The Heart of the Red Firs: A Story of the Pacific Northwest

by Ada Woodruff Anderson

But this old bar, the last remaining bit of furniture in the place, guarded the sagging door of a small ell evidently once used as a tap-room. It stopped at the first story, and the flooring, made of rougher, wider lumber than that in the main building, was laid in short patched strips. It was rotting about the rusty nailheads; sometimes there were breaks. All this was lighted dimly by one small window, high up in the unfinished wall and curtained by the bluff, and she saw a dozen pitfalls in the ruin, yawning for her baby's feet. She drew the door shut, but it was without a lock and dragged back a foot or more.

The great rear door of the bar-room also stood open; it was loose on its hinges and grounded on the floor. The threshold dipped to a balcony, dismembered of railing and stairs. She caught the child up in her arms and hurried out through the front entrance back along the walk.

It was twilight when she entered her gate. A first star glimmered over the mills, and on the water front across the harbor Seattle's lamps shone whitely. Close at hand the burning slabpile at the end of the waste-chute took on a redder glow, sending long searching tongues of flame into the gloom of the bluff. She went in and lighted a swinging lamp. Its crimson shade sent a pleasing warmth through the room, which possessed the attractive element that follows the touch of a refined and orderly woman. There were no housemaids in that milling camp; no other women. The few men who had wives made their homes over in the town, where they spent the week-end. Once during the day Mason came in to make things "ship-shape," but he took the hour when she was at the cook-house, where the meals for the Captain's family, which included Forrest, were served in a small private dining-room off the main hall.

The night was cool and she lighted the fire in the grate and seated herself in a low wicker chair to read her remaining letter. It was from her sister, briefer than usual, for she expected to follow it within the week to go that promised cruise among the islands.

"... The country is being settled very fast," she wrote. "Mill Thornton is clearing on his new homestead for a cabin, and Mr. Stratton has built a charming little lodge of cedar shakes thatched with bark, on his timber claim up the headwaters. It is tucked away in a clump of fine old trees, and the first time I saw him there, leaning in the doorway, with one of Laramie's dogs fawning over him, and bargaining with the trapper over a beaver pelt at his feet, I couldn't help calling, 'Good morning, Robin Hood.' It was so pleasant to find the place unspoiled, for most of the settlers set up their homes in a great burn, with not even an alder saved; not a flower or blade of grass left to ease the eyes."

But, though she had so much to tell about these matters, of her own homestead there was not a word. Louise folded the letter, puzzled, and laid it aside. She sat for an interval looking absently into the fire. "I don't understand," she said at last. "I don't understand why she is staying up there in the wilderness. She has promised to marry Uncle Silas, and yet she has let him go to Washington without her. She is willing to have the whole continent between them; and when a woman loves, as she should love the man she is going to marry, she is ready to shape her plans and interests to his. She wants to give him her companionship, to be at hand to help him the first moment he may need her. But Alice seems happy. I wonder what her reason is."

She had learned in this solitude to think aloud, gathering comradery from the sounds of her voice, and young Silas, growing tired of his playthings, came over to her knee. He looked up into her face gravely, trying to fathom her meaning. She laughed softly and lifted him to her lap. He was a lovely child; a little copy of Philip Kingsley in form and gesture; he had the same close-curling blond hair. He returned his mother's caress warmly, putting his stout arm about her neck and kissing her mouth, her cheek, again and again. Presently she undressed him, but she deferred the bed-going, enticing him, with surprise and frolic, to stay awake. She dreaded the silence that was to follow; the interminable loneliness of the slow night. But at last he went to sleep in her arms.

When she had tucked him away in his bed in an inner room and returned, she moved about restlessly, giving housewifely touches to things already arranged. "After all, it is the business," she said. "It must be—nearly always—the business. I am too exacting. I expect too much."

She reached the window and lifted her hand to draw the blind. But she started and dropped her arm, letting the shade spring back to the roller. Someone stood on the walk without. His long figure rose in the square of light which, blocked on the piazza, included the breadth of fence where he leaned. His dark, repulsive face was raised to her, and he seemed to fix her with his small, snakelike eyes. The next instant he dropped his goblin shape and shrank writhing away into the gloom.

She shivered and her fingers trembled when she reached again for the cord and drew the blind. She went into the hall and pushed the heavy bolt above the lock on the front door. When she had gone through the house and secured every door and window, she came back, still shivering, to the fire. "It is nothing," she told herself, and put her hand on the mantel, reassuring herself as a woman must when denied human support, "it was nothing. The man stopped a moment in passing, attracted by the light. I must have some—courage. But his face—was terrible."