The Shepherd of the North

by Richard Aumerle Maher

A summer without rain meant a season of grim and unrelenting watchfulness. Men armed themselves and tramped through the woods on unbidden 115 sentry duty, to see that no campfires were made. Strangers and outsiders who were likely to be careless were watched from the moment they came into the hills until they were seen safely out of them again. Where other children scouted for and fought imaginary Indians, the children of our hills hunted and fought imaginary fires. The forest fire was to them not a tradition or a bugaboo. It was an enemy that lurked just outside the little clearing of the farm, out there in the underbrush and fallen timber.

Ruth was waiting for Jeffrey Whiting. He had ridden up to French Village for mail. For some weeks they had known that the railroad would try to have its bill for eminent domain passed at the special session of the Legislature. And they knew that the session would probably come to a close this week.

If that bill became a law, then the resistance of the people of the hills had been in vain: Jeffrey had merely led them into a bitter and useless fight against a power with which they could not cope. They would have to leave their homes, taking whatever a corrupted board of condemnation would grant for them. It would be hard on all, but it would fall upon Jeffrey with a crushing bitterness. He would have to remember that he had had the chance to make his mother and himself independently rich. He had thrown away that chance, and now if his fight had failed he would 116 have nothing to bring back to his mother but his own miserable failure.

Ruth remembered that day in the Bishop’s house in Alden when Jeffrey had said proudly that his mother would be glad to follow him into poverty. And she smiled now at her own outburst at that time. They had both meant it, every word; but the ashes of failure are bitter. And she had seen the iron of this fight biting into Jeffrey through all the summer.

She, too, would lose a great deal if the railroad had succeeded. She would not be able to go back to school, and would probably have to go somewhere to get work of some kind, for the little that she would get for her farm now would not keep her any time. But that was a little matter, or at least it seemed little and vague beside the imminence of Jeffrey’s failure and what he would consider his disgrace. She did not know how he would take it, for during the summer she had seen him in vicious moods when he seemed capable of everything.

She saw the speck which he made against the horizon as he came over Argyle Mountain three miles away and she saw that he was riding fast. He was bringing good news!

It needed only the excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods and followed them better than he would have followed 117 whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter and gradually slowed down to a walk as Jeffrey came thundering down upon them. He pulled up sharply and turned on his hind feet. The two horses fell into step, as they knew they were expected to do and their two riders gave them no more heed than if they had been wooden horses.

“How did you know it was all right, Ruth?”

“I saw you coming down Argyle Mountain,” Ruth laughed. “You looked as though you were riding Victory down the top side of the earth. How did it all come out?”

“Here’s the paper,” he said, handing her an Albany newspaper of the day previous; “it tells the story right off. But I got a letter from the Bishop, too,” he added.