CATHERINE’S PLAN
Old Gaspard Javet did not return to the war-path with the celerity
feared by Catherine. He kept to his bed all that afternoon and all
the next day, his rifle on the patchwork quilt beside him, without
showing any sign of his usual energy beyond the power of his voice
and an occasional flash of the eyes. The tumble had given his dry
joints and stiff muscles a painful wrenching; and his mind had also
suffered from the sudden shock of the fall and the emotional
explosion that had led to it. Now and then, for brief periods, his
memory of the immediate past served him faithfully and he thought
clearly and violently on the subject of the unwelcome intruder; and
at other times, for hours together, he lay in a state of peace and
mild bewilderment.
To understand this old man, one must know that he was more Scottish
than French, (despite his name), and that a dark old strain of
Iroquois blood ran in his veins. He had lived rough and wild most of
the years of his life, and neither the ministers of the Kirk nor the
priests of the Church of Rome had enjoyed a fair opportunity of
shaping him to any authorized form of religious thought and
practice. He had been a scoffer and unbeliever until past
middle-life; but for years now he had been deeply, and sometimes
violently, religious according to his own lights and to laws of his
own conception. Born in the wilderness far north of the city of
Quebec eighty years ago, of a father of two strains of blood and a
mother of three, he had been bred early to self-reliance, privation,
loneliness, and physical dexterity and endurance. He spoke French
and English fluently but incorrectly, several Indian languages with
as much fluency as their vocabularies permitted, and he read English
with difficulty. All his reading was done in Holy Writ; and,
considering the laborious process of that reading, the ease and
freedom of his interpretations were astonishing.
While the old man was confined to his bed, Akerley was permitted
almost unlimited freedom of action; but he was not allowed to enter
the house or intrude on the field of vision of Gaspard’s bedroom
window. He milked the cows, fed the calves and pigs, and hoed in a
secluded field of turnips and corn. For two nights he made his bed
in the hay of the big barn, with blankets brought to him by the
girl. She also supplied him with a clay pipe and tobacco belonging
to her grandfather; and though he had smoked cigarettes for years
and the first pipeful made his head spin, he soon learned to take
his tobacco hot and heavy according to the custom obtaining in those
woods. He saw and talked to the girl frequently during that time.
She frankly seized every opportunity of leaving her grandfather and
her household tasks to be with him. She did not question him
further, just then, concerning his deed of violence, nor did her
manner toward him suggest either fear or repugnance after he had
made his confession. And yet her manner was not entirely as it had
been before his frank answers to her questions had placed him at her
mercy. It was changed for the better. It was more considerate of his
feelings. In short, it was the manner of a sympathetic and trusting
friend; and yet she knew nothing more of him, good or bad, than the
bad he had told of himself. He was wise enough, understanding
enough, not to doubt her full recognition of the fact that he had
placed his freedom, his honor and perhaps his life, in her hands. He
believed that her manner of sympathy was sincere. He credited her
with a heart of utter kindness and an unshaken faith in her own
instincts concerning the hearts of others; and he was deeply moved
by admiration and gratitude.
She brought him his supper at seven o’clock in the evening of the
second day of his residence in the barn, and went back to the house
immediately. He made short work of the food, then took up a position
behind the barn-yard fence, from which he had a clear view of the
house, and awaited her reappearance. When eight o’clock came with no
sight of her he felt a sudden restlessness and began to pace back
and forth. By half-past eight he was in a fine fume of impatience
and anxiety; and then he suddenly realized the silliness of it and
made bitter fun of himself. She was safe, there in her own home not
two hundred yards away—so why worry about her? And who was he to
worry about her? She had never heard of him, nor he of her, four
days ago. Why should he expect her to come hurrying back to talk to
him? Wouldn’t it be the natural thing for her to prefer her
grandfather’s company to his?
He asked himself all these questions and answered them all with
disinterested logic; and yet he felt no less anxious and no less
impatient. He climbed the fence and stared accusingly at the house.
He was joined by the little black dog, with whom he was now on
familiar terms. Together they strolled to the far side of the barns,
where Blackie started a chipmunk along the pasture fence; but
Akerley could not wait to watch the excitement. He left the chase in
full cry and hastened back to a point from which he could see the
house as if he had been absent a year. It had been out of his sight
for exactly five minutes; and still she was not on her way. He
wondered if he had said anything that could possibly have offended
her, anything that she could possibly have misunderstood, and
wracked his memory for every word that they had exchanged since
morning. He could not recall anything of the kind or anything in her
manner to suggest anything of the kind. Again he took himself to
task for his foolishness.
“Your nerves are crossed, Tom Akerley,” he said. “Your wind is up in
vertical gusts. Your brains are addled. You are so devilish lonely
that you’ve gone dotty. You expect a girl who doesn’t know you from
Adam to sit around and entertain you all the time and neglect her
poor old grandfather; and it isn’t because you are used to it, old
son, for no other woman ever neglected so much as a dog to entertain
you. Buck up! Pull yourself together! Forget it!”
He filled and lit the clay pipe and sat on the top rail of the fence
and smoked. Twilight deepened to dusk, the stars appeared, bats
flickered and fire-flies blinked their sailing sparks; and lamplight
glowed softly from the windows of the house.
It was long past ten o’clock when Catherine made her appearance,
carrying a lighted lantern in her left hand and a large bundle under
her right arm. She found Akerley on the top rail of the fence. He
slid to his feet the moment the swinging circle of light discovered
him, and strode forward to meet her.
“I was afraid you were never coming,” he said. “I began to fear that
the old man had mistaken you for the devil. What have you there?”
“I thought I’d find you asleep,” she replied. “I didn’t say I was
coming back to-night, you know. But I had to. Grandfather is feeling
much better and will be up and out bright and early in the morning,
so I have had to get these clothes ready for you to-night. And here
are an old quilt and things—a frying-pan and old kettle—to make a
pack of. You must leave here before sunrise and come back about
breakfast-time. I’ll show you the road to come in by now—the road
from Boiling Pot.”
Akerley took the bundle from her.
“You have been working all evening for me; and I am not accustomed
to this sort of thing,” he said. “You are a very wonderful person,
Catherine MacKim.”
“What do you mean by wonderful?” she asked curiously.
“You are wonderfully kind. I don’t believe there are many girls in
the world who would take the trouble to fit me out like this. I may
be wrong, for I don’t know many girls or women.”
“Didn’t a woman have anything to do with—with what you did?”
“A woman! Bless you, no! What made you think that?”
“I don’t know. Please put these things in the barn, and then I’ll
show you the road.”
He obeyed and returned to her. She extinguished the lantern.
“He may be awake,” she explained. “He is very restless to-night; and
there is no saying what he might do if he saw a lantern wandering
about the edge of the woods.”
It was a still, vague night of blurred shadows and warm gloom. The
dim stars did no more than mark out the close sky. The girl found a
path through the oats and led the way along it until they came to
the edge of the forest and the opening of the rough track that wound
away from old Gaspard Javet’s clearings to the nearest settlement.
“There has never been a wheel on this end of it,” she said. “We do
our hauling in winter; and we don’t pay road-taxes. Grandfather
doesn’t seem to mind how far out of the world he lives.”
“Thank Heaven for that!” replied Akerley.
They walked for a short distance along this track, feeling the way
with cautious feet and frequently brushing against the dense
undergrowth to right and left. She halted suddenly, so close to him
that her shoulder touched his arm for a moment.
“Do you think you will be able to find it in the morning?” she
asked.
“Easily,” he assured her. “It is due south from the house.”
“Yes, just to the right of the two big pines. But that will not be
all. You must invent a story about how you came in, and why, and all
sorts of things. He is slightly mad about devils from the sky, you
know. He has been expecting one. So, to save your life, you had
better say that you lost your canoe and outfit—everything but the
quilt and frying-pan—in the rapids below Boiling Pot.”
“But what is this boiling pot?”
“It is the pool below the falls, and it is also a little settlement,
about fifteen miles from here. We are on the height-o’-land, you
know, and you can’t get to within six miles of us from any direction
by water, even in a canoe. The spring where we cool our creamers and
the one in the pasture are the beginnings of Indian River. But what
will you say about yourself?—who you are and what you are looking
for? And what kind of person will you pretend to be?”
“I’ll think of something to-night—but I wish your grandfather was
more modern and rational. I know a good deal about the woods, though
this part of the country is new to me; and I can use an ax, and
manage a canoe in white water. So don’t worry. I’ll think up
something pretty safe. But have you told him that the devil has
cleared out?”
“Yes, I told him so yesterday; and he thinks I am mistaken. Are you
sure that the aëroplane is hidden where he won’t find it? I don’t
see how it can be.”
“I took it to pieces, and the pieces are carefully hidden. I meant
to tell you before what I had done with them. The engines are packed
and stowed away in the little loft over the pig-house. The planes
are under the hay in the small barn, where they should be safe until
I can think of a better place for them. The old machine is scattered
as if a shell had made a direct hit on her. I even took the liberty
of putting a few small but very valuable parts in your room.”
“I found them. They are safe there.”
“So you see, Catherine, I have not only put my own fate in your
hands, but that of the old bus as well. I have not practiced
half-measures.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that—my liberty and honor. Suppose you were to let people know
that I am here—that a stranger had come here by air? What would
become of me? I might run into the woods and hide—and starve. The
game would be played out and ended, whatever I did.”
“But you have never thought that there was any danger of such a
thing!”
“Never. Not for a moment. But what right had I to treat you like
this—to tell you the truth about myself and then throw myself on
your mercy? You must think me a poor thing.”
“You have not asked for mercy from me; and you have told me that any
man of spirit would have done what you did.”
“Any man of spirit and jangled nerves.”
They returned to the barn-yard in silence. There they lit the
lantern.
“Don’t forget to put on the old clothes,” she said. “And please give
me that coat now. I will take good care of it, ribbons and all; and
I will give it back to you when you want to fly away from here.”
“I have neither the petrol nor the desire for flight,” he returned.
“There are letters in the pockets, so please hide it securely.”
He took off the jacket, folded it and laid it over her arm.
“Good night,” she said, and hurried away.