CHAPTER VII
Searching
Days passed. The police came and went. Indeed, they might be said to haunt Ripple at this time. The dog grew so used to strange faces and visitors at all hours that it took no notice of them at all. It was tired, too. Morning, noon, and night Pam was searching for some trace of the old man whom she had come so far to live with, and yet had never seen; and where she went the dog went too. It was a dead body she was looking for now, and she had tramped the fields until she knew the land literally foot by foot. Then she penetrated into the forest, going very warily at first, for she had all a city girl’s dread of the unknown, and who could tell what terrors might lurk unseen beneath the brambles and the undergrowth?
She did not find anything. Sometimes the dog would stop suddenly, and lifting its head, would howl in a manner calculated to make the warm blood in her veins turn cold, for she believed herself on the brink of a find; but always there was nothing.
While Pam was away searching, Sophy sat in the house and sewed. She was to be married in the spring, as her father had said, and she had her own ideas as to the amount of plenishing it was proper to take with her to her husband. At home she was harassed and hurried between her duty and her inclination. Here there was no duty to harass her, and she felt as if she was having the best holiday she had known for years. Every morning after the “chores” were done she and Pam cleaned a room; when that was finished, Sophy sat down to her sewing, and Pam started out to search. The house was beginning to look different already, and it had lost the odour of exceeding fustiness which had struck them both on the night of the surprise party.
Then the inevitable happened, and Pam lost her way in the forest one day. She walked on and on, realizing that she was getting more hopelessly bewildered every minute. Suddenly she remembered the dog, and catching the creature round the neck, she told it all about her difficulty, winding up by telling it in the most forcible language she possessed to take her home.
“Woof! woof! woo-o-o-h!” The dog flung up its head and howled in such a fearfully dismal fashion that Pam gave an involuntary cry.
“You must not make such an awful row, I simply cannot bear it!” she exclaimed, seizing the creature round the neck and giving it a great hug. “We are in trouble, both of us, but you must learn to keep yours to yourself a bit, my friend; this sort of thing is past bearing. Now, take me home, dear, and make haste about it, or Sophy will certainly have a fit.”
The animal gave a short bark as if perfectly understanding what was required of it, then started off along a cross-trail, going at a businesslike trot, but looking round every few minutes as if to make sure that Pam was following all right. The trail turned suddenly through a belt of beechwood thick with foliage into a bare and desolate region, which made Pam cry out in amazement. As far as she could see the forest had been burned. Even the ground appeared to have been charred, and there was hardly a vestige of green to be seen anywhere. The mighty trunks had been the sport of the winter tempests since being ravaged by fire, and here and there they were blown into heaps of gigantic confusion. They lay in piles, or were bunched together in groups, while heaps of cinders and charred fragments lay in all directions. The dog went steadily on through this desolate region, and Pam saw that the creature was following a well-defined trail. She was beginning to wonder where she would find herself by and by, when her guide turned short round into the living forest once more, the trail grew broader and broader, and suddenly she was in a little clearing where there was a long, low, brown house in front of her, and just beyond the shimmering waters of the creek.
“Oh, how pretty!” she murmured to herself, for the autumn sunshine fell full on the water, while a little wind was ruffling the surface, making it catch a thousand sparkles that seemed to light the woodland and the strip of brown field through which it ran.
An elderly woman came to the door of the house, and seeing Pam and the dog, beckoned her to come nearer. Pam went at once, needing no second invitation, for she was very anxious to know where she was, and how long it would take her to reach home again. But the dog was growling and growling, while a ridge of hair bristled erect along its spine.
“There, there, mend your manners, can’t you? Don’t you see that the lady is a friend?” cried Pam, catching at the old strap which the dog wore round its neck by way of a collar, for she was afraid that it was going to fly at the woman who was smiling in such friendly welcome.
“Now, say, ain’t that Wrack Peveril’s dog? And I do believe you must be his granddaughter! My dear, I do take it kind that you should have come to see me so soon. Come in, come in, and don’t take no notice of the dog growling. Because men fall out is no reason why women should be at enmity, and it is glad I am to see you, my dear!”
Pam suddenly began to tremble, tried to speak and could not, then, giving herself a shake, gasped out, “Are you Mrs. Buckle?”
“Why, yes, my dear, of course. Didn’t you know, and hadn’t you come to see me?” There was so much disappointment in the woman’s face and manner that Pam hastened to soothe her.
“I would have come before if I had had the faintest idea that you would care to see me, but I naturally supposed that I was the very last person you would want to have for a visitor.” To her exceeding dismay Pam found herself on the verge of tears. It was dreadful to think that she should have blundered into the presence of the woman whom of all others she would have chosen to avoid.
“I should have come to Ripple myself to see you,” said Mrs. Buckle, shaking hands with Pam in the friendliest fashion imaginable, and then leading her into the house, and literally forcing her to sit in the big cushioned chair that stood between the window and the stove. “But, you see, the trouble is I haven’t got my widow’s bonnet made yet, and it would not be honouring to poor Sam’s memory for me to go paying calls in a hat with a blue feather, which is all the outdoor wear I’ve got at the present. I went to the funeral in Mrs. O’Rafferty’s bonnet, a dreadfully shabby affair, as you may guess, for her man has been gone nearly two years, and she was never good at taking care of things. She is not too clean either, and I did not fancy wearing her bonnet, I can tell you. Miss Johnson, the milliner at The Corner, was quite out of widows’ crape—that is, the sort with the big tear-drops, you know—so I had to wait until she had got a fresh lot in from St. John.”
“It was very kind of you to think of coming in to see me!” murmured Pam, when Mrs. Buckle paused for want of breath. “I am so very, very sorry for the trouble you have had, but I cannot think that my grandfather, an old man himself, would have knocked Mr. Buckle about so cruelly.”
“Ah, you never knew my poor Sam!” cried Mrs. Buckle, shaking her head, as she wiped away a tear to her husband’s memory. “He was the most aggravating man that ever was, and I ought to know, seeing that I bore with his infirmity for hard on twenty-nine years. And, my dear, if your grandfather didn’t do it, poor man, why should his axe, with his name branded on the handle, have been found lying on the ground close to the broken fence?”
“Was it found there?” breathed Pam in a cold horror, and from that moment the iron of a deep humiliation and disgrace entered into her very soul.
“Why, yes. Didn’t they tell you?” asked Mrs. Buckle. “But, there! I expect they kept it back just to spare your feelings, poor child!” The kindly woman came nearer as she spoke, and her work-worn hand dropped in a consoling fashion on to Pam’s arm. “But you must not blame the poor old man too much, for doubtless he was angered past bearing. Everyone knew that he had a violent temper, and he would be deaf and blind to the consequences when once he began to lay on. It is well when people learn to restrain themselves when they are young, for when they have come to years they lose control over their passions. I wish your grandfather had stayed to face the music, though. I am sure that the inquiry would have brought in that there were extenuating circumstances, and so he would have got off lighter. Now, he will have to face the very worst when they find him.”
“Oh, I do not think they will find him alive; it is his dead body that I am looking for!” said Pam, and her voice was sharp with pain.
Mrs. Buckle shook her head.
“You did not know your grandfather, and so you think of him as a feeble old man; but he was not, he was strong and vigorous. I saw him once knock Sam down as clean as if he were bowling a ninepin over, and I did not pity Sam either, for that time, at least, I knew very well he deserved all he got. From my heart I pity your grandfather now; it is cruel hard that a man at his time of life should have to be a wanderer.”
“Oh, it is dreadful, dreadful!” wailed Pam, hiding her face in her hands. The trouble had been bearable when she thought of her grandfather as dead, for then he at least would have been beyond the reach of hunger and cold; but if he had done this terrible thing of beating a fellow-man to death, and was forced by his crime to be a fugitive from justice, how the poor old man would suffer! She would never be at peace now, but would always be looking for him to come stealing back to his home for money, for food, and for shelter.
“Child, you must not take on like that!” said Mrs. Buckle, whose own tears were falling like rain. “You have just got to be bright and brave, and to keep your end up as best you can. It is hard lines for you to be pitchforked into a trouble of this sort, but just figure to yourself how much worse it would have been for the poor old man if you had not been at Ripple just now. The place would have been in the hands of strangers; there would have been no one to look after his interests or to keep the place going. Now he will most likely come creeping back some stormy night this fall, for he will want money to help him get clear away from parts where he is known. You must keep some handy for him when he comes. Have you got any?”
“Only a few shillings—I mean, dollars,” replied Pam, who had constantly to remind herself of the difference in currency.
“I thought as much!” muttered Mrs. Buckle. Telling Pam to sit still a minute, she went away to an inner room, whence she returned a minute later to thrust a bundle of dirty-looking papers into the girl’s hand. “Take that, my dear, it is only twenty dollars, but it is all I have to spare; and it may make the difference for him between starvation and security, for he is a man that can do with very little, from having lived alone so long.”
“But I cannot take your money, yours of all people’s, to help my grandfather!” protested Pam, in a voice of awe, and she looked up at the kindly old woman, trying to thrust back the little bundle of paper money.
But Mrs. Buckle was obdurate.
“You must take it, please, my dear,” she insisted. “It is my right to spare myself what suffering I can, for I have had enough to bear. I feel that it would be the last straw to my endurance if the police were to find your grandfather, and all that old trouble had to be raked up in a court of justice. It is not likely I have many more years to live, and they might as well be peaceful years, but I should never know another happy hour if your grandfather were put in prison for wounding my husband. I’ve no doubt that poor Sam’s aggravating ways were a sort of infirmity, like a hare-lip or a crooked back, and I would rather leave the punishment of the man who did him to death in the hands of Almighty God; so you will please take the money and say no more about it. Only you must keep it in a place where the poor old man can get it himself if he happens along when there is no one about; for he may break into his own house, don’t you see, because he won’t know how we feel about his escaping.”
“The desk in his bedroom is locked,” said Pam faintly. She could protest no more, and taking the roll of notes, she thrust it for security into the front of her blouse.
“Try if you have got a key that will open it,” said Mrs. Buckle, who was plainly a person of resource. “If not, perhaps I can pick it for you as soon as I get my bonnet and can come to pay a call. Oh, it wouldn’t be the first lock I have picked by a good many. When a woman has a husband who keeps her as short as my man kept me, she is apt to do things that won’t bear daylight; but he is dead now, and his faults ain’t going to be talked about except in the way of stopping other people from having to suffer for them. You are a dear good girl for coming to see me; it has done me a power of good to have you to talk to. I feel better than I have done since Sam was taken.”
“It is very sweet of you to feel like this, Mrs. Buckle, and I thank you for myself and for my mother. But oh, I wish that I had some way of repaying you for your kindness to us!” Pam’s eyes were wet with tears as she leaned forward and warmly kissed Mrs. Buckle’s cheek.
“There is something that perhaps you may be able to do for me if you have a mind,” said Mrs. Buckle slowly.
“Oh, tell me, please, what it is, and I will so gladly do it if it is in my power.” Pam was thinking how she must in her own person expiate what she could of her grandfather’s wrong-doing. She could not bring Sam back to life again, but she might be able to do some service for the widow.
Mrs. Buckle hesitated. She was not a woman of fine feeling, and yet she hated to tell this nice girl, with the straightforward, fearless gaze, that the old man, her grandfather, was a thief. Yet there it was, and although she might soften it down, the ugly fact remained the same. Nervously she cleared her throat, and a hot flush crept over her kindly old face as she burst into speech.
“Sam was found with his pockets cleared out. Some money he had on him, I know, but whether it was much or little I can’t say, and of course I shan’t ever know now; but what upset me more than the loss of the money was that poor Sam’s watch had been taken. A good watch it was, and it had belonged to my father, who gave it to Sam when he died. My word, but I did value that watch! Of course I’m not saying that your grandfather took it for the sake of stealing from the man he’d hurt so badly, but I think perhaps, when he found that he had knocked the sense out of Sam, he just took the money and the watch to make it look as if the whole thing had been done by someone for the sake of stealing. If your grandfather comes creeping back some night, and you see him, I want you to ask him to give you back the watch. Tell him from me that he can keep the money and welcome, for it is sorely he will need it, poor man, if he has got to be a wanderer all through this bitter wintertime that lies before us.”
“I will tell him, Mrs. Buckle; I will be sure not to forget,” answered Pam, her eyes shining with earnestness. “But oh, since you have told me of the robbery, I am quite sure that Grandfather did not do that. You see, my mother has told us so much about Grandfather, and what an upright man he was; hard and difficult to live with, but straight as a die. I can understand that he might have quarrelled with Mr. Buckle, and in the heat of anger might have beaten and injured him, but I am not going to believe that Grandfather stole the money and the watch. Someone must have come along afterwards and done that. Oh, what a fearful business it is!”
“You are right, my dear; it is a fearful thing, and no mistake about it!” cried Mrs. Buckle, following Pam to the door. Then she exclaimed sharply, “Why, whatever are you hanging round here for, Mose Paget?” and Pam saw the untidy figure of the man whom she had once taken for a tramp leaning against the angle of the house. He was white and trembling, and she was sorry that Mrs. Buckle felt it necessary to speak so harshly to him.
“I’m bad!” the man said briefly. “I was working in my creek-lot when I was took queer, so I came up here to see if you had anything you could give me, something to stop the pain,” and he pointed vaguely at his chest as if to indicate the seat of the trouble.
“Come straight in and sit down!” cried the widow heartily. “I wouldn’t turn a sick dog from my door, and certainly I would not turn you away, seeing how you helped me when my husband lay dying. I expect it is colic that you have got, and I’ve a fine remedy for that, though it is a bit nasty. No, Miss Walsh, you need not trouble to stop, for I do just know that you are wanting to get away home. I have got Amanda Higgins here if I want anyone; she is away down in the corner lot picking berries, and I shall just whistle for her if I want her.”
Pam was glad to go. Mrs. Buckle had shown her the right trail to take, telling her that she could make no mistake; nor did she, for, crossing the creek on the log footbridge at the ford, she passed the fence which had been the cause of all the trouble between her grandfather and Sam Buckle, and was at once on their own land at Ripple.
Mrs. Buckle’s account of her grandfather’s axe having been found close beside the injured man had been a great shock to Pam. She had refused to let herself believe that her grandfather would hurt anyone so badly and then disappear, and not a word had been said in her presence of the axe. But when Mrs. Buckle had spoken of the robbery, a gleam of comfort had stolen into her heart again. She was quite, quite sure that her grandfather would not steal money and a watch. Disagreeable he was, and so hard to live with that her mother had been glad to run away from him; but he was bed-rock honest. He owed no man anything, and would rather have lived on buckwheat porridge all the time than run up an account at the store for groceries for which he could not pay. Perhaps he was entirely innocent of this thing, although it did look so black against him. But where was he hiding? And if he had done nothing to be ashamed of, why was he hiding?
These questions, which she could not answer, brought Pam back to her old theory of something having happened to him, and she reached the house at Ripple thoroughly tired out with her search, but with courage unabated to go on again. She told Sophy of her visit to Mrs. Buckle, and how that kindly woman had given her money to supply her grandfather’s need if the poor fugitive should come back; and Sophy dropped her sewing, and sat with parted lips, staring at Pam as she listened to the extraordinary story.
“Just to think of it! Why, Pam, Sam Buckle must have been a tyrant if his widow can feel so kindly to the man who is believed to have caused his death! If I thought all men were like that I should change my mind about getting married. But I know that George is good and kind.”
“People are not all alike, of course,” said Pam, as she leaned back in the big chair and fanned herself with her hat, for the day was hot. “I think that even the very disagreeable ones would not be so bad if they were properly handled. Take Grandfather, for instance. I know he was hard to live with, but half of his disagreeableness came because he was so upset at Mother wanting to marry Father, who was not particularly hard-working, and I am afraid not too steady. Mother was wayward, she would have her own way, but ah, how bitterly she has had to pay!” Pam sighed as visions of her childhood rose up before her eyes.
Sophy nodded in perfect sympathy, but she asked no questions about those old, sad memories. Pam’s past did not concern her, so why be curious about it? Her needle went in and out of the white seam with such soothing regularity, and the house in the forest was so quiet, that presently Pam fell fast asleep, curled up in the big chair with the tired dog at her feet.