The Loggin’-Bee
Logging-bees were not uncommon events among the Bushwhackers. But
usually logging-bees were held after the winter snows had fallen, when
with oxen and sleds the men moved the great logs to where they were
wanted.
But, as Mrs. Declute explained it, this was “a sorter unusual loggin’;”
it was “more of a raisin’ than a loggin’,”—all of which was quite true.
Mrs. Declute had set her mind upon having a new cow-stable erected, one
that would be tight and warm, “with no chinks to let in death to the
poor dumb critters.” Ander, at first adverse to the idea, had
reluctantly given in to having a bee, and bee it was to be.
Thursday morning dawned clear and bright, and with it came all the
Bushwhackers, big and little, in Bushwhackers’ Place.
Buck and Bright, the champion ox-team, bedecked with a new yoke of white
elm in honor of the occasion, were driven forth to the contest by their
proud master, who cracked his whip in time to the rattle of the long
chains, and commanded, “gee there, Buck; haw, Bright,” in a voice that
Mrs. Ross declared could be heard “quite plain on the Point.” Peeler
with his span of oxen was already on the ground, and by the time he and
Big McTavish had got through chaffing each other on the respective
deficiencies of each other’s team, three more span with their owners had
arrived on the scene.
An hour later all throughout the nearby wood could be heard the
“k-whack” of axes, and every now and again a great tree would fall with
a swish and a crash that seemed to jar the earth.
While the young men chopped down and trimmed the trees, the older ones
laid out the foundation of the new building. So thoroughly was this done
that Declute avowed in the hearing of his good wife, who naturally was
close at hand to admonish and advise the architects, that he wouldn’t be
surprised but that he’d desert the house and live in the new cow-stable
himself. Whereupon that good woman flashed a look of scorn upon him and
jeeringly remarked: “A cow-stable is too good for a man what allars
smells o’ rat-musk an’ can’t take a skunk outin a trap without scentin’
up th’ whole neighborhood.” The little man hid his discomfiture by
suggesting that the men who claimed their oxen could haul two tons of
green timber “at a wallop” come along and prove it. Laughing, the men
sought their patient cattle and proceeded with a chorus of “gees” and
“haws” to haul the trimmed tree-trunks up to the clearing.
It was a great trial of strength and patience and endurance on the part
of both team and driver, the hauling of those heavy logs across rough
ground to the wide square marked off in the clearing. The young men left
off trimming trees to watch the oxen pull. There was much excitement
while the rival teams pitted their muscle against one another. The spans
were very evenly matched, and it is likely the friendly contest would
have ended in a draw had not a circumstance arisen to put McTavish’s
Buck and Bright away to the fore.
A great basswood log had nosed itself deep into a bank of moss, where,
held securely by root-tendrils, it refused to budge to the repeated tugs
of Peeler’s red oxen. Two other teams tried to break it out without
success, and then Big McTavish, smiling broadly, declared that he would
show them what a real span of oxen could do when they wanted to. Sure
enough, Buck and Bright after tremendous exertion did break the log out,
and lowering their broad, burly heads, and snorting and puffing, haul
the timber up to the clearing. Peeler declared that McTavish had been
“feedin’ up for this tug-o’-war for a month,” and Big Mac contended that
he had “been starvin’ the poor oxen for weeks just so’s they wouldn’t
beat the other spans too bad.”
Oh, they were a happy crowd, these young boys and old boys; happy in the
hauling up, the mortising of the timber, and the laying “true” of the
first logs for the building. They one and all forgot, for the time
being, that new apprehension which had crept among them and stayed, and
worked them up to disquietude. The bush-world was theirs still, and it
was a very beautiful world with its autumn scents and sounds and colors.
High above, through the tree-tops, was the yellow-gold of the sky; on
the tree-tops the old-gold of late fall; on the forest aisles an
amber-gold commingled with the green moss that glowed through the yellow
leaf-carpet.
By noon the mortised logs had been gathered into a great pile, ready to
be thrown up into a roomy building, and the men went in to dinner.
Dinner was usually a hurried meal, supper being the main “feedin’
event,” as Paisley termed it.
There were twenty-three men at the logging: Jim Peeler and his two sons,
almost men grown; Big McTavish with his “body guard,” as the six Indians
present from Point Aux Pins were called; Alex Lapier, a French trapper
from Indian Creek, and his two swarthy sons; Injun Noah; four men from
Bridgetown; Boy McTavish; and the Broadcrook family. The Broadcrooks
were not popular. In fact, they were not liked any too well by their
honest bush-neighbors. They bore evil reputations, and they were a
sullen, ill-conditioned lot. But on account of their size, and from the
fact that peace amounted to something, they were always invited to an
affair of this kind. Broadcrook, senior, was a tall, lean, white-haired
old man, with hawk-like eyes and hatchet face. He was surly and
quarrelsome, and he never attempted to do anything much save scoff at
the efforts of others. Three of his strapping sons were present with
him, and the old man leeringly assured Declute that Amos, the fourth and
worst of the gang, would be “along in time fer supper.”
“It’s to be hoped he won’t strain hisself none gittin’ here,” returned
that gentleman; “howsomever, he’ll be welcome.”
The captains having chosen their men, the word was given, and the boys
attacked the pile of logs with cant-hooks and hand-spikes. “He-o-heave!”
roared the captains, and in an incredibly short space of time the
cow-stable began to grow and take on the shape of a building. By three
o’clock in the afternoon the four sides of the building were nearly
laid, and now began the finish for first laurels. The side that was
first able to lay its upper plates and rafters would win the day. Men
ran nimbly along the slippery logs shouting orders and handing long,
slender pipe-poles below.
“Now, lads, up with her, all together.—He-o-heave!” rang the cry, and
the boys responded with a will. It was a close race, and excitement ran
high.
All the ladies of Bushwhackers’ Place had gathered outside to witness
the finish. Mrs. Declute had her hands full admonishing the little
Declutes to keep from under the great plates that were being raised.
Mrs. Ross and several other women kept clapping their hands and cheering
the workers on.
Gloss McTavish and Mary Ann Ross stood some distance apart from the
older women, and more than one of those sweating, striving workers threw
a glance in the direction of the two girls.
“Our side is goin’ to win, after all,” laughed Gloss, clapping her
hands. “Oh, look, Mary Ann, do look at Boy running along that slippery
plate. It makes me shudder.”
“And look at Bill Paisley liftin’ that heavy log,” returned her friend.
“My, but he _must_ be strong, Gloss!”
“You young ladies are taking a personal interest in the raising, I see.”
Simpson, the teacher, had come up in time to hear the remarks of the
girls, and his face, in spite of the smile it wore, showed anything but
pleasure.
“I let my pupils go at three o’clock,” explained the man. “I wanted to
see what a Bushwhackers’ bee was like.”
“Better look more and talk less, then,” counseled Mary Ann, turning her
back on him. She moved slowly away, and Simpson spoke in low tones to
Gloss.
“Did you think I would come?”
His voice was not quite steady and he swayed slightly as he spoke. A
look of abhorrence swept across the girl’s face and her big gray eyes
were ominous as she answered:
“I wasn’t givin’ any thought to you at all, Mr. Simpson.”
“But you will,” he almost threatened; “you must, Gloss. Do you suppose I
would come here among these—these people, if it weren’t just to catch a
glimpse of you?”
“Please go away,” she pleaded.
“No, I’m going to stay by you.”
“Then _I_ will go.”
She turned toward the house and he turned and walked beside her.
“You can’t help my seeing you, you can’t help my loving you, you can’t
help my winning you,” he whispered fiercely.
She paused and faced him.
“You will make me hate you,” she said quietly; “please go away.”
They were in the shadow of the milk-house and the building hid them from
the others.
“I ask you to marry me, will you?”
“No.”
He caught his breath.
“I come of good family. I will take you to a big city. I will give you a
fine home,” he urged.
The girl recoiled from him. He reached out for her, but she sprang
aside, and bracing her feet, she struck out with all her young strength.
She was no weak lady, reared in an artificial atmosphere. She was a
woman of the Wild, strong and supple and courageous. It never occurred
to her to call out. She obeyed the law she knew: she struck out.
Simpson caught the full force of her blow on his face and, already
unsteady from the effects of drink, he staggered back and would have
fallen had not the building supported him. He struggled up, sobered
materially by surprise and pain.
She stood before him tall and straight, her eyes blazing, her face set
like marble, her fine nostrils dilated.
From across the clearing came the cheering voices of the winners of the
day.
Once in the low-lying bushlands Simpson had seen a doe brought to bay by
a timber-wolf. He remembered the picture now.
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“What else could I do?” she answered.
She pulled down a branch of a maple and leaned her head against it. The
rough bark caressed her hot cheek and the sweet sappy aroma entered her
soul and soothed it.
“Why did you not call out or scream like other girls would have done?”
She lifted her head and looked at him with compassion almost.
His eyes fell.
“I understand,” he murmured.
From the newly raised structure came renewed cheering.
“If they knew—if Boy knew——” she commenced, then checked herself.
He started, and the perspiration broke out on his forehead.
“That would mean hanging for him,” he laughed uneasily.
“That’s why I didn’t call out like other girls would have done,” she
returned quietly.
His hands clenched and the blood mounted to his cheeks.
“Then I count for nothing,” he said bitterly.
“I can’t understand why you will take risks,” she said, ignoring his
last utterance. “The folks of the woods have learned a lot from the wild
things here. Nothin’ in all this wide woods ever goes where it’s
dangerous to go, if they know it. You had better go back to the
clearin’, teacher. I don’t want to see you hurt. I don’t seem to want
anythin’ hurt. You had better go back to the clearin’.”
“Boy McTavish advised me to do that in those very words,” he sneered.
“But listen, I’m neither a fool nor a coward. I have made up my mind to
have you, Gloss, and have you I will—remember that.”
He turned away into the timber.
Gloss entered the house and lit the candles. Twilight had swept down, a
twilight fresh with wood-scented dews and fragrant with smoke of the
clearing-fires. On the floor beside the fireplace sprawled the form of
Daft Davie. He was fast asleep, and Pepper, the ’coon, lay coiled up
close beside him. One of the lad’s arms encircled the pet and the little
animal’s pointed nose was hidden among the long golden curls. Gloss bent
and stroked those curls softly and something warm and wet splashed down
and awoke the Nature child.
He scrambled up, his great eyes blinking at the light; then, bending,
the boy raised Pepper and placed him in Gloss’s arms.
She sat down on a stool before the fire and gathered the little
bush-children close to her. The raccoon sniffed her red cheeks and nosed
her soft throat caressingly, and Davie, clinging to her hands, poured
forth the story of his day’s adventures. The girl listened, now and then
smiling, understanding, as she did so well, those little pictures that
the daft child was painting for her. She saw the gray tangle of marsh
with the great dead elm lying across it; saw the ragged home of the mink
and the tall elm where his enemy, the bald-headed eagle, sat poised and
watchful.
When, at last, happy voices were heard coming down the path, she arose
with all the old-time gladness astir in her heart. No new and strange
shadow could linger for long where the joy-songs of many glad days could
be brought to life by memory. And hugging the tiny daft boy close to her
she whispered:
“What could I do without you, Davie?”
“Well, I do declare,” cried Mrs. Declute, as she came panting in, “if
here she ain’t, right here, and that blessed boy Davie with her, too.
Give my life if it don’t beat all, Mrs. Ross.”
“Bless her,” exclaimed the widow, “and to think that we’ve been
wonderin’ where she had slipped off to. I’ll just swing the kettle on,
Mrs. Declute, so’s we needn’t keep them hungry men waitin’. My, but I do
expect they’ll enjoy that custard.”
“Leave us alone for that,” laughed Peeler, who had entered and was
drying his face on the long towel hanging behind the door.
Declute came forward, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man dressed
in red flannel shirt and buckskins.
“Here’s Amos Broadcrook,” grinned the master of the house, “an’ he
declares he’s fearful hungry.”
“You’re right welcome, Amos,” cried Mrs. Declute, pushing her progeny
into a neat pile in one corner of the room, “but I’m sorry to see you’ve
been drinkin’ again.”
“Goin’ to quit now,” pledged Broadcrook, seating himself on a stool.
His head was small and bullet-shaped, his neck thick, and his hair a
light-red. His heavy face was coarse and made further unbeautiful from
the fact that he had but one eye, having had the other knocked out by an
arrow in early youth while playing buffalo-hunt with his brothers.
Having spoken, he relapsed into sullen silence, and glowered about him
occasionally, venturing no remark and making no move until supper was
announced. Then he sprang up and was one of the first to seat himself at
the long table in the inner room.
Watching him, Mrs. Ross sighed and shook her head so forcefully that the
tea she was pouring from the great tin pot missed the cup and splashed
down on the upturned nose of Goliath, thereby changing that agreeable
canine into a yelping bunch of legs and fur that speedily made its way
out through the open door.
“Poor thing,” sympathized Mrs. Ross.
“Pshaw, he ain’t hurt any. It serves him right. He’s allars snoopin’
’round where he ain’t wanted, anyway,” cried Mrs. Declute, placing a
dripping roast of venison on a big platter.
“I ain’t talkin’ about the dog. I mean Amos Broadcrook,” said the widow.
“Ain’t it too bad he drinks so hard and is so shiftless?”
“I’ll tell you somethin’ that is no secret,” whispered the hostess.
“Thar ain’t no Broadcrook alive that’s wuth anythin’, an’ if thar’s any
of ’em dead as is, then only old Nick hisself knows it.”
Mrs. Peeler, a little, small-faced woman with mild eyes, looked up from
her potato-mashing with a start.
“My, my,” she sighed, “are they that bad, Mrs. Declute?”
That lady nodded grimly.
“While they be eatin’ in my hum I will say no more than what I have
concernin’ them,” she affirmed, “as that wouldn’t be hospitable o’ me.
But after they’ve et an’ gone——” she compressed her lips and frowned
severely, “then I’ll tell you more about them outlaws.”
“Dear me,” sighed Mrs. Peeler again. Then she glanced around. “Where is
Mary Ann and Gloss gone?” she asked.
“Oh, they slipped over t’ Mac’s to see how the little mother was
restin’,” answered Mrs. Ross. “The poor woman took a bad turn last
night, you know. They’ll be comin’ back soon. Libby, dear, just help me
dish out this custard, will you? They are callin’ for it in there, don’t
you hear ’em?”
“I hear your Tom’s voice,” laughed Mrs. Peeler.
“And your boy, Ed. Do you know what that boy said to me when I was in
givin’ a second helpin’ of tea just now? He said, ‘Missus Ross,’ says
he, ‘I haven’t et anythin’ worth while as yet, ’cause I’ve been waitin’
for that custard.’ The sly rascal!”
Mrs. Peeler’s blue eyes danced with pride.
“Ed is awful lively,” she smiled. “There’s no keepin’ him quiet.”
“Mr. Simpson says he’s a smart boy,” said Mrs. Ross; “says he takes to
book larnin’ like a squirrel t’ a nut.”
“Oh, and how do you like the teacher, widder?”
“I like him first-rate.”
“And Mary Ann?”
Mrs. Ross glanced about her. Then she bent over and whispered in the
other woman’s ear.
“No!” exclaimed that little lady; “you don’t say so!”
“Judgin’ from appearances, it looks that way, dear,” smiled the widow.
“But not a word to anyone else, Libby. I haven’t told a single soul but
you.”
“It don’t seem to me that Mary Ann would take to a man like him,” said
Mrs. Peeler. “He don’t seem to fit her somehow. I always thought and
hoped that Bill Paisley would meet her favor, widder.”
Mrs. Ross opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again on
second thought.
“My, I must get in with th’ custard,” she cried, and hurried away.
Gloss and Mary Ann entered the kitchen with Daft Davie between them.
“Oh, you’ve come back, my dears, have you!” smiled Mrs. Peeler. “I’m
glad you got back so soon. How’s she now, Glossie?”
“Awful bad,” answered Gloss. “I’m goin’ right back, and will you tell
uncle to come soon? Don’t say anythin’ to Boy, but just whisper to uncle
to come as soon’s he can. She misses him so much. Now, I must go. You
explain to ’em all how it is, Mrs. Peeler, will you?”
“You’re not goin’ back alone,” protested Mary Ann. “Just wait, we’ll
send——”
Gloss put her hand on her friend’s arm.
“I don’t want anyone to know just how bad she is—not to-night. It would
only spoil the evenin’s fun for them, and I’m not scared—why, I have
little Davie.”
She put her arm about the boy’s shoulders. “You don’t know what company
Davie is, and it’s scarcely dark yet. No, I don’t want anybody else.
Good-night.”
She slipped out, her arm still around the daft boy, and the two passed
down the path that stretched like a thread of silver in the moonlight.
The lad talked to her in his strange language and she let him go on
without paying much attention to him, for her heart was heavy with a
great fear. They reached the creek path where the gray rushes stood and
the deep creek slept beneath the moon. The lad laughed and swept his
arms about, as the shrill wing-whistles of a migrating flock of
pin-tails sang out and died away high above them. They turned up the
path, and a whip-poor-will woke up and uttered his plaintive call from a
nearby copse. Davie imitated the call, and then all about them the
night-birds awoke and made the world alive with sound.
Further on the lad hooted like an owl and from the swales the feathered
prowlers of the night answered him. He clapped his hands in glee, and
Gloss’s arm tightened about him.
“Oh, Davie,” she whispered, “you are just like the birds—glad and free.
Are you just what God intended us all to be, I wonder? Are you, Davie?”
He stroked her hand, and Pepper climbed from his shoulder over to hers.
“Do you know we are goin’ to lose her—do you?” said the girl chokingly.
“Yes, you both know.”
When they reached the fork in the path Gloss put the little animal in
the boy’s arms. Then she bent and kissed him.
“Davie must run along to Granny, now,” she said, “and he can come over
to see Boy to-morrow.”
Davie put his hands to his lips and gave a low call, then bent his head
to listen. From a far-off swale there came the answering cry of a lynx,
and the boy with a happy laugh flung his arms in the air and darted away
through the grove. Gloss, standing with the moonlight laving her face,
sweet to-night with a new pathos, prayed:
“Oh, God, who looks after Davie, look after the little ma. Don’t take
her from us, God.” Then, leaning her face against the rough bark of a
beech tree, she sobbed:
“Mother, let her stay with us a little longer—just a little longer.”