Thayor's interview with Alice only made him more determined than
ever to carry out his plans at Big Shanty. If he had hesitated at the
danger to Margaret, he got over it when Leveridge said, with marked
professional courtesy:
"I should not have diagnosed her case as seriously; I should not worry
in the least," adding confidentially--"I should be very much surprised
if Dr. Sperry were right. However, I'll keep an eye on Margaret, and
if I see things going the wrong way I might advise Lakewood in the
spring. To send that child to as severe a climate as the woods in
winter, would, in my opinion, be the worst thing in the world for her,
Sam."
Thayor had repeated Leveridge's words to Alice, and she had replied:
"Well, if you are fool enough to believe in Leveridge I wash my hands
of the whole affair."
Margaret, as Thayor had expected, was radiantly happy over the idea of
the camp. She and her father talked of nothing else, Margaret taking
an absorbed interest in every detail concerning the new home. Every
letter from Holcomb was eagerly scanned by her. She even treasured in
her bureau drawer a duplicate set of the plans, as well as memoranda
of the progress of the work, and so knew everything that the young
woodsman was doing. Furthermore, the frank simplicity of his letters
to her father appealed to her--showing, as they did, a manliness
sadly lacking in the fashionable young men about her. Thus it was not
strange that she began to take a personal interest in Holcomb himself,
whom she dimly remembered at Long Lake. With this there developed in
her mind a certain feeling of respect and admiration for the young
superintendent, due more to her democratic spirit than to anything
personal about the man. Then, again, those who were natural appealed
to her. As to men of Dr. Sperry's stamp and the idle youths who
chattered to her in the world which her mother had forced her into,
these she detested.
* * * * *
During the long winter months Big Shanty lay buried under tons of snow
and ice. The broad bed of the stream became unrecognizable; its roar
muffled. Along its wild course the boulders showed above the heavy
drifts, capped with a sea of white domes, like some straggling city of
sunken mosques. Along the bed of the brook open wounds gaped here and
there, while at the bottom of these crevasses the treacherous black
water chuckled and grumbled through a maze of passages, breaking out
at rare intervals into angry pools, their jagged edges piled with floe
ice. For days at a time the big trees moaned ceaselessly; often the
snow fell silently all through the day, all through the bitter cold of
the night, until the knotted arms of the hemlock were cruelly laden to
the cracking point, and the moose hopple and scrub pines lay smothered
up to their tops. Always the crying wind and the driving snow.
As the winter wore itself out the sun began to assert its warmth.
All things now steamed at midday, dripping and oozing in sheer
gratefulness; the snow became so soft that even the tail of a wood
mouse slushed a gash in it, the dripping hemlocks perforating the
snow beneath them with myriads of holes. Soon the woods were oozing in
earnest, the warm sun swelling the young buds. Day by day the roar of
Big Shanty Brook grew mightier, its waters sweeping over the boulders
with the speed of a mill race, tearing away its crumbling banks.
With the opening of spring Holcomb started work in earnest. The woods
reverberated with the shouts of teamsters. Soon the deserted clearing
became the main centre of activity, echoing with the whacking strokes
of axes and the crash of falling trees. Horses strained and slipped
in their trace chains, snaking the big logs out to the now widened
clearing--slewing around stumps--tearing and ripping right and left.
By early March the clearing had widened to four times its original
size, reaching for rods back of the shanty; the air had become
fragrant, spiced with the odour of fresh stumps and the great piles of
logs stacked on the skidways.
At last the work of chopping ceased. Then began the ripping whine of
saws and the wrenching clutch of cant hooks; loads of clean planks
now came clattering up the rough road from the sawmill in the valley
below--men cursed over wheels sunk over their hubs in mud--over broken
axles and shifted loads.
The clearing had now become Holcomb's home--if a square box provided
with a door and a factory-made window can be called a home. In it
he placed a cot bed and a stove, the remainder of its weather-proof
interior being littered with blue prints, bills, and receipts. Before
long these had resulted in the development of the skeleton of a
pretentious main structure; its frame work suggesting quaint eaves and
a broad piazza. At the same time a dozen other skeletons were erected
about it, flanking a single thoroughfare leading to the road. This,
too, had undergone a radical change. Before many weeks had passed the
newly cut road lay smooth as a floor in macadam.
Strange men now appeared at Big Shanty on flying trips from Albany and
New York--soulless looking men, thoroughly conversant with gas engines
and lighting plants; hustling agents in black derby hats with
samples, many of whom made their head quarters at Morrison's, awaiting
Holcomb's word of approval. Most of these the trapper and the Clown
treated with polite suspicion.
Wagon loads of luxuries then began to arrive--antique furniture,
matchless refrigerators, a grand piano and a billiard table--cases of
pictures and bundles of rare rugs. So great was the accumulation of
luxuries at Big Shanty that little else was talked of.
"How much money do ye cal'late Sam Thayor's got?" one of the prophets
at Morrison's would ask. The "Mr." had been long since dropped from
lack of usage.
"Goll--I hain't no idee," another would reply, "but I presume if the
hull of it was dumped inter Otter Pond you'd find the water had riz
consider'ble 'round the edge."
During all this time Thayor had not once put in an appearance. He had
left Holcomb, as he had promised, entirely in charge. Billy worried
over the ever-increasing expenditure which had grown to a proportion
he never dreamed of at the beginning, and was in constant dread of
being asked for explanations--yet the vouchers he sent to New York
invariably came back "O.K.'d" without a murmur or a criticism from the
man who had told him to buy Big Shanty "as far as he could see."