The harsh tone of the unseen man terrified Nan Sherwood; but the words
he spoke about her Uncle Henry inspired her to creep nearer that she
might see who it was, and hear more. The fact that she was eavesdropping
did not deter the girl.
She believed her uncle's life to be in peril!
The dampness between the logs of the roadway oozed up in little pools
and steamed in the hot blaze of the afternoon sun. Insects buzzed and
hummed, so innumerable that the chorus of their voices was like the
rumble of a great church-organ.
Nan stepped from the road and pushed aside the thick underbrush to find
a dry spot to place her foot. The gnats danced before her and buzzed in
her ears. She brushed them aside and so pushed on until she could see
the road again. A lean, yellow horse, tackled to the shafts of a
broken top-buggy with bits of rope as well as worn straps, stood in the
roadway. The man on the seat, talking to another on the ground, was Mr.
Gedney Raffer, the timberman who was contending at law with Uncle Henry.
It was he who had said: “I'd give money, I tell ye, to see Hen Sherwood
git his.”
There had fallen a silence, but just as Nan recognized the mean looking
old man on the carriage seat, she heard the second man speak from the
other side of the buggy.
“I tell you like I done Hen himself, Ged; I don't wanter be mixed up in
no land squabble. I ain't for neither side.”
It was Toby. Nan knew his voice, and she remembered how he had answered
Uncle Henry at the lumber camp, the first day she had seen the old
lumberman. Nan could not doubt that the two men were discussing the
argument over the boundary of the Perkins Tract.
Gedney Raffer snarled out an imprecation when old Toby had replied as
above. “Ef you know which side of your bread the butter's on, you'll
side with me,” he said.
“We don't often have butter on our bread, an' I ain't goin' ter side
with nobody,” grumbled Toby Vanderwiller.
“S-s!” hissed Raffer. “Come here!”
Toby stepped closer to the rattletrap carriage. “You see your way to
goin' inter court an' talkin' right, and you won't lose nothin' by it,
Tobe.”
“Huh? Only my self-respect, I s'pose,” grunted the old lumberman, and
Nan approved very much of him just then.
“Bah!” exclaimed Raffer.
“Bah, yourself!” Toby Vanderwiller returned with some heat. “I got some
decency left, I hope. I ain't goin' to lie for you, nor no other man,
Ged Raffer!”
“Say! Would it be lyin' ef you witnessed on my side?” demanded the eager
Raffer.
“That's my secret,” snapped the old lumberman. “If I don't witness for
you, be glad I don't harm you.”
“You dare!” cried Raffer, shaking his fist at the other as he leaned
from the buggy seat.
“You hearn me say I wouldn't go inter court one way or 'tother,”
repeated Toby, gloomily.
“Wal,” snarled Raffer, “see't ye don't see't ye don't. 'Specially for
any man but me. Ye 'member what I told ye, Tobe. Money's tight and I
oughter call in that loan.”
Toby was silent for half a minute. Then Nan heard him sigh.
“Well, Ged,” he observed, “it's up to you. If you take the place it'll
be the poorhouse for that unforchunit boy of mine and mebbe for the ol'
woman, 'specially if I can't strike a job for next winter. These here
lumber bosses begin to think I'm too stiff in the j'ints.”
“Wal, wal!” snarled Raffer. “I can't help it. How d'ye expec' I kin help
you ef you won't help me?”
He clucked to the old horse, which awoke out of its drowse with a start,
and moved on sluggishly. Toby stood in the road and watched him depart.
Nan thought the old lumberman's to be the most sorrowful figure she had
ever seen.
Her young heart beat hotly against the meanness and injustice of Gedney
Raffer. He had practically threatened Toby with foreclosure on his
little farm if the old lumberman would not help him in his contention
with Mr. Sherwood. On the other hand, Uncle Henry desired his help; but
Uncle Henry, Nan knew, would not try to bribe the old lumberman. Under
these distressing circumstances, which antagonist's interests was Toby
Vanderwiller likely to serve?
This query vastly disturbed Nan Sherwood. All along she had desired much
to help Uncle Henry solve his big problem. The courts would not allow
him to cut a stick of timber on the Perkins Tract until a resurvey of
the line was made by government-appointed surveyors, and that would be,
when?
Uncle Henry's money was tied up in the stumpage lease, or first payment
to the owners of the land. It was a big contract and he had expected to
pay his help and further royalties on the lease, from the sale of the
timber he cut on the tract. Besides, many valuable trees had been felled
before the injunction was served, and lay rotting on the ground. Every
month they lay there decreased their value.
And now, it appeared, Gedney Raffer was doing all in his power to
influence old Toby to serve as a witness in his, Raffer's, interests.
Had toby been willing to go into court and swear that the line of the
Perkins Tract was as Mr. Sherwood claimed, the court would have to
vacate the injunction and Uncle Henry could risk going ahead and cutting
and hauling timber from the tract. Uncle Henry believed Toby
knew exactly where the line lay, for he had been a landloper, or
timber-runner in this vicinity when the original survey was made,
forty-odd years before.
It was plain to Nan, hiding in the bushes and watching the old man's
face, that he was dreadfully tempted. Working as hard as he might,
summer and winter alike, Toby Vanderwiller had scarcely been able to
support his wife and grandson. His occasional attacks of rheumatism so
frequently put him back. If Raffer took away the farm and the shelter
they had, what would become of them?
Uncle Henry was so short of ready money himself that he could not assume
the mortgage if Raffer undertook to foreclose.
“Oh, dear me! If Momsey would only write to me that she is really rich,”
thought Nan, “I'd beg her for the money. I'll tell her all about poor
Toby in my very next letter and maybe, if she gets all that money from
the courts in Scotland, she will let me give Toby enough to pay off the
mortgage.”
She never for a moment doubted that Uncle Henry's contention about the
timber tract line was right. He must be correct, and old Toby must know
it! That is the way Nan Sherwood looked at the matter.
But now, seeing Toby turning back along the corduroy road, and slowly
shuffling toward home, she stepped out of the hovering bushes and walked
hastily after him. She overtook him not many yards beyond the spot where
he had stood talking with Raffer. He looked startled when she spoke his
name.
“Well! You air a sight for sore eyes, Sissy,” he said; but added,
nervously, “How in Joe Tunket did you git in the swamp? Along the road?”
“Yes, sir,” said Nan.
“Come right erlong this way?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Did ye meet anybody?” demanded old Toby, eyeing her sharply.
“Mr. Raffer, driving his old buckskin horse. That's all.”
“Didn't say nothin' to ye, did he?” asked Toby, curiously.
“Not a word,” replied Nan, honestly. “I'm afraid of him and I hid in the
bushes till he had gone by.”
“Huh!” sighed Toby, as though relieved. “Jest as well. Though Ged
wouldn't ha' dared touch ye, Sissy.”
“Never mind. I'm here now,” said Nan, brightly. “And I want you to show
me your house and introduce me to Mrs. Vanderwiller.”
“Sure. My ol' woman will be glad to see ye,” said the man, briskly.
“'Tain't more'n a mile furder on.”
But first they came to a deserted place, a strip more than half a mile
wide, where the trees had been cut in a broad belt through the swamp.
All Nan could see was sawdust and the stumps of felled trees sticking
out of it. The sawdust, Toby said, was anywhere from two to twenty feet
deep, and there were acres of it.
“They had their mill here, ye kin see the brick work yonder. They hauled
out the lumber by teams past my place. The stea'mill was here more'n
two years. They hauled the sawdust out of the way and dumped it in ev'ry
holler, jest as it come handy.”
“What a lot there is of it!” murmured Nan, sniffing doubtfully at the
rather unpleasant odor of the sawdust.
“I wish't 'twas somewhere else,” grunted Toby.
“Why-so?”
“Fire git in it and it'd burn till doomsday. Fire in sawdust is a mighty
bad thing. Ye see, even the road here is made of sawdust, four foot or
more deep and packed as solid as a brick walk. That's the way Pale Lick
went, sawdust afire. Ha'f the town was built on sawdust foundation an'
she smouldered for weeks before they knowed of it. Then come erlong a
big wind and started the blaze to the surface.”
“Oh!” murmured Nan, much interested. “Didn't my Uncle Henry live there
then?”
“I sh'd say he did,” returned Toby, emphatically. “Didn't he never tell
ye about it?”
“No, sir. They never speak of Pale Lick.”
“Well, I won't, nuther,” grunted old Toby. “'Taint pretty for a young
gal like you to hear about. Whush! Thar goes a loon!”
A big bird had suddenly come into sight, evidently from some nearby
water-hole. It did not fly high and seemed very clumsy, like a duck or
goose.
“Oh! Are they good to eat, Mr. Vanderwiller?” cried Nan. “Rafe brought
in a brace of summer ducks the other day, and they were awfully good,
the way Aunt Kate cooked them.”
“Well!” drawled Toby, slyly, “I've hearn tell ye c'd eat a loon, ef
'twas cooked right. But I never tried it.”
“How do you cook a loon, Mr. Vanderwiller?” asked Nan, interested in all
culinary pursuits.
“Well, they tell me thet it's some slow process,” said the old man,
his eyes twinkling. “Ye git yer loon, pluck an' draw it, let it soak
overnight in vinegar an' water, vitriol vinegar they say is the best.
Then ye put it in the pot an' let it simmer all day.”
“Yes?” queried the perfectly innocent Nan.
“Then ye throw off that water,” Toby said, soberly, “and ye put on fresh
water an' let it cook all the next day.”
“Oh!”
“An' then ye throw in a piece of grin'stone with the loon, and set it
to bilin' again. When ye kin stick a fork in the grin'stone, the loon's
done!”
Nan joined in Toby's loud laugh at this old joke, and pretty soon
thereafter they came to the hummock on which the Vanderwillers lived.