The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tom Akerley, by Theodore Goodridge Roberts, Illustrated by Ernest Fuhr

TOM AKERLEY

HIS ADVENTURES IN THE TALL TIMBER AND
AT GASPARD’S CLEARINGS ON THE INDIAN RIVER

STORIES BY

Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Comrades of the Trails

The Red Feathers

Flying Plover

The Fighting Starkleys

Tom Akerley

THE PAGE COMPANY

53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.

“THE BEAR’S GREASE PROVED TO BE AS POTENT AS IT SMELT.”

TOM AKERLEY

His Adventures in the Tall Timber and at

Gaspard’s Clearing on the Indian River

RELATED BY

Captain Theodore Goodridge Roberts

Author of “The Fighting Starkleys,” “Comrades of the Trails,”

“Red Feathers,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED BY

Ernest Fuhr

BOSTON

L. C. PAGE AND COMPANY

(INCORPORATED)

MDCCCCXXIII

Copyright, 1922,

By Perry Mason Company

Copyright, 1923

By L. C. Page and Company

(INCORPORATED)

All rights reserved

Made in U. S. A.

First impression, April, 1923

PRINTED BY C. H. SIMONDS COMPANY

BOSTON, MASS., U. S. A.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

• [“The bear’s grease proved to be as potent as it smelt.”]
• [“They sat side by side on a small heap of straw”]
• [“‘He was figgerin’ to lose ye in the woods’”]
• [“It was hard work and slow progress”]
• [“He ... thrust his head and shoulders out of the window”]

TOM AKERLEY

CHAPTER I
THE FLIGHT

The night was hot and hazy. The aerodrome was in darkness save for a moving light in the black maw of one of the hangars and a shine from the open window of the office on the other side of the ground. All the machines were down and in.

Two men were in the small hut which served as field-headquarters and office for this particular unit of the Dominion Air Force. They sat at opposite sides of a large table, one leaning back in his chair with a cigar in his mouth, the other stooped forward over a map which he studied intently. Clerks, orderlies, pilots, observers and mechanics all were gone, with the exceptions of these two and the man with the lantern across at the hangars.

“Ottawa seems determined to decorate every one who ever flew, be he alive or dead,” remarked the elder of the two, without removing the cigar from his mouth and still gazing upward at the low ceiling. “We seem to have more Military Crosses and such things than we know what to do with.”

“Yes, sir?” returned the younger officer inquiringly, looking up from the map.

“It seems so to me,” continued Colonel Nasher. “You knew a fellow named Angus Bruce, I believe.”

“Yes, I knew Angus Bruce.”

“Ottawa suggests a posthumous Military Cross for him.”

The younger officer said nothing to that, although the expression of his face suggested that he wanted to say a great deal. Instead of speaking he fell to studying his map again. The line of his mouth was tense. Even the set of his broad, lean shoulders looked tense. A keen observer would have noticed a general air of tenseness about him—tenseness of self-control practiced under difficulties.

“But I think my letter to Ottawa will fix that,” added the colonel, still speaking around his cigar.

The other looked across the table again.

“Fix it?” he queried.

His voice was low but slightly tremulous.

“Kill it,” replied the colonel.

“I don’t understand you, sir,” said the junior, still speaking quietly. “Bruce earned it several times, to my personal knowledge.”

“I don’t agree with you. I knew the fellow for years. We used to live in the same town. There’s a yellow streak in the breed. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

“He had no yellow streak. He proved his courage a dozen times—scores of times—his courage and his worth.”

“So you say, major.”

At that the major pushed his chair back and stood up.

“Yes, that’s what I say!” he cried.

Colonel Nasher sat up straight, plucked his cigar from his mouth and stared at his second-in-command.

“And I mean what I say,” continued the major, in a loud and shaken voice. “And I know what I am talking about.”

“But you forget to whom you are talking!” roared the colonel.

“No I don’t,” retorted the younger man, wildly. “I am talking to you—and there is some true talk coming to you. You’ve been asking for it ever since I joined this outfit. I know what your game is. You want to get me out—to make people believe that my nerve is gone and I’m no longer fit for the service. I’m fit enough—fit for anything but to sit and listen to you lie about a friend of mine—about the memory of a friend who was killed over the Boche lines. You’re not fit to name a man like Angus Bruce. You never saw him fight. You never saw anybody fight. A yellow streak? I have seen him go up alone after four of them! You’ll swallow that lie, Colonel Nasher, here and now!”

The colonel got to his feet, glaring. He was a large man with a large face. The only small things about him were his heart and mind. His eyes looked like polished gray stones in his red face.

“Your dead friend won’t get his cross and you’ll lose yours!” he cried, pointing a thick finger at the ribbons on the major’s breast. “I’ll break you for this, you upstart! Consider yourself under arrest. I’ll teach you that you’re not in France now!”

The major stepped swiftly and with smooth violence around the end of the table; and then, quick as a flash, his right fist came in contact with the colonel’s red chin. Down went the colonel with a crash.

The major stood above his prostrate C. O. for a few seconds, staring down at the motionless bulk and shaking as if with fever chills.

“What’s the use!” he exclaimed hysterically, turning away. “I’m as helpless as if I were under French mud with Angus Bruce.”

He took his leather cap and leather coat from a hook on the door, opened the door and stepped into the dark warm night. He saw the lantern beyond the level field and hastened across to it.

“I want the old bus out again, Dever,” he said.

“Very good, sir,” replied Dever.

They wheeled the ’plane from the open hangar. The major put on his leather coat and cap and climbed in. He started the engines and switched on the internal lights. Then he leaned over and said, “You remember Major Angus Bruce, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I remember him well,” replied the man on the ground. “We don’t forget that kind, sir, do we—nor ever will.”

“A good soldier, Angus Bruce.”

“One of the smartest and bravest in the Old Force, sir. He crashed his sixth just a day after you crashed your seventh, sir.”

“Yes, I remember it. Now get me off, Dever, and then go over to the office and see if the colonel wants anything. If he needs a stimulant I think you’ll find something of the sort in the right-hand drawer on his side of the table.”

“Very good, sir. When’ll you be back?”

“Not before sunrise. Don’t wait up for me.”

Dever gave a downward heave on a propeller-blade. Then the wide, white ’plane slid, roaring, into the darkness.

Akerley was flying low; and when he saw the little smudge of yellow light on the black expanse beneath him he went down to it like a wing-weary duck to the sheen of water. The numbness of indifference and confusion that had possessed him for an hour or more passed swiftly from his brain and spirit. His nerves snapped back to duty and his vision cleared. The light expanded to his gaze as he neared it and by its form and position he judged it to come from an open doorway of modest dimensions. It streamed out upon a green level; and he reasoned hopefully that the level ground would, very likely, be of considerable extent in front of the building. So he shut off his flagging engines, swooped around, dipped and flattened.

The machine ran, swaying and lurching, through old Gaspard’s half-grown oats; and just as Akerley was about to congratulate himself on the soundness of his reasoning, the right plane came in violent contact with an ancient and immovable stump of pine.

Akerley recovered consciousness in the dew-wet grain, in the gray dawn. He lay on his left side, with his left shoulder dug into the soft soil. The sappy stems of the young oats had saved his face and head from serious injury; but there was blood on his cheek. He felt a stab of pain through his shoulder as he sat up and looked dizzily around; and his first thought was that a bullet had gone through him. Then he remembered his changed situation and altered circumstances.

He saw the machine on its nose beside the sturdy old stump. One wing was ripped off and twisted hopelessly. That sight did not distress him, for he had finished with the machine anyway. It had served his purpose.

He sat in a field of half-grown oats, ten or twelve acres in extent, rimmed all around by dense forest. A large log-house and two barns stood in a group near the farther edge of the clearing.

Akerley got slowly and painfully to his feet and moved toward the house, the door of which stood open. He had been so badly shaken by his throw from the machine that he had to sink to his knees and right hand several times on the way. He reached the door-step at last and sat down on it. So far, he had not caught a glimpse of anything human and alive. A few hens scratched about a stable door and a small black dog eyed him inquiringly from a distance.

The door stood open upon the main apartment of the house, which was very evidently kitchen and living-room in one. It contained a long, high-backed settle against one wall, a deal table against another and a dresser of unstained pine against a third. Plates, platters and bowls, yellow, blue-and-white and a few adorned with flowery designs in gorgeous hues, and a big brown tea-pot, stood on the shelves of the dresser. There was a wide chimney with a fireplace containing fire-dogs and a crane with dangling pot-hooks; and to one side of the chimney, with an elbow of pipe leading into the rough masonry, stood a small stove. Both hearth and stove were cold. A few rag mats, and two deer skins worn bald in patches, lay on the floor of squared timbers. The log walls were sheathed with thin strips of cedar, the partitions and ceiling were of wide pine boards. Rough hewn rafters ran across the ceiling. There was no sign of plaster anywhere in that wide room. There were closed doors in the partitions to the right and left, and one in the log wall beside the chimney, opposite the open door. A wide ladder went steeply up from a corner to an open trap in the ceiling.

Akerley got stiffly to his feet and crossed the threshold. He knocked sharply on the open door; he crossed to the stove and hit the top of the oven with the poker; he shouted, “Wake up!”, “Good morning,” and “Is any one at home?” Knocks and shouts alike failed to produce a response of any sort except from the little black dog. The dog looked in at him across the threshold with an expression of sharp but good-humored curiosity on his black face; and when the intruder addressed him familiarly by the name of “Pup” and asked him where the devil every one was gone to, he wriggled with delight but continued to keep his distance.

Akerley opened the back door and looked out, under the roof of a narrow porch and across a wood-yard, at the high edge of the forest. Sunshine was flooding over the clearing by this time like a bright, level tide. The porch ran the length of the house; and in its shelter stood an upright churn, a couple of tubs, and two benches supporting empty pails and pans and “creamers” which shone like silver in the sun. Also, there were two old splint-bottom rocking-chairs on the porch; and on the seat of one of these lay an open book on its face.

Akerley stepped out onto the rough hewn flooring of the porch and stared about him inquiringly. Here was a comfortable and well-kept home; here were the material things of peaceful industry and leisure; but where had the people gone to? He knew that they had been at home last night, for the light from their open door had guided him to his landing. He sat down in one of the chairs, for he was still weak from the shaking and the pain in his shoulder, and lifted the book from the other.

“My hat!” he exclaimed. “Where am I?”

The book was the elder Dumas’ “Three Musketeers,” printed in the original language of that great and industrious romancer.

He replaced the book and reëntered the house. The dog, who had advanced as far as the middle of the room, immediately beat a wriggling retreat to his old position beyond the threshold. Akerley ascended the ladder and searched through the loft, which was divided into three chambers—a bedroom, a storeroom and a lumber-room. Nobody was hidden there. He descended and opened the closed doors off the main room. Behind them he found a pantry and storeroom combined, a long apartment containing a carpenter’s table and several large grain bins, and a bedroom. They were all as empty of humanity as the kitchen and upper floor.

It was now fifteen minutes past six by the clock on the chimney-shelf; and the intruder felt keen stirrings of hunger. He had not eaten since an early hour of the previous day. He made a fire in the stove with kindlings and dry wood which lay ready to hand, and then looked about for water. There was none in the house. He took an empty pail from the porch and followed a path that ran from the chip-yard into the green gloom of the forest. He found the spring within ten paces of the edge of the clearing, roofed over and fenced about with poles. The clear water brimmed the oblong basin that had been dug for it; and in the lower end of the basin stood two tin “creamers” held down by a stone-weighted board across their tops.

“Last night’s milk, I suppose,” said Akerley, as he filled his pail. “What about this morning’s milking? Are they leaving that to me, I wonder?”

He returned to the house and cooked and ate a very good breakfast. He found everything he wanted—bread, tea, sugar, butter, bacon and jam. Then he lit a cigarette.

“I won’t wash dishes, anyway,” he said, “I draw the line at that. I’ll dirty every cup and plate in the house first. But I suppose I’ll have to go and look for those blasted cows.”

His shoulder felt better, but still very stiff. He placed a dish of bread and milk on the floor and pointed it out to the little dog, then hung two tin pails on his arm and went out to look for the dairy herd. On his way, he searched the barns. The stables were empty, save for a few dozens of scratching fowls. He found a pig-house of two pens and open runs behind one of the barns. One suite was occupied by a large sow and the other by five promising pink youngsters. They all greeted the sight of him enthusiastically.

“Pigs!” he exclaimed. “I suppose they think I’ll attend to their confounded pigs.”

He entered the pig-house and found there a small iron stove and large iron pot. The pot, which had a capacity of about two flour barrels, was half-full of a stiff sort of porridge. Beside it stood a spade with a short handle. He set the pails on the floor and spaded a quantity of this mess into the troughs to right and left. The exertion sent stabs of pain through his injured shoulder. He glared at the big sow on his right and the small pigs on his left, who had dashed in from their yards at the sounds of his spading and were now sunk to the eyes and knees in their untidy breakfast.

“They’d better come home before that pot is empty,” he said. “If they think I’m going to cook for a bunch of pigs while they go fishing they’re everlastingly mistaken.”

The big field of oats spread completely around the barns, but from the barn-yard a fenced road led through the crop to a second clearing behind a screen of trees. This clearing, which was rough pasture, was fenced and occupied by three horses and a foal; and in a small, square yard at the near edge of it stood five cows in expectant attitudes. One cow had a bell at her neck, which she ding-donged restlessly.

Akerley had learned to milk when he was a small boy and used to visit a brother of his mother’s housekeeper in the country. The knack of it is not easily lost, though the muscles of hands and wrists may suffer from neglect of the exercise. He milked the five cows, grumbling at the necessity; and he was glad that two of them proved to be remarkably light producers. He then let them into the pasture with the horses; and upon seeing them hasten toward a green clump of alders in a far corner, he knew that he would not have to carry water for them. Owing to the painful condition of his shoulder, he was forced to make two trips with the milk. He found the house still unoccupied, save by the little black dog.

One thing led naturally to another; and Akerley found no time that morning to consider the graver problems of his situation. He was conscientious to an extraordinary degree and knew just enough about farm life to feel the responsibilities of his peculiar position. Milking led to the care of milk and the washing of creamers. He carried the skimmed milk to the pigs, cooked and ate his dinner, then fell asleep in one of the chairs on the porch.

Akerley slept heavily and senselessly for several hours; but at last his head slipped along the back of the chair into so uncomfortable a position that his brain shook off its torpor and busied itself with the spinning of dreams. They were startling and distressing dreams. They were of flying in fogs and over strange cities and through resounding barrages, of fighting against fearful odds, and of falling—falling—falling. Crash!—and he awoke just in time to save himself from tumbling sideways off the chair.

He opened his eyes wide and straightened himself with a gasp. His heart was going at a terrific rate, his nerves were all twanging, and for a second or two he felt numb with fear. Then he saw the afternoon sunlight along the edge of the forest and remembered. He laughed with relief.

“This is better,” he said to the black dog, who sat on the edge of the porch and faced him with an expression of undiminished interest and expectancy. “Yes, a great deal better, you black pup. Better for the nerves and better for everything—and you can take a flight-commander’s word for it, Pup.”

So great was his relief at awakening from his nightmares to those peaceful and rustic surroundings that, for several minutes, his mood and manner of whimsical complaint were forgotten. He surveyed the yard, with its cord wood, chips and saw-horse; and the path leading into the brown and green shades of the forest; and the dog wagging its tail in front of him, with the keenest satisfaction. His appreciative glance lowered to the floor between his feet and the dog.

“What’s this!” he exclaimed, staring. “Where’d it come from?”

He stooped forward and picked up a piece of folded white paper. It was written on with pencil, in a round hand, as follows:—

“Sir; My Grandfather refuses to return for he will not believe that you are not a devil. He is not an educated man, and has not been more than forty miles from here in the last thirty years. He has always believed in the Devil, but never in aëroplanes or anything of that kind, although I have shown him pictures of them. I am glad you were not killed and sorry you broke your aëroplane. You did not find the calves, which are in a pen at the far end of the cow-stable. I fed them a few minutes ago. The cows do not pasture with the horses, as Jess kicks cows—so I let them out. The bars in the brush-fence are just beyond the brook among the alders. I shall bring my grandfather back to the house as soon as he recovers from his foolish fright; but how soon that will be I cannot state definitely, for he is a very stubborn old man. I have left him asleep in the woods. He made me promise not to speak to you.

Yours very truly,

Catherine MacKim.”

Akerley read with astonished haste, studied the signature, then re-read the letter slowly from the beginning. This done, he raised his head and gazed searchingly around him.

He entered the house and looked at the clock on the chimney-piece. It pointed to four; and he corrected the watch on his wrist by it. Again he read the note before putting it carefully away in his pocket-book. He stood for some time in the center of the room, deep in thought, fingering his stubbly chin. Then he entered the bedroom.

This was evidently Grandfather’s sleeping-place and nothing else. Its walls of natural wood were bare save for a few earthy and unshapely garments of coarse material hanging from nails. A pair of mud-caked boots with high legs stood crookedly in a corner. On the window-sill lay a black clay pipe, the heel of a plug of black tobacco and a shabby spectacle-case. The only articles of furniture were a large chest and a bed. The chest was not locked; and Akerley rummaged through it in search of a razor. He found an ancient suit of black broadcloth, a leather wallet fat with ten and twenty-dollar bank notes, flannel shirts, rifle cartridges rolled up in a woolen sock, a packet of papers, cakes of tobacco, suits of winter underclothes so aggressively wooly that his back itched as he beheld them, a Bible, a cardboard box full of trinkets—and, last of all, a razor in a stained red case.

He had to go up to the bedroom in the loft to find a mirror; but he did not shave there, feeling that he would be taking an unwarrantable liberty in doing so. With the mirror and a purloined cake of pink soap he returned to the kitchen. Nothing like a shaving-brush was to be found, high or low, so he did without. The pink soap proved to be a poor producer of lather, and the ancient razor seemed to prefer either sliding or digging to cutting; and so it was twenty minutes to five before Akerley considered himself shaved. He returned the mirror and soap to their places and went out to his crippled machine.

Akerley had no further use for the plane. He felt that it had fulfilled its mission, quite apart from the fact that it was damaged beyond immediate repair with the tools and materials at hand. He judged by the atmosphere and appearance of his surroundings and the fact that the old man of the place had mistaken him for a devil, that he had gone far enough. And the nearest supply of petrol was sure to be many weary miles away. So much the better—for petrol stood for the very things he was most anxious to avoid at this particular stage of his career. Now he was anxious to put the machine out of sight in the shortest possible time, and for a few minutes he seriously contemplated breaking it to pieces and burning and burying the fragments. But he decided against this violent course. He hadn’t the dull toughness of heart for the task; for this plane had served him well, as many others had served him well and truly in the past. So he set briskly to work at dismantling it.

It was after seven o’clock when Akerley went for the cows. He found them waiting outside the bars in the brush fence among the alders, yarded them and milked them. He then fed the calves and pigs, prepared and ate his own supper, and returned to his work on the machine. Later, he found and lit a lantern. It was close upon midnight when his task was completed to his satisfaction. Then he threw himself, boots and all, on the old man’s bed, and sank into dreamless sleep.

CHAPTER II
THE GIRL AND THE MAN

The twilight of dawn was brightening over the clearing when Akerley was suddenly awakened by the grip of fingers on his injured shoulder. He could not have leapt back to consciousness more swiftly and violently if a knife had been driven into him. He sat up with a jerk and opened his eyes in the same instant of time; and fear shone visibly in his eyes for a fraction of a second. The look of fear gave place to one of relief, and that changed in a wink to an expression of polite and embarrassed surprise.

A girl stood beside the bed, staring at him wide-eyed. Her lips were parted and she breathed hurriedly.

“Get up,” she whispered. “You must hide in the woods. Grandfather is coming. Climb out the window and run.”

He swung his feet to the floor and stood up before her.

“But why should I run and hide?” he asked.

She placed her hands on his breast and pushed him backward until he brought up against the wall beside the open window.

“He will kill you,” she replied. “He has his rifle. Get out, quick, and hide in the woods. Please go! And watch the house. And I’ll tell you later. Crawl away. Don’t let him see you.”

“But why does he want to shoot me?”

“Go! Go! I don’t want you to be killed!”

“I am not afraid of any old man with a rifle!”

The girl’s eyes blazed and the color faded out of her cheeks. She raised her right hand as if she would strike him in the face. Daunted and bewildered, Akerley turned quickly and slipped out of the window into the dew-wet grass. He moved toward the edge of the woods by the shortest line, on his hands and knees, without pausing once to look back. Upon reaching the shelter of bushes and round spruces along the front of the forest, he lay flat and turned and surveyed the house and clearing. His shoulder hurt him, and he felt angry and hungry and generally abused; but his mind was soon diverted from himself by the sudden appearance of a tall old man within fifteen or twenty paces of where he lay.

The old man stared at the house from beneath the brim of a wide and weather-stained felt hat. Abundant white whiskers showed with startling distinctness against the breast of his dark shirt. He held a rifle in his right hand, at the short trail. After standing motionless for half a minute, he stooped almost double and advanced toward the house with long strides. He reached the porch and vanished from view through the back door.

“She was right,” soliloquized Akerley. “The old bird is out for blood and no mistake. He certainly has his nerve with him—if he still thinks I’m a devil.”

He lay still, watching the house. The minutes dragged past; and his hunger and the soreness of his shoulder again attracted his attention. Presently the girl appeared in the doorway, paused there for a moment and then stepped out onto the porch with her grandfather close at her heels. The old man was in the act of passing her when she turned swiftly and halted him, and stayed him with a grip of both hands on the front of his shirt. Akerley, watching intently, again forgot his discomfort and hunger. He knew something of the strength of those small hands.

“I hope she’ll pull out his blasted whiskers,” he muttered.

The two were evidently of different opinions on some matter of importance. The old man seemed to be all for leaving the porch immediately, and the girl for having him remain there. He waved his left hand violently. He waved his right hand, in which the steel of the rifle-barrel shone blue. She continued to cling to the front of his shirt. It was plain to be seen that they argued the point hotly. He side-stepped toward the edge of the porch and she pulled him back sharply to his former ground. He struggled to get away and she struggled to retain her hold on him. He broke away suddenly and fell backwards off the edge of the raised floor. It was a drop of about two feet. The rifle flew from his grasp as he struck the ground. He lay on his back for a few seconds, then turned over and raised himself to his hands and knees. From that position he got slowly to his feet. He stood facing Akerley’s hiding-place for a moment, swaying uncertainly, then staggered forward a few paces, reeled suddenly, fell heavily on his face and lay still. The girl sprang down from the porch and knelt beside him.

Akerley saw the girl make several attempts to get the old man to his feet. He left his cover after the third unsuccessful attempt and approached the yard. He was half-way to the porch when the girl raised her head and saw him. She signalled him to make haste; and he immediately broke into a run.

“He is hurt!” she exclaimed, breathlessly. “He is unconscious. He has not opened his eyes since he fell. There’s no doctor this side of Boiling Pot. What am I to do?”

“He is stunned, that’s all,” replied Akerley. “He breathes right enough, and his heart is working away like a good one. Very likely he knocked the back of his head on a stone or something when he crashed. We had better carry him in-doors, I think, and pour some water over him.”

Akerley lifted him by the shoulders, the girl gathered him up by the knees, and so they carried him into the house and laid him on his own bed. Akerley asked if there were any brandy or whiskey on the premises.

“Not for him!” she cried. And then, in a lower tone, “There is some brandy, but I have hidden it from him,” she continued. “It is the worst thing in the world for him, for it inflames his temper; and I think it is his temper that is the matter with him, mostly. He has been like that twice before, and both times he was in a terrible rage.”

“Pleasant company, I don’t think,” remarked Akerley. “But the trouble isn’t entirely bad temper this time, Miss MacKim. Here’s the bump where he assaulted something hard with the back of his skull. It doesn’t seem serious—but he is very old, I suppose.”

The girl investigated the bump with her fingers.

“I’ll bathe that,” she said. “See, he looks better already. It was foolish of me to be afraid. Please get out of sight before he opens his eyes. Get your breakfast now, please, and make as little noise about it as possible; and I’ll keep him here until you have finished, even if he recovers consciousness in the meantime.”

“Does he still think I am a devil?” he asked.

“Yes—and that it is his sacred duty to kill you,” she replied. “He was terrified at first; but he is not at all afraid of you now. The very thought of you, and of the way you frightened him when you rushed down from the sky, fills him with fury.”

“But am I to hide from him always?”

“Always? Did you come here to settle for life?”

“My machine is smashed and I have dismantled it; and I need a rest.”

“You will not get much rest with Grandfather hunting you all the time; and there are other and more usual ways of leaving here than by aëroplane. But go now—quick!”

Akerley left the room and closed the door behind him. He lit a fire in the stove stealthily, boiled water and made tea. He did not fry bacon, for fear that the smell of it might start the old man into action again; so he breakfasted on bread and butter and jam. He was about to light a cigarette—the last one in his case—when the girl appeared from the old man’s bedroom. She came very close to him, with a finger on her lip for warning.

“He has come around, but he is very weak and shaken,” she whispered. “He seems quite dazed, just as he did the other times; but he will soon recover his wits and energy, you may be sure. He may be like this all day, or perhaps only for a few hours; and then he’ll be out with the rifle again, looking for you. What have you done with your aëroplane?”

Akerley eyed her steadily and thoughtfully before replying.

“I have hidden the parts here and there,” he said. “I’ll show you, any time you say. One plane is badly smashed, but not hopelessly. I may mend it some day; but just now the important thing for me is to have all the parts out of sight.”

“So that Grandfather can’t find them and destroy them?” she queried.

“That is one reason,” he replied. “The fact is, I should not like any one from outside to find any trace of the old bus around here. It might prove very awkward for me. The less known about me and the machine the better for me, Miss MacKim. If I tell you why I’ll put myself at your mercy—which I shall do sometime when we can talk in more security. Now I think I had better milk and do the chores.”

“Are you in danger?” she whispered.

“I shall be glad to explain my position to you, as far as possible, at the first opportunity,” he answered, smiling. “But there are other things to do now that need to be done quick—the milking, for one—and if I could get hold of your grandfather’s ammunition I’d extract the charge from every cartridge. Then I’d feel less uneasy. My nerves are not in the best shape, as it is.”

She went to the front door with him and instructed him to keep out of line of the old man’s window, not to bring the milk to the house but to leave it on the floor of the larger barn, and to remain in the barn until he saw her again.

“And I’ll bring you every rifle-cartridge I can find,” she concluded.

He thanked her and started off to attend to the cows; but before he had gone a dozen paces he turned and came back to where she still stood on the threshold.

“I had forgotten the milk-pails,” he explained.

After milking and turning the cows out, he fed the pigs. He could not feed the calves, for he had not brought their breakfast of hay-tea and skimmed milk from the house. He retired to the barn then and gave his mind to very serious and painful thought.

“What’s the use?” he exclaimed, at last. “Thinking won’t undo what’s already done. The past is out of my hands—and I hope to heaven it is buried! I can only help myself in the future.”

The girl found him a few minutes later. She carried a small basket containing sixty cartridges.

“These are all I could find,” she said. “I took them from the box in his room, and from behind the clock, and from the rifle and even from his pockets. He is feeling much stronger already.”

She took up the pails of milk and was about to go when Akerley begged her to wait a minute. He produced a knife of parts from a pocket and with one of its numerous attachments pried the bullet out of a cartridge and extracted the explosive charge. Then he refixed the bullet in the empty shell and handed it to the girl.

“Please put that in his rifle,” he said. “Nothing will go off but the cap when he pulls the trigger on that. I’ll have the rest of them fool-proof in a couple of hours.”

She complimented him on his cleverness, told him not to budge from the barn until her return, and went away with the milk and the harmless cartridge. He was very busy throughout the next two hours. He counted the seconds of the third hour, paced the dusty floor and looked out every minute.

She came at last, with his dinner in a basket covered with a linen napkin. Everything looked as right as could be to him then—and he did not know why. He thought it was because he felt hungry. His pleasure lit his eyes upon beholding her and sounded in his voice when he welcomed her; and these things did not escape her notice and at once pleased and puzzled her.

“THEY SAT SIDE BY SIDE ON A SMALL HEAP OF STRAW.”

They sat side by side on a small heap of straw in a corner of the threshing-floor, and she set out the dinner at their feet—sliced cold chicken, bread and butter, pickles, two large wedges of Washington pie and a pitcher of hot coffee.

“I left Grandfather eating his in bed, so I’ll have mine with you,” she said.

She told him that the old man had recovered sufficiently to demand his rifle, and that she had placed the chargeless cartridge in the breech before giving it to him.

“He still thinks it was a devil who lit in the oats,” she ran on, “so if you intend to stay here for some time we must think of a way of leading him to believe that you are not the person who came down from the sky. You must get some other clothes, and a pack, and walk into the clearing as if you had come in all the way from Boiling Pot on foot. I may be able to fix over some of his things so that he won’t recognize them. Haven’t you a hat? And is that your only coat? You must have been very cold up in the air.”

“I have a cap and a wool-lined leather coat,” he replied. “They are both hidden away with the engine of the poor old bus; and if I am wise I will hide this one, too.”

She looked at him curiously, and he returned her gaze gravely.

“This is a military coat, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Yes, a khaki service jacket.”

“You are a soldier, then.”

“An officer of the Royal Air Force.”

“I knew you were a soldier when I saw you asleep in the chair yesterday. I knew by that ribbon.”

She placed the tip of a finger on the left breast of his jacket, and he kinked his neck and looked down at it.

“The Legion of Honor. So you have seen that ribbon before.”

“I have it—the cross and ribbon. It belonged to my Grandfather MacKim. He won it in the Crimean War.”

“That old boy?”

“No, not that one. His name is Javet, Gaspard Javet—and he was never a soldier. What are the other ribbons?”

“One is the Military Cross and the others are service medals. But tell me about your Grandfather MacKim, please.”

“Not now. I am the questioner to-day. You came here without being invited, so I have a right to ask you questions. It is my duty to do so.”

“Of course it is. It is one of your duties as a hostess. Ask away, and I’ll tell you the truth or nothing.”

“Very well. Are you in great danger?”

“I don’t know. If people from the outside don’t find me or learn that I am here I shall be safe enough for the present—except from your grandfather; and I am not seriously afraid of him.”

“But you ran away from something or someone! You flew away! What were you afraid of, to make you fly away? You are not a coward. What are you afraid of?”

“Of disgrace for one thing.”

“Have you done a disgraceful deed?”

“No—but you wouldn’t understand. My nerves are not quite right—and I lost my temper. I struck a senior officer.”

“And you are a soldier! And the king has decorated you!”

“Any soldier would have done it. You would have done it yourself, under the same circumstances. It was about a friend of mine who is dead. Those swankers who have never seen the whites of the enemies’ eyes don’t understand. He lied about him! I got out and up, and flew and lost myself, and when my petrol was done I made a landing to your light—and here I am.”

“Did you kill him?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. I didn’t wait to see. My nerves aren’t right yet. I hit him with my fist. Any man in my place with an ounce of blood in him would have done what I did. But I’m afraid that won’t help me much if they find me, even if he was only knocked out for the count.”

“Listen! It is Grandfather shouting for me. I must go, or he may get out of bed to look for me. You stay here.”

“For how long?”

“Until I come back—which will be as soon as I can get away. I’ll take these cartridges. Climb into a mow, and if you hear anyone coming hide under the hay.”

“I am in your hands. You believe what I have told you?”

“Yes, everything.”

“Even that you would have done it yourself?”

“Yes, I believe that. There!—he is shouting again!”

“Will you bring me something to smoke? I haven’t a cigarette left.”

“Yes, yes,” she cried, and ran from the barn.

CHAPTER III
CATHERINE’S PLAN

Old Gaspard Javet did not return to the war-path with the celerity feared by Catherine. He kept to his bed all that afternoon and all the next day, his rifle on the patchwork quilt beside him, without showing any sign of his usual energy beyond the power of his voice and an occasional flash of the eyes. The tumble had given his dry joints and stiff muscles a painful wrenching; and his mind had also suffered from the sudden shock of the fall and the emotional explosion that had led to it. Now and then, for brief periods, his memory of the immediate past served him faithfully and he thought clearly and violently on the subject of the unwelcome intruder; and at other times, for hours together, he lay in a state of peace and mild bewilderment.

To understand this old man, one must know that he was more Scottish than French, (despite his name), and that a dark old strain of Iroquois blood ran in his veins. He had lived rough and wild most of the years of his life, and neither the ministers of the Kirk nor the priests of the Church of Rome had enjoyed a fair opportunity of shaping him to any authorized form of religious thought and practice. He had been a scoffer and unbeliever until past middle-life; but for years now he had been deeply, and sometimes violently, religious according to his own lights and to laws of his own conception. Born in the wilderness far north of the city of Quebec eighty years ago, of a father of two strains of blood and a mother of three, he had been bred early to self-reliance, privation, loneliness, and physical dexterity and endurance. He spoke French and English fluently but incorrectly, several Indian languages with as much fluency as their vocabularies permitted, and he read English with difficulty. All his reading was done in Holy Writ; and, considering the laborious process of that reading, the ease and freedom of his interpretations were astonishing.

While the old man was confined to his bed, Akerley was permitted almost unlimited freedom of action; but he was not allowed to enter the house or intrude on the field of vision of Gaspard’s bedroom window. He milked the cows, fed the calves and pigs, and hoed in a secluded field of turnips and corn. For two nights he made his bed in the hay of the big barn, with blankets brought to him by the girl. She also supplied him with a clay pipe and tobacco belonging to her grandfather; and though he had smoked cigarettes for years and the first pipeful made his head spin, he soon learned to take his tobacco hot and heavy according to the custom obtaining in those woods. He saw and talked to the girl frequently during that time. She frankly seized every opportunity of leaving her grandfather and her household tasks to be with him. She did not question him further, just then, concerning his deed of violence, nor did her manner toward him suggest either fear or repugnance after he had made his confession. And yet her manner was not entirely as it had been before his frank answers to her questions had placed him at her mercy. It was changed for the better. It was more considerate of his feelings. In short, it was the manner of a sympathetic and trusting friend; and yet she knew nothing more of him, good or bad, than the bad he had told of himself. He was wise enough, understanding enough, not to doubt her full recognition of the fact that he had placed his freedom, his honor and perhaps his life, in her hands. He believed that her manner of sympathy was sincere. He credited her with a heart of utter kindness and an unshaken faith in her own instincts concerning the hearts of others; and he was deeply moved by admiration and gratitude.

She brought him his supper at seven o’clock in the evening of the second day of his residence in the barn, and went back to the house immediately. He made short work of the food, then took up a position behind the barn-yard fence, from which he had a clear view of the house, and awaited her reappearance. When eight o’clock came with no sight of her he felt a sudden restlessness and began to pace back and forth. By half-past eight he was in a fine fume of impatience and anxiety; and then he suddenly realized the silliness of it and made bitter fun of himself. She was safe, there in her own home not two hundred yards away—so why worry about her? And who was he to worry about her? She had never heard of him, nor he of her, four days ago. Why should he expect her to come hurrying back to talk to him? Wouldn’t it be the natural thing for her to prefer her grandfather’s company to his?

He asked himself all these questions and answered them all with disinterested logic; and yet he felt no less anxious and no less impatient. He climbed the fence and stared accusingly at the house. He was joined by the little black dog, with whom he was now on familiar terms. Together they strolled to the far side of the barns, where Blackie started a chipmunk along the pasture fence; but Akerley could not wait to watch the excitement. He left the chase in full cry and hastened back to a point from which he could see the house as if he had been absent a year. It had been out of his sight for exactly five minutes; and still she was not on her way. He wondered if he had said anything that could possibly have offended her, anything that she could possibly have misunderstood, and wracked his memory for every word that they had exchanged since morning. He could not recall anything of the kind or anything in her manner to suggest anything of the kind. Again he took himself to task for his foolishness.

“Your nerves are crossed, Tom Akerley,” he said. “Your wind is up in vertical gusts. Your brains are addled. You are so devilish lonely that you’ve gone dotty. You expect a girl who doesn’t know you from Adam to sit around and entertain you all the time and neglect her poor old grandfather; and it isn’t because you are used to it, old son, for no other woman ever neglected so much as a dog to entertain you. Buck up! Pull yourself together! Forget it!”

He filled and lit the clay pipe and sat on the top rail of the fence and smoked. Twilight deepened to dusk, the stars appeared, bats flickered and fire-flies blinked their sailing sparks; and lamplight glowed softly from the windows of the house.

It was long past ten o’clock when Catherine made her appearance, carrying a lighted lantern in her left hand and a large bundle under her right arm. She found Akerley on the top rail of the fence. He slid to his feet the moment the swinging circle of light discovered him, and strode forward to meet her.

“I was afraid you were never coming,” he said. “I began to fear that the old man had mistaken you for the devil. What have you there?”

“I thought I’d find you asleep,” she replied. “I didn’t say I was coming back to-night, you know. But I had to. Grandfather is feeling much better and will be up and out bright and early in the morning, so I have had to get these clothes ready for you to-night. And here are an old quilt and things—a frying-pan and old kettle—to make a pack of. You must leave here before sunrise and come back about breakfast-time. I’ll show you the road to come in by now—the road from Boiling Pot.”

Akerley took the bundle from her.

“You have been working all evening for me; and I am not accustomed to this sort of thing,” he said. “You are a very wonderful person, Catherine MacKim.”

“What do you mean by wonderful?” she asked curiously.

“You are wonderfully kind. I don’t believe there are many girls in the world who would take the trouble to fit me out like this. I may be wrong, for I don’t know many girls or women.”

“Didn’t a woman have anything to do with—with what you did?”

“A woman! Bless you, no! What made you think that?”

“I don’t know. Please put these things in the barn, and then I’ll show you the road.”

He obeyed and returned to her. She extinguished the lantern.

“He may be awake,” she explained. “He is very restless to-night; and there is no saying what he might do if he saw a lantern wandering about the edge of the woods.”

It was a still, vague night of blurred shadows and warm gloom. The dim stars did no more than mark out the close sky. The girl found a path through the oats and led the way along it until they came to the edge of the forest and the opening of the rough track that wound away from old Gaspard Javet’s clearings to the nearest settlement.

“There has never been a wheel on this end of it,” she said. “We do our hauling in winter; and we don’t pay road-taxes. Grandfather doesn’t seem to mind how far out of the world he lives.”

“Thank Heaven for that!” replied Akerley.

They walked for a short distance along this track, feeling the way with cautious feet and frequently brushing against the dense undergrowth to right and left. She halted suddenly, so close to him that her shoulder touched his arm for a moment.

“Do you think you will be able to find it in the morning?” she asked.

“Easily,” he assured her. “It is due south from the house.”

“Yes, just to the right of the two big pines. But that will not be all. You must invent a story about how you came in, and why, and all sorts of things. He is slightly mad about devils from the sky, you know. He has been expecting one. So, to save your life, you had better say that you lost your canoe and outfit—everything but the quilt and frying-pan—in the rapids below Boiling Pot.”

“But what is this boiling pot?”

“It is the pool below the falls, and it is also a little settlement, about fifteen miles from here. We are on the height-o’-land, you know, and you can’t get to within six miles of us from any direction by water, even in a canoe. The spring where we cool our creamers and the one in the pasture are the beginnings of Indian River. But what will you say about yourself?—who you are and what you are looking for? And what kind of person will you pretend to be?”

“I’ll think of something to-night—but I wish your grandfather was more modern and rational. I know a good deal about the woods, though this part of the country is new to me; and I can use an ax, and manage a canoe in white water. So don’t worry. I’ll think up something pretty safe. But have you told him that the devil has cleared out?”

“Yes, I told him so yesterday; and he thinks I am mistaken. Are you sure that the aëroplane is hidden where he won’t find it? I don’t see how it can be.”

“I took it to pieces, and the pieces are carefully hidden. I meant to tell you before what I had done with them. The engines are packed and stowed away in the little loft over the pig-house. The planes are under the hay in the small barn, where they should be safe until I can think of a better place for them. The old machine is scattered as if a shell had made a direct hit on her. I even took the liberty of putting a few small but very valuable parts in your room.”

“I found them. They are safe there.”

“So you see, Catherine, I have not only put my own fate in your hands, but that of the old bus as well. I have not practiced half-measures.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that—my liberty and honor. Suppose you were to let people know that I am here—that a stranger had come here by air? What would become of me? I might run into the woods and hide—and starve. The game would be played out and ended, whatever I did.”

“But you have never thought that there was any danger of such a thing!”

“Never. Not for a moment. But what right had I to treat you like this—to tell you the truth about myself and then throw myself on your mercy? You must think me a poor thing.”

“You have not asked for mercy from me; and you have told me that any man of spirit would have done what you did.”

“Any man of spirit and jangled nerves.”

They returned to the barn-yard in silence. There they lit the lantern.

“Don’t forget to put on the old clothes,” she said. “And please give me that coat now. I will take good care of it, ribbons and all; and I will give it back to you when you want to fly away from here.”

“I have neither the petrol nor the desire for flight,” he returned. “There are letters in the pockets, so please hide it securely.”

He took off the jacket, folded it and laid it over her arm.

“Good night,” she said, and hurried away.

CHAPTER IV
THE HEAVIEST HITTER

Akerley lay awake for hours on a blanket spread on a mattress of innumerable springs—a ton or more of last year’s timothy, bluejoint and clover. He had air enough, though it was still and warm; for one of the wide doors stood open and the fingers could be thrust anywhere between the horizontal poles of which the sides and ends of the barn were constructed. Only the roof was weather-tight.

His thoughts kept him awake; and yet he let them deal only with the immediate past and the immediate to-morrow. He did not think backward or forward beyond this forest-farm. What was the use of brooding over the past or dreaming of the future? After much reflection, he decided on the character in which he was to emerge from the woods into the clearing and encounter that formidable old Gaspard Javet. He would come as a backwoodsman from the upper waters of the main river, two hundred miles or more away to the west and south, looking for new land and seclusion. He had known that country well, years ago. This was a part that he could act with a degree of interest and realism; and he would explain it to the old man—sooner or later, as circumstances determined—that the game-wardens of his old stamping-grounds wanted him in connection with a little matter of spearing salmon at night by the light of a torch. The confession of a crime against the Game Laws was not likely to prejudice the old woodsman against him; and this was a particularly mild offense. He knew enough of back-countrymen to believe that his story would excite Gaspard’s sympathy—if Gaspard were true to type.

He worked out his part carefully, giving all his thought to it until he considered it to be as nearly perfect as was possible to bring it before the actual performance. He saw that certain details of character and action would have to be left until the illumination of the psychological moment. As the thing had to be done, it must be well done—with all his brain, all his will and all his skill. If not, then it was not worth attempting. This was the spirit in which he had set his hand and mind to every task, congenial or otherwise, in the lost past. Success had been won by him again and again in this spirit; and though the task before him was but a play, a game, the stakes for which he was to play were serious enough to give it the dignity of a great adventure. The stakes were honor and freedom.

Still he did not sleep. Invention seemed to have agitated his mind. He continued to keep his thoughts within the former limits of time, but he could not soothe them to rest. They made pictures for him of every one of his waking hours since his first awaking among the young oats in the gray dawn. He heard mice rustling in the hay and scampering on the rafters. At last he slept. He awoke sharply at the first hint of dawn. He continued to lie still for a little while, recalling the details of his plan of action for the new day. Then he donned the ancient and rustic garments which Catherine had brought him and hid his own shirt and breeches. His high, moccasin-toed boots were in part with his new character. He hid his wrist-watch and identification disc, then took up his bundle and left the barn. He made his way swiftly and cautiously to the nearest point of woods and, behind a screen of saplings, to the road. He followed this road toward Boiling Pot for several miles through the awakening forest. Here and there, in swampy hollows, he encountered mud-holes and intentionally stepped into them. By the time he sat down on an old stump and lit his pipe he looked as if he had come a long and rough journey.

He had not been seated more than ten minutes when his reveries were disturbed by the appearance of a large young man with an axe on his shoulder and a pack on his back. The stranger came into view suddenly and close at hand, around a bend in the track from the direction of Boiling Pot.

He halted abruptly at sight of Akerley.

“Good day,” said Akerley, coolly.

“Where’d you come from?” exclaimed the other.

“I’m a stranger in these parts,” returned Akerley; “and what I want to know is, where’ve I got to?”

“Into the woods, that’s where. But you know where you come from, don’t you? You ain’t just been born right here, I reckon.”

“Maybe I was.”

“Say, you know where you’re headin’ for, don’t you?”

“Sure thing. I’m heading for somewhere north of here on this track.”

“Well, it’s got a name, ain’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“T’ell you say! Where do you cal’late to fetch up at?”

“Somewhere quite a way north of this—if I don’t have to spend all day answering questions.”

“Looka here, friend, you don’t want to git too cussed sassy.”

“Friend nothing! I choose my friends.”

“Say, d’you reckon you’re talkin’ to me?”

“That’s what I am dead sure of. It’s you I am talking to; and unless you change your line of conversation for the better pretty quick I’ll quit talking.”

The big young man in the road flung down his ax and pack, uttered a string of blistering language and spat on the palms of his hands.

“What’s the idea?” queried Akerley, still smoking his pipe, still hunched forward with his elbows on his knees.

The other raised and flipped his feet about as if in the opening steps of a popular rustic dance, and at the same time began to chant in sing-song tones of a marked nasal quality.

“Stan’ up an’ take yer medicine, ye pore skunk,” he chanted. “Git up onto yer hind legs so’s I kin knock ye off’n ’em again, ye slab-sided mistake. Git onto yer splayed feet, or I’ll sure lam ye in the lantern right where ye set.”

“I don’t know if you want to dance or fight,” said Akerley, calmly but clearly, “but I’ll tell you this—I don’t feel like dancing. And I warn you not to start anything else, for I am a smart man with my hands.”

“Git up,” sang the other, continuing to jink about on his booted feet without shifting his ground. “Git up so’s I kin swing onto ye. Stan’ up on yer feet, dad blast ye, or git down onto yer prayer-handles an’ say ye’re bested already—for I’m Ned Tone, the heaviest hitter in Injun River.”

“So be it—but never say that I didn’t warn you,” replied Akerley, laying aside his pipe.

Then he complied with Ned Tone’s reiterated request with speed and violence suggestive of the releasing of tempered springs within him. His feet touched the ground in the same instant of time that his right fist touched the cheek of the heaviest hitter on Injun River. That was a glancing blow. Ned Tone turned completely around in his tracks, but he did not fall. He staggered and lurched. He recovered his balance quickly and plunged at his antagonist. He spat blood as he plunged, for his cheek had been cut against his teeth. He flailed a murderous blow—but it returned harmlessly to him through the non-resistant air. He jumped again, quick as thought, with a jab and a hook.

Akerley employed all his skill of defense, for he realized in a moment that the big bushwhacker was a practical fighter and that he possessed agility as well as weight. In height and reach there was little to choose between them—but that little was in favor of the woodsman. Akerley’s left shoulder was still tender; and when he caught a swing on it like the kick of a mule he gasped with pain and realized that now was the time for him to do all that he knew how for all that he was worth. His left was useless for offense, but he managed to keep it up so that it looked dangerous. After a little more clever foot-work, which seemed to bewilder and madden the heaviest hitter on Indian River, he stepped close in and did his very best at the very top of his speed.

Akerley was glad to sit down and press his hands to his head. He felt dizzy and slightly sick with the pain in his shoulder and neck. The dizziness and nausea passed almost instantly; but he continued to sit limp and gaze contemplatively at the sprawled bulk of the heavy hitter.

Ned Tone lay flat on the moss of that woodland road. For a few minutes he lay face-down; then he turned slowly over onto his broad back, with grunts of pain. He opened one eye slowly, only to close it immediately.

“Feeling bad?” asked Akerley, drily.

“Kinder that way,” replied Tone, thickly.

“As if you’d had enough, perhaps?”

“Too durned much.”

“You’ll be right as you ever were in a little while, so cheer up. I didn’t hit you hard.”

“Ye hit me hard enough, I guess—but I ain’t complainin’.”

“You remember that I warned you.”