rafe shriek with pain.
Nan was almost as startled as was Rafe. In the half-darkness Tom's dull face blazed with anger, and he held his writhing brother as though he were a child.
“You ornery scamp!” he said, almost under his breath. “You try to scare that little girl, and I'll break you in two!”
Nan was horrified. She begged Tom to let his brother alone. “I was only fooling her,” snarled Rafe, rubbing his injured shoulder, for Tom had the grip of a pipe wrench.
Uncle Henry never turned around at all; but he said: “If I had a gun I'd be tempted to shoot that old wolf hound of Toby Vanderwiller's. He's always running after sleds and yelling his head off.”
Nan was glad the creature following them was not really a wolf; but she knew she should be just as much afraid of him if she met him alone, as though he really were a wolf. However, mostly, she was troubled by the passionate nature of her two cousins. She had never seen Tom show any anger before; but it was evident that he had plenty of spirit if it were called up. And she was, secretly, proud that the slow-witted young giant should have displayed his interest in her welfare so plainly. Rafe sat and nursed his shoulder in silence for several miles.
The cold was intense. As the sky lightened along the eastern horizon it seemed to Nan as though the frost increased each moment. The bricks at their feet were getting cool; and they had already had recourse to the thermos bottle, which was now empty of the gratefully hot drink it had contained.
As the light gradually increased Nan saw Rafe watching her with sudden attention. After his recent trick she was a little afraid of Rafe. Still it did not seem possible that the reckless fellow would attempt any second piece of fooling so soon after his brother's threat.
But suddenly Rafe yelled to his father to pull down the roans, and as the ponies stopped, he reached from the sled into a drift and secured a big handful of snow. Seizing Nan quickly around the shoulders he began to rub her cheek vigorously with the snow. Nan gasped and almost lost her breath; but she realized immediately what Rafe was about.
The frost had nipped her cheek, and her cousin had seen the white spot appear. “The rubbing stung awfully, and the girl could not keep back the tears; but she managed to repress the sobs.
“There!” exclaimed Rafe. “You are a plucky girl. I'm sorry I got some of that snow down your neck, Nan. Couldn't help it. But it's the only thing to do when the thermometer is thirty-two degrees below zero. Why! A fellow went outside with his ears uncovered at Droomacher's camp one day last winter and after awhile he began to rub his ears and one of 'em dropped off just like a cake of ice.”
“Stop your lying, boy!” commanded his father. “It isn't as bad as that, Nan. But you want to watch out for frost bite here in the woods, just the same as we had to watch out for the automobiles in crossing those main streets in Chicago.”
With a red sun rising over the low ridge of wooded ground to the east, the camp in the hollow was revealed, the smoke rising in a pillar of blue from the sheet-iron chimney of the cookhouse; smoke rising, too, from a dozen big horses being curried before the stables.
Most of the men had arrived the night before. They were tumbling out of the long, low bunkhouse now and making good use of the bright tin washbasins on the long bench on the covered porch. Ice had been broken to get the water that was poured into the basins, but the men laved their faces and their hairy arms and chests in it as though it were summer weather.
They quickly ran in for their outer shirts and coats, however, and then trooped in to the end of the cook shed where the meals were served. Tom turned away to look over his horses and see that they were all ready for the day's work. Rafe put up the roan ponies in a couple of empty stalls and gave them a feed of oats.
Uncle Henry took Nan by the hand, and, really she felt as though she needed some support, she was so stiff from the cold, and led her into the warm room where the men were gathering for the hearty meal the cook and his helper had prepared.
The men were boisterous in their greeting of Uncle Henry, until they saw Nan. Than, some bashfully, some because of natural refinement, lowered their voices and were more careful how they spoke before the girl.
But she heard something that troubled her greatly. An old, grizzled man in a corner of the fireplace where the brisk flames leaped high among the logs, and who seemed to have already eaten his breakfast and was busily stoning an axe blade, looked up as Nan and her uncle approached, saying:
“Seen Ged Raffer lately, Hen?”
“I saw him at the Forks the other day, Toby,” Mr. Sherwood replied.
“Yaas. I heard about that,” said the old man drawlingly. “But since then?”
“No.”
“Wal, he was tellin' me that he'd got you on the hip this time, Hen. If you as much as put your hoof over on that track he's fighting you about, he'll plop you in jail, that's what he'll do! He's got a warrant all made out by Jedge Perkins. I seen it.”
Uncle Henry walked closer to the old man and looked down at him from his great height. “Tobe,” he said, “you know the rights of that business well enough. You know whether I'm right in the contention, or whether Ged's right. You know where the old line runs. Why don't you tell?”
“Oh, mercy me!” croaked the old man, and in much haste. “I ain't goin' to git into no land squabble, no, sir! You kin count me out right now!” And he picked up his axe, restored the whetstone to its sheath on the wall, and at once went out of the shack.
That was a breakfast long to be remembered by Nan Sherwood, not particularly because of its quality, but for the quantity served. She had never seen men like these lumbermen eat before, save for the few days she had been at Uncle Henry's house.
Great platters of baked beans were placed on the table, flanked by the lumps of pork that had seasoned them. Fried pork, too, was a “main-stay” on the bill-of-fare. The deal table was graced by no cloth or napery of any kind. There were heaps of potatoes and onions fried together, and golden cornbread with bowls of white gravy to ladle over it.
After riding twenty-five miles through such a frosty air, Nan would have had to possess a delicate appetite indeed not to enjoy these viands. She felt bashful because of the presence of so many rough men; but they left her alone for the most part, and she could listen and watch.
“Old Toby Vanderwiller tell you what Ged's been blowin' about, Henry?” asked one of the men at the table, busy ladling beans into his mouth with a knife, a feat that Nan thought must be rather precarious, to say the least.
“Says he's going to jail me if I go on to the Perkins Tract,” growled Uncle Henry, with whom the matter was doubtless a sore subject.
“Yaas. But he says more'n that,” said this tale bearer.
“Oh, Ged says a whole lot besides his prayers,” responded Uncle Henry, good-naturedly. Perhaps he saw they were trying to bait him.
“Wal, 'tain't nothin' prayerful he's sayin',” drawled the first speaker, after a gulp of coffee from his thick china cup. “Some of the boys at Beckett's, you know, they're a tough crowd, was riggin' him about what you said to him down to the Forks, and Ged spit out that he'd give a lump of money to see you on your back.”
“Huh!” grunted Uncle Henry.
“And some of 'em took him up, got the old man right down to cases.”
“That so?” asked Mr. Sherwood curiously. “What's Ged going to do? Challenge me to a game of cat's cradle? Or does he want to settle the business at draughts, three best out o' five?”
“Now you know dern well, Hen,” said the other, as some of the listeners laughed loudly at Mr. Sherwood's sally, “that old Ged Raffer will never lock horns with you 'ceptin' it's in court, where he'll have the full pertection of the law, and a grain the best of it into the bargain.”
“Well, I s'pose that's so,” admitted Nan's uncle, rather gloomily, she thought.
“So, if Beckett's crowd are int'rested in bumping you a whole lot, you may be sure Ged's promised 'em real money for it.”
“Pshaw!” exclaimed Uncle Henry. “You're fooling now. He hasn't hired any half-baked chip-eaters and Canucks to try and beat me up?”
“I ain't foolin'.”
“Pshaw!”
“You kin 'pshaw' till the cows come home,” cried the other heatedly. “I got it straight.”
“Who from?”
“Sim Barkis, him what's cookin' for Beckett's crew.”
“Good man, Sim. Never caught him in a lie yet. You are beginning to sound reasonable, Josh,” and Mr. Sherwood put down his knife and fork and looked shrewdly at his informant. “Now tell me,” he said, “how much is Sim going to get for helping to pay Ged Raffer's debts?”
“Har!” ejaculated the other man. “You know Sim ain't that kind.”
“All right, then. How much does he say the gang's going to split between 'em after they've done me up brown according to contract?” scoffed Uncle Henry, and Nan realized that her giant relative had not the least fear of not being able to meet any number of enemies in the open.
“Sim come away before they got that far. Of course Ged didn't say right out in open meetin' that he'd give so many dollars for your scalp. But he got 'em all int'rested, and it wouldn't surprise him, so Sim said, if on the quiet some of those plug-uglies had agreed to do the job.”
Nan shuddered, and had long since stopped eating. But nobody paid any attention to her at the moment.
Uncle Henry drawled: “They're going to do the hardest day's job for the smallest pay that they ever did on this Michigan Peninsula. I'm much obliged to you, Josh, for telling me. I never go after trouble, as you fellows all know; but I sha'n't try to dodge it, either.”
He picked up his knife and fork and went quietly on with his breakfast. But Nan could not eat any more at all.
It seemed to the gently nurtured girl from Tillbury as though she had fallen in with people from another globe. Even the mill-hands, whom Bess Harley so scorned, were not like these great, rough fellows whose minds seemed continually to be fixed upon battle. At least, she had never seen or heard such talk as had just now come to her ears.
The men began, one by one, to push back the benches and go out. There was a great bustle of getting under way as the teams started for the woods, and the choppers, too, went away. Tom hurried to start his big pair of dapple grays, and Nan was glad to bundle up again and run out to watch the exodus.
They were a mighty crew. As Uncle Henry had said, the Big Woods did not breed runts.
Remembering the stunted, quick-moving, chattering French Canadians, and the scattering of American-born employees among them, who worked in the Tillbury mills, Nan was the more amazed by the average size of these workmen. The woodsmen were a race of giants beside the narrow-shouldered, flat-chested pygmies who toiled in the mills.
Tom strode by with his timber sled. Rafe leaped on to ride and Tom playfully snapped his whiplash at him. Nan was glad to see that the two brothers smiled again at each other. Their recent tiff seemed to be forgotten.
Some of the choppers had already gone on ahead to the part of the tract where the marked trees were being felled. Now the pluck, pluck, pluck of the axe blows laid against the forest monarchs, reached the girl's ears. She thought the flat stuttering sound of the axes said “pluck” very plainly, and that that was just the word they should say.
“For it does take lots of pluck to do work of this kind,” Nan confided to her uncle, who walked up and down on the porch smoking an after-breakfast pipe.
“Yes. No softies allowed on the job,” said he, cheerfully. “Some of the boys may be rough and hard nuts to crack; but it is necessary to have just such boys or we couldn't get out the timber.”
“But they want to fight so much!” gasped Nan.
“Sho!” said her uncle, slowly. “It's mostly talk. They feel the itch for hard work and hard play, that's all. You take lively, full-muscled animals, and they are always bucking and quarreling—trying to see which one is the best. Take two young, fat steers they'll lock horns at the drop of a hat. It's animal spirits, Nan. They feel that they've got to let off steam. Where muscle and pluck count for what they do in the lumber camps, there's bound to be more or less ructions.”
Perhaps this might be; but Nan was dreadfully sorry, nevertheless, that Uncle Henry had this trouble with Mr. Gedney Raffer. The girl feared that there had been something besides “letting off steam” in the challenge her uncle had thrown down to his enemy, or to the men that enemy could hire to attack him.
The timber sledges soon began to drift back, for some of the logs had been cut before the big storm, and had only to be broken out of the drifts and rolled upon the sleds with the aid of the men's canthooks. It was a mystery at first to Nan how they could get three huge logs, some of them three feet in diameter at the butt, on to the sled; two at the bottom and one rolled upon them, all being fastened securely with the timber-chain and hook.
How the horses strained in their collars to start the mighty load! But once started, the runners slipped along easily enough, even through the deep snow, packing the compressible stuff in one passage as hard as ice. Nan followed in this narrow track to the very bank of the river where the logs were heaped in long windrows, ready to be launched into the stream when the waters should rise at the time of the spring freshet.
Tom managed his team alone, and unloaded alone, too. It was marvelous (so Nan thought) that her cousin could start the top log with the great canthook, and guide it as it rolled off the sled so that it should lie true with timbers that had been piled before. The strain of his work made him perspire as though it were midsummer. He thrust the calks on his bootsoles into the log and the shreds of bark and small chips flew as he stamped to get a secure footing for his work. Then he heaved like a giant, his shoulders humping under the blue jersey he wore, and finally the log turned. Once started, it was soon rolled into place.
Nan ran into the cook shed often to get warm. Her uncle was busy with the boss of the camp, so she had nobody but the cook and his helper to speak to for a time. Therefore it was loneliness that made her start over the half-beaten trail for the spot where the men were at work, without saying a word to anybody.
None of the teams had come by for some time; but she could hear faintly the sound of the axes and the calling of the workmen to each other and their sharp commands to the horses.
She went away from the camp a few hundred yards and then found that the trail forked. One path went down a little hill, and as that seemed easy to descend, Nan followed it into a little hollow. It seemed only one sled had come this way and none of the men were here. The voices and axes sounded from higher up the ridge.
Suddenly she heard something entirely different from the noise of the woodsmen. It was the snarling voice of a huge cat and almost instantly Nan sighted the creature which stood upon a snow-covered rock beside the path. It had tasseled ears, a wide, wicked “smile,” bristling whiskers, and fangs that really made Nan tremble, although she was some yards from the bobcat.
As she believed, from what her cousins had told her, bobcats are not usually dangerous. They never seek trouble with man, save under certain conditions; and that is when a mother cat has kittens to defend.
This was a big female cat, and, although the season was early, she had littered and her kittens, three of them, were bedded in a heap of leaves blown by the wind into a hollow tree trunk.
The timberman driving through the hollow had not seen the bobcat and her three blind babies; but he had roused the mother cat and she was now all ready to spring at intruders.
That Nan was not the person guilty of disturbing her repose made no difference to the big cat. She saw the girl standing, affrighted and trembling, in the path and with a ferocious yowl and leap she crossed the intervening space and landed in the snow within almost arm's reach of the fear-paralyzed girl.
Nan Sherwood could not cry out, though she tried. She opened her lips only to find her throat so constricted by fear that she could not utter a sound. Perhaps her sudden and utter paralysis was of benefit at the moment, after all; for she could not possibly have escaped the infuriated lynx by running.
The creature's own movements were hampered by the deep drift in which she had landed. The soft snow impeded the cat and, snarling still, she whirled around and around like a pinwheel to beat a firmer foundation from which to make her final spring at her victim.
Nan, crouching, put her mittened hands before her face. She saw no chance for escape and could not bear to see the vicious beast leap at her again. “Momsey! Papa Sherwood!” she thought, rather than breathed aloud.
Then, down the hill toward her, plunged a swift body. She rather felt the new presence than saw it. The cat yowled again, and spit. There was the impact of a clubbed gun upon the creature's head.
“Sacre bleu! Take zat! And zat!” cried a sharp voice, between the blows that fell so swiftly. The animal's cries changed instantly from rage to pain. Nan opened her eyes in time to see the maddened cat flee swiftly. She bounded to the big tree and scrambled up the trunk and out upon the first limb. There she crouched, over the place where her kittens were hidden, yowling and licking her wounds. There was blood upon her head and she licked again and again a broken forefoot between her yowls of rage and pain.
But Nan was more interested just then in the person who had flown to her rescue so opportunely. He was not one of the men from the camp, or anybody whom she had ever seen before.
He was not a big man, but was evidently very strong and active. His dress was of the most nondescript character, consisting mainly of a tattered fur cap, with a woolen muffler tied over his ears; a patched and parti-colored coat belted at the waist with a frayed rope. His legs disappeared into the wide tops of a pair of boots evidently too big for him, with the feet bundled in bagging so that he could walk on top of the snow, this in lieu of regular snowshoes.
His back was toward Nan and he did not turn to face her as he said:
“Be not afeared, leetle Man'zelle. Le bad chat is gone. We shall now do famous-lee, eh? No be afeared more.”
“No, no, sir,” gasped Nan, trying to be brave. “Won't, won't it come back?”
“Nev-air!” cried the man, with a flourish of the gun which was a rusty-barreled old weapon, perhaps more dangerous at the butt end than at its muzzle. “Ze chat only fear for her babies. She have zem in dat tree. We will go past leeving zem streectly alone, eh?”
“No!” cried Nan hastily. “I'm going back to the camp. I didn't know there were such dangerous things as that in these woods.”
“Ah! You are de strange leetle Mam'zelle den?” responded the man. “You do not know ze Beeg Woods?”
“I guess I don't know anything about this wilderness,” confessed Nan. “My uncle brought me to the camp up yonder this morning, and I hope he'll go right home again. It's awful!”
“Eet seem terrifying to ze leetle Mam'zelle because she is unused—eh? Me! I be terrified at ze beeg city where she come from, p'r'aps. Zey tell Pete 'bout waggings run wizout horses, like stea'mill. Ugh! No wanter see dem. Debbil in 'em,” and he laughed, not unpleasantly, making a small joke of the suggestion.
Indeed his voice, now that the sharpness of excitement had gone out of it, was a very pleasant voice. The broken words he used assured Nan that his mother tongue must be French. He was probably one of the “Canucks” she had heard her cousins speak of. French Canadians were not at all strange to Nan Sherwood, for in Tillbury many of the mill hands were of that race.
But she thought it odd that this man kept his face studiously turned from her. Was he watching the bobcat all the time? Was the danger much more serious than he would own?
“Why don't you look at me?” cried the girl, at length. “I'm awfully much obliged to you for coming to help me as you did. And my uncle will want to thank you I am sure. Won't you tell me your name?”
The man was silent for a moment. Then, when he spoke, his voice was lower and there was an indescribably sad note in it.
“Call me 'Injun Pete', zat me. Everybody in de beeg Woods know Injun Pete. No odder name now. Once ze good Brodders at Aramac goin' make scholar of Pete, make heem priest, too, p'r'aps. He go teach among he's mudder's people. Mudder Micmac, fadder wild Frinchman come to dees lakeshore. But nev-air can Pete be Teacher, be priest. Non, non! Jes' Injun Pete.”
Nan suddenly remembered what little Margaret Llewellen had said about the fire at Pale Lick, and “Injun Pete.” The fact that this man kept his face turned from her all this time aroused her suspicion. She was deeply, deeply grateful to him for what he had just done for her, and, naturally, she enlarged in her mind the peril in which she had been placed.
Margaret had suggested this unfortunate half-breed was “not right in his head” because of the fire which had disfigured him. But he spoke very sensibly now, it seemed to Nan; very pitifully, too, about his blasted hopes of a clerical career. She said, quietly:
“I expect you know my uncle and his family, Pete. He is Mr. Sherwood of Pine Camp.”
“Ah! Mis-tair Hen Sherwood! I know heem well,” admitted the man. “He nice-a man ver' kind to Injun Pete.”
“I'd like to have you look at me, please,” said Nan, still softly. “You see, I want to know you again if we meet. I am very grateful.”
Pete waved her thanks aside with a royal gesture. “Me! I be glad to be of use, oh, oui! Leetle Man'zelle mus' not make mooch of nottin', eh?”
He laughed again, but he did not turn to look at her. Nan reached out a tentative hand and touched his sleeve. “Please, Mr. Pete,” she said. “I, I want to see you. I, I have heard something about your having been hurt in a fire. I am sure you must think yourself a more hateful sight than you really are.”
A sob seemed to rise in the man's throat, and his shoulders shook. He turned slowly and looked at her for a moment over his shoulder. Then he went swiftly away across the snow (for the bobcat had disappeared into her lair) and Nan stumbled back up the trail toward the camp, the tears blinding her own eyes.
The disfigured face of the half-breed HAD been a shock to her. She could never speak of it afterward. Indeed, she could not tell Uncle Henry about her meeting with the lynx, and her rescue—she shrank so from recalling Injun Pete's disfigured face.