Nan was sure her Cousin Rafe would be drowned, as well as his foreman.
She covered her eyes for a moment, and could not look.
Then a great cheer arose from the men in the boat and those still
remaining on the bank of the river. Her uncle, beside her, muttered:
“Plucky boy! Plucky boy!”
Her eyes flew open and she looked again. In the midst of the scattering
foam she saw a small log over which her cousin had flung his left arm;
his other arm was around the foreman, and Rafe was bearing his head
above water. Turner had been struck and rendered senseless by the blow.
The small log slipped through a race between two shallows, ahead of the
greater timber. The latter indeed grounded for a moment and that gave
the victim of the accident and his rescuer a chance for life.
They shot ahead with the log to which Rafe clung. The men in the boat
shouted encouragement, and rowed harder. In a minute the boat came
alongside the log and two of the rivermen grabbed the boy and the
unconscious foreman. They had them safely in the boat, and the boat was
at the shore again in three minutes.
By that time the big boss himself, Mr. Blackton, was tearing out over
the logs from the other shore, axe in hand, to cut the key log of the
jam, the formation of which Turner had tried to prevent. A hundred logs
had piled up against the stoppage by this time and there promised to be
a bad time at the bend if every one did not work quickly.
Before Nan and her uncle could reach the foot of the bluff, Turner had
regained consciousness and was sitting on a stranded log, holding his
head. Rafe, just as he had come out of the river, was out on the logs
again lending a hand at the work so necessary to the success of the
drive.
“Oh, dear me!” cried Nan, referring to her cousin, “he ought to go home
and change his clothes. He'll get his death of cold.”
“He'll work hard enough for the next hour to overcome the shock of the
cold water. It's lucky if he isn't in again before they get that trouble
over,” responded Uncle Henry. Then he added, proudly: “That's the kind
of boys we raise in the Big Woods, Nannie. Maybe they are rough-spoken
and aren't really parlor-broke, but you can depend on 'em to do
something when there's anything to do!”
“Oh, Uncle!” cried the girl. “I think Rafe is just the bravest boy I
ever saw. But I should think Aunt Kate would be scared every hour he is
away from home, he is so reckless.”
She was very proud herself of Rafe and wrote Bess a lot about him. Slow
Tom did not figure much in Nan Sherwood's letters, or in her thoughts,
about this time. Thoughts and letters were filled with handsome Rafe.
It was while the Blackton drive was near Pine Camp that Nan became
personally acquainted with old Toby Vanderwiller. It was after dinner
that day that she met Margaret and Bob Llewellen and the three went down
to the river bank, below the bridge, to watch the last of the Blackton
drive.
The chuck-boat had pushed off into the rough current and was bobbing
about in the wake of the logs; but all the men had not departed.
“That's old Toby,” said Bob, a black-haired boy, full of mischief. “He
don't see us. Le's creep up and scare him.”
“No,” said Nan, decidedly; “don't you dare!”
“Aw, shucks! Girls ain't no fun,” the boy growled. “Mag's bad enough,
but you air wuss'n she, Nan Sherwood. What's old Toby to you? He's allus
as cross as two sticks, anyway.”
“We won't make him any crosser,” said Nan, laughing. “What's the good?”
Nan saw that the old man had his coat off, and had slipped down the
right sleeve of his woolen shirt to bare his shoulder and upper right
arm. He was clumsily trying to bandage the arm.
“He's got hurt,” Nan cried to Margaret. “I wonder how?”
“Dunno,” returned the smaller girl, carelessly. Although she was
not mischievous like her brother, Margaret seldom showed traits of
tenderness or affection. Nan was in some doubt as to whether the strange
girl liked her. Margaret often patted Nan's cheeks and admired her
smooth skin; but she never expressed any real affection. She was
positively the oddest little piece of humanity Nan had ever met.
Once Nan asked her if she had a doll. “Doll?” snarled Margaret with
surprising energy. “A'nt Matildy give me one once't an' I throwed it as
far as I could inter the river, so I did! Nasty thing! Its face was all
painted and rough.”
Nan could only gasp. Drown a doll-baby! Big girl as she considered
herself, she had a very tender spot in her heart for doll-babies.
Margaret Llewellen only liked people with fair faces and smooth
complexions; she could not possibly be interested in old Toby
Vanderwiller, who seemed always to need a shave, and whose face, like
that of Margaret's grandfather, was “wizzled.”
Nan ran down to him and asked: “Can't I help you, Mr. Vanderwiller? Did
you get badly hurt?”
“Hullo!” grunted Toby. “Ain't you Hen Sherwood's gal?”
“I'm his niece,” she told him. “Can I help?”
“Well, I dunno. I got a wallop from one o' them logs when we was
breakin' that jam, and it's scraped the skin off me arm----”
“Let me see,” cried Nan, earnestly. “Oh! Mr. Vanderwiller! That must be
painful. Haven't you anything to put on it?”
“Nothin' but this rag,” grunted Toby, drily. “An' ye needn't call me
'Mister,' Sissy. I ain't useter bein' addressed that way.”
Nan laughed; but she quickly washed the scraped patch on the old man's
arm with clean water and then bound her own handkerchief over the
abrasion under the rather doubtful rag that Toby himself supplied.
“You're sure handy, Sissy,” he said, rising and allowing her to help him
into the shirt again and on with his coat. “Now I'll hafter toddle along
or Tim will give me a call-down. Much obleeged. If ye get inter the
tam'rack swamp, come dry-foot weather, stop and see me an' my old
woman.”
“Oh! I'd love to, Mr. Vanderwiller,” Nan cried. “The swamp must be full
of just lovely flowers now.”
The old man's face wrinkled into a smile, the first she had seen upon
it. Really! He was not a bad looking man, after all.
“You fond of posies, sissy?” he asked.
“Indeed I am!” she cried.
“There's a-plenty in the swamp,” he told her. “And no end of ferns and
sich. You come see us and my old woman'll show ye. She's a master hand
at huntin' up all kind o' weeds I tell her.”
“I'll surely come, when the weather gets warmer,” Nan called after Toby
as the old man dogtrotted down the bank of the river. But he did not
answer and was quickly out of sight.