The First Snow
Pam had been five weeks at Ripple. She was getting used to the forest
solitude. She was rosy and energetic, keenly resolved to do her very
best to keep the farm going until her grandfather came back or made some
sign. She was more puzzled than ever that he should have gone and never
left one word or sign. It was cruel to her, so she told herself
sometimes, because he knew that she was coming; and what a plight she
would have been in but for the Griersons! Mrs. Grierson, a kindly but
rather dreary woman, had been over once or twice to see the girls at
Ripple, and she had told Pam that Sophy should stay through the winter
with her. It was a solitary place for two girls alone, but farther down
the creek Mrs. Buckle was living with only little Amanda Higgins for
company. There was nothing to be afraid of except solitude, and people
had to get used to that. Pam was getting used to it, and she was so
occupied from morning to night that she had not much time to think about
herself.
The neighbours were kind, although they lived so far away. Galena
Gittins came over regularly every week, and it was she who was
instructing Pam in the mysteries of farmwork. Galena had a shrewd head
on her shoulders, and knew what had to be done and the best way to do
it, so Pam was rigorously put through her paces. She spent laborious
days in the forest with Galena gathering beech-nuts for the pigs, to be
stored against the time when the snow would prevent the creatures
foraging for themselves. She toiled over harvesting the roots that were
still in the fields, and with her own hands dragged the loads on a truck
to the house, where the capacious cellar received them and would keep
them safe from fear of being spoiled by frost. There was not a horse on
the place. Pam had wondered at first how her grandfather had managed
without a beast of burden, but Galena told her that a good many people
who had only a few cleared fields kept no horses, for the keep of the
animals was a big consideration in winter, and it was possible to hire a
man and a team when they were needed for purposes of cultivation.
“I am glad not to have a horse to look after, but it will seem rather
far to walk to The Corner or to Hunt’s Crossing every time I want to
post a letter when the snow comes,” said Pam, who was looking forward to
being snowbound with considerable dread, only she took good care that no
one should know it. She did not choose that these people, to whom the
forest was so well known and familiar, should ever guess how scared she
was at the thought of the long dark nights and the cheerless days which
would have to be faced before the summer came again.
[Illustration: THE DOG AND THE UNKNOWN FURY WERE ROLLING
OVER IN THE DEADLIEST OF COMBATS]
It was not in her nature to give up, and so much hung on her ability to
keep the place going through the winter. If her grandfather did not
return in a year, and if he gave no sign of being alive, it was probable
that the authorities would allow his death to be assumed. Then, in the
event of no will being found, his daughter would naturally take what was
left. It was the future of her mother and the other children that Pam
was guarding, and she was minded to do her very best.
Ah, how home-sick she was for them during those shortening days, while
the forest trees flamed through splendours of crimson and gold to the
brown and russet of dead leaves! But she would not speak of her pain,
she would not even grumble over her misery. It was when she was most
hilarious that Sophy guessed the home-sickness raged the fiercest.
There had been no need for Mrs. Buckle to practise her lock-picking
skill on the desk in Wrack Peveril’s sleeping-chamber. When Pam’s heavy
luggage was brought from Hunt’s Crossing she discovered that the key of
her writing-desk served also to open the desk which the old man had
used. This when opened had not been found to contain much. Some money
there was, but only a little. There was a small heap of letters well
worn with much reading. They were letters from Pam’s mother, and Pam
cried over them more bitterly than she had ever cried before, for they
revealed a side of her home life that she had only faintly guessed at.
Mrs. Walsh had not found her marriage a happy one, and she had poured
out her bitter disappointment and grief to the old man, her father, whom
she had set at naught and run away from in her desperate eagerness to
get her own way.
Those letters did not appear to have been answered. Indeed, almost every
one of them began with a reproach because the old man had not written.
Some of them begged for money to meet some pressing need. The babies had
come so fast, and the needs had been so great.
Pam wondered why the old man had not asked his daughter to come home
again after the death of her husband. But he had not. He had never even
hinted that he would like to see her again. It made Pam shiver to think
of it. She could not imagine being parted for years from her mother
without her mother wanting to see her again. But she was too just to
condemn the old man. Of course there was another side to the question,
her mother’s side. Without doubt Pam gained a greater insight to the
natural laws, the ethics of give and take between parent and child, in
that reading of the letters in her grandfather’s desk, than she would
have done from any other source.
Her grandfather must be found somehow; then, when she had found him, it
must be her work to bring about a reconciliation between him and her
mother. Then her mother must come home. Without doubt the place of Mrs.
Walsh was at Ripple. The children would love the wild free life of the
forest. The boys would grow into strong men here, and if the effort to
get an education was greater, the chances were that they would prize it
more.
It was this planning for the good of her family that kept Pam’s heart
warm in those shortening days of the fall. The mornings grew colder and
colder; the pond behind the barn which drained into the creek was
fringed with ice, and she had to use a long pole to keep a space of open
water for the animals. Later on that would not be possible, and she
would have to melt snow for them in the boiler that was built into the
out-shed which stood between the house and the barn. There was no snow
as yet, but it might come any day now. There would be an end to all
search for the old man when once the land was covered in its winter
mantle, so Pam took advantage of every day when she could spare the time
to take long tramps across the forest in every direction. Don Grierson
had brought her a pocket compass, and armed with this she found her way
back, however hopelessly she might get confused in trying to strike a
trail.
There came a day in early November when the dawn seemed as if it could
not penetrate through the cloud masses that brooded so closely down over
the forest trees. A grey, dreary day, which made Pam more home-sick than
ever, though apparently in the wildest of spirits. She rushed about
between the house and the barn, doing the morning “chores“, and as she
hurried to and fro she sang at the top of her voice, the sound of her
singing having a weird effect on that drear, cold morning.
Luke Dobson, from Hunt’s Crossing, came along about ten o’clock, and
wanted to know what was to be done about the lumber-felling. Her
grandfather had arranged for twenty acres of black spruce to be cut this
fall, and Luke Dobson wanted to know if the work was to be carried
through, or what was to be done in the matter.
“You say that Grandfather had settled price and everything?” asked Pam,
who was so terribly in the dark about business matters that she had to
rely on other people. It was a great comfort to her that this man looked
honest and respectable, and Sophy had told her that he did most of the
lumbering in the district this side of the Ridge.
“No. If the price had been settled and the contract signed there would
have been nothing for me to do but warn you of the transaction, and cut
the lumber at my own convenience,” said Mr. Dobson, who had rather a
bothered air. He did not like having to do business with women, for,
privately, he considered them lacking in common sense; and this one was
only a girl—a girl, moreover, with a skittish look, just for all the
world like a young colt, so he told himself, in severe disapproval of
Pam’s radiant good spirits and smiling face.
“How much did Grandfather want, and how much were you prepared to give?”
asked Pam, who had her own theories on the way to do business.
Mr. Dobson stated the price he was prepared to give and the sum for
which Wrack Peveril had stood out, a matter of only a few dollars in
reality. He was sufficiently straightforward to say that black spruce
was going up in price, and he was willing to make a small advance on his
first offer, if Pam was able to do business with him.
“Oh, I am quite willing to do business,” replied Pam in an airy tone.
Then she dropped suddenly into graver speech, while lines of care showed
on her face. “The trouble is to know what power I have to sell anything
belonging to my grandfather. Supposing I took your offer, and when you
had cut the lumber he came back and objected to the transaction, it
would be out of your power, or mine either, to put the trees back on
their stumps again; and what would be my position?”
Mr. Dobson shook his head and looked dubious, hesitated a minute, then
said rather uneasily:
“I take it that you are here to do your best for the old man, or if he
is dead, for your mother, who is his natural heir. You can leave that
lot of trees standing another year if you would prefer it. But if your
grandfather comes home, and the police get hold of him for the part he
is supposed to have had in the death of Sam Buckle, there will be the
expense of his defence, and all the other things that arise out of an
action at law, and you will be hard put to it perhaps to find ready
money when you most need it. If, on the other hand, he is dead, or is
never heard of again, your mother would agree that you had acted for the
best in selling, and your trees would be hard cash, and safe from any
danger of being destroyed in a forest fire.”
Pam shivered. She was thinking of that awfully desolate region that
spread over so many acres of forest near to where Mrs. Buckle lived. Her
grandfather’s black spruce would not be worth the trouble of lumbering
if a forest fire happened along that way. But she had a cautious streak
in her character, and she knew how dreadfully ignorant she was, so she
said frankly: “I should like to take your offer straight away, but I
think I ought just to ask the advice of someone outside. Dr. Grierson
will be round this way to-day or to-morrow; do you mind letting it stand
over until then?”
“That will suit me very well indeed, and I will wish you good morning,”
said Mr. Dobson, getting to his feet in a great hurry. But Pam had a
question to ask before he went—one that she had been wanting to ask all
the while Luke Dobson had been talking.
“Do you mind telling me where that twenty acres of black spruce is?” she
asked nervously. Of course she ought to know every bit of her
grandfather’s land by this time, and as a matter of fact she had
supposed that she did know it, but puzzle her head as she would she
could not remember any plantation of trees which would be twenty acres
in extent. What a lot of trees there would be on twenty acres of land—a
piece that was twice as big as the cleared field at the back of the
house! Don Grierson had told her that was ten acres—the ten-acre lot he
called it.
“Ah! you would have gone the round of the quarter-section boundary
posts,” said Luke Dobson slowly, and then he turned to a roughly-drawn
map that was nailed to the wall opposite the window and called Pam’s
attention to it. “You see this map, Miss Walsh? Well, this red line is
your grandfather’s boundary.” His broad finger was travelling slowly
round the red line for her benefit, but he paused where a thick black
line crossed the red. “This black line here shows the old tote road.”
“What is a tote road?” demanded Pam.
Luke Dobson rubbed his head in a rueful fashion.
“I don’t know. It has always been called the tote road ever since I can
remember, and I have lived about these parts all my life, but I never
heard anyone ask before.”
“I know!” cried Sophy, looking up from her work. “A tote road is so
called because it is the road along which people ‘tote’ things—that is,
carry them. That road leads straight away through the forest to the
river miles below Hunt’s Crossing. It is rarely used now, but I have
heard some of the old people say that is the way the lumber used to be
carried from these parts to be floated down river to Fredericton.”
“Well now, I shouldn’t wonder but what you are right!” exclaimed Mr.
Dobson, who was fairly amazed at such a reasonable solution of the
mystery.
“What a thing it is to be clever!” cried Pam, and then crossed the room
on purpose to give Sophy a little hug, just to show that she had no
intention of making fun of her.
“Your grandfather bought that lot cheap about fifteen years ago,” said
Luke Dobson, his big finger covering the small red-lined patch on the
farther side of the old tote road. “There was a half-breed lived up
there, a mighty hunter he was too. But he got caught napping one day and
was clawed by a b’ar, died of it, he did too, and his wife—she was a
white woman from St. John—she sold the land at what anyone would give
her for it, and cleared out sharp. They used to live in a bit of a shack
standing on the tote road; I expect it is standing there still, bits of
it, but no one has lived there since.”
“I am sure that I have not been in that direction yet, or I should have
seen the house,” said Pam, who was studying the map with close
attention. It was bewildering to her to get her bearings in the forest,
and she had not hitherto understood the significance of the
roughly-drawn map.
“You had better take a stroll round there before fixing up with me about
lumbering that bit,” Mr. Dobson advised her as he took his leave, and
Pam made up her mind that she would go right away.
The tote road ran on the side of her grandfather’s land farthest away
from the trail to Hunt’s Crossing. It was thick forest in that
direction, and Pam with the dog at her heels had to make her way by a
narrow trail that was really an old game path; but presently she emerged
on a wide avenue running in a straight line east and west, and looking
as if it stretched for miles and miles, as indeed it did. It was fast
being choked with rubbish, brambles and so forth, but it would not take
much trouble to make it fit for traffic once more, and the ground was
solid and level beneath her feet, very different from the mossy, marshy
trails which abounded in these parts.
“So this is the old tote road!” she murmured, as she stood surveying it.
But it was too cold to stand long, and she was anxious to start her
inspection of the lot of black spruce. She had learned all she could
about trees and lumber generally since she had been at Ripple, and her
education was so far advanced that she could tell black spruce when she
saw it, also cedar, ash, maple, birch, and oak. She was wise enough
already to understand that it was a really valuable lot of trees that
stood in serried rows bordering on the old tote road. Sophy had told her
that black spruce was valuable because it was so largely used for pulp
for paper-making. All those long lines of trees at which she was gazing
were potential newspapers, or novels, or perhaps hymn-books. How strange
it was to think that trees could be made into paper, a material that she
in her ignorance had always associated with rags and straw! She laughed
a little as she thought of all the wonders science had wrought, and the
dog at the sound of her voice crept closer to her side, pressing its
head against her knee with a whimper of affection.
She stooped to pat the shaggy head, for the love of the creature was
really precious to her. Suddenly the dog gave a low, savage growl, then
stood with its teeth bared, snarling, while a ridge of hair stood up
along its spine, sure sign indeed of something wrong.
“Have you heard someone about, or is it only a fancy that you have got
in your thick old head?” asked Pam; but although the dog wagged its tail
at the sound of her voice, it began to growl again the next moment, and
then went creeping forward, its teeth still bared, and looking so fierce
and ugly that Pam was more than half-afraid.
Then she caught sight of the angle of a shingled roof, and guessed that
she was close to the half-ruined shack that stood on her grandfather’s
land.
“Did the poor dear see a house, and didn’t the poor dear like it?” she
asked the dog, jumping at once to the conclusion that it was the
nearness to a dwelling-place that made the dog growl. It took no notice
of her this time, but crept forward with great caution, growling so low
down in its throat that it seemed to be swallowing its own voice.
A queer purring noise, such as a very big cat might make, broke on the
ears of Pam. The dog heard it too, and growled more fiercely than
before. Pam had a cold sensation, and her limbs seemed suddenly
paralysed. She lifted one foot by a great effort, took a step forward,
tried to lift the other, failed, and would have fallen, for she trembled
so badly, only she gripped at the slender stem of a young spruce growing
close to the edge of the tote road, and clung to it, quite helpless from
the overmastering terror that had seized upon her.
Without doubt it was that same terror which saved her life. If she had
not been so badly scared she would have moved forward when the dog went.
As it was, she clung to the trunk of the tree, the rough bark bruising
her bare hands, her heart beating so fast that it made her feel
downright sick.
The broken door of the shack was half-open. The dog was close to it now,
creeping and creeping, as if ready for a spring. The purring sound had
dropped to silence, and a minute passed which seemed to Pam as long as
hours. Then came an awful, ear-splitting yell, as a lithe grey creature
hurled itself out from the shattered door like an arrow from a bow
straight at the dog. Pam heard a shriek of pure terror, yet had no idea
that it was herself who had screamed. The dog swerved, the lithe grey
thing hit the ground beside it, and then dog and the unknown fury were
rolling over in the deadliest of combats.
The dog would be killed, Pam was sure of it, and she simply could not
stand by to see her dumb friend done to death. Instead of running away,
which under the circumstances would have been the highest discretion,
she dashed towards the door of the shack, intending to get hold of a
piece of wood which might do for a weapon. She had almost reached the
door when out bounded another creature, sinuous of body, grey of hue,
with a thick head, short ears, and fetid breath that seemed to smite her
like a poison blast as the beast bowled her over in its mad rush to get
away. Pam was somewhat stunned by her fall, for her head struck against
a stump, and she lay where she had been flung, too dazed to rise.
She came to her senses to find a weirdly dishevelled figure helping her
to her feet, a man with a familiar voice, but his face so smothered in
dirt and blood that it was not easy to remember where she had seen him
before. Then she recalled the man whom at the first she had supposed to
be a tramp. He was speaking to her, but she had difficulty in
understanding what he said, for he mumbled so, and his mouth was
bleeding.
“Did the beast claw you? Say, now, did it claw you?” he was asking with
desperate anxiety.
Pam put her hand to her head.
“It was a fearful bang I had where my head struck the tree, but I don’t
think I am hurt anywhere else. But you—oh, what will you do? You are
most fearfully wounded!” she cried, fairly appalled at his condition.
Mose Paget shook his head.
“I have a few scratches where the beast clawed me, but it isn’t worth
talking about. It is lucky, though, that I heard you scream, for it
might have gone hard with you and the dog if I had not been here.”
“Is the dog killed?” cried Pam, starting up to run back to the spot
where the plucky creature had been so mixed up in the fray with the
savage grey animal of the sinuous shape.
Mose stopped her with a gesture.
“No, it isn’t dead, but it is a bit clawed about, and it will be a week
or two before it is fit to walk again, I’m afraid. I am going to carry
it home for you, only I might as well fasten this door, so that those
beasts can’t take shelter here again.”
“What were they?” asked Pam. She was shaking horribly still, and she had
a feeling of nausea that was horrible.
“Canada lynx is their book name, but we call them Indian devils, and the
name fits them to a nicety,” he answered, as he put his head into the
tumbledown shack; but he hastily withdrew it, the odour from the animals
which had found a shelter there being unpleasantly overpowering. “They
are the cutest and wickedest beasts that are found anywhere in the
forests. They are very rare, though, and happily they are getting rarer.
I had an uncle who was so badly clawed by one that he carried the marks
to his grave; fifty years ago that must have been, and I have not heard
of any in this neighbourhood since.”
“I shall be afraid to venture into the forest alone after this,” cried
Pam, and again she shivered violently, feeling deadly sick, and not
understanding that the nausea was almost entirely due to the shock to
her nerves.
“No, you won’t,” Mose contradicted her harshly, then drew the broken
door close and fastened it, so that no wild creature could get inside.
“You won’t see that charming pair again, I’ll be bound. There will be a
score of men out hunting for them directly word goes round that they
have been seen, and it is not likely that you will see another pair if
you live in these parts until you are an old woman.”
“Oh, the poor dog!” cried Pam, as they reached the spot where the animal
lay. It was already feebly trying to lick its wounds—a good sign, Mose
told her, for if it had been mortally wounded it would have lain still
and not troubled at all. He lifted it carefully, as if it had been a
baby, and then went striding back on the way to Ripple, while Pam
stumbled along in the rear. He was bleeding from his numerous hurts, but
would not let her bind him up with her handkerchief, and he stalked on
ahead with the savage dignity which she had always connected with an
Indian chief.
It was beginning to snow, but not with the leisurely falling flakes to
which Pam had been accustomed in England. The air was suddenly full of a
white smother, fine as dust, which, filling eyes and nose and mouth all
at once, set up such a choking and confusion that Pam felt as if she
would be suffocated. The man in front grew into an indistinct blur,
although she was so close to him that by reaching out her hand she could
have gripped his coat. A fear seized her that they would be lost and
would both perish miserably. Her breath was beaten out of her by the
sting of that awful cold, and she cried out sharply.
Mose stopped so suddenly at the sound of her cry that she punted into
him without being able to help herself.
“What is wrong, miss; have you hurt yourself?” he asked in a jerky tone,
for the dog was heavy and he was short of breath.
“I—I thought we were lost, and this snow is awful!” Pam cried.
“You are close home now; here is the house!” he said in an encouraging
tone, just as one might speak to a frightened child.
Pam peered through the snow-blur, and there, just ahead, was the outline
of the house, as he had said. A moment later and the door was flung
open, and they staggered into the room, where Sophy fell upon them in
tearful thanksgiving that Pam had escaped with her life. The blizzard
had come on so suddenly that she had been frightened at the thought of
Pam exposed to its fury.
While Pam explained the situation in a hurried, incoherent fashion, Mose
Paget was caring for the dog. Calling for hot water, he washed its
wounds, and bound them so that the dirt could not get into them. Then he
made the animal as comfortable as possible on a bit of carpet and some
cushions at the back of the stove, called for milk, warm milk, and fed
it himself, taking as much care as if the creature had been a human
being. But when they wanted to bring him water and bandages for his own
hurts, he brushed them aside brusquely, declaring that there was nothing
needed for him.
“I want to get home for my gun; I must have a shot at that vermin if I
can,” he said hurriedly. “I am only sorry I could not do for the one the
dog had its teeth fixed in. Gee, but the critter had a grip on it, and
no mistake!”
“You cannot possibly go out in this storm; you will lose your way and
perish!” cried Pam.
“It is clearing, and I have faced worse weather,” he answered briefly.
He was so eager to be gone that Pam could not insist on his staying
longer, especially as Sophy was curiously silent on the matter.
Mose was quite right. The gloom was lifting and the snowfall was thinner
when he opened the door, and, shutting it with a bang, disappeared from
view. Not a cent would he accept for the work he had done, though Pam
had begged him to take some money, if only to pay for the time he had
wasted on her and the dog. He warned Pam to keep to the house for a day
or two, until the lynxes were either killed or driven away from the
neighbourhood, and then he was gone.
“It is dreadful to have him go like that, for I know he is badly hurt,
and he saved my life twice over. If I had escaped the lynx, I certainly
should have perished in the snow, it is so bewildering.” Pam was
distinctly tearful, for she was shaken by the nerve-wracking experience
she had gone through.
“Fancy Mose Paget turning out like that!” cried Sophy. “I thought he was
bad all through.”
“Even the worst people have streaks of good in places,” answered Pam.