Lost Farm Camp

SWICKEY SHOOTS THE BEAR

LOST FARM CAMP

BY

HARRY HERBERT KNIBBS

Author of “Overland Red”

ILLUSTRATED BY HAROLD JAMES CUE

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1912,

BY HARRY HERBERT KNIBBS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

TO GRETCHEN

Over a height-of-land the trail

Wanders down to an inland sea

Where never a keel nor a mirrored sail

Has ruffled its broad tranquillity,

Save a golden shadow that fires the blue

When I drift across in my birch canoe....

CONTENTS

1. [Swickey Shoots a Bear]
2. [Lost Farm Folk]
3. [Much Ado about Beelzebub]
4. [The Compact]
5. [A Midnight Adventure]
6. [Tramworth]
7. [The Book and the “Specs”]
8. [Smoke Finds Employment]
9. [Jim Cameron’s Idea]
10. [Barney Axel’s Exodus]
11. [That Green Stuff]
12. [“Us as don’t know Nothin’”]
13. [David’s “Real Good-Bye”]
14. [The Flight of Smoke]
15. [Boston]
16. [The Man in the Street]
17. [News from Lost Farm]
18. [A Consultation]
19. [Piracy]
20. [Home for Christmas]
21. [The Traps]
22. [“Red” Smeaton’s Love Affair]
23. [A Confession]
24. [Rivals]
25. [On the Drive]
26. [David’s Return]
27. [“I Want Dave”]
28. [Complications]
29. [Smoke’s Last Stand]
30. [Just Fun]
31. [The Bluff]
32. [Hoss Avery’s Tribute]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Swickey shoots the Bear]

[“Where be they?” she whispered]

[“Here’s your game,” he said hoarsely]

[“I didn’t know, Swickey—I thought—there was someone else”]

CHAPTER I—SWICKEY SHOOTS A BEAR

Old man Avery hurried from the woods toward his camp, evidently excited. His daughter Swickey stood watching the black kitten Beelzebub play a clever but rather one-sided game with a half-dead field-mouse. As Avery saw the girl, he raised both hands above his head in a comical gesture of imprecation.

“Swickey, thet bug-eatin’ ole pork-thief’s been at the butter ag’in!”

“Why, Pop, thet’s the second time he’s done it!”

“Yes, an’ he scraped all the butter he could outen it, an’ upset the crock likewise. Swickey, we’ve got to git that b’ar or take the butter outen the spring-hole.”

The girl’s brown eyes dilated. “Why don’t you trap ’im, Pop?”

“Law ag’in’ trappin’ b’ars in August.”

“Law ag’in’ shootin’ deer in August, too, ain’t they?”

“Thet’s diff’runt. We’ve got to have fresh meat.”

“Ain’t b’ar meat?” she asked ironically.

“Reckon ’tis.”

“Then, why ain’t you a-shootin’ of him?”

The old lumberman rubbed his hand across his eyes, or rather his eye, for the other was nothing more than a puckered scar, and his broad shoulders drooped sheepishly. Then he laughed, flinging his hand out as though it contained an unpleasant thought which he tossed away.

“Gol-bling it, Swickey, seems to me as lately every time I drawed a bead on a deer, they was three front sights on the gun, and as many as three deer where they oughter been one. ’Sides,” he continued, “I ain’t ketched sight of him so fur. Now, mebby if you seen him you could shoot—”

Swickey grabbed the astonished Beelzebub to her breast and did a wild and exceedingly primitive dance before the cabin door.

“Be-el-zebub!” she cried, “Be-el-zebub! he’s a-goin’ to leave me shoot a b’ar—me! I ain’t shot nothin’ but deer so fur and he’s shot more ’n a million b’ars, ain’t you, Pop?”

“Wa-al, mebby a hun’red.”

“Is thet more ’n a million, Pop?”

The smile faded from Avery’s face. Huge, gray-bearded, pensive, he stood for a moment, as inscrutable as the front of a midnight forest.

Swickey eyed him with awe, but Swickey at fourteen could not be suppressed long.

“Pop, one of your buttins is busted.”

Her father slid his hand down his suspender strap and wrinkled the loose leather end round his thumb.

“How many’s a hun’red, Pop?”

Avery spoke more slowly than usual. “You git the cigar-box where be my ca’tridges.”

“Be I goin’ to shoot now?” she exclaimed, as she dropped the kitten and skipped into the cabin.

“Got to see him fust,” he said, as she returned with the cigar-box and his glasses.

“Here they be, Pop, and here’s your ‘specs.’” Avery adjusted his spectacles, carried the box of cartridges to the chopping-log and sat down. Beelzebub, who had recovered his now defunct field-mouse, tried to make himself believe it was still alive by tossing it up vigorously and catching it with a curved and graceful paw.

“You count ’em, Swickey, as I hand ’em to you.”

“One.”

“One,” she replied hurriedly.

“Two.”

“Two,” she repeated briskly.

“Three.”

“Thr-ee.” She turned the shells over in her hand slowly.

“Four.”

“Four’s ’nough to shoot a b’ar, ain’t it, Pop?”

“Five,” continued Avery, disregarding her question.

Swickey counted on her fingers. “One he guv me; two he guv me; then he guv me ’nother. Them’s two and them’s two and thet’s four, and this one makes five—is thet the name fur it?”

“Yes, five,” he replied.

“Yes, five,” replied Swickey. “Ain’t five ’nough?”

The old man paused in his task and ran his blunt fingers through the mass of glittering shells that sparkled in the box. The glint of the cartridges dazzled him for a moment. He closed his eyes and saw a great gray horse standing in the snow beneath the pines, blood trickling from a wounded forward shoulder, and then a huddled shape lying beneath the horse. Presently Nanette, Swickey’s mother, seemed to be speaking to him from that Somewhere away off over the tree-tops. “Take care of her, Bud,” the voice seemed to say, as it trailed off in the hum of a noonday locust overhead. The counting of the shells continued. Painfully they mounted to the grand total of ten, when Swickey jumped to her feet, scattering the cartridges in the grass.

“I don’t want to shoot no million b’ars or no hun’red to oncet.”

There were tears of anger and chagrin in her voice. She had tried to learn. The lessons usually ended that way. Rebellion on Swickey’s part and gentle reproof from her father.

“Don’t git mad, Swickey. I didn’t calc’late to hurt you,” said the old man, as he stooped and picked up the cartridges.

He had often tried to teach her what he knew of “book larnin’,” but his efforts were piteously unsuccessful. She was bright enough, but the traps, the river, her garden-patch, the kitten, and everything connected with their lonely life at Lost Farm had an interest far above such vague and troublesome things as reading and writing.

Once, after a perspiring half-hour of endeavor on her father’s part and a disinterested fidgeting on hers, she had said, “Say, Pop, I ain’t never goin’ away from you, be I?”

To which he had replied, “No, Swickey, not if you want to stay.”

“Then, ding it, Pop, ain’t I good ’nough fur you jest as I be, ’thout larnin’?”

This was an argument he found difficult to answer. Still, he felt he was not doing as her mother would have wished, for she often seemed to speak to him in the soft patois of the French-Canadian, when he was alone, by the river or on the hills.

As he sat gazing across the clearing he thought he saw something move in the distance. He scowled quizzically over his spectacles. Then he drew his daughter to him and whispered, “See thar, gal! You git the rifle.”

She glided to the cabin noiselessly and returned lugging the old .45 Winchester. Avery pointed toward a lumbering black patch near the river.

“He’s too fur,” she whispered.

“You snick down through the bresh back of the camp. Don’t you shoot less’n you kin see his ear plain.”

The girl stooped and glided behind the cabin, to reappear for a moment at the edge of the wood bordering the clearing. Then her figure melted into the shadows of the low fir trees. Avery sat tensely watching the river-edge.

Swickey had often rested the heavy barrel of the old rifle on a stump or low branch, and blazed away at some unsuspecting deer feeding near the spring in the early morning or at dusk, with her father crouching behind her; but now she was practically alone, and although she knew that bruin would vanish at the first suspicion of her presence, she trembled at the thought that he might seek cover in the very clump of undergrowth in which she was concealed. She peered between the leafy branches. There he was, sitting up and scraping the over-ripe berries from the bushes clumsily. She raised the rifle and then lowered it. It was too heavy to hold steadily, and there was no available branch or log upon which to rest it. A few yards ahead of her was a moss-topped pine stump. Shoving the rifle along the ground she wriggled toward the stump and sighed her relief when she peeped over its bleached roots and saw the bear again. He was sitting up as before, but his head was moving slowly from side to side and his little eyes were shifting uneasily. She squirmed down behind the rifle, hugging it close as her father had taught her. The front sight glistened an inch below the short black ear. She drew a long breath and wrapping two fingers round the trigger, pulled steadily.

With the r-r-r-ri-p-p, boom! of the Winchester, and as the echoes chattered and grumbled away among the hills, the bear lunged forward with a prolonged whoo-owoow, got up, stumbled over a log, and turning a disjointed somersault, lay still.

The old man ran toward the spot. “Don’t tetch him!” he screamed.

From the fringe of brush behind the bear came Swickey, rifle in hand. Disregarding her father she deliberately poked bruin in the ribs with the gun-muzzle. His head rolled loosely to one side. She gave a shrill yell of triumph that rang through the quiet afternoon, startling the drowsy birds to a sudden riotous clamoring.

Avery, panting and sweating, ran to his daughter and clasped her in his arms. “Good fur you! You’re my gal! Hit him plump in the ear.” And he turned the carcass over, inspecting it with a critical eye.

“Goin’ on five year, I reckon. A he one, too. Fur’s no good; howcome it were a bing good shot for a gal.”

“Don’t care if the fur ain’t no good, he’s bigger nor you and me put t’gither, ain’t he, Pop?”

“Wal, not more ’n four times,” said Avery, as he reached for the short, thin-bladed skinning-knife in his belt and began to deftly work the hide off the animal. Swickey, used to helping him at all times, held a corner of the hide here and a paw there, while the keen blade slipped through the fat already forming under the bear’s glossy black coat. Silently the old man worked at cutting up the carcass.

“Godfrey!” The knife had slipped and bit deep into his hand. “Why, Pop! Looks as if you done it a-pu’pose. I was watchin’ you.”

“It’s the specs. They don’t work right somehow.”

The girl ran to the cabin and returned with a strip of cloth with which she bound up the cut.

“Thar, pop. It ain’t hurtin’ you, be it?”

“N-o-o.”

“We kin bile some ile outen him,” said Swickey, as with a practical eye she estimated the results.

“Three gallon, mebby?”

“How much does thet make in money?”

“’Bout a dollar and a half.”

“Say, Pop!” She hesitated.

“Wa-al?”

“Kin I have the money for the ile?”

Her father paused, wiped his forehead with a greasy hand, and nodded toward the pocket containing his pipe and tobacco. She filled the pipe and lighted it for him.

“Say, Pop, I hear somebody singin’.”

“Wha—Jumpin’ Gooseflesh! If I ain’t clean forgot they was fifteen of them lumber-jacks comin’ fur supper. Ya-as, thar they be down along shore. Swickey, you skin fur the house and dig into the flour bar’l—quick! We’ll be wantin’ three bake-sheets. I’ll bring some of the meat.”

CHAPTER II—LOST FARM FOLK

Lost Farm tract, with its small clearing, was situated in the northern timber lands, at the foot of Lost Lake. Below lay the gorge through which the river plunged and thundered, its diapason sounding a low monotone over the three cabins on the hillside, its harsher notes muffled by the intervening trees.

When Hoss Avery first came there, bringing his little girl whom he had fondly nicknamed “Swickey,” he climbed the narrow trail along the river, glanced at the camp, swung his pack from his shoulders, filled his pipe, and sitting on a log drew Swickey down beside him and talked to her, asking her her opinion of some things which she understood and a great many things which she did not, to all of which she made her habitual reply of “Yes, Pop.”

That was when Swickey, ten years old and proudly conscious of a new black-and-red checkered gingham dress, had unwittingly decided a momentous question.

“You like this here place, Swickey?” her father had asked.

“Yes, Pop,” and she snuggled closer in his arm.

“Think you and me can run the shebang—feed them lumber-jacks goin’ in and comin’ out, fall and spring?”

“Yes, Pop.”

“’Course you’ll do the cookin’, bein’ my leetle woman, won’t you?” And the big woodsman chuckled.

“Yes, Pop,” she replied seriously.

“And you won’t git lonesome when the snow comes and you can’t play outside and ketch butterflies and sech things in the grass? They ain’t no wimmen-folks up here and no leetle gals to play with. Jest me and you and the trees and the river. Hear it singin’ now, Swickey! Bet you don’t know what it’s sayin’.”

“Yes, Pop.” But Swickey eyed her father a mite timidly as she twisted her dress round her fist. She hoped he would not ask her what the river was “really-truly, cross-your-heart-or-die, sayin’,” but she had imagination.

“What be it sayin’, Swickey?”

She rose to the occasion pluckily, albeit hesitating at first. “Why it’s—it’s—it’s sayin’, ‘father, father, father,’—jest slow like thet. Then it gets to goin’ faster and faster and says, ‘Hello, Swickey! Hello, Pop! thet you?’—jest like thet. Then it goes a-growlin’ ’long and says, ‘Better stay fur a lo-o-ng time ’cause it’s nice and big and—and—’ and I’m hungry fur supper,” she added. “Ain’t thet what it says, Pop?”

Avery pushed his hat over his eyes and scratched the back of his head.

“Suthin’ like thet. Yes, I reckon it says, ‘Better stay,’ and she says better stay, howcome I don’t jest know—”

“Who is she, Pop?”

“Your ma, Swickey. She talks to me like you hear’n’ the river talkin’ sometimes.”

“She ain’t never talkin’ to me—reckon I be too leetle, ain’t I, Pop?”

“Ya-a-s. But when you git growed up, mebby she’ll talk to ye, Swickey. And if she do, you mind what she’s a-tellin’ you, won’t you, leetle gal?”

“Yes, Pop.” And she looked up at her father appealingly. “But ain’t I never goin’ to see her in my new dress, mebby?” And she smoothed the gingham over her knees with a true feminine hand and a childish consciousness of having on her “good clothes.”

“If God-A’mighty’s willin’, Swickey, we’ll both on us see her some day.”

“Who’s he, Pop? Is he bigger’n you be?”

“Ya-a-s,” he replied gently. “He’s bigger nor your Pop; but why was you askin’ thet?”

“’Cause Jim Cameron, what drives the team, says you be the biggest man that ever come into these here woods.” She paused for breath. “And he said, he did, ‘thet even if you was a old man they warn’t no man he thunk could ever lick you.’” She drew another long breath of anticipation and gazed at her father admiringly. “And mebby you could make God-A’mighty giv my ma back to you.”

“Huh! Jim Cameron said I was a old man, hey? Wal, I reckon I be—reckon I be. But I reckon likewise thet me and you kin git along somehow.” He began to count on his fingers. “Now thar’s the feedin’ of the crews goin’ in to Nine-Fifteen, and feedin’ the strays comin’ out, and the Comp’ny settles the bills. Then thar’s the trappin’, and the snowshoes and buckskin and axe-handles. Oh, I reckon we kin git along. Then thar’s the dinnimite when the drive comes through—”

“What’s dinnimite, Pop?”

Avery ceased his calculating abruptly. He coughed and cleared his throat.

“Wal, Swickey, it’s suthin’ what makes a noise suthin’ like thunder, mebby, and tears holes in things and is mighty pow’ful—actin’ unexpected at times—” He paused for further illustrations, but Swickey had grasped her idea of “dinnimite” from his large free gestures. It was something bigger and stronger than her father.

“Is dinnimite suthin’ like—like God-A’ mighty?” she asked in a timid voice.

“Ya-a-s, Swickey, it are—sometimes—”

So Swickey and her father came to Lost Farm. The river had said “stay,” and according to Swickey’s interpretation had repeated it. They both heard it, the old giant-powder deacon of the lumber company, and his “gal.”

Woodsmen new to the territory had often misjudged him on account of his genial expression and indolent manner, but they soon came to know him for a man of his hands (he bared an arm like the rugged bole of a beech) and a man of his word, and his word was often tipped with caustic wit that burned the conceit of those who foolishly invited his wrath. Yet he would “stake” an outgoing woodsman whose pay-check was inadequate to see him home, and his door was always open to a hungry man, whether he had money or not. He liked “folks,” but he liked them where they belonged, and according to his theory few of them belonged in the woods.

“The woods,” he used to say, “gets the best of most folks. Sets ’em to drinkin’ or talkin’ to ’emselves and then they go crazy. A man’s got to have bottom to live up here. Got to have suthin’ inside of him ’ceptin’ grub and guts—and I ain’t referrin’ to licker nohow—or eddication. When a feller gits to feelin’ as like he was a section of the woods hisself, and wa’n’t lookin’ at a show and knowin’ all the while he was lookin’ at a show; when he kin see the whole works to onct ’thout seein’ things like them funny lights in the sky mornin’s and evenin’s, and misses ’em wuss than his vittles when he be whar they ain’t, then he belongs in the bresh.”

Swickey used to delight in hearing her father hold forth, sometimes to a lone woodsman going out, sometimes to Jim Cameron, the teamster at the “Knoll,” and often to her own wee brown self as she sat close to the big stove in the winter, chin on knees, watching the fleecy masses of snow climb slowly up the cabin windows.

Four summers and four long winters they had lived at Lost Farm, happy in each other’s company and contented with their isolation.

There was but one real difficulty. Swickey’s needlecraft extended little farther than the sewing on of “buttins,” and the mending of tears, and she did need longer skirts. She had all but out-grown those her father had brought from Tramworth (the lumber town down river) last spring, and she had noticed little Jessie Cameron when at the Knoll recently. Jessie, with the critical eye of twelve, had stared hard at Swickey’s sturdy legs, and then at her own new blue frock. Swickey had returned the stare in full and a little over, replying with that juvenile grimace so instinctive to childhood and so disconcertingly unanswerable.

The advent of the bear, and Swickey’s hand in his downfall, offered an opportunity she did not neglect. She had asked her father if he would buy the oil for her before he got the money for it from Jim Cameron. Avery, busy with clearing-up after the men who had arrived that afternoon, said he “reckoned” he could.

“I don’t calc’late to know what’s got into ye. No use in calc’latin’ ’bout wimmen-folks, but I’ll give you the dollar and a half. Mebby you’re goin’ to buy your Pop a new dress-suit, mebby?”

“What’s a dress-suit, Pop?”

“Wal,” he replied, “I ain’t never climb into one, but from what I seen of ’em, it’s a most a’mighty uncumf’table contrapshun, hollered out in front and split up the back so they ain’t nothin’ left but the belly-band and the pants. Makes me feel foolish like to look at em, and I don’t calc’late they’d be jest the best kind of clothes fer trappin’ and huntin’, so I reckon I don’t need any jest now.”

“Huh!” exclaimed Swickey, “I reckon you’re all right jest as you be. Folks don’t look at your legs and grin.”

Avery surveyed himself from the waist down and then looked wonderingly at his daughter. Suddenly his eye twinkled and he slapped his palm on his thigh.

“Wa-al, by the great squealin’ moo-cow, if you ain’t—”

But Swickey vanished through the doorway into the summer night.

CHAPTER III—MUCH ADO ABOUT BEELZEBUB

Fourteen of the fifteen men, who arrived at Avery’s camp that afternoon, came into the woods because they had to. The fifteenth, David Ross, came because he wanted to. Ever since he could read he had dreamed of going into the woods and living with the lumbermen and trappers. His aunt and only living relative, Elizabeth Ross, had discouraged him from leaving the many opportunities made possible by her generosity. She had adopted the boy when his father died, and she had provided for him liberally. When he came of age the modest income which his father’s estate provided was transferred from her care, as a trustee, to him. Then she had offered him his choice of professions, with the understanding that her considerable fortune was to be his at her death. She had hoped to have him with her indefinitely, but his determination to see more of the woods than his summer vacations allowed finally resolved itself into action. He told her one evening that he had “signed up” with the Great Western Lumber Company.

Protests, supplications, arguments were of no avail. He had listened quietly and even smilingly as his aunt pointed out what seemed to her to be the absurdities of the plan. Even a suggested tour of the Continent failed to move him. Finally she made a last appeal.

“If your income isn’t sufficient, Davy, I’ll—”

He interrupted her with a gesture. “I’ve always had enough money,” he replied. “It isn’t that.”

“You’re just like your father, David,” she said. “I suppose I shall have to let you go, but remember there is some one else who will miss you.”

“Miss Bascomb has assured me that we can never agree, on—on certain things, so there is really nothing to keep me here,—except you,” he added in a gentler tone, as he saw the pained look on her kindly old face. “And you just said you would let me go.”

“Would have to let you go, Davy.”

“Well, it’s all the same, isn’t it, Aunt Bess?”

She smiled tearfully at his boyishness. “It seems to be,” she replied. “I am sorry about Bessie—”

The following morning he had appeared at an employment office where “Fisty” Harrigan of the Great Western had “taken him on” as a likely hand, influenced by his level gaze and direct manner. “Fisty” and David Ross promised to become good friends until, during their stay at the last hotel en route to the lumber camp, Harrigan had suggested “a little game wid th’ b’ys,” wherein the “b’ys” were to be relieved of their surplus change.

“They jest t’row it away anyhow,” he continued, as David’s friendly chat changed to a frigid silence. “T’ought you was a sport,” said Harrigan, with an attempt at jocularity.

“That’s just why I don’t play poker with that kind,” replied David, gesturing contemptuously toward the mellow fourteen strung in loose-jointed attitudes along the hotel bar. “I like sport, but I like it straight from the shoulder.”

“You do, hey?” snarled Harrigan, drawing back a clenched fist. Ross looked him full in the eye, calm and unafraid. Fisty’s arm dropped to his side. He tried a new tack. “I was only tryin’ you out, kid, and you’re all right, all right,” he said with oily familiarity.

“Sorry I can’t say the same for you, Harrigan,” replied David. “But I’m going through to the camps. That’s what I came in for. If I don’t go with this crew, I’ll go with another.”

“Forget it and come and have a drink,” said Fisty, trying to hide his anger beneath an assumption of hospitality. He determined to be even with Ross when he had him in camp and practically at his mercy. David declined both propositions and Harrigan moved away muttering.

So it happened that when they arrived at Lost Farm Camp, the last stopping-place until they reached the winter operations of the Company at Nine-Fifteen, Fisty and David were on anything but friendly terms. David’s taciturn aloofness irritated Harrigan, who was not used to having men he hired cross his suggestions or disdain his companionship. When they arose in the morning to Avery’s “Whoo—Halloo” for breakfast, Harrigan was in an unusually sour mood and David’s cheerful “good-morning” aggravated him.

The men felt that there was something wrong between the “boss” and the “green guy,” as they termed David, and breakfast progressed silently. A straw precipitated the impending quarrel.

The kitten Beelzebub, prowling round the table and rubbing against the men’s legs, jumped playfully to Harrigan’s shoulder. Harrigan reached back for him, but the kitten clung to his perch, digging in manfully to hang on. The men laughed uproariously. Fisty, enraged, grabbed the astonished kitten and flung it against the wall. “What’n hell kind of a dump is this—” he began; but Swickey’s rush for her pet and the wail she gave as Beelzebub, limp and silent, refused to move, interrupted him.

Avery turned from the stove and strode toward Harrigan, undoing his long white cook’s apron as he came, but Ross was on his feet and in front of the Irishman in a bound.

“You whelp!” he said, shaking his fist under Harrigan’s nose.

The men arose, dropping knives and forks in their amazement.

Fisty sat dazed for a moment; then his face grew purple.

“You little skunk, I’ll kill you fur this!”

Avery interfered. “If thar’s goin’ to be any killin’ did, promisc’us-like, I reckon it’ll be did out thar,” he said quietly, pointing toward the doorway. “I ain’t calc’latin’ to have things mussed up in here, fur I tend to my own house-cleanin’, understand?”

Ross, who anticipated a “free-for-all,” stood with a chair swung halfway to his shoulder. At Avery’s word, however, he dropped it.

“Sorry, Avery, but I’m not used to that kind of thing,” he said, pointing to Harrigan.

“Like ’nough, like ’nough—I hain’t nuther,” replied Avery conciliatingly. “But don’t you git your dander up any wuss than it be, fur I reckon you got your work cut out keepin’ yourself persentable fur a spell.” He drew Ross to one side. “Fisty ain’t called ‘Fisty’ fur nothin’, but I’ll see to the rest of ’em.”

Harrigan, cursing volubly, went outside, followed by the men. Avery paused to offer a word of advice to Ross.

“He’s a drinkin’ man, and you ain’t, I take it. Wal, lay fur his wind,” he whispered. “Never mind his face. Let him think he’s got you all bruk up ’n’ then let him have it in the stummick, but watch out he don’t use his boots on you.”

Harrigan, blazing with rage, flung his coat from him as Ross came up. The men drew back, whispering as Ross took off his coat, folded it and handed it to Avery. The young man’s cool deliberation impressed them.

Harrigan rushed at Ross, who dropped quickly to one knee as the Irishman’s flail-like swing whistled over his head. Before Harrigan could recover his poise, Ross shot up and drove a clean, straight blow to Harrigan’s stomach. The Irishman grunted and one of the men laughed. He drew back and came on again, both arms going. Ross circled his opponent, avoiding the slow, heavy blows easily.

“Damn you!” panted Harrigan, “stand up and take your dose—”

Ross lashed a quick stinging fist to the other’s face, and jumped back as Harrigan, head down, swung a blow that would have annihilated an ox, had it landed, but David leaped back, and as Harrigan staggered from the force of his own blow, he leaped in again. There was a flash and a thud.

The Irishman wiped the blood from his lips, and shaking his head, charged at Ross as though he would bear him down by sheer weight. Contrary to the expectations of the excited woodsmen, Ross, stooping a little, ran at Harrigan and they met with a sickening crash of blows that made the onlookers groan. Ross staggered away from his opponent, his left arm hanging nervelessly at his side. As Harrigan recovered breath and lunged at him again, Ross circled away rubbing his shoulder.

Harrigan’s swollen lips grinned hideously. “Now, you pup—”

He swung his right arm, and as he did so Avery shouted, “Watch out fur his boots!”

David’s apparently useless left arm shot down as Harrigan drew up his knee and drove his boot at the other’s abdomen. Ross caught Harrigan’s ankle and jerked it toward him. The Irishman crashed to the ground and lay still.

With a deliberation that held the men breathless, Ross strode to the fallen man and stood over him. Harrigan got to his knees.

“Come on, get up!” said Ross.

Harrigan, looking at the white face and gleaming eyes above him, realized that his prestige as a “scrapper” was gone. He thrust out his hand and pushed Ross from him, staggering to his feet. As the trout leaps, so David’s fist shot up and smashed to Harrigan’s chin. The Irishman staggered, his arms groping aimlessly.

“Get him! Get him!” shouted Avery.

Ross took one step forward and swung a blow to Harrigan’s stomach. With the groan of a wounded bull, the Irishman wilted to a gasping bulk of twitching arms and legs.

For a moment the men stood spellbound. Fisty Harrigan, the bulldog of the Great Western, had been whipped by a “green guy”—a city man. They moved toward the prostrate Fisty, looking at him curiously. Ross walked to the chopping-log in the dooryard, and sat down.

“Thought he bruk your arm,” said Avery, coming toward him.

“Never touched it,” replied Ross. “Much obliged for the pointer. He nearly had me, though, that time when we mixed it up.”

One of the men brought water and threw it on Harrigan, who finally got to his feet. Ross jumped from the log and ran to him.

“All right, Harrigan,” he said. “I’m ready to finish the job.”

Harrigan raised a shaking arm and motioned him away.

Ross stepped back and drew his sleeve across his sweating face.

“He’s got his’n,” said Avery. “Didn’t reckon you could do the job, but good men’s like good hosses, you can’t tell ’em until you try ’em out. Wal, you saved me a piece of work, and I thank ye.”

A bully always knows when he is whipped. Fisty was no exception to the rule. He refused Ross’s hand when he had recovered enough breath to refuse anything. Ross laughed easily, and Harrigan turned on him with a curse. “The Great Western’s t’rough wid you, but I ain’t—yet.”

“Well, you want to train for it,” said Ross, pleasantly.

One by one the men shouldered their packs and jogged down the trail, bound for Nine-Fifteen, followed by Harrigan, his usually red face mottled with white blotches and murder in his agate-blue eyes.

David stood watching them.

“So-long, boys,” he called.

“So-long, kid,” they answered.

Harrigan’s quarrel was none of theirs and his reputation as a bruiser had suffered immeasurably. In a moment they were lost to sight in the shadow of the pines bordering the trail.

“Now for the kitten,” said David. “I think he’s only stunned.” He went into the cabin, and much to Avery’s amusement, washed his hands. “A dirty job,” he said, catching the twinkle in the lumberman’s eye.

“A dum’ good job, I take it. Whar you from?”

“Boston.”

“Wal, I seen some mighty queer folks as hailed from Boston, but I don’t recollec’ any jest like you.”

David laughed as he went to the corner and stooped over Swickey, who sat tearfully rocking the limp Beelzebub in her dress.

“What’s his name?” he asked gently.

“Be—el—zebub,” she sobbed.

“Will you let me look at him—just a minute?”

Swickey unrolled her skirt, the kitten tumbled from her knees, turned over, arched his back, and with tail perpendicular shot across the cabin floor and through the doorway as though nothing had happened.

David laughed boyishly.

“He’s got eight of them left, even now.”

“Eight whats left?” queried Swickey, fixing two tearfully wondering eyes on his face.

“Eight lives, you know. Every cat has nine lives.”

Swickey took his word for it without question, possibly because “eight” and “nine” suggested the intricacies of arithmetic. Although little more than a healthy young animal herself, she had instinctively disliked and mistrusted most of the men who came to Lost Farm Camp. But this man was different. He seemed more like her father, in the way he looked at her, and yet he was quite unlike him too.

“That’s a big name for such a little cat,” said David. “Where did he get his name?”

Swickey pondered. “Pop says it’s his name, and I guess Pop knows. The ole cat she run wild in the woods and took Beelzebub ’long with her ’fore he growed up, and Pop ketched him, and he bit Pop’s thumb, and then Pop said thet was his name. He ketched him fur me.”

Just then Avery came in with a pail of water and Swickey set about clearing the table. David, a bit shaken despite his apparently easy manner, strolled out into the sunshine and down the hill to the river. “My chance with the Great Western is gone,” he muttered, “and all on account of a confounded little cat, and called ‘Beelzebub’ at that! Harrigan would fix me now if I went in, that’s certain. Accidents happen in the camps and the victims come out, feet first, or don’t come out at all and no questions asked. No, I’ll have to look for something else. Hang it!” he exclaimed, rubbing his arm, “this being squire of dames and kittens don’t pay.”

Unconsciously he followed the trail down to the dam, across the gorge, and on up the opposite slope. The second-growth maple, birch, and poplar gave place to heavy beech, spruce, and pine as he went on. Presently he was in the thick of a regiment of great spruce trees that stood rigidly at “attention.” The shadows deepened and the small noises of the riverside died away. A turn in the trail and a startled doe faced him, slender-legged, tense with surprise, wide ears pointed forward and nostrils working.

He stopped. The deer, instead of snorting and bounding away, moved deliberately across the trail and into a screen of undergrowth opposite him. David stood motionless. Then from the bushes came a little fawn, timidly, lifting its front feet with quick, jerky motions, but placing them with the instinctive caution of the wild kindred. Scarcely had the fawn appeared when another, smaller and dappled beautifully, followed. Their motions were mechanical, muscles set, as if ready to leap to a wild run in a second.

What unheard, unseen signal the doe gave to her offspring, David never knew, but, as though they had received a terse command, the two fawns wheeled suddenly and bounded up the trail, at the top of which the doe was standing. Three white flags bobbed over the crest and they were gone.

“How on earth did that doe circle to the hillside without my seeing her?” he thought. Then he laughed as he remembered the stiff-legged antics of the fawns as they bounded away, stirring a noisy squirrel to rebuke. On he went, over the crest and down a gentle slope, past giant beeches and yellow birch whose python-like roots crept over the moss and disappeared as though slowly writhing from the sunlight to subterranean fastnesses. Dwarfed and distorted cedars sprung up along the way and he knew he was near water. In a few minutes he stood on the shore of No-Man’s Lake, whose unruffled surface reflected the broad shadow of Timberland Mountain on the opposite shore.

“Well!” he exclaimed, “I suppose it’s time to corral a legion of guide-book adjectives and launch ’em at yonder mass of silver and green glories, but it’s all too big. It calls for silence. A fellow doesn’t gush in a cathedral, unless he doesn’t belong there.” He sat looking over the water for perhaps an hour, contented in the restful vista around him. “I wish Aunt Elizabeth could see this,” he muttered finally. “Then she might understand why I like it. Wonder who owns that strip of land opposite? I’d like to. Great Scott! but my arm’s sore where he poked me.”

A soft tread startled him. He swung round to find Hoss Avery, shod with silent moosehide, a Winchester across his arm, standing a few feet away.

CHAPTER IV—THE COMPACT

“After fresh meat?” asked Ross.

“Nope. Lookin’ fur a man.”

Avery’s good eye closed suggestively and he grinned. Standing his rifle in the crotch of a cedar, he drew a plug of tobacco from his pocket and carefully shaved a pipeful from it. Then he smoked, squatting beside David as he gazed across the lake.

“Purty lake, ain’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” replied David.

“Chuck full of trout—big fellers, too. Ever do any fishin’?”

“A little. I like it.”

“Slithers of deer in thet piece across thar,” pointing with his pipestem to the foot of Timberland Mountain. “Ever do any huntin’?”

“Not much. Been after deer once or twice.”

“Must have been suthin’ behind thet poke you gave Fisty this mornin’, I take it?”

“About one hundred and seventy pounds,” replied David, smiling. Avery chuckled his appreciation. Evidently this young man didn’t “pump” easily.

Puff—puff—“Reckon you never done no trappin’.”

“No, I don’t know the first thing about it.”

Avery was a trifle disconcerted at his companion’s taciturnity. He smoked for a while, covertly studying the other’s face.

“Reckon you’re goin’ back to Tramworth—mebby goin’ to quit the woods, seein’ as you and Fisty ain’t calc’lated to do any hefty amount of handshakin’ fur a while?”

“Yes, I’m going back, to get work of some kind that will keep me up here. I wanted to learn a bit about lumbering. I think I began the wrong way.”

“Don’t jest feel sartain about thet, m’self. Howcome mebby Harrigan do, and he’s boss. He would have put you on swampin’ at one plunk a day and your grub. Reckon thet ain’t turrible big pay fur a eddicated man. They’s ’bout six months’ work and then you git your see-you-later pay-check fur what the supply store ain’t a’ready got.”

“It’s pretty thin picking for some of the boys, I suppose,” said David.

“Huh! Some of ’em’s lucky to have their britches left to come out in.”

“I didn’t expect to get rich at it, but I wanted the experience,” replied David, wondering why Avery seemed so anxious to impress him with the wage aspect of lumbering.

“Don’t calc’late you ever did any spec’latin’, did you?”

“Well, I have done some since I had my fuss with Harrigan this morning.”

Avery tugged at his beard thoughtfully.

“I’m turnin’ a penny onct in a while or frequenter. With the trappin’ winters, feedin’ the crews goin’ in and comin’ out, makin’ axe-handles and snowshoes, and onct in a spell guidin’ some city feller in the fall up to whar he kin dinnimite a moose, I reckon six hundred dollars wouldn’t cover my earnin’s. I could do more trappin’ if I had a partner. Mebby me and him could make nigh on to five hundred a year, and grub.”

“That’s pretty good,—five hundred clear, practically.”

“Ya-a-s.” Avery grunted and stood up, thrusting his pipe in his pocket. “Said I was huntin’ fur a man when you ast me. You’re the man I be huntin’ fur if you want a job bad ’nough to hitch up with me, and Swickey.”

Ross arose and faced him, his surprise evident in the blank expression of his face.

“I’m not out of cash,” he replied.

“Thet ain’t what I ast you fur,” said Avery, a shade of disappointment flickering across his face. “I want a man to help.”

“How much would it cost to outfit?” asked David.

“Wal, I got a hundred and fifty traps, and mebby we could use fifty more, not countin’ dead-falls for b’ar and black-cat. And you sure need a rifle and some blankets and some winter clothes. I figure fifty plunks would fit you out.”

“I didn’t know but that you would want me to put up some cash toward expenses,—provisions, I mean?”

“No,” said Avery. “I reckon you ain’t broke, but thet ain’t makin’ any diff’runce to me.”

“That’s all right, Avery. It wasn’t the expense of outfitting. I simply wanted to know where I would stand if I did accept. But I have no recommendations, no letters—”

“Hell! I guess them two hands of your’n is all the recommendations I want. I’ve fit some m’self and be reckoned a purty fair jedge of hosses, and a man what is a good jedge of hosses knows folks likewise. I ain’t in no hurry fur you to say yes or no.” The old man swung his rifle to the hollow of his arm. “Take your time to think on it, and you kin stay to Lost Farm Camp jest as long as you are wishful. ’Tain’t every day a eddicated man what kin use his hands comes floatin’ into these here woods.”

“Well,” said David, “I’ve decided. There are reasons why I don’t want to go back. It’s a fair offer and I’ll take it.”

“Put her thar!” the huge bony fist of the lumberman closed heavily on David’s hand, but met a grip almost as tense. “Me and you’s partners. Half-and-half share of workin’, eatin’, earnin’s, and fightin’—if there’s any fightin’ to be did. Reckon you’d better go to Tramworth and git fixed up and mebby you calc’late to write to your folks.”

They strode down the trail, Avery in the lead. As they neared the last turn which led them out to the footboard of the dam, he paused.

“My gal Swickey is growin’ up to whar she oughter git larnin’. I sot in to learn her, but she’s always a-squirmin’ out of it by askin’ me things what I can’t answer and then gettin’ riled at her Pa. Now if you could—’thout lettin’ on as you was doin’ it—larn her readin’ and writin’ and sech, I’d be pow’ful glad to pay you extra-like fur it.”

So the cat was out of the bag at last. Avery wanted a teacher for his girl. The old man was willing to take a green hand as partner in trapping and share the proceeds with him for the sake of Swickey’s education. Well, why not?

“I’ll do what I can, Avery.”

“Thet’s the talk. Me and you’ll make a lady of her.”

As they approached the cabin a figure appeared in the doorway and the melodious treble of a girl’s voice rang across the river. She disappeared as Avery’s Triton bellow answered.

“She’s callin’ us fur dinner,” he explained needlessly.

“Did you get anything?” said Swickey, as they entered the cabin.

“He bagged me,” said Ross, laughing.

“Whar’d he bag you?” exclaimed Swickey, solicitously looking at David for visible proof of her father’s somewhat indifferent marksmanship.

“Over on No-Man’s Lake—I think that’s what he called it,” replied David.

“He’s a-goin’ to stay, right along now. I’ve been wantin’ to git a partner to help with the traps fur quite a spell.”

“You ain’t never said nothin’ to me ’bout gettin’ a partner,” said Swickey, her vanity wounded. “You always said I was as good as any two men helpin’ you.”

Avery, a trifle embarrassed at his daughter’s reception of the new partner, maintained an uncomfortable silence while dinner was in progress. He had hoped for delight from her, but she sat stolidly munching her food with conscious indifference to his infrequent sallies.

That evening, after David had gone to bed in the small cabin back of the camp, Avery sat on the porch with his daughter. For a long time she cuddled the kitten, busily turning over in her mind the possibilities of a whole dollar and a half. She had heard her father say that the new man was going to Tramworth in the morning. Perhaps he would be able to get her a dress. A dollar and a half was a whole lot of money. Maybe she could buy Pop some new “specs” with what she had left after purchasing the dress. Or if she had a book, a big one that would tell how to make dresses and everything, maybe that would be better to have. Jessie Cameron could sew doll’s clothes, but her mother had taught her. The fact that Swickey could not read did not occur to her as relevant to the subject. She felt, in a vague way, that the book itself would overcome all obstacles. Yes, she would ask the new man to buy a book for her and “specs” for her Pop. How to accomplish this, unknown to her father, was a problem she set aside with the ease of optimistic childhood, to which nothing is impossible.

“Pop,” she said suddenly.

“Wal?”

“Mebby you kin give me thet dollar-money fur the ile.”

“Ya-a-s,” he drawled, secretly amused at her sudden interest in money and anxious to reinstate himself in her favor. “Ya-a-s, but what you goin’ to do? Buy Pop thet dress-suit, mebby?”

“I reckon not,” she exclaimed with an unexpected show of heat that astonished him. “You said dress-suits made folks ack foolish, and I reckon some folks acks foolish ’nough right in the clothes they has on without reskin’ changin’ ’em.” With this gentle insinuation, she gathered Beelzebub in her arms and marched to her room.

“Gosh-A’mighty but Swickey’s gettin’ tetchy,” he exclaimed, grinning. “Wal, she’s a-goin’ to have a new dress if I have to make it myself.”

When he went into the cabin, he drew a chair to the table and, sitting down, took two silver pieces from his pocket and laid them on Swickey’s plate. He sat for a long time shading his eyes with his hand. He nodded, recovered, nodded again. Then he said quite distinctly, but in the voice of one walking in dreams, “I know it, Nanette. Yes, I know it. I’m doin’ the best I kin—”

He sat up with a start, saw the silver pieces on the plate and picked them up.

“Swickey!” he called, “be you sleepin’?”

“Yes, Pop,” she replied dutifully.

He grinned as he went to her room. As he bent over her she found his head in the dark, and kissed him. “I’m sorry what I said ’bout the clothes, Pop. I don’t want no money-dollar—I jest want you.”

He tucked the money in her hand. “Thar it is. Dollar and a half fur the ile.”

She sighed happily. “I say thanks to my Pop.”

“Good-night, leetle gal.”

She lay awake long after he had left her, turning the coins over in her hot fingers. Presently she slipped from the bed and, drawing the blanket about her, stole softly to the door.

CHAPTER V—A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE

With a soft rush of wings an owl dropped from the interior blackness of the midnight forest and settled on a stub thrust from a dead tree at the edge of the clearing.

Beelzebub, scampering sinuously from clump to clump of the long grass, flattened himself to a shadow as the owl launched silently from the limb, legs pointing downward and curved talons rigid. Wide, shadowy wings darkened the moonlit haze where Beelzebub crouched, tail twitching, and ears laid back. Suddenly he sprang away in long, lithe bounds; a mad patter of feet on the cabin porch and he scrambled to his fastness in the eaves.

Slowly the great bird circled to the limb again, where he sat motionless in the summer night, a silver-and-bronze epitome of melancholy patience.

Below him a leafless clump of branches moved up and down, although there was no breeze stirring. The owl saw but remained motionless. Stealthily the branches moved from beneath the shadow of the trees, and a buck stepped to the clearing, his velvet-sheathed antlers rocking above his graceful neck. Cautiously he lifted a slender foreleg and advanced, muzzle up, scenting the warm night air. Down to the river he went, pausing at times, curiously intent on nothing, then advancing a stride or two until he stood thigh-deep in the stream. Leisurely he waded down shore, lifting a muzzle that dripped silvery beads in the moonlight.

Above him on the slope of the bank a door opened and closed softly. He stiffened and licked his nostrils. With the slight breeze that rippled toward him over the wavering grasses, he turned and plunged toward the shore, whirling into a dusky cavern of tangled cedars. With a swishing of branches he was gone.

“Ding thet deer,” said Swickey, as she hesitated on the cabin porch. She listened intently. Sonorous and regular strains from her father’s room assured her that he had not been disturbed.

She stepped carefully along the porch and into the dew-heavy grass, gathering the blanket closely about her. Beelzebub’s curiosity overcame his recent scare and he clambered hastily from his retreat, tail foremost, dropping quickly to the ground. Here was big game to stalk; besides, the figure was reassuringly familiar despite its disguise. The trailing end of the blanket bobbed over the hummocks invitingly.

“Ouch! Beelzebub, you stop scratchin’ my legs!” Swickey raised a threatening forefinger and the kitten rollicked away in a wide circle. She took another step. Stealthily the kitten crept after her. What live, healthy young cat could resist the temptation to catch that teasing blanket end? He pounced on it and it slipped from her nervous fingers and slid to the ground, leaving her lithe, brown young body bathed in the soft light of the summer moon. She dropped to her knees and extracted Beelzebub from the muffling folds. Then she administered a spanking that sent him scampering to his retreat in the eaves, where he peeked at her saucily, his wide round eyes iridescent with mischief. She gathered the blanket about her and resumed her journey, innocently thankful in every tense nerve that the cabin in which David Ross slept was on the other side of the camp. Patiently she continued on her way, keeping a watchful eye on Beelzebub’s possible whereabouts until she arrived at the smallest of the three buildings. She took the silver pieces from her mouth, where she had placed them for safe-keeping while admonishing the kitten, and rapped on the pane of the open window.

David Ross had found it impossible to sleep during the early hours of the night. The intense quiet, acting as a stimulant to his overwrought nerves, tuned his senses to an expectant pitch, magnifying the slightest sound to a suggestiveness that was absurdly irritating. The roar of the rapids came to him in rhythmic beats that pulsed faintly in his ears, keeping time with his breathing. A wood-tick gnawed its blind way through the dry-rot of a timber, T-chick—T-chick—T-chick—It stopped and he listened for it to resume its dreary progress. From the river came the sound of some one or something wading in the shallows. Each little noise of the night seemed to float on the undercurrent of that deep hum-m-m of the rapids, submerged in its heavier note at times, at times tossed above it, distinctly audible, always following the rushing waters but never entirely lost beyond hearing. Finally, he imagined the river to be a great muffled wheel turning round and round, and the sounds that lifted from its turning became visible as his eyes closed heavily. They were tangible annoyances, imps in stagged trousers and imps in calico dresses. The imps danced away to the forest and the dream-wheel of the river stopped abruptly. So abruptly that its great iron tire flew jangling across the rocks and fell a thousand miles away with a faint clink, clink, clink.

He sat up in bed listening. Clink, clink. He went to the window, leaned out, and gazed directly down into the dusky face of Swickey.

Without preamble she began.

“I shot a b’ar yest’day.”

“You did! Well, that’s pretty good for a girl.”

“My Pop guv me the money fur the ile.”

“Yes, but why did you come out to-night to tell me? Aren’t you afraid?”

“Afraid of what?” she asked, with an innocence that despite itself was ironical.

“That’s so. There’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”

She hesitated, drawing the blanket closer about her.

“Nothin’—’cept you.”

“Afraid of me? Why, that’s funny.”

“I was sca’d you’d laugh at me.” Then she whispered, “I dassent tetch my clothes, ’cause Pop would have waked up, so I jest put on this, and come.”

“That’s all right, Swickey. I’m not going to laugh.”

“I say thanks fur thet.”

Such intensely childish relief and gratitude as her tone conveyed, caused David to feel a sense of shame for having even smiled at her pathetically ridiculous figure. He waited for her to continue. Reassured by his grave acceptance of her confidence, she unburdened her heart, speaking with hesitant deliberation and watching his face with a sensitive alertness for the first sign of ridicule.

“You’re goin’ to Tramworth in the mornin’, ain’t you?”

“Yes.”

“I reckon you could buy me a book if I guv the money-dollar fur it?”

“A book! What kind of a book, Swickey?”

“Big as you kin git fur this,” she said, thrusting the moist dollar into his hand; “a book what tells everything, to sew on buttins and make clothes and readin’ and writin’ and to count ca’tridges fur a hun’red—and everything!”

“Oh, I see!” His voice was paternally gentle. “Well, I’ll try to get one like that.”

“And a pair of ‘specs’”—she hesitated as his white, even teeth gleamed in the moonlight—“fur Pop,” she added hurriedly.

“All right, Swickey, but I—”

“His’n don’t work right.”

“But I don’t just know what kind of ‘specs’ your father needs. There are lots of different kinds, you know.”

Her heart fell. So this man with “larnin’”—his man who could fight Fisty Harrigans and make dead kittens come alive and jump right up, didn’t know about “specs.” Why, her Pop knew all about them. He had said his didn’t work right.

The troubled look quickly vanished from her face, however, as a tremendous inspiration lifted her over this unexpected difficulty.

“Git ‘specs,’” she whispered eagerly, “what Pop kin skin a b’ar with ’thout cuttin’ his hand.” There! what more was necessary except the other silver piece, which she handed to David with trembling fingers as he assured her he would get “just that kind.” In her excitement the coin slipped and fell jingling to the cabin floor.

“I—beg—your—pardon.”

She had heard David say that and had memorized it that afternoon in the seclusion of the empty kitchen, with Beelzebub as the indifferent object of her apology. She cherished the speech as a treasure of “larnin’” to be used at the first opportunity. Ross missed the significance of her politeness, although he appreciated it as something unusual under the circumstances.

“You won’t tell Pop?” she asked appealingly.

“No, I won’t tell him.”

She retraced her steps toward the main camp, bankrupt in that her suddenly acquired wealth was gone, but rich in the anticipated joy that her purchases would bring to her father and herself accurate eyesight and “book-larnin’.”

David wanted to laugh, but something deeper than laughter held him gazing out of the window, across the cabin roofs to where the moon was rocking in the haze of the tree-tops on the distant hills. Long after she had regained her bedroom and crept hurriedly beneath the blanket to fall asleep and dream of Beelzebubs wearing bright new “specs” and chasing little girls across endless stretches of moonlight, he was still gazing out of the window, thinking of his little friend and her trust.

CHAPTER VI—TRAMWORTH

David was awakened by the sound of chopping. He arose and dressed sleepily. After a brisk ablution at the river’s edge he came up the hill, where he found Avery making firewood.

“Mornin’. Skeeters bother you some?”

“Guess I was too sleepy to notice them,” replied David.

He watched the old man swing the axe, admiring his robust vigor. Then he stooped and gathered an armful of wood. As he lugged it to the kitchen, Avery muttered, “He’s a-goin’ to take holt. I have noticed folks as is a-goin’ to take holt don’t wait to ask how to commence.”

“Where’s Swickey?” said David, as he came for more wood.

“Up to the spring yonder.”

David was about to speak, but thought better of it. When he had filled the wood-box he started for the spring.

“He’s a-goin’ to spile thet gal, sure as eggs,” said the old man, pausing to watch David.

But he whistled cheerfully as he moved toward the cabin. Presently the rattling of pans and a thin shaft of blue smoke from the chimney, a sizzling and spluttering and finally an appetizing odor, announced the preparation of breakfast.

“If they don’t come purty quick,” said Avery, as he came to the doorway and looked toward the spring path, “they’ll be nothin’ left but the smell and what me and Beelzebub can’t eat.”

As he turned to go in, David and Swickey appeared, both laughing. He was carrying both water-pails and she was skipping ahead of him.

“Pop, we seen some fresh b’ar tracks nigh the spring.”

“You did, hey?”

“Yip. Big uns. We follered ’em for a spell, goin’ back into the swamp.”

“Huh! Was you calc’latin’ to bring him back alive, mebby?”

Swickey disdained to answer. Her prestige as a bear hunter was not to be discounted with such levity.

After breakfast Avery tilted his chair against the wall and smoked. David laughingly offered to help Swickey with the dishes. He rolled up his sleeves, and went at it, much to her secret amusement and proud satisfaction. Evidently “city-folks” were not all of them “stuck-up donothin’s,” as Mrs. Cameron had once given her to understand, even, thought Swickey, if they didn’t know how to drain the rinsing-water off.

“When you get to the Knoll,” said Avery, addressing David, “Jim Cameron will hitch up and take you to Tramworth. Like as not he’ll ask you questions so long’s he’s got any breath left to ask ’em. Folks calls him ‘Curious Jim,’ and he do be as curious as a old hen tryin’ to see into a jug. But you jest say you’re outfittin’ fur me. That’ll make him hoppin’ to find out what’s a-doin’ up here. I be partic’lar set on havin’ Jim come up here with the team. I got ’bout fifty axe-helves fur him. He’s been goin’ to tote ’em to Tramworth and sell ’em fur me sence spring. If he thinks he kin find out suthin’ by comin’ back to-night he’ll make it in one trip and not onhitch at the Knoll and fetch you up in the mornin’. If he did thet he’d charge us fur stablin’ his own team in his own stable, and likewise fur your grub and his’n. It’s Jim’s reg’lar way of doin’ business. Now I figure them axe-handles will jest about cover the cost of the trip if he makes her in one haul, and from what I know of Jim, he’ll snake you back lively, wonderin’ what Hoss Avery’s up to this time.”

“I’ll hold him off,” said David, secretly amused at his new partner’s shrewdness.

David departed shortly afterward, striking briskly down the shady morning trail toward the Knoll, some ten miles below. It was noon when he reached Cameron’s camp, a collection of weathered buildings that had been apparently erected at haphazard on the hillside.

Cameron was openly surprised to see him.

“Thought you went into Nine-Fifteen with Harrigan’s bunch?”

“No! I was headed that way, but Harrigan and I had a misunderstanding.”

Curious Jim was immediately interested.

“Goin’ back—goin’ to quit?”

“I have quit the Great Western. I’m going to Tramworth to get a few things.” He delivered Avery’s message, adding that the old man seemed particularly anxious to have the proposed purchases that night. “There’s some of the stuff he declares he must have to-night,” said David, “although I don’t just understand why.”

“Short of grub?” asked Jim.

“By Jove, that may be it! He did tell me to get a keg of molasses.”

Cameron sniffed as he departed to harness the team. “Molasses! Huh! They’s somethin’ deeper than molasses in Hoss Avery’s mind and that city feller he’s in it. So Hoss thinks he can fool Jim Cameron. Well, I guess not! Sendin’ me a message like that.”

He worked himself into a state of curiosity that resulted in a determination to solve the imaginary riddle, even if its solution entailed spending the night at Lost Farm.

“You ain’t had no dinner, have you?” he asked as he reappeared.

“No, I haven’t,” replied David. “But I can wait till we get to town.”

“Mebby you kin, but you ain’t a-goin’ to. You come in and feed up. My missus is to Tramworth, but I’ll fix up somethin’.”

After dinner, as they jolted over the “tote-road” in the groaning wagon, Cameron asked David if he intended to stay in for the winter.

“Yes, I do,” he replied.

“Sort of lookin’ around—goin’ to buy up a piece of timber, hey?”

“No. Avery offered me a job and I took it.”

“Huh!” Curious Jim carefully flicked a fly from the horse’s back. “You’re from Boston?”

“Yes.”

Curious Jim was silent for some time. Suddenly he turned as though about to offer an original suggestion.

“Railroads is funny things, ain’t they?”

“Sometimes they are.”

Jim was a bit discouraged. The new man didn’t seem to be much of a talker.

“Hoss Avery’s a mighty pecooliar man,” he ventured.

“Is he?” David’s tone conveyed innocent surprise.

“Not sayin’ he ain’t straight enough—but he’s queer, mighty queer.”

Ross offered no comment. Tediously the big horses plodded along the uneven road. The jolting of the wagon was accentuated as they crossed a corduroyed swamp.

“I think I’ll walk,” said David, springing from the seat.

“That settles it,” thought Cameron. “He don’t want to talk. He’s afeared I’ll find out somethin’, but he don’t know Jim Cameron.”

The desolate outskirts of Tramworth, encroaching on the freshness of the summer forest, finally resolved themselves into a fairly level wagon-road. Cameron drew up and David mounted beside him.

“Reckon you want Sikes’s hardware store first.” said Jim.

“No. I think I’ll go to the hotel. You can put up the horses. I’ll get what I want and we’ll call for it on the way back.”

At the hotel Cameron accepted his dismissal silently. When he returned from stabling the team he noticed David was standing on the walk in front of the hotel, apparently in doubt as to where he wanted to go first.

“Do you know where there is a dressmaker’s shop,” he asked.

“Dressmaker’s shop?” Cameron scratched his head. “Well—now—let’s see. Dressmaker’s sh—They’s Miss Wilkins’s place round the corner,” he said, pointing down the street.

“Thank you,” said Ross, starting off in the opposite direction.

Cameron’s curiosity was working at a pressure that only the sympathy of some equally interested person could relieve, and to that end he set out toward his brother’s where Mrs. Cameron was visiting. There he had the satisfaction of immediate and attentive sympathy from his good wife, whose chief interest in life, beside “her Jim,” and their daughter Jessie, was the receiving and promulgating of local gossip, to which she added a measure of speculative embellishment which was the real romance of her isolated existence.

After purchasing blankets, a rifle, ammunition, traps, and moccasins at the hardware store, David turned to more exacting duties. The book and the “specs” next occupied his attention. With considerable elation he discovered a shop-worn copy of “Robinson Crusoe,” and paid a dollar for it with a cheerful disregard of the fact that he had once purchased that identical edition for fifty cents.

He found an appalling variety of “specs” at the drug store, and bought six pairs of various degrees of strength, much to the amazement of the proprietor, who was uncertain as to whether his customer was a purchasing agent for an Old Ladies’ Home, or was merely “stocking-up” for his old age.

“Haven’t crossed the Rubicon yet,” muttered David, as he left the drug store and proceeded to the dry-goods “emporium.” Here he chose some mild-patterned ginghams, with Avery’s whispered injunction in mind to get ’em plenty long enough anyhow.

With the bundle of cloth tucked under his arm, he strode valiantly to the dressmaker’s. The bell on the door jingled a disconcerting length of time after he had entered. He felt as though his errand was being heralded to the skies. From an inner room came a pale, dark-haired little woman, threads and shreds of cloth clinging to her black apron.

“This is Miss—er—”

“Wilkins,” she snapped.

“I understand you are the most competent dressmaker in Tramworth.”

Which was unquestionably true. Tramworth supported but one establishment of the kind.

“I certainly am.”

“Well, Miss Wilkins, I want to get two dresses made. Nothing elaborate. Just plain sensible frocks for a little girl.” He gained courage as he proceeded. An inspiration came. “You don’t happen to have a—er—niece, or daughter, or”—Miss Wilkins’s expression was not reassuring—“or aunt, say about fourteen years old. That is, she is a big girl for fourteen—and I want them long enough. Her father says, that is—”

“Who are they for?” she asked frigidly.

“Why, Swickey, of course—”

“Of course!” replied Miss Wilkins.

David untied the bundle and disclosed the cloth.

“Here it is. I’m not—exactly experienced in this kind of thing.” He smiled gravely. “I thought perhaps you could help me—”

Miss Wilkins was a woman before she became a dressmaker. She did what the real woman always does when appealed to, which is to help the male animal out of difficulties when the male animal sincerely needs assistance.

“Oh, I see! No, I haven’t a niece or daughter, or even an aunt of fourteen years, but I have some patterns for fourteen-year-old sizes.”

“Thank God!” said David, so fervently that they both laughed.

“And I think I know what you want,” she continued.

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a bill.

“I’ll pay you now,” he said, proffering a five-dollar note, “and I’ll call for them in about three hours. There’s to be two of them, you know. One from this pattern and one from this.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t make one in three hours! I really can’t have them done before to-morrow night.”

David did some mental arithmetic rapidly.

“What is your charge for making them?” he asked.

She hesitated, looking at him as he stood, hat in hand, waiting her reply.

“Two dollars each,” she said, her eyes fixed on his hat.

The males of Tramworth were not always uncovered in her presence, when they did accompany their wives to her shop.

“I have to leave for Lost Farm at five o’clock, Miss Wilkins. If you can have one of the dresses done by that time, I’ll gladly give you four dollars for it.”

“I’ve got a hat to trim for Miss Smeaton, and a dress for Miss Sikes and she wants it to-morrow—but, I’ll try.”

“Thank you,” replied David, depositing the cloth on the counter and opening the door; “I’ll call for it at five.”

From there he went toward the hotel, where he intended to write a letter or two. As he turned the corner some one called:—

“Ross! I say, Ross!”

Startled by the familiarity of the tone rather than by the suddenness of the call, he looked about him in every direction but the right one.

“Hello, Davy!”

The round face and owlish, spectacled eyes of “Wallie” Bascomb, son of the Walter Bascomb, of the Bernard, White & Bascomb Construction Company of Boston, protruded from the second-story window of the hotel opposite.

“Come on up, Davy. I just fell out of bed.”

The face withdrew, and David crossed the street, entered the hotel, and clattered up the uncarpeted stairs.

“Hey! where are you, Wallie?”

A door opened in the corridor. Bascomb, in scanty attire, greeted him.

“Softly, my Romeo. Thy Juliet is not fully attired to receive. Shut the door, dear saint, the air blows chill.”

They shook hands, eyeing each other quizzically. A big, white English bull-terrier uncurled himself and dropped from the foot of the bed to the floor.

“Hello, Smoke! Haven’t forgotten me, have you?”

The terrier sniffed at David and wagged his tail in grave recognition. Then he climbed back to his couch on the tumbled blankets.

“Now,” said Bascomb, searching among his scattered effects for the toothbrush he held in his hand, “tell Uncle Walt, why, thus disguised, you pace the pensive byways of this ignoble burg?”

“Outfitting,” said David.

“Brief, and to the point, my Romeo.”

“For the winter,” added David.

“Quite explicit, Davy. You’re the same old clam—eloquent, interestingly communicative.”

David laughed. “What are you doing up here? I supposed you were snug in the office directing affairs in the absence of your father.”

“Oh, the pater’s back again. I guess the speed-limit in Baden Baden was too slow for him. He’s building the new road, you know, N. M. & Q. Your Uncle Wallie is on the preliminary survey. Devil of a job, too.”

“Oh, yes. I heard about it. It’s going to be a big thing.”

“Yes,” said Bascomb, peering with short-sighted eyes into the dim glass as he adjusted his tie, “it may be a big thing if I”—striking an attitude and thumping his chest—“don’t break my neck or die of starvation. Camp cooking, Davy—whew! Say, Davy, I’m the Christopher Columbus of this expedition, I am, and I’ll get just about as much thanks for my stake-driving and exploring as he did.”

Bascomb kicked an open suit-case out of his way and a fresh, crackling blue-print sprang open on the floor.

“That’s it. Here we are,” he said, spreading the blue-print on the bed, “straight north from Tramworth, along the river. Then we cross here at Lost Farm, as they call it. Say, there’s a canny old crab lives up there that holds the shell-back record for grouch. Last spring, when we were working up that way and I took a hand at driving stakes, just to ease my conscience, you know, along comes that old whiskered Cyclops with a big Winchester on his shoulder. I smelled trouble plainer than hot asphalt.

“‘Campin’?’ he asked.

“‘No,’ I said. ‘Just making a few dents in the ground. A kind of air-line sketch of the new road—N. M. & Q.’

“‘Uhuh!’ he grunted. ‘Suppose the new rud ’s a-comin’ plumb through here, ain’t it?’

“‘Right-o,’ said I.

“I guess he didn’t just cotton to the idea. Anyway he told me I could stop driving ‘them stakes’ on his land. I told him I’d like to accommodate him, but circumstances made it necessary to peg in a few more for the ultimate benefit of the public. Well, that old geyser straightened up, and so did I, for that matter.

“‘Drive another one of them,’ he said, pointing to the stake between my feet, ‘and I reckon you’ll pull it out with your teeth.’”

Bascomb lit a cigarette and puffed reflectively. “Well, I never was much on mumble-the-peg, so I quit. The old chap looked too healthy to contradict.”

David sat on the edge of the bed rubbing the dog’s ears.

Bascomb observed him thoughtfully.

“Say, Davy, I don’t suppose you want to keep Smoke for a while, do you? He’s no end of bother in camp. He has it in for the cook and it keeps me busy watching him.”

“The cook? That’s unnatural for a dog, isn’t it?”

“Well, you see our aboriginal chef don’t like dogs, and Smoke knows it. Besides, he once gave Smoke a deer-shank stuffed with lard and red-pepper, regular log-roller’s joke, and since then his legs aren’t worth insuring—the cook’s, I mean. You used to be quite chummy with Smoke, before you dropped out of the game.”

“I’ll take him, if he’ll come,” said David. “Just what I want, this winter. He’ll be lots of company. That is, if you mean it—if you’re serious.”

“As serious as a Scotch dominie eating oysters, Davy mon.”

“Won’t Smoke make a fuss, though?”

“Not if I tell him to go. Oh, you needn’t grin. See here.” Bascomb called the dog to him, and taking the wide jaws between his hands he spoke quietly. “Smoke,” he said, “I’m going to leave you with Davy. He is a chaste and upright young man, so far as I ken. Quite suitable as a companion for you. You stick to him and do as he says. Look after him, for he needs looking after. And don’t you leave him till I come for you, sir! Now, go and shake hands on it.”

The dog strode to David and raised a muscular foreleg. Laughing, David seized it and shook it vigorously.

“It’s a bargain, Smoke.”

The terrier walked to Bascomb, sniffed at his knees and then returned to David, but his narrow eyes moved continually with Bascomb’s nervous tread back and forth across the room.

“What’s on your mind, Wallie?”

“Oh, mud—mostly. Dirt, earth, land, real-estate; but don’t mind me. I was just concocting a letter to the pater. Say, Davy, you don’t want a job, do you? You know some law and enough about land deals, to—to cook ’em up so they won’t smell too strong, don’t you?”

“That depends, Walt.”

“Well, the deal I have in mind depends, all right. It’s hung up—high. It’s this way. That strip of timber on the other side of No-Man’s Lake, up Lost Farm way, has never seen an axe nor a cross-cut saw. There’s pine there that a friend of mine says is ready money for the chap that corrals it. I wrote the pater and he likes the idea of buying it out and out and holding on till the railroad makes it marketable. And the road is going plumb through one end of it. Besides, the pater’s on the N. M. & Q. Board of Directors. When the road buys the right-of-way through that strip, there’ll be money in it for the owner. I’ve been after it on the Q.T., but the irate gentleman with the one lamp, who held me up on the survey, said that ‘if it was worth sellin’, by Godfrey, it was worth keepin’.’ I showed him a certified check that would seduce an angel, but he didn’t shed a whisker. My commission would have kept me in Paris for a year.” Bascomb sighed lugubriously. “Do you want to tackle it, Davy?”

“Thanks for the chance, Wallie, but I’m engaged for the winter, at least.”

“Congratulations, old man. It’s much more convenient that way,—short-term sentence, you know,—if the young lady doesn’t object.”

Bascomb’s banter was apparently innocent of insinuation, although he knew that his sister had recently broken her engagement with David.

If the latter was annoyed at his friend’s chaff, he made no show of it as he stood up and looked at his watch.

“That reminds me, Wallie. I’m due at the dressmaker’s in about three minutes. Had no idea it was so late.”

“Dressmaker’s! See here, Davy, your Jonathan is miffed. Here I’ve been scouring this town for anything that looked like a real skirt and didn’t walk like a bag of onions or a pair of shears, and you’ve gone and found one.”

“That’s right,” said David, “but it was under orders, not an original inspiration.”

“Hear that, Smoke! Davy’ll bear watching up here.”

“Come on, Wallie. It’s only a block distant.”

“All right, Mephisto. Lead on. I want to see the face that launched a thousand—what’s the rest of it?” said Bascomb, as they filed down the stairs.

As they entered the little shop round the corner, Wallie assumed a rapturous expression as he gazed at the garishly plumed hats in the window.

“Might have known where to look for something choice,” he remarked. “Now, that hat with the green ribbon and the pink plume is what I call classy, eh, Davy?”

They entered the shop and presently Miss Wilkins appeared with the new gingham on her arm.

“I just managed to do it,” she said, displaying the frock from ingrained habit rather than for criticism.

“Isn’t it a bit short?” asked Bascomb, glancing from her to David.

Miss Wilkins frowned. Bascomb’s countenance expressed nothing but polite interest.

David was preternaturally solemn.

“Don’t mind him, Miss Wilkins. He’s only a surveyor and don’t understand these things at all.”

“Only a surveyor!” muttered Bascomb. “Oh, mother, pin a rose on me.”

He walked about the shop inspecting the hats with apparent interest while the dressmaker folded and tied up the frock. When they had left the place and were strolling up the street, Bascomb took occasion to ask David how long he had been “a squire of suburban sirens.”

“Ever since I came in,” replied David cheerfully.

“Is the to-be-ginghamed the real peaches and cream or just the ordinary red-apple sort?”

“Neither,” replied his friend. “She’s fourteen and she’s the daughter of your up-country friend the Cyclops, or, to be accurate, Hoss Avery.”

“Oh, Heavings, Davy! But she must be a siren child to have such an intelligent purchasing agent in her employ.”

David did not reply, as he was engaged at that moment in waving the parcel containing the dress round his head in a startling, careless manner.

“Easy with the lingerie, Davy dear. Oh, it’s Cameron you’re flagging—Curious Jim—do you know him?”

“Distantly,” replied David smilingly.

“Correct, my son. So do I.”

Cameron acknowledged the signal by hurrying to the rear of the hotel. In a few minutes he appeared on the wagon, which he drove to the store, and David’s purchases were carefully stowed beneath the seat.

“Where’ll I put this?” said Cameron, surreptitiously squeezing the parcel containing the dress.

“Oh, the lingerie,” volunteered Bascomb. “Put that somewhere where it won’t get broken.”

“The which?” asked Curious Jim, standing astride the seat.

“Lingerie, Jim. It’s precious.”

“How about Smoke?” David turned toward Bascomb.

“I’ll fix that,” said Wallie, calling the dog to him. “Up you go, old fellow. Now, you needn’t look at me like that. Great Scott! I’m not going to sell you—only lend you to Davy.”

The dog drew back and sprang into the wagon. It was a magnificent leap and Cameron expressed his admiration earnestly.

“Whew!” he exclaimed, “he’s whalebone and steel springs, ain’t he? Wisht I owned him!”

“Well, so-long, Davy.” Bascomb held out his hand. “Oh, by the way, I suppose the reason for your advent in this community is—back in Boston wondering where you are, isn’t she?”

David laid a friendly hand on the other’s shoulder.

“Wallie,” he said, speaking low enough to be unheard by the teamster, “you mean right, and I understand it, but it was a mistake from the first. My mistake, not Bessie’s. Fortunately we found it out before it was too late.”

Bascomb was silent.

“And there’s one more thing I wanted to say. Avery of Lost Farm is my partner. I should have told you that before, but you went at your story hammer-and-tongs, before I could get a word in. I’m going to advise him, as a business partner, to hold up his price for the tract.”

Bascomb’s eyes narrowed and an expression, which David had seen frequently on the face of the elder Bascomb, tightened the lips of the son to lines unpleasantly suggestive of the “market.”

“It’s honest enough, Davy, I understand that, but don’t you think it’s a trifle raw, under the circumstance?”

“Perhaps it is, but I should have done the same in any event.”

Bascomb bit his lips. “All right. A conscience is an incumbrance at times. Well, good-bye. I’ll be up that way in a few weeks, perhaps sooner.”

With a gesture of farewell, David climbed into the wagon.

Smoke stood with forepaws on the seat, watching his master. When he could no longer see him, he came solemnly to David’s feet and curled down among the bundles. He, good soldier, had received his captain’s command and obeyed unhesitatingly. This man-thing, that he remembered vaguely, was his new master now.

In the mean time Bascomb was in his room scribbling a hasty note to his father. He was about to seal it when he hesitated, withdrew it from the envelope, and added a postscript:—

“I don’t think Davy Ross knows why we want Lost Farm tract, but I’ll keep an eye on him, and close the deal at the first opportunity.”

CHAPTER VII—THE BOOK AND THE “SPECS”

The wavering image of the overhanging forest was fading in the somnolent, foam-dappled eddies circling lazily past Lost Farm Camp when Jim Cameron’s team, collars creaking and traces clinking, topped the ridge and plodded heavily across the clearing. Smoke swayed to the pitch and jolt of the wagon, head up and nose working with the scent of a new habitation. As the horses stopped, David and Smoke leaped down. Beelzebub immediately scrambled to his citadel in the eaves, where he ruffled to fighting size, making small unfriendly noises as he walked along the roof, peering curiously over the edge at the broad back of the bull-terrier. Cameron unhitched the team leisurely, regretting the necessity for having to stable them out of earshot from the cabin. “I’ll find out what a ‘loungeree’ is or bust,” he confided to the horses, as he whisked the rustling hay from mow to manger.

“We been keepin’ supper fur you,” said Avery, as David came in, laden with bundles. “Set right down. Jim won’t keep you waitin’ long if he’s in his reg’lar health. But where, this side of the New Jerusalem, did you git the dog?”

“That’s Smoke. Here, Smoke, come and be introduced.”

The dog allowed Swickey and her father to pat him, but made no overtures toward friendship. Avery eyed the animal critically.

“He’s a born fighter. Kin tell it by the way he don’t wag his tail at everything goin’ on. Likewise he don’t make up to be friends in a hurry, like some dogs, and folks.”

“I hope he won’t bother Beelzebub,” said David, as Smoke, mouth open and tongue lolling, watched the kitten peek at him from the doorway.

“They’ll be shakin’ hands afore long,” said Avery. “Thet cat’s got spunk and he ain’t afraid of nothin’ reason’ble, but he ain’t seen no dogs yit. He’ll get sorter used to him, though.”

When Cameron came in he glanced at the end of the table. None of the bundles had been opened. He ambled out to the wash-bench and made a perfunctory ablution. Judging by the sounds of spouting and blowing which accompanied his efforts, he was not far from that state of godliness which soap and water are supposed to encourage, but the roller-towel, which he patronized generously, hung in the glare of the lamp, its limp and gloomy folds suggesting that nothing remained for it but kindly oblivion. In fact, David, who succeeded Cameron at the wash-basin, gazed at the towel with pensive interrogation, illumined by a smile as hand over hand he pulled it round and round the creaking roller, seeking vainly for an unstaked claim.

Supper over, the men moved out to the porch and smoked. Swickey, busy with the dishes, glanced frequently at the bundles on the table, wondering which one contained her precious book and the “specs fur Pop.” The dishes were put away hurriedly and she came out and joined the men.

“Now, Swickey,” said her father, “you jest tell Jim how you shot the ba’r. Me and Dave’s got them things to put away and you kin keep Jim comp’ny.”

Swickey, fearing that she would miss the opening of the bundles, gave Cameron a somewhat curtailed account of her first bear hunt, and Cameron, equally solicitous about a certain mysterious package, listened with a vacant gaze fixed on the toe of his dusty boot.

In the cabin David and Avery were inspecting the purchases.

“Glad you got a .45,” he said, handling the new rifle. “They ain’t no use diddlin’ around with them small bores. When you loose a .45 at anything and you hit it, they’s suthin’ goin’ to happen direct. But did you get the dresses?”

“Only one,” replied David. “The other will be ready for us the next time we go to Tramworth. But I want to talk business with you. I met a friend to-day,—a Mr. Bascomb of the new railroad survey.”

Avery hitched his chair nearer.

“You don’t say?” he exclaimed a few minutes later. “Wal, it’s ’bout what I figured, but I can’t make out jest why they’s so mighty pa’tic’lar to get the whole piece of land. You see, if they ain’t suthin’ behind it, land up here ain’t wuth thet money, mine or anybody else’s.”

Cameron came in and took down the drinking-dipper. Over its rim he surveyed the table. The bundles were still unopened. With an expression of disgust he walked to the door and threw half the contents of the dipper on the grass. Then he sat down beside Swickey, moodily silent and glum.

Again he arose and approached the dipper. Still the partners were talking in guarded tones. He drank sparingly and returned the dipper to its nail. The parcels were as he had seen them before.

“Drivin’ team makes a man pow’ful thirsty, eh, Jim?”

“That’s what,” replied Cameron. “’Sides, they’s a skunk prowlin’ round out there,” he added, pointing through the doorway, “and a skunk jest sets my stomach bilin’.”

“Thought I smelled suthin’,” said Avery, with a shrewd glance at the teamster.

“Skunks is pecooliar things,” said Cameron, endeavoring to prolong the conversation.

“Thet’s what they be,” said Avery, turning toward David.

“Them ‘loungerees’ is pecooliar actin’ things, too, ain’t they?” said Cameron.

The old man rose to the occasion superbly, albeit not altogether familiar with the species of animal so called.

“Yes, they be,” he remarked decisively. “I et one onct and it liked to kill me. Reckon it hung too long afore it was biled.”

David had immediate recourse to the drink-dipper. The cough which followed sounded suspiciously like a strangled laugh to Cameron’s sensitive ears.

“Huh!” he exclaimed, with some degree of sarcasm; “sounds as if he’d et one hisself to-day.”

He sat down, filled his pipe and smoked, feeling that if he was not entitled to their confidence he was at least entitled to their society. Presently his pipe fell to the floor as his head nodded in slumber.

“Guess I’ll turn in, Hoss,” he remarked, recovering the pipe and yawning abysmally.

“I fixed up the leetle cabin fur you,” replied Avery. “I’ll go ’long out and onlock it. Keep it locked account of skunks comin’ in and makin’ themselves to home.”

As the teamster and Avery went out, Swickey ran to David. “Where be they?” she whispered. “Quick! afore Pop comes!”

He pointed to the package. She broke the string and whisked off the paper. She opened the book, unfortunately for her first impression, at a picture of the “Man Friday,” clothed with “nothing much before and a little less than half of that behind.” A shade of disappointment crossed her eager face. Evidently there were rudiments to master, even in dressmaking. But it was her book. She had earned it, and her face glowed again with the buoyant rapture of childhood as she clasped the volume to her breast and marched to her room. She dropped it quickly on the bed, however, and returned. “I ’most forgot the ‘specs,’” she said self-accusingly. She untied the smaller package and drew them out, “one, two, three, four,” six pair of glittering new glasses. Evidently the potency of money was unlimited. She laid them down, one at a time, after vainly endeavoring to see through them.

“WHERE BE THEY?” SHE WHISPERED

“Your father’s eyes are different,” explained David.

She danced gleefully across the room and back again. Smoke followed her with deliberate strides. He knew they were to be the friends of that establishment. She ran to the bedroom and returned with her book. Assuming a serious demeanor, one leg crossed over the other, book on knee and a pair of glasses perched on her nose, she cleared her throat in imitation of her father.

“Is he comin’?” she asked.

“Yes, I hear him,” replied David.

“S-s-h!” She held up a warning finger.

Avery had the kitten in his arm when he entered. “Fished him off the eaves and brung him in to get acquainted with the dog—Sufferin’ catfish!” he exclaimed, as he gazed at Swickey. “Where’d you—?” He glanced at David, who nodded meaningly.

Slowly the old man stepped to his daughter’s chair. He took the “specs” and the book gently from her, and laid them on the table. She felt that her father was pleased, yet she knew that if she didn’t laugh right away, she would surely cry. He was so quiet, yet he smiled.

Presently he held out his hands. She ran to him and jumped into his arms, her black hair mingling with his snowy beard as he carried her to her room.

When he returned, he sat down, shading his eyes from the light of the lamp. Presently he chuckled.

“Wal, a feller’s a fool anyway till he’s turned forty. And then if he is a mind to he can look back and say so,—to hisself, quiet-like, when nobody is a-listenin’,—and even then I reckon he won’t believe hisself.”

“Thinking of Cameron?” said David.

“No,” replied Avery sententiously; “wimmen folks.”

David pushed the parcel containing the “loungeree” toward him. Avery untied it and spread the dress across his knees, smoothing it reverently, as the newness of the cloth came to his nostrils. “Makes me think of her mother.” His voice deepened. “And my leetle gal’s growin’ up jest like her.” He sat with his head bent as though listening. Then from the interior of the cabin came Swickey’s laugh, full, high, and girlish. Avery folded the dress carefully and went to her room.

As David arose to go to his cabin, he started and checked an exclamation. Smoke and Beelzebub stood facing each other, the dog rigid and the kitten’s tail fluffed beyond imagination. Beelzebub advanced cautiously, lifted a rounded paw, and playfully touched the dog’s nose.

Smoke moved his head a fraction of an inch to one side. The kitten tilted his own head quizzically, as though imitating the dog. Then he put up his pert, black face and licked Smoke’s muzzle. The dog sniffed condescendingly at the brave little adventurer, who danced away across the floor in mimic fright and then returned as the dog laid down, stretching his forelegs and yawning. The kitten, now that a truce was proclaimed, walked back and forth in front of Smoke, flaunting his perpendicular tail with no little show of vanity.

David spoke to the dog. With an almost shamefaced expression the big terrier got up and followed his master out, across the cool grass, and into still another abode.

To him the man-thing was a peculiar animal. He had one place to eat in, another to sleep in. The man-thing also protected impudent, furry, disconcerting kittens that it wouldn’t do to kill—

CHAPTER VIII—SMOKE FINDS EMPLOYMENT

September drifted imperceptibly into October, and even then there were days when coats were shed and sleeves rolled up as the noon sun burned down on the tawny gold and scarlet of the woodside. It was not until the sedges grew brittle on the river edges and the grasses withered that November sent forth its true harbingers of winter—small fluttering white flakes that covered the ground sparsely.

With the keen tang of the first snow stirring his blood, David swung down the river-trail toward Tramworth, Smoke padding at his heels. With Avery’s help he had built a snug winter camp near the three cabins, and although not in the best location available, it reflected some Celtic astuteness on David’s part, as it was centred on the prospective right-of-way of the new road. His present errand involved the purchase of a stove, cooking utensils, and the other essentials to independent housekeeping. He found out, early in his undertaking to teach Swickey, that he could not maintain the prestige necessary, in her continual presence.

He felt pleased with himself that brisk November morning. He had his own cabin, neat, new, fragrant. He had learned to swing an axe during its construction. He had not missed the first deer he hunted, and thereby had earned Swickey’s condescending approval. She had killed a “b’ar.” In the setting of traps and dead-falls he won Avery’s appreciation by a certain deftness and mechanical ability. But, above all, was the keen joy he felt when he thought of the Bascombs’ recent offer of twenty-five thousand dollars for Lost Farm tract.

“There is something behind it,” he muttered. “Avery gave five thousand for the land. But why don’t they appraise it and sell it from under us. They could. By Jove, I have it! The Great Western Lumber Company is back of the N. M. & Q., and they want the pine. Why didn’t I think of that before.”

Unused to observing signs on the trail, he failed to notice the moccasin tracks in the light snow ahead of him, but Smoke picked up a scent and trotted along, sniffing and blowing. Then he came to heel again, evidently satisfied. The man-thing he followed ought to know that the people who made the tracks were not far ahead, and that one of them had turned off in a clump of firs they were just passing.

He noted the dog’s actions subconsciously, his mind busy with the problem of how to get the best results from the sale which he knew must come eventually, despite Avery’s assertion that “No blamed railrud would come snortin’ across his front yard, if he knew it.”

He had about decided to advise his partner to sell and avoid complications, but only the right-of-way and retain the stumpage—

Wh-e-e-e—Pang! His pack jumped from his shoulders as a bullet clipped a beech and sung off at a tangent with a mournful ping—ouing—ing.

From the hillside above him, again came the sharp Pang! Pang! of a high-power rifle. He flung up both arms, whirled half round, and dropped on the frozen trail. Smoke bristled and growled, pacing with stiff forelegs round his master. He nuzzled the limp hands and whined. He trembled and a ridge of hair rose along his spine. He was not afraid, but the rage of an impotent avenger shook him. This man-thing had been struck down—from where?—by whom?

He sniffed back along the trail till he came to the tracks that swung off into the firs. He leaped to the hunt, following the scene over knoll and hollow. An empty brass shell lay melting the thin snow around it. He nosed it, then another and another. They were pungently disagreeable to his nostrils. The tracks circled back to the trail again. They were leading him to where his master lay—he knew that. Near the fringe of undergrowth that edged the trail the big white terrier stiffened and raised his homely nose. A new man-smell came to him and he hated it instinctively. With the caution and courage of the fighter who loves battle for its own sake, he crept through the low, snow-powdered branches noiselessly. He saw a dark figure stooping above his master.

Smoke gathered his haunches beneath him and shot up, a white thunderbolt, straight for the naked, swarthy neck. The man heard and whirled up his arm, but that hurtling death brushed it aside and the wide straining jaws closed on the corded throat and crunched. The man fumbled for his knife, plunging about on his knees. It had slipped round in front. With a muffled scream he seized the dog’s throat. Smoke braced his hind legs in the man’s abdomen, arched his back, and the smooth thigh muscles jumped to knots as he tugged, once—twice—

Blotched with crimson, muzzle dripping, he drew back from the twitching shape, lay down and lapped his steaming breast and legs. His work was done.

Finally he arose and sniffed at that silent nothing beneath the firs. Then he went over and sat beside the other man-thing, waiting—waiting—

Presently David stirred, groaned, and raised tremblingly on his elbow. Smoke stood up. “Home, Smoke!” he murmured inarticulately, but the dog understood. He sprang up the trail in long leaps, a flying horror of red and white.

“Must have—hurt—himself.” David was gazing stupidly at the dead man. This thing was a joke—everything was a joke—Swickey, her father, Jim Cameron, Smoke, David Ross-ung-gh! His grinning lips drew tense across his clenched teeth. A lightning whip of pain shot through his temples, and the white trail, worming through the dark-green pit of the forest, faded, and passed to the clouds. A smothering blackness swooped down and enveloped him.

CHAPTER IX—JIM CAMERON’S IDEA

Below, at the Knoll, Fisty Harrigan and Barney Axel, one of his foremen, had entered Cameron’s camp.

Mrs. Cameron, a tall, broad-faced, angular woman, greeted them from a busy kitchen with loud masculine familiarity. “Jim’s out to the stable. He’ll be in in a minute.”

They drew off their caps and mackinaws, rubbing their hands above the wide box-stove as they stamped the snow from their moccasins.

“Where’s Jessie?” asked Harrigan.

“She’s to Jim’s folks at Tramworth,” replied Mrs. Cameron, wrapping the end of her apron round her hand and reaching into the oven. “Jim said it was about time she learned somethin’,—them biscuits ain’t commenced to raise yet,—and I reckon he’s right. He says that Avery young-one can read her letters and write ’em, too. That man Ross is a-teachin’ her. So Jessie’s goin’ to school this winter.” She lifted a dripping lid from a pot on the stove and gave a muscular impetus to its contents. “But I can’t fancy that Avery young-one learnin’ anything ’ceptin’ to make faces at other folkses’ children and talkin’ sassy to her betters!”

Harrigan acquiesced with a nod.

Barney Axel stood, back to the stove, gazing out of the window.

“Indian Pete’s takin’ his time about that deer, Denny. Reckon he’s waitin’ for us to come and help him tote it out?”

Harrigan glanced at the speaker’s back. “Might ’a’ missed. I didn’t hear no shot, did you?”

“Nope.”

Just then Cameron came in with a bridle in his hand.

“Hello, Denny! H’lo, Barney. Set down—don’t cost nothin’. Missus ’ll have grub ready in a minute. When did you get here? Didn’t hear you come in.”

“Oh, we been here quite a spell—waitin’ fur Pete.”

“Where’s Pete—Injun Pete, you mean?”

“Uhuh. He sneaked in, a ways back, lookin’ fur a deer. Said he seen one—”

“Thought you seed it fust—when you looked back that time.” Axel turned and looked at Harrigan.

“No,” said Harrigan decisively. “He seen it first.” Mrs. Cameron felt that her visitors were slighting her, even if the Company was paying for their meals. She had introduced the topic of Swickey Avery. Was she going to cook dinner for three hungry men and get nothing in immediate return for it except dishes to wash? Not she.

“That little snip, Swickey Avery,” she began; but Cameron shuffled his feet and glanced appealingly at his Amazonian spouse to no avail;—“that little snip,” she continued, opening the oven door and closing it with a bang that made Harrigan start, “came traipsin’ down here in a new dress—a new dress, mind you! and told my Jim she had ’nother ‘loungeree’ to home. Said Davy Ross had jest ketched it. And my Jim was fool enough to pertend he wanted to see Hoss Avery, and he sets to and walks—walks over to Lost Farm,—and what do you think she showed him?”

Harrigan realized that the question was launched particularly at him. “Showed who?” he queried. He had been thinking of something far different.

“Why, Jim!” she replied irately, red arms folded and thin lips compressed in bucolic scorn.

“Search me,” said Harrigan absently.

“A calicah dress! Now, if you, Barney Axel,” she said, “kin see any sense in callin’ a calicah dress a ‘loungeree’—”

Something rattled the door-latch faintly. Harrigan started, recovered himself, and nervously bit a chew from his plug.

“Guess it’s Pete,” said Cameron, dropping the bridle he was mending, and opening the door. He looked, and stepped back with an exclamation of horror.

His face as white as the snow at his feet, hat gone, hair clotted with blood, and hands smeared with a sickening red, David Ross stood tottering in the doorway. His eyes were heavy with pain. He raised an arm and motioned weakly up the trail. Then he caught sight of Harrigan’s face over Cameron’s shoulder. The soul of a hundred Highland ancestors flamed in his eyes.

“Your man,” he said, pointing to Harrigan, “is a damned poor shot.” He raised his hand to his coat-collar and fumbled at the button,—“And he’s dead—up there—”

Cameron caught him as he wilted across the threshold, and, with Barney Axel, helped carry him to the bedroom.

Harrigan had gone pale and was walking about the room.

Barney stood in the bedroom doorway, watching him silently. “So that’s the deer Fisty sent the Indian back fur. Always knowed Fisty’d jest as leave kill with his dukes, but settin’ a boozy Indian to drop a man from behind—Hell! that’s worse than murder.”

Cameron came from the bedside where his wife was bathing David’s head with cold water and administering small doses of whiskey.

“What did he mean, sayin’ your man was a dam’ poor shot?” Curious Jim fixed Harrigan with a suspicious glare.

Fisty tugged into his coat. “You got me. Injun Pete slipped into the bresh lookin’ for a deer he seen,”—Harrigan glanced apprehensively at Barney,—“and it looks like as if he made a mistake and took—”

“From what Ross said afore he keflummixed, I guess he did make a mistake,” said Jim dryly, “but I’ll hitch up and go and have a look anyway. Then I’ll go fur the Doc. Comin’ along?”

Cameron drove and the two lumbermen walked silently behind. Just beyond the first turn in the trail they found the body and beside it many animal tracks in the snow. A new Winchester lay at the side of the trail.

“My God!” cried Harrigan, as he jumped back from the dead man, “his throat’s cut!”

Curious Jim was in his element. Here was something to solve. He threw the reins to Barney Axel and examined the tracks leading into the bushes. He followed them for a short distance while his companions waited. “Nothin’ up there,” he said, as he returned. Then he walked along the trail toward Lost Farm. Finally he turned and came back briskly.

He was unusually quiet as they drove toward his camp. At the Knoll he brought out a blanket from the stable and covered the thing in the wagon.

“I’m goin’ to Tramworth with this,” he said, jerking his head toward the body, “and git Doc Wilson. Missus says Ross is some easier—only tetched by the bullet—lifted a piece of scalp; but I guess you better keep the missus comp’ny, Barney, for sometimes they get crazy-like and bust things. I’ve knowed ’em to.”

“You was goin’ to Tramworth anyhow, warn’t you?” asked Cameron, as he faced Harrigan.

“Sure thing, Jim,” replied Harrigan, a trifle over-eagerly. “There’s some stuff at the station fur the camp, that we’re needin’ bad.”

“Denny,” said Cameron solemnly, as the wide-tired wagon shrilled over the frosted road, “’t warn’t no knife that cut Injun Pete’s throat. That big dog of Ross’s done the job, and then skinned back to Lost Farm to tell Hoss Avery that they was somethin’ wrong.” He paused, looking quickly sideways at his companion. Then, fixing his gaze on the horses’ ears, he continued, “And they was, for Injun Pete warn’t three feet from young Ross when the dog got him.”

“Hell, but you’re gettin’ mighty smart—fur a teamster.”

Harrigan’s self-control was tottering. The three words, “for a teamster,” were three fates that he unleashed to destroy himself, and the moment he uttered them he knew it. Better to have cursed Cameron from the Knoll to Tramworth than to have stung his very soul with that last speech. But, strangely enough, Curious Jim smiled serenely. Harrigan saw, and understood.

They drove slowly down the trail in the cold, dreary afternoon, jolting the muffled shape beneath the blanket as they lumbered over the corduroy crossing the swamp. Pete the Indian meant little enough to Cameron, but—

He pulled up his horses and stared at Harrigan’s feet. The Irishman glanced at him, then down. A lean, scarred brown hand lay across his foot. “Christ!” he shrieked, as he jumped to the ground. The horses bounded forward, but Cameron pulled them up, talking to them gently.

“I was goin’ to ask you to get down and pull it back a piece,” he called to Harrigan, who came up, cursing at his loss of nerve. “The dum’ thing’s been pokin’ at my legs for a half an hour, but I guess you didn’t notice it. The old wagon shakes things up when she ain’t loaded down good.”

Again Harrigan felt that Jim Cameron was playing with him. He, Fisty Harrigan, the bulldog of the Great Western, chafed at his inability to use his hands. He set his heavy jaw, determined to hold himself together. What had he done? Why, nothing. Let them prove to the contrary if they could.

They found the sheriff at the hotel. In the privacy of his upstairs room he questioned them with easy familiarity. As yet no one knew nor suspected what brought them there, save the thick-set, ruddy, gray-eyed man, who listened quietly and smiled.

“Got his rifle?” he said suddenly, still smiling.

“It’s in the wagon. I brung it along,” replied Cameron.

“Denny, will you step down and get it?” The sheriff’s tone was bland, persuasive.

Harrigan mistrusted Cameron, yet he dared not refuse. As the door closed behind him the sheriff swung toward Cameron.

“Now, out with it!” The tone was like the snapping of pine in the flames.

“How in—” began Cameron, but the sheriff’s quick gesture silenced him.

“Here they be,” said Jim. “Three shells I picked up ’bout two rods from the trail. Injun Pete might ’a’ took young Ross for a deer onct, but three times—”

Harrigan’s hand was on the door-knob. The sheriff swept the shells into his pocket.

“Thanks, Denny,” he said, as he emptied the magazine and laid the rifle on the table. “A 30-30 is a good deer gun, but it’s liable to over-shoot an inch or two at short range.”

CHAPTER X—BARNEY AXEL’S EXODUS

Indian Pete’s death was the talk of Tramworth for a month. The “Sentinel” printed a vivid account of the tragedy, commenting on the Indian as having been a crack shot and emphasizing the possibility of even experienced hunters making grave mistakes. Much to the sheriff’s disgust the article concluded with, “In again reviewing this tragedy, one important fact should not be overlooked. The Indian fired three shots at the supposed deer. This information we have from a trustworthy source.” In a later issue the sheriff read, “Mr. Ross visited Tramworth last week, accompanied by the brave animal that so nobly avenged the alleged ‘mistake,’ as described in a recent issue of this paper. Both seem to be in excellent health.”

This issue of the “Sentinel” eventually reached the lumber-camps clustered about the spot where township lines Nine and Fifteen intersected. It was read with the eager interest that such an article would create in an isolated community that had known and liked or disliked “Injun Pete.” Some of the lumbermen expressed approval of the dog, appreciating the unerring instinct of animals in such cases. Others expressed a sentimental sympathy for the Indian, and Smoke’s history would have been a brief one had their sanguinary threats been executed. Most of the men seemed to consider David Ross as a victim of circumstance rather than an active participant in the affair. Yet in one shadowy corner of the main camp it was recalled by not a few that Ross had made Harrigan “take the count,” had in fact whipped him in fair fight. There were head-shakings and expressive silences over this; silences because Harrigan had friends in the camp, and he was czar.

One evening, much to the surprise of every one, Barney Axel, who had been gloomily uncommunicative heretofore, gave them something to think about, especially as he was regarded as Harrigan’s closest friend, and a man prone to keep his own counsel.

It happened that Joe Smeaton, an axe-man at the main camp, and universally unpopular owing to his habit of tale-bearing, was rehearsing the “Sentinel’s” account of Indian Pete’s death to an interested but silent audience.

“Denny’s hit kind of hard,” he ventured at random.

Several nodded.

“He kind of liked Pete.”

More nods and a muttering of “That’s so—he sure did.”

Then, out of the smoke-heavy silence following, came Barney Axel’s voice, tense with the accumulated scorn of his secret knowledge.

“He’ll be hit harder yet!”

There was a covert threat in the tone. Pipes stopped wheezing. The men stared anywhere but at each other. This was high treason.

“Fisty’s drinkin’ too much,” he added, covering his former statement with this counter-suggestion, which seemed to satisfy every one but Smeaton. He took occasion to repeat the conversation to Harrigan that night in the seclusion of the wangan office.

“He said that, did he?” Harrigan’s heavy brows drew together. Smeaton nodded. Harrigan spat on the glowing stove viciously. “Things at the ‘Wing’ ain’t runnin’ jest to suit me. Barney’s been boss there just three years too long. He’s sufferin’ fur a new job, and he’ll get it.” Then he turned to Smeaton. “Joe, you can take charge at the ‘Wing’ in the mornin’.”

Early next day Fisty and Joe Smeaton drove over to Axel’s camp. They found him in the woods, hard at it with his men, as usual. The “Wing” was the best-managed camp at Nine-Fifteen.

“Barney,” said Harrigan, taking him to one side, “I’m thinkin’ you’d like a better job.”

“Ain’t got no kick, Denny,” said Axel, eyeing Smeaton suspiciously.

“You’ve been foreman here for three years. I’m thinkin’ you’d like a change—to a better payin’ job.”

“Well, if it’s more pay—I would that,” said Axel. “What’s the job?”

Harrigan stepped close to him. “It’s lookin’ fur another one,” he said. “You kin go!”

A wolfish grin twisted Axel’s lips and Harrigan reached for his hip-pocket; but, disregarding him, the discharged foreman leaped to Smeaton and planted a smashing blow in his face. “That’s one I owe you, Joe. Stand up ag’in and I’ll pay the whole ’count and int’rest.”

Smeaton, on his knees, the blood dripping from his mouth and nose, spat out curses and incidentally a tooth or two, but he refused to stand up. Harrigan had drawn his gun and stood swinging it gently, and suggestively. Axel swung round and faced him, his eyes contemptuous as they rested on the blue gleam of the Colt.

“Got any fust-class reason for firin’ me so almighty fast?” he asked quietly.

“No,” said Harrigan, “’cept I’m t’rough wid you.”

“Don’t be so ram-dam sure of that, Mr. Denny Harrigan,” he said, turning his back and going for his mackinaw, which was down the road near the men.

Smeaton looked up and saw the gun in Harrigan’s hand. He arose and walked quietly toward his boss, who was still watching Axel. Fisty felt the gun jerked from his grip, and before he could even call out, the big .44 roared close to his ear and he saw Axel’s shirt-sleeve twitch, a second before he leaped behind a spruce for protection.

Smeaton flung the gun from him and ran toward the shanty, as the men came up from here, there, and everywhere. The shot had been too near them to pass unnoticed.

Harrigan recovered the Colt and slid it in his pocket, as Axel came from behind the tree, white, but eyes burning.

“It’s all right, boys,” he shouted. “Went off by accident. Nobody’s goin’ to get shot.”

They picked their steps back through the heavy snow, one “Pug” Enderly grunting to his companion, “Dam’ a man that’ll carry a gun, anyhow.”

“Keep your hands easy, Denny Harrigan,” said Axel. “I got a better way to get even with you, and you knows it.”

Harrigan fingered the butt of the Colt in his pocket. So Barney was going to peach about—no, he couldn’t prove anything about Ross and the Indian, but he did know too much about a certain find on Lost Farm tract. Harrigan snarled as he realized that Axel held the whip-hand.

He jerked the gun from his pocket, murder gleaming in his agate-blue eyes.

“Now, you git, quick!” he snapped, leveling the short, ugly barrel at Axel’s head.

“It’s mighty nigh time—you’re right,” said Axel. “When a boss gits crazy ’nough to come at the men he’s hirin’, with a gun, it’s about time to quit. And I’m goin’,” he added, stalking to where his snowshoes were planted in a drift; “and if you dast, shoot ahead while I’m gettin’ ready.”

Harrigan stood watching him as he laced the thongs of his snowshoes. He realized that Axel’s going meant the squelching of his prospects, the unmasking of the find on Lost Farm, and he temporized gruffly.

“You can’t make it by to-night, Barney.”

“Can’t, eh? Well, my bucko, I’m goin’ to.”

He straightened to his gaunt height and shook first one foot, then the other. “Guess they’ll stick.”

Then he swung down the road, passed the men at work, without a word to them, and disappeared in the forest.

The pulse of his anger steadied to a set purpose with the exertion of breaking a trail through the fine-bolted snow which lay between him and the Tramworth “tote-road.” When he came out on the main road, he swung along vigorously. At the end of the second mile he stopped to light his pipe and shed the mackinaw, which he rolled and carried under his arm. It was piercingly cold, but, despite the stinging freshness of the morning, he was sweating. He knew that he must reach Lost Farm before nightfall. He trudged along, a tall, lonely figure, the lines of his hard-lived forty years cut deep in his weather-worn face. The sun rode veiled by a thin white vapor, a blurred midday moon. He glanced up and shook his head. “She’s a-goin’ to snow,” he muttered. From nowhere a jay flashed across the opening ahead of him. Again he stopped and lit his pipe. Then he struck up a brisker gait. The long white miles wound in and out of the green-edged cavern through which he plodded. Click! clack! click! clack! his snowshoes ticked off the stubborn going. He fell to counting. “A dum’ good way to git played out,” he exclaimed. He fixed his gaze on the narrow, tunnel-like opening left by the snow-feathered branches that seemed to touch in the distance and bar the trail, endeavoring to forget the monotonous tick of his snowshoes.

A little wind blew in his face and lifted a film of snowdust that stuck to his eyelashes. He pulled off his mitten and brushed his eyes. There on the trail, where had been nothing but an unbroken lane of undulating white, stood a great brown shape. As Barney tugged at his mitten the shape whirled, forelegs clear of the snow, and Whish! a few shaking firs, a falling of light snow from their breast-high tops, and the moose was gone.

“Go it, ole gamb’l roof!” shouted Barney, as the faint plug, plug, plug, of those space-melting strides died away. Before he realized it he was counting again. Then he sang,—a mirthless, ribald ditty of the shanties,—but the eternal silence swallowed his chant so passively that he ceased.

A film of snow slid from a branch and powdered the air with diamond-dust that swirled and settled gently. Above, a thin wind hissed in the pine tops.

The sun had gone out in a smother of ashy clouds, and the trees seemed to be crowding closer. Pluff! pluff! a mass of snow slid from the wide fan of a cedar, and breaking, dropped softly in the snow beneath.

Barney quickened his stride. A single flake, coming out of the blind nothingness above, drove slanting down and sparkled on his leather mitten. Then came another and another, till the green-fringed vista down which he trudged was suddenly curtained with whirling white. The going became heavier. The will to overcome the smothering softness that gave so easily to the forward thrust, yet hung a clogging burden on each lift of the hide-laced ash-bows, redoubled itself as he plunged on. Presently the trail widened, the forest seemed to draw back, and he found himself on the wide, white-masked desolation of Lost Lake.

Panting, he stopped. Instantly the rising wind struck freezing through his sweat-dampened shirt. He jerked on his coat. “I’ll make her yet—but I guess I’ll stick to the shore. How in tarnation I come to miss the road gets me, but this is Lost Lake all right, and a dum’ good name fur it.”

He turned toward the forest that loomed dimly through the hurtling white flakes. When he reached its edge he looked at his watch. It was four o’clock. He had been traveling six hours without food or rest. He followed the shore line, frequently stumbling and falling on the rocks that lay close to the surface of the snow. The wind grew heavier, thrusting invisible hands against him as he leaned toward it. It was not until after his third fall that the possibility of his never reaching Lost Farm overtook him. Before he realized it, night was upon him, and he could scarcely see the rim of his snowshoes as he drew them up, each step accomplished by sheer force of will. He thought of the men who had left the camp above and had never been heard from. It was bad enough, when a man’s light went out in a brawl, or on the drive; but to face the terror of the creeping snow, lost, starving, dragging inch by inch toward a hope that was treason to sanity. Finally, raving, cursing, praying, dying, alone—

Well, it was “up to him” to walk. He struggled on in the darkness. Had he known it, he was almost opposite the trail that crossed the dam at the foot of Lost Lake and wound up the hillside to Avery’s camp. Again he stumbled and fell. The fury of despair seized him and he struggled in the resistless snow. His foot was caught in some buried branches. Had it been daylight he would have reached down and carefully disentangled himself, but the terror of night and uncertainty was on him. He jerked his leg out and was free, but the dangling web of a broken snowshoe hung about his ankle. The ash-bow had snapped.

“Done!” His tone commingled despair and anger. Then the spirit, which had buoyed on the lashing current of many a hazardous enterprise, rallied for a last attempt.

“What! Quit because I think I’m done? The dam’ snowshoe is busted, but I ain’t—yet.”

He hobbled toward the trees, fighting his slow way with terrible intensity. Beneath a twisted cedar he rested. The cold took hold upon him and lulled him gently.

“I’ll fix her up and plug along somehow.” He examined the shoe. “Take a week to fix that,” he muttered. “Guess I’ll start a fire and wait till mornin’.”

He felt in his pockets. He had used his last match in lighting his pipe. “Wal, I was a fool to fly off the handle ’thout grub or matches or nothin’. Wal, I kin cool off now, I reckon.”

He felt drowsily comfortable. The will to act was sinking as his vitality ebbed beneath the pressure of cold and hunger.

He gritted his teeth. “What! let my light go out afore I get a finishin’ crack at Denny Harrigan?”

In the blanket of night a pin-prick of red appeared. It moved, vanished, moved again.

“Dreamin’,” he grumbled. His head sunk on his chest. Once more he lifted his frosted eye-lids. The red point was moving.

“Last call fur supper,” he said; and bracing his hands against the cedar, he drew in a great breath and shouted.

“Hallo-o-o!” came faintly to him on the wind.

“Hallo-o-o—yerself,” he added, in a drowsy whisper. His last round was spent.

David Ross, on his way from Avery’s cabin to his own, heard the far-away call. He immediately turned and walked toward the spot where Axel was. As he drew near he circled about, peering under the bending branches. He looked here and there, holding the lantern high above his head. Nothing answered as he called. Nothing moved. He turned back toward the trail, round which twinkled the lights of Lost Farm Camp. The wind had hushed. The snow fell lazily. In the silence a rustling caught his ear. Axel, huddled against the cedar trunk, had slipped sideways, his coat scraping against the loose-fibred bark.

David traced the sound to a snowshoe sticking up in the drift beneath the tree. Then a moccasined foot, a red-striped stocking, and finally he was kneeling by the unconscious Barney, shaking him vigorously. The lumberman’s eyes slowly opened, then closed again heavily. David placed his lantern in the lee of the cedar and, kicking off one of his own racquettes, belabored Axel with it unsparingly.

Finally, the torpor broke and Axel opened his eyes. “A’right, a’right,” he muttered. “Git up in a minute—jest a minute—”

In the half-hour it had taken David to reach him, the frost had gripped Axel’s blood with clogging fingers that were not to be easily shaken off. Slipping his snowshoe on again, he propped the drowsy figure against the tree and worked himself under the inert shoulders. He reached up and grasped the wide coat-collar, then straightened himself suddenly. He had the lumberman on his back, but could he stagger through that killing half-hour again? Hanging the lantern on a low stub as he stooped beneath the burden of that dead weight on his shoulders, he turned toward the camp, fighting his way first and wondering how he did it afterwards.

Hoss Avery was pouring hot coffee between Axel’s blue lips when the latter coughed and his eyes unclosed.

David, holding the lamp above him, stooped nearer. A look of recognition brightened Barney’s heavy eyes for a moment.

“Jest—the—man—I’m—lookin’—fur,” he whispered. Then he yawned, turned on his side and David thought he heard those grim lips murmur, “Sleep.”

CHAPTER XI—THAT GREEN STUFF

RRR-R-UUF! R-r-r-r-uff! Swickey grabbed Smoke’s collar and stood astride of him, holding on with both hands. “He ain’t goin’ to bite—’cause he don’t growl when he’s goin’ to bite.”

Barney Axel came from the front room of the cabin, limping a little. “’Course not! Smoke ain’t got nothin’ ag’in’ me, have you, Smoke?”

The dog had paid little attention to the lumberman during the three days he had been “resting up” at Lost Farm, as Ross and Avery had been in the cabin most of that time; but this morning they were both out, toting in firewood on the hand-sleighs.

“He’s jest pertendin’,” said Swickey, patting the terrier and encouraging him to make friends with Barney.

But Smoke was inclined to maintain a position of vigilant neutrality. Somewhere in the back of his head he had recorded that particular man-smell, and he took many uneasy paces between Swickey and Barney, keeping the while a slanted and suggestive gaze on the latter.

“Pop says ever since Injun Pete was killed, they’s folks might shoot Smoke.”

Axel’s pipe didn’t draw well. The pine splinter which he thrust in the stove occupied his entire attention.

“Pop says they won’t, if he sees ’em fust.”

“Reckon that’s right,” said Barney noncommittally.

“The sheriff was up to see Pop and Dave.”

“So?”

“Yip. And Jim Cameron come, too.”

“Ain’t su’prised at that.”

“Smoke he didn’t growl at them.”

“That dog knows his business,” replied Barney.

The conversation lagged. Axel sat smoking, eyes ceilingward and chair tilted at a perilous angle. “Fisty Harrigan give me the dirty end of the stick,” he thought. “But I got holt of the stick and Fisty’s goin’ to git it back ag’in good and plenty. Here I be settin’ easy and com’f’table right on the job. Hoss Avery and his partner Ross is plumb square, both of ’em. And the young feller’s mighty smart, keepin’ the ole man from sellin’ even if he don’t know they’s a fortune of money up there in Timberland, layin’ right on the ground waitin’ for him to come and find it. And, by gum, he’s a-goin’ to find it. All bets is off with Denny Harrigan and me. He done me and I’m goin’ to do him; and Ross he pulled me out of the snow, dumb near friz, and I reckon when I show him what’s over on Timberland, I’ll be square with the whole bilin’ of ’em. Then me fur Canady. Them St. John’s folks need men. Guess I kin land a job, all right.”

Swickey wanted to talk, but Barney’s abstraction awed her. She left the room finally, and returned with her “Robinson Crusoe.” She sidled up to the lumberman and laid the book on his knee. Still he smoked, apparently oblivious to the girl’s presence.

“Barney.” The tone was cajoling.

“Wal, sis?”

“Kin you read?”

“Wal, some.”

“Pop kin!” This was a challenge.

Barney glanced at the volume. “You want me to read this here?” he said, his chair clumping to the floor.

“Yes.”

“Thanks. I was feelin’ kind of lonesome.”

He studied the first page for a long time. Then he settled back against the wall again, apparently absorbed in the book.

Swickey stood patiently waiting. She shifted from one foot to the other. Tick-tack. Tick-tack. The cabin was silent save for the rhythmic perseverance of the old clock. Smoke lay in front of the stove watching her.

“Barney!”

He glanced up, a surprised expression seaming his forehead.

“Kin you read—so’st I kin hear?”

“Why, sure!”

The suggestion seemed a novel idea to him. He turned back to the first page and began slowly, often pausing to illustrate the meaning with colloquialisms that to Swickey were decidedly interesting. He had already read the first page and he intended to make it last as long as possible. He felt fairly safe on the ground he had already covered, but new territory loomed ahead. “Let’s see,” he said, approximating the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word, “c-o-n-v-” but the stamping of feet on the porch saved him.

Avery and Ross entered, ruddy with exercise. Smoke raised his head and dropped it again with a grunt of satisfaction.

“Wal, Barney, how’s the feet?” said Avery, drawing off his mittens.

“Siz’able,” he replied.

“Kind of think you’d better not try to make thet explorin’ trip this a’ternoon. It’s heavy goin’.”

“Guess I kin hump along somehow. Jim’s comin’ up with the team fur me t’morrow, so I figure we’d best be joggin’ over there to Timberland.”

“Jest as you’re wishful. Me and Dave’s ready.”

“Kin I go?” asked Swickey.

“Reckon you better stay and keep Smoke comp’ny,” replied her father. “Dogs gits tol’able lonesome when they’s alone, jest the same as folks. They git to thinkin’ ’bout their famblys and friends and—”

“Has Smoke got a fambly?” asked Swickey.

“Wishin’ they was back home ag’in same as thet Robi’son Crusoe feller, all alone on a big island s’rrounded by cannibells jest dyin’ to git a taste of white meat biled tender—”

“They roasted ’em,” corrected Swickey.

“Thet’s right—roasted; and they’s no tellin’ what thet dog might do. He might take a notion to go home by hisself—”

“I’d shet the door,” said Swickey.

“Huh! s’pose thet’d make any diff’runce. Why, if thet dog sot out to do it, he’d go through a winder like a hoss kickin’ a hole in a fog. You stay by Smoke, thet’s a good gal.”

Swickey was silenced. The thought of losing Smoke outweighed the anticipated joy of lacing on her small snowshoes and accompanying the men on the trip about which there seemed to be so much mystery.

After dinner the three men filed out of the cabin and down across the frozen river, then up toward No-Man’s Lake, David breaking the trail, Avery and Barney Axel following. They crossed the windswept glare of the lake, carrying their snowshoes. Round the base of Timberland Mountain they crept like flies circling a sugar-cone, slowly and with frequent pauses. David carried a rifle, Avery an axe, and Barney his own complaining body, which was just a trifle more than he bargained for at the start. His feet telegraphed along the trunk-line (so to speak) to give them a rest. But Barney was whipcord and iron, and moreover he had a double purpose of gratitude and revenge to stimulate him.

They came to the mouth of a black, ice-bound brook, and, following his directions, skirted its margin for perhaps a half-mile through the glen which wound along the north side of the mountain.

“It’s somewhere right here,” he called from the rear, where he had been examining the blaze on a pine. The two men waited for him, and, following his slow pace, were presently on a comparative level where a branch of the stream swung off toward the east. The second stream ran through a shallow gorge of limestone ledges, their ragged edges sticking up through the snow at intervals.

“Fust time I ever sighted this stream,” said Avery. “Howcome we got a line of traps t’other side of the main brook.”

Axel leaned wearily against a tree. His vengeance was costing him more physical pain than he cared to admit.

“There’s where it is,” he said, pointing to the ledges. “Mebby you might poke around with the axe a bit. You’ll know it when you find it.”

Avery handed the axe to David, who scooped away the snow and tapped a sliver of shale from the ledge. “Nothing here,” he said, “except stone.”

“Try a piece furder along,” said Axel. “That surveyor feller, young Bascomb, could show you. He’s been here, and so has Harrigan.”

David tried again. This time he broke away a larger piece of rock and threw it aside to peck at a crevice. Presently he laid down the axe and came to Avery, holding something in his hand.

They crowded close to him. He held out his hand, disclosing a shining, dark-green mineral with little white cracks on its grained surface.

“That’s her!” said Axel.

Avery took the piece of mineral from David and looked at it curiously, turning it over and over in his hand.

“Thet green stuff!” he exclaimed skeptically. “Thet green stuff! And thet’s what they was a’ter. Wal, I’ll be henpoggled! What’s it good fur? What d’you call it?”

“Asbestos,” said David.

“That’s her,” assented Barney.

David picked a sliver from the mineral and shredded it to a white fibre. “Got a match?”

Avery handed him one. He lit it, and, holding the white shreds in the flame, watched them grow red, then pale to a grayish white ash, but the substance was unconsumed.

“That’s her!” said Barney. “And there’s miles of it strung along this here creek. Drillin’ and dinnimite ’ll show more. Fisty set a blast in up there,” he said, pointing above them, “but I promised him I’d never squeak about there bein’ asbestos on your land—and I hain’t nuther. I never told you they was asbestos here. I said they was suthin’ wuth comin’ a’ter, and you come and found it. I reckon I’m square with Fisty Harrigan now—and mebby with you,” he added, turning to David, “fur diggin’ me out of the snow.”

“What’s it wuth?” said Avery.

“Well, if there’s the quantity that Barney seems to think there is, it’s worth a whole lot more than Bascomb offered you,” replied David.

“Yes,” said Axel, “and Denny was in on the deal with young Bascomb. Denny put him on to it, expectin’ to make a fortune. Said he found it cruisin’ fur the Great Western.”

“Cruisin’ fur the Great Western?” exclaimed Avery. “What’s Harrigan been doin’ cruisin’ my land fur timber fur them?”

“Oh, they’ll get it some day,” replied Axel. “They’ve got a pull down to the State House.”

“Wal, they ain’t got it yit,” said Avery, pocketing the sample. “And they ain’t a-goin’ to.”

“They’s one thing more I was a-goin’ to say.” Barney Axel gazed at the rim of his snowshoe. “Denny Harrigan was my friend onct. That’s up the spout now. But Injun Pete was set on to do what he come dum’ near doin’ and mebby you kin guess who set him on. And the feller that set him up to it won’t quit till he’s done you up. I ain’t mentionin’ no names, but you licked him onct—and you’re the fust man that ever done it. The next time,” he continued slowly, “don’t you quit till you’ve finished the job—cold.”

“Much obliged, Barney,” said David. “I’ll remember.”

The next day, after Axel had left with Cameron for Tramworth, the partners had an interesting session. Ross was to go to Boston and bring a mining expert back with him,—but not till spring had swept an easier footway to the mountain and laid bare the ledges for a more comprehensive inspection. They wanted to find out what the asbestos was really worth, and then, if it promised well, to mine it themselves.

“It will take time and money,” said David. “These things always move slowly, and it takes money to interest capital.”

“Wal,” replied Avery, “you got the time,—next spring,—and mebby I kin rake t’gither a leetle dough. How much do you reckon it’ll take to git started?”

“Oh, a thousand or two for initial expenses; perhaps more.”

“Smotherin’ cats! But I reckon you know somethin’ ’bout sech things—havin’ a law eddication.”

“You could mortgage the land and operate with the money,” said David, “but it’s risky.”

“Say, Dave, ain’t me and you done purty fair so fur?”

“Yes,” replied David, smiling, “we have. But my interest in the trapping lets me out. It’s your land and your asbestos.”

“Ya-a-s,” drawled Avery whimsically, studying the other’s face. “It’s my land, and my asbestos, and you’re my partner, and Swickey’s my gal, and I reckon I kin pay the man what’s eddicatin’ her as much as I dum’ please.”

“If the man is willing,” replied David.

“If he ain’t, it won’t be for because ole Hoss Avery don’t pay him enough. We’re goin’ halves on this here deal the same as the trappin’ and the eddicatin’ and sech.” He put his hand on David’s shoulder and whispered, “Listen to thet!”

It was Swickey, perched in Avery’s armchair, spelling out letter by letter the first page of her “Robinson Crusoe,” to Smoke, who sat on his haunches before her, well aware that she demanded his individual attention to the story, yet his inner consciousness told him that it was a good half-hour past supper-time.

CHAPTER XII—“US AS DON’T KNOW NOTHIN’”

With the June rains came the drive, thousand after thousand of glistening logs that weltered in the slow rise and fall of the lake, crowding, rolling, blundering against each other, pounding along shore on the rocks, and shouldering incessantly at the chain-linked booms that sagged across the upper end of the conglomeration of timbers. Rain-dappled spaces appeared here and there in that undulating floor of uneasy logs, round which two floating windlasses were slowly worming another boom from shore to shore. Round and round the capstans stepped red-shirt, blue-shirt, gray-shirt, their calked boots gnawing a splintered, circular path on the windlass rafts.

Below the three cabins, and close to the river, stood the smoking wangan of weathered tents, flopping in the wind that whipped the open fireplace smoke across the swinging pots, and on down the gorge, where it hung eddying in the lee of rain-blackened cliffs.

Peaveys stood like patient sentinels, their square steel points thrust in stranded logs. Pike-poles lay here and there, their sharp screw-ends rusting in the rain. They seemed slight and ineffectual compared with the stout peaveys, whose dangling steel fingers hung suggestively ready to grasp with biting spur the slippery timber; and Y-hey! from the men, and the log would grumble over the shingle and plunge in the lake with a surly rolling from side to side. But the peavey’s attenuated brother, the pike-pole, was a worker of miracles in the hands of his master, the driver.

Ross, who had been watching with keen interest the manœuvres of the rivermen, stood with his shoulders against a buttress of the dam, muffled in sou’wester and oilskins. Logs were shooting from the apron of the sluiceway and leaping to the lift of the foaming back-water, like lean hunters taking the billowy top of a wind-tossed hedge. A figure came toward where he stood and called to him, but the roar of the water through the sluiceway drowned his voice. Then Harrigan, brushing the rain from his face, stood before him.

“Here you! get a roll on that log there, or—”

He pointed to where two of the crew were standing, knee-deep in the backwash of the stream, tugging at a balky timber that threatened to hang up the logs that charged at it and swung off in the current again.

“No, you won’t,” said David, turning his face to Harrigan. “Thought I was one of the crew loafing?” A faint twinkle shone beneath his half-closed lids. It vanished as he leveled his clear gray eyes on Harrigan’s. “That’s the fourth mistake you’ve made regarding me. Aren’t you getting tired of it? I am.”

Harrigan had not seen Ross since the shooting, and, taken aback by suddenly coming upon him, he stared at David a little longer than the occasion seemed to warrant.

Coolly the younger man lifted his sou’wester and ran his fingers through his hair. “It’s on this side,” he said, disclosing a red seam above his ear, “if that’s what you are looking for. Shot any deer lately?”

“You go to hell!”

Ross stepped up to him and pointed across the opposite hill to where the dim crest of Timberland Mountain loomed in the rain.

“Bascomb & Company haven’t bid high enough for the raw material, including you. That’s all.”

Harrigan’s loose, heavy features hardened to a cold mask of hate as the full meaning of David’s words struck home. Then the sluggish blood leaped to his face and he stooped for the peavey at his feet, but David’s foot was on it like a flash. “None of that!”

They faced each other, shoulder to shoulder, David’s eyes measuring the distance to Harrigan’s jaw. In the intense silence the patter of rain on their oilskins sounded like the roll of kettledrums.

“Hey, Denny!” Up on the dam a dripping figure waved its arms.

“I’ll git you yit, you—”

“Swallow it!” David’s voice rang out imperiously. The wound above his ear tingled with the heat of blood that swept his face.

Harrigan drew back and turned toward the beckoning figure.

“Go ahead,” said David; “I don’t carry a gun.”

As Fisty swung heavily along the shore, Avery came from down river with one of the men.

“They’re pilin’ up at the ‘Elbow,’” he said, as he approached. “They’s a full head of water comin’ through the gates, but she’s a-goin’ to tie up.”

“That means the outfit will be here indefinitely,” said David.

“Reckon it do. Comin’ up to the house?”

“No; I think I’ll go over and see if Smoke is all right.”

“Thet’s right: I’ll send Swickey over with some grub fur him,” said Avery, as he moved on up the slope.

“Well, it’s pretty tough on old Smoke, chained up and worrying himself out of appetite, because he can’t understand it all,” thought David, as he climbed the easy slope to the stable.

The clink and rustle of a chain in the straw came to him as he unlocked the rusty padlock and opened the door. Smoke stood blinking and sniffling. Then on his hind legs, chain taut from collar to manger, he strained toward his master, whimpering and half strangled by his effort to break loose. David drew an empty box to the stall and sat down.

“Smoke,” he said playfully, “we’re going back to Boston pretty soon. Then no more hikes down the trail; no more rabbits and squirrels to chase; and no more Swickey to spoil you. Just Wallie and the horses and maybe a cat or two to chase.”

The dog sat on his haunches, tongue lolling, but eyes fixed unwaveringly on David’s face. He whined when Swickey’s name was mentioned, and while David listlessly picked a straw to pieces, he turned and gnawed savagely at his chain. Surely they had made a mistake to shut him away from the good sun and the wind and the rain. The consciousness of unseen presences stamping past his door, strange voices, new man-smells, the rumbling of logs in the river, the scent of smoke from the wangan, all combined to irritate him, redoubling his sense of impotency as a champion and guardian of his adopted household.

The door of the main camp opened and closed. With the slant of the rain beating against her came Swickey, a quaint figure in her father’s cap and gay-colored mackinaw. She had a bowl of table scraps for Smoke, who ceased whining and stood watching her approach. David took the basin from her hands and gravely offered her a seat on the box; but she declined with a quick smile and dropped on her knees beside Smoke, caressing his short, pointed ears and muscular fore-shoulders. The dog sniffed at his food disdainfully. What did meat and bones amount to compared with prospective liberty? With many words and much crooning she cajoled him into a pretense of eating, but his little red eyes sought her face constantly as he crunched a bone or nosed out the more appetizing morsels from the pan.

“Dave,” she said, addressing him with the innocent familiarity of the backwoods, “you’re goin’ to take Smoke to his real home again, ain’t you?”

“Yes, I’ll have to, I think. But this is as much his real home as Boston was.”

“Are you comin’ back again?”

“I think so, Swickey. Why?”

“Are you goin’ to bring Smoke back when you come?”

“I’m afraid not. You see he belongs to Mr. Bascomb the surveyor. He was coming up here to get Smoke and—and talk with me about certain things, but he was called home by wire. Had to leave immediately.”

“What’s it mean—‘called home by wire’?”

“By telegraph. You remember the telegraph wires in the station at Tramworth?”

“Yip. Hundreds of ’em.”

“Well, people call telegraphing, ‘wiring,’ and a telegram a ‘wire.’”

“Ain’t telegraph its real name?”

“Yes; but wire is shorter—easier to say.”

“Is thet why you said it?”

“Not exactly. But why?”

“Oh, nothin’; only when Pop had a cold and I said to you he could sca’cely talk ’cause he had frost in his pipes, you said it was wrong to say thet, and to say ‘my father has a sore throat.’ Ain’t ‘frost in your pipes’ quicker than sayin’ ‘my father has a sore throat’?”

She looked up from Smoke as David laughed, her gravely smiling lips vivid in contrast with the clear, healthy brown of her rounded young cheek.

He gazed at her a moment, and the pert, shabbily-clad Swickey of a year ago returned his gaze for a fleeting instant. Then a new Swickey, with full, brown eyes and the rich coloring of abundant health, pushed back the frayed cap from her smooth, girlish forehead, and laughed, laughed with the buoyant melody of youth and happiness.

“You’re actually pretty, Swickey.”

She grasped the import of his words with a slow realization of the compliment, perhaps the first that had ever been paid her, and a sudden consciousness of self overwhelmed her throat and cheek with rushing color. She pulled her skirt, that Smoke had disarranged, closer about her knees.

“Pop says my mother was pretty—awful pretty. I never seen her, ’cept in her picture. Pop’s got it with all gold on the edges of the box and a cover thet goes ‘snap’ when he shets it.”

“Yes,” replied David absently.

He was thinking of the pale beauty of another and older girl, a tall, slender woman, whose every feature bespoke ancestral breeding. He could not imagine her as a part of this picture, with its squalid setting, nor even as a part of the splendid vista of glistening spring foliage sprinkled upon the background of the hillside conifers that climbed the height of land opposite. Palms and roses, the heavy warm air of the conservatory, sensuous, soothing, enervating.... Wallie Bascomb’s sister ... Elizabeth Bascomb. “Well, it had been a mistake.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Bascomb senior will sit up straight when I name our price,” he muttered. “Strange how this thing has worked out ... and Bessie won’t understand....”

Smoke, nuzzling his hand, recalled him to his surroundings. He did not realize that he had been speaking, but Swickey sat with eyes intently fixed on his face.

“I thought—” he began.

“I unhitched the chain when you was talkin’ to yourself like Pop does,” explained Swickey.

David stooped and patted the dog, who jumped from him to Swickey and back again, overjoyed and impartially affectionate.

“Be careful not to let him out alone,” said David. “Smoke isn’t popular with the men.”

“Pop says they’ll be”—(“There’ll be,” corrected David)—“there’ll be suthin’ doin’ if any of the crew tetches Smoke!”

“Well, you and I will look after him for a while, Swickey. Then no one will touch him.”

Together they walked leisurely toward the cabin, hand in hand, Swickey swinging the empty bowl, all unconscious of Smoke’s capering and rushing in circles round his liberators. He quieted down and trotted silently behind them when his first joy had evaporated. They didn’t seem to enter into the spirit of the thing.

David, unlike his usual self in Swickey’s presence, was silent to taciturnity. Boston, of which he was thinking, seemed vague and unreal, a place he once knew. His surroundings were the only realities, and now that he was going away they seemed to hold him with a subtle force he could not analyze. Was he really growing fonder of his life here, of Swickey and her father, than he cared to acknowledge?

“’Fraid Dave’d get lost in the long grass?” said Avery, who stood in the doorway, grinning as they came up.

David stopped and turned toward Swickey. She slowly withdrew her fingers from his.

“I reckon Dave’s sick,” she replied.

“How sick?” queried her father, with undisguised solicitude.

“Sick of us as don’t know nothin’,” she answered, her cheeks flaming. And she pushed past the figure in the doorway and disappeared into her room.

“Wal, sweatin’ catfish! What ails the gal? She was puffin’ like a hen drawin’ rails when she went past me. Huh!”

The old man fumbled in his pocket for tobacco, oblivious to Smoke’s appeal for notice. Then the dog trotted quietly after Swickey, who in the sanctuary of her own tiny bedroom was crying her heart out. Smoke was sympathetic from his cold, friendly nose to the tip of his querulous tail, which wagged in an embarrassed way; and he licked her chin at intervals when it was visible, with dumb solicitude for the sorrow of his idol, a sorrow wholly incomprehensible to him, and vague even to Swickey, but more emotionally potent, perhaps, for that very reason.

CHAPTER XIII—DAVID’S “REAL GOOD-BYE”

Dear Davy:—Only a line to say how d’do, and tell you that things are booming here, especially in the office. The pater asks me to say that he, as chairman of a certain committee of inflated gold-bugs, will accept your figure for the entire Lost Farm tract (survey inclosed), provided the figure is anywhere within reason, whatever that means. This is with the understanding that the present tenants vacate on or before June 1st, 19—.

The N. M. & Q. will have their iron laid as far as Tramworth by that time.

I suppose you have become quite a woodsman by this time, but I can’t for the life of me see how you can stand it up there in winter; summer is bad enough.

By the way, if it is not too much trouble, you might bring Smoke along when you come out, if you ever do. I’ve given up hoping you will. Bess seems to think she wants Smoke, although she didn’t see him once a month when he was at home.

My illustrious father has cooked up a new job for me—I’m a promoter now. Shake.

Davy, I have a surprise for you when you come; something that will make you sit up and take notice, I’ll bet. In the mean time, beware the seductions of Tramworth, and dressmakers in particular. Speaking of Tramworth reminds me of the account I saw of your accident. Congrats, old man, on your ability to dodge bullets. I intended to write sooner, but have been on the jump every minute. Smoke did the Indian up for fair, bless his little heart (I mean Smoke’s). But we can talk it over when you arrive. Regards to old Cyclops and the siren child.

Sincerely,

—WALTER E. BASCOMB.

David tucked the letter into his pocket, and closing the door of his cabin walked over to Avery’s camp.

“Pop’s down on the dam talkin’ to Jim,” said Swickey from the doorway.

“All right. I’ll jog down and see him.” He turned back after a step or two. “Did Jim say he was going back this afternoon?”

“I dunno,” replied Swickey listlessly.

He looked at her. She seemed older, more serious than usual. Slowly he realized that she was no longer the child of yesterday, but a girl budding rapidly into womanhood, which seemed natural enough when he remembered what her life had been up to the time he had first met her. She was virtually doing a woman’s work at the camp; had been for a number of years. Then she was of the type that matures rapidly. Outdoor air and exercise had developed her physically, and she had always been of full proportions for her age. The color glowed in her cheeks as he gazed at her.

“Swickey, what’s the matter? Have I offended you in any way? You haven’t spoken to me since yesterday.”

“Nothin’,” she replied. “You ain’t done nothin’.”

“Don’t you mean: ‘You haven’t done anything?’” he asked kindly.

“Nope.” She offended deliberately.

“Swickey!” His tone of gentle reproof was new to her. Self-accusation, laboring in her heart, sent a full tide of color to her brows, but she did not speak.

“Is it Smoke?” he asked.

She nodded. Yesterday that answer would have sufficed her conscience, but to-day....

“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping across the porch and to the path. He had gone as far as the end of the camp when she called.

“D—Dave!”

He came back to her, an amused light in his eyes.

“I lied, I did. ’Tain’t Smoke—it’s you, too,” she cried, the tears welling to her eyes.

“Me?” he exclaimed. Then he understood. “You poor youngster. There, don’t cry. I’m coming back and, by crickey! I’ll bring Smoke, too, if it’s possible.” He drew nearer to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You’ve got your father, and there isn’t a finer man on earth than he. Besides, I won’t be away so very long if I can help it.”

But David’s words failed to comfort her.

“’Tain’t Pop I want,” she sobbed, “like I want you.”

“But, Swickey—”

She came close, pressing her face against him. Suddenly she flung her arms about his neck, her tempestuous affection striking a thrill through his body as her warmth crept to him. Despite the many interests of his new life, he had been lonely and she brought it home to him in her own abrupt way.

“Why, Swickey, I didn’t know you cared so much. Come! I’ll promise to come back just as soon as I can, and we’ll have some new books, and glorious winter evenings together to read and talk and study.”

He drew her hands from his shoulders, and as he did so she threw back her head and half affectionately, half defiantly whispered, “Ain’t you goin’ to kiss me—jest once—afore you go?”

The appeal of her tearful eyes and upturned, trembling lips, half pouting with a thirst inexplicable to her, found answer as he stooped and kissed her with grave tenderness.

“Good-bye, Swickey. I’m going to-night, if Cameron will take me through to Tramworth. The letter he brought has changed my plans. Of course I’ll see you again, but this is our real good-bye, little girl.”

“I’m fifteen anyway,” she replied, smiling through her tears.

“I’ll send you a birthday present when I get home. How would you like a nice, woolly, white mackinaw coat, with little blue squares round the edges? I know where I can get one.”

“Oh, heaps!” she exclaimed rapturously. “Will you?”

“As sure as you’re Swickey!”

She watched him as he hurried toward the dam where her father and Curious Jim were vehemently discussing the new railroad. Something white lay on the floor at her feet. She picked it up and studied the address on the envelope. It was Bascomb’s letter to David. Intending to return it to him when he came back, she placed it on the clock-shelf and busied herself with the daily routine of housekeeping.

Cameron’s fist was in the air as David came to where Avery and he stood.

“I seen ’em as plain as I see Dave Ross a-comin’,” he asserted.

Avery seemed doubtful.

“A whole line of ’em strung along the river. Then they stopped. Seein’ they was plenty of logs stranded, I clumb across, and sure as shootin’, on the other side they commenced ag’in with N. M. & Q. stamped on every ding one of ’em.”

“Jim’s a-tellin’ me them surveyor fellers marked out a new line fur the railrud, crossin’ the Branch about five mile below here tow’ds the Knoll!”

David contained his surprise. “Is that so?” he answered easily.

“Sure as hens ’ll squawk,” said Cameron.

“You’re sure it isn’t an old survey?”

“They’re fresher than them,” he replied, kicking a survey stake at his feet.

Ross glanced at Avery, but the old man’s gaze was fixed on Cameron’s face.

“Why’d you tell me about it, Jim?” he asked abruptly.

Cameron shuffled his feet in the shingle, and pensively bit a chew from his plug. He busied himself adjusting the tobacco satisfactorily, evidently preparing for a long siege.

“M-m-um, well,” he began, “thought it might int’rest you if the road was to cross the Branch there, instid of here,” emphasizing the location by again kicking the stake. “Probably you know why better than I do. I was jest spec’latin’ on that.”

“Jim,” said Avery, fixing him with a shrewd eye, “whar you been pokin’ round lately?”

Curious Jim shifted from one foot to the other.

“I can smell somethin’ comin’ plain as burnin’ grevvy—”

Cameron grinned in anticipation of his hearers’ astonishment when he should tell them what he knew.

“When the drive went through last week, I was to Tramworth. You know the back room in Bill Smeaton’s harness-shop. Well, I was settin’ there, pickin’ over some findin’s to mend my harness,—Bill havin’ gone out on a personal errand,—and somebody comes in, follered by another feller. One of ’em says, ‘Hey, Bill!’ Seein’ as my name’s Jim, I jest said nothin’”—a smile twitched Avery’s beard—“but set there. Pretty soon the feller what follered the first feller in, says, ‘Guess he’s gone out fur a drink,’ which was c’rrect. Then they sorter hung around fur a minute or two, talkin’ about the drive and this here new railroad, and some folks as ain’t more’n a mile from here; and then Fisty says, ‘Well, Red, Barney’s done us on the asbestos and that one-eyed ole’—”

“Go ahead,” interrupted Avery, “I been called thet afore now.”

“‘Has got it comin’ his way so fur,’” continued Cameron, “‘but the game ain’t all played out yet.’”

Curious Jim drew himself up and looked from one to the other of the partners. “That’s all—’cept they went out, Fisty and Jim Smeaton, and I climb out of the back window after a spell and waited till Bill Smeaton come back. Then I went in the front ag’in and got what I was after.”

“Wal, is thet all?” said Avery.

“All of that,” replied Cameron. “Later on I was in the hotel, and when I went out to the stable to hitch up, they was a couple of fellers talkin’ kind of loud in the alley back of the stable. They had liquor in ’em, I reckon. One of ’em says to the other, ‘What good is it goin’ to do ’em if the railroad don’t cross on their land?’ Now, that’s what set me thinkin’ they might be some manœuvrin’ goin’ on what might int’rest you.”

“Jim,” said Avery, “if what you say is true, you never done a better day’s work in your life. We’re goin’ to need a fust-class man with a team when the—when things gits to runnin’ right. It’ll be stiddy work and good pay. Dave here is goin’ to Boston to-morrow to see about it and he’ll be wantin’ you to take him to the train, I reckon.”

“I was,” said David, “but all this has changed my plans. I want to go just as quick as I can. Can you take me down to-night?”

“Guess I can make her,” replied Curious Jim. “It’s goin’ to rain afore long,” he added, looking at the sky.

“Never mind the rain, Jim. I’ll be ready in five minutes,” and David hastened toward his cabin.

An hour later they were jolting down the trail in the big wagon. As they entered the woods, David turned and waved his hat. A hand flickered up and down on the distant cabin porch. He could not see the figures distinctly, Avery shading his eyes with a great hairy hand, as he gazed at the retreating wagon, and Swickey, standing beside him, eyes fixed on the edge of the forest, and the memory of David’s real good-bye still warm in her heart and tingling on her lips.

CHAPTER XIV—THE FLIGHT OF SMOKE

They passed Cameron’s place without stopping, much to the disappointment of the good woman of that establishment, whose real fondness for David was hidden beneath the rough bark of bucolic assertiveness with which she chose to mask her natural kindness of heart.

“There goes Jim and that man Ross, tearin’ past here like as if wagons and hosses didn’t cost nothin’,” she remarked. “And they’re drivin’ into what’s like to be the biggest drenchin’ of their lives, if I’m any jedge.”

She snatched the meagre array of stockings, sheets, and underwear from the clothes-line, bundling them hurriedly in her long, muscular arms, and disappeared into the house, followed by the first scattering harbingers of a heavy June downpour that presently came, spreading black spots on the soft gray of the sun-bleached door.

Racketing over the road at a brisk trot, a quarter of a mile below, went the team, David clinging to the seat and wondering how Cameron managed to maintain his swaying poise with both hands on the reins and his mind engrossed with nothing more serious than asking stuttering questions as to what his companion thought the new road—Bump! Judas!—was up to now?

“She’s a-goin’ to break loose in a minute,’ yelled Cameron, as a gust of wind flapped his hat-brim over his eyes. With one hand he reached beneath the seat and drew out a grain sack, which he flung round his shoulders, tucking the ends beneath his suspenders.

“C-c-cant, he-he-lp it now,” replied David. “I want to make that ten-thirty train.”

He cast a glance over his shoulder to where Smoke stood, legs spread to the lurch of the wagon, and a canine grin of fixed intensity gripped between his set jaws.

With the quick chill of air that blew in their faces came the roar of the rain through the leaves.

The broad, round flanks of the horses worked rhythmically, and each huge forefoot rose and fell with trip-hammer precision. A sharp drive of wind bent the tops of the young wayside firs groundward. The wagon pitched over a knoll and took the rutted grade below it at a speed that kept the horses’ flanks quivering with the anticipated shock of the clacking whiffletrees, as the traces slackened and then snapped taut again with a jerk. Then somewhere in the southern sky a long, fiery seam sprang open and winked shut again, followed by a hush in which the battering of the horses’ feet on the shale was like mimic thunder.

A dull grumbling rolled out of nowhere and boomed lazily across the crouching hills, dying away in the distant valleys.

“’Fraid of lightnin’?” asked Cameron, pulling up the horses as they descended a steep pitch in the road.

“No, but I don’t like it.”

“I be,” said Cameron.

David glanced at his dripping face, which seemed strangely white in the gathering dusk.

“Had a hoss struck onct—when I was drivin’ him. That’s as close as I—”

A whirl of flame spurted from the trees on the roadside. A rush of shattering noises tore the false truce of silence to a million shreds, and the top of a giant hemlock fell crashing through the trees below it and lunged across the road. The team plunged backward, and David saved himself from a headlong dive between the rearing animals by the sheer force of his grip on the seat. The roar of the rain, as it pounded on the corduroy of the “swamp-stretch,” drowned Cameron’s voice as he called to the horses. Curious Jim’s fear of lightning was not altogether a selfish one. He treated his horses like human beings in so far as he could, and they shuddered uneasily in the slack harness as they stood in front of the wrecked tree-top, but they did not run, as David feared they would.

Cameron handed the lines to David and went to their heads with a reassuring familiarity of voice and touch that quieted them.

“You go ahead a piece and look if they’s room to get by.”

David dropped to the road and felt his way cautiously over the slippery logs. A white flash lit the dripping leaves around him, disclosing an impassable barrier of twisted limbs through which gleamed the riven top of the hemlock.

“We can’t make it with the team,” he shouted.

“You jest hold the hosses a spell.” David came back to him. “No—go back and take the lines. I’ll have a squint at things.”

The teamster crept forward in the gloom and peered at the obstruction. Presently he came back and reached beneath the wagon. David heard him loosen the chain and brake-shoe attached to the axle. Again Cameron moved toward the fallen tree, the chain clanking behind him. “Now, I’ll onhitch and see if we can snake her to one side. Where in thunder’s that axe?”

He found it and drove out the king-pin. The tongue of the wagon thudded to the road as the horses stepped free.

“They’s jest one chanct in a hundred we kin make it,” he called, as he started toward the tree.

Another flash burned through the cavernous gloom, and David saw his companion stooping among the fallen branches. Then he heard the chain jump taut with a snap, followed by myriad rustlings as the horses leaned to the creaking collars. He could hear Cameron’s voice urging them easily as they stumbled on the slippery corduroy. With a groan the tree swung parallel to the trail. The horses stopped.

“She’s a-comin’,” called Jim. “If they’d only light up ag’in so I could resk snakin’ her a leetle—”

With the flash that followed, Cameron called to the horses. Ross could hear them shouldering through the underbrush at the edge of the swamp.

“E-e-easy, thar!” Cameron backed the team and unhooked the chain. “Reckon we kin jest about squeak by,” he said, as he swung the hard-breathing horses to the wagon again. “She’s lettin’ up some, but that ain’t sayin’ much.” After some delay he found the axe which he had dropped after driving out the king-pin. He drove it in place again and climbed to the seat.

“When we git by this piece of corrugated cussedness, I calc’late we’ll make a noise like as if suthin’s comin’,” he remarked, wiping his forehead with a dripping hand. “Kin you see what’s the time?”

“About nine-thirty. I looked when you were unhitching. I won’t have time to change my clothes at the hotel.”

“Reckon not,” replied Jim, as he swung the horses round the crowding branches that whipped their flanks and snapped along the side of the wagon. In a few minutes they were on the natural roadbed again, swishing through pools of muddy water, and clanking over the stony stretches at a brisk trot.

A tiny red glow appeared on the edge of the night. It crept higher and higher as they jingled toward it. Presently it was a lamp, framed in the cottage window of the first habitation on the outskirts of Tramworth. Then more lights sprang out of the darkness, gleaming faintly through rain-blurred panes.

A dog ran out of a dooryard as they passed, barking raucously. Smoke growled his disapproval. It was bad enough to get wet to the hide without being insulted by an ill-bred animal whose valor was proportionate, in adverse ratio, to the proximity of the front gate. Smoke knew that kind.

They turned a corner and trotted smoothly down the main street of the town. On the right, at the foot of the street, shone the low red and green switch-lights of the railroad. The station baggage-room was open, and the lamplight spread out across the glistening, wet cinders of the approach to the platform. Cameron whirled the team alongside and David jumped out, Smoke at his heels.

“Boston—single.”

The station agent stamped the ticket and shoved the change under the wire screen.

“Two bundles on this,” he said, handing his ticket to the baggage-man, and lifting his belongings to the platform. “I suppose the dog can come in the smoker with me?”

“’Gainst the rules. Have to buy a ticket for him. He goes in the baggage.”

The air quavered with the rumble of the on-coming train. A long shaft of light shot round a distant curve.

“Here, Smoke!” David attached the red ticket to the dog’s collar. “You’re live baggage this trip.”

“You’ll have to have a chain or they won’t take him,” said the baggage-man.

“Got a piece of rope, Jim?”

“Nope. They’s some on your duffle.”

“Here you are.” The baggage-man appeared with a cord which he hastily knotted in the dog’s collar. “I’ll put him aboard with your stuff.”

“All right,” answered David, as the train roared past and slowed down. “Well, good-bye, Jim.”

“So-long, Dave. I’ll keep an eye on Fisty.”

“Smoker? Three coaches forward,” said a brass-buttoned official in answer to David’s question.

David swung to the car steps as the train started, and stood for a second waving to Cameron. As he turned to mount the steps he saw a familiar shape shoot down the glistening platform and disappear in the darkness, a red ticket fluttering at its throat.

CHAPTER XV—BOSTON

“Smoke! Smoke!” he called, as the white figure shot across the patch of light from the station doorway and vanished up the Tramworth road. Then he realized the futility of his recent action, and laughed. As the step on which he stood glided smoothly past the end of the platform, his attention was attracted to another figure, standing with mouth open and eyes gazing with an absurdly wistful expression toward the place where Smoke was last visible. It was the baggage-man, with a piece of broken cord in his hand.

“Cheer up, old man!” shouted David, as the train slipped past. Then he turned and entered the car. “Might have known Smoke wouldn’t lead just like a little woolly lamb on wheels. Hang it, though, what will Wallie say? Well, I’ve got the claim check for him, anyway.”

He found a seat near the end of the car, flung up the window and filled his pipe. “Couldn’t sleep if I tried, so I’ll just have it out with myself now. Then I’ll try the sleeper.”

Settling comfortably in the corner of the seat, he glanced down the aisle of the car through the smoky haze that blurred the lamps and swirled through the ventilators. The man across the aisle lay huddled in his seat, mouth open and head jogging as he slept. Near the middle of the coach four men were playing cards. The muscular impetuosity of the one who was leading his trumps with a flourish that suggested swinging a pickaxe amused David more than it offended by its uncouthness. He understood that type of man better than he had a year ago.