the middle of June, or, as Twinkle-tail understood the matter, it was
the time when the snow water and the water from the spring rains had
already gone down to the Big River: Beaver Run was still a fresh,
rushing stream of water, but it was falling fast. Soon there would not
be enough water in it to make it safe for a trout as large as he. Then
he would have to stay down in the low, deep pond of Beaver River,
where the saw-dust came to bother him.
He was going up to lie all the morning in the shallow little pond at
the very head of Beaver Run, where the hot, sweet sun beat down and
drew the flies to the surface of the pond. He was very fond of flies
and the pond was his own. He had made it his own now through four
seasons, by his speed and his strong teeth. Even the big, greedy,
quarrelsome pike that bullied the river down below did not dispute
with him this sweet upper stretch of his own stream. No large fish
ever came up this way now, and he did not bother with the little ones.
He liked flies better.
His pond lay all clean and silvery and a little cool yet, for the sun
was not high enough to have heated it through: a beautiful breakfast
room at the bottom of the great bowl of green banks that ran away up
on every side to the rim of the high hills.
Twinkle-tail was rather early for breakfast. The sun had not yet begun
to draw the flies from their hiding places to buzz over the surface of
the water. As he shot into the centre of the pool only one fly was in
sight. A rather decrepit looking black fly was doddering about a
cat-tail stalk at the edge of the pond. One quick flirt of his body,
and Twinkle-tail slid out of the water and took the fly in his leap.
But that was no breakfast. He would have to settle down by the
cat-tails, in the shadows, and wait for the flies to come.
Twinkle-tail missed something from his pond this season. Always, in
other years, two people, a boy and a girl, had come and watched him as
he ate his breakfast. The girl had called him Twinkle-tail the very
first time they had seen him. But Twinkle-tail had no illusions. They
were not friends to him. He loved to lie in the shadow of the
cat-tails and watch them as they crept along the edge of the bank. But
he knew they came to catch him. When they were there the most tempting
flies seemed to appear. Some of those flies fell into the water,
others just skimmed the surface in the most aggravating and
challenging manner. But Twinkle-tail had always stayed in the
cat-tails and watched, and if the boy and girl came to his side of the
pond, then a lightning twinkle of his tail was all that told them that
he had scooted out of the pool and down into the stream. Once the girl
had trailed a piece of flashing red flannel across the water, and
Twinkle-tail could not resist. He leaped for it. A terrible hook
caught him in the side of the mouth! In his fury and terror he dove
and fought until he broke the hook. He had never forgotten that
lesson.
But he was forgetting a little this season. No one came to his pool.
He was growing big and fat, and a little careless.
As he lay there in the warming sand by the cat-tails, the biggest,
juiciest green bottle fly that Twinkle-tail had ever seen came
skimming down to the very line of the water. It circled once.
Twinkle-tail did not move. It circled twice, not an inch from the
water!
A single, sinuous flash of his whole body, and Twinkle-tail was out of
the water! He had the fly in his mouth.
Then the struggle began.
Ruth Lansing sprang up, pole in hand, from the shoulder of the bank
behind which she had been hiding.
The trout dove and started for the stream, the line ripping through
the water like a shot.
The girl ran, leaping from rock to rock, her strong, slender,
boy-like body giving and swaying cunningly to every tug of the fish.
He turned and shot swiftly back into the pool, throwing her off her
balance and down into the water. She rose wet and angry, clinging
grimly to the pole, and splashed her way to the other side of the
pond. She did not dare to stand and pull against him, for fear of
breaking the hook. She could only race around, giving him all the line
she could until he should tire a little.
Three times they fought around the circle of the pool, the taut line
singing like a wire in the wind. Ruth's hand was cut where she had
fallen on the rocks. She was splashed and muddy from head to foot. Her
breath came in great, gulping sobs. But she fought on.
Twice he dragged her a hundred yards down the Run, but she headed him
back each time to the pond where she could handle him better. She had
never before fought so big a fish all alone. Jeffrey or Daddy Tom had
always been with her. Now she found herself calling desperately under
her breath to Jeffrey to come to help her. She bit back the words and
took a new hold on the pole.
The trout was running blindly now from side to side of the pond. He
had lost his cunning. He would soon weaken. But Ruth knew that her
strength was nearly gone too. She must use her head quickly.
She gathered herself on the bank for one desperate effort. She must
catch him as he ran toward her and try to flick him out of the water.
It was her only chance. She might break the line or the pole and lose
him entirely, but she would try it.
Twinkle-tail came shooting through the water, directly at her. She
suddenly threw her strength on the pole. It bent nearly double but it
held. And the fish, adding his own blind rush to her strength, was
whipped clear out on to the grass. Dropping the pole, she dove
desperately at him where he fought on the very edge of the bank.
Finally she caught the line a few inches above his mouth, and her
prize was secure.
"It's you, Twinkle-tail," she panted, as she held him up for a good
look, "sure enough!"
She carried him back to a large stone and despatched him painlessly
with a blunt stick. Then she sat down to rest, for she was weak and
dizzy from her struggle.
Looking down at Twinkle-tail where he lay, she said aloud:
"I wish Jeffrey was here. He'll never believe it was you unless he
sees you."
"Yes, that's him all right," said a voice behind her. "I'd know him in
a thousand."
She sprang up and faced Jeffrey Whiting.
"Why, where did you come from? Your mother told me you wouldn't be
back till to-morrow."
"Well, I can go back again and stay till to-morrow if you want me to,"
said Jeffrey, smiling.
"Oh, Jeff, you know I'm glad to see you. I was awfully disappointed
when I got home and found that you were away up in the hills. How is
your fight going on? And look at Twinkle-tail," she hurried on a
little nervously, for Jeffrey had her hand and was drawing her
determinedly to him. She reached for the trout and held him up
strategically between them.
"Oh, _Fish_!" said Jeffrey discontentedly as he saw himself beaten by
her ruse.
The girl laughed provokingly up into his sullenly handsome face. Then
she seemed to relent, and with a friendly little tug at his arm led
him over to the edge of the pool and made him sit down.
"Now tell me," she commanded, "all about your battle with the railroad
people. Your mother told me some things, but I want it all, from
yourself."
But Jeffrey was still unappeased. He looked at her dress and shoes and
said with a show of meanness:
"Ruth, you didn't catch Twinkle-tail fair, on your line. You just
walked into the pond and got him in a corner and kicked him to death
brutally. I know you did. You're always cruel."
Ruth laughed, and showed him the jagged cut in her hand where she had
fallen on the rocks.
Instantly he was all interest and contrition. He must wash the hand
and dress it! But she made him sit where he was, while she knelt down
by the water and bathed the smarting hand and bound it with her
handkerchief.
"Now," she said, "tell me."
"Well," he began, when he saw that there was nothing to be gained by
delay, "the very night that the Bishop of Alden told me that they had
found iron in the hills here and that they were going to try to push
us all out of our homes, I started out to warn the people. I found I
wasn't the only man that the railroad had tried to buy. They had Rafe
Gadbeau, you know he's a kind of a political boss of the French around
French Village; and a man named Sayres over on Forked Lake.
"Gadbeau had no farm of his own to sell, but he'd been spending money
around free, and I knew the railroad must have given it to him
outright. I told him what I had found out, about the iron and what the
land would be worth if the farmers held on to it. But I might as well
have held my breath. He didn't care anything about the interests of
the people that had land. He was getting paid well for every option
that he could get. And he was going to get all he could. I will have
trouble with that man yet.
"The other man, Sayres, is a big land-owner, and a good man. They had
fooled him, just as that man Rogers I told you about fooled me. He had
started out in good faith to help the railroad get the properties over
on that side of the mountains, thinking it was the best thing for the
people to do to sell out at once. When I told him about their finding
iron, he saw that they had made a catspaw of him; and he was the
maddest man you ever saw.
"He is a big man over that way, and his word was worth ten of mine. He
went right out with me to warn every man who had a piece of land not
to sign anything.
"Three weeks ago Rogers, who is handling the whole business for the
railroad, came up here and had me arrested on charges of extortion and
conspiring to intimidate the land-owners. They took me down to
Lowville, but Judge Clemmons couldn't find anything in the charges. So
I was let go. But they are not through. They will find some way to get
me away from here yet."
"How does it stand now?" said Ruth thoughtfully. "Have they actually
started to build the railroad?"
"Oh, yes. You know they have the right of way to run the road through.
But they wouldn't build it, at least not for years yet, only that they
want to get this iron property opened up. Why, the road is to run from
Welden to French Village and there is not a single town on the whole
line! The road wouldn't have business enough to keep the rust off.
They're building the road just the same, so that shows that they
intend to get our property some way, no matter what we do. And I
suppose they will, somehow," he added sullenly. "They always do, I
guess."
"But the people," said Ruth, "can't you get them all to join and agree
to sell at a fair price? Wouldn't that be all right?"
"They don't want to buy. They won't buy at any fair price. They only
want to get options enough to show the Legislature and the Governor,
and then they will be granted eminent domain and they can have the
land condemned and can buy it at the price of wild land."
"Oh, yes; I remember now. That's what the Bishop said. Isn't it
strange," she went on slowly, "how he seems to come into everything we
do. How he saved my Daddy Tom's life that time at Fort Fisher. And how
he came here that night when Daddy was hurt. And how he picked us up
and turned us around and sent me off to convent. And now how he seems
to come into all this.
"Everybody calls him the Shepherd of the North," she went on. "I
wonder if he comes into the lives of _all_ the people that way. At the
convent everybody seems to think of him as belonging to them
personally. I resented it at first, because I thought I had more
reason to know him than anybody. But I found that everybody felt the
same way."
"He's just like the Catholic Church," said Jeffrey suddenly, and a
little sharply; "he comes into everything."
"Why, Jeffrey," said Ruth in surprise, "what do you know about the
Church?"
"I know," he answered. "I've read some. And I've had to deal a lot
with the French people up toward French Village. And I've talked with
their priest up there. You know you have to talk to the priest before
it's any use talking to them. That's the way with the Catholic Church.
It comes into everything. I don't like it."
He sat looking across the pool for a moment, while Ruth quietly
studied the stubborn, settling lines of his face. She saw that a few
months had made a big change in the boy and playmate that she had
known. He was no longer the bright-faced, clear-eyed boy. His face was
turning into a man's face. Sharp, jagged lines of temper and of
harshness were coming into it. It showed strength and doggedness and
will, along with some of the dour grimness of his fathers. She did not
dislike the change altogether. But it began to make her a little
timid. She was quick to see from it that there would be certain limits
beyond which she could not play with this new man that she found.
"It's all right to be religious," he went on argumentatively.
"Mother's religious. And Aunt Letty's just full of it. But it don't
interfere with their lives. It's all right to have a preacher for
marrying or dying or something like that; and to go to hear him if you
want to. But the Catholic Church comes right in to where those people
live. It tells them what to do and what to think about everything.
They don't dare speak without looking back to it to find out what they
must say. I don't like it."
"Why, Jeffrey, I'm a Catholic!"
"I _knew_ it!" he said stubbornly. "I knew it! I knew there was
something that had changed you. And I might have known it was that."
"That's funny!" said the girl, breaking in quickly. "When you came I
was just wondering to myself why it had not seemed to change me at
all. I think I was half disappointed with myself, to think that I had
gone through a wonderful experience and it had left me just the same
as I was before."
"But it has changed you," he persisted. "And it's going to change you
a lot more. I can see it. Please, Ruth," he said, suddenly softening,
"you won't let it change you? You won't let it make any difference,
with us, I mean?"
The girl looked soberly and steadily up into his face, and said:
"No, Jeffrey. It won't make any difference with us, in the way you
mean.
"So long as we are what we are," she said again after a pause, "we
will be just the same to each other. If it should make something
different out of me than what I am, then, of course, I would not be
the same to you. Or if you should change into something else, then you
would not be the same to me.
"It's too soon," she continued decisively. "Nothing is clear to me,
yet. I've just entered into a great, wonderful world of thought and
feeling that I never knew existed. Where it leads to, I do not know.
When I do know, Jeffrey dear, I'll tell you."
He looked up sharply at her as she rose to her feet, and he understood
that she had said the last word that was to be said. He saw something
in her face with which he did not dare to argue.
He got up saying:
"I have to be gone. I'm glad I found you here at the old place. I'll
be back to-night to help you eat the trout."
"Where are you going?"
"Over to Wilbur's Fork. There's a couple of men over there that are
shaky. I've had to keep after them or they'd be listening to Rafe
Gadbeau and letting their land go."
"But," Ruth exclaimed, "now when they know, can't they see what is to
their own interest! Are they blind?"
"I know," said Jeffrey dully. "But you know how it is with those
people. Their land is hard to work. It is poor land. They have to
scratch and scrape for a little money. They don't see many dollars
together from one year's end to the other. Even a little money, ready,
green money, shaken in their faces looks awful big to them."
"Good luck, then, Jeff," she said cheerily; "and get back early if you
can."
"Sure," he said easily as he picked up his hat.
"And, say, Ruth." He turned back quietly to her. "If--if I shouldn't
be back to-night, or to-morrow; why, watch Rafe Gadbeau. Will you? I
wouldn't say anything to mother. And Uncle Catty, well, he's not very
sharp sometimes. Will you?"
"Of course I will. But be careful, Jeff, please."
"Oh, sure," he sang back, as he walked quickly around the edge of the
pond and slipped into the alder bushes through which ran the trail
that went up over the ridge to the Wilbur Fork country on the other
side.
Ruth stood watching him as he pushed sturdily up the opposite slope,
his grey felt hat and wide shoulders showing above the undergrowth.
This boy was a different being from the Jeffrey that she had left when
she went down to the convent five months before. She could see it in
his walk, in the way he shouldered the bushes aside just as she had
seen it in his face and his talk. He was fighting with a power that
he had found to be stronger and bigger than himself. He was not
discouraged. He had no thought of giving up. But the airy edge of his
boyish confidence in himself was gone. He had become grim and
thoughtful and determined. He had settled down to a long, dogged
struggle.
He had asked her to watch Rafe Gadbeau. How much did he mean? Why
should he have said this to her? Would it not have been better to have
warned some of the men that were associated with him in his fight? And
what was there to be feared? She laughed at the idea of physical fear
in connection with Jeffrey. Why, nothing ever happened in the hills,
anyway. Crimes of violence were never heard of. It was true, the
lumber jacks were rough when they came down with the log drives in the
spring. But they only fought among themselves. And they did not stop
in the hills. They hurried on down to the towns where they could spend
their money.
What had Jeffrey to fear?
Yet, he must have meant a good deal. He would not have spoken to her
unless he had good reason to think that something might happen to
him.
Withal, Ruth was not deceived. She knew the temper of the hills. The
men were easy-going. They were slow of speech. They were generally
ruled by their more energetic women. But they or their fathers had
all been fighting men, like her own father. And they were rooted in
the soil of the hills. Any man or any power that attempted to drive
them from the land which their hands had cleared and made into homes,
where the bones of their fathers and mothers lay, would have to reckon
with them as bitter, stubborn fighting men.
Jeffrey Whiting was just coming to the bare top of the ridge. In
another moment he would drop down the other side out of sight. She
wondered whether he would turn and wave to her; or had he forgotten
that she would surely be standing where he had left her?
He had not forgotten. He turned and waved briskly to her. Then
he stepped down quickly out of sight. His act was brusque and
businesslike. It showed that he remembered. He could hardly have
seen her standing there in all the green by the pond. He had just
known that she was there. But it showed something else, too. He had
plunged down over the edge of the hill upon a business with which
his mind was filled, to the exclusion, almost, of her and of
everything else.
The girl did not feel any of the little pique or resentment that might
have been very natural. It was so that she would wish him to go about
the business that was going to be so serious for all of them. But it
gave her a new and startling flash of insight into what was coming.
She had always thought of her hills as the place where peace lived.
Out in the great crowded market places of the world she knew men
fought each other for money. But why do that in the hills? There was a
little for all. And a man could only get as much as his own labour and
good judgment would make for him out of the land.
Now she saw that it was not a matter of hills or of cities. Wherever,
in the hills or the city or in the farthest desert, there was wealth
or the hope of wealth, there greedy men with power would surely come
to look for it and take it. That was why men fought. Wealth, even the
scent of wealth whetted their appetites and drew them on to battle.
A cloud passed between her and the morning sun. She felt the
premonition of tragedy and suffering lowering down like a storm on her
hills. How foolishly she had thought that all life and all the great,
seething business of life was to be done down in the towns and the
cities. Here was life now, with its pressure and its ugly passions,
pushing right into the very hills.
She shivered as she picked up her prize of the morning and her fishing
tackle and started slowly up the hill toward her home.
Her farm had been rented to Norman Apgarth with the understanding that
Ruth was to spend the summer there in her own home. The rent was
enough to give Ruth what little money she needed for clothes and to
pay her modest expenses at the convent at Athens. So her life was
arranged for her at least up to the time when she should have finished
school.
It seemed very strange to come home and find her home in the hands of
strangers. It was odd to be a sort of guest in the house that she had
ruled and managed from almost the time that she was a baby. It would
be very hard to keep from telling Mrs. Apgarth where things belonged
and how other things should be done. It would be hard to stand by and
see others driving the horses that had never known a hand but hers and
Daddy Tom's. Still she had been very glad to come home. It was her
place. It held all the memories and all the things that connected her
with her own people. She wanted to be able always to come back to it
and call it her own. Looking down over it from the crest of the hill,
at the little clump of trees under which lay her Daddy Tom and her
mother, at the little house that had seen their love and in which she
had been born, she could understand the fierceness with which men
would fight to hold the farms and homes which were threatened.
Until now she had hardly realised that those men whom people vaguely
called "the railroad" would want to take _her_ home and farm away from
her. Now it came suddenly home to her and she felt a swelling rage of
indignation rising in her throat. She hurried down the hill to the
house, as though she saw it already threatened.
She deftly threw her fishpole up on to the roof of the wood shed and
went around to the front of the house. There she found Mrs. Apgarth
weeding in what had been Ruth's own flower beds.
"Why, what a how-dye-do you did give us, Miss Ruth!" the woman
exclaimed at sight of her. "I called you _three_ times, and when you
didn't answer I went to your door; and there you were gone! I told
Norman Apgarth somebody must have took you off in the night."
"Oh, no," said Ruth. "No danger. I'm used to getting up early, you
see. So I just took some cakes--Didn't you miss them?--and some milk
and slipped out without waking any one. I wanted to catch this fish.
Jeffrey Whiting and I tried to catch him for four years. And I had to
do it myself this morning."
"So young Whiting's gone away, eh?"
"Why, no," said Ruth quickly. "He went over to Wilbur's Fork about
half an hour ago. Who said he'd gone away?"
"Oh, nobody," said the woman hastily; "it's only what they was sayin'
up at French Village yesterday."
"What were they saying?" Ruth demanded.
"Oh, just talk, I suppose," Mrs. Apgarth evaded. "Still, I dunno's I
blame him. I guess if I got as much money as they say he's got out of
it, I'd skedaddle, too."
Ruth stepped over and caught the woman sharply by the arm.
"What did they say? Tell me, please. Mrs. Apgarth saw that the girl
was trembling with excitement and anxiety. She saw that she herself
had said too much, or too little. She could not stop at that. She must
tell everything now.
"Well," she began, "they say he's just fooled the people up over their
eyes."
"How?" said Ruth impatiently. "Tell me."
"He's been agoin' round holdin' the people back and gettin' them to
swear that they won't sign a paper or sell a bit of land to the
railroad. Now it turns out he was just keepin' the rest of the people
back till he could get a good big lot of money from the railroad for
his own farm and for this one of yours. Oh, yes, they say he's sold
this farm and his own and five other ones that he'd got hold of, for
four times what they're worth. And that gives the railroad enough to
work on, so the rest of the people'll just have to sell for what they
can get. He's gone now; skipped out."
"But he has _not_ gone!" Ruth snapped out indignantly. "I saw him only
half an hour ago."
"Oh, well, of course," said the woman knowingly, "you'd know more
about it than anybody else. It's all talk, I suppose."
Ruth blushed and dropped the fish forgotten on the grass. She said
shortly:
"I'm going to spend the day with Mrs. Whiting."
"Oh, then, don't say a word to her about this. She's an awful good
neighbour. I wouldn't for the world have her think that I--"
"Why, it doesn't matter at all," said Ruth, as she turned toward the
road. "You only said what people were saying."
"But I wouldn't for anything," the woman called nervously after her,
"have her think that-- And what'll I do with this?"
"Eat it," said Ruth over her shoulder. The prize for which she had
fought so desperately in the early morning meant nothing to her now.