The Girl From Tim's Place

by Charles Clark Munn

“’Tain’t often one shoots in the dark ’n’ makes a bull’s eye,” he said.

“I think you and I had better keep mum about this half-breed’s call,” Martin added quietly, “and if Angie mentions it, you needn’t say that you know who he was. It will only make my wife and the girl nervous.”

The two tents were now pitched at the head of a cove, some rods away from the hermit’s hut, and well out of sight from the landing, and to these both Angie and Chip were assured they must flee as soon as the expected bateau entered the lake, and remain secluded until it had departed.

In a way, it was a ticklish situation. All knowledge that this waif was with Martin’s party must be kept from Tim’s Place and this half-breed, or she wouldn’t be safe an hour; and until the Canucks had come and gone, she must be kept hidden. Another and quite a serious annoyance to Martin was the fact that he had counted on these two men as helpers in cutting and hauling logs for this new camp. Only man-power was available, and to move logs a foot in diameter and twenty feet long, in midsummer, was no easy task; but Levi, more experienced in camp-building, made light of it.

“We’ll cut the logs we need, clus to the lake,” he said, “float ’em ’round, ’n’ roll ’em up on skids. It’s easy ’nough, ’n’ we don’t need them Canuckers round a minit.”

It was four days of keen suspense to Chip before they appeared. Neither she nor Angie left the closed tent while they remained over night, or until they had been gone many hours, and then every one felt easier.

The ringing sound of axes now began to echo over the rippled lake, logs were towed across with canoes, a cellar under the new cabin site was excavated, and home-building in the wilderness went merrily on.

While the men worked, Angie and Chip were not idle. Not only did they have meals to prepare over a rude outdoor fireplace, but they gathered grass and moss for beds, wove a hammock and rustic chair seats out of sedge grass, and countless other useful aids.

Chip was especially helpful and more grateful than a dog for any and all consideration. Not a step that she could take or a bit of work that she could do was left to Angie; her interest and do-all-she-could desire never flagged, and from early morn until the supper dishes were washed and wiped, Chip was busy.

But Martin, and especially Levi, had other causes for worry than those which camp-building entailed. The fact that this “Pernicious Pete,” as Angie had once called him, would soon learn of their presence here, and hating all law-abiding people, as such forest brigands always do, would naturally seek to injure them, was one cause. Then, there were so many ways by which he could do harm. A fire started at one corner of the hut at midnight, the same Indian-like malice applied to their two tents, the stealing of their canoes or the gashing of them with a hunting-knife, and countless other methods of venting spite, presented themselves. In a way, they were helpless against such a night-prowling enemy. Over one hundred miles separated them from civilization and all assistance; an impassable wilderness lay between. The stream and their canoes were the only means of egress. These valuable craft were left out of sight and sound each night, on the lake shore, and so their vulnerability on all sides was manifest.