"You mad, dirty, lying cur!" he cried.
He shook Amos Hammond until hairs flew from his dog-skin coat. He slapped his face. He cuffed his ears. He rolled him in the snow. He bumped him and thumped him, then grabbed him up in both arms and flung him back in the sleigh.
"Get along home, you unspeakable cur, and thank God that I don't lose my temper!" he cried.
He jumped into the pung and put Dexter along the Glen road at a thumping trot. He was no more than around the first curve and over the first rise than he heard the report of a gun behind him. He looked back without drawing rein, but saw nothing. He drove on, wondering if Hammond had fired a wild shot after him, or if the queer old woman was still hunting rabbits in the vicinity of the fork.
Jim did not tell the Ducats of his encounter with Amos Hammond on his way home, but he spoke of his meeting with the old woman on his way to the village. Mrs. Ducat said that the queer old person with the basket and the staff must have been Widow Wilson from Kingswood Settlement, and the others agreed with her. Peter Ducat, who had been suffering increasing twinges of rheumatism all morning and half the night before, held forth at length and bitterly on the subjects of Widow Wilson's sad case and Amos Hammond's hypocrisy and cruelty.
After dinner, Jim decided to master the art of snowshoeing immediately, so as to be ready for the long cross-country journey to the Kettle Pond country before Mark's arrival. There were plenty of snowshoes in the house. Flora selected a pair for him and showed him how to arrange and tie the thongs. He fastened them to his moccasined feet there and, after a few preliminary shuffles and stumbles around the kitchen, to the peril and amusement of the grandfathers and the disgust of the suffering Peter, he flopped and staggered out into the snow. Flora could not accompany him, for it was baking day. He got clear of the farmstead in the course of half an hour, with the dogs leaping around him with yelps of encouragement and derision. After that he began to see how to avoid stepping on himself; and within the hour he was footing the white aisles of the forest, and surmounting white barriers where brush fences lay buried with astonishing ease and security. He kept at it until the sun was low.
CHAPTER IX
AN AWKWARD SITUATION
Upon his return to the house, Jim found Flora alone in the old kitchen preparing supper. Peter Ducat had retired to bed with his rheumatism, Mrs. Ducat was upstairs rubbing his tortured joints with liniment, and the grandfathers were out at the barn. Flora turned from the stove on the instant of Jim's entrance and advanced swiftly to meet him. Her face was pale and her eyes were even brighter than usual.
"You must go right away!" she whispered. "No, rest a few minutes—and then travel fast. I have grub all packed, and your rifle and ammunition ready, and blankets, and a compass. Sit down and rest!"