Chapter XXI. IN THE TAMARACK SWAMP
The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the words he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping did not deter the girl.
She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!
The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the rumble of a great church-organ.
Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr. Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry.
It was he who had said: “I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood git his.”
There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the other side of the buggy.
“I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in no land squabble. I ain't for neither side.”
It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.
Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as above. “Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll side with me,” he said.
“We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side with nobody,” grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.
“S-s!” hissed Raffer. “Come here!”
Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. “You see your way to goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it, Tobe.”
“Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose,” grunted the old lumberman, and Nan approved very much of him just then.
“Bah!” exclaimed Raffer.
“Bah, yourself!” Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. “I got some decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man, Ged Raffer!”
“Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?” demanded the eager Raffer.
“That's my secret,” snapped the old lumberman. “If I don't witness for you, be glad I don't harm you.”
“You dare!” cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned from the buggy seat.
“You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother,” repeated Toby, gloomily.
“Wal,” snarled Raffer, “see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for any man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and I oughter call in that loan.”
Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh.
“Well, Ged,” he observed, “it's up to you. If you take the place it'll be the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol' woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These here lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints.”
“Wal, wal!” snarled Raffer. “I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help you ef you won't help me?”
He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start, and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart. Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had ever seen.
Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of Gedney Raffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on his little farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contention with Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; but Uncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Under these distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was Toby Vanderwiller likely to serve?
This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired much to help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allow him to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey of the line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be, when?
Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first payment to the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected to pay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of the timber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felled before the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Every month they lay there decreased their value.
And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power to influence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests.
Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of the Perkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have to vacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cutting and hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Toby knew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, or timber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made, forty-odd years before.
It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might, summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter they had, what would become of them?
Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose.
“Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich,” thought Nan, “I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poor Toby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money from the courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off the mortgage.”
She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about the timber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must know it! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter.
But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowly shuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walked hastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot where he had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke his name.
“Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy,” he said; but added, nervously, “How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nan.
“Come right erlong this way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did ye meet anybody?” demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.
“Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all.”
“Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?” asked Toby, curiously.
“Not a word,” replied Nan, honestly. “I'm afraid of him and I hid in the bushes till he had gone by.”
“Huh!” sighed Toby, as though relieved. “Jest as well. Though Ged wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy.”
“Never mind. I'm here now,” said Nan, brightly. “And I want you to show me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller.”
“Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye,” said the man, briskly. “'Tain't more'n a mile furder on.”
But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp. All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet deep, and there were acres of it.
“They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry holler, jest as it come handy.”
“What a lot there is of it!” murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.
“I wish't 'twas somewhere else,” grunted Toby.
“Why-so?”
“Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an' she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a big wind and started the blaze to the surface.”
“Oh!” murmured Nan, much interested. “Didn't my Uncle Henry live there then?”
“I sh'd say he did,” returned Toby, emphatically. “Didn't he never tell ye about it?”
“No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick.”
“Well, I won't, nuther,” grunted old Toby. “'Taint pretty for a young gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!”
A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or goose.
“Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?” cried Nan. “Rafe brought in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good, the way Aunt Kate cooked them.”
“Well!” drawled Toby, slyly, “I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef 'twas cooked right. But I never tried it.”
“How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?” asked Nan, interested in all culinary pursuits.
“Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process,” said the old man, his eyes twinkling. “Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best. Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day.”
“Yes?” queried the perfectly innocent Nan.
“Then ye throw off that water,” Toby said, soberly, “and ye put on fresh water an' let it cook all the next day.”
“Oh!”
“An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's done!”
Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.