"The wilderness allus seems full o' spectres 'n' creepin'
crawlin' panthers. Sometimes I think it's God, an' then
agin, the devil."--Old Cy Walker.
Tim's Place, this refuge in the wilderness, cleared and colonized by
Tim Connor, was neither better nor worse than such pioneer openings in
Nature's domain are apt to be. Tim, a hardy Irishman of sod-hovel and
potato-diet ancestors, had been blacksmith for a lumber camp on this
broad river and at its junction with a tributary called the Fox Hole
years before Chip was born.
When all the adjacent lumber was cut and sent down this river, the camp
was abandoned, and then Tim saw his opening. With his precious winter's
wages he purchased a large tract of this now worthless land, induced a
robust Bridget, his brother Mike, and his consort to join fortunes with
him, brought in cows, horses, pigs, and poultry, and began farming with
the lumber camp as domicile.
Another log cabin was soon added, the first crop of potatoes sold
readily to other lumbermen farther in the wilderness, the pigs in a
sty adjacent to his own throve, the poultry multiplied, children came,
and the red-shirted men coming into the wilderness or going out found
Tim's Place convenient.
With this added business came an enlargement in Tim's ideas, the
outcome of which was a framed house containing a kitchen and dining room
and half a dozen others of closet-like proportions, furnished with
box-on-legs beds. It was not a pretentious hostelry. Paint, shutters,
and carpets were absent, benches served for chairs, the only mirror in
it was eight by twelve inches, and used in common by Bridget and Mary.
The toilet conveniences consisted of a wash-basin in the kitchen sink and
a "last year's" towel, used semi-occasionally. A long table bare of
cloth and set with tinware served in the dining room, warmed in winter by
a round sheet-iron stove; above it usually hung an array of socks and
mittens, and a capacious cook stove half filled the kitchen. It was the
crudest possible backwoods abode, and yet compared to the log cabin
first occupied by Tim, it was a palace, and he was proud of it.
In autumn swarms of lumbermen halted there, content to sleep on the floor
if need be. In spring they came again, log-driving down stream; later
a few sportsmen occasionally tried it, and all fared alike.
There was no sentiment about Tim. If the citified fishermen objected to
what they found, "Be gob, you kin kape away," he readily told them. A
quarter for each meal, or a night's lodging, was the price, whether a
bed or the floor was provided, and from early spring until frost came,
all the occupants went barefoot.
When snow had made the sixty miles of log road to the nearest settlement
passable, Tim invariably journeyed hither with horse and bob-sled for
clothing and supplies.
No knowledge or news from the world reached here, unless brought by
chance visitors. Sundays were an unknown factor, the work of clearing
land and potato-raising became a continuous performance from spring
until autumn; and the change of seasons, the rise and fall of the river,
were the only measure of time.
An addition to Tim's Place, other than babies and pigs, came one fall in
an old Indian who, by ample presents of game, soon won Tim's good-will
and help in the erection of a log wigwam; but this relic of a vanishing
race--reckoned by Tim as partially insane--remained there only winters,
and when spring returned, disappeared into the wilderness.
There were also two other occasional visitors both meriting description.
First, a beetle-browed, keen-eyed, red-haired man garbed as a hunter,
whose speech disclosed something of the Scotch dialect, and who,
presenting Tim with a deer and two bottles of whiskey as a peace-offering
on his first arrival, soon obtained a welcome. He told a plausible
tale of having been pursued for years by enemies seeking his life;
how he had been robbed and driven away from the settlements; and how
two of these enemies had even followed him into the woods. He had
been shot at by them, had killed one in self-defence, a price had been
set upon his capture, dead or alive, and, all in all, he was a sorely
abused man.
How much of this lurid and fantastic tale Tim believed, is not pertinent
to this narrative. The stranger, calling himself McGuire, was evidently
a good fellow, since he brought good whiskey, and Tim made him welcome.
The facts as to McGuire, however, were somewhat at variance with his
assertions. He had originally been a dive-keeper in a focal city for
the lumbering interests of this wilderness, had entertained swarms of
log-drivers just paid off and anxious to spend money, and when the law
interfered, he retreated to a smaller town.
In the interval, strange to say, his moral nature--or rather
immoral--suffered a brief relapse, during which he persuaded an
excellent if confiding young woman to share his name and infamy.
His second business venture came to grief, however, and his wife deserted
him and met with a fatal accident a few years after. In the meantime
he had kept busy, exercising his peculiar talents and tastes in an
individual manner, and evading officers, and his ways of money-getting
were peculiar and diverse.
The Chinese Exclusion Act had just become operative, and the admission
of Celestials into the land of the free, and of good wages, became a
valuable matter. McGuire conceived the brilliant, if grewsome, idea of
passing "Chinks" over the border line concealed in coffins. It worked
admirably, and with accomplices on both sides to obtain certificates
and permits, and take charge of the "corpses," a few dozen almond-eyed
immigrants at two hundred dollars each obtained admission.
In time, this budding industry met an official quietus, and McGuire,
with several warrants out against him, took to the woods. He still
continued business, however, in various ways. He smuggled liquor over
the border by canoe loads, hiding it at convenient points, to exchange
for log-drivers' wages. He killed game out of season, and dynamited
trout and salmon on spawning beds for the same purpose; and, handy
with cards, did not disdain their use in lumbering camps.
In all and through all his various ways of money-getting, one purpose
had governed him--that of money-saving. Trusting no one, as he had reason
to feel no one trusted him, he continually emulated the squirrels and
hid his savings in the woods. A trapper and hunter by instinct, as well
as thief, dive-keeper, smuggler, poacher, and gambler, he had in his
wanderings discovered a cave in a slate ledge upon the shores of a small
lake far into the wilderness. It was while trapping here that he found
this by the aid of a fox which, while dragging a trap, became caught
and held in a crevasse while attempting to enter it.
The fox thus secured, McGuire made further investigation, and by removing
a loose slab of slate, he was enabled to enter a roomy cavern, or rather
two small ones partially separated by slate walls. A little light
entered the larger one, through a seam crossing it lengthwise. They were
free from moisture at this time--early autumn--and so secluded was the
spot that McGuire decided at once to use this place as a hiding-spot
for his money. The entrance could be kept concealed, its location served
his purpose, and, fox-like himself, he decided to occupy what he
would never have found without the aid of a fox, believing no one
else would find it. It could also be used as a domicile for himself as
well. A fireplace of slate could be built in it, an escape for smoke
might be formed through the crack, if enlarged, and so this cave's
possibilities increased.
There were still several other advantages. This lake was surrounded by
precipitous mountains; no lumbermen, even, were likely to operate there;
the stream flowing out of it soon crossed the border line, finding escape
into the St. Lawrence valley at a point some twenty miles distant; a
short carry enabled him to reach the Fox Hole which flowed by Tim's
Place, and so this served as an excellent whip road in case of pursuit.
His transient asylum at Tim's Place also served as a vantage point in
another way.
Here all who entered this portion of the wilderness invariably
halted,--officers and wardens as well,--and as by this time McGuire
had become an outlaw murderer, with a reward offered for his capture,
this outpost was of double advantage.
Caution was a strong point in his make-up, yet he was daring as well.
He still visited the settlements occasionally, to sell furs and obtain
ammunition and whiskey; and when he, as ill luck would have it, happened
there at the time his child was left motherless, some malign impulse led
him to take her to Tim's Place and leave her in servitude there.
There was also another chance caller at this outpost--a half-breed
trapper and hunter named Bolduc, who had established himself in a
lone cabin on the Fox Hole, some ten miles up from Tim's Place. He
was a repulsive minor edition of McGuire. A wildcat, with laudable
intentions, had essayed putting an end to his career, and succeeded to
the extent of one eye and some blood. He had been the accomplice and
partner of McGuire in many a whiskey-smuggling trip. He also dealt in
this pernicious, but valuable, fluid, was a poacher ever ready to
pot-hunt for a lumbering camp in winter, or find a moose yard on
snow-shoes, after slaughtering the helpless inmates of which, he
would sell them to the busy wood-choppers.
He, too, could be classed as brigand of the wilderness, and while no
warrants or charges against him were rife, he felt it wise to avoid
meeting minions of the law. Tim's Place was a convenient point to
obtain information as to location of new lumber camps or possible visits
of officers. An occasional bottle of whiskey secured Tim's favor.
The evenings and meals there impressed Pete with the advantages of
owning a woman's services, and as Chip matured in domestic and other
possibilities, a desire to possess her began to increase his visits.
His wooing met no response, however, and when persisted in always awoke
on her part the same instinct once displayed toward him by a wildcat.
Then recourse to her father's greed for money was taken, with results as
described.
The only thing that saved poor Chip from pursuit and capture, however,
was his wholesome fear of her finger-nails, and the belief that it was
best to let her father earn the balance of her price and fetch her, as
agreed. Acting upon this theory, Pete had departed from Tim's Place at
dawn, to await her arrival at his cabin, quite oblivious of the fact that
his bird had flown.
All that long day he waited in great expectancy. Toward evening he
returned to Tim's Place to learn that Chip had not been seen since
the previous night; that her father had also vanished without comment.
That he was a party to this trick and deception, and, after securing his
three hundred dollars, had taken her away, was Pete's conclusion,
and he vowed a murderous revenge. He returned to his cabin, little
realizing that twenty miles away poor Chip, faint with hunger and the
terror of a vast wilderness, was fighting her way through bush, bramble,
and swamp in a mad attempt to escape.
Neither did Tim, while regretting the loss of his slave, know or care
that one of his occasional visitors was now a mortal enemy of the other,
and that a tragedy, dark and grewsome, would be its outcome.