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[Illustration: 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
I. Swickey Shoots a Bear
II. Lost Farm Folk
III. Much Ado about Beelzebub
IV. The Compact
V. A Midnight Adventure
VI. Tramworth
VII. The Book and the "Specs"
VIII. Smoke Finds Employment
IX. Jim Cameron's Idea
X. Barney Axel's Exodus
XI. That Green Stuff
XII. "Us as don't know Nothin'"
XIII. David's "Real Good-Bye"
XIV. The Flight of Smoke
XV. Boston
XVI. The Man in the Street
XVII. News from Lost Farm
XVIII. A Consultation
XIX. Piracy
XX. Home for Christmas
XXI. The Traps
XXII. "Red" Smeaton's Love Affair
XXIII. A Confession
XXIV. Rivals
XXV. On the Drive
XXVI. David's Return
XXVII. "I Want Dave"
XXVIII. Complications
XXIX. Smoke's Last Stand
XXX. Just Fun
XXXI. The Bluff
XXXII. Hoss Avery's Tribute
ILLUSTRATIONS
Swickey shoots the Bear
"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."