A Canadian Farm Mystery; Or, Pam the Pioneer

by Bessie Marchant

Then came busy days of trough-making. This was all done at Ripple⁠—⁠indeed, most of it was done by Pam after Don had made a few as patterns; for Dr. Grierson was spilled from his sledge just at that time, and was so much hurt that he could not go to his patients except when Don went with him, to lift him in and out of the sledge and help him to the bedsides of those who needed him badly. It was the sickness-time; the fierce cold was relaxing its grip on the land, and everyone was feeling the change. Nathan Gittins, who had said that he would come and help to make the troughs, was ill in bed with influenza, and Galena was tied hand and foot with the work of the house and the farm, to say nothing of the nursing. Indeed, Nathan was so ill for three days that Mrs. Buckle went over to the Gittins farm to help Galena, who was nearly worn out. Then he began to improve, and got better almost as fast as he had got ill.

Then the sugaring began. The trees selected were carefully numbered, an incision was made in the bark, and the little troughs made by Pam were fixed under the openings to catch the oozing syrup. When the troughs were full they were emptied into a cooking pot, which two of the sugar workers carried the round of the trees; then the pot was brought to the house, and the work of boiling and skimming began. But the accidents, the frights, and the surprises were so numerous that Pam began to wonder whether after all her sugaring venture would pay its expenses. The snow was melting fast, and the sun was so hot at midday that the bears, which had been sleeping for most of the winter snugly tucked into some cranny of the hillside, or in hollow trees, came out of their long slumber and cast about for food to satisfy them after their long fast. As a matter of course they found the troughs under the tapped trees, and equally as a matter of course they helped themselves to the syrup, knocked the troughs down, so that the escaping syrup was wasted, and generally upset things. After this a very close watch had to be kept, and although it was impossible to keep the bears from stealing the syrup, it was possible to prevent the waste by fixing the troughs anew, or by replacing them, when they were damaged, with fresh ones.

The boiling was an anxious business, too, but here Pam proved her mettle. It took her some days to discover just how big to make her fire, and just how fast it was safe to let the syrup boil without its boiling over; but when once she had succeeded in mastering these details, she was able to run the boiling business single-handed whilst the others of the party were away collecting syrup. Sophy’s time was fairly well filled in catering for such a big party, and the fun at meal-times was fast and furious. Luckily the weather was fine, and so the work went on with dispatch. The house was redolent of the smell of boiling syrup, and when Sophy complained that it made her feel sick, Pam pointed out to her how much worse it would be if the stuff were allowed to boil over on the stove and the odour of burning were added to the smell of the syrup.

At last the long hours of bending over the boiling syrup began to affect Pam; she had a fearful headache, then came nausea and sickness. Galena was forced to take the place of boiler, while Pam went out to the woods to help in the collecting. Don wanted her to come with him. It was necessary for them to work in pairs, and Pam looked so shockingly bad from her bilious fit that she was really an object of pity. But Pam had a perverse fit and would not go. She told Don that he must go with Nathan and work as fast as possible, while she strolled along behind with little Amanda Higgins, whom Mrs. Buckle had generously spared for a day’s outing in the forest. Don was reluctant to leave her; he said that Amanda could go with Nathan, and they two would go together, when he would see that she did not have to work hard, nor yet to walk farther than she felt fit for. But Pam was bent on having her own way, and, like most perverse people, she had to suffer in consequence.

Amanda was a feckless girl, whose idea of sugaring was to run here and there looking in sheltered places, and on the sunny sides of the banks, to see if the colt’s-foot was coming into blossom. She left Pam to do the work of emptying the troughs and refixing them, and she was a proud and happy girl when she announced with a shout of jubilation that she had found the first flower. Pam dropped her trough in a hurry then, and let the exuding sap drip to waste while she ran to look at the tiny yellow blossom, which was indeed the harbinger of the hosts of flowers that were waiting to carpet the waste places with beauty.

“It is too early for flower-hunting yet,” said Pam, mindful of her duty, as she picked up the trough which she had flung down in such a hurry and went off to fix it to the tree. “Come and help me, Amanda, and then next week, when this sugar business is all out of the way, I will ask Mrs. Buckle to spare you, and we will have a long afternoon in the forest hunting for flowers. They will all be new to me, but I expect you know all about them, and which come first?”

“I should just think I do!” cried Amanda, who was skipping and prancing like a young lamb, and was almost as irresponsible. She started to run down a little bank that was clear of snow, and to jump the hollow at the bottom, where the drift still lay in unsullied whiteness on the top of last year’s leaves; but she caught her foot in an upstanding root, tried to save herself, failed, then went sprawling into the drift, clutching wildly for something by which to save herself, and screaming at the top of her voice.

Pam put the pot of syrup carefully on the ground and went to the help of Amanda. Privately she was sharply regretting the fit of perversity which had made her refuse to go with Don, for if Amanda had been with Nathan Gittins, he would have taken good care that she did not get up to pranks of this sort, which not merely wasted time, but endangered her limbs likewise. There was so much sickness about at this time that it was of all things foolish to run risks which might be avoided.

“Catch hold of my hand and I will pull you out!” cried Pam, and holding to the stem of a slender young birch with one hand, she reached out the other to assist Amanda from the hollow, which was a deep one.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Amanda’s voice rose in a crescendo of shrieks as she squirmed round and round in an agitated endeavour to get on her feet, and she was in such a hurry that it took about twice as long to scramble up as it would have done if she had gone to work in a cooler fashion. “Ah! Oh! Ah! There is a dead man here down under me, and I am frightened out of my life!”