Читать книгу Love of the Wild - Archie P. McKishnie - Страница 5

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The father arose and hung the fiddle on its nail.

“Best go to bed, Boy,” he yawned, picking up the huge clasp-knife with which he had been shaping the ax-handle and putting it in his pocket. When he withdrew his hand it held a letter.

“Well, now, if I didn’t forget all about this here epistle,” he exclaimed, frowning. “Jim Peeler gave it to me this afternoon. That man Watson, the land-agent at Bridgetown, gave it to Jim to give me. You read it, Boy, and see what he wants.”

Boy took the letter and broke it open with nervous fingers.

“Watson says he’s comin’ over here to see you to-morrow, dad. Seems like he wants to get hold of this place.”

He threw the letter from him and walked over to the window.

“By hickory!” expostulated the father, “what do you think of that?”

“What do I think? It’s just what I expected, that’s all.”

Boy lifted the window and leaned out. The moon was flooding the outer world with a soft radiance. The bark of a wolf came faintly to his ears from the back ridges. Old Joe lay stretched in the moonlight beside the ash-leach. As Boy watched him the dog arose, shook himself happily, turned three times around, and lay down again. An owl hooted mournful maledictions from a neighboring thicket, and in the nearby coop the fowl stirred and nestled down again, heads beneath wings. Boy came back and stood beside his father.

“I guess maybe I’m selfish, dad,” he said slowly. “It isn’t for me to say what I think, although it’s mighty good of you to ask. This place ain’t mine; it’s yours. You’ve worked hard and long to clear what you’ve cleared here, and that’s a great deal more than any of the other Bushwhackers have done. I haven’t been anythin’ of a help to you much. ’Course I could be from now on. I’m a man growed, nearly, and as soon as the trappin’ is over I might pitch in and help you with the loggin’.”

The father laid his pipe down on the table and combed his long beard with his fingers.

“Boy,” he said, “every hanged stick of timber and every foot of this four hundred acres of bushland is as much yours as mine, and you know it. I ain’t wantin’ to clear the land any more than the rest of the Bushwhackers are. What do I want with cleared land? Gosh sakes alive, I’d be so lonesome for the woods that I couldn’t live. I can’t sleep now if I don’t hear the trees swishin’ and the twigs poundin’ the roof nights. And ain’t we tolerably happy, all of us together here, even if the little ma is purty sick and it’s mighty hard not to be able to help her? And ain’t we hopin’ and prayin’ that she’ll get to be her old self once more, here where the woods breathes its own medicine? And don’t we know them prayers’ll be answered?”

He bent over and laid his big hand on the lad’s shoulder.

“Then we’ll naturally put in some great nights, crackin’ hickory-nuts by the fire and playin’ the fiddle. Why, I wouldn’t part with one acre of this piece of bush for all the cleared land in western Ontario.”

Boy stooped and picked up the letter.

“Watson writes that he has a cultivated farm near Clearview that he’ll swap for this of ours,” he said. “Where’s Clearview, dad?”

“Why, it’s a strip of sandy loam between Bridgetown and Lake Erie. It’s too light even to grow Canada-thistles. Well, I guess maybe Watson would be willin’ to swap that sand for our place. I don’t like that man Watson. I can’t say why, unless it’s on account of some things I’ve heard of him and that other feller, Smythe, who’s a partner of his in some way.”

“You mean the Smythe who keeps the store at Bridgetown?”

“The same. You know him pretty well, I guess. He cheated you out of a dozen mink-hides, didn’t he?”

“He tried to,” answered Boy with a smile.

“Mr. Watson’ll find that we’re not wantin’ to trade farms,” affirmed the father.

“There’s Gloss,” suggested Boy. “If she was where there was a good school——” He hesitated and looked at Big McTavish.

The man laughed.

“Why, bless your heart,” he cried, “you couldn’t drag the girl away from this bush. She loves it—loves every nook and corner of it.”

Boy sighed.

“She sure does,” he agreed. “She sure does.”

The father brought a pine board from the wood-box and began to whittle off the shavings for the morning fire-making. This done, he gathered them together with a stockinged foot, glancing now and then at the boy, who had resumed his old attitude.

“Watson and Smythe want to get hold of our property for some reason,” said the father, “and I reckon it’s pretty easy to guess who they’re trying to get it for. It’s that big landowner, Colonel Hallibut, who has his mill on Lee Creek. I hear that Colonel Hallibut swears he’ll own every stick of timber in Bushwhackers’ Place.”

“That’s what troubles me,” returned Boy quickly. “You know what them rich Englishmen are like, dad. They have always got hold of everythin’ they wanted, and now this one is goin’ to try and get our place. But we ain’t goin’ to let him,” he cried, springing up. “We’ll fight him, dad; we’ll fight him off, and if he tries to take it we’ll——”

“Hush, Boy; there’s no reason to take on that way. What makes you think he’ll try to drive us?”

Big McTavish stood up straight. Something of the boy’s spirit had entered into him for an instant.

“You see, dad, we’re poor. That is, we have no ready money, though we have everythin’ we need for comfort. Then we’re lackin’ in that somethin’ called sharpness among businessmen. We’ve never learned it. We are like the other wild things that creep farther back into the woods before what they can’t understand. We don’t know their ways. I tell you, Hallibut would steal this bushland from us, and he’s goin’ to try. It’s valuable. There’s enough walnut and oak and the highest class of timber on this place to make us rich—rich, d’ye know that, dad? And ain’t Hallibut and his agents tryin’ to get every other Bushwhacker under their thumbs same as they’re tryin’ to get us? But, dad, listen—they won’t get us, by God; they won’t get us.”

The lad was trembling and his face was white and perspiring.

“Boy,” chided the father sternly, “you mustn’t swear. Watson nor Hallibut nor any other man is that bad. You’ve let the woods get into you until you’re fanciful. Read your Bible, and pray more.”

“I didn’t mean to swear, dad. I’ve swore more to-day than I have for years. I can’t stand to think that them men will steal this beautiful spot that is ours now, and cut and cripple it and drive its wild things away.”

“Hallibut’s sawmill is runnin’ nights,” said the father thoughtfully. “He made French Joe an offer for his timber through Watson the other day, but I guess it wasn’t much. Joe owed him money.”

“Well, us Bushwhackers are goin’ to hang together,” said Boy. “We own over two thousand acres of the best timber in Ontario. We can keep it by fightin’. If we don’t fight——”

He turned and walked toward the door.

“Boy,” warned the elder man, “don’t you do anythin’ you’ll be sorry for. Just forget all about Watson and Hallibut for a time, ’cause I want to tell how we all come to be in this place we love so much.

“Before you were born, Boy, I lived in the States; ranched it in Arizona. And there was a man down there who as much as stole everythin’ I had in the world. It was because of a woman that he lived to enjoy it all for a time. That woman was his wife, your ma’s more’n friend, little Glossie’s mother.”

Boy looked up quickly, then dropped his head again.

“That woman was a lot to me and your mother. She was a lady, every inch of her, and educated, too. She taught your ma to be the scholar she is, and she was the kindest-hearted, sweetest woman that could be found in the world. Seems as she run off from a fine home and rich people to marry that man. He was a bad ’un, her man; bad in every way a man can be bad, I guess. He drank and he abused her——”

Big McTavish caught his breath hard.

“ ’Course,” he went on, “we might have killed him—lots of us there would have done more’n that for his wife. But you see that woman stuck to him in spite of all he did to make her life hell; so we let him alone. Your ma worshiped her, or as near it as mortal can worship mortal, and they were a lot together. Women are not very plentiful on the Plains, Boy. When I lost everythin’ to her husband, through his cheatin’ me on a deal, and made up my mind to quit ranchin’ and strike for some new country, she promised us that after her baby was born she’d come to us, no matter where we might be. You see it had come to such a pass that she simply couldn’t live with that man no longer.”

The big man paused to light his pipe, and Boy asked:

“Did she come?”

“No. We came direct here to Ontario and settled in this hardwood, me an’ your ma and Granny McTavish. All we had in the world was the clothes we wore and three hundred dollars in money. I took up as much land as the money would buy from the Canadian Government and started in to cut out a home. You was born soon after we’d settled here. Peeler came and he settled alongside us and soon after that Declute came.

“We wrote to the poor little woman out West and told her the latch-string was out for her whenever she could come. You see I’d built this house by then, and we all felt tolerably happy and well-to-do. We never got an answer to our letter, and the followin’ spring I left you and your ma and Granny with the neighbors and struck the back trail for Arizona. I found that her man had been killed in a quarrel with a Mexican, but nobody seemed to know where she and her baby had gone. I hunted high and low for them, but at last had to give it up. I thought maybe she had gone back to the home of her people, ’cause I learned that her husband had left some money behind him. When I got back here I found two babies where I’d left but one. You had a little girl companion sleepin’ in your hammock beside you, Boy. Your ma picked her up and put her in my arms and she cried a good deal, your ma did, and by and by she showed me a little gold locket that she had found tied about the baby’s neck. I opened one of the doors and a tiny picture lay there. Then I knowed at once whose baby it was that God had sent to us, and I knowed, too, that the baby’s mother would never come now. An old Injun was there, and he told me how a man in Sandwich had given him money to tote the baby down to us. He couldn’t tell us much about the man. We called the youngster Gloss, ’cause that was the name the old Injun gave her.”

McTavish arose and knocked the ashes from his pipe.

“Now you know how we all come to be here, Boy,” he said gently, “and you know why old Injun Noah seems so near to us all. He was the man who brought our girl to us.”

Boy did not speak, and the father quietly left the room. At the door he turned and looked back. The boy was sitting with his chin in his hands. Outside, the moon was trailing low above the tree-tops, and the owl’s hoot sounded far-off and muffled.