The Gentling of Red McWha
I
It was heavy sledding on the Upper Ottanoonsis trail. The two lumbermen were nearing the close of the third day of the hard four days’ haul in from the Settlements to the camp. At the head of the first team, his broad jaw set and his small grey eyes angry with fatigue, trudged the big figure of Red McWha, choosing and breaking a way through the deep snow. With his fiery red head and his large red face, he was the only one of his colouring in a large family so dark that they were known as the “Black McWhas,” and his temper seemed to have been chronically soured by the singularity of his type. But he was a good woodsman and a good teamster, and his horses followed confidently at his heels like dogs. The second team was led by a tall, gaunt-jawed, one-eyed lumberman named Jim Johnson, but invariably known as “Walley.” From the fact that his blind eye was of a peculiar blankness, like whitish porcelain, he had been nicknamed “Wall-Eye”; but, owing to his general 109 popularity, combined with the emphatic views he held on that particular subject, the name had been mitigated to Walley.
The two were hauling in supplies for Conroy’s Camp, on Little Ottanoonsis Lake. Silently, but for the clank and creak of the harness, and the soft “thut, thut” of the trodden snow, the little procession toiled on through the soundless desolation. Between the trees––naked birches and scattered, black-green firs––filtered the lonely, yellowish-violet light of the fading winter afternoon. When the light had died into ghostly grey along the corridors of the forest, the teams rounded a turn of the trail, and began to descend the steep slope which led down to Joe Godding’s solitary cabin on the edge of Burnt Brook Meadows. Presently the dark outline of the cabin came into view against the pallor of the open clearing.
But there was no light in the window. No homely pungency of wood-smoke breathed welcome on the bitter air. The cabin looked startlingly deserted.
“Whoa!” commanded McWha, sharply, and glanced round at Johnson with an angry misgiving in his eyes. The teams came to a stop with a shiver of all their bells.
Then, upon the sudden stillness, arose the faint sound of a child’s voice, crying hopelessly.
“Something wrong down yonder!” growled 110 McWha, his expectations of a hot supper crumbling into dust.