THE STIFF KNEE
“Well, I found that bear,” said Young Dan Evans to Andy when he arrived
at the camp; and then he gave a full account of his experiences with the
Conley family.
“You done dead right!” exclaimed Andy Mace, at the conclusion of the
story. “You got brains and use ’em, I do believe; and that’s more’n can
be said about most folks nowadays. What size was this here Jim Conley?”
“Big. Over six foot high, I guess, and hefty—and no more sick-abed nor
you or me.”
“What would ye’ve done if he’d clum outer the bunk an’ lammed ye one?”
“I’d of lammed him two or three back—maybe four.”
“I reckon ye would. I was jist sich another at yer age, Young Dan—always
up an’ doin’, always ready to fight my own weight in minks or men, and
yet always a thinker an’ a bit of scholard, too.”
“But I don’t go round looking for fights, Mr. Mace. I’m peaceable enough
by nature.”
“Yes, in course. It’s the same with me. There never was a more peaceable
citizen on the Oxbow nor Andy Mace—but nobody had to tromp on the tails
o’ my snowshoes more’n twice to fetch me round with fists in both
hands.”
A week passed before the partners on Right Prong heard or saw anything
more of the Conleys. It was a busy week with them, for trails had to be
beaten out anew in the deep snow and a fresh supply of bait had to be
obtained for the traps; and, as if these tasks were not enough, Andy
shot a fat buck deer which had to be skinned and quartered and placed
out of harm’s way, and Young Dan cracked the frame of one of his
snowshoes. The partners were full of energy and determination, however.
They survived that strenuous week breathless but triumphant. They
obtained the required bait from the depths of a nameless pond which lay
four miles to the eastward of the camp. This was a big job in itself,
for the ice was nearly two feet thick on the pond, not to mention the
three feet of snow which topped the ice. They shovelled snow; then they
chopped and shovelled ice; and at last old Andy bored with a four-inch
bit until the clear water welled up into the icy trough from the brown
depths. He bored two holes; and then they baited their hooks with fat of
pork and each lowered a line into the unknown. They fished steadily for
three hours and by the end of that time were too nearly frozen to go on
with it. The captured trout froze stiff after a jump or two on the snow.
“Reckon it’s a reel chilly day,” remarked Andy, looking from the low
sun, which glinted as grey and cheerless as a flake of ice, to the
frozen fish. “Reckon we’d best quit and git home before we’re as stiff
an’ twisted as these here trout.”
He was right. If there had been a thermometer in the Right Prong country
it would have marked twenty-five degrees below zero just then. Young Dan
was agreeable; but he would have stood there and continued the motions
of fishing, slowly and more slowly until the numbness caught his heart,
if the old man had not suggested a move. When two good men go into the
woods together, and one of them is well past four score years of age and
the other has not yet completed his first score, the spur of competition
is bound to prod now and then. In this matter of endurance against the
cold the partners had silently and almost unconsciously competed. No
rivalry of youth and age had inspired them, but rather the rivalry of
two widely separated generations of youth; for old Andy Mace considered
himself as good a man as he had ever been and so a trifle better than
Young Dan, maybe, because of his birth and training in a period of the
world’s existence that had marked its very highest point of development.
He said nothing of all this to Young Dan, of course—even if he thought
it.
They gathered up their gear and scooped the frozen fish into a couple of
sacks. Not a word did they exchange until they were both on the warm
side of their own door; and even then they didn’t exchange many. An hour
later, however, when the “riz” biscuits, broiled venison steak, and the
coffee-pot were on the table, they talked “good and plenty.”
Woodsmen are not generally supposed to be talkative folk. If there is
any truth in this general supposition, then Young Dan and old Andy Mace
must be the two exceptions that prove it—if suppositions, like rules,
can be proved by exceptions. However that may be, these two woodsmen
spent every evening in conversation, crawling into their bunks at last
only because they couldn’t hear in their sleep. And their talk was not
all of the woods and the day’s work. Far from it. They had much more to
say concerning what they thought than what they knew; and so almost
every subject under the sun was dealt with. Even when Young Dan read
aloud, Andy capped every paragraph with a comment or an explanation, or
an objection of equal or greater length. Their library contained only
three small volumes of fiction, all from one entertaining pen—but under
their system of reading, three promised to be plenty, for one winter at
least. In spite of his interruptions, Andy Mace was a hungry listener,
and so his interest in the adventures and mental processes of Mr.
Sherlock Holmes soon became almost as keen as his partner’s. No one
could be more sharply intrigued by an artful combination of significant
words than that old trapper.
On the night of the day of the cold fishing, after the last fragment of
steak had been devoured, Young Dan opened one of the treasured books and
began to read aloud; and, at the same moment, Andy began to cut tobacco
for his pipe. Andy gave ear intently until the tobacco was shredded,
rolled, stuffed into the pipe and satisfactorily lighted. He blew three
large, slow clouds and settled back in his chair.
“I wisht we had that gent here on Right Prong with us,” he said. “He’d
stand it all right, too, I reckon, in a good coonskin coat. What d’ye
cal’late he’d of made o’ that thief in claws?”
Young Dan closed the book on a finger.
“I guess he would of known it wasn’t a bear right off,” he said. “I did.
I suspicioned it wasn’t, anyhow. I guess he would of known for sure,
right off; and maybe he wouldn’t of figgered it out the way I did,
neither—not by the molasses jug alone, perhaps.”
“How else could he figger it out? What else was there to figger on?”
“Plenty for him. I can think of some other things myself, now. There
were the claw-marks. I guess those alone would of been enough for Mr.
Holmes.”
“What about ’em? They were marks of a b’ar’s claws.”
“Yes—but he’s scientifical, Mr. Holmes is. He would of had a spyin’
glass handy in his pocket to look at the marks with, and right off he’d
of seen by the spread from claw to claw that they had been made by a
mighty big bear. He would study over that a few minutes, somethin’ like
this: A bear with paws as big as what these must of been must be an
uncommon big bear; and heavy—four or five hundred pounds in weight,
maybe, in the fall of the year; and so he would just naturally make
deeper tracks than these here; and a bear as big as what he must be to
own these paws and claws would be too darned big to get through that
little window without spreadin’ the side of the camp or bustin’ himself
or somethin’. So he would up and say, quick but quiet, ‘This thief is a
lamb in a wolf’s clothes’—or somethin’ like that. He would know it
wasn’t a bear, anyway. That’s how Mr. Holmes would of figgered it out, I
guess.”
Andy withdrew his pipe from his mouth and slowly straightened himself in
his chair.
“Sufferin’ cats!” he exclaimed. “It don’t sound altogether human comin’
like that from a young feller who ain’t been to school nowhere but down
to the Bend. Where’d ye get the trick of it from, Young Dan? Not from
yer Pa nor yer Ma, I’ll swear an Alfy Davy!”
“That was easy, workin’ it out after I knew, the way I did,” replied
Young Dan, modestly. “If I had worked it out that way before I
knew—well, that would of been pretty slick work. That would of been
scientifical.”
“If Gover’ment hears about it you’ll be one o’ these here boss policemen
some day,” said Andy.
“I guess not,” retorted Young Dan, with a slight curl of the lips that
was foreign to his character.
He already shared Sherlock Holmes’ opinion of the mental equipment of
that stalwart and imperturbable force.
He reopened the book and took up the story at the point of his partner’s
interruption. He read a paragraph, his voice skidding now and then on a
word of formidable proportions. He read a page, warming to his work and
tearing the big words to pieces without so much as a hitch in his
stride. Two pages—and still not a peep out of Andy Mace. He ceased
reading and looked up inquiringly, and beheld his aged partner slouched
in the chair and sunk deep in slumber, his shoulders hunched high, his
chin tucked in and his grey beard rising and falling peacefully on his
breast.
Young Dan was up as early as usual next morning. He lit the lantern and
then the fire in the stove; and it was not until then that he heard any
signs of life from his partner’s bunk.
“Sufferin’ cant-dogs!” exclaimed Andy. “Warm up the b’ar’s grease for
me, pardner. This here right leg o’ mine’s stiffer’n King Pharaoh’s
neck. Must of give it a twist yesterday.”
Young Dan complied with this request, cooked the breakfast and tucked
into it. He set out on the northward line at the first break of dawn,
with a sack over his shoulder containing a supply of the new bait and a
haunch of venison, leaving Andy Mace still rubbing that high-smelling
cure-all into his right knee and telling how it had been tender ever
since he had hurt it fifty years ago in an argument with a man from
Quebec.
It was a fine morning, and a clear finger of light in the east promised
a fine day. The air was still and not so perishing cold as it had been
the day before. Young Dan traveled fast. He found a mink in the first
trap and stowed it away in the sack without waiting to skin it. He
rebaited the trap with a frozen trout. The second and third traps were
exactly as he had last seen them; the fourth contained a red fox, which
he added to the collection in the sack; and the remaining traps were
undisturbed. He continued northward along the trail that led to the
Conley cabin.
Young Dan did not find Jim Conley at home, but Mrs. Conley and the
babies were there. He produced the haunch of deer-meat, for which the
woman thanked him heartily.
“I’m glad to see that Jim’s able to be up and out,” he said. “He must be
feeling better.”
“I reckon he’s some better,” she replied. “He lit out for the
settlements two days back, anyhow.”
“To fetch in some grub?”
“Maybe he’ll fetch in some grub.”
Young Dan’s eyes turned significantly to the floor at the edge of the
bunk beneath which he had discovered the store of “square-faces” during
his last visit. The woman observed the glance and sighed. Young Dan felt
embarrassed.
“I’m glad he has something to buy grub with,” he said.
“He’s got a few skins,” said the woman. “He went out an’ set some traps
first thing after the tongue-lashin’ ye give him.”
“He must be lucky, to have enough to carry out to the settlements after
a couple of days’ trapping,” said the youth, astonished.
Mrs. Conley smiled bitterly.
“Jim don’t wait to git a lot before he commences sellin’,” she said.
“It’s the way he’s built.”
“And he’s left you to attend to the traps?”
“Nope, he told me to let ’em be while he was gone. I don’t know nothin’
about traps, anyhow. I was born and riz in the settlements.”
“He might lose some good skins that way—have them et up on him; but it’s
his own business, I guess. Well, I must be getting home. If you need
anything, m’am, you know where to find my partner and me.”
Young Dan sat down and ate his lunch as soon as he got out of sight of
the cabin. He felt depressed; and the cold steak and frosty biscuits
didn’t cheer him.
“That’s a poor outfit,” he said. “I guess that Jim Conley’s no darned
good. I wonder where he got that gin—and if he’ll get any more? He won’t
buy much with the price of a few fox skins, that’s sure. He’s big, and
maybe he’s powerful—but I kind of feel that I’ll light right into him
next time I see him.”
He made the homeward journey of twelve miles without a stop. It was
close to three o’clock in the afternoon when he reached camp; and there,
to his astonishment, he found Andy Mace seated by the stove with his
right leg cocked up in a chair.
Andy looked ashamed of himself.
“I never knowed it to act so contrary before,” he said. “It’s still
stiffer’n a ramrod, an’ I’ve rubbed nigh all my b’ar’s grease into it;
an’ all the fault o’ that gum-heeled feller from Quebec I fit with over
on the Tobique in the winter o’ eighteen-seventy. It’s nigh enough to
rile a man’s temper, Young Dan.”
Young Dan was distressed.
“If it hurts you bad, just say the word and I’ll go clean out to Harlow
and fetch in a doctor,” he offered.
“No!” exclaimed Andy. “It ain’t my knee hurts me, but it’s layin’ down
on the job to-day, and maybe to-morrow, and leavin’ all the work to you.
That’s what riles me.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” the youth reassured him. “I am able and
willing, and you’ll be right as rain in a few days. Now I’ll do a mile
or two of the south line and be back in time to fry pancakes for
supper.”
He was as good as his word; and, later, his pancakes proved to be as
good as any his partner had ever mixed and fried. He told of his visit
to the Conley cabin, and the old man agreed with him that it would be a
real pleasure to hand Jim Conley just what he deserved. After supper,
Young Dan read a complete story, in irregular fragments, and his partner
talked a bookful.
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