The Stranger’s Errand
“I could not think of letting you guide me anywhere in this downpour,”
said the stranger, who had drawn Pam away from the fine tree against
which she was leaning, telling her that it was not safe to shelter under
a tree, especially a beech tree, until the storm was over. “If you will
tell me which way to go I dare say that I can manage, or, if it is very
complicated, perhaps you will let me go with you to the nearest shelter.
This rain is going to keep on for a few hours, which will be a good
thing for the farmers, but it is not worth while to keep more of it off
the ground than we can help.”
“If I am right as to where we are, Mrs. Buckle’s house is the nearest
place where we can shelter; and if I am not to lean against a tree, we
might as well be going forward, for I don’t feel as if I can breathe
with all this water dropping on my face.” Pam was gasping and choking as
she turned into the trail which she thought led to Mrs. Buckle’s house,
and she felt as if it would be a physical impossibility to reach shelter
of any sort unless she could get her breath more easily. She thought of
the ruined house on the old tote road, but decided that she would rather
be out in the rain than forced to shelter there. Then, too, it was no
farther to the house of Mrs. Buckle in one direction than it would be to
go back to that place of ill repute.
“Keep your head down, then you will be able to breathe easier!” called
out the stranger from the rear, and Pam decided that he was a very
understanding sort, and well versed in forest lore likewise, so her
curiosity grew and grew as she plodded along through the pouring rain,
as wet through as if she had been sitting in the creek.
A turn in the trail, and she saw the angle of the little brown house.
She had made no mistake, but had brought the stranger straight as the
crow flies to the house he was seeking. They emerged from the forest and
were crossing the field, when the door was flung open, and to her
surprise Pam saw Jack on the threshold, peering at her and her companion
as if he failed to recognize her.
“Just a nice little shower, isn’t it?” she called out, trying to make
her voice sound as cheerful as possible, although she was feeling pretty
bad by this time.
“Pam, is it you? Why, you are nearly drowned! What has happened to bring
you out in such a downpour?” demanded Jack, darting out to help her
along those last few steps.
“I went out to find the cow,” she explained; then, reaching the door,
paused on the threshold, for the house was clean, and she could not bear
to enter in such a condition.
At this moment Mrs. Buckle came upon the scene, and, bursting into a
torrent of exclamations and questions, dragged Pam indoors to find dry
clothes. Then she made Jack take the stranger away to the barn to change
into a suit of her late husband’s. She talked all the time at her very
fastest rate, and gave Pam no chance at all of explaining how she came
to be in such a plight.
The rain stopped almost as suddenly as it began; the clouds were
breaking and the sun was coming out when Pam emerged from Mrs. Buckle’s
bedroom wearing an old washing frock of her hostess, which was much too
short and much too broad for her. It was at this moment that Jack came
hurrying in from the barn, crying excitedly:
“I say, Pam, why didn’t you say that it was Sophy’s policeman that you
had in tow? My word, isn’t he a fine chap! Won’t she be pleased to see
him, too!”
“Is that Mr. Lester?” cried Pam in amazement. “Why, I never dreamed of
such a thing! Besides, he wanted to see Mrs. Buckle!”
“I suppose he can want to see whom he pleases,” retorted Jack. Then, as
the stranger came along, looking grotesque and floppy clad in the
deceased Sam Buckle’s best “blacks”, he was graceless enough to burst
into a shout of laughter, in which he was joined by Pam, who simply
could not help her merriment.
“It is not fair that you should laugh at me, Miss Walsh, for your own
things are not a very good fit,” said George Lester, and then he shook
hands with her, telling her that he was glad to see her, but that he had
guessed who she was when they were putting out the fire.
“Why did you not tell me?” she said reproachfully. “If you had said who
you were we would have struggled on as far as Ripple instead of coming
here, for of course Sophy wants to see you.”
“But I had to see Mrs. Buckle, and it is business first, you know.” He
spoke in a quick, firm tone, and, looking at him, Pam decided that
certainly Sophy had made no mistake, and that here was a man of whom any
girl might very reasonably feel proud.
“Jack and I will go across to the barn and wait while you do your
business; then we will guide you to Ripple. Sophy is staying there with
us, you know.” Pam spoke a little uncertainly, for after all she did not
know how much Mr. Lester might know of the movements of his betrothed.
“My business is rather public than private—at least, so far as you and
your brother are concerned. You had better stay and hear about it, then
we will go to Ripple together. Sophy told me in her last letter that I
should find her staying there.” Mr. Lester then turned from Pam to speak
to Mrs. Buckle, and Pam sat down on the nearest chair, feeling
tremendously curious as to the errand that had brought George Lester to
this house before he made any attempt to see Sophy, from whom he had
been parted for a year.
Amanda Higgins had gone home for the day to help her mother, so there
were only Jack and Pam with Mrs. Buckle when George Lester began to
state his errand.
“I think you used to know a man named Mose Paget?” He was looking at
Mrs. Buckle as he spoke, and Pam felt a queer contraction of her heart
as she told herself that Mose was dead; she was sure of it from the
stranger’s manner of speaking.
“Yes, I knew him, but I’m sorry to say he was not very well worth
knowing,” answered Mrs. Buckle. “He was downright good to my poor
husband when he was dying, but the fellow played me rather a dirty trick
afterwards in going off and leaving me in the lurch just at seeding
time. I can’t think how I would have got through if it had not been for
Miss Walsh and her brother. The way Mose treated that poor little
half-brother of his was just shameful, too, so I’m not to say proud of
his acquaintance.”
“The man is dead.” George Lester spoke in a quiet tone, but his voice
sounded loud in the ears of Pam, who had difficulty in suppressing a
sob. She was thinking of all the tragedies that lay behind the wasted
days of Mose Paget, and of Galena’s spoiled life, for spoiled it had
been to a certain extent.
Mrs. Buckle threw up her hands in surprise.
“Dead, is he? Well, the world isn’t much the poorer anyhow. Not but what
he had his good streaks; but there! a man would be bad indeed if there
was not some good in him.”
“Did you know that he had a quarrel with your husband?” asked George
Lester, who had opened a bulky pocket-book, and was busy sorting papers.
“Why, no, Sam never told me anything about it,” replied Mrs. Buckle.
Pam gave a sudden start as a wonderful possibility flashed upon her
mind. She went rather white, too, and there was a sound of surging
waters in her ears, so that the voice of George Lester seemed to come to
her from a great distance.
“Two nights before I left on furlough,” he was saying, “we had word
brought us of a shooting affray at a saloon in the mining town at the
bottom of Black Cow Pass. Things are pretty lively down there as a rule,
and we have to go fully armed; we have to use our weapons, too, for
mostly that man is safest who is first in with the shooting irons. On
this night I went down with one other man, and we found that there had
been a fight between two of the miners, and the one getting the worst of
it had pulled out his revolver, shooting wildly. He did not hit the man
with whom he had been fighting, but another man sitting in a far corner
got the bullet in his chest. It was easy to see the poor fellow had been
badly hit, and one of the boys started to ride for the doctor; fifteen
miles he would have to ride, on a bad trail, and the rain coming down at
a pour.
“We made the injured man as comfortable as we could, but we could not do
much, for it was a hopeless case from the first. I stayed with him, for
I knew most of what was best to be done. I took the medical course
before I joined the Mounted Police, and that is such a help at times
like this. I told the man that if he had anything to say he had better
out with it while he had the power to talk. Then he told me his name was
Mose Paget, that he came from this part of New Brunswick, and that there
was something on his mind that must be told before he died.”
“Ah! I thought it was strange that he should leave here in such a hurry,
it was such a trumped-up story!” said Mrs. Buckle. George Lester nodded,
then went on with his story, only now he was turning over the papers and
sorting out some sheets covered closely with writing.
“The man told me that he owned a strip of ground running by the side of
land belonging to Sam Buckle, who had the creek frontage, but only a
narrow strip about two hundred yards deep. This bit of land had always
been coveted by Mose, who felt that he could develop the land that was
his own so much better if he could front the creek. Often and often he
had asked Sam Buckle to put a price on it, but he could never get a
satisfactory reply.”
“Sam was just like that!” sighed Mrs. Buckle, dropping a tear to her
husband’s memory, while she shook her head in disapproval of his
unneighbourly ways.
Again George Lester nodded; but he never took his eyes from the papers,
and when Mrs. Buckle ceased speaking, he took up the thread of his
narrative once more.
“It came to the ears of Mose that Sam Buckle intended planting his strip
of frontage with black spruce; the young trees had been already
bargained for, and were to be planted before the frost came if the
ground could be got ready. This was like a deathknell to the hopes of
Mose, and he determined to make one more effort to get Sam to put a
price on the land. He had made up his mind that if he could get hold of
that piece of ground he would leave off his lazy ways and work hard to
retrieve the past. He would have a saw-mill on the creek, and he knew
that with the help of his young step-brother he would be able to make
his venture pay in very quick time.
“He went in search of Sam Buckle directly he heard the rumour, and meant
to have it out with him and to know for certain what he had to expect.
When he got near to this house he saw Sam leaving the door and going off
across the field in the direction of Ripple, so, without approaching the
house, Mose started in pursuit, for he guessed that the other was going
to a fence which had been a bone of contention between Sam Buckle and
his neighbour for many years past. When he reached the place he found
Sam Buckle in a towering rage. It appeared that Sam had been working on
putting up the fence on the previous day, and that Wrack Peveril must
have come at dawn and chopped it all down, and then gone away in such a
hurry that he had left his axe lying on the ground.
“Mose started on his grievance right away, asking Sam if it was
neighbourly, kind, or Christian to try to take the bread out of a man’s
mouth. Sam answered that he treated his neighbours as his neighbours in
their turn treated him; then he pointed to the demolished fence, and to
Wrack’s axe lying on the ground, and he said that because of that last
outrage from the old man at Ripple he would do as he chose about
planting his frontage with black spruce. It was his right to do as he
liked with his land, and no one should stop him. Then Mose seemed to go
mad, and flying at Sam, the two fought as only madmen will. Of course
Sam got the worst of it. Mose was the younger man; he was, too, the man
with the grievance, and that lent power to his arms, while his passion
gave him double strength. But it was not until Sam dropped apparently
dead at his feet that he realized where his strength had led him. Then
he was afraid and fled, for the curse of Cain was on him, and he
believed that he had killed his fellow-man.”
“Oh, why did he not come for help straight away? We might have saved
poor Sam if only help had been there in time. The Doctor said so!”
wailed Mrs. Buckle, while Pam cried from sheer sympathy, and Jack sat
staring out through the open door, making the most horrible grimaces at
the landscape, as if the peaceful scene had in some way offended him.
“A good deal of misery would be averted if only people would own up when
they have done wrong,” remarked George Lester. Then he went on again:
“It was not until quite late in the evening that Mose chanced to hear
that Sam Buckle was still alive. He had been making up his mind to leave
the neighbourhood that night, for he felt that he was a murderer, and
from thenceforth he must be a wanderer. If Sam was alive, however, then
there was hope for him still. But Sam Buckle died, and, as of course you
know, he died saying nothing but the last words that had been on his
lips before he and Mose fought—it was his right to do what he would
with his own. Mose would have run away then, but he realized that, Wrack
Peveril having disappeared, it was safest for him to stay where he was,
while the old man’s memory bore the blame.”
“If Wrack Peveril did not hurt my husband, what made him go away?”
demanded Mrs. Buckle.
“That is what we want to know,” put in Pam, brushing away her tears, and
looking at George as if she expected him to explain that mystery also.
“Ah, that is more than I can tell you,” he replied. “But doubtless time,
which has cleared this mystery, will clear that one also. Of course I
was not here to know anything about it. I had no acquaintance with the
old man, but from what Sophy has told me in her letters I should incline
to the belief either that he went away because he felt he did not dare
stay where he was any longer, or else that something happened to him.”
“But he has been seen,” put in Pam in a jerky tone. She always hated to
speak of this, because the circumstance seemed to write the old man down
as a wrongdoer straight away. “A man met him at a lumber camp in the
back country last winter, but Grandfather did not like being
recognized.”
“What man was it?” asked George Lester quickly. It was plain he doubted
the evidence, and Pam made haste to state her authority.
“He was a man named O’Brien, who used to work for Mr. Luke Dobson at
Hunt’s Crossing, years ago. He told Mose Paget of this meeting with
Grandfather, and he spoke of it also to Dr. Grierson, but he said he had
told no one else, because he was afraid of putting the police on the
track of Grandfather’s whereabouts.”
“If it was that O’Brien—Cassidy O’Brien, his full name was—then we
shall never know more about it than we do now, for he, too, is dead,”
said George, referring again to the papers in his hand. “Do you remember
the night when someone entered the house at Ripple, and took the money
from the desk?”
“Why, yes. I thought it was—I mean, I had believed it might be
Grandfather come back for his own money, to which, of course, he had a
perfect right.” Pam’s tone always became defiant when she spoke of her
grandfather’s supposed return. How much she hated having to defend that
coming back, no one but herself could know. She realized perfectly that
it had been a dastardly thing to lure two unprotected girls from the
shelter of a warm house on a night in midwinter, when the wolves were
hunting in packs, and that no man worthy the name would have done it.
But for the sake of her mother she would not alter her attitude,
although it was impossible not to feel a little resentful about it all.
“It was not your grandfather who entered the house that night and forced
open the desk where the money was kept, then walked off with all he
could find. It was Mose Paget,” said George. Pam started up with a
little cry of sheer amazement, for if Mose were the thief, how was it
that the money had been found with those poor remains which the melting
snows had revealed at the time of sugaring?
“How do you know?” she demanded, her heart beating furiously. Had she
been misjudging the poor old man all this time? How good it would be to
feel that she could respect him in her own private heart, and not have
to continually fight down her secret mistrust of him!
“It is here, in the confession,” replied George, giving a shuffle to the
papers he was holding; “but because they are mostly in shorthand, as I
took the statement down, and I have not had time to transcribe them, I
have told my story instead of writing it. Cassidy O’Brien came back to
this part of the world to hunt out Mose Paget, who owed him money. He
threatened that if Mose did not pay up he, O’Brien, would make known to
the police a bit of the past of Mose that would not bear the light of
day. The debt was not a big one, but it was more than Mose could pay. He
had heard Mrs. Buckle pressing Miss Walsh to take the money to supply
the wants of Wrack Peveril if the old man should come creeping back to
his home in want. He had heard Miss Walsh say where she intended putting
the money, so that her grandfather would be sure to find it if he came
when she was not about. It is the opportunity that makes the thief, and
because it was all made so plain for him, Mose determined to get that
money from Ripple, and to clear his debt with it.
“He arranged to meet O’Brien at a certain place and to take the money to
him. It was fifty dollars he owed the man, but there was not sufficient
to pay all; so he kept some of the cash for himself, and gave the rest
of the cash and the paper money to O’Brien, who vowed that he would go
straight to the police and tell what he knew. Apparently he must have
started, for the direction in which his remains were found would seem to
point to his having tried to hit the trail to the police head-quarters.
Either he sat down and was frozen to death, or else he was chased by
wolves, and died that way; this we shall never know.
“Mose was amazed to find that his old enemy made no sign. But when the
bones were found in the forest it seemed to him as if fate had been
working for him, and henceforth he had nothing to fear. Then Jack Walsh
came out from England, and suddenly the blow of which Mose had stood in
dread fell from a most unexpected quarter. He was coming into the house
to see Mrs. Buckle about some small matter connected with his work, when
to his horror he saw Mrs. Buckle with Sam’s watch in her hand. He had
taken away Sam’s watch and the money in the man’s pockets after their
fight, just to make it look like a case of robbery and violence. Then
when he had been so ill in St. John from the after-effect of the mauling
he got from the lynx, he had sold the watch to pay the doctor.”
“My word!” cried Mrs. Buckle; “he was a bad lot to rob the man he had
knocked about so badly!”
“He had got out of the straight, and when once a man gets on the slant,
there is no saying what he will do,” replied George, who then went on to
tell them how Mose had worked his way out west, tracking backwards and
forwards in the going, in order to hide his trail. But the fugitive had
known no rest and no peace, and had faced starvation and hardship, until
at last he had come by his death-wound in a fray between two strangers,
when the bullet meant for another man found its billet in his breast. It
was, indeed, a sad and tragic story.
“There is one thing for which I shall be grateful to my dying day,” said
Mrs. Buckle between her sobs, “and that is that I was never tempted to
visit what I supposed Wrack Peveril had done to my poor man on his
granddaughter. She has always been my dear friend, and though sometimes
I’ll admit I felt a bit wicked about it all, I stuck to what my
instincts told me, and I’m just more glad about it than I can say.”
“You have been truly good to me, and to Jack too!” murmured Pam. Then,
the confession having come to an end, she declared that they must be
going, for it was not fair to Sophy to keep Mr. Lester away any longer.
“I will come with you,” said Jack. “When I got to the Gittins’s place
this morning, Nathan told me he could not get the machine until
to-morrow, so, of course, we could not start haymaking; and as he did
not need me, I came over to put in some time at Mrs. Buckle’s hoeing
corn. Then the rain came and I bolted indoors for shelter, and that is
how I happened to be loafing round, apparently doing nothing, in the
middle of the day.”
Pam laughed. It was rich to hear Jack trying to explain that he was more
industrious than he looked, for those who knew anything about it at all
had no trouble in making up their minds as to his hard work, though he
always seemed to think that he might do a bit more if only he were a
little more energetic. But it was not Jack or his doings that interested
her most just then. She was turning over and over in her mind the
problem of her grandfather’s mysterious conduct. Now that the old man’s
name was entirely cleared, his conduct in going away was more mysterious
than ever. Why did he choose to leave home without any warning on the
very day that she had arrived at Ripple? It was not even as if he had
not known of her coming. To Pam, in her fit of depression, it looked as
if he had gone away because of her. A bitter humiliation this! How she
winced in her secret heart to think that perhaps it was her self-will in
coming that had driven the old man from his home! It might be that his
mind had become a little unhinged from his long years of living alone
since her mother left him. Perhaps he had vowed that he would never live
in a house again that had a woman in it. But how strange that he should
drop everything and go like that!
George Lester was talking to Jack, as they went along the trail, of the
solitudes of the far west, but Pam was silent, thinking and thinking of
her grandfather, and making herself so acutely miserable over the
mystery of his disappearance that she was perilously near the verge of
tears.
Then Jack began to speculate on what Sophy would think of her betrothed
husband tricked out in the go-to-meeting garments of the late Sam
Buckle.
“It looks as if there ought to be some tucks let down in one direction,
and some tucking put in in another direction,” said Jack, falling back a
few steps to get a better view of what the new-comer looked like from
the rear.
“Get in front of me and see how I look from there,” said George. “You
don’t surely think I have come over two thousand miles for my wife to
give her any chance of seeing a back view of me on the very first day of
my arrival, do you? It is the front that matters. A smudge down my nose,
or anything of that sort, might be serious; but I can sort of snap my
fingers at my clothes, especially as they are big enough. If I couldn’t
move without fear of a burst somewhere it would be a different matter,
but you can’t deny that they are roomy.”
Jack hopped round to the front of the stranger, and walking backwards
began a lively criticism from that point of view.
“Too much ankle, and, though you have a fairly big foot of your own, the
late Sam Buckle had a bigger. Then you stick your arms too far through
your sleeves; can’t you shrug them up a bit? That is better! Quite an
inch of raw wrist has disappeared. I suppose you will do, and your face
is the same whatever clothes you wear; but I can’t help being reminded
of a man who bought an undertaking business, and the late proprietor’s
clothes were thrown in to make the bargain a little better for him.”
“Oh, Jack, you are horrid!” cried Pam, who had to laugh in spite of her
low spirits. “Mr. Lester, you do not look like a second-hand undertaker,
and Sophy will be so glad to see you that she will not have a thought to
spare for your clothes.”
“I hope she will be glad to see me,” said George simply, but there was
something in his tone that made Pam say hurriedly, when they came in
sight of the house at Ripple:
“There is the house, Mr. Lester, do you go right in and introduce
yourself. Jack and I have some work to do in the barn, and we shall be
in presently.”
“But——” began Jack, who for all his sharpness lacked the insight of
Pam. Her intuition perhaps came from a sympathetic feeling of what she
herself would like under the same circumstances.
“But me no buts, only come, as I tell you,” she said with a laugh,
catching at his arm and giving it a playful squeeze. “Look, Jack, look,
there is the cow, so she came back alone after all! We must milk her
straight away. Oh, the silly creature, what a chase she has led us!”
“I guess it was the old dog that brought her home; and see, there lies
the creature in the gap in the fence by which the cow broke out of the
pasture!”
Jack and Pam turned abruptly away across the grass to where the cow was
feeding as quietly as if she had never broken bounds. But George Lester
went with a quick step towards the house. His weird garments of sombre
black flapped and flopped with every step he took, and, as Jack had
said, his arms and legs stuck ever so much too far through them; but
nothing could detract from the real dignity of the man or hamper the
splendid alertness of his movements.
As he drew near to the house the door flew open, and Sophy appeared on
the threshold.
“George! Is it really you? I thought you were not coming until next
week.”
“Have I come too soon?” he asked, as he covered the remaining distance
in a few long strides.
“You could not do that,” she said, holding out her hands to him; and
gathering them into a tight clasp he drew her over the threshold and
shut the door.