SWICKEY SHOOTS THE BEAR
LOST FARM CAMP
BY
HARRY HERBERT KNIBBS
Author of “Overland Red”
ILLUSTRATED BY HAROLD JAMES CUE
NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY HARRY HERBERT KNIBBS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
TO GRETCHEN
Over a height-of-land the trail
Wanders down to an inland sea
Where never a keel nor a mirrored sail
Has ruffled its broad tranquillity,
Save a golden shadow that fires the blue
When I drift across in my birch canoe....
CONTENTS
- [Swickey Shoots a Bear]
- [Lost Farm Folk]
- [Much Ado about Beelzebub]
- [The Compact]
- [A Midnight Adventure]
- [Tramworth]
- [The Book and the “Specs”]
- [Smoke Finds Employment]
- [Jim Cameron’s Idea]
- [Barney Axel’s Exodus]
- [That Green Stuff]
- [“Us as don’t know Nothin’”]
- [David’s “Real Good-Bye”]
- [The Flight of Smoke]
- [Boston]
- [The Man in the Street]
- [News from Lost Farm]
- [A Consultation]
- [Piracy]
- [Home for Christmas]
- [The Traps]
- [“Red” Smeaton’s Love Affair]
- [A Confession]
- [Rivals]
- [On the Drive]
- [David’s Return]
- [“I Want Dave”]
- [Complications]
- [Smoke’s Last Stand]
- [Just Fun]
- [The Bluff]
- [Hoss Avery’s Tribute]
ILLUSTRATIONS
[“Where be they?” she whispered]
[“Here’s your game,” he said hoarsely]
[“I didn’t know, Swickey—I thought—there was someone else”]
CHAPTER I—SWICKEY SHOOTS A BEAR
Old man Avery hurried from the woods toward his camp, evidently excited. His daughter Swickey stood watching the black kitten Beelzebub play a clever but rather one-sided game with a half-dead field-mouse. As Avery saw the girl, he raised both hands above his head in a comical gesture of imprecation.
“Swickey, thet bug-eatin’ ole pork-thief’s been at the butter ag’in!”
“Why, Pop, thet’s the second time he’s done it!”
“Yes, an’ he scraped all the butter he could outen it, an’ upset the crock likewise. Swickey, we’ve got to git that b’ar or take the butter outen the spring-hole.”
The girl’s brown eyes dilated. “Why don’t you trap ’im, Pop?”
“Law ag’in’ trappin’ b’ars in August.”
“Law ag’in’ shootin’ deer in August, too, ain’t they?”
“Thet’s diff’runt. We’ve got to have fresh meat.”
“Ain’t b’ar meat?” she asked ironically.
“Reckon ’tis.”
“Then, why ain’t you a-shootin’ of him?”
The old lumberman rubbed his hand across his eyes, or rather his eye, for the other was nothing more than a puckered scar, and his broad shoulders drooped sheepishly. Then he laughed, flinging his hand out as though it contained an unpleasant thought which he tossed away.
“Gol-bling it, Swickey, seems to me as lately every time I drawed a bead on a deer, they was three front sights on the gun, and as many as three deer where they oughter been one. ’Sides,” he continued, “I ain’t ketched sight of him so fur. Now, mebby if you seen him you could shoot—”
Swickey grabbed the astonished Beelzebub to her breast and did a wild and exceedingly primitive dance before the cabin door.
“Be-el-zebub!” she cried, “Be-el-zebub! he’s a-goin’ to leave me shoot a b’ar—me! I ain’t shot nothin’ but deer so fur and he’s shot more ’n a million b’ars, ain’t you, Pop?”
“Wa-al, mebby a hun’red.”
“Is thet more ’n a million, Pop?”
The smile faded from Avery’s face. Huge, gray-bearded, pensive, he stood for a moment, as inscrutable as the front of a midnight forest.
Swickey eyed him with awe, but Swickey at fourteen could not be suppressed long.
“Pop, one of your buttins is busted.”
Her father slid his hand down his suspender strap and wrinkled the loose leather end round his thumb.
“How many’s a hun’red, Pop?”
Avery spoke more slowly than usual. “You git the cigar-box where be my ca’tridges.”
“Be I goin’ to shoot now?” she exclaimed, as she dropped the kitten and skipped into the cabin.
“Got to see him fust,” he said, as she returned with the cigar-box and his glasses.
“Here they be, Pop, and here’s your ‘specs.’” Avery adjusted his spectacles, carried the box of cartridges to the chopping-log and sat down. Beelzebub, who had recovered his now defunct field-mouse, tried to make himself believe it was still alive by tossing it up vigorously and catching it with a curved and graceful paw.
“You count ’em, Swickey, as I hand ’em to you.”
“One.”
“One,” she replied hurriedly.
“Two.”
“Two,” she repeated briskly.
“Three.”
“Thr-ee.” She turned the shells over in her hand slowly.
“Four.”
“Four’s ’nough to shoot a b’ar, ain’t it, Pop?”
“Five,” continued Avery, disregarding her question.
Swickey counted on her fingers. “One he guv me; two he guv me; then he guv me ’nother. Them’s two and them’s two and thet’s four, and this one makes five—is thet the name fur it?”
“Yes, five,” he replied.
“Yes, five,” replied Swickey. “Ain’t five ’nough?”
The old man paused in his task and ran his blunt fingers through the mass of glittering shells that sparkled in the box. The glint of the cartridges dazzled him for a moment. He closed his eyes and saw a great gray horse standing in the snow beneath the pines, blood trickling from a wounded forward shoulder, and then a huddled shape lying beneath the horse. Presently Nanette, Swickey’s mother, seemed to be speaking to him from that Somewhere away off over the tree-tops. “Take care of her, Bud,” the voice seemed to say, as it trailed off in the hum of a noonday locust overhead. The counting of the shells continued. Painfully they mounted to the grand total of ten, when Swickey jumped to her feet, scattering the cartridges in the grass.
“I don’t want to shoot no million b’ars or no hun’red to oncet.”
There were tears of anger and chagrin in her voice. She had tried to learn. The lessons usually ended that way. Rebellion on Swickey’s part and gentle reproof from her father.
“Don’t git mad, Swickey. I didn’t calc’late to hurt you,” said the old man, as he stooped and picked up the cartridges.
He had often tried to teach her what he knew of “book larnin’,” but his efforts were piteously unsuccessful. She was bright enough, but the traps, the river, her garden-patch, the kitten, and everything connected with their lonely life at Lost Farm had an interest far above such vague and troublesome things as reading and writing.
Once, after a perspiring half-hour of endeavor on her father’s part and a disinterested fidgeting on hers, she had said, “Say, Pop, I ain’t never goin’ away from you, be I?”
To which he had replied, “No, Swickey, not if you want to stay.”
“Then, ding it, Pop, ain’t I good ’nough fur you jest as I be, ’thout larnin’?”
This was an argument he found difficult to answer. Still, he felt he was not doing as her mother would have wished, for she often seemed to speak to him in the soft patois of the French-Canadian, when he was alone, by the river or on the hills.
As he sat gazing across the clearing he thought he saw something move in the distance. He scowled quizzically over his spectacles. Then he drew his daughter to him and whispered, “See thar, gal! You git the rifle.”
She glided to the cabin noiselessly and returned lugging the old .45 Winchester. Avery pointed toward a lumbering black patch near the river.
“He’s too fur,” she whispered.
“You snick down through the bresh back of the camp. Don’t you shoot less’n you kin see his ear plain.”
The girl stooped and glided behind the cabin, to reappear for a moment at the edge of the wood bordering the clearing. Then her figure melted into the shadows of the low fir trees. Avery sat tensely watching the river-edge.
Swickey had often rested the heavy barrel of the old rifle on a stump or low branch, and blazed away at some unsuspecting deer feeding near the spring in the early morning or at dusk, with her father crouching behind her; but now she was practically alone, and although she knew that bruin would vanish at the first suspicion of her presence, she trembled at the thought that he might seek cover in the very clump of undergrowth in which she was concealed. She peered between the leafy branches. There he was, sitting up and scraping the over-ripe berries from the bushes clumsily. She raised the rifle and then lowered it. It was too heavy to hold steadily, and there was no available branch or log upon which to rest it. A few yards ahead of her was a moss-topped pine stump. Shoving the rifle along the ground she wriggled toward the stump and sighed her relief when she peeped over its bleached roots and saw the bear again. He was sitting up as before, but his head was moving slowly from side to side and his little eyes were shifting uneasily. She squirmed down behind the rifle, hugging it close as her father had taught her. The front sight glistened an inch below the short black ear. She drew a long breath and wrapping two fingers round the trigger, pulled steadily.
With the r-r-r-ri-p-p, boom! of the Winchester, and as the echoes chattered and grumbled away among the hills, the bear lunged forward with a prolonged whoo-owoow, got up, stumbled over a log, and turning a disjointed somersault, lay still.
The old man ran toward the spot. “Don’t tetch him!” he screamed.
From the fringe of brush behind the bear came Swickey, rifle in hand. Disregarding her father she deliberately poked bruin in the ribs with the gun-muzzle. His head rolled loosely to one side. She gave a shrill yell of triumph that rang through the quiet afternoon, startling the drowsy birds to a sudden riotous clamoring.
Avery, panting and sweating, ran to his daughter and clasped her in his arms. “Good fur you! You’re my gal! Hit him plump in the ear.” And he turned the carcass over, inspecting it with a critical eye.
“Goin’ on five year, I reckon. A he one, too. Fur’s no good; howcome it were a bing good shot for a gal.”
“Don’t care if the fur ain’t no good, he’s bigger nor you and me put t’gither, ain’t he, Pop?”
“Wal, not more ’n four times,” said Avery, as he reached for the short, thin-bladed skinning-knife in his belt and began to deftly work the hide off the animal. Swickey, used to helping him at all times, held a corner of the hide here and a paw there, while the keen blade slipped through the fat already forming under the bear’s glossy black coat. Silently the old man worked at cutting up the carcass.
“Godfrey!” The knife had slipped and bit deep into his hand. “Why, Pop! Looks as if you done it a-pu’pose. I was watchin’ you.”
“It’s the specs. They don’t work right somehow.”
The girl ran to the cabin and returned with a strip of cloth with which she bound up the cut.
“Thar, pop. It ain’t hurtin’ you, be it?”
“N-o-o.”
“We kin bile some ile outen him,” said Swickey, as with a practical eye she estimated the results.
“Three gallon, mebby?”
“How much does thet make in money?”
“’Bout a dollar and a half.”
“Say, Pop!” She hesitated.
“Wa-al?”
“Kin I have the money for the ile?”
Her father paused, wiped his forehead with a greasy hand, and nodded toward the pocket containing his pipe and tobacco. She filled the pipe and lighted it for him.
“Say, Pop, I hear somebody singin’.”
“Wha—Jumpin’ Gooseflesh! If I ain’t clean forgot they was fifteen of them lumber-jacks comin’ fur supper. Ya-as, thar they be down along shore. Swickey, you skin fur the house and dig into the flour bar’l—quick! We’ll be wantin’ three bake-sheets. I’ll bring some of the meat.”
CHAPTER II—LOST FARM FOLK
Lost Farm tract, with its small clearing, was situated in the northern timber lands, at the foot of Lost Lake. Below lay the gorge through which the river plunged and thundered, its diapason sounding a low monotone over the three cabins on the hillside, its harsher notes muffled by the intervening trees.
When Hoss Avery first came there, bringing his little girl whom he had fondly nicknamed “Swickey,” he climbed the narrow trail along the river, glanced at the camp, swung his pack from his shoulders, filled his pipe, and sitting on a log drew Swickey down beside him and talked to her, asking her her opinion of some things which she understood and a great many things which she did not, to all of which she made her habitual reply of “Yes, Pop.”
That was when Swickey, ten years old and proudly conscious of a new black-and-red checkered gingham dress, had unwittingly decided a momentous question.
“You like this here place, Swickey?” her father had asked.
“Yes, Pop,” and she snuggled closer in his arm.
“Think you and me can run the shebang—feed them lumber-jacks goin’ in and comin’ out, fall and spring?”
“Yes, Pop.”
“’Course you’ll do the cookin’, bein’ my leetle woman, won’t you?” And the big woodsman chuckled.
“Yes, Pop,” she replied seriously.
“And you won’t git lonesome when the snow comes and you can’t play outside and ketch butterflies and sech things in the grass? They ain’t no wimmen-folks up here and no leetle gals to play with. Jest me and you and the trees and the river. Hear it singin’ now, Swickey! Bet you don’t know what it’s sayin’.”
“Yes, Pop.” But Swickey eyed her father a mite timidly as she twisted her dress round her fist. She hoped he would not ask her what the river was “really-truly, cross-your-heart-or-die, sayin’,” but she had imagination.
“What be it sayin’, Swickey?”
She rose to the occasion pluckily, albeit hesitating at first. “Why it’s—it’s—it’s sayin’, ‘father, father, father,’—jest slow like thet. Then it gets to goin’ faster and faster and says, ‘Hello, Swickey! Hello, Pop! thet you?’—jest like thet. Then it goes a-growlin’ ’long and says, ‘Better stay fur a lo-o-ng time ’cause it’s nice and big and—and—’ and I’m hungry fur supper,” she added. “Ain’t thet what it says, Pop?”
Avery pushed his hat over his eyes and scratched the back of his head.
“Suthin’ like thet. Yes, I reckon it says, ‘Better stay,’ and she says better stay, howcome I don’t jest know—”
“Who is she, Pop?”
“Your ma, Swickey. She talks to me like you hear’n’ the river talkin’ sometimes.”
“She ain’t never talkin’ to me—reckon I be too leetle, ain’t I, Pop?”
“Ya-a-s. But when you git growed up, mebby she’ll talk to ye, Swickey. And if she do, you mind what she’s a-tellin’ you, won’t you, leetle gal?”
“Yes, Pop.” And she looked up at her father appealingly. “But ain’t I never goin’ to see her in my new dress, mebby?” And she smoothed the gingham over her knees with a true feminine hand and a childish consciousness of having on her “good clothes.”
“If God-A’mighty’s willin’, Swickey, we’ll both on us see her some day.”
“Who’s he, Pop? Is he bigger’n you be?”
“Ya-a-s,” he replied gently. “He’s bigger nor your Pop; but why was you askin’ thet?”
“’Cause Jim Cameron, what drives the team, says you be the biggest man that ever come into these here woods.” She paused for breath. “And he said, he did, ‘thet even if you was a old man they warn’t no man he thunk could ever lick you.’” She drew another long breath of anticipation and gazed at her father admiringly. “And mebby you could make God-A’mighty giv my ma back to you.”
“Huh! Jim Cameron said I was a old man, hey? Wal, I reckon I be—reckon I be. But I reckon likewise thet me and you kin git along somehow.” He began to count on his fingers. “Now thar’s the feedin’ of the crews goin’ in to Nine-Fifteen, and feedin’ the strays comin’ out, and the Comp’ny settles the bills. Then thar’s the trappin’, and the snowshoes and buckskin and axe-handles. Oh, I reckon we kin git along. Then thar’s the dinnimite when the drive comes through—”
“What’s dinnimite, Pop?”
Avery ceased his calculating abruptly. He coughed and cleared his throat.
“Wal, Swickey, it’s suthin’ what makes a noise suthin’ like thunder, mebby, and tears holes in things and is mighty pow’ful—actin’ unexpected at times—” He paused for further illustrations, but Swickey had grasped her idea of “dinnimite” from his large free gestures. It was something bigger and stronger than her father.
“Is dinnimite suthin’ like—like God-A’ mighty?” she asked in a timid voice.
“Ya-a-s, Swickey, it are—sometimes—”
So Swickey and her father came to Lost Farm. The river had said “stay,” and according to Swickey’s interpretation had repeated it. They both heard it, the old giant-powder deacon of the lumber company, and his “gal.”
Woodsmen new to the territory had often misjudged him on account of his genial expression and indolent manner, but they soon came to know him for a man of his hands (he bared an arm like the rugged bole of a beech) and a man of his word, and his word was often tipped with caustic wit that burned the conceit of those who foolishly invited his wrath. Yet he would “stake” an outgoing woodsman whose pay-check was inadequate to see him home, and his door was always open to a hungry man, whether he had money or not. He liked “folks,” but he liked them where they belonged, and according to his theory few of them belonged in the woods.
“The woods,” he used to say, “gets the best of most folks. Sets ’em to drinkin’ or talkin’ to ’emselves and then they go crazy. A man’s got to have bottom to live up here. Got to have suthin’ inside of him ’ceptin’ grub and guts—and I ain’t referrin’ to licker nohow—or eddication. When a feller gits to feelin’ as like he was a section of the woods hisself, and wa’n’t lookin’ at a show and knowin’ all the while he was lookin’ at a show; when he kin see the whole works to onct ’thout seein’ things like them funny lights in the sky mornin’s and evenin’s, and misses ’em wuss than his vittles when he be whar they ain’t, then he belongs in the bresh.”
Swickey used to delight in hearing her father hold forth, sometimes to a lone woodsman going out, sometimes to Jim Cameron, the teamster at the “Knoll,” and often to her own wee brown self as she sat close to the big stove in the winter, chin on knees, watching the fleecy masses of snow climb slowly up the cabin windows.
Four summers and four long winters they had lived at Lost Farm, happy in each other’s company and contented with their isolation.
There was but one real difficulty. Swickey’s needlecraft extended little farther than the sewing on of “buttins,” and the mending of tears, and she did need longer skirts. She had all but out-grown those her father had brought from Tramworth (the lumber town down river) last spring, and she had noticed little Jessie Cameron when at the Knoll recently. Jessie, with the critical eye of twelve, had stared hard at Swickey’s sturdy legs, and then at her own new blue frock. Swickey had returned the stare in full and a little over, replying with that juvenile grimace so instinctive to childhood and so disconcertingly unanswerable.
The advent of the bear, and Swickey’s hand in his downfall, offered an opportunity she did not neglect. She had asked her father if he would buy the oil for her before he got the money for it from Jim Cameron. Avery, busy with clearing-up after the men who had arrived that afternoon, said he “reckoned” he could.
“I don’t calc’late to know what’s got into ye. No use in calc’latin’ ’bout wimmen-folks, but I’ll give you the dollar and a half. Mebby you’re goin’ to buy your Pop a new dress-suit, mebby?”
“What’s a dress-suit, Pop?”
“Wal,” he replied, “I ain’t never climb into one, but from what I seen of ’em, it’s a most a’mighty uncumf’table contrapshun, hollered out in front and split up the back so they ain’t nothin’ left but the belly-band and the pants. Makes me feel foolish like to look at em, and I don’t calc’late they’d be jest the best kind of clothes fer trappin’ and huntin’, so I reckon I don’t need any jest now.”
“Huh!” exclaimed Swickey, “I reckon you’re all right jest as you be. Folks don’t look at your legs and grin.”
Avery surveyed himself from the waist down and then looked wonderingly at his daughter. Suddenly his eye twinkled and he slapped his palm on his thigh.
“Wa-al, by the great squealin’ moo-cow, if you ain’t—”
But Swickey vanished through the doorway into the summer night.
CHAPTER III—MUCH ADO ABOUT BEELZEBUB
Fourteen of the fifteen men, who arrived at Avery’s camp that afternoon, came into the woods because they had to. The fifteenth, David Ross, came because he wanted to. Ever since he could read he had dreamed of going into the woods and living with the lumbermen and trappers. His aunt and only living relative, Elizabeth Ross, had discouraged him from leaving the many opportunities made possible by her generosity. She had adopted the boy when his father died, and she had provided for him liberally. When he came of age the modest income which his father’s estate provided was transferred from her care, as a trustee, to him. Then she had offered him his choice of professions, with the understanding that her considerable fortune was to be his at her death. She had hoped to have him with her indefinitely, but his determination to see more of the woods than his summer vacations allowed finally resolved itself into action. He told her one evening that he had “signed up” with the Great Western Lumber Company.
Protests, supplications, arguments were of no avail. He had listened quietly and even smilingly as his aunt pointed out what seemed to her to be the absurdities of the plan. Even a suggested tour of the Continent failed to move him. Finally she made a last appeal.
“If your income isn’t sufficient, Davy, I’ll—”
He interrupted her with a gesture. “I’ve always had enough money,” he replied. “It isn’t that.”
“You’re just like your father, David,” she said. “I suppose I shall have to let you go, but remember there is some one else who will miss you.”
“Miss Bascomb has assured me that we can never agree, on—on certain things, so there is really nothing to keep me here,—except you,” he added in a gentler tone, as he saw the pained look on her kindly old face. “And you just said you would let me go.”
“Would have to let you go, Davy.”
“Well, it’s all the same, isn’t it, Aunt Bess?”
She smiled tearfully at his boyishness. “It seems to be,” she replied. “I am sorry about Bessie—”
The following morning he had appeared at an employment office where “Fisty” Harrigan of the Great Western had “taken him on” as a likely hand, influenced by his level gaze and direct manner. “Fisty” and David Ross promised to become good friends until, during their stay at the last hotel en route to the lumber camp, Harrigan had suggested “a little game wid th’ b’ys,” wherein the “b’ys” were to be relieved of their surplus change.
“They jest t’row it away anyhow,” he continued, as David’s friendly chat changed to a frigid silence. “T’ought you was a sport,” said Harrigan, with an attempt at jocularity.
“That’s just why I don’t play poker with that kind,” replied David, gesturing contemptuously toward the mellow fourteen strung in loose-jointed attitudes along the hotel bar. “I like sport, but I like it straight from the shoulder.”
“You do, hey?” snarled Harrigan, drawing back a clenched fist. Ross looked him full in the eye, calm and unafraid. Fisty’s arm dropped to his side. He tried a new tack. “I was only tryin’ you out, kid, and you’re all right, all right,” he said with oily familiarity.
“Sorry I can’t say the same for you, Harrigan,” replied David. “But I’m going through to the camps. That’s what I came in for. If I don’t go with this crew, I’ll go with another.”
“Forget it and come and have a drink,” said Fisty, trying to hide his anger beneath an assumption of hospitality. He determined to be even with Ross when he had him in camp and practically at his mercy. David declined both propositions and Harrigan moved away muttering.
So it happened that when they arrived at Lost Farm Camp, the last stopping-place until they reached the winter operations of the Company at Nine-Fifteen, Fisty and David were on anything but friendly terms. David’s taciturn aloofness irritated Harrigan, who was not used to having men he hired cross his suggestions or disdain his companionship. When they arose in the morning to Avery’s “Whoo—Halloo” for breakfast, Harrigan was in an unusually sour mood and David’s cheerful “good-morning” aggravated him.
The men felt that there was something wrong between the “boss” and the “green guy,” as they termed David, and breakfast progressed silently. A straw precipitated the impending quarrel.
The kitten Beelzebub, prowling round the table and rubbing against the men’s legs, jumped playfully to Harrigan’s shoulder. Harrigan reached back for him, but the kitten clung to his perch, digging in manfully to hang on. The men laughed uproariously. Fisty, enraged, grabbed the astonished kitten and flung it against the wall. “What’n hell kind of a dump is this—” he began; but Swickey’s rush for her pet and the wail she gave as Beelzebub, limp and silent, refused to move, interrupted him.
Avery turned from the stove and strode toward Harrigan, undoing his long white cook’s apron as he came, but Ross was on his feet and in front of the Irishman in a bound.
“You whelp!” he said, shaking his fist under Harrigan’s nose.
The men arose, dropping knives and forks in their amazement.
Fisty sat dazed for a moment; then his face grew purple.
“You little skunk, I’ll kill you fur this!”
Avery interfered. “If thar’s goin’ to be any killin’ did, promisc’us-like, I reckon it’ll be did out thar,” he said quietly, pointing toward the doorway. “I ain’t calc’latin’ to have things mussed up in here, fur I tend to my own house-cleanin’, understand?”
Ross, who anticipated a “free-for-all,” stood with a chair swung halfway to his shoulder. At Avery’s word, however, he dropped it.
“Sorry, Avery, but I’m not used to that kind of thing,” he said, pointing to Harrigan.
“Like ’nough, like ’nough—I hain’t nuther,” replied Avery conciliatingly. “But don’t you git your dander up any wuss than it be, fur I reckon you got your work cut out keepin’ yourself persentable fur a spell.” He drew Ross to one side. “Fisty ain’t called ‘Fisty’ fur nothin’, but I’ll see to the rest of ’em.”
Harrigan, cursing volubly, went outside, followed by the men. Avery paused to offer a word of advice to Ross.
“He’s a drinkin’ man, and you ain’t, I take it. Wal, lay fur his wind,” he whispered. “Never mind his face. Let him think he’s got you all bruk up ’n’ then let him have it in the stummick, but watch out he don’t use his boots on you.”
Harrigan, blazing with rage, flung his coat from him as Ross came up. The men drew back, whispering as Ross took off his coat, folded it and handed it to Avery. The young man’s cool deliberation impressed them.
Harrigan rushed at Ross, who dropped quickly to one knee as the Irishman’s flail-like swing whistled over his head. Before Harrigan could recover his poise, Ross shot up and drove a clean, straight blow to Harrigan’s stomach. The Irishman grunted and one of the men laughed. He drew back and came on again, both arms going. Ross circled his opponent, avoiding the slow, heavy blows easily.
“Damn you!” panted Harrigan, “stand up and take your dose—”
Ross lashed a quick stinging fist to the other’s face, and jumped back as Harrigan, head down, swung a blow that would have annihilated an ox, had it landed, but David leaped back, and as Harrigan staggered from the force of his own blow, he leaped in again. There was a flash and a thud.
The Irishman wiped the blood from his lips, and shaking his head, charged at Ross as though he would bear him down by sheer weight. Contrary to the expectations of the excited woodsmen, Ross, stooping a little, ran at Harrigan and they met with a sickening crash of blows that made the onlookers groan. Ross staggered away from his opponent, his left arm hanging nervelessly at his side. As Harrigan recovered breath and lunged at him again, Ross circled away rubbing his shoulder.
Harrigan’s swollen lips grinned hideously. “Now, you pup—”
He swung his right arm, and as he did so Avery shouted, “Watch out fur his boots!”
David’s apparently useless left arm shot down as Harrigan drew up his knee and drove his boot at the other’s abdomen. Ross caught Harrigan’s ankle and jerked it toward him. The Irishman crashed to the ground and lay still.
With a deliberation that held the men breathless, Ross strode to the fallen man and stood over him. Harrigan got to his knees.
“Come on, get up!” said Ross.
Harrigan, looking at the white face and gleaming eyes above him, realized that his prestige as a “scrapper” was gone. He thrust out his hand and pushed Ross from him, staggering to his feet. As the trout leaps, so David’s fist shot up and smashed to Harrigan’s chin. The Irishman staggered, his arms groping aimlessly.
“Get him! Get him!” shouted Avery.
Ross took one step forward and swung a blow to Harrigan’s stomach. With the groan of a wounded bull, the Irishman wilted to a gasping bulk of twitching arms and legs.
For a moment the men stood spellbound. Fisty Harrigan, the bulldog of the Great Western, had been whipped by a “green guy”—a city man. They moved toward the prostrate Fisty, looking at him curiously. Ross walked to the chopping-log in the dooryard, and sat down.
“Thought he bruk your arm,” said Avery, coming toward him.
“Never touched it,” replied Ross. “Much obliged for the pointer. He nearly had me, though, that time when we mixed it up.”
One of the men brought water and threw it on Harrigan, who finally got to his feet. Ross jumped from the log and ran to him.
“All right, Harrigan,” he said. “I’m ready to finish the job.”
Harrigan raised a shaking arm and motioned him away.
Ross stepped back and drew his sleeve across his sweating face.
“He’s got his’n,” said Avery. “Didn’t reckon you could do the job, but good men’s like good hosses, you can’t tell ’em until you try ’em out. Wal, you saved me a piece of work, and I thank ye.”
A bully always knows when he is whipped. Fisty was no exception to the rule. He refused Ross’s hand when he had recovered enough breath to refuse anything. Ross laughed easily, and Harrigan turned on him with a curse. “The Great Western’s t’rough wid you, but I ain’t—yet.”
“Well, you want to train for it,” said Ross, pleasantly.
One by one the men shouldered their packs and jogged down the trail, bound for Nine-Fifteen, followed by Harrigan, his usually red face mottled with white blotches and murder in his agate-blue eyes.
David stood watching them.
“So-long, boys,” he called.
“So-long, kid,” they answered.
Harrigan’s quarrel was none of theirs and his reputation as a bruiser had suffered immeasurably. In a moment they were lost to sight in the shadow of the pines bordering the trail.
“Now for the kitten,” said David. “I think he’s only stunned.” He went into the cabin, and much to Avery’s amusement, washed his hands. “A dirty job,” he said, catching the twinkle in the lumberman’s eye.
“A dum’ good job, I take it. Whar you from?”
“Boston.”
“Wal, I seen some mighty queer folks as hailed from Boston, but I don’t recollec’ any jest like you.”
David laughed as he went to the corner and stooped over Swickey, who sat tearfully rocking the limp Beelzebub in her dress.
“What’s his name?” he asked gently.
“Be—el—zebub,” she sobbed.
“Will you let me look at him—just a minute?”
Swickey unrolled her skirt, the kitten tumbled from her knees, turned over, arched his back, and with tail perpendicular shot across the cabin floor and through the doorway as though nothing had happened.
David laughed boyishly.
“He’s got eight of them left, even now.”
“Eight whats left?” queried Swickey, fixing two tearfully wondering eyes on his face.
“Eight lives, you know. Every cat has nine lives.”
Swickey took his word for it without question, possibly because “eight” and “nine” suggested the intricacies of arithmetic. Although little more than a healthy young animal herself, she had instinctively disliked and mistrusted most of the men who came to Lost Farm Camp. But this man was different. He seemed more like her father, in the way he looked at her, and yet he was quite unlike him too.
“That’s a big name for such a little cat,” said David. “Where did he get his name?”
Swickey pondered. “Pop says it’s his name, and I guess Pop knows. The ole cat she run wild in the woods and took Beelzebub ’long with her ’fore he growed up, and Pop ketched him, and he bit Pop’s thumb, and then Pop said thet was his name. He ketched him fur me.”
Just then Avery came in with a pail of water and Swickey set about clearing the table. David, a bit shaken despite his apparently easy manner, strolled out into the sunshine and down the hill to the river. “My chance with the Great Western is gone,” he muttered, “and all on account of a confounded little cat, and called ‘Beelzebub’ at that! Harrigan would fix me now if I went in, that’s certain. Accidents happen in the camps and the victims come out, feet first, or don’t come out at all and no questions asked. No, I’ll have to look for something else. Hang it!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm, “this being squire of dames and kittens don’t pay.”
Unconsciously he followed the trail down to the dam, across the gorge, and on up the opposite slope. The second-growth maple, birch, and poplar gave place to heavy beech, spruce, and pine as he went on. Presently he was in the thick of a regiment of great spruce trees that stood rigidly at “attention.” The shadows deepened and the small noises of the riverside died away. A turn in the trail and a startled doe faced him, slender-legged, tense with surprise, wide ears pointed forward and nostrils working.
He stopped. The deer, instead of snorting and bounding away, moved deliberately across the trail and into a screen of undergrowth opposite him. David stood motionless. Then from the bushes came a little fawn, timidly, lifting its front feet with quick, jerky motions, but placing them with the instinctive caution of the wild kindred. Scarcely had the fawn appeared when another, smaller and dappled beautifully, followed. Their motions were mechanical, muscles set, as if ready to leap to a wild run in a second.
What unheard, unseen signal the doe gave to her offspring, David never knew, but, as though they had received a terse command, the two fawns wheeled suddenly and bounded up the trail, at the top of which the doe was standing. Three white flags bobbed over the crest and they were gone.
“How on earth did that doe circle to the hillside without my seeing her?” he thought. Then he laughed as he remembered the stiff-legged antics of the fawns as they bounded away, stirring a noisy squirrel to rebuke. On he went, over the crest and down a gentle slope, past giant beeches and yellow birch whose python-like roots crept over the moss and disappeared as though slowly writhing from the sunlight to subterranean fastnesses. Dwarfed and distorted cedars sprung up along the way and he knew he was near water. In a few minutes he stood on the shore of No-Man’s Lake, whose unruffled surface reflected the broad shadow of Timberland Mountain on the opposite shore.
“Well!” he exclaimed, “I suppose it’s time to corral a legion of guide-book adjectives and launch ’em at yonder mass of silver and green glories, but it’s all too big. It calls for silence. A fellow doesn’t gush in a cathedral, unless he doesn’t belong there.” He sat looking over the water for perhaps an hour, contented in the restful vista around him. “I wish Aunt Elizabeth could see this,” he muttered finally. “Then she might understand why I like it. Wonder who owns that strip of land opposite? I’d like to. Great Scott! but my arm’s sore where he poked me.”
A soft tread startled him. He swung round to find Hoss Avery, shod with silent moosehide, a Winchester across his arm, standing a few feet away.
CHAPTER IV—THE COMPACT
“After fresh meat?” asked Ross.
“Nope. Lookin’ fur a man.”
Avery’s good eye closed suggestively and he grinned. Standing his rifle in the crotch of a cedar, he drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket and carefully shaved a pipeful from it. Then he smoked, squatting beside David as he gazed across the lake.
“Purty lake, ain’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” replied David.
“Chuck full of trout—big fellers, too. Ever do any fishin’?”
“A little. I like it.”
“Slithers of deer in thet piece across thar,” pointing with his pipestem to the foot of Timberland Mountain. “Ever do any huntin’?”
“Not much. Been after deer once or twice.”
“Must have been suthin’ behind thet poke you gave Fisty this mornin’, I take it?”
“About one hundred and seventy pounds,” replied David, smiling. Avery chuckled his appreciation. Evidently this young man didn’t “pump” easily.
Puff—puff—“Reckon you never done no trappin’.”
“No, I don’t know the first thing about it.”
Avery was a trifle disconcerted at his companion’s taciturnity. He smoked for a while, covertly studying the other’s face.
“Reckon you’re goin’ back to Tramworth—mebby goin’ to quit the woods, seein’ as you and Fisty ain’t calc’lated to do any hefty amount of handshakin’ fur a while?”
“Yes, I’m going back, to get work of some kind that will keep me up here. I wanted to learn a bit about lumbering. I think I began the wrong way.”
“Don’t jest feel sartain about thet, m’self. Howcome mebby Harrigan do, and he’s boss. He would have put you on swampin’ at one plunk a day and your grub. Reckon thet ain’t turrible big pay fur a eddicated man. They’s ’bout six months’ work and then you git your see-you-later pay-check fur what the supply store ain’t a’ready got.”
“It’s pretty thin picking for some of the boys, I suppose,” said David.
“Huh! Some of ’em’s lucky to have their britches left to come out in.”
“I didn’t expect to get rich at it, but I wanted the experience,” replied David, wondering why Avery seemed so anxious to impress him with the wage aspect of lumbering.
“Don’t calc’late you ever did any spec’latin’, did you?”
“Well, I have done some since I had my fuss with Harrigan this morning.”
Avery tugged at his beard thoughtfully.
“I’m turnin’ a penny onct in a while or frequenter. With the trappin’ winters, feedin’ the crews goin’ in and comin’ out, makin’ axe-handles and snowshoes, and onct in a spell guidin’ some city feller in the fall up to whar he kin dinnimite a moose, I reckon six hundred dollars wouldn’t cover my earnin’s. I could do more trappin’ if I had a partner. Mebby me and him could make nigh on to five hundred a year, and grub.”
“That’s pretty good,—five hundred clear, practically.”
“Ya-a-s.” Avery grunted and stood up, thrusting his pipe in his pocket. “Said I was huntin’ fur a man when you ast me. You’re the man I be huntin’ fur if you want a job bad ’nough to hitch up with me, and Swickey.”
Ross arose and faced him, his surprise evident in the blank expression of his face.
“I’m not out of cash,” he replied.
“Thet ain’t what I ast you fur,” said Avery, a shade of disappointment flickering across his face. “I want a man to help.”
“How much would it cost to outfit?” asked David.
“Wal, I got a hundred and fifty traps, and mebby we could use fifty more, not countin’ dead-falls for b’ar and black-cat. And you sure need a rifle and some blankets and some winter clothes. I figure fifty plunks would fit you out.”
“I didn’t know but that you would want me to put up some cash toward expenses,—provisions, I mean?”
“No,” said Avery. “I reckon you ain’t broke, but thet ain’t makin’ any diff’runce to me.”
“That’s all right, Avery. It wasn’t the expense of outfitting. I simply wanted to know where I would stand if I did accept. But I have no recommendations, no letters—”
“Hell! I guess them two hands of your’n is all the recommendations I want. I’ve fit some m’self and be reckoned a purty fair jedge of hosses, and a man what is a good jedge of hosses knows folks likewise. I ain’t in no hurry fur you to say yes or no.” The old man swung his rifle to the hollow of his arm. “Take your time to think on it, and you kin stay to Lost Farm Camp jest as long as you are wishful. ’Tain’t every day a eddicated man what kin use his hands comes floatin’ into these here woods.”
“Well,” said David, “I’ve decided. There are reasons why I don’t want to go back. It’s a fair offer and I’ll take it.”
“Put her thar!” the huge bony fist of the lumberman closed heavily on David’s hand, but met a grip almost as tense. “Me and you’s partners. Half-and-half share of workin’, eatin’, earnin’s, and fightin’—if there’s any fightin’ to be did. Reckon you’d better go to Tramworth and git fixed up and mebby you calc’late to write to your folks.”
They strode down the trail, Avery in the lead. As they neared the last turn which led them out to the footboard of the dam, he paused.
“My gal Swickey is growin’ up to whar she oughter git larnin’. I sot in to learn her, but she’s always a-squirmin’ out of it by askin’ me things what I can’t answer and then gettin’ riled at her Pa. Now if you could—’thout lettin’ on as you was doin’ it—larn her readin’ and writin’ and sech, I’d be pow’ful glad to pay you extra-like fur it.”
So the cat was out of the bag at last. Avery wanted a teacher for his girl. The old man was willing to take a green hand as partner in trapping and share the proceeds with him for the sake of Swickey’s education. Well, why not?
“I’ll do what I can, Avery.”
“Thet’s the talk. Me and you’ll make a lady of her.”
As they approached the cabin a figure appeared in the doorway and the melodious treble of a girl’s voice rang across the river. She disappeared as Avery’s Triton bellow answered.
“She’s callin’ us fur dinner,” he explained needlessly.
“Did you get anything?” said Swickey, as they entered the cabin.
“He bagged me,” said Ross, laughing.
“Whar’d he bag you?” exclaimed Swickey, solicitously looking at David for visible proof of her father’s somewhat indifferent marksmanship.
“Over on No-Man’s Lake—I think that’s what he called it,” replied David.
“He’s a-goin’ to stay, right along now. I’ve been wantin’ to git a partner to help with the traps fur quite a spell.”
“You ain’t never said nothin’ to me ’bout gettin’ a partner,” said Swickey, her vanity wounded. “You always said I was as good as any two men helpin’ you.”
Avery, a trifle embarrassed at his daughter’s reception of the new partner, maintained an uncomfortable silence while dinner was in progress. He had hoped for delight from her, but she sat stolidly munching her food with conscious indifference to his infrequent sallies.
That evening, after David had gone to bed in the small cabin back of the camp, Avery sat on the porch with his daughter. For a long time she cuddled the kitten, busily turning over in her mind the possibilities of a whole dollar and a half. She had heard her father say that the new man was going to Tramworth in the morning. Perhaps he would be able to get her a dress. A dollar and a half was a whole lot of money. Maybe she could buy Pop some new “specs” with what she had left after purchasing the dress. Or if she had a book, a big one that would tell how to make dresses and everything, maybe that would be better to have. Jessie Cameron could sew doll’s clothes, but her mother had taught her. The fact that Swickey could not read did not occur to her as relevant to the subject. She felt, in a vague way, that the book itself would overcome all obstacles. Yes, she would ask the new man to buy a book for her and “specs” for her Pop. How to accomplish this, unknown to her father, was a problem she set aside with the ease of optimistic childhood, to which nothing is impossible.
“Pop,” she said suddenly.
“Wal?”
“Mebby you kin give me thet dollar-money fur the ile.”
“Ya-a-s,” he drawled, secretly amused at her sudden interest in money and anxious to reinstate himself in her favor. “Ya-a-s, but what you goin’ to do? Buy Pop thet dress-suit, mebby?”
“I reckon not,” she exclaimed with an unexpected show of heat that astonished him. “You said dress-suits made folks ack foolish, and I reckon some folks acks foolish ’nough right in the clothes they has on without reskin’ changin’ ’em.” With this gentle insinuation, she gathered Beelzebub in her arms and marched to her room.
“Gosh-A’mighty but Swickey’s gettin’ tetchy,” he exclaimed, grinning. “Wal, she’s a-goin’ to have a new dress if I have to make it myself.”
When he went into the cabin, he drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took two silver pieces from his pocket and laid them on Swickey’s plate. He sat for a long time shading his eyes with his hand. He nodded, recovered, nodded again. Then he said quite distinctly, but in the voice of one walking in dreams, “I know it, Nanette. Yes, I know it. I’m doin’ the best I kin—”
He sat up with a start, saw the silver pieces on the plate and picked them up.
“Swickey!” he called, “be you sleepin’?”
“Yes, Pop,” she replied dutifully.
He grinned as he went to her room. As he bent over her she found his head in the dark, and kissed him. “I’m sorry what I said ’bout the clothes, Pop. I don’t want no money-dollar—I jest want you.”
He tucked the money in her hand. “Thar it is. Dollar and a half fur the ile.”
She sighed happily. “I say thanks to my Pop.”
“Good-night, leetle gal.”
She lay awake long after he had left her, turning the coins over in her hot fingers. Presently she slipped from the bed and, drawing the blanket about her, stole softly to the door.