The Babes in the Wood
The father arose and hung the fiddle on its nail.
“Best go to bed, Boy,” he yawned, picking up the huge clasp-knife with
which he had been shaping the ax-handle and putting it in his pocket.
When he withdrew his hand it held a letter.
“Well, now, if I didn’t forget all about this here epistle,” he
exclaimed, frowning. “Jim Peeler gave it to me this afternoon. That man
Watson, the land-agent at Bridgetown, gave it to Jim to give me. You
read it, Boy, and see what he wants.”
Boy took the letter and broke it open with nervous fingers.
“Watson says he’s comin’ over here to see you to-morrow, dad. Seems like
he wants to get hold of this place.”
He threw the letter from him and walked over to the window.
“By hickory!” expostulated the father, “what do you think of that?”
“What do I think? It’s just what I expected, that’s all.”
Boy lifted the window and leaned out. The moon was flooding the outer
world with a soft radiance. The bark of a wolf came faintly to his ears
from the back ridges. Old Joe lay stretched in the moonlight beside the
ash-leach. As Boy watched him the dog arose, shook himself happily,
turned three times around, and lay down again. An owl hooted mournful
maledictions from a neighboring thicket, and in the nearby coop the fowl
stirred and nestled down again, heads beneath wings. Boy came back and
stood beside his father.
“I guess maybe I’m selfish, dad,” he said slowly. “It isn’t for me to
say what I think, although it’s mighty good of you to ask. This place
ain’t mine; it’s yours. You’ve worked hard and long to clear what you’ve
cleared here, and that’s a great deal more than any of the other
Bushwhackers have done. I haven’t been anythin’ of a help to you much.
’Course I could be from now on. I’m a man growed, nearly, and as soon as
the trappin’ is over I might pitch in and help you with the loggin’.”
The father laid his pipe down on the table and combed his long beard
with his fingers.
“Boy,” he said, “every hanged stick of timber and every foot of this
four hundred acres of bushland is as much yours as mine, and you know
it. I ain’t wantin’ to clear the land any more than the rest of the
Bushwhackers are. What do I want with cleared land? Gosh sakes alive,
I’d be so lonesome for the woods that I couldn’t live. I can’t sleep now
if I don’t hear the trees swishin’ and the twigs poundin’ the roof
nights. And ain’t we tolerably happy, all of us together here, even if
the little ma is purty sick and it’s mighty hard not to be able to help
her? And ain’t we hopin’ and prayin’ that she’ll get to be her old self
once more, here where the woods breathes its own medicine? And don’t we
know them prayers’ll be answered?”
He bent over and laid his big hand on the lad’s shoulder.
“Then we’ll naturally put in some great nights, crackin’ hickory-nuts by
the fire and playin’ the fiddle. Why, I wouldn’t part with one acre of
this piece of bush for all the cleared land in western Ontario.”
Boy stooped and picked up the letter.
“Watson writes that he has a cultivated farm near Clearview that he’ll
swap for this of ours,” he said. “Where’s Clearview, dad?”
“Why, it’s a strip of sandy loam between Bridgetown and Lake Erie. It’s
too light even to grow Canada-thistles. Well, I guess maybe Watson
_would_ be willin’ to swap that sand for our place. I don’t like that
man Watson. I can’t say why, unless it’s on account of some things I’ve
heard of him and that other feller, Smythe, who’s a partner of his in
some way.”
“You mean the Smythe who keeps the store at Bridgetown?”
“The same. You know him pretty well, I guess. He cheated you out of a
dozen mink-hides, didn’t he?”
“He tried to,” answered Boy with a smile.
“Mr. Watson’ll find that we’re not wantin’ to trade farms,” affirmed the
father.
“There’s Gloss,” suggested Boy. “If she was where there was a good
school——” He hesitated and looked at Big McTavish.
The man laughed.
“Why, bless your heart,” he cried, “you couldn’t drag the girl away from
this bush. She loves it—loves every nook and corner of it.”
Boy sighed.
“She sure does,” he agreed. “She sure does.”
The father brought a pine board from the wood-box and began to whittle
off the shavings for the morning fire-making. This done, he gathered
them together with a stockinged foot, glancing now and then at the boy,
who had resumed his old attitude.
“Watson and Smythe want to get hold of our property for some reason,”
said the father, “and I reckon it’s pretty easy to guess who they’re
trying to get it for. It’s that big landowner, Colonel Hallibut, who has
his mill on Lee Creek. I hear that Colonel Hallibut swears he’ll own
every stick of timber in Bushwhackers’ Place.”
“That’s what troubles me,” returned Boy quickly. “You know what them
rich Englishmen are like, dad. They have always got hold of everythin’
they wanted, and now this one is goin’ to try and get our place. But we
ain’t goin’ to let him,” he cried, springing up. “We’ll fight him, dad;
we’ll fight him off, and if he tries to take it we’ll——”
“Hush, Boy; there’s no reason to take on that way. What makes you think
he’ll try to drive us?”
Big McTavish stood up straight. Something of the boy’s spirit had
entered into him for an instant.
“You see, dad, we’re poor. That is, we have no ready money, though we
have everythin’ we need for comfort. Then we’re lackin’ in that
somethin’ called sharpness among businessmen. We’ve never learned it. We
are like the other wild things that creep farther back into the woods
before what they can’t understand. We don’t know their ways. I tell you,
Hallibut would steal this bushland from us, and he’s goin’ to try. It’s
valuable. There’s enough walnut and oak and the highest class of timber
on this place to make us rich—rich, d’ye know that, dad? And ain’t
Hallibut and his agents tryin’ to get every other Bushwhacker under
their thumbs same as they’re tryin’ to get us? But, dad, listen—they
won’t get us, by God; they won’t get us.”
The lad was trembling and his face was white and perspiring.
“Boy,” chided the father sternly, “you mustn’t swear. Watson nor
Hallibut nor any other man is that bad. You’ve let the woods get into
you until you’re fanciful. Read your Bible, and pray more.”
“I didn’t mean to swear, dad. I’ve swore more to-day than I have for
years. I can’t stand to think that them men will steal this beautiful
spot that is ours now, and cut and cripple it and drive its wild things
away.”
“Hallibut’s sawmill is runnin’ nights,” said the father thoughtfully.
“He made French Joe an offer for his timber through Watson the other
day, but I guess it wasn’t much. Joe owed him money.”
“Well, us Bushwhackers are goin’ to hang together,” said Boy. “We own
over two thousand acres of the best timber in Ontario. We can keep it by
fightin’. If we don’t fight——”
He turned and walked toward the door.
“Boy,” warned the elder man, “don’t you do anythin’ you’ll be sorry for.
Just forget all about Watson and Hallibut for a time, ’cause I want to
tell how we all come to be in this place we love so much.
“Before you were born, Boy, I lived in the States; ranched it in
Arizona. And there was a man down there who as much as stole everythin’
I had in the world. It was because of a woman that he lived to enjoy it
all for a time. That woman was his wife, your ma’s more’n friend, little
Glossie’s mother.”
Boy looked up quickly, then dropped his head again.
“That woman was a lot to me and your mother. She was a lady, every inch
of her, and educated, too. She taught your ma to be the scholar she is,
and she was the kindest-hearted, sweetest woman that could be found in
the world. Seems as she run off from a fine home and rich people to
marry that man. He was a bad ’un, her man; bad in every way a man can be
bad, I guess. He drank and he abused her——”
Big McTavish caught his breath hard.
“’Course,” he went on, “we might have killed him—lots of us there would
have done more’n that for his wife. But you see that woman stuck to him
in spite of all he did to make her life hell; so we let him alone. Your
ma worshiped her, or as near it as mortal can worship mortal, and they
were a lot together. Women are not very plentiful on the Plains, Boy.
When I lost everythin’ to her husband, through his cheatin’ me on a
deal, and made up my mind to quit ranchin’ and strike for some new
country, she promised us that after her baby was born she’d come to us,
no matter where we might be. You see it had come to such a pass that she
simply couldn’t live with that man no longer.”
The big man paused to light his pipe, and Boy asked:
“Did she come?”
“No. We came direct here to Ontario and settled in this hardwood, me an’
your ma and Granny McTavish. All we had in the world was the clothes we
wore and three hundred dollars in money. I took up as much land as the
money would buy from the Canadian Government and started in to cut out a
home. You was born soon after we’d settled here. Peeler came and he
settled alongside us and soon after that Declute came.
“We wrote to the poor little woman out West and told her the
latch-string was out for her whenever she could come. You see I’d built
this house by then, and we all felt tolerably happy and well-to-do. We
never got an answer to our letter, and the followin’ spring I left you
and your ma and Granny with the neighbors and struck the back trail for
Arizona. I found that her man had been killed in a quarrel with a
Mexican, but nobody seemed to know where she and her baby had gone. I
hunted high and low for them, but at last had to give it up. I thought
maybe she had gone back to the home of her people, ’cause I learned that
her husband had left some money behind him. When I got back here I found
two babies where I’d left but one. You had a little girl companion
sleepin’ in your hammock beside you, Boy. Your ma picked her up and put
her in my arms and she cried a good deal, your ma did, and by and by she
showed me a little gold locket that she had found tied about the baby’s
neck. I opened one of the doors and a tiny picture lay there. Then I
knowed at once whose baby it was that God had sent to us, and I knowed,
too, that the baby’s mother would never come now. An old Injun was
there, and he told me how a man in Sandwich had given him money to tote
the baby down to us. He couldn’t tell us much about the man. We called
the youngster Gloss, ’cause that was the name the old Injun gave her.”
McTavish arose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.
“Now you know how we all come to be here, Boy,” he said gently, “and you
know why old Injun Noah seems so near to us all. He was the man who
brought our girl to us.”
Boy did not speak, and the father quietly left the room. At the door he
turned and looked back. The boy was sitting with his chin in his hands.
Outside, the moon was trailing low above the tree-tops, and the owl’s
hoot sounded far-off and muffled.