All through the night that followed Sam Thayor slept soundly on his
spring bed of fragrant balsam, oblivious to the Clown's snoring or the
snapping logs burning briskly in the stove, his head pillowed on his
boots wound in his blanket. Beneath the canopy of stars the torrent
roared and the great trees whined and creaked, their shaggy tops
whistling in the stiff breeze. Not until Hite laid his rough hand on
his shoulder and shook him gently did he wake to consciousness.
"Breakfus's most ready," announced the trapper cheerfully.
Thayor opened his eyes; then, with a start, he sat up, remembering
where he was. As he grew accustomed to the light he caught a glimpse
outside of Billy and the Clown busy over the frying pan, and the
steaming pail of coffee. Its fragrance and the pungent smoke from the
fire now brought him fully awake.
"How'd ye sleep, friend?" inquired Hite, his weather-beaten face
wrinkled in a kindly grin.
"How did I sleep?" returned the millionaire smiling; "like a
top--really I don't know; I don't remember anything after Holcomb
covered me up."
"Breakfast!" shouted the Clown from without.
"Wait'll I git ye some fresh water," said the trapper, tossing the
soapy contents of a tin basin into the sun and returning with it
re-filled. "Thar, dip yer head into that, friend--makes a man feel
good, I tell ye, on a frosty mornin'." Then lowering his voice to a
whisper he added: "The old dog's sot on gittin' an early start; he's
mighty pertickler 'bout it. The old feller's been up 'long 'fore
daylight. He told me he never seen no nicer mornin' for a hunt. If
we don't git a deer 'fore noon you kin have all that's on my plate."
There was a confident gleam in the old man's eyes--an enthusiasm that
was contagious.
The gray head of the millionaire went into the tin basin with a will.
Big Shanty Brook, that morning, was as cold as ice. He rubbed his
face and neck into a glow, combing his hair as best he could with
his hands. He was as hungry as a wolf. Thayor was now beginning to
understand their unwillingness to accept pay for their services.
Breakfast over, the four struck into the woods in single file, en
route for their runways, Hite taking the lead, the old dog trotting at
the Clown's heels in silence, Holcomb bringing up the rear.
"Now, friend," began Hite in a low tone to Thayor, "you'd better come
with me, I presume; and, Billy, we'll go slow so's you'll have time
to git down to whar that leetle brook comes into Big Shanty." And the
banker and the trapper, followed by the dog, struck off to the left,
up the densely wooded side of the mountain.
It was all a mystery to Thayor, this finding a blind trail in the
forest, but to the trapper it was as plain as a thoroughfare.
"'T won't be long 'fore the old dog'll git down to business this
mornin'," he muttered to Thayor in his low voice, as he steadied him
along a slippery log. "The dog says Freme's allys sot on keepin' up
too high. He thinks them deer is feedin' on what they kin git low down
in the green timber underneath them big slides. I ain't of course,
sayin' nothin' agin Freme. Thar ain't a better starter in these hull
maountins, only him and the old dog ain't allus of the same idee."
Presently Big Shanty Brook flashed ahead of them through the trees,
and the trapper led the way out to a broad pool, a roaring cauldron of
emerald green steaming in mist. Just above it lay a point of
boulders out of which a dense clump of hemlocks struggled for a rough
existence--the boulders about their gnarled roots splitting the course
of the mountain torrent right and left.
"Thar, Mr. Thayor!" shouted the trapper in a voice that could be heard
above the roar of water. "Guess you'll be better off here whar ye kin
see up and down--if the deer comes through here he's liable to cross
jest above whar ye see them cedars noddin' to us, or like's not he'll
take a notion to strike in a leetle mite higher up, and slosh down
till he kin git acrost by them big rocks. Take your time, friend, and
if ye see him comin' your way, let him come on and don't shoot till he
turns and ye kin see the hull bigness of him."
"I'll do my best," returned Thayor above the roar, as he settled
himself behind the pile of driftwood the trapper had indicated. "But
where are you going, Mr. Holt?"
"Me? Oh, further up. 'T ain't likely he'll come my way, but if ye was
to miss him I'll be whar he can't git by without my gittin' the gun
on him if he undertakes to back track up the brook. Let's see!" he
exclaimed, after a moment's hesitation, again casting his keen eyes
over Thayor's vantage point. "Guess ye'd be more comfortable, wouldn't
ye, if ye was to set over thar whar ye won't git sloppin' wet. Gosh!
how she's riz!" he remarked, as Thayor re-settled himself. "If you was
to hear me shoot," said the old man, as he took his leave, "come back
up to whar I be. 'T ain't more 'n half a mile."
Thayor watched the gaunt figure of the trapper as he went off to his
runway, leaping with his long legs from one slippery boulder to the
next, as sure-footed as a goat--watched until he disappeared beyond
the clump of torrent-scarred trees.
The man from the city was alone. He sat there listening and watching
as eager as a boy. An hour passed. Time and again since he had taken
up his vigil he had started up excitedly, glancing here and there,
confident he heard the baying notes of a hound above the roar of
Big Shanty. Voices, too, rang in his ears from out of that deceptive
torrent as it boiled and eddied past him in the sunlight. Again, it
seemed as if quarrelling had broken out among the boulders--quarrels
that changed to girlish laughter and distant choruses. Once his mind
reverted to the note he had sent by Blakeman; he wondered what effect
the news had had upon Alice. When he faced her again would he have to
go through what he had gone through before? or would she come to her
senses, and be once more the loyal, loving wife she had always been
until--No; he would not go into that. Then Margaret's eyes looked into
his. Again he felt her arms about his neck; the coo and gurgle of her
voice, and laughter in his ears. Here she, at least, would be happy,
and here, too, they could have those long days together which he
had always promised himself, and which his life in the Street made
impossible.
He rose to stretch his legs. As he did so the strange fascination of
the mountain torrent--fascination that grew into a stranger feeling of
isolation, almost of fear, took possession of him. He knew the trapper
was somewhere, but half a mile above him. He was glad of this unseen
companionship, and yet he realized that he was helpless to find his
way back to the shanty. Big Shanty Brook had lost men before, and
could again.
Suddenly the hoarse bellowing of a hound brought him again to his
feet.
"Oo--oo--wah!" it rang over the roar; then the baying grew fainter
from far up under the black slides as the dog turned in his course.
At this instant he became conscious of a presence which he could not
at first make out--but something alive--something that moved--stood
still--still as the tree behind which it slunk--and moved again. He
grasped his Winchester and peered ahead, straining his eyes. Before
him, barely thirty yards away, stood a man, the like of whom he had
never seen before. Gaunt, hollow-eyed, unshorn, his matted beard and
hair covered by a ragged slouch hat. Resting in the hollow of his arm
was a rifle, and around his waist a belt of cartridges. That he had
not seen Thayor was evident from the way he stood listening to the
baying of the hound, his hand cupped to his ear.
Suddenly the figure crouched; sank to the ground and rolled behind a
fallen log. At the same instant the old dog bounded out of the bushes
and sprang straight at where the man lay concealed.
Thayor waited, not daring to breathe. The old dog had evidently lost
the deer tracks.
Thayor settled once more in his place, now that the mystery was
explained; looked his rifle over, laid it within instant reach of his
hand and gave a low cough in the direction of the concealed figure.
Should the deer charge this way it was just as well to let the man
know where he sat, or he might stop a stray bullet. Quick as the
answering flash of a mirror a line of light glinted along the barrel
of a rifle resting on the fallen log, its muzzle pointed straight at
him.
Thayor shrank behind the drift and uttered a yell. Almost every year
someone had been mistaken for a deer and shot.
At this instant there rang through the forest the stamping splash of
hoofs in the rapids above him; a moment more and he saw the spray fly
back of a boulder. Then he gazed at something that obliterated all
else.
A big buck was coming straight toward him. He came on, walking
briskly, his steel-blue coat wet and glistening, a superb dignity
about him, carrying his head and its branching horns with a certain
fearless pride, and now that he had struck water, wisely taking his
time to gain his second wind.
In a flash the buck saw him, turned broadside and leaped for the clump
of nodding hemlocks.
_Bang! Bang!_ Thayor was shooting now--shooting as if his life
depended upon it. His first shot went wild, the bullet striking
against a rock. The second sent the buck to his knees; in a second he
was up again. It was the fourth shot that reached home, just as
the deer gained the mass of boulders and hemlocks. The buck sprang
convulsively in the air--the old dog at his throat--turned a half
somersault and fell in a heap, stone dead, in a shallow pool. With a
cry of joy the trapper was beside him.
"By Goll! you done well!" Hite declared with enthusiasm. "By Goll!
friend, you done well! I knowed you had him soon's I heard the gun
crack. Thinks I, he ain't liable to git by ye if he comes in whar
I knowed he would. Well, he's consider'ble of a deer, I swan!" he
declared, running his hand over the branching prongs.
"He's a beauty!" cried Thayor.
"Yes, sir, and he'll dress clus to a hundred and seventy. Must have
made him think this perticler section was inhabited when ye was
lettin' drive at him. Fust shot I know ye shot too quick. I warn't
mor'n a hundred yards from him, then I knowed ye was gittin' stiddier
when I heard ye shoot again."
"Hurrah, boys!" shouted a voice from the bank. It was Holcomb.
"There's our saddle for Randall," he cried as he leaped toward them.
"But, Billy, I came pretty near not getting him after all," exclaimed
Thayor with a laugh. "I was trying to keep your friend in the runway
across the brook from shooting me, but I forgot all about him when I
heard the deer come crashing down stream. If he got a crack at him at
all I didn't hear it, I was so excited. You ought to have told me, Mr.
Holt, you had somebody else watching out across the brook, or I might
have let drive at him by mistake, or he at me." And Thayor laughed
heartily. He was very happy to-day.
The trapper looked at him in wonder.
"Freme warn't down this way was he, Billy?"
Holcomb shook his head--a curious expression on his face.
"Oh, it wasn't Freme," retorted Thayor. "This man was half the size of
Skinner, and a regular scarecrow. Looked as if he hadn't had anything
to eat for weeks--but he could handle a gun all right. That's what
worried me; I was afraid he would use it on me until the old dog lay
down beside him."
The trapper gazed at the hound long and earnestly as if to read his
mind, and then he answered thoughtfully:
"No--he warn't none of our folks, Mr. Thayor--one o' them gunners, I
guess. They all know the old dog. And now," continued the old man, "I
presume, likely, arter we've washed up a mite, we'd better be makin'
tracks for home. I'm gittin' hollerer 'n a gourd. How be you, friend;
hongry?"
"Hungry as a wolf," returned Thayor, still beaming over his good luck.
The Clown now appeared, and drawing his heavy knife, began dressing
the buck.
"Here, Freme," cried the trapper, when the deer had been quartered,
"that's yourn," and he slung the forequarters over the Clown's neck.
"Ride nice?" asked the old man. "Kinder hefty, ain't it, Freme?"
"Wall, it ain't no ear-ring," laughed the Clown, shifting his burden
to a finer balance.
"I'll take the hind quarters," said Thayor, straddling them across
his neck, as the Clown had done, and with his own and Thayor's rifle
spliced to the buck's head, the Clown led the way back to camp.
* * * * *
Some mornings after the hunt, during which Thayor had become so
saturated with the life about him that the very thought of his work at
home was distasteful, the banker called Holcomb to one side, and the
two took their seats on a fallen tree, sections of which had warmed
their tired and rain-soaked bodies more than once during his stay in
the wilderness.
The open-air life--the excitement of the hunt--the touch of the cool
woods, had removed from Thayor's mind every lingering doubt of his
future plans. With the same promptness which characterized all his
business transactions, he decided to return to New York the next day.
"Billy," began the banker, when he had settled himself comfortably,
and lighted his cigar, "do you suppose Skinner can get a despatch out
for me in the morning?"
"Yes, he might," replied Holcomb.
"Well, will you please see that he does then? And, Billy, one thing
more--how many acres did you tell me the other day there was as far as
we can see?" and he waved his hand to the stretch below him.
"About fifteen thousand, sir."
"Well, that will do for a beginning. I'm going to settle here, Billy,
permanently--all my life. I want you to start to-morrow and find out
who owns, not only this fifteen thousand acres, but what lies next to
it. I'm going to buy if I can, and you're the man to help me."
"But, Mr. Thayor," faltered the young woodsman.
"No--there are no buts. I am not buying timber land, you understand,
in the ordinary way, to destroy it. I want this beautiful country to
be my own. No," he added smiling, "_our_ own, Billy. That's the better
way to put it."
"I'll do my best," replied Holcomb simply, when he got his breath.
"It's a big purchase and I must go slowly."
"Then the sooner you begin on them, my boy, the better. I shall send
my lawyer, Mr. Griscom, up to you immediately; he will see that we get
fair play legally, but as to the question of what and what not to buy,
I leave that entirely to your judgment; what money you need you have
but to ask Mr. Griscom for."
"I'm afraid they will hold the tract at a high price, Mr. Thayor,"
said Holcomb.
"Whatever they hold it at within reason I'll pay," declared the
millionaire.
"Then you'll have it," replied the young woodsman in a positive tone,
"at the fairest figure I can get it for."
"I haven't a doubt of it, Billy. And now let me tell Holt and
Freme--they are just inside the shanty. Ah--Mr. Holt, I was just
telling Holcomb that I'm off in the morning, and before I go I want
to tell you and Freme that I shall miss you dreadfully--miss you more
than I can tell.
"Yes--so we mistrusted," answered Freme, in a regretful tone, "when we
overheard ye talkin' 'bout telegrams."
"Goll! I hate to have ye go," declared the trapper, clearing his
throat. "Seems 'ough you hain't but jest come, Mr. Thayor. But you got
what ye come for, didn't ye? I dunno as I ever see a nicer deer."
"Yes, thanks to you and the old dog. But I'm coming back."
"Thar! what did I tell ye, Hite?" exclaimed the Clown.
"And when I do come back it will be to stay--at least during the
summer months--perhaps for all the months."
The Clown and the trapper looked up with a puzzled expression.
"And as it is a decision which concerns all of us," Thayor resumed,
"I want to tell you now that I have decided to buy Big Shanty Brook as
far as we can see, and build a home here for myself and my family."
"Gee whimey!" cried the Clown. "I want to know!" The keen eyes of the
trapper opened wide in astonishment.
"I have left the matter of purchase," continued Thayor, "entirely in
Holcomb's hands. He will be my superintendent. I now ask your help,
my friends, both of you; and so if you are willing you may consider
yourselves under salary which Billy will settle with you, beginning
from the morning I first saw this shanty. And now, Billy, if you don't
mind, I want to see Big Shanty Brook once more before it gets dark.
Maybe we can pick out a place for the new camp."
For some time neither the trapper nor the Clown spoke. Both sat
amazed, silently gazing into the fire. Then Hite said slowly, turning
to the Clown:
"Freme, I dunno as if I ever seen a nicer man."
* * * * *
Once outside Thayor stretched his arms above his head.
"Ah--what a day, it has been, Billy," he sighed. "What a full,
glorious day, and what a rest it has all been. At what hour do we
start in the morning?" and a touch of sadness came into his voice.
"At seven," Holcomb replied; "Freme will take us out to the railroad
with a team from Morrison's. We can send your telegram there."
"Good!" cried Thayor, brightening. "And, Mr. Holt--isn't he coming
too?"
"I'm afraid not; he said to me before lunch that he and the dog were
going to stay on for a spell."
"What--not alone! Oh, Billy, I wouldn't want to leave him here alone.
He's an old man, you know, even if he is tough as a pine knot. Can't
we persuade him to go with us? He's been so loyal and lovable I hate
to leave him."
"I don't think you need worry, sir--he won't be alone."
"But Skinner is going with us."
"Yes--but he'll have company."
"Who?"
"The man you saw yesterday. You didn't suspect, perhaps, but that was
Bob Dinsmore, who killed Bailey."
"The hide-out!" exclaimed Thayor, with a start.
"Yes, he's been around here ever since we came."
"Oh! I'm so sorry! Why didn't you let me see him?"
"Well, we didn't think any good would come of it, sir. Hite won't let
him go hungry if he can help it, and he can now. We haven't eaten half
the grub we brought."
Thayor stood for a moment in deep thought, reached down into his
pocket and took from it a roll of bills.
"Hand this to Holt, Billy, and tell him to give it to the poor fellow
from me."