Comrades of the Hardwoods
Even in this golden, hazy dawn it was with him, as he stood gazing
across the creek. The crimson sun warmed his cheeks and the heavy scent
of over-ripe woods-plants stole to his senses like a soothing balm. But
that scar upon which his eyes rested had reached his inmost soul, and
for him the old gladness of sweet, dewy mornings must hereafter be
tempered with a new and strange bitterness.
From the tall smokestack of Hallibut’s mill a thin wreath of blue smoke
ascending cut a spiral figure against the fleecy clouds.
Boy turned and walked up the path, his head bowed and his hands deep in
his pockets. Behind him trailed the setter, looking neither to the right
nor to the left. His moods were always suited to his master’s. For some
reason Boy was sad. Therefore, Joe was sad.
Where the path forked Boy turned and, catching sight of the dog’s
wistful face, he threw back his head and laughed. Then he turned and,
bending, caught the setter about the neck with strong arms.
“Joe,” he whispered, “you’re an old fool.”
The dog submitted to the caress gravely and sat down, looking up into
his master’s face with deep sympathetic eyes.
Adown through the woods came a voice in rollicking song:
“_Massar gone away, de darkey say ‘Ho! ho!’_
_Mus’ be now dat de kingdom’s comin’_
_I’ de year ob jubiloo._”
“That’s Bill, pup,” laughed Boy. “He always sings when he’s washin’ his
breakfast dishes. Come on, let’s go over and borrow his pitch-fork. You
and me have got to dig taters to-day.”
A few hundred yards further on they found the singer. He was clad in
Bushwhacker buckskins from head to foot.
“Hello, Boy, how’s your ma?” he called as he caught sight of the
visitors.
“Just about the same, I guess,” Boy answered. “Nobody up when I left, so
I can’t just say how ma spent the night. Want to borrow your fork,
Bill.”
“Take it and anythin’ else you see as you’d like. Say, won’t you step in
the house and have a cup of tea?”
“I ain’t much on tea drinkin’, as you know, Bill, and I must be hittin’
the back trail soon, ’cause we want to get the taters dug before night.”
“All right, as soon as I put these dishes away I’ll get you the fork.”
Boy’s eyes followed his friend sympathetically, and when Paisley
rejoined him he asked hesitatingly:
“Say, Bill, why do you live alone here like you do? Ain’t it lonesome
for you?”
“Some.” Paisley dried his hands on a towel and sat down on a stump.
“It’s some lonesome; yes. But I’ve sort of got used to it, you see.”
Boy seated himself on a log and leaned back, nursing his knee in his
hands.
“How about Mary Ann?” he asked.
Bill shook his head.
“Too good and too young for me, Boy. She don’t just think me her style,
I guess. That young teacher chap, now, he is just about Mary Ann’s
style.”
Boy’s eyes narrowed.
“He’s just about Gloss’s style, too,” he said slowly. “He’s some
different from us bush-fellers, is Mr. Simpson.”
“I don’t take to him very well myself,” said Paisley, looking away,
“but, of course, Mary Ann’s bound to see him a lot, him boardin’ at her
mother’s, and maybe he’ll see as he can’t afford to miss gettin’ a girl
like Mary Ann, pervidin’ she’s willin’.”
“How many times have you asked her, Bill?”
“Twice a year—every spring and fall, for the last three years.”
Paisley laughed queerly and stooped down to pat the setter’s shaggy
sides.
“Boy,” he said, “don’t ever get carin’ for a woman; it’s some hell.”
Boy leaned back with a deep breath. His eyes were on a tiny wreath of
smoke drifting between the tree-tops and the sky.
“I ask her twice a year regular,” went on Paisley. “It’s got to be a
custom now. It’ll soon be time to ask her again.”
A yellow-hammer swooped across the open and, alighting on a decayed
stub, began to grub out a breakfast. He was a gay, mottle-breasted chap,
with a dash of crimson on his head. The drab-colored thrush that had
been preening himself on a branch of a nearby tree ruffled his feathers
and flew further back into the bush. Boy frowned at the intruder and
arose slowly from his log. He glanced up, to find Paisley looking at
him.
“Somethin’s wrong with you, Boy,” said the man; “what is it?”
“I was watchin’ them birds,” Boy answered. “You saw what the big greedy
chap did to the thrush—he drove him away; and it made me think of what
Hallibut and his agents are tryin’ to do with us Bushwhackers.”
“They can’t do it,” cried Paisley. “Just let ’em try it on.”
“Hallibut threatens that he’ll own all this part of the country. He’s
too much of a coward to come over and try to get it himself, but he’s
tryin’ to get it through others, as you know.”
“Watson?” questioned Paisley.
Boy nodded.
“Watson’s likely comin’ over to-day. Dad got a letter from him.”
Paisley crammed his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders.
“I scented trouble when the Colonel built that mill over on Totherside,”
he declared, “but there was no way of stoppin’ him. It was his own land
he built on; it’s his own timber he’s been sawin’. I understand he’s
layin’ plans to get our timberland, and there ain’t no tellin’ just what
a man like him will do to gain his ends. But, Boy, we’re here
first—don’t you forget that.”
“I’m not forgettin’ it,” returned Boy grimly.
“Say,” said Bill, abruptly changing the conversation, “when is Gloss’s
birthday?”
The shadow left Boy’s face and he looked up with a smile.
“Why, it’ll soon be now,” he answered; “she’s nineteen next month.”
“I didn’t figger on lettin’ you in on this,” grinned Paisley, “but I
reckon you need cheerin’ up. You know them silver-fox furs that Smythe
offered me my own price for? Well, I’m not goin’ to sell ’em to Smythe
nor anybody else. They’re for Gloss.”
“For Gloss?” repeated Boy, “—for Gloss? Say, Bill, you can’t afford to
give them furs away—not even to Gloss.”
“Me and Injun Noah are makin’ her coat,” chuckled the man. “Such a coat,
Boy! No lady in this land has ever had such a coat before; never will
have such a coat again. Silver-fox pelts at three hundred dollars
apiece. Think of it, Boy! And there’s six of ’em—four grays and two
blacks. And the coat’s to be lined with mink-skin, too—think of that!”
He took his friend by the arm and led him into the house. Boy liked
Paisley’s home; it was always so bright, so tidy, and so cheerful. The
wide table of heavy oak with solid legs artistically carved, standing in
the center of the main room, the carved high-backed chairs fashioned by
a master hand, the crude charcoal sketch of marsh and wood and water
scenes on the whitewashed walls, gave him a sense of restfulness.
A great iron tea-kettle suspended over the fire of hickory logs was
disgorging a cloud of steam that drifted to the rafters. Paisley came
forth from an inner room carrying a huge platter piled high with fowl.
“Never seen the pa’tridge in better condition,” he avowed. “I shot six
last night and I’ve been feastin’ ever since. Just pull up and devour,
Boy, while I give old Joe some of his choice bones. I’ve been savin’ ’em
up for him. I’ll get you some of my special brew of tea soon’s I wipe
the reproach out of that setter’s brown eyes.”
Boy drew up to the table and fell to with an appetite such as only men
of the woods possess.
Having attended to Joe’s wants, Paisley placed a pot of fragrant tea at
his guest’s elbow, and, leaning back in his chair with a smile of
content, lit his well-seasoned clay pipe and smoked.
His eyes followed those of Boy, who was gazing on the smaller of two
rifles hanging above the fireplace.
“You’ve often wondered why I never use that little gun,” he remarked,
drawing his chair forward and leaning upon the table, “and I’ve never
told you. I’m goin’ to tell you now. I won that rifle from a man down
near Sandwich. He was a bad man all round, and up until I met him just
about made the laws of his community. I happened along there one night,
and bein’ in no hurry, made up my mind to stay around for a time. The
feller I speak of owned that rifle. He was a big chap, about five years
older than me, and was supposed to be a fisherman. In reality he was a
smuggler, and he was a slick one, and no mistake. When he wasn’t
smugglin’ he was gamblin’ with the sailors and passengers of the lake
boats. A poor little hunchbacked sister kept house for him, and he used
to ill-treat her. Once I happened along and stopped him from strikin’
her with a whip. Of course, he always hated me after that. One afternoon
there was a shootin’-match in the neighborhood, and he beat me
shootin’.”
Paisley sat back and smiled.
“Yes, he beat me shootin’, Boy. Then he got boastin’; but I didn’t say a
word. He finally offered to bet his rifle against mine that he could
beat me again. I didn’t want more hard feelin’s; but I simply had to be
game. A man couldn’t just take a dare in that wild country, so we had
the match right there, and I won his rifle. He didn’t say anythin’, but
he looked murder. I left the place soon after that, and about a year
later I came along that way again. I heard then that the fisherman chap
had cleared out to no one knew where, and left his sister sick and in
want.
“I went over to their shanty and found the little woman dyin’. She knew
me, and she seemed to want to tell me somethin’. But the end came before
she could say it.”
Paisley nodded toward the rifle.
“I’ve never shot that gun since, and I won’t. I’d be ashamed to shoot a
gun that belonged to a man who’d leave his crippled sister to starve.”
“Did the sister know where her brother had gone?” asked Boy.
“No; or if she did she couldn’t tell me.”
Boy pushed back his chair and arose from the table.
“I don’t understand how any man could do such a thing, Bill. What was
the feller’s name?”
“His name was Watts, Jim Watts,” answered Paisley, swinging the kettle
off the fire. “I ain’t thinkin’ as I would know him again, now, even if
I happened to run across him. This all happened sixteen years ago.”
He followed Boy outside and the two walked over to an out-house standing
in a grove of beeches.
“I haven’t had much use for this fork since the wolves got poor old
Mooley last winter,” said Paisley. “Guess I’ll be gettin’ another
milk-cow soon, ’cause it’s quite a bother havin’ to go to Peeler’s for
my butter.”
“I was goin’ to ask you about Peeler,” said Boy. “I wish, Bill, you’d
see him and persuade him not to sell one stick of his timber to Hallibut
or his agents. Jim’s an easygoin’ sort, who might be led off quite easy,
and it’s up to us to see that he isn’t.”
“I’ll see him—leave that to me,” Paisley replied. “And I’ll see the
rest of the Bushwhackers, even old man Broadcrook and his sons, who
haven’t any particular use for me, somehow.”
“I guess what the Broadcrooks do won’t matter much,” laughed Boy. “They
hate everybody and everything it seems. I don’t know why.”
He picked up the fork and turned toward the path. A west wind had piled
up a bank of long drab clouds above the wood. The wind was damp, and
from the distance came the dull boom of the waters beating upon the
mucky shore of the bay.
A few yards down the path Boy halted.
“Say, Bill, dad was tellin’ me about the talk you had with the teacher.
I wish you’d get better acquainted with him and make him see that his
place isn’t here.”
“If he was half as smart as he thinks he’d see that it isn’t,” replied
Paisley.
“And, Bill,” called Boy from the edge of the wood, “I guess Mary Ann
knows a real man when she sees one. Keep askin’ her till she says ‘yes,’
Bill.”
As Boy found the creek path a gust of wind, damp with the spray of Rond
Eau, smote against his face with biting force.
From across the creek came the jarring notes of the school bell.
Then the wind fell, and the clouds parted to let a misty web of warm
sunlight through to the world.