Читать книгу Lost Farm Camp - Henry Herbert Knibbs - Страница 9

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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.”