All through a long, drowsy, dreamy afternoon while Donahue had taken
very much his own way and gait, Augusta had watched the unfolding of
the hills before them. They had passed Old Forge and the Divide where
the water-sheds drop off to north and west, and were deep in the bosom
of the hills. At times, for a little while, they seemed to be on the
very top of all the hills, for they could see north, east, south and
west, a broken picture of jutting rocks and dipping green, and the blue
haze of distance running like a ribbon around it all. Then, for hours,
they would be plodding noiselessly along, shut securely in a pocket,
with only a few rods of the winding road showing before them and the
walls of the hills closed in about them on all sides.
Somehow Augusta knew that they were soon going to find the home for
which they were both longing. She knew that Jimmie was weary of the
road. He did not say so. He never complained, she had learned that. It
was useless to try to know what he felt from what he said. But when he
was too quiet she knew that he was either feeling worse again--and it
was not that--or he was weary of what they were doing and wanted to be
doing something else.
Augusta did not blame him. Indeed she would have been sorry if he
had taken too easily to the useless, idle drifting of the road. His
restlessness now proved that he was not content to drift towards
whatever lay before them. It was the one thing of which she had been
afraid when she had taken responsibility away from him and had bundled
him off on the road as she had done.
Now she saw that the danger which she had imagined was not
threatening. Jimmie was fretting to get back his grip on life. He
wanted to be putting his hand to something, to be doing something, to
be getting somewhere. With all his surface nonsense and his ways of
an ungrown boy, Augusta knew the hot rage of ambition that had burned
within him. And she knew that with returning strength it would come to
flame again. It must not be allowed to eat hopelessly at him while they
drifted aimlessly along a seemingly endless road.
In the late afternoon they came dropping down from a ridge into Smedley
village. Augusta read the name on a white sign over the post office
door. It seemed to be the end of the highway, for the road which they
had been following appeared just to stumble on weakly, between the six
houses on the one side and the four houses and little white school on
the other, out into a rising field and to lose itself there.
Augusta went into the post office to buy bread, bacon, matches and
soap. While the postmaster filled her order she inquired:
"Where does the road go from here?"
The stout old man beamed benignly on Augusta's happy, browned,
open-eyed face. Then he squinted cautiously out through the door at the
wagon which was unmistakably gypsy. He could not place her.
"Where was you calc'latin' to go, missy?" he evaded with the usual
rural unwillingness to give any information until he had first received
some.
"Oh, nowhere," Augusta confessed. "My husband--"
"Then you're right there. You don't need to go another step. This
is nowhere. The last place you stopped at was next to nowhere, and
Smedley, here, is it itself," he grumbled, without any ill humor. "I
been waitin' here forty year for that road to go somewhere. But it
aint gone and it aint goin', not so it appears. There aint no place
for it to go to. That bacon's been around here a good while, too," he
interpolated thoughtfully. "But the soap's prime--staple as old cheese.
No sir, there aint no other place beyond this. This is nowhere. When
you get here you have to stay or go back."
"But people do stay here," said Augusta a little thoughtfully, "and
live and keep well," she added, eyeing the ruddy, well nourished, well
preserved face of the old man.
"Of course they do," he admitted. "What else is there for 'em to
do. There's no doctors here, so they can't get sick. And there's no
preachers to make 'em think about dyin'. So they just hang 'round."
"But it seems a nice place to stay around in," said Augusta as she
stood on the little porch of the post office and looked around at the
comfort and security of the solid little houses with the strength of
the hills behind them.
"Any place is nice, if you don't _have_ to stay there," the old man
grumbled, following Augusta out to the wagon. He took a sharp look up
at Jimmie, and seemed to like him instantly.
"If you folks," he remarked pleasantly as Augusta climbed lightly into
the wagon, "didn't look so much like a pair of runaway children, I'd
say you was looking for a place to make a nest."
Augusta and Jimmie looked quickly at each other and then they both
laughed in sudden mutual understanding. They had each been thinking
the same thought all day, but neither had said anything of it. Jimmie
laughed.
"Do you do a little mind reading on the side?" he inquired, "besides
holding up a wing of the United States government and supplying the
countryside with dry goods and groceries."
"Well, you know," the old man winked genially, "or you soon will know,
married men has to make a good many shifts in order to scrape 'round."
"You are profoundly right," said Jimmie solemnly, "Mr.--Gamblin? Is
that the name I see on the window?"
"Jethniah Gamblin, that's me. Just like a post in the mud. Been here
for forty year and sorry for it every minute."
"But you stay."
"It's a habit."
"Yes," said Jimmie thoughtfully, "it's an old habit that people have of
staying in places. The fact is my wife and I are just now both tired of
wandering, though we hadn't thought to tell each other about it until
you mentioned it."
"You see," Augusta took up the explanations, while Mr. Gamblin settled
a heavy foot on the hub of the wheel and went into conference with
them, "Jimmie hasn't been well. Not really sick, you know, but just--he
coughed a good deal. And we came out like gypsies, you know we're not
really gypsies at all," she elucidated carefully. "And now I'm sure
he's tired of it. It's so easy to tire of a thing that isn't after all
quite natural."
"Well now," Mr. Gamblin began helpfully, "there's as much room right in
sight here as you'll find most anywheres. And there's a balsam ridge
right over that shoulder of hill there that when the wind is right is
better for a cough than anything that ever came out of a doctor's shop."
Jimmie, whose eyes still had their trick of watching for the details
of every picture, noticed an angry twitching of the vine that screened
a window in the wing of the post office building, where, probably,
Mr. Gamblin lived. He deduced that there was a woman behind that vine
listening. And the woman was getting angry.
"Oh, that sounds so good!" Augusta enthused immediately. "You know,
we've only got a little money. And it has to last. You know if we had a
plenty we wouldn't have to think or worry at all. But then, if we had
money it would be something else."
"Golly! You're right," the old man agreed with a hearty slap on his
knee. "And the fryin' pan can't be quite so hot as the fire anyway. So
if you can only just--"
"Jeth-_nye_-yah! You left the 'lasses runnin'!"
Mr. Gamblin jumped into the air as though at the crack of a whip.
He came down nimbly on his feet and started a bolt for the door of
the post office. He took, however, only a few hurried steps. Then
he stopped short with a thud and an angry grunt. He shook himself
viciously like an enraged and baffled bull, and it seemed that he was
about to roar.
Jimmie knew at once that the woman behind the screen of vines had
played a ruse--probably an old one--upon the old gentleman, to make him
break off an interesting conversation.
Augusta, not understanding at all, and wishing to go on with the
discussion, said helpfully:
"But I'm sure you didn't touch the molasses at all."
Jimmie put his hand warningly upon her arm.
Mr. Gamblin did not appear to hear her. He was standing with his legs
braced wide apart. His mild mannered spectacles which seemed to have no
relations whatever with his eyes stood out at a truculent angle near
the end of his nose. His face and neck were very red and he had the
look of a man fighting for breath.
"Forty year!" he muttered belligerently, "just like a post in the mud!
An' sorry every minute!"
Then he shook himself and strode stubbornly back to the wagon, placed
his foot solidly where it had before rested on the hub of the wheel,
and renewed his conversation in a loud and defiant tone.
"Yessum, there's as good air right 'round here as there is anywhere,
and more of it than there is in most places."
Jimmie wondered sympathetically how many times in the forty years the
old man had been called away from some interesting doing by that false
alarm about the molasses.
"And what's a little cough anyway?" the old man boomed on resonantly.
"Why I had a tarnation mean cough one time, my own self, long about
twenty years ago, I figure it was, or twenty-five. Come on in hayin'
time and hung 'round till the first frost. That's the cure. The first
nip of the dry frost just picks it right out. And there you are, sound
as a trivet. Just like a post in the mud!"
"I'm sure you are right," said Augusta. "And I know that Jimmie and I
are both tired of drifting. I don't think we will go much farther."
"Well, just mosey 'round and see for yourselves. Maybe you'll find just
the place you want. And if anybody asks, tell 'em Jeth--"
"Jethniah Gamblin," the voice from behind the vines rasped out
spitefully, "don't you dare go bringin' no lung folks to stoppin' here.
You know well enough what happened up at Fenton Lake. The sick folks
come there and got well, and the well folks took it and got sick. And--"
They did not hear any more, for Augusta had grabbed the whip and
brought it down wickedly on the unoffending back of Donahue. The
astonished animal started with a leap that threw Jimmie and Augusta
backwards in a huddle and nearly knocked Mr. Gamblin flat to the ground.
When Jimmie had recovered himself and gotten hold of the reins he
looked back. The old man was standing almost where they had left him,
and although Jimmie could see that he was now white with anger yet
there was a droop of humiliation and shame on the kindly, sturdy old
figure that made Wardwell genuinely sorry for him.
Augusta was now sobbing hysterically:
"Please, please, Donahue, forgive me! I didn't mean to hurt you! You
know I didn't mean it!" She could see the line in the dusty hair of his
back where she had struck him and to her eyes it seemed a livid welt.
"Oh, how could she be so hard?" she wailed. "I could go back and tear
her eyes out! I don't see why God doesn't choke people when they say
things like that!"
"There, there, dear," said Jimmie soothingly, putting one arm around
her while he steadied Donahue with the other, "we musn't mind that.
People say things like that without thinking."
"But she hurt you! And she hadn't even seen you! And I hurt Donahue!
And she doesn't get hurt at all! Oh, it isn't right, it isn't right!"
she wailed.
"Of course not, dear. But see," Jimmie began, gathering himself to
talk Augusta out of her feeling, for it always worried him to see her
under a strong emotion, "you know she didn't really mean what she said
at all. She wasn't thinking of that, not a minute. She meant something
else, entirely different. Do you want to know what she really meant
when she said that?"
Augusta stopped tentatively and looked up miserably through her tears.
"Well, what she meant was this," said Jimmie blandly. "She meant that
friend Jethniah was philandering too much time over the affairs of a
very attractive gypsy. _I_ did not matter, and Donahue was just like
any ordinary horse so far as she was concerned. The point was that the
bold Jethniah was dallying with a fair female.
"What know we," he declaimed, getting into his stride, while Donahue,
comforted and reassured by the well known sound of the harangue,
steadied himself down to a walk, "of the restless nights and the heavy
days that yonder virtuous woman has suffered from the meanderings of
Jethniah? He is a personable, plausible man with a roving eye. He has
a gift for conversation and an eye for beauty. Even his references to
a post in the mud show a discontented, restless disposition. You heard
him mention the post in the mud? It is proof patent that his thoughts
are wanderers.
"Then, too, he is a man of consequence and of travel. I saw the stage
back of the house. It proves that he himself journeys daily down to the
railroad to get the mail, to carry the passengers, if any there be--You
notice that I stick to the bare facts, there may not be any passengers,
but if any there be--and to mingle with the gay world that whirls by.
"Fifthly and sixthly; he is the postmaster. We can only vaguely
appreciate what that means. He has the first read at every postal
card that comes into these hills. He knows everybody's secrets. Do
you realize the hold that gives him on the imaginations of the female
portion of this high and wide community?
"He knows the ins and the outs. The devious ways of the female mind
are to him an open book. He pats the shoulder of widowed sorrow. He
consoles the lovelorn maiden and invents all too welcome excuses for
the letter that does not come. He is even capable of writing letters
himself to take the place of the missing ones. Given the man, the
temptation, and the immunity of his position, and there are no heights
of rascality that he might not scale."
"I don't care," said Augusta hotly. "I'm sure he is a good kind man."
And that's all right! thought Jimmie, pleased and proud to have drawn
Augusta out to argue, and flushed for further triumphs.
"There you have it! He is kind," he echoed. "You have touched the very
key spring of his villainy. What man was ever kind but to beguile?
From our ancient friend Leander at the swimming bee down to young
John W. Lothario himself they all had kind hearts and were willing to
share them with any and every lady within the horizon line. And here
is our Jethniah the very prize dandler of them all. For forty years he
has gone up and down these hills and has ranged far and wide, even as
far as the railroad, interesting himself in the trials of beauty in
distress, while his own lawful wife and spouse languished behind the
vines.
"Think of the tale of these doings that she could tell! And she _would_
tell them, too. In fact I'd wager that she _has_ told them, numerously,
circumstantially, and in detail, for a good many hours out of the forty
years," he concluded with a grin.
Augusta was quiet now. She had nestled in close under Jimmie's shoulder
and seemed to have forgotten Jethniah and his wife.
"Jimmie."
"Yes, dear."
"Well--Oh--Do you think I hurt Donahue very much?"
Jimmie considered, squinting thoughtfully along Donahue's dusty back.
He was sure that Augusta had intended, and had tried, to say something
entirely different.
"Well," he answered critically and judicially, "he _does_ seem to be
unusually sleepy. But whether it is from the effects of your blow or
from the soporific influence of my discourse would be hard to say."
Donahue ambled on up a gently winding track--it was not quite a
road--which was entirely of his own choosing.
"Jimmie."
"Yes, dear."
She nestled closer, and Jimmie waited.
"I'm afraid."
"What is it, dear?"
"You."
"Me?" Jimmie inquired blankly, wondering what he had been doing now.
"I'm afraid of the time when you get all well and yourself again.
You'll want to wander."
"Like Jethniah, eh? There now, what did I tell you? That's what comes
of listening to him. You think that, like him, the whole male world is
uncertain, coy and hard to please."
"Please, Jimmie, don't head me off. I'm afraid. I suppose love makes
cowards of us all. Do you remember a time when I said that I wouldn't
want to keep even a kitten that didn't want to stay?"
"Oh, but that was before we were married!" he explained airily. "We all
talk turkey at a time like that. It's the last chance we get. And we
spend the rest of our lives trying to pay the bets."
"Jimmie."
"Yes, dear?"
"Do you remember the lady I saw you talking with that day in the
Square?"
"Sure," said Jimmie lightly, "Jean Bradley"--They were far away now, it
seemed to him, and the name meant nothing to either of them--, "what
about her?"
"And the woman in the cards, do you remember?"
"You mean the one the gypsy girl wanted to claw me about? Oh yes."
"They were the same woman."
"Same woman?" asked Jimmie, mentally pawing about for firm ground.
"It was the same dark, handsome woman, in the cards, I saw her."
"Saw----?" For one rare and breathless moment Jimmie was completely
dumbfounded. He could not find a word anywhere. But he reacted bravely.
"Well if you saw her," he exclaimed eagerly, "why the deuce didn't you
tell her that you'd collect the money she owes us?"
"Please, Jimmie, don't joke. I'm trying to say something that's hard to
say. You know when we stood before the priest I promised, in my heart,
that if I ever thought you wanted to go away from me I would not only
let you go but I would force you to be free, by going away and hiding
myself."
Jimmie said nothing. He sat looking stupidly at Donahue's ear, his
hands clutching the reins so that they were cutting into his flesh.
There was nothing to be said. Better let her talk this out for herself.
"And now," she went on fearfully, "I'm afraid, afraid of that woman.
And I'm going to do a cowardly thing. I'm afraid of the test, afraid of
myself. Jimmie, I'm going to ask you to promise something. I know it's
going back on my own heart promise, but I can't help it--I can't help
it!"
Jimmie saw that she was suffering, and trembling with fear and self
reproach, and he did the best he could. He said:
"Let's drive back, and I'll choke Jethniah's wife to death with the
soap. She's to blame for all this."
"But will you promise, Jimmie?"
"Of course, I'll promise! What is it, dear?" He was ready to promise
her the setting sun.
"Will you promise me never to have anything to do with that woman?"
"Jean Bradley? Why, yes, sure I promise, if you wish it. That's easy,
and all settled. We'll probably never see her again anyway. But I do
wish you had put in something about Jethniah's wife. If ever a woman
deserved choking, and with soap--I insist on the soap, it is certainly
that woman."
But Augusta was not to be turned aside by his diversion.
"I'm afraid," she confessed, shrinking in closer to him so that she
seemed so little and so forlorn that Jimmie instinctively put his hand
on hers to stop her, "afraid that I would be coward enough to want
you to stay even if I knew you wanted to go. And then you'd begin to
talk. And you'd be so kind and so bright and jolly that I'd begin to
let myself be fooled. You know how you can talk. You can make anybody
almost believe anything. Please, darling," she pleaded, "promise you
won't ever use it to deceive me!"
Wardwell silently cursed the gift of his glib and ready tongue, while
he tried to find the right words for this. After a little he said
humbly:
"Augusta, to your knowledge I'm a good many kinds of a fool. But let me
tell you something that I know about you, and me. If I should ever be
that particular kind of fool, do you know what would happen? Well, in
the first place, you'd know it before I knew it myself. And before I'd
get around to know it, you'd snap me loose and send me spinning so fast
that I'd never know just what happened."
"Oh, Jimmie, don't let me think of it! I could not bear it, and live."
"There are other, more immediate, things to be thought of. Our patient
Donahue is thinking hard on some of them this minute. In the first
place, he is wondering if he is expected to work nights."
Donahue, who was by now accustomed to the name which had been thrust
upon him, stopped and looked around at Augusta.
"I'm sorry, Donahue," she apologized cheerfully. "I know you are hungry
and so is Jimmie. And it's all my fault. But really we can't stop right
here. This is just the middle of a field. We'll just go on up to the
edge of that little woods. And there we'll stop all day tomorrow, if
you like, and think about things."
Jimmie tightened up on the rein, and Donahue plodded on obediently.
The track which they followed came again to the edge of a brook which
they had been crossing and re-crossing now for two days. And they knew
from the limpid clearness of the water and the slight thread of its
rapid flow that they must be near its headwaters. Across its little
valley, straight in front of them, stood a thin wall of tall, handsome
maple trees, which thickened and deepened into a heavy green bank of
solid forest as either end of the line ran up to the enclosing heights
above the valley.
The cool, sharp breath of a hidden mountain lake came down to them, and
Donahue smartened up his gait.
As they came up to where they could see through the fringe of trees,
Augusta looked one long moment and drew in a deep breath of delight and
pure joy in beauty.
A quick grasp of her hand on Jimmie's arm made him stop the horse.
But before he could say a word she was out over the wheel and running
through the trees, crying:
"It's ours, Jimmie! All alone ours! Nobody told us about it! We found
it all for ourselves. It is all our own!"
When Jimmie caught up to her on the bank of the little lake, she hugged
him excitedly and then waved her arm out over the water.
"Oh, isn't it the darling! A beautiful white diamond lying deep in its
cushion of green velvet!"
Jimmie admitted quietly that the little five-pointed lake, lying like a
precious white jewel embedded in the deep green setting of the wooded
hills, was the most beautiful thing that he had ever seen.
The mantle of ready speech seemed to have dropped from him. He had no
words with which to answer Augusta's enthusiasm. He stood holding her
arm, silent so long that Augusta wondered and looked up at him, with a
question.
"This is the end," he answered quietly, "of our wanderings. Here are
your Hills of Desire."
Augusta nodded, but she did not answer in words. And Wardwell,
watching, saw that strange, strained, listening look come into her
eyes--the look that used to frighten him in the days of her trial.
The look did not trouble him now, for he could place against it the
healthy, rugged browned beauty of Augusta's supple body. Her hold upon
earth and the things of life did not seem at all so slender as it had
in those days when he had almost feared that she would slip away from
him into that strange border land into which she peered and from which
she certainly brought back knowledge.
Now as he held her arm, firm and warm and strong with the weeks of
sunshine and wind and freedom, he smiled at his fears of those other
days and nights. But when she spoke she startled him more thoroughly
with the quiet certainty of her fore-knowledge than she had ever done
in those other days by her strained and timid glances into the future.
"We shall stay here through the winter," she said, in the even voice of
a dream, "for I can see the snow on the hillsides and the lake lying
wrapped in ice. But then we will be driven away. I do not know why."
She paused a moment, hesitating, and then hurried on desperately, as
though the vision was slipping from her:
"We will both be killed, a long, long way from here. But we won't
care!" A little ring, like the sound of defiant laughter, broke up
through the monotone of her speech, and it alarmed Wardwell so that he
took her forcibly in his arms and almost shook her, to make her stop.
But she went on quickly to the end of her knowledge:
"I shall be here waiting for you, and you will come. And we will go on
together into the Hills of All Desire!"
She stopped, trembling against him. Jimmie chose not to answer or to
make any comment on what she had said. From experience he knew that she
probably would not remember just what she had been saying. He wanted
to ignore it altogether. He preferred to believe that her nerves had
merely become over taut from her excitement of the afternoon and that
the sudden surprise of the beautiful little mountain-locked lake had
played tricks upon them. He looked about for a diversion, and found one.
Not twenty yards from where they stood, in plain view, though flanked
heavily with trees on both sides, and some little distance from the
water, there was a small wooden house with an open door. And before the
open door sat a man calmly whittling shavings for a fire. As Jimmie
stared open-mouthed--he was almost ready to take oath that neither
the house nor the man had been there before, that they had both been
moved into place there by some stage trick while his back had been
turned--the man leaned over from the low stump on which he sat and
heaped the shavings into a neat pile. Then he looked up, and though he
certainly saw Wardwell standing there holding Augusta he gave no sign
whatever that he was aware of them.
Good manners, anyhow! Jimmie commented to himself.
Then he turned Augusta around to see what he saw, and said quietly:
"I'm awfully sorry, dear. But it seems that someone is here ahead of
us."
Augusta looked and saw. But, to Wardwell's relief, she did not seem to
be disturbed or deeply disappointed.
"Well, let's talk to him anyway. Maybe he doesn't belong here," she
whispered. "Maybe he just happened to stop."
He led her back to where Donahue was patiently nibbling at some sweet
maple shoots and wondering when this day was going to end, and taking
Donahue by the bridle and Augusta by the arm Wardwell went forward
by the track which he now saw led up to the open door and presented
himself and his retinue to the leisurely gentleman who seemed to be in
possession.
"We didn't mean to come breaking into your camp. Fact is," Jimmie
explained, "we just followed our horse. And when we saw the lake we
just wanted to stay."
As they had approached the man had thrown some dry sticks on top of the
shavings which he had lighted, and he now straightened and stood up
regarding them whimsically.
He had seen the wagon through the trees long before they had seen him
and had wondered what gypsies were doing here so far from the ways
of their trade. Now he saw that they were not of any of the kinds
of gypsies that he had ever known. They looked, as Mr. Gamblin had
remarked, exactly like a pair of runaway children.
"I couldn't but see the two of you at the lake," he said in a rich,
soft, South of Ireland brogue that made Jimmie gasp--he would as soon
have expected to be stopped here among the trees by a Broadway traffic
policeman as to have heard a voice like that here--"and I saw the faces
of you when you saw me. You were two blessed childer runnin' to the end
of your rainbow, an' when you got there, when you got there, here was
an ould dodherin Dimmick sittin' with his hand already in the pot o'
gold."
"But we really hadn't any right to expect to find such a beautiful
place untaken," said Augusta easily.
The man nudged the sticks of the fire gently with his foot and looked
down at Augusta out of a pair of great, soft blue eyes. He was an
enormous man of powerfully rounded build, as tall as Wardwell but so
broad and solid of stature that, at a little distance he would have
seemed just a well-knit man of medium height.
Wardwell had nothing to say. That wonderful brogue had silenced him
completely. And the man's face was one which would have drawn attention
in any crowd or setting.
It was a large, clean, unlined face as clear and chubby as the face of
a rugged healthy boy. Yet it had in it the same quiet power which the
man's giant limbs and torso concealed under their perfect proportions.
Wardwell, on the instant, remembered that he had seen three faces
strikingly like this. One was the face of a United States senator.
Another belonged to a powerful Anglican bishop. The third was the face
of a noted downtown New York politician who was said now to be confined
in a madhouse. A fantastic suspicion connected with that third face
flashed across Jimmie's brain and probably showed for an instant in his
eyes. But he almost laughed in the big man's face at the absurdity of
the idea.
This man was different. His loose gray shirt and broad overalls
revealed a body that fairly pulsed with the clean health of years of
out of doors, while a gentle, fine light of sadness and of wholesome
humor played almost imperceptibly in the soft blue eyes. The gray hair,
cut down close and crisp, told of probably sixty years lightly and
soundly lived.
"I'll be moving along early in the morning," he was saying to Augusta,
though he was watching Wardwell with a gleam in his eyes. He had seen
the flash of a question on Jimmie's face.
"Oh, but you mustn't do anything of the kind!" Augusta objected warmly.
"Why, we'd just feel that we had driven you out of your beautiful camp."
"The camp's here all the year, for anybody. 'Tis a sugar bush, don't
you see. Nobody comes here only very late in the fall, to cut wood for
the sugar boiling, and then again when the winter's breaking up. But
for them two little times, a man might stay here the year round and
nobody be a whit the wiser."
Again Wardwell's instinct for news and for mystery was roused. He set
himself to watch and to listen.
"Our horse is tired," said Augusta, "and it's night now, so if you
really don't mind we'll stay by the lake till tomorrow."
"You may stay on in welcome, the whole year if it suits you. The truth
of the whole is, I--"
Evidently he was going to tell something of himself, but in that
instant he caught Wardwell watching him and he stopped short.
He hesitated, looking sharply at Wardwell, as though wondering whether
he could trust him.
"You may as well stay on," he said finally, with what seemed a sigh of
tired, baffled resignation. "For I have to be moving on. The truth is,
I--I'm _wanted_."
The effect of the last two words on the listeners was peculiar.
Wardwell, whose mind had been vaguely working toward some such thought
as this announcement implied and who might have been expected to be
somewhat prepared for it, started sharply and caught Augusta's arm.
Augusta, on the other hand, who had not anticipated the man's
announcement by the smallest suspicion and who might reasonably have
been expected to be shocked, spoke interestedly and as though in answer
to what the big man had admitted.
And this is what she said.
"Did you ever know what it is to go six long whole weeks on stuff
that's just been half stewed on a stove that doesn't hold fire enough
to really cook anything? We've been doing that until there's just one
conglomerate taste in our mouths and we don't know whether we're eating
fish or meat. And all because I haven't learned to cook with an open
fire. I'm going to borrow your fire right now and beg you to teach me."
The big blue eyes of the old Irishman beamed down upon her in wonder
and appreciation. He was about to speak, but Augusta was too quick
for him. She had taken her attitude--it was that they were going to
consider those last two words of his as never having been spoken--and
she was not to be moved from it.
"I have bacon," she rattled on, "that the storekeeper said was as
staple as old cheese. No, that was the soap," she remembered, laughing,
"and new potatoes, and eggs that were laid this morning, if we want
them, and--Come, I'll show you what we have, and we'll make a picnic
feast."
She turned away and led the big man towards the step of the wagon.
"My name is Smith," the big man asserted with an effort as he followed
her.
"How stupid of me!" Augusta apologized from the step of the wagon.
"But, out gypsying like this, it's so easy to get careless in one's
manners. We are the Wardwells. My husband is a writer," she catalogued
carefully. "And I am his wife. And our horse Donahue once lived under a
lake in Ireland."
The big man turned for a look at Donahue. "Them horses was white," he
argued, "I know all about them. He's a rusty red."
"Of course," said Augusta cheerfully as she dived into her stores and
handed forth potatoes and bacon, "that's rust, from the dampness."
The big man exploded into a roaring laugh. "God bless the handy liar
that made that up for you! I don't think you did it yourself."
"No," Augusta admitted, "it's my husband. You see, inventing is his
business. I only quote. And Donahue, who is truly wise, he only
listens."
Jimmie was dutifully unhitching Donahue.
"Donahue," he grumbled as he tugged at the girth buckle, "_what_ do you
know about that?
"Now, not as between master and servant but as horse to man, give me
your plain opinion. Are women born into the world full armed with all
the weapons of diplomacy, tact and happy deceit? And if they are not so
born, Donahue, I put it to you, who teaches them?
"Augusta is fully convinced that the man is a desperate criminal. And
she waves the whole matter aside, as though he had merely apologized
for being without a dress suit, and makes him the long lost uncle.
"I am a stupid man and you are not a particularly brilliant horse. We
are stumped, and we know it.
"Come and have a drink."
He led the way down to where there was a little shingle of pebbles
running from the grass bank out into the lake and Donahue walked into
the water so as to cover all four feet, for he was old and road wise
and he knew the comfort of a cool foot bath after a long blistering day.
"Good idea," Jimmie commented, "cool your feet and clear your mind. We
need clear minds around here. Come on now, this is the only lake in the
neighborhood. Don't try to drink it all. You'll spoil your appetite and
ruin your digestion which is already impaired by sugar bags and other
surreptitious gobblings.
"About our Mr. Smith, now," he inquired as he dragged Donahue away
from the water, "what do you think? What particular branch of high
crime does he favor. He is a specialist, of course. He is far too
clever a man to scatter himself on general practitioning in this age of
specialists. What do you suggest?
"He is a large round man with a kind eye. He could sell mining stocks.
But, somehow, I rather feel that he'd be above preying on widows and
school teachers and innocent clergymen. I think he'd prefer some
excitement in his.
"He might be a head waiter, of course. But no law has yet been invented
to make those gentlemen flee to the woods.
"I'll have to give it up, if you have nothing to suggest," he concluded
lamely.
When he had filled Donahue's measure of oats he left him feeding at the
wagon and came to the fire.
Augusta was hanging a pot of potatoes over the fire from a long crooked
iron hook that was sunk into the ground. The big man had gone down to
the brook where, it appeared, he had a string of live fish in captivity.
"Do you think we are wise?" said Jimmie cautiously. "We can't tell,
you know. People might be looking for him. And suppose he had taken
things and brought them here. And if we were found here," he worried
on, "why, we simply haven't any credentials at all. And we're a deuce
of a long ways from anybody that knows us. It might be very mean for
you--these country sheriffs, you know, they might bundle the whole of
us off to the nearest county jail, wherever it is."
"I don't care," said Augusta warmly, flushing over the fire. "Just look
at the man. I _know_ he didn't do anything really wrong."
"That's the woman of it," Jimmie argued meanly, "just because a man
looks like a well preserved and benevolent Greek god and talks with a
soft brogue, then the law of the land must be wrong."
"Well, the law _is_ wrong lots of times," Augusta answered evenly. And
Jimmie wondered whether women, with all the terrible discipline which
nature and human society put upon them, were not essentially more
lawless than men; or was it that they had gotten a larger share of the
fruit of the Tree of Knowledge and actually did know good from evil.
He had no time for any remarks on the subject, for the big man was
coming back from the brook carrying a big fish, cleaned and split, on a
toaster that was fashioned out of two bent pieces of wire.
"If ye'll just rub in the salt," he said, holding out the fish to
Augusta. "It'll not need a deal of it for we'll lash the bacon in with
the fish."
"Our table is very little," said Augusta, regarding her folding table
as she took the salt from it. "But you and Jimmie can sit and I'll wait
on you like an Indian woman."
For some reason Augusta was supremely happy. It was not merely the
exciting effect of the feeling that she was flouting the law. And she
was deeply touched by the big man's plight as she understood it. But
there was about her to-night what Jimmie sometimes called a mist of
happiness, as though she trod on dew rays and moved in a cloud.
"Faith'n I know a trick worth two o' that," said the big man
positively. "If you'll just turn the fish against the fire, mam--not
over the fire, mind you, but just against it--I'll find a table."
He disappeared into the darkness of the little house, and presently
came out carrying a good sized table.
"McQuade's a queer duck enough. But I'll say for him that he does keep
his things clean."
"Who's McQuade?" Jimmie inquired with a show of interest. He was
nervous. He did not like the position at all. He was, in fact, out of
his element. He was a man of city streets, where certain people are
paid to take care of every sort of situation. Here he would not know
what to do. This man was, beyond doubt, a criminal at large. It was
entirely possible that a posse was even at this moment searching the
vicinity for him. He would certainly have fire arms about. Wardwell
shuddered as he thought of Augusta being senselessly exposed in a
desperate affair of this kind. But, since Augusta had set the tone for
the party, there was nothing for him to do but to follow her lead as
best he could.
"McQuade's a nut," said the big man, placing the table judiciously
under a tree to windward of the fire. "He owns this place. He has a
fine farm fifty miles down the Parishville road. He has plenty to do,
and everything to do it with. And he has a grand energetic Yankee wife
to see that he does it. But, an' there's the thrapin' contrary Irish of
him, he'd far rather come up here an' sit on the step o' the door an'
look out at the lake than to put in the finest harvest that ever was."
"I think he's just right," Augusta argued, glad that a neutral subject
had been introduced. For even she, in the heating test of holding the
baking fish to the fire and watching the boiling potatoes, was not
sure how long their thoughts and conversation could be kept away
from forbidden ground. There were so many things which it would be
unfortunate to mention to a strayed criminal.
"'John McQuade o' the sunny shade an' the woodbine cottage' he calls
himself, and he thinks, because he'd a long sight rather loaf and
fish than work his honest farm, that he must surely be some sort of a
character. I'm not sure but he half thinks he's a poet, or at the very
least a philosopher. In five minutes he can give you more good reasons
for vagabondin' than you could argue down in a long day's talk."
"This must be a man worth knowing," said Jimmie.
"He's jealous right away!" Augusta laughed. "He's afraid that
somebody's been discovered who can talk more nonsense than he can."
"Nonsense," said the big man sententiously as he picked the potato pot
off the fire and turned to drain off the water, "nonsense is the salt
o' creation. The maxims of the unwise," he pronounced, hanging the pot
back over the fire again, to dry for a moment, "are the gatherings of
fools' experience. But, ye'll mind, the fools get far more experience
than the wise folk. So, there you are."
He brought the potatoes from the fire and deftly turned them into the
dish that Augusta had waiting. Augusta brought the baked fish, and he
showed her how to slip it from the toaster, without disturbing the
bacon which was cooked right into the fish.
Jimmie, seeing the dusk which seemed to be gathering in upon them from
the shadows of the trees, brought the lantern from the wagon and was
going to hang it lighted from a tree. But the big man would not hear
of this. He would have no smelly lanterns around a sylvan feast, he
said. And since he was seconded by Augusta he had his way. From under
the house he dragged out a fire cradle, a wire basket on the end of
an iron rod, which is used in the prow of a boat for spearing fish at
night. This he drove fast into the top of a stump and filled it with
knots of resinous wood.
The strong reddish light had the effect of drawing the darkness down
upon them immediately, so that they could not see a thing beyond the
radius of its rays. It gave them a feeling of complete isolation from
all the world, such as only a campfire at night can give, and, in a
way, a sense of security. But Wardwell could not help thinking, and
only with difficulty refrained from saying, that it was a foolish thing
for a hunted man to so advertise his whereabouts with a light that
could attract attention for miles in the hills.
The big Irishman, however, seemed the most unworried fugitive at large.
"No," he declared, as though continuing an argument, "you couldn't do a
thing in the world better than to stop right here till the snow flies."
It was plain that Augusta had talked plans with him while Jimmie and
Donahue were down at the lake. "Or if there is one thing better it'd be
to stop right here through the winter."
"But, Lord Alive man!" said Jimmie, appalled at the idea, "we'd freeze
to death! You don't know, and I don't want to know, what the cold is
like here."
"I know it well. But I never knew anybody yet that froze to death in
it."
"Yes, but we're city folks," Jimmie argued. "We wouldn't know how to
keep ourselves alive. Don't forget that we've been brought up to hug
radiators."
"An' that's the very thing that you must forget. The way to keep warm
is not to get cold. Get an ax, there's a good one inside there, and go
at the windfall wood here. Agen the time comes when ye'll want the wood
for big rousing fires ye'll have a fire up inside of you shootin blood
through your veins in a way that'll let you laugh at cold."
"I'm not sure that I'd have the nerve to try it," said Jimmie
doubtfully. "But even if I had there are two things that seem to be
objections."
"What two things?"
"Well, first, there's--my wife," Jimmie explained a little stiffly,
"she couldn't chop wood, so she'd just naturally have to freeze."
"Leave it to a woman to face any dare," said the big man easily.
"She'll come through and laugh, when you'll be fit to cry."
"I know that," Jimmie admitted. "But, besides, there's Mr. McQuade to
be thought of. He hasn't yet given us any invitation to move into his
camp and use his ax."
"Be easy, then," said the big man promptly. "I'll give me word for
McQuade. He'll never miss any bit you use. And I'll warrant that he'll
be only too glad to have someone gettin' good o' the camp. There's the
big sugar house itself stuck in the hill back of us. The boilin' pans
are out and the brick furnace is topped over with sheet iron. The very
thing. When the real cold comes ye'll just move in there an' lay your
open fire in the very door o' the furnace, an' there ye have a camp
snug an' dry an' as warm as ever ye'll want to make it. An' there's
full an' plenty of blankets there stowed away for the boys."
He went on expatiating at large and generously on the resources of
the sugar cabin, while Augusta listened eagerly and dreamed of the
snowbound winter nights with the big fire blazing. Jimmie with his eye
fixed firmly on his plate was fighting back a grin. If he could have
had Donahue's ear for a moment he would have pointed out to him that
this making so free of other people's property was good philosophy but
that it was rather discouraged by the laws of the state.
He did not, however, say any of these things, for, in spite of all, he
found himself liking the big man, it was impossible to do otherwise,
and Jimmie would have felt it a very ugly thing indeed to have hurt him
by any smart reference to his unfortunate position.
"You'll need to get rid of the horse," the big man was advising
Augusta, who, it seemed, was already in charge of the practical
operations for the winter.
"Horse?" said Augusta vaguely. She was utterly unable to grasp the idea.
"Your horse, yes. It'd take all he's worth to feed him through the
winter, and he'd be no use to you at all. In the spring you can buy
another if you're wantin' one."
"But you mean--You mean _sell Donahue_!"
"Who else?" said the big man unconcernedly.
"Never, never! You don't understand at all. Why, Donahue is one of
ourselves! We could never think of such a thing." And Augusta looked
her indignation at Jimmie, as though he had offered the proposal.
"I suppose it would be the practical thing to do," said Jimmie without
thinking. "But, of course, we needn't think of it. We haven't come that
far yet, you know."
"Well, I don't think we _will_ think of it," Augusta returned warmly.
"I don't see how you can suggest such a thing, Jimmie, when you know
well enough we wouldn't be here at all if Donahue hadn't pulled us
every step of the way!"
"Oh well, mam," the big man put in softly, "you see I was only saying
what I'd do meself. You'll do whatever you think best, of course. But
for your husband, now, as I was saying," he switched skillfully back to
safe ground, "put the ax in his hand, an' don't let him hurt himself
with it at first, an' agen the snow flies you'll see him a man as hard
as nails an' twice as important, for, say what you will about the pride
of brains, there's nothing that makes a man quite so sure proud of
himself as to feel the strength bulgin' up in him."
Supper over, the two men helped Augusta with the dishes while the big
Irishman dealt out sage counsels to provide for every emergency that
might confront the two people who were to stay on here. He seemed to
leave no room at all for doubt that they would stay. He refused to hear
that they had no right to stay here and use Mr. McQuade's property. In
the first place, he argued that McQuade was a rich old curmudgeon who
would never know how much or how little of his property they might use.
And in the next breath he represented McQuade to be a man of a heart of
gold who would gladly move out of his own house and home to leave it to
some one who had more need of it.
Jimmie reflected that the arguments were hopelessly contradictory, but
as the whole manner of their evening's entertainment had been fantastic
and more or less unbelievable he decided to leave study and decision
over until the morning.
Augusta was not looking for logic. She had fallen under the spell of
the big man's promises for Jimmie's health and she was willing to take
Mr. McQuade's complacence for granted.
When they had settled down about the fire and the early evening noises
of the woods were dying down to the occasional, lonely cheepings of a
restless bird or the far distant, creepy baying of a hound somewhere in
the hills, the talk became fitful and desultory.
Jimmie was keenly sorry for the big breezy man who was so cheerfully
proposing to leave this place which apparently had been a safe haven
and take the lonely, hopeless trail of a hunted man. And Augusta,
always sensitive to Jimmie's moods and thoughts, was depressed and
nervous with him. Every happy start of conversation which they tried to
make seemed inevitably to turn back to something which must be avoided.
They could not ask where "Mr. Smith" intended going, or hope that they
might see him soon again, or even offer him provisions out of their own
store, without bringing themselves upon the dismal question of what he
had done and why he was "wanted."
"Can you shoot?" the big man asked in one of the pauses.
"I can hit things in a gallery, but I never hunted much," Jimmie
explained.
"It's not the same thing at all. But if you've the eyes and the nerve
you'll very soon learn. And you'll be wanting fresh meat. There'll be
plenty of it hereabout in another month, birds and rabbits and later
on deer. Get a good rifle and learn the times for shooting. Have your
license right and see that you keep the law. You might think you
wouldn't be bothered here. But the game people would spot you out in no
time, and you being a stranger with a gypsy wagon you'd get no shrift
at all." Jimmie commented to himself on the stranger's respect for what
he himself in common with most people had always thought of as merely a
formal law.
"You'll want to hunt, to kill things," the big man stated. "I don't
know why it is, but it's a fact. No sooner does a man feel his own
life and strength swellin' up in him than rightabout he wants to kill
things. And, would you believe it, he thrives on it. Killing, do you
know, is one of the healthiest occupations--"
A startling, ear-splitting noise broke out of the silence of the night
and moved towards them with frightening rapidity.
Wardwell sprang to his feet and placed himself in front of Augusta. He
did not know what he expected to see come driving upon them out of the
dark. But the noise, to his city ears, had just one meaning. It was a
sharp, staccato, drumming sound on a rising note, and it was apparently
coming straight at them. In a way, Wardwell might be said to have been
prepared for this. The noise, as he understood it, was quite familiar
to him. He was certain that a badly firing motorcycle had been started
just a little way off and was now dashing straight for their fire. He
quite forgot the trees and rocks, for he could not see them, and stood
peering defiantly out into the darkness that fell black and formless
beyond the circle of the flare of light. He was convinced that a
motorcycle policeman was bearing down upon them. But his only emotion
seemed to be indignation at the fellow for driving without a light.
Around to the right another drumming, driving sound broke out and beat
and purred upon the same note as the first. This sound also came toward
them.
"Surrounded!" said Jimmie bravely, reaching back for Augusta's hand to
pull her closer to him--one could never tell, there might be shooting
here.
Augusta had risen and was standing right behind Jimmie. She did not
understand, but she was frightened because Jimmie seemed to know what
the danger was and would not tell her.
The whole action was a matter of seconds. Jimmie turned for a quick
look at the big man whose doom was coming thus swiftly upon him. He sat
on the stump where they had first seen him, his hands clutching tightly
at his knees, his big face red in the glare of the light and plainly
working with some strong emotion.
The noise ceased suddenly as the two partridges who had made it got
wing in air at last and came flying over the fire. It took Jimmie some
time to believe that these birds, beating with their wide bare wings
like flat boards on the ground and underbrush as they ran along the
ground until they had momentum enough to take the air, had caused all
that noise. But when he did realize it and turned to try to explain to
Augusta, he felt extremely foolish.
The big man did not wait for the explanation. He rose hastily from the
stump and lurched toward the house, saying in a choking voice:
"I'm goin' in."
Jimmie's explanation, while he took down the flare light and buried the
flaming knots in the ashes of the fire, was entirely true and fairly
accurate. But it was wasted. Augusta was convinced that someone was
trying to hide something from her. She listened patiently, but she had
her own argument, which she kept to herself. Jimmie _might_ have been
fooled that way by two birds. _But_, the other man had been visibly
affected, too!
When Jimmie thought she was settled in her hammock for the night, he
was surprised to hear her rustle out again and come to his side.
"What _do_ you think he can have done?" she worried as she cuddled down
to his pillow. "And isn't there anything we can do for him?"
"Oh, don't be troubled, dear. He'll probably be able to take care of
himself. I don't hardly think he's done anything himself. Maybe he's
just keeping out of the way from something. You know there's always an
investigation or some blamed thing going on. Maybe it's only that," he
suggested reassuringly. "Get into bed and sleep. You're tired to death."
Augusta gave him a hit-or-miss kiss in the dark, climbed into her bed
and went obediently to sleep like a child.
Jimmie listened gratefully to the gentle, even breathing that told
him that she had forgotten everything. There was a curious feeling of
worry upon him. The alarm which he had gotten from the strange noise
had turned out ridiculously, of course, but the possibilities which his
imagination had seen in it stayed about, to suggest new pictures of
trouble and possible danger for Augusta.
He fell asleep, heartily wishing that they had never seen this man,
whoever he was.
He awoke in the bright morning light, to find Augusta standing over
him, fully dressed, shaking him with one hand and with the other waving
a bit of paper accusingly at him.
"He's gone! He's gone, I tell you!" she was crying at Jimmie, as though
he had spirited the big man away in the dark.
Jimmie sat up like a jacknife.
"Is the family silver safe?" he inquired anxiously.
"Stop your nonsense and listen." Augusta gave him another excited
shake. "I tell you he's a fraud and a cheater. I said double prayers
for him last night, and he isn't any criminal at all! I could be angry
at him!"
Now at any other time Jimmie would have gleefully picked flaws in this
bit of Augusta's theology. Instead he took the paper quite humbly and
read:
"Dear Nice Folks, whoever you are:
"It was a shame of me to take you in like that. But I couldn't help
it. It was the suspicious way you looked at me." (Jimmie took this as
directed to himself alone.)
"I _am_ wanted. The wife wants me home to start the harvest. That was
in my mind when I said the thing first. And I kept it up because I
wanted to see what'd happen.
"But you will not be angry, I hope. This place is yours in welcome if
you care to stay. I'll be up to see you in the Fall.