Tom Akerley / His Adventures in the Tall Timber and at Gaspard's Clearing on the Indian River

by Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Akerley got slowly and painfully to his feet and moved toward the house, the door of which stood open. He had been so badly shaken by his throw from the machine that he had to sink to his knees and right hand several times on the way. He reached the door-step at last and sat down on it. So far, he had not caught a glimpse of anything human and alive. A few hens scratched about a stable door and a small black dog eyed him inquiringly from a distance.

The door stood open upon the main apartment of the house, which was very evidently kitchen and living-room in one. It contained a long, high-backed settle against one wall, a deal table against another and a dresser of unstained pine against a third. Plates, platters and bowls, yellow, blue-and-white and a few adorned with flowery designs in gorgeous hues, and a big brown tea-pot, stood on the shelves of the dresser. There was a wide chimney with a fireplace containing fire-dogs and a crane with dangling pot-hooks; and to one side of the chimney, with an elbow of pipe leading into the rough masonry, stood a small stove. Both hearth and stove were cold. A few rag mats, and two deer skins worn bald in patches, lay on the floor of squared timbers. The log walls were sheathed with thin strips of cedar, the partitions and ceiling were of wide pine boards. Rough hewn rafters ran across the ceiling. There was no sign of plaster anywhere in that wide room. There were closed doors in the partitions to the right and left, and one in the log wall beside the chimney, opposite the open door. A wide ladder went steeply up from a corner to an open trap in the ceiling.

Akerley got stiffly to his feet and crossed the threshold. He knocked sharply on the open door; he crossed to the stove and hit the top of the oven with the poker; he shouted, “Wake up!”, “Good morning,” and “Is any one at home?” Knocks and shouts alike failed to produce a response of any sort except from the little black dog. The dog looked in at him across the threshold with an expression of sharp but good-humored curiosity on his black face; and when the intruder addressed him familiarly by the name of “Pup” and asked him where the devil every one was gone to, he wriggled with delight but continued to keep his distance.

Akerley opened the back door and looked out, under the roof of a narrow porch and across a wood-yard, at the high edge of the forest. Sunshine was flooding over the clearing by this time like a bright, level tide. The porch ran the length of the house; and in its shelter stood an upright churn, a couple of tubs, and two benches supporting empty pails and pans and “creamers” which shone like silver in the sun. Also, there were two old splint-bottom rocking-chairs on the porch; and on the seat of one of these lay an open book on its face.

Akerley stepped out onto the rough hewn flooring of the porch and stared about him inquiringly. Here was a comfortable and well-kept home; here were the material things of peaceful industry and leisure; but where had the people gone to? He knew that they had been at home last night, for the light from their open door had guided him to his landing. He sat down in one of the chairs, for he was still weak from the shaking and the pain in his shoulder, and lifted the book from the other.

“My hat!” he exclaimed. “Where am I?”

The book was the elder Dumas’ “Three Musketeers,” printed in the original language of that great and industrious romancer.

He replaced the book and reëntered the house. The dog, who had advanced as far as the middle of the room, immediately beat a wriggling retreat to his old position beyond the threshold. Akerley ascended the ladder and searched through the loft, which was divided into three chambers—a bedroom, a storeroom and a lumber-room. Nobody was hidden there. He descended and opened the closed doors off the main room. Behind them he found a pantry and storeroom combined, a long apartment containing a carpenter’s table and several large grain bins, and a bedroom. They were all as empty of humanity as the kitchen and upper floor.

It was now fifteen minutes past six by the clock on the chimney-shelf; and the intruder felt keen stirrings of hunger. He had not eaten since an early hour of the previous day. He made a fire in the stove with kindlings and dry wood which lay ready to hand, and then looked about for water. There was none in the house. He took an empty pail from the porch and followed a path that ran from the chip-yard into the green gloom of the forest. He found the spring within ten paces of the edge of the clearing, roofed over and fenced about with poles. The clear water brimmed the oblong basin that had been dug for it; and in the lower end of the basin stood two tin “creamers” held down by a stone-weighted board across their tops.

“Last night’s milk, I suppose,” said Akerley, as he filled his pail. “What about this morning’s milking? Are they leaving that to me, I wonder?”