The lure of Piper's Glen

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

"Even if that's so, ye won't make a trade when I ain't around to see you ain't cheated."

"I reckon I can do my own tradin'. I'd sooner get cheated on a gun-trade with a man than be seen with you 'round Kingswood."

"Mel!" cried Mrs. Hammond, white to the lips. "Mel! Have a care what you say, for my sake!"

"Shut yer face!" screamed Hammond at the woman, with a black, jumping glare out of his eyes that looked like murder. She bowed her head. He turned to Melchior, trembling with rage. "Do you come along with me, or d'ye go yer own way from this time forrad?" he asked in a terrible whisper.

Melchior was silent, a picture of shamed and sullen defeat. He sat hunched in his chair, his head hanging, his face red as fire.

Hammond and his son drove off in a light wagon immediately after breakfast, to be gone all day. Jim Todhunter went to the store. The bright morning dragged slowly toward noon, but no customers came to buy, sell, or trade. Jim went to the front door and looked out rebelliously at the village, the river, and the hills. The village could be seen at a glance, for it was nothing more than a cluster of a dozen buildings from which ill-tilled farms receded up the valley and back among the hills. Beyond, on every side, the forests dipped and climbed, and drove wedges of dusky firs and glowing maples down between the clearings.

After the mid-day dinner, which was eaten in nervous silence, even young Sam seemed subdued. Jim took his shotgun from its case and filled a pocket with shells. Thus equipped, he returned to the store. For an hour he idled there, growing more deeply disgusted with himself and Amos Hammond and the store every minute. This lolling among barrels and bags was not what he had built his hopes upon, and Hammond was not what he had expected. At the end of the hour he locked up, took the keys over to the house and hung them on their nail just within the front door and walked away. He walked up the road, across the short bridge that spanned Millbrook, with the gun in the crook of his right arm. He walked fast, cleared the village in a minute, and was soon beyond the farthest of the inlying farms.

The brown river brawled with rocks and obstructing ledges on his right, and the wooded hills shouldered down on his left. The road was never level for more than a hundred yards at a stretch. On the rises it was overhung by big birches and maples and pines; spruces crowded it, and in the lowest hollows ancient cedars and hemlocks made a dusky tunnel for it.

Young Todhunter had gone about two miles when a covey of ruffed-grouse puffed up suddenly from the edge of the road and whirred off into the woods. Jim caught no more than a glimpse of short wings and hurtling bodies, but that was enough. His blood raced and his spirits lifted. Hammond's queer eyes and beastly temper, the crude commercial odors of the store, Mrs. Hammond's frightened eyes, the plush-covered chairs and the misinformation of his uncle's friend were all forgotten in the flash of the wild wings. Jim slipped two shells into the gun and went forward alertly.

An hour later, Jim came to a fork in the road and paused to consider his way. The straight road continued beside the river, the branch went off to the left at an angle of about seventy degrees. Both looked promising. The valley of the river was deeper and narrower now, the hills higher and more irregular, the forests less broken. The slosh and roar of white water came up from the river. The branch road led up a shadowed glen between abrupt hills; and down this glen a small brook sang over mossy rocks, slipped under a short bridge of logs and vanished among dense brush in its dive to the river. Both roads looked wild and inviting, but that branching to the left looked the wilder and the less used of the two.