Where the Brook and River Meet
Big McTavish walked slowly back to the house. In the doorway stood Gloss
awaiting him.
“Is he gone?” she asked.
“Yes, Glossie, he’s gone.”
McTavish picked up the ax which was leaning against the ash-block and
turned toward the bush.
“You might just keep your eyes on the soap-fire, Gloss. I’m goin’ down
to the swale to cut some sassafras for the yearlin’s—they seem ailin’.
While I’m down there I might as well mark some basswood saplin’s that’ll
make good sap-troughs. Promised myself last sugar-makin’ that I’d have
new troughs before another syrup-boilin’.”
“The potatoes must be about ready to dig,” said the girl.
“Yes, Boy’s over to Paisley’s after a fork, and when he gets back we’re
goin’ to start in on ’em. There’s this satisfaction about raisin’
taters,” he laughed, “—the squirrels and crows don’t molest the crop
any like they do the corn. It does seem we can’t keep them out of the
corn, though.”
“It looks fine since you’ve got it cut and shocked up,” declared the
girl; “and it does seem so good that we’re gettin’ such a nice piece of
land cleared. Granny was tellin’ me what that man who just left wanted
you to do, and I had to laugh when I thought how he could be so foolish
as to think we’d be willin’ to leave Bushwhackers’ Place. ‘Why, Granny,’
says I, ‘what do we want of a farm in Clearview when we’ve got one right
here?’”
The big man’s face lit up.
“You’re sure good medicine, Gloss,” he said. “Yes, we are gettin’ quite
a nice plot of ground cleared, and I look for quite a nice yield this
year, both in corn and taters. Trappin’ don’t seem to promise much for
this winter, though. The noise and clatter of Hallibut’s mill seems to
be drivin’ the mink and rats across the bay.”
“Can’t we make him take the mill away from Lee Creek?” asked the girl.
“I hate the sound of it. Its noise drowns the song of the birds and its
smoke hides the blue of the sky between the trees. What right had he to
put that mill there, uncle?”
“Well, he owns a strip of bush on Totherside,” explained McTavish. “It
comes right up to Lee Creek. So you see the mill is on Hallibut’s own
property.”
“Oh, look, uncle,” cried the girl, “there’s some black squirrels
crossing the corn-stubble now—five of them. I do believe aunty would
relish a bit of stewed squirrel. I meant to tell Boy to shoot one or two
for her this mornin’, but he was gone before I was up.”
Joe, the setter, broke from the thicket and loped across the cornfield.
All summer he had acted as custodian of the field, and even now the
squirrels stood in mortal terror of him, and the crows cursed him in
guttural croaks from the tops of tall trees beyond the danger-line.
As the squirrels took to a lone hickory in the center of the field, Boy
McTavish came quickly around the corner of the house. He stood the
clumsy hand-made fork he carried up against the lean-to, and mopped his
face with his sleeve.
“Whew!” he whistled, “but it’s turned out a fine day after all. Never
knowed Injun summer to hang on so long. Hope it keeps up, dad, and we’ll
get the corn all husked yet before trappin’-time. Suppose we have a bee
and a dance at night, same as we did at the wood-bee? Declute is goin’
to have a loggin’-bee soon.
“Hello, Gloss,” he called, catching sight of the girl, “how’s ma this
mornin’?”
“Better, and hungry for squirrel,” she answered, her eyes on the treed
blacks.
She ran into the house and returned with a rifle. She handed Big
McTavish the powder-horn and, bracing her feet, cocked the gun.
“How far?” she asked, throwing it to her shoulder with a practiced hand.
“Sixty yards, anyway,” answered Big McTavish.
“Nigher eighty,” asserted Boy. “Too far, Gloss; you’ll miss sure.”
A gleam of mischief shone in the gray eye sighting along the brown
barrel. Then the rifle cracked, and a black ball detached itself from
the hickory and went swinging down to earth in tiny circles. The dog
gave a low whine and came bounding forward, the squirrel in his mouth,
and allowed Boy to take it from him.
“Right between the eyes,” said Boy proudly.
Big McTavish reloaded the rifle and handed it back to Gloss. His face
was wrinkled in a grin of mingled surprise and admiration.
“Neither you nor me could do any better, Boy,” he said hesitatingly by
way of admission.
“The one on the left next,” motioned the girl, and the rifle spoke once
more.
“Missed,” gasped the man. “Can’t always make a bull’s-eye, Glossie.”
“Missed nuthin’,” cried Boy; “there he comes now.”
The second squirrel spun about on the limb a couple of times, then went
crashing through the branches.
“As Bill Paisley would say, ‘that’s remarkable shootin’,’” chuckled
McTavish. “That distance is well over eighty yards, else I don’t know
distance.”
“Nearer a hundred, I should judge,” contended Boy. “She’s got all the
rest of the McTavishes beat, dad.”
“Try another, Gloss,” suggested McTavish, placing the cap on the nipple
of the rifle with clumsy fingers.
“I thought maybe two would be enough,” said the girl.
She took the rifle once again and glanced at Boy.
“Oh, go on, Gloss,” he encouraged, “only one more. Fact is I’m a bit
hungry for corn-fed squirrel myself.”
“And I’m thinkin’ I wouldn’t turn up my nose at a plateful of stewed
squirrel either,” seconded the father.
“All right, just one shot more, then, hit or miss,” laughed Gloss. “See
that chap’s two ears and part of his head stickin’ up above the knot?
I’ll take him this time, I guess, though it’s no easy shot.”
She fired, and the squirrel dropped from the limb. Another whine from
Joe proclaimed it a clean kill.
Big McTavish, without so much as a word, took the gun inside. Boy held
the animals up by their bushy tails and the girl who was watching him
said:
“You ain’t carin’ much to see the blacks killed ever since the time you
had Tommy for a pet, are you, Boy?”
“Well, I don’t know as I’m carin’ much either one way or t’other,” he
answered slowly. “Tommy was a cute little beggar, but he wasn’t really a
black. He was a gray squirrel. Grays are gentler and make better pets
than blacks. Tom Peeler one time had a black for a pet, and used him
mighty good for two years. But one day that black pretended he wanted
Tom to play with him and tickle him as he was used to doing, and it gave
him a bad bite. No, the blacks are too cross for pets.”
“Boy,” said the girl suddenly, “I meant to tell you before—old Injun
Noah was tellin’ me yesterday that there’s a big gray fox who makes his
home on the Point. Noah says he’s the biggest silver-gray he ever saw.
Says he’s as big as a timber-wolf. But he is so cunnin’ nobody can get a
shot at him.”
“Well,” smiled the boy, “I guess we needn’t go after that feller, and
you needn’t worry about one little silver-gray. Just you wait a while
and you’ll know what I mean.”
He winked mysteriously, and Gloss laughed. Then her face grew grave.
“That man Watson was over here this mornin’, Boy,” she said. “You know
what he wanted and you know how he’d get it. Well, I guess him and uncle
had words. I was hidin’ in a bunch of willows at the spring when he was
goin’ back, and when he passed me he was swearin’ awful.”
“Was he ridin’ toward the trail or goin’ toward Totherside?” asked Boy,
his face darkening.
“I watched him cross th’ creek, and when he got across he rode toward
the schoolhouse.”
Boy turned away. Then he paused and looked at the girl.
“Boy,” she said wistfully, “I wish we didn’t have no school in this
place. I wish Simpson would go away.”
“Why?” he asked quickly.
Slowly her eyes sank and her bosom heaved as her breath came in quick
gasps.
He reached out and caught her, and for the first time in their young
lives the girl struggled in his arms. He let her go and stood back,
wondering. She looked at him and smiled. Her face was pale, and her long
lashes did not conceal a look of dumb entreaty.
“Gloss——” he commenced.
“Boy,” she whispered, “we’re built for chums, and chums we’ll always be.
But the old rompin’ days are over now. Boy, you mustn’t take me—you
mustn’t hold me like that again. We ain’t boy and girl no more.”
He bent and picked up the squirrels. When he stood up again she had
gone.
“‘We ain’t boy and girl no more,’” he repeated.
He walked to the spring repeating the words over and over—“‘no
more.—Boy and girl no more!’”
From Totherside came the clang of the school bell.
“I wonder what she meant. I wonder why she wished that school—I wonder
why she wishes Simpson——”
Suddenly he flung the squirrels from him, and, bending forward, gazed
with hard eyes toward the white schoolhouse clinging to the hill.
“If he thinks harm to her, then God curse him,” he breathed, “and help
me to kill him.”
A wee hedge-sparrow, drunk with the hazy Indian summer sunshine, perched
itself on a branch above his head and poured out the simple little song
that he had always loved above all other songs of wood-birds, because it
was always the first song in new spring; the last in dreary fall. The
little singer was about to leave the wood wherein he had nested and
enjoyed a season’s happiness. He was about to fly far south, and was
trilling a promise to Boy to come back again another springtime. And Boy
listened to the simple song and wondered at the gladness in it. Nothing
of the deep unrest of his own soul was there,—only the gladness of a
heart brimful of God’s deep joy. Boy sat down on a log and watched the
bird.
“Little chap,” he murmured, “you’ve got a long ways to fly. I guess I
know you about as well as anybody could know you, unless it’s Daft
Davie, who’s wild like yourself, and I can’t understand why you should
be glad when you’re leavin’ all this——”
He looked about him. “—All this big nestin’-place. The great woods has
been mighty good to you, little feller—mighty good. There’s a nest you
built here, and you’ve got to leave it behind.”
A shadow floated across the hazy sunlight and a cold wind swept in from
the bay. With a last sweet note of good-by the bird sprang to wing, and
beating skyward high above the trees, faded, a little darting speck in
the somber clouds rolling up in the south. Boy watched it until its tiny
gray body was lost against the sky’s gray fringe. Then he sighed, picked
up the squirrels, and proceeded to strip them, deftly, of their glossy
coats. This done, he washed them carefully and carried them to the
house. Gloss was standing by the table in the kitchen and spoke to him
as he entered.
He answered her almost rudely and strode outside. The hazy light of
morning had vanished. The skies had darkened, and a low wind was shaking
the dead leaves from the trees. Boy plunged down the path and into the
wood. A shaggy dog, snoozing beside the ash-leach, watched him furtively
from half-closed eyes. When Boy’s figure disappeared behind the slope
the dog arose, shook himself, and with stiffened muscles trailed his
master stealthily.
Deep into the woods, Boy paused before a small grove of baby maples.
Beneath their spreading branches stood a playhouse built of rough bark
and twigs. He and Gloss had built this house; she, girl-like, to play at
mimic life therein; he, boy-like, that she might own her little joy.
There stood the table, a basswood block, set for a feast, with broken
bits of crockery and glass for dishes. It seemed but yesterday that he
and Gloss had sat before that table and eaten an imaginary repast of
earth’s luxuries from those broken dishes. It all seemed so poor, so
lonely, and deserted now.
In the twig high-chair slept Peggy, the rag doll, her arms dangling, her
whole attitude one of peaceful repose.
Boy crept in and shamefacedly swept the cob-webs from her poor little
face. Then he sat down on the stump-chair, and, laying his arms on the
table, rested his head upon them.
In the open the clouds scudded low above the trees, and it began to
snow. Boy arose and walked about the little house, his eyes searching it
for the small trinkets the girl had treasured there. A bunch of dead
flowers rustled in the cracked cup on the bark shelf. They were tied
with a gorgeous bit of red flannel, which, he remembered, Gloss had been
careful to explain was watered silk. Boy smiled and pressed the knot
between his fingers.
On the floor lay a home-woven straw hat. Its decorations, too, were of
woodland flowers faded to ashes and scentless. Boy caught it up and held
it at arm’s length; then he threw it from him and sprang out into the
darkening wood again.
He hurried on, passing the tree-swing where he and the girl had played
so many summers. He passed through the hickory grove where they had
garnered the nuts for the winter’s cracking; through this and into the
heavier timber and deeper shadow where the light was very dim and forest
whispers stirred and vibrated. A fox glided across his path, switching
into a clump of hazel-bushes. A cock grouse, drumming upon a decayed
log, arose on thundering wing to dip into a clump of trees far to the
left. Farther into the wood the cluck of a wild turkey sounded. Boy
heeded none of these things. On and on he strode,—his an aimless goal;
his one desire, to come up with that something urging and
elusive,—something he feared though treasured and could not understand.
Later, he stood in the low-lying wilderness of the Elm Swamp. And there,
perhaps, his great Mother pityingly solved for him the problem of a new
unrest. There where day’s light wavered faintly like foggy starlight,
his soul shook off its brooding, and the old glad fearless light came
back to his eyes.
“No, we ain’t girl and boy no more,” he whispered; and lifting his arms
high he laughed.
What he had received from the forest soothed his spirit as the starry
snowflakes, falling on his upturned face, soothed his burning flesh.
At mid-day the setter crept back to his old place by the ash-leach and
lay down. A little later Boy came up the path. He stooped down and
patted the dog’s head, and noting his tangled hair, laughed softly.
“Joe, old pup, I thought it was me who had to roam among the briers and
the burrs, but I see you’ve been there, too.”
And Joe looked up and yawned sleepily, just as if he had been awakened
from his forenoon’s nap.
Boy ate his dinner in silence. When he arose he glanced at Gloss. She
was standing before the window, and Boy saw her perfect face, crowned by
a mass of heavy chestnut hair, clear-lined against the light of an outer
world. Her great eyes were looking into space: she was dreaming. The
young man sought the open with surging pulse. The whistle of Hallibut’s
mill sounded its challenge, and, squaring his broad shoulders, he
laughed. Something new had come to him. Not strength; though strength
was of it. Not defiance; though it held the power to defy. Boy did not
attempt to define that new thing: it was enough for him to know that he
possessed it.