It was fortunate for Nan Sherwood that on the day of parting with her
parents she had so much to do, and that there was so much to see, and so
many new things of which to think.
She had never traveled to Chicago before, nor far from Tillbury at all.
Even the chair car was new to the girl's experience and she found it
vastly entertaining to sit at a broad window with her uncle in the
opposite chair, gazing out upon the snowy landscape as the train hurried
over the prairie.
She had a certain feeling that her Uncle Henry was an anomaly in the
chair car. His huge bearskin coat and the rough clothing under it; his
felt boots, with rubber soles and feet; the fact that he wore no linen
and only a string tie under the collar of his flannel shirt; his great
bronzed hands and blunted fingers with their broken nails, all these
things set him apart from the other men who rode in the car.
Papa Sherwood paid much attention to the niceties of dress, despite the
fact that his work at the Atwater Mills had called for overalls and,
frequently, oily hands. Uncle Henry evidently knew little about stiff
collars and laundered cuffs, or cravats, smart boots, bosomed shirts, or
other dainty wear for men. He was quite innocent of giving any offence
to the eye, however. Lying back in the comfortable chair with his coat
off and his great lumberman's boots crossed, he laughed at anything Nan
said that chanced to be the least bit amusing, until the gas-globes rang
again.
It seemed to Nan as though there never was such a huge man before. She
doubted if Goliath could have looked so big to young David, when the
shepherd boy went out with his sling to meet the giant. Uncle Henry
was six feet, four inches in height and broad in proportion. The chair
creaked under his weight when he moved. Other people in the car gazed on
the quite unconscious giant as wonderingly as did Nan herself.
“Uncle Henry,” she asked him once, “are all the men in the Big Woods as
tall as you are?”
“Goodness me! No, child,” he chuckled. “But the woods don't breed many
runts, that's a fact. There's some bigger than I. Long Sam Dorgan is
near seven feet he isn't quite sure, for he's so ticklish that you can't
ever measure him,” and Uncle Henry's chuckle burst into a full-fledged
laugh. “He's just as graceful as a length of shingle lathing, too. And
freckles and liver spots on his hands and face, well, he certain sure is
a handsome creature.
“He went to town once and stayed over night. Wasn't any bed long enough
at the hotel, and Sam had got considerably under the weather, anyhow,
from fooling with hard cider. So he wasn't particular about where he
bedded down, and they put him to sleep in the horse trough.”
“The horse trough!” gasped Nan.
“Yes. It was pretty dry when Sam went to bed; but right early in the
morning a sleepy hostler stumbled out to the trough and began to pump
water into it for the cattle. Maybe Long Sam needed a bath, but not just
that way. He rose up with a yell like a Choctaw Indian. Said he was
just dreaming of going through the Sault Ste. Marie in a barrel, and he
reckoned the barrel burst open.”
Nan was much amused by this story, as she was by others that the old
lumberman related. He was full of dry sayings and his speech had many
queer twists to it. His bluff, honest way delighted the girl, although
he was so different from Papa Sherwood. As Momsey had said, Uncle
Henry's body had to be big to contain his heart. One can excuse much
that is rough in a character so lovable as that of Uncle Henry's.
The snow increased as the train sped on and the darkness gradually
thickened. Uncle Henry took his niece into the dining car where they
had supper, with a black man with shiny eyes and very white teeth, who
seemed always on the broad grin, to wait upon them. Nan made a mental
note to write Bess Harley all about the meal and the service, for Bess
was always interested in anything that seemed “aristocratic,” and to the
unsophisticated girl from Tillbury the style of the dining car seemed
really luxurious.
When the train rolled into the Chicago station it was not yet late;
but it seemed to Nan as though they had ridden miles and miles, through
lighted streets hedged on either side with brick houses. The snow was
still falling, but it looked sooty and gray here in the city. Nan began
to feel some depression, and to remember more keenly that Momsey and
Papa Sherwood were flying easterly just as fast as an express train
could take them.
It was cold, too. A keen, penetrating wind seemed to search through
the streets. Uncle Henry said it came from the lake. He beckoned to a
taxicab driver, and Nan's trunk was found and strapped upon the roof.
Then off they went to the hotel where Uncle Henry always stopped when he
came to Chicago, and where his own bag was checked.
Looking through the cab windows, the girl began to take an immediate
interest in life again. So many people, despite the storm! So many
vehicles tangled up at the corners and waiting for the big policemen
to let them by in front of the clanging cars! Bustle, hurry, noise,
confusion!
“Some different from your Tillbury,” drawled Uncle Henry. “And just as
different from Pine Camp as chalk is from cheese.”
“But so interesting!” breathed Nan, with a sigh. “Doesn't it ever get to
be bedtime for children in the city?”
“Not for those kids,” grumbled Uncle Henry. “Poor creatures. They sell
papers, or flowers, or matches, or what-not, all evening long. And
stores keep open, and hotel bars, and drug shops, besides theatres and
the like. There's a big motion picture place! I went there once. It
beats any show that ever came to Hobart Forks, now I tell you.”
“Oh, we have motion picture shows at Tillbury. We have had them in the
school hall, too,” said Nan complacently. “But, of course, I'd like
to see all the people and the lights, and so forth. It looks very
interesting in the city. But the snow is dirty, Uncle Henry.”
“Yes. And most everything else is dirty when you get into these brick
and mortar tunnels. That's what I call the streets. The air even isn't
clean,” went on the lumberman. “Give me the woods, with a fresh wind
blowing, and the world looks good to me,” then his voice and face fell,
as he added, “excepting that snake-in-the-grass, Ged Raffer.”
“That man must make you a lot of trouble, Uncle Henry,” said Nan
sympathetically.
“He does,” growled the lumberman. “He's a miserable, fox-faced
scoundrel, and I've no more use for him than I have for an egg-sucking
dog. That's the way I feel about it.”
They reached the hotel just then, and Uncle Henry's flare of passion was
quenched. The hostelry he patronized was not a new hotel; but it was
a very good one, and Nan's heart beat high as she followed the porter
inside, with Uncle Henry directing the taxicab driver and a second
porter how to dispose of the trunk for the night.
Nan had her bag in which were her night clothes, toilet articles, and
other necessities. The porter carried this for her and seated her on
a comfortable lounge at one side while Uncle Henry arranged about the
rooms.
To do honor to his pretty niece the lumberman engaged much better
quarters than he would have chosen for himself. When they went up to the
rooms Nan found a pretty little bath opening out of hers, and the maid
came and asked her if she could be of any help. The girl began to feel
quite “grown up.” It was all very wonderful, and she loved Uncle Henry
for making things so pleasant for her.
She had to run to his door and tell him this before she undressed. He
had pulled off his boots and was tramping up and down the carpeted floor
in his thick woolen socks, humming to himself.
“Taking a constitutional, Nan,” he declared. “Haven't had any exercise
for this big body of mine all day. Sitting in that car has made me as
cramped as a bear just crawling out of his den in the spring.”
He did not tell her that had he been alone he would have gone out and
tramped the snowy streets for half the night. But he would not leave
her alone in the hotel. “No, sir,” said Uncle Henry. “Robert would
never forgive me if anything happened to his honey-bird. And fire, or
something, might break out here while I was gone.”
He said nothing like this to Nan, however, but kissed her good night and
told her she should always bid him good night in just that way as long
as she was at Pine Camp.
“For Kate and I have never had a little girl,” said the big lumberman,
“and boys get over the kissing stage mighty early, I find. Kate and I
always did hanker for a girl.”
“If you owned a really, truly daughter of your own, Uncle Henry, I
believe you'd spoil her to death!” cried Nan, the next morning, when she
came out of the fur shop to which he had taken her.
He had insisted that she was not dressed warmly enough for the woods. “We
see forty and forty-five below up there, sometimes,” he said. “You think
this raw wind is cold; it is nothing to a black frost in the Big Woods.
Trees burst as if there were dynamite in 'em. You've never seen the
like.
“Of course the back of winter's about broken now. But we may have some
cold snaps yet. Anyhow, you look warmer than you did.”
And that was true, for Nan was dressed like a little Esquimau. Her coat
had a pointed hood to it; she wore high fur boots, the fur outside. Her
mittens of seal were buttoned to the sleeves of her coat, and she could
thrust her hands, with ordinary gloves on them, right into these warm
receptacles.
Nan thought they were wonderfully served at the hotel where they
stopped, and she liked the maid on her corridor very much, and the boy
who brought the icewater, too. There really was so much to tell Bess
that she began to keep a diary in a little blank-book she bought for
that purpose.
Then the most wonderful thing of all was the message from Papa Sherwood
which arrived just before she and Uncle Henry left the hotel for the
train. It was a “night letter” sent from Buffalo and told her that
Momsey was all right and that they both sent love and would telegraph
once more before their steamship left the dock at New York.
Nan and Uncle Henry drove through the snowy streets to another station
and took the evening train north. They traveled at first by the
Milwaukee Division of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad; and now
another new experience came Nan's way. Uncle Henry had secured a section
in the sleeping car and each had a berth.
It was just like being put to sleep on a shelf, Nan declared, when the
porter made up the beds at nine o'clock. She climbed into the upper
berth a little later, sure that she would not sleep, and intending to
look out of the narrow window to watch the snowy landscape fly by all
night.
And much to her surprise (only the surprise came in the morning) she
fell fast asleep almost immediately, lulled by the rocking of the huge
car on its springs, and did not arouse until seven o'clock and the car
stood on the siding in the big Wisconsin city.
They hurried to get a northern bound train and were soon off on what
Uncle Henry called the “longest lap” of their journey. The train swept
them up the line of Lake Michigan, sometimes within sight of the shore,
often along the edge of estuaries, particularly following the contour
of Green By, and then into the Wilderness of upper Wisconsin and the
Michigan Peninsula.
On the Peninsula Division of the C. & N. W. they did not travel as fast
as they had been running, and before Hobart Forks was announced on the
last local train they traveled in, Nan Sherwood certainly was tired
of riding by rail. The station was in Marquette County, near the
Schoolcraft line. Pine Camp was twenty miles deeper in the Wilderness.
It seemed to Nan that she had been traveling through forests, or the
barren stumpage where forests had been, for weeks.
“Here's where we get off, little girl,” Uncle Henry said, as he seized
his big bag and her little one and made for the door of the car. Nan
ran after him in her fur clothing. She had found before this that he was
right about the cold. It was an entirely different atmosphere up here in
the Big Woods from Tillbury, or even Chicago.
The train creaked to a stop. They leaped down upon the snowy platform.
Only a plain station, big freight house, and a company of roughly
dressed men to meet them. Behind the station a number of sleighs and
sledges stood, their impatient horses shaking the innumerable bells they
wore.
Nan, stumbling off the car step behind her uncle, came near to colliding
with a small man in patched coat and cowhide boots, and with a rope tied
about his waist as some teamsters affect. He mumbled something in anger
and Nan turned to look at him.
He wore sparse, sandy whiskers, now fast turning gray. The outthrust of
the lower part of his face was as sharp as that of a fox, and he really
looked like a fox. She was sure of his identity before uncle Henry
wheeled and, seeing the man, said:
“What's that you are saying, Ged Raffer? This is my niece, and if you
lay your tongue to her name, I'll give you something to go to law about
in a hurry. Come, Nan. Don't let that man touch so much as your coat
sleeve. He's like pitch. You can't be near him without some of his
meanness sticking to you.”