Читать книгу Lost Farm Camp - Henry Herbert Knibbs - Страница 5

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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.