One day Nathan was gathering ashes from the heaps where the log piles
had been burned and storing them in a rude shed. Close by this stood the
empty leach-tubs awaiting filling and the busy days and nights when the
potash-making should begin. It was hard, unpleasant work, irritating to
skin, eyes, and temper. It was natural a boy should linger a little as
Nathan did, when he emptied a basket, and quickly retreated with held
breath out of the dusty cloud. He looked longingly on the shining
channel of the creek, and wished he might follow it to the lake and fish
in the cool shadows of the shore. He wished that Job would chance to
come through the woods, but Job lately rarely came near them, for he was
vexed with Ruth for mating with this stranger, and the new master gave
no welcome to any of the friends of the old master. His hands were busy
as his thoughts, when he was startled by his stepfather's voice close
behind him.
"You lazy whelp, what you putterin' 'bout? You spend half your time a
gawpin. You git them ashes housed afore noon or I'll give ye a skinnin',
and I'll settle an old score at the same time," and Toombs switched a
blue beech rod he held in his big hand. After seeing the boy hurry
nervously to this impossible task, he went back to his chopping.
The shadows crept steadily toward the north till they marked noontime,
and still one gray ash heap confronted Nathan. As he stood with a full
basket of ashes poised on the edge of the ash bin, Toombs appeared, with
his axe on his shoulder and the beech in his hand. "You know what I told
you, and Silas Toombs doesn't go back on his words; no, sir."
"I couldn't do it. I tried, but I couldn't get 'em all done!"
Silas strode toward him in a fury, when Nathan hurled the basket of
ashes full at his head, and dodging behind the shed was in rapid flight
toward the woods, when his assailant emerged from the choking, blinding
cloud, sputtering out mingled oaths and ashes. In a moment he caught the
line of flight and followed in swift pursuit. The boy's nimble feet
widened the distance between them, but he was at the start almost
exhausted with his severe work, so that when he reached the woods his
only hope lay in hiding.
Silas, entering the woods, could neither see nor hear his intended
victim. Listening between spasms of rushing and raging, he heard a
slight rustling among the branches of a great hemlock that reared its
huge, russet-gray trunk close beside him. Looking up, he saw a pair of
dusty legs dangling twenty feet above him.
"Come down, you little devil, or I'll shoot you."
"I won't," said Nathan, half surprised at his own daring; "you can't
shoot with an axe."
"I'm glad you made me think on't. Then come down or I'll chop you down!"
As an earnest of his threat he drove his axe to the eye into the boll of
the tree.
The boy only climbed the higher, and disappeared among the dark foliage
and thick, quivering rays of branches. Parleying no more, Silas began
chopping so vigorously that the great flakes of chips flew abroad upon
the forest floor in a continuous shower, and soon paved it all about him
with white blotches. When the trunk was cut to the middle, he shouted up
another summons to surrender, but got no answer. Then his quick, strong
strokes began to fall on the other side, steadily biting their way
toward the centre, till the huge, ancient pillar of living wood began to
tremble on its sapped foundation. Standing away from it, he peered up
among the whorls of gray branches and broad shelves of leaves, but they
disclosed nothing.
"Hello! Come down! Don't be a fool! An' I won't lick you. The tree's
comin' an' it'll kill you." Still no answer nor sound, save the solemn
whisper of the leaves, came down from the lofty branches. "You're a
plucky one, but down you come!"
In a sudden blaze of passion at being thus scorned, he drove his axe
deep into the tree's heart. A puff of wind stirred the topmost boughs. A
shiver ran through every branch and twig. Fibre after fibre cracked and
parted. The trunk tremulously swayed from its steadfast base. The
sighing branches clung to the unstable air. A tall, lithe birch, that
had long leaned to their embrace, sprang from it as in a flutter of
fear, and then, with a slowly accelerating sweep, the ancient pillar,
with all its long upheld burden of boughs and perennial greenery, went
through its fellows to the last sullen boom of its downfall. Toombs
breathlessly watched and listened for something besides the shortening
vibration of the branches, some sound other than the swish of relieved
entanglement, but no sound or motion succeeded them.
"Nathan, Nathan," he called again and again.
He ran along the trunk looking among the branches. He felt under the
densest tangles, then cleared them away with quick but careful axe
strokes, dreading, in every moment of search, that the next would reveal
the crushed and mangled form of the boy. Not till the shadows of night
thickened the shadows of the woods did he quit his fruitless search. He
knew the boy was dead, and, if found, what then? Well, for the present a
plausible lie would serve him well enough.
"Your boy has run off, Mis' Toombs. You needn't worry. He'll git starved
out 'fore long and sneak back. And he'll work all the better when he
does come. Boys has got to have their tantrums an' git over 'em." This
device served so well to quiet any graver apprehensions that Ruth
entertained, he the more insisted on it. "Like's not he's over to the
Fort. They'll make him stan' round, I tell ye."
He intended in the morning to renew his search, but when it came he
dared not go near that fallen tree, the dumb witness and concealer of
his crime. When, from afar, he saw the crows wheeling above the spot, or
when at night he heard from that direction the wolf's long howl, he
shook with fear, lest they had discovered his secret and would in some
way reveal it.