THE DRIFTING FIRE
When the little Sherwood girl first saw the library she did not
believe her eyes. It was not a large room, and there were not more
than six hundred volumes on the shelves; but Marion had to pull out
and examine a score of the books before she believed that the rest
were real. She had not known that there was so much printed paper in
the whole world. She had seen only three books before this discovery
of the O’Dell library, the three from which her father had taught
her to read. He had told her of others and she had pictured the book
wealth of the world on one shelf three feet long.
Ben O’Dell looked into the library through one of the open windows.
“Have you read ‘Coral Island’?” he asked.
Marion shook her head.
“It’s good,” continued Ben. “But ‘Treasure Island’ is better. They
are both on my shelves, farther along. ‘Midshipman Easy’ is fine,
too—but perhaps it’s too old for you. Have you read many books?”
“I’ve read three,” she replied. “Dad taught me to read them. He
taught Julie and me to read at the same time, and he said we were
very clever. He could read as easy as anything.”
“Who is Julie?” he asked.
“She is my mother,” replied the little girl, with averted face.
“They taught me to call her Julie when I was a baby and they used to
laugh. She—she was ill two years ago—and I haven’t seen her
since—because she’s in Heaven.”
Ben’s face grew red with pity and embarrassment; for a minute both
were silent. He found his voice first.
“What books have you read?” he asked.
“‘Rob Roy,’ by Sir Walter Scott,” she answered in a tremulous
whisper which scarcely reached him. “It was quite a big book, in
green covers—and I liked it best of all. And ‘Infantry Training.’ It
was a little red book. Julie and I didn’t find it very interesting.
The third was ‘The Army List.’ It had dad’s name in it and _your_
father’s too, and hundreds and hundreds of names of other officers
of the king.”
“But—you read those—‘Infantry Training’ and ‘The Army List’?”
“Yes—plenty of times.”
“And only one story like ‘Rob Roy’?”
“We hadn’t any more.”
Ben O’Dell leaned his hoe against the side of the house and hoisted
himself through the open window. The little girl looked at him; but,
knowing that there were tears in her eyes he did not meet her
glance. Instead, he took her by the hand and led her across the room
to his own particular shelves of books.
“Here’s what I used to read when I was your age,” he said. “I read
them even now, sometimes. ‘Treasure Island’—you’ll like that.” He
drew it out and laid it on the floor. “‘From Powder Monkey to
Admiral,’ ‘My Friend Smith,’ ‘The Lady or the Tiger,’ ‘Red Fox,’
‘The Gold Bug,’ ‘The Black Arrow,’ ‘Robbery Under Arms,’ ‘Davy and
the Goblin’—you’ll like all these.”
The little girl stared speechless at the pile of books on the floor.
Ben recrossed the room, climbed through the window and reshouldered
his hoe. He met Uncle Jim at the near edge of the potato patch.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” said McAllister. “I don’t want to take
any advantage of you by starting in at these spuds ahead of you.”
“I stopped a minute to show the little Sherwood girl some good books
to read,” explained the youth.
“Can she read?” asked Uncle Jim. “How would she learn to read, way
up there on French River?”
“Her father taught her. He taught her and her mother to read at the
same time. And her mother’s dead. I’m sorry for that kid, Uncle Jim.
Mighty tough, it seems to me—no mother—and to be left all alone in a
big pirogue by her father. I’d like to know why he did that.”
“So would I,” returned McAllister. “I asked your ma and she didn’t
seem to know exactly. Couldn’t make out anything particular from the
letter nor from what the little girl told her—but it’s something
real serious, I guess. He had to run, anyhow. He is fond of the
little girl, no doubt about it. His letter to Flora told that much.
And he was mighty fond of his wife too, I reckon; and I wouldn’t
wonder if there wasn’t more good in him than what we figured on,
after all. He had wild blood in him, I guess; and Louis Balenger was
sure a bad feller to get mixed up with.”
They worked in silence for half an hour, hilling the potatoes side
by side.
“I’d like to know why he left her in the pirogue. Why he didn’t
bring her all the way,” said Ben, pausing and leaning on his hoe.
“How far down did he bring her?” returned McAllister.
“I don’t know.”
“Likely he was scared. Maybe the wardens were close onto his heels.
It looks like he figgered on just coming part way with her, by his
having the letter to your ma already written.”
Again they fell to work and for ten minutes the hoes were busy. Then
McAllister straightened his back.
“It’s years since I was last on French River,” he said. “I’d like
fine to take another look at that country. We’d maybe learn
something we don’t know if we got right on the ground. We wouldn’t
have to be gone for long. Two days up, one day for scouting ’round
and one day for the run home—four or five days would be plenty.”
“When can we go?”
“Not before haying, that’s a sure thing. Between haying and harvest
is the best time, I reckon. I feel real curious about Dick
Sherwood’s affairs now—more curious than I’ve felt for years.”
“He sounds mighty interesting to me! and I shouldn’t be surprised to
learn that you were wrong when you said the woods had been too much
for his gentility, Uncle Jim.”
“Neither would I, myself. But how d’ye figger it, Ben?”
“Well, the little girl has good manners.”
“She sure has! I never saw a little girl with better manners. I’m
hoping her pa hasn’t done something they can jail him for—or if he
has, that they can’t catch ’im. I’m all for keeping the laws—even
the game laws—but maybe if I’d lived on French River along with
Louis Balenger instead of at O’Dell’s Point alongside O’Dells all my
life, I’d be busy this minute keeping a jump ahead of the wardens
instead of hilling potatoes. You never can tell. There’s more to
shootin’ a moose in close season nor the twitch of the finger.
There’s many an outlaw running the woods who would have been an
honest farmer like yer Uncle Jim if only he’d been born a McAllister
and been bred alongside the O’Dells.”
“I’ve been thinking that myself,” returned Ben gravely.
“Environment, that’s it! The influence of environment.”
“It sure sounds right to me, all right,” said McAllister. “We’ll
call it that, anyhow; and we won’t forget that Dick Sherwood taught
his little girl good manners and how to read.”
The thought of getting away from the duties of the farm for a few
days was a pleasant one to both the honest farmer and his big
nephew. Jim McAllister was not an enthusiastic agriculturalist. He
loved the country and he didn’t object to an occasional bout of
strenuous toil; but the unadventurous round of milking and weeding
and hoeing day after day bored him extremely even now in his
forty-sixth year. But for the mild excitement of the salmon net in
the river and his love for his widowed sister and his nephew and his
respect for the memory of the late Captain John O’Dell he would long
ago have turned his back on the implements of husbandry and taken to
the woods.
Young Ben, on the other hand, was keen about farm work. He preferred
it to school work. He was young enough to find excitement where none
was perceptible to his uncle. He loved all growing things, but he
loved cattle more than crops, horses more than cows. The practical
side of farm life was dear to him and he took pleasure in the duties
which seemed humdrum to his uncle; but the side issues, the sporting
features, were even dearer. He loved the river better than the
meadow and he saw eye to eye with McAllister in the matter of the
salmon net. A flying duck set his blood flying and the reek of
burned powder on the air of a frosty morning was the most delicious
scent he knew. He loved wood smoke under trees and the click of an
iron-shod canoe pole on pebbles, and the tracks of wild animals in
mud and snow. The prospect of a visit to French River was far from
unwelcome to him.
That was an unusually warm night, without a breath of air on
O’Dell’s Point. Ben went to bed at ten o’clock and somehow let three
mosquitoes into his room with him. He undressed, extinguished his
lamp and lay sweltering in his pajamas on the outside of his bed.
Then the mosquitoes tuned their horns and sounded the charge. They
lasted nearly half an hour; by the time they were dead Ben was wider
awake than he had been at any time during the day. He went to the
window and looked out at the sky of faint stars and the vague dark
of the curving river. His glance was straight ahead at first, then
eastward downstream.
Ben saw a light, a red light, drifting on the black river. His first
thought was that it might be some one with a lantern, but in a
moment he saw that the light could not be that of a lantern, for it
grew and sparks began to fly from it. A torch, perhaps. The torch of
a salmon spearer? Not likely! For years it had been unlawful to kill
salmon or bass with the spear and there was no lawbreaker on the
river possessed of sufficient hardihood to light his torch within
sight of O’Dell’s Point. More than this, the light was running with
the current; and it was increasing every moment in height and length
far beyond the dimensions of any torch.
Ben groped for his shoes and picked them up, felt his way cautiously
out of the room and down the back stairs. In the woodshed he put on
his shoes and equipped himself with paddle and pole. Then he ran for
the river, ducking under the boughs of the old apple trees and
descending the bank in a jump and a slide. Dim as the light was he
saw that the big pirogue was gone before he reached the edge of the
water. The sixteen-footer was there but nothing was to be seen of
the giant from French River. He looked downstream and saw the light
which had attracted him from his window vanishing behind the head of
the island, out in the channel. It was like a floating camp fire by
this time.
Ben threw pole and paddle into the sixteen-footer, ran her into the
water and leaped aboard. He shot her straight across the current for
a distance of several hundred yards, until he was clear of the head
of the island, then swung down on the track of the drifting fire. He
paddled hard, urged by a very natural curiosity. This and the
disappearance of the red pirogue from the point and the fact that he
was out on the dark river in his pajamas instead of tossing on his
hot bed, thrilled him pleasantly.
He drew steadily down upon the fire which was now leaping high and
tossing up showers of sparks and trailing blood-red reflections on
the black water. As he drew yet nearer he heard the crackle of its
burning and the hiss of embers in the water. He heard a dog barking
off on the southern shore. He heard the roaring breath of the fire
and felt its heat. He swerved slightly and drew abreast of it.
He saw that the fire was in a boat of some sort, that the vessel was
full of flame and crowned with flame, that it was heaped high from
bow to stern with blazing driftwood and dry brush. The lines of the
craft showed black and clear-cut between the leaping red and yellow
of the flames above and the sliding red of the water below. He
looked more intently and recognized the lines and bulk of the big
red pirogue.
The red pirogue, the property of his mother’s guest, adrift and
afire in the middle of the river! Who had dared to do this thing? No
neighbor, that was certain. Canoes, nets, all sorts of gear, were as
safe on the beach at O’Dell’s Point as in the house itself. This
must be the work of a stranger and of an insane one, at that.
Ben continued to drift abreast of the red pirogue and watch it burn.
He kept just out of range of the showering sparks and the scorching
heat. He felt indignant and puzzled. But for the assurance of his
own eyes he could not have believed that any inhabitant of the
valley possessed sufficient temerity thus to remove property from
O’Dell land and destroy it. If he should ever discover the identity
of the offender he would make him regret the action, by thunder! He
would show him that the O’Dells were not all dead. No other theft of
such importance as this had been made on the O’Dell front in a
hundred years. But could this be properly classed as a theft? It
seemed to Ben more like an act inspired by insolence than the
performance of a person driven by greed or necessity.
“Hello! Hello!” hailed a voice from the gloom on the right.
“Hello,” answered Ben, turning his face toward the sound.
A small sturgeon boat appeared in the circle of fierce light,
paddled by a square-shouldered old man with square whiskers whom Ben
recognized as Tim Hood of Hood’s Ferry.
[Illustration: “THE OLD MAN DREW ALONGSIDE AND PEERED AT BEN.”]
“Hold hard there!” cried Hood. “What pranks be ye up to now?”
“Pranks? What are you talking about?” returned the youth.
The old man drew alongside and peered at Ben, shading his eyes with
a hand against the glare of the fire.
“Oh, it’s yerself!” he exclaimed. “Well, what d’ye know about this
here? What be the joke an’ who be the joker?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” replied Ben, turning again to
contemplate the drifting fire.
The mass of wood had settled considerably by this time and was now a
mound of hot crimson and orange with low flames running over it. The
gunnels of the pirogue were burning swiftly, edging the long mass of
glowing embers with a hedge of livelier flame. The big pirogue
hissed from end to end and was girdled by misty puffs of steam.
“Looks to me like a pirogue,” said old Tim Hood. “A big one, like
the ones we uster make afore all the big pine was cut off
hereabouts.”
Ben was about to tell what he knew but he checked himself. Pride and
perhaps something else prompted him to keep quiet. Why should he
admit to this old ferryman that some one on the river had dared to
take a pirogue from the O’Dell front? Very likely it would amuse
Hood to believe that the influence of this distinguished family for
honesty and order was waning, for the ferryman was the only person
within ten miles of O’Dell’s Point who had ever openly denied the
virtue of the things for which the O’Dells of the Point had stood
for more than a hundred years. During Captain John’s term of
occupation, and even in the days of Ben’s grandfather, Tim Hood had
openly derided the elegant condescension of the O’Dell manners and
the purity of the O’Dell speech and made light of learning, military
rank and romantic traditions. So Ben did not tell the old man that
the pirogue had been set adrift from O’Dell’s Point.
“I saw it from my bedroom window and couldn’t make out what it was,”
he said.
“Same here,” replied Hood. “An’ whatever it was, it won’t be even
that much longer.”
He swung the sturgeon boat around and paddled away into the gloom.
Ben also deserted the fated pirogue which was now shrouded in a
cloud of steam. He backed and headed his sluggish craft for the
bulky darkness of the left shore.
“I’m glad I didn’t tell him,” he reflected. “He’d have laughed and
sneered, the way he does about everything he doesn’t know anything
about. And I’m mighty glad I didn’t say anything about the little
girl—about her coming to the point all alone and me finding her
drifted against the net stakes. He’d have made the worst of
that—would have said Sherwood had run away and deserted her and
sneered at both of them.”
When he got into shallow water he headed upstream and exchanged the
paddle for the pole. He had paddled and drifted far below the tail
of the little island. The water was not swift and the bottom was
firm. He poled easily, keeping close inshore. He searched his
knowledge of his neighbors and his somewhat limited experience of
life and human nature for a solution of the puzzle and for a reason
for the removal and destruction of the red pirogue. But he failed to
see light. The more he thought of it, the more utterly unreasonable
it seemed to him. It was a mystery; and he had inherited a taste for
the mysterious with his McAllister blood.
Upon reaching the tail of the island Ben kept to his course and
entered the thoroughfare between the island and the left shore. Here
the shallow water ran swiftly over sand and bright pebbles in a
narrow passage. In some places the water was so shoal that Ben had
to heave straight down on the pole to scrape over and in other
places it eddied in deep pits in which water-logged driftwood lay
rotting and big eels squirmed. Both the island shore and the
mainland shore were grown thick and tall with willows, water maples
and elms. Under the faint stars the thoroughfare was black as the
inside of a hat.
Ben was almost through the dark passage, almost abreast of the head
of the island, when he thrust the pole vigorously into seven feet of
water instead of into seven inches and lost his balance. The crank
little pirogue did the rest and Ben went into the hole with a mighty
splash. He came to the surface in a second, overtook the drifting
craft in a few strokes and herded it into shallow water under the
wooded bank. He waded hurriedly toward the stranded bow and collided
with something alive—something large and alive.
Ben was staggered, physically and in other ways, for several
seconds. Then he pulled himself together, shook his O’Dell courage
to the fore and jumped straight with extended arms. But the thing
was gone. He stumbled, recovered his balance and listened
breathlessly. Thing? It was a man! He had felt clothing and smelled
tobacco. He heard a rustle at the top of the bank and instantly
dashed for the sound. But the bank was steep and tangled with
willows. He ripped his pajamas, he scratched his skin and finally he
lost his footing and rolled back to the stranded dugout. He stepped
aboard, pushed off and completed his journey.
Uncle Jim smote Ben’s door with his knuckles next morning, as usual,
and passed on his way down the back stairs. Ben sighed in his sleep
and slept on. Mrs. O’Dell came to the door twenty minutes later and
was surprised to find it still closed. She knocked and received no
answer. She opened the door and looked into the little room. There
was Ben sound asleep, his face a picture of health and contentment.
The mother smiled with love and maternal pride.
“He is so big and young, he needs a great deal of sleep,” she
murmured.
Her loving glance moved from his face and she saw the front of his
sleeping jacket above the edge of the sheet and her eyes widened.
The breast of the jacket was ripped in three places and stained in
spots and splashes with brown and green. And on one of his long arms
a red scratch ran from wrist to elbow.
“Ben!” she cried.
He opened his eyes, smiled and sat up.
“Look at your arm!” she exclaimed. “And your jacket is torn! What
has happened to you, Ben dear?”
Then he remembered and told her all about his midnight adventure.
She sat on the edge of his bed and listened gravely. The more she
heard, the graver she became.
“I bet the man I bumped into is the one who did it,” concluded Ben.
“Yes—but I can’t think what to make of it,” she said. “Something
queer is going on. Perhaps an enemy of poor Mr. Sherwood’s is
lurking around. I shall tell Jim, but nobody else.”
“The little girl will ask about her red pirogue some day,” said Ben.
“It was a fine pirogue—the best I ever saw.”
“We must try not to let her know that it was willfully burned,”
replied his mother. “The poor child has suffered quite enough
without knowing that her father has an enemy mean enough to do a
thing like that. We must see that no harm comes to her, Ben.”