Wherein Freckles Wins Honor and Finds a Footprint on the Trail
Round-eyed, Freckles watched the Bird Woman and the Angel drive away.
After they were from sight and he was safely hidden among the branches
of a small tree, he remembered that he neither had thanked them nor said
good-bye. Considering what they had been through, they never would come
again. His heart sank until he had palpitation in his wading-boots.
Stretching the length of the limb, he thought deeply, though he was not
thinking of Black Jack or Wessner. Would the Bird Woman and the Angel
come again? No other woman whom he ever had known would. But did they
resemble any other women he ever had known? He thought of the Bird
Woman's unruffled face and the Angel's revolver practice, and presently
he was not so sure that they would not return.
What were the people in the big world like? His knowledge was so very
limited. There had been people at the Home, who exchanged a stilted,
perfunctory kindness for their salaries. The visitors who called on
receiving days he had divided into three classes: the psalm-singing
kind, who came with a tear in the eye and hypocrisy in every feature
of their faces; the kind who dressed in silks and jewels, and handed to
those poor little mother-hungry souls worn toys that their children
no longer cared for, in exactly the same spirit in which they pitched
biscuits to the monkeys at the zoo, and for the same reason--to see how
they would take them and be amused by what they would do; and the third
class, whom he considered real people. They made him feel they cared
that he was there, and that they would have been glad to see him
elsewhere.
Now here was another class, that had all they needed of the world's best
and were engaged in doing work that counted. They had things worth while
to be proud of; and they had met him as a son and brother. With them he
could, for the only time in his life, forget the lost hand that every
day tortured him with a new pang. What kind of people were they and
where did they belong among the classes he knew? He failed to decide,
because he never had known others similar to them; but how he loved
them!
In the world where he was going soon, were the majority like them, or
were they of the hypocrite and bun-throwing classes?
He had forgotten the excitement of the morning and the passing of time
when distant voices aroused him, and he gently lifted his head. Nearer
and nearer they came, and as the heavy wagons rumbled down the east
trail he could hear them plainly. The gang were shouting themselves
hoarse for the Limberlost guard. Freckles did not feel that he deserved
it. He would have given much to be able to go to the men and explain,
but to McLean only could he tell his story.
At the sight of Freckles the men threw up their hats and cheered. McLean
shook hands with him warmly, but big Duncan gathered him into his arms
and hugged him as a bear and choked over a few words of praise. The gang
drove in and finished felling the tree. McLean was angry beyond measure
at this attempt on his property, for in their haste to fell the tree
the thieves had cut too high and wasted a foot and a half of valuable
timber.
When the last wagon rolled away, McLean sat on the stump and Freckles
told the story he was aching to tell. The Boss scarcely could believe
his senses. Also, he was much disappointed.
“I have been almost praying all the way over, Freckles,” he said, “that
you would have some evidence by which we could arrest those fellows and
get them out of our way, but this will never do. We can't mix up those
women in it. They have helped you save me the tree and my wager as well.
Going across the country as she does, the Bird Woman never could be
expected to testify against them.”
“No, indeed; nor the Angel, either, sir,” said Freckles.
“The Angel?” queried the astonished McLean.
The Boss listened in silence while Freckles told of the coming and
christening of the Angel.
“I know her father well,” said McLean at last, “and I have often seen
her. You are right; she is a beautiful young girl, and she appears to be
utterly free from the least particle of false pride or foolishness. I do
not understand why her father risks such a jewel in this place.”
“He's daring it because she is a jewel, sir,” said Freckles, eagerly.
“Why, she's trusting a rattlesnake to rattle before it strikes her, and
of course, she thinks she can trust mankind as well. The man isn't made
who wouldn't lay down the life of him for her. She doesn't need any
care. Her face and the pretty ways of her are all the protection she
would need in a band of howling savages.”
“Did you say she handled one of the revolvers?” asked McLean.
“She scared all the breath out of me body,” admitted Freckles. “Seems
that her father has taught her to shoot. The Bird Woman told her
distinctly to lie low and blaze away high, just to help scare them. The
spunky little thing followed them right out into the west road, spitting
lead like hail, and clipping all around the heads and heels of them; and
I'm damned, sir, if I believe she'd cared a rap if she'd hit. I never
saw much shooting, but if that wasn't the nearest to miss I ever want to
see! Scared the life near out of me body with the fear that she'd drop
one of them. As long as I'd no one to help me but a couple of women that
didn't dare be mixed up in it, all I could do was to let them get away.”
“Now, will they come back?” asked McLean.
“Of course!” said Freckles. “They're not going to be taking that. You
could stake your life on it, they'll be coming back. At least, Black
Jack will. Wessner may not have the pluck, unless he is half drunk. Then
he'd be a terror. And the next time--” Freckles hesitated.
“What?”
“It will be a question of who shoots first and straightest.”
“Then the only thing for me to do is to double the guard and bring the
gang here the first minute possible. As soon as I feel that we have the
rarest of the stuff out below, we will come. The fact is, in many cases,
until it is felled it's difficult to tell what a tree will prove to
be. It won't do to leave you here longer alone. Jack has been shooting
twenty years to your one, and it stands to reason that you are no match
for him. Who of the gang would you like best to have with you?”
“No one, sir,” said Freckles emphatically. “Next time is where I run.
I won't try to fight them alone. I'll just be getting wind of them, and
then make tracks for you. I'll need to come like lightning, and Duncan
has no extra horse, so I'm thinking you'd best get me one--or perhaps a
wheel would be better. I used to do extra work for the Home doctor, and
he would let me take his bicycle to ride around the place. And at times
the head nurse would loan me his for an hour. A wheel would cost less
and be faster than a horse, and would take less care. I believe, if you
are going to town soon, you had best pick up any kind of an old one
at some second-hand store, for if I'm ever called to use it in a hurry
there won't be the handlebars left after crossing the corduroy.”
“Yes,” said McLean; “and if you didn't have a first-class wheel, you
never could cross the corduroy on it at all.”
As they walked to the cabin, McLean insisted on another guard, but
Freckles was stubbornly set on fighting his battle alone. He made one
mental condition. If the Bird Woman was going to give up the Little
Chicken series, he would yield to the second guard, solely for the sake
of her work and the presence of the Angel in the Limberlost. He did not
propose to have a second man unless it were absolutely necessary, for
he had been alone so long that he loved the solitude, his chickens,
and flowers. The thought of having a stranger to all his ways come and
meddle with his arrangements, frighten his pets, pull his flowers,
and interrupt him when he wanted to study, so annoyed him that he was
blinded to his real need for help.
With McLean it was a case of letting his sober, better judgment be
overridden by the boy he was growing so to love that he could not endure
to oppose him, and to have Freckles keep his trust and win alone meant
more than any money the Boss might lose.
The following morning McLean brought the wheel, and Freckles took it to
the trail to test it. It was new, chainless, with as little as possible
to catch in hurried riding, and in every way the best of its kind.
Freckles went skimming around the trail on it on a preliminary trip
before he locked it in his case and started his minute examination of
his line on foot. He glanced around his room as he left it, and then
stood staring.
On the moss before his prettiest seat lay the Angel's hat. In the
excitement of yesterday all of them had forgotten it. He went and picked
it up, oh! so carefully, gazing at it with hungry eyes, but touching it
only to carry it to his case, where he hung it on the shining handlebar
of the new wheel and locked it among his treasures. Then he went to the
trail, with a new expression on his face and a strange throbbing in his
heart. He was not in the least afraid of anything that morning. He felt
he was the veriest Daniel, but all his lions seemed weak and harmless.
What Black Jack's next move would be he could not imagine, but that
there would be a move of some kind was certain. The big bully was not a
man to give up his purpose, or to have the hat swept from his head
with a bullet and bear it meekly. Moreover, Wessner would cling to his
revenge with a Dutchman's singleness of mind.
Freckles tried to think connectedly, but there were too many places on
the trail where the Angel's footprints were yet visible. She had stepped
in one mucky spot and left a sharp impression. The afternoon sun had
baked it hard, and the horses' hoofs had not obliterated any part of it,
as they had in so many places. Freckles stood fascinated, gazing at
it. He measured it lovingly with his eye. He would not have ventured a
caress on her hat any more than on her person, but this was different.
Surely a footprint on a trail might belong to anyone who found and
wanted it. He stooped under the wires and entered the swamp. With a
little searching, he found a big piece of thick bark loose on a log and
carefully peeling it, carried it out and covered the print so that the
first rain would not obliterate it.
When he reached his room, he tenderly laid the hat upon his bookshelf,
and to wear off his awkwardness, mounted his wheel and went spinning on
trail again. It was like flying, for the path was worn smooth with his
feet and baked hard with the sun almost all the way. When he came to the
bark, he veered far to one side and smiled at it in passing. Suddenly
he was off the wheel, kneeling beside it. He removed his hat, carefully
lifted the bark, and gazed lovingly at the imprint.
“I wonder what she was going to say of me voice,” he whispered. “She
never got it said, but from the face of her, I believe she was liking it
fairly well. Perhaps she was going to say that singing was the big thing
I was to be doing. That's what they all thought at the Home. Well, if
it is, I'll just shut me eyes, think of me little room, the face of her
watching, and the heart of her beating, and I'll raise them. Damn them,
if singing will do it, I'll raise them from the benches!”
With this dire threat, Freckles knelt, as at a wayside spring, and
deliberately laid his lips on the footprint. Then he arose, appearing as
if he had been drinking at the fountain of gladness.