leg mendin' into the Lord kens what-like shape? Would I be lettin' ony
ither drive the horses my feyther entrustit to my lone? Would I be
dependin' on Mr. Pinnager for keep, and me idle? Man, I'd eat the
horses' heads off that way; at home they'd be profit to my feyther. So
it's me and them that starts at gray the morn's morn."
"Alone!" exclaimed Pinnager.
"Just that, man. What for no?"
"You're light-headed, Davie. A lad with his leg broke can't drive three
days."
"Maybe yes and maybe no. I'm for it, onyhow."
"It may snow, it may----"
"Aye, or rain, or thaw, or hail; the Lord's no in the habit o' makin'
weather suit ony but himsel'. But I'm gawn; the cost of a man wi' me
would eat the wages ye're owing my feyther."
"I'll lose his team, anyhow," said Pinnager, "and me needing it bad. A
driver with you could bring back the horses."
"Nay, my feyther will trust his beasts to nane but himsel' or his sons.
But I'll have yer case in mind, Pinnager; it's a sore needcessity you're
in. I'll ask my feyther to send back the team, and another to the tail
of it; it's like that Tam and Neil will be home by now. And I'll spread
word how ye're needin' teams, Pinnager; it's like your neighbors will
send ye in sax or eight spans."
"Man, that's a grand notion, Davie! But you can't go alone; it's clean
impossible."
"I'm gawn, Pinnager."
"You can't turn out in seven feet of snow when you meet loading. You
can't water or feed your horses. There's forty miles the second day,
and never a stopping-place; your horses can't stand it."
"I'm wae for the beasts, Pinnager; but they'll have no force but to
travel dry and hungry if that's set for them."
"You're bound to go?"
"Div you tak' me for an idjit to be talkin' and no meanin' it? Off wi'
ye, man! The leg's no exactly a comfort when I'm talkin'."
"Why, Davie, it must be hurting you terrible!" Pinnager had almost
forgotten the broken leg, such was Davie's composure.
"It's no exactly a comfort, I said. Get you gone, Pinnager; your men
may be idlin'. Get you gone, and send in Jock Scott, if he's man enough
to handle my leg. I'm wearyin' just now for my ain company."
As Davie had made his programme, so it stood. His will was inflexible
to protests. Next morning at dawn they set him on a hay-bed in his low,
unboxed sleigh. A bag of oats supported his back; his unhurt leg was
braced against a piece of plank spiked down. Jock Scott had pulled the
broken bones into what he thought their place, and tied that leg up in
splints of cedar.
The sleigh was enclosed by stakes, four on each side, all tied together
by stout rope. The stake at Davie's right hand was shortened, that he
might hang his reins there. His water-bucket was tied to another stake,
and his bag of provisions to a third. He was warm in a coon-skin coat,
and four pairs of blankets under or over him.
At the last moment Pinnager protested: "I must send a man to drive. It
sha'n't cost you a cent, Davie."
"Thank you, kindly, Pinnager," said Davie gravely. "I'll tell that to
your credit at the settlement. But ye're needin' all your help, and I'd
take shame to worsen your chances. My feyther's horses need no drivin'
but my word."
Indeed, they would "gee," "haw," or "whoa" like oxen, and loved his
voice. Round-barrelled, deep-breathed, hardy, sure-footed, active,
gentle, enduring, brave, and used to the exigencies of "bush roads,"
they would take him through safely if horses' wit could.
Davie had uttered never a groan after those involuntary ones forced from
him when the log, driving his leg against a tree, had made him almost
unconscious. But the pain-sweat stood beaded on his face during the
torture of carrying him to the sleigh. Not a sound from his lips,
though! They could guess his sufferings from naught but his hard
breathing through the nose, that horrible sweat, and the iron set of his
jaw. After they had placed him, the duller agony that had kept him
awake all night returned; he smiled grimly, and said, "That's a
comfort."
He had eaten and drunk heartily; he seemed strong still; but what if his
sleigh should turn over at some sidling place of the rude, lonely, and
hilly forest road?
As Davie chirruped to his horses and was off, the men gave him a cheer;
then Pinnager and all went away to labor fit for mighty men, and the
swinging of axes and the crashing of huge pines and the tumbling of logs
from rollways left them fancy-free to wonder how Davie could ever brace
himself to save his broken leg at the cahots.
The terrible _cahots_--plunges in snow-roads! But for them Davie would
have suffered little more than in a shanty bunk. The track was mostly
two smooth ruts separated by a ridge so high and hard that the
sleigh-bottom often slid on it. Horses less sure-footed would have
staggered much, and bitten crossly at one another while trotting in
those deep, narrow ruts, but Davie's horses kept their "jog" amiably,
tossing their heads with glee to be traveling toward home.
The clink of trace-chains, the clack of harness, the glide of runners on
the hard, dry snow, the snorting of the frosty-nosed team, the long
whirring of startled grouse--Davie heard only these sounds, and heard
them dreamily in the long, smooth flights between cahots.
Overhead the pine tops were a dark canopy with little fields of clear
blue seen through the rifts of green; on the forest floor small firs
bent under rounding weights of snow which often slid off as if moved by
the stir of partridge wings; the fine tracery of hemlocks stood clean;
and birches snuggled in snow that mingled with their curling rags.
Sometimes a breeze eddied downward in the aisles, and then all the
undergrowth was a silent commotion of snow, shaken and falling. Davie's
eyes noted all things unconsciously; in spite of his pain he felt the
enchantment of the winter woods until--another _cahot!_ he called his
team to walk.
Never was one _cahot_ without many in succession; he gripped his stake
hard at each, braced his sound leg, and held on, feeling like to die
with the horrible thrust of the broken one forward and then back; yet
always his will ordered his desperate senses.
Eleven o'clock! Davie drew up before the half-breed Peter Whiteduck's
midwood stopping-place, and briefly explained his situation.
"Give my horses a feed," he went on. "There's oats in this bag. I'll no
be moved mysel'. Maybe you'll fetch me a tin of tea; I've got my own
provisions." So he ate and drank in the zero weather.
"You'll took lil' drink of whiskey," said Peter, with commiseration, as
Davie was starting away.
"I don't use it."
"You'll got for need some 'fore you'll see de Widow Green place. Dass
twenty-tree mile."
"I will need it, then," said Davie, and was away.
Evening had closed in when the bunch of teamsters awaiting supper at
Widow Green's rude inn heard sleigh-bells, and soon a shout outside:
"Come out, some one!"
That was an insolence in the teamsters' code. Come out, indeed! The
Widow Green, bustling about with fried pork, felt outraged. To be
called out!--of her own house!--like a dog!--not she!
"Come out here, somebody!" Davie shouted again.
"G' out and break his head one of you," said fighting Moses Frost. "To
be shoutin' like a lord!" Moses was too great a personage to go out and
wreak vengeance on an unknown.
Narcisse Larocque went--to thrash anybody would be glory for Narcisse,
and he felt sure that Moses would not, in these circumstances, let
anybody thrash him.'
"What for you shout lak' dat? Call mans hout, hey?" said Narcisse.
"I'll got good mind for broke your head, me!"
"Hi, there, men!" Davie ignored Narcisse as he saw figures through the
open door. "Some white man come out. My leg's broke."
[Illustration: MY LEG IS BROKE]
Oh, then the up-jumping of big men! Moses, striding forth, ruthlessly
shoved Narcisse, who lay and cowered with legs up as a dog trying to
placate an angry master. Then Moses carried Davie in as gently as if
the young stalwart had been a girl baby, and laid him on the widow's one
spare bed.
That night Davie slept soundly for four hours, and woke to consciousness
that his leg was greatly swollen. He made no moan, but lay in the
darkness listening to the heavy breathing of the teamsters on the floor.
They could do nothing for him; why should he awaken them? As for
pitying himself, Davie could do nothing so fruitless. He fell to plans
for getting teams in to Pinnager, for this young Scot's practical mind
was horrified at the thought that the man should fail financially when
ten horses might give him a fine profit for his winter's work.
Davie was away at dawn, every slight jolt giving his swollen leg pain
almost unendurable, as if edges of living bone were griding together and
also tearing cavities in the living flesh; but he must endure it, and
well too, for the teamsters had warned him he must meet "strings of
loadin'" this day.
The rule of the long one-tracked road into the wilderness is, of course,
that empty outgoing sleighs shall turn out for incoming laden ones.
Turn out into seven feet of snow! Davie trusted that incoming teamsters
would handle his floundering horses, and he set his mind to plan how
they might save him from tumbling about on his turned-out sleigh.
About nine o'clock, on a winding road, he called, "Whoa!" and his bays
stood. A sleigh piled with baled hay confronted him thirty yards
distant. Four others followed closely; the load drawn by the sixth team
was hidden by the woodland curve. No teamsters were visible; they must
be walking behind the procession; and Davie wasted no strength in
shouting. On came the laden teams, till the steam of the leaders
mingled with the clouds blown by his bays. At that halt angry
teamsters, yelling, ran forward and sprang, one by one, up on their
loads, the last to grasp reins being the leading driver.
"Turn out, you fool!" he shouted. Then to his comrades behind, "There's
a blamed idyit don't know enough to turn out for loading!"
Davie said nothing. It was not till one angry man was at his horses'
heads and two more about to tumble his sleigh aside that he spoke:
"My leg is broke."
"Gah! G'way! A man driving with his leg broke! You're lying! Come,
get out and tramp down snow for your horses! It's your back ought to be
broke--stoppin' loadin'!"
"My leg is broke," Davie calmly insisted.
"You mean it?"
Davie threw off his blankets.
"Begor, it is broke!" "And him drivin' himself!" "It's a terror!"
"Great spunk entirely!" Then the teamsters began planning to clear the
way.
That was soon settled by Davie's directions: "Tramp down the crust for
my horses; onhitch them; lift my sleigh out on the crust; pass on; then
set me back on the road."
Half an hour was consumed by the operation--thrice repeated before
twelve o'clock. Fortunately Davie came on the last "string" of teams
halted for lunch by the edge of a lake. The teamsters fed and watered
his horses, gave him hot tea, and with great admiration saw him start
for an afternoon drive of twenty-two miles.
"You'll not likely meet any teams," they said. "The last of the
'loading' that's like to come in soon is with ourselves."
How Davie got down the hills, up the hills, across the rivers and over
the lakes of that terrible afternoon he could never rightly tell.
"I'm thinkin' I was light-heided," he said afterward. "The notion was
in me somehow that the Lord was lookin' to me to save Pinnager's bits of
children. I'd waken out of it at the _cahots_--there was mair than
enough. On the smooth my head would be strange-like, and I mind but the
hinder end of my horses till the moon was high and me stoppit by
McGraw's."
During the night at McGraw's his head was cleared by some hours of sound
sleep, and next morning he insisted on traveling, though snow was
falling heavily.
"My feyther's place is no more than a bittock ayont twenty-eight miles,"
he said. "I'll make it by three of the clock, if the Lord's willin',
and get the doctor's hands on me. It's my leg I'm thinkin' of savin'.
And mind ye, McGraw, you've promised me to send in your team to
Pinnager."
Perhaps people who have never risen out of bitter poverty will not
understand Davie's keen anxiety about Pinnager and Pinnager's children;
but the McAndrews and Pinnagers and all their neighbors of "the Scotch
settlement" had won up by the tenacious labor and thrift of many years.
Davie remembered well how, in his early boyhood, he had often craved
more food and covering. Pinnager and his family should not be thrown
back into the gulf of poverty if Davie McAndrews' will could save them.
This day his road lay through a country thinly settled, but he could see
few cabins through the driving storm. The flagging horses trotted
steadily, as if aware that the road would become worse the longer they
were on it, but about ten o'clock they inclined to stop where Davie
could dimly see a long house and a shed with a team and sleigh standing
in it. Drunken yells told him this must be Black Donald Donaldson's
notorious tavern; so he chirruped his horses onward.
Ten minutes later yells and sleigh-bells were following him at a furious
pace. Davie turned head and shouted; still the drunken men shrieked and
came on. He looked for a place to turn out--none! He dared not stop
his horses lest the gallopers, now close behind him, should be over him
and his low sleigh. Now his team broke into a run at the noises, but
the fresh horses behind sped faster. The men were hidden from Davie by
their crazed horses. He could not rise to appeal; he could not turn to
daunt the horses with his whip; their front-hoofs, rising high, were
soon within twenty feet of him. Did his horses slacken, the others
would be on top of him, kicking and tumbling.
The _cahots_ were numerous; his yells for a halt became so much like
screams of agony that he took shame of them, shut his mouth firmly, and
knew not what to do. Then suddenly his horses swerved into the
cross-road to the Scotch settlement, while the drunkards galloped away
on the main road, still lashing and yelling. Davie does not know to this
day who the men were.
Five hours later David McAndrews, the elder, kept at home by the
snowstorm, heard bells in his lane, and looked curiously out of the
sitting-room window.
"Losh, Janet!" he said, most deliberately. "I wasna expeckin' Davie;
here he's back wi' the bays."
He did not hurry out to meet his fourth son, for he is a man who hates
the appearance of haste; but his wife did, and came rushing back through
the kitchen.
"It's Davie himsel'! He's back wi' his leg broke! He's come a' the way
by his lone!"
"Hoot-toot, woman! Ye're daft!"
"I'm no daft; come and see yoursel'. Wae's me, my Davie's like to die!
Me daft, indeed! Ye'll need to send Neil straight awa' to the village
for Doctor Aberdeen."
And so dour Davie's long drive was past. While his brother carried him
in, his will was occupied with the torture, but he had scarcely been
laid on his bed when he said, very respectfully--but faintly--to his
father:
"You'll be sendin' Neil oot for the doctor, sir? Aye; then I'd be
thankfu' if you'd give Aleck leave to tak' the grays and warn the
settlement that Pinnager's needin' teams sorely. He's like to make or
break; if he gets sax or eight spans in time he's a made man."
That was enough for the men of the Scotch settlement. Pinnager got all
the help he needed; and yet he is far from as rich to-day as Davie
McAndrews, the great Brazeau River lumberman, who walks a little lame of
his left leg.
*PETHERICK'S PERIL*
Each story of the Shelton Cotton Factory is fifteen feet between floors;
there are seven such over the basement, and this rises six feet above
the ground. The brick walls narrow to eight inches as they ascend, and
form a parapet rising above the roof. One of the time-keepers of the
factory, Jack Hardy, a young man about my own age, often runs along the
brick-work, the practice giving him a singular delight that has seemed
to increase with his proficiency in it. Having been a clerk in the
works from the beginning, I have frequently used the parapet for a
footpath, and although there was a sheer fall of one hundred feet to the
ground, have done it with ease and without dizziness. Occasionally
Hardy and I have run races, on the opposite walls, an exercise in which
he invariably beats me, because I become timid with increase of pace.
Hopelessly distanced last Wednesday, while the men were off at noon, I
gave up midway, and looking down, observed the upturned face of an old
man gazing at me with parted lips, wide eyes, and an expression of
horror so startling that I involuntarily stepped down to the
bricklayer's platform inside. I then saw that the apparently frightened
spectator was Mr. Petherick, who had been for some weeks paymaster and
factotum for the contractors.
"What's the matter, Petherick?" I called down. He made no answer, but
walking off rapidly, disappeared round the mill. Curious about his
demeanor, I descended, and after some little seeking found him smoking
alone.
"You quite frightened me just now, Petherick," said I. "Did you think I
was a ghost?"
"Not just that," he replied.
"Did you expect me to fall, then?"
"Not just that, either," said he. The old man was clearly disinclined
to talk, and apparently much agitated. I began to joke him about his
lugubrious expression, when the one o'clock bell rang, and he shuffled
off hastily to another quarter.
Though I puzzled awhile over the incident, it soon passed so entirely
from my mind that I was surprised when, passing Petherick in the
afternoon, and intending to go aloft, he said, as I went by:
"Don't do it again, Mr. Frazer!"
"What?" I stopped.
"That!" he retorted.
"Oh! You mean running on the wall," said I.
"I mean going on it at all!" he exclaimed. His earnestness was so marked
that I conceived a strong interest in its cause.
"I'll make a bargain with you, Mr. Petherick. If you tell me why you
advise me, I'll give the thing up!"
"Done!" said he. "Come to my cottage this evening, and I'll tell you a
strange adventure of my own, though perhaps you'll only laugh that it's
the reason why it sickens me to see you fooling up there."
Petherick was ready to talk when Jack and I sat down on his doorsteps
that evening, and immediately launched into the following narrative:
I was born and grew to manhood near the highest cliffs of the Polvydd
coast. Millions of sea-fowls make their nests along the face of those
wave-worn precipices. My companions and I used to get much excitement,
and sometimes a good deal of pocket money, by taking their eggs. One of
us, placing his feet in a loop at the end of a rope and taking a good
grip with his hands, would be lowered by the others to the nest. When
he had his basket full they'd haul him up and another would go down.
Well, one afternoon I thus went dangling off. They paid out about a
hundred feet of rope before I touched the ledge and let go.
You must know that most of the cliffs along that coast overhang the
water. At many points one could drop six hundred feet into the sea, and
then be forty or fifty feet from the base of the rock he left. The
coast is scooped under by the waves, and in some places the cliff wall
is as though it had been eaten away by seas once running in on higher
levels. There will be an overhanging coping, then--some hundred feet
down--a ledge sticking out farther than that of the top; under that
ledge all will be scooped away. In some places there are three or four
such ledges, each projecting farther than those above.
These ledges used to fall away occasionally, as they do yet, I am told,
for the ocean is gradually devouring that coast. Where they did not
project farther than the upper coping, the egg-gatherer would swing like
a pendulum on the rope, and get on the rock, if not too far in, then put
a rock on the loop to hold it till his return. When a ledge did project
so that one could drop straight on it, he hauled down some slack and
left the rope hanging. Did the wind never blow it off? Seldom, and
never out of reach.
Well, the ledge I reached was like this. It was some ten feet wide; it
stuck out maybe six feet farther than the cliff top; the rock wall went
up pretty near perpendicular, till near the coping at the ground; but
below the ledge, the cliff's face was so scooped away that the sea, five
hundred feet below, ran in under it nigh fifty feet.
As I went down, thousands of birds rose from the jagged places of the
precipice, circling around me with harsh screams. Soon touching the
ledge, I stepped from the loop, and drawing down a little slack, walked
off briskly. For fully a quarter of a mile the ledge ran along the
cliff's face almost as level and even in width as that sidewalk. I
remember fancying that it sloped outward more than usual, but instantly
dismissed the notion, though Gaffer Pentreath, the oldest man in that
countryside, used to tell us that we should not get the use of that
ledge always. It had been as steady in our time as in his
grandfather's, and we only laughed at his prophecies. Yet the place of
an old filled fissure was marked by a line of grass, by tufts of weeds
and small bushes, stretching almost as far as the ledge itself, and
within a foot or so of the cliff's face.
Eggs were not so many as usual, and I went a long piece from my rope
before turning back. Then I noticed the very strange conduct of the
hosts of sea-fowls below. Usually there were hundreds, but now there
were millions on the wing, and instead of darting forth in playful
motions, they seemed to be wildly excited, screaming shrilly, rushing
out as in terror, and returning in masses as though to alight, only to
wheel in dread and keep the air in vast clouds.
The weather was beautiful, the sea like glass. At no great distance were
two large brigs and, nearer, a small yacht lay becalmed, heaving on the
long billows. I could look down her cabin stairway almost, and it
seemed scarcely more than a long leap to her deck.
Puzzled by the singular conduct of the sea-birds, I soon stopped and set
my back against the cliff, to rest while watching them. The day was
deadly still and very warm.
I remember taking off my cap and wiping the sweat from my face and
forehead with my sleeve. While doing this, I looked down involuntarily
to the fissure at my feet. Instantly my blood almost froze with horror!
There was a distinct crack between the inner edge of the fissure and the
hard-packed, root-threaded soil with which it was filled! Forcibly I
pressed back, and in a flash looked along the ledge. The fissure was
widening under my eyes, the rock before me seemed sinking outward, and
with a shudder and a groan and roar, the whole long platform fell
crashing to the sea below! I stood on a margin of rock scarce a foot
wide, at my back a perpendicular cliff, and, five hundred feet below,
the ocean, now almost hidden by the vast concourse of wheeling and
affrighted birds.
Can you believe that my first sensation was one of relief? I stood
safe! Even a feeling of interest held me for some moments. Almost
coolly I observed a long and mighty wave roll out from beneath. It went
forth with a high, curling crest--a solid wall of water! It struck the
yacht stern on, plunged down on her deck, smashed through her swell of
sail, and swept her out of sight forever.
Not till then did my thoughts dwell entirely on my own position; not
till then did I comprehend its hopelessness! Now my eyes closed
convulsively, to shut out the abyss down which my glance had fallen;
shuddering, I pressed hard against the solid wall at my back; an
appalling cold slowly crept through me. My reason struggled against a
wild desire to leap; all the demons of despair whispered me to make an
instant end. In imagination I _had_ leaped! I felt the swooning
helplessness of failing and the cold, upward rush of air!
Still I pressed hard back against the wall of rock, and though nearly
faint from terror, never forgot for an instant the death at my feet, nor
the utter danger of the slightest motion. How long this weakness lasted
I know not; I only know that the unspeakable horror of that first period
has come to me in waking dreams many and many a day since; that I have
long nights of that deadly fear; that to think of the past is to stand
again on that narrow foothold; and to look around on the earth is often
to cry out with joy that it widens away from my feet.